Video 84

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (01/07/22)

[Music] your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and removal sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of srama krishna we are on the chapter in the master in m it is saturday september 22nd 1883 page 288. srama krishna was seated in the drawing room of other's house in calcutta with rakhal adhar m ishan and other devotees many gentlemen of the neighborhood were also present it was afternoon we've now met on her many many times he uh came only about uh i don't know less than a year ago but became very very close to srama christian in a very short period of time and tucker went and visited him on several occasions in his own house rakkal is there ishan ishaan was uh well we'll get to that the master was very fond of ishaan ishaan was a very very uh generous and uh he was such a good person we we we get a funny picture of of ishan because of a later chapter but he was a very very good person a very uh loving and sweet and kind natured person and swamiji was very good friends with his son yeah and uh there were two sons one of them was a classmate of m so the isham was older and the other was a classmate of swamiji so swamiji apparently went to his house many times also they seemed to have a good friendship and swamiji was tremendously impressed with this uh ishan and one place he said that he was every every bid as as as generous and wonderful and philanthropical as vidyasagar who was known throughout bengal and probably india also as the paradigm the paragon of the of generosity and and everything so the ishana was a wonderful person uh also they're all special people they're all different players in this divine leela of srama krishna so there's something special about all of them and yet we'll see a lot about ishaan the master was very fond of isha he had been a superintendent in the accountant general's office and later on his and later on his children also occupied high government positions one of them was a classmate of nurendras ishan's purse was always open for the poor and needy when he retired from service he devoted his time to spiritual practices in charity he often visited suramar krishna at dakshinaswar so he would have been older than sram krishna i i tried to find out when he was born i didn't see did anybody sat too high do you know but he he he outlived from krishna he passed away in 1898 it says and uh i was reading a little bit about him yeah he was was very well known throughout that whole area for his compassion and his generosity and he went very often to srama krishna and his life underwent a great change after meeting him uh and you know it says that uh oh during swamiji's wandering period he stayed in gazipur with the older son chandra for some time anyhow he was a very wonderful person he gets a terrible scolding later the whole chapter but it's very interesting i didn't realize it it was very interesting that talk was giving him instructions now that he won't follow a year from now that because the there's a lot about ishan here this is 1883 but the chapter advice to ishan it comes much later and it's about a year after this also master to ishan please tell us the story of the boy who posted the letter ishaan with a smile a boy once heard that god is our creator so he wrote a letter to god setting forth his prayers and posted it the address he put on the envelope was heaven master with a smile did you hear that story one succeeds in spiritual life when one develops a faith like that boys to ishan tell us also about the renunciation of activities isha after the attainment of god religious duties such as the sandhya drop away one day some people were sitting on the bank of the ganges performing the sandhya but one of them abstained from it on being asked the reason he said i am observing this is that period after uh very often after death in in the family here it's going to be death i think it can also be birth of a childish anyhow after death where they're considered to be impure or at least they're not supposed to go into a temple or something for for 12 days because they've they've had contact with the dead body something like that we don't follow these things the orthodox people follow them you know there was uh uh one instance that we know of when uh keshav's relative had died who was it remember and everyone thought that he won't come to see surami krishna that day and he said no how can i miss seeing him he came anyhow but he ate separately from the others so there's a so this is uh one being asked the reason why he didn't perform sandhya he said i am observing i cannot perform the sandhya ceremony in my case the defilement is due to both a birth and a death my mother ignorance is dead and my son's self-knowledge has been born master tell us also how cast distinctions drop away when one attains self knowledge ishan shankar acharya who was once climbing the steps after finishing his bath in the ganges when he saw just in front of him an untouchable who had a pack of dogs with him you have touched me said shankara revered sir said the pariah i have not touched you nor have you touched me the self is the inner ruler of all beings and cannot be contaminated is there any difference between the sun's reflection and wine and its reflection in the ganges now we have these stories about shankaracharya that i don't know where they come from exactly many many of them are with reference to the different uh hymns that he composed say the the bodyguard we have the whole story about there was an old man sitting by the banks of the ganges reciting these punit rules and he took pity on him and he composed it so these stories i think were maybe a little bit made up i i doubt very much we we assume shankaracharya was at this point fully god realized soul he's not going to be so castrated and everything we we think anyhow these are these are stories that come along with it we hope we hope that it was swami maha yoga on that everybody he's here no no good master with a smile and about harmony how one can realize god through all paths ishaan smiling both hari and hada are derived from the same root okay this is a little sanskrit pun i also wonder about this from the same road we get the followers of the shiva and the followers of adi the vishnu don't always get along but the same is the same in fact i've heard that hardware that the followers of shiva like to say the haredwar and the followers of vishnu hadidor anyhow the same place so the the same sanskrit rude to take away but one becomes one becomes hari so one refers to so the difference is only in the pratyaya is some operation that takes place to change a sanskrit root into a regular word but it also means faith in in bengali so the difference is only in in the faith so this is an interesting little thing both the hadi and hada derived from the same root the difference is only in the pratyaya there are two footnotes the rude khuri from which both words are derived further and hara are two manifestations of the same godhead hadi is the name of vishnu the ideal deities of the vaisnavas and the name of shiva the ideal deity of the sheavers there is a pawn on the word pratyaya which means both faith and inflection in some sense where the grammatical operation is taking place master and please tell us also how the heart of assad is the greatest of all it's like they rehearsed this thing before because he there must have been other times when he told all these things tucker had that habit if he knew that somebody had a nice little story or knew some of him how many times he asked mahima to recite that if one uh how does it go into the game that that that him so he he had that habit that he wouldn't tell that he would let the person tell the story the nice nice way he did it the earth is still ishan the earth is the largest thing we see around us anywhere around us but larger than the earth is the ocean and larger than the ocean is the sky but vishnu the godhead has covered earth sky and the netherworld with one of his feet and that foot of vishnu is enshrined in the sadhu's heart therefore the heart of a holy man is the greatest of all the devotees were delighted with ishan's words now we're going to get a little background which will help us understand this later chapter advice to ishan ishan intended to retire to a solitary place and practice a special discipline of the gayatri through which brahman is evoked this is called buddhist and the way it's usually done is uh one will take a vow to start on a new moon day and and increase and increase increase the number of jumper uh until it reaches a full moon and then go back down again or jan does that did you know that yeah see it was just was it not within guide or anything but uh so this is this is the habit that you gradually increase it and then bring it down again and then we've we've passed that uh that month but the master said so any others of the gayatri so this gayatri of course is uh ishaan is is a brahman so he'll already have been initiated into that and have been secretary and everything but this is a vedic ritual and uh for some reason i like to talk about this sandhya when we when we uh reach a certain spiritual state the sunday is the ritual that goes along with gayatri that emerges in gayatri then we go a little deeper in spiritual life and that merges uh simply in in home so he didn't like this idea for those who were reaching and he's reaching you know the final portion of his life he's we don't i don't know how old he was but if he was older than takur in those days he was considered an elderly man and he's ready to retire and everything so this is the period where one should uh presumably not be too interested in in ritual anymore and uh kind of like so tucker associated this gayatri in the sandy and everything with more ritualistic things and vedic tradition the vedic tradition as opposed to the quranic tradition of the tantric tradition but the master said that the knowledge of brahmin was not possible without the complete destruction of worldliness further he said that it was impossible for a man totally to withdraw his mind from the objects of the senses and the kali yuga when his life was dependent on food that is why the master discouraged people from attempting the vedic worship of brahmin and asked them to worship shakti the divine mother who is identical with brahman now we'll see tucker is going to give a lot of instructions about all of this and for some reason ishan really had it in his head he really wanted to do this and later we'll see the taqwa in some semi ecstatic mood he goes towards the kali temple and he's and he sees ishan sitting there starting to do this this guy and and he gives him uh pretty good scolding he really lays into him at that time but i was surprised i had forgotten that all of this is a full year before that other chapter advice to ishan master to isha and why do you waste your time simply repeating so it's a combination of two things one is this vedic ritual and the second is this very kind of a strict eduardo vedanta neither this is this is a type of of spiritual practice according to this yoga where we analyze everything and we try to separate things into two categories now the one we can say is the is the real and the unreal or the permanent and the changing uh very often we understand this to to mean external things that everything that we see every all the objects of the senses and everything that this can't be movement so we eliminate all of these things but really this in 1880 the application uh in dwight vedanta is at least for me it's more important with regard to internal things so uh we we analyze what is the real nature of the self and we say is it the body and the body is is constantly changing and the body is an object of our perception and the body is a possession of what we have three three things three ways of looking at this as we each retarder that uh what is what is permanent what is changing so we eliminate body-mind all of those and what is uh what is the seer who is the seer and what is seen so the is an object of our perception and even the mind the ego and everything that's uh that's all part of uh uh the drishya that that which is seen and and i am the seer what was the third one what's permanent what's impermanent the syrian and who is the the possessor and what is the possess so if we say that i have a body i can't be the body i have a mind i'm not the mind i have an ego i am not the ego i'm the possessor of these three different ways of practicing uh this type of now his objection is not to this he he in fact he says that this is a type of spiritual practice but the conclusion he says the mistake is if we take this this practice and conclude that this world itself is unreal and that this this uh when when uh when we take this the final truth is siddhanta he says it's not the siddhanta that this is part of sadhana or spiritual practice that we shouldn't take this as a conclusion that there are two things in this world one is real and one is unreal there's only one thing there's only what the real so he says that this is what enables us to get to the roof and when we get to the roof then of course everything disappears for us at that time but coming back down we see that we see this oneness so it's it's a curious paradox that the the sadhana for the vedanta is based on the duality of sat and assad the real and the unreal or and russia the seer in the scene so taka says that this is a provisional thing afterwards we say that brahman alone is real of course that's one of the truths of dwight vedanta so he accepts this uh but not the the if we take it as the conclusion that brahman alone is real and the world is unreal taco says this is this is for the sake of sadhana for the sake of of separating two things and and knowing what the real is which is the self brahman and the self are one of the same after that we see that everything is also a manifestation of reality of brahman itself so he has a little bit of an objection to taking what is for him a spiritual path and confusing that with the the ultimate truth number two is that uh he thinks that most people uh when they talk about the uh identity identification of the self lord of the of jiva and and paramatman jivadmin paramatman that uh they make a mess of things because they identify themselves with the body in the mind of the senses and say ambroman and the other thing is that it requires a tremendous amount of great argument dispassion renunciation uh lack of interest in things of the world freedom from desires all sorts of things as a preliminary before the practice of advaita vedanta so the passage of ghana yoga has a lot of decada to it it wears the path of devotion we just have to be sincere that's all be sincere and try to lead a good life but for ghana yoga we have to have a very sharp intellect and a very strong feeling of detachment from the world these are two essential things so this ishan is very much involved with the world in a good way helping people and everything but he also did things like arbitration and lots he was in with social things involved with lots of things like that so tucker says to him while you waste your time simply repeating nothing whatsoever can be specified about brahmin except that it it exists we have from the upanishads that it's to be experienced simply as it is that it exists we can't say anything about it because everything we say about it will limit it and it's it's it's the self it's this it's the seer it's the sub the pure subject it has no qualities or attributes or anything this this pure grumman whatever we see or think about is the manifestation of the glory of the primordial energy the primal consciousness now he's he's expressing the view we can say the view of the shaktas now people have all different opinions about takur he himself used to say that everybody thinks i belong to their school the rights of us think that i'm a vaisnava they're shocked as i'm in shock then everything we also sometimes try to pin him down and m very often gives the impression that he thinks takur upholds this fascist advice and the little headings will be and tucker does give those teachings but taker never teaches these things as as a doctrine everything is a path for him we know that that he thinks that that's a very nice way of looking at things but he also does the same thing with the advaita vedanta if we pin him down to anything i would say that the the doctrine that he seems to be most attracted to that appeals to him that he likes is this shock to view that everything is a manifestation of the power of the divine mother he likes that this is another interesting uh concept that uh our beliefs system is based uh very much on what appeals to us not so much what is logical it has to appeal to the heart somehow and this appealed to him very much so we can the temptation is to say that he was really at heart a shakta and this was the the most important thing for him but he gives so many different teachings to different people and everything when he's talked to the gyanies he'll he'll talk about this jana yoga and everything but his view was very much like that of gita when we read chapter 12 bhakti yoga that this is a path of knowledge is it difficult for most people is a very steep path and because we have to accept the final conclusion at the very beginning the path of devotion we can start out as doelis and as we practice it we can start feeling this this connection and then this feeling of union and oneness and everything we everything is provisional we go step by step by step the yani has to start at the very top somehow when the mind is at the bottom so it was a very difficult a very difficult path of course tucker wanted us to to understand it and and keep it in our pocket this idea of oneness because of the ultimate truth he accepted that this was the ultimate truth but from a practical point of view that this bhakti yoga he thought was a better pet i mentioned a couple of times this beautiful statement by swami permission on the g that we are a dwight vardens but due to karins that's a very nice statement we meaning this those who follow the teaching of krishna that philosophically we accepted ultimately this oneness but from a practical point of view we accept his teaching form a relationship with god uh that that a dividing line which separates us from god will eventually disappear is the stick on water now it'll be like like a line on water later so uh this is this is a dualistic path superimposed on a non-dualistic understanding of things very nice idea so sometimes they say ganymede they give different ways of explaining but really we can't pigeonhole swami krishna he he appreciated all of these different paths very much appreciated all of the dualistic different types of sadhana and practiced all of them he really appreciated them and taught them and emphasized so much at the same time he loved this idea of qualified non-dualism every time he gives the example the belt fruit that the the inside the flesh is the essential portion but unless you you count the seeds that'll be the individual jeffers and the outer shell you won't get the full weight so he loved that idea and then he said everything ends in oneness ultimately that there's only one son each jiva is just a reflection he accepted all of them he his ideal was with hanuman that when i think of myself as the body then i think you're the lord and i'm your servant when i think of myself as a jiva then you're the whole and i'm a part when i think of myself as ottman then you and i are one of the same so that was that was really one of one of the statements that he liked very much so he starts out with ishan don't waste your time with all of this in 1880 that is not a path for you there's nothing wrong with it and everything but your stage of life now is the time to put your heart and soul into calling on god and try to follow these other paths somebody was asking me about this and i was fortunate i met him towards the end of his life and i also read if if this uh if you read this second volume the second it was a long section of at the very end of his life he was asked about all this that dwight vadanti said no now all i care is to sit here and repeat the name of god that's all and what i meant it was very sweet and loving before that even though they were staunch at white with hunted so people change sometimes at the end also so whatever we see or think about is the manifestation of the glory of the primordial energy the primal consciousness creation preservation and destruction living beings and the universe and further meditation and the meditator bhakti and prema all these are manifestations of the glory of that power aishwarya this is another way of just saying that this maya is not some veil of ignorance hovering over brahmin but the actual power that belongs to brahman a different way of looking at it serves the same purpose is a way of understanding how this infinite absolute reality can somehow manifest as the universe that there has to be something which will trigger this change which will allow it to not remain simply as an unmanifest infinite brahman and turn it into ishvara turn it into the saguana brahman or divine mother the divine mother is really this brahman in both niergun and sagoniform that's what tucker means by when he talks about the divine mother of course this this overlay of of the sweetness of the motherhood is also there but from a philosophical point of view but brahman is identical with its power so ramen and shakti are abhid this is the one of the statements that taco makes over and over and over again and this has to again is a very subtle point but it has two different meanings that sometimes he'll talk about inseparable that we can't separate the power of brahman from brahman itself so that that point is obeyed in indistinguishable inseparable other times he'll say brahman and chakri are one they're not two different things that's a slightly different that's that's near guna brahman and saguna brahman they're not two different things so if we if we talk about the the woman and the mother the the power that the woman has to give birth to a child is inseparable from the woman but when she becomes a mother the mother and the woman are one they're not two different people this is one of the same person so he uses in both terms sometimes shakti means the power sometimes shakti means divine mother shakti means brahman together with its power but brahman is identical with its power when returning from ceylan hanuman praised saying o rama you are the supreme brahman and sita is your shakti. even in advice of a tradition they accept this this idea with radha is the shakti of krishna from the you know symbolic allegorical way of putting it you and she are identical brahman and shakti are like the snake and it's wriggling motion okay so now we're talking about the quality of that that belongs to the the substance substance and attribute thinking of the snake one must think of the wriggling motion and thinking of its wriggling motion one must think of the snake or they are like what milk and its whiteness thinking if milk one has to think of its color that is whiteness and thinking of the whiteness of milk one has to think of milk itself or they're like water and it's wetness thinking of water one has to think of its wetness and thinking of the wetness of water one has to think of water now how does this apply to consciousness itself thinking of consciousness we have to understand that it has this power of projection so if we if we think of the power that an individual has to protect a dream that power is there it's always there it's not always manifest that power can't exist without the the consciousness itself and that consciousness will never be unfully understood unless we understand that it possesses that power sometimes manifest sometimes dormant that's all so otherwise if we accept this this idea of consciousness just as pure pure consciousness nothing else to it we can't explain anything there has to be something there has to be either either we bring in this concept of maya where we bring in this concept of shakti there has to be something otherwise there's no way to explain even this even we say this this world is just a dream there's no way to explain even the dream that power to to dream that power to project the chitchakti that that has to be there and it can't exist on its own it has to be belong to brahman and if we think of brahman we have to understand that that's also a part of it the primal power muhammad so now when he says the problem of power he means brahman together with its primal power mahamaya uh okay no i take it back now we're going to talk about this this uh this uh this somehow this this edwardic idea of maya is a little bit divorced from brahman itself it doesn't exist separate but it's not part of it so he says it has covered brahman these are very very strange concepts this is when it comes to cosmology they they don't have an easier time of it than anybody else the advaitans can't really explain it nobody can really explain it but they have to bring in this idea that somehow this this uh mahamaya mahamaya this will be that uh avidya or again from the cosmic point of view so we can say muhammad and maya this maya covers us with muhammad covers brahman itself because the brahman itself is the one who's forgetting everything brahman has entered into everybody huh so brahman itself has to forget itself and then get identified with this then we're then we can say now i am the one who's uh covered with this this ignorance i fail to understand the real nature of the south but it all starts with brahman now we can say how can brahman be covered with with ignorance how can it be connected with ignorance then they'll say well this is really just uh roman is unaffected by all of this it's very hard it's very tricky stuff i think that it ha it has it's a defect i don't know what to say this is a defective philosophy but all of them there's better right looks better but then how do they explain the existence of of this nature and everything where did it come from we keep saying well it just was always there it happened before and before and before before they also have a problem everybody has a problem somehow the uh the the dualist who simply says oh well god created it they can say okay then no problem god just did it how could he do it god is god god can do anything but it's not very scientific not very appealing to somebody who likes to really rely on on a logical explanation there's no logical explanation in fact this theory of maya is another way of saying there's no logical explanation when we say due to maya that means we it's inscrutable but because this maya can disappear then we don't have to worry about uh where it came from because it's not real if it doesn't continue to exist a little bit of philosophical sleight of hand a little bit but it has its own logic to it yeah how can a little cloud hide the vision of the sun from us it doesn't affect the sun yeah it's as i say that uh it's it's a very nice kind of interpretation if we want to find flaws in it we can we can kind of if you ask a person who's sleeping then how what caused you to dream to have a dream sleeping just one just just pure consciousness just pure awareness what causes the dream to come about something inscrutable we can't really say so this is for some reason something so they say maya maya is really a way of saying we don't know swamiji says it's a statement of fact the statement of fact means it's not an explanation this is just the way it is it's a statement of fact why is it that way don't ask me that we can't really answer yeah [Music] these are the two shaktis that are connected with maya now the real very very very strict advaitic position will not like to identify maya with with shakti but still these are the two if uh uh if we're talking about ourselves that uh we we fail to see the real nature of roman and we superimpose on that this this uh image of of the universe something like that that uh we have to fail to see the the real thing it has to be covered first and then something has to be superimposed on it so i look at myself i fail to see myself as as pure consciousness number one and number two i superimpose on that the idea of individuality and personality and ego and i then identified with that so uh everything will be this so so from the microcosmic point of view in the macro cosmic point of view so talk we're starting out here with this this cosmic maya so that's why he's calling it muhammad the prime minister muhammad has covered brahmin what covers us is maya sometimes they'll say that one is is uh is maya and the others avidya that did we suffer from the vidya but this maya somehow uh hovers over brahmin doesn't exactly belong to we give illustrations like the snake and the poison inside that the snake has this poison inside we admit that but there's a sack and it's covered and it's protected and it's not at least affected this poison can kill other people but it doesn't affect the snake so they use these types of illustrations of course to transfer the illustration to the to brahman itself is a little difficult so the primal power muhammad has covered brahmin as soon as the covering is withdrawn one realizes now look at this see brahmin is the one who's being covered as soon as it's with the drawing i realize that means that still some type of individuation some type of of process has taken place to give at least the appearance of this whole universe so it's still within the dream this is all within the dream uh i can have that realization that uh i'm really not this actor in the dream i'm the i'm the i'm the sleeper i'm i'm the dreamer i'm the one who's sleeping and i'm the one who's dreaming is that the same as brahman having that realization well when when the dream ends huh then brahman will say ah it was just a dream but they're one of the same they're not two different things the eye and the dream and and the brahman and the the dreamer and the sleeper is all the same eye so there's a deuteronomy brilliant from one point of view the other point of view to have to explain how this universe appears and everything that's not possible it seems to be beyond this is why tucker says don't get into that too much that who can understand the ways of god how these things take place and everything he said the human mind can't handle that it's too big it's like pouring a huge quantity of milk into a small container it'll just keep overflowing so this is very interesting he starts out with the brahmin prime mor the primal power mama has covered brumen as soon as the covering is withdrawn one realizes that means we i am what i was before i am thou thou art i so still this says it's the character in the dream saying now i realize that i am one with the dreamer so it's not the same as when we wake up from the dream even then there's still some feeling of that eye is connected with the the actor in the dream right i've had that experience that in the dream many of us have had it then i know that i'm dreaming but still when i wake up i realized that the i who knew i was dreaming was still connected with that other body not with the one who was lying in bed you know interesting things tucker says don't get too interested in these things that will miss the whole point of spiritual practice and everything so he's telling this this ishan don't get too involved with all this in 1880 but now he's explaining it what it really means as long as the covering remains the vidanta formula i am he that is man is the supreme brahman does not rightly apply so that means as long as i i feel that i'm an individual that this is my body this is my mind that i was born i have parents i live in a certain place as long as we have that feeling and then we say i am brahmana then it doesn't mean anything it's not appropriate it's not even truthful to say i am brahman we have to know that that i is is the is the atman which is indistinguishable from brahman any anything short of that and it's not even a true statement there's a certain misunderstanding about it now we may say that i know it theoretically and i'm working on it and that's that's fine that's fine but if we have the slightest feeling that i am i'm an individual then it just brings pride we hear people who say yes i'm in a dwight with such pride it's not the ego i mean i'm an invite don't talk about it that's a duality that's a dualism i don't want to hear it we have lots of devotees like not lots of them but we've had some that have come to some of the classes and things and everything as soon as you say something that's dualistic and they turn up their nose so it shows that uh there can't be the slightest identification with this ego sense if we want to follow this path now tucker never says don't follow it he says don't understand it but but accept the reality of the apparent eye except the reality of the apparent eye and utilize it the scent of i will not leave the center of i for the gyani is also a sense of i even to say i am he this is a relationship and it's an attitude to say i'm a child of god it's a relationship and it's an attitude if we understand that uh it's a work in progress there's i am he then it's okay but if we if we take it that uh there's one place where uh kalimaraj swami abednanda at the end he went to a little funny period there when swamiji is talking to him and he says oh you make me laugh i am i am the creator of this whole universe and everything and there's so he takes more of a dualistic position there because he knows he doesn't quite understand it at that time so as long as that covering remains that means i i mean identified with this package this is a package body mind senses ego personality it's a package as long as i'm identified with that the vedantic formula i'm he that is man is the supreme roman does not rightly apply the wave is part of the water but the water is not part of the wave so this is this is a way of saying that lowered a little bit except this fascist that i'm a part of the whole i'm a wave on this whole ocean uh if i think of myself as a wave i shouldn't say that i am the whole ocean if i realize that uh i'm nothing but water the ocean is water and there's oneness that way it's okay but for most of us we're identified with a wave then we feel that this is this is good enough that uh i dwell in god i rest on god like the wave on the ocean and there's a union there's a certain type of oneness but as soon as i feel connected with this wave identified with the wave then it's part to hold this type of idea there's one of shankaracharya's hymns he even uses this illustration that the wave belongs to the to the ganga and the ganga not to the wave i forget which one as long as that covering remains one should call on god as a mother now remember he's telling all of this to ishaan who's going to ignore him later and get the scolding addressing god the devotee should say thou art the mother and i am thy child thou art the master and i am thy servant it is good to have the attitude of the servant toward the master from this relationship of master and servant spring of other attitudes the attitude of serene love for god the attitude of friend toward friend and so forth this is a little bit of a unique this is kind of a unique explanation because uh according to the division of the scriptures it's the mother bhava that that contains all of the others this is a very very interesting statement is now saying that there's a dossier baba his relationship with the servant contains the others because that love is there that the desire to protect god the way that the mother protects the child that that's their this peaceful attitude chant of others that they're all there see we say about people who've read the gospel for so many years every once in a while they'll read something they never noticed before i never noticed this before that's interesting yeah so this from the relationship of servant and master spring up other attitudes the attitude of serene love for god they sound about the attitude of a friend succeed and so forth when the master loves his servant he may say to him come sit by my side there is no difference between you and me so this is takwa's way of saying that there's an evolution to this dualistic relationship that it will reach a point where we'll see where we'll end with oneness he says every relationship ends in oneness every spiritual path ends in oneness but we can start out through the dualistic type of practice but we should never think that this stick of ego was permanent and that it that it's a real that it really divides us that it's just on the surface this is a superficial thing and it's uh when this eye becomes so purified this ripe ego that it doesn't even give the impression of separation then we realize our oneness just the ocean is there this is actually a higher attitude to say i am brahmin is a little bit lower than to say brahman alone is there so not that i am one with that ocean but only the ocean is there he had these two attitudes that sometimes he would say the mother and child are both there a relationship or even a type of one this other times mother alone is there he will look inside and see mother alone is there dwelling in this body so when the master loves his servant he may say to him come sit by my side there's no difference between you and me but if the servant comes forward of his own own will to sit by the master will not the master be angry god's play on earth as an incarnation is the manifestation of the glory of the chit-chakti the divine power so this chit shakti has this cosmic role this is what projects the whole universe but this is also some special manifestation when we talk about the avatar doctor said it's uh it's really not exactly a manifestation of brahman but a manifestation of the power of government there's a whole school of thought called shakthipath that this universe is not exactly a manifestation of brahman because brahman is by definition unmanifest and and beyond everything but it's a manifestation of the power of brahmin the power which belongs to brahman so the shakti parinama radha so takur is also but we have to remember that for him shakti and roman are one and the same so it's not such a strong type of distinction god's play on earth as an incarnation is the manifestation of the glory of the chitchakti that power of projection the divine power that which is also rama krishna and shiva now takur this is of course a big subject he gives so many different ways of understanding the avatar for those who don't like this kind of quranic view that god descends from heaven and takes human birth and everything he has so many beautiful ways like the hole in the wall through which we see the infinite absolute reality so many beautiful ways of understanding it or the uh the wave the huge wave the the steamship that goes down the middle of the of the of the river and the wake is huge and it'll break the banks and so many different ways of explaining it uh or just these other cardigans was born with uh this born ever perfect with a special power and a special mission and everything lots of uh ways that even the gyanis can accept taqwa says that the incarnation is not for the for the gyani but i i think the gandhi can can really appreciate some of tucker's ways of explaining it maybe not the quranic way that very traditional way but he gives us a way for everyone look at look at swamiji how much faith he had and top words in avatar and how much he was an absolute advaita vedantin also he tucker stretched him so that he accepted everything yes sir both are derived from the same root the difference lies only in the so back to that little story master yes there is only one without a second so he never questions the that ultimate truth of advaita vidanta that everything is one that whatever we see either is a manifestation of that one or a projection out of that one or identical to that one when it comes to the individual self then it's this pure consciousness when it comes to everything else then it's traced back to brahman the way the dream is traced back to the mind of the sleeping individual somehow yes there's only one without a second the way they speak of it is um the puranas is om sachidan on the krishna and the tantra is om sachidan on the shiva the chit shakti as mahamaya has deluded all with ignorance so this is it's such an interesting of course we take it an allegorical center or explain as an allegory such an interesting way of understanding that brahmin like the spider huh the everything comes out of its own uh comes out of it and then the berman goes and lives within that net so brahman creates this universe and dwells within it and forgets and identifies with each individual body is it logical no but there's nothing logical about this world how it happens and but we we have the same the same thing with the dream every night we do the same thing exactly the same thing we create this universe we enter into this universe we have no idea that the universe isn't 100 real we do it every single night i have this theory that because uh we can imagine this world without dreams right there's nothing essential about this uh this uh waking state and everything we could easily envision a world where we simply go to sleep when we wake up we don't have any dreams right there any special reason that there has to be a dream i have this theory that god gave us as one clue he said they'll never figure this out this mystery up let me give them that one clue that how this eye can seem to manifest in a different body so that they'll understand it's not tied to this body so if we didn't have that one clue then we wouldn't have anything to point to oh i see it is possible that uh the real eye is the witness of all the three states of consciousness is not connected to any one particular body so we get that from by analysis of the dream state the three states so the chit shaktis has deluded all with ignorance it is said in the atma ramayana tucker loved that book that when the rishi saw rama they prayed to him in these words only o rama please do not delude us with your world bewitching maya ishan what is this maya yeah this is this is a slippery slippery concept mayas is that which allows the one to become the many or to as is which allows the unmanifest to be manifest we we uh we don't have a real definition that that really tells us much is an inscrutable power which cannot be understood there's a verse that i like very much if i can remember it this i don't know where it's from in in the uh we don't asada it's in one of the footnotes i i like this very much it's a nice verse it says that uh avid that the unintelligibility the the the uh inability to be able to explain is the is the main characteristic of maya of india so what is the character of india that it's illogical and then it says it doesn't bear the use of any pramana a pramana it can't stand up to any pramana pramana is a way of deciding if something is real or not real if we if we say can it be seen no it can't be seen can it be understood no it can't can it be inferred no it can't can it be direct the experience no so if we analyze it it disappears just like this this ego we analyze it it disappears otherwise it would be something real and they're not willing to accept this amaya something real it's not real but it can't be denied because we see the effects of it is this whole universe a very slippery tricky concept yeah the philosophers have a field day with this idea of maya very interesting thing so now what is this maya master he'll give a very interesting definition he'll define it mostly from the point of view of the individual as i say we have the cosmic concept of maya which turns this that near going to brahman into some type of creator god ishwara and then we suffer from it we suffer from this is failure to recognize our true nature the false identification whatever you see think or hear is maya in a word lust in gold comedy content in a word woman of gold is the covering of maya now what does that mean that we're born because we have these passions then we are automatically connected with this body sense this this desire to enjoy it won't be there unless i'm identified with the body and i'm identified with the mind the real enjoyer for us is the mind everything is through the body but it's the mind that enjoys things so these are the the the fact and and why did why does it happen we don't know we're born with this this is a natural thing that everybody is born uh with the mind going out through the senses mind goes out to the senses so automatically we identify with external things automatically we feel lack and we want things we want to enjoy we want to bring things in so this is our lust and greed and all of the different passions that we have these are the passions or the things that hide the our true nature from us that make the mind outgoing and make us identified with external thinking a very practical definition of maya none of this there's this veiling power that hovers over brahmin now he's talking about very practical point of view there's no harm in chewing be the leaf eating fish smoking or rubbing the body with oil said all of the things that people i'm going to be a spiritual person i'll give up all of these things they say what good does it do if you still have this attachment the attachment to lust and gold and all of these other things will one achieve by renouncing only these things the one thing needful is the renunciation of lust and gold that renunciation is the real and supreme renunciation householders should go into solitude now and then to practice spiritual discipline in order to cultivate devotion to god so we can get rid of this attachment through devotion through having the spiritual attitude we we adopt this relationship with god say i'm a child of god that means that i'm no longer thinking myself as a child of my biological parents child of the divine mother means i'm thinking of myself as spirit mother is spirit so that will also cut this this type of false identification they should renounce mentally so the householder should not think that no i have to give up everything sell the house go to the forest join a monastery anything like that but the sannyasi should renounce both mentally and physically i once said to kesha how can the typhoid patient be cured if he remains in a room where a pitcher of water and jar of pickles are kept yeah the typhoid patients are not supposed to drink water huh is that the the thing anyhow that was that's the any other the folk tale the neo that was the belief so what he's saying is that if we're somewhere that we see things that will make them out of water and to make us thirsty for something like that he says we should we should live in solitude we should remove ourselves from from temptation this is the main main point this sannyasi is supposed to do it uh in a very strict sense the house soldier as far as possible now and then one should live in solitude okay then the conversation changes a little bit so we can stop stop here this is a very interesting a very interesting section here he starts out by telling him forget about this in 1880 and then gives his brilliant explanation of the real meaning of 1818 and the pet of gyani yoga and everything and the difficulty involved in it difficulty involved in it and the uh helpful nature of utilizing this this scent of i which is an obstacle in the path of gyani yoga and the help and the path of devotion there's a very nice way of explaining it this is the i always find it very curious that the things that are obstacles and the path of knowledge are helpful in the path of devotion say name and form we have to give up name and form these are the two things we hold on to in the path of devotion and name it for a lot of things like that so okay any final questions or anything yes karen this is from time to time he says from time to time i'll go into solitude and sometimes she'll say if you can do it six months you can do it or six weeks or three weeks or three days or one day as much as possible but yes there's a tremendous value to living in solitude we can go very deep in our spiritual practice and we don't have any uh disturbances from the outside things and we we can lose the sense of of being a physical person even we can really start thinking ourselves in terms of just that pure awareness that uh there's nobody to look at me as a person i lose that feeling of being his physical body and i feel myself to be consciousness so solitude is a very wonderful practice yeah yeah no doubt okay and we'll stop here um [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 peace