Video 12

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna with Swami Atmajnanananda (06/19/20)

the rhythm depth even I'm Kaveri didn't cut my shop sherman among golems remedy that um we guarantee topic at Arboretum your words are like nectar top dodgy venom bringing life to squirt souls coveted item praised by poets in the wise Kalama shop 'him putting an end to sin shavon among golem auspicious to hear srimad art adam beautiful and exalted boo vegan aunty a hurry dodging are those who will spread these words throughout the world or blessed indeed and this is the verse that m himself chose as the param mantra we can say for the the gospel of ramakrishna taken from the Gopi Gita from the bhagavata which was supposed to be the words of the gopis addressed to Sri Krishna okay last time we're reading from Swami nickel analogies translation of the cat America the gospel of ramakrishna visit to Vidya Sagar this is page 101 this is the third chapter and it's August 5th 1882 and Sri Ramakrishna's in the video cigars drawing-room you'll remember video Savar was the great scholar and philanthropist and educationalist and the sanskrit is and and master of Bengali grammar he wrote several books but mostly famous for his tremendous compassion his hard work for certain reform movements widow remarriage abolishment of child marriage many things he was considered really one of one of the the gems of Bengali culture and society at that time it's yama krishna was anxious to meet him so they've been having a conversation but the a cigar was very reticent about giving religious instruction to others he had studied Hindu philosophy once when M had asked him his opinion of it but the a cigar had said I think the philosophers have failed to explain what was in their minds of course this is a problem with the philosophy the III always I was a philosophy student so I had to breathe through a lot of philosophy and you wonder sometimes first of all most of them are not very good writers this is they don't go into philosophy because they're very good writers and can explain things very easily and they like highly technical terms that make up words and all sorts of things and actually when I read first read the Gita and I saw how ideas can put be put so simply into language then I was really amazed and then of course when we get to ceramic Krishna and and those of that class the great Saints who speak in parables and everything we find that these great truths can be put in a very simple language so this is video cigars idea I think the Philosopher's have failed to explain what was in their minds but in in his daily life he followed all the rituals of the Hindu religion and were the sacred thread of a Brahmin so he shared some of the reformist ideas with the Brahmo Samaj but wasn't a bromo he wasn't wasn't looking to start some news sect some kind of Unitarian thing and that was opposed to image worship and guru and avatar other ideas of Hinduism so he was a combination of the old traditional Hindu culture and the modern reformist movement about God he had once declared it is indeed impossible to know him what then should be our duty it seems to me that we should live in chewie that if others followed our example this very earth would be heaven everyone should try to do good to the world a nice idea is very beautiful idea and we can hardly think of a higher ideal when it comes to that side of life the difference is with Shri Ramakrishna they were the whole world spirit world that to him was more real than this world that we'll see he felt it Vidya Sagar had had failed to to appreciate we can say but otherwise it's a beautiful ideal there's really nothing we can criticize about it Sri Ramakrishna's conversation now turned to the knowledge of Brahman master Brahman is beyond Vidya and a Vidya knowledge and ignorance it is beyond Maya the illusion of duality now this illusion of duality I read this phrase this morning and had never really thought about it what exactly does he mean the illusion of duality huh what do you think he really means the illusion of duality of course we can say that everything in Maya is is at one what they call it Wanda WA that everything is up and down and hot and cold and good and bad it could be that or if we if we look at this idea and I may be wrong but this idea of Vidya and Vidya separating everything were such an asset real and unreal that this is an illusory distinction and she Ramakrishna actually says that this distinction between the real and the unreal is provisional he says this is this is for the sake of sadhana he doesn't take this this idea that Brahman alone is Israel in the world is unreal he doesn't take that as a final truth it's a very interesting distinction subtle distinction between his his understanding of this idea from asatyam derivative and what we've what we come to thank as Shankracharya idea for sri ramakrishna this was a provisional attitude and if we think about it it's a dualistic attitude we're separating everything into two categories something that's real and something that's unreal now if we can we can split hairs and say that well the unreal won't constitute a category because it's unreal there's nothing there it's like saying somebody can object well you're saying there are two categories there's a snake in a rope yeah so they'll say oh of course there's only the Rope snake is unreal so it's not really a category but what Ramakrishna is saying that in the beginning when we're climbing up the steps then we do make a dichotomy between what is real and what is unreal now it's your only Krishna did something which I personally think is is a tremendous service in terms of philosophy I've you know I've been reading this gospel for almost 50 years no very seriously I when I first read it I very quickly came to the conclusion that Sri Ramakrishna was brilliant that his intellect was so sharp that even I won't even compare it to some criteria or a manager and you were even Swamiji yeah I I've never come across a mind that was so subtle with these distinctions as his so I I read this on several levels I read it of course for the inspiration I read it for this Leela idea so that we feel that we're in its presence but also his understanding was so subtle his way of explaining things and the difference of course at least with the ordinary philosophers is that he didn't have to imagine anything he was simply trying to put into words his direct experience so anybody who does that they don't have to worry about any internal Dixons in their philosophy you know they say one thing about people who tell lies if you tell lies you always have to remember what you said huh otherwise you may tell one line they'll contradict a different lie if you tell the truth you never have to worry about that no matter what you say it's not going to contradict anything because events took place and only one way and you're recounting them that's all so first Ramakrishna it was all based on his direct experience but the the contribution that I think he made was to first of all explain that this idea of the unreality of the world is provisional is not a final truth that things have gotten mixed up sutton assad they've gotten mixed up and the main way that they're mixed up is with the self and the coverings of the self in particular the mind and ego sense this is the main way they've been mixed up and we have to separate them somehow so we have to be dualists even the avoiding has to be a dualist and try to separate the real self from the apparent self such and assad even though this is an illusory distinction the illusion of duality so this is the illusion of duality that there's a real self and an unreal self or real self and apparent self now what's ramakrishna does is he explains that this is only so that we can disentangle something that's gotten mixed up with something else so he gives he gives some very nice examples most of us are like that mixture of milk and and water under the the you pour milk in the water and somebody says now retrieve the milk it's very difficult we've been all mixed up together we hope that we're not in that sorry condition we hope that we're more like the example in the punished odds if you if you take grass and it has different stems to it and they seem to be all connected and tied up and that the in the center of that will be the real self we can say but actually they can they can be pulled apart there really connected only apparently connected when we cut grass sometimes we we cut the grass for puja it has to have these three what do they call them stems something like that and if we cut it in the wrong place it'll fall apart before we even get it so they're not really connected so what sure I'm a Christian is saying is that yes we have to take this dualistic position between the real and the unreal now there'll actually be several things that impress me so much one is that his distinction won't be between real and illusory it'll be between permanent and impermanent it'll be between whenever whenever he says Varna septum brahma satyam almost always he'll say jagged and Athiya he'll he'll either an idea or a vastu and Athiya means non-eternal transient and elasto means something like insubstantial not not even from a philosophical point of view insubstantial hollow somehow I mentioned this earlier there's a term called padartha padartha is Sanskrit term that that means something that is an actual real existent category thing and there's a UH padartha which which will be the exact opposite I was surprised when I learned that in Bengali and probably Hindi other languages without meaning worthless fellow huh a worthless person it doesn't mean that the person is non-existent or a loser here or anything there's no inner stuff so this when chakra says all those two of us do that it doesn't mean that this world is an illusion it means that there's something hollow about it it can't fulfill us it can't satisfy us so this is one thing so all right so now we have two things one is that this other side is not a final truth it's something that will help us climb the steps till we get to the roof second thing is that the asset doesn't have to be taken to something illusory or completely unreal it'll be shadowy it'll be a little bit in between but if we understand it in terms of transitory then we can easily see what is changing and what is not changing the witness is not changing everything else is changing and if we say that well what about we have Himalayas we have mountains that have been there for millions or billions of years barely changing certainly not noticeably changing and and what if we even pause it or suppose that a world can be created where nothing changes in it just assume that does that mean that this world is now Athiya no because we're changing we're the ones who were fleeting we're the ones that are that are just flying by that's the impermanent nature of existence not physical things so much but of the existence I like that Nursery Rhyme row row row your boat gently down the stream merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream so it's like that we're rolling our go down the stream of time and that's that's the Anna Thea element of it okay so these are two things now the third thing that that Tamizh is very important is that one can accept the reality of the world relative reality of the world because ramakrishna says once we get to the roof and and work our way back down then we see this universe as real so he spin puts everything flips it on its head somebody asked him one time is the world then unreal he said as long as you haven't realized god it's unreal after the realized realization of God it's real on the face of it it sounds like a perfect refutation of Shankara tardies philosophy but we have to understand it's not that what he's saying is that our conception of the world now as something independent in material is false when we understand this world as the manifestation of Roman or the Divine Mother then we'll understand the reality of it so we can say that now this if we're if we're seeing the snake instead of the rope we're saying something that's false and when we understand that it's really the rope then we can say that we're seeing something that's real so this is another thing now what what to me is important is that Sri Ramakrishna can be an adroit in from the point of view which is the essential point of view that he takes this ego this I as as a false super imposition on Brahman itself on pure consciousness on the real self on the othman giving the appearance of many individual souls or he'll use the example of course of the Sun the if we if we confuse the Sun with the reflection will say there are many Suns there are many individual Souls but there's only the one real son so what Sri Ramakrishna is telling us is that this from brahma satyam brahman alone is real and deva brahma even opera ha the diva is nothing other than brahman these two things can be accepted and at the same time say that the world is not Mattia that Yoga is an idea that it's fleeting so I and interesting because I had a philosophy professor in in college who I didn't appreciate at the time he was actually very pretty i I was I thought I know everything because here I'm studying Swami do you know all this but but he said something which which now I understand was a very subtle idea very good idea he said that when we talk about adwaita and the she stood whiter and Deuter the three schools of vedanta that the the distinguishing feature of the Advaita will be that this oneness of the individual self and the supreme self not the illusory or real nature of the universe this is something that is that is secondary there can be many different types of atoms and she Ramakrishna was that type of a Titan who belonged to the Shakti school if we want to pigeonhole him and I don't I want to make that clear but we can say that he did he he liked this shock that philosophy where they'll say this universe is a manifestation of the of the divine which really or a projection really is closer to the upanishadic idea now just to clarify things a little bit ramakrishna had a unique unique take on the different schools of philosophy he did not look upon them as truth we'll get to that it is not that one is true and what is false or one of the better one is worth there are different paths when he said yamato apart we always take that as meaning different faiths we can easily take it as the different schools of it onto all the different philosophical schools he took them as different spiritual paths we were reading last night in the and the great master and just to mention again that's the fantastic companion book to the gospel those of you who were reading the gospel you'll find tremendous lay they shed on it by the the gospel any of our army sharon rd who wrote that he was saying that ramakrishna recommended mostly for most of the devotees are what we would call the she stood void of Ananta is qualified non-dualism and he gave many examples the bell fruit that we accept that it has many seeds to it so and it has a hard outer shell so that's the and the door belongs to the same reality so some people will claim will even fight no ceramic krishna was a qualified non duelist but again it's missing the point that for some that spiritual attitude he felt was most helpful in order to get to the roof and truth had nothing to do with with how we get to the roof why you shouldn't say nothing but but the real truth is the experience of berman the direct experience and it doesn't matter if we follow a dualistic path or non-dualistic the one distinction will be that the roof represents oneness so in that sense we can say that he really are the qualified non duelist and the this won't really accept his final conclusion about things because they're the one to say that even in the state of liberation there's there's separation for a Sri Ramakrishna there's merging and and how did he know it he spent six months in that state and then though almost daily he could go into that state when this I consciousness disappears then Berman alone exists there's only one this in that state so this is this is this all came out because I read it this morning this idea that Maya when this phrase the illusion of duality so this distinction between real and unreal that's also an illusory distinction because after realization we see everything is real only some things are a manifestation of that reality and something so the reality itself so the seer in the scene or both equally are one with the ramen but one is the manifestation just as the dream is a manifestation of the dreamer but the actor in the dream is the dreamer itself huh another subtle distinction but both get resolved back into the dreamer into Brahman and the dreamer gets resolved backed into the sleeper huh so for sure Amma Krishna this oneness was the final truth but then the path to getting to that involves this path of of discrimination or devotion discrimination vichara or discernment discrimination we try to avoid that term nowadays but where we have to have this dualistic distinction between southern Assad and the path of devotion we also have a distinction between the devotee and the object of worship these because the the latter that require me to get to the roof is belongs to the relative plane we have no other choice so anyhow this all came out of just this this one simple phrase the illusion of duality interesting phrase then he goes on the world consists of the illusory duality of knowledge and ignorance it contains knowledge and devotion and also attachment to lust and gold righteousness and unrighteousness good and evil another way of saying this is even on the relative plane we'll find that there's sat well and then there's Rajas and Tamas we talk about the three gunas I like to think of this two gunas because thought was so different Rajas and Tamas they kind of run into each other a little bit they they're both holding us back Tomasz skin can kill us that'll take us lower and lower edges will do much better it'll keep us stuck with the same round of desire and satisfaction desire and satisfaction but what can save us but even sattva belongs to the relative plane and we have to transcend that but that's the very final rung of the ladder going to the roof a very final one we don't we don't stout start out with this idea of let me transcend set what we start out with this idea let me develop sort with qualities so that I can get rid of all this resistant Thomas so this when we say righteousness and unrighteousness and good and evil we can say that these lower gunas and the higher ones but Brahman is unattached to these so now the Brahman if we think of Brahman as this witnessing consciousness because to be honest we don't really have much direct access to this Brahman as the protector of the universe what we have direct access to is a Brahman dwelling within as the real self we have access to the reflected sun so Ramakrishna says in one place or probably several places that you want to know what the real Sun is like then then go through that reflected Sun so we look we have to turn within did somebody says well Brahman is the ground of the whole universe let me look without I never say good luck huh because we only see objects it how do we know what what the the the thing in itself would underlies it very hard to say but that there's a Brahman consciousness is within me and is witnessing and hearing everything that I say I know that directly so that's our director access to that so when they say the Brahmin is unattached to these we know that this witness from in dwelling within as the higher self as the as the witness that that witness is unaffected not only unattached but unaffected somebody says something to me and I get angry the witness doesn't get angry the mind gets angry and the witness observes the witness can't if the witness could I have different states then it would need another witness to observe those states and we wouldn't have that sense of of integration of of self existence so the witness is completely unchanging good and evil apply to the Jeeva the individual soul and we can easily say to the mind and we can even break it down and say that or all of these things are different realities that arise in the mind as the righteousness and unrighteousness but ramen is not order all affected by them one man may read the bhagavata by the light of a lamp and another may commit a forgery by that very light but the lamp is unaffected the Sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous when taqwa gives one of his very favorite examples when the Sun is reflected in the the water and it in the jar that Sun may be very hazy the water may be murky that Sun may look like it's a little bit moving disturbed if the water is disturbed but is the real Sun hazy does the real Sun move when the reflection moves no completely unaffected nothing can possibly affect it is it a reflection the reflection in the mind itself that gives the appearance that that Sun has been affected but in reality is not affected the sun shades its light on the wicked as well as the virtuous you may ask how then can one explain misery and sin and unhappiness the answer is that these apply only to the Jeeva Brahman is unaffected by then so when we say that suppose somebody says that I am the self or in the admin how can you say I'm a sinful person I'm a bit of a person anything yeah from that point of view it's true but have we realized it if we're if we're so identified with this the lower self the apparent self the apparent self is is is the mask that goes over the environment you know there's there's a term persona persona I hope I don't give wrong information I think comes from the Greek meaning mask so a persona means our personality what is it it's a mask that we were so that masks can have qualities that can can have good in bed and we put the mask on and we play the part of a thief sometimes sometimes we play the part of the policeman but the real self within is not affected by any of this so the answer is that these only apply to the Jeeva the individual soul the individual soul is not different from the artment is the Atman that they got entangled apparently through false identification with the body in mind the senses and the ego sense these apply only to the Jeeva Brahman is unaffected by them there is poison and a snake but though others may die if bitten by it the snake itself is not affected by the poison now this illustration is used in several different contexts when we start out with this idea brahma satyam Brahman is real and it also means Brahman is the only soul existence that nothing else exists but Brahman now when it comes to trying to explain how this world can come into existence even if it's even if it's a dream Brahmans dreamer how does it come into existence we the items come up with this idea not that they invented it Maya's very old term we find it in the Rigveda even it means something like magic there but we come up with this idea that there's something which causes the Brahmin to see simply being pure consciousness and to somehow project this this universe enter into this universe identify with the individual and then under the influence of ignorance fail to see that it's really consciousness itself and takes it for some external universe and everyone is separate and all of that so then the question comes that what about this Maya you said that Brahman alone exists permanent is real now you're saying there's a second thing Maya so they come up with different ideas that well when when we reach illumination Maya disappears if it can disappear then it was never real to begin with so you don't have to ask where it came from somebody says where did the darkness come from they said well there's no really no such thing as a darkness you've hidden the light of the Sun that's all there's nothing real you you remove the the impediment you let the cloud dissipate and you'll see that the sunlight is there again so don't talk about this darkness is something real it's yes you failure to see the light light doesn't exist at that time the one type of the answer the other thing is that since this Maya has an effect it can't be considered completely unreal so it's neither real nor unreal so the sudbury luck Sheena can be this start described as either real or unreal but it's characterized by a Vidya ignorance now the problem is where does this exist if it exists within Brahman then Roman that has a little infection huh a little imperfection there we can't have that and if we say no it's outside of Brahman then we have two things we can't have that either so then they come up with this this kind of clever idea well with it's within Brahman with Brahman is completely on affected by it like the the poison in the snake which is protected by a little sac so that the snake can not be affected by the poison so Brummett cannot be affected by your endurance we can't say that ignorance is the quality of our men but it's not non-existent so they'll use this example also this idea of the of the venom within the snake which is not poisonous for the snake you never hear of a snake a dying of the poison that's inside of it maybe another snake can buy the snake but it can die from its own venom that's inside of it what Brahman is cannot be described all things in the world the Vedas the Puranas the Tundra's the six systems of philosophy have been defiled like food that has been touched by the tongue for they've been read or honoured by the tongue only one thing has not been defiled in this way and that is Brahman no one has ever been able to say what Brahman is now this is another one of the kind of pet ideas that Ramakrishna had we have this this term Oh Chester Oh Chester if the very typical I should say Indian idea in the West we're not so particular about who can eat food when somebody else's played and things like that of course in India I've seen with the school boys and close friends that'll be sticking their hands into each other's plate and everything but when they reach a certain age and in certain Orthodox communities if someone touches something eats eats some food then they have to finish it they can't take a bite out of something then give it to somebody else and say now you finish it it's Ishta then they're giving them the leftovers and certainly if you offer food in the shrine and not supposed to taste it first or anything like that then you're giving leftovers so Ishta something that's been touched by the tongue and that means the the rest of it is somehow tainted or defiled so everything is defiled because it's been put into the relative world of philosophical concepts except for Brahman now I mentioned before my my very bad habit of remembering something very clearly and remembering where I read it and even memorize verses and then forgetting them so this is another instance there's actually a very beautiful verse that says system Salva chaste Rani surah Vidya mu came okay so everything all knowledge all scriptures and everything has been defiled by this tongue in that tongue note system Brahma no Yanam but the knowledge of brahman is the only thing that's not a cheetah and then I don't remember the rest of the verse is actually there's a very beautiful there X there too - very beautiful and very very helpful companions to the gospel is Ramakrishna which probably many more these are the two that I know of that came out of gospel classes that were recorded and put down in in book form one was Swami Lokesh one on the G and the other Swami bhuteshu analogy and I don't know if Swami locational Jesus is now translated both were in Bengali originally but he found all of these verses he had a good staff the Institute of culture so he found all of these different different verses there's another one that I don't remember you know we hear about this on Nagato prana that is Kali Yoga that life is I forget how he puts it is there life is involved in food or something like that each of the four Yuga's has a different one I don't remember if Vidya got the prana negative or something like that so taqwa he must have heard these things he had so much content people would ask him how do you know all these things you don't even read or write or anything he said how many things I heard whenever these great pundits were discussing anything even as a boy he would go the Sato's and he would listen very attentively and everything so there's a little surprising because Vidyasagar who was a great sanskrit scholar had not heard of this maybe it's a very obscure verse I don't know so video cigars to his friends oh that is a remarkable statement I've learned something new today that everything has been defiled by the tongue everything is 800 Ishta except for Brahmin master a man had two sons the father sent them to a preceptor to learn the knowledge of Brahman after a few years they returned from their preceptors house and bowed low before their father wanting to measure the depth of their knowledge of Brahman he first questioned the older of the two boys my child he said you have studied all the scriptures now tell me what is the nature of Brahman the boy began to explain Brahman by reciting various texts from the Vedas the father did not say anything then he asked the younger son the same question but the boy remained silent and stood with eyes cast down no word escaped his lips the father was pleased and said to him my child you have understood a little of Brahman what it is cannot be expressed in words now we talk about it all of the time huh the pure consciousness in such a LAN on de the the ground and source of the universe we say so many things about it chakras idea first of all most of this is saguna brahman if we're talking about near gonna Brahman there are no qualities whenever we talk if we have to talk about a thing or a person we have to do it in terms of their qualities we can't say too much about anything unless we talk about the the color of the shape the attributes the the personality traits all of these different things if something is lacking that even near guna if it's just pure existence then there's nothing much we can say except that pure existence we can if we want to say that but problem is that if we start to speak of our men in that way we start to think of it as an entity as a thing and this is also a great mistake it's it's not a great being there's not a great being that possesses the qualities of existence knowledge and bliss its existence itself knowledge means consciousness and the Bliss aspect is only known to those who have this this direct direct experience of the self those knowers of brahman they become filled with bliss and there's no other source for it when environment itself so from that point of view we can understand that we're somehow falsely attributing attributes thinking that this moment is something that possesses some attributes when we start to describe it it's nothing describable in the Upanishads all of the descriptions and mostly all of the descriptions will be negative things that it's adoration that it can't be seen it can't be touched as pressure it can't be smelled as beyond the sentences to beyond the pairs of opposites everything will be in a negative sense there's nothing positive that we can say it's that's why we had this in 1880 it's what remains after we've removed everything else if we if we peel the onion trying to describe what's in the center it's long as the onions there we can describe the the center as suppose it is a little hollow inside the onion we can describe it that it'll it'll be a certain size and shape once we've peeled everything off - how to describe that it's the infinite absolute space no way to describe it so this is what I think talk more means when he says that what Brahman is cannot be explained in words okay Bala Diana he says it over and over again men often think they have understood from men fully a mistake once an ant to a hill of sugar when grain fills its stomach taking another grain in its mouth it started homeward on its way it thought next time I shall carry you home the whole hill sees Ramakrishna he he said even even someone who realizes Brahman can one say that I've understood all the brahman and then he says is it necessary and he gives a very nice example one is said to achieve liberation by bathing in the Ganga hmm you go to the Ganges he said if you go in one place and bathe then you have achieved her goal is there any need to go and every single bathing ghat from go mook - all the way to ganga sagar from the very beginning of the ganges - each and every place all the way down till it reaches the Bay of Bengal any reason for that what we have to do is realize it in one place in one aspect of course there no aspects Duberman but through one particular path and that's enough there's he gives other nice examples if you can get drunk from one bottle of wine that what did you have of knowing how much wine how many bottles of wine there are than the in the warehouse and then in the wine cellar so the aunt thought next time I shall carry home the whole hill that is the way shallow minds think they don't know that Brahman is beyond one's words and thought however great a man may be how much can he know a brahman sukadeva and sages like him may have been big ants but even they could carry at the utmost eight or ten grains of sugar now sukadeva is held up by Ramakrishna as one of the greatest examples of someone who's very pure from birth and a great knower of Mirman so whenever he talks about sugar devil we shouldn't think that he's saying all this is an ordinary individual who may be achieve some type of realization he's talking about the highest possible class he doesn't get into this idea avatar he should have caught see anything like that but as a knower Brahman and perfectly pure soul so he says shuka deva shook and other states ages no sorry I skipped a place shuka Deven sages like him may have been big ants but even they could carry at the utmost eight or ten grains of sugar so basically he's saying forget about it though don't thank you and he of us will carried the whole hill even even these great Souls no matter how great it's not possible to to put the infinite into the the limited receptacle of the mind talk were very it was very fond of this expression can you put four seers of milk in a pot that only holds one seer we can't do it we can have the experience of the infinite when we're when we've transcended the ordinary mind but if we want to do things that this mind can grasp the infinite it can't do it as for what has been said in the Vedas and the Puranas do you ask what it is like suppose a man has seen the ocean and somebody asks him well what is the ocean like the first man opens his mouth as wide as he can and says what a sight what tremendous waves and sounds the description of Raman in the sacred books is like that it is said in the Vedas that Roman is of the nature of bliss it is such it Ananda so that means that the very vain attempt to try to explain what the experiences is like shook and other sages stood on the shore of this ocean of brahman and saw and touched the water according to one school of thought they never plunged into it those who do cannot come back to the world again I'll get to this there's another big issue in Samadhi one attains the knowledge of Brahman one realizes Brahman in that state reasoning star altogether and man becomes mute he has no power to describe the nature of Brahman once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean or left it wanted to tell others how deep the water was but this it could never do for notes no sooner did it get into the water then it melted now who was there to report the ocean's depths okay now this is a very big topic and talk war talks about it very much this question of first of all what does it mean really to get to the roof what does it mean to have this ultimate experience of a Brahman can it only be had in near bacopa Sumati if one attains the state of nirvikalpa samadhi then is it possible through any effort to bring the mind back down is it something that has to happen through one's past karma is it something that will only happen through the will of the Divine Mother and aquas case the voice of the mother had to come to say remain in power mukha or does does the body just wither away and the individual remain go from that state of jeevan mukti to videhamukti that the mind is already merged and gone one way the brahman for some time the body the body is there for something then after some time it's not there makes no difference is completely irrelevant to the the so called individual who has that type of experience now Sri Ramakrishna was very fond of saying that the body last 21 days in general for what he called the Jeeva Cote Deva Katta and I'm not sure where these technical terms come from Ishwara coating and evocati but the evocati will be everyone with the exception of these very special souls are the Carioca polishes that we generally know as the others and companions of authorities Ramakrishna used the expression each for decotis that they can come down from that state the diva koti will the mind will remain merged assuming that this is all this all the Karma's go on there are no desires to pull it back down mind will remain merged and the body will last only as long as it can last which is more or less or we can say exactly 21 days and this is something if I remember correctly that Ramakrishna heard from Terry Rangaswamy almost all of these these interesting teachings that taqwa has in the Kali Yuga nodded the époque tea is best that the body last 21 days give a twist to the passion all of these he'll give little citations I heard this from a wandering heart who I heard this from this devotee that the Tongass farm isn't used to say this and so I think it was from him but it not really important because these were things that taqwa felt intuitively within there's a very interesting story incident in the life of Swami Sardar Bhagat Anand EG swami sorry gotten and EG who was a disciple is for me a kundalini and ahead of our Boston and Providence centers for many many years and every wonderful wonderful soul he joined in Conkel and worked in the hospital there at that time it was almost exclusively meant for asados and there was one saw - who was very ill and he was there but he was very highly spiritual soul and one day they saw that he went into stated look to everyone like Santi that just lost in meditation wasn't dead pulse was there but very slow all of the signs of bodies that showed some signs of death but still the breath was there and everything now Swami Sardar got an energy he used to say that before that I took the things that Shri Ramakrishna ed accepted them but maybe not literally 21 days what does that mean that means it you know it could be a week two weeks it could be three weeks but he said after 21 days that the piranhas left the body this is odd - exactly 21 days he said after that I believed everything everything literally and yeah it's really not important but the point here is that there's a certain type of realization that will be final we can almost say that this this for ordinary soul that unless we've reached the end of our paradigm the Karma that we've exhausted everything we won't be able to get into that that type of nirvikalpa samadhi it's not that one day that I'll go into that type of the sorority and then I'll be gone in three weeks I have to have really reach at that point where there's there's nothing holding me back down anymore there's no karma parado vikarna is is has to be finished otherwise like the brick on the mongoose it'll pull the mind down a little bit so and this idea of the salt doll we we have to understand this the two ways to understand this one is that if we do enter into that final merging in Brahman then it's impossible to come back because there's no I left that ego sense disappears the mind is merged dislike the salt has become one with the ocean now in the case of Shri Krishna who went back and forth he could dive down to the bottom and come back whenever he felt like it what he's saying to us even for him by the time he got down to the bottom then somehow this old dog was one with the ocean but could re-emerge as this old dog could come back together so he's explaining two things one is how in this this very final state for the Jeeva coati to attain the state of near we called the Samadhi unless we'll have the divine mother feels something else unless taqwa says in some places that this individual I had some deep-seated desire for the welfare of others there's also maybe a possibility if those things aren't there there's nothing to bring the mind back down again now for sarama krishna even he he could come back down but by the time he's merged in that brahman the mind is not functioning any more so that there is nothing to come back and report I was saying before that everything he says has a certain consistency to it because it's all based on experience but this experience in brahman is nothing that you can report about there was a an instance where one that he said no today I'm going to tell everything on me to explain what happens when the mind goes higher and higher when it gets into the different levels and he could get as high as two maybe the agnya chakra you know you see light and and you see their ultimate reality only there's little pane of glass so you can't touch it every time he would start to say when the mind goes to the thousand petaled Lotus at the top of the head Sarada when he would do that his mind would merge and he would come back down and say ah I wanted to tell you that experience a minute I think of it the mind goes into that and they say that he actually shed tears that day that he had such a desire to explain to them what that experience is like and found that it was futile that he couldn't do it that he actually shed tears so for even for sure on the Krishna because there's nothing to see how do you report you go down to the bottom there it's not it's not the ocean that has all the gems and things at the bottom it's the ocean that's that's so deep that there's no light that penetrates nothing to report there's only one miss there so this was this idea of the the salt doll what to measure the depth of the ocean wanted to tell others how deep the water was if it can come back it still can't tell how deep it is if it's an ordinary soul by the time you get down there there's no salt all left anymore individuality is gone so there's nothing to come back a devotee suppose a man has obtained the knowledge of Brahman in Samadhi doesn't he speak anymore now that now there's there are certain ideas contained in this question presuppositions one is that someone can obtain the knowledge of Brahman in Samadhi and be able to come back and at least even if he can't speak to able to come down from that state Sri Ramakrishna hasn't exactly told him that the ordinary person won't come down from that state but he's saying suppose he has obtained the knowledge a Brahman so number one presumption is that one can attain the knowledge of Raman - in Swati and he can come back from that then what happens after that now Sri Ramakrishna says he starts out with Shankar Acharya so already we know he's not talking about the Jeeva koti Shankar Acharya will belong to a special class Ramakrishna always points to him as the example of the type of the gianni who belongs to the Yana yogev class so and talk was mine he never says exactly Shankar Acharya is an avatar or anything like that but he'll always give him into that example that means that he doesn't classify him as a Jeeva koti he classifies him as one who had the highest realization that could come back and teach after that Shankara Chartier attained the ego of knowledge in order to teach others now this is the V Gianna state the V gianni can be of two basic types one the Ghani will come back and will have this ego of knowledge that means it'll be immersed in this idea I am that the devotee will come down and live on the relative plane in a relationship with God so the devotee can be of many types and Ramakrishna's case mostly it was he found himself to be a child of the mother others can feel this isn't serving any of the attitudes can be there here is talking about Shankaracharya keeping this this the eye of knowledge Shankracharya retained the ego of knowledge in order to teach others so there was a mission there so perhaps before he had is that highest realization that that very saatvik desire not the type of desire that pulls one back down into the relative world of Maya but the desire which allows one to go all the way to the roof and come back down as Avignon II that he had that desire after the vision of Brahman a man becomes silent this will get him in trouble because later we see when dr. Schar car he said you see one become sorry why do you talk so much then he'll explain after the vision of brahman a man becomes silent he reasons about it as long as he has not realized it if you heat butter in a pan on the stove yeah if anyone has ever tried to make he you'll know it'll sputter and do all sorts of things then it'll get quite afterward it makes a sizzling sound as long as the water it contains has not dried up but when no trace of water is left the clarified butter makes no sound if you put an uncooked cake of flour in that butter it sizzles again okay so that means that yes after the realization of brahman one that has a tendency to remain silent but they have a mission in life they have teachings to give and that's the whole reason why the mind need to come back down again so then they can start to speak again but after the cake is cooked all sound stops just so a man established in Sumati comes down to the relative plane of consciousness in order to teach others and then he talks about God the bee buzzes as long as it is not sitting on a flower that means we're still trying to get to the roof the time who saw dinner it becomes silent when it begins to sip the honey so that state of realization but sometimes intoxicated with the honey it buzzes again so the mind comes down a little bit lower even if that tendency is there they say with Ramakrishna and we'll stop here they say with sri ramakrishna that and again this is from the great master after he had had his six long months of nearly practically entirely in every cup of samadhi mine would come down from time to time a little bit and just to be able to swallow some food but more or less six months in the recovery so honty after that there was a tremendous tendency of the mind to to practice this so not practice on it to remain silence remain in word to remain absorbed almost almost painful for him to have to speak to other people this changed later when he got some hint from the divine mother that there will be those who will come who will be able to understand and appreciate what you've been through and your words and your teachings and then tremendous desire came in his mind he would go to the roof the chutney every every night and and cry out he was a mother you told me where are they they haven't come yet please come I'm waiting for you I want to tell you all my innermost secrets and everything then he said one by one they started to come rock on their enter and others so very wonderful Leela and then we find that the same ceramic Krishna whose mind so I was sold longing to remain mers in quiet in silent how he could speak practically 24 hours a day giving these these beautiful teachings to his disciples so we will stop here give this closing chant come to the open rock down with him directly he saw avatar incarnation medium Ramakrishna [Music]