Talks Excerpt 417. Swamiji says: God is the opposite of this world.
From Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.
Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘A man is learned who knows God, otherwise he is ignorant.’
One must pray: ‘O Lord, give me the strength to forgive my enemies.’
Jesus Christ forgave them, saying: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ But perhaps we are asking our Father to kill our enemy.
If reading the Bhagavad Gita makes you more of a sinner than you are, why should you read the Gita? Why do you read books on chemistry, or law? To know how to keep the law. So why do you read spiritual books? To know the Spirit.
Sri Ramakrishna told a story of how a Brahmin went to a king. Everyone thought the brahmin was a learned man. The king asked him, ‘What do you want?’ ‘I want to teach you the Bhagavad Gita.’ Then the king said, ‘Read it again, and then come back.’ So the Brahmin read it again and after two years he returned.
Then the king said: ‘Have you read it? Did you understand it?’ ‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘Go, and read it again, and come back to me,’ said the king. Another two years passed but the Brahmin did not return. The king wondered about this. So he went to the man’s village and asked the old Brahmin’s wife what had happened. She said: ‘The Gita turned his head. He has gone off to the forest and left me alone.’
The king went looking for the Brahmin and found him. The brahmin prostrated to the king – before it was the king who prostrated to the brahmin. Then the king said: ‘Please, I want you to teach me the Gita.’ ‘But how will I teach you the Gita?’, answered the man. The king said: ‘Ah, now I know you know the meaning of the Gita.’
Repeat ‘Gita’ ten times and it becomes tyagi [renunciation]. The Master said this is the essence of the Gita.
God is the opposite of this world – He is the head and this is the tail.
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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