Talks Excerpt 372. Swami says spiritual progress can involve illness and loss of money.

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

Once you have a guru, he has to purify you; not at the ordinary rate, but fast [accelerated evolution]. So the first thing you see is the body’s ill-health. Then you see lack of money. Then you are reviled again and again, and spat on. You are clay in his hands, he has to make you expand and so he beats the clay. But he has to do it carefully, so as not to break the pot which is precious.

Monday to Sunday you do the guru’s worship. Do not start and leave it three quarters done.

There is a story about a man and his wife. The wife wanted a beautiful palace, so the Lord granted her desire. Her husband returned home and was amazed to see the palace. His wife was upstairs and called down to him. But he said, ‘No, no, if this palace is what you want, you have it.’ And he went off to live in the forest.

This is what the guru does for you.

This mind [meaning Swamiji’s mind] reacts to the state of your mind. As your mind is, so this mind reflects the same.

It is absolutely essential to surrender to the guru. Everything the guru does is right, even if he kills or cures. If he sends you to India or America, it is all the same. You must have absolute faith in him.

Be pure in thought word and deed – that is all you have to do. Do not even think of God-realisation.

You would not come here [to the guru] day after day if you did not have some kind of love in you.

Do not think of past mistakes. If I speak of a past mistake, I have not renounced it. I am still using it as a foundation. Repeat God’s name.

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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.