Swamiji speaks on the need to take each person ‘from where they are’, spiritually. Audio Transcript 132 track 2.

Originally transcribed 24 September 2025

Sri Ramakrishna could awaken the divinity in someone with just a touch or word. As did the Lord Jesus.

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Swamiji refers to Sri Ramakrishna saying that there are ‘as many religions as there are minds’. And that no matter how awful the behaviour of any individual, they are [albeit it unknowingly] also on the path to self-perfection and God-realisation, even though they’re not aiming at it, don’t know it, and are travelling along a very crooked path to reach that destination. Every soul will be forced along that path – however slowly.

It’s essential that religion is suited to the intellectual and emotional capacity of the people to whom it’s introduced. Swamiji gives the example of simple farming people and someone trying to inflict sophisticated philosophy on them. It just won’t work. 

In response to a devotee asking what the solution to such a problem is, Swamiji stresses that as he’s already said, you need to take someone slowly, at their own pace, and gradually expose them to better options. He gives the example of the Buddha having instructed the end of murti [sculpture, statue, image] worship, some rituals and so on. But for people incapable of grasping the higher spiritual message, they were then left in an even worse off position, because they had no substitute for the murti worship. [Re-emphasising the imperative of ‘Take the person from where they are’, Swamiji told us umpteen times when we were tempted to inflict our new-found Vedantic ‘information’ – not knowledge or experience, note – on others – ‘You have no right to disturb the faith of another person.’] 

Swamiji says that if we’re genuinely and sincerely living a spiritual life, then that spirit of the religion living through us, will touch others. He says that in the Hindu religion, each one worships ‘God’ according to their concept. It’s that all-embracing.

Swamiji circles back to the contempt with which some people refer to ‘idol-worshippers’ and other nasty terms. He says that the so-called idol is a symbol or representation, just as the flag is a symbol for a country, but is not the country itself. In this case, the murti is a symbol of that which we know we can’t express with our finite [limited and inadequate] senses. 

Swamiji tells of someone who had converted to Christianity as an illustrative [but not unkind] example. He draws our attention to the fact that all religions have symbols which are representations. Swamiji gives a wonderful example. Take a golden statue of Lord Rama, melt it down and cast it as a Christian cross. The person who worshipped through it when it represented Lord Rama, will no longer want to worship it. Yet it’s the same [the essence being the gold] just in a different form. Swamiji says don’t start excluding old methods or approaches. Rather grow out of them. He says that we can’t force people into following a new path. They need to see value in it for themselves, to do so. We must receive a new idea and understand it before embracing and following it. Not because someone else is trying to force it on us.

Swamiji illustrates how Incarnations like Lord Jesus or Sri Ramakrishna are giving religion whereas we’re just trying to practise it. The Incarnation [avatar] says, ‘Behold!’ and the ready, pure and receptive soul will receive it and experience it, there and then. Sri Ramakrishna would touch a man and say, ‘Awake, Ma!’, and the man would enter into an ecstatic mood. Today, we can keep saying ‘behold!’ and ‘awake!’ [Swamiji chuckling] and nothing is happening. Why? Why is it not happening? Because we are not yet pure. Therefore that light, that grace, that power cannot come through us. Now and then we experience it, but that’s now and then. This is the difference between those great ones and us. 

The free-to-read or download, 396 page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography is available by clicking HERE.

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 an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.