Talks Excerpt 414. Swamiji quotes Swami Vivekananda: ‘The purpose of all religions in the world is to manifest that divinity in us.’

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

Sri Ramakrishna did not want a ‘bread-winning education.’ He wanted that Knowledge [jnana], knowing which, you know everything else.

Master had the knowledge of who we really are, and how we can live in peace with ourselves and with the whole Universe.

Scholars think they are the greatest and that they will reduce the world to dust and dirt with their theories. Philosophers think the same, as do theologists, and atheists.

Like other Incarnations [avatars], this son of the world came to deliver this message that is very, very old, but is new to us today. Sri Ramakrishna’s message to the world is very simple; but to explain this message, he spoke in parables.

His whole message is: Know your Creator; know from whence you come; your purpose in the world; and where you are going.

When a man has no answer to these questions, he is puzzled. Even a child can get the highest benefit from this message. God must be for the literate, for the illiterate, for the rich, for the poor, for the learned and for the ignorant. This fits Sri Ramakrishna ‘to the T’.

You must lead a life going towards God.

Your first duty is to become God-conscious. Swami Vivekananda said, ‘Each soul is potentially divine,’ and the purpose of all the religions in the world is to manifest that divinity in us.

Today, are we manifesting divinity or not? Or have we gone back to the animal kingdom where the fittest survive?

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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.