SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji
614
A sadhaka [spiritual aspirant] must think: 'I am Brahman'.[the One indivisible universal consciousness]. But when the thought comes, 'I am the body,' he must use the other mantra: 'neti neti' [not this, not this]. When you look at others as the body, think: 'neti neti: Brahman has come and I must worship It.'
Keep yourself cheerful; that is the secret of yoga. Keep yourself happy; and if you cannot keep yourself happy, no gods, no goddesses, no saints, no scientists, can ever make you happy. You will live such a miserable life that you yourself will be fed-up with it. Do not think that someone else can make you happy. Nobody else can make you happy.
Now, how to make yourself happy? That is another secret of yoga: Whatever you feel to be painful, do not tell anybody; and whatever you feel to be blissful, tell everybody. In [Sri] Lanka Mother Sita must have felt a lot of miserable thoughts going through her mind. But if the Ramayana was full of those thoughts how would you read that scripture? But in fact we only see how blissful she was, how happy she was, how she took Sri Rama's name and thus lived her life.
If you do this for three months you will be the most blissful person under the sun; people will come to you for inspiration. No outward expression of your feelings of depression or of limitedness should be felt.
If you have not felt the power of Master's [Sri Ramakrishna's] Name it is because you are just treating it as something ordinary. You do not know the power of it. The power is so great that it will increase love for your own deity and it will increase love for all religions. That is the power of this Name. At the same time it will give the moksha [liberation] of all the scriptures as promised. It will give you the moksha of the Christian Bible, it will give you the moksha of the Qur'an. Even more He will give his own abode: Ramakrishnadham. That is the crux of the whole thing: Master's Name.
1) Care should be taken by the reader to
understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every
teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with
Swamiji at the time. 2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the
posting for further explanation or links.
There are currently available, over 100 different CDs
or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email
timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and
teachings.
Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Nischalananda Puri, Swami Shivapadananda Click Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna to read online... Reference websites (please mouse-over
the name to connect): Ramakrishna Math and Mission, Ramakrishna Centre of SA, Ramakrishna Centre of Southern Africa,
Ramakrishna Dham, Swami Shivapadananda 2