Gospel | Chapter 4: Aug 24, 1882 (Part 2) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[SPEAKER_01]: Shabana Mangalam Shri Bhagatatham, Bhavigrinanti, Bhuridha, Janamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaamaama
[SPEAKER_01]: we are on page 113 page 113 in the middle of the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have read some of this last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to start from the middle of the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was almost dusk.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master and M stood talking alone, near the door on the southeast
[SPEAKER_01]: The mind of the yogi is always fixed on God, always absorbed in the self, this is self with capitalist.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can recognize such a man by merely looking at him.
[SPEAKER_01]: His eyes are wide open with an aimless look, like the eyes of a mother bird, hatching her eggs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her entire mind is fixed under eggs, and there is a vacant look in her eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: can you show me such a picture?
[SPEAKER_01]: M, I shall try to get one.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the evening came on, the temples were lighted up, Sri Ramakrishna was seated on his small couch, meditating on the Divine Mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he chanted the names of God, incense was burned in the room, where an oil lamp had been lighted, sounds of conch shells and gongs came on floating on the air as the evening worship began in the temple of Kali.
[SPEAKER_01]: The light of the moon flooded all the quarters.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master again spoke to M, these descriptions are very beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those who have seen the temple at Calitemple induction issue, you can recreate this in your mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can visualize fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master again spoke to M, master.
[SPEAKER_01]: Perform your duties in an unselfish spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The work that Vidya Sagar is engaged in is very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Always try to perform your duties without desiring any result.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes sir, but may I know if one can realize God while performing one's duties can Rama and desire coexist.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a play on the Sanskrit or Hindi words Rama and Kama.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other day I read in a Hindi couplet where Rama is their desire cannot be where desire is, their Rama cannot be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Master, all without exception, perform work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even to chant the name on Gloris of God is work.
[SPEAKER_01]: As is the meditation of the non-dualist on I am he.
[SPEAKER_01]: Breathing is also an activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way of renouncing work altogether.
[SPEAKER_01]: So do your work, but surrender the results to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: master.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is permissible to do so to maintain a religious family.
[SPEAKER_01]: You may try to increase your income but in an honest way.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goal of life is not the earning of money by the service of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Money is not harmful if it is devoted to the service of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long should a man feel obliged to do his duty towards his wife and children?
[SPEAKER_01]: Master.
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as they feel pinched for food and clothing, but one need not take responsibility of a son when he is able to support himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the young fledgling learns to pick its own food, its mother pecks it if it comes to her for food.
[SPEAKER_01]: master.
[SPEAKER_01]: The blossom drops off when the fruit appears.
[SPEAKER_01]: One doesn't have to do once duty after the attainment of God, nor does one feel like doing it then.
[SPEAKER_01]: If a drunkard takes too much liquor, he cannot retain consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he takes only one or two or three glasses, he can go on with his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you advance nearer and nearer to God, he will reduce your activities
[SPEAKER_01]: have no fear, finish the few duties, you have at hand, and then you will have peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the mistress of the house goes to bed after finishing her cooking and other household duties, she won't come back, however you may shout after her.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, we'll just take a look at this and then go ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a few points I want to make here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you see the Sri Ramakrishna describes a picture, mind of the yogis fixed on God, and it's like a bird sitting on her eggs and the eyes of the bird are vacant, because the attention is on the eggs on which the bird is sitting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, the eyes of a yogi, the eyes of a person immersed in God consciousness, is fixed somewhere, not on something outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have myself seen this and I've also heard from senior monks, those were spiritually very advanced when this in certain spiritual moods, not always, sometimes they may be looking outwards also, but sometimes inwards and when that inward mood is there, then the eyes become like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can, maybe we cannot recognize.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we might mistake a simply an absent-minded person who's thinking of something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's not God consciousness, but spiritual people can recognize this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this reminds me of another picture that Sri Ramakrishna actually mentions.
[SPEAKER_01]: You, some of you may recall the
[SPEAKER_01]: the mediator, the yogi who is taking a puff of the, you know, the bang and the, the chilam which yogis in the Himalayas, some of them, they actually still do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes a puff of that and you know, it lights up.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the dark, the yogis sitting in the dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a little light which comes up because it, like means fire is burning there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the eyes of the yogi are fixed on guard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here one might think that he's simply high, but their eyes, the yoga fixed on God means fixed on something which is not of this material, but not looking at something outside, though the eyes are open.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a vacant look.
[SPEAKER_01]: And through Ramakrishna wanted a picture like that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now why I'm mentioning that is, I had a picture like that once, and that was interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who gave it to me was a notorious gangster.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the story is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I once went to jail, not that I was arrested, but there was a program being run by the monks in the Ashram for people convicts in prison and monks were invited to go and give talks, so I went once.
[SPEAKER_01]: and he's quite interesting, you know, to meet all of them and to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I was giving talks enough to that, one of them came up.
[SPEAKER_01]: This gentleman was very powerfully built huge with, but I must ask the girl up at the edges and tall and hefty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he loved drawing, and he showed me his drawings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, somehow, I think he liked me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I'll visit you when I'm out.
[SPEAKER_01]: When they release me, I'll come in visit you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another person I recall was we had with us of senior Swami.
[SPEAKER_01]: It started raining.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in one of the convicts here, unfurled and umbrella, and walked us to the gate.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was such a polite gentleman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was quite impressed, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he saw us, and then he said that at the gate, that he said, you know Swami, I cannot go beyond this gate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he bowed down to the senior so I mean so afterwards when we went to meet the prison superintendent he asked for all the experience was like and I said that person, you know who walked us to the gate It is quite impressive actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like why is he inside and The superintendent said oh, you didn't recognize him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's quite famous his pictures were in the papers He's a paid has assassin a hitman
[SPEAKER_01]: So, anyway, this other person, he came later to meet me when he was released and he showed me some of his pictures because of the influence of a senior Swami who is to visit that present to talk to the prisoners.
[SPEAKER_01]: This person was reformed to such an extent that all his paintings were now about gods and goddesses and religious and spiritual themes and the last I heard about him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He, at least, that's the story, he was entirely reformed and he spent his days teaching arts to children, painting to little children, so that's an interesting thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The grownups would be scared of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he came to meet me, I was the head of an institution there, a college, he came to my office and he talked about art and painting and he promised to give me a picture, one of his paintings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many, many left, the other people in that college became to me and said, Swami, you have such strange contacts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you don't know who he is.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the most notorious mafia boss of this area.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he was reformed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seemed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so this took a long story short.
[SPEAKER_01]: One day he turned up.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was in the main monastery and he gave me a bound like a laminated picture, he had drawn.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still remember it was quite remarkable.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a yogi.
[SPEAKER_01]: but with a beard and sitting dreadlocks and all and that the chillam of ganja is there in smoking its dark all around and the fire within is flaring up and lighting up his face and the eyes are focused somewhere inwards pretty well done and the interesting thing was the yogi is none other than Sri Ramakrishna he has pictured Sri Ramakrishna in that mode.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that picture hung in my room in Belodmath for about six or seven years, maybe it's still there, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is seen a number of times in a great spiritual personalities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often they seem not quite aware of this physical world, but they're aware of something.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know what they are seeing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know so many such incidents.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was Swami Nirvana and the G. He was a vice president of the Ramakrishna Mutant Mission and he was the attendant to Swami from Hananda.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was many years ago and I've heard it from, I have seen him when I was a little boy but monks who served him, they have told so many of these stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: So strange stories, you know, in Calcutta in those days there was frequent power cuts.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there used to be what in India we called emergency lights.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you would call them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The battery operated lights and you switched them on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It the power goes away.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was one in that Swami's room and he was an elderly Swami.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was the vice president of the order.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was sitting there and there was electricity was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were lights all around and suddenly he told the attending monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: So won't you switch on the emergency light?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sunny.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's light all around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the attendant left, even as he even, he hadn't even cleared the stairs outside when the whole monastery was plunged into darkness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he rushed back and he switched on the emergency light.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, Swamya, how did you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Swamya said, I know, I saw it was dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now about Swamya Nirvana and the JIT used to be said that many times, you would go to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, when you a person who doesn't recognize you,
[SPEAKER_01]: He would look like, although you might be a monk or a devotee whom he has known for years, if not decades, you might look at you like that, and his eyes were always focused elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another story, one of those attending monks told me was, Calcatans are very fond of football.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the Indian kind of football, what we call soccer here in America.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the legend was fairly, this South American player.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he came to play in Calcutta once.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was, you can imagine, Bengali is especially Calcutta and it's a crazy about football.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole thing, there was news on the radio in those days.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was no television probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the monks were interested that they were talking among each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the old Swami heard this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, but he won't play and they said, what is he talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's announced in and so he played and the game was it was played and all that and at the end early it seems he announced that this is his last game he won't play anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were all these amazing stories about Swami Nirvana and the G. But he was often like that, abstracted and abstracted mood.
[SPEAKER_01]: As if he's seeing something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not aware of his surroundings or the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And who takes some effort for him to focus and look at you and recognize you as this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there is this M says he will get a picture like that for Sri Ramakrishna and actually did.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a such a picture which hung on in Sri Ramakrishna's room for many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: beautiful description of the temple in darkness imagine so those that was the days those days before electric lights so this spectacular sky with the moon and the stars and unpolluted sky and the Ganga flowing by the temple being lit up on the other side is what is Haurana was mostly jungle setting at that time
[SPEAKER_01]: temple of Cali, where the aratis being performed, the gongs are being sounded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Conshells, so conshells, I remember in Bellumatau.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before the aratis, these big conshells are blown, that's a tradition in Hindu temples.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once in Bellumat, I was showing around a British delegation that come through the British Council visiting Calcutta and showing them around.
[SPEAKER_01]: and explaining about the temples, about the river, about the holy river Ganga and so on, the significance of the message of Sri Rama Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, all of them disappeared.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was looking at what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were all collected outside the temple of Sri Ramakrishna, where the monk who's the Pujari, the worship, or he has come out and is blowing the big conch.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of them was excitedly explaining to the others.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they have to see, here is the custom of blowing air to the skull of a dead animal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know whether you would put it quite that way, but anyway,
[SPEAKER_01]: then about an important subject.
[SPEAKER_01]: Spirituality is one side, but then there is this other side, your life, you have families and jobs and your personal affairs, also all of this one has to take care.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what is its relationship with spirituality?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they different?
[SPEAKER_01]: Should one be reduced?
[SPEAKER_01]: Should one be at the expense of the other?
[SPEAKER_01]: Societarmakrishna gives his very important instruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Perform your duties in an unselfish spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The work that Vidya Sagar is engaged in is very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: always try to perform your duties without desiring any result.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what he's saying here is karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is karma yoga?
[SPEAKER_01]: Our activities are born of desire.
[SPEAKER_01]: When those desires are not regulated by morality, by ethics, they become Adharma.
[SPEAKER_01]: They often go beyond the limits of morality.
[SPEAKER_01]: One then makes an effort to be moral and ethical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same activities, you may be earning money, you may be raising a family, you may have relationships, whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you bring it within the limits of morality, ethics, decency, and that becomes
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you raise it further, it's no longer for the satisfaction of personal desires.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's now for a spiritual goal, all your activities have this ultimate goal of God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: So even through your relationships, even through, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: whatever you do with in your Sri Ram Krishna will say, the money you earn, your relations with other people, ultimately your goal is God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then all these activities are performed in an unselfish spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what he's saying, perform your duties in an unselfish spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three levels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Adharmic karma, just for once on selfish ends and without any consideration of whether it's
[SPEAKER_01]: higher than that, the harmic karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still for one selfish ends, but within the limits, all generally people, we all think of ourselves as good people, moral people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we try to be a decent moral.
[SPEAKER_01]: And higher than that, then it becomes karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before that, it is karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: First is adharmic sacama karma, sacama karma karma with desire, but adharmic.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may go beyond the limits of the Dharma.
[SPEAKER_01]: You we push it up to the level of the Dharma, sacama karma with desire, with selfish desires, not related to God's realization, but within the limits of morality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then from the sacama, the Dharma, we push it to karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: push it further upwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want anything except spirituality, except God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, M's question is deep.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, what about the type of carbohydrate?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I still have what will be my relation with my family?
[SPEAKER_01]: What will be my relation to my job?
[SPEAKER_01]: When people ask, yes, I'll perform my duties in the job, but it's not just performing.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many things
[SPEAKER_01]: what about taking on roles which will demand more time and energy from you?
[SPEAKER_01]: What about having ambitions let me get another job which will give me better opportunities?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, whatever all those are they can they be spiritual or not?
[SPEAKER_01]: M says yes sir but can one realize God but performing once
[SPEAKER_01]: Our worldly desire prompted duties, yes within the limits of morality as a good person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna gives an indirect answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you cannot avoid it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody has to perform or even spiritual seekers.
[SPEAKER_01]: The spiritual practice they do is also work.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also an activity of a kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, the devotee repeats the names of God,
[SPEAKER_01]: And the non-dualist is just Shabanam, Manana, Nidithyasana, is study Vedanta, you contemplated, the new meditate upon it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I am he.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's work, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, it is because it's mental work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are holding on your mind, deliberating on one thought, one understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Breathing, he says breathing is also an activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way of renouncing work altogether.
[SPEAKER_01]: So do your work, but surrender the result to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Krishna points this out to Arjuna.
[SPEAKER_01]: That he teaches him karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: Arjuna is that, well, karma yoga, it could be optional.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to do Gany yoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to do meditate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to fight this battle of Kurukshetra.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Krishna tells him, you cannot give up activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even for a moment, the sentient being, the Jeeva in this world, cannot give up activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Najyaratu tishtthya karma krith shanam api.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shanam api means even for one moment, you cannot remain without activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the other time, I think I've told you the funny story of the monk, who was very dynamic, it's true story, in an ashram, very dynamic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the senior monk in the ashram told him,
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to take a break.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to go into retreat and meditate once in a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I suggest one weekend every month.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go away from the Ashram, from the school in the Ashram and all the activities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to the village side, beg for your food that day, stay overnight in some temple or someplace and meditate and just spend time and contemplation in solitude.
[SPEAKER_01]: So event.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then after some time, there are people in Ashram, we found that he was going more often, almost every week, a weekend, or every other weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: So somebody asked him, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he sheepishly admitted, he had started under the school in the village.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea was to take a break from the work, but he found that the kids in the village need to the school, so he started, he has a second school there now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot stay for even one moment without work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one must make the effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: For those who are lazy, one is asked to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: For those who are very active, Rajasik, it is good to withdraw one sin away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew this one monk, he has passed every so I can tell this to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was the most honored, he was quite round, physically he was round, and he was this bundle of energies, he was like a bob, he would ball rolling along, you know, all day long.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he would, and he would tell the head monk that, so I mean, I'm available for the work of the Ashram, from 4 a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: till 11 a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: from 4 a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: till 11 a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you just roll around the Ashabli that incredible amount of work, but I noticed the moment you would sit for meditation, you would fall asleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is not a good combination.
[SPEAKER_01]: One must be able to withdraw and sit in absolute silence and inward calmness and one must be able to engage in dynamic activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the idea of Swami Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_01]: M. Sir, may I make an effort to earn more money?
[SPEAKER_01]: Master, it is permissible to do so in order to maintain a religious family.
[SPEAKER_01]: You may try to increase your income but in an honest way.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goal of life is not the earning of money for the service of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Money is not harmful if it is devoted to the service of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: an important insight, dictum, so all that we earn and accumulate, it will not tie us if it is spent for high and noble purposes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could be religious purposes, could be social action, could be for helping others, keeping the minimum necessary for yourself and letting it go.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, anything that I hold on to, if I hold on to this notebook, I think I'm holding on to it, but I'm also stuck, notice, I'm stuck with this notebook, I'm holding on to money, but money is also holding on to me, I'm stuck with that and one day it will be gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this such tragic instances, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: brothers and fathers and sons quarrelling over property and money and they are all dead and gone and the money and the property are being enjoyed by somebody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: They never got to enjoy it because of in India you have this endless court cases litigating and they spend their time intention in annoyance and anger and bitterness quarrelling over
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember a long time ago, one of my little cousins and his grandmother was telling him, the old ancestral houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all for you, my child, you'll grow up and take care of all of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it little cousin at that time, she was so alert, you know, she immediately said, what do you think I am, a museum keeper?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to look after your old houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the first instance of all those,
[SPEAKER_01]: ancestors who had accumulated money and built up this old houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: First instance, this girl, when she grew up, she sold off everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what was the point of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Minimum amount, which is necessary for a reasonably comfortable life, which will give you an app space for your self development, spiritual development, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: More than that, it's a trap.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long should a man feel obliged to do his duty towards his wife and children?
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, it was at that time, it was a man who did all the work, but so now it would be how long do husbands and wives have duties towards each other and the children?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what it means now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Master says Ram Krishna says, as long as the other partner needs your support and help, then for the children, especially for the children.
[SPEAKER_01]: What he says is very American, it's very unlike, it's not something that Indian parents want to hear, but it's something that's actually really good, and you see that in America.
[SPEAKER_01]: One need not take the responsibility of a son or daughter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, son or daughter, when he or she is able to support himself for herself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he gives the example of the little bird.
[SPEAKER_01]: When it learns to pick its own food,
[SPEAKER_01]: So Sri Ramakrishna is all for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is the other side of the healthy development of children, but what he means is quickly, quickly, free yourself for the essential task of spiritual enlightenment, of God-realization, time and energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an opportunity cost for everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Indian parents, many of you are in just parents, especially, I mean, all parents everywhere, especially Indian parents, they tend to hang on to children.
[SPEAKER_01]: feeling is, oh, what they need me, they don't believe me, they don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: You may think, what do you know so I mean, I know because they tell me, they don't, they are perfectly alright, they can take care of themselves, be there if there is anything to be done
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't involve yourself with your children's lives, then what will you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: You will have time and energy for spiritual practices, for study and meditation and of job devotional practices and to give back to society.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moving with tragic stories, this elderly couple came to me and was saying that we were introduced to this Vedanta classes by someone much younger than us, our nephew who found these YouTube talks and introduced it to us and he died of cancer at the age of 30, the young boy, young man.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last thing he said to his uncle and aunt, the elderly couple that he said that, yes, there is pain, but pain comes and goes, consciousness is forever experience is forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anubha was forever, and I am glad that was his understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: One must quickly learn from these experiences and go ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody who has come into our lives,
[SPEAKER_01]: will again go away from our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is permanent is God, is spirituality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And our spiritual connections with each other, this is the most important thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can help each other at the most to go ahead spiritually in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the point of all these connections, all these classes, these relationships and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he says,
[SPEAKER_01]: How long, then next question, how long will you do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: How long will you take care of family, go on with your job, the blossom drops up and the fruit appears, one doesn't have to do once duty after the attainment of God, not does one feel like doing it then.
[SPEAKER_01]: So notice two questions, one was last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long do you have to do spiritual practices?
[SPEAKER_01]: For ever, no, actually there is a time when God becomes real to you, then all your spiritual practices are not for finding God or realizing God or seeking God, then all any spiritual practices you do would be for remaining centered in God or it becomes natural to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: to meditate becomes natural to you, to take the name of God becomes natural to you, to be prayerful continuously becomes natural to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, there is an end when you do your spiritual effort, that will come.
[SPEAKER_01]: And long before that, he says, what about worldly duties?
[SPEAKER_01]: Job, family, is an end to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, yes, there is an end to that also.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what do you have to do now?
[SPEAKER_01]: He says that, you know, he gives the example of a drunkard, too much liquor, he cannot retain consciousness, if he takes only two or two or three glasses, he can go on with his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you advance near and nearer to God, your duties and responsibilities will become lesser.
[SPEAKER_01]: God will reduce your duties, your responsibilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: you don't have to make an effort to get rid of this and or that too much, but look at the pointy makes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Finish the few duties, duties you have at hand and then you will have peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are two sides to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean Vivekananda would say the principle is neither
[SPEAKER_01]: don't seek out new engagements, new responsibilities, you know, whatever, which you engage is in the world, don't seek it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people have the tendency of remaining busy all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they can't, they don't like it if they're, they are not busy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to remain with people all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's also not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: So neither seek.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not avoid.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm the recognition.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not escape is a meter.
[SPEAKER_01]: who finished the few duties you have at hand, then you will have peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Peace means, then you have peace with spiritual practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that the duties are over, now I have nothing more to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you make your life a vacuum, then unhappiness will come in again.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to fill it with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he gives the example.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, imagine the joint families of India where the lady of the house, she does a lot of work, supervises the cooks and the maids and the servants, and she also does a lot of work, it goes on and on from morning till afternoon, but then more or less it's done, everything is ready and she goes to take a bath.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at that time, if you start yelling, this is not done, that's not been done.
[SPEAKER_01]: She will not come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the example he is giving for all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the mistress of the house goes to bath after finishing her cooking and other household duties, she won't come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, you may shout after her.
[SPEAKER_01]: M. All right, let me just stop a little bit because the topic is being changed now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go very deep now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me see what comments there are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sengita says, we learned that Swami Vivekananda fought with various litigations to so 14 years, even in the last Saturday's life, he worked towards putting an end to the court case.
[SPEAKER_01]: What value he might he have seen in doing so in spite of being a Brahman
[SPEAKER_01]: His whole spiritual, you know, his karma yoga was for establishing his master's missions, what Sri Ramakrishna had given him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was one side.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was this other side, which for a long time, his family, after the death of his father, his mother and his little brothers, their ancestors, they were suffering because they had been deprived of the property and all that for by their greedy relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they started court cases.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Vivekananda Narendra Nakh, he pursued it as long as he lived.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the reason is not that he would have found any value for it himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Neither in establishing the monastery and starting all this work was beneficiary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am other monks and our devotees, we are all here today because of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: or his personal link to his family, his mother and his younger brothers and sisters, that also he didn't want anything for himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously he didn't want that property for himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had nothing to do with that, but he wanted it for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is actually a pretty good lesson, whether it's a mundane work like going to the court, which is, I'm sure he found it
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't avoid it, not only Vivekananda, someone as spiritual, as elevated at Swami Brahmananda, was for much more sensitive nature than Vivekananda.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also did it, or when it was required, he went to court to present the case for his, for the order, whatever is required for the order.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to know that, that these highly spiritual people did not spend all the time in Vedanta and meditation and listening to devotional music.
[SPEAKER_01]: That seems like a very nice life actually, especially for people who are in the midst of a lot of struggle in some sort of no whatever came their way, they did it with the same grace and inwardness and calmness that shows it can be done.
[SPEAKER_01]: her whole life daily grind, you know, from.
[SPEAKER_01]: from cooking and cleaning and managing a big household, looking after relatives, people of all sorts, very peculiar people, so including insane people, greedy people, troubles some people, insensitive people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she did that not one day, but month after month, year after year, till the very end of her life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And with the same calmness and sweetness and centeredness.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a demonstration, demonstration for the rest of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it can be done.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you see, then, how is it different from other people who, the courts are full of people suing each other, you know, and fighting for property and all that, how is this different?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the exactly what Sri Ram Krishna is saying, do it not for the results.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's for the benefit of others, so look at Vivekanda, you did it, benefit of the family,
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the benefit of the order which he was founding, in either case, he didn't touch one bit of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was nothing to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he came back from the United States and he had started the order, he gave everything to Swami Pramhananda.
[SPEAKER_01]: From now on, you are our president.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he went to ask Swami Pramhananda for money pocket money for a boat to cross the river.
[SPEAKER_01]: that was symbolic, that literally I don't own anything of every thing that he has got.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vivekan, they had started all of this, literally he owns the whole thing, nothing, he doesn't want to touch it at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the exact opposite of this greedy fighting for, you know, mind for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Krishna Moti Vishwanathan says, in the kind of picture that Thakur wanted, same as the description of Tadvishnu Paramam Param Salab As-Shanti.
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose so, this is the mantra used in, in the Pujas, in the beginning of the Pujas, this mantra is chanted, that is the state of Vishwanathan, that is basically the description
[SPEAKER_01]: where those cast of characters like Radhu and her brother, all part of the leader for our benefit truly so, it is a difficult situation and how she managed in the midst of that chaos to retain her sanity, her calmness, her sweetness, her grace and be a well-bisher to everybody, even when they were troubling her.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he asked the crucial question, all this thing about spirituality.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, notice the subtraction of the whole dialogue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first it was about spiritual practices, that was last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it was about, so what do we do over the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: Our duties in the world, money, family, this is the question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then now the question is the core question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what is the whole project of this Bugas philosophy of Ramakrishna of the lives of saints, spiritual people?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we all doing here?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's our central project here?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's asking that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what exactly is meant by God Realization?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does one get it?
[SPEAKER_01]: What happens?
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is what he's asking.
[SPEAKER_01]: M. Sir, what is the meaning of the realization of God?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean by God vision?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does one attain it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Master.
[SPEAKER_01]: According to the Vaishnavas, the aspirants and seers of God may be divided into different groups.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are the Pravattaka, the Sadhaka, the Siddha, and the Siddha of the Siddha.
[SPEAKER_01]: He who has just set foot on the path may be called the Pravattaka.
[SPEAKER_01]: He may be called a Sadhaka who has been practicing spiritual disciplines such as worship,
[SPEAKER_01]: The chanting of God's name and glories, he may be called a siddha, who has known from his inner experience that God exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: An analogy is given in the Vedant that we explain this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master of the house is asleep in a dark room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone is groping in the darkness to find him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He touches the couch and says, no, it is not he.
[SPEAKER_01]: It touches the window and says, no, it is not he.
[SPEAKER_01]: It touches the door and says, no, it is not he.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is known in the Vedanta as the process of 1980, not this, not this.
[SPEAKER_01]: At last his hand touches the master's body and he exclaims, here he is.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, he is now conscious of the existence of the master.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has found him, but he doesn't yet know him intimately.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, so he talks about a structure in spiritual life given by the
[SPEAKER_01]: So different stages and what's happening at the different stages and what happens finally and ultimately also.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the beginning of spiritual life, one has entered into the path, one may be initiated, one may be exploring, then one spends some time in practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a difference between Trabhattaka and Sadahaka.
[SPEAKER_01]: few months years have elapsed, maybe many years have elapsed and one has been practicing as one has been initiated in a path, one is following this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So who is a sadhaka?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sadhaka literally means a practitioner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in India, somebody practicing classical music is also called a sadhaka or a classical dance, for example.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sadhaka is a practitioner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now one sadhu.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ramsavdas, he defined it very nicely.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, in that little bit of devotional music and visits to temples, a pooja or to reading a couple of religious books, everybody does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that doesn't make anybody a sadhaka, spiritual practitioner.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what makes a person a sadhaka, spiritual practitioner?
[SPEAKER_01]: doing things or making an effort to do things which will take him or her to watch God and carefully avoiding that which is when to take him or her away from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a sadaka.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Hindi, he said, all this in Hindi.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kavi Kavar Mandir, Chalaya, Kavi, Thodakitan, Kalyanam, Lailio, to sublook at them.
[SPEAKER_01]: little bit of temple, little bit of japa, we go at end religious function, everybody does this, that does not make anybody a sadaka.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in India, it's a tradition when some big industrialist ties, it used to be, I don't know even now.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would take out like a memorial in a big advertisement in the paper.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we inevitably say that invariably say that this gentleman, so and so, who has so many businesses and industries was a great karma yogi.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean that he was a karma yogi, just means that he earned a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not karma yogi.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Sadhaka is someone that Sadhus, that some Ramsukdas he said, that Sadhana, Anukul, Sadhana, Anukul, Kaam, Kiyayata, or Sadhana, that a particular question he can't have.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that which is according to Sadhana, that which is helpful to take you towards God realization, systematically doing that, and systematically avoiding, trying to avoid.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this is effort, that which is taking you away from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a sign of Sadhaka.
[SPEAKER_01]: practitioner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then what happens?
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, ten one realizes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that endlessly one has to go on spiritual practice, doing spiritual practices.
[SPEAKER_01]: And suddenly, it might be quite certain.
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes that you actually realize.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he gives an example, see how smoothly he shifts from a devotional path of the Vaishnavas to the Vedantic path.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, he gives
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody a friend is visiting a gentleman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the servant has come into the room looking for the master and it's dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know why he didn't switch on the light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there was no light at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's touching this and that and he says this is the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not not him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the couch and the table, not him, not him.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment he touches the master of the house, he immediately knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice that the master was there all along.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not known, not seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, and also notice that when he touched the door of the table or something, it's quite clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not who I'm looking for.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment he touched the master, the servant realized, this is the master.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no doubt about it, also.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, obviously, you're touching a warm human body, so this don't doubt about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And exactly like that, not that you touch Brahman,
[SPEAKER_01]: Both of these things match.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is, when the breakthrough happens, you realize it was always there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like the master was sleeping in the dark and not seen, but this reality, which suddenly you become aware of, it was always there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, the sense of certainty is so tremendous.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so relentless.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so not dependent on your effort anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: earlier it was dependent on your effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's not dependent on your effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's chisedless.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot not be aware of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's out of your hands now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Luckily, it's completely now nothing more that for you to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the level of the sintha.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sintha means the one who has actually for whom
[SPEAKER_01]: God is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could be an devotional path who feels the presence of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could be on the path of knowledge who feels the reality inside outside everywhere that one existence permeating the entire universe, all the time, not that this person continuously thinks about it, but it is available to that person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever that person wants and quite effortlessly available.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is called
[SPEAKER_01]: the Vedantic method of 18, 18, not this, not this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet this is not the end, this is not the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sir Ram Krishna says, this is in one sense, just the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I am a Brahman and the says in another place that when Navigalpa Samad is the beginning of spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what does he mean by that?
[SPEAKER_01]: He means at that time it becomes real.
[SPEAKER_01]: Till that time, till before that time, one has done lot of spiritual practices, one may have many kinds of spiritual experiences also, but it is still an effort from our scent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's no longer necessary.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like looking at the world, open your eyes the world is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not trying to create the world there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, God is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not as an object of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is the moment of realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet that's not the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Siram Krishna says, it's like the person who has found the master.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's not anything about the master.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just the presence of the master is detected.
[SPEAKER_01]: The presence of God is detected.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or the reality that one Brahman is there that's there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That itself is tremendous.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is completely life-altering, of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Siram Krishna says, you can go and should go much further.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: There is another type known as the Sidharb, the Sidharb, the supremely perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me give you a little introduction.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll go into this.
[SPEAKER_01]: A very beautiful description.
[SPEAKER_01]: One young monk who actually had this breakthrough.
[SPEAKER_01]: So after that, he was wondering, is there anything more to be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: So he asked a very senior monk of our order, a wonderful, highly spiritual person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not taking any names because they said monk is still alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he asked this very senior monk, suppose someone without revealing that he has himself had this experience, suppose someone has this breakthrough and you feel all the time, the presence of the divinity everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything more to be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that senior monk told him,
[SPEAKER_01]: exactly this what Sri Ram Krishna is going to say that you establish a loving relationship with the divinity of the if you have discovered the one should do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, this is a bhakti which comes after.
[SPEAKER_01]: you feel the presence of God, after you made the breakthrough, even after an automatic realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: After the non-dual realization, again, as long as the mind is functioning, as long as you feel as I am this sentient being, was found something extraordinary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what do I do?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you feel like that, then
[SPEAKER_01]: your operating from a point of individuality.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that individual should establish a relationship with the divinity which has been discovered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that relationship can be of five kinds that those that these are categories borrowed again from the Vaishnavas, the Shanta, the peaceful attitude, the Dasya attitude of a servant to the master, the sakya attitude of a friend,
[SPEAKER_01]: and then the Vaxelia of the parent or the child and the madhura of the attitude of the lover of Bill of Ed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sri Ramakrishna is going to say this here in describe it very nicely.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fruition of that realization, the culmination.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is another time, no type, known as the Siddha of the Siddha, the supremely perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Siddha perfect has realized called, but supreme
[SPEAKER_01]: when one talks to the master intimately, when one knows God very intimately through love and devotion, a siddha has undoubtedly attained God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the one who has made the breakthrough, definitely has attained God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will never go away and that will give its result in the form of liberation at the point of death.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the supremely perfect has known God very intimately
[SPEAKER_01]: But in order to realize God, one must assume one of these attitudes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shanta, Dasya, Sakya, Vatsali, or Madhur.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shanta, the Sri in attitude.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is basically the attitude taken by the Rishis or, you know, the Ghanis on the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shanta, the Sri in attitude.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Rishis of old and times had this attitude towards God.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did not desire any worldly enjoyment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is like the single-minded devotion of a wife to her husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: She knows that her husband is embodiment of beauty and love, a veritable modern.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dasya, the attitude of a servant towards his master, Hanuman had this attitude towards Rama.
[SPEAKER_01]: He felt the strength of a lion when he worked for Rama.
[SPEAKER_01]: A wife feels this mood too.
[SPEAKER_01]: She serves her husband with all her heart and soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: A mother also has a little of this attitude as Yashodha had towards Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sakya, the attitude of friendship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends say to one another, come here and sit near me, Sri Dama and other friends, sometimes fed Krishna with fruit, part of which they are already eaten and sometimes climbed on his shoulders.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's earlier, the attitude of a mother towards her child?
[SPEAKER_01]: The wife, too, has a little up this.
[SPEAKER_01]: She feeds her husband with her very lifelod as it were.
[SPEAKER_01]: The mother feels happy, only when the child is eaten to his heart's content.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yashoda would roam about with butter in her hand in order to feed Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Madhu, the attitude of a woman towards her parama.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rather had this attitude towards Krsna, the wife also feels it for her husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: This attitude includes all the other four.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a comprehensive description.
[SPEAKER_01]: This of course entirely from the Vaishnava Path of Devotion.
[SPEAKER_01]: because Sri Ram Krishna seemed to actually seem to see with these eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Sri Ram Krishna explains, master, God cannot be seen with these physical eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the course of spiritual discipline, one gets a love body and doubt with love eyes, love ears and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: One sees God with those love eyes, one hears the voice of God with those love ears.
[SPEAKER_01]: One even gets a sexual organ made of love.
[SPEAKER_01]: at these words, M burst out laughing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master continued unannoyed.
[SPEAKER_01]: With this love body, the soul communes with God, M again became serious.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it not with the physical sense organs.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Gita, Srikrishna says, when Arjuna wants to see the divine form of Krishna, Arjuna says, I believe that you are in incarnation, but this is your human form, then you are not a human being like the rest of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I see your divine form?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Krishnasa says, you cannot with these eyes, and I'll give you the divine eyes that the vision, a divvyachakshu, he calls it, the divine eyes, it's like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: master.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is not possible without intense love of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: One sees nothing but God everywhere when one loves Him with great intensity.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is like a person with jaundice who sees everything yellow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then one feels, I am veryly he.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never quite understood this because I had John this at one time, I didn't see anything as yellow, but I became very yellow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody saw me as yellow, but I hear that when it becomes even more the pigments coming to the lenses probably, then maybe you see everything as yellow probably, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: A drunkard, deeply intoxicated, says, veryly, I am Kali, the group is intoxicated with love, exclaimed, veryly, I am Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is not the same as Ahm Brahm has, me, that's a different thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the intensity of half of divine emotion.
[SPEAKER_01]: You still have the distinction between God and the sentient being, between the lover and the beloved.
[SPEAKER_01]: But because of the intensity of the feeling of one miss, you feel one with the beloved, the one with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: One who thinks of God, day and night, beholds him everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is like a man seeing flames on all sides, after he has gazed, fixidly at one flame for some time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that isn't the real flame, flash through M's mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, if you don't need it, doubt which will be there in our minds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suiramakrishna, who could read a man's inn most start said, one doesn't lose consciousness by thinking of him, who is all spirit, all consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shivnanath once remarked, the too much thinking of God confirms the brain, therefore I said to him, how can one become unconscious by thinking of consciousness?
[SPEAKER_01]: M, yes sir, I realize that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't like thinking of an unreal object because he was thinking that it's not a real flame then.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like you think too much about God, you'll see God everywhere, but that's not real.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says, now he realizes, he says, no, it's not like thinking of an unreal object.
[SPEAKER_01]: How can a man loses intelligence?
[SPEAKER_01]: If he always fixes his mind on him, who's very nature is eternal intelligence.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't have intelligence in sense of consciousness, pure consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Master, with pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is through God's grace that you understand that, the doubts of the mind will not disappear without his grace, doubts do not disappear without self-realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me see, there are a few comments here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kiran says, what is the difference between realizing God and having an intimately a relationship with God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the difference what Sadama Krishna just said that the first step of God realization is God becomes real.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the path of devotion, the Eistic approach, you will say, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Krishna, or Rama, or Shiva Vishnu, or God, or God in any other tradition also.
[SPEAKER_01]: You feel the presence of God, and it's unmistakable.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the path of knowledge, you feel that one reality, it's a way we have a sense of reality now.
[SPEAKER_01]: The things are real, we have this general sense, we are looking around and talking to each other, I am real, all this is real, we take it without any question, it feels natural to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it didn't feel real, we would feel disoriented, you think am I dreaming or am I dizzy or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: But now we feel it's very normal, this feeling of reality in itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It points to that ultimate reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that there is an ultimate reality which you have no conception of.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a conception of that right now in our conception of the reality of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: But our attention is not on the reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our attention is on real things.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the things rather than the reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some sorrow is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: We feel that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Vedanta says these two are two separate things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some sorrow and reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have mixed up the two, so it's a real samsara, and we are ignoring the reality part of it, and we're concentrating on samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: Real people, people, actions, likes and dislikes, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are any value at all, only when they are real.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you also agree, only when they are real, then they have any value.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reality, it does not belong to these thoughts, feelings, people, activities, events, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are as unreal, like a magic show, like a illusion, like an appearance.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is reality right there, underlying all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That reality in itself is one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a million or a billion existing things, not a billion existing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once it becomes clear, it sounds very abstract here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's actually very natural.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once that becomes clear as natural as, you can look at the ocean and see 10,000 waves there,
[SPEAKER_01]: like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It becomes clear and becomes as effortless as that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see 10,000 waves or you can see it one mile supported.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment you are asked to see, see the water in the ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, yes, I don't have to make any special effort for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: See the waves, yes, I don't have to make any special effort for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: See people, even body, mind, happy, unhappy, desires, struggles, frustration, sorrows, yes, there is some sorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: See the one existence, awareness, completion, the Purnam, everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that is what is appearing as all of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the sign of God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: But higher than that, Saddam Krishna said, and Saddam Krishna again and again is very consistent on this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: He talks about Yana knowledge, but Vigyana, special or the higher knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: He talks about
[SPEAKER_01]: attaining gana and then bhakti, knowledge and then devotion.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what is this devotion which comes after knowledge?
[SPEAKER_01]: Here it talks about the more intimate relation with God, realization, the God exists like that a servant who touched the Master and felt, oh here is the Master, but has no relationship with the Master?
[SPEAKER_01]: Does not know anything about the Master is not enclosed, you know, intimate oneness with the Master, whereas the devotee
[SPEAKER_01]: who after realizing God or the person who is more intimately who has realized God is has a very living relationship with that divinity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, is it not enough to realize God does one have to go to that level?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not necessarily, but Sri Ram Krishna says you should, you can, you can, many have
[SPEAKER_01]: And those are the most spectacular faces of Enlightenment, the saints and sages who have helped humanity, they are the ones who are Sidharth Sidharth, the supremely perfect ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me say some questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kalpana is saying, is God realization same as unbreaked realization?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes and no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the same because it is the realization of the same reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is only one reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you can touch it as God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can approach that reality as God with your, through the prism of the practice that you have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have worship, Vishnu you will probably see God as Vishnu or as Allah or as an incarnation, Krishna or Rama or Rama Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's that reality which is which you are experiencing in that form.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the advantage of reality is that you experience it as your own reality, as the sub infinitude of your own self, you are let's put it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I myself, the same self which I feel right now, but not limited as one being as against all other beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is one infinity in which everything appears.
[SPEAKER_01]: I and all other beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is the advantage of realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the difference between the two.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are they same as I said first, that both you are both approaching the same reality or touching or experiencing the same reality, but the experiences are different, the modes of approaching the practices, the philosophies associated with each path, they are different.
[SPEAKER_01]: The field difference also, the practice will also be different and the paradigm in our mind will also be different.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is God is there, and I worship, I don't believe in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one is, this is my infinite reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the five men who approached the elephant, the blind men, or blind boarded men, and the touch telephone, and they got different conceptions of what the elephant is like.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like the trunk, somebody said it's like a rope, somebody said it's like a pipe, somebody said it's like a big fan, who touched the ears, somebody said it's like a pillar, who touched the legs.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were not wrong, but they saw different aspects of the same reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is from Sri Ramakrishna's perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very holistic perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you now, if you ask the same question, what was the question that is God Realization same as Advaiti Krilyasin?
[SPEAKER_01]: He had God Realization, I mean, by that, I take it as the theistic devotional path.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ask the classical Advaitin or the classical
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ask the classical Advaitan, it is the vision of God, feeling the presence of Sabishnu, or Shiva, like Sri Ram Krishna is to feel Kali, is it the same as Advaiti Krayalization?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not by a long shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a very advanced stage of spiritual practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: You will get this answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the realization of Saguna Brahman, Brahman with attributes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beyond this, you will have to realize I am Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: that is middle-guna Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can never realize, I am seven of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody ever realizes, I am God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Megalomania.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you say, I am God, you mean, I is not an individual sentient being.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is not the ruler of the universe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both are the absolute reality, middle-guna Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where Vedanta sir had just the Mahavarky, Thakthuamasi, the implied meanings and the identity of the two.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the answer from the Advaited Perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now if you approach a traditional dualistic master, say the Advaita Vedanta Madhava school or the followers of Chaitan, you have the Achintya Vedavates school.
[SPEAKER_01]: What will they say?
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, from the very nice humorous response from the two responses.
[SPEAKER_01]: One from a great Madhava master, Wadi Rajya.
[SPEAKER_01]: he is literally the translation is the master of arguments or the master of debates, the king of debates.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, what you, this miserable little insect, you dare to claim that you are Narayana, what could be worse than this?
[SPEAKER_01]: You are like one turdmite in a heap of turdmites, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Lord is the Lord of all the universes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you claim, I am He, this is sacred, this is madness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that He would dismiss it completely.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the realization of the presence of the divinity of God, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing further than that that I am from her, no, you are not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry to break the news tissue.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a devotee of God, you are a servant of God, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the dualistic position.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another variation on this dualistic position is from the Godiya Vaishnavas, the followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the theologians and the Godiya Vaishnava path, they incorporate the Vedic thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: What the Advaitans have done to them, they do the same thing to the Advaitans.
[SPEAKER_01]: What have the Advaitans done?
[SPEAKER_01]: They have accepted the vision of God and devotion to God as a lower, as a preliminary step.
[SPEAKER_01]: beyond which you have to go and realize your oneness with Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: What the Gauri of Aishnamas do is just reverse it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The realization of Brahman, I am Brahman, that's possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: They call it Tanubha, the radiance of Krishna's body.
[SPEAKER_01]: Krishna's body is so luminous, that as you approach Krishna and devotion, you become merged in the light emanating from the Krishna's body, and these foolish, non-duelist they think I have become one with consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just your approaching Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you persist a little bit with devotion, after that radiance, you will see the little blue boy, with the peacock feather and the flute, and then you'll have devotion to Krishna and that is the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So according to them, this Advaiti-Crealization, I am pure consciousness, is a pretty boring thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just the beginning sort of, it's kindergarten hospitality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you go higher and establish a loving relationship with Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember once this question was asked to Swami Bhuteshayanandaji, the 12th President of Order, I was there when the question was asked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody asked Swami Vivekananda, if you see he makes a ladder of spiritual realization, clearly Swami Vivekananda said many times, the ladder model, dualism, qualified monism, non-dualism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dwighta, Vishishtar Dwighta, and Al Dwighta.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many lectures when we reckon this has presented it in this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it doesn't that make non-dualism the highest and dualism earlier or preliminary.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first dualism, then you advance further into qualified monism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dualism means God is different.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Qualified monism is Vishishtar Dwight.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a part of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am not really different from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a spark of God and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am not, I God, is not a God, but there is only one indivisible reality, which is my real nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a letter.
[SPEAKER_01]: This question was asked to Swami Bhuteshana and his only reply, he had this remarkable way with few words and great humor.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would never smile or laugh himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Swami isn't it a letter with dualism at the bottom and non-duelism at the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: His answer is a typical draw, he said, a ladder can be reversed, you can turn it upside down, which is what the Gorilla Vaishnavas have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your highest non-dulism now becomes the lowest, the first step.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you go up to the dualistic really experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, then Alpana says,
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an important thing to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have seen this in the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and other advanced spiritual seekers.
[SPEAKER_01]: All these neat divisions we are making, path of devotion, path of knowledge, actually when you get down to it, it's not quite like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have known of people who repeating the mantra given by the Guru, have gotten a Dwighti Creatorization.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a vision of this to Devata.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got another Dwighti Creatorization.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are any number of examples of great non-to-elists being very great devotees also, full of devotion for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: In some sense, Ramana Mashi also had it, Tothapuri, eventually got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in our modern day, Nisarga Dattam Maharaj, who was, who was it, and I am that, the book is published based on his Marathi teachings.
[SPEAKER_01]: But every day, he would perform R.I.K.
[SPEAKER_01]: and sing Pitans.
[SPEAKER_01]: from about the, you know, the Chinmai mission is the Chinmai and the Chinmai mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Chinmai and the G is Guru, Tapova Maharaja.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have heard it from his Savak, Sundar and the G. That one day, Tapova and Maja is a very austere, very committed non-duelist, very strict non-duelist.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was in Tapova, which is above Gango 3, which is the namesake.
[SPEAKER_01]: There, he had gone, actually he had gone to the Gomuk glacier, the source of Ganga, and he was worshiping.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this, this attended Swami Sundar and the Heimsatorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was standing behind with the materials of worship, flowers and incense.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would light the incense and give the flowers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Swami,
[SPEAKER_01]: And he, Sundaram ji, I can still clearly see in my mind side that he, he, he, so vivid in his description.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I'm in top of one turn towards him, asked for asking for more flowers.
[SPEAKER_01]: As he turned, he saw tears streaming down his cheeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the worship of Dhangra, and he said, I was quite struck by that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Such a great non-dualist on the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the tears in his eyes in devotion, he told me all this in Hindi, he just told me it may but a Giani or Arakme Asu, such a great Gany on the path of knowledge and tears in his eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yes, let us not, it is good to understand these paths, but let us not be too rigid about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: shweta says, is it parabhakti?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, from bhakti to parabhakti.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what he is talking about parabhakti.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gma says, is there a sense of i for pure Brahman?
[SPEAKER_01]: The sense exists only at Giva level that realizes Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: It exists only at Giva level that realizes Brahman and that i in the Giva level before realizing Brahman that i points to body mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you say a word, it refers, it indicates something.
[SPEAKER_01]: So book, the book is a word.
[SPEAKER_01]: It refers to this entity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you say, I, what does it refer to?
[SPEAKER_01]: For an unenlightened person, the eye refers to the body mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when it is investigated through Vedantic investigation, the eye points towards Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot refer to Brahman, really points towards Brahman, the enlightened eye.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's still in the mind of the enlightened one.
[SPEAKER_01]: WG says, what is the Sanskrit for joyousness,
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, and again, Ashta Bakrasi is near-of-a-exha, without depending on anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vishwanath says, the three levels of the library seem to echo the response of Hanuman to Rama about the relationship, depending on what we have in different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hanuman said to Rama, that as a body, I think of myself as Hanuman as your servant and you are my Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I think of myself as sentient being
[SPEAKER_01]: that one is a part of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are the the whole and you're part.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like a divine spark.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I think of myself as consciousness, as the earthman, you and I are one, which is correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my conclusion.
[SPEAKER_01]: This all three, because we are dealing with one reality, you don't say that one is incorrect and the others are correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole vision would
[SPEAKER_01]: a dualist, and I have a simple devotion to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need not feel that, oh, there are so many other things to be attained after this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have got hold of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is not an inert rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you've got hold of the reality, that reality will take care of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you need anything more, it will be given to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also you realize, this is also a fact that, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: that these spiritual realizations these enlightened breakthrough and this enlightened man, whatever you call it, dualistic, non-dwellistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: One realizes that it's not really due to our effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have, that's a paradox.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to put in effort without that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our effort and what good is our effort?
[SPEAKER_01]: Our effort clears up a lot of blockages in us, a lot of impurities in us and it shows our intention to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It shows that I want it.
[SPEAKER_01]: before that it is, you know, this is a put your money, where your mouth is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So putting our money where our mouth is means putting our life to what we say I am I want God realization.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll show it with your life that you really want it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll be given to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But until that point you have to show it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Upanishad says, who will realize the Atman?
[SPEAKER_01]: Upanishad has a very strange way of putting it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one whom the Atman chooses to that one, the Atman reveals itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Atman chooses and reveals itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very dualistic devotion and language.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Shankaracharya, ask the question, whom does the Atman choose?
[SPEAKER_01]: The Atman chooses and reveals itself, whom does the Atman choose?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer, Shankaracharya himself provides in the commentary.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Atman chooses the one who chooses the Atman.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you choose the Atman, the Atman chooses to reveal itself to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: The wind of God's grace is ever blowing, but you have to raise your sail to catch that wind.
[SPEAKER_01]: The existentialists will end with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The French existentialists, they have that principle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't listen to what a man says.
[SPEAKER_01]: Watch what he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think God is an existentialist in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God would want to watch us seeking God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then,
[SPEAKER_01]: It is entirely the grace of God, especially it's actually precisely the grace of the divine mother of Shakti, which gives us that breakthrough.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives us some sara, and then we have had enough of some sara, it releases us from some sara.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I can say, she releases us from some sara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Om Shantesh Shantesh Shantesh Hariyom tatsap Sri Ramakrishna Rupana Mastu.