Talks Excerpt 592. Swamiji asks if we’re worshipping God by providing for the poor and starving.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
Gurudev [Swamiji’s beloved Guru, Swami Nischalananda Puri] often told us, ‘If you do not know starvation, you do not know suffering.’ We actually have a golden spoon in our mouths. [Gurudev told the ashram brahmacharis that they didn’t know hunger, until they’d been forced to eat scraps out of garbage cans as he had in India, at one point.]
Think of the thousands of people in Africa who are suffering and dying. How often have you seen their faces on TV? Does your heart not go out to them? I am sure if Swami Vivekananda were here, he would say, ‘Leave this Camp, leave all this praying, go and serve them for they are the living gods waiting for your service, waiting for your worship.’ How many of us think to give, give, give? How many of us live a life of selfishness and only cater for ourselves and our children?
When Sri Ramakrishna went on pilgrimage with Mathur Babu [son in law to the Rani Rashmoni – the force behind the construction of the Dakshineswar Kali temple] he saw thousands of people suffering. At the Deoghar train station he sat on the platform and said to Mathur, ‘Mathur, feed and clothe them.’ Mathur, the son-in-law of Rani Rasmani said, ‘Baba [father], where will I get so much money to feed these people? How can I look after these people?’
Master [Sri Ramakrishna] sat there and said, ‘I shall not move from here until you feed these people. I will not go on pilgrimage. What is pilgrimage to me when my people are dying of starvation and are suffering?’
Mathur knew that if Master said something, he would keep to his word. So he ordered clothing and other items from Calcutta. Only when these had been distributed amongst the poor did Master continue on his pilgrimage.
Are we doing that? Are we providing for some poor man somewhere? What is the use of you and me sitting and calling upon God, when God Himself is starving in the poor and inviting our worship in a particular way? Master himself said, ‘Serve them first, then your children will be blessed, you will be blessed and God Himself will come to seek your blessing.’
If our hearts are not yet melting then we are far from the truth. There is something wrong. Our hearts are paralysed if we cannot feel for others.
The Yoga Camp itself is an embodiment of your Deity. Let that Deity now go out and serve the poor, the miserable.
NEW! For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial ‘memoir’ of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.
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.