Talks Excerpts 619 to 630 inclusive. Swamiji speaks about the 5 elements of the body and goes into depth on facets of the Bhagavad Gita.

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

[Dear Devotee, Swamiji did a deep dive into facets of the Bhagavad Gita – so the excerpts are grouped here for your convenience and continuity purposes.]

The most powerful thing is the guru’s mantra – and he has given it to you.

The value of God’s name is never lost; and the man who recites His name [japa] will have love to God’s lotus feet.

Truth can even come from a person like Valmiki [the highwayman who became a Rishi]. But it is you who are going to do the striving, not the guru.

In the the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 7, the Lord says: Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and egotism – thus is My nature divided eight-fold. This is my lower nature. But different from it, know My higher nature – the Indwelling Spirit by which the universe is sustained.

God’s lower nature is divided into eight different divisions. ‘That which does not perish is God.’ Anything that perishes is not God. We see the Earth perish, we see the ego perish. Though these come from God they are not His real nature. It is His superimposition or His power which falls into the three qualities [gunas]; sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. It is God’s power; but it is not God in essence. We do not know Him in essence, we only see His gross manifestations.

This is the inferior prakriti, O mighty Arjuna. Note that thou art different from it: my higher nature: the very life element by which this world is upheld.

Take your body as an example. Why do you look after your body? It is to keep something inside it – life. So life is higher than body. That which gives life to the whole world, that which is the life of the whole world, is higher than the world itself. The Lord says, ‘Know Me as the eternal seed of all beings.’

This body is made of the five elements that we read about. You have fire elements in you. Feel your body; it is warm. Water? There is water in the body. Air? The breath is there. Ether or space? You have it. Earth is the excreta or the body itself. It is made of clay. But what is higher than the body? Life.

Excerpt 620:
There is nothing whatsoever higher than Me, O Arjuna. All this is strung on Me as clusters of gems on a string.

There is nothing higher than Consciousness. All things are built around Consciousness. If you look at a stone, even the stone is appreciated because you have Consciousness. The Consciousness in that stone is latent or dormant, so you are higher in many ways.

I am the taste in water.

Like the sap of a tree. Without the sap the tree is a dead thing. There is something called strength or taste in water; without that, the water would be of no use. The taste (or the living entity) in water is God Himself.

I am the radiance in the sun and the moon.

We know that the moon has no light of its own, so the Lord says the reflected light and the origin of the light in the sun, are both His. In the same way, the apparent man is also Him. If the ‘rope’ was not there, where would the ‘snake’ come from? Both these are the reflected truth. God alone (or Brahman) is the absolute Truth; the highest reality. [For the Vedantic rope and snake analogy, click HERE.]

I am the syllable Om in the Vedas.

We read in the Vedas that He is Om. AUM – the creator, the preserver and the transformer (or destroyer) is He.

I am the sound in ether and virility in man.

He is the sound that you hear. Even if no one makes a sound there is a sound [anahata shabda] the yogis hear within themselves. And He is the strength in man. Nothing else exists apart from Him.

Excerpt 621:
Devotee: When Sri Krishna says: ‘There is nothing whatsoever higher than Me,’ is this ‘higher than Me’ referring to man’s higher and lower nature or only the higher nature? Swamiji: ‘Higher than Me’ means Consciousness. There is nothing higher than Him. He is the source. Further on it says, ‘I am the seed.’ The seed is higher than everything. [The parallel statement in Christianity would be the Lord Jesus saying, I am the way the truth and the life. – Gospel of John 14:6].

Devotee: He says, ‘All this is strung on Me.’ All what?

Swamiji: This whole world, this whole universe, is strung on Him as Consciousness. If Consciousness was not there, the whole world would not be . . .

Devotee: Is it the lower nature strung on the higher nature?

Swamiji: Yes. From the lower nature, the higher nature is expressed. Your leg is a lower part of you, yet, if your head were not there how could that leg live? [laughter] All are part of Him; but we can perceive the lower part through the senses. If you see it, it becomes lower. But through meditation, when we perceive from beyond the senses, we can know Brahman.

Know Me, O Arjuna, as the eternal seed of all beings.

Now the crux of the matter is the eternal seed. He is not a temporary seed. He is the eternal seed; always existing. It always exists and will always be there in the future. He is the eternal seed of everything, of all beings. In other words, everything manifests or projects from Him.

Excerpt 622:
I am the intelligence of the intelligent.

You can have no pride whatsoever that you are a learned man. God says that intelligence is Him too. So how can you say, ‘It is I who am intelligent’? You are not intelligent. Take that life out of you and you are a dead body. Can a dead body be intelligent? Do you have control over your life?

How many of you say you do not want to die now? But you have no control over it. The controller is God Himself; and therefore He is the owner of it and not you.

The splendour of the splendid objects am I.

Wherever you see anything magnificent or impressive, it is God Himself.

Of the strong, I am the strength devoid of desire and attachment.

The Lord is now talking about His higher nature. His lower nature will be strength or power with desire and with attachment.

‘Of the strong’ – who is strong? Of those people who have no desire whatsoever, who mean well for the world, He is the strength in them.

Earlier in the Bhagavad Gita He explains: ‘I have no work to do, but yet I do the work so the others can follow . . .’  Work for what? To purify the mind and reach Him.

An ordinary man, a sannyasi or a holy man who becomes a selfless worker will actually be expressing Sri Krishna’s nature itself.

Excerpt 623:
And in all beings I am the desire unopposed to dharma, O Arjuna.

Sri Krishna is talking about His higher nature here. Higher than adharma is dharma. The Lord is the freeing [liberating] agent because dharma frees you, adharma binds you and God is not a binding factor in you.

Whatever beings and objects that appear active and inert, know that they proceed from Me, they are in Me yet I am not in them.

The bad and the good, the high and the low, proceed from God Himself but he says, ‘Know that these proceed from Me and I am not in them.’

To explain this let us say that you are walking in the dark. Suddenly you see something strange and you shout, ‘Ghost, ghost, ghost.’ But when you put on a torch, what happens? You see the stump of a tree. Therefore the tree is not in the delusion called ghost. ‘They are in Me.’ In other words they are superimposed on Me; but I am not in that superimposition; I am not the ghost; I am a tree. I know that sometimes I found this very difficult to understand until guru’s grace came.

Question: Swamiji, if all things become illusion what in me is not an illusion?

Swamiji: That which is inside it. Whatever is its real nature is not an illusion: the Self; the Atman: God. When you are in deep sleep, when you have no dreams, when you do not know anything, that which makes the food digest, that which makes the heart beat, that which keeps you breathing, is the real Self. (Do not worry about voluntary and involuntary muscles; that too, He made.)

Do you understand what I am saying? Devotee: Partly. Swamiji: Very good. Even that is progress. As you continue your sadhana, you will learn.

Excerpt 624:
Suppose there are two parallel lines – one is called matter and the other is called Consciousness. If you take matter away then Consciousness will remain; and that Consciousness is you. Therefore the Vedas say ‘Prajnanam brahma’: Consciousness is Brahman. And that Consciousness is all-pervading; it is in everything. The only thing is that we do not know it. Consciousness never dies. A dead body has no consciousness. Consciousness is the truth, the Reality.

Furthermore Swami Vivekananda explains that the day science can put the five elements together and make Consciousness, is the day you can prove the theory that ‘Consciousness is Brahman,’ is wrong. Until you can create consciousness please accept what the scriptures say.

Whatever beings and objects that appear active and inert, know that they proceed from Me, they are in Me, yet I am not in them.

At the present moment, you are imagining that you are this body but you know that you are not the body. If your hand is cut off, you are still living. You would only say, ‘My hand got cut off in an accident.’ So the hand belongs to someone or some Being!

You say, ‘My body.’ Who is this who owns everything, and says, ‘My, my,’ every time? Who is this? Find the possessor of all this and you will know who you are. You are identifying yourself with a fat body and you are saying, ‘I am a fat man’. You are not fat. Your body is fat. Then you say, ‘Oh, I am feeling very depressed.’ You are not feeling depressed, your mind is feeling depressed. You say, ‘I’m a very clever man.’ It is not that you are a clever man, but that your intellect is sharp, your intellect is clever about a particular thing. Who is the ‘you’ that is operating through these three apparent bodies? It is the Atman; supreme consciousness; absolute truth.

Excerpt 625:
Verily this divine illusion of Mine (God’s illusion) made up of the three qualities [gunas] of nature (sattvic, rajasic, tamasic) is difficult to cross over.

The Lord Himself is saying, ‘It is difficult to cross over.’

How can we overcome it? Sri Krishna says, ‘Those that take refuge in Me alone cross over this illusion.’ No man can cross it through drugs, or some magical power; holding the nose [pranayama] and pressing the toes. No man can get out of it by raising his kundalini. There is only one way: take refuge at God’s lotus feet. And ‘at God’s lotus feet’ does not only mean at Sri Krishna’s feet. It means at your chosen Deity’s [Ishta Devata’s] feet.

Just like God took an avatar [incarnation] as Sri Krishna Bhagavan, God is infinite and also manifests as Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu, Mother Kali, Bandi, or as Hanumanji.

Ramana Maharshi puts it very well. He says that when you are meditating your mind becomes like a dog: It sniffs and sniffs and sniffs until it smells out where the master, the Self, is.

Sri Ramakrishna puts it the other way. He says, ‘You must become like a dog. Its master can dress up as a clown or a spaceman, but a dog will smell its master out.’

So you and I must smell out our master, the Self, in any guise. He can come as Kali, Durga, Bandi, Sitala, even if he comes as Ravana, who cares?

Excerpt 626:
A pure mind will see purity all the time. An impure mind will see impurity in the pure.

First you must have the quality of being virtuous. If you are robbing, stealing and killing others and yet praying, ‘God make me better,’ you are not virtuous yet. God will give you more sickness. If you are giving ten or fifteen people a bad time and yet praying to God, ‘I’m a little sick, please cure me.’ God will never cure you. You have to be virtuous first.

Four kinds of virtuous men worship Me: They are the distressed . . .

Those people who are in all sorts of trouble go to the Lord to worship Him. The Lord is happy with that. He knows that sooner or later that person’s mind will get purified and they will know: ‘I am the Master of everything.’

. . . the seeker of knowledge . . .

He who wants knowledge, he who wants to know the real truth, worships God.

. . . the seeker of wealth . . .

Who wants wealth. Wealth must not be confined to money only, wealth can also mean health; a good house and other things.

. . . and the wise . . .

Think about this verse very carefully. It was translated very beautifully. One who is in distress wants his distress to be taken away; one who wants knowledge gets knowledge; one who wants wealth gets wealth. But the last one does not say, ‘the seeker of wisdom,’ it says ‘the wise’. The wise man knows that this world is temporary, not permanent, so he worships God and will realise the Self.

Excerpt 627:
Of these, the wise man, ever steadfast and devoted to the One, excels; for I am exceedingly dear to the wise and he is dear to Me.

Why? Because the wise man realises that the Self is God. So he loves the Self and the Self loves him. In the Upanishads it is said that you cannot get the Self by learning, you will not attain the Self by wealth, but the Self is realised by whosoever the Self chooses. You do not choose the Self, the Self chooses you. The wise man is so dear to God that God has chosen him and he has realised the Self. He is dear to God and he, knowing the infinite nature of the Self, loves the Self even more.

Whatsoever form any devotee desires to worship with faith, I make that faith unwavering.

God is very understanding. Whichever form of God you want to worship, He makes your faith in that form grow and grow. (As He says in another verse, He is the eternal seed of all beings.) So you worship that particular form thinking that Saraswati is giving you vidya; thinking that Saraswati is separate from Lakshmi. Thinking that Lakshmi is giving you wealth, you think Lakshmi is separate from Kali because Kali is giving you strength. So you pray to each of the deities. But God is Almighty and God is only ONE. Anything you seek from Him, He will give you. Through ignorance you do not know that each manifestation, each deity, has everything in it. The same God, no matter which deity you worship, can give you everything you want. It can give you vidya and whatever you ask for.

Modern people make me laugh. Your great grandfathers worshipped the deities but suddenly you are finding a new deity. You throw out all the old deities and put a new one there – as if the new one is going to give you everything. Your father and mother prayed to those deities and that is why you are successful; you have all the knowledge and so on. So why are you suddenly throwing out the old deity? If you see the old one merged in the new one that would be all right, but now what you are saying is: ‘The old one is no good, the new one is the right one . . .’ You are listening to incorrect information; like the blind leading the blind. The deity that you worship is the same eternal expression of which we all are, the Self.

Excerpt 628:
Verily the reward (the fruit) that accrues to those men of small intelligence is finite.

If you think that God can only give you this or only give you that, you have small intelligence. But if you think that God is Satchidananda, that He can give you anything, then you have infinite knowledge and therefore the fruit will be infinite. Your deity has taken a special avatar for you, to save you from this mass of ignorance. It is God alone who has taken the avatar – no one else.

The worshippers of the gods go to the gods . . .

Now we must understand that if I pray for puny things in life, I will remain at a lower level. For example, if I pray to Sri Lakshmi chanting: ‘Sri Lakshmiyai Namah, then I will get wealth. Do you know where I will be born next birth? I will not go to heaven; I may be born in the family of a rich man who is probably a miser, and a lot of richness will surround me. I will not go to Vaikuntha Loka where Lord Vishnu is living. Yet if I say, ‘Sri Lakshmi namah, I want you and you alone, Ma,’ then I will attain Mother who lives with Lord Vishnu. Remember, Lord Vishnu and Mother are not two separate beings. Thus, I will get God-realisation.

So do not think that ‘go to the gods,’ means you will go to some heaven. But if you worship God and say, ‘You are all-knowing, Lord, I want You. You give me knowledge, You give devotion, You give me faith, Lord. I want You more than all the things of the world’, then you will go directly to God. In all these deities God Himself is seated.

. . . but My devotees come to Me.

The scriptures say, ‘God is the truth’. Mahatma Gandhi qualified it when he said, ‘Don’t say ‘God is truth,’ say, ‘truth is God.’ If you say ‘God is truth’ then the atheists will say, ‘I don’t want your God.’ But if you say ‘truth is God’, even an atheist becomes a worshipper of God because he believes in truth – though he may reject your concept of God.

Excerpt 629:
I am not manifest to all beings as I am veiled by yogamaya . . .

God is present everywhere, but we cannot see Him with these physical eyes. If there is a flaming fire, you can see the fire. Fire is hidden in dry sticks, but we cannot see it, as it is not manifest. If you rub the sticks together, the fire will manifest. So God is present in everyone. Yet everyone cannot be treated alike. The lion may be God and the man may be God, but the man cannot sweetly say, ‘Lion, you are a god, come to me.’ The lion will say, ‘A lovely breakfast has arrived today.’ [laughter]

So you have to use discrimination and judge each situation differently. Admire the lion from afar. Admire the bad man from afar. Say, ‘God is present there. But I don’t want to be like that.’

This deluded world does not know Me, the unborn and imperishable.

Behind what the senses perceive, is the imperishable REAL Being, the eternal and undying Consciousness.

Yet the Lord consciously comes to the world and consciously leaves the world, hence He is unborn. God says, ‘I did not take birth, the body took birth though I was inside that.’

But because you ignorantly came into this world, you are born. And when you ignorantly leave this world, you will die. Incarnations of God come into this world of their own accord and knowingly leave this world, so they are never born and they never die. God never dies.

‘This deluded world,’ means Maya. Through sadhana, meditation and the grace of the Guru, we can know that which is Real (God) in this world. The scriptures state: ‘O Lord, withdraw all your golden coloured rays, so I will be able to see the Purusha in the sun.’ This means: take away all these pleasures, these sensual entrapments, so that I may be able to realise the truth.

By the delusion of the pairs of opposites, rising from desire and aversion . . .

You are either attracted to somebody or repelled. Instead you must be like Buddha – take the middle path. Do not be attracted nor repelled; just be calm, quiet. When the veena string is over-tuned it snaps and when the veena string is under-tuned it does not play. So just tune it right and you will find everything is God. If you do not adjust the lens of a camera properly it takes a blurred picture. Similarly, you have to discipline our senses and purify them. If you adjust a lens correctly, it takes beautiful pictures, doesn’t it? So now you have to discipline yourself through sadhana.

Excerpt 630:
O Bharata, all beings are subject to delusion at birth . . .

Regardless of who it is, all beings are deluded at the time of birth. We get so caught in the sense world that we forget about the underlying reality; the supreme consciousness. This world is full of delusion, until we wake up in God consciousness.

Those who strive for liberation from old age and death, taking refuge in Me, realise in full that Brahman, the whole knowledge of the Self, and all action.

I always ponder on this verse of my Lord. Those who love their beautiful or handsome faces will do more hatha yoga so that they will remain young. Do not take these exercises so seriously that you forget to smile. The Lord is not talking about there being no old age in this body. He is saying that after God-realisation you will not take any birth – and therefore there will be no old age or death. In this body you will just have to go through your prarabdha karma. Do not think you can avoid it. You can avoid it by concentrating your mind fully on God and God’s glories. When you are fully concentrated on God then old age does not affect you, pain does not affect you. Pain will come but it will just pass away unnoticed. You will become indifferent to it. A lot of bhaktas became old but never forgot bhajan and kirtan – they did not even know that their bodies were old. They were above body consciousness.

God bless you. Hari Om Tat Sat.

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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.