Video 93

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (4/16/22)

[Music] [Music] your words are like nectar and bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and removal sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls good evening everyone and welcome to our class on the gospel astronomy krishna it's been several weeks since i've been here last week of course we had swami sarva david and we had our nice weekend program and today is a very very auspicious day today is the first it's the new year day for various parts of india bengal and tamil nadu and many other areas and it's good friday and it's passover and it's also we're in the middle of ramadan so yeah so so it was very unusual that so many things falling on the same the same day we're on the chapter instruction the vaisnavas and brahmos this is page 314 in the gospel and the date is november 26 1883. uh most of the conversation so far has been with vijay krishna goswami and uh if i remember correctly that he had just renounced the world uh think i think he showed up and wearing his garage cloth anyone remember yes anyhow this is vijay krishna goswami uh he was a member of the brahma-samaj he was a little bit younger than kesho keshav was i think two years younger than srama krishna he was born in 1838 and video krishna goswami in 1841 so they were all within a few years of each other and they were very close friends video and and keshav but then uh because of the slight scan small scandal we can say with the marriage of his daughter anyhow there was a separation of the of the two uh the brahma-samaj in the two groups he became head of one paid acharya paid teacher not exactly the the head he wasn't he wasn't you know the most important person but uh takur always always recognized in him that the fit with the brahma-samaj was not a good fit the brahma-samaj didn't care for a lot of traditional hindu devotional practices in fact they didn't allow it there's a lot of uh image worship uh they didn't accept a lot of teachings the avatar and a lot of the quranic stories and everything uh but me joy came from a very uh famous lineage he had a very famous lineage he was actually born uh in nodia and we i always connected him with the rain guns in the east bengal bangladesh because he lived there for some time but he was actually born in the family of the way the goswami so right in the same place where he was born the shantipur that same that same area and srama krishna always said that uh he had that some scatter within him that that devotion to the personal god uh because of his his lineage and his upbringing and everything so it was only a matter of time when it would come out and also he had this longing for god realization and renunciation i don't know much about his f family but he was he was married he was a family person this is uh what did we say 18 83 so he's 42 years old roughly and around this time i think he had already done the seed he renounced the world now we always wonder what about the family and everything and i don't know too much but possibly the family the children if uh wouldn't have grown up and in those days it was different joint families and everything you kind of married into a family not just an individual and there was always someone to look after maybe grown children and everything i don't know too much but we find sometimes those who are married who want to renounce ramakrishna scolds them that you have your duties and obligations in the family other times if he knows it's very very sincere he encourages them so this was one of those cases takur was very very fond of him uh he was very devoted to srama krishna and takur was very happy that that he took to that life of fuld renunciation he later became considered a very great saint in the the vaisnava tradition so tucker has been talking mostly to vijay and a lot of it is about renunciation so all this strong talk of renunciation is because uh vijay had just renounced if if if i remember correctly anyhow sometime around this time he's about to renounce everything so where we left off before was srama krishna was talking about in the bhagavata the he told the story of the of the kite and then uh so the avid learned this lesson from the kite that as long as a man has the fish that his worldly desires he must perform actions and consequently suffer from weary anxiety and restlessness though sooner does he renounce these desires then his activities fall away and he enjoys peace of soul this is where we left the last time we were here tiaga i mentioned that last time this is this is one of those phrases in the gita that really resonates it goes right back to the story that once we let go immediately we get peace once we cling cling to things then we've we're chased by a thousand crows and that means worries and anxieties and everything once we let go now in the case of of the sannyasi it means literally fig really letting go and renouncing everything in the case of the householder it means let things let god take care of things that mother decide how things will turn out i'll do my best then let let her worry about everything so that that kind of idea so tucker says but work without any selfish motive is good so remember he's talking to a whole group of people not just bj so he has to balance things for the vijay he's saying yes time has come to give up everything but then there are other people there so work without selfish motive so this is taco's emphasis on internal renunciation internal pronunciation mostly giving up uh any selfish motive for things any uh desire for uh praise or getting reward for things that we do to have a pure motive for things but work without any selfish motive is good it does not create any worry but it is very difficult to be totally unselfish we may think that our work is selfless but selfishness comes unknown to us from no one knows where this is this is something that we have to keep reminding ourselves of because we think that we have no selfish motive and then as soon as somebody uh either doesn't give us credit we're criticized as us then we feel it and then we know that there's a little bit behind it all at least we'd like to be appreciated we don't just be praised but at least we'd like to think that somebody noticed that we did a nice thing we don't care if our name is on the side of the building but it'll be nice so a little bit will creep in but if a man has already undergone great spiritual discipline then as a result of it he may be able to do work without any selfish motive so this is that the necessity for meditation because in meditation we start to understand the apparent nature of the ego of this eye that is not real and that is not terribly important and that it's a lot of it is our own imagination and it's the source of all problems in this world so in meditation it's very good for us to feel that this eye that i'm clinging to this personality and all of that it's just of my own making it's just it's an idea this ego it's an idea that i have of myself of who i am and how i want other people to see me and appreciate me and all of that and there's nothing real nothing substantial it's just it's an idea it's something that we create we create our own self-image and we want other people to appreciate us for that so in meditation we can clearly see we can get a real sense of what is the real nature of the self and that we can observe this ego is just uh this sense i have of who i am or who i want people to think i am and there's nothing ultimately real about it otherwise it just keeps coming back taqwa says so many times that we can analyze a thousand times he says a thousand times uh and understand that this ego is just maya that has no real existence the next minute comes back so at least if we do this spiritual practice and meditation there's a chance that we'll be able to do uh work in more of a selfless spirit at least so he says but if a man has already undergone great spiritual discipline then as a result of it he may be able to do work without any selfish motive may may be able to even then it's difficult and notice that he's always saying that we have to do our spiritual practice first because we get entangled too easily in the beginning so tucker always emphasizes that that uh before we get too mixed up with the world we have to do a little spiritual practice we have to be able to separate ourselves know the cell to be distinct from everything else otherwise like milk and water it gets mixed up so he says a little spiritual practice so that we can separate it and we can turn the milk into curd and into butter then it can float in the water of the world and won't mix with it otherwise this world is too strong for us it will it'll overtake us and we won't be able to maintain or or our balance in the midst of everything after the vision of god a man can easily do unselfish work now taqwa has three different ways of expressing the same idea after the vision of god is too high if we if we say that i won't do any work until i've got vision then probably i'll spend a whole life not doing any work sometimes he says after uh after getting the knowledge then one can work in the world sometimes after getting devotion he uses these these three terms so knowledge means that we have a little discrimination we know what's real what's on what's important what's not important and devotion means that we know that things are not in our hands that we want to do everything as an offering but we can take it that way this uh after the attainment of god of course then that one can easily do unstable work but we can't wait for that we we have to do our spiritual practice and then gradually we'll be able to work in the world without getting too entangled so after the vision of god a man can easily do unfit unselfish work in most cases action drops away after the attainment of god only a few like narada work to bring light to mankind so this is another distinction is a very good psychologist he knows that there are different natures people of different natures different classes of people some after god realization and then like the like the mother who just gives a birth to the child she'll just play with the child she has no other household duties to do for a while but others that he says uh if if a clerk is thrown into prison and he's led out of prison what will he do go around singing and dancing in the streets he'll go back to being a clerk so we have two different uh scenarios you can say one isn't higher than the other they're uh it depends on the nature and and uh what type of karma we have with uh what the divine mother has in store for us the aviduta accepted a bee as another teacher this is a beautiful section in the bhagavata purana with the 24 teachers that the of a dota had all different animals and insects nature things bees accumulate their honey by days of hard labor but they cannot enjoy the honey for a man soon breaks the comb and takes it away the aviduta learned this lesson from the bees that one should not lay things up so talkwar is very clear that uh this is not the householder has to if the householder doesn't save for the future to look after the family and uh then he's not doing his his duty this so this is for the uh talk where says what sadhus and birds yeah there's a hindi hindi expression what is it yeah yeah so they don't save up anything so the aviduta learned this lesson from the bees that one should not lay things up sadhus so now he's explaining sadhu should depend 100 on god they must not gather for the moral now this is something that takur followed literally literally to such an extent that if by mistake he kept something for the future then uh he would start to reel he wouldn't know why there was one one incident that we know of there are many of them of course but one he had some stomach trouble and he was given a little little bit of uh opium which was used hoping it has a constipating effect so without thinking too much about it he put it in his pocket and started to go walk back home he must have been in general mother's house yeah and he didn't know why he started reeling and started for going towards the ganga as if he's going to drown himself in the ganga and then it occurred to him that he had kept something to save for the for the free future use and then he got rid of it then he was okay after so things manifested in his life in a very literal way that uh renouncing gold meant he literally couldn't touch it that his hand would curl up and everything so he he very often said that even simple things he was once asked to take something for the rum love some some food or something he said no i can't take anything for the for the few it wasn't even for him and the interesting thing is that the same srama krishna who couldn't save anything had a whole savings plan for holy mother for for buying her bangles and also for her future so he he also could make exceptions in certain cases but for himself he wouldn't he would never do it but this does not apply to the householder he must bring up his family therefore it is necessary for him to provide here it is birds and monks do not hoard yeah yet birds also hoard for their chicks after their chicks are hatched they collect food in their beaks for their young ones let me tell you one thing bijay don't trust asatu if he keeps bag and baggage with him and a bundle of clothes with many knots so that means there's not full reliance what will i do if this cloth tears i better keep another one you know just in case it means there's no full reliance some uh idea possessions means that we also think of ourselves as a body that if we think of ourselves as the self then we can't own anything we can't own anything there has to be some eyes and ego sense for us to feel that we own something even this body we feel we don't own if we have that don't have that ego sense i've told the story many times about sony brutes when he was very ill at the end and they wanted to perform another surgery he was in his upper 90s and the doctors said we can't bring ourselves to ask this poor man at that age to undergo another surgery this one of you will have to do it i think what's funny that he said okay i'll talk to him and he said if we do the surgery that this will extend your life we don't know how long maybe a few years or something but of course there's the recovery time and everything it's not an easy surgery you know are you willing to do it and he said when i when i became a monk i gave up all the sense of of possession or even this body either this body belongs to takur it belongs to the order you're the trustees if you all think it'll serve some purpose for this body to live longer then you do the surgery so even no sense of possession with with his own body so but this is for the sadhus this is what we're saying so don't trust assad if he keeps bag and baggage with him and a bundle of clothes with many knots i've seen such sadhus under the banyan tree in the punjabi two or three of them were seated there you have one of the special features of the kali temple the chinese word kali temple was that there were so there were so many arrangements made to feed wandering saudis and pilgrims and poor people there were two different feeding areas one for kali temple one for the radhakantha temple one would be vegetarian one non-vegetarian so many sadhus went there it was a well-known place they were welcome there there was a place where they could stay and take food and everything so i've seen such sadhus under the banyan tree the panchavati two or three of them were seated there one was picking over lentils yes sometimes they wouldn't take food they would get foodstuffs they would get rice and dal and things like that and they would cook on their own tucker himself did that in the beginning some were sowing their clothes and all were gossiping about a feast they had enjoyed in a rich man's house they said among themselves that rich man spent a hundred thousand rupees on the feast and fed the satu sumptuously with cake sweets and many such delicious things all laugh it is true i've seen such sadhus at gaia they are called the lotawala sadhus of gaia that means that carrying this water pot like no with special significance but master tbj when love of god is awakened work drops away of itself yeah this is another theory of love of god or any type of as we get closer and you know spiritual attainment it can be for the gyani also when that longing for realization becomes stronger and stronger then he says that work just falls off on its own uh he never recommended uh forcing ourselves to give up he said renunciation it comes in course of time through our sincere longing and everything that mother will reduce our work if god makes some and work let them work it is now time for you to give up everything so this is this is when vijay is renouncing renounce all and say oh mind may you and i alone behold the mother letting no one else intrude saying this suramar krishna began to sing in his soul enthralling voice cherish my precious mother shyama tenderly within o mind may you and i alone behold her letting no one else intrude o mind in solitude enjoy her keeping the passions all outside take but the tongue that now and again it may cry out o mother mother suffer no breath of base desire to enter and approach us there but bid true knowledge stand on guard alert and watchful ever more the master to vijay surrender yourself completely to god and set aside all such things as fear and shame give up such feelings as what will people think of me if i dance in the ecstasy of god's holy name the saying one cannot have the vision of god as long as one has these three shame hatred and fear is very true shame hatred fear cast pride secretiveness and the like are so many bonds man is free when he is liberated from all these used to use this expression holy mother said the opposite of course the context is different sometimes we find the holy mother looking at things from a little different angle and specifically with women this logia see when taka uses it it really means that we have some shame or we get embarrassed why do we get embarrassed huh ego what do we care what people think and and fear and anger and hatred all of these things they're they're all passions that represent uh some type of obstacle in spiritual life but the same taqwa said that in the sense of modesty and holy mother also this is a special ornament for women now it sounds a little bit sexist why just women and not men men also should they should have a little bit of this uh at least lack of arrogance and everything so for holy mother that uh there's an absence of pride and modesty we can say was very important and uh and we have to protect ourselves we have to be not fearful exactly but uh we have to know when the people are can harm us in some ways spiritually or otherwise we have to protect ourselves but the shame taco he used to scroll down quite a bit when and because ann was was very shy and didn't like to show any emotion and things he didn't like to sing in front of others or get up and dance when the others got what got up in the air so taku would sometimes scold him a little bit so it's a balance we should we shouldn't be too much in one direction or the other direction then that means we have to preserve a little bit of the proper decorum at least but for someone like vijay who's who he will become an ecstatic um satu they sing and dance and who cares with takur he would sing and dance his cloth would fall off he'd be naked like a baby he didn't care so for someone like him that uh it's that that perfect innocence and purity and the whole mind given to god that you don't care about anything else so this is these are specifically here for vijay that his life is taking a huge turn here it's so strange he's in this is this conservative organization the brahmos ahmad are highly conservative they were all well to do people well educated people they they weren't the type to go about doing curtin in the streets and singing dance although after meeting takur they did a lot of kirtan and they learned to sing and dance and everything but this regia was really cut from a different cloth from the others how he got involved with that of course keisha was so charismatic many or all of takwa's disciples so many of them were also enamored with keto and they had to meet ramakrishna to really fully blossom according to you know their their own inner spiritual mood this is what happened with luigi that this meeting with takua really opened everything up for him so the master said to bj surrender yourself completely to god and set aside all such things as fear and shame give up such feelings as what will people think of me if i dance in the ecstasy of god's holy name the saying one cannot have the vision of god as long as one has these three shame hatred and fear is very true shame hatred fear cast srama krishna uh two things that we know one is is when he would go at night spend the whole night in the in the jungle north of the of his room in the temple area he would remove his sacred thread and rita used to scold him why do you do that he said sacred thread it's there's there's some pride that comes from feeling i'm a berman i have the sacred thread so to get rid of that and then we know of course with uh uh with rochi with the clean cleaning there's the latrines and everything of this the the sweeper to get rid of this feeling of gas pride of cast secretiveness this is another one that there are many people that they just don't want people to know anything about them they'll hide things somehow that uh some somehow they make a big distinction this is it this is a personal thing they don't want to talk about it even good things if if they they're very well educated or something they don't want to tell other people that uh it's sometimes the good motive behind it but it all goes back to this uh caring so much about what other people think of us it all goes back to some ego idea so these are so many bonds man it's free when he is liberated from all these when bound by ties one is jiva when free from ties one is shiva pasha so that means the same the same what is the difference between the god realize in egypt this is the same only there's bondage that comes from this false identification which leads to all of these these different passions and everything prima ecstatic love of god is a rare thing first of all one acquires a bhakti now when takwa talks about the path of knowledge and who can detain to what stages and samadhi and all of that they'll make all of these distinctions that who can have a savvy copper samadhi who can have nearby kobusmani who who will be brought down who can stay on the roof who will jump over all of that similarly with with the different stages of bhakti these are all things that were very scholastically and scholarly scholarly uh defined in the the works of the gold swamis urupan sanatana you will see the ghostwoman all these different levels of spiritual emotion and and the spiritual moods and and physical manifestations and everything this what is it a very big book with all of these different things so they talk about bhakti and prema and and different stages and takur just just as an ordinary jiva can experience some of the highest states of samadhi without coming back there'd also be limits to how much the height of of devotion that we can reach also is all the question of of this size of the receptacle this is a theory of aadhaar that some get filled up very easily these are huge like they'll talk about jetta that a huge amount of water can can enter into them and uh like we always talked about swamiji swamiji was a huge receptacle that others a little bit of ecstasy they'll be singing and dancing and going and falling down and everything and swamiji that he could withstand so much more that uh because of a huge vessel that way so first of all one acquires bhakti bhakti is single-minded devotion to god bhakti sometimes we take is is the highest it's uh according to the yoga sutras yoga and everything that's that's a different sense that the bhakti which includes everything else but now as a stage this will this will be a little bit restricted but the single-minded devotion to god like the devotion a wife feels for her husband so that nishta that uh not caring for anything else that one pointed devotion it is very difficult to have unalloyed devotion to god through such devotion one's mind and soul emerge in him then come to bhava so bhava the way we understand it this when we keep reading taco goes into power is that it's a type of ecstasy uh where one is not aware of one's surroundings even he gives other illustrations that uh the three different stages that chaitanya devoted was in some he would sing and dance some uh he he would just uh with the in-between type of stage and others he's lost to the world completely shraddha is something that's common to every every spiritual but not just the path of devotion but the path of knowledge we have to start out with uh this feeling of of humility and reverence for the tradition the teachings of the scriptures teaching of the guru a little faith and conviction that what we're told can can happen will happen we have to start out with that it doesn't matter if we're giannis or we're about this doesn't make any difference what path it is we need this so this is this is the most important prerequisite in spiritual life if we start out with pride that we think we know everything then no one can teach us anything then we won't make any progress in spiritual life i i think that this uh we don't usually we say faith i think humility is is almost the most important element includes so many different uh elements aspects to it so this this humility that we're able to go to a teacher and and say you please tell me what to do i take refuge with you i don't know what's good for me what's not good for me whatever you tell me i'll try to understand to the best of my ability it doesn't mean that we accept anything without analyzing it that's not shraddha so swamiji had intends for the first krishna because he never disregarded anything he said he took it very seriously if he didn't understand it he'd tell him it doesn't make sense to me and then ultimately he understood everything so it's it's not just uh pretending that we understand and accepting things without understanding that's not swaddha shraddha means that we can say that yes i hear these teachings i read taku says this i don't understand it i know that the fall is with me because i i see he doesn't say anything that doesn't turn out to be of value and true and good for me that how can i understand it better it doesn't mean that we pretend that we understand everything because we can impossible so this is uh is is first whether it's a path of devotion or knowledge or meditation or karma yoga or anything we have to have that so first he says so bhava when we say ceramic christian goes into baba it's a type of i don't want to say subway called personality because we call somanti is also the mind is pretty much blank and empty but some sense of of i some awareness that we're in that state is there however there can be all sorts of visions and ecstatic moods and emotion the tears flowing and everything so that's impover through bhava a man becomes speechless his nerve currents are stilled comes by itself so we even breaths will stop as if we were shocked by something we stopped breathing it is like the case of a man whose breath and speech stop when he fires a gun so this will be see you know more of a raja yoga example that intends concentration then you know before you shoot they even tell you that that hold your breath if you breathe you may shake a little bit hold your breath and be perfectly concentrated and everything so that kumbhaka will come but prima ecstatic love is an extremely rare thing so now he's he's making this distinction that this is a higher level that we find radha had and caitanya dave and others that these there's there's there's it's it's really similar to our raja yoga but and and samantha that it intensifies intensifies and then flips into a slightly different category so there's not huge difference between bhakti bahaba and and prema except that it's more intense and more ecstatic and and reaches it is different level and we reach a point where we can't contain it it becomes too much like the bull in the china shop it'll just destroy everything tucker says the elephant goes in with a tiny straw head and it'll just break it that means the body can't hold it even the body can't hold it so takara sometimes says just like the ishwara koti alone could come back from there we call the samadhi that ordinary jiva if they attain to these very high states of mahabhava and everything that also the by the whole system will be shattered they won't be able to withstand it fortunately all we want to do is fill our container we don't care about whether it's called prima or mahabhava or anything like that that'll be enough that'll be enough to to have that realization see the difference will be the spiritual power that we have and everything we don't care about those things but prima ecstatic loves is an extremely rare thing caitanya caitanya had that love when one has prema one forgets all outer things one forgets the world one even forgets one's own body which is so dear to a man the master began to sing oh when will dawn the blessed day when tears of joy will flow from my eyes as i repeat lord huddy's name o when will dawn the blessed day when all my craving for the world will vanish straight away from my heart and with the thrill of his holy name all of my hair will stand on end oh when will dawn that blessed day see the devotee doesn't care for this samadhi or mukti or any of these other things just to be able to feel that ecstatic love of god so the talk of divine things was proceeding when some invited brahmo devotees entered the room yeah now we're at uh whose house joy gopassen somebody's house this is one of the brahmo festivals money molex house manila al-malik's house so uh these during these festivals there are different things going on there are different rooms some people will be downstairs some upstairs so any of the uh he was talking mostly to vijay this whole time of course am is there if them is not there we're not there we don't uh we don't know what what took place this is where em it's so interesting that uh there'll be times when taco disc goes something he'll go to the pine grove he'll go to the panchapati and m will be by his side nobody else will go just m and we don't think about it much but otherwise we don't get the description unless m is there so any time there's conversation going on m is there then tucker knows it and tucker knows that he's this will get recorded and not that it's uh uh pre-planned or anything like that tucker is thinking oh let me call him so he can remember but it's it's the part of the of the whole so the talk of divine things was proceeding when some invited brahmo devotees entered the room there were among them a few pundits and high government officials yeah this this brahmo samaj was really for the for the elite for the very well educated people and high position people i'm sure there were others also but this was mostly for them srama krishna had said that bahaba steals the nerve currents of the devotee he continued when arjuna was about to shoot at the target the eye of a fish his eyes were fixed on the eye of the fish and or nothing else this isn't a real fish huh do they make a target to look like a fish or something these will be they used to have these contests who was the best archer in everything so it was probably something like that i don't know but they would also have flying birds and things but this i doubt if it's if it's uh if it's just a fish anyhow sometimes he says the eye of a bird he gives us the example a couple of times so when arjuna was about to shoot at the target the eye of a fish his eyes were fixed on the eye of the fish and on nothing else he didn't even notice any part of the fish except the eye in such a state the breathing stops and one experiences this kombucha we know it's one of those the three elements of the pranayama you breathe in then you hold it then you let it up i don't know all these things another characteristic of god vision is that a great spiritual current rushes up along the spine and goes toward the brain if then if then the devotee goes into samadhi he sees god so the this is uh the same type of explanation we have for raja yoga we have for bhakti yoga the same idea this spiritual current only in the form of emotion spiritual emotion we'll also be going up the same way with with raja yoga it'll be more intense concentration and one pointedness and emerging in the object and everything looking at the brahmo devotees who had just arrived the master said mere pandit devoid of divine love talk incoherently this means that taqwa didn't have a very high opinion of the people who just walked in that he know that he recognizes that these are pundits and these are high officials and everything but uh see he was having so much fun with rejoining he loved this video and uh vijay was soaking up these words we we know that that he had great reverence for sravya krishna and now people are coming in so he has to say something mere pundits devoid of divine love talk incoherently once said in the course of his sermon this poor man he gets quoted for this one thing over and over again god is dry nerosh make him sweet by your love and devotion imagine to describe him as dry whom the vedas declares the essence of bliss it makes one feel that the pundit didn't know what god really is that was why his words were so incoherent a man once said there are many horses in my uncle's cow shed from that one could know that the man had no horses at all no one keeps a horse in a cow shed some people pride themselves on their riches and power their wealth honor and social position but these are only transitory so now he's talking directly to these new visitors who would come these are wealthy people high position people and and educated pundits educated people but these are only transitory nothing will remain with you in death there's a song that runs remember this oh mind nobody is your own baby is a very beautiful song very powerful song yeah this is a fantastic song remember this oh mind nobody is your own vain is your wandering in this world trapped in the subtle snare of maya as you are do not forget the mother's name only a day or two men honor you on earth as lord and master all too soon that form so honored now must needs be cast away when death the master seizes you even your beloved wife for whom while yet you live you fret yourself almost to death will not go with you then she too will say farewell and shun your corpse as an evil thing this is this is the theme of uh the great poem if you read that you'll you'll get that feeling that the field of intense renunciation and constantly this idea of thinking of death and this body really think about it this this body that is such a desirable thing that people fall in love with the beauty in in youth that it'll be ashes one day and before that uh you you leave it for a long enough time it'll shrivel up it'll start to smell it'll get rotten no one will want to go near it that same body that people lust after and this is one type of part it's one type of spiritual practice where we try to think of these things in order to get rid of this this attachment we have that everything we possess everything will be gone either it'll go before us or we'll go and we'll leave it behind and this idea that no one is our very own this is another uh example of a holy mother giving the opposite teaching without a contradiction the two different spiritual moods she says everyone is there no one is a stranger learn to make the whole world your own feel oneness with everyone this is looking at it from the other side that this world is full of hypocrisy is it full of a hollowness that people who love you one day they'll hate you the next day i i always think it's it's not a nice example but the the husband and wife that uh love each other to death till death do his part and uh only want the the welfare of the other the wife is only happy if the husband is happy husband is only happy if the wife is happy if one of them comes one day and says you're only happy if i'm happy yes my daughter they said i found somebody else that i love who makes me happy instantly hatred the worst type of hatred and then the the most worst type of divorce will take place in everything so where is where is there any permanence in these things how how it's as fickle all of these things are and we know people who praise us to our face they'll criticize us behind our backs we know all these things so we have to remind ourselves sometimes that who is what is it that we can hold on to that's never going to fail us the divine mother now we may say that that our own parents mother father something like that that uh they'll never fail us that they're lovers and everything it's true to a certain extent of course this is this is a little bit too too strong that there are cases of of people who have tremendous loyalty no matter what there are there are unselfish people but in the for the most part for the most part and we have to admit that this world is not a very safe place to if we want to put all if we have nothing else to hold on to but these these relationships temporary things and everything that even swamiji he said he had that relationship with swami brahmananda right and how much the all of the brother disciples loved each other and loved him and he loved them he said they all may leave me the only one that i know won't ever leave me is is rakha rajamout so if we can imagine if he felt that way about the most selfless you know god intoxicated in the holy people we can imagine that what about ordinary people we know and the people will just we one day they're our friends the next day they don't look at us we don't know why we maybe we said something we didn't realize it happens that way yet talker gives those stories about the guru who tells the disciple no one is your own but god and he says no my parents everyone loves me so much and then we see the results that they're too little too strong a little bit too strong that there is there is selfless love in this world to a certain extent within limits but for the most part the world is like that we really can't we we make a big mistake if if that's all that we have to hold on to one must not be proud of one's money if you say that you are rich then one can remind you that there are richer men than you and others richer still and so on at dusk the glow worm comes out and thinks that it lights the world but its pride is crushed when the stars appear in the sky the stars feel that they give light to the earth but when the moon rises the stars fade in shame the moon feels that the world smiles at its light and that it lights the earth then the eastern horizon becomes red the sun rises the moon fades and after a while is no longer seen if wealthy people would think that way they would get rid of their pride in their wealth manila had provided a sumptuous feast in celebration of the festival he entertained the master and the other guests with great love and attention it was late at night when they returned to their homes we have to find a balance sometimes we we don't want to have such a poor self-image of ourselves and we don't want to be too proud so it's it's a real balance it's not it's not good and taco didn't like that that attitude i'm nobody i'm nothing the time is center and everything we we have to recognize that we have some good qualities we have some bad qualities that we're a work in progress i think one of the great advantages we have is that we have the examples of the direct disciples takur and ma that's too high we we shouldn't even try to think about comparing ourselves to them but we have these other great examples i remember one time years ago a young man wrote to me a very nice sincere young man who uh he belonged to one of these uh should i tell the name there's a video pete you reckon on the video pit very nice nice young man but he wrote to me that uh sometimes i feel proud because uh i'm kind of the leader of this little group that there are many other students there it's a wonderful organization at vidup and they kind of look up to me they'll ask me questions and what do i do about this little bit of pride that i have so i wrote back to him that all we have to do is is look at the direct disciples and we see what giants they are and how can we have any pride at all in our attainments when we see that the heights to which they they've reached and you know who they are and what they are so not to make us feel small but to make us be realistic about ourselves and and to get rid of any chance of pride and arrogance so this is why it's good it's good to uh take stock sometimes and and see that it's if we start to feel that we've done some great things and we look at people who've really done great things we think we have some knowledge really good people who really have it we think we have a little devotion we look at these these great souls who you know and and renunciation and everything so it's good for us to uh to understand that the value to to our lives but we shouldn't think of too much of ourselves that's all so this is the the end of that chapter instruction device numbers and brahmos the next chapter we'll start next time is the last visit to kesho so this is this timing of this is very interesting because uh the two main figures of the brahmos homage now one is about to pass away and the other is about to renounce the world and leave so after this uh of course i don't know the history of the brahmos so much that will but uh after after this this is a real turning point in that movement so we'll we'll stop here we'll begin next time on the page 318 chapter 15. the last visit to keisha it's a very touching chapter okay they said he was he was hardly recognizable he was so weak and nailed and thin and everything and the very touching scene that uh we see how much devotion that kesha had to surround krishna at the end so that will be next time [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 peace peace peace okay thank you everyone