Talks Excerpt 552. Swamiji says transformation starts with yourself. Never ever think you are a sinner.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

Happiness cannot come to the home if there is no unity. I am talking about a Hindu home where the devotees want to be happy, where the family wants to be happy.

The whole universe is made out of unity. Though unity starts with a selfish purpose, it later includes the family, society, nature, the universe. The idea is to reach the universality of unity. But this only comes with practice.

We must set a goal. Saints and sages say that the goal is to know God in ordinary life – not out of the ordinary – in thought, word and deed. God is Omnipotent so know Him to be everywhere and in everything.

Where to start? Let us start with ourselves. A person must never think he is a sinner. He must always think he is pure, that he is the creation of God, and God cannot create something impure, something against his dharma. Gradually, after that, you see the body as the shrine, with the heart as the altar.

You may think of your Deity as with form or without form. It is like a man posing for a photograph, he poses differently each time. Similarly, God’s poses are many. He may sit like this or like that, He may dress up as Lord Shiva, as Hanumanji, or as Mother Lakshmi. He may dress as Om or He may be natural, like Mother Kali, with no clothes. Nature cannot be dressed by something else. It must be dressed by nature. If God is nature, and is dressed up with His own nature, then He would be depicted with no clothes; nature is naked.

Think of God in any pose, in any form, provided that the idea of God expresses the highest positivity. Think of God as full of mercy, full of love, as being immortal. He is Infinite, and that which is Infinite brings peace and bliss. One must meditate on this aspect of God always.

Remember that anything finite must end, and must ultimately bring unhappiness.

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.