Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna Lecture 065 on 19-July-2022

Full Transcript(Not Corrected)

Om Jananem Sharadam Devem Ramakrishnam Jagat Gurum Pada Padme Tayo Sritva Pranamami Moho Rumohoho Since the last few classes, we have been talking about faith. Faith is one of the most important ingredients, not only in spiritual life, but also in secular life. Swamiji used to say, what is the difference between one man and another man? It is the amount of faith one has. A person who has faith in himself, in herself, is greater to that extent. And it manifests in the form of greatness in any field. Great statesman, great writer, great poet, great sculptor, great visionary, great businessman. Tremendous self-confidence. And if that is true, how much should it be true in the field of spirituality? So we have been discussing, faith should bring about a transformation. I have already mentioned, mentioning the story of Nachiketa and his father. The father of Nachiketa, we find in the Katha Upanishad, that he professed faith, but his behavior was totally different. Whereas Nachiketa, his faith and his behavior were absolutely indistinguishable. And that's why he could attain to the very highest. By the way, Swamiji also used to say, and many senior Swamis also say, that even among Swamis, a person who could be a good Swami, a good Sanyasi, first of all, he must be one of the best householders in the world. One of the best worldly persons in the world. Because only everybody claims that I am a worldly person, even if they do not claim they are worldly persons. But a successful worldly person is one who has tremendous confidence. It means, even if a thousand times he has to fall down, not successful, he will not give up. He will not give up until he attains what he wants to attain. Only such a person is fit to become even a spiritual person. If a person doesn't have that much strength of faith in the worldly affairs, and cannot achieve, how do we dare to imagine such a person can achieve in spiritual life, which is a billion times more difficult. There is nothing more difficult than self-conquest. So far our discussion went on, faith means indirect knowledge, faith in the words of the scriptures, faith because of the scriptures, because of the Guru, that God is, and there is dharma, there is justice, and whatever is happening is happening by the will of God, and it is the very best thing, because God's will can never be anything less than the very best. That much faith we must have. But at the same time, depending upon where we are, we have to strive to do our best. Once somebody asked, if everything happens by the will of God, even the suffering of anybody is because of their purva janma, karma phala, and God's will is only fulfilling one's karma phala, then what is the good of our doing anything? He replied, that is a false logic. If it is the fate of everybody because of their karma phala, by doing good, you should keep in mind, you are not doing any good to the world, but you are rather doing good to yourself. Every other person to whom you intend or really do good is an instrument which goes to reinforce your own selfishness. We are all selfish. There is no doubt about it. So faith means transformation of one's behavior, one's thoughts, one's goals, etc. In my last class, I have discussed the story of Sri Ramakrishna, which is profound. We are all thieves. Everybody is a thief. What is it? If we do not believe that we get what we deserve and we get what we deserve as a result of what we did in the past, and to desire more than what we deserve, that is called thievery. That is the first meaning of thievery. The second meaning of thievery is that the gods are there to bless us and they are bestowing upon us uncountable goods, and yet those who are not grateful do not acknowledge their gratefulness. The gods who are giving us, they don't want anything. They just want a bit of thank you, so to say. Gratefulness. I am very grateful. Through worship, through offering a leaf, a flower, even a bit of water, they will be so pleased, just offer a bit of water. So all these indicate that we cannot add to the ocean, to the infinity, but if we are grateful, they will be so pleased that they will bestow much more than what we deserve. So we have to understand, we have to be grateful because we are able to live, because Vahudevata is sustaining us every millisecond. The Jaladevata is sustaining us every day. The Bhudevata in the form of food is sustaining us. The Agnidevata is sustaining us in the form of keeping so much of heat. And the Akashadevata is sustaining us in the form of giving us space. All the Devatas are representations of the Divine Lord. In other words, God is creating us, God is sustaining us in the form of the Panchadevata and God will take us back when we are tired, just as a mother takes the child who is tired after playing into her lap, so that we can rest and again we can go about our play. The whole life is nothing but a play and that is what is called Bhagavat Leela, Divya Leela. So we have to be grateful, grateful for everything. Americans, in fact, have dedicated one whole day in the month of November. They call it Thanksgiving Day. I am alive thanks to God. The world is running so well thanks to God. Is the world really running so well? The war is going on, prices are going up, everybody seems to be suffering and we all tend to blame somebody or the other, but nobody should be blamed. It is all what we deserve and it is the best thing that can happen. It is taken spiritually, it is a wake-up call. You cut down your requirements, your necessities. How? Increase them so much. People lived when all these things were not there. I remember an incident. There was a Greek philosopher. He used to visit a supermarket from morning till evening. He will be going on looking at the shelves. I suspect that it was summer and all these supermarkets will be air-conditioned, so he is taking advantage of it. People, in fact, do take advantage of it. So somebody asked him, Sir, you visit and you spend so many hours, but you don't buy anything. Can you explain your behavior? He said, I go on looking at everything to find out how much I can do without and that should be philosophy. Nobody says we should not enjoy. In fact, enjoyment has nothing to do with what we possess. It depends upon our mental condition. A beggar is... A voluntarily renouncing beggar is extremely happy with whatever he gets and a beggar born because of his past karma, he is never happy whatever is given. So we have to be grateful whole life. Every breath we have to be grateful to Vayu Devata, to God in the form of Vayu. That is why in Taittiriya Upanishad, Vayu Devata is praised. We have to be grateful even if under the most painful conditions, we have to be grateful. It is to remind this, every Christian's duty is to say grace just before the Christian puts anything in his mouth. Coming back, so this story of the thief, we are all thieves, but we have to be the greatest thieves. Why are you running after petty things? Why don't you run after the greatest wealth, the greatest treasure in the world? Another name for that is God. And once we possess God, everything is possessed. There is nothing that is left out. So Swamiji used to say, if you want to rob, don't rob a poor fellow. Rob the royal treasury. That is the best thing anybody can do. What is spirituality? We want to possess God Himself, nothing less than God. But for that, who can possess God? Only God can possess God. Therefore, if we can become God-like, then only we can possess God. What is God-like? Certain spiritual qualities, absolute unselfishness, absolute love, absolute sacrifice, and ever experienced joy. These are the four characteristics. So for that, we have to slowly train our mind, whatever be the circumstances. I remember an incident. You know, in the olden times, the readers used to give very beautiful things. Now also it gives now and then, but it has become very low quality. There was a man, he was one-legged person and he was moving in the street. And a beggar, very cheerfully, his legs were covered, he said, Good morning, sir. And the other fellow got angry, the person with one leg. He said, What is there to thank for? What is there to say good morning? Everything is bad. Why are you, sir, saying this one? Because, look, I went to serve my country, I lost my leg. Now I have become one-legged. And the beggar removed his blanket and then the visitor found he had no legs at all. Sir, I also served my country, but it so happens, it happens in the war, that the both legs are gone. Now I can't do anything. I am reduced to this state, but I am extremely grateful to God. My stomach is okay. I have good appetite and I greet everybody. I tell marvellous stories to everybody. Only I need the help of some people to get a little bit of food. I am more than satisfied with what I get. What a marvellous real incident the Reader's Digest is telling us. A person who has much less is much more cheerful. So our life has to be transformed. That is why the second set of the Ten Commandments of Hinduism, which is Yama and Niyama. The second great quality we have to acquire with great sadhana is called Santosha. Santosha means contentment. Whatever God is pleased to keep us with, let us be happy with that. And such a person who develops that quality, he attains the highest happiness. Who says so? In the Yaksha Prashnas, Yudhishthira was asked by Yaksha, Dharma Raja, what is the greatest happiness? And the categorical answer is Santushti, contentment. He who is content, he is an extremely happy person. So that is what Sri Ramakrishna was trying to illustrate. If we have to be thieves, if we have to have desires, let us pitch them to the highest thing that is available, which is God. Now I am talking and talking and talking about faith because this is the most misunderstood quality in the whole armory of the spiritual warfare. Faith is the only thing which can take us to God. So Sri Ramakrishna is talking about guilelessness and faith. Faith and guilelessness. What is faith? That whatever is written in the scripture is absolute truth and Guru only tells what is in the scriptures, elaborates and illustrates through his own life. What is guilelessness? That is absence of hypocrisy, straightforwardness, also called Arjavam. There is no inside outside. I think one thing, I say something, I do something else. This is called pure hypocrisy. So Arjavam is one of the greatest qualities. Sri Ramakrishna used to love guileless people. That means anybody can read their mind. What they say is what they mean and what they think. This is called guilelessness. And if we have faith, then we cannot do without guilelessness. This is what Sri Ramakrishna is telling. Unless a man is guileless, he cannot so easily have faith in God. God is far far away from the mind steeped in worldliness. Worldly intelligence creates many doubts and many forms of pride. Pride of learning, wealth and the rest etc. Sri Ramakrishna had just placed his finger on the very nuts of the problem. He said, we want faith. That's why we pray, O Lord, grant me faith. Grant me bhakti, which comes first, bhakti or faith. Faith is the root cause. Why? Because faith means knowledge. What is knowledge? That God exists and He is compassionate and a little prayer will please Him and He knows we are all His children. He is our creator and if we can open our arms, He will come running to us. We don't lose anything. So prayer is the key. Guilelessness is the transformation in our character. Absolute faith, we don't need to be having guile. Why? Because we have a greater safety. When do we hide ourselves? When we fear that if I open my heart, somebody will harm me, somebody will take advantage of me. But if God is there to protect me, a devotee who has that faith, through the scripture, through the Guru, never again is going to suffer from anything. Several beautiful stories Sri Ramakrishna illustrates this aspect of faith. We will come across it even today itself. So, if a man has got faith, then he has got guilelessness as the foundation. If there is guile, then faith cannot have. That is why it is written, God is very far away from the mind steeped in worldliness. Why? Worldly intelligence creates doubts and many types of pride and doubts and pride are the deadliest enemy of faith. So, we have to analyze a little bit. We find ourselves faced with the task of getting rid of all this intellectual jargon in our minds which only serves as a breeding ground for doubts and replacing it with guileless, childlike faith in God. So, faith is divided into two types of faith, childlike faith and blind faith. Once there was an argument between Sri Ramakrishna and Narendra. Not an argument, Narendra issued the statement, blind faith, in some context. Immediately, the axe of Sri Ramakrishna had come down. He said, Naren, are there two types of faith? One is blind faith, another is a seeing faith. Sri Ramakrishna has told Narendra this for some purpose, but we should also be aware there is something called blind faith. What is blind faith? I am going to talk and I will also be a bit funny in my own usual way. It is very important for us to differentiate between childlike faith and blind faith. The faith of a child is open, spontaneous and receptive, without motive or thought of the Self. For example, the child has got the faith in mother, in father, in elder brother, elder sister. As soon as they come near, if he is alone, he will be completely reassured, but we will take specially mother. As soon as the child sees the mother, immediately, joyfully, he will cry out, Mama, and runs into her arms. So that is the kind of faith. He will not think, is she going to reciprocate? Is she going to protect me? Is she going to feed me? Is she going to take care of me when I fall asleep? Where I fall asleep? When? When do I wake up? What do I eat? And what do I eat tomorrow? Everything is taken care of by the mother because she knows, this is my child. So that is called openness. Hiram Krishna tells, a mother wanted to introduce her child to some person, a Brahmin woman, to some non-Brahmin person who was serving that family. He says, this is your elder brother. And immediately the child has absolutely no doubt about it. He runs and then behaves as if he is the elder brother, entrusting himself completely to that stranger, even though this is the first time he is seeing. So it is spontaneous because he doesn't think. At the moment he has that faith, immediately, and receptive. He is ready to receive anything that comes from the people whom the child trusts. Mother says, don't enter into that room. Buchi is there. Bogeyman is there. And the child has 100% faith. Yes. But in contrast, the faith of a fanatic is closed, veiled, unsympathetic. Blind faith is usually motivated by fear, a need for security, or a desire for acceptance. Marvellous analysis of what is called blind faith. And we know in our day-to-day lives, open your eyes, here is a person who says, I believe in God and does everything contrary to that faith. Here is a religion. And they call, we all believe in our Creator. And they are so fanatical, so inconsiderate, so cruel. How many millions have been mercilessly butchered, all in the name of religion. Even today, they are encountering it. And it is not only, they are not encountering, it is growing by leaps and bounds, not only in India, but in every other country. You talk to one of those persons, fanatics, and say that, do you have faith? He says, what are you talking about? If you utter a doubt about my faith in God, I am going to behead you. So this is the faith of a fanatic. It is closed. That means, it is not open to reason. It is not open to debate. This is the final. Whatever I think, whatever I believe, that is the final thing. And it is willed, self-willed. And it is extremely unsympathetic. And extremely, deadly dangerous. And why does it come? Usually, psychology has many good answers for these questions. So there is a fear. Fear that if I show a little bit of slackness, maybe I will not be happy myself. So I have to assert, I have absolute faith. In fact, psychology tells, if anybody goes on telling about oneself something, you can reasonably suspect that person doesn't have that quality and he is not assuring others, but reassuring himself that I have such and such a quality. He is a doubtful person. Fear is there. Then security. Anybody who has got security, the first thing is they will not be fanatical. Because nothing can disturb their faith. Or a desire for acceptance. Many people join gangs only because they don't have self-identity. And usually such people do not have a steadfast father or mostly single mothers. After some time, they do not have self-identity. And what a blessing it is for all of us to be able to say, I have a father, I have a mother, I have a family. But these people are completely deprived of it, especially single parent family. So, they derive their sense of identity by joining some violent gang. And in order to be accepted by that fanatical group, they are prepared to steal, they are prepared to rob, they are prepared to kill, they are prepared to injure, they are even prepared to die. If anybody dies, says that if I die in the defense of my religion, such a person is not at all religious, he is a veritable demon. We are talking about what? Blind faith. These are the characteristics of a blind faith. But the faith of a child is such that if his mother says there is a ghost, he believes there is one. And there is no doubt in his mind that the ghost exists. Ramakrishna repeatedly taught, emphasized the importance of such a childlike faith by saying God cannot be realized without childlike faith and God bestows His grace on the devotee who has this faith of a child. That is why Jesus Christ, one of the greatest incarnations of God, He says unless a man dies and is reborn as a child, he is not going to enter into the kingdom of heaven. What profound, meaningful words Christ was uttering for our sake. What is He telling? A man has to die. Who is a man? Man of worldliness, man of double behavior, man of doubt, man of oscillation, man of very little faith, man of pure selfishness, fanatical, dangerous, demonish. On the contrary, he that has to die, worldliness has to die and he must become Shoucha, Santosha, Tapaha, Swadhyaya, Ishwara Pranidhana. He becomes like a child. And he knows, I cannot look after myself, God is going to look after myself. That is why for every child, mother is the God. Matru Devo Bhava, first mother is God. Sri Ramakrishna not only tells these highest teachings, he also reinforces them by giving certain concrete examples. So Sri Ramakrishna was fond of telling the story of a young boy who was asked by his father to offer food to the Lord in his absence. See that God is fed for the last words before he went out of the house. So this is a very small story. There was a very devoted Brahmin family. The Brahmin, the father, every day used to worship Govinda and he used to be offered, it is called Annabhoga. Whatever a family eats, that is offered first to God. There is a shrine room, so he takes a big plate full of everything else and then offers it to God ritualistically and prays to God. This is called Anna Nivedana, Naivedya. And then after some meditation, he concludes, he believes God has taken and which is true also, God absorbs the essence of it and fulfils it, fills it. And then he used to bring out the Prasada and everybody used to great faith, enjoy it. He had a son and one day this father had to go and by that time the son was quite capable of doing the puja. Maybe the father taught him and these are the words, I am going out, you do the ritual, puja and see that God is fed. But the child understood, really God comes down every day and then eats the food like any one of us eat and then the Prasadam is given to us. So he sat, finished his puja, started praying, Lord now come down and sit down and have your food. He was praying but nothing was happening and then he thought there is something wrong with me. My father used to see God coming down. The child believed that God came down every day, ate the food but in my case he is not coming, something is wrong with me. He started weeping and then God could not wait any longer. He smilingly came down from his asana, sat down but unfortunately ate the whole plate and then he went away and the boy was highly satisfied. He saw God with so much of satisfaction eating and then he went out and everybody was waiting for Prasadam and then they asked, where is the Prasadam? He said, why? God has eaten everything and they were shocked. They at first suspected maybe the child has eaten and then when they came and saw the whole plate was empty and they know the child, he will never tell untruth and he is not a greedy person and they understood, they were wonder struck how God could come and since the story has come, another story I remembered, this you get in the Periyapuranam, the story of the 63, 9 march that is Shobhakthasu story. So there was a family and there was a small daughter, small child, instead of boy here, there was a daughter. This is a real story and one day the father had to go out and the father requested his daughter, you do Shiva Puja and you offer the food and the daughter went. She was a great Shiva Bhakta and she earnestly requested. Lord Shiva came smiling and ate the food and then went away. Then the father returned, saw that the plate was empty and his suspicion fell on the daughter, you are a thief, you have eaten all the food instead of offering to God. She said, no father, I offer to Lord Shiva. He came, he ate the whole thing and he blessed me and he went away. But the father would not believe. Then the girl ran inside. It was a stone, Vedic and then she started beating her head against the stone and saying, Oh Lord, I do not want to live where my own father doesn't believe me. And then immediately Shiva came and absorbed the spirit of that girl into himself and then the father came and saw that his daughter was dead. Then only he understood. His daughter was right. She was sincere. She saw the Lord offering which he himself had never seen. How many such stories are there in Indian lore of the saints? How many low caste people? How much of darshana they had? At Udupi, they say, because of this low caste devotee, the whole image, the whole temple had turned because he was not allowed even to glimpse into the main temple and there was a huge crack in the wall so that anybody from that side saw this devotee. He had seen the Divine Lord Krishna in Udupi and ever since then the priest realised and then they made that the main temple. Those who have visited Udupi, they know the story. Even today, it is that side where the devotee was denied the darshan and where the wall broke and the entire image of the Lord Krishna had turned itself in that southerly direction. So there are so many things in Ramakrishna's life. So many real incidents have happened and still if we don't believe, O unto us! That's all I can say. So this is the story of the boy who saw that God came down smilingly yet and everybody had to wonder and I am sure they have got faith because they themselves did not see God coming down and eating. So absolute faith makes the impossible possible. This is one of the greatest truths. If anybody has got faith then anything is possible because of faith. There is nothing impossible for faith. This is what Ramakrishna tells us all the time. As I said, he illustrates immediately. He reinforces his teaching with a beautiful story. This is a story made up. So what is the story? There was a village. There was a pandit and there was a milkmaid and there was a river just in front of this pandit's house and every day from the other side of the village a milkmaid, you know, low caste people they tend the cows and they milk it like gopis and then they cross the river and come and supply milk to whosoever pays them. So this pandit was paying every day. He was very fond of having his coffee but sometimes the milkmaid used to pay very late. He was impatient and he shouted why are you not coming in time? You are spoiling my enjoyment. She said, sir, it is not intentionally I am doing that sometimes the boatman doesn't come so it is not possible for me to cross the river. The brahmana, the learned brahmana he was accustomed to giving empty lectures. So he started quoting from the scripture. What? People can cross an ocean of samsara by taking the name of God any name of God and you cannot cross this small river which is very, very small not even like a puddle compared to an ocean by taking the name of God sarcastically, scoldingly, hypocritically he issued this statement. But the illiterate, innocent milkmaid she absolutely believed wherever here is a learned man he knows what he is talking about and he has revealed the greatest secret to me by taking the name of God we can cross the ocean of samsara what difficulty is there in crossing this small river village river. So next day onwards she started coming even before time and after a few days the brahmin noticed it and he asked how come nowadays you are able to supply milk regularly how are you able to manage? The innocent milkmaid replied Sir, you only showed me the way and I am very thankful because previously I had to pay money to the boatman now I don't need to do anything. What do you mean? What do you mean by what do you mean? You taught me take God's name I take God's name and happily walk across the river. The brahmin was astounded he did not believe he could not believe because he would not believe he doesn't have that faith these are all for lectures for cock and bull stories not reality so he said show me can you show me she said yes come right now I will show you so immediately he followed her happily the milkmaid never suspected anything simply she started taking God's name Hari Hari Hari Narayana whatever and started walking as if it is pure concrete and then she looked back and said Sir, you also take the name of God and come so this fellow thought maybe there is some secret maybe I can also cross so he also started taking the name of God but he did not believe 100% only a small percentage so he stepped into the river by pulling he is wearing a cloth up and up and up the milkmaid looked back God has given that faith itself has given tremendous intuitive knowledge to her Sir, this hypocrisy will not do Sri Ramakrishna did not say that I am adding it you are a hypocrite you are taking God's name and at the same time lifting the cloth that will not do Sir you will have to have complete faith in God now who is the teacher and who is the student we will have to understand by it so this is what the milkmaid's story like that there are many stories are there in the Bible we see Jesus very often he said if ye have faith the measure of a mustard ye shall say unto this mountain remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you what a marvelous truth how much faith mountain volume of faith if ye have faith the measure of a mustard you can hardly see a mustard seed such a small till ye shall say unto this a huge mountain so you move from that place to this place remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you see there was a great sage in the Indian Puranic lore called Agastya once it so happened the mountains had life and then they were growing and growing it is even said the mountains have huge wings they can fly and whenever they feel a bit tired they just plump they fall down on the earth and you can imagine whatever is there exactly in that place like a comet striking the earth so everything will become chitnified so people prayed to Indra Indra came and cut down the wings of the mountains ever since they are like that that was another story so in this story that this Mount Meru in the North India went on growing and growing and growing and then suddenly the sun saw that if it grows a little bit more I will not be able to cross from this side to other side and then the result will be people here will die because if the sun stands constantly in one place the whole place will become a desolated charcoal but the other side also will die because Surya is food Surya is life Surya is this universe we see it in the Prashna Upanishad we are going to see it so if you are eating first class idli that is a bit of Surya a bit of bread a bit of cake a bit of rasagulla a bit of mango anything you eat that is because of the sun you breathe because of the sun the heat because of the sun the wind because of the sun the space because of the sun that means I am none other than sun created by the sun sustained by the sun and ultimately I go back to the sun just I am making a bit of fun how do I go back to the sun? all that you need to do is you just strip off your cloths and stay in a mosquito infested area and you become first class juicy nectar amrutha to all the mosquitoes very soon you will die or you walk in a lonely place where wild animals are there tigers are there lions are there and when a lion or tiger these wild animals, prey animals look at any one of us they don't look there is a young man young woman they see that there is young flesh old flesh tough flesh dried flesh useless flesh hanging flesh but very juicy desirable flesh means food I am food to everybody and everybody is food to me aham annam, aham annam, aham annam aham annadho, oham annadho, oham annadha taitriya, a sage goes on jumping in joy dancing and dancing I am food I am the eater of food I am the bhokta everything is a bhoja I am the experiencer everything is my experience I am everything marvellous statements of realizations are there saying that we are nothing but prajapati we are the sun sun is the hiranyagarbha hiranyagarbha is the ishwara ishwara is brahman everything is brahman this is one model of creation so that is why it says if anybody has slightest amount of mustered faith tell to the mountain remove to another place so I was telling the story that the mount meru was growing and growing and growing and the sun decided that if it not stopped growing then it is going to obstruct me and then the world will come to an end so there was a sage called Agastya so he was a man of tremendous tapasya so the sun requested sir this is my problem you alone are capable of removing this obstacle Agastya said yes I want everybody to be happy so I will travel to the south and I will cross this mount meru and then I will solve your problem so he came to walking to mount meru and meru recognized there is a great sage so in order for that sage to be able to cross mount meru and then Agastya said I am intending to go to south India so the meru immediately bent down making pranams as it were so that he can just put his leg and jump over that being and after jumping over he said look you just remain exactly as you are until I return back and he never returned back so he is staying permanently in south India and so the meru is still waiting for Agastya to come back he is not going to come back this is a beautiful illustration this Agastya Rishi had that tremendous faith that I am Bhagawan and I am the creator I created this meru so whatever I say it has no other option but to do it this is what Jesus Christ says if you have the measure of a mustard faith as little as a mustard you shall say unto this mountain remove here to yonder place you go away you smash to smithereens become powder anything is possible for the mountains so there is a particularly touching incident in the life of Jesus as told by Saint Matthew and behold a woman who was deceased came behind him and touched the hem of his garment she said within herself if I may but touch his garment I shall be whole that was the thought within herself because she was a public woman but she had complete faith in Jesus and then she had a disease and then she came and she believed that the holy touch of Jesus he need not touch her if she touches it is like touching each other then I will be free of this problem and then Jesus she never said this but that was her faith that was her thought Jesus turned around and when he saw her he said daughter be of good comfort thy faith hath made thee whole that means immediately her faith made her completely disease free and the woman was made whole from that hour there are marvellous incidents in the life of Christ in the life of Sri Ramakrishna in the life of every great saint because who is a saint is the body and mind were the former instruments of the saint the saint himself has merged in God and what works through those instruments of body mind is none other than God a medieval monk once asked Lord what is the clue to the knowledge of God Lord God how can I obtain knowledge of you whereupon God replied faith is the only clue to it you cannot know God unless you are implicit and form faith so Sri Ramakrishna used to say God can be attained through faith alone he who has faith has all and who lacks faith lacks all and then Swami Brahmananda said faith without it none can attain God in one of the most terrifying passages in the Bible Lord Jesus declares I am the resurrection and the life and he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live and whosoever lived and believeth in me shall never die what a marvellous statement paradoxical statement he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live and whosoever lived and believeth in me shall never die what does it mean not that the body will remain forever but the Jeeva becomes Shiva himself because of that faith through the words of the spiritual Jains we are made aware of the supreme importance of faith in our spiritual life these great men and women of God emphasize certain forms or directions of faith that every sincere spiritual aspirant needs to cultivate a strong belief in the reality in the truth of the teaching of the Holy Scripture is necessary as is firm faith in the power of the mantra or the name of God I hope something, some bell rings in your mind the word of the Guru or the mantra given whom am I referring to Shabari, her Guru when Shabari was 5-6 year old girl orphan girl and her mother was serving some sages in an ashrama suddenly the mother was bitten by a cobra and died and these sages out of compassion looked after her as their own daughter but they had to move the ashrama one of them out of infinite compassion initiated Shabari into Rama Mantra and said Shabari, don't go anywhere live here you will get sufficient food here itself and Rama, you don't need to go anywhere Rama himself will come and then they left and with that faith firm faith unshaking faith that faith never deserted her until Rama Darshana had come day passed, month passed year passed 99 years and yet she had tremendous optimism Guru told me it cannot be but Rama will come give me Darshan give me liberation and then I will give up the body so last day of her life Rama came in search of Sita along with Lakshmana about this great lady she had seen Sita being kidnapped by Ravanasura so he visited and the moment she saw her saw Rama and Lakshmana she knew the last day has come and then with the same enthusiasm that she started her spiritual life on the very first day after the saints had left that faith never wavered never became diminished or tarnished her whole mind was fixated on Rama Rama will come like a Kamsa saying Krishna is going to come and kill me and then Rama came and by that time she could not see properly so she gathered as usual some fruits and she wanted to feed her beloved child and she was tasting before the smallest incident to find out whether the fruit is at least a little bit sweet or not. Only those fruits which she knew that these are sweet she offered. Rama like a child as mother sometimes eats a little bit and puts its rest in the mouth every animal does it practically our mother also does it she digests the food converts them into milk and that's what it happens if it is a wolf for example she digests the food and gurgles brings it out and that is the right type of food for the babies half digested and that is what we also do when we take half digested milk so Shabari offered, he ate, he blessed she said, Lord my last wish is you sit here as you are sitting and looking at you I will give up the body and looking at Rama Harishnadevata, she gave up the body and then Rama himself had performed the funeral ceremonies what a marvellous story of Shabari it is faith etched sculpted in the hearts of each one of us the Shabari is an embodiment of faith none else so many many such stories are there, Ambarisha was there Pandavas had that faith in Krishna every devotee, he starts his life with faith grows in faith and he is Sakshatkar of the faith in the vision of his Ishtadevata or her Ishtadevata so we must wholeheartedly believe that the Lord is showering his grace on us whatever situation we be in, whenever we repeat his name, even if we do not repeat his name, this is a doubt that comes to so many people suppose I forget God so God also will forget, no a mother, a child may forget the mother, mother will never forget the child God will never forget us because he created us, he became us, he is sustaining us and he will take us back in fact everyday he is taking us back into his lap, what we call Nidra Devi and without this Nidra, nobody can positively live in this world even for a day, but all because of his grace we attain to his state, Advaita state for several hours every single day and in between also and that is the greatest grace of God we have to remember, we will continue this talk in our next class, the topic will be still, the topic will be faith for some time until I complete what I wanted to convey to you. Om Jananim Sharadam Deivim Ramakrishnam Jagadgurum Pada Padmetayoh Sritva Pranamami Mohur Mohoh May Ramakrishna Holy Mother and Swami Vivekananda bless us all Jai Ramakrishna