Video 39

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (01/08/21)

[Music] 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 continuing with chapter seven in the master and vijay goswami this was the entry for december 14th 1882 and it was a thursday and we are up to the bottom of page 170. the conversation before this had to do with the realization of god coming when we can transcend this eye consciousness and enter into the higher states of deeper states of meditation and go into somati and vijay is thinking that uh if this is the way to do it then one should follow the path of knowledge the path of devotion may entail keeping this this ego sense using it as a devotee or the child of god or something like that so he had that doubt and i'll just read a little bit before we get to this present portion that we asked the question if well without destroying the eye a man cannot get rid of attachment to the world and consequently cannot experience samadhi then it would be wise for him to follow the path of brahmagyana to attain samadhi if the i persists in the path of devotion then one should rather choose the path of knowledge and i mentioned last time these are all statements that vijay is making but they're not statements they're questions he really wants ramakrishna's opinion on all of this and it brings up a very uh important question for all of us because when we read the gospel sramakrishna we hear so many things about samathi and about god realization and sometimes we get the impression that without attaining to the state of nirvikalpa somati that we won't have god realization we won't become brahmagyanis in ours of brahmin and at the same time we hear srama krishna saying that this is something that's very rare and that in general those who are not special souls those who are not uh what he calls ishwara kotis either divine incarnations or their companions that they won't be able to remain long in the body after attaining to that state of samadhi that will more or less be this passageway from this world to just union with within brahmin so it is very important for us to understand that all of this talk about realizing god and then having 21 days left in that state of samanti this is just for those who follow this one path either the path of knowledge or the path of yoga the the uh scriptures and all of the texts the victory tests like that that uh speak about this path of knowledge and the upanishads themselves don't equate this brahmagyana with nirvikalpa samadhi they'll talk more about some awakening and we'll read cases of viveka to domini the long section where the disciple is more or less describing his enlightenment state it's true he'll say that yes it seems as if the world has disappeared that means the mind has gone into a higher state but still he's aware enough that he can speak and the mind comes down very quickly it seems to be just a momentary thing but it's enough for illumination many traditions have this idea in the japanese zen tradition they use the term satori that'll be an instant awakening it doesn't mean going into deep meditation and remaining there for long hours and perhaps not be able to bring the mind back down again so even the path of knowledge doesn't necessarily or doesn't seem to require this nerve he called this amati uh it may one may through that enter into that but uh more importantly the path of devotion srama krishna will tell us over and over again that we can also attain to the knowledge of brahman we can attain to the state of liberation we can attain to the state of of wisdom knowledge of brahmin through devotion as well so it's understandable because the conversation was in that direction that we just feeling that perhaps this is the only way to do it the only way to really get rid of this eye consciousness is to enter into samanthi and if we can't have ultimate realization and liberation unless we get rid of this i then we should seek for samadhi or follow the path of non-dualism the impersonal absolute path of wisdom as opposed to any other path now it's a big doubt for vidya because he's at a turning point in his life he's still a member of the brahma-samaj but it must have been in his mind at this time to leave uh he had already left the the branch of the brahma-samaj that kesha had founded actually it wasn't a branch at that time it was he and others who left who created a second branch but even after that he wasn't he wasn't comfortable in his own skin he came from a long line of devotees they were all descendants of advaitacharya from the caitanya school and probably in his mind at this time is this idea two things one that he should follow this path of devotion and at the same time should renounce everything so it's a big doubt for him and not a big doubt for us in the sense that we were thinking of making any any big change in our spiritual life or anything but it does represent a point of confusion very often i know that i've struggled with this question there's so many times what is all this talk about striving a whole lifetime to enter into a state where we we merge in god in 21 days the body's gone and that's it this is what it's all about but surrounding krishna will say that very few people are fit even to to tread this path of knowledge and of those who do very few will have the type of realization and that that final samadhi which is the gateway to videhamukti going from liberated in life to absolute liberation with the fall of the body that will come when all of our karma is done also so proud of the karma will have to all be gone at that point or close enough that it can just get kind of destroyed at the very end so anyhow this uh will be very interesting and important for us to hear what shirami krishna says is he going to say yes you made a good point that you have to get rid of the eye the eye can only go in samanthi so you should practice the deep meditation and the path of knowledge but he doesn't say that he says master it is true that one or two can get rid of the eye through samanthi so one or two this will be out of thousands and thousands of all all those who are striving for realization we have the same thing in in gita that out of hundreds and thousands who strive perhaps one will will realize me we have that song out of a hundred thousand kites perhaps but one or two will break free and uh chapter 12 gita of course this is trapped around on bhakti yoga so we expect it but the emphasis will be not on the ineffectiveness of the path of knowledge but the fact that the level of a decade this level of who is qualified is very high for that and those who have some attachment to the body and to other things and uh feel uh that they're the doer and the actor and all of that for them srama krishna will say that the path of devotion is more natural as an easier path a more natural path so he says it is true that one or two can can get rid of the eye through samadhi but these cases are very rare you may indulge in thousands of reasonings but still the eye comes back now this is this curious thing this is why talks about this rascal eye that through reasoning we realize that it's unreal we realize that this eye is just an idea it's just how we look upon ourselves it's a question of false identification at the same time that feeling comes back not that we don't have that same understanding a good example is a total purity he was was so such a perfect perfectly god-realized soul through the path of knowledge that he was above everything without eye consciousness without this identification with the body and the mind in this an ego sense one can't have anger and and envy and desires and all of those things but one day they're sitting there around the dhoni this was this was the highest form of worship for totapuri to light a sacred fire and sit around that fire and practice the spiritual disciplines meditation and reflection and everything so one day ridoi or hazrat one of them one of them came and wanted us to have a smoke and wanted to use the sacred fire to light the little piece of charcoal that will go in the chilom something like that and toto party got furious he said how dare you this is a sacred fire and you want to light your tobacco with that so sram christian laughed he said just now you're telling me this world is unreal that the senses i the eye is non-existent and all of that and you're getting so angry over this small thing so it's a good example that uh this scent of i it comes back to us everybody has an ego this is a great teaching of srirama krishna only for the god realized soul is a very light transparent translucent ego it has no weight to it he calls it ripe fully ripened it's uh everyone else it's a big stick lying on the surface of the water for them it's like a little mark if if you can't even draw a line on the surface of water but something anyhow will give this the appearance of an ego it won't be able to bind but still there'll be some sense of i after god realization srirama krsna says that the god realized soul which he calls the vignani that the vigyani lives in the world with the scent of i and this is the ripe ego it'll be of two types one for the uh for the gyanis like shankar italia it'll be the eye of knowledge so that means that my scent of i will be that i am he i am that i am brahman that type of sense for the devotee the sense of i will be the relationship i and it can take different forms it can be i'm a child of god i am a servant of god uh any of the different attitudes but it'll be a dualistic attitude the non-dualistic attitude still involves some sense of eye i am he the highest type of knowledge will be that brahman alone exists this i am brahman that means there's still some sense of of myself as being one with within brahman so this this ego sense it comes back it's a nice example i like this is from a completely different tradition but the existentialist tradition jean-paul sartre he was a wonderful i think a brilliant thinker i studied him in my pre-vedanta days he was a philosophy student he called this ego he said this ego is like a thief that after a big robbery will go into the tavern and be bragging about all of his exploits how he did this and climbed up and broke through the window and all of that and then as soon as he hears the police are coming then he runs out the back door and hides from them as soon as he hears the police have left he goes back in again so talker says ramana maharshi says a similar thing as long as we're looking we try to look for this eye we can't find it the second we stop looking it pops up now how can something that's unreal pop up this is maya we can't explain it exactly but there's an old way of thinking it comes right right back in so this is what talk was saying you may indulge in thousands of reasoning very good reasoning that we can we can have a very perfect understanding that this sense of i comes from falsely identifying the real self which is impersonal which is the witness with the objects that it is observing namely the the mind the contents of the mind and the ego and the personality to a certain extent the body in the senses that that process gives rise to this eye sense in viveka to domini this is uh attributed to this vigyanamayakosha this vignana myocochia that means this ability of the mind to reflect it can reflection can give a positive result and a negative result when i reflect on this whole process of of of action i come to the conclusion that i did it now uh is it true from a psychological point of view uh from a very high high point of view uh if this i doesn't exist then then i can't be the doer impossible if it's a phantom if it's just it has a phenomenal existence an apparent existence not a real existence then this this doership can't be true either so we can have this do all of the perform all of this very very deep and avid antic type of reasoning and be convinced that there's no ultimate substance behind this feeling of i and at the same time the very next moment somebody criticizes us and we get our feelings hurt someone praises us we get puffed up it keeps coming back this is a human condition not too much we can do very few people will go beyond this they'll be very rare souls that those who don't can also be fully god realized souls only they won't be affected the same way that others are affected everything with them is just the the appearance of an ego and some old some scottish may still be at work tucker says suppose you dream you're being chased by a tiger and this moment you wake up you realize there was no tiger he said but still your heart will beat for a while that means that old way of thinking that old fear that old misconception that the tiger was real that will remain for some time maybe through out the lifetime but deep down we know that there's really no tiger so it doesn't that that pumping of the heart doesn't give us that real feeling of fear that it normally would okay you may indulge in thousands of reasonings but still the eye comes back you may cut the people tree to the very root today but you will notice a sprout springing up tomorrow therefore if the eye must remain and what he's saying is that for almost everyone this i will remain in some form if this i must remain let the rascal remain as the servant i so what he's telling vijay is no don't think that everything i said before means that you should follow the path of knowledge the path of knowledge may obliterate this ego momentarily at least the path of devotion can transform the ego can ripen the ego so there are two ways of doing it uh one is to convince ourselves that uh this incentive eye is false and the other is to say that well my current sense of i my current feeling i of identification is uh with this lower self is with superficial things and i know i don't have the strength of mind or the understanding or anything to just tell myself no that's wrong that's false so what can i do let me identify with something else and let that counteract let that be the remedy for this so let me think of myself if i'm a child of god then the divine mother is my real mother not in the physical sense with his physical body but in a spiritual sense so that i as a spiritual i am thinking of myself in terms of spirit not in terms of body so that should counteract this body consciousness this identification so he says therefore if the eye must remain let the rascal remain as the servant i as long as you live you should say o god thou art the master and i am thy servant now he's telling vijay something that will will be very pleasing to him because and paquin knew it taco is the one who told him look you've been trying trying to squeeze squeeze yourself into the brahma so much you've been trying to take uh uh a square peg and put it in a round hole it doesn't work that your nature is that of a of a bhakta of a devotee this is this is really for you everything else he said before that was true and what he'll say is that this is another way of getting rid of that eye consciousness or at least that harmful eye that rascal eye the eye that's that's representing uh bondage for us so as long as you live you should say oh god thou art the master and i am thy servant the i that feels i am the servant of god i am his devotee does not injure one now he's going to go further not only doesn't it injure one but it saves one sweet things cause acidity of the stomach no doubt but sugar candy is an exception talker many times gives this example other examples also he says that these things cause acidity but this very refined sugar mitri he says not only doesn't it cause acidity it will counteract acidity it will be the remedy for it so if somebody says that uh this i that you're talking about is also uh within maya is also false identification then tako would say you're right it falls within maya but this is videmia and the others of idemaya the the thorn that we use to pull out the thorn that's stuck in our foot it's also a thorn we know that but this is the one that will eliminate the other one what if we if we get that thorn in the foot and we just go about saying uh there's no thorn in my foot huh it won't do much good unless we really have the tremendous ability to think no the even this foot is not real this is not me the taco says one time that you have a headache and you want to tell yourself there's no headache you have to say there's no head we have to go through the whole thing but why not take the help of a second thorn which is also a thorn but one which can remove the first one and then we throw both of them away so we we get rid of avid nehemiah this this illusion of ignorance with the help of vidyamaya some positive type of aid which also falls within maya and then we can go beyond both of them going beyond both of them means that we go from the last rung of the ladder to the roof the path of knowledge is very difficult now why do we study so much of the path of knowledge yoga swamiji spent so much time with all of that the upanishads are filled with it we have all of our ashtavakra sambita vivek all of the different texts that we study we do that because we need this foundation we need this deeper understanding when we talk about the path of knowledge in this sense we're talking about an exclusive path of knowledge without relying at all on anything that smacks of maya what what we do in our tradition and what srama krishna really taught was get a foundation of a duit vedanta tie it in the corner of your cloth that means have it there keep it with you but have something else that can be a practical help in your spiritual life the the path of devotion that tak were taught was really based on the foundation of oneness same thing with swamiji he said in the path of devotion we all start out as a duelist we get closer and closer and closer and we realize uh our oneness with the object of our love and this love is like a rope that we can use to pull ourselves closer and closer and closer then we retain that state of union and that state of oneness so uh unless we start out with some idea if we start out with this idea that i'm eternally separate from god god is someplace far off we won't be able to practice the path of devotion the way taqwa wants us to to feel that god dwells within is our very own self this is the highest type of knowledge and one way to realize it is to feel as long as that stick of ego is there i'm on one side god is on the other to feel that uh i can form a relationship and through that realize my oneness why won't the the small wave in the ocean feel the reverence for the entire ocean or for a huge wave we can say the huge wave is the avatar which is the only way that we can have some conception of the grandeur of the whole ocean otherwise it's too big somebody says try to try to imagine uh the power and strength of the entire ocean it's too much the mind can't handle that but then somebody says oh look there's a huge wave and then we could say ah so now i see even in that one wave what power the ocean must have so this will be the avatar swamiji says in one place even uh christ and buddha and others these were just huge waves or huge whirlpools and there's an ocean of consciousness so uh when he says the path of knowledge is very difficult that doesn't mean that we shouldn't use reasoning we have to talk who says that constantly reason regarding the nature of the self otherwise we fall into that old trap we identify with uh with our old some scatters this is the real problem not so much identifying with the body we identify with what we call the personality and that means with all of my traits and and of course it involves things like all of my possessions and everything but mostly i identify with uh with a certain set of qualities that i feel myself to have a certain type of nature and personality this is a real false identification is true from a practical point of view but it keeps us bound to this to this uh world of maya so we have to try to transcend that so uh we shouldn't think that taqwa is saying the path of knowledge is very difficult don't engage in any of this type of reasoning give up this idea that this eye is some somehow the result of maya he said understand that it's the result of maya and because of that understand that you can mold it and twist it and give it a different direction and utilize it so this is why they they use the term gyana misra bhakti gana misra bhakti i don't know who coined it if thakur himself uses it or others but it really means the path of devotion which is combined with knowledge and really based on enground and on knowledge so that has to be there he's not telling us the path of knowledge is very difficult he's not telling us don't try to understand these things he's saying to exclusively follow that path which means having no interest in anything short of the impersonal absolute brahmin and perfect oneness and to a certain extent to a certain extent uh this idea that this world is unreal now we can follow there are many ways to follow the path of knowledge uh and looking upon this world as a manifestation of the divine but many of the schools following shankar italia will emphasize the other side more that look upon this world as a kind of dream and for most of us very difficult it seems so real to us so i would i would say when he says the path of knowledge is very difficult i would add in a little footnote to follow the path of knowledge exclusively is very difficult but utilize it we can say the same thing with raja yoga very few of us are qualified to simply follow this path of long hours of deep meditation which will lead to higher and higher states and ultimately does that mean we don't practice meditation no we get whatever we can from the study of raja yoga and we utilize that in our devotional type of meditation in the kali yuga the life of man is centered on food he cannot get rid of the feeling that he is the body and the ego therefore the path of devotion is prescribed for this cycle srama krishna he emphasis emphasized this idea we don't have to take it very literally this idea of kali yuga and the other yugas the point is that if we have this body consciousness and we have this sense of identification with the the ego he says body and ego these are the two things that means this this lower ego that means with this feeling of of personality if we have that then it's very hard for us to uh to follow this path of knowledge so he says therefore the path of devotion is prescribed for this cycle so this is yeah this idea of kali yuga this simply means that in this present age and maybe it's always been like this there's a greater tendency for us to take everything as real to identify very much with this this physical body in fact sometimes i think what nonsense how can we not identify with it we're it's following us wherever we go and it's covering us and we have to look through the eyes in order to see outside how can we not be identified with it only those who can raise the mind to higher states and can experience themselves as as as the self they can get beyond this otherwise uh it's it's mostly just in the intellectual activity it's not a bad activity i'm saying but uh it's it's something that in this present age [Music] goes this goes to a theory that in the earlier ages that these riches had the ability to spend 24 hours a day in meditation and they could be detached from everything the gita gives us a very important understanding of this it uses this term dehawat he's the the sri krishna says that uh for those who are they has two meanings it means possessed of a body and shankaracharya takes it also as meaning is those who have body consciousness so those who are very attached to the body now if we if we're very honest with ourselves we really won't find too much difference everybody has a body and everybody's attached the attachment part there's a gradation there some have a very light type of attachment not just to their body but to the world they don't feel very much attached to possessions or to people they're born with a certain type of freedom and and detachment and renunciation and these are really the keys to following the path of knowledge it's not a question of this a decada question are we intelligent enough to follow the path of knowledge it's not that are we detached enough do we have enough uh stern renunciation and a feeling that there's nothing in this world for me i want to go deep within i want to go within i don't want to let the mind be scattered out relief we have to have a very deep feeling and conviction about the reality of the inner world and not much interest in other things this is why it's always traditionally always been associated with the path of of monasticism renunciation that the monks were the ones who were supposed to follow this is a path of knowledge they were the ones who were supposed to say no i don't care for this world i don't care for family for children for job for enjoyment or anything i just want to go deep within among the direct disciples of srama krishna swamiji was the only one that taqwa really pushed this path of of of knowledge a little bit swami turiyananda a little bit swami abhidananda but for the others it would be this mixture very nice mixture of knowledge and devotion now takara knew that swamiji had the heart of a devotee so he was just trying to to develop that other side but he knew that the swamiji was fully rounded of course and in all of the four yogas he was the perfect ideal of all four yogas so therefore the path of devotion is prescribed for this cycle this is an easy path now very often taku will add the path of devotion is easy but not all that easy don't think that i say okay now i'll just be a devotee and everything will go very smoothly there'll be no problems in life i'll easily have god realization i'll go into higher and higher states of ecstasy it's a relatively easy path compared to the very stern path of of knowledge and renunciation it's like saying to somebody if you want to scale mount everest huh you don't want to go around the the path or anything like the deepest face of mount everest uh it'll be very very difficult it's relatively easy if you if you follow the other path the sharpest will tell you and everything but how easy is it to climb mount everest huh it's not so easy so he says it's an easy path he's probably laughing when he says that so it's an easy path to follow relatively but to have god realization there's no easy there's no shortcut to god realization it's easy this word easy it means it means natural also it has both meanings that the why is the path of devotion easy and natural because we all know what relationships are we have them no one is born without having some type of family situation even an orphan we'll have adopted parents perhaps or brothers and sisters but in general we all know that we all know what it means to have attachment we all know what it means to love someone so we utilize all of these things that are natural to us the human the human beings have this ability to to feel to feel emotions even even anger and jealousy and all of these can be used in the path of devotion so these are natural to us social hoods so this is why he says easy pests is a natural path it's not it's not swimming up against the current it's not trying to constantly fight against with a strong wind coming in her face it's going with the wind anukul how uh tucker uses this expression as my favorite expression in the entire gospel the favorable wind when when we can just raise the sail and and the wind is directly behind us and we don't have to go back and forth we can go straight there so this is utilizing all of these things so that everything becomes favorable to us so this is a easy path so i'm adding two things when he says that the path of knowledge is very difficult i'll say the exclusive path of knowledge is relatively very difficult and when he says path of devotion is an easy path i'll say compared to the path of knowledge it's an easy path and natural path easier for most people if one is qualified for the path of knowledge then it's better this is not a question of of uh that he's fanatic about the path of devotion he's a realist taka was a realist if anybody came who he felt was suited for worship of one kind or another kind he would push them in that direction he would help him in that direction he he had no agenda that i want to see everyone become a bhakta he had no agenda that way and remember he's talking to vijay who later becomes a great kind of ecstatic type of bhakta with kirtan and singing and dancing and everything you will detain god if you sing his name and glories and pray to him with the longing heart there is not the least doubt about it and i don't know that much about his life but the vijay krishna gosvami was considered to be a very great saint later many books were written about him and many he had many followers disciples i don't know followers but he would consider to be very highly ungodly soul in in later days suppose you draw a line on the surface of water with the bamboo stick and now we can do it on the ground but can we draw a line with it with the stick on the surface of water not any or we try to imagine what it's like that it can't really have any substance to it suppose you draw a line in the surface of water with a bamboo stick the water appears to be divided into two parts but the line doesn't remain for any length of time the servant i or the devotee eye of the child eye is only a line drawn with the ego and is not real so what what a perfect combination of knowledge and devotion that the the typical devotee uh in most of the traditions in not only in india but in the western religions is a dualist and don't think that the dualist is a dirty word we have people in vedanta who say ah that dualistic as as if you've uh your mouth should be washed out with soap how can you say it that's dualistic there's nothing wrong with dualism unless one is fanatical about it and one says no it's impossible for the individual soul to ever be become one with god or problem with dualism is that it leads to a type of realism that they can say that yes god is to be worshipped this way and not that way this is this is the problem with it that it leads to some type of fanaticism but the dualistic attitude also leads to a tremendous devotion so it should be utilized but look what taku is doing he's saying utilize this i utilize this ego sense in order to have the highest realization at the same time understand that it's creating a false distinction a false division that i am feeling myself to be a child of the divine mother but i know that it's only as long as this feeling of i remains once that disappears then there's no distinction between child and mother there can't be then only the mother exists the brahman alone exists in that point when this ego dies then we can't say i am that humble that has to be from a lower point of view when this the ego dies we can't say anything but there's certainly no feeling that oh now i've realized bruhman that that even that type of eye can't be there coming down it can be there afterwards but so tako is saying that this line doesn't remain for any length of time that means that this feeling of separation this feeling of separation is something which is helpful in the beginning in order to establish this feeling of love because this feeling of love is what purifies the heart and gets rid of all of the other bed tendencies and things that plays a very crucial role so this this video maya we can't we can't eliminate this step we we have to admit the crucial role of the second thorn to take out the first thorn we we won't go and cling to that second thorn and worship it we'll throw it away it served its purpose that's why this line doesn't last long if this line were so necessary this ego then we would want a permanent line but there is no permanent line so let me read this again this taco he'll use this illustration over and over again but we have to understand the subtlety of his mind how brilliant taku's mind was we we sometimes think that oswamiji was the real real gigantic intellect of course he was but compared to takur nobody was a gigantic intellect his understanding was so subtle and his way of explaining things so brilliant so let me read this again suppose you draw a line on the surface of water with a bamboo stick this will be the ego the creation of this ego the water appears to be divided into two parts that means i'm on one side and god is on the other side or even other individuals or on the other side some sense of separation is there but the line doesn't remain for any length of time that means this will this will lead us to this the feeling of oneness the servant i or the devotee i or the child i or any other whatever attitude we have is only a line drawn with the ego and is not real now look at this he's saying the servant i is a line drawn with the ego that's also into the eye we could say the servant ego the line drawing with the ego so what does that mean it means that right now i have a certain understanding of who i am and it's within my realm of possibility to decide how i want to look upon myself so this i that is falsely identified with the body will decide to adopt this other type of ego the servant ego or child ego uh in order to utilize it so that it's no longer a big stump that's in for that's grown up in front of of the door of the house prevents me from getting in it becomes a very light and helpful type of eye so the servant eye or devotee our child eye is only a line drawn with the ego say i and ego they're the same and it's not real that means the mind is working on the mind we we ourselves are our own best friend and our own worst enemy very wonderful idea from gita vijay to the master sir you ask us to renounce the wicked eye okay this wicked eye is the one that gets offended so easily and has all the desires and has selfishness and wants to get things and hoard things and own things and uh feel proud about things and and try to put other people down this is this is the eye that functions uh automatically unless we make some attempt of course some people are born with good some scars i shouldn't say automatically but for most of us uh this lower eye which is so identified with the body and the mind of the senses it becomes very self-protective and it becomes fearful and it becomes jealous and angry and envious of all of these things so this is the wicked eye we all want to give up giving up the wicked eye means giving up pride and giving up all of the passions because they're all connected with the eye you ask so vijay to the master so you ask us to renounce the wicked eye is there any harm in the servant eye so tucker has actually answered this question already vijay wants it clarified a little bit he has a slight confusion but tucker has already told him that this other eye belongs to the vidyamayan is very helpful that's the the maturity that's the the sugar candy and it gets rid of the bile or acidity master the servant i that is the feeling i am the servant of god now look what he's saying what is the i it's nothing but a feeling it's not a real thing this sankia idea that a homkata is something real is a very on some level harmful idea and vedanta doesn't really speak of this ego in the same way that sankhya does for sankia it's kind of a structure within consciousness that we have memory we have chitta then we have the functioning of the mind and then we have good tea which will make decisions we have all of these different things and a hong kong this scent of i it right onto the scent of i doesn't have the same reality of the other things it's uh it's really we can trace it back to the buddhi there's a buddhi somehow creates this feeling i lower animals don't have the same type of feeling of eye they can function with the mind they can do things they can react to things but they they won't have this feeling of who are you to telling me to do that who are you to keep me from climbing up in your roof and going into your attic and doing all they won't have that same type of eye because this vigna maya kosher the booty isn't developed in them anyhow however it comes this i comes this sense of i so takwa says uh the servant i that is the feeling i am the servant of god i am the devotee of god does not injure one on the contrary this is what i was saying before on the contrary it helps one to realize god so someone can be a stickler and say what are you doing you're replacing one falsehood with another falsehood but it's a good falsehood i've told the story before many of you know the story it's a nice story it's uh something that was uh i read first and uh the mind in its control i think swami buddha swami was in this country for some time but then he went back he was in charge of the delhi center and he already wrote his very nice book and he tells a story of a man who's walking down the street with a basket under his arm and he happens to meet a friend and the friend says what are you doing and he says i'm on my way to a party and he said what i see you have that basket there what's in your basket and he said well let me explain you know when i go to these parties there's a drinking there and you know i can't control drinking i drink too much i have a problem with that and whenever i drink too much i see snakes everywhere so he said that that's why i have this basket with a mongoose there to scare away the snakes so then the friend says what kind of a fool are you that how can a real mongoose scare away imaginary snakes so then the man opens his basket and he's and is empty and he says i'm not such a fool as you think my mongoose is also an imaginary mongoose so the imaginary mongoose that means this uh servant eye child eye it's also not a hundred percent real is a creation of the imagination uh but the positive imagination and this gets rid of the snakes which is that unripe ego it's a very beautiful illustration so on the contrary it helps one to realize god it'll get rid of the snakes and then we know that that mongoose it'll disappear along with the snakes we'll go beyond both we'll throw away both thorns vijay well sir what becomes of the lust anger and other passions of one who keeps the servant i okay now takura he'll give a nice uh answer to this so let me read this first master if a man truly feels like that then he is only the semblance of lust anger and the like because everything goes back if we analyze this feeling of lust this feeling of anger greed jealousy covetedness possession of all of these things they don't exist without this clinging to this this body consciousness and this and this ego sense this personality if we get rid of that we transform that then the other things become transformed the second answer which takur gives in many other places is that we can also utilize these lust anger other passions and give them a twist he said if if it's impossible if it's impossible to get rid of the eye then it's also impossible to get rid of the passions in the same way in the same way but just as the eye can be transformed the passion can be transformed in fact in spiritual life we need passion is nothing but passion we need this tremendous passion for god realization and if we see somebody who has attained something higher we see someone who has been able to renounce everything someone who has a very smooth path and a spiritual life we should feel some sense of of of envy uh wouldn't it be nice if i could do that i also have a longing to do that i have that desire to do it these are all positive ways that these passions can be utilized but what he's saying taquer is saying here is that there's no binding power to these things we may feel them and it may appear to others that we have them but it won't be the same for the devotee there's a good test we think we're good devotees we have to see to what extent are we slaves to the to the passions that's a very good test for us so taqwa says if a man truly feels like that then he has only the semblance of lust to anger and the like if after attaining god now he's saying if after attending god now this is where the passions will all be completely transformed they'll be burnt up they'll just be the appearance of them if after attaining god he looks on himself as the servant or the devotee of god now we should understand that there are two different types of ripe ego the one is is what we adopt and which we we actively try to superimpose on our understanding that every time that we feel that uh i don't you know who i am the diamond intelligent person i have this much money that every time we have that feeling we try to superimpose this other feeling i'm a child of god child of the divine mother i'm a servant of god this is utilizing the concept of the ripe ego the other way taco uses ripe ego is after god realization when one comes down enters into the state of vignana then one lives in the world with his ripe ego which is not a question of imagination anymore then one really feels yes i'm nothing but a child of the divine mother i'm nothing but a wave in this ocean of consciousness so he says if there after attaining god so this other type of ripe ego if after attaining god he looks on himself as the servant or the devotee of god then he cannot injure anyone by touching the philosopher's stone the sword is turned into gold it keeps the appearance of a sword but cannot injure this philosopher's stone was supposed to take any base metal so we have steel you can kill somebody you can go like that and the head will come off but gold a very soft metal it can't be used to fight if you try to fight uh have a duel with somebody they'll slice right through that gold sword it can't be used to injure anybody but it looks like a sword the other example i like very much taco says if there's a string on the ground and it has its curves and everything and you light it on set it on fire and the whole thing burns and it leaves a trail of powder of ash that'll have the same curves it'll from a distance it may even look like the string is still there but he said you go up and puff on it he said the whole thing disappears there's no substance to it anymore there's nothing no binding power it can't be used to bind anything especially ourselves when the dry branch of a coconut palm drops to the ground it leaves only a mark on the trunk indicating that once there was a branch at that place this is a beautiful example huh so we can see with the god realized soul that yes at one time this feeling of i was there but it's been completely that that bojada me this rascal is is gone it's fallen off we may see that there's a place where it once was almost like a scar in the hand something like that but it's not there anymore so when the dry branch have a coconut palm drops to the ground it leaves only a mark on the trunk indicating that once there was a branch at that place in like manner he was attained god keeps only an appearance of ego there remains in him only a semblance of anger and lust he becomes like a child a child is no attachment to the three gunas sattva rajas and thomas he becomes as quickly detached from a thing as he becomes attached to it now we shouldn't we know children aren't angels they have their real anger and things but you know tacos point into a certain special qualities the children have they pick up one thing and they it's so important to them then they drop it they go to something else they don't have that same type of attachment that we have he becomes as quickly detached from a thing as he becomes attached to it you can cajole him out of a cloth worth five rupees with a doll worth an anna though at first he may say with great determination no i won't give it to you my daddy bought it for me again all persons are the same to a child he has no feeling of high and low in regard to persons so he doesn't discriminate about caste these are all signs of of the gyani the same sightedness and there's a detachment all of these things are signs that children have up to a certain age and then as they become closer to adulthood all of these things naturally come along with it if his mother tells him that a particular man should be regarded as an elder brother the child will eat from the same plate with him though the man may belong to the low caste of a blacksmith the child doesn't know hate or what is holy or unholy even after attaining samadhi some retain the servant ego or the devotee ego now normally as i say we associate samadhi with the path of knowledge and after realizing see the type of ego that one maintains in the state of vignana normally we understand will be the same type of ego that one adopted on the way up so we go up to the roof with this feeling that i am roman then come down the ripe eagle we'll have that really said yes i am roman and if one goes up with this feeling i'm a child of god may i realize the divine mother one gets up to the top and realizes the divine mother as one's very own self and comes down and that relationship will be that way so if taqwa says after attaining samadhi some retain the servant ego or the devotee ego that means that one can attain samadhi by adopting the serving the ego or the devotee ego so and he says that many times even through the path of devotion one can attain uh samantha uh brahmagyana the higher states of consciousness one can get to the roof but fear of of going to this deep nearby samadhi and remaining 21 days and giving up the body is not necessarily there it'll maybe a different type of thing these are all sometimes i think vain speculation on our part what taqwa really meant by all of these things very hard to know so even after attending samadhi some retain the servant ego or the devotee ego the bhakta keeps this i consciousness he says o god thou art the master and i am thy servant taqwa says many times coming back from samadhi one has to cling to some sense of i that something has to uh keep that mind from from going back up it's like a helium balloon unless you tie it down it'll go right up to the ceiling that was takwa's mind so he said because of that that one has to establish a relationship and in his case he said the two things that kept his mind down so this feeling of devotion and the company of devotees these were the two things that taku utilized other mind is especially they say after his long period of nirvikalpu samadhi and after totopuri left when there weren't too many people around that they would see whenever he wasn't engaged in something eating or doing something he would mine would go straight up he would be so detached and withdrawn from everything so he had to fight to keep that mind down so he says oh god thou art the master and i am thy servant thou art the lord and i am thy devotee he feels that way even after the realization of god his eye is not completely effaced because he has to cling to this eye it is is if we live in the body even if even if my sense of i is not this not that even it said i am not this body of mind that's still a sense of i we can't talk to people we can't do anything unless there's some semblance of i some sense of eye but it's not this ahamkar is not with his pride in this heavy eye so his eye is not completely effaced again but constantly practicing this kind of eye consciousness one ultimately attains god so he's talking about this this type of eye consciousness as the cause and the effect it's the means by which we get to the roof and it's what we resort to again after coming back down both so again by constantly practicing this kind of eye consciousness that means that it's not 100 real to me i say i'm the child of the divine mother what does it mean to me it means something but not the same as after god's realization so one it ultimately attains god this is called bhakti yoga and then it becomes a natural attitude that eyed one can attain the knowledge of brahman too by following the path of bhakti so this is all to tell the uh says vijay no don't think that you have to spend all of your your time in deep meditation you can sing and dance and also have that realization god is all-powerful he may give his devotee brahmagyano also if he so wills but the devotee generally doesn't seek the knowledge of the absolute because he wants that enjoyment which which requires a little bit of this this line of ego some separation he would rather have the consciousness that god is the master and he the servant or the god is the divine mother and he the child this is why taqwa will stop here because a very nice end of this conversation talk were very often quoted and we'll probably get it next time there's a beautiful song of ram prasad where he says that i don't want to become sugar i want to taste sugar i love to taste sugar he says so i don't want to become sugar this means that well i understand that not only is that possible but this is the ultimate result the ultimate truth i am one with that but i'd rather keep enough sense of separation so there can be this dualism between the enjoyer and the object of enjoyment at least that much and that allows one to live in the world as a devotee of god so let us stop here and i will close with our chant [Music] [Music] is [Music] we bow our heads before srama krishna 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 so i thank all of you for joining us for this section session and we will see you next time