Video 16

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna with Swami Atmajnanananda (07/17/20)

your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and removal 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 getting towards the end of the chapter visit to vidyasagar this is the third chapter and the visit takes place on august 5th 1882 and for those who are following along in in the book it's page 108. so srama krishna has been talking to vidyasagar and there's a room full of people some of taqwa's close devotees m of course is always there there's not because he's the one who's recording everything so we know that m will be there m's the one who brought him he's the one who knew vidyasagar and some other devotees are there some of the neighbors have come who have heard that sram krishna was coming and they out of curiosity or out of sincere interest they have come and then there'll still be some of the petitioners who were there who had come to ask vidyasagar for some type of help either a scholarship or some funds or helping with food whatever so there's a room full of people and shirami krishna is oblivious to everything and going into samadhi singing songs and talking to vidyasagar so the last time the last thing that we had was that brahman and shakti are identical like fire and its power to burn when we talk of fire we automatically mean also its power to burn again the fire's power to burn implies the fire itself if you accept the one you must accept the other this is srama christian's way of saying that near guna brahman and saguna brahman are not two separate things when we when we talk about brahman the impersonal absolute pure consciousness and when we talk about ishwara the creator of the universe or the projector of the universe who dwelts within the heart and who withdraws the universe at the end they're not two separate things they don't exist side by side they're one in the same they're identical and this so when he says shakti if we say brahmana and chakti are identical when we say shakti we really mean saguna brahman we don't mean the power associated with the brahman we mean brahman with his power so uh the the example that i always like best is the one that swami swahili used to use about the the mother and the woman the the woman aspect is always there when the woman has a child then the mother aspect is there but the woman aspect is there also she doesn't cease to be a woman she remains a woman so this uh near guna brahmin is the essential feature because it's always there brahman has to be there when the mother aspect is not there that simply means that it's potential so srama krishna sometimes will say the only difference between brahman and shakti or brahman and kali or his understanding brahman and saguna brahmin is the example like the snake sometimes it's coiled up and not moving and sometimes it's wriggling along the ground that will be the shakti part when it's not moving that power has to be there it can't start wriggling unless that power is there only it's not active that's the only difference so then he says brahman alone is addressed as the mother this is because a mother is an object of great love so the second advantage to this this concept first advantage is that we can see that if everything is projected out of this abram then everything is divine this is the the view of the chakras second is that uh we have this relationship of the loving relationship that a child has for its mother so there's that psychological side to it also there's there's nothing uh objectively uh real in the sense that we will say god is a woman god is not a man but god is a woman it's not exactly like that we have a little bit of freedom to think of of this this absolute reality and the terms that appeal to us so this is one of the ways of doing it addressing not his mother so he says brahman alone is addressed as the mother this is because a mother is an object of great love one is able to realize god just through love ecstasy of feeling devotion love and faith these are the means listen to a song as is a man's meditation so is his feeling of love as is a man's feeling of love so is his again tucker liked this expression he used to use this all of the time and faith is the root of all if in the nectar lake of mother kali's feet my mind remains immersed of the youth or worship oblations or sacrifice now srama krishna will will speak on this theme over and over again one reason is that kali worship had a terrible reputation in those days and all we have to do is look at narendra his attitude which is very typical of the western educated typical because the british thought that this was really the lowest possible form of of religion of worship to worship this bloodthirsty goddess with a cut off head in one hand held by the hair and then a sword to to slaughter people and uh tongue sticking out in the red with blood and uh and making sacrifice of of goats and sheep and sometimes water buffalo that he thought a horrible thing and so narendra swamy he used to say how i hated that mother kali and he used to look down on sriram krishna he used to say even after all of his realization he still goes there it means that he goes to the to the kali temple so sriram krishna kept trying to explain to him that this conception that you have of mother kali that this of course this is what we read in the puranas and everything but he said very nice thing he said what you call brahmin i called kali that i'm i'm not talking about uh some conception of god as a mad woman who's dancing about in in slaughtering demons and everything that i simply mean that brahman together with shakti that combination so that was his conception of course he liked this other image of mother kali and the funny thing is that swami vivekananda fell in love with it he fell in love with his kali worship especially the terrible aspect and he wrote the beautiful poem kali the mother and he used to say i don't speak about it very much it's my own special fad he said i have this special love and then he talked about how srama krishna turned him over and and really consigned him to this uh this divinity which he called mother and how that mother was directing him to do everything so uh so swamiji came to srama krishna as a nithya siddha as a perfect soul but that that the perfection was covered by a lot of funny subtle ideas that he had picked up through his english education as a member of the brahmos homage which which had to be in some cases flipped around a little bit and ultimately swamiji said that yes how i argued with with the master he said for six long years i argued with him over this and over that and everything so now i know every inch of the way and now i know that everything he said was right so swamiji was bold that way he could say that so swami krishna after singing the song he goes on what is needed is absorption in god loving him intensely now what is the advantage to this this devotional path if we really think about it the main advantage is the intensity because this is the most important thing in spiritual life this is what taqwa says that if you float on the surface you won't get the gems at the bottom of the ocean we have to have this intensity we have to have this longing there's a great desire and this can come through devotion now not that it's impossible in the path of knowledge and again i always point to the buddha as an example he had that intensity he had that incredible longing this life isn't worth living unless i know the truth but for most of us because we're emotional people and because we we know what it means to have an emotional tie to another person we know what it means to love someone we know what it means to miss someone we know what it means to long for the company of someone so we can utilize all of those feelings and direct them towards god so this is the one of the great advantages to this path of devotion what is needed is absorption in god loving him intensely anuraga is this intense type of love and the akulota these are the two terms that taqwa likes is this uh anguish of heart this is this is what uh carried suramar krishna to the vision of the divine mother it wasn't anything else it wasn't that he was so great in meditation that he would sit for hours on end most of the time he was weeping and rolling on the ground tears coming out of his eyes just calling piteously mother mother mother and uh he would come the next morning from the pine grove where he was spending the whole night people would see his eyes were bloodshot filled with uh tears and and his body would be dirty and everything so it wasn't that he was studying the scriptures and doing deep meditation and doing japa all of these things no his heart was was breaking he was in this state of anguish so the akulota this was the vehicle that took him to his first first vision of the divine mother it wasn't that some guru said you do this and you do that and he followed those practices it was just this tremendous longing of the heart so he knows what he's talking about what is needed is absorption in god the mind doesn't care for anything else loving him intensely the nectar lake is the lake of immortality has both meanings it's uh in in greek is ambrosia the same word amrita ambrosia this was the nectar of the gods if you drank it you became immortal so this is the same idea when we use this word it can mean nectar but literally it means immortal so a man sinking and it does not die we dive into this and later we'll find of course uh that very interesting conversation that tucker has with his swamiji he asked him suppose that there's a a a cup filled with this nectar the nectar of immortality and you're a fly and you want to partake of it what will you do so swamiji said that i'll land right on the edge and i'll lean over and i'll i'll sip it from that position and taco said why he said well if i don't hold on to the edge if i simply dive in i'll drown so taco said no my child and one doesn't die if one drowns in the ocean of immortality one becomes immortal so we we can really say that these are if if we if we want to enjoy that nectar then we'll keep a slight distance that means that sense of i if we want to merge and become one then we'll dive into it so tako is saying a man sinking in it does not die but becomes immortal some people believe that by thinking of god too much the mind becomes deranged but that is not true this was actually a statement that was made by shivnat she's not shastri he was one of the brahmos that tako loved more than he should have loved if you ask my personal opinion tucker always talked about it how he longed to see if not and he used him as the example you see as long as he's not here we're talking about him as soon as he comes then we simply enjoy his company but this if not he would say that i'm coming and then he wouldn't come and he's the one who made this statement that talk were by thinking of god too much and he used the term behead behead it means he's lost his head that's an interesting word this bay is i think some or do prefix and the head is the english word head so he's he's going off his head he's going crazy so he also had this this idea that takur he's a good person he's very nice he's a great devotee of god but he's gone off his head behead he's become deranged so sometimes taco will say the sheep not used to say that and then he or he's just mentioning it but that is not true and he would also add that it's not like thinking of ordinary things you can lose your head that way thinking about pure consciousness one cannot become unconscious thinking of consciousness god is the lake of nectar the ocean of immortality he is called the immortal amrita in the vedas sinking in it one does not die but verily transcends death then he repeats the line from the song of little youth or worship oblations or sacrifice now why does it why do they say that worship oblations or sacrifice are of little use we have to remember if the mind is immersed in this nectar lake of mother kali's feet that means once we've reached this state of state of anuraga then and taka will talk about this then we can dispense with the preliminaries with actually not dispense they drop off on their own and we don't have to bother with well let me get up at a certain time let me do a certain amount of japa let me spend this time in reading and scriptural study and keep to my strict routine because the whole mind is immersed in god day in and day out so there's no need to follow any of that so of little use or worship oblations or sacrifice if a man comes to love god he need not trouble himself much about these activities one needs a fan only as long as there is no breeze the fan may be laid aside if the southern breeze blows then what need is there of a fan so this is this is the point is not that we we reach the point where we don't need that fresh breeze coming we need that breeze but we don't have to do it ourselves it's become natural it's become spontaneous it's become effortless that that breeds of grace we feel it and we're being carried along by that breeze of grace before that we have to make some effort but afterwards it becomes spontaneous so this is the two-tier system we see it over and over again that first self-effort and then grace first is vedi bhakti and then anuraga first activity karma and then shama and then lack of activity in gita we find that we find it in many places but the second stage is very very high up this is the final rung of the ladder we have to go all through this dumlas and rajas and satwad reach that perfect sattwa and then we can say yes the breeds of grace will carry me the rest we won't even say it it will automatically happen but we we shouldn't pretend we've reached it if we haven't reached it we have to keep struggling so taco says that yeah you'll have to work a little bit for all of this the activities that you are engaged in are good and taqwa meant it he is not just flattering him he appreciated what vidyasagar did but to all the limits of it it is very good if you can perform them in a selfless spirit renouncing egotism giving up the the idea that you are the doer through such action one develops love and devotion to god and ultimately realizes him now with the asagara wasn't a very egotistical person but taqwa must have seen that a little bit of this this feeling that i'm doing so much i'm helping people a little bit it must have been there and he was a proud person in some respects we know that uh he uh was was head of the sanskrit department at the university and he had some fallout with uh some of the trustees something happened and and he he felt that he had been wronged so he gave up that position so that type of pride he had which wasn't a bad thing it meant that he had principles in him but taco could say that he was continuing all of this at least with the idea that i am the doer which of course it's very rare to find somebody who doesn't have that feeling the more you come to love god the less you will be inclined to perform action so again this is not something that that we choose to do although there's a sense in which we also do choose to do it so on the one hand the divine mother will remove our actions she'll remove that inclination does the talker does he do it here he gives the yeah we'll see the example of the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law when she's when she's pregnant with child on the other hand we also have to reach a point in life where we say okay let me cut back on all my duties and jobs obligations and everything and immerse myself in spiritual practice we have to do that also when it comes to real duties then that's a little bit different if if we're going to say oh okay i'll abandon wife and children i won't cook for the family anymore i'll do my spiritual practice and we're simply escaping things then that's not a good thing but if that fire of enunciation comes and then we do it then it's okay so for most of us or at least those who reached that monoprostate age the the age of least of retirement when the worldly duties are already less that we don't have to raise the kids and we can give up the the work and everything then we we try to spend more time in spiritual practice but on the other hand this feeling of duty and feeling of obligation feeling of wanting to do work will will be pulled away from us the more we go toward god the less we'll be inclined to do that at a certain point the mind will get immersed and it won't care for any external things we'll want to go more and more inward so this is what taco is talking about and what happens he said let me read again the activities you were engaged in are good it is very good if you can perform them in the selfless spirit renounce the egotism giving up the idea that you were the doer through such action one develops love and devotion to god and ultimately realizes him those who are devotees this will come those who are yanis through such selfless action also this desire to realize the truth will become greater and greater but this this is uh in one respect the very orthodox belief of karma yoga that shankaracharya upholds very much that karma yoga is prior we do our karma yoga until we're ready to reach that stage of either bhakti or guyana with shankaracharya of course is diana yoga but it can also be bhakti yoga so this karmio is meant to purify ourselves it's meant to fulfill desires it's meant to get rid of this feeling of eye and mind it's meant to carry us high enough so that we we feel that a breeze of grace so that karma yoga is meant to raise the sail and then the breeze of grace will come the more you come to love god the less you will be inclined to perform action when the daughter-in-law is with child her mother-in-law gives her less work to do as time goes by she is given less and less work so month by month and she gets higher and higher off the ladder that she'll her work will become lessened when the time of delivery nears that means god realization she is not allowed to do any work at all lest it should hurt the child or cause difficulty at the time of birth i like this idea that we we think of our spiritual life and our spiritual practice in terms of of giving birth to a child and then nurturing that child i i often feel that uh our attitude towards our our spiritual routine towards our spiritual life towards our meditation that we should guard it we should protect it we look upon it as a small child the way we would we would protect a small child something so that we we try to keep to it and stick to it to our spiritual practice so we nurture it we we love it we may not be able to love god we can learn to love spiritual practice this is a great uh step in spiritual life when we reach that we feel a little bit like we're on firm ground a little bit safe then takwa continues but these philanthropic activities or by these philanthropic activities you were really doing good to yourself if you can do them disinterestedly your mind will become pure and you will develop love of god as soon as you have that love you will realize him man cannot really help the world god alone does that he who has created the son and the moon who has put love for their children in parents hearts endowed noble souls with compassion and holy men and devotees with divine love the man who works for others without any selfish motive really does good to himself okay now this is uh a very important idea and swamiji developed this idea he has one lecture in karma yoga uh what is it called no something about we we really help ourselves something like that almost exactly what what takur is saying that we don't help the world we help ourselves now to me this can be very easily misunderstood because if somebody says that okay what you're doing you're not really helping anybody else but you're helping yourself say somebody says that you know i go to the soup kitchen every every saturday morning and i serve food to the poor people there the homeless people there and it makes me feel good like i'm doing something and the other person says very good through that if you do it with the right attitude you yourself will benefit very much but are they benefiting they'll come back hungry the next day somebody else could have done it don't think that you're doing anything so wonderful there then we can say yes i know that i i know that uh really i'm getting some benefit what i'm doing for them of limited value it's it's something if i don't do it someone else will do it i i understand that but if we say that you're just a complete waste of time you're not helping anybody at all but you're helping yourself and we say oh good then i'll keep doing it what does that mean it means we're selfish people we're completely self so i i will never believe that taqwa means that and that swamiji means that our motive for helping other people is that we will benefit spiritually ourselves it's a very selfish type of idea but we know that actually we are getting some benefit so we should be grateful to the other person so there are two things one great grateful to the other person and also have some humility that i know that there's very limited value what i'm doing but it's the least i can do at least i'm trying to do something i recognize that so the point of this isn't to say well then i won't try to help anyone and when we say that no one can help the world that means we can't do any big thing we're not going to eliminate poverty we're not going to eliminate wars but on a small one-to-one person basis we know that it is possible for one person to be helpful to another person if we look at our own lives how many times at least spiritually that we've been benefited from holy company or that someone has been sympathetic that they listen to to our weeping and wailing when when we're very sad and everything and afterwards we feel oh what a great service they did with wonderful loving people there so it's possible but we want to get rid of this idea that ah what a wonderful thing i did for that person how uh how great i am so this is meant to have a little humility to get rid of this feeling that i can do so much and to understand also that we don't know the what the results of things are uh if we if we stop and think and many people do that we've we're at the red light and there's somebody sticking out his hand asking for for money and then a lot of people will stop and think i know this person he's going to take my money he's going to go to the liquor store and buy something to drink i'm not going to give him anything okay so what may happen we don't know what may happen it may be that that night this man doesn't have any money and he robs the store and he kills somebody now are we responsible for that maybe in a small way it may be the very opposite that uh we give him money and we think ah this poor man let me help him i'll give him some money he'll be able to get something to eat and he goes and he buys drugs with it he has an overdose and he dies is it our fault a little bit partly our fault the point of this is is that whatever we do we do with a little prayer i don't know if it's right or wrong i'm doing it with the best possible intention i hope the things will work out i know that the results are are not in our hands and so with a little humility if we try to help somebody whenever people ask me advice especially counseling types of things psychological types of things i shudder because i know that with all good intention i may give a certain piece of advice it may be absolutely wrong maybe with all good intentions and the result may be the opposite so uh i i very rarely will say anything and if i do uh it'll be with that prayer or of course with the disclaimer you know i'm not a professional counselor with anything this is just what i think may be helpful you can try it and that's about it so the point is to work without any selfish motive this is what taco says those who work for others without any selfish motive they really do they do good to themselves so we know that that the karma yoga any action that we do with a good motive that we have that motive that we want to help somebody a purely unselfish motive i don't care to get any publicity i don't care to get anything returned and he prays nothing at all i'm doing it out of the goodness of my heart thinking that this is probably something that may be helpful uh that i'm not changing the world and that if there's a that prompting within is a good thing then i take it as the divine that divine presence within prompting me to do that so with all humility we have to try to do these things now with vidyasagar he means literally okay you've done enough of all this because remember he's 16 years older than srama krishna srama krishna at the time is probably what 47 something like that so he's in the early 60s that means that he's he's quite elderly for that time and would be considered to be in that final stage of life where he has this opportunity now to really have some type of realization approaching that time when death will come and when whatever future life will come will be determined be determined by the state of mind that one is in at the end so it's out of compassion for him that tucker is talking like this there's gold buried in your heart but you are not yet aware of it it is covered with a thin layer of clay that means this this veil of maya this thin veil of maya covering that awareness of the divine presence within or of our own divine nature after the birth of her child the daughter-in-law in the family busies herself with it alone everything she does is only for the child her mother-in-law doesn't let her do any household duties so after this god realization we enjoy the bliss of god realization now when the child gets a little bit older then of course she has more duties to do so even the god realized soul can die after a certain point and we see of course with swami krishna all the direct disciples then there's no harm if they if they try to be of a benefit to the world when when swamiji came up with his uh motto for the order it wasn't simply for one's own realization that it'll be too selfish the other is for the welfare of the world now talk we're saying we can't help the world but individually we can do a little bit we can do a little bit to try to eliminate poverty and ignorance and exploitation all all different types of things violence in our own small way we can do something so this is this is not something that's ruled out but right after the child is born that means after we have that uh that experience we have that state of the divine inebriation what can we do then we simply enjoy it at that time so the mother just enjoys the the child till the child becomes a little bit older go forward this was a great theme that tucker had in spiritual life we we may think we've made a little progress and then we rest on our laurels but we can't rest on our laurels that until we really get to the top there's nothing very great about going from one rung of the ladder to the next rung unless we get to the roof we haven't uh fulfilled the purpose of climbing the ladder so he says go forward a woodcutter once entered a forest to gather wood a brahmachary said to him go forward he obeyed the injunction and discovered some sandalwood trees now he was a wood cutter cutting ordinary wood firewood sandalwood tree you can sell this and they'll use it for carving and they'll use it for malas and all sorts of things it'll be very valuable very we all know beautiful scent of sandalwood so this was a very great thing he thought ah this is wonderful now i'll become you know very comfortable i can make a little money so he made the injunction discovered some sandalwood trees after a few days he reflected the holy man asked me to go forward he didn't tell me to stop here so he's intelligent he stopped and thought what does he really mean when he says go forward just to get the sandable trees maybe there's something more so he went forward and found a silver mine after a few days he went still farther and discovered a gold mine and next mines of diamonds and precious stones with these he became immensely rich so these spiritual riches will come more and more and more will come we can't feel that because we made a little progress that we've done enough we we get to the next level and then we try again to get higher and higher when we reach the end we'll know when we get to the diamond mine we'll know no one will have to tell us we won't we won't ask do i have to go forward after this we'll know that all doubts are removed at that time through selfless work love of god grows in the heart so he's telling vidyasagar that you should finally reap the fruit of what you've been doing you've been doing this selfless work hopefully it's been without any motive and this should yield the results that you'll find the love of god and how somebody who's leading the life that vidyasagar is leading how will this love of god manifest it's an interesting question huh i think it'll manifest in in love with humanity seeing god in others he's serving others serving others faithfully this should dawn on him at some point that the divine presence within him that is doing all of this and the divine presence within the other that is the beneficiary of it and now there may be other possible ways that this divine love will grow so through selfless work love of god grows in the heart then through his grace one realizes him in course of time this grace is absolutely necessary in every spiritual path some of you may have uh participated in that san diego conference you know where the different speakers were there and then at the end these questions were asked and the swami admiral rupa nani he gave a very nice nice answer which which i fully agree with explaining how grace is necessary in the path of knowledge because we know that the devotee will always feel that grace is necessary but the path of knowledge also why because the one essential thing in the path of knowledge is to transcend this feeling of i to go past this purushakara to go past that level of self-effort and when we get past that level of self-effort and when this ego starts to vanish and die then there's no one there to do anything and we still haven't reached the end so we have to be pulled the rest of the way so that grace comes so it's taqwa gives the example of a huge amount magnetic mountain and we're like a little piece of iron but we're too far away from it we we have to keep walking get closer and closer and closer the closer we get to it the more this feeling of eye will disappear and then when we get to that point where his eye is gone forever and we haven't reached the mountain but we're close enough so that that magnet is strong enough it will pull us the rest of the way the other example i like takoro is always talking about bringing water to the field he must have dozens and dozens of illustrations using this very common uh example of irrigating a field now if the water is at a higher level we're trying to get it to a lower level we dig the the canal the channel and we have a floodgate there we've done all of this very hard work and then all we have to do is lift that floodgate now we don't bring the water to the field the water the the very nature of the water is that it seeks the lower ground that this water itself will flood the field we don't do that that's grace so even for the gyani when we get rid of this ego sense then we're flooded with that illumination with that light so even for the gyani this grace is absolutely necessary so through his grace one realizes him in course of time god can be seen one can talk to him as i am talking to you now i won't make any attempt to give any logical explanation for these things we have to always remember that srama krishna was a mystic that he had experiences that go far beyond the experiences of even an ordinary god relay soul there are some things that are just beyond our ability to understand uh even this this idea of avatar can we really understand that i read a nice thing this morning that swamiji and i hadn't seen this before swamiji used to say that we can understand brahmagyana we can understand the meaning of the knowledge of brahman but this avatar this is the truth of the avatar is beyond our ability to comprehend that means there's something that is the beyond the uh limitations of the mind the mind can only extend only such a different distance now we we true we can't understand the real nature of brahman with this with this mind but we understand the concept of it we may say oh i understand the concept god comes down from heaven to earth but do we really know what that means we don't really know what it means but swamiji is saying that because we don't know what it means does that mean that it's not true no it means that we we simply don't try to explain every every possible thing some things we simply have to accept when the evidence is so clear that a srama krishna or holy mother that they exhibit these qualities that we don't find in ordinary people so we can say well they're extraordinary people avatar this is what we mean sometimes it's completely extraordinary in so many possible ways so through his grace one realizes him of course god can be seen one can talk to him as i am talking to you and now sriami krishna he would talk to the divine mother and the divine mother would talk to him in that ecstatic state or uh we don't even even in the ordinary state sometimes when he's talking he would say i feel as if mother is is providing the words for me to say we don't know what all of this means but he used to say yes i hear the voice of the mother i hear the tinkling of her anklets as she's climbing the roof thing he would say things like that this in his mystic vision it was 100 real to him can we hear it no uh can we reach a state where mother will talk to us maybe maybe taku says it's possible that'll would be this vigna state after this highest type of realization before that we have to be a little cautious is it my own mind is it monebool this is this it's usually translated as hallucination that swamiji used to say about takur this is all bull this is all some funny false ideas uh in his mind in his mind that way when he's he's talking to the divine mother and everything narendra swamiji uh was was really really tough on srama christian in the beginning of course he came to understand that it's all true the understanding that it's true and understanding how it's true these are two different things of course pharmacy himself he felt as if mother held him by the hand as if taka went by his side that he would hear taqwa's words sometimes see him so they had these experiences swami brahman many of them saw me pray manhunter swami permanente shemin on david c takur sometimes walking the grounds in balaramat is it is it bull is it a hallucination or is it is it something real or is it simply the fruits of their tremendous devotion very hard to say in silent wonder they all sat listening to the master's words it seemed to them that the goddess of wisdom herself seated on sriram krsna's tongue was addressing these words not merely merely to vidyasagar but to all humanity for its good now taqwa had some sense and this is a very uh difficult thing to understand because he was so artless he he was so guileless he he didn't have any uh artificiality officiality to him he didn't do anything that oh this will be great and they'll write this down and they'll do that and people will lionize me and everything he didn't have that at all at the same time he he knew that why he was born and what the purpose of his birth was and everything and he knew that m was recording everything now when did he know it from the very very beginning at the very beginning maybe he recognized it and would do it and himself didn't know it at the very beginning we don't have dates and things you know the first couple of visits things like that but we have a very clear indication at some point that tucker knew others tried taruk swami shivananda one day he's looking very intently taco said why are you looking like that and he said i'm trying to remember what you say so i can write it down he said don't bother it's not it's not for you it's not your job and many knew that m was there and so many times that taco some interesting topic would be there and would be someplace else he'd say oh go bring him yeah let him hear this and sometimes you'll ask him did you get that and then he'll say repeat it to me and what did i say the other day so it's clear that he knew that all of this was the welfare of other for others but he had no egotistical feeling he really felt that it was the divine mother who was speaking and that he was just an instrument and this this was the reason for his birth it was nearly nine o'clock in the evening i don't know what time they came in the afternoon it could be hours that it passed and of course no one is aware of the time or anything the master was about to leave master to vidyasagar with a smile the words i have spoken are really superfluous you know all this he was a very brilliant person he'd read all the vedanta and everything he was a great scholar you know all this you simply aren't conscious of it that means that he hasn't really thought uh is this something to be applied in my life personally i know these things are true anybody who reads it simply in gita they simply we we read about this the state of shama the state of where where we transcend this karma yoga anybody reads it they know but how many people actually apply that to their lives so you you simply aren't conscious of it there are countless gems in the coffers of varuna but he himself isn't aware of them vidyasagar with the smile you may say as you like master smiling is that out of humility he said that smiling oh yes there are many wealthy people who don't know the names of all their servants and aren't even aware of many of the precious things in their houses all left everybody was delighted with the master's conversation again addressing vidyasagar he said with the smile please visit the temple garden sometime i mean the garden of rashmani it is a charming place so he's inviting him to his place he doesn't want to say where i live but this is the to the chenishwar to the kali temple to visit him to come to his room to enjoy his company he'll be able to serve him they'll have prasad and everything vidyasagar of course i shall go now he's saying it we'll find out later does he really go or not taco wasn't very pleased that he said that he would you have so kindly come here to see me and shall i not return your visit master visit me okay so remember talk word said come to the garden he doesn't say come to me visit me oh never think of such a thing with the assad why sir why do you say that may i ask you to explain master smiling you see we are like small fishing boats all smile we can fly in small canals and shallow waters and also in big rivers but you are a ship you may run aground on the way all that with the asteroid of the ocean this is this with the title of course he was given the ocean of wisdom but the assad remained silent srama krishna said with a laugh but even a ship can go there at this season so it's a rainy monsoon season vidyasagar yes this is the monsoon season olaf em said to himself this is indeed the monsoon season of newly awakened love now they did establish a very sweet relationship it didn't blossom into anything very special in fact the opposite happened is especially a fallout between m and vidyasagar and then later narendra in vidyasagar so it didn't end that well but at least for for the moment and this happened very often the those who are with srama krishna they felt that the divine presence that joy and bliss and then later they forgot even with hadra it would happen almost daily and some of some of the others who were there yeah that uh the freedom that every once in a while we think ah who am i living with it's a great soul they make pranam to it other times they would think why did they come to this man he doesn't even know if it's a daytime or nighttime he's sitting there and saying oh can i see the hairs can i count the hairs on my arm they don't know if it's at nighttime or daytime they say what this was this was the feeling the first time he saw takur you know not everyone was so impressed the first time that swamiji himself uh he met him in surrender's house he came to sing for him we don't know that he felt any tremendous attraction taku said come see me and he said okay i'll come see you and and he went to see him and everything and gedich had this opposite reaction who is this man well what pretense pretending i don't know if it's day or night so some of them they had to come a second time or a third time others it was the opposite they were greatly impressed and then they left and they thought ah really a little bit crazy so they didn't care to come back too much so people had different reactions this is so m said to himself this is indeed the monsoon season of newly awakened love at such time one doesn't care for prestige or formalities so to see people into in those days everyone was very formal about things you have to offer them food you have to and water for washing their hands this and that you have to see them off you have to offer to pay for the the carriage higher and all these different things but among your own people you don't bother too much srama krishna then took leave of vidyasagar who with his friends escorted the master to the main gate leading the way with a lighted candle in his hand before leaving the room the master prayed for the family's welfare going into an ecstatic mood as he did so now this is a very common thing uh it worked both ways that generally if taco went to somebody's house they would feel that it was a great blessing for the moon this very this very auspicious coming and this idea of this the dust of his feet very often they would say oh now can you come into this room can you walk into that room they want them to go to each and every room so the room will be blessed one of i forget who it was one of the women devotees was it uh golab ma maybe she said now or yoga that now my room has been turned into benares this room anybody who dies here will get liberated they had such a belief so on one hand many of the devotees felt that they would they would be seats rami krishna can you bless the house come into each room listen that uh other times those who weren't even aware of it taco would feel some type of not exactly obligation but some some desire in his heart to go into the different rooms to really as a as a blessing and it wasn't of course an egotistical thing but but he recognized that so uh it was an obligation of a holy man of assad to to bless the family that he goes to visit somehow so before leaving the room the master prayed for the family's welfare going into an ecstatic mood as he did so as soon as the master and the devotees reached the gate they saw an unexpected sight and stood still in front of them was a bearded gentleman a fair complexion aged about 36 he wears clothes like a bengali but on his head was a white turban tied after the fact after the fashion of the sikhs no sooner did he see the master then he felt prostrate before him turbine and all when he stood up the master said who is this see it's it's nine o'clock it's dark out maybe just as some gas lights are there hard to see who is this balarama why so late in the evening now who is in balaram near the balarama booth of course he is one of the most important householder disciples of sri ramakrishna plays a very important role in this leela not only with srama krishna but with the direct disciples after the passing away of srama krishna tucker knew that it was not possible for everyone to come and see him in dakshineshwar it was a bit out of the way in those days so he himself would go into kolkata very often and the place where he stayed the most where he visited the most and spent nights even was about rambos's house it said that he he went a hundred different times hundred different times he went and stayed at barrambosh's house the room where he stayed is now a shrine room uh this is one of the uh wonderful centers of our order [Music] balarambos was a great friend of all of the the disciples his wife was the elder sister of baburam of swami premananda and swami brahmananda used to stay there in in this house swami ramananda was prone to getting malaria and had a fear of getting malaria so in the uh and the rainy season or whatever the malaria season is the he wouldn't stay in baltimore he would stay to brother ambose's house la tumeraj would stay there that swami turian and they would stay there many of them stayed there so it's considered a very very blessed place we call it bhararan mandir so it's really like a temple to go there it's been in a center of the order for many many years the back portion where the ladies of the of the family would stay and where some of the members lived and everything was not a part of the of the order somehow uh only the front portion was acquired by the order to to be used as a center and a very interesting thing that uh there were some proceedings some legal proceedings so that the entire thing could become part of the order and one of our swamis who was a lawyer was the one who argued the case so that that could become part of of the order the swamija kuntanandiji who was a direct uh relative of balaram bush so he was the one most responsible uh for that becoming uh part of the order now it's a very wonderful place i went many many times when when i was in in india for studies one year i used to go with swami lokeshwar in the g he used to go i don't know how often once a month maybe to give a talk there in many many devotees becomes a big house there's so much of kirtan was there taqwa loved him so much he had a wonderful death that at the time of passing his wife krishna bhavani what was her name and his wife saw that a golden chariot came and and took him and ascended with him to heaven so he uh he and a very humble very humble he came from a very orthodox division of a family which is a bit of a problem because they were very worth it activation of families they didn't mix too much outside of the community the division of a community so his father and his brothers they weren't so happy that he was going to this kali worshipper to israeli krishna but they were wealthy they had a place somewhere in erisa they had a place in in vrndaban and very very devoted and dedicated the couple of times that his father went to surami christian and brother also they were also impressed they recognized his greatness but they were entrenched in their own communal feelings so not that they became great devotees or anything but they appreciated what he did still they didn't like this balarama he didn't he didn't participate in any of the work of the family they were they were zamindars they they had a lot of estates to look after and everything so he was look criticized a little bit by the other family members but he didn't mind and he also would take the side of the of the young boys who became monastic disciples on different occasions uh he was speaking recently somewhere to someone about oh with swami ramakrishnan you'll hear that on sunday uh when the the taqwa's ashes were secretly kept apart so that the the young boys future monastic disciples would have it for their worship and the rest was given to uh ramchandra to be kept in the kakurugachi in his garden house uh it was done with the knowledge of of the m and the rambos i think it was done in balaram bush's house even at that time so sometimes we read about the split between the the young monastic disciples and the householder disciples especially during kashipur it wasn't that type of even split that uh some of them and especially in ballarambus especially those two and gides to a certain extent also sometimes would identify more with these young boys than with the householder disciples so the ball around both sees how long he could be hours just standing out there that he didn't want to crash the party so he balarama uh i have been waiting here a long time sir master why didn't you come in mularam all were listening to you i didn't like to disturb you so let's see that humility the master got into the carriage with his companions with the ostagar 2m softly shall i pay the carriage higher just out of a courtesy sometimes it was done they would go someplace and then that would be one of the obligations of the person of the of the host m oh don't bother please it is taken care of vidyasagar and his friends bowed to sramakrishna and the carriage started for the chenishwar but the little group with the venerable vidya cigar at their head holding the lighted candle stood at the gate and gazed after the master until he was out of sight and this ends the very beautiful chapter the visit to vidyasagar next time we'll be in chapter four advice to householders and i will close with the closing chat 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 om shanti shanti shanti peace peace peace be untold thank you everyone