Talks Excerpt 582. Swamiji says: Hinduism does not force its religion down other people’s throats.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
[Reading from the Bhagavad Gita continued].
[Lord Krishna speaking to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita]: Fix your mind on Me. Be devoted to Me. Worship Me. (Swamiji: The Self, that is.) Prostrate before Me. So shall you come to Me. This is My pledge to you. For you are dear to Me.
This is his promise. His promise is not like yours. You say, ‘This fire is my witness, I am getting married to you,’ but after five years you say, ‘All right, my pledge is off. I love you but I have to divorce you.’ [laughter].
Having abandoned all duty take refuge in Me alone. I shall liberate you from all sins. Grieve not.
The Lord is saying, ‘If you take refuge in Me, I’ll do everything for you. You do not have to do anything, just take refuge in Me.’
This is never to be spoken by you to one who is devoid of austerities, nor to one who is not devoted, nor to one who does not do service, or desires not to listen, nor to one who speaks ill of Me.
This shows that Hinduism does not force its religion down other people’s throats. He says, ‘Those people who do not want to listen to it, let them carry on. Do not try to force it down their throat.’ The Lord Himself says that. He says, ‘If you do not believe in Me, do not talk about Me because it will only agitate your mind.’
He who, with supreme devotion to Me, would teach this immensely profound philosophy to My devotees shall doubtless come to Me alone.
Yes. If you teach it to those people who are devoted to the Lord, then the teacher himself will come to the Lord as well as those people who practise it.
Nor is there any among men who renders dearer service to Me than he. Nor shall there be another on Earth dearer to Me than he [who teaches this].
See how easy it is. If you want God-realisation then go and preach his word, preach it sincerely and He will give you whatever you need. But He also tells you where you must preach it. He did not say, ‘Stand on West Street corner [in Durban] and shout it out’.
And he who will study this sacred dialogue of ours, by him shall I have been worshipped by the sacrifice of knowledge (jnana yajna). Such is My conviction.
Do you see? There is not one kind of worship – i.e. only, with camphor, coconut and so on. By this teaching it becomes jnana yoga.
And the man who merely hears this, full of faith and free from malice, even he, liberated from evil, shall attain the sacred regions of the righteous.
We must hear this scripture with faith. But we are not listening to it with faith and therefore we do not even believe that it is true.
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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.