Talks Excerpt 413. Swamiji quotes Swami Vivekananda: ‘Where there is knowledge there is unity.’

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

[From a book – Meditation and Spiritual Life – by Swami Yatiswarananda] You must have an intimate relationship with the divine, draw inspiration from the divine.

Only when you become the witness – i.e. the inactive party – do all troubles etc., no longer remind you of the ephemeral world.

The first step is to keep repeating God’s name [japa] and this leads to thinking about God – and what you think, you become. You must be a gentle man, or a gentle woman, first. You must be good and perfectly controlled.

Learn to be patient.

Watch yourself, not others. MYOB – Mind Your Own Baby – your mind. [Swamiji also used to often say to us that the most powerful mantra in the Ramakrishna Centre was ‘Mind Your Own Business’ – also MYOB.]

If I can do good, I do. If not, I leave it alone.

You must pull out that giant (spiritual power) in yourself and in others. Let us all, together try to build the temple.

[During Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] birthday [jayanti] celebration]:

Today is a great day. Swamiji Vivekananda said, ‘Where there is knowledge there is unity. Ignorance leads to disunity.’ The very fact that we got together to praise God, God must be dwelling here in the form of knowledge [jnana] – knowledge of things we know, and do not know.

We make a difference between man and man, but we are all seeking to understand ourselves and others.

It is lack of knowledge that has become the devil today. [Swamiji always used to remind us that ‘the devil’ is the impure mind.] Our great saints and sages [Rishis and Munis] were born under different conditions. They had one message: To know God you must have knowledge of 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.