Talks Excerpt 506. Swamiji says: If you want to be happy, even in an ORDINARY life, stop finding fault with others.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
Sri Sarada Devi’s life was simple, apparently non-active but super-active at the same time. Her last words are very, very important. She said, ‘My child, if you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather learn to see your own faults.’ This one last teaching is applicable to all four stages of life.
Firstly, it is applicable to the ordinary man who does not believe in God. If he gets into the habit of finding fault with others, then sooner or later the others will start finding fault with him. So if you want to be happy, even in an ordinary life, stop finding fault with others.
It is applicable, if we go a little higher, to the devotee level. How can one devotee find fault with another devotee, if both are devotees? No matter whether he is a Christian devotee, a Muslim devotee, a Hindu devotee or a Buddhist devotee, all are devoted to the highest that their mind can think of, in their particular Ideal. Did not Sri Ramakrishna preach harmony of religion? So do not criticise. Recognise that the other person is also praying to the same divine Being – Satchidananda.
The highest stage is that if I have realised the Self, I, the Self, appear as all this; I see myself in all this. The Self is in me and the Self is in all beings.
When they asked the Holy Mother [Sri Sarada Devi], ‘What will happen to the other gods and goddesses?’ Sri Sarada Devi said, ‘Nothing is wrong, they are all a part of Me.’ She saw herself in them.
The One has become many, so the many must be true too. The many becomes the One.
Holy Mother’s words are a great teaching.
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.