Talks Excerpt 692. Swamiji says do NOT change your Ishta Devata [Chosen ideal or preferred Deity].
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
It is very important that you should not change your Ishta Devata. You can let all other ishta devatas be absorbed in your Ishta Devata, but you should not change your Ishta Devata.
The Master [Sri Ramakrishna] guides us on how to find God. He says that if a man is digging a hole to find water and somebody says, ‘You are digging in the wrong place, dig a hole here, and you will find water’, the man will leave the first hole even after digging ten feet, and begin digging somewhere else. Then someone else comes by and says, ‘No, you will not find water there; dig here.’ He moves again, and digs another ten feet elsewhere. Thus he moves about from one spot to another and does not find water anywhere. Sri Ramakrishna said that if he had dug in only one place, he would have found water.
Devotee: But if you said the Ishta Devata is the soul . . . ? Swamiji: Yes, how are you going to change your soul? The real nature of the soul is Satchidananda and your Ishta Devata is Satchidananda. Brahman, the Absolute Reality, is worshipped as Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. And yet all three are one. It is Brahman alone that becomes your Ishta Devata.
Devotee: If it is Satchidananda, you are going to say that it has a specific form . . . Swamiji: You like that form because you meditate on that form. The restless bird of your mind settles longer and more lovingly on that particular tree called Ishta Devata, therefore you take that Ishta Devata. Otherwise it will keep flying about and cannot realise God.
No matter how many scriptures we have, take one and study it carefully. We are fortunate to have many scriptures which explain what Brahman is, and how to realise this Supreme Reality.
The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial, ‘Memories of my ashram days‘, of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, 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.