RELIGION AND REALIZATION
MARCH --1882
Place : - Temple of Dakshineswar
(Henceforth Shri Ramkrishna will be spoken of as
Thakur” when required as it is so done in the Gospel )
81).
“The same man
when he worships
in a temple
is called
a priest and
when he prepares
a meal is
a cook”.
and as he proceeds he
reasons—“not this, not
this”1 Brahma is
neither this, nor that,
not these living beings, nor
this Universe,
Elimination succeeds elimination
and then mind
is transformed
into
a point (a
zero) and then
comes “Sthitha Samadhi”.
The
Brahmajnani knows it for
certain that God it
real and the
Universe is unreal—not
in existence . Like dream, all these
Names and forms
are illusory . It cannot
be said that
God is a
Person . All men of knowledge,
known as Vedantists, say like
this”.
Who are vedantists ?
The Vedantisis are those who see and realise God in these
five aspects in the seventh plane .
They are---
(1) Atma ;
(2) Atma holding
the Universe within Him ;
(3) This Vast
Universe is transforming into a seed ;
(4) The seed is
transformed into a dream ; and,
(5) The dream in its turn evaporates and what
remains,
nobody knows
.
83) “To a devotee
every state of life is real . The waking
state is a reality to them .
The world
to them is not a dream . They say that the Universe is His attributive
power. All
this are His parts and parcels as eternally He is expressing Himself
in the form
of sky, stars, moon, sun, mountains, oceans, men, animals, They are but His
inseparable glory . He is within us well as in and spreading over all our consciousness . Again He is in the outside all over the world . The devotees who are
blessed with the realizations of descent, say that the twenty four cosmic
principles and Universe are all but manifestations of His own self . The devotees
crave to eat sugar, but they do not want to get themselves transformed into
sugar”.
A devotee accepts all the forms of transformations as they
spring up in the process from the waking of the life-power assumes the form of
Manus Ratan . These transformations are but realizations solving the problem of
life and death, the woeld and God, and all questions which may rise in a man .
“Knowledge is like a gentlemen who goes and stops in the outer house, but
devotion is like a lady and enters in the zenana—“Sri Ramkrishna .
84) “Do you know
how a lover of God nurtures his love to God ?
He says, “O God! Thou art the Master and I am Thy servant .
Thou art the Mother and I am Thy child”. Or again “Thou art
both my Father and Mother . Thou art the Full and I am a part”.
He does not like to say, “I am Brahma”.
After attaining the manikin form of God in the body, the
lover of God ties himself in a relationship with God and tastes the sweetness
of love to God through the body and all over the body.
This relationship has got five forms. They are:--
(1) Relationship of
quietness—transforming into God but not in toto. God is quietness. The only
existence of the devotee is left to enjoy the sweetness of quietness, the God .
This quietness is felt in two ways. It is felt in a concentrated form as spoken
of by Thakur—“a fish kept confined in a jar has been set free in an ocean”. And
again, it is felt all over the body.
(2) Relationship of
servant and master. The best example is the life of Shri Hanumana as depicted
in the Ramayana—an epic.
(3) Relationship
which springs up between two best friends . The best example is cited in the
life of Sreedanma, Sudama. In the Bhagavat .
(4) The love of
mother and her child as between Sri Krishna and Yashoda, or Thakur and Ramlala
.
(5) The love of a
lady to her lover as between Shri Radha and Shri Krishna .
There are some specially favored people who get the bliss
of these five kinds of relationship with God .
