Video 90

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Atmajnanananda (02/18/22)

foreign [Music] your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and remove or 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 it's page 307 and we're starting a new day this is tuesday october 16 1883 and the conversation earlier included the balarama's father benipal oh sorry father and benny paul and and others so a lot of this just to give a little bit of background that balarama's father was visiting and he wasn't very pleased that balarama [Music] was spending so much time visiting suramar krishna because they were very orthodox vaishnavas which meant that they had their own community and their own temples and their own rituals and things and so suramar krishna talking to him to try to broaden his view and also to try to smooth things over for balarama his beloved disciple so that he he won't be kind of uh the black sheep of the family outcast in the family srama krishna was it was in his room with raqqa balarama's and other devotees master liberal-minded devotees accept all the forms of god krishna kali shiva rama and so on so this this was the one complaint against the vaisnavas that they weren't liberal to the extent that they would show respect to other traditions and other forms of of worship surrounding exactly accusing his father of that but a little bit there in the background to try to broaden his way of thinking bother on father yes sir it is like a woman's recognizing her husband whatever clothes he wears now when we meet balarama's father and also balarama's brother he comes at another time we find that they're not so at least the way they present themselves to srama krishna that they're not so narrow-minded they seem to be good people and everything but still they would have been happier if balarama spent more time with the invasion of a community and not with charlemagne he still had that reputation of being a kali worshipper which they didn't care for very much [Music] the rice nervous believed in all of the incarnations but krishna was the main one this is the view actually of the bhagavad-gita that krishna has some special status above and beyond all of the others there's a series of verses that talk about the the number of uh avatars and it goes through 10 and then it says they're 24. and then it says asanka that there's uh numerous himself so and you'll remember it was vaishnav who when he came to that the meeting that was arranged where they tried to just decide whether takuru is an avatar or not he came a little bit late and he heard all the evidence and saw srama krishna and then he heard that they had all agreed that yes rama christian was the avatar he said only that much and he said but i see he's the source of all avatars so that goes back to this idea that he would heal to be krishna himself reincarnated somehow rather than just an off offshoot something like that so yes they accepted uh but they have something a special type of nishita which is a little bit fanatical talker talks about it also with regard to hanuman that and we'll get to this idea of nishta that of course he he recognized krishna and everything but he said you better take your form as rama hanuman is coming that's what he the way he wants to see you so [Music] yeah theoretically of course that they'll recognize ramen krishna is one and the same and everything but in their worship the image will be of krishna and usually either baby gopala or govinda as the coward boy it's part of this brindavan leela that would be the main thing yeah we're getting into this now master so balaram's father yes sir it is like a woman's recognizing her husband whatever clothes he wears master but again there is a thing called single-minded devotion it means that we accept theoretically god can be worshipped in any form but we have our own special way that we we feel comfortable with and we like and we're devoted to and we won't deviate from and it's through that that we recognize and respect everybody else but this is will be firm in that so this is that idea talker liked that idea he said we have to have that it's not like one day you worship rama one day with krishna one day shiva we have our own one that we stick to but we give everyone else the right to have nishita that special devotion to whatever their liking is whatever their spiritual inclination is so taqwa says but again there is a thing called single-minded devotion when the gopis went to mathura so it will even reply to krishna himself this is interesting they saw krishna with the turban on his head so even between the krishna of mathura and the govinda of brindavan they made a distinction their devotion was to the cowherd boy that their friend and not to now this fancy guy with the turbine and who's who's the king future king and everything yeah who is this man where is our krishna with the peacock feather on his crest and the yellow cloth on his body hanuman also had that unswerving devotion he came to dwarika in the cycle of dwapura krishna said his queen honum will not be satisfied unless he sees the form of rama so to please hanuman krishna assume the form of rama sorry krishna assumed the form of rama but my dear sir now i'm a christian talking to balaram's father i am in a peculiar state of mind my mind constantly descends from the absolute to the relative and again ascends from the relative to the absolute what is this called this this was this is a very famous phrase because tucker heard this he heard this on three different occasions during his period of satana and sometimes we we may think that oh everything is is our own mind telling us things even the inspiration it's her own mind but sometimes taku would hear things he would have to ask oh what does that mean he wasn't quite sure and everything so we take this to mean that yeah this was some some how divine mother i was communicating with him he heard this voice in different ways one time through someone who was known as orati's mother this is kind of devotee that used to come there and all in vision though and another time i think a bearded man or something that he heard it from but the last time was after he was in nirvikale samadhi for the six months and he said that this it was just a voice it was a formless voice this time telling him remain in bahala and then somehow he he understood that this man the mind should should remain in the state just below this samadhi state may be called the samadhi state but on the threshold on the threshold of some type of ecstatic merging in god or samadhi sometimes nearby kopa samati sometimes is a bhava samadhi that stayed so that when he looked upward the mind would go in that direction he would get merged in samadhi when he came down a little bit and saw this universe he would see everything as a manifestation of the divine so whether he saw whether mind was merged in oneness it was a question of the state of the mind state or how high it went when the mind was in that higher state then everything merged that was so and so there's no uh experience there it's just then he was just merged in the absolute and uh when the mind came down a little bit then he saw a variety but he saw it as suggest he would give different examples as if seeing artificial fruit made of wax that he could see this is a banana this is an apple this is a pear but he also knew that it was all one substance so that was so this kind of going back and forth he said a little bit like a boat the sailboat has to attack back and forth when it unless the wind's directly behind so you're going from one bank to the other to the other and it's the way they so that's how his mind was going back and forth and back and forth when he broke his hand that was a different realization that a little bit yeah when he broke his arm takur said this was a turning point in his life he felt that the divine mother was sending a message to him because at that time he he had gone into this state of bhava where he wasn't aware of this external world and he had a vision of juggernaut and in his mind in this vision in the state of harvard went to embrace him now even though that's that stayed in barbara his physical body also did that and he failed he said no one was was was with him at that time and he was outside near the the environment where the railing was and everything fell and he broke his arm so we can say that uh after that he was not the mind was tending more to stay on the lower level rather than go to the higher level if we want to look at it in terms of divine mother was saying okay you've had enough of this there's a ecstasy and everything now concentrate on this not a lila see his other devil he's seeing everything in that ecstatic state not seeing any of this this world world disappears he's in some state of ecstasy and some deep meditative state and having all types of experiences and things but when the mind comes down then he can see this of this human lila and see god dwelling within all beings so that became a little more of his the emphasis or more the the nature of his mind after he broke his arm uh he went through different stages and then in kashipur towards the end he used to say that now i find my mind more inclined toward the infinite absolute reality even beyond formless even beyond the divine mother and everything that was an indication that he was coming to the end end of his life so he says but my dear sir i am in a peculiar state of mind my mind constantly descends from the absolute to the relative and again ascends from the relative to the absolute it doesn't come down to the relative plane the way our mind is dwelling on the relative plane we see is this ordinary world we accept it for what it is he saw everything i don't know how to explain it uh we have to have that experience but either soaked with the consciousness or the embodiment of consciousness chiddhagana is hard to know exactly what his vision was of course but he didn't see things the way we see things where we don't see things the way he did that's that's clear because his mind never descended below this heart center he said he said ordinary people were in the three lower centers occasionally we may go there and i think so his his vision was different yeah tucker understood everything in terms of uh what level his mind was on that's why he never he never talked about any philosophical position as a final position it depended on his mood and his state of mind and all sorts of other things so he he differed from the philosophers that way that there was no one doctrine or one school of thought or anything that that we can say oh he really belonged to that there's been an attempt to to kind of tie him in with the uh the sister dwight of ardens partly because of the belt fruit example and everything and em also seem to have that idea but it's completely wrong i feel to tie him in with anything because he liked all of them he liked all of them he used to say that divine mother has given a smorgasbord with all different types of dishes or that she she takes one fish and makes all different preparations of it then you would say i like all of them i like all types preparation to fish metaphorically speaking that means he he appreciated very much the dualistic point of view and the the qualified non-dualism and non-dualism and everything i only he thought some were more appropriate than others for different people so they restricted why the vedanta he felt was more for those who had that stern type of renunciation and not much attachment to the world and hadn't entered into family life so that's why he generally taught the path of devotion but that doesn't mean that he was a duelist or anything he uh it depended on his mood personally for him and what was suitable for others when he gave the instructions to others that's why this daughtomatopod if we restrict it as many faiths so many paths if we restricted yes to the different religions that taku taught i think we miss a very important point it should be applied to the different schools of vedanta also and to the shock to school as well and other things yeah the attainment of the absolute is called the knowledge of brahmin but it is extremely difficult to acquire a man cannot acquire the knowledge of brahman unless he completely rids himself of his attachment to the world so this is what i was saying this will be the path of guiana usually connected with eduardo vedanta and uh involving this perfect detachment we have to have certain prerequisites for this path that we don't for other paths those following the path of devotion they just have to be sincere and lead a good pure life to a certain extent and then gradually everything will fall in line for them but if we want to start out i am brahman we have to have no attachment to this lower self in the ego sense and so it's a different type of thing otherwise we we can get in trouble and make a mess of it and it won't be helpful for us when the divine mother was born as the daughter of king himalaya she showed her various forms to her father the king said i want to see brahman thereupon the divine mother said father if that is your desire then you must seek the company of a holy men you must go into solitude away from the world and now and then live in a holy company see the distinction or one distinction between the path of knowledge and the path of devotion is that the path of knowledge we start out at the at the roof we start out at the end we start out with a conclusion we start out with the idea of oneness and we have to somehow close the gap between uh our real feeling of duality and this this ultimate truth of oneness the path of devotion we can start out with anything we can be complete materialists and everything and we can think that god is far off in heaven someplace and as we practice everything we go step by step by step each one is provisional each one gets a little closer to uh what the final goal would be and uh we stopped thinking if god is far off then we realized god dwells within then we realize that we're part of that and ultimately we may realize that there's no absolute distinction between the individual's soul and the supreme soul this is the way takur explains it that even the path of devotion ends in oneness they're stricken to all this they won't go straight for it they'll say it ends a new state of union distinction would put still a state of union so this path of devotion we don't have to have a very deep philosophical understanding of the nature of the self or anything like that we just need a little devotion and through that that itself will uh bring clarity to the mind and understanding as we as we practice little by little the manifold has come from the one alone the relative from the absolute so this is why uh we we can't say that takur was qualified not to elicit any duelist or anything like that and then he'll he'll go right back and say but everything comes from that one so that one number i'm gonna i'll give some of the base very basic truths of the there's a state of consciousness where the many disappears and the one as well this is what i'm saying for him he saw everything in terms of the level of his consciousness his state of awareness if if if he says in that state of awareness this universe disappears he won't conclude that this universe is false some do they'll say unless if it's real it has to be real all of the time and always there he doesn't come to that conclusion he just says my mind ascended to that realm where the universe disappears and then comes back to the realm where the universe is there again only he sees it in a new light that's all so there's a state of consciousness where the many disappears and the one as well so there's no feeling of i am brahman in the ubiquitous it's not there the only one is there's no i there there's no there's there's no cognitive thinking or anything like that so we can't even talk about uh that i was merged in that state of oneness we there's nothing that can be said about it environment alone exists even at that we can't say anything about that state so the one also exists this is why they say that the term given for this uh advaita vedanta will have to be not oneness but non-dual so we're denying duality but we won't even assert oneness because it's something beyond that one this is relative to the one to the many so something even beyond that so there's a state of consciousness where the many disappears and the one as well for the many must exist as long as the one exists brahman is without comparison it is impossible to explain brahman by analogy it is between light and darkness it is light but not the light that we perceive not material light okay i want to talk about this because this is something very important we sometimes think that if we understand these analogies we've understood something i can tell you personally that i have a very clear understanding of how the sun can be reflected in different containers of water giving the appearance of many suns but the sun not being affected perfectly clear to me absolutely clear to me does that mean either any understanding of how grumman becomes the many no it's a it's an illustration that helps to a very small degree it helps us understand how something can appear to change but not really change it helps us to understand if if the container is the physical body and the mind is water how this this light of the sun can be reflected in it and we see this it can explain all of these things but when we stop and think but this light of the sun that i'm talking about i am that and now i say how do i understand that i am that that means this light is consciousness i'm thinking of it as some physical light which is reflected and mind but it's mind it's not water that it can reflect the physical light of the sun you know so how much do we we gain something of course is it helpful these are helpful illustrations but if we think that because we understand the illustration we've we understand brahman and the relationship between brahmin and and this physical body and mind and all of that we really don't these are things that uh have to be experienced and this is in vain that we reach for these types of analogies to help us a little bit to understand so it is helpful i'm not saying it's not helpful when we talk about the the mind being like a lake and that there are ripples on the surface and there's sediment and and it gets roiled and all of that it helps us understand but does it help us understand what is this mind that we're talking about it's not water so so this is why taka says it is light one says brahman it's without comparison anupa it is impossible to explain brahman by analogy it is between light and darkness it is light but not the light that we perceive not material light so that's probably the best analogy that we have but this light of the sun has no awareness it illumines things but it has no awareness this light of brahman brahman itself is pure consciousness pure awareness so it fails that way because there's no analogy that works there's nothing in this physical universe that can explain how this this brahmin uh either either is the ground of the world or creates the world or dwells within the world or functions as the south there's there's no perfect type of analogy he says we have to understand what part of the analogy to accept that's real and what part of it to accept is extraneous to it you remember the example he gives say someone is says comparing somebody to a tiger he says does it mean that they have a jaw that looks like a lantern that's that shape no the agreement will be at one point that they have that fierceness and boldness and everything not on any of the other points having fur having stripes none of those other things so we get a little bit from these types of examples of how the one can appear to be the many without changing how it can be the source of illumination how we can see a reflection of it and everything but really when we stop to think we're trying to understand something that's this awareness that's consciousness it's not a reflected light or anything like that then we realize how little we get how much we get and how little we get from these analogies [Music] used to say this that today's imagination is tomorrow's release that means that [Music] we try to posit an image of ourselves that we don't at present really feel but which has some reality to it and which if we if we uh practice that attitude eventually we'll find out that it's true now this is this is done both in a dualistic sense and also in a non-dualistic sense that this arrow kora that we adopt in attitude that i'm not the child of my biological parents i'm the child of the divine mother now i say that but i feel that no you ask me who my parents are they're they're the ones who gave birth to me that's i really feel that but i have to keep telling myself no that the real self within me has a relationship it comes from the divine mother in a real sense so i try to impose that superimpose impose that idea in my mind until one day i realize the truth of it so the same thing ahambar i am brahmin that now i just have to uh kind of imagine what it's like that it doesn't seem real to me but practicing that again and again one day i realize oh it is true that's that's the absolute truth it it wasn't just imagination i was imagining it but what i was imagining was actually true so if so say someone has amnesia there's a story about a king he went into this forest and he fell down and he forgot who he was got amnesia and somebody came and saw him and recognized him some yogi and he said well people said no i know you're the king he said about the king he woke up in the forest he thought he was a hunter something like that so this one man said i'll tell you what what you should do is dress like you're a king put on the clothes of the king and start to think how would i act if i were the king and what would i do and how would i talk to people isn't that and he did it long enough until one day he said oh now i remember i really am the king so it was imagination but it was true he was imagining that he was a king but he really was the king so that kind of idea that's an analogy that helps the sun and the and the uh and the reflection the helpful of course it's one of the most helpful analogies that we have but we shouldn't confuse understanding the analogy with understanding vermin there are two different things again when god changes the state of my mind when he brings my mind down to the plane of the relative i perceive that is he who has become all these the creator maya the living beings and the universe now again is this a philosophical position he says many times that brahman has become all this now there will be philosophers who say that brahman can't change into anything and if brahman changes into something then does it change completely is it 10 of that becomes the universe the rest remains we have our you know hymns and things that talk about this kind of thing the the one-tenth is this like a like uh an iceberg huh seven tenths or below the surface or something or one-seventh is above anyhow uh i i take this again as in that state of mind this is the way he saw things and understood things sometimes they'll say that this shakti parinama that the brahmana remains unchanged but the shakti changes or we can say that this brahman is changing but remaining the same at the same time obey the other different schools he didn't care about these different schools this was just he had this experience and it was real for him and uh consistent with everything else and uh this was his view of the world that there'll there'll be others they come down from that state of samadhi everything is like a dream nothing seems very real they're not too involved in anything this is that that [Music] the eye of knowledge as opposed to the eye of devotion so there'll be people who have different even god realized souls will have a different view of things so i perceive that it is he who has become all these or some will say that is a brahman appearing to be all this but unchanged really so different different experiences and and different views and everything not a philosophical truth talk was very clear what is the philosophical truth about brahman the brahman the brahman itself is that we have an individual everyone will describe that individual differently what is the truth of that individual that person with every aspect that's there not the way i see that person or anybody else sees that person but the person itself brahman itself so what brahman is no one can say what brahman is like what is brahman like brahman no analogy what the ghee tastes like you see everything we always say that oh this is seafood all these things it all tastes like chicken because it's the closest thing that we come uh with brahman there's no that's really saying there's no analogy that really works what is it like it's not like anything else we have two categories one is this visible universe which has billions and billions of different things in it and the other is just unitary there's there's no distinction within it nothing within it and yet it has that hidden power to become all of this they're not really two separate things this is all maya this is this is my topic for sunday i'll be talking about this yeah these four aspects uh they are all financial station of brahmana's okay let me see did we get to this okay okay i perceive that is he who has become all these okay so the creator ishwara maya the living beings and the universe he says i see that it is he who has become all of these okay now so suppose we start out with a brahman that brahman has become ishwara not really brahman is called ishwara when when brahman is functioning as the creator this is like saying that the woman has become a mother when the child is born right it's not becoming a mother like becoming somebody else it's the same person they're one and the same then maya so that power by which the mother can give birth to a child that also belongs to the same so we have all done the same the living beings so this will be that the god manifests in the form of all beings so that god this is the only self within all beings dwelling within all and this universe the vidart so this isn't brahmin as this visible universe so they're all manifestations or projections they're all connected with the brahman somehow they're all tied there's no anything separate from that and and we give the different descriptions one is all projected out of brahmin some will say creation of brahman some will say brahman itself some will say false appearance all different ways of understanding it but what taku is saying is that there's a unity connecting all of this to you so near go to brahman saguna brahman it's not that saguna brahman is is a creation of near gonna roman who are projected out of it they're one and the same this is what tucker says this the snake that's that's coiled up and the snake that's wriggling they're not two different snakes they're one of the same snake when it's not moving inactive they need to call it brahmin when it's moving and everything then we call it shakti or kali or divine mother or ishwara or sagun of brahman but one in the same again sometimes he shows me that he has created the universe okay see something the universe is nothing but he and other times that he has created the universe the for the philosophers these are conflicting points of view they'll argue either he created the universe or he is the universe or is a false appearance but tucker is saying that he has all of these different visions and from that standard whatever point of view he's looking at it from it's true and real this is beautiful again sometimes he shows me that he has created the universe now i don't like this he it should really be she because in his mind i'm sure in his mind he's thinking divine mother the problem is in bengali it's the same word there's no separate he and she huh they're all so there's no way of putting it into english to to capture that the way it is in the bengali so sometimes he shows me that he has created the universe and all living beings he is the master and the universe his garden so all of these different relationships this is why he was so fond of the hanuman's statement that you want to know what i think of iran it depends depends on my state of mind at the time when i feel this body to be real then uh i'm your servant that's all when i feel a little bit closer then i'm a part of you and i can go into that state also rama don't don't forget it where i understand that i am the self and uh you and i are not different we're one and the same that as i can also go into that state and tucker loved that so these are the three schools of vedanta they're all true and they're all real in different points of view and when the mind is in a different level of awareness he is the master and the universe and all its living beings belong to him that is knowledge and i am the doer i am the guru i am the father that is ignorance this is my house this is my family this is my wealth these are my relatives this also is ignorance now why is it ignorant because the one thing that is insubstantial is this ego and when we search for it we understand that this consciousness which is the real self is impersonal and this ego is nothing but an idea and it's a false idea because we take that to be the ultimate reality and yet it's constantly changing and it's constantly going having its own moods and uh it's and disappearing it sometimes and uh and fooling us and it's really the result of maya so if we understand that we're not that then how can i be the owner of anything if i'm not this ego and if i'm not this ego then either i am the witness or the god alone dwelling within and if god alone is dwelling within then everything belongs to god dwelling within and every decision is made by god there's also an attitude uh i i don't think we have to try to get too philosophical with some of these things i think it's a mistake sometimes that uh i say that i'm the instrument and god is is the operator mother is the operator i do what she makes me do taco could say that we can't say that we get all confused because this i is there like not going to say the divine mother is making me say something when i know that i'm doing it on my own now it may be one day i'll get that realization that even when i was immersed in ignorance it was mother making me do everything maybe but tucker says as long as i'm not in that state i have to take responsibility for what i do later if i have that realization that's a different story so this is my house this is my family this is my wealth these are my relatives this also is ignorance balarama's father that is true sir they they like all of these ideas but not from this from the same point of view and not so much that uh this eye is something unreal but his eye is a humble servant of god or uh taking any one of the relationships that we find in this krishna looking upon god as the child and everything mastered as long as you do not feel that god is the master you must come back to the world you must be born again and again there will be no rebirth when you can truly say o god thou art the master as long as you cannot say o lord thou alone art real you will not be released from the life of the world now real and unreal these are loaded terms they're they're highly controversial terms what do we mean by unreal that there'll be a whole range there'll be some who will say that absolutely unreal that it's like a mirage in the desert you go to to find it and you see that there's nothing but sand there it's just completely in in your imagination then there'll be some who will say that no it's actually real but it's but it's temporary and it's vanishing and though some will say that even if it's permanent it has no real substance to it that only that which is unchanging is is ultimately real there'll be all different ways of understanding this but the reality of of brahmin or the reality of god is of a different nature than this whatever this is it's a relative reality empirical it's perceivable but what it is in itself we have no idea we know it only as it comes through the senses and is understood by the mind that's all so it doesn't have that same reality as the self which is undeniable i know that i am i know that i'm aware i don't know how it happened or all the ramifications of it but you can't tell me that i don't exist you can tell me that this body is a dream body i can say it's possible i may wake up and say yes it was a dream body but you can't tell me i don't exist i won't accept that i know that that even a madman knows that he exists and he's 100 right even if he thinks that you know he's exists as uh as napoleon or as as a king of something some complete delusion but the fact of existence can't be denied this going and coming this rebirth is inevitable there will be no liberation further what can you achieve by saying it is mine the manager of an estate may say this is our garden these are our couches and furniture now they were big landlords they had property in the different places in orissa and other places so the wealthy people so this is this will go straight to the heart of balaram's father of course he was a good person a good person and they had a little place in vrindavan also and i'm sure that they felt that everything belonged to krishna they were that type of devotee relation the manager of an estate may say this is our garden these are our couches and furniture but when he is dismissed by the master he hasn't the right to take away even the chest of worthless mango wood given to him for his use and we're all going to be fired from this world one day when we depart this world and we won't take anything with this so this applies to everyone the feeling of i and mine has covered the reality so this is an ego sense that i am so and so and these things belong to me i and mine and now he's talking this really to him because of this we do not see truth attainment of caitanya divine consciousness is not possible without the knowledge of advaita non-duality after realizing caitanya one enjoys nityananda the eternal bliss one enjoys the bliss after attaining the state of paramahamsa this is all uh plays on words of the three the three main actors we can say in this chaitanya leela advaita with aduetacharya so it's uh yes by accident that he had that name and not that he was in a dwightin he wasn't he was a a real devotee of of of krishna he's he was the really the one who started the whole movement it wasn't chaitanya deva caitanya david was very much against all of these people this uh led by a dwight acharya and others they would have kirtan in the streets and he would go and make fun of them and everything and they would avoid him they were afraid of him and everything so he was really the precursor of this whole kirtan movement and everything and then caitanya dave himself and nityananda nithyananda was we can say his uh his disciple but companion also and the most important uh companion most important figure next to caitanya deva they talk about them as two brothers they weren't biological brothers but as if brothers so many songs about that so it's a very nice play on these three names the name of advaita so taka says attainment of chaitanya so the name of chaitanya chaitanya devo but now he's talking about the attainment of god realization he said divine consciousness not possible without the knowledge of advaita now the knowledge of advaita doesn't mean this universe is a dream dismiss it it means this oneness it means there's oneness that we can take it even even the followers followers of ramanuja they believe in oneness the any even the duelists there's a certain type of oneness that this uh the whole universe comes out of brahmin itself like the the sparks coming out of a fire so still that fire is the one real thing but everything comes out it has its relative reality for a certain period of time so this this idea of oneness is really common to all of the schools of vedanta the one difference will be with sankia even there there's a connection they're not really two separate categories there's a connection between them so he's and he has to he has to talk about knowledge of a dwight because otherwise the play on words won't work because his name was advaita tacharia and after really realizing titania one enjoys nithyananda so his name just happened to mean that the eternal bliss so one enjoys this bliss after retaining the state of apar mahamsa the part of muhammad says where god realized those who just wandered with perfect freedom not bound by any traditions or rules or anything even to to have to wear a certain cloth to do anything they're 100 free and talk for himself uh we called him referred to him as a putter mahamsa because he didn't care about taking the gerbil cloth and following these strict rules and going barefoot and vegetarian all of these different things he didn't bother about any of that so the part of mohammed says it's beyond free beyond all of these things they say sukadeva was a good example of paramahamsa just wandered freely no attachment to anything even even to a connection with any sampradaya or order even though there is a kind of paramahamsa sampradaya but still okay now we get this this uh very interesting statement vedanta does not recognize the incarnation of god we've had this before we did we discussed this before okay now what does this mean vedanta does not recognize the incarnation of god sometimes the talker says also the incarnation is for the bhaktan not for the gyani when topper uses this term vedanta what is he referring to generally the upanishads do you punish it when when we use the term we don't in the largest sense it includes all the schools so the uh followers of madhu and ramanuja they're equally redundant and they of course accept the avatar now when we use vedante even in the in the sense of uh darshan one of the six darsanas it includes gita as well as upanishads of course everything is about his avatar so taqwa he means specifically upanishads almost always when he says vedante and specifically advaita vedanta uh in in the most formal sense now there can be a dwight into accept this avatar there's no reason not to but there was no concept of the avatar in the the time of the upanishads swamiji says we can find the seed for these things there and the fact that it's not in the upanishad doesn't mean that it's made up or it's not real another great statement of swamiji is that spiritual truths will get discovered in time and there may be some still to be discovered in the future because when before the time of uh who was it newton the law of gravity sir isaac newton yet did things not fall according to to that law yeah but nobody knew what was at work there or what the rate of acceleration was or anything like that so the same thing with the avatar so venonta so that means in the upanishads we don't find this incarnation of god according to it so now according to it this will be more this uh advaita vedantist idea say we read vedic true nominee see according to it caitanya dave is only a bubble of the non-dual brahmin swamiji also talks like that he says christ and buddha were only the great waves on this ocean of consciousness but that makes a difference that makes a difference even if we accept that then every once in a while there'll be a huge wave that comes this is the avatar huge wave that leaves a tremendous impression on the world changes everything and that gives us a glimpse of the power of the ocean by seeing that wave this is what tupper sometimes said the avatar is like the hole through which you see that infinite field on the other side so even this avatar we have so many different ways of understanding it we take the one that is most helpful for us if somebody says no the avatar means the vishnu came descended from heaven and took a form for a certain period of time and then went back up again i said i don't believe that so does that mean that i can't have any concept of the avatar no we can we can have our own understanding of swamiji used to say don't insist that anybody look upon a christian in any one particular way let them understand them according to their own light of course we make a little distinction about the avatar not not hemming in karma is ever perfect and coming with a special spiritual mission and everything not just that the degree of power other distinctions are there but this is one way of looking at it this is why said to swamiji when i tell you he was christian and he was ramen i don't mean it in the vedantic sense that everybody because he used to say i see all of you were ramen himself well all the men who were assembled in the room whether you know it or not you're all rama he said i don't mean it in that sense in the sense in which anybody can say it i mean in a special sense [Music] do you know what the vision of divine consciousness is like it is like the sudden illumination of a dark room when a match is struck so this means that it's instantaneous and all-encompassing we we may have look upon everything as a gradual ascension to the roof but once we get there it'll be wow it'll be just all the overpowering when once we get there so the very nice illustration is like sudden illumination of a dark room when a match is struck the incarnation of god is accepted by those who follow the path of bhakti a woman belong to the sect observed my condition and remarked these were kind of a sects that uh also like this mother bhava this is rather krishna stuff and their habits weren't so good because uh that they engaged in taking of wine and other things and uh but takwo he would go to because the vaisnava charan was involved with all this he went with them a few times to these different places he said this is also a path and don't go there but it's also a path so a woman belonging to the carter they didn't care too much for these gods and goddesses but carter is the guru they were more this uh like this uh huh and this uh uh what did he call it the uh the man of my heart that's the guru who's also thought of the guru the man of his heart is also thought of god dwelling within so they they prefer to to worship god through the guru the karta guru and us so a woman belonging to the cartel observed my condition and remarked you have inner realization don't dance and sing too much ripe grapes must be preserved carefully in cotton the mother-in-law lessens her daughter-in-law's activities when the daughter-in-law is with child let me see oh this is all this is all her quote so yeah taco that's interesting so this this illustration of this the daughter-in-law with child comes from this one woman from the cardiologist i never noticed that before so this is all the her statement you have inner realization don't dance and sing too much ripe grapes must be preserved carefully in cotton this is also what keshav said he said you don't know of what precious treasure you have in srama krishna he should be preserved like that with these these grapes that if you if you just put it let it rest on the ground or something it'll get bruised it should be kept very carefully preserved that way the mother-in-law lessens her daughter-in-law's activities when the daughter-in-law is with child one characteristic of god realization is the the activities of a man with such realization gradually drop away inside this man meaning srama krishna is the real jewel so she could recognize him different people recognized taku it's very interesting that that that quaker i don't know what his full name was that he said to all of them there you don't realize who this is this ramakrishna i see jesus himself come back in this form and then have he recognized him as the avatar and he said you don't need even the preach so people from different traditions sometimes could see him that way watching me eat she remarked sir are you yourself eating or are you are you feeding someone else so where is the center of eye are you identified with that divine of self within who is alone exists there or is it the divine mother who dwells within you who's feeding you this is that same thing they talk where he would go back and forth sometimes he said what is this confusion mother am i feeding you are you feeding me that sometimes i see mother and child are both there sometimes only your mother is there what is this confusion mind would go slightly different levels and everything so sometimes he may feel that yes i'm doing everything as an offering to mother daughter within sometimes he would feel i'm just this this machine mother is the one who's feeding me well different ways of looking at it she was very insightful huh this woman the feeling of ego has covered the truth narendra once said as the eye of man see this god really so it's quoting this teenage boy as the eye of man recedes the eye of god approaches cather says the more clay there is in the jar the less water it holds krishna said to arjuna brother you will not realize me if you possess even one of the eight cities these give only a little power with the healing and the light one may do only a little good to others isn't that true therefore i pray to the divine mother for pure love only a love that does not seek any return i never asked for occult powers while talking thus srama krishna went into samadhi it almost seems that he would would do it just as as the final level of the point that he wanted to make that now i've told everything that i have to tell if they say that this god realization is something real then they'll understand what i've been talking about i don't believe it was a pre-planned thing or anything but it seems to be uh how it how the whole thing worked for some reason that this would be the way it would happen while talking about surah krishna went into samadhi he sat there motionless completely forgetful of the outer world then coming down to the sense world he sang ah friend i've not found him yet whose love has driven me mad at the master's request ramallah sang a song describing how caitanya embraced the monastic life we'll stop here there's a very famous song this is part of that nimai sannyas that at least in bengal when they do these things everyone is in tears they're highly emotional because he's leaving behind his mother who lost all of her children and it's a very sad type of thing so we'll stop here that's on page 309 [Music] who is stainless of infinite nature whose heart melts in sympathy for his devotees who is an embodiment of the divine and the supreme lord and ever worthy of our worship [Music]