Sunday 29 March 2020

How we affect the world - Paramhansa Yogananda

All the hatred, the anger, the evil we send out into the word.........
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The good and bad karmic conditions created by man determine and influence the climate , they affect the wind and the ocean, the very structure of the earth, sometimes causing earthquake. All the hatred, the anger, the evil we send out into the world, and the agony and rebellion they cause-- all these are disturbing the magnetic force of the earth, like static in the ether. In the destruction caused by this war we are seeing a partial dissolution of the world-- dissolution of lives, money, homes...
Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.
The Divine Romance. P61

New Harmony - Sri Aurobindo

Prakriti is eternal, but every universe passes. The fact of universe endures for ever, but no particular world of things can last; for each universe is only one rhythm out of an infinite number of possible movements. Whatsoever system in Nature or of Nature is thoroughly worked out, must give place to a new harmony.
     Nevertheless all world and everything in world is eternal in its essential being; for all  essential existence is Brahman without end or beginning.
     Forms and names are also Brahman and eternal; but, in world, theirs is an eternity of recurrence, not of unbroken persistence. Every form and every idea that has once been, exists still and can again recur; every form or idea that is to be, already exists and was from the beginning. Time is a convention of movement, not a condition of existence.

CWSA 17 - 352.                     Sri Aurobindo

Tuesday 24 March 2020

INSCRUTABLE ARE THY WAYS, O GOD

INSCRUTABLE ARE THY WAYS, O GOD
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THE COLOSSAL DANGER LURKING OVER HUMANITY!! WITH THE OUTBREAK OF CORONA VIRUS WHICH HAS TAKEN A FORMIDABLE FORM OF PANDEMIC!! FROM EVERY CORNER OF THE GLOBE ARE HEARD THE PAINFUL CRIES OF DESPAIR WITH THE EVER INCREASING NUMBER OF THE DEAD AND THOSE STRUCK WITH THE VIRUS!! FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY HAS ENVELOPED ALL!
We are naturally tempted to ask : How can God, who is called the Ocean of Mercy, the Help of the Helpless, let it happen to His created beings? Does He not have the power to stop the onslaught of Covid-19 on mankind? Is there anything impossible for Him?
For the answer, let us listen to the words of Sri Ramakrishna —the Avatara Varisthaye. 

“Who, indeed can  understand the things of the Spirit through reason? No, all should strive for devotion to the Lotus Feet of God. 

"Infinite are the glories of God! How little can you fathom them! Can you ever find out the meaning of God's ways?

"Bhishma was none other than one of the eight Vasus, but even he shed tears on his bed of arrows. He said: 'How astonishing! God Himself is the companion of the Pandava brothers, and still there is no end to their troubles and sorrows!' Who can ever understand the ways of God?

"A man thinks, 'I have practised a little prayer and austerity; so I have gained a victory over others.' But victory and defeat lie with God.

M: "Once Vidyasagar said in a mood of pique: 'What is the use of calling on God? Just think of this incident: At one time Chenghiz Khan plundered a country and imprisoned many people, the number of prisoners rose to about a hundred thousand. The commander of his army said to him: "Your Majesty, who will feed them? It is risky to keep them with us. It will be equally dangerous to release them. What shall I do?" Chenghiz Khan said: "That's true. What can be done? Well, have them killed." The order was accordingly given to cut them to pieces. Now, God saw this slaughter, didn't He? But He didn't stop it in any way. Therefore I don't need God, whether He exists or not. I don't derive any good from Him.'"

MASTER: "Is it possible to understand God's action and His motive? He creates, He preserves, and He destroys. Can we ever understand why He destroys? I say to the Divine Mother: 'O Mother, I do not need to understand. Please give me love for Thy Lotus Feet.' The aim of human life is to attain bhakti. As for other things, the Mother knows best. I have come to the garden to eat mangoes. What is the use of my calculating the number of trees, branches, and leaves? I only eat the mangoes; I don't need to know the number of trees and leaves.

MASTER (to M.): "The husband of Mani Mallick's granddaughter was here. He read in a book that God could not be said to be quite wise and omniscient; otherwise, why should there be so much misery in the world? As regards death, it would be much better to kill a man all at once, instead of putting him through slow torture. Further, the author writes that if he himself were the Creator, he would have created a better world."

M. listened to these words in surprise and made no comment.

MASTER (to M.): "Can a man ever understand God's ways? I too think of God sometimes as good and sometimes as bad. He has kept us deluded by His great illusion. Sometimes He wakes us up and sometimes He keeps us unconscious. One moment the ignorance disappears, and the next moment it covers our mind. If you throw a brick-bat into a pond covered with moss, you get a glimpse of the water. But a few moments later the moss comes dancing back and covers the water.

"One is aware of pleasure and pain, birth and death, disease and grief, as long as one is identified with the body. All these belong to the body alone, and not to the Soul. After the death of the body, perhaps God carries one to a better place. .

"How little we know! Can a one-seer pot hold ten seers of milk? If ever a salt doll ventures into the ocean to measure its depth, it cannot come back and give us the information. It melts into the water and disappears."
—THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA 

JAI THAKUR ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ™๐ŸŒน๐ŸŒบ๐ŸŒทPROTECT THY CHILDREN FROM ALL HARM, O LORD

Sunday 22 March 2020

Swami Vivekananda memories

The Swami's health was failing rapidly. Besides diabetes, from which he had been suffering, he had had at Dacca another very severe attack of asthma. His disciples were very anxious, when it was discovered that the climate of Shillong had done him no good. During the asthmatic attack, the Swami said half-dreamily, as if to himself: “What does it matter! I have given them enough for fifteen hundred years!" He felt that he could die in peace now that he had given his message to the world, and that if the Western nations accepted his spiritual ideals and India adopted his plans for her regeneration, there was work ahead of both sufficient for fifteen hundred years.

(“Swami Vivekananda – A Biography: By His Eastern & Western Disciples”, Advaita Ashrama 1960, Ch. XXXVIII “A Trip to East Bengal and Life at the Math”, p. 709)

Sri Ramakrishna in Russia

Sri Ramakrishna in Russia 
There was a young Russian bachelor with a low-paying job. Once, for three nights in succession, he had a vision of an Indian yogi in his room. 

Sometime later, he came across a picture of Sri Ramakrishna and recognised him to be the yogi seen in the vision. 

He saved money and finally came to Calcutta. He knew virtually no English, and in response to the taxi driver's query, kept repeating, 'Ramakrishna Mission'. The driver, who knew the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Calcutta, took him there. 

Swami Lokeswarananda, the then head of the institute, made the Russian feel at home, and later sent him to the Belur Math. Swami Bhuteshananda, who was the president then, was much pleased on listening to the young man's story and graciously initiated him. He was also presented with a large number of books on Sri Ramakrishna literature. Now he is back in Russia. 

-Vedanta -( March - April 2016)

Thursday 19 March 2020

Action of hostile forces - Sri Aurobindo

"The action of the hostile forces is a special intervention creating violent inner conflicts, abnormal depressions, thoughts and impulses of a kind which can be easily recognised as suggestions e.g. leaving the Ashram, abandoning the yoga, revolt against the Divine, suggestions of calamity and catastrophe apparently irresistible, irrational impulses and so on. An attack might also encourage us to question, reason away, doubt or deny prior spiritual experience.

Many worldly people are constantly attacked, influenced or even possessed by hostile forces without being aware of it. However, through yoga we can become immune to hostile forces in our own inner worlds whilst moving in the outer world. Irrespective of our individual efforts, hostile forces will continue to exist in the outer world, because our collective level of consciousness is relatively low. 
*They will continue to operate until a future stage of the evolution of consciousness*. 

-- *Sri Aurobindo*

Divya Janma (The Divine Birth)

Man himself is a doubly involved being; most of himself in mind and below is involved in a subliminal conscience or a subconscience; most of himself above mind is involved in a spiritual superconscience. When he becomes conscient in the superconscience, the heights and the depths of his being will be illumined by another light of knowledge than the flickering lamp of the reason can now cast into a few corners; for then the master of the field will enlighten this whole wonderful field of his being as the sun illumines the whole system it has created out of its own glories. Then only he can know the reality even of his own mind and life and body. Mind will be changed into a greater consciousness, his life will be a direct power and action of the Divinity, his very body no longer this first gross lump of breathing clay, but a very image and body of spiritual being. That transfiguration on the summit of the mountain, divine birth, divya janma, is that to which all these births are a long series of laborious steps. An involution of spirit in matter is the beginning, but a spiritual assumption of divine birth is the fullness of the evolution.

CWSA 13 : 326-27.                 Sri Aurobindo

Sunday 15 March 2020

Ways of the Divine

๐ŸŒป Mother, why do these people receive the force, since the Divine knows that they are not sincere?

Listen, my child, the Divine never goes by human notions in His ways of acting. You must get that well into your head, once and for all. He probably does things without what we call reasons. But anyway, if He has reasons they are not the same as human reasons, and certainly He does not have the sense of justice as it is understood by men.

For example, you imagine very easily that a man who is craving for wealth and tries to deceive people in order to get money... According to your idea of justice, this man ought to be deprived of all his wealth and reduced to poverty. We find that usually just the opposite happens. But that, of course, is only a matter of appearances. Behind the appearances, there is something else.... He exchanges this for other possibilities. He may have money, but he no longer has a conscience. And, in fact, what almost always happens is that when he has the money he desired, he is not happy.... And the more he has, usually the less happy he is! He is tormented, you see, by the wealth he has gained.

You must not judge things from an outer success or a sem- blance of defeat. We may say — and generally this is what almost always happens — we could say that the Divine gives what one desires, and of all lessons this is the best! For, if your desire is inconscient, obscure, egoistic, you increase the unconsciousness, the darkness and egoism within yourself; that is to say, this takes you farther and farther away from the truth, from consciousness and happiness. It takes you far away from the Divine. And for the Divine, naturally, only one thing is true — the divine Con- sciousness, the divine Union. And each time you put material things in front, you become more and more materialistic and go farther and farther away from full success.

But for the Truth that other success is a terrible defeat.... You have exchanged truth for falsehood!

To judge from appearances and apparent success is precisely an act of complete ignorance. Even for the most hardened man, for whom everything has apparently been successful, even for him there is always a counterpart. And this kind of hardening of the being which is produced, this veil which is formed, a thicker and thicker veil, between the outer consciousness and the inner truth, becomes, one day or another, altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly — outer success.

(Mother’s voice becomes extremely deep.) One must be very great, very pure, have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This, indeed, is the true test of life!

When you do not succeed, quite naturally you turn back on yourself and within yourself, and you seek within yourself the consolation for your outer failure. And to those who have a flame within them — if the Divine really wants to help them, if they are mature enough to be helped, if they are ready to follow the path — blows will come one after another, because this helps! It is the most powerful, the most direct, most effective help. If you succeed, be on your guard, ask yourself: “At what price, what cost have I bought success? I hope it is not a step towards...”

There are those who have gone beyond this, those who are conscious of their soul, those who have given themselves entirely, those who — as I said — are absolutely pure, disinterested, and can succeed without its affecting and touching them; here, then, it is different. But one must be very high to be able to bear success. And after all, it is perhaps the last test which the Divine gives to anyone: “Now that you are noble, you are disinterested, you have no egoism, you belong only to me, I am going to make you triumph. We are going to see if you will hold out.”

๐ŸŒธ The Mother ( Question and Answers, Volume-6, page no.238-240)

THE LAST DAYS OF MRINALINI DEVI AND SRI AUROBINDO’S LETTER TO HIS FATHER-IN-LAW

THE LAST DAYS OF MRINALINI DEVI AND SRI AUROBINDO’S LETTER TO HIS FATHER-IN-LAW This is the last of the posts we have published ...