Video 89

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Atmajnanananda (02/11/22)

your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls their praise by poets and remove all 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're on the chapter instruction to vaishnavas and brahmos and the date is wednesday october 10 1883 and we're on page 304. the instruction the vaisnavas and brahmos the main version of a present it seems is a balarama versus father and we'll get introduced to him here balram's father was a wealthy man with the states in different parts of orissa an orthodox member of the division of a sect he had built temples and arranged for distribution of food to the pilgrims at various holy places he had been spending the last years of his life in virginia the vaisnavas for the most part are bigoted in their religious views okay now we have to understand a few things here the term vaisnava is a very broad term and it can refer to anyone who follows any of the uh either vishnu is narayana or any of the incarnation rama and the krishna they're all considered vaishnavas but in the context here this will mean almost almost all the ways and specifically the worshipers of krishna who are followers of caitanya do and the the chaitanya movement the lila of chaitanyadeva took place mostly outside of bengal because he spent most of his years in in budi uh on pilgrimage in south india and then pilgrimage in the north and rindaglin so it's very strong in the rindavan area and also in orissa and paula rambos's father he also had a place a house in ireland and i don't know if the order owns it or not but i remember being taken there i i went to bring them along back over almost 50 years ago now i'm sorry almost 40 years ago and the house is their holy mother stayed there and the cot that she slept on is still there so it's considered a very holy place so this is a little bit strong i would say they're they're very orthodox in their views and and a little bit exclusive i don't know very bigoted it sounds too strong but they they uh they did feel that the worship of krishna was the highest type of worship but others did also it wasn't just them there were many followers of the shakti tradition that were equally one-sided and everything but they got this reputation for being a little bit uh exclusive standoffish they they had their own kind of separate society and rules and things like that a little bit but there were also many great scholars and great pundits and everything so a little bit strong some of them harbor malicious feelings towards the followers of the tantra and vedanta but srama christian never encouraged such a narrow outlook this introduction that m is giving is a little bit to explain why srama krishna is going to emphasize this liberal attitude so this is why he's telling us all of this but trump christian never encouraged such a narrow outlook according to his teachings through earnestness and yearning all lovers of god will ultimately reach the same goal the master began the conversation in order to broaden the religious views of balarama's father now we have to understand a few other things that balarama himself was a bit of an outcast in the family partly because he went to srama krishna who wasn't considered part of this orthodox division of a faith and he was a little bit cut off from the family he's so will find that his his brother also came to see sramakrishnan takur tried to explain to them this kind of more liberal point of view and everything but we'll find that neither the brother nor the father or are so bigoted or biased or anything at least the way the conversation goes so part of this is to of course to broaden the religious views of balaram's father but also so that they would stop objecting so much to balaram and his family because they were the closest family the householder family to srama krishna he went to their home more often than any other home we know that they say a hundred times master to em once i thought why should i be one-sided you see he's talking to em in order to teach the others this is there's a tradition like that huh that the uh the mother-in-law scolds the daughter in order to teach the daughter-in-law is there some story like that okay uh so suramar krishna to him once i thought why should i be one-sided therefore i was initiated into vaishnavism in rindavan so this this is what he's saying that he himself wanted to practice all of the different faiths tucker was a provisional family but not this type division of a family this is there's a distinction that we have to make that his family they were worshippers of rama and worshippers of ramen worshipers of krishna are a little bit different because the tradition of worship of rama has to include the worship of shiva and then worship of durga because of the ramayana historian and rameshwaram and sita making the image of the sheba lingam and everything whereas the the krishna tradition they really stick to this worship and the bhagavad-gita is their main text and everything therefore i was initiated in in rindavan and took the garb of evasion of a monk because if we look at most the division of a sadhana of srama krishna that uh more of it had to do with rama than with krishna even at what saudi bhagavata almost all the ways worshipping krishna is the child in this case it was ramallah it was the baby rama and the dossier bhava that's also traditionally with rama that with hanuman and everything so this was this was a little bit different and this isn't during his years during his regular sadhana this is when he was on pilgrimage with mature again in that sinister i was initiated into the mystery of rama worship so this is when the injured hari came and he had this small image of ramallah the baby rama and this was a very unusual thing very hard for us to understand at least me to understand how this this image was alive for srama krishna and he could feed it and bathe it and everything seeing the baby drama there and talk to it in the is it living how how that seeing this image translates into seeing the real baby rama let go palama yeah but gopalama uh she felt the baby krishna like go on her on her shoulders and and clinging around her neck uh did she actually have the image with her at that time so it's slightly different but gopal or mao also yeah with a very living thing but this is through this image so that's why it's not just a vision but seeing this and not that small thing with made of nebraska probably is the image of the baby rama so again in the chinese war i was initiated into the mystery of rama worship i painted my forehead with a long mark and put on a string with a diamond around my neck but after a few days i gave them up now we noticed one thing that whenever takur practiced any spiritual path he used to say i i practice the way they practice i dress the way they dress i ate the way they ate he did everything and ascends literally and when he did his islamic sadhana we know that he wanted to eat food cooked by a muslim cook and this was too much for the authorities at the temple the kali temple the too much concerned with the caste questions and everything so they got a muslim cook to instruct the brahman cook how to cook according to the muslim style i don't know what it was maybe more onions or something is in garden but so he did that and uh uh at various times when he would go through different types of sadhanas he would remove the pictures from his room even that he just he wanted to immerse himself in the world view of the people whose path he was trying to follow so he did everything literally so there's a big this they have some type of dress with a long uh like a little quartet or something that they wear so he he used to wear that when he was doing this version of a practice a certain man had a tub people would come to him to have their clothes dyed the tub contained a solution of dye whatever color a man wanted for his cloth he would get by dipping the cloth in the tub one man was amazed to see this and said to the dyer please give me the dye you have in your tub now tako tells this story on several different occasions and usually we see in parentheses all laugh and i always find that interesting that i'll get to that in a second and they have the m says what's the master hinting that people professing different religions would come to him and have their spiritual consciousness awakened according to their own ideals now this this uh parable we can say allegory parable uh can be looked at in in two ways one sri ramakrishna himself it's like that and this is what am is is referring to here or uh intimating here that whoever came to srama krishna saw in him a follower of their own path taco used to say that whenever the invasion of islam they think that obama's nation of the chakras they think of and partly because he would he would go into that mood when he saw followers of those traditions as well so we'll we'll see for example when he used to see gopalerma that there were times when he would even start crawling on the ground like baby gopala he would get into that mood now the other way of understanding this and takur uses this illustration that this other way is the near gonan saguna aspects and god with form in god without form that the the die will i will be the substance of brahmin and those who want to worship in a particular way uh can see god in any particular god can take any particular form that the devotee wants to see without undergoing any change now if we think about it what will the color be in this vat of die it has to be colorless it has to be colorless in order for it to take any to die things in all different types of color if it's any one color every cloth will come out that same color so this is this is why everyone laughs can we dye a cloth say a white cloth can we dye it colorless no it has to be some particular color so taco gives many illustrations like this uh if we if we think about the different bathing gods and people come and take water and they have different pictures and different names and everything it's the same thing there's one substance will be there and the water will take the form of the different containers now if water itself has any form it can't take the form of the container it has to be formless in order to take every particular form so brahmin if brahman can manifest in all different forms it has to be formless this is really that teaching and if we want to access this brahman through the mind it has to take a form and a shape there's no way that we can take the formless water unless we put it in a container and that container has a shape and the water takes that shape so that's our mental conception of god if we want that infinite absolute reality we dive in the water we dive and we merge ourselves in it otherwise even with the conception then this this formless it's taking some type of shape and form even if the intellectually our conception is the near guna brahman still that's a conception and it's taking the shape of the container of the mind so here this is showing this this bahudupi aspect that god is capable of taking all different forms and this is why takara used to say that if we start with this near-going brahman aspect and we don't go beyond that we're not getting the full picture we're not getting the full weight he used to say the full picture if we say that brahman is like the sun and the sun is light and we say now this is another example that this the the sun light of the sun is is colorless it's invisible it has no color of its own yet going through a prism it takes all possible colors now if we say that it only is invisible we don't see anything else about it we're not getting the full picture that shakti that power for it to manifest as all possible colors dwells within that infinite ramen so this is why taquer says that you don't get the full weight of the bell fruit unless you have all aspects of it some people take that to maine this fish which it can but it can be looked at it this other way also that unless we we add the shakti together with this near gona brahmin then we don't get the full picture because this consciousness is not just awareness this consciousness has the power to create and to to project so that has to be understood the sun it also has the power to warm and to give life and sustain life it's not just illumination and of course to to manifest all the different colors of the rainbow are contained in that invisible light so the vat the liquid in this vat will be like that it'll have to be colorless but it's not like any other uh if we just say well then we can just have water water has no color but we dip the cloth in it doesn't work so it's not like any ordinary type of colorless thing it's it's colorless but with the potential to manifest as any possible color and this also shows the subjective aspect of the personal god because i choose no i want to see it as yellow or i want to see it as red and then it comes out that way now if we're if we're really fall on the side of the personal god then we say that god knows that my deputy wants to see me this way i'm going to reveal myself in this way if we want to look at it from the subjective point of view then it'll automatically manifest that way because that's the shape of the container that i have and that's that's the uh uh aspect of god that i want to see that's my understanding of god that's the tradition that i grew up in this is the the culture that i'm from all of these things will help color and explain why we experience god in a particular way so i mean there are instances where people have a realization of god in a way that is unexpected for them or even a division of the avatar or something that they never worship or a dream of of a christian or holy mother something like these things happen of course but in general we won't find these these great catholic saints having a vision of mother kali it'll be of christ now we have two ways of looking at it god says my child wants to see my christ form so i'll reveal myself that way or we can say this is the way that uh divinity will will blossom forth in their hearts because this is the desire of the heart to see god that way so we have two ways we were very hard to say subjective objective how much is one how much is the other very hard to to put a figure on it this percentage is subjective this percentage is objective anyhow there's a very beautiful way of understanding see the the very beginning when srama krishna says that god is both with form and without form and it's completely baffled how how can something have two opposite attributes like that now can the male could be both white and black at the same time impossible but now we understand that uh in order for god to be able to manifest in all possible forms that there has to be at the ground ground level underlying everything formlessness i remember in my college days that i studied western philosophy and uh there was one philosopher heidegger and you say the ground of being is non-being the ground of being is nothingness and you know the students we memorize these things we can write it down on the test and everything but didn't mean anything to me now i have some understanding that if something can manifest as all possible things then in itself it has to be empty if it has anything particular in it then it won't be able to manifest in all possible ways so this is something like what suramar christian is saying here of course he experienced these things experiencing god in all of these different forms it was that was through his sadhana so it wasn't theoretical for him for us we we marvel at the the theory behind it and how logical it is but for him it was the realization of course was yeah and in person that was he wanted to see the divine in the form of quality that's why he saw the vision of hanukkah no he he saw the personal god in the form of rama in the form of krishna in the form of shiva in all different forms the seeing not his mother khali personal god is mother kali that's what he kept going back to but this is why after he had that vision he could have stopped but he said no i want to see how god is worshipped and other tradition other ways and everything so his realization was that the mother kali form was the one dearest to his heart but not absolute if that's absolute then these other forms we have to just say that uh this is uh some misconception on the part of people of other religious faiths that uh they're worshiping god as father but i know god is really mother that that's what that's the beginning of the end of it god can't be father not his mother the personal if the the personal god is mother then but taqwa didn't have that understanding this is this was the uh the form that appealed to him most and was was of course real to him and everything uh but most of the time when he talked about mother he himself says when what you call brahmanai ko khali he understood that it was this play this uh personal impersonal formless with form that play uh between nirguna saguna bruhman that was the divine mother for him so even the songs we have we were reading so many beautiful songs how divine mother manifested herself as krishna and so this is this is uh when it comes to uh the absolute aspect and even that's a contradiction in terms absolute aspect with that this is where talk were failed that that experience is the same for everyone because the the mind is not functioning the ego was gone just merged in that oneness as soon as the mind comes down a little bit a little bit then it goes back into what is the shape of the mind that'll that'll determine exactly the the shape of the that the water takes in that container so even god realized souls we'll we'll have different experiences of this sagun of roman where we can take somebody called pasanti they'll have different experiences and if they don't have this this view this understanding that tucker had even those who have had some higher realization can quarrel among each other look at the look at uh and others we take them to be men of realization uh it really the the great saints more than the acharyas that were a little broader in their view and didn't care for cass so much and things like that master to balarama's father don't read books anymore but you may read books on devotion such as the life of caitanya now another curious thing this division of a tradition that we're talking about highly devotional and at the same time highly scholastic full of philosophical books and uh we think devotion is such a spontaneous natural thing but they'll break it down into 19 different things of this and 20 things of this and everything these goswami's and everything very highly technical scholastic works and and very scholarly people study these things and write commentaries and everything but at the same time we have the beautiful uh biographies of chaitanya deva they that are very inspiring and we also get some some of the teaching they're very similar to the gospel actually these these books so taquer says don't read books anymore but you may read books on devotion such as the life of caitanya the whole thing is to love god and taste his sweetness he is sweetness and the devotee is its enjoyer what is it something like that the devotee drinks the sweet bliss of god further god is the lotus and the devotee the bee the devotee sips the honey of the lotus as the devotee cannot live without god so also god cannot live without his devotee now these things have to be understood uh in a kind of allegorical way with uh if we want to be very philosophical we end up saying that a brahman can have no desire had no needs it's perfect and everything how can brahman uh have the longing for the devotee so in this in this particular version of a tradition everything will be seen in this play of chaitan of of krishnan and radha or krishna and the cowherd boys or mother yashoda and the baby gopala it'll be seen in those terms so that there'll be times when the gopis are lonely for krsna's times for christians longing for the gopis it'll work both ways so takwa felt that in the beginning it's all of up to us we make all of the effort as all of our devotion our love and everything we get closer and closer and we become incapable of doing anything so then god himself comes towards us or that magnet pulls us in the rest of the way and as if god needs us as if this this is all uh making this a very sweet type of relationship between the individual and god we don't have to worry about like are these things literally true is this philosophically sensible and everything why does god need us this is this is for these are all spiritual attitudes that are very helpful in spiritual life the big mistake to try to uh shove everything into into this is the pigeon hole of philosophy these are this is poetry it's meant to be felt even the upanishads i have a very strong feeling about this even the upanishads uh should be read parties philosophy party is poetry and we even say the covies huh the cubbies these are the wise men and are women also and poets it means both so these things are to be failed on a certain level that they won't always appeal to us if we want to be very use very hard logic with these things [Music] yeah the this is what this relationship between the sweetness and the enjoyer of sweetness yeah otherwise if there's no devotee then there's only this new gonna bruhman yeah so this uh and as i say either god reveals himself that way or just this is the way uh this human mind works and the point is that no matter what the shape no matter what the shape of the container is we're getting the essence we're getting the substance we argue over the shape and the name and the form but we're all getting the this if we can if we can access it we're getting the real stuff so this is this is the main point uh yeah same thing but there's an allegory god there's no feet that he's walking yeah so we to what extent do we make it an allegory do we say well only the part about walking is the allegory or do we take the whole thing that it simply means that as as we proceed in spiritual life that we realize our inability to do everything on our own and that realization takes place through some type of grace that that power is so great that it will pull us in we can understand it that way also those who have a very strong faith in the personal god they can take these things more literally they won't have a problem with that those of us who try to see things you know through the prism of of logic and reason and then we can understand it this way but taco explained it for us that way he doesn't say that uh you love god so you'll you'll you'll immerse your mind and it'll come out the color of god he said everyone will come at a different color depending on what they want so he's he's giving us both the attitude of the devotee and the attitude of the philosopher how we can understand one in the same substance can because our minds are different our minds are different we have we have different types of cloth we put uh even even if the cloth is if the dye is a particular color some will take a very strong die some of the dye will hardly do anything to it and if the cloth is a certain color you add the dye it'll be a mixture you take a yellow cloth and you put it in the red dye it'll come out a little bit purpley something like that so even from that point of view that the experience of the mystics will be different because their mind their world view and their understanding and their type of devotion is a little bit different but it's all real this is the whole point that people will say that oh this is cultural because because you want to see god this way you see god that way that it's your imagination well partly imagination that's part of the whole thing that imagination means that a little bit of of the the human mind is coloring the experience but the substance is real we're accessing the real substance and this is why tucker says that the water will take the shape that we wanted to when it freezes into ice and when the sun comes up it'll melt back in but if the only way we can get it is when in that ice form then we take it in that form that form that we want and when the sun of knowledge comes then it'll be the states of the same order it doesn't matter same order i know what swami used to give this example of we want to get intoxicated we want his divine intoxication some people can can just take liquor and drink it straight others they have to put ice in it some they have to mix it with sugar with with the soda or something like that now the ones who mix with all sorts of things other people will say that's not getting you drunk that's not getting you intoxicated no but the same stuff that's getting human talks again is getting me intoxicated but the other makes it sweet for me so different ways of understanding these things takuru a subtle understanding of all of these these very abstruse uh spiritual and philosophical ideas they were just so natural and easy for him yeah now this is another uh a way of of this we use this illustration of die uh as dying the mind this is a little different that taqwa says that we want to let the mind get died in the the in that color of god uh this is that ranjita that we have with the holy mother uh that her nature would died in in this the whole being of srama krishna so this idea that whatever we meditate on it's like letting the mind soak in that dye it takes the color of that so the the dye has to be strong there has to be some intensity to it if we want the color to be strong and we have to let it sit for a long time we have to let it soak it up and the cloth has to be clean so these are different aspects to that when we sit for meditation there should be some intensity there should be a little time that we give it and the mind itself should have a certain amount of purity if we wanted to really take the color that means get transformed into divinity of course we can say transformed into what it really is in the first place but that's a different way of looking at it so the devotee becomes the lotus and god the bee it is the godhead that has become these two in order to enjoy its own bliss that is the significance of the episode of radha and krishna so this is one very nice interpretation of rata and krishna that god incarnate incarnates himself in these two forms one the beloved beloved and the other the lover in order to experience that relationship and to to demonstrate that relationship because when we talk about the avatar we have to talk about the shakti aspect also we can't talk about srama krishna without holy mother or the krishna without radha of course different traditions it will be rukmini and other things but in this particular tradition it's always radha and she represents the shakti of krishna and here represents that relationship between uh this madhur relationship between the lover and the beloved so this is there's a footnote according to one school a division of a religion the supreme god himself became radha and krishna in order to enjoy the bliss of their mutual communion and this is this is the idea with uh chaitanya deva that uh he was born as a combination of the two of them that krishna wanted to understand the joy that radha had in with her devotion so he was externally he looked like radha internally he was krishna because he had the golden complexion at the beginning of spiritual life the devotees should observe see tucker is explaining because he's that particular division of a tradition uh they'll have the highest reverence for this play of rather than krishna so it was explaining to balaram's father that there's a way of understanding this that it's not literal it doesn't have to be with rata and krishna it can be any aspect of god as the lover and the beloved that this is the real significance of it if they're one-sided it means that uh there is such a devotion to that particular way of worshiping god that they want everyone to do it and feel that this is the best but as i say that all different religious traditions will have their element that uh was a little bit fanatical a little bit of fanaticism swamiji has said once that uh the beauty of these religious this devotional tradition the bhakti movement is that it fervor that they have that love of god but the the negative side is fanaticism yeah they all feel that our path is the best path at the beginning of spiritual life the devotees should observe such riots as pilgrimage putting a string of beads around his neck and so forth but outward ceremonies gradually drop drop off as he attains the goal the vision of god now one other thing didn't particularly appreciate about this vaisnava tradition is that there are a lot of external signs of things sometimes stamping the whole body and wearing clothes everything hari krishna krishna and big marks on the forehead and everything yeah they're all different things the ramanuja tradition has in one way the chairs do it another way and they have different materials some this will be sandal paste some will be that vermilion some will be ash i don't know yeah and there'll be three things and yeah there and and like that yeah i don't know all those uh there's some tradition behind all of them and some significance i guess so this was uh one of toppers ideas is that in the beginning we start out with the ritual things fall off little by little by little as we progress in spiritual life we go from this state to this anuraga and everything at that point we don't have to worry about rituals and they but they fall off on their own we don't when they decide uh i've been doing puja for 30 years i'm not going to do it anymore because we still may need the help of it i read a very nice thing this family reputation he was talking about these rights and rituals and and even image worship and everything and he said if we say that this is the lowest rung on the ladder this is the first step that why should we do all of that then we never get to the second step we have to start sometimes we have to start at the first step and then gradually we can leave it behind but if we're we if we think we're too bigoted to think that no we're we're above all of that then maybe we don't even get the first step in spiritual life but outward ceremonies gradually drop off as he attains the gold the vision of god then his only activity is the repetition of god's name and contemplation and meditation on him the pennies equivalent to 16 rupees make a big heap but 16 silver coins do not look like such a big amount again the quantity becomes much smaller when you change the 16 rupees into one gold mohur and if you change the gold into a tiny piece of diamond people hardly notice it what an interesting way of putting it huh so the the manifestations of our spiritual emotion in the beginning that will be a big fuss and everything as we we everything as we progress everything uh becomes less manifest it goes deeper and deeper within and we don't need any external show of things orthodox insist on the outer insignia of religion they criticize any devotee who does not wear these marks was that why the master said that after the vision of god a devotee becomes indifferent to outer marks giving up formal worship when the goal of spiritual life is attained master to balarama's father the karda bhajas group grouped the devotees into four classes there were several different uh sects within this division of tradition that were current during tucker's lifetime the uh the ghost para sahaji has others and the device of jordan whom he loved so much and had such a beautiful sweet relationship with he was with one of the main acharyas of this carter saying but uh tucker he warned he criticized him a little bit also but he warned his his disciples that uh some of their practices were uh that was vomit on it the the taking of wine and men and women reenacting this krishna rather play and all of that so he warned them against that but taku was so liberal there's there's a section in the lilipe swang the great master where swami sharon writes that in those days we had such contempt for these these tantric these left-handed brahmachari traditions that we would just snare it and look down on them and everything and takara said to us no don't hate any tradition this is also a path this is like entering the house through the through the back door that goes into the the train it's not a clean path but for some people they may also be able to have realization through that so don't look down upon anything but don't follow it yourself you would warn them that way so even compared to these highly educated young men who became the direct disciples he was so much more liberal but tucker liked this he refers very often to this the category categorization that they make karthum had a group group the devotees into four classes the puerto vallarta the sadhaka the siddha and the siddha of the siddha the prabhatika is the beginner somatic is taking the spiritual life the pravarta puts the mark of his religion on his forehead where it's a string of beads around his neck and observes other outer conventions the sartica the struggling devotee does not care so much for elaborate rights now what are we we can we can call ourselves sadhakas yeah we're beginners on one in one sense but uh we're not taking the first step maybe we've at least already taken the first step and we have a spiritual practice we can consider ourselves i think that's a big i mean they're all different levels too they're very advanced in senior sadhakas and and the gender ones the sadhaka the struggling devotee does not care so much for elaborate rights an example of this class is the bowel the vowels uh were very very interesting uh non-conformist very free outside of of the normal social norms they didn't observe caste they didn't observe religion in many cases that there would be muslims in hindus together that some of the bowels were kind of sufis and some of them were vaisnavas there were vows that followed this caitanya tradition and they like to sing and dance and they were very free and varied some of them very highly evolved people and some of the songs that they wrote are so beautiful i know that there's a lot on here because i've seen the movie so many times if you if you ever get a chance this uh uh what is it called monreal manush a beautiful film and knew he he he lived in a remote area so he wasn't that well known it was the tagore family that made him uh publicized him because he lived in in their uh area that was part of their they were the jamidars the the landlords uh but talk renewed some of the songs and he was familiar with some of these teachings and everything very difficult they're very yeah yeah they're a little bit like sutras they're a little bit uh highly symbolic language it's it's done especially so that uh they say only only a bowel can recognize another bowel only can recognize another sign they and they have it with their own kind of symbolic mysterious type of language so they all understand it so it's true they'll do things with the for the three gunas and different yes symbolic things yeah some of it though is very simple and easy to understand they your songs many of them they're really beautiful and many of them with this idea of harmony of of islam and hinduism yeah there's one song how does it go uh looper pandey napani which is greater pani and dull same thing water kali and ali saying this just to show different names say same thing they talk with teaching they had that idea this very liberal that way but they were outcasts a little bit because first of all uh this orthodox hindu society didn't like this mixing of religions and casts and everything they didn't care for cast or anything and they didn't have traditional marriages and things also they could have their companions in spirit to practice and everything so an example of this class is the bowel so they have their spiritual then and they live in these ashrams akras and everything and spend their whole life devoted to spiritual practice the siddha the perfect firmly believes that god exists so siddha perfect it doesn't mean that this is someone who was re attained to the highest state that would be the siddha of the sitter the city of the siddha the supremely perfect like caitanya not only has realized god but also has become intimate with him and talks with him all the time this is the last limit of realization so we can say the siddha will be like a realized soul perhaps and this this last one will be like the big yani someone who's really had the highest realization and could come back down again from it the others said uh they may have had some some type of realization but maybe not this highest near recover somati and from which very few can come down there are many kinds of spiritual aspirants so now what taku is saying is this is one way of dividing them into four there are many other ways of doing it we can do it according to gunas also there are many kinds of spiritual aspirants those endowed with sattva perform their spiritual practices secretly so tucker liked this very much he used to say don't make a show of your devotion don't let others know what you're about your spiritual practices the less they know of your spiritual practice is the better he used to say that those endowed with satwa perform their spiritual practices secretly they look like ordinary people but they meditate inside the mosquito net so that means that they're not even coming outside of their room they'll be inside the room just maybe on their bed they don't want other people to know other people may think they're sleeping they don't care they want to do it outside of the gaze of others aspirants endowed with rudges exhibit outward pump a string of beads around the neck a mark on the forehead an ochre robe a silk cloth a rosary with a gold bead and so on they are like stalled keepers advertising their wares with signboards all religions and all paths call upon their followers to pray to one and the same god now takur he hasn't told us about the satwik devotee which he does in many other places oh we started out with that oh i'm sorry okay all religions in all paths call upon their followers to pray to one of the same god therefore one should not show disrespect to any religion or religious opinion now this is for balaram's father he's he's assuming that he's going to be a little bit one-sided and we know he's a little bit one-sided because otherwise they wouldn't object to him going to suramar krishna now it's also true that they don't know this ramakrishna that just they've heard they've heard rumors and anybody who worships in a kali temple that's already a black mark against them but after meeting him of course their minds will change a little therefore one should not show disrespect to any religion or religious opinion it is god alone who was called sachidan the brahman and the vedas krishna in the puranas and sachitan on the shiva in the tantras it is one in the same sachida there are different sects of vaisnavas that which is called the brahmana in the vedas is also called alec the dungeon by one division of a sect this will also be of vowel they do this means that which cannot be pointed out or perceived by the sense organs probably alexia that is a shakism also they also like this formless aspect and uh yeah there'll be there'll be some overlap there also i like need engine is what with niranjan also ah okay i didn't know that so this is also in the sikh dharma tradition alec means that which cannot be pointed out or perceived by the sense organs according to this sect rata and krishna are only two bubbles of this alec so this is also a little bit of of this vedanta idea no he's saying that it's uh the one of the sects of vaisnava used this term he's so it could be just a term that found its way into two different traditions somehow according to vedanta there is no incarnation of god they began to say that rama and krishna are but two waves in the ocean of satyananda now we have another footnote here this is a reference to advaita vedanta and i would go even further and generally when takur talks about vedanta it's a reference to the upanishads now if we say dwight vedanta is there room for the avatar in the duet of we look at gita bhagavad-gita yeah there's nothing in gita that is uh opposed to advaita vedanta it looks at it from the point of view of devotion and the the the duelists can also point to uh the verses and in their favor and everything but uh here uh and this is part of vedanta we have our prestana the three main sources for vedanta are upanishad gita and brahmasutra so we can't really say that there's no avatar in the vedantic tradition first of all the vedantic tradition will of course include the other schools of vedanta yeah and and and this and everything so it's really from the uh historically from the the point of view of the upanishads themselves there's no reference to this avatar in the upanishads so this historically the statement is true and there will be some advaitans who don't accept the the avatar at least in the quranic sense that god himself has descended earth they may have their own understanding of it the one great example we have in our order is he was a real real thorough uh beginning to top to bottom at dwight o'brien and uh he would never go into the shrine the main temple to bow down like anyone make pranam like everybody else does sometimes on these festival days he would go just to see the decorations and decorations and everything what tremendous devotion to srama krishna of course one of the great and the highly realized souls he looked upon as one of the stalwarts of our order the disciple of holy mother but didn't have that same idea and even swamiji narendra that he used to argue that uh how can we say that one person is an avatar god dwells with equally within all beings this is a vedantic principle so taka would say yes from that point of view you're right that's why when taka said to swamiji the end he was ramen he was krsna's now in the now here in this body but not in your vedantic sense not in the sense that everybody can say it i can also say it taku used to say ramen dwells within all men seated within all women god dwells within all beings like well god draws it within me but not in the same sense in a special sense that with some special commission or any other lots of ways of understanding it this idea of the overtime so taqwa starts out according to vedanta there is no incarnation of god the vedanta say that rama and krishna are but two ways in the ocean of sachidananda now this is a very nice way of understanding it two gigantic waves two waves of course we're always in the two gigantic waves that uh with with such tremendous power that seeing that wave we understand the power of the ocean itself tuck were like this with this way of understanding too he he didn't insist that we have to think that vishnu was in heaven and decides there's too much trouble down there i better incarnate and go down this again this allegory we may take it literally if we like we don't have to but we can understand this phenomenon of these special souls that are like huge waves and and our devotion to them uh can be uh equally as great as the devotional personal god taco used to say and this is the easiest way to worship god in the personal form as the avatar in this human form in reality there are not two there is only one a man may call on god by any name if he is sincere in his prayer he will certainly reach him he will succeed if he has longing as rami krishna spoke these words to the devotees he was overwhelmed with divine fervor coming down the partial consciousness of the world he said to balarama's father are you the follower of the father of balarama yes sometimes when tucker came down his mind would still be lingering in that other realm he would say is it daytime or nighttime that was when gedi saw him for the first time he said what kind of madman is this he doesn't know if it's daytime or nighttime he wasn't impressed he thought a big show and everything but it wasn't a show when he came down he would be like that sometimes all sat in silence balarama's aged father was silently telling his beads another thing is the type of device was always with their beads always yeah many of them they'll have a little pouch or uh they'll keep it in the fold of their cloth or even just take it out keep it around their neck when they're not using it and everything they're very devoted to to jump up master to am and the others well these people practice so much dumber and go to so many sacred places but why are they like this that means a little bit too orthodox why do they make no progress in their case it seems as if the year consists of 18 months you talk we're saying too much outward show and too much ritual and things once i said to harish what is the use of going to benares if one does not feel restless for god and if one feels that longing then this very place is benarus they make so many pilgrimages and repeat the name of the name of god so much but why do they not realize anything it is because they have no longing for god god reveals himself to the devotee if only he calls upon him with a longing heart now he's not talking about all of them he's talking about those who are too much given to this outward show and ritual at the beginning of a yatra performance much lighthearted restlessness is to be observed on the stage at that time one does not see krishna next the sage narada enters with his flute and sings longingly o my life o my soul then krishna can no longer remain away and appears with the cowherd boys and that is the end of that day so we'll start next time on page 307 it'll be tuesday october 16 1883. [Applause] [Music] [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