Talks Excerpt 637 and 638 combined. Swamiji teaches us how to behave with prasad and in a shrine.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
The man who has a lot of money and still has many worldly desires, is poor. The man who is lazy and has no desires is worse. But the man who has the desire to realise God is the richest.
There is a special attitude with which one must offer food to the deity, in the shrine. Look at the face of the deity. Then hold His Lotus feet with your hands and prostrate. Feel that you are holding His feet. Now look at Him again after He has blessed you. Mentally say to Him: ‘Lord, I’ll take your prasad. When anyone eats this prasad may they have a pure mind and have bhakti for you.’ Then you take the prasad. Gurudev [Swamiji’s beloved guru, Swami Nischalananda Puri] used to say, ‘Don’t just go and grab it without reverence. It’s not just a piece of fruit kept there. It belongs to God.’
If there is a little bit of food left on my plate after I have finished eating and I keep talking, what would you do? You would say, ‘Swamiji, are you finished? Can I take that away?’ Similarly, when you come to God’s food, treat it with reverence, feeling that God has blessed it.
When you are offering prasad you should not speak because the saliva from your mouth, unnoticed by you, goes onto the prasad and that becomes jutha, defiled. Therefore never speak near the altar.
I see some men that visit the ashram, they walk with such big steps from the back of the shrine. I sometimes tell them, ‘Look, this is wrong. Walk slowly in the shrine.’ You may think that I am scolding. No. Hatred, honestly, is not in my mind, prejudice is not in my mind. The only thing in my mind is to make you a lovely flower so that one day I will be proud to offer you to Sri Ramakrishna, or Lord Vishnu or Kali or Durga or Bandi or Shitala. Only that is in my heart.
When you walk in the shrine you must remember that God is living. How do you walk at the office in the presence of your boss? You walk with respect. When you walk in front of Sri Ramakrishna, even in your own shrines at home, you must walk with that love, with the feeling of ‘living-ness’. God is living, even though we cannot see Him.
The mothers should see that their saris or dresses do not touch any prayer items. If the lota is touched, even when it is empty, it should be washed.
Excerpt 638:
Our scriptures say that when you are praying and when you sneeze you must do achamanyam (the purification rite) again.
So I ask you to treat the Deity in your own shrine and in this shrine with love. Either you use psychology on God or God will use it on you. You had better be the first one.
Offer the arati, feed the Deity and lovingly take its blessings. Then say, ‘Lord you are Omnipresent, I am feeding you.’ Place one fruit before the Lord and say, ‘Lord, please eat.’
Train your mind, when you are praying at home. As the deity has a form, and we feel its living presence, it is your duty to offer some food. Sit before the deity and offer everything. [Holy] Mother Sarada Devi says that the mind becomes pure by eating Prasad.
They say that mental worship [manasik puja] is the most beautiful worship. Every day Arjuna would take bilva leaves and put them on the Shiva lingam, while his elder brother Bheema appeared to do nothing. One day Sri Krishna wanted to humble Arjuna so they went to Lord Shiva’s abode. Arjuna noticed that one Shiva linga was covered with great big bilva leaf trees, while another had only a few leaves scattered around it. Arjuna looked at the trees that had been offered and said, ‘But who has offered this worship?’ Sri Krishna replied, ‘Bheema performed this worship.’ ‘But he was just sitting there,’ remarked Arjuna. Then Sri Krishna said, ‘No he did manasik puja [mental worship].’
External [ritual] worship too is important because it makes an inner impression. It brings about inner transformation.
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.