Video 25

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna with Swami Atmajnanananda (09/25/20)

your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and remove all sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of srama krishna we are on the chapter the master and keisha this is page 134 and the date is october 27 1882. you may remember that keshav had showed up unannounced at uh the duchenne ishwar temple on a big steamer and many of the members of the brahmos homage were on it they used to do that from time to time they would have these outings and of course they were thrilled if they could stop and have srama krishna to come that would be the main attraction of course and so this is what happened and just by chance vijay krishna gosvami was uh had come to see srama krishna not knowing about the boat trip he was in the room with him and didn't want to miss the opportunity to be with him so he also went and got on the boat the same time that ramakrishna got on the boat and it was a little bit embarrassing because he and kesha who had of course worked very very closely together and i'm sure had a personal friendship uh had split over the marriage of keshav's daughter to the son of the maharaja of kuchbihar which became a little bit of a scandal it seems there were two different things one is that she was a little bit under the marriageable age and this is a marriageable age that the brahmos themselves themselves had said it wasn't a legal thing he didn't do anything illegal of course but this was one of their big issues that they were against the child marriage so it didn't look very good some people thought a little hypocritical of keshav and they uh they made a principle out of it and they separated and started their own group and vijay krishna goswami became the head of the other group or at least the priest of it and so it was a little embarrassing when the two of them saw each other the other thing is some people objected to the fact that kesha been married his daughter to summit from a different cast now for the brahmos this probably wasn't a big issue because they didn't care too much for these things but we were just reading the other night that who was it huh captain yeah captain was very worth the dr bremen he was worked for the uh the government of nepal he objected to takwego in the ck show keisha mixed with english people and did all sorts of things plus married his daughter to someone from a different cast so but that the real issue was about the age of the daughter takur didn't care too much i think it seems like it was just a few months before the the limit that she had to to reach anyhow that's not very important this is just a little background so they're on the the steamer and they're going up gangan coming back down and no one is aware of anything because of course as soon as tucker goes there he goes into samadhi and then comes down in ecstatic state he uh speaking uh the whole time i mean there's this was the whole purpose really that they would have this company so the steamer had been going toward calcutta so this will be maybe they'd already gone up and they're coming back down now or i don't remember but the passengers with their eyes fixed on the master and their ears given to his nectar-like words were oblivious of its emotion with its temples and gardens was left behind the paddles of the boat churned the waters of the ganges with a murmuring sound but the devotees were indifferent to all this spellbound they looked on a great yogi his face lighted with a divine smile his countenance radiating love his eyes sparkling with joy a man who had renounced all for god and who knew nothing but god unceasing words of wisdom flowed from his lips master the gyanis who adhere to the non-dualistic philosophy of edante say that the acts of creation preservation and destruction the universe itself and all its living beings are the manifestations of shakti the divine power now there's a little footnote says known as maya in the vedanta philosophy footnote is there because this isn't the way typical dwight then would probably describe their view of how the acts of creation preservation and destruction take place this idea of shakti is something which we attribute more to this what what they scolded called the school of the the shaktas the shaktas are not really an official vedantic school as far as i know i don't think there's any commentary or punishable commentary and things like that uh the the different schools of of vedanta will be mostly shankaracharya and then there are four major division of schools they'll they'll be the ones that are considered uh to be uh official because they have commentaries on uh the uh the three pillars of vedanta this was at one time this became the standard you needed to have a commentary on the upanishads in order to be considered a an authentic sampradaya and school of vedanta so the the shaktas were not quite so formal as all of that but they had this this belief that everything is is the manifestation of the divine mother of shakti now there are so many different schools there's something called shakti parinamavada that that it's kind of an evolution or a manifestation of shakti itself why do they say that because the brahman is unchangeable so it's not brahman that undergoes any change but that power of brahmin that will manifest itself is the universe now i just said that it sounds a little bit a little bit off from what the real dweitens will say but the next the next sentence will help us understand that taqwa is really describing quite nicely if you reason it out so this is what first first he's saying that the adoitins will say that all of this is the manifestation of of shakti or the divine power if you reason it out you will realize that all these are as illusory as a dream brahman alone is the reality and all else is unreal even this very shakti is unsubstantial like a dream so we're getting a little bit closer now we have to remember one thing that uh when we talk about the vedantins taco will talk about this very often he he has an interesting type of terminology that he uses he'll say according to vedanta or according to the puranas now what does he mean by that when he says according to vedanta he means according to the gyanis which means the advaitans when he says according to the puranas he's talking about the bhaktas the devotees and either dualistic or qualified non-dualistic but not the strict advaita vedanta now when we talk about the philosophy of the upanishads and when we talk about the philosophy of advaita vedanta we have to understand that dwight vidant is an interpretation of the upanishads as is the shift all of them were interpretations in the upanishads we find a little bit more of a tendency to interpret things realistically we don't find any of this uh the this world is maya that it's like a dream we don't really find that in the upanishads the real non-dualism of the upanishads is the absolute oneness of atman in brahmin or the individual in brahman there's this we find in the uh maharaki is me and the others so from that point of view a very strong case can be made that the upanishads follow this adwaitic non-dualistic position with regard to the nature of the individual individual cells jivatman and the paramatman or brahman that there's there's a oneness when it comes to the theory of creation a little bit more this idea of of projection the chi chakti and a little bit more this idea uh that this creation also has a type of reality and is a manifestation of brahman the mahabharatas are all all deal with the nature of the self in brahman none of them deal with the nature of the universe shankaracharya probably is the one who chose these four which we call mahavakias it's not that the upanishads contained something with a red letter that we read it and say oh here's one of the mahavakis somebody had to choose it there's nothing special um they are special but probably shankaracharya chose that when he founded his dashnami sampradaya and each of the four mahavakias will go with each of the four different pitas matas in in the different parts of india and i'm getting it too complicated here but my point is that one of the great sayings which is not one of the four mahavakyas is sadvam kalvidan brahma that all this this entire universe is a brahman not that the entire universe is imaginary or false or a dream but it's brahman itself but again covered with this this false superimposition of of name uh and uh and form na rupa so so tucker finishes this let me read the first sentence then we'll get the second together the gyanis so gyanis generally and this is just terminology but johnny generally we mean the non-dualist the followers of ramanuja they are also gyanis because they reason things out they use logic but it's just become standard taqwar in most that when we talk about the yanis we mean the non-dualists the gyanis who adhere to the non-dualistic philosophy of vedante say that the acts of creation preservation and destruction the universe itself and all its living beings are in the manifestation of shakti the divine power then he says if you reason to doubt you will realize that all these are as illusory as a dream brahman alone is the reality and all else is unreal now we get to very strict now he's following this advaita vedanta according to shankar shankaracharya very strictly even this very shakti is unsubstantial like a dream now takur is going to explain his position which is that these are positions his position is that these are positions his position is not that uh either you choose that i believe this is true and or this is true each one is a path giotto he doesn't simply refer to the different faith traditions of the world he's referring to the different schools the way down to philosophy also so then he says but though you reason all your life unless you are established in samadhi you cannot go beyond the jurisdiction of shakti now established in samadhi and in samadhi i think taku uses the term shimadisto madisto and generally it means in the state of somalia it doesn't mean a person who is established then it can can go back and fortak was established in it but even when takur was not in that state when he mine came down he was within the realm of maya because he had some sense of i in mind even though there was no attachment to it it was perfectly pure it was a fully ripe ego but even then he would accept uh the this play of shakti and he would accept that is true he would say i see everything as a manifestation of of of the divine mother so it really it's only in that state of samadhi when one transcends everything of the relative universe so but though you reason all your life unless you are established in samadhi you cannot go beyond the jurisdiction of shakti even when you say i am meditating or i am contemplating still you are moving in the realm of shakti within its power and that means within the realm of shakti means that we have some sense of i some ego consciousness is there even though and tucker also says you can reason a thousand times that this i is false it's unreal it's uh insubstantial still the second we stop reasoning it comes back so this this was a a very firm conviction that it's not a question of of what's ultimately an absolutely real or false is the question of where is our mind at the time what is our sense of self-identification it was very very practical when when swamiji gave he gave various definitions of of religion or spiritual life one was that it's a question of being and becoming now the being part will be this absolute truth but the becoming is what we're interested in we have to start if we have some sense of i and some sense of attachment and body consciousness then we have to think that we have to transform we have to change we have to go from point a to point b we're on a spiritual journey at the end we may say that ah we were perfect from the very beginning but to simply say that in the beginning and not do any spiritual practice won't get us to that point so talk was very very practical he says even when you say i am meditating or i am contemplating still you are moving within the realm of shakti within its power so we have to deal with it there is no point in our saying that this world is a dream and then we go about into where we need to satisfy all of our little desires this and that and at the same time say everything else is unreal so there's a type of hypocrisy there and if not hypocrisy then at least uh we're we're not doing anything that will uh take us from point a to point b we're stuck in the being and we're we're overlooking the becoming we want to transform ourselves so now he'll talk from this slightly lower plane because we can't talk from the highest plane the highest plane no one can say anything there's that's that's immersed in brahmin and no one can say anything about that come down this a little bit and then he says thus brahman and shakti are identical now the word they choose is this means they're inseparable slight slight distinction why make a big point about this because this is a little bit similar to the sangki philosophy where we have uh we have this brahman which is called purusha and then we have the shakti which is called prakriti and they are separate nature is dependent upon the purusha but they're two separate categories uh in in vedanta and according to sramakrishnan according to shakhtar philosophy we can't separate them so here i would say inseparable is a little bit closer to the meaning the brahman and shakti are inseparable if you accept one you must accept the other so they're not identical in the sense that there's no distinction because he'll be talking about it like fire and its power to burn we can make a distinction we know fire what that means and we know what a burning power means so they're two separate things but they're they can't be found separately one in here is in the other substance and attribute he says if you see the fire you must recognize its power to burn also you cannot think of fire without its power to burn nor can you think of the power to burn without fire you cannot conceive of the sun's rays without the sun nor can you conceive of the sun without its rays this is a very simple thing for us to understand we have the two categories of substance and attribute so the substance will be the thing itself take a chair we can't conceive of a chair that's not a particular color in a particular shape it has to have them in order to be a chair so it'll have to have a certain color we can't conceive of a color that's not the color of something even if it's just the sky a color can't exist unless it's the attribute of something and a thing can't exist unless it has attributes so this is how taquer conceives of this relationship between brahman and shakti now sometimes when he talks about shakti we'll see he means roman itself he means brahman itself he's not talking about the power that adheres in brahman he's talking about the package brahman and his power together he'll call shakti so we'll see that he'll use it in two different senses so when he says brahmana and shakti are identical he means that consciousness and its power what is the power of consciousness it's called chit shakti there may be different aspects of it but basically it's through the power of of consciousness itself so almost as if we have to bring in this idea of the cosmic mind somehow that brahman will think this world predict this world just as the dream world is projected out of the uh out of the dreamer that there's a power that can project they can take consciousness from an undifferentiated state to a differentiated state to create something that will be real and so far as it's experienced as real if we want to analyze it back into bruhman itself in the consciousness we can do that but from our point of view some separation has taken place between subject and object some separation has taken place between this duration and that means that is to be seen and rashta so they see here in the scene subject and object what is milk like oh you say it is something white you cannot think of the milk without the whiteness and again you cannot think of the whiteness without the milk thus one cannot think of brahmin without shakti or of shakti without brahman now what do the advaitans do with this maya ultimately they explain it in terms of shakti they're helpless there's if if brahman doesn't have some power then then what is it takur says if if a king doesn't doesn't own a kingdom if a king doesn't have the the power to throw people in jail and do all of this then he's not a king this is brahma it has to otherwise it can't become a creator so the brahmin and because the ishwara we think of is the creator but ishwar is nothing but brahman they are not separate things or divine mother or saguna brahman they are not separate things the the power is not always manifest that's the only distinction taco will explain these things so one cannot think of the absolute without the relative or of the relative without the absolute now there are so many different ways of understanding why and how this universe comes into being and they're all for our sake none of them are scientific fully logical and rational explanations because there's no fully logical rational explanation why this universe is the way it is why it is at all why why this was there was a interesting german philosopher named heidegger he said the number one question of philosophy is why is there anything at all why is there not nothing why did brahman stop simply being brahmin and and manifest as this universe was it roman board did brahman want to experience all different ideas was it just a game was it just play for our sake because there's no real answer so tucker has his favorite explanations which again i don't look at them as explanations i look at them as spiritual attitudes which can be very helpful we don't have to think that something is scientifically true for it to be a helpful attitude for us to take so now say the primordial power so this is that adi shakti or mahamaya i don't know what the actual term he's using is but here the primordial power is ever at play she is creating so this is the divine mother creating preserving and destroying in play as it were this as it were is important that uh he's not saying that i'm giving you the final absolute it seems like that that she's doing it as just as lila as a type of play this power is called kali kali is verily brahman and brahman is veronique ali so not the consort of shiva not shiva and kali or any of the other names for the divine mother not shiva and shakti as two halves of the same coin but maybe two but but one reality one in the same so uh yes we give a different name to it that's all because in one we're observing this power at play and the other we're observing this power at rest so kali is very brahman and brahman is verdikali it is one in the same reality so here abhinav really means identical here it's not that the two of them are combined but we're only talking about one thing one entity when we think of it as inactive so now it's us it's my particular attitude when i think of it as inactive that is to say not engaged in the acts of creation preservation and destruction then we call it brahman but when it engages in these activities then we call it kali or shakti the reality is one and the same the difference is in name and form now one thing to to note here is that we call it brahmin when it's not engaged in the acts of creation preservation and destruction is it not brahman during that period also yes but we don't limit it to that so that means that it's uh whenever it's near gone it's also saguna because he's going to have to inherit something which without those gunas would be saguna the the example that i like uh which swami swannanji used to give very very often is that when the when the woman gives birth to the child then she's a mother but she's still a woman that woman part is always there that's the brahman part the mother part is this shakti is that kali that can only exist if the other part is there so brahman doesn't lose it to brahman hood when this is near guna brahman doesn't cease to be near guna brahmin when this this shakti is active when it's projecting the universe and holding up the universe that's always there that remains there unchanged so the sun is the sun there's no question sun doesn't change it's simply the sun but when there's something to to for it to reflect in so that there are a multitude of of living beings then it's not simply that in near gonna brahman sun then it's also saguna and that that power is there it is like water called in different languages by different names now remember this is the example that we taker usually uses and we normally associate with the harmony of religions then all religions will take us to the same goal they call god by different names here he's using it in terms of this relationship between near guna brahman and saguna brahman and to show that the saguna that that the brahman has the source of creation that that is up to us how we want to understand it we can call it the divine mother we can call it shakti we can use any ishwara saguna brahman they can be any of the names that the other religions use for it for the creator god that uh when we talk about the personality and all of that that's partly our understanding that we're projecting on top of it there's nothing absolute about that there's nothing absolute about the name that we choose but each one is fine each one is good each one is helpful and we use the one and the concept that we like best the absolute reality is brahman itself which we can't say anything about so it is like water called in different languages by different names such as jol pani and so forth there are three or four gods on a lake the hindus who drink water in one place call it joel the muslim ones another at another place called pani and the english at the third place call it water all three denote one in the same thing the difference being in the name only in the same way some address the reality as allah some is god some is a brahmana some it's kali and others by such names as jesus durga hadi now the srirami krishna mentions this illustration many many times and and other places will find that he adds something else and that is that they all draw water from the pond in their own type of container so the hindus will have a type of picture the muslims will have a type of pouch the letter leather sack or something they fill water uh christians may take a bucket but they're all accessing it and they can drink it and use it for washing and do all sorts of things with it but it also takes its own shape not just its own name they'll use different names but it takes a different shape so when we when we want to access that and what is the water in the pond that's a brahmin that doesn't require any name or anything it simply is what it is but if we want to access it then we use the container of the mind or the container of the heart and it takes a shape and a form and a name and this is what we worship as the personal god and it's not absolute but it's real because the water is real and the name and the form are secondary but important because they they give it a personal touch for us so this this analogy of drawing water from the from the pond works equally well with all of the different religions and all the and the different schools of edante kesha with a smile described it was sir in how many ways kali the divine mother sports in the world now this will be a little bit of of just uh what we read in in the different uh uh scriptures and uh put on us and and uh other types of scriptures which deal with the the divine mother master with a smile oh she plays in different ways is it is she alone who is known as mahakali nityakali shemashana kali the mother who lives in the cremation ground ali and shyama kali mahakali and nitikali are mentioned in the tantra philosophy they'll have their own texts when they were neither the creation nor the sun the moon the planets and the earth and when darkness was enveloped in darkness then the mother the formless one mahakali the great power was one with mahakala the absolute so this will be our or our brahman whose power is is just in an unmanifest form at that time shamakali has a somewhat tender aspect and is worshiped in the hindu households she is the dispenser of boons and the dispeller of fear people worship ali the protectorists in times of epidemic famine earthquake drought and flood smash is the embodiment of the power of destruction she resides in the cremation ground surrounded by corpses jackals and terrible female spirits so now we're clearly in in the realm of allegory and the quranic type of thinking but for those who are devoted to the worship of the divine mother this gives the mind something to hold on to and everything has its symbolic importance mythology is is not something to be looked down upon there's a tremendous value to mythology it expresses through stories uh concepts and and ideas and stories and symbols that we can understand better than we can logically through the logical mind so it has a tremendous role to play when some people say oh this is a mythological we shouldn't think that that means that it has no value has tremendous value i spoke once in in providence and i was talking about vedic mythology because there's also in the vedas we also and upanishads we also have these are different ideas of of brahma and hiranyagarh and prajapati and sons and everything so somebody got offended and said why do you call it mythology will you call these christian stories mythology and other mythology i said yeah of course they're all mythology but it doesn't he took it as a very negative thing i tried to explain no it's a very positive thing this is you know joseph campbell he he really popularized this idea of the importance of mythology there were others also what is her name uh i forget one one woman writer who did a lot of work on on mythology joseph campbell by the way which was very helpful in the english translation of this gospel of srama krishna that we're reading he was very closely connected with swami nikhilananda at the time whether disciple or not i'm not quite sure but anyhow very devoted to him so this is shawshan kalis mashaana kali resides in the cremation ground surrounded by corpses jackals and terrible female spirits from her mouth flows a stream of blood from her neck hangs a garland of human heads and around her waist is a girdle made of human hands it's a little a little bit similar to our uh bhavatar neither taco used to worship but that's half and half that also has the very uh loving aspect of giving boons and freedom from fear without all the blood coming out of the mouth after the destruction of the universe at the end of a great cycle the divine mother garners the seeds for the next creation she is like the elderly mistress of the house who has a hodgepodge pot in which he keeps different articles for household use all that oh yes housewives have pots like that where they keep sea foam this is master refers to perhaps to the cuddle fish bone found on the seashore the popular belief is that it is hardened sea foam blue pills small bundles of seeds of cucumber pumpkin and gourd and so on they take them out when they want them in the same way after the destruction of the universe my divine mother the embodiment of brahman gathers together the seeds for the next creation after the creation the primal power dwells in the universe itself she brings forth this phenomenal world and then pervades it in the vedas now when taqwa says in the vedas very often he means upanishads because they belong to the vedas in the way this creation is likened to the spider and its web the spider brings the web out of itself and then remains in it god is the container of the universe and also what is contained in it he's both of these now what does this mean that uh if if we think that at the end of creation we'll all get liberation that will go back to brahmin and this universe will go back to its unmanifest form uh we don't get off the hook that easily everything whatever whatever the state of affairs is that will go into some suspended animation and when the next creation comes we also continue with our own karma and all of that that all gets stored somehow now we have this concept of the microcosm and macrocosm so what takes place in this divine play and this divine play between brahman going to sleep for a while and then waking up again takes place within us also this is why we have something called the karanashir karanashira this causal body because when we go to sleep at night everything that was in the mind everything that manifested in the mind as an opinion or a feeling or a tendency all of these things uh they go into this hotpot pot so that when we wake up everything comes back out again the same with the same way that it was before and we're the same person that we were before so this is what happens at the end of this cycle that everything that we see now it goes into some potential form this is what swamiji like to call involution evolution and involution if this everything evolves out and grows into this big tree then when the tree drops a little seed the whole tree is involved in that little seed that means the potential for the tree is in that one little seed so the same thing with this universe at the end everything gets involved taco used to talk sometimes about this anuloma viloma in in that sense involved so that when creation comes again everything will emerge just as it was before that means us particularly for us as individuals then we continue just as we did before only there's a little break which we're not even aware of every uh everything is just suspended animation this is all theory of course we don't know how things really work is kali my divine mother of a black complexion now i mentioned before that takur had a little way of introducing songs he'll introduce a concept and he'll quote a line from the song he'll he'll explain what it means then he'll sing the song it's a very beautiful kind of teaching technique not that he thought it out ahead of time but it was very common the way he did it his colleague my divine mother of a black complexion she appears black because she is viewed from a distance but when intimately known she is no longer so the sky appears blue at a distance but look at it close by and you will find that it has no color the water of the ocean looks blue at a distance but when you go near and take it in your hand you find that it is colorless the master became intoxicated with divine love and saying is calling my mother really black the naked one of blackest hue lights the lotus of the heart this was the song that uh swamiji was heard to sing when he uh left the shrine very final day of his life uh he got up quite early and went into the the shrine room and locked the door so nobody else went in he stayed in for several hours and when he came out they heard him singing the song so probably his final meditation was on this idea of this mysterious play of the divine mother one of the great themes of mother worship is that the the greatest devotees of the divine mother here this is a kamalakantha song iran prasad they all have complete agreement that impossible to know who this divine mother really is they have they've and it's very nice some people may say what's the point of all of this if we don't have answers for anything they say no the very nature of the divine mother that at the very heart of this universe is something very mysterious and this is this is the essence of the worship of god as mother that we want to know mother we want to lie in the lab of mother we don't want to understand all of the things that are impossible for us to understand so uh interesting to me that that was the song that swamiji sang the very last day of his life now this idea of and the distance what taku is saying is that we see god as having a certain form why because there's a distance not real distance there's separation because of the scent of i he explained it this way and not that we're so far away we may be very close we may tucker had visions of the divine mother dwelling within him as close as possible but at a distance means that there was some eye consciousness separating them not as a great distance but we're using that analogy here at a great distance we we may see something with shape and form and color and everything we get closer and closer using the idea of either the sky or water and we see that that water which it looks very green or very blue they can have different colors we take it in our hands we see that it's colorless if you if you ever go to prayag and you see ganges coming from one side and the i'm going to come from the other side you see a slight difference in color one will be a little bit greenish a little bit bluish where you go to see it's you reach a certain age and names don't come to uh kanye kumari and you have the bay of bengal in the indian ocean you also see a slightly different view of the colors of the water but you take in your hand are they equally clear the master continued bondage and liberation are both of her making by her maya worldly people become entangled okay now i make it a point never to say woman in gold because it doesn't sound nice and when taka spoke to women he would he would use the term purusha but i'm going to do it this time because i'm going to read something i'll get to it in a second by her maya worldly people become become entangled in woman in gold that means in the worldly life and again through her grace they attain their liberation she is called the savior and the remover of the bondage that binds one to the world okay now i got this idea because last night we read a very nice passage from ceramic christian the great master lee le peshongo and this is just so we really understand how taco looked upon women sometimes people would think that oh we pick out one or two little things that uh that he said nice that women are all manifestation of the divine mother but how did he really show it in his life uh and uh there's swami shardananda explained wrote one little section here that i want to read about this beautifully sweet relationship that shiramura krishna had with the women devotees huh we read it last night okay if i can find it hmm was it the night before oh come on where is it okay we are unable to express what a sweet relation the master devoid of the slightest tinge of desire had with these chaste and virtuous women devotees many of them knew the master even then as their chosen ideal everyone had that faith in him again some fortunate ones among them knew this directly like gopala's mother through visions etc so they knew the master as more than their own and did not feel any fear or hesitation in his presence when they had prepared any nice food at home in the first instance they set apart a portion of it for the master before using it for the household and either senate or themselves took it to him at dakshineshwar it cannot be calculated how many times these ladies walked to the tu dakshinishwar and back home many of them would never leave the home alone there's a lot of them were very high-class brahmin ladies and and uh was unthinkable for them to go out on their own they would forget everything because of him and then the other members understood it so it cannot be calculated how many times these ladies walk to dakshineshwar and back home during the master's lifetime on some occasions they returned home after sunset on others at 10 pm on still others later than midnight after the kirtan and festival etc were over at the chinese war the master like a boy eagerly consulted some of them regarding the medicine for his stomach trouble if anyone smiled to see him do so he said what do you know she is the wife of a great doctor she cannot but know a few medicines about someone among the among them when he saw her intense love towards him he said she is a gopi perfected by god's grace of some other when he tasted the food cooked by her he said she is a cook of econta she has a perfect hand in cooking and so on then it goes on to say how many times he would always go and visit all of the women devotees it would go to the inner apartment had food with them and they people would hear laughter and then all sorts of things so this is our takur he he had the equal love for the women devotees when he's when he speaks a little strongly it's to develop a little bit of uh dispassion and renunciation to the especially the young boys who we wanted to become monks okay then the master sang the following song and his melodious voice okay this uh reference to kite flying competitions yeah in india not just india i probably came from uh uh from the middle east or at least in afghanistan there was a very nice book that was written about the kite flyer that they would have these contests where uh they would try to cut the string all of the kites will will be flying and they'll they'll even put some uh paste with little sharp edges somehow on the string so that they can do it they can get next to another one and go back and forth and cut it and and so the string will break in and that kite will fly off now in the in the contest the one that flies off is the loser and the one who can cut all of the others and still have his kite and bring it back down is the winner but in this song it's the opposite those are the ones who will get liberated so it's a very beautiful song and the world's busy market place o shama divine mother thou art flying kites high up they soar on the wind of hope held fast by maya string so they're being bound to the world by the string of the of the kite their frames are human skeletons their sails of the three gunas made but all their curious workmanship is merely for ornament upon the kite strings that was rubbed the manja paste of worldliness so it says glue and barley and powdered glass so this is what will cut the other strings so as to make each straining strand all the more sharp and strong out of a hundred thousand kites at best but one or two break free and i'll just laugh and clap thy hands on mother watching them so she really wants to lose the winning from our point of view means that we we remain in the world we remain with our enjoyments and everything for the divine mother it's the opposite she's really happy when somebody gets free when favoring wins as ram prasad the kite set loose will speedily be borne away to the infinite across the sea of the world the master said the divine mother is always playful and sportive this universe is her play so as i say this is the attitude spiritual attitude of worshipers of the divine mother she is self-willed and must always have her own way she is full of bliss she gives freedom to one out of a hundred thousand now it's not fair huh uh why just that one why not us huh so abramo devotee but sir if she likes she can give freedom to all why then has she kept us bound to the world now we can give a hundred thousand different answers oh we have our karma we have our attachments so all of this we can't blame the divine mother but tucker will say that is her will so ichamaya and so she's she's the embodiment she's the embodiment of willfulness this is the attitude that he took that is her will she wants to continue playing with her created beings in a game of hide and seek this is not our hide and seek this is a game where someone will take the part of the of the granny buddy and all of the little children will be blindfolded and they'll be groping around and whoever touches the granny can take off the blindfold so uh if if everybody does it right away then the game's over so she'll she'll try to move away a little bit and make a little difficult for people to touch her in the game of hide and seek the running about soon stops if in the beginning all the players touch the granny so if everybody gets the liberation and every the game stops world comes to an end we need people to keep this play going on if all touch her then how can the game go on that displeases her her pleasure is in continuing the game therefore the poet said this is wrong prasad out of a hundred thousand kites at best but one or two break free and thou dost laugh and clap thy hands o mother watching them then taqwa continues it is as if the divine mother said to the human mind in confidence with the sign from her eye go and enjoy the world huh yeah tucker likes this this idea that mother is very pleased when her child is outside playing with the toy huh very pleased she doesn't she'll do her cooking and everything that's fine let me let my child enjoy the world but as soon as the child gets tired of it and longs for the mother and cries the mother immediately drops everything and comes out takes the child on her lap she's happy either way my child is enjoying things okay the child realizes the world is not so much fun and wants only me i'm right there i'll come immediately so it is as if the divine mother said to the human mind in confidence with a sign from her eye go and enjoy the world how can one blame the mind the mind can disentangle itself from worldliness if through her grace she makes it turn toward herself we're slaves to our own minds and we're born with that mind what we're trying to do uh is is ridded of all the tamas and rajis and and all these bad some scottish we can do a certain amount but uh we're doing it with the help of the mind itself so we don't have that absolute freedom we're using an imperfect instrument to try to perfect that instrument so this is why some grace is is needed however we understand grace only then does it become devoted to the lotus feet of the divine mother whereupon suramar krishna taking upon himself as it were the agonies of all householders saying a song complaining to the divine mother this is called as abhiman this attitude is very typical of worshipers of the divine mother where they'll they'll be in a state of peak that what kind of mother are you look at our helpless condition and what are you doing you're not doing anything it's a very nice type of attitude it indicates intimacy it indicates that that closeness that the deputy has the same closeness that the small child has with its own mother mother this is the grief that surely grieves my heart that even with thee for mother and though i am wide awake there should be a robbery in my house that means that how is it possible that divine treasure of your your very presence is there and yet as if i can't find it as if it's been stolen that i'm looking i don't find it so why did you do that so blaming the mother this is the grief that surely grieves my heart that even with thee for mother and though i am wide awake there should be a robbery in my house many and many a time i vow to call on thee yet when the time for prayer comes round i have forgotten now i see it is all thy trick why because the mind itself is maya is the manifestation of the divine mother as thou has never given so thou receiveth nought so you won't do anything for me i won't do anything for you this is the way the child will will talk am i to blame for this so mother hat's thou but given surely then thou hatched received out of thine own gifts i should have given to thee glory and shame bitter and sweet are thine alone this world is nothing but i play then why o blissful one thus thou cause a rift in it says ram prasad how many songs of ram prasad knew taqwa really looked upon iran prasad as his his ideal that the mother he used to say you revealed yourself to ram prasad why won't you reveal yourself to me before this his vision of in the kali temple says ram prasad thou hast bestowed on me this mind and with the knowing wink of thine eye bidden it at the same time to go and enjoy the world yes my child go enjoy it stick your hand in the fire huh enjoy it stick your hand in the fire it'll have to happen once or twice before you start to understand and so i wander here forlorn through thy creation blasted as it were by someone's evil glance taking the bitter for the sweet taking the unreal for the real the master continued men are deluded through her maya and have become attached to the world says ram prasad thou hast bestowed on me this mind and with the knowing wink of thine eye bidding it at the same time to go and enjoy the world let me stop here we're going to get to a very big question is it possible to realize god without complete renunciation so we will save that for for next time and i will close with our chant om niranjanam [Music] [Music] we bow our heads before srama krishna who is stainless of infinite nature whose heart melts in sympathy for his devotees who is an embodiment of the divine and the supreme lord and ever worthy of our worship [Music] peace peace peace be unto all i thank all of you for joining us for the class hope everyone is well have a good week and we will see you next time thank you