Talks Excerpt 509. Swamij says that WHEREVER you are, the Lord is there.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘God is with form, without form and He is beyond that.’ Then, as a thinking man I say, ‘God is with form, without form, He is beyond that and He Himself knows what He is.’

In this world there is fear. In that world [i.e. even in heaven] there is *fear – so what is the difference? We know that there is a state called Satchitananda which is not an attribute of God but God Itself.

[Why *Fear? Swamiji explained to us many times that heaven is only a temporary reward state due to the merits of our good deeds in life. But like a passport, when those merits are used up, we have to reincarnate and work towards liberation or moksha from here. Even the gods have to come back here first. Liberation is only possible from the human body.]

There are various practices used in our scriptures to motivate souls to go towards God. In this too there are stages. Suppose you find a man who has not evolved well, you tell him, ‘You are going to burn in hell-fire if you do bad things.’

For example, many children still do the wrong thing even when you tell them lovingly to do something. So you give them a smack and that is ‘hell’. Then the child, out of fear, will do the right thing. The fear of hell makes people do the right thing. This is the first stage.

The next stage is when you tell a man, ‘If you do all the good things you will go to heaven. Heaven is an eternal oasis where you get your cravings satisfied, and you rest peacefully. Here on Earth you are working like a donkey.’ Of course the man will say, ‘Well, I’ll do anything for that.’

Then the last stage – which is the highest, according to reasoning and the experience of the [God/Self] Realised Ones – is that you love God for love’s sake, you love the Self for love’s sake. Why? Because then we realise that God is Omnipresent. He is present in hell, He is present in heaven and wherever else. Wherever I am, my Lord is there.

Though people say, ‘You merge with God,’ it is actually like the river flowing into the sea.

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.