Video 101

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (7/22/22)

your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and remove all sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of srama krishna we are on the chapter with the devotees at the chinese war part 2. page 342 and the date is sunday december 16 1883 and you may remember that this is part of m's long stay at dakshin ishwar with srama krishna during this break that it would be more or less the christmas break at that time israma krishna was seated with m on the semicircular porch of his room at about ten o'clock in the morning the fragrance of gardenias jammins oleanders roses and other flowers filled the air the master was singing looking at m thou must save me sweetest mother unto thee i come for refuge helpless as a bird imprisoned in a cage i have done the unnumbered wrongs i have done unnumbered wrongs and aimlessly i roam about misled by my spell bereft of wisdom's light comfortless as a mother cow whose calf has wandered far away master but why why should i live like a bird imprisoned in a cage fight for shame as the master said these words he went into an ecstatic mood his body became motionless and his mind stopped stopped functioning tears streamed down his cheeks after a while he said o mother make me like sita completely forgetful of everything body and limbs totally unconscious of hands feet and sense organs only the one thought in her mind where is rama now the song is about the divine mother so what happened where did sita come in this is very interesting we we know this phenomenon of ud that was very prominent in the life of srama krishna that something would trigger something in his mind some words or something here my feeling is that this line helpless as a bird imprisoned in the cage reminded him of sita when she was captured by and she had to live almost as if in in a cage as if in in a prison and uh srama krishna used to look upon a holy mother essita sometimes and he would think of her being stuck in the nhh of course she was bound there and just by her own modesty that she didn't like to go out it wasn't any force the bondage but anyhow that uh long hours of the day she wouldn't go out because she didn't like other people to see her and everything so it was almost as if imprisoned in a cage so i to me it seems very clear that this one line helpless as a bird imprisoned in a cage uh somehow awakened usually something else awakens it hears ramakrishna he's awakening this in himself by himself singing the song usually someone else will sing a song or he'll see something else but he himself is singing the song and then he goes into that mood after a while he said oh mother make me like sita completely forgetful of everything body and limbs totally unconscious of hands feed and sense organs only the one thought in her mind where is rama then m to himself was the master inspired by the ideal of sita to teach m the yearning that a devotee should feel for god sita's very life was centered in rama completely absorbed in the thought of rama sita forgot even the body which is so dear to all one of the very important visions that krishna had or realizations was of of the sita important because uh suramar krishna says that this was a different type of vision for him most of his visions he'll be unconscious of the outer world but this one time when he was near the pontifiti and he saw on the path he saw a very beautiful woman dressed in asari walking towards him very majestic looking and calm and peaceful and he's wondering who is this woman where did she come from and then he says he saw a monkey jump out and jump out of the tree and roll on the ground in front of her and then he said ah this is sita that so he said that this was the first time that he had a vision with eyes open seeing everything else so we seeing the trees and the and the flowers and the buildings everything but uh superimposed on all of that he had this vision of sita walking so that was that was a a little bit different type of vision there was a book that was written many years ago by swami yogesh yogesh one of our american monks he wrote some nice books that six slided windows and some other things this was called the visions of srama krishna and he classifies them according to which ones were with eyes open and which ones were with eyes closed because tucker had other visions like this with with the eyes open we could say almost that that whole ram lala experience was like that he's seeing everything else but he's saying the baby rama at the same time at the same time he's seeing the actual physical brass the image but still seeing the real baby rum with eyes open so he had these two different types of visions and the other interesting thing about that is that he noticed the bangles that sita was wearing it's called a diamond cut it's a certain style of mango and when he had the bangles made for holy mother yeah he had them made according to that style so taku looked upon a holy mother in so many different ways as a giver of wisdom saraswati as the goddess of wealth saraswati yeah one more time in an unguarded moment oh i'll tell that story yes yes yeah the question was about uh holy mother's experience in rameshwaram and this is also a very beautiful incident in her life when she went there she was given very special privileges partly because she was looked upon as the guru of swamiji who was well known to the maharaja of ramanada who was in charge of the rameshwaran temple so she was able to go into the inner shrine they they have a shrine with uh uh what's supposed to be the original is it's kind of sand sandstone and it's covered it's covered with some golden sheets something like that and the inside is the one that some of the sandstone or something but it's supposed to have been the one that sita herself made on the seashore out of sand so she had that privilege of being able to to worship that which is not normally done and she went into a kind of an ecstatic mood and she was asked what she thought about it she said it's just as it is when i made it something like that not once uh second time when she went back to urbhodan house she also made a similar comment like that and it was golov ma i think was there and she said oh mother what did you say and she said oh nothing something just escaped my lips and everything now how do we understand that this is a very interesting question how do we understand that was she really sitta in the previous lifetime and she remembered that the whole incident is 100 percent true if you talk about rama then it has to be do we have to understand it that way i have a different explanation because this is a minor story what if we take it as a literature in poetry we can do that my my other way of understanding this is that the holy mother was so identified this is a type of there's a type of spiritual experience where one becomes so identified with the object of worship that one feels to be one with uh so she felt that oneness was sita whether it was actually a memory of of an experience that she had how many eons earlier or something if it's the other way it equally shows her divine nature and her pure nature that you could feel such a sense of oneness with the sita the mind would be so merged and because we talked about this earlier that one very important element of of this dualistic worship with with the abhava and attitude is that one identifies with the worshiper and not with the object of worship so to worship rama one identifies with sita that way so this is another for for for people who say that i don't really believe this all did ramayana did you really remember it they can dismiss it and say that uh people made up the story or we can say no there's another way of looking at it it shows that tremendous purity of mind and heart and everything yeah [Music] so many different times not just identify almost manifested that terrible form of mother kali yeah and when her the nephew yeshibo insisted tell me who you are people say you're kali then finally she had to say yes so in different moods she said different things at different times and and again chocolate looked upon her with all different aspects sometimes it's ita sometimes lux me he used to say she loves her jewelry why shouldn't she she's luxury the goddess of wealth anyhow these all point to this the divine nature of course we can say everyone has a divine nature but this is perfect purity of nature of the holy mother that she could become so uh lost in that worship of rama to feel herself as sita now is it possible that this was an incident and she remembered it of course it's possible but it's just another way if we if we want to look at it from a different angle another way of looking at that how to explain that incident at four o'clock in the afternoon mr mukherjee a relative of prana krsna arrived in the company of abraham and well versed in the scriptures mukherjee i am very happy to meet you sir master god dwells in all beings he is the gold in all in some places it is more clearly manifest than in others god dwells in the worldly minded no doubt but he is hidden there like gold under deep layers of clay this is always a question that that people ask how do we say that god dwells in people who are so filled with thomas and uh so evil and in their nature and and all they want to do is is harm other people and everything this idea of the coverings that some of the uh the lampshade is is so dark that hardly any light shines through it all that doesn't mean the light isn't there so this is one way of understanding uh it's and it's not even that the light is greater in one or lesser in another there's a light it's the one source light that one light of the sun it shines more brightly in some it uh it's hidden more in others this is their only distinction but there and all that's why taco said god dwells in all beings mukherjee sir what is the difference between worldly and otherworldly things master now he's going to give an answer that's going to at first we'll wonder oh he didn't answer the question but if we think about it we'll see he's answering the question a couple questions in advance that he knows what's in the mind of this mukherjee while striving for the realization of god the aspirant has to practice renunciation applying the logic of neither not this not this now this requires us to look upon things as we can say worldly and otherworldly or we can say permanent and transcend we can say but to break things into these two different categories so the question was what is the difference between worldly and otherworldly things tucker is going to explain that we we have to focus on the difference at the beginning and then later at the end we can see the common feature of them so while striving at the time of sadhana while striving for the realization of god the aspirin has to practice renunciation this is this is not renunciation as we usually think of it this is really discrimination that uh trying to decide what is real and what is unreal what is permanent uh so it's a kind of rejection they will reject that which is which is not real uh if if someone is really taking to monastic life then they'll actually renounce it if worldly life is unreal then they'll give up if it's transient they'll give it up but otherwise we can just do this as as a intellectual uh or or using our viveka discrimination this this we charter this path of each other we can see so while striving for the realization of god the aspirin has to practice renunciation applying the logic of nati not this not this so we we have two ways of doing this one is external that where anything that's transitory anything that's changing anything that's composed of parts has to fall under the category of assad we can do it internally looking for that real eye the atman that anything that is again transitory changing or anything it's an object of consciousness anything with different ways of doing it then we reject it from the point of view of we saying that it's not the self or it's not vermin something like that but now this is the thing after attaining the vision of god he realizes that god alone has become all things so this is that vigna state so for surama krishna this uh sodium brahma takes on greater importance i feel for him than than it does in advaita vedanta in general the the maharaki is if we look at the four maharajas they all point to the oneness of the self in brahmin or brahmanas pure consciousness something like that they don't really talk about this this external universe uh what is it in in reality uh see if we we talk about these these four four great statements of the upanishads who picked them these four statements if we if we look at the formation of the sampradaya the the monastic order of chakritaria that he started you will see that he broke everything down there are four different mud but each one will have two or three underneath them and each of these four will have its own veda its own maharakia other things like that so at least in that case it seems like he chose them these maharaki's were chosen by shankaricharya other traditions will have different types of maharakis it's it's it's not like in the upanishads this is a red line edition you read them and then you'll say oh this is this is a maharaki we know it that way. could have been could have chosen that is very important but more emphasis is put in the other direction first ramakrishna krishna equal emphasis is put on this and maybe more because this is the state of vigna for him that after having that realization we so some people will say that he contradicts shankaracharya that shankaracharya is saying that the world is unreal tucker says i don't like to call this this world unreal it is not the case that srama christian recognizes the importance of this 1880 but he says this is this is the way that we get to that realization that we can separate and get to that ultimate reality and what are we separating we're really just getting rid of name and form we're separating that we get to that reality then we see everything the manifestation of that same reality so uh i don't really feel that there's any essential difference a difference in in emphasis maybe the chunkier chariot talked more about this attitude that the gyani takes in order to have that highest realization after realization that yana may also say everything seems like a dream to me that may also be the uh the state of the ghana is different for the gyani and different for the bhakta mahdi we'll see everything is a manifestation of divine mother or have some relationship again and taku says that the gyani following the path of gyana yoga has this the eye of knowledge so that may be a little bit different he can also say i see brahmin shining everywhere i can see everything is a manifestation of the divine so it doesn't have to be simply one thing can be all the different types of of ways that that vigna manifests itself after this realization are all statements that we find in the in the upanishads and uh these the four maharaki is each one is taken from one of the the four vedas so this is another way of looking at it each of the the different mut of the shankaracharya tradition has falls under one of the four vedas and one of the four mahavakias and so that's the way he established everything in some in some sector there are more than two sets of mahabharata yes [Music] yeah there may be different traditions this is why i say it's not written in stone these these maharaki is and i think i may be wrong but i think there may be other uh vietnamic traditions outside of it don't they will have different ones that they'll consider yes then maybe and you know that the m used this term maharakiya for statements that tuck were made he had a list of things that he considered talk words maharaki is that way at one time rama was overpowered by the spirit of renunciation this one line bird imprisoned in the cage you know taku's whole mind is on sita and now rama and everything ramayana that's how that worked in his mind at one time rama was overpowered by the spirit of renunciation worried at this went to the sage and begged him to persuade rama not to give up the world the sage came to rama and found him in a gloomy mood the fire of intense renunciation had been raging in the prince's mind but sister said rama why should you renounce the world is the world outside god reason with me now this is another type there's we have our neti neti we have this is a path we don't hear about this this is a way that at the very beginning that we try to see everything as a manifestation of the divine we try to tell ourselves see god dwelling in everything see everything is manifestation of the divine don't make this distinct distinction that something belongs to brahman something is outside of brahman don't make that type of distinction that uh from the very outset we we accept everything chuck would like that he liked that point of view who was a great adwaitan uh at the very end of his life last day or to the end of his life he said roman is world and the world is real from that point of view it's not contradictory contradicting this is from the point of view that it's it's changeful it's see if we if we look at if we look at the ocean and we look at the wave if we understand that the wave is the ocean there's no distinction then it's real if we think it's something separate and but there's no there's there's substance to it it's water but but the name and the form are constantly changing then we can dismiss it that it's unreal if we don't know that beneath the surface there's actually fathoms of water we only see that surface area so different different ways of looking at it different points of view so the sister said said rama why should you renounce the world is the world outside god reason with me rama realized that the world had evolved from the supreme brahman so he said nothing now i i just want to look at the language that tucker uses here that the world has evolved from the supreme brahman sometimes he'll say that brahman itself has become the universe sometimes divine mother has become the universe so he'll uh he's he's he's not worried about somebody making a philosophy out of all of this according to his to his mood and his feeling and and his uh the type of spiritual attitude he has at that time then he'll explain things in different ways people object we say how can brahman become this world how does it become this world i not not like the way milk becomes butter or yogurt the brahmin doesn't transform itself and yet through maya it or apparently there's no other explanation that's given in vedanta sakhi of course will say that there's this there's there's a primal matter and and nature and everything but we don't we'll have to trace it everything back to brahman okay then talk where continues buttermilk is made from the same substance as a butter so that which emerges this this is actually one of the teachings of advaita vidant we can we can look at the three schools of vedante in terms of the uh cause and effect relationship so the the duelist will say that the effect comes out of the cause the qualified nondual it says that the cause itself becomes the effect and the adwaitin says that there's no difference that there's just an apparent difference between the effect and the cause that they're really one of the same so the brahmin is really not different from the universe or this roman is is transforming itself into the universe or the universe comes out of vermin three different ways of looking at this is a cause and effect idea so tucker is emphasizing this idea that even if we say that this this world is uh is just name and form and constantly changing and everything what is the substance of it what is the substance and if we take uh say we take water and it freezes in the blocks of ice and tucker likes the illustration uh the the blocks of ice or water there's nothing we can say that uh that has a different shape and a different form and we can give it a different name and everything but ultimately it's water there's no distinction whatsoever that way once we eliminate that that name and form so we but the distinction is an important distinction because we get fooled by the name in the form and we and we think of things as separate and distinct we lose that sense of oneness so we have to in the beginning this in 1880 we have to make that distinction it's at least according to this richard margaret so buttermilk is made from the same substance as butter one who realizes this knows that butter goes with buttermilk and buttermilk with butter after separating the butter with great effort that is to say after attaining brahmagyana you will realize that as long as butter exists buttermilk also must exist wherever there is butter there must be buttermilk as well as long as one feels that bromine exists one must also be aware that the universe living beings and the 24 cosmic principles exist as well now this is again that vigna state the the ghana state up on the roof we if we want to say nirvikalpa samadhi state and nothing else exists at that time for that individual nothing else exists at that time so taco is talking about is this state of of the jivan mukta someone who's living in the world after attaining that knowledge that person lives in a world where everything is brahman everything is divine every manifestation of mother seeing mother everywhere that that will be that the ecstatic type of existence that uh lower brahman will have what brahman is cannot be described in words everything has been polluted like food that has touched the tongue that is everything has been described in words but no one has been able to describe brahman it is therefore unpolluted i said this to vidyasagar and he was delighted so the idea this of uchista if something touches the tongue even if even if your your fingers touch your your tongue and you touch it to something else then you won't let anybody else have it it's it's been polluted somehow so words the word touches the tongue if we explain something using words it's touched the tongue so that way but since brahman can't be explained then the words will never come to the mouth to the tongue so this is another way of just saying that it can't be explained but the noah brahman cannot the knowledge of brahman cannot be realized if the aspirin is worldly minded even in the slightest degree now we we get the crux of the matter now we may say that if someone has brilliant intelligence and the ability to discriminate and to understand these these philosophical very subtle teachings subtle ideas that why won't they be able to have that highest realization now we find out that it it goes beyond that level of mind that it has to go beyond that this recharger this is just to set the stage so that the mind can go beyond to some higher state that requires this this perfect purity of mind and purity of heart so it's not just a question of intelligence there'll be many great highly realized souls who won't be able to go through all of this the vedantic philosophy and everything and it doesn't matter for them they've had that that type of realization and this this worldly worldliness in the mind pulls it down and and it causes these uh attachments and attachment automatically brings false identification with the body and the mind it automatically does it so he says but the knowledge of brahman cannot be realized if the aspirin is worldly minded even in the slightest degree he succeeds in acquiring this knowledge only when his mind is totally free from lust and gold parvati once said to her father father seek the company of a holy men if you want the knowledge of brahman so why the company of holy men this is this is the best way to raise that level of mind when we when we see these great souls who don't have that attachment to worldliness then that helps us shake off our own attachment addressing mr mukherjee the sri ramakrishna said you are rich and still you call on god that is very good indeed it is said in the gita that those who fall from the path of yoga are born in their next birth as the devotees of god in rich families we have two different types the yoga prashta that the born into a good prosperous family righteous family and everything but those who are really really high they may be born a very poor family of but of great yogis where renunciation will be natural for them mr mukherjee quoted the line from the gita master god if he so desires can keep a gyani in the world too so this for gyani what is in the world and outside of the world this is what vashishta was telling rama who is not in the world what it means is that he may continue with his with his job and with his family situation and everything that's all everybody's in the world they they like to point to this argue that uh i don't know if he was really a realized soldier knife but he remained as a midi salesman he had that's that's what he did he had a little shop he wasn't a wealthy person anything uh so after his so-called realization whether he had it or not i don't know uh he still kept at that shop but people would come and sit and and he would give these kind of talks and things they would record them and everything there's some zen expression realization uh i chopped wood and carried water and before nirvana or something and then after nirvana i chopped wood and carried water something like that yeah it's like tupperware says that the clerk who gets sent to jail when he comes out what will he do will he just go dancing in the street he'll go back to being a clerk that's what he was so even after realization but it's not necessary this is very clear the realized soul can can continue to work or not continue to work nothing gained by working nothing lost by not working but generally for the welfare of others to set an example uh maybe inspired by divine mother that generally we find that everything they do is for the welfare of the world master so god if he so desires can keep bigyani in the world too the world and all living beings have been created by his will now here i would prefer her will you know and bengali we can't distinguish what's in what's in taquer's mind when he's saying this probably this is my guess what's in his mind is divine mother because both the songs and everything at chamois most of the songs will be to the divine mother when he talks about this this idea of will so the world and all living beings have been created by his or her will but he or she is self-willed huh what's the bengali chamois yeah this is this is a little problem with translating the bengali because we have to choose between he or she or either he slash she or they these pronouns are very problematic nowadays mukherjee with the smile how can god have any will does he lack anything all right now this is the difference between somebody who has a little bit of intellectual uh capacity and understanding that uh brahman is perfect and pure and brahman is pure consciousness there's no personality within brahman that will means that there's some lack of something and how can this possibly take place within brahman these are all very legitimate questions for the philosophers and sram christian is talking from the point of view of the divine mother which includes this idea of this inscrutable maya and how do we go from this nadia this this actionlessness this brahman that doesn't do anything to this created universe does it is it does it just happen on its own this idea of will uh is not so much that uh the way we have will i want it this way or that way but shakti that there has to be some power associated with the brahmin one of the key teachings of takur in order to explain now why is it the way that it is this world it could have been anyway people could have had ears on their knees and noses on the top of their heads and it didn't have to be exactly this way why did it turn out this way we can't say we can't say so is it willful not just the sweet will it's not a scientific or even philosophical answer there's a spiritual attitude that we take this is just this is how we get to this idea of lila lila and and maya both are recognition of our inability to come up with some full foolproof scientific philosophical explanation of things magnets with method yeah there's a there's a method to your madness or a matter to the method one of one of the two yeah who could have created this world but my mad mother kali that's the idea it was such a crazy world like this and why is it the way that it is it could have been any way we can say ah because everything was in the vedas ah okay if you like that answer it's not a very you know foolproof answer how many people will accept that or even plato will say they all they're all these divine ideas these uh have to exist first and then they can manifest but it didn't have to be exactly like that could have been so we don't know so we talk about this divine mother being willful out of play leela or just out of maya we can't say exactly but those who want to preserve the purity of brahmin they'll also say brahman is perfect and and lacked nothing so wherever that desire to create come from and yet in the upanishads we see brahman looked around and thought may i become manipu he felt lonely this allegory the allegory because we can't explain any of these things so takur a master with a smile what's wrong in that so he's he's not he's not trying to say that though your explanation there are flaws in it or anything but look at it from this other point of view what's wrong with saying that we don't we don't know exactly how it how it takes place that you have a dream why did you have that dream i don't know it just kind of emerged from the dreamer was it the will of the dreamer not exactly that the dreamer thought let me have this particular dream but it had to emerge from the mind of the dreamer there had to be some shakti at play some something causing it so why not say any harm with that to say this is the divine mother is willful this is playful so what's wrong in that water is water whether it is still or in waves now still when water is still taco says this is near guna brahmin when it's in waves there's a sago number the same they're not two separate things this when it's when it's still that means the shakti is there but it's not active and dormant and when it weighs the shakti is active that's the only difference but the same reality one in the same reality and not that brahmana is sitting here and ishwar is sitting there and brahman says to ishwar and now you create the world and not like that i like to think of it the relationship between the sleeper and the dreamer are they two different people i go to sleep i have a dream in the same area same so the snake is a snake whether it is coiled up motionless or wriggles along a man is the same man whether sitting still or engaged in action how can you eliminate from the reality the universe and its living beings if you do that it will lack its full weight it's a very wonderful talk with favorite illustrations you cannot find out the total weight of the bell fruit if you eliminate the seeds and shell okay now we've come across this illustration many times that we know what a bell fruit is like it looks a little bit like our butternut butternut squash something like that maybe but then he has a hard outer shell and it'll have the flesh inside and then inside of that it will be the seeds if we want to make sugar out of it yeah we have to remove the shell and we have to remove the seeds they're non-essential to making the the drink or to eating the flesh is what we is what we want so that's the real thing now talk we're saying that if we if we take that we discard all the others and we weigh that we actually weigh it on a scale then we're not getting the full weight of the if we if we wait before we take off the outside and the inside say it weighs two pounds and afterwards say it weighs half a pound we're not getting the full weight now what does this mean this is this is very often taken as the illustration of the shishta dway to vedanta now the the idea there is that brahman is one but there are internal distinctions that brahman is one but qualified vishishta qualified by jagat and jiva and the real distinction here is that there are many seeds inside of a bell fruit in a duato dante the individual jivas are all reflections of that one reality they don't have any real independent uh existence on their own uh according to the dualistic schools and the sister dwight vedanta that they are distinct they have some distinct realities like the seeds inside the belfry something like that now tucker likes this illustration does that mean that he understood the jiva to be something real and permanent and separate from from others i don't think so i understand this in a slightly different way that i understand this from an experiential point of view that means that if we if we eliminate this this universe and living beings as being either just name and form non-brahman who are really the same brahmana just name and form then uh we're we're not getting the full experience of things in the in the upanishads and vedanta in general we have several different types of illustrations one is gold so we have we have objects made of gold and what is the value of of a gold bracelet or a gold necklace in in india you know india there's there's more gold purchased in india than any place in the world and and historically traditionally wealth was kept in gold the the people if they had money they wouldn't buy paintings in this net or real estate or anything they'd buy gold jewelry for the wife and the value of it was the weight of it you could just weigh it if you got tired of it you could melt it down and have other things made out of it so the the real value of it uh wasn't wasn't the shape wasn't the name and form whether it's a necklace or whether it's a bracelet or an anklet didn't didn't make any difference it was it was the gold the quality of the gold and the weight of the gold right now if we if we take another example suppose we say that we take a great sculptor take a michelangelo and we have a block of stone and we have this beautiful carving in it now is the is the value of that beautiful carving the weight of the stone no right take we have two paintings that uh well one the same canvas the same frame the same amount of paint one is is a child does it there's a parent willing like it and everything that's that's the end of it another one it'll be worth the million dollars for the hundreds of millions of dollars the weight is the same weight is the same but if we dismiss the the beauty of it and the the time and effort and the art and the grace and everything we're not getting the full weight so i we can look upon these as it's really not contradictory points of view if we take it literally though is it ramanaji and chakritari they have different points of view it's uh both have merits and both have demerits but they're different they contradict each other either there's a reality and to the separate uh jivas then we run into a lot of problems are there many of the infinite number do we get rid of them uh or is it yes different reflections uh there's a difference in those different points of view but if we take it this way experiential then we see there's there's no problem with that and this idea of wade the classic uh example that we get or classic verse the mantra it says that uh if we if we eliminate this entire external universe from brahman itself the weight doesn't change there's another way saying that we have the whole ocean if all of the waves disappear does the ocean become lighter the weight will be the same same amount of water so does that contradict this idea of the of the the weight we're not getting the full weight we're not getting the full experience we're we're not getting the full appreciation uh if we don't make a distinction between the uh the the beauty of the name and the form and and and this name and form all of this is a vehicle for god to manifest herself divine mother that way that then we're cheating ourselves a little bit if we simply dismiss everything and say i'll only go i won't open my eyes i don't want to see anything i don't want to get attached to anything we're not getting the full weight of this universe this divine play that way metaphysically we can agree with the non-doulas that you eliminate the name and the form the weight is the same you eliminate the the waves the weight is the same yeah see this idea of separation for for those who uh are unenlightened people the separation is the cause of all sorts of problems separation is between one person and another person one community in another community between ourselves and god uh it causes anxiety alienation fear or all sorts of different things it's this feeling of separation this idea of separation for the god relay soul is a completely different thing and tucker talks about a slight ego resting on the surface of the water like a mark on the water allowing this relationship between the lover and and the beloved that's that's all that that type of uh still feeling oneness we can feel oneness with everyone but you remember that incident in the life of swamiji with with the holy mother where he said something to her like mother if if i don't want that brahmayana if it means that that you'll cease to exist separate from me something like that something like that so uh or this the story of uh who was it with shukadeva or something that you give me the dakchina first because after the realization you won't see any distinction between the student and the guru and disciple that that will disappear separated from brown yeah hanuman had all three attitudes he had all three attitudes but generally generally the devotee wants to have that relationship a relationship with god tucker needed it to live in the world otherwise the mind would just go up it'd be merged in brahmin and how long can you stay even for an avatar how long can they stay in that state before the body falls off so he had to keep it down a little bit so this bell fruit yeah uh it's always pointed out and as as this example that this is sometimes that uh is thought to hold that that was his position philosophical position i don't think he had a position he he he didn't look upon philosophy that way but i also think that he's talking more in terms not not that we have to accept this world as as something permanent even if it's changing something permanent and jeevas as as all individual but we're we're losing something if we don't see this all as the manifestation of the divine we're losing something we're not getting the full experience here it says the full weight brahman itself is unattached one finds good and bad smells in the air but the air itself is untainted this is when we talk about this in brahmin the you remember we talked about chidakashi in chittakasha that these bad smells and things they can cling to the air molecules and everything but space is pure you you put a fan there and blow it all out the space is unchanged that's a completely different thing there's akasha and value are very different in the beginning this the whole concept of of ether in uh greek mythology was to explain that this the distance between objects the empty space between objects but we understand space differently it's not it's not just to explain that because even physical objects or in empty space there's no distinction whatsoever so when consciousness this thought is upheld in consciousness the way planets are upheld in space they just kind of float there within that space uh areas where there's nothing it's the same pure space doesn't make any difference so this consciousness is like that whether there's any thought that takes place within it any good feelings bad feelings uh it's it's just upheld it's suspended in that but it does it's not affected by that so he says one finds good and bad smells in the air but the air itself is untainted here really means it's space it's there brahman and shakti are identical now this is that other issue this are they identical or are they inseparable very subtle point generally when takwa says that they're identical he's talking about the shakti as divine mother he's really saying that near going to brahman and saguna brahman are one of the same but when he talks about shakti as the power that belongs to brahman then they're inseparable but if it belongs to it it's different from it but inseparable so that way of hinda we can say so here he says identical now what did the bengali say no no no does roman and chuckle are identical yeah so sometimes he'll use that language but this is a way of saying that say we have an attribute that belongs to a substance that you can't have the color red without a red object without an object there and you can't have an object without a color they're inseparable but we can make a distinction between the two of them but if by shakti we mean divine mother then absolutely identical just like the dreamer in this sleeper absolutely identical so he uses it actually in different times in different ways it is the primordial power that has become the world in all living beings so now so now we see that this shakti is brahman together with the chakti shakti itself can't do anything if we look at it from that point of view they have to they have to work together somehow mukherjee why does one deviate from the path of yoga so now he's bringing it back to a little bit of a practical question master as the saying goes this is from a song in my mother's womb i was in a state of yoga coming into the world i've eaten its clay i think it brought for satsang the midwife has cut one shackle the naval cord but how can i cut the shackle of maya maya is nothing but lust and gold and entertains yoga when he has freed his mind from these two so most most philosophers will say my is false identification my misunderstanding of things they'll look at it from the point of view of knowledge knowledge and ignorance talk words looking at it from this point of view of attachment they're not completely separate of course but this is more important to him that we need we need to uh feel that freedom that because attachment is is what makes us feel small and limited and bound and all attachment ultimately uh requires attachment to the body and attachment to ego all of that so this is another way saying the ego ego itself is maya papua says many times ego itself is maya because it's false ego means taking this my individuality to be absolute and to perfectly identify with all of my limitations and all of my peculiarities and all of the things that make me feel different from other people and this is what keeps us bound the self the supreme self is the magnet the individual self is the needle now if we're going to say the supreme self the individual self are ultimately one then we have to understand this this a higher mind and lower mind or that the divine presence within and and the mind seeking to realize its true nature something like that the individual self experiences the state of yoga when it is attracted by the supreme self to itself but the magnet cannot attract the needle if the needle is covered with clay it can draw the needle only when the clay is removed the clay of lust and gold must be removed we we have uh another illustration with this idea of this magnet that this god is a huge magnet magnetic mountain this world is very small magnet but we're close to it so the pull of a magnet doesn't depend entirely on on the on the force of the magnet but the distance we are from it further we are from it the less it can pull us attract us this is why if we walk a little bit there then it pulls us even more we take one step then it'll god will take 10 steps towards us something like that so then mukherjee asks how can one remove it that means this attachment master we forgot with the longing hard so again he's not saying discriminate ask yourself who am i uh do this drink drizzy viveka i am the witness of all of this he's not saying any of that he said we forgot with the logging heart these for most people if we can do it of course for most people this will transform the mind and heart in a far more effective way than any type of reasoning can do so and tucker he he experienced this this is how he had his realization through weeping for god we forgot with a longing heart tears shed for him will wash away the clay when you thus freed yourself from impurity you will be attracted by the magnet only then will you attain yoga mukherjee priceless words okay we can stop here this is a nice nice conversation and remember half of this is for m this was this was the time when srama krishna really trained up him to be to be the perfect messenger with regard to recording all of this and also uh living in the world as the example of of the ideal householder or half householder jeff sanyasi gurihi sanyasi so this is all uh you know they say scolding the daughter for the sake of the of the daughter-in-law so a lot of this is this uh advice to this refugee for the sake of [Music] [Music] who was stainless of infinite nature whose heart melts in sympathy for his devotees who is an embodiment of the divine and the supreme lord and ever worthy of our worship [Music] all these chat things [Music]