Talks Excerpt 508. Swamiji says: Even if you go to heaven you can be sent back down to Earth.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
I would like everyone to give this a serious thought: Why is spiritual seriousness not in you? Are you just bluffing – cheating? Do you really want to obtain some sort of love for God?
Swami Vivekananda said that two jivatmas [embodied souls] are never the same at any time – just as two fingerprints are never the same. Even if they are spirit, in that spirit there will be differences, mainly of degree.
When practise bears results, we go further by reasoning. Therefore we believe in reason.
Swami Vivekananda says that absolute fearlessness is the goal of everything. As long as there is duality there is always fear. As long as there is fear you can never be blissful. The idea is to reach a stage where you have nothing to fear.
Advaita philosophy says that you are God, and that superimposition has taken place through ignorance. Do not ask where the ignorance came from. It is natural to human beings.
Jaya and Vijaya [gatekeepers of the Lord] were in Goloka [heaven] and the Lord scolded them. They held the Lord’s feet and cried out, ‘Don’t curse us to go down to Earth.’ So there was fear even in heaven.
Even if you go to heaven you can be sent down to Earth – so this is not complete bliss. Some people say it is eternal bliss but we find, through the same scripture, that it is not eternal. Reason therefore tells us that the various heavens cannot be the end or final goal.
[Swamiji explained to us that going to ‘heaven’ or other pleasant lokas is only so long as the merits of our good deeds on earth last. Like a passport, when they expire, we have to come back here again. The human body is the only one from which Moksha [liberation] can be attained. Even the gods have to come back here and earn Moksha.]
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.