Video 79

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (11/19/21)

welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of srama krishna we are on chapter 13 the master and m it's august 19 1883. so if you if you missed the last class that we had the last one was with swami b but the one before that when i explained that i made a booboo whole bunch of pages so don't be surprised if if you think that we're in april of 1884 i skipped by mistake because we have two sets of bookmarks in the book so i went to them i forgot so this is page 275 the master nm august 19 1883. and uh who was in the room okay it's two or three in the afternoon and adhar adoshen and balarama arrived after saluting suramar krishna they sat on the floor and asked him if he was well the master said yes i am well physically but a little troubled in mind he did not refer to fredoy and his troubles i i know that this is the last thing that we read thank you the reference was we we know that redoi had to leave the dakshineswara because of some poor judgment that he was asked by the authorities to leave and when he went back he suffered very greatly that uh his health wasn't good and and he missed trauma krishna and monetarily the financial problems and everything so that's that reference now this is where we're starting tonight the conversation turned to the goddess this will be the reference to uh as she's worshipped in one of the local places but we're mostly familiar with singaporean because this is the most important temple in garden party probably the only one huh i don't know if there's any other maybe some tiny little some little village things nearby or something but uh this is a reference to the divine mother who has the lion as her vehicle singh singh it's it is very important in the life of holy mother because uh there was a time when she was very very ill and suffering terribly and and uh a lot of pus coming out of her body her eyes were caked clothes all sorts of terrible things and she went and and she lay before singaporeany and she was given a cure and everything and from that time on everyone all the village people everyone in that area felt that the deity was awakened we we have this idea that uh when we do puja to the image that we have to awaken the deity this is not the same thing this is a little bit different that somehow that through some special event that takes place that that particular form of the divine mother or any any deity takes on some special power and we they use the term awakened i don't know how we really explain it but it was felt that people could go and uh she would she would answer their prayers and and cure people and everything so that's the thing jordan bucky master yes i visited the goddess she is worshiped by one of the branches of the malik family of calcutta this branch of the family is now in straightened circumstances and the house they lived in they live in is dilapidated the walls and floor are spotted with moss and pigeon droppings and the cement and plaster are crumbling but other branches of the malik family are well off this branch has no sign of prosperity to m well what does that signify and remain silent master he remains on because he knows that taco will answer it himself and there's not much point in him saying too much master the thing is that everyone must reap the result of his past karma now we had a discussion last time about this parade of the karma and other things it'll continue a little bit because takur he he says many things about paratha the karma he doesn't always use that term but to what extent are we influenced by what we've done in the previous lifetime or lifetimes if we believe in it or what what do we bring in uh what what is the hidden cause behind the particular family that we're born into length of life abilities disabilities all sorts of things these are explained in terms of paradigm the karma and one of the reasons it's important is that uh takur had a very strong belief in uh people who were born with good some scatters and these some scottish this will be the uh psychological side of the karma theory this paratha of the karma it has different elements to it one will be actual circumstances of birth so we're born into a family according to what we've done uh in the previous lifetime and will be born with a certain genetic makeup we can say will be born with certain propensities and talents and things like that this cannot be changed we we can't go back in time and decide oh i want to be born in a different family this absolutely can't be changed because it's already done so prarabdha the what we did in the past life was responsible for the circumstances of birth and many things that have happened up until now but is still active so there could be things in the future that are determined by the past can these be affected can these be changed in the brahman in the in the radha yoga we read about this hey can can these be avoided now those who strictly follow this karma theory will say no paratha the karma can't be avoided taco and holy mother they take an in-between position can be lessened they'll say through through devotion and to knowledge and everything his position is is also very interesting he says that prada of the karma cannot be changed but the god realized soul no longer has any identification with the body so it's not affected by it so we can no longer say that otherwise everyone suffers or experiences proud of the karma the jivan mukta doesn't really experience it because even that is separate from the from the body and then uh they give the example of the of the potter's wheel when when the pot is is uh perfectly formed then the potter takes it off the wheel while it's there he keeps spinning the wheel these are manual things keep spinning it takes it off and then it spins as long as it's a pass momentum keeps it going it doesn't keep spinning it that means that the real iso doesn't create any more karma but there'll be the past momentum that much but the the pot is no longer on the wheel anymore so it's not affected by it at all so uh when it comes to these uh this is what i like to think of is the psychological side that we're born with certain spiritual tendencies taco had a very strong uh belief in this and he he kind of uh was anxious for him to accept that there are many conversations earlier where am will say sir i don't really believe in some scholars will that harm me in my spiritual life and that talker says no but uh understand that everything is possible with god other times he says that you have to accept these things and he'll always point to some devotees or others that they came to ceramic christian that the author is very interesting we find he just came for the first time not long ago and every week he comes and tucker goes to his house so often then he dies quickly now the fact that he dies quickly after that srama christian will probably explain this that that was his something in his proud of the karma that he was only destined to live at a certain number of years something like that but these good some scholars were awakened when he met sirama krishna and that brought him to srama krishnan and that really quickened his spiritual progress so so we have kind of three things now okay that uh one will be the psychological element and whatever tendencies we're born with these can be changed to a certain extent uh we may have certain tendencies that uh shyness or bad temper things like that these we can change to a certain extent spiritual things we can certainly grow with them when it comes to the metaphysical side of it then we can change what's already taken place that is family we're born into and all of this length of life now what do we do with that this is supposed to be determined by our paradigm even even the number of breaths that we take again they'll be very orthodox people who will say yes this is true there will be others well they don't take it so literally now with sriami krishna when he says that for ordinary the jiva kotis if they get nirikopa samadhi then their body only lives another 21 days then we have to connect that with prada of the karma they only had 21 days left when they got in their recovery money a little tricky to do it and yeah my feeling is that uh with as with most things most of the teachings of srama krishna is that these are spiritual attitudes that we don't have to worry about how literally true it is that this is a very nice attitude to take when something happens to us we say with my karma what can i do i i've mentioned many times that this is a very special conversation i had with swami swananji one day it was maybe the last two three years of his life and uh all of those young monks who had served him either they were had gone to a different center anyhow they weren't there anymore so i said to him marais is very uh unfortunate that at this stage of your life you don't have anybody to serve you and he looked at me and said it's my karma what can i do now do i think that he really believed that that he did some bad things in his past and he was destined to suffer i don't think so but he got so much peace and consolation by by on by believing that and so a very nice attitude to take that we don't blame anybody else see when swamiji talks about it no one but me to blame it's a beautiful beautiful poem i take it as more of a spiritual attitude that uh we we learn to accept things not very much different from those who say everything is the will of the divine mother they're both methods by which we can learn to practice acceptance and surrender one is surrender to our own past karma the other is to the will of god otherwise we can even learn to to practice surrender to randomness now this talk we believe in randomness a little bit a little bit we'll see because he'll talk about you uh anybody's born with the physical body something will happen some ailment this or that everyone dies from something he he won't specifically say that oh that was his karma that he got this and that sometimes he just gives that that other way of looking at it so if we analyze all of the different teachings of srirama krishna we find that none of them are written in stone they're all attitudes and and they're all helpful in a certain way and not helpful in another way there's karma theory uh if we believe that everything is predetermined in everything and we don't make any effort then it's not helpful if it leads us to practice acceptance then it's very helpful so we we have to we have to balance these things and look at them and and try to figure out what works for us in our spiritual life if we really want to practice uh surrender to the will of mother then we can forget about this this karma theory we don't have to bother or we can say this is how she works we can dovetail them but these are all different attitudes this was really i think one of the most important teachings that taqwa has he'll never talk about any of these different doctrines as true or false or anything they're all different ways of looking at things that are helpful or not helpful that's why sometimes i'll hear people say that otaku was a qualified nondualist very often he talks in those terms the bell fruit idea that fits in very well with that but it completely misses the point that for him truth for him is not in any doctrine and so this is what swamiji says you won't find it in any dogma or doctrine or anything like that truth is experience truth of the brahman itself truth is is the real nature of our being is not in any doctrine all of these these are simply uh different attempts some better than others trying to explain this human condition that we're in so we'll we'll see it's interesting because they'll say many things now about this karma so let me read this again the thing is that everyone must reap the result of his past karma one must admit the influence of tendencies inherited from past births this was the thing that he really stressed some people are are fortunate they're they're born with the greater purity of heart and longing for god the taco will always say that this is this is uh the some scottish so the some squad is one element the other element is some type of adristi of some type of unknown force that will result in events that take place in life length of life marriage who we marry things like that once i went to vishnupur the roger of that palace has several fine temples and one of them there is an image of the divine mother called murin there's a footnote for the legend connected with this temple see page 797. because taco will talk about this uh again there are several lakes near the temple known as the lal band krishna bond and so on in the water of one of the lakes i could smell the ointments that women use for their hair how do you explain that i didn't know at that time that the women devotees offer ointments to the goddess while visiting her temple near the lake i went into samadhi though i had not yet seen the image in the temple in that state i saw the divine form from the waist up rising from the water now tucker won't say anything more about this we don't know why exactly he's saying this we we always have to remember that takur had he was a mystic he had a mystic vision he saw things that we don't see is his mind worked in a different way he could enter in into different levels that are not accessible to us why and how he could do these things is very hard for us to understand in the meantime other devotees had arrived some referred to the political revolution and civil war in kabul a devotee said that jakub khan the amir of of afghanistan had been deposed he told the master that the amir was a great devotee of god so now this again this will be the question why someone is such a great devotee of god should they suffer so much and and not received grace of god who knows that uh so this will be the dilemma we all we also wonder about that there's a book that uh was written by some rabbi rabbi kushner or something and why good people suffer i think he gives seven different arguments i never read it something like that there's always a dilemma for us if we if whether we believe in karma or whether we believe that there's some justice in the universe then god is just or something and we see good people suffering terribly and we see bad people some sometimes having perfect health and we don't know why exactly uh we can always say that they're they did good things in a past lifetime we can always justify it but but we don't really know this is the main thing that these are all different theories this is why we call it the karma theory and swamiji says that the best theory the best explanation we have now but it's still provisional it's still uh some somehow a hypothetical uh type of theorem yeah [Music] this the question is what is this connection between the gunas and the samskaras this is how these some scars will manifest themselves in general in a general way so we can say if if somebody is born with a tendency towards anger or someone with the tendency to be very restless all the time we'll say they're they were born with an excess of rudges so some somehow they dovetail they work together two theories but you must remember that pleasure and pain are the characteristics of the embodied state okay so now this is this is where uh we can i don't want to say it's a random theory but but there's some universality to to good things and bad things that pleasure in pain that everyone will have to undergo some one time or another the body will break down somehow do we want to explain everything in terms of past karma we can but it's up to us because we don't know or we can simply say that you know you you live in the body you have to pay the tax that there'll be there's no avoiding it for anybody good people bad people we don't know this theory of karma when we look at it as a spiritual attitude then we can see how we may apply it to ourselves but not to other people so if we see somebody else suffering and we go up to them and say yeah you must have done horrible things in your past lifetime then it's not a very nice thing to do if we do it then we're perfectly free to say that i must deserve this i must have done something so if it helps us accept it then it's fine so even even with this this is we can have a little bit of a double standard with regard to that so the master but you must remember that pleasure and pain are the characteristics of the embodied state and kabhi kankans chandi it is written that kaluvir was sent to prison and heavy stone placed on his chest yet kali was born as a result of a boon from the divine mother of the universe now what is he trying to say that some things are not easy to explain he's not he's not going to go back and say oh he must have done something horrible before he say so thus pleasure and pain are inevitable when the soul accepts a body again take the case of srimanta who was a great devotee though his mother kullana was very much devoted to the divine mother there was no end to his troubles he was almost beheaded there's also the instance of the woodcutter who was a great lover of the divine mother she appeared before him and showed him much grace and love but he had to continue his profession of wood cutting and earned his livelihood by that arduous work again while devaki krsna's mother was in prison she had a vision of god himself endowed with four hands holding mace discus conch shell and lotus but with all of that she couldn't get out of prison so this is why i make a very sharp distinction for myself personally between this idea of of good tendencies the psychological side of it which i think is is almost impossible to to argue against that uh everything we experience in life leaves a mark on us these some scottish that were we're formed by our experiences and uh good in bed all of these things uh so there's a simple law of cause and effect when it comes to the metaphysical side of it then i don't know then to me there's a question mark why things happen are there some things that are that are random are there some things that we want to explain just scientifically with so many ways of explaining things we somebody's born blind we can we can say well genetic defect we can find it we can find that gene or that something happened at birth that are born upside down all sorts of different things or we can say well this was the karma or we say because of the karma this is it happened this way we can come up with any type of explanation none of them are final and absolute but from a psychological point of view that we we know that whatever we do whatever we experience whatever we see whatever we hear that these help shape and form who we are as people and give us certain tendencies this is why holy company is so important that all of these things uh leave a very strong mark on us and from that point of view we can change very radically we may not be able to change uh some say we have a tendency to to be thin or fat that's not going to change but this tendency to get angry or or to be patient or impatient all of that these things we can gradually change and this is what we're trying to do in spiritual life that the mind starts developing this repeated stimuli that becomes you know how we respond to situations that was samskara no everything everything is a combination of these tendencies that we're born with and each and every experience we have in this lifetime so if if we're born with uh good tendencies that you know peaceful calm people and yet our childhood is a complete mess there's abusive parents what whatever it is that will instantly start changing that will instantly start changing our mental makeup and everything so it's not just uh what we're born with the very second that we're we we can experience things in the world then we're creating new subscribers or or deepening them or uh our psychological makeup is changing so it's always a combination of what we bring into the world and our environment and our education and our experiences although it's always a combination of those and for some the uh environment that we that we live in in childhood is more important this in fact very often they say that the first five years of life that uh our personality gets formed more than the whole rest of the lifetime so this is why it's so important uh to have a good environment for children even prenatal this is why indian tradition the parents the mother especially she'll do so much of prayer and everything and even even in this country it's very very common and popular now to have the music different types of music that they play well the babies in the womb the beethoven and bach and things like that and just for the calming effect and everything because at some stage i don't want to get into this whole abortion question but at some stage the the child the fetus in the womb has a certain amount of awareness we know that that just just as the maturity develops after birth it develops before there's not that much difference between the day before birth and the day after birth except one is inside the womb and one is outside the womb it's just a progression there's not a particular moment when the soul enters or anything like that of course i shouldn't say that in the absolute way everyone has their own belief but i mean to me there's a a certain physiological and and therefore mental development that takes place from the time of inception to the time of birth and that it continues to lay up throughout the whole lifetime but environment plays a tremendously important role early education and family and everything so that can even uh trump these these uh tendencies and some scholars now the people who believe in the karma theory they'll say well you were born into that family uh for a reason because of your first karma so they'll make everything dovetail we can do that whether this is our own rationalization or this is the way it works and god only knows i don't know so the taco is talking about devaki krishna's mother who was in prison then m says why speak only of getting out of prison this body is the source of all our troubles devaki should have been freed from the body master the truth is that one must reap the result of the pradabh the karma now he's going to go into this idea of a few special things the length of life and everything the the body remains as long as the results of past actions do not completely wear away now can that be changed again strict strict theory will be no that at the very birth we're destined to live a certain length of time now taku were saying that can we experience the results of our past karma more quickly tucker always says through through devotion and through knowledge and everything these things can be speeded up somehow so he's in the in between school that uh the certain types of of things that we're destined to experience will be lessened and and can be sped up and uh uh so the the theory behind prada the karma he keeps he does tucker said he he never came to destroy any of these theories or anything but he he gives a little bit of of leeway for all of these things you can explain everything in terms of karma absolutely everything we say there's an earthquake and and a hundred thousand people die how is it possible just coincident there are all those people that people say yes that is that it's not coincidence that they had to be born in that place because the the uh predestined there will be an earthquake and but this i predestination idea is not very helpful in spiritual life we have to we have to believe that uh something is in our hands that otherwise is purushakara all the emphasis on struggle struggle struggle struggle practice practice practice why do we do that if everything is it's predetermined so it's not it's better to this voice for me always emphasizes that tell yourself you're free it's we can we can do anything but we know it's ultimately everything's in the hands of mother religion according to some it does according to some this is the strict that's what i'm saying that is that's what i'm saying that swamiji doesn't accept that they don't accept the strict karma the strict followers the kamavadin strict karma people they'll say that each and everything is determined by the past yeah that's predeterminism we talk where doesn't talk about that but he'll say the body remains as long as the results of past actions do not completely wear away so to a certain extent some things are if we say predetermined now he'll give another example once a blind man bathed in the ganges and as a result was freed from his sins but his blindness remained all the same all that now that's because it already happened now suppose he hadn't yet gotten blind was supposed was because of his past karma was supposed to get blind and and that gets god realization then tucker says maybe he'll just get blind in one eye instead of both that it'll be lessened uh supposed to be running by a sword he had to pinprick something like that but it already happened if because of prada of the karma he was born blind nothing you can do about that there won't be any operation course nowadays maybe you can but anyhow so it was a very tricky type of thing but but awkward didn't and swamiji absolutely didn't like this predetermination yeah sorry mother also said in my cockpit that somebody asked that does one has [Music] everyone is free to i don't bother about these things that i don't i don't see what's to be gained by blaming something on the on a past lifetime or i don't know but we have to learn acceptance and surrender somehow and we have to feel that we're not simply machines that nothing things that have been pre-predetermined may be predisposition but not predetermination in the sense that we have no say in anything then we're just like machines so whatever or whatever world view we take it should give some room for self-effort and uh at the same time we have to understand that uh the results are not in our under our control that we have the right to put forth all of the effort and whatever comes we accept either as a result of our past karma or as divine providence or whatever this is a commentary that uh we have the adikata uh to perform action but not with regard to the fruits of action so this this is this is why we put so much emphasis uh on spiritual practice spiritual practice it can counteract any any tendon tendencies that we have and you regis and thomas this is what we're trying to do and if we simply say ah this is this i was born with this nature what can i do about it we can do that to a certain extent but they're very defeatist we we want to emphasize this idea that we can change and at the same time know that it's not absolute that we are restricted to a certain extent by our own nature gita is very a back and forth on this question sometimes it says negra kim karisiti what can we do that we're all slaves to our own nature what can we do about it and other times it says no you can control it you do it by the asa you do it with it you do it through spiritual practice and everything so we have to learn to accept the things that we can't change and change the things that we can a very simple formula and and and not be afraid to take things into our own hands and and try as hard as we can to to pinpoint all of these negative sumscadas we're all born with some positive and negative things we're all a combination of of autonomous radius and saturn and to to search out is rajus and thomas and i either we say okay i was born with these tendencies i don't know why past lifetime or for whatever reason i'm born with them i don't like them they're not helpful to me i'm going to do whatever i can to try to to weed out all of these promising and rogers egg tendencies and try to make my mind and heart more satwik and pure and do this through spiritual practice and do this through yes self-effort self-work through analysis of the mind and catching ourselves and and just to through tremendous effort and this includes of course holy company and all of the meditation and everything else so once a blind man bathed in the ganges and as a result was freed from his sins but his blindness remained all the same or left it was because of his evil deeds in his past of birth that he had to undergo that affliction so taco accepts it he accepts his prada of the karma but uh once one takes the spiritual life and if this prada of the karma has not yet started to bear fruit then that can be affected that can be lessened at least and we can still get god realization and at the same time maybe have to suffer from these other things who knows m yes sir the arrow that has already left the bow is beyond our control master however much of bhakta may experience physical joy and sorrow he always has knowledge and the treasure of divine love so these are not always corresponding things we we can find as i said before very bad people who don't suffer from physical things or or poverty or anything like that and very good people who do the the point is that our mental attitude is more important than anything else we can grow up in in poverty and be very peaceful and content we can grow up with great wealth and and be perfectly discontent and actually that's probably more likely so however much of bhakta me and bhakta he means really somebody who has some type of spirituality and is and is actively leading a spiritual life however much of huck the may experience physical joy and sorrow he always has knowledge and the treasure of divine love this treasure never leaves him take the pandava brothers for instance though they suffered so many calamities they did not lose their god consciousness even once where can you find men like them endowed with so much knowledge and devotion okay so this this is pretty much the end of this uh this particular discussion uh what what do we what do we learn from all of this what's practical in their own spiritual life acceptance surrender if if if we're the result of our past karma then we can affect our future karma by the way we live today this is with swamiji's emphasis uh and uh the mind can be raised above any physical pain and suffering the more question of how we bear these things we can look upon what some people will say is bad karma we can look upon that as as as an opportunity even a blessing to progress in spiritual life everything is a attitude or whatever spiritual attitude is towards these things the metaphysical side of it is impossible to scientifically prove we may say that it's perfectly logical okay that doesn't mean that it's proven it's uh the world is not such a logical place but uh if it's helpful to us in our spiritual life then we accept it and we don't have to feel that everybody else should accept it somebody else says i believe everything is the will of the divine mother good but it's fine taco likes both there's one conversation where he says everything is the word of the divine mother and then just out of the blue he says but don't you know if you eat chilis that your mouth will burn so this is also the will of the divine mother may be the law of cause and effect to a certain extent and you're not good to get hung up on these things too much but we don't want to be defeatist and say what can i do i'm stuck we want to take the bull by the horns and say that uh and no i am not going to be bound by these if i have some good tendencies thank god if i have some bad tendencies i'll i'll try to root them out i'll try to get rid of them as far as i can now what tucker will say sometimes we work through we we utilize these bad tendencies we're born with a certain degree of anger or jealousy this and that we give it a twist we try to utilize it with some type of spiritual attitude that we we feel angry at not having realized god or that being prevented from doing or spiritual the different ways of doing it so not every not every tendency that we have can be gotten rid of so we see sometimes we try to just uh work through it instead of trying to stuff stifle it we can't always do that justin narendra and karna vishwanath upadhyay entered the room narendra was then 22 years old and study in college this of course is our swamiji they saluted the master and sat down the master requested narendra to sing the tanpura hung on the west wall of the room the devotees fixed their eyes on narendra as he began to tune the drums master narendra the drums don't sound as well as before captain they are now full therefore they are quiet like a vessel filled with water or they are like a holy man who remains silent when his heart is full of god consciousness now taku is going to make a comment here because there are many times when he was slightly criticized and actually directly criticized by dr sharkar that you're a god man of god realization why do you talk so much that you should be perfectly full and content and no need to say anything so taco would would he would explain he's going to say give that explanation now master but what about sages like nada so sometimes he'll say that yes when when you fill a picture with from one picture to another then you don't hear anything else then tucker will say yes but we can pour that into somebody else's container and then it'll make some noise that's why so he did that to fill other people to so they should say just like narada otherwise the gyanis or this those who attain realization that they don't they don't have to care about anybody else they can remain silent they can have their samathi these ishwara koti's and the big yanis they'll come down and and then they can share the wealth with others captain they talked so he said what about sages like not at the captain they talked because they were moved by the sufferings of others so tucker likes that master you were right after attaining samadhi narada sugar deva and others came down a few steps as it were to the plane of normal consciousness and broke their silence out of compassion for the sufferings of others and to help them this is takur's case of course so he considered the inaudib whether we say yes for the cotes or not but some special souls who had that enough spiritual power to be able to come down from that that highest state narendra began to sing oh when will dawn for me that day of blessedness when he who is all good all beauty and all truth will light the inmost shrine of my heart when shall i sink at last ever beholding him into that ocean of delight no sooner had the master heard a few words of the song then he went into deep samadhi he sat with folded hands facing the east his body was erect and his mind completely bereft of worldly consciousness this this was a almost a daily occurrence whenever narendra would sing others also with him especially he would go into this this spiritual mood one or two exceptions when the render sang and he left the room even then came back and said oh did we do a bad thing he was sinking and we left his breath had almost stopped this was one of the signs of of samanthi this uh with srama krishna especially that they couldn't detect any uh pulse or any any breath that his his bodily function slowed down to such an extent that very hard to tell if he was still alive when when he had his mahasanti they were most of them felt that this was just a very deep state of samadhi and he could be brought down so for for hours they chanted the name of of the divine mother in his ear home other things and they tried who was it who had that knew to put pogie on his back one of the who was it do you remember yeah that he knew some method to take some ghee and rub it on his back bring it down to bring kundalini back down and everything then finally dr sarkar he said no the life has left the body after a certain amount of time so this was a common thing that was very hard to detect the breath pulse heart beat breathing anything like that his breath had almost stopped with unwinking eyes even one of the doctors who was it when he won one of them even touch his eyeball to see if there was any sensation there he was completely gone there was no the sensation in the eye can go as far as the mind but not to the self was it was disconnected there was you know some yoga there it was a v yoga it was that was broken so it didn't feel anything with unwinking eyes he sat motionless as a picture on the canvas his mind had dived deep into the ocean of god's beauty that indra left the room and went to the east veranda where hazra was seated on a blanket with a rosary in his hand this is where hazrat always said azra was a character he he liked to this is what did they call it where he was showing off his devotion he liked to do his mother and everything wherever he wanted to see and uh at the same time was always worried about trying to get money because he had some debts to pay off and everything but swamiji he liked all these people that nobody else liked the people that uh yeah that had some oddity to them or whatever whether it's pharmacy felt sorry for them or just could relate to everybody but they were big friends he and hasra so narendra left the room and went to the east veranda where a hospital was seated on a blanket with a rosary in his hand they fell to talking other devotees arrived the master came down from samanthi and looked around he could not find narendra the tanpura was lying on the floor he noticed that the earnest eyes of the devotees were riveted on him master referring to narendra he has lighted the fire now he doesn't it doesn't matter whether he stays in the room or goes out to captain and the other devotees attribute to yourself the bliss of god consciousness then you too will experience ineffable joy now i went back to the to the bengali for this because it doesn't we don't get the real sense of this what does it mean attribute to yourself the bliss of god consciousness does it make sense this is uh this is a term that taku uses over and over and over again this is there's a whole philosophy behind this that we somehow adopt uh an attitude or a feeling which isn't necessarily natural to us but is real this is we have our uh isho punishad that we're to cover everything with god that doesn't mean that everything isn't already covered with god only we don't know it so this uh says that we do this with a spiritual attitude generally this will be more this kind of shanta bhava but the spiritual attitude that i i try to act as if i try to feel that i may not have this real feeling that i'm a child of the divine mother i i don't know exactly what does that really mean i know what it means to be a child of my own mother so i think okay let love that i feel for my own mother let me try to feel that love and imagine that i have that love for the divine mother so so what he's saying is this is the nature of brahmin the nature of brahman is is bliss and joy and everything so we have to try to adopt that feeling and we feel that yes if it's true that my real nature is a brahmana then i should be joyful so how do we do that we just we just tell the mind we just try to convince ourselves we uh it's a little bit role-playing but we have to do it in some type of genuine way because what what should we feel sad about we just how do we do it maybe we think of things that make us happy i don't know how do we do it i think of of a few of my favorite things and that i don't feel so sad there's a little bit of that type of idea that we we have to color the mind with this color the mind with it and then we find that it's really true it's not just just fooling ourselves that i'm really by nature i'm really a miserable person but i'll pretend that i'm a joyful person then we find a no that joy really springs from within it's really my own nature so it's a very important idea a tribute to yourself so really means superimposed it really means saturday how will we how will you put that into english okay so we have an image we also do that we attribute that so we start we stop seeing the photograph or the the image and we we tell ourselves no we're face to face with taco himself mother itself is already adopted we have already adopted it yeah a good amount yeah so attribute kind of adopt that attitude see in in in vedanta we we have this concept of a diyasa or adiharopa it's the same thing where one thing is superimposed on something else only in in vedanta it's usually a negative thing and false superimposition so if we uh if we happen to see you know the vase with the red rose behind it we attribute that redness to the vase itself now this we're not doing consciously we're doing this as a result of maya this is error but what we're doing now is we're purposely doing it purposely trying to attribute to the mind the characteristics that belong to brahman there's a very nice verse from the gita which says that brahman is near dosha and salman brahman is the same to everyone in in free from all uh for blemishes if we become like that therefore we're one with the brahman so if if we can be free from sorrow and everything and the real nature of brahman is bliss then we've become brahmin in a sense but it has to be true it has to be true it can't simply be some psychological thing it's not on the mental level starts out on the mental level but it has to be true so taco will go on he'll say a tribute to yourself the bliss of god consciousness then you too will experience ineffable joy this is the important thing the bliss of god consciousness always exists in you so it's our own nature so we're we're attributing to ourselves something which really belongs to us because it's been covered over it's been covered over and we don't realize it so we're not we're not putting on a false mask of something that doesn't belong to us we're we're putting on covering ourselves with something in order to bring out the the real truth of it we we were just talking who was talking about it this uh oh in connecticut yeah this idea of sandalwood this is this is the illustration that shankaracharya uses with this uh issue punishad verse he says that sander wood if you if you soak it in water it loses the smell of it now when when we we take it out if we rub it if we rub it then this the smell comes back to it but it already belongs to it it's been covered over it's something is preventing it from coming out so when we try to attribute bliss to ourselves we're really bringing out the bliss that's already there that's the real nature of the self so as a tribute to yourself the bliss of god consciousness then you too will experience ineffable joy the bliss of god consciousness always exists in you it is only hidden by the veiling and projecting power of maya it's covered over and the all of the restlessness and difficulties of the mind get superimposed on the self and the mind is unhappy you say i'm unhappy so this is how maya how mighty works the less you were attached to the world the more you love god captain the farther you proceed toward your home in calcutta the farther you leave benar is behind many people like to say these things which talker himself said half quoting him again the farther you proceed toward benares the farther behind you leave your home master as radha advanced toward krishna she could smell more and more of the sweet fragrance of his body the nearer you approach to god the more you feel his love as the river approaches the ocean it increasingly feels the flow of the tides now how do we get closer to god the closer that we get to god we we have this image of this kolpatoru that the kalpatoru will for whatever we which for we'll get the fruits of that but tucker said we have to sit beneath it how do we get close to it how do we get how do we approach god oh it's all with the mind if we're thinking of god we're with god this verse from chapter 12 it says fix your mind on god place your intellect in god then he says you'll dwell my evil you'll dwell in me we dwell in god when we think of god he says there's no doubt about that we dwell in god when we think if the mind is fixed on god we're with god now is god far from us otherwise experientially yes metaphysically know that divine presence is always there but if we're not aware of it it's as if it's not there and this is why we go and search to here and there and everything as far as he says is we we uh we look and temp vain as our search in temples and churches and everything that we have to turn within we have to turn the the inner innermost dwelling place within the depths of the heart god is always there but we're far away from god if if we don't realize it and we don't pay any attention we look in the other direction as if god is not there but the divine presence is always there so the nearer you approach to god that means the more practice we do the more meditation we practice the more we think of god the more uh and what what does it mean to think of god for us thinking of taku or mother thakur says to meditate on the avatar is the same as the meditation this is this is uh the easiest approach now for taqwa of course everyone is different for some of course it will be krishna or drama or anything like that for takur it was thinking of divine mother but he emphasizes the the uh advantage to uh this avatar to worshiping god as the divine incarnation not limited to that particular historical line but looking upon the avatar as uh these infinite absolute brahmin and the zhishwara and also the indweller and also the physical human manifestation all of them together package the nearer you approach the god the more you feel is love as the river approaches the ocean it increasingly feels the flow of the tides okay we'll stop here then tucker will talk about little distinction between the gyani and the bhakta [Music] 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 [Music] peace peace everyone wishing everyone a happy thanksgiving this coming week huh no thursday yeah okay um