Video 80

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (11/26/21)

foreign your words are like nectar bring life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and removal sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of srimad krishna we are on chapter 13. the master and m and it's august 19 1883 and the page is 277 and suramar krishna i was speaking to i believe narendra was in the room m of course is always there and uh and the other we'll see i think rakal is there also the gyani experiences god consciousness within himself it is like the upper ganges flowing in only one direction to him the whole universe is illusory like a dream he is always established in the reality of self swami krishna is speaking to to captain captain was this what is his name he uh he was from nepal he he worked for the nepali government and what's his first name we should not i think anyhow and he had a little uh propensity for the path of knowledge so we always find that ramakrishna when he's talking about this at the weight of it and things like that generally there's somebody there who especially likes that particular path so the gyani experiences god consciousness within himself it is like the upper ganges flowing in only one direction to him the whole universe is illusory like a dream he is always established in the reality of self what with the lover of god the case is different his feeling does not flow in only one direction he feels both the ebbtide and the flood tide of divine emotion this is a very very beautiful illustration when we when we look at the ganges from the himalayas coming down tremendous force always going in the same direction but in dakshineshwar where tucker was it was close enough to the ocean so that sometimes that flow was was upstream sometimes downstream so the path of devotion has its ups and downs and especially with the uh virah bhava and that we find innovation of a tradition that is typified by the relationship that radha had with krishna that when she was uh with him that was that state of union military and when she was deprived of his company she the mind was was absolutely absorbed in him thinking when will she be able to see krishna again this is called so this is ups and downs ups and downs we see it also on the life of chaitanya devo that constantly like like a seesaw or a swing going back from one side to the other this state of union and the state of longing back and forth yani it's more in one direction the closer and closer and that ultimate so the deputy feels both the eptide and the flood tide of divine emotion he laughs and weeps and dances and sings in the ecstasy of god the lover of god likes to sport with him in the ocean of god's consciousness he sometimes swims sometimes goes down and sometimes rises to the surface like a piece of ice in the water laughter the gyani seeks to realize brahman but the ideal of the bhakta is the personal god a god endowed with omnipotence and with the six treasures the six treasures uh takur uh talked about shadow means these lordly uh qualities if he irritates all of this strength and and courage and uh the the devotees have another six there's this word bhagavan this word bhagavan means something possessing bhagat and they're supposed to be six of these madhuri and says so the invasion of a tradition especially they they emphasize the sweet qualities of the lord and otherwise we have these lordly ones we in many many other religious traditions we have these two sides then god has one side is justice and the other side is mercy something like that so this is how they explain this is bhagavan these these different different qualities that uh that belong to brahmin now we'll see taco will talk about them as upadhis we'll get to that how they belong to brahmin and yet uh don't have that same essential aspect as the as the swarupa brahman which is just pure consciousness we'll get to that in a second okay the gyani seeks to realize brahman but the ideal of the book is the personal god they got endowed with omnipotence and with the six treasures yet brahman and shakti are in fact not different now when dr says shakti here he's talking about the personal god because this is we can just tell by the way the conversation is going then brahman on the one side personal god on the other and then brahman and shakti so shakti for for taqwa the personal god is nothing but brahman together with either shakti or qualities or gunas are these hagas what they call the departures so this will be the defining feature of the personal god that it'll be qualities or powers these two things the idea of power uh fits in better with the upanishadic ideal that this chitchakti this power to project the universe this will be the defining feature of the ishwara is another way of putting it is saying that brahman and ishwar are the same they're going to brahman saguna brahman that these this shakti will manifest his power to project and to uphold and to withdraw the three acts of of the creation and sustenance and preservation and dissolution so when he said brahman and shakti are in fact not different what he's saying is that we're not we don't have two different we don't have brahmin and ishwara and bhagavan we don't have they're not three different divinities or anything like that and just like there's really no brahma vishnu shiva it's not that there are three different deities or anything like that they represent different functions and yet we can think of them that way quranic stories and everything but uh from the point of view of elanta there will only be one that unity will behind it all that which is the blissful mother is again existence knowledge bliss absolute so they're going to bruh they are like the gem and its luster when one speaks of the luster of the gem one thinks of the gem and again when one speaks of the gem one refers to its luster one cannot conceive of the luster of the gem without thinking of the gem and cannot conceive of the gem without thinking of the luster so when we think of consciousness when we think of consciousness i used to think is that really true can't we imagine consciousness that is just pure consciousness we could but it doesn't explain anything it doesn't explain this universe it doesn't explain the the projection if we think of an individual individual has consciousness and yet that pure consciousness has that power to project say when we go to sleep that dream world now that power to project that dream world will turn turn the the sleeper into a dreamer but they're not two different people is the same one and i if we accept the fact of the dream world then we have to accept the fact that there's a power to create that has to belong to that same consciousness which is witnessing it they can't be two separate things that the unity has to be there i like this this understanding in terms of this dream because we see that the individual in the dream is also 100 one with the dreamer who's 100 one with the sleeper when we wake up we know that uh i was sleeping and i dreamt that i did this and i did that the same eye refers to all three of them so they're not three different things they're all just all the same so this this consciousness uh this when we talk about brahmin we can't just say that it's pure consciousness because then it doesn't explain anything we can't this we can bring in this maya idea but what does maya do it somehow makes this consciousness active otherwise it's passive we have to accept both sides to it if we simply say that brahman alone is real soon as we say and the world is unreal then we have more than brahman we have this unreal world to explain yeah if if we say that no it wasn't real it was just a dream where did the dream come from even that needs an explanation and it's not explained if we if we don't allow brahmin to have this power to create it and who else can create it because the brahmin alone is real and it existed there's only the sleeper that way so we the way talker explains it is with substance and attribute in german it's luster we never have a substance that doesn't have an attribute and we never have an attribute that's not in hearing and a substance we we can't have an object that doesn't have a shape and a form and a color and we can't have a color that's not the color of something we don't have a pure color closest thing maybe the blue sky but even that we attribute it to the sky we never come into contact with anything that's not this combination substance and an attribute so this is how taqwa is trying to explain that the same near guna brungman is saguna brahman only the the gunas or the shakti is not always active this is the way he explains it and even when it's active behind it is this this is unchanging from it's it the way there i i always mentioned swami swanaj's example of the woman to me there's a very nice way of understanding it that a woman is a woman always 100 when she gives a birth to a child she becomes a mother but does she stop being a woman that woman aspect is always there that she can't be a mother without being a woman but she can be a woman without being a mother huh so that that's why there's some uh reality to this near guna brahmin that seems to surpass the reality of saguna roman because the saguna aspect uh is changeable then we bring in this maya or this this or the gunas or parakuriti something like that or shakti that that's not it comes and goes if it comes and goes it won't have that same level of reality this is why uh when the when the ghani says brahman alone is real that he can accept a little bit of this shakti and maya and everything but reality means unchanging always real if something changes it's not considered real according to the vedantic definition of rio satya it means that the past present and future that it'll all won't undergo any modification or undergo any change so the woman-ness of the woman doesn't undergo any modification whatsoever even when she becomes a mother so there's a good way of understanding it existence knowledge bliss absolute is one and one only but it is associated with different limiting adjunct adjuncts on account of the different degrees of its manifestation so this is that concept of upadhi now upadhi has a range of meanings according to the degree of reality that we give to the upati so we can say substance and attribute that the attribute is an upati so these are red chairs so the redness belongs to the chair it belongs to it we can't think of this chair without the redness 100 belongs to it so this is one type then there's the apathy that gets added on afterwards i i always found it strange when people were discussing indian names and i would ask is that the last name they said no it's a title that's what what's the difference exactly a new party a title it kind of gets added on say you you get a degree you get the medical degree you graduate from college or you get a phd that gets added on to it that's an ubahti now the person uh the day before graduation and the day after graduation are they two different people little probably just gets a fix to it added on to it it doesn't really change anything so this is the medium type of uh in vedanta the the third type is that which appears to belong to something but doesn't belong to it at all in fact it's the exact opposite the exact opposite and here's where we get the examples of the crystal with the with the red rose behind it so when we look at it from one side it looks like the redness belongs to the crystal say we have a vase clear vase and without knowing that there's something red behind it some said what color is the vase it's red but it never belonged to it if it belonged if it actually belonged to it we could remove the red rose and it would remain red it never enters into it it only apparently belongs to it so it's interesting that tucker is using this concept of ubhati with regard to the personal god so this is also some somehow added on but also inherent so we can say that now we can call this woman a mother that's her new upadhi and yet it's not falsely attributed with with the individual this idea of and with the individual this is 100 maya false identification with something that doesn't belong to us that means that the self identifies with body-minded senses and we take ourselves to be this is a small individual person so that becomes that's the apathy which we've superimposed on ourselves which doesn't belong there and and never never affects it the self is never affected by the mind the senses or anything uh just as the the laser is never affected by the red rose that color never enters into it this only apparently enters into it this is how we can say the self is always pure and perfect it's not affected by anything they give the examples of these good and bad smells in the air they don't affect space akasha they may adhere to some of the air pollic republic molecules but they can be blown away in everything space can't be affected by any of these things so the self is like that so he's now he's talking about these parties that is why one finds various forms of god so these parties can be just our way subjective way of understanding things you look upon god as mother i look upon god as his child the this is this is a superimposition but the the distinction is that uh the reality uh of both of them is brahman itself so there's no falseness to it but there's nothing absolute to it that's how it can be called in an ubhadi i'd like the name shiva you like the name narayana these will be parties we're putting names on that which is essentially nameless there's no name to brahman right so it's a little party but it helps us access it and and there's there's something uh in inherently useful about that so this is this is uh that play of objectivity and subjectivity with the personal god and if we use the illustration that taking water out of the pond that that water will have to take the shape of the container the shape will be different with all of us because our container is a little bit different but the water is 100 percent the same and the fact that the water is is in a bucket or a pitcher or anything has no effect on the on the formless essential nature of water water has no form of its own even if we put it in a bucket still if it took the form of the bucket then we could throw it out and it would be the bucket just as if it were frozen but the second we pour it out of the bucket it goes back to the formula state but it's never found in a formless state we never find water in a formula state surface is always flat bottom is always whatever the bed of the river ocean is something like that but it takes the shape of its container we use that that language so so the brahman is both formless and takes the shape of its container it it takes these upadhi that means whatever our attitude of mind is it'll it'll take that and that allows us to access it and what we get is the real thing so people say oh that's just subjective my concept may be subjective but the reality that i'm that i'm getting a hold of is is is the real thing that that's undeniable so don't deny me my right to call god his mother or to to think of god with a particular form or anything as long as i understand that everyone else has the same right and there's nothing nothing absolute about the name that i give to god or the form that i give to god or the gender that i give to god i remember uh attending an interfaith meeting once and one of the other speakers from the other religions really couldn't bear this idea how do you worship god as mother god is a male figure the male 1 how do you say and then it to go god is it thinking this is brahman this tut i tried to explain it doesn't mean it was is a word that indicates something that is is beyond is transcended that that ultimate reality which we can't define everything not it is an object something like that so this is this is the problem uh swamiji says with devotional schools that their little fanaticism comes and the way we worship with the upadhis that we like the ones that everyone should like so taco says that is why one finds various forms of god the devotee sings oh my divine mother thou art all these all these different forms we can accept all of them taku was living proof of that he could worship god in any possible form he could worship god in any temple or church or mosque or anything didn't make any difference to him wherever you see actions like creation preservation and dissolution there is the manifestation of shakti water is water whether it is calm or full of waves and bubbles the absolute alone is the primordial energy so this this you're going to brahman is that's all that it means which creates preserves and destroys thus it is the same captain now he's referring to his captain whether he remains inactive or performs his worship or pays a visit to the governor general only we designate him by different names at different times another another one of swami swan and jesus illustrations he says again take her take a woman that to the child she's a mother to the husband she's a wife to the student she's the teacher he says if you if you call that woman over if the child calls the woman does just the mother come the teacher also comes the wife also comes there's there's a unity to that but for the child it's only the mother so all of these uh are different aspects and everything but the reality is is one and the same so it doesn't matter the name did we use the nickname or anything it's the reality is the person captain yes sir that is so master i say those words to keshav sen captain keshav is not an orthodox hindu he he is a little proud of his orthodoxy he adopts manners and customs according to his own whim he is a well-to-do gentleman and not a holy man now we have to remember how much tucker loved kesha how much he loved keshav and kate how much keshav loved him and uh uh how much respect he had for him we have to remember even the first time that takara saw kesha what did he say huh i see he used a couple of different illustrations when they when you go fishing there's a little bob or something when it catches the fish that the bob goes up so i see his bob is going up or i see everyone else is is like uh what is the tadpoles yeah yeah the the the tail is is still there and not yet there he hasn't dropped its tail yeah but keshav has dropped his tail so the others are looking at him like he's a madman then so casey said no no there must be some meaning to this and he said yes when the tadpole drops its tail it can live in both the water and on land that i see with the kesha that uh his mind can attend to his worldly duties but also can be fixed on god and then he said i saw that everyone only kesha was was deeply meditating he saw all of the brahmos meditating so he had great respect for keisha now can takeover ever get angry yeah every once in a while not really angry but he can it says here sharply a little a little bit annoyed with him not really angry just but anyhow so master to the other devotees captain forbids me to go to kesho captain but sir you act as you will what can i do master sharply why shouldn't i go to see kesha you feel at ease when you go to the governor general's house there's a footnote according to orthodox hindu custom an englishman is a malaysia one outside the pale of hindu society the touch of a malaysia pollutes a hindu you when you feel at ease when you go to the governor general's house those would be british nepal was also uh under the british at that time did nepal get independent same time india didn't would partition and everything that had anything to do with nepal was it was it a kingdom and it remained the kingdom but it was still it was under the british it was still under anyhow it doesn't matter yes in fact his great great grandson came here one day yeah yeah yeah and they introduced himself he was also obadiah and uh they had started a a kali temple in kathmandu they still didn't live there and of course he knew about the ramakrishna mission we have a small center there also yeah i don't i think they were they were nepali um but went back and forth calcutta of course was the seed of the of the british raj so that was the capital and those who had government work to do they would go back and forth so why shouldn't i go to cksub you feel at ease when you go to the governor general's house and for money at that kaichoff thinks of god and chants his name isn't it you who are always saying that god himself has become the universe and all its living beings doesn't god dwell in keshav also with these words the master left the room abruptly and went to the northeast veranda not that he's so upset or angry angry because we'll see uh he wanted it his narendra was outside he he must have noticed also that it's okay i'm talking to the captain it's okay but it's outside so with these words the master left the room abruptly and went to the northeast veranda captain and the other devotees remained waiting for his return m accompanied the master to the veranda and was very clever when when taco would go out someplace he would follow him he would go there he had to record everything plus he didn't want to miss a second with him and accompanied the master to the randa where narendra was talking with hazrat we know narendra he had a fondness for these eccentric characters and for people that other people didn't care for so much he had a very soft heart soft nature that way that if anybody was criticized by people then he would become friends with them and they'd like to sit and have discussions hazrat was a big philosopher he likes to talk about the high things suramar krishna knew that ahazrah always indulged in dry philosophical discussions would say the world is unreal like a dream worship food offerings to the deity and so forth are only hallucinations of the mind awkward didn't mind his attitude so much but he got very annoyed when hazrat would would tell the young disciples all these things and he said what will happen to their devotion you tell them that you're only offering to your own self he said that maybe a high ideal you can understand flattering him a little bit but for these young boys where will they stand if they have that idea so hazura would say the world is unreal like a dream worship food offerings to the deity and so forth are only hallucinations of the mind the aim of spiritual life is to meditate on one's own real self okay nothing too about that the final thing but the two one-sided then he would repeat i am he but with all that and the other thing is he was a bit of a hypocrite this was all big talk with all that he had a soft corner in his heart for money material things and people's attention but she'll leave people's attention he would do his his vala sitting right outside so everyone would have to see him when they came into the room and at the same time he's doing it he'll be discussing uh business deals and things he he had a little debt he had to earn some money and he was a funny character sometimes he would show great respect to srama krishna other times nothing at all he would go back and forth most of them were like that ramla that's a good question there there are a lot of rooms surrounding the chinese for the the kali temple and some of them are offices some of them maybe some of the priests live there i never really inquired about it you know yeah yeah i think i think many of them lived right there uh you know this this outer veranda and inside and everything a lot of individual little rooms some were store rooms somewhere offices and things and other well then it's original yeah yeah so yeah i don't know exactly or if they had little homes nearby or something surround chris smiled and said to hazrat so he's not annoyed or anything said to a hatred and not enter hello what are you talking about lorendra smiling oh we are discussing a great many things they are rather too deep for others [Music] is also making fun of himself a little bit i mean big talk master with a smile but pure knowledge and pure love are one of the same thing both lead the aspirants to the same goal the path of love is much the easier narendra quoted a song oh mother make me mad with i love what need have i of knowledge or reason this was a song composed by tarot of the brahma-samaj and they always point to this song as evidence of how much the the brahmos were inspired and how much they changed after meeting srama krishna this is not a song that they would have written before we don't find things first of all addressed to the divine mother everything was was this the it was a brahman it was saguna brahman but that means brahman has the father it was really a type of worshiping god his father and uh none of it with his ecstatic madness or anything like that this is a very very nice talker love this song norende said to em that he had been reading a book by hamilton who wrote a learned ignorance is the end of philosophy and the beginning of religion so he he said this too and in english both of them of course were fluent and then actually when swamiji came to this country people were shocked at how perfect is english was they say far better than the average american in terms of grammar vocabulary and everything and would have been the same way they all grew up with the english medium schools and that it was almost the language of the day there so they said it in english which means that tucker is listening and wondering what in the world they're talking about master 2m what does that mean narendra explained the sentence in bengali the master being with the joy and said in english thank you thank you everyone laughed at the charming way he said these words they knew that his english vocabulary consisted of only half a dozen words and those were mostly word english words that got incorporated into bengali language and the government terms and things like that and like magazine you know this term magazine because magazine is as a place where they stored ammunition because there was a magazine right on the other side of the wall north of the dakshinishwar temple it was almost dusk when most of the devotees including rendra took leave of the master srama krishna went out and looked at the ganges for a few minutes from the west porch two priests were bathing in preparation for the evening worship young men of the village were strolling in the garden or standing on the concrete embankment gazing at the murmuring river others perhaps more thoughtful were walking about in the solitude of the ponchovati it became dark the maidservant lighted the lamp in ceramic christian's room and burned incense this incense is that what they call tuna it's not really incense it's i don't know it has a very strong smell a lot of smoke in the room it's for mosquitoes it it sweetens the room uh it's not the same incident that you wave in for all the well they can't do that also but uh it's a beautiful smell yeah yeah they'll have a little fan and it's almost like charcoals where there'll be charcoals on it a little fan like that and it fills the room with smoke but it's not a horse smoke and you know this no it's not camphor i'm sure you've seen it i've seen it yes yeah they'll do it almost everywhere and it takes it helps with mosquitoes i think they call duna in bengali yeah they can offer it also let me see no no no it's it's some herbs some some type of herbs when i see when i went to india the first time these were all new things to me with all of us of course for the first time what in the world are they doing it's uh the room will be filled with smoke you'll be coughing and everything but it turns out to be very sweet a nice smelling and it cleans a very clean type of smell and it gets rid of some of the mosquitoes also it became dark the maidservant lighted the lamp insurance christian's room and burned incense the evening worship began at the twelve temples of shiva and in the shrines of krishna and kali as it was the first day after the full moon the moonlight soon flooded the tops of the trees and temples and touched with silver the numberless waves of the sacred river em always said that uh he was uh how did he put it priya something that is uh he was very fond of poetic things it had a poetic nature and his writing is very poetic with all of these descriptive passages are really beautiful very very high uh sanskritic type of bengali the master returned to his room after bowing to the divine mother he clapped his hands and chanted the sweet names of god this was what he did early morning when he first woke up and then he would do it again at sunset a number of holy pictures are hung on the walls of the room among others there were pictures of dhruva pralada kali radha krishna and the coronation of rama there's other i don't know why they don't mention it here this peter said jesus saving the drowning peter and then the buddha and everything uh i think they're all still there i think all the pictures are still there they may have added some things and you know the master bowed lo before the pictures and repeated the holy names then he repeated the holy word brahma atma bhagavan then he said i have taken refuge at the feet o divine mother nagato while the master was meditating in this fashion on the divine mother a few devotees coming in from the garden gathered in his room srama krishna sat down on the small couch he said to the devotees and other devotees like them belong to the group of the nithya siddhas they are eternally free now there's something very interesting here that in the in the bengali and he doesn't i don't know how many times he does it if this is the only time but he refers to bhavanat as an ishwarikoti here now this is a little bit of a difficult thing for us to understand that talk we're usually very precise in these things that he says they're six ishwar ishwar koti will be those who come with the avatar nithya siddha is someone who is born perfect nithya is not as restrictive as ishwar goti so all of the all of the direct disciples can be considered perfect ever perfect nithya said that they weren't born that's when he says these boys he's not very restrictive that way that they're just they have to shake off a little bit of maya they don't have to do much and remember their their perfection that they're born with a certain mission but they can come at any time ishwarakoti comes with the avatar this is the idea behind it so we have uh five are the monastic disciples and then the sixth sixth slot in the beginning we find that babanat this is the her and then later we find the purna is called this is the sixth the eastward now how does this happen my theory is that these are not so precise and uh this distinction between nithya siddha and ishwar koti that they're not so hard and fast distinctions and i i remember uh when which one of the planets pluto was it one of them got dropped pluto huh so what happened i grew up it was one of the nine planets next thing i know it's a little bit too small it doesn't count anymore as a planet huh they dropped it right maybe they'll find a bigger one they'll add it so the eastward coated maybe something like that i don't know but cockroach had great great regard for above not in the beginning how he dropped off a little bit at the end and uh of course he claimed not to want to get married in those days the children didn't have that much say they could they could absolutely refuse but uh very often the marriage would be arranged for them and everything and and uh slowly dropped out of that inner circle even we can say tucker talked about the antarangas and bahirangas inner circle that had sifting of the inner circle the outer circle took place after his illness when he went to kashipur and at that time the the babanadu wasn't so regular of course married and had a child i think also so to me it's interesting that uh here the one time uh i i don't pay so much close attention but the one time that i remember that he refers specifically to the governor's eastwood but it's not mentioned in the english translation maybe just because it'll confuse people that uh how is it that he uh he got dropped like pluto that dropped from the list of planets so what happened where did i go okay so master was meditating in this fashion on the divine mother a few devotees coming in from the garden gathered in his room suramar krishna sat down on the small couch he said to the devotees like them belong to the group of the nitya siddhas they are eternally free religious practice on their part is superfluous now superfluo is unnecessary the contradiction right somehow tucker wanted they had to do it but not because uh they were caught in the grip of maya not because that they weren't already perfect but just to to realize their perfection so it wasn't really necessary they they weren't born with that type of karma they weren't born to work out that karma and to attain this given even mukti state that that was already theirs their own possession but they had to just shake off the dust dust of maya somehow so it wasn't absolutely necessary because they had already achieved their perfection but at the same time for them to realize that they had that's why tucker insisted that they do hard hard spiritual practices so religious practice on their part is superfluous look at narendra he doesn't care about anyone that meant that he had this perfect independence he didn't care about uh public opinion what people said about him it was beyond everything he was like like a maharaja the king nothing you could do anything nothing bothered him that way one day he was going with me in captain's carriage captain wanted him to take a good seat but narendra didn't even look at him he is independent even of me he doesn't tell me all he knows lest i should praise his scholarship before others he would get very embarrassed all the time the taco would start praising him in front of him in front of his friends and taco would start feeding him and he would get embarrassed he said no give some to them but tucker loved him so much he couldn't help himself he is free from ignorance and delusion he has no bonds they never remember that he's he's uh in the room at this time he's a great soul he has many good qualities he is expert in music both as a singer and player and is also a versatile scholar again he keeps his passions under control and says that he will never marry there is a close friendship between narendra and bhavanath they are just like man and woman the renderer doesn't come here very often that is good for i am overwhelmed by his presence taqwa had a theory about connecting devotees that the either they had the same spiritual attitude or they complemented each other or they helped each other so he liked it then when these special friendships would form that way so one special the one that we hear about mostly that ended in poland okay that's the end of the day now it's a monday august 20th 1883 [Music] [Music] yeah i'm sure there's information about it after swamiji came back i'm i'm sure he did the the the the friendship was there he remained devoted but still had their great devotion to ceramic christians just drifted away a little bit at that one period i think oh that relationship yeah of course when one one takes the monastic life the other marries it's just i don't i don't think they kept that actually after swamiji came back from the west he didn't live in india that long he came back in 1897 and stayed for a few years and then went back again and stayed for another year and then passed away so there really wasn't that much time after that but before that uh i went swamiji's and but underground i think they visited and everything then swamiji wandered so he wasn't that available he wandered for several years and then went to the west and then came back so if we really think about how much time he spend uh and is it it wasn't that much time srama christian was sitting on his bed inside the mosquito net meditating it was about eight o'clock in the evening m was sitting on the floor with his friend haribabu hudi a young man of 28 had lost his wife about 11 years before think of that he was 17. huh probably couldn't have been married more than you know a couple years or something like that and lost his wife's name and did not marry the second time he was much devoted to his parents brothers and sisters azra was living at dakshinishwar raqqa lived with the master though now and then he stayed at adhere's house where people lived in those days with something very very fluid and because being in taquer's room it would be a bedroom at night they would just spread out a mat or some bedding or something people would sleep there we find lots of devotees uh living with rama or adha or balarambos we're very free in the west uh it's not so common to just invite anybody to come and stay with you and as long as they want and it's kind of open-ended thing and families and a little everything was a little different that way so uh rachael living with srama christian that means he spent most of his time there but uh he would also go back home sometimes and then he would he would stay with uh yes and now we see how important he was he came late to srama krishna didn't live long but taku went to his home so many times and and now rockhold is even staying with him raqqa lived with the master though now and then he stayed in authors and other devotees visited the master almost every week so for most of them that that meant on the weekend christian's nephew was ill in his home in the country now remember this is after he got kicked out he was forced to leave he did some foolish thing worshiped the young daughter of the mathura's family and was considered very inauspicious and was asked to leave the master was worried about him one of the devotees had sent him a little money but the master did not know it who will that be yeah i'm sure it's him he won't say that he did it and how will he know if it is done secretly m did this uh for holy mother he did this for barana gramat and he did it for swamiji's mother and i mentioned this earlier in friday class that he was very particular that swamiji's mother never let him know that the amid sense of money swamiji would have been very upset as this is taking charity from from someone who am didn't have that much he didn't make a lot of money headmaster and everything he didn't make a lot of money but very generous that way when srama krishna came out of the of the mosquito net and sat on the small couch the devotees saluted him master to him i was meditating inside this is a curious thing i was meditating inside the net it occurred to me that meditation after all was nothing but the imagining of a form and so i did not enjoy it the only other similar thing to this is when he saw a hazardous telling his beads one day and and he said well let me see if i can do it and he picked up the beads and he said no let me try with my left hand i can do a little bit with my left hand something like that so there's a little bit of that the type of spiritual practice that is done at a fixed time with a fixed way of doing it and everything that gets left behind when one reaches this state and for suramar krishna constantly having visions of god and everything to have to try to just sit for a moment and try to imagine god or imagine the image of god or whatever when when he sees the real living form day and night it won't be such a good thing for him then he says one gets satisfaction if god reveals himself in the flesh so he had that revelation all the time again i said to myself who is it that meditates on on whom does he meditate this is also uh a nice a nice little interlude let's see when we when we practice meditation it sounds so simple that yeah you can repeat your mantra you can picture the form of your ishta devata and and that's your meditation and do it do it for an hour see how it goes the mind's going to go all over the place so what do we do we try to think of leela or sometimes we can we can do a little philosophical contemplation this is a very nice thing to do that while we're meditating to think about the process of meditation and who who is actually repeating the mantra who is actually looking at the form who is the one watching who was the one listening who was admitted who was the meditator who was the object of meditation yeah and uh we can we can reach the point where we say no this the mind is meditating i'm watching or we can get so involved in it that there's no question of who's meditating at all the whole mind is merged in the object of meditation other times whole mind is merged in the witness of the meditation all of these give us some insight into the nature of the self if we understand the nature of meditation we understand the nature of the self and the relationship between mind and and and is witnessing consciousness so there's nothing wrong with this we may say that oh i should be thinking about uh the ishta devata i shouldn't let the mind wander it's gonna wander this is a good nice thing to wonder around it gives us some deeper insight we we don't simply meditate to merge the mind or to get devotion of course these are fantastic things but also to get insight into the way the mind works and the way this relationship between consciousness and awareness and thought and imagining and all of that we can get some very deep insight if we observe the mind meditating and observe ourselves as the witness in the act of meditation it becomes a contemplation we're not giving up this repetition of untold and everything rather than let the mind wander to something else that every once in a while uh to to try to get that feeling we can do all sorts of things in meditation sometimes uh i i like this idea that the object of meditation say we're meditating on surah krishna that it it's not not identifying with him that i am sir i'm a krishna but what would it feel for suramar krishna to be meditating to try to think that i'm we can even sit with our hands folded the way that he does and everything and to try to feel what would what would mean what would meditation feel like if i could witness ceramic christian's meditation and this is my funny mind the way my mind works i'd like to to play with these things sometimes but these things can be helpful things try to imagine what it would be like to to to live in the mind of a holy mother for a few moments that sweetness that innocence that beautiful loving nature these are all different things we can do in meditation because otherwise it becomes a little dry and we fail at it and the mind wanders and everything these are all the helpful little things that we can try so so that tucker says again i said to myself who is it that meditate and on whom does he meditate em yes sir you said that god himself has become everything the universe and all living beings even he who meditates is god because where is this i if we really feel now the mantra is going on on its own the imaging is going on on its own witness is there where is room for the eye even maybe in the divine play of of this this divine consciousness i'll read the next line but we'll start with it next time because it's also interesting master what is more one cannot meditate unless god wills it that means real deep meditation that doesn't mean that we can't sit for meditating we can sit for meditation whenever we want but to get real meditation this is this is something that kind of grace one cannot meditate unless god wills it one can meditate when god makes it possible for one to do so what do you say and true sir you feel like that because there's no i in you when there is no ego one feels like that okay we'll start with this next time okay i have a small announcement to make that some of us here at the center where recently we had to go to make a hospital visit with a deputy and got exposed to uh some someone with positive for covet 19. we we don't have any symptoms we're 100 fine nobody should worry at all we got tested today but we won't get the results so we're requesting at least for the next few days and we don't know if if we turn out positive how long it'll be but please attend the sunday lecture just from home and everything is on youtube and we have normally have our karma yoga tomorrow morning we're going to suspend that and we're going to request everyone to just uh put everything on hold for a while till we know what the situation is a little bit better but nothing for anybody to worry about we're all fine 100 fine we're all fully vaccinated and everything so just to let you know if you know of any this of course is for our local people i know many of you are are out of town and everything but uh uh yeah i don't know what to say about that i mean yeah we could we could get the results uh better to skip this sunday we could be negative and we could pick it up in between also we don't know yeah so any of not that many come most of you watch online anyhow so uh but please don't worry that uh we're we're really feeling fine see okay [Music] [Music] 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 [Music] peace peace in case you're wondering there are some people here everyone here has already been exposed so that's why we're not so worried about that okay thank you everyone what's that