Video 72

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (09/17/21)

[Music] foreign 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 let me apologize in advance for having a little bit of a allergy attack today this month of september is always challenging for me so don't get nervous if i sneeze or cough a little bit we're in page 258 the gospel it's saturday july 14 1883 chapter is called the festival at bonnie hati but it actually covers many days for some reason so we've already finished that and srama krishna arrived at adhere's house in calcutta although we've now met on several occasions he's he started coming uh very shortly after m was within within a year or so but started coming fairly frequently and became very close with stroma christian because we'll see that tucker will be going to his house on consecutive weeks yeah so and he was he was a young man uh 30 years old and had a nice position deputy magistrate and there's a little bit of a ongoing play throughout the gospel that takes place with regard to alter trying to get a better position and asking people to give him recommendations and things like that and tucker uh telling him to be content with what uh what he has and takur had some premonition it seems that other would not live long yeah so he thought now give your time to thinking of god he never told him that because your days may be short but probably that was something that some intuitive thing that he had and uh he died he fell off a horse horseback riding yeah some very funny funny thing like that so surrounded krishna arrived at other's house in calcutta raqqa m and other deputies were with the master adar had arranged to have narayan the famous singer and his party recite the chandi began the recital in the worship hall he sang i have surrendered my soul at the fearless feat of the mother am i afraid of death anymore as the master listened he became filled with divine fervor and joined the musicians this chandi recitation very famous that usually it's not simply channing from the chandi usually there's some bengali devotional songs and uh i don't know kali kirito here's having some git something like that that will accompany all of this so uh he starts out with this uh title bhajan you can say but there will all be songs to the divine mother and in the form of durga kali and srama krishna always goes into some type of that he was the embodiment of all moods all spiritual attitudes and practiced all of them but he seemed to revert back to this this what he called shontan the attitude of looking upon god as mother and oneself as the child this seemed to be something that was natural to him and it's interesting because it wasn't something from his childhood maybe it was hidden in his childhood but the family did of course was raghuvir a form of rama and uh we know that he foretook and everything shivarati and everything like that but it seems like after he came deduction this war was preached to the kali temple and then of course his first vision was mother kali in the form of pure consciousness from that time onward it seems like in between is other southerners interesting that he would he did all the evasion of the sadhanas yesterday but in between and then when everything was finished this seemed to be the basic mood that looking upon himself as a child of the divine mother as the master listened he became filled with divine fervor and joined the musicians now and then he improvised an appropriate line suddenly he went into samadhi and stood still the singer sang again who is the woman yonder who lights the field of battle darker her body claims even than the darkest storm cloud and from her teeth there flashed the lightning's blinding flames disheveled her hair is flying behind as she rushes about undaunted in this war between the gods and the demons laughing her terrible laugh she slays the fleeing asuras and with her dazzling flashes she bears the horror of war this is of course things that are described in the in the chandelier how beautiful on her brow the drops of moisture appear about her dense black hair the bees are buzzing in swarms the moon has veiled its face beholding the sea of beauty tell me who can she be this sorceress wonder of wonders she himself lies like a corpse lies vanquished at her feet kamalakanda has guessed who she is with the elephant gate she is none other than kali mother of all the worlds kamala kanta was uh i don't know the second two of rahm prasad but uh uh anyhow some people will say the equal to rom president wonderful uh poet saint as ron prasad was i think he lived about a century later not even more more recent than rahm prasad but his his poems and songs are very very beautiful one thing that's interesting is that who is the woman the word that they use here for a woman is comedy and because this is such a a sensitive point when tucker uses that that phrase commonly conscious and some people think that this is a pejorative phrase that the comedy means a lustful woman something like that but we find that this this term comedy is used most often for the different types of consort of shiva or kali or other forms and it's used as a name in in bengal i think girish uh second wife it was a koilash comedy so it means the concert of shiva living on mount kailash something like that so this is all we get for that day then this is next week saturday july 21st 1883. it was about four o'clock in the afternoon when srama krishna with ramallah and one or two other deputies started from dakshineshwar for calcutta in a carriage as the carriage passed the gate of the kali temple they met em coming on foot with four mangoes in his hand throughout the gospel uh probably two at least two three different times we find that m shows up just as they're going some other place or on the way they see him so they say hop in and he gets in the carriage and he goes with him because he's coming just to say it's ramakrishna the srama christian was going to visit some of his devotees in calcutta master to end with a smile come with us we're going to adhere's house so this is two weekends in a row em got joyfully into the carriage having received an english education he did not believe in the tendencies inherited from previous births now i think you have the original the bengali you say he did not believe or he had some doubt you know he didn't have any strong belief we can say and this is something that i found very surprising that uh i i was under the impression that this was such a universally held belief and uh and reincarnation and to find that because when when m says he doesn't believe in some scars some scars tendencies he doesn't mean these tendencies that we see in a person he means the tendencies that came along with the birth due to the previous lifetimes so the one on the same if uh if he doesn't believe in past life he won't believe in some scottish the way it's normally been because uh the the law we say someone is born with good subscribers now we acquire them in this lifetime also so if we're if we're born with certain tendencies then our environment takes over our education everything takes over and we we these these tendencies get a little bit changed in different directions and we develop new tendencies no subscribers this is that little area of free will that we have which allows us to transform ourselves if it weren't for that these some scottish would just uh drive drive us like just a mechanical toy we we wouldn't be able to change anything we would just uh keep acting in accordance with uh these old tendencies of the mind and we wouldn't be able to make any spiritual progress so we have there's a little bit of of free will that we can control ourselves and control these tendencies these gunas yeah because some of our some scholars will be thomasing some scholars so we may be born with some tendency towards uh laziness and procrastination and things like that and the same thing with roger seek and the southwest so the subscribers will have a color to them yeah everything is is a mixture there's a mixture and uh and nobody is is born with say we could say okay this person is a twenty percent thoughtwick and fifty percent promising and thirty percent rather different areas of our life and with the different uh different times of our lives different periods that we'll all have a different mixture of these things we may be very software in one area and very thomasic in another area we may be very aggressive in some ways and then other ways we're very passive so this this lagunas this is just a way of of understanding how we have these different tendencies and the whole idea of some scottish is that uh we're not born into this world with a clean slate that we're not uh that it's not that everything is taught to us that uh we we may have uh a perfect example of two parents who are very calm and mild and sweet and yet the child grows up to be very aggressive and mischievous and everything so we attribute it to to these some scottish from the past lifetime it's a theory they're not something that can be very easily proved scientifically proved but it makes sense it makes sense we otherwise we have difficulty understanding some people like to say that these tendencies are genetic that we get them from the parents through through the genes but the the answer that will be given uh by the vedanta is that we're born into that family who have those genes that will transfer them because of our past lifetime so it can be they can be worked together that way but we say that children can be very different from the parents also so i don't know if they're hidden genetic traits and things like that or anyhow this is some scottish theory doesn't doesn't depend on the dna or biological transmission or anything like that so anyhow m as a two things western educator and also a member of the brahma so much that the the brahmos did not believe in a lot of things that we take for granted this uh rebirth probably they accepted that more or less because they followed the upanishads so this may be particular with them that he had that doubt because he as he says he has a western education the most most of all was the the educated young men who came to srama krishna went to christian missionary schools so uh they probably heard a lot about this reincarnation being nonsense and there's only one birth and one life and after that you go to heaven or you go to hell something like that so anyhow he didn't have any deep conviction with regard to rebirth and the subscribers but it seems like he didn't have any very strong feeling against it that he was open just had some doubts so he wanted to ask because he asked ravi krishna earlier so this is also another theme that comes the other thing is the avatar m did not believe in that because partly because uh it also fits in with this reincarnation if you don't believe in that you're talking about someone coming age after age and partly because uh the christian doctrine that christ was the only son of god uh partly because of the british english education so uh ideas in guru also they didn't accept this idea of good of the brahmos christian missionaries of course very strong as i was saying because the parents wanted their children to learn english that was one of the only options there weren't too many hindu schools that had were an english medium they may have taught a little bit of english so most of the time the parents thought that that was more important send her to a christian missionary school thinking that well they're probably not going to get converted anyhow but they'll they'll get the tool of english and they can get a good job uh just do civil service or something like that yeah so and the the indian population there's always a little bit of of uh hidden respect for the uh for the british because they were so prosperous and so powerful how do they walk into a country and just take it over without a battle or anything like that so a little bit of admiration maybe not respect a little bit of admiration and then a little bit of this idea that uh they were very thoughtful people that they had a lot of high philosophical thinking and everything like that so uh that was part of the other thing was that they wanted to please them some somehow get into good favor so if they thought if the british find that we don't hold any of these ideas of these native people so image worship horrible british said it's horrible they say it's horrible callie worship the worst worst type of idolatry is kali worship so they say it's also horrible the interesting thing about the kali worship is that it was a it was a an irish woman sister nivedita who was one of the most influential people in and showing the beauty behind and the symbology behind the kali worship she gave a very well-known talk at some place albert hall or something some big big place they arranged a big meeting and caligard yes also yeah she was accepted of course by the hindus because she was defending them and everything so a very complex period where there's there's of course a little bit of this maybe we can say outright hatred of the british they were standing on the necks of the people a little bit and of course revolutionaries ready to die for that and at the same time a little bit of this admiration and a little bit of of trying to get them to to approve uh so trying to so this was i think a strong element of the bravo so much yes educational syllabus yeah at the missionary schools so anyhow i am now everything is in this transitional period for him his thinking is undergoing a great change because of of course contact with ramakrishna so he said but he mini emma had admitted a few days before that it was on account of those good tendencies as some goddess from passive births that he showed such great devotion to the master and this is what i was saying because he had only met him one or two times before already he's inviting him to his house he's confiding in him and became very very close to him later on he had thought about the subject and had discovered that he was not yet completely convinced about inherited tendencies he had come to the chinese for that day to discuss the matter with sri ramakrishna master well what do you think of adha now taco is a very common question he used to ask very often one devotee what do you think of this devotee or he would ask him and or he would ask what do you think of me now it sounds a little bit odd to us is he looking for flattery or something like that but this is how he could judge the ability of the devotee to appreciate spiritual values and virtues and qualities and everything so this was helpful for him to see how far somebody had come along this was a little bit of his way of of of saying and not that he needed m's opinion but he wanted to know the nature of m's mind could he appreciate this other master what do you think of aadhaar and he is great yearning for god master other two speaks very highly of you and remained silent a while and then began to speak of past tendencies some scholars em i haven't much faith in rebirth and inherited tendencies will that in any way injure my devotion to god so this is a nice way of putting it he doesn't really believe in it he's a little bit open to him now if he says he admitted earlier that other had good and then that means that there's there's some inner contradiction in his thinking how could he be born with good tendencies from the previous lifetimes if he didn't have her previous lifetime so he's a little bit little bit confused he's not quite sure how much he believes with this and how much he believes with that this is really when we analyze the things we believe and we find lots of contradictions also that we don't think through and don't realize all the time so he's he's really asking him i don't really need you to convince me about these things i just want to know that is it really necessary for me to to bother about these things do i really have to come to a conclusion and we have to ask ourselves that question with regard to so many things so many things and do we do we believe that the endless cycles of this universe do we believe it was created at one time there's so many different things that we can be a little confused about and we always want to come to some conclusion we always want somebody to tell us no this is true that yes it happened this way and not that way and we don't always find those types of answers and we have to ask ourselves uh how much time and effort do we want to give to these questions and very often we'll find that the best answer is that if if i can analyze it enough to understand that there's no possibility of some conclusive answer then leave it aside then leave it aside is it really necessary for my spiritual life say rebirth if some people feel that this believing rebirth means i believe the the soul exists when the body falls a very positive idea and somebody else can say that if i believe in rebirth then i'm identifying myself with this transmigrating soul when really i'm the odd man admin is not born and doesn't die and and gita we finally side by side these two ideas that they just take chapter two of the gita we'll find that side by side i was never born and i never die along with how many births i've had how many deaths i've had so uh if we if we want to be very staunch in dwightens then we go with this i never was never born and never died what is this talk of reincarnation or we say that we're talking about the subtle body being born and dying and we're not talking about the self the self is unchanging it can't can undergo birth and death so there are positives and negatives for everything i sometimes think that we get too identified with ourselves as an individual with this idea of rebirth who was i before who will i be in the next lifetime the real and dwight and will say no i am the witness of this body after body life after life i'm the unchanging one so different ways of looking at it so takur is very good here he says it is enough to believe that all is possible in god's creation now this taco himself believe in rebirth it seems obvious he gives different answers sometimes that he'll he'll adjust uh give very short shrift with these questions they'll say yes we find something like that in the gita he'll say things like that but otherwise when he talks with such conviction say with the other and the some scottish very strong conviction that uh how many lifetimes we've had and how we've developed all of these things and what grace it is to have this human body and all of these things so he he didn't talk about it much he didn't talk about uh who will be in the next lifetime this and that because he wanted us to focus on who am i now and how do i get devotion now these these two things that was more his interest and that respected a little bit more like bhuta he said don't ask these questions that it's it's as if you have an arrow that's been shot into you and you need to get the doctor to take it out but before the doctor can do it you have to find out all these questions who who shot the arrow what was his village what was his cat all of these different questions he said by the time you get the answers you'll be dead so don't waste your time with all of these these types of questions this is why taka was always telling m and don't argue don't reason anymore it wasn't about uh what is the nature of the self it wasn't about what is the goal of life it was about these types of questions that don't have easy answers so it is enough to believe that all is possible in god's creation never allow the thought to cross your mind that your ideas are the only true ones and that those of others are false then god will explain everything now the other thing was that takura he looked upon all of these these different philosophical positions as different spiritual paths we we know that he did he wasn't like the uh acharyas that looked upon them as as true or false is it true that there are many jivas jivatmits where there are only one you have to decide is it many or is it one for krishna each one has a spiritual attitude which will be helpful to a different type of person and then we have that highest realization and then we'll know or we won't know it or it won't matter is it one or is it many so the duelist will realize god the qualified non-duelist non-dualist nondualist because each one was a pet for him the truth was nothing but experience it wasn't a doctrine it went beyond all doctrines and philosophies and schools of thought and everything what can a man understand of god's activities the facets of god's creation are infinite i do not try to understand god's actions at all now he'll give different explanations we do get different theories but these are all uh for for us to hold on to the divine mother she's placing us in a position that the best for us like the mother cat and the kitten this is an explanation of why things happen the way they do divine mother did it for us but he presents it uh as a way of of allowing us to do cling to something because we we need some type of of guidelines some type of parameters in spiritual life to have a spiritual attitude so these things are different attitudes for him it's a lot is a type of attitude it can be a school of thought it could be a different religion but it could also be just yes uh what what is our world view there's a nice term in german well they use a lot of these germans this idea what is our world view everybody has a world view the scientists it will be one thing they see everything in the combination of the atoms and molecules and things like that the artists will have a different world view they'll say everything is a beautiful combination of colors and textures and things like that everyone has a different worldview some will say it is just random creation others they'll see the hand of god and everything a different world of people and we can make spiritual progress with any of these and we shouldn't think that one is absolutely right and the others are all wrong some may be more logical some may yield better results but taku says even going through the back door of the house you can get inside so i do not try to understand god's actions at all this is also the idea of the the point of view of the shaktis and the worshipers of divine mother we have the beautiful kamalakantha song though i've been trying to figure out mother all of my life i still have no idea who you are and now i think you're you're male now i think you're female now i think you're the void so thinking of all of these things yes confuses poor so kind of a common theme that part of this idea of worshiping mother as the divine mother is that uh there will always be a little bit of this this mahamaya aspect it will always be a little uh of of this this veil of maya not allowing us to to know that the truth and knowing the truth uh for talkwar is just so different knowing the truth for him is is realization that's all we have a person can be described in a hundred different ways for him each one is okay some may be more accurate some less accurate but you meet the person that's the truth of the person then you have the person there you know the person you've experienced that directly and then there's no point in trying to describe that person how many names does he have how many forms has he had all of that there's no point in it i've heard that everything is possible to god's creation and i always bear that in mind therefore i do not give a thought to the world but meditate on god alone yeah we we have a tendency to i think put too much emphasis on this idea of brahman being the ground of the world that external things are they real or the unreal for srama krishna the direction they go was inward if we say that brahman is covered with maya and that nothing really exists but roman plus name and form if we take this as a doctrine for the external world we'll end up in lots of confusion either we'll have to think though what this roman is actually some type of matter there's like there or energy where there's no atoms in there how do we think that that juror is really consciousness itself with the name and form added to it very difficult very difficult concept you almost have to think uh this this roman as as energy prana we find this idea and in the punishment but when we talk about the innermost self we can easily understand these things not easily realize but easily understand how this this infinite absolute pure consciousness gets covered over with this false identification with the body the mind and the senses and everything so there we have our direct experience everything with the world unless we get that mystic type of vision that tucker had i see everything a manifestation of practice that means the mind goes to a different realm even that is not universal we don't find every tradition will will come up with that same conclusion even that uh will will be in accordance with uh one's spiritual attitude so the buddhists getting nirvana they may not say anything like that they may just remain silent what is their nature how do they understand the self emptiness how does the vedante understand the self same emptiness only that's pure consciousness so i always think you know we have this this example of seeing the glass either half empty or half full i think people between vedanta and buddhism it's it's not half it have didn't have full we either see it as completely empty or completely full you take a glass with nothing in it it's it's full huh there's there's the air inside that's that's full but the other hand it's empty so when we say that the brahman is empty that means a devoid of anything external foreign to it we look at our own innermost consciousness if we say it's empty that means that it could be filled with everything we'd look in a mirror the mirror is empty because there's there's no picture on it there's nothing there but it can reflect it it's always filled with an image so both have to be true at the same time there was a very important philosopher named heidegger and he used to say that one of his kind of foundational statements was the ground of being is nothingness so if it's just like a taco's tub of dye that liquid it has to be colorless if it can account for all of the possible colors light has to be invisible if you can account for all other for us to be able to see things as it is so these two things go hand in hand and yeah talk was talking about this idea of not bothering too much about this external world and how it came into being why it came into being these are all dead end questions so he says therefore i do not give a thought to the world but meditate on god alone hanuman once hanuman was asked what day of the lunar month is it hanuman said i don't know anything about the day of the month the position of the moon and stars or any such things i think of rama alone tucker repeats this many many times in the gospel because this is where we get our direct answer everything else is speculative everything else is seen to the lens of the mind but looking at the south we can do it by transcending the mind the mind becomes still that we have then the vision of the self within can one even understand the work of god he is so near still it is not possible for us to know him balarama did not realize that krishna was god m that is true sir muller was his brother huh yeah with them all of the time and still did not realize of course they say that those who are closest to the incarnations are the last ones to recognize them we look at holy mother's family and talk to his family and they build these people one or two recognized in that song master god has covered all with his maya he doesn't let us know anything now he talked about when swami sabi they've got he was here we talked about this maya quite a bit that maya has different aspects to it the sense in which it's used here it will it'll be both it has a cosmic sense and it has an individual sense so this maya with a capital m this is this is how the shock to some extent the advantage of it more than the worshipers of divine mother how they explain uh this universe that everything comes about through this divine power so maya becomes something like a divine power but it's a type of power that also covers the real nature of things there's something delusive about it so that means that when the individual comes to take himself to be the individual is because there's a covering of ignorance so we we have this this universal aspect this cosmic maya and then we have the individual of india ignorance which is also called maya sometimes because both terms can be used so this cosmic maya is a way of saying that this power belongs to brahman the strict advaitans the shankaracharya school of of the dua duvernata looks upon maya more as some type of delusive power for taqwara it's some divine power there's there's there's no negative element to it except for the fact that uh this whole universe comes into creation but the individual forgets his real nature so that part of maya is there but otherwise it's the glory of god he uses this this term very often but look at this as uh as the lordly power and the the glory of of the moment to be able to manifest this whole universe and really this is closer to what we find in the upanishads that the environment will project this universe so the universe will come directly from it from broken it'll have some type of independent existence being projected out of it yet upheld by roman brahman is never separate from it as in a dream the dream takes on a life of its own uh once this is there but it can't exist unless the dreamer is dreaming it but everything takes place on its own we we often ask everybody asks why is this world the way it is how could god create a world with so much suffering and war and everything like that this maya that is part of this creation covers the individual this ego comes and these desires come and and this feeling of separation comes and so this is why swamiji will say don't blame god blame man for all of these things but ultimately we can say that once once this little bit of of of free will entered into man and a little bit of this ignorance covered the real nature man everything spun out of control there's a little bit of this story of the garden of eden this uh before was kind of a pre maya and then eating of the the tree of the apple uh the apple a little bit of of uh allowing this sense of of individuality and now i realize i'm a man and i realize that she's a woman and all of these other things come after that so we can say that yes this is part of of the the divine scheme not not the will of god that people will be killing you to each other but uh we give them a little a chance to do things on their own and they mess it up so but as i say he'll give so many different interpretations there will be some people will say no i i see everything is perfect it's all just to play it's very hard for us to see that weakness will always observe this weakness if we think in that way yeah we have this idea that uh if we if we remain in that state of being the witness then we don't identify with the mind we can observe how this delusion is still there within the mind we can observe how the mind still has attachments and passions and all of these things we can observe how the mind still feels a sense of separation from other people we have our own people we have strangers we have enemies all of that the witness can see all of that but not identify with it and remaining as the witness a little transformation will take place within the mind so that this there's a veil of ignorance if we know that we're the witness pure consciousness then who do we fear who is separate from us who is different from us so both things are there it'll bring about transformation and it'll also bring about separation so that we feel for something other than body mind sent to them god has covered all with his maya he doesn't let us know anything maya is now we get our comedy gunship so uh this this tendency that is in the human being for lust and greed and we can add pride and anger jealousy all of these these different passions that these these go along with this whole idea of maya because if we analyze why why do we have anger why do we have fear about other people everything goes back to this this false identification with this lower self and with his body and mind if i know i one with the brahman then who is an enemy to me who do i fear what do i long for what desire do i have if i know that i'm perfect and perfectly fulfilled so because this ignorance is really uh the the the seed out of which all of the passions arise and this ignorance is maya we're born with it why are we born with it with different answers we were reading permission he said how many thousands and thousands and thousands of lifetimes have we lived identifying with the body naturally we're born with it we're born with the mind going outward with no no sense of any inward uh indwelling presence of god anything like that and this becomes a samskata we're born with it but we also create it and these are the things that we have to undo and it's very difficult to undo these things because they've become so ingrained some squatters uh they they really we have this this image of a ball of wax that has grooves in it it's not simply ripples on the surface is something very very deep rooted these some scottish so it's hard to get rid of them so this is maya this is the maya as it as it uh applies to the individual so we have both things this is that the maya of mahamaya of the of the divine mother that power through which he can create this whole universe enter into this universe and then she herself uh becomes covered by this maya this is another funny funny idea a very beautiful idea that god alone dwells within each and every being as the real individual there but this false identification takes place so the sun being reflected in all the different containers and each container that reflected sun identifies with that the container of the water the body-mind complex and this is this is maya and maya which which is responsible for the whole process of reflection and then it's maya which is that false identification so it says maya is nothing nothing but this lust and greed that means that it's the passions that grow out of ignorance that keep us attached to the body and the mind and everything so sometimes he says that my the ego is maya sometimes he says time is maya there's a very nice idea that time is maya then we understand everything is just flowing down this river of time what is substantial there what do we hold on to there what happened to the last 50 years of our lives where did all of this go this flow flow maya we get a real sense of the dreamlike quality of the world when we think in terms of time he who puts my aside to see god can see him now we're talking about individual ignorance putting that aside it won't change the maya that creates the universe now we're talking about the individual trying to transcend to go beyond this veil of maya once when i was explaining god's actions to someone god suddenly showed me the lake at kamarpukur i saw a man removing the green scum and drinking the water the water was clear as crystal god revealed to me that satyananda is covered by the scum of maya he who puts the green scum aside can drink the water now what does this mean is covered by the scum of maya we take it both internally and externally but this is what i was saying before i don't find it too beneficial to think that if i can remove this covering of name and format that i'll see pure consciousness sitting there to me this is a very difficult concept that to see god uh dwelling within all inanimate objects and everything we can see god dwelling within human beings we see that light of consciousness but it's the ground of inanimate object this is for the mystic uh it was so clear to him everything is chin my chin very clear to him but for us if we understand this internally that what is this common on the surface of of this ocean of this lake this is my my false conception of who i am which is based on ignorance and which is a combination of all sorts of personality traits that i have and all desires i have in some scholars and all of the passions and all of the pettiness and anger and hatred and jealousy all of those things that define me as a person from the lower point of view underneath all of that is pure consciousness that we can understand very easily how pure consciousness underlies this external world the very difficult concept either we say everything is like a dream or we say that this this consciousness is is manifesting itself in some as a form of energy something like that and we have both ideas the upanishads is more than ramen projected itself as elements when we read in the taitu panasonic and others god thought let me be many what did he do he didn't dream this universe he projected the different elements this uh space and fire and air and all of that and they combined and caused this universe more moors is a type of uh divine energy and prana or something then there will be others uh swami sabha david anthony kept talking about this there'll be others who say no there was no predicted universe like that that it's almost as if just in a dream that there's no substance any of it taco would say that these are all different theories and different ideas choose the one you like but for me i like the other one better i don't like to call this world not real like a dream he says it many many times so when it says the water was clear as crystal that's the real nature of the self it's perfect perfectly clear perfectly clean who am i do i am am i somebody filled with all sorts of bad habits and great qualities and everything no i'm the self i'm the pure consciousness i'm the witness of everything everything i experience coming through the sentence through the mind but i'm the seer of everything i recognize that the defective nature of the mind and the impurities of the heart i recognize these things and i try to change them but at the same time i know that this scum that's covering over this satchel is my false identification self-identification with this personality let me tell you a very secret experience once i had entered the wood near the pine grove and was sitting there when i had a vision of something like the hidden door of a chamber i couldn't see the inside of the chamber i tried to bore a hole in the back with a nail knife but did not succeed as i boarded the earth fell back into the hole and filled it then suddenly i made a very big opening so we we have to feel some keen sense of of being in a state of ignorance and some keen desire to realize the truth this is this is a typical typical uh explanation given for butter that uh everything seemed false to him that all the life of enjoyment and the temple of singing and dancing and eating too much and drinking too much and all of that then it became a horror show for him he said no i i must realize the truth that longing for for truth uh from a devotional point of view it would be long before god there's not a terrible amount of difference just again world view it's a little bit different so this this feeling that somehow we're not saying things correctly one of my favorite statements in the gospel is made by em talker asked him about something do you believe this lady said no i don't know too much about anything only one thing i know is that i'm not saying things rightly a very beautiful statement i i have no idea that what is the real nature of this external world this or that but i know that uh things aren't the way they seem to be of the main ideas of maya things aren't as they seem to be this appearance is something that is hiding the reality of course we can say that this appearance is the manifestation of that reality whether we say positively or negatively but so anyhow this seems to be what taku is saying here that uh we know that this truth is hidden within and yet it seems so hard to get to it it's so it's so close to us it's too close to us it's so too close to us that is always always uh behind us it's it's the light which is always shining we keep turning around it's always still behind us i i like this image of trying to see the back of our heads we can spin around as fast as we want we won't be able to do it because it's the seer itself it can never be seen it's the seer itself yeah this is why self-effort only takes us so far if we fall down on the ground we can lift ourselves off the ground but if we want to lift ourselves into the air we can't do it somebody else has to lift this up so this is then that grace has to come uttering these words the master remains silent after time he said these are very profound words i feel as if someone were pressing my mouth very often he would say that sometimes he would say it if he was in the company of devotees who wouldn't appreciate it or understand it very often he would say that oh you're all my very own no one is a stranger here let me tell you something very secret guccio it's interesting that when em first wrote the gospel you know he did it serially it was in five different parts the last one is mostly later things but in the first four parts uh he had enough to to do one huge book at the very beginning but he must have thought that let me pick out things that i think are important or interesting we don't know what his mind thought was what is but he put out published one volume it was greatly appreciated that he said oh i have enough information for another one so he did the second one and third but he reserved the fourth one almost all of these secret talks are in the fourth volume because he must have thought very carefully should i should i let others know these things when he told us that i'm telling you something very secret and then probably thought for the welfare of the world he had to do it or maybe his doubt was that people will misconstrue it which has happened of course that they won't be able to understand the uh the hidden in meaning and symbology of the whole thing so we're going to get something also that could be very easily misunderstood he says there these are very profound words i feel as if someone were pressing my mouth i've seen with mine own with my own eyes the god dwells even in the sexual organ the yoni the yoni uh of course has the meaning of womb and it has a very sacred meaning that uh this this idea of the sexual relations and everything is as being uh some something sinful uh is so contrary to this uh this other idea that this is how creation takes place the life comes they said every creature in the world this is this union of shivan shakti is what allows for future generations for children to be born problem is that tremendous amount of attachment and jealousy and all sorts of things come out of it but uh but the act itself was always considered something sacred this is why we have the shiva lingam and the yoni the the shiva lingam and the yoni is very much like kali and shiva on the body of shiva only it's reversed there we have the the lingard will be on top of the only will be on the bottom but this is the whole symbology behind the santi philosophy and many different types of philosophy the male principle in the female principle the active principle and the or imminent transcended principle that this is how we explain the the process of creation the same way in the same terms that we use for the process of creation of an individual i saw him once god and the sexual intercourse of a dog and a the universe is conscious on account of the consciousness of god so the universe is conscious that doesn't mean that the tables and chairs are conscious he's talking now about each individual being there's consciousness and every everything that [Music] has some mechanism has some some way to to receive consciousness it's like electricity it's everywhere but we have to have plugs and we have wires and all sorts of things so this we can say that the consciousness will be in human beings of course and animals in plants we we have tremendous research work that was done by jc his disciple showing how how planted things can also react in a way that seems to suggest that there is some type of awareness there sexual sense whether it's it's really conscious awareness it won't be the same way as that we have conscious awareness but still uh things uh all plants are light sensitive as they go towards the light [Music] we we even know that if there's some tremendous they say there's a murder is committed something some some horrible violent thing is there plants will will they'll dry up there there are instances of things like that and uh one very interesting thing japanese did some study where i think uh the the uh the way that the water molecules formed and everything when they were playing music did anybody ever see that that study as if they could react to it somehow anyhow we don't know we don't know to what extent it's like the sun shining to what extent objects can reflect that light some things clear upon you'll see perfect reflection of the sun other things you'll see a little bit of light and when it's on the black asphalt we don't see any reflection there but still it's shining on it so this unit but this this consciousness that uh when we say consciousness of the universe every being that has consciousness it's all from that one light from the sun it's not that it's growing out of the brain or the mind or anything there's only one source for consciousness there's a binocular position of course so it's just reflecting whatever can can accept that reflection it'll all come from that one sun of consciousness so the universe is conscious on account of the consciousness of god sometimes i find that this consciousness wriggles about as it were even in small fish so this consciousness and prana and life now we know that plants have life we may explain it in terms of prana not as much as consciousness but this is my point the upanishad world of view did not make that big distinction between consciousness and prana and life so so that we can understand things when we see we see the the bright eyes of a young child understanding something that of course that light of consciousness but we see animals wriggling on the ground still that divine prana is there how much if there's some consciousness will be there also how much we can't really say the carriage came to the crossing at choba bazaar in calcutta the master continued saying sometimes i find that the universe is saturated with the consciousness of god as the earth is soaked with water in the rainy season now this is what i say is not something that we should expect to be able to experience necessarily ourselves this is the mystic this is the vision the vision that the mystics have something like that we can experience the nature of the self because i am that to see this world that other way the mind has to rise to a very high level we don't know and in some tradition to dwight of italy tradition it'll be war we'll see this universe disappear for srama krishna that will also happen but coming back down you'll see everything as a manifestation of consciousness soaked with consciousness it says congealed form of consciousness or see the divine mother everywhere okay let it stop here oh [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 peace peace peace