Talk Excerpt 559. Swamiji says: The scriptures say that anything that is finite must bring unhappiness.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
It is a rare privilege indeed for one in this world to sit quietly and contemplate on his life’s journey on earth. The questions we must ask are: ‘Who are we? Whence have we come? What are our duties?’
Though we deal with many different subjects the most important question seems to be lost. That question is: ‘Who is the substratum of these things that we see and see not?’
There is no doubt that all beings, from the tiniest worm to the highest angel, are trying to find happiness and spontaneously express this in their daily lives.
If I have a prescription, it is logical that I should go to a chemist for the medicine – not to a vegetable market. Similarly, we are looking for this happiness, and our prescription is the scriptures. But we go looking for happiness in mundane things.
The scriptures say that anything that is finite must bring unhappiness; and anything that is infinite will give you that bliss, that happiness, that immortality, that we are knowingly or unknowingly looking for. But then it seems that we are not in a hurry. We do not realise that in finding That Thing (the ultimate Truth called God) we find everything.
In the scriptures, when the great bhaktas were offered a boon, some asked their Deities to cure their diseases, or for wealth, or name and fame. Only a rare few asked for bhakti and jnana (devotion and knowledge). Only when we have that bhakti and that jnana will we find the Eternal Being, God.
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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 an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.