Talks Excerpt 602. Swamiji shares some fascinating insights into pilgrimage.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
When you go on pilgrimage it must not be for sightseeing. You must go to awaken your spirituality, to yearn for God Himself. You must feel the same love that the Rishi who founded that particular temple felt. Feel the same sacrifice that the Rishi who founded that particular holy place felt.
When Swami Vivekananda took Sister Nivedita and the band of devotees from the West on pilgrimage he had an experience at Amarnath. Swami Vivekananda said that he obtained the gift of immortality from Lord Shiva. Sister Nivedita later qualified it by saying, ‘Lord Shiva told him that whenever he wished to leave his body, he would leave it.’ Now that is immortality. He would still have to throw away the body, but throw it away at will.
Swami Vivekananda obtained his freedom there, at that particular time. He became conscious of his absolute freedom. Most of us can get free from many things but we never get free from death. We die when we do not want to die. Therefore that is not jivanmukta.
Swami Vivekananda became absolutely free – just like Hanumanji who gives up the body when he feels like it, or keeps the body when he feels like it.
It is surprising that a westerner like Sister Nivedita could say that she felt that Sri Sarada Devi was the final word in Indian motherhood. Sister Nivedita also warned that we [of the Hindu culture] should not imitate the western world. She said, ‘You may take the good in it; but never imitate them in any other way.’
One of Sri Ramakrishna’s disciples said, ‘A woman can do anything in this world.’ I say that a woman can even be like the Rani of Jhansi who got on a horse to fight and defend her country. Through it all she never lost her modesty. A woman who loses her modesty is no woman. In all things that you do, have that modesty.
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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.