Talks Excerpt 617. Swamiji explains that if we’re not instruments and doing everything for GOD, it won’t lead to realisation.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

The Bhagavad Gita shows us that we sadhakas have many doubts on our path to God-realisation. Sri Krishna says it precisely: With a mind intent on Me, practising yoga and taking refuge in Me, you will know Me.

There are two things here: He says you must practise and at the same time you must take refuge in him. We must learn to discriminate [use viveka].

Many people in welfare societies are doing very good work but this does not mean that they will get God-realisation. Their work is not adapted as a discipline for God-realisation. Whilst doing the same work, if you take refuge in God, if you surrender the fruits to God, or feel that it is God’s grace that is making you do it, then only does it become sadhana; then only will you get God-realisation. This applies to whichever form of God you are praying to. God is One but He has different forms. [Truth is one, Sages call it by various names. From the ancient Hindu scripture, the Rig Veda (Hymn 1.164.46), which states, ‘Ekam sat vipra bahuda vadanti.’]

There are two separate ideas here in the text: Firstly, yoga means a certain discipline. Secondly, taking refuge means surrendering or completely knowing that it is His Grace that makes you do everything.

It is very important for doctors [of whom there were many as devotees at the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa] to understand this. No matter how much good you do in the world, the people will clap their hands and say what a good man you are, but you will do nothing for your self. In this life you are born as a donkey – carrying people up and down the mountains; and you will probably die as a donkey. And in your next birth you will still not get any realisation because while doing all this you are thinking of grass, you are not thinking of God. So you will become even more of a grass-eater in the next birth.

Printing will not take you anywhere – print it for God. Singing will not take you anywhere – sing for God. Explaining to others will not take you anywhere – do it for God.

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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.