Talks Excerpt 615. Swamiji explains the incredible power of Sri Ramakrishna’s name.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] name does not only take you to Vishnuloka or Shivaloka or Shaktiloka. Nay. It takes you to all the lokas and yet it withdraws and shows you: ‘Look! All the lokas I am.’ That is why you find all the deities being absorbed in Master.
Master is the heart of Kali. Kali is only the outer manifestation of that heart.
When a kirtan is sung slowly, with love and devotion, it makes a calming impression on your mind. The kirtans that are fast should be sung at the times when you are lethargic [tamasic]; when you are feeling sleepy. Of course if you sing a slow kirtan when you are feeling sleepy then you will go to sleep; it will help you to sleep. The mantra, after all, makes you do whatever you want to do.
Sing a fast kirtan at the beginning of your satsang, then later come to calmer songs. Another thing is, do not end your satsang with a fast kirtan. If you do, then when the people are leaving you will see how they shake hands and how very happy they feel [rajasic] – but that lasts only as far as the door. The effect of it will wear off.
In my life, by my guru’s [Swami Nischalananda Puri’s] grace, I paid attention only to his words. The association with my guru was not long, but his words still associate me with him, and therefore my life has been blessed.
I hope that the speakers in these classes at the Yoga Camp (Spiritual Retreat) do not think that they are giving lectures. They should rather think that they are worshipping their Deity; offering the talk to their Deity. And if their Deity has taken an apparently ignorant form (i.e. in our forms as we are seated) it is just to give training to the lecturer because he is more ignorant than the rest of us. So God tries to uplift the lecturer’s intelligence in that way, by giving him a chance to prepare and speak.
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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.