THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA | CHAPTER 39

 MahaBhava is a Divine Ecstasy .

It shakes the body and mind to their very foundation .

It is like a huge elephant entering a small hut .
The house shakes to its foundation .
Perhaps it falls to pieces 

                                              

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks

 As his mind becomes purer and his emotions come under control, his thoughts become clearer and his instincts truer. As he learns to live more and more in harmony with his higher Self, his body’s natural intuition becomes active of itself. The result is that false desires and unnatural instincts which have been imposed upon it by others or by himself will become weaker and weaker and fall away entirely in time. This may happen without any attempt to undergo an elaborate system of self-discipline on his part: yet it will affect his way of living, his diet, his habits. False cravings like the craving for smoking tobacco will vanish of their own accord; false appetites like the appetite for alcoholic liquor or flesh food will likewise vanish; but the more deep-seated the desire, the longer it will take to uproot it–except in the case of some who will hear and answer a heroic call for an abrupt change.

                                               

Papaji

 When mind is quiet, all is Self.

When mind moves the world rises,
so be Still, throw away everything, and be Free.
Then, when mind is pure, you will see Self in all beings.
Give up seeing with the outer eye
and the Divine eye will open

                                       

Ram Dass

 

“I laid down and I experienced my thoughts, until pretty soon I saw each thought arising, existing, and passing away. As long as I was in a thought I was living, and I was somebody, and I was gonna die. Then, the spaces between the thoughts became more pronounced. Finally, I was sitting in a thought, facing the space, and I dove into the space between two thoughts.”

                                                 

Lao Tzu

 “Do you have the patience to wait Till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving. Till the right action arises by itself?”

Artist: Tomás Sánchez

                                     

Matthieu Ricard

 When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought.

                                                 

     

Sri Ramakrishna

 When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive – neither creating nor preserving nor destroying – I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active – creating, preserving and destroying – I call Him Sakti (Divine Mother) or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one.”

Ramesh Balsekar

 Self realization is not some elevated or special alteration of our state. It is a mistake of conditioning to think unrest and conflict must be transcended into a state of bliss and peace. The very effort to make such a change creates unrest and conflict. It is rather a state in which the mental conditioning of dualism breaks down and there is an in-seeing and deep conviction of what we have always been, of what everything always is; pure Subjectivity. 

                                                     

Laozi

 Ordinary men hate solitude.

 But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

                           

            

“Baha’u’llah teaches [quoting from] the Mathnavi [written by Rumi, the Sufi poet] that:

  ‘man will not be able to receive the Light of God in this day unless he acquires a new Eye. Eyes which are fixed on the things of this world can never see the glory of His Revelation, and ears which are tuned to the voices of the ungodly cannot hear the Melodies of the Kingdom.’ By ‘new eyes’ and ‘new ears’ He means spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. He states that since the Eye of the Spirit receives its Light from God it is shameful to let it turn to a stranger, and re-affirms that the purpose of God in creating the inner Eye was that man might behold the beauty of His Manifestation in this world.”