sudden (hathat-siddha).
Disciple: What is the meaning of 'made perfect all of a sudden'?
Mother: It is like becoming wealthy suddenly by inheriting the riches of another.
Just then Nalini, the Mother's niece, entered the room after a bath in the Ganges. Finding the water-closet a little dirty, she had washed it with a few pots of water, and hence had taken bath in the Ganges for purification. The disciple and the Mother opined that she need have bathed under the tap alone.
Nalini: How is that enough? A water-closet!
Mother: I too had to purify myself for coming into contact with filth on several occasions. But I only chanted the Name of Govinda
1 a few times and felt pure. The mind is everything. It is in the mind alone that one feels pure and impure. A man, first of all, must make his own mind guilty and then alone he can see another man's guilt. Does anything ever happen to another if you enumerate his faults? It only injures you. This has been my attitude from my childhood. Hence I can't see anybody's faults. If a man does a trifle for me, I try to remember him even for that. To see the faults of others! One should never do it. I never do so. Forgiveness is Tapasya (austerity).
Disciple: Swamiji (Swami Vivekananda) used to say, "Suppose a thief entered the house and stole something. The idea of a thief would flash in your mind. But a baby has no such idea. Therefore it would not see anyone as a thief."
Mother: That's true, indeed. He who has a pure mind sees everything pure. . . . . .
One could be born with a pure mind if one had performed many austerities and spiritual practices in a previous birth.
Disciple: Mother, my mind does not feel joy in doing Japa or spiritual practices.
Mother: (smiling) Why? Not a little even?
Disciple: Oh, I do a little rather half-heartedly. The next moment I think, "What is the use of mumbling? Let me rather try meditation."
Mother: Can you meditate?
Disciple: No, I cannot do even that. I understand everything but I cannot practise it at all and get peace. One may know the
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1 A name of God.