Talks Excerpt 524. Swamiji says don’t raise spineless children.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

Every time you come to a Yoga Camp (Spiritual Retreat) I feel that you must come with some kind of deep, divine motive to know your Self, to reach God, to get devotion and to become more humble each day.

Many people think that when you take to religion you become spineless, but I do not like you to have this kind of thought. Prahlada, who was brought up with religion from a young age, led great victorious armies when he was older. Sri Rama was brought up in religion and he conquered the great enemy Ravana, and greater still, his own ego. Sri Krishna, who was so soft outside, who played the flute and was brought up religiously, in the end won a great war – the war of destroying evil in everyone. And his words, in the form of the Bhagavad Gita, he goes on destroying evil up till now.

A man who is really religious and who stands on truth, can one moment bless and the next moment manifest the wrath of Rudra and destroy with Rudra-power.

Your child should not grow up soft as butter or like a worm without a spine. Your child has a spine, and he must be taught that, in the right place, he must manifest the divine qualities; at other times he must manifest forgiveness; and yet in other places let him use a club [gada] – like Hanumanji.

I once found [in Swamiji’s premonastic days] somebody misbehaving at the Ashram and I was very disturbed about it. When Gurudev [Swamiji’s beloved guru, Swami Nischalananda Puri] came to the ashram that night, I told him what I had seen during the day. He said, ‘So what did you do?’ I told him that a brother disciple had sent the person away. On hearing this Gurudev was very upset and said that I should have disciplined the man myself.

Swami Vivekananda while he was travelling overseas, was prepared to fight and to throw a man overboard [from a boat] when the man talked ill about Hinduism.

I do not like spineless people and I think God likes them a little less than I do. So do not let your child grow up to be a jellyfish.

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.