Daily Readings 29. Swamiji about transformational thinking.
Taken from Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.
The Upanishads state: When the wise surrender sattva, rajas and tamas [the three gunas] to the Lord, He will reveal Himself to you.
The Bhagavad Gita says: Who is a wise man? ‘He who sees the Self in all, and all in the Self.’ Devotees of God see God in all, and all in God. Man prides himself by thinking: I am the highest creation of God.
The Lord as Christ rode on a donkey. The Lord’s grace falls even on that which, to us, is unworthy. Worthiness depends on God’s insight and not on man’s value. He sees your heart. Jesus said: What you do for the least of these you do to me.
[Mother] Kali is benign. There is violence too – but it is the violence of a mother for [protecting] her children.
Man must be very careful. Time is going. You must make up your mind if you want God. Enough of speculation. If not now, when? It is sad and it is easy.
Everything you do, relate it to God. You must see Him. Do everything dharmic and relate it to Him. But we relate everything to the body. Like this, learning becomes Shakti, wealth becomes [Mother] Lakshmi and so on. Relate it to God all the time.
It does not cost anything to speak sweetly, does it?
Thought with rites is very important. Thought travels and affects destiny and alters it – for the good of the ancestors.
Human birth is the rarest privilege. Other life forms are led by instinct, nature.
Sadhana is forced evolution. We know God-realisation is good for us and we want to get there as quickly as possible by sadhana. But if we do not look out this leads to attachment, unless we have satsang.
Look for the highest stage of life: Bhakti, devotion to God, or jnana, knowledge of the Self – that is to say the Self in the Absolute Form. Otherwise it leads to body consciousness, in the animal levels.
Rites definitely help us and lead to some degree of evolution, of upliftment of the soul. Action itself is a blessing to man. It has a result. If it is motiveless now, in the next birth we will be encouraged, we will be motiveless.
There are degrees of knowledge. Sattva mixed with less rajas and tamas leads to the ‘northern path’.
Tamas mixed with less rajas and sattva lead to the ‘southern path‘.
Our gurus tell us: Never say anything to a person unless they want to know. Only a thirsty man wants
water. Never tell a man unless he asks you. If I know you want to watch TV and say, ‘Ah, you want to watch TV,’ and you say, ‘No’, that seems to make me a liar. But how would I prove it?
My guru [Swami Nischalananda Puri] was very, very full of compassion. When someone did not offer him guru dakshina, Gurudev said, ‘I think of him offering me flowers and gold. That exonerates him.’ It made me cry when my guru told me that.
See Christ in your heart. See his face, his hands, his feet. See him playing with children. And let your ego melt away like this candle. He has given us the love, and now he is running after the love he has given us.
Man cannot get rid of the ego completely. Become humble in front of the teacher. Surrender. Then the ego goes away and you find the answer.
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The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial ‘memoir’ booklet of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.
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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to those with him at the time.