Talks Excerpt 467. Swamiji says: Premature spiritual experiences can create great fear.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

After the first few visits to Master [Sri Ramakrishna] the young Naren [later Swami Vivekananda] had a similar experience to Arjuna. He went to see Sri Ramakrishna and the Master touched him. He went into an ecstatic mood. He became fearful and said to Master, ‘Oh, what are you doing to me? I have got my mother and my father . . . .’ Naren was fearful. He thought that he was going to lose his individuality. Then Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘All right, let it wait a little,’ and Master brought him back to normal consciousness.

There was another time too when Swami Vivekananda visited Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna touched him with his leg and he felt the whole world reeling. He became blissful – then he became fearful.

He wanted to experience God, but when the test was given it was as if the container was not yet ready to contain it. The blissful and the fearful were both there. Swami Vivekananda said that for almost three days he found this state existed everywhere. When he walked on the road he wanted to go and embrace the carriages. The carriages did not know that he was looking at God. He would have been knocked over; but the people pulled him out of the road. He looked at his mother and to him his mother looked like God. When he took his food he could not eat, because he saw only God, even in the food.  

He saw the Vishwaroopa was one: Sri Ramakrishna. Then he prayed for this experience to go down because he could not manage it. He was not yet ready; and slowly Sri Ramakrishna withdrew it. Later on, this fearful Naren preached fearlessness, as Swami Vivekananda.

Sri Ramakrishna said to him, ‘This gift is given to you. But until you are ready and until you have finished my work, I have locked it and have got the key. Later I’ll open the treasure-house for you. Then you will not be fearful. Instead, just like a moth rushing to the light, you will want to rush off willingly, naturally.’

There are *unnatural ways of trying to make yourself rush into it, but all sadhanas and prayers in the life of Swami Vivekananda prepared him to keep him naturally in God.

[*unnatural ways. Swamiji warned us again and again, being youngsters of the 1960s, that although there were psychoactive and hallucinogenic drugs that could lead one into these experiences, the dangers were massive. Several young ‘hippies’ who arrived at the Avoca ashram in 1971 had been experimenting with drugs. Swamiji’s description was ‘It’s like running very high voltage, high amperage electrical power through thin wires, not designed for it. You’ll burn up the subtle nerves – nadis – and there’ll be nothing anyone can do to help you.’ So natural, persistent self-effort and God’s grace is the only way to go.]

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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.