Video 75

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (10/15/21)

hmm what's your words are like nectar bringing life discord 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 and uh today is the dashimi vijayadashimi day this is the day when these immersion takes place the image of durga the the worship is completed and the very nice custom in our monastic order and other places of course but uh all of the junior monks make pranam to all of the senior monks and all of the senior monks embraced all the junior monks and back and forth kolakoli what you call yeah it's the one time when you'll see these very old sadhus and young sadhus and everything embracing like they're equals but of course we make pronoun first so a very nice nice thing to see if you're ever valermott this year people couldn't come i watched a little bit on youtube but because of the pandemic okay we're on the chapter the festival at panihati and it is sunday july 22nd 1883 and this is page 267. hey devotee sir you met pandit with yasagar what did you think of him now we've met with yasigar before is he came from uh a village very close to komar pakur uh beer room huh i think something like that and uh he was older of course than takur but taqwa met him and vidyasagar was very very well known in kolkata at that time in bengal for his charitable works for his uh uh scholarship first he started the central college i think and was always helping people who was working for a big advocate for social reform remarriage of widows and uh out outlawing the caste system and other things he was a very very well-known figure and he was very highly regarded and highly respected tucker liked him they had a long conversation melania will find out what tucker says so what did you think of him master vidyasagar has both scholarship and charity but he lacks inner vision now lacks in her vision for takur men that he hasn't realized god not that he he wasn't an introspective person if you're a good good person but taco says gold lies within him had he but found it out his activities would have been reduced finally they would have stopped all together now this was one of takur's teachings that at a certain stage in life that we start to reduce our activities and this is a very standard thing in the hindu tradition that time comes when one retires into the forest becomes a van a prostin and then eventually sannyasan gives up everything and this vidyasagar had reached that age he must have been in the mid 60s or something when takwa met him 67 something like that i think yeah so uh from takur's point of view it was time for him to maybe turn over the the charitable works he was doing to someone younger and for him to spend more time in spiritual practice so this was his point had he been known that god resides in his heart his mind would have been directed to god in thought and meditation some persons must perform selfless work a long time before they can practice dispassion and direct their minds to the spiritual ideal and at last be absorbed in god and a very traditional belief this is this is something emphasized by sakuraitarianism commentary is that this performance of selfless work is for he calls it or for we can say purification of the heart purification of heart purification of the mind and it has to be done until one reaches the stage where one can start reducing uh activities and and spend more time but without that without that very hard to do spiritual practice without some purity of mind purity of heart so here talk we're saying it's different in everyone's case that some from a very early age can realize that there's something higher goal in life and they can renounce it earlier for other people so it's not a very strict thing that the first 25 years this 25 years i'd like to break it down that way that some people have to spend more time in doing this selfless work not that he had a lot of impurities or anything like that but this was some somehow part of his nature so some persons must perform selfless work a long time before they can practice this passion and direct their minds to the spiritual ideal and at last be absorbed in god the activities that vidyasagar is engaged in are good we we sometimes get the impression that aqua was was not very pleased with all of the social reform work that was going on the brahmos what he was doing was a bit similar to what the brahmos were doing talk were nothing against it a few little things this abolition of caste and things like that he said the real way to do it is through devotion to god so a few little things he would have changed but it was more the over emphasis on social programs and to the disregard of of diving deep within and realizing that inner divinity the activities that vidyasagar is engaged in are good a charity is very noble there's a great deal of difference between daya compassion and maya attachment thy is good but not maya maya is love for one's relatives one see maya in in bengali has this secondary meaning not just illusion but the type of attachment i i'll tell you a nice story when i stayed in india one year as a student they were doing the research this was 1978-79 and i stayed in two small rooms in the ground floor of a small house in in kolkata and uh i got very very friendly with the family that lived there the husband and wife and a small daughter 11 year old daughter and so one i used to do things with them we would go to the caligot together he used to go every saturday night and then sometimes they would invite me up and make some special meal and things like that so one day he said to me do you know the meaning of maya and i thought why is he asking me this i said yeah it has some delusive power and again ignorance and everything and he said no we're forming some maya for you they were starting to get attached to me they were a little bit older than i was so this is this is the meaning of maya that those whom we consider to be are very close to us now there's nothing wrong with it except that it's it divides those who belong to us and those who don't it's a little exclusive that if we love our own people that means we don't love the other people it's so much well and sometimes this is what swamiji says that the way we showed great devotion to our ideal is by hating every other ideal so not that maya is a bad thing but it has to be it has to be broadened and expanded it's not one of those concepts that we have to just throw it out the window because it is love my mommata we have this termite very interesting and uh uh according to the gyanis there's a mommata the feeling of mind it's a very bad thing and it's a very bad thing that it's the source of ignorance based on false identification and everything for the the bhakta it means that i feel that god is my very own and everyone else it's a very nice thing so it can be used for a name we we all know a politician by that name but the name itself is beautiful whatever we think so the same thing with this maya it has a negative connotation from a philosophical point of view that it's uh type of ignorance it's the cause of our identification and bondage and everything but from this other point of view maya is some type of deep love which involves a little attachment and a little exclusivity we can say diaz is nothing but my extended and expanded so it includes everyone so there's no limitation to it there's no uh self-identification it's a maya is for those who we can identify with somehow so it can be our own family our own community our own language group our own religion our own country it can be expanded uh little by little but as long as it's restrictive it's maya huh [Music] do they use it it's it's not uh maya like with maya yeah i don't know i don't know yeah yeah i never heard that's a name the user no just it's like okay okay we are probably just repeating maya that way anyhow sometimes this second reduplication doesn't really mean doesn't really mean that particular word like kawadawa i think that's what it is tulsi kawadawa so it just means maya and etc i don't think it means daya because it's not maya maya it just means right so mayan is okay so daya is good but not maya so maya is not good because they're restricted and limited it's not absolutely bad that's that's the distinction here maya's love for one's relatives so there's nothing wrong with it one's relatives one's wife children brother sister nephew father and mother we get that husband also but daya is the same love for all created beings without any distinction now tucker has this little progression that compared to maya that is very good thing but when he's talking about compassion then he'll say oh what a terrible low ideal this is that we want prema we want love so if uh if it's very much with our own limitations and everything that is maya if we expand it to everyone then it's a daya but if that diet that compassion for others means that we place ourselves above others or we think that i am i'm in good shape i can help other people and uh with the feeling of pity and compassion that way then it's a very low thing comparatively so this was like that great incident that took place in daksiniswa when taku was talking about jivedoyah jibedorim's compassion for all beings and then he went into an ecstatic mood and he started railing against this who were you to show compassion on anyone huh who are you little worms crawling around to show compassion on anyone then he says it's not it's love and we should do it by seeing god in all beings so this idea of die a little bit is this that we're looking at other creatures other individual beings who were not so well off we take pity on them he says no we should feel the great privilege to worship them god dwelling within that this is higher than that so we go from maya to daya from daya to seva to serve them and then from seva the puja this is former jesus and then it becomes worship we worship god in others then we feel it's a privilege then it gets reversed and we don't feel that we're doing something for the benefit of others they're allowing us to do it it's become a privilege for us and so swamiji says let the one who is uh doing the service and bow down that the one who is receiving it stand up and receive so this is a very nice way of seeing how we convert our feelings of love and everything in our actions and observe if we if we feel compassion for someone then is there a little bit of pity there and a little bit of superiority feeling that way this is what awkward in one and swamiji and is dia also a bondage all of the gunas are have the power and the binding for us master yes it is but that concept is something very something far beyond the ordinary man diet springs from saturn preserves brothers creates and thomas destroys but brahman is beyond the three gunas it is beyond prakriti what we're trying to do as spiritual aspirins is not go beyond sattva we're trying to to cultivate satwa we can't give it up if we don't have it we can't jump from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top rung we have to develop this there's all of these good spiritual qualities and then that'll take us to the very top of the letter then we can give it up also involves this feeling of i i'm a good person i'm a kind person i'm helping other people vidya says what he did what he did was out of sattva but that little eye is there and this is another source of bondage this is a chain of gold that swamiji says binds as strongly as a chain of iron so but taco says far beyond the ordinary and that means that that should be the last thing we worry about that oh i don't want to have saltwater it'll be bondage no we want to we want to have all of these satwik qualities goodness kindness uh appreciation for others lack of jealousy hatred all of these these are all satwik qualities we need these in spiritual life this is this saturday purification of the heart means also not just get rid of getting rid of the thomas and rajest but developing these asato qualities so thy spring is from sattva this desire to help other people to to feel to identify with others and feel their pain satwa preserves rajas creates and thomas destroys this is why sometimes they'll talk about the with the puranas they'll break them down into three types those that they deal with with the uh brahma will be rajyas those that deal with vishnu will be saturn those that deal with shiva will be thomas because of the three acts of creation preservation and destruction brahman is beyond the three gunas it is beyond parakleti if we want to realize our own nature our nature is the same as the nature of roman atman and brahman the same so ultimately we realized that this these three gonnas belong to the mind they belong to the mind we understand their goodness in two senses as the constituent elements that make up this physical universe but on a subtle plane they're also the elements that make up our our own individual nature which is more important for us whether whether external objects how we understand that combination of the gunas that's not very important but when it comes to our own tendencies the tendency toward anger and jealousy and hatred and everything that we recognize that these springs from thomas and rajas and this feeling of love that it springs from sattva really we can separate the three bonus into two gunas we have sattva which is what we're trying to develop and thomas and rogers together which are real obstacles the taco will tell that nice story here about the the three goodness none of the three gunners can reach truth they are like robbers who cannot come to a public place for fear of being arrested and thomas are like so many robbers but very different of very different natures listen to a story once a man was going to a forest when three robbers fell upon him and robbed him of all his positions one of the robbers said what's the use of keeping this man alive so saying he was about to kill him with his sword when the second robber interrupted him saying oh no what is the use of killing him tie him hand and foot and leave him here the robbers bound his hands and feet and went away after a while the third robber returned and said to the man ah i am sorry or you heard i will release you from your bonds after seeing setting the man free the thief said come with me i will take you to the public highway after a long time they reached the road then the robber said follow this road over there is your house and this the man said sir you have been very good to me come with me to my house oh no the robber replied i can't go there the police will know it tucker tells this story in different times sometimes he says i am also a robber so the the point is that thomas has the power to kill us now that means when we when we have that heavy heavy type of thomas where we have no desire to do anything we can't lift our heads off of the bed we just want to close the turn out the lights and sleep and not do anything at all it's a type of slow death this radius is when the ego comes out and we [Music] get so engaged in action that we get bound up with everything as the attachment comes and uh the ambition comes and desire for more and more wealth and enjoyment and everything and becomes a terrible type of bondage so thomas kills subtle binds then rajus when that comes that overpowers the other two generally they say that rogers will overcome thomas because thomas means we have no desire to do anything how do we get over that i can do anything now i know that i can get up i can enjoy everything do everything it's not such a great thing but it gets rid of the other one then we have to get rid of this regis so we do that with the help of sattva so uh this is sattva has the power to cancel out this thomas itself means yeah see it's very interesting because satu also means just our own nature so this these assata equalities somebody asked this question the other day it was very good question are we really developing new qualities or are we allowing to the qualities of the self to shine through is it a good way of looking at it there's no right or wrong answer but it's a good way of looking at it there's satyadan under the this side and this chit and this ananda that these are satu qualities also if we take as meaning not simply this philosophical type of of existence but goodness so we take it as goodness chit not simply just awareness but knowledge and ananda some type of happiness so in a sense developing these software qualities is we all we have to do is eliminate the others and naturally that joy from within will come out huh that'll be this and we'll will have uh all of this false identification with this lower ego when that disappears then we get some type of wisdom jana and then this goodness will come because we we know the real nature of the self is already perfect and full and we don't have to seek things and and prevent others from anything so there's a very nice way of looking at it these software qualities uh are allowing the real nature of the self to shine through because we're cleaning the the coverings these we have these lamp shades that are keeping the light from shining and we simply get rid of the all the dust and dirt on the lampshade and let the light shine through and these will manifest through the human personality as they start to equalities a nice way of looking at it i don't know if everyone will accept that idea but i i like it then tucker explains this world itself is the forest the three robbers prowling here are sattva rajas and thomas it is they that rob a man of the knowledge of truth thomas wants to destroy him so that was the thief that said let's kill him no point in keeping him alive raj just binds him to the world that was a thief slits time to a tree but satwa rescues him from the clutches of rajas and thomas so we we have to take the aid of of sattva these thought qualities will save us they'll cancel out all these tendencies towards anger and jealousy and hatred and smallness and exclusiveness all of these these are other uh these are passions and and all the bad qualities under the protection of satwa man it's rescued from anger passion and the other evil effects of thomas further sattva loosens the bonds of the world it was the thief who came back and untied him but satu is also a robber it cannot give him the ultimate knowledge of truth though it shows from the road leading to the supreme abode of god setting him on the path sattwa tells him look yonder there is your home even sattha is far away from the knowledge of brahmin far away because we have to completely transcend this lower self even with this software qualities but on the other hand not so far away this is when we develop sattva we've really come very close to the end of of the journey so then he talks about so he even thought was far away from the knowledge of brahman what brahmanas cannot be described okay this is a very standard statement the talk word that says even he who knows it cannot talk about it there is a saying that a boat once reaching the black waters of the ocean cannot come back taco makes one or two references to something that we don't talk about very much and that is uh i believe from what he said that the common idea about samanthi during his time was that no one returns from it because sometimes he'll make little references that some people say that no one can return from that means it nearly called the salati that the idea was that this was the uh what led to passing away that one would pass away in that state of samadhi and so uh takur had to try to explain to people no it is possible to come back from that state i mean of course he was in that state for a long time but you stay there too long you can't come back and only certain people can can come back after some can go back and forth he has all of his distinctions that way but we saw otherwise it wouldn't make sense that what prominence cannot be described he's talking about those who've had that experience those who haven't had that experience they go on and on describing it we have that nice passage from the the upanishads that the father sent his two sons to study with it within guru and he comes back and he asks one tell me you know what did you learn what is the nature of brahman and he recital versus mostly in the upanishads it'll be negative things that which can't be seen or heard things like that but then the other son he asked him he said he just kept silent he lowered his head and kept saying father said ah i see you have understood a little bit of what brahman is what brahman is cannot be explained cannot be uttered by because uh to think about it is to become one with it to enter into this with talk with his own experience whenever he would try to explain the nature of it he would go into samadhi and become one with it then who is there to explain and then we'll talk about the salt doll and everything so it says there's a saying that a boat once reaching the black waters of the ocean cannot come back this is another way of saying that one does not come back from that nearby samadhi state which uh we don't really find in the raja yoga or anything but it seems to have been what what people understood at that time once four friends in the course of a walk saw a place enclosed by a wall the wall was very high these are the walls that uh there's not a wall to a roof or anything just like an open area with a outside wall that would have a little bit of a ledge on top you could climb up and sit on the top of the wall something like that the wall was very high they all became eager to know what was inside one of them climbed at the top of the wall what he saw on looking inside made him speechless with wonder he only cried ah ah and dropped in he could not give any information about what he saw the others too climbed the wall uttered the same cry ah and jumped in now who could tell what was inside now there's another illustration taco gives many many times but other times he'll he'll say that the fourth friend fourth friend climbed to the top looked over saw this tremendous joy singing and dancing and feasting and everything and also felt the pull to jump over but then said no let me go back and tell other people about the tremendous joy in the other side of the wall so we don't get that full story here he just refers to the beginning part of it sage is like you all know who he was yeah that king when he when he went into the forest and had his pet deer and became attached to that pet deer and then was born as a deer now being born as a deer because this is just to show that that idea that the last thing we think of will determine the future birth and as he was dying all he could think of was that peter he was so attached to it but it doesn't mean he had to go from every other birth to get back it was just a little blip so the very next birth he was born as a sage but who could remember his past lives and he remembered how attached he got to that deer and he took a vow that he would never get attached again so he wouldn't speak so john about it they thought he was dumb they were just an ordinary person there's a nice text i don't know what it is i read it years ago that uh there were some procession was going along and there were bears carrying a palanquin uh one of them uh injured himself or something they needed somebody to take over and they saw this this simpleton this sort of the man sitting by the side of the road and they said hey you come on and they made him a bearer and then they asked some questions and he gave all of you be high and do i take replies to everything so there's some text about that so he was considered a fully realized soul the whole shankaracharya position uh tradition goes back to the treya it says the original guru for for that some pradaya so another these are considered to be the event of the highest wisdom sages like and after realizing brahman could not describe it a man's eye completely disappears when he goes into samadhi after attaining the knowledge of brahman so this is this is the defining feature of nearby couples there's no sense of i there's no sense of i'm having this experience oh how wonderful nothing like that that it's just the mind is gone there's merging the moment alone exists at that time there's no knower it's a lot of blank or empty experience but it's not anything involving this triad of nowhere objective knowledge and knowledge amanda i completely disappears when he goes into samadhi after attaining the knowledge of brahman that is why ram prasad sang addressing his mind if you should find the task too hard call upon ram prasad for help the mind must completely merge itself in knowledge knowledge doesn't mean book knowledge or anything like that it means in in that kid aspect and the pure consciousness the mind completely merges in into pure consciousness so it ceases to exist they talk about mano nausea it doesn't mean that it's completely destroyed it means it's completely non-functional at that time otherwise tucker couldn't come back and and experience the world and everything the mind is just non-functional at that time no varity is no mind we have these no mind schools of buddhism that their only thought what is the mind the mind is something that we speculate must be there in order for thoughts to exist so if the thoughts aren't there where is the mind there's nothing there's just that ocean of consciousness and right onto the course the mind must completely merge itself in knowledge but that is not enough ram prasad that is the principle of i must vanish too then alone this one get the knowledge of him from hey devotee sir is it possible then that sugar deva did not have the ultimate knowledge now taka talks about sugar developed and prahlada and all of these ancient figures uh sukadeva was perfectly pure and free from his very birth and thakur praises him all the time but this same question comes up who can really come back from the the highest experience after merging merging in the ocean who can come back who simply melts into the ocean no way of coming back so talk was ambivalent here according to some people sukadeva only saw and touched the ocean of brahmin he did not dive into it that is why he could return to the world and import religious instructions so this is that school of thought if he dove into it he would have melded that we're all salt dolls he would have melded and couldn't have come back he would have become one with the ocean according to others another school of thought he returned to the world of name and form after attaining the knowledge of brahman for the purpose of teaching others taqwa is not taking a stand here he's simply giving us two different options no but very often they'll talk about the nithya synthesis these ever perfect people like sugardeva so he considered him to be a perfect soul yeah we don't know exactly uh this uh the whole avatar doctrine doesn't apply in all cases when he's talking about the avatar he'll be talking at most about caitanya david rama christian and everything uh but these were definitely juventus at the very least perfect free souls so according to others he returned to the world of name and fame after attaining the knowledge of brahman for the purpose of teaching others so this is one thing that taqwa says that so those who have a mission in life whether we say avatar or ishmael or those who feel some call like the fourth friend to tell others that they'll postpone their own enjoyment of liberation and come back they can come back but not if they stay too long you stay up too long and the pull from the other side will be too strong because the longer you stay the more the scent of i disappears once said to go on and then no one to to come unless divine mother herself pulls you back remain in bhava otherwise there's there's no mechanism by which one can return to the world so that's what talk remains that that's all it's already one with the ocean there's no way for it to come back so what was this that sugar devil had to do he had to recite the bhagavata to king pariksit and had to teach people in various ways therefore god did not destroy his ego altogether there's a conversation between em and srama krishna once when m speculates he's explaining that takur that yes you've you've had this heist nervous called salati but you kept the little trace of ego to be able to come back down and enjoy the world and to teach others and taco says no i didn't do it divine mother did it because at that point one can't decide there's nobody there nobody home at that point so you're saying therefore god did not destroy his eye altogether god kept in him the ego of knowledge so this is this is that state of igyana where one has this uh of maya but it's all video a little touch of maya means some identification with the body and some identification of our own individuality but that will always be through this divine relationship either the ego of knowledge or the ego of devotion the ego of devotion can be many types the child the child of god or servant of god any any of the relationships can one keep up an organization after attaining the knowledge of brahman you just said very few people could even come back to the world i was talking about an organization master once i talked to keshav zen about the knowledge of bruhman he asked me to explain it further i said if i proceed further then you won't be able to preserve your organization and following then please stop here replied queso all left but still i said to kesha i and mine indicate ignorance without ignorance one cannot have such a feeling as i am the doer these are my wife children possessions name and fame therefore keshav said sir if one gives up the i nothing whatsoever would remain this is true this is exactly why what tucker says it's like uh when you burn camphor if you burn incense there'll be ash that's left you burn camphor nothing is left nothing i know it all goes into the air huh something you won't find the slightest trace ass not no residue nothing at all so this is tucker will agree yes when his ego is completely effaced there's not even a trace of it left so okay kaiser said sir if one gives up the eye nothing whatsoever would remain i re reassured him and said i'm not asking you to give up all of the i you should give up only the unripe eye so this we can take this back and say eliminate all the thomas and rajas that ripe eye will be the one that's which becomes satwik become purified and tucker uses this term right by to indicate the relationship that i would which identifies itself as a child of the divine mother servant of god any any of their relationships the unripe eye makes one feel i am the doer i read it okay renounce the unripe eye and keep the ripe eye which will make you feel that you were the servant of god it's all the same i it's all the same eye word because i simply means what what do i identify with how do i look upon myself so he's really saying renounce this false identification if there's any false identification or any superimposition any otopa any of that let it be with this relationship with god and that will destroy everything else so renounce this unripe vine keep the right eye which will make you feel that you were the servant of god is devotee and that god is the doer and you are his instrument this is this is an attitude that comes when this eye disappears as long as we have a sense of i then we can feel that we're a servant of god that way but when the eye completely disappears then we feel that we're just a puppet in the hands of god god is doing everything through us but taco said beware as long as that sense of i is there then don't claim that everything is god working through you when you're doing all sorts of selfish things liberty can the ripe eye form an organization this is somebody obviously with some desire to have a following we don't know who it is master i said to keshav sen that the i that says i am a leader i form this party i am teaching people is the unripe eye it is very difficult to preach religion it is not possible to do so without receiving the commandment of god the permission of god is necessary this chaprash idea taco talks about it very often uh everyone is always confused about that the one one of the pundits came and taco was talking about that and then who was the host of somebody say oh i'm sure he's received this job and he said no i haven't i don't know what this is anything like that what does it mean exactly and talk with his case it was very clear mother spoke to him it was very clear in his case and directed him and led him by the hand and everything otherwise uh it'll have to be something that brings us back to the world after the attainment of that ultimate experience that enlightenment experience however we understand it that uh short of that then the is the blind leading the blind we uh if we if we think that we can teach other people and that we'll know what's best for everybody else there's tremendous problems come from that sukadeva had a command from god see so he did consider the sukadeva to be a perfect soul to recite the bhagavata if after realizing god a man gets his command and becomes a preacher or teacher then that preaching or teaching does no harm in fact it's this is what the world needs his eye is not unright it is ripe i asked kesha to give up this unripe eye the ego that feels the ego that feels i am the servant of god and lover of god does not injure one tucker normally says in fact it helps one and in fact we have to have that he's constantly telling us that we have to have this type of eye that allows a relationship with god we have to our whole spiritual practice will be grounded in that relationship if we're really ghanaians that relationship is i improvement that's also a relationship until we have that ultimate realization but from the deductional schools it'll be uh one of one of the standard uh ratsolia dossimo and different problems that we have i said to him he's telling about his conversation with kesha you've been constantly talking of your organization and your followers but people also go away from your organization and and also criticize them and start other groups and everything this happens everywhere keshav answered it is true it is true sir after staying in it several years people go to another organization what is worse when deserting me they abuse me right and left of course this is the way of the world why don't you study their nature i said is there any good in making anybody and everybody a disciple now this of course was with takur's uh understanding with regard to kesha with regard to himself he was after the cream of the crop the ones that would be the future world teachers holy mother she was after everybody so there are only a few cases where she she demurred a little bit or said no wait my child the time is not right if you or i'm either high fever now this and that otherwise she really didn't turn anybody away she had a different attitude that's all i said the kesha further you should accept the divine mother the primal energy yeah they say that taqwar gave the gift of the name of mother to the brahma-samaj and then we find in later songs that were written it's uh before that they it was all just this is what a type of thing it was more impersonal so i said dedication further you should accept the divine mother the primal energy brahman is not different from its shakti what is a brahman is also shakti now when taka says what is the brahman is also shakti he's not identifying brahmin with with power with shakti as power he's identifying brahman with with that divine being endowed with power so really what he's saying is that brahmana ishwara or brahman and mother are not two separate things sometimes he'll use this shakti as as as the divine power sometimes the shakti means brahman together with the shakti with its power so when he says there's no difference whatsoever if we're talking about a person and the power that the person has there's a difference but they're abina they're inseparable of hidden we we can't have that power to burn without fire or fire without the power to burn they they can't be separated out but other times they'll say kali and brahm and brahman and kali are one of the same that's the different type of shakti and then he's talking about brahman together with the shakti who he calls mother kali it's a very small distinction but sometimes it's confusing i also used to wonder and sometimes they think this non-different doesn't mean identical it means inseparable that you can't have one without the other this is why all the images of kali and durga and everything shiva will have to be there they have to the shakti can't exist without the ground and the ground can exist without a chakti as long as a man remains conscious of the body he is conscious of duality it is only when a man tries to describe what he sees that he finds it is only when a man tries to describe what he sees that he finds duality keshav later on recognized kali so uh the kali doesn't mean that he started believing in and the divine mother with with the different arms and skulls and all of these things it means this whole concept and uh and the joy of calling on god as mother this is this is uh the other half of it the first is really a metaphysical doctrine that the mother gives birth to the universe like your mother gives birth to her child but the other is how the child loves the mother and how the mother loves the child and this is our freedom this is this is our freedom to form our own conception of god that that works for us and this idea of the divine mother those who feel that the love of the mother is the most precious thing in the world and this this is the most selfless type of love if they want to conceive of god as having perfectly selfless love then they can think of god's mother it's a very a sensible idea it doesn't mean that they'll say no you can't worship god his father or anything else this is my understanding this is the way i like to do it one day when keshav was here with his disciples i said to him that i would like to hear him preach he delivered a lecture in the chandni then we all sat by the vedic god and had a long conversation i said to him it is a bhagavan alone who in one form appears as a bhakta and another as the bhagavata please repeat bhagavatam so the lord the devotee and the scripture and the holy teachings that describe the leela of the lord keshav and his disciples repeated the words then i asked them to repeat guru krishna vaisnava okay now this will be a little bit too sectarian huh there upon keshav said sir i should not go so far now people will say that i become an orthodox hindu they they would never be confused with orthodox hindus because they wouldn't set foot in a temple or bow down before an image or anything a lot of things they didn't accept they didn't care for this guru idea this avatar idea this personal god their personal god was a very impersonal personal god not much personality but still that we'll have the attributes of goodness and kindness and justice and mercy things like that it is extremely difficult to go beyond the three gunas again he's talking about uh when he says we have to go beyond all the three uh generally taco is very practical this is when he says we have to get rid of the ego completely next sentence will be impossible to get rid of the ego completely so utilize it it'll be the same thing here extremely difficult to go beyond the three goals one cannot reach that state without having realized god so we try to transcend the three gunas in order to realize god but only after realizing god or we're really free from that because there's no attachment to anything in the gita we have a whole chapter on what is what is the description of the person going beyond the three gunas almost identical with the titanic that yes just unaffected by anything observing things and not attached to the functioning of the mind of the goodness or anything like that so it's extremely difficult to begin go beyond the three goals because we have to go beyond our own mind his own sense of i and everything one cannot reach that state without having realized god man dwells in the realm of maya relativity time space causation all of that doesn't that mean that we're we're talking the deepest type of ignorance we may have have a little clarity regarding things but still we live in this relative universe maya does not permit him to see god it has made him a victim of a victim of the ignorance this is the deep type of maya what is this ignorance it's not uh the ignorance regarding our own nature and it's not such a uh uh evil thing it's not that type of ignorance that will make us want to go and murder people and rob them and it's that type of ignorance that makes me feel you know this is me this is who i am that false identification once read i brought a bull cow here i saw one day that he had tied it with a rope in the garden so that it might graze there i asked him freedom why do you tie the calf there every day uncle he said i'm going to send this calf to our village when it grows strong i shall yoke it to the plow now immediately taco is thinking oh my god the poor little little cat is here and everything and he doesn't know there's tremendous bondage and pain and suffering waiting for him as soon as i heard these words i was stunned to think how inscrutable is the play of the divine maya kamarpakura and shihor shihur with the srita's village are so far away from calcutta this poor cath must go all that way then it will grow and at length it will be yoked to the plow this is indeed the world this is indeed maya i fell down unconscious only after a long time did i regain consciousness okay the day continues but we're going to get a break here then we'll go back three or four o'clock in the afternoon so i'll stop here and uh yeah so this uh puja time is over this very nice period this uh this idea of worshiping god his mother a very sweet idea and in bengal i this tradition is so nice you know very common to call one's own daughter ma right so this is a time we worship the divine mother as our own daughter daughter who was married off to this madman in the himalayas and can't come home very often she lives far away so for a few days she gets to come back to stay with her with her parents in their home and how much joy there is and then this feeling of sadness everything is over and she has to go back to the himalayas but we always say when she remain in our hearts so that's this uh dasha me this is the time when we should feel that mother was available to us in some visible form and now she goes back and dwells within us as that divine presence within the heart as the the feeling of motherhood that motherly love that dwells within the heart so let us let it stop here up close 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 om shanti shanti peace peace