Talk Excerpts 750 to 752 inclusive. Swamiji speaks generally, but also about Guru-chela relationship impact.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

Excerpt 750: I never tell a devotee something without ‘stamping it on top’. If I say, ‘This is Devan,’ I put a stamp that says, ‘This is Devan’. I just draw your attention to it: If I find something is not good for your spiritual progress, I bring it to your attention so you can change it. I say, ‘A spot is here, take it out.’

Thought can uplift and remove obstacles. Thought makes me think of a light-bulb. When it is bright it makes me think it is touching the battery. If it’s not bright I think, ‘Well, darkness. It is not touching the battery called God.’ Sometimes I look at a battery and think, ‘God is like this’. You can’t separate the battery from its power.

God is Almighty. Try and take the ‘might’ out. You can’t do it. ‘Might’ can be felt, but the ‘might’ is still there. The more it gives ‘might’ the more it should be there. Generate it. Your generator is sadhana. If the generator is faulty, the battery is not charged – there will be no contact with God.

Don’t think you are doing sadhana. Forget the word sadhana. Forget the word japa. Just do japa.

The greatest progress came to me when I did not know that I was doing japa and meditation for the sake of God-realisation. It was natural. My father used to do it, so I did it. My mother used to do it, so I did it. They just repeated God’s name; I repeated God’s name. I didn’t ask the questions, ‘Why repeat God’s name? To become pure? To become impure? To become God-realised? To become protected?’ Nothing. I just repeated because everyone was repeating.

Later on, the evil, called maya, comes in: ‘Oh, I must do meditation for God-realisation.’ That is when japa gives us pride and we fall. So just do it for the sake of doing. Who cares? Isn’t it better to repeat God’s name than to think of worldly things? So just repeat the Name.

Excerpt 751: Didn’t Swami Vivekananda say to his brother disciples, ‘Do you think that if I am not going to get milk to drink, I am going to drink ditch water?’ The pleasures of this world are ditch water. Milk is repeating God’s name, thinking about God.

Householder devotee asks: But isn’t a goal necessary? Swamiji: Yes, it is. But it depends on what goal you set for yourself. Will that goal help you and those around you? A worldly man will look for a goal so that only he benefits. But it is better to just do good; because it’s good to do good. Don’t do good because somebody will say, ‘You are a good man,’ or because you will have a place in the public eye, or so that God will come to you and pat you on the back and say, ‘You did very good work.’ No. You just do good because it is your nature.

If you ask the sun, ‘Why are you giving sunlight?’ What is he going to say? ‘Because it is my nature. I can’t help but do it.’ It has no motive. As a child, did you think you were breathing to keep living? No, you just breathed. As a child you just breathe because it is natural to breathe. Who cares why you are breathing? So just do japa and meditation. Don’t care for what reason you are doing it. Do it because that’s the only right thing to do.

If you do this, your mind will be concentrated at once. Because before I say, ‘Shiva’, my mind just goes: ‘Shiva, Shiva, Shiva’. I repeat Shiva, Shiva, Shiva. At that time the concentration was perfect without thinking it was concentration. Then the thought came in, ‘To think is divine.’ Just repeat God’s name. That is the right thing to do.

Excerpt 752: Swami Vivekananda used to say that when he fell asleep, he would see a light. He assumed that everyone saw the light. He learnt much later that it was a unique experience.

People travelling the same path will see things differently. One will say, ‘While going to Pietermaritzburg [a South African city] I have to pass a bridge.’ Somebody else will say, ‘While going to Pietermaritzburg, we see a shop on the right-hand side.’ One will stress the shop, and the other will stress the bridge. All sadhakas explain their experiences according to the evolution of their minds.

My mother called me Inder (after Lord Indra, chief of the gods) from young, but it never made an impression. But when my guru called me Inder, it left an impression.

Actually when anyone called me Inder I would see my guru’s lips moving; I’d see how he was calling me, ‘Inder, Inder.’ And though all the others had called me by that name, I didn’t feel anything – it was just a name. But now, with that name, flashed back the guru’s form; not my form, but my guru’s form comes to mind. Beautiful. Even that name had become a blessing to me. That’s guru’s grace. Blessed is he who can see it. Even in the minute things, his grace is there. I see the loving spark in his eyes calling me. So even when you call others by their name it should remind them of something higher.

Sometimes I call a person by some other name. I know their name but I call them something different. Thus the idea of the guru comes to their minds.

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.

There’s also a Facebook site for Swamiji’s posts now. They’re for newer readings published much more recently. Click HERE to view.

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.