Talks Excerpt 415. Says Swamiji: You must struggle your whole life to make yourself pure, to discover who you are.

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

The nature of God is such that it gives, and asks nothing – like the sun which is so natural: it must give heat to the world. No sooner does the sun leave its own nature, and give something else, than it is dead. We have left our nature – we are dead.

Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] first message is: You must become God-conscious. If I know who I am, if you know who you are, then who is God? Are you mere bone, flesh, marrow, or are you as immortal as the Soul in you?

His second message is: The cause of this disturbance in our nature is lust and gold consciousness – we are greedy. You lust after other things; this leads to chaos.

So you must renounce lust and gold. Even then there is danger, because Sri Ramakrishna said: The greatest obstacle to God-realisation is spiritual pride, spiritual arrogance, ego, i.e. you think you know God, you think you are great, you think, ‘I am chosen’ – ‘I’. Guard against these. Then you will find what you are looking for.

Jesus the Christ said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ You must struggle your whole life to make yourself pure, to discover who you are, and what your duty is in this world.

In India there are gurus, spiritual teachers, who have no pride, no arrogance.

This Sri Ramakrishna, who spoke from his own experience, we worship. Because he couldn’t read, he couldn’t copy from others. Everything he said was from his own experience.

Master said that every religion is true in itself, and like a river that runs crooked or straight, ultimately it must flow into God, the sea.

A lion eats other animals. Goats eat grass. Your duty is to devour your own ego, through love of God. Then every action of yours will glorify God.

The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click 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.