Video 41

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (01/22/21)

[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 good evening everyone welcome to our class on the gospel of srama krishna we are on chapter 7 this is the master and vijay goswami and we're on page 174 this chapter covers several different days i think three different visits the first two we see swami krishna and rakal and vijay krishna goswami and for some reason this third entry this is monday january 1st 1883 we don't find krishna goswami here so some somehow i don't know if he's there and he simply doesn't say anything uh or if uh this was just added it wasn't long enough for its own separate chapter but in any event this is the first entry that we have in the year of 1883 january 1st so what starts out at 8 o'clock in the morning sriamakrishna was seated on a mat spread on the floor of his room at dakshineshwar since it was a cold day he had wrapped his body in his moleskin shawl prana krishna and em were seated in front of him raquel ii was in the room prana krsna was a high government official and lived in calcutta since he had no offspring by his first wife with her permission he had married a second time by the second wife he had a son because he was rather stout the master addressed him now and then as the fat brahman he had great respect for srama krishna though a householder prana krishna studied the vedanta and had been heard to say brahman alone is real and the world illusory i am he the master used to say to him in the kali yuga the life of a man depends on food the path of devotion prescribed by narada is the best for this age we had a long discussion about this earlier because this was also the question that ability krishna gosvami was asking srama krishna which is better the path of devotion or the path of knowledge so this is this is advice that taqwa would give specifically to certain people and just in in general in general he would also say that the path of devotion is better there's a sandwich verse that uh attributes a different type of of worship and and spiritual attitude according to the different yugas so this uh is what is described in the kali yuga that means that we have a materialistic attitude it's not simply depending on food but this under my kosher everything exterior external the mind is outgoing that we have our attachments this is the main reason why uh the path of knowledge is is more difficult a deputy had brought a basket of jalipi for the master this was his favorite suite and there's a very famous sweet meat uh jillipi shop in kamar pakura i think the same one is still there from tucker's time and he used to love these jalibis they're very nice they look like pretzels used they uh fry them in an oil then soak them up in syrup and they're very crispy and very nice eating a bit of the sweets he said to prank krishna oh sorry the devotee had brought a basket of dilipi for the master which the latter kept by his side eating a bit of the sweets he said dupran krishna with a smile you see i chant the name of the divine mother so i get all these good things to eat laughter but she doesn't give such fruits as gourd or pumpkin she bestows the fruit of amrita immortality that is knowledge love discrimination renunciation and so forth a boy six or seven years old entered the room the master himself became like a child he covered the contents of the basket with the palm of his hand as a child does to conceal sweets from another child lest the latter should snatch them then he put the basket aside this was something that they saw very often with takur that when children would come he would become just like them and he used to say that the paramahamsa is like a five-year-old boy and he likes to keep children around because their mind is on the same wavelength in certain areas rakal swami brahmananda who was the spiritual son of sriami krishna and was supposed to have been the one who resembled him most in his spiritual attitude and his uh his visions and everything even they say in his appearance a little bit uh also was like that as soon as little children would come he would play games with them and become just like one of them so he's playing with this uh this little boy and then all of a sudden the master went into samantha and said thus a long time his body was transfixed his eyes wide open and unwinking his breathing hardly perceptible the eyes are wide open that means that everything is visible that whatever image is there that can come and impress itself on the eye and can go to the uh through the the organ to the brain into the mind and everything but he won't see anything because the mind isn't attached so it makes no difference where the eyes are open or the eyes are closed the mind is not attached to the to the senses at that time so he won't experience anything his wife eyes wide open and unwinking his breathing hardly perceptible after a long time he drew a deep breath indicating his return to the world of senses master to prank krishna my divine mother is not only formless she has forms as well he's not saying she has form as well she has forms now sometimes he may say that she is with foreman without form here he's using the plural she has forms as well one can see her forms now this was uh tucker's way of explaining how god can reveal himself or herself to different deputies in different ways and he gave so many different illustrations when the water freezes into blocks of ice those blocks can take any form and it's still water and it's still water is always formless even when it's in a block of ice it doesn't lose its formless nature it's temporarily taking a particular form and takara says it takes the form according to the the the power of of cooling holding power of the devotee that means that the devotee wants to see god in a certain form and god can appear in that form now we have two ways of understanding this the subjective model and the objective model subjective model would be really the devotee model that god is thinking oh my child wants to see me in this form i'll appear in this form the other is that's objective the other subjective that is that it's it's strictly my desire to see god in a certain form which is responsible for seeing god in that form uh or it can be a combination it can be just be the very nature of whatever color i want the the cloth dyed in the in the vat it'll come out that color is it the power of the of the dye or the desire of the of the liquid in the vat that it comes out blue or red or green or is it my desire that comes out blue red or green where the person who's who owns that that of liquid hard to say so this is this is all always display between uh objective and subjective if we say oh these visions are just subjective does it mean they're not real of course they're real they're real but the particular form whether it's objective or subjective it's not real in the same way that the water is real because it's temporary it's not permanent and it could be otherwise there's nothing absolute about it and this is a very good thing because then we can accept the truth of different types of realizations someone realizes god in one form and says no this is the this is the form of god another person said no this is the form of god third person says god can reveal himself or herself in any form whatever form you want to see and then then we can accept everything so uh he's talking all the different forms this means that uh for the mystic the mystic will have different visions and these visions uh will be a hundred percent real but uh they'll be very particular now we know that uh one of the features of of the the divine absolute reality will be its universality so this again that play between the universal and the particular that the universal will if the universal appears to us it has to be in a particular form but that doesn't mean that that's the the form that belongs to it that's the only form so he's talking about all the different forms that means all the different ways that he's experienced god and realized god one can see her forms one can behold her incomparable beauty through feeling and love the mother reveals herself to her devotees in different forms this is the objective way of looking at it that is the mother who's doing it we we read about the story that when hanuman went to see srikrishna in dwarka and rukhmeen he was there and he said to her let me go and change into my rama form because that's the form that hanuman wants to see me in he won't be pleased if he sees me in my krishna form so this is that putting everything on the side of god that revealing himself or manifesting himself in a particular way for the sake of the devotee i saw her yesterday she was clad in a seamless ochre-colored garment and she talked to me now if we if we question these things that oh this is just a vision uh we have to remember narendra questioned him even more and he used to say that it's a hallucination he used to say about all of his visions and things till he started having them and he was he was a still a teenager teenager when he first came uh but i if we think we understand this then we're also fooling ourselves how can we possibly understand what it means to have all and see god in all these different forms when taka says yes mother will come she'll talk to us how do we how do we know if it ever happens how do we distinguish that from the madman who hears voices there'll be tests of course the genuine nature of it and the purity of heart and all of that but for us we just have to accept the fact that there are experiences that certain mystics and saints have that we don't have or won't have and it's not necessary to have taco is a mystic there can be many fully god realized souls perfected souls that don't have all of these visions and things there's a question of temperament a little bit we we know the story of babur um how he came to taqwa one day and said everyone is having visions i'm not having any visions so taco said hmm okay let me talk to the divine mother and mother said oh he'll have knowledge he won't have visions and so and he was a perfect soul he was an issue with okay so it's not that everyone will have these types of visions but this shows that we can't put any limit to god if we can't put in the quote god is this and not and nothing else taco used to like that expression she came to me another day as a muslim girl six or seven years old she had a tilak on her forehead and was naked she walked with me joking and frisking like a child we may think what is this naked business in in india in those days even today in some places little kids don't start wearing clothes till they're older you know i thought it was very cute you see all these little kids running naked only with a little thread around their waist or a little bead on it or something like that it's a hot country and nobody cared about these things at friday's house i had a vision of godanga so divine mother can appear in the male form because when takara talked about mother revealing herself he's talking about this infinite absolute reality he's not talking about mother kali or durga in any specific way that she's the one with four arms or six arms or ten arms that's all a manifestation of mother appearing in different ways at the friday's house i had a vision of gauranga that means caitanya he wore a black bordered cloth used to say that god is beyond both being and non-being we chant this in the mornings it's part of the the hymn to srama krishna god is beyond both being a non-being as the near guna brahmin but taku's point is that niergun and brahman and saguna brahman belong to the one in the same reality they're not two separate things if we if we say god is only this near going to brahman then we're limiting it we're we're not getting the full scope of the infinite power and then we have to say that this whole universe is something different from god if we say god is beyond being a non-being that means that god is something separate from this universe so it's really from that point of view not a non-dualistic statement it's telling us about the perfectly transcendent nature of consciousness but it doesn't account for this this visible universe so a taqwa would say yes there's near going to brahman absolutely true what you say but the same brahman has this power the shakti to project this universe and to uphold this universe to pervade this universe that's also an essential feature of brahmin but not an absolute feature because it's not always active that power so essential but not always active so this is why the near guna brahmin is always there that the brahmana even when this brahman is manifesting as the universe it remains beyond and behind as pure consciousness that part never changes but sometimes it will just as the we have the example of the woman and the mother that the woman aspect is always there when the child is there she's a mother in addition to being a woman the woman the part is always there that's the essential uh unlimited with the aspect they can't be eliminated but the motherhood depends on upon the child upon this uh visible universe the the ishwar aspect or uh the sagun aspect and others they thought they were great ghani's and they would talk like that and they would criticize taquer sometimes and they would tell these young young boys that you should be doing spiritual practices you shouldn't be just uh frisking about and enjoying yourself with takur and laughing at his jokes and everything and and what is this going to the temple making offerings don't you know you're offering to yourself alone because you're yourself or god and taco would say yes this is a very high ideal but don't spoil things these are young boys of course he knew that these young boys were far advanced to them so tako that was the one of the uh leila aspects of his life that he was surrounded by these people half of them were his relatives also or from his village or nearby villages that were all there is to serve him or to be priests in the temples that couldn't fully appreciate the breadth of taqwa's vision and experiences so used to say that god is beyond both being and non-being i told the mother about it and asked her then is the divine form an illusion this is what takur did whenever he got confused about something he would go to the divine mother the divine mother appeared to me in the form of rati's mother and said do thou remain in bhava this is mother she was a devotee the vaishnava devotee who used to come sometimes probably belonged to this court of hajja sect and but it was a very staunch invasion of a talker says one day she saw him taking the prasad from the kali temple and stopped coming again but he mentions her a few different times and there were three times in his life when he heard uh this this command of the divine mother remained in bhava muka and once was with this vision when he heard this rati's mother we don't know her other name this is generally how they referred to people in those days he heard it from her lips he had a vision of her for some reason so we have to say that there was something special about her whatever else there was about her do that remain in bhava now bhava here we have to understand as a bhava muka because that's how he explains it in other places and it makes more sense we'll understand see there's a footnote and the footnote doesn't explain bhav it explains so even the editor and translator is taking it that way a rare state of divine exaltation when the devotee after realizing the absolute remains in the borderland between the absolute and the relative sometimes talk was between the fifth and sixth states from the sixth state he can look up and see that the roof that nearly called with samadhi state and from the other he can see everything is a manifestation of the divine in this state he sees that both the absolute and the relative are the two aspects uh as the two aspects of the godhead are real so lila and nitia that they're both real and also in that state he's able to keep the mind from getting merged in in the absolute brahman so when he when he heard the command the most important time was the third time uh after his nearby called the samadhi this allowed him to live in the world otherwise the mind kept going up so the divine mother appeared to me in the form of varati's mother and said do thou remain in bhava i repeated this to holodhari now and then i forget her command and suffer once i broke my teeth because i didn't remain in bhava now it sounds very odd he actually broke his teeth because he was in bava that means he was in some ecstatic state but it means he wasn't controlling his mind to keep it from going up too high so this means he's entered into the bhava samadhi state now bhava has so many different meanings it can just mean ecstasy in general we see bhavasta that they'll say tako was in an ecstatic mood and talking to everyone so being in bhava has a big range the lower range it simply means one is filled with divine bliss and feeling that joy of the divine presence but can sing and dance and enjoy the company of others other types of hara will be mind disappears from this world and goes to some divine realm and has different experiences and and visions that will be this time taqwa had two uh at least there are two instances of injuries that he had one was this he fell down we see a little chip in his tooth that he was in this state of ecstasy when he's in that state he can't see anything he doesn't know where he is he doesn't really have control over his body he can easily fall so he fell and chipped his tooth the other time was when he broke his arm and that caused a big change in his mind we'll get to it a little bit but that's when he said i should start seeing god with eyes open dwelling within all beings well i'll get to that in a little bit so once i broke my teeth because i didn't remain in bhava so i shall remain in bhava that means this bhava muka state trying to keep the mind from going to that nerikopu samadhi state unless i receive a revelation from heaven or have a direct experience to the contrary i shall follow the path of love what do you say now he's asking praan krishna just like a child would ask why should he care about prank krishna's opinion of him and yet takur he he anytime somebody had a certain opinion he would take it a little bit seriously like a child and he would say a child has so much guilelessness that if somebody comes and somebody says oh this is your elder brother the mother will say that he's you can call him dada he's your elder brother he'll accept it 100 he won't even ask this person comes from a different village it belongs to a different cast or it won't even occur to him so taco was like that he was very guileless and childlike sometimes so he would ask the opinion of others and if they said something funny he would disturb his mind a little and he would go to the divine mother and she would assure him no no what you say is right master but why should i ask you about it there is someone within me who does all these things through me now this is both philosophically true and metaphysically true but also a talker's experience and his and his spiritual attitude it's a question of spiritual attitude the the yani who realizes the infinite absolute brahmin won't necessarily talk like that their sense of identification will be with the brahman itself but they won't say that there's somebody inside me they may say that this body is simply acting due to pest karma that i'm not doing anything they may have different ways of explaining it the same phenomenon different explanation so there is someone and in english they write someone with a capital s meaning some divine presence divine mother is the way taker understood it there is someone within me who does all these things through me at times i used to remain in the mood of godhood and would enjoy no peace of mind unless i were being worshiped so this means that he felt a sense of identification i am he i am one with his infinite absolute reality now when he said i enjoyed no peace of mind unless i were being worshiped it's not this ego i we may say oh how egotistical he wants to be worshipped he didn't find that small eye at that time he found that i identified with with the supreme he said at one time there wasn't a mood that lasted very long i am the machine and god is the operator i act as he makes me act i speak as he makes me speak this is a famous ram prasad song but there are also kamala kante there are other songs that give us the same idea this was a very common mood with these shock the saints these those who realize god as the divine mother that this was an attitude spiritual attitude and a spiritual mood and a spiritual realization where they felt that mother within wasn't guiding them so the two ways that it would happen sometimes taco would feel that mother was guiding him and mother was providing words for him to say other times the mother herself was doing everything he used to say sometimes i look within i see that the mother is there and child is there both are there other times i see mother alone is there so at that time then either he has no awareness of himself at all or if he feels himself with body and mind and everything this is just an instrument in the hands of the divine mother the it's just the chariot and and the horse and the reins and the coach master but the divine mothers inside directing everything keep your raft says ram prasad afloat on the sea of life drifting up with the flood tide drifting down with the ebb it is like the cast-off leaf before a gale sometimes it is blown to a good place and sometimes into the gutter according to the direction of the wind now this this uh is a an idea that we find uh from the advaita vedantic point of view also that one of the verses from this ashtavakra samhita which many of us have read together a highly advaitic text that it says that one should live in the world like a dry devshushka parnavat chest that after god's realization that what type of effort does one put forth the same type of effort that a dry leaf puts forth that means no effort it doesn't do anything so what determines where a dry leaf will go just wherever the wind takes it and they take that in these edwardic texts as pes karma wherever the past karma leads the body to to move or act or do anything that's what it will do there's no individual left with any desire to do anything so this illustration works in both ways takur he he gives a very nice example when they have these outdoor feasts with with everything is served on a leaf and every the leaf dal and rice and everything are there and it gets all soaked and wet and it sticks to the ground and in those days everybody left everything there because later the cows would come and eat everything you didn't have to clean up afterwards but gradually the sun would come out and everything would dry up and and then it would curl up a little bit and if the wind came it would pick it up it would fly all over the place now the the leaf itself has no willpower and no interest to decide where it will go it goes wherever the wind blows so this is uh this is supposed to be the description of the god relay soul that they don't make any effort to do anything if something presents itself to them they'll do it otherwise they there's nothing they have to do mr krishna says in the three worlds there's nothing that i have to do there's nothing i gain by doing anything nothing that i lose by not doing anything he said still i remain active that was because he was a an avatar but uh but the point is here that tucker himself felt that way he didn't make decisions you know that the incident when uh three door worshiped the granddaughter of mature babu tarello daughter and when the father found out he was furious it was supposed to be highly inauspicious for a brahmin to worship a non-brahmin little girl and he was furious and he kicked out and they went to to tell him and some reason either with miscommunication or he was also angry at tucker for some reason tucker was told to leave so what did he do he didn't didn't affect him in the slightest he said oh i have to leave and he took his gum through it over his shoulder and started walking out because everything for him was the will of the divine mother he didn't make any decisions anything like that then they found out that taco was leaving they said oh no it wasn't him we wanted ridoid to leave they ran after him and begged him please come back and stay he said okay didn't mean anything to him he didn't know where he was going where he would stay what he would do who it just it wasn't in his mindset to even worry about that so he was living in the world like a cast off leaf before a gale as the weaver said in the story the robbery was committed by the will of rama i was arrested by the will of rama arrested by the police by the will of rama and again by the will of rama i was set free all of these things are both a spiritual attitude and means that we adopt at the time of spiritual practice and the result of god realization we we find that over and over again the the end result and the means have to be in sync with each other so we can practice this even if we still have some sense of i something happens and we say no i don't like that i want to change that we just tell ourselves or remind ourselves or try to feel no it's the will of god then we can accept it that way so it's a spiritual practice that a spiritual attitude that we adopt that we assume talker will talk about this a lot that we have to sometimes use our imagination we read about this and say okay let me imagine what it's like to be that weaver let me imagine what it's like to feel that whatever happens is the will of rama and then we find that this is a spiritual practice this is what gedich had to do when he was practicing this giving the power of attorney to srama krishna that it wasn't natural for him he felt it i i really decide what i want to do and what i don't want to do so each time he had to think no let me think how one would act if one really felt that i don't do anything i had no right to do anything everything is i should act as i'm directed by a higher power hanuman one said to rama o rama i have taken refuge in thee bless me that i may have pure devotion to thy lotus feet and that i may not be caught in the spell of thy world bewitching maya i want the dying bullfrog said to rama o rama when caught by a snake i cry for your protection but now i'm about to die struck by your arrow hence i am silent i used to see god directly with these very eyes no just as i see you divine visions in trance okay now we had a slight reference to this earlier about how he saw saw god with at the time in the state of bhava and everything now there's a third one here so taka is talking about earlier he would have visions where he actually saw god along with everything else now when he says i used to see directly with these eyes that doesn't mean that all of his visions were like that that his first vision of the divine mother was not looking at her anything his mind was gone that was in the state of bhava but there were other times and he says that the first time he had a vision like this was a vision of sita that he said i was i was and it didn't just happen on its own this was after he was practicing this dossier bhava feeling himself to be hanuman feeling himself adopting that mood that attitude he himself did that that's why he could tell us and he said i saw everything i saw the panchavati i saw the walking path i saw the trees the leaves everything and i see this the majestic calm beautiful peaceful looking woman walked towards me and i didn't know where she came from who she was or anything like that and then i saw one of the hanuman hanuman is a monkey one of the monkeys uh dropped down from the tree and went in front of her and rolled on the ground this is a sign of great devotion to to roll in there and gora guardia there's a roll in the ground and then he said ah then i understood this was a sita with that smile of hers and she gifted that smile to him so he used to say this was the first vision that i had with eyes open seeing everything else so he had that and then when he when the last time when he fell and broke his arm that was the time when he felt the divine mother was telling him that i don't see god only with with eyes closed within the state of bhava see god dwelling in all beings so this is this is not a lila and he used to give credit to vaisnavcharan he used to say vaisnava of children used to tell me that the highest vision of god is god dwelling within all human beings will be the transcending aspect not it will be this human aspect and he said now i know that it was true what the vaishnav said so this is these are two things there's a third one i used to see god directly with his very eyes just as i see you now i see divine visions in trance then the third stage will be back again and we see this especially in kashipur with eyes open he would see when he looked at physical objects he would see everything as chinmaya everything is uh as if composed of consciousness and when he saw individual beings he saw them as the embodiment of the divine he saw ramen all men and sita and all women or the divine in all so really he had the vision of god whether his eyes were open or closed both different ways whether in behavior not that he stopped having ecstatic visions and everything he did but the emphasis was more on seeing god dwelling within within all living beings after realizing god a man becomes like a child one acquires the nature of the object one meditates upon okay now we ask ourselves what are the fruits of meditation what do we gain by meditating and generally we think we're trying to increase our concentration we're trying to increase our devotion we're trying to have some type of higher realization become one pointed to stop the the abilities of the mind these are all true but meditation on god with form and with the personality is supposed to allow some transference to take place if we meditate on holy mother some sweetness should come into our personality some forbearance we meditate on suramar krishna some ecstatic love of god these are transferable this is how we get these things deeply meditating we take on the qualities of the object of meditation so we find that spiritual life from one point of view is all about transformation that we're trying to change our present understanding our present world view our present sense of identification and rearrange everything restructuring everything we have the vision or the illustration sometimes of people who have some gold jewelry say the wife has some bangles she's had for years and years and other things she's a little tired of them so what does she do she goes to the goldsmith and gives him all of this gold jewelry and says melt it all down and make some other things for me so they take the form they they get rid of that they mail it becomes molten gold they'll pour it in a different type of mold it'll come out differently but it's the same gold the same gold they won't be trading it in for new jewelry they'll use the same gold so the same the same individual stuff that we have or the personality that we have we're going to try to melt it down and recreate it and we pour it into the mold who what is this mold taco used to say i am that mold i created the mold now you you pour yourself into that and come out transformed so one way we transform ourselves is through meditating on god with personality and with characteristics and qualities one acquires the nature of the object one meditates upon the nature of god is like that of a child as a child builds up his toy house and then breaks it down so god acts while creating so god acts while creating preserving and destroying the universe further as the child is not under the control of any guna so god is beyond the three gunas sattva rajas and thomas that is why paramahamsas keep five or ten children with them that they may assume their nature now takara gives this exact illustration same illustration when he describes the nature of the paramahamsa so this is what he's saying the the qualities of the god realize soul and the qualities of god are the same because they're being transferred if if god is perfect and we become perfect then we also if god is same-sided we become same-sided if god is is is one we feel that oneness so that we take on these qualities there's one verse from gita that i like very much it says that uh they have have conquered this world who are established in sameness now why because the brahmin is the same and brahman is the same to everything no distinction and everything and uh and we can fix our minds in this oneness and sameness then that there's no distinction that we are brahmin so this the characteristics of the god relay soul and the characteristics that we've attributed to god god will be on beyond be beyond everything but there'll be there'll be one in the same so exactly what he's saying the nature of god is like that of a child building up his toy house and then breaking it down he'll say about the the part of mohamta the god realized soul sitting on the floor in the room was a young man from agurapara about 22 years old whenever he came to the temple garden he would take the master aside by a sign and whisper his thoughts to him he was a newcomer that day he was sitting on the floor near the master master to the young man and man can change his nature by imitating another's character this is what i was was saying earlier imitate i don't know if this is the best translation or not this is imitating it it doesn't give the the feeling of sincerity behind it what this really means is that if we see equality in someone that we respect and we think this is a very nice thing we wish we could have that then we ourselves tried to adopt that you know the very famous book called the imitation of christ and when swamiji was wandering during his wandering days i don't know always but for at least some time he said he carried only two books with him one was gita and the other was the imitation of christ he liked it very much and he even wrote a bengali introduction to it and anyhow the whole idea of that is that we imitate christ if we want to uh get the benefit through worshiping worshiping someone and not trying to take on their qualities i won't won't accomplish that much if we if we respect somebody and why do we respect them we respect their truthfulness so we have to imitate that that means that uh we we try to adopt that in our own lives invitation is the highest form of flattery there's an english expression imitation so it won't do any good to go and say oh i admire your truth only so much and then we go and tell lies if we really admire it we'll try to do it ourselves that'll be the highest type of flattery uh highest type of appreciation for someone so this is how we change our nature by imitating taqwa usually uses this this term that we take refuge in this we take shelter in this we adopt it this idea of adhyasa we superimpose this on ourselves that it may not be natural to us in the beginning but we're superimposing something which is really part of our real nature which we've forgotten this is the key if we're superimposing something which doesn't really belong to us it won't work but this is covering everything with god this is the issue of teaching we cover everything with god because everything is god so if if it's just some some false imagination it won't mean anything but this is what we're imagining is something we'll find out is true today's imagination is tomorrow's realization this was a saying that swami turian under liked today's imagination and tomorrow's realization so why am i saying imagination because i don't really realize the truth of it at this point god alone is real i can say that and and yet i'm superimposing that idea in my mind which doesn't really know what it means at this point type of affirmation but by doing that one day i'll realize the truth oh it really was true from the very beginning so the the very important teaching when he says a man can change his nature by imitating another's character he can get rid of a passion like lust by assuming the feminine mood now tucker did this and he used to he used to say that one of the reasons why a man will feel lustful towards a woman or vice versa is identification with the body and identification with our whatever our gender is so because i identify not just with my body but with a male body then i'll see a female as a object of enjoyment if i if i can identify myself with a female body then i may see a female as oh just my sister i'll get rid of this attitude of course this is something that won't work for everybody because he's he's giving the uh the idea here but he said in it this is what he did in his his case i think it was a full year where where he lived and dressed like a woman in matar babu's house and worshiped the divine mother as a woman and felt really like he was a companion of the women and they felt it also they considered him they weren't shy in front of him they considered him one of their own they would laugh and joke with him and feel perfectly free with him this actually remained throughout his life whenever he was with women and when the men weren't there when the women were around the men were there then he was a little cautious because he knew that they couldn't do what he could do but when he was with them they all felt so free with him in front of any other man they would have kept veiled and would have been shy in front of him they were perfectly free and could laugh and joke they felt that he was one of them even when he was a child he was like that he some of his best friends were the daughters of the law family and he would go and spend lots of time with them should i tell the story the the uh what was his name he's the the father of the daughters he was very proud that no man had ever come into the inner apartments where the women stayed and that he kept their virtue like they're very proud of that and taco was a boy at this time but he wanted to to challenge him somehow so he dressed himself up as a girl and he went and they they didn't recognize him and they invited him in this is the strange girl has come and everything and he went and he went with into the inner apartments it was and it showed them who he was and they were all laughing and joking and everything and then he walked out and they saw that it was gudai it was ramakrishna and that curbed the pride of mr law a little bit so he he had that because he had no identification with the body he could easily identify as male or female or even as a monkey he perfectly identified with hanuman during the dashi bhava the sadhana so a man can change his nature by imitating another's character he can get rid of a passion like lust by assuming the feminine mood he gradually comes to act exactly like a woman i've noticed that men who take female parts in the theater speak like women or brush their teeth like women while bathing do they brush their teeth differently there's something called dong dong there's a way that people do different things taku had a very keen eye he would notice all of these things sometimes he would imitate the way different people do things and the way these these women singers who do kirtan and everything the way that they'll he said that they'll push back and just show off their bangles and things like that and the devotees would be roaring with laughter so he noticed all of these little things come again on a tuesday or saturday the these are two days that are especially auspicious for worshipers of the divine mother taqwa very often would ask devotees to come and he would give some special advice and tuesday was a weekday so there would be fewer people there also to prank krishna brahman and shakti are inseparable now half the time we'll see are identical the word is is i like inseparable better now when they say brahman and shakti are identical they're not talking about shakti as the as the power that belongs to brahman they're talking about brahman together with its power so it's true brahman and shakti are identical uh if we understand that the woman and the mother are identical they're the same person or that near guna brahman and sagu and brahman are identical if we think of shakti as power then they're not identical they're inseparable that we can't have the power that doesn't we can't have an attribute that doesn't belong to a particular substance we can't have a color that doesn't belong to a fabric or uh and any quality that we think of it has to inhere in some type of material thing so brahman and shakti are inseparable unless you accept shakti you will find the whole universe i you house buildings and family let me read this again unless you accept shakti you will find the whole universe unreal sorry i you house buildings and family yeah because we if we start out with the brahmin as pure infinite absolute consciousness and uh inactive the they can't do anything it's just consciousness itself then uh what is the what is the uh possibility of of this universe and if this universe does exist then what is the substance of this universe the one of the descriptions of brahmin is this the segway of roman is that brahman is the instrumental cause and the material cause of the universe instrumental and material cause of the universe so it's not like uh a carpenter and and wood the carpenter will uh the wood in the carpenter will be two separate things and the carpenter will will cut the wood and saw it and and glue it together and build something out of it but the the substance of itself is also brahman so it's the material cause also so without that idea we can't explain this this universe unless we want to be complete dualists unless we want to say well prakriti is something separate it can exist whether anything else is there or not there's a materialistic view but then it's hard to explain how consciousness and this material universe where's the meeting point for them where's the meeting point the sun can reflect in in in the water because there's some point of contact where's the point of contact so the devices will say no there has to be ultimately oneness the world stands solid because the primordial energy stands behind it so this is this idea of ground the the difficulty with the mechanical view of the universe even the quantum mechanics suppose we we can get everything down to matter and energy where do they come from what sustains them what holds them what is their source there has to be something unchanging behind that which is changing so even even then there'll have to be some something uh underneath upholding them this is a ground theory it's very important in philosophical discussions that there has to be a sufficient ground to explain the existence of something if we if we see i'm now looking at the carpet on the floor if somebody says there's only carpet there i'll say what's holding it up there has to be something that's holding it up otherwise it'll fall down there has to be a ground to it so we pull it up we say ah there's a concrete slab but we can keep going further what's holding up the concrete slab we have to ultimately get to something otherwise it's an infinite regress we can't keep saying no it's the egg and it's the chicken and the egg and the chicken there has to be something absolute and unchanging that'll be brumen however we understand it it a little bit defies logic but there's no other way to otherwise we're living in a universe that's 100 relative we have to accept this fact that i can only explain the chicken by the egg and i can only explain the egg by the chicken it's not very satisfying of course no theory of creation is fully satisfying they all have their flaws the world stands solid because the primordial primordial energy adi shakti stand behind it if there is no supporting pole no framework can be made and without the framework there can be no beautiful image of durga you see these artisans just you'll see them by the roadside sometimes a few weeks before door reputation or any big puja they'll make these beautiful images of mother durga you won't know what they're made of there's no way to see anything inside but they have to start out with the framework they'll take some bamboo and they'll tie it together then they'll add some straw gradually they'll kill building things up and then they'll put the final finish and then they'll they'll paint it and put ornaments and everything but they can't do anything without the foundation being there there's nothing to build upon so if there's no supporting poll no framework can be made and without the framework there can be no beautiful image of durga without giving of worldliness a man cannot awaken his spiritual consciousness nor can he realize god now we're going to get the same thing again a little later taco is going to say that one cannot get give get beyond worldliness unless one realizes god so we can't realize so we'll say oh well we're stuck unless we're free from worldliness we can't realize god and we can't get rid of worldliness unless we realize god what do we do our hands are tied this is when we adopt that attitude we say okay let me imagine that i'm free from worldliness let me try so this is a spiritual practice without giving up worldliness that means to the extent that we can we try not to run after worldly objects we try to practice truthfulness we try to practice uh spiritual austerities whatever it is that is part of our spiritual life he cannot but be a hypocrite as long as he has even a trace of worldly desire now we all have traits that we have more than traces of worldly desire but we won't be hypocrites we'll say no we know this and we're doing our best to to realize god we're not going to make claims that i am he when i know that i have all these desires god cannot be realized without guilelessness this was one of the great prerequisites that tucker had when he says that uh if we practice uh truthfulness uh that we can realize god this truthfulness and guidelines are very similar why do we tell lies because we're not guileless if we're very simple people we won't try to impress anybody we won't care what they think about us so the guylessness and truthfulness very closely aligned uh we'll stop here but i want to tell one story let me just finish this okay i can stop here okay that i heard from swami gautam very nice story i've told it before but everything i say i've told before he was working in a tribal area one time and he decided one day to teach the kids to not tell lies now these tribal boys were very very simple 100 guyless and first thing they said what is a lie and he said well suppose you do something and you say that you didn't do it and they said if we did it why would we say that we didn't do it and it went on and on and then he realized that these boys didn't know what it was to tell a lie they were so simple and so guileless so we see that these go together they're not two separate teachings that we analyze why we we say things that aren't 100 true because we want people to have a certain impression of us or for our gain or something like that so okay so we'll stop here it's a little bit in a funny place uh ben anyhoo goes on to a song this is the bottom of page 176. okay and let me close with our chant is 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 peace peace peace be unto you