Talks Excerpt 406. Swamiji says that Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, set a good example for spiritual life.
From Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.
[To the renunciates – monks [Swamis], nuns [Pravrajikas] and Brahmacharis] Have only one thing in your heart: to save humanity. It is a natural attraction.
An Incarnation [Avatar] is like a magnet, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, but always drawing near the middle, in the form of the Devotee.
[After a film on Sri Ramakrishna’s life Swamiji said:] What we experienced was an insight into the scriptures and into the lives of the great ones – Sri Ramakrishna and others – and above all an insight on how to live like real human beings.
A human being, on an animal level, lives selfishly. Human beings on the spiritual level sacrifice their lives and their breath to save, not only the devotees, but all. For example: Buddha felt for animals and Jesus Christ felt [compassion] for the prostitute. Sri Ramakrishna felt for fish, for the cow, for human beings and for [disembodied] spirits that were visible to him alone and not to others.
Master was a Saviour par excellence. He came, not only to save man, but to save all of creation. He was the embodiment of God himself. We too should have some feeling for animals, for trees and plants. Because our real nature is one of self-sacrifice.
The saints add to the glory already obtained by human beings and get intense love for Themselves – not for the body and the mind, but for something beyond. Something which the saints call by different names: Atman, Self, Brahman etc. [Truth is One – sages call it by various names.]
If this is reflected in your daily life, from the time you open your eyes early in the morning, to the time you become unconscious in the dark, then you are on the way to progress.
[Mohandas aka ‘Mahatma’] Gandhi set a good example. He would have fasted to death if necessary. He said, ‘I fast for your sin.’ Only a saint says that. He did not say, ‘You are a sinner, I will kill you.’
When you start to understand that rightly, that is what happens: you observe silence.
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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.