Talks Excerpt 311. Swamiji: Never think you will not suffer. You will; a thousand times.

From Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Never think you will not suffer. You will; a thousand times: and so you need a strong body and mind.

Where love is, there is no fear. Where fear is, there is no love.

You take one step towards God and He will take ten steps towards you.

I beg you to meditate and to love one another. Whilst you [be]grudge another you cannot be simple. And you have to be simple. Faith and determination are the secret. Never leave your meditation, if you do, there is something wrong with your sadhana. Check it up.

Spiritual life must become natural, like breathing, then you will not get tired of it. We get tired of the unnatural things, but now we are trying to reach our natural state. You may ask, ‘Is this sitting in the temple unnatural then?’ The answer is, ‘The fact that we get weary of it shows it is not natural.’

Natural things bring eternal peace, joy, knowledge. But first you have to learn to be a ‘gentleman’. It is no use talking about God-realisation when you are not even a gentleman. It is like a blind man looking for the light, not realising that first he must have eyes, otherwise he will pass by the light.

Swami Nishreyasananda was a frequent visitor to the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa at the Avoca, Durban, Ashram. One day during a Q&A period, a young man asked Maharaj, ‘Swamiji, are you God-realised?’ In a gentle voice, the Swami replied, ‘You know, it’s difficult enough being a gentleman.’

So become pure, loving, saintly. This means that you are getting your eyes, your sight. Only then will you recognise God.

How do you get this? By following moral and ethical laws. God-realisation is like ice-cream on the palm of the hand of the blind man. He cannot see it, so he is saying, ‘Give me some ice-cream.’ But when he gets his sight, he will see he already has it.

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.