Talks Excerpt 454. Swamiji illustrates Sri Ramakrishna’s 100% commitment to truthfulness in even the smallest of details.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

Afterwards, referring to the opium incident [see Talks Excerpt 453], Master [Sri Ramakrishna] said, ‘It is because I placed my whole responsibility upon the Mother, that She holds me by the hand and never allows me to stray even an inch from truth.’ Do you see how humble he was?

Very often Sri Ramakrishna used to show his displeasure to those who did not observe truth in their words and deeds. Once he said to Sivanath, one of his devotees, ‘It is said that truthfulness alone constitutes the spiritual discipline of the Kali Yuga. If a man clings tenaciously to truth, he ultimately realises God. Without this regard for truth one gradually loses everything.’

Again, Sri Ramakrishna used to take a lemon with his food. One of his devotees had given Master permission to take a lemon from his garden every day. And one of Master’s attendants [then Yogin – later Swami Yogananda] would fetch it.

One day Sri Ramakrishna could not touch the lemon and everyone wondered what was wrong. Later, on enquiry, it was found that the owner of the garden had leased out the garden to someone else. This lemon had unknowingly been taken without the permission of the new owner and so for Sri Ramakrishna it was equal to stealing. His adherence to truth was so instinctive that even unknown to himself he would not deviate from the literal truth.

Now these are very simple facts but it is good for us to remember them. We can remember big things, in big circumstances, but we forget that small things go to make up big things.

Every moment Sri Ramakrishna was conscious of this fact in his life. If a disciple told a lie and came to him, he used to turn his face away from the disciple. I know a lot of people don’t come to see me because of that. They say, ‘Swamiji, you know, sometimes the way you speak, it looks like you’re telling me off.’ So the guilty conscience becomes like handcuffs – it cuffs you down. But you know this yourself.

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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.