Talks Excerpt 590. Swamiji talks about the impact of Sri Ramakrishna’s holy name.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
Nowadays the orthodox way of giving herbs and other concoctions for illness does not work. By the time you go and fetch the herbs the patient may die. What he needs is a genuine injection and that injection is what Master [Sri Ramakrishna] gives.
When a man has a heart attack you do not go and get a pill to put in his mouth. No. Straight away the doctor will treat him so the man’s heart may start beating again. When it starts beating normally then let him swallow any other medication he likes.
It is very important that when you say, ‘Sri Ramakrishna’ you say it with devotion. I even find the young ones talking about Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and [Holy Mother] Sri Sarada Devi without any respect. I mean by this that they do not feel the presence of that Deity, they do not feel the personality. There must be a kind of devotion behind your words when you take Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] name.
When real devotees of Master utter his name, they actually get goose-bumps. They actually feel this and you can see their faces change. The name itself changes their whole personality. And that is how we must take God’s name. Do not take it as you would take a five-year-old’s name, without any respect. Just think about the name – if you cannot repeat it with respect.
If you start telling people about your spiritual experiences and telling them what mantra to use, without first getting the spiritual fruit, without doing enough japa, without practising austerities [tapasya], you will have your downfall.
An electrical wire will take a certain amount of voltage, but if you put a little extra voltage on it, you can burn the wire out. So do not start becoming chota [little] gurus.
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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.