[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]
[now a Centre of the international Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission]
DAILY READINGS
Transcribed from the recordings made by Mother Radha
Day 1040
Every stage [of spiritual growth] has happiness. And with almost every stage you have the opposite – which is misery. But only one stage – that is the last one which is bliss in the Spirit or the Self - has no opposites. Because in that state there is no second. It is only One and One alone. And this in turn, the Lord rounded it up very beautifully, Sri Krishna Bhagawan gives us a practical exercise. First of all he says you must try and keep your mind pure. This, when I think of Jesus, is always in my mind, when he said, "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God". Now the question is, are we following the advice of these great ones to keep ourselves pure? And when you keep yourself pure, it is not just keeping yourself pure but at the same time try to contact the Universal Spirit which we term it as 'God', or 'Nirvana'.
These are terms of the Universal Spirit – and how to contact it? He gives it very openly again. You must, as the Isha Upanishad says, "see This dwelling in every one and permeating everything". One might say, "ah, this is just imagination." But everything is imagination – even if you are to make a clay pot, what do you do? You first imagine. You want to build a house, you imagine, you put it on a plan. Everything is imagination. Are you so clever that you want to condemn imagination, when in the first place, in baby class, imagination came to your assistance? Yes, in the beginning it is like an imagination, like in the beginning a building is an imagination in your mind. Later on, when you do practical things, like follow the ethical and moral laws [yama and niyama], then it will become a reality. It's like asking a builder and then building the house. It stands, it's there. You can see it, you can touch it, you can talk in it, you can play in it. Beautiful.
Today's speaker wonderfully said that many people think that in sex you get happiness. There is definite happiness but supposing the time comes that your partner doesn't agree with you, then you get sadness. What he called this "trifling, crudest form of bliss", is always associated with that which is?...sorrow. Sadness. In one stage only, there is no sadness - that which is One without a second. Therefore it is said, if you want infinite bliss, you must realise the infinite Being. Infinite Being or Spirit. He gives the three kinds of happiness.
["That which in the beginning is like poison but in the end like nectar; that happiness, born from the tranquillity of one's own mind, is declared to be sattvic." (Bhagavad Gita 18:37)
"That which in the beginning, through contact between the senses and their objects, is like nectar, and in the end like poison; that happiness is declared to be rajasic." (Bhagavad Gita 18:38)
"That happiness which both in the beginning and afterwards deludes the self, arising from sleep, indolence, and negligence, is declared to be tamasic." (Bhagavad Gita 18:39)]
In the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna says you get delusion out of sleep and drunkenness. You drug yourself you get it, how true. There is happiness in that isn't there? But I know from personal experience, sometimes sleep gives bliss, but when you continue sleeping your body starts giving the opposite of bliss. You can even get fed up with sleeping in bed. You want to now walk. So that is again a delusion as Krishna calls it.
Then you find there is a passionate type of bliss – which is a rajastic type – where you get sensual bliss. And again many people have 'blissful' eyes. And then they again have 'blind-ful' [deluded] eyes. So you can see, this has also got to come to an end.
The highest form of bliss is sattvic. Again that you find bliss in happiness. We are so hypnotised living on earth and we make earth such a hell that when we land in hell we find that it is even bliss there. And this is true, because great yogis have told different stories. Remember one time a man was told to go and get the lowest of the low things. [Swamiji chuckles] He walked and found a pig but then thought, "well, people eat pork, so it can't be the lowest of the low". He continued looking and saw the untouchables [Dalits] and thought, "the untouchables are cleaning our places, so they can't be the lowest". Then he found excreta. He was about to touch it, when the excreta shouted, "stop! stop! Do not touch me, you low fellow!" He asked what the excreta meant. "Why are you calling me low?" The excreta answered, "you know, you are only a third-class ordinary man and you want to touch me. But do you know why my position is like this? I was once a wonderful cake on the king's table and this is my position today. [devotees laugh] And if you're going to touch me, I don't know what's going to happen." So you see – this is the problem. The problem is that we always think something else is low - but we're getting lower and lower. We don't know how low we ourselves are. I think it's high time that we must take stock.
But then sometimes when my mind goes with a great thought like this, I think "wait a minute, what are the people to do then?" And I'm sure that thought goes through your mind, too. What are the people to do? The people have to make up their minds which kind of bliss they want. They do not say that you must withdraw from the worldly life, that you must withdraw from your wife and children, but make it a spiritual practice. Do it, because you just have to do it. Do it and surrender it to God. Because it is God's. Not yours. Only when you say, "mine" and "my", "I", "yours", it goes bad. But when you say, "God, it is Thine", there's nothing bad.
Then, how to live? The speaker said that if you do good things and you follow the ethical and moral laws you won't suffer. I beg your pardon. You suffer like hell. But when you make hell no suffering - then only do you become blissful. That's how it is. Swami Vivekananda [spiritual heir to Sri Ramakrishna] said that the western world wants to tell us how to stop suffering and get happiness. But he says that we eastern people try to bear the suffering. And when suffering becomes 'no-suffering' to the bearer - like Sita - then it's blissful, isn't it? You don't care. So, when you do good things, sufferings will come but you must be indifferent to them. Happiness will also come – be indifferent to it. When you go above these two, what then? You must feel the happiness of just doing the thing. Why? Because that is the only way to live. And then you'll get the supreme release – God. But what we are trying to do…we are trying to avoid.
You know these homoeopathic people talk sometimes about the allopathic people. They say, "you know Swamiji, if you've got migraine they give you a drug and that headache gets stopped but then a leg-ache starts". [Swamiji chuckling merrily] They say, "they'll give you this kind of medication and your skin starts troubling you. But the original problem is stopped". So that's what happens with happiness. You look for one kind of happiness but the side-effects of that happiness are tremendous. It comes out as something else. Or, say that my body is itching. I used to always make a mistake in the olden days and devotees used to laugh at me. I used to say, "my body is scratching, please scratch it for me". [Swamiji and devotees laugh] So, when your body is itching, the bliss is the scratching, isn't it? But that's going to cause a spreading – and extension – of the scratching. You're not going to spend your life scratching. You may not have any flesh left – you'll reach the bone. So like that you'll find that happiness – worldly happiness – will only add fuel to the?...fire. It will only add desire to the already 'apparent' satisfied desire.
1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.
2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.
There are currently available, 150 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order.
For more about the Holy Trinity, and also the founding Swamis of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, please mouse over their names below:
Sri Ramakrishna Sri Sarada Devi Swami Vivekananda
Swami Nischalananda Swami Shivapadananda
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online
Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:
Ramakrishna Math and Mission Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa Ramakrishna Dham
Comments