Talks Excerpt 581. Swamiji explains freedom of choice but also the karmic consequences of it.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
[Reading from the Bhagavad Gita].
Sri Krishna to Arjuna: Bound by your own karma, born of your own nature, that which from delusion you wish not to do, even that you shall do, helplessly, against your will, O son of Kunthi.
‘Against your will’ you will have to do it, because your nature will make you do it. Fire will say, ‘I do not want to burn,’ but fire will be forced to burn.
The Lord dwells in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, and by His maya causes all beings to revolve as if mounted on a machine. [Swamiji stressed to us that ‘Maya’ doesn’t mean lies or total delusion. It is simply ‘partial truth‘. You could not mistake a rope for a snake – the commonly used Vedantic example – if the rope was not there, as the substratum.]
In other words: Karma itself becomes the Lord’s hands and legs. God Himself does not burn you; but if you hold fire, which was made by God, it will burn you.
Seek refuge in Him alone with all your heart. By His grace you will gain supreme peace and the eternal abode. Thus has wisdom, more profound than all profundities, been declared to you by Me. Reflect upon it fully and act as you choose.
In other words, what the Lord is saying is, ‘Go and reflect on it and if it makes sense then choose whichever course you like and do it.’ If you want to bind yourself further to delusion, go ahead. But if you feel that the Lord is right, and that He knows better than you, then do what He says.
Listen again to My supreme word, the profoundest of all. You are beloved of Me therefore I shall tell you what is for your good.
Why is He telling us this? Why has God brought these scriptures to us? Because He loves us. We are his beloved. He did not just give the scripture to us because He wants to be supreme. He loves us. He is part of it. He does not want us to suffer in ignorance, unknowingly.
In reality you are born in joy, you live in joy and you pass on in joy. That is what the Upanishad says. But what is it in between that makes us feel that we are not living in bliss? That is what Sri Krishna is saying here: ‘I love you. You are still in bliss. Do it this way and then you will know.’
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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.