Gospel | Chapter 4: Aug 24, 1882 (Part 3) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[SPEAKER_00]: So we are studying the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which is the English translation of the Bengali Sri Ramakrishna Kathambita.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we were on 24 August 1882, 24 August 1882,
[SPEAKER_00]: 115 at the very bottom of the page.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have been reading this last time in the bottom of the page.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Ramakrishna is saying one of the things of God day and night beholds him everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is like a man seeing claims on all sides after he has gazed fixatly at one flame for something.
[SPEAKER_00]: flash through M's mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sri Ramakrishna, who could read the man's in most part, said, one doesn't lose consciousness by thinking of him, who is all spirit, all consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: She will not once remarked that too much thinking about God confounds the brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thereupon, I said to him, how can one become unconscious by thinking of consciousness?
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, sir, I realized that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't like thinking of an unreal object.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can a man lose his intelligence if he always fixes his mind on him who's very nature is eternal intelligence?
[SPEAKER_00]: Master with pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is through God's grace that you understand that the doubts of the mind will not disappear without his grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doubts do not disappear without self-realization.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one need not fear anything if one has received the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is rather easy for a child to stumble if he holds his father's hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there can be no such fear if the father holds the child's hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man does not have to suffer anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God in his grace removes his doubts and reveals himself to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: What this grace depends descends upon him, only after he has prayed to God, with intense yearning of heart and practiced spiritual discipline.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother feels compassion for her child when she sees him running about breathlessly.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has been hiding herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now she appears before the child.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why should God make us run about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Start M immediately, Sri Lama Krishna said.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is his will that we should run about a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it is great fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has created the world in play as it were.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called Mahama, the great illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, one must take refuge in the divine mother to cosmic power itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is she who was boundless with the shackles of illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: The realization of God is possible only when those shackles are
[SPEAKER_00]: One must propitiate the Divine Mother, the primal energy, in order to obtain God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: God himself is Mahamaaya, who deludes the world with a illusion, and conjures up the magic of creation, preservation, and destruction.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has spread the veil of this veil of ignorance before our eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can now go into the inner chamber only when she lets us pass through the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: living outside, we see only outer objects, but not that eternal being, existence, knowledge, bliss, absolute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, it is stated in the Purana that deities like Brahma, praised Mahama for the destruction of the demons, Madhu and Kaitava.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shakti alone is the root of the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: That primal energy has two aspects, Vidya and Avidya.
[SPEAKER_00]: Avidya deludes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Avidya conjures up less than gold, which casts the spell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vidya begates devotion, kindness, wisdom, and love, which lead one to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Avidya must be propitiated, and that is the purpose of the rights of Shakti Varship, footnote.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this worship, a woman is regarded as the representation of the
[SPEAKER_00]: The devotee assumes various attitudes towards Shakti in order to propitiate her.
[SPEAKER_00]: The attitude of a handmade hero or a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: A hero's attitude is to please her even as a man pleases a woman through intercourse.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worship of Shakti is extremely difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is no joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I passed two years as the hand made and companion of the Divine Mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: but my natural attitude has always been that of a child towards its mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: I regard the breasts of any woman as those of my own mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women are all of them the very table images of Shakti.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the northwest India, the bride holds a knife in her hand at the time of marriage in Bengal and nutcutters.
[SPEAKER_00]: The meaning is that the bride grew with the help of the bride, who is the embodiment of the divine power, will sever the bondage of illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: this is the heroic attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never worship the Divine Mother that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: My attitude towards her is that of a child towards its mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bride is the very embodiment of Shakti.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haven't you noticed at the marriage ceremony how the groom sits behind like an idiot but the bride she is so bold.
[SPEAKER_00]: After attaining God, one forgets his external splendor, the glories of his creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: One doesn't think of God's worries after one has seen him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The devotee, one's immerse in God's bliss, does not calculate any more about out of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I see Narendra, I don't need to ask him, what's your name?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you live?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is the time for such questions?
[SPEAKER_00]: Once a man asked Anuma, which day of the fortnight it was,
[SPEAKER_00]: Brother said Hanuman, I don't know anything of the day of the week or the fortnight or the position of the stars.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of Rama alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's set out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll go back to the beginning of where we started.
[SPEAKER_00]: This question about is spirituality a kind of insanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, every time there are mystics, there'll always be people, this is an over old old theory that this person is mad, this person is an epileptic, this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now there is more modern neuroscience terms, but the theory is the same, the person must be crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, we've seen Mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: We now at this distance, say Sri Ramakrishna, incarnation, great Paramahamsa, what not we say, but most people who had just a casual acquaintance or, you know, who had heard about him, they would have heard that he is his man, you know, he's a crazy about God and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, that issue is raised, Sri Ramakrishna, he gives an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that if stare at a flame of fixed time, and then you look around, you will see the flame everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that happens immediately, M misunderstood.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the problem with examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the master is employing examples, similarly, metaphors, the master knows, a spiritual teacher knows what he means, what he intends to convey.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the person who's hearing it may not take it in that sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it works often works like that and what happened here was that
[SPEAKER_00]: And immediately notice that the example when you look at a flame and you look around and you see the flame everywhere that's an illusion that's the image persisting in your eyes that's why you see that it's not that there's an actual flame outside and immediately took that to mean so you just think about God a lot of a lot intensely think about God pray to God and then you will you can delude yourself into thinking that you are seeing God experiencing God everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what he, I mean he didn't think that but he at least that doubt came to his mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Something like that where you brainwash yourself into believing you are seeing God or even generate illusions, hallucinations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Narendra Nathu later became Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_00]: He once charged Ramakrishna and Ramakrishna protested but I see God.
[SPEAKER_00]: God talks to me and Vivekan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see God and Vivekan said, and then in the last said that if you put a lot of pressure on your mind and think about it, it intendsly these things, you will get these hallucinations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ramakrishna in his innocence he protested, he said, but God talks to me and Vivekan said, yeah, all that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's hallucination for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, M thinks like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And immediately Siddhama Krishna says, no, no, it is not an illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a delusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, one doesn't lose consciousness by thinking of him who is all spirit, all consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: What he means here is that lose consciousness we think somebody fails.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He means one doesn't become deluded.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're thinking about reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can you be deluded if you are meditating on reality?
[SPEAKER_00]: Delusion is when you go away from reality, when you distance from reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he makes that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, you're not the first one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shiva Natsasthri, another great scholar, devotee, and religious leader, prominent religious leader at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: He remarked, if you think too much about God, then it could confounce the brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I said to him, how can one become unconscious by thinking of the consciousness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can folks, here again, unconscious means diluted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't become diluted if you think about reality about God, about about consciousness itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: M, of course, says that, yes, sir, I realize that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that you're thinking about some illusory thing or some fancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not like thinking about an unreal object.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can a man lose his intelligence if he always fixes his mind on him who is very nature is eternal intelligence?
[SPEAKER_00]: Adwaita Vedanta, for example, in a way you're trying to express something that is beyond the limits of language.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that case, and you're trying to express it through language.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the ways that the texts do that teaches to that is through examples, metaphors, similes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's every chance of misunderstanding those examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the duties of the spiritual teacher is to make sure that what the teacher is trying to convey, that has been understood in that sense by the student.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give an example of what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: How I had misunderstood something for a very long time, and then only it struck me later.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is the one reality, and what appears as this multifidious world is an illusion, is an appearance, not the reality in itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the example often used is the snake rope, which makes sense, I understand the example, for a dream, again makes sense, I understand the example, however, what made me
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't come across the snake group, for example.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Chandow geopension, for example, you get, look, you get examples play and thought, go an argument like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was a little uneasy about that example.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I thought?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that will play is fashion into a part by the potter.
[SPEAKER_00]: So something is done to it and then it becomes a part.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is it that Brumman evolves into this universe, actually changes into this universe?
[SPEAKER_00]: Say some real change.
[SPEAKER_00]: See the rope and snake is pretty clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing ever happens to the rope, but it appears to all intents and purposes as a serpent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole thing is corrected immediately by realizing that it's a rope, the serpent goes away, that illusion goes up and you see it as a rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: However,
[SPEAKER_00]: The example of the clay and the part is our gold and ornament is not at all that clear because first of all a new shape is given to it And the part does something to it and just by thinking that it's clay the part form will not go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did not understand what was meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only much later understood the only thing that was trying that was they were trying to say in the Chandu Ghiopanishad and the teacher tells Shwaita ki to the student.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, just as out of the one clay, all these different kinds of pucks are passion, clay alone is the reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thought is just the name and a form.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it just says it's part is just a form.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, there is only one reality in this universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's our art, that's our legacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the teaching again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, nine times he keeps giving different examples, including clay and pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what's the only thing that the book initiative is trying to say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing about making the clay into a part, nothing about a potter, all those things are extra and it's not the point at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only point it wants to make is even though it looks like a pot and you give it a name a pot, it is clay and clay only.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was clear to begin with when it you call it a part and use it as a part and it looks like a part everything you can do it or you can transact with it as a part it's clay and clay only one day the part will be broken it will be clay and clay only
[SPEAKER_00]: all throughout, it is Brahman and Raman only, which before the universe was created, Brahman alone exists during the time of the universe, when all these names and forms are there, Brahman alone exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the entire universe disappears, either daily in our deep sleep or at the end of the cosmos in the cycle of existence creation, existence and destruction, Brahman and Brahman alone exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all he meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the whole thing about the potter and the making of a pot, all those things are not intended.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's not the point of the example.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the example has to be used carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gave many examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no other way.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other way, the way down there, you have to give, similarly, metaphors, examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I always want, Sri Ramkishna also says in the Gospel, he says Uppoma as Dishi.
[SPEAKER_00]: Examples are meant to prove a point.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you say, as brave as a lion, I say that person is as brave as a lion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not at all intend that to say that that person walks about on all fours and grounds and bounces on people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that person is brave.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lion is supposed to be brave.
[SPEAKER_00]: That much alone is intended.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, in the flame example, what did Sri Ram Krishna intend?
[SPEAKER_00]: He intends that by a certain kind of practice, which is like intensely looking at the flame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you get a result, you see the flame every day, similarly, by a certain kind of practice, by intense devotion to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had the experience of God in everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the fact that that flame, looking at a real flame and then you look around and you see like an image after the image of the flame.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's not a real flame.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that was added by M's mind, very naturally, but there was a little M's mind, that's not what is intended
[SPEAKER_00]: one more thing though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here Sri Ramakrishna is talking about contemplating God or Brahman or the Atman and then becoming enlightened, fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not deluded there.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, let me come down the scale, come down to our level.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is always the possibility of mental strain, of even mental breakdown, nervous breakdown, I had seen it again and again and again,
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't confuse the two, over doing say meditation and many sometimes of spiritual practices, it can lead to nervous breakdowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, if there is an existing mental condition like a depression or a schizophrenia or something, that can be exacerbated by certain spiritual practices.
[SPEAKER_00]: a certain time a person might need counseling, even medication.
[SPEAKER_00]: The person thinks I'm going to go into solitude and meditative, meditative, dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can always have a negative consequence.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a different thing altogether.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Sudham Krishna is talking about is at the end of the, you know, the highest point at the end of the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: is spirituality in sanity or are you in touch with reality?
[SPEAKER_00]: You are in touch with reality, let's ultimately so.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, what I just said was a kind of beware.
[SPEAKER_00]: The negative side is entirely possible, especially at our level when we are beginners and walking along the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always, one of our senior monks, when I joined our Ashtam, I remember this advice so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's little little things they would tell us, which are good for spiritual beginners.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, train, don't over train, don't train, don't train, don't train, it's like coaches, the coaches always tell at least, they tell them, train, don't train, and then he said, the monk said, look, you have already entered a specialized way of life, it's a monastic life, it is a kind of artificiality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, try to be normal, don't try to be further, you know, strange or abnormal here.
[SPEAKER_00]: already this is a specialised form of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So fit in here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another wonderful Swami who I record as a great spiritual person I've met in my life, one of the few, genuinely I would say enlightened or close to enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_00]: This person this monk told me when I went to the training center where the young monks had trained.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went to him to bow down and take his blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a very
[SPEAKER_00]: And we said, what's the matter in Bengal?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Qivapar, what's the matter?
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I have Swami blessed me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have come to come here to the main monastery for two years of training.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's done in our order two years of intensive training.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he said, oh, the training center, very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go with the bell.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a wonderful teaching I saw go with the bell that's enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you have to understand in our training centers for young monks, it's very intensely regulated.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are 26 bells, I counted, 26 bells in 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything is regulated from getting up to going to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going to sleep bell is the most hated bell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you're already asleep, it's most annoying.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're here at the bell, what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it morning already now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a typical reaction among young, immature, monastic novices like us was trying to overdo things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now is the time when we are set for austerities, meditation, study.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do so much by the end of two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be a G1 Mukta.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, enlightened and Brahman can.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, we thought so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, there would be so many everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it's the same case even now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every year, there would be some few who would overdo things, sometimes to the detriment of their health, physical and mental.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was one end.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other end was the lazy ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do the minimum possible and if possible, less than the minimum.
[SPEAKER_00]: So look at the beautiful advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go with the bell.
[SPEAKER_00]: that means don't try to do anything more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't try to do anything less either.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's already a pretty strict life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just follow that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the recent books, recent means a few years ago, I read a room show.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the well-known journalist in India.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people don't know that he wrote a book on Ramana and Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a one book on Ramana and Ramakrishna, where he theorized what possible neurological defect they had, what the neurological defect they had, which would have led to the Samadhi episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny to read, you know what he says, Ramana, if you look at his early childhood, he was given to very deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, probably that itself became the what so called Samadhi later on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is not new, this has been there in every religion, wherever there are mistakes, there will be people, they'll see, there are these people are banned, they're crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, I'm not criticizing Arun Chori, he's a very good journalist, but see, this is a problem of the 80s or agnostic intellectual.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sadhana Krishna says, it's through God's grace that you understand that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also important point.
[SPEAKER_00]: These little things, when you say God exists, and some people accept it and take it serious to their deeply move by this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people reject it entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say, well, it is Christopher James Daniel, then it all more than them, their followers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some people are not interested basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are not convinced either way, not even interested in the issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even interested in the issue is a worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: worst in the sense, it shows a mind so sunken in the materialism that there is no curiosity about anything higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might be curiosity about things in the world, but nothing more than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of mind, if one is cursed with that, will take a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may even seem to be pretty well settled in Samsara, because that mind is designed for Samsara.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is, that kind of mind will be, that kind of person will be subject to lot of suffering, more than one lifetime of suffering, until that kind of questioning arises.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you are one of those few people who are moved by these statements that these teachings, God exists, one can realize God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The grace of God is most important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is by the will of God, everything happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: The central teachings of any kind of religion, dualistic, non-dualistic whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: If these are profound, if they move you, Sirama Krishna is very pleased with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, it is through God's grace that you understand that.
[SPEAKER_00]: the doubts of the mind will not disappear without his grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one without the grace of God is doubts to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is not thoroughly convinced about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're thoroughly convinced about it, it's the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then,
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, doubts will go, doubts do not disappear without self-realization, until self-realization, the grace of God is necessary, and the grace of God is not that after a self-realization, the grace of God disappears.
[SPEAKER_00]: The grace of God becomes the reality of God after self-realization.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's obvious then, then you don't have to say, I believe in it, I'm subjected to doubts.
[SPEAKER_00]: There'll be no possibility in you of any doubts after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after self-realization,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know why there's no possibility of any doubt after that, right now there's no possibility of doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice about the self, I'm not talking about God now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about you yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: You never ever seriously entertain any doubt about your own existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you see, my existence is the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a thousand and one problem, it's only because I exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm good, I don't doubt my existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is self-realization?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is that same undoubted, absolutely certain existence, freed of all limitations.
[SPEAKER_00]: You realize the infinitum of your own self.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is enlightenment in a Guayta Vedha.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll repeat that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You realize the infinitum of your own self.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is meant by infinitum?
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not limited in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is no beginning and end to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you are not limited in space.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing outside of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not limited in object also, which means there is no second reality apart from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eternal, all pervading, non-dual, nithya, server of the happy, adwaita are in terms in Vedantic terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deshakala was to parichaila shunya, free of the limitations of space, time, and object.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you, what is this, what are we talking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: You.
[SPEAKER_00]: The you, the eye, which at this time seems like a person with lots of problems, that will now will be realized as that limitless absolute, no problem at all, no possibility of any problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should there be any doubt?
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no doubt about your own existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there won't be any doubt about the existence of that absolute then also.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until that time one needs the grace of God and he says one need not fear anything one has this received the grace of God, a child will stumble, a child tries to hold on to the father's hand but if the father holds the hand of the child in the child need not have any fear God reveals all his God first of all gives grace one removes the doubts and third reveal
[SPEAKER_00]: if we have this phase, it could be phase in God, teistic dualistic, or it could be an interest in enlightenment in a non dualistic sense in some spiritual path.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we develop this phase, then it's the grace of God, number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, the doubts will disappear one after another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever confusions we have, invitations we have, they will disappear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And number three enlightenment will come in conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do we get this grace now?
[SPEAKER_00]: His grace depends, this grace depends, descends upon him only after he has prayed to God with intense yearning of heart and practice spiritual disciplines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sriramakrishna gets his example of the little boat sailing on the Ganga.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says the wind of God's grace is always blowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Raise the sail and catch that wind.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had seen this boatman with little boat sailing along and sometimes they raise the sail.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it catches the wind and then you can go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this experience recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went to a place called Newport in the Rhode Island.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's one of Yogatman and the G and some devotees.
[SPEAKER_00]: We sailed in the ocean there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big boat, a scooter.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with big sales and all, it's quite impressive because the entire crew was female, the captain and the hard crew members, they were all women and so, you know, normally you associate if it was a motel boat or electric boat, you could understand, you could drive it like a car, but this was an actual, like a small sailing ship.
[SPEAKER_00]: and those huge, you know, masks and huge sales, you normally associate and you have to be manhandled, you are normally associated with brownie sailors, you know, big muscles, brownie sailors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these women are very fit with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: literally they were hanging on the roof to pull the sail this way on that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so expertly and competently catching the wind as the wind ships shifting the sails this way and that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was quite an experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you catch the wind.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wind is always blowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You catch the wind and exactly like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's grace is always there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You catch the, you catch God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you catch that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sri Ramakrishna says, intense yearning of heart, you must want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you must practice spiritual disciplines.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there must be a desire, a love, a yearning for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must realize God, I must see God in this life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must become enlightened in this life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do something, it's not enough to just want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, we currently in the morning and meditate, actually study those scriptures, have a devotional practice, try to convert your daily activities into worship of God and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The yoga's.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she gives another nice example, so the mother has been hiding herself now she appears before the child when the child is running around breathlessly suddenly the child misses his mother is running around mother suddenly appears before him so she may be she was playing hide and seek.
[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately emptyings yes but why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is God making us do all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: After some time, everybody gets this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: In devotional path, if everything is God and God realization feel, so if that's true, why is God making us do all this anyway?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, God, if the goal is God realization, fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then God can reveal himself or herself right now, and it's done, finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why go through all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: In an unrealistic path also, this question comes, yes, it's all Maya, but still why Maya?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is is if Brahman is the only reality right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: It could just remain Brahman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would does it have to go through all these?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know these are false, these are appearances, still why?
[SPEAKER_00]: So this question comes.
[SPEAKER_00]: end gets this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: He thinks, he's just things and said, I'm officially immediately answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something you see again and again in the presence of very holy people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems to address your questions straight away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should God make us run about?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is his will, by the way, he's in English, you have to translate it as his or her or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bengali is gender neutral.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it actually probably he meant her, because he always thought of God as mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is his will that we should run about a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one answered, it is God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, then it is great fun
[SPEAKER_00]: You may think it's not fun for us, but it's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun for God at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, God created the world in play as it were.
[SPEAKER_00]: In English, in in Sanskrit, in Hindi, Bengali, it's the word is Lila, Lila, divine play.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the third answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four times a year, this is called Mahāmaya, the great illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an appearance.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a Advaitic way of looking at it, or even times like we are looking at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are different answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is all this happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God wants it to be so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are frowning, some of you are nodding, that shows the difference in attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's good enough answer, but God wants it fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: What else can we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other one is, why would God want it so?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he gives the answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can it be fun?
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's play, Lila, as it went, not that God is playing, but it's one way of expressing it in our language play, because when a child plays,
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does the child play?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're asking, what useful purposes are you accomplishing?
[SPEAKER_00]: How much money are you earning?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it that's not the point of it the point of play is fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like somebody's dancing and you go to the man who's dancing and ask so where exactly do you want to go?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not going anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's dancing like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So play is for fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lila
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it's the great display.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very nature of God to appear in that which is Mahāma, or the great illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the answer that God upon the gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate answer given by God upon the Nādvāta, Vela, why at all all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a great display.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the nature of God to shine for.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very nature of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nature of God is to shine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the shining of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't gone there in this place, but in another part in the Gospel, it will come to it, the problem of evil is raised, that yes, from God's perspective, the M's question was, or his mind, the question was, why does God do all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are good answers, what are the good answers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it says, we number one, because it's fun for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, number two, number three, because it's play for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four, it is the very power of the illusion of God,
[SPEAKER_00]: but there's another side of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is our side of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our side of it is full of suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's full of conflict, full of terrible things in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one may ask, how is it play or fun?
[SPEAKER_00]: So in another place in the Gospel, Sri Ram Krishna gives these answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are the question most different.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question in that section will come to it much later.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question was, if God exists, then why is there so much suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just from our side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is there so much suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Sri Ram Krishna says, it is will, what can we know of God's will?
[SPEAKER_00]: that was not very acceptable to the persons who were asking the question, two brothers, they called Mukherjee brothers in Calcutta.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Sadama Krishna goes to his next best answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, it is God's play.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then one of those brothers couldn't withhold himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, it may be God's play, but it is death to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's death to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Terrible suffering for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Sri Ramakrishna gives the final answer, which is not given here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there he has given gifts, the ultimate answer for which there is no comeback.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, ah, but who are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's death for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are saying it's death for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like somebody I'm dreaming.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nightmare in the dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I ask, why am I suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is the author of this suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, who are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: The one who are suffering?
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the author of this very dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, you are the answer of this very dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, even more important, it's all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing terrible is actually happening to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, in Advaita Vailanta, yes, God is the creator of this and then this terrible suffering and we are suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: But essentially, you and God are the same reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, it is all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in the worst circumstances, it is all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he goes on to a different subject, taking refuge in the Divine Mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, she herself has bound us with the shackles of illusion and it is by her grace that those shackles will be severe.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Master continued, one must propitiate the Divine Mother,
[SPEAKER_00]: All these things again are easily understood if you have a little bit of Vedanta Sada.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate reality, Nirguna Brahma, with Maya, becomes Saguna Brahma, or God of Religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: That God of Religion is what Islam Krishna is calling Mahamaya.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you stress the Maya part of it, the prakriti part of it, the Shakti part of it, you call it Shakti or Mahamaya or Durga, Kali or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you stress the consciousness part of it, you call it Shiva or Saguna Brahma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is this?
[SPEAKER_00]: She is the one who creates this entire game of creation of the universe, the preservation of the universe, and the ultimate destruction of the universe, and the recreation again in cyclical form.
[SPEAKER_00]: Endless times, it's burling around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we attract in it as it is because of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, so can't we get free?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get free.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, that also depends on her.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we ask her, yes, her nicely, then she'll let you off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it says, living outside, we see only outer objects, but not that eternal being existence, consciousness, bliss, absolute, such a dhanand, such a dhanand, the brimma.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't experience that that's right here, if you don't see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like looking at a pot, but not seeing the clay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking at water, not seeing a look at the wave and not seeing the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can it be you say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking at water, not seeing a looking at the wave and not seeing water.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are seeing water, correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't recognize it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the person does not understand what water is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the person does not understand what, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understand what pot, potter is.
[SPEAKER_00]: The stories there of the,
[SPEAKER_00]: child, you know, whose father was a master joeller, goldsmith, and he was working in his shop, and he sends his little boy, they need some more gold to work on, and he says, go to the vault, there's a key there, open the key, a vault, and bring me some gold from there, and the little boy runs up, and after a long time he comes back and he says, there's no gold
[SPEAKER_00]: and the falsive is horrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you mean, it's full of gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there isn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I looked.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the father goes, rushes back to the vault open, sit and see, it's full of gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are necklaces and bracelets and the earrings and so many things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, can't you see?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the boy says, but there is gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are jewels, ornaments.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't know what gold is.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had some vague idea, but he thinks these are ornaments, he will, this is a nice story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We think, well, it's God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We deal with this man, it's a woman, it's a chair, it's a table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the Divine Mother must be propitiated.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, this power has two, the Divine Mother is two powers, Vidya and Abitya, both are powers of the Divine Mother, that which we are trapped in.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have desire, but desire for things of the world, not desire for God, desire for God is a bhakti.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do get focused on things in the world, but not on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do find real things, but we want to find real things on things in the world, our bodies, our minds, this is reality for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is not reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like a theory, like the person who sees the thought, but can't see the clay, who sees the wave, but can't see the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Avintya.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will go on until we, as long as we want to play, want to get out of this, of course, God Realization Spirituality, I mean, meditation, all that are important, but it must go through the free says, he makes a point here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Divine Mother must be worshiped and he gives different forms of the worship of the Divine Mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially he says, women are the embodiment of the Divine
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me see if there are any comments here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill says as spoken to many psychotic patients in mental hospitals who are hallucinating, not at the sweetness of Sri Ramah Krishna.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was unpleasant being with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Difference between a genuine spiritual experience and something
[SPEAKER_00]: the character of the person will make a sainter.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, they're very kind of the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: A fool goes into somebody and comes out as saint.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, somebody say what is difference between deep sleep and some audio?
[SPEAKER_00]: Deep sleep, we going to deep sleep is the same person we come out, maybe a little more sleepy, but we come out of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But genuine mystical experience is like transformative.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who have lost their balance because of overdoing certain practices, they must have received some morning signs which they ignored.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's best to have a routine and stick to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen this again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: This impatience, this impatience is not a divine further.
[SPEAKER_00]: This impatience is often black of discipline.
[SPEAKER_00]: lack of, I would say, spiritual stamina.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lifelong thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a sprint.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've given these examples earlier, also.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew this so many examples have seen extraordinary austerities, but unnecessary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not eating, not sleeping,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's bound to rank one's body and mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Buddha put it to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But who has done more austerities than the Buddha?
[SPEAKER_00]: The prince did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, before he became the Buddha, he nearly starred himself to death.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd become all skin and bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are those sculptures, depicting like a skeleton.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was the Buddha's conclusion about the whole thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: After he became enlightened, he said the middle pass.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it gives the example of a vener.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you string it tight, if you pull the string tight, it won't play, if you try to play, it's snap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's too loose, it'll no music will be produced by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it must be tightened to the right attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, there must be discipline, that's there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A simple, austere focused light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Akma Rupa Ranjali.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a Rupa Ranjali.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm in Houston now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was talking about meeting Gopesh Maharaj, how austere their life was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, he would people who would come to him, especially how soldiers, you know, he would say that why go through all these extreme austere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to be like us, you know, he was himself very austere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The main thing is ensure a comfortable life for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't overdo these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The main thing is to be focused on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Main things have to devotion to God, repeat the name of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the main thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to starve yourself, not to sleep on bricks and give a give up your comfortable bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not to throw yourself into disturbing an unnatural condition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to live in a hut in the top of a mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a couple of days, you might try it, but not for long periods of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not used to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm going from now on and with what barefoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I know, I know in our own order also.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a senior monk who was one of our teachers, all his life is barefoot, even if going on train or a plain barefoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now his feet were like leather.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I tried to do that,
[SPEAKER_00]: From that day onwards, the only thing that would come to me would be the souls of my feet, not my own eternal soul, but the skulls of my feet would be topmost in my mind because it would hurt so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't overdo the innocents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Focus on the essentials.
[SPEAKER_00]: So follow the bill, you must have some structure in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the time for my job, this is the time for my exercise, this is the time for my food, this is the time for meditation, this is the time for study, this is the time for my devotional practices, moral, let's don't be rigid about that also.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that structure is very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't overdo that, or don't relax, don't be relaxed there either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill says to Amity, would always say to me slow and easy when studies always in spiritual activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: although not self-realized, can't one be convinced of the grace of God experientially, certainly, certainly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please have heard again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: One monk wrote to Swami Thurian and the Jiyang monk, who was conducting a big relief camp for victims of a flood, I think, feeding people who are hungry, something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote that so much work has been done, but I'm not getting any time or energy for my meditation, for my reputation at the month, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: All, and Swami Turian is your road back.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is good to do these great acts of service.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you begin to depend on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you do big things like that, feeding thousands of people, for example.
[SPEAKER_00]: You realize how much of it depends on the will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where will the money come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where will the food come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Will the weather be all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these many things will depend on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody told me recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's also one of the benefits of some sorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in a family and a job, crisis after crisis will come, test up to test will come, over time you begin to realize that not much is in my hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I do my bit, I struggle, I worry, I am anxious and I struggle through it, but I also realize good deal of it was done by something else or someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it somehow, I am just, I get the feeling of muddling through and things are being taken care of.
[SPEAKER_00]: at a higher level.
[SPEAKER_00]: That feeling you get, no matter how sceptical you are, you begin to see, it's not, at least this much you see, it's not in my hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the great thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One can be convinced of the grace of God experientially, that experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes to some sorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're devoted to God and in some sorrow, in your family life and holding a job and struggling in life,
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I can tell you another example.
[SPEAKER_00]: This monk has passed away now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nirmukta Anandhiji, he lived to be more than 100.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the direct experiences of Sri Ramakrishna he had actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously, he had never seen Sri Ramakrishna long after Sri Ramakrishna passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was in the 1940s, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was sent, so there was a very young and inexperienced monk.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was sent to a hospital in what is now Burma, Myanmar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that time, Burma, Ranggu, we had a hospital there, which we don't anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was sent there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was very nervous because he had never been in a foreign line before and he had no experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was scared basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he prayed to Sri Ramakrishna to protect him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says, as he got down from the transport whatever he was using and walked into the Ashram, he said, literally as he walked into the Ashram, he actually physically felt somebody hold his head and he looked around, you couldn't see, but somebody held his head and asked for how long and he actually felt as if Sri Ramakrishna was holding him by the hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: and all his fears went on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he has no feeling, he has no doubt at all that it was actually a genuine spirit experience of Thakur personally, helping him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's one of those few, I regard who I met, I regard as being enlightened back.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a disciple of Swami Shivana, Nirmuktanandaji.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another interesting story about that monk is Nirmukthanamiji.
[SPEAKER_00]: I met him in his very old age, in his late 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: He used to call me the Pandit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they would wheel him around and his wheelchair.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was always so happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his late 90s, when he was more than 100 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: So happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: A thin, small man, full of joy and curiosity about the world and blessings for everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, she would call me the Pundit moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would see me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would say, well, Pundit, which book are you reading now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which book are you reading now?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you teaching the young novices?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was the, I was a master for the novices is teach them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are you teaching now?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you studying now?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you teaching?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, So one day at that time Swami Ranganathan and the G was the president of the order, who was also a disciple of Swami Shivananda.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Nirmukta Nandiji walked into the presence of Swami Ranganathananda and we are all gathered there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Nirmukta Nandiji asked him, what will happen to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I didn't see this one, I heard a report later on, but I verified it from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Nirmukta Nandiji asked President Maharaswami Ranganathanji, what's going to happen to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Swami Langanathan, the immediately replied, and he's also surprising because he couldn't hear all that well and certain questions like that from a distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He immediately replied, and in English, he said, he said, this is your last life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your last birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't, and then he said, this is your last birth, I shall come again to do Swami Jesus Word, but you don't have to come any more.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your last life.
[SPEAKER_00]: After Swami Nagarathandya passed away, I asked Swami Nagarathandya once that is this true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You went, you asked this and then he said, at that point he cut me off and he said, yes, Maharashtra said to me, this is your last life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I shall come again.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to come again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so delighted to hear this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Swami, his quality was usually the caliber of the person.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was most impressed by Swami Ranganathananda.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, look at the spirit of that Swami.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, he's going to come again to do ceramic Krishna's work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to record this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, you've got this permanent vacation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're free.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's blessed you that you're free.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he did not take so all that seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just said in Bengal, he said, ha, that hazard, Mahapurushira, Asheedva, let us see.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the blessings of Mahapurushma Ratswami, Shiva and this blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: But look at the spirit of Swami Rangarata.
[SPEAKER_00]: There also I asked him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do you think he's actually going to come?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to be reborn.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may become a month again and do Swami Vivekanas work.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, the complete level headedness of this man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing mystical about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, Oh, that's up to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But look at his attitude, what happens ultimately after death will be liberated forever, believe it about who knows who understands these things, these are speculations for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the important thing is look at the attitude of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dima says, is this a right understanding using logic alone?
[SPEAKER_00]: One can be convinced and advise as a reasonable probability.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very, but not exhaustive reasoning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The final conviction comes with enlightenment only.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: a kind of deep conviction comes with enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_00]: This conviction, which you have got through logic, this will be deepened into enlightenment, but that's distinct, it's unshakable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it goes to some level of, maybe our subconscious mind or something where it is, you get so much courage and strength from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot be shaken.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as clear as the sun blazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a, you have not argued your way to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's put it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot argue your way to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot reason your way to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that reasoning will take you up to a certain point, then there is a certain jump.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rick says, if you're created in the image of God, then like God, our idea of fun of nimbots things that don't raise suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shakespeare's tragedy is scary movie sports that calls pain and may cause injury, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like God, our place, not all sweetness and light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: But notice, that kind of suffering is either, if it's a tragedy, it must be false.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the sense, it's fiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: They only be enjoyed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It cannot be, you know, like gross reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, scary sports and all, that also is enjoyable when you are doing it voluntarily and you are trained.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are capable of doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, who is it fun for?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun for God's sure and it's fun for the enlightened one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun for the enlightened one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, our professor in the Jakravati, it talks about his guru.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I served him at the end of his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had bed source, we were treating that with, you know, this antiseptics and all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the rubbish, severe pain, surely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the old dying old bunk food, burst out in giggles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't it hurt?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it, of course, it hurts, but it's so much fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would say that we had to tell him to tell us when it hurts because he said, don't do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't just don't go beyond the pain like that because it confuses the doctors.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to know what is hurting how much is it hurting in order to treat you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he would actually you know, pondered on it for a moment, dries attention down and tell them why I'm like, you know, this is hurting or this is painful or not painful, how much painful it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But naturally, he could just go beyond that
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the best attitude for a South Dakota hold on that you're able to accept the explanation that all this is just the play of God?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is easier to be at peace with that after we have fully recovered from any hardships that have happened in life, but not during or soon after.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the matter of becoming more mature in our spiritual journey and that of grace, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all the suffering is gone and things are a little better, you can still reconcile yourself to it and surrender everything to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's also very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes a lot of spiritual depth to detain once centeredness in the midst of suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may not be possible for most people in the midst of suffering to be entirely at peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though some can do it, I have actually seen some people do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: um Streaming us, as you say, the second agreement can take any form, God, nail form, God is divine mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Divine mother can also be primarily considered as consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, God, male form can also be considered having projected Maya.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why associate Maya with female form only?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is a female, it's in Sanskrit grammar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maya is female.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prakritis, female, so it's one reason, at least, it's grammatical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alpona says, is it God's will that some will be self-realized in this life and some will not be?
[SPEAKER_00]: God's will that everyone will be self-realized in this life itself and we don't work towards it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who knows these things?
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact is, some people, we see some people becoming enlightened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we think at least we hope, we feel, we believe at a in every age someone becoming enlightened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I always said, according to Vedanta, everybody will become enlightened.
[SPEAKER_00]: may not be, will not be in this like maybe, but everybody will become enlightened at some point or the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can we not become enlightened?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is our own real nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, how can it escape away from us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Our real nature, Aquaman is always there.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is always there with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the beautiful team, let's end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, shanti shanti, shanti hariyom tatsat shri Ramokishnar paramas.