ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY
APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE
ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
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THE
KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS
APPRENTICE
LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS
TANTRA
APPRENTICE
LEVEL4
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2005 AND 2006 |
KrishnaTHE MAN AND HIS PHILOSOPHYChapter 15: Life After Death and Rebirth,Question 7 |
Question 7 QUESTIONER: YOU SAID THAT ARJUNA WAS SURRENDERED TO KRISHNA, AND YET HE WAS A FREE INDIVIDUAL WHAT HAVE YOU TO SAY ABOUT VIVEKANANDA WHO WAS SIMILARLY SURRENDERED TO RAMAKRISHNA? WHY COULD HE NOT BE ENLIGHTENED? There are reasons for it. The relationship between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda is basically one of the master and the disciple; it is not the same relationship between Krishna and Arjuna. Secondly, Krishna is not trying to prepare Arjuna in a way so that he can take his message to the world at large; all his teachings are meant for Arjuna's growth and are exclusively addressed to him. On the other hand Ramakrishna wants Vivekananda to be his messenger to the whole world. Krishna is not aware that his dialogues with Arjuna are going to turn into the BHAGWAD GEETA. It is incidental that they turned out that way. It is Krishna's spontaneous discussions with Arjuna while the two of them were standing on the battlegrounds of Kurukshetra. He does not know that his sayings are going to be so significant that they will be discussed for centuries upon centuries to come. They are meant for Arjuna alone, for his spiritual transformation. They are very intimate conversations meant exclusively for a close friend. My own experience says that every significant and momentous word of wisdom came into being by way of an intimate dialogue. A writer can never touch that depth which a speaker does. All that is of the highest in the world of wisdom has been spoken, not written, As I said this morning, all of Arvind's words have been written by him, he did not speak anything. On the contrary, Krishna and Christ, Buddha and Mahavira, Raman and Krishnamurti, said everything by word of mouth. Speech is personal; it is between one person and another; there is an element of intimacy about it. Writing, except when one writes a letter, is impersonal; it is addressed to an unknown and abstract audience. Krishna is in direct communication with Arjuna; it is an intimate dialogue between two friends. There is no third person between them, Ramakrishna's case is very different, and there are reasons for it, Ramakrishna had attained to super-consciousness, to samadhi, he had experienced the truth, but his difficulty was that he lacked the ability to communicate to others that which he knew. He was in search of someone who could serve as his medium and take his message to the world at large. He knew the truth, but he could not communicate it. He was un educated; he had hardly gone through two grades in an elementary Bengali school. This simple villager had a great treasure with him, but he did not know how to share it with the world. He was not articulate; he was utterly lacking in language. His sayings that are available to us are highly edited, because it is said that being an uneducated country man, his original utterances were natural but coarse and uncouth, replete with four-letter words. Those who prepared an anthology of his sayings deleted everything they thought was coarse and vulgar, and almost remade it. I don't think they did a right thing; they should have made an authentic report. It should be exactly as he had said it. It is true that he freely used invectives, but what is wrong with invectives? They should have been there. But his disciples decided to present their Master, who was known as a paramhansa -- one who had attained the state of absolute innocence -- as a sophisticated teacher, and so they did a lot of pruning of his statements. However, Ramakrishna was in need of some one who could be his mouthpiece. So when Vivekananda came to him, he decided to use him as his instrument. There is a small incident in the lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda which sheds light on their relationship, and I would like to relate it here. Vivekananda once said to Ramakrishna that he wanted to have the experience of superconsciousness or samadhi. Ramakrishna explained to him the necessary techniques and guided him through its discipline. Ramakrishna was a Master of such great attainment that his very presence could trigger a process of samadhi in Vivekananda. He was so dynamic that just a touch of his hand sent Vivekananda into deep samadhi. Do you know what Vivekananda did after his first experience of the superconscious? There was a man in Ramakrishna's ashram; he was known as Kaloo. He had come from some rural area of Bengal, and lived in a small hut close to the temple of Dakshineshwar. He was a very plain, simple and innocent person. A temple remains a temple only so long as simple and innocent people like Kaloo live in its premises. The day clever and cunning people enter and reside there, its beauty, its divinity, its glory, is destroyed. Kaloo had collected a huge number of statues of gods and goddesses -- wherever he found them he brought them to his room and installed them on an altar. They were so many that they occupied every inch of space available in his small room, so much that he himself had to sleep under the open sky. This is the way of God: he occupies all the space of one who comes close to him, he soon ousts him from his own house. Kaloo had no time for anything else; from the morning through the evening he kept worshipping them. Vivekananda, who was educated with a strong rationalist background, did not like this orthodoxy of Kaloo; he often advised him to throw his crude statues of gods and goddesses into the Ganges and get rid of them. Vivekananda believed that God was formless and omnipresent, and it was foolish to worship him through the medium of statues and their rituals. He often said to Kaloo that he was wasting his time and energy in fruitless rituals. But Kaloo laughed saying, "Maybe you are right but let me first worship them, they must be waiting for me. If others are wasting their time in other things, let me waste my time with my gods and goddesses. They are so nice and beautiful." When Vivekananda achieved his first samadhi, it flooded him with a strange and powerful energy. A thought arose in his mind that if in this moment of ecstasy he sent a telepathic message to Kaloo to throw away his many useless gods and goddesses, he would not resist it. The moment Vivekananda thought like this, Kaloo sitting in his room got the message and he obeyed it without a question in his heart. He made a bundle of all his gods and goddesses, put them on his back and left for the bank of the Ganges to drown them into its holy water. Vivekananda had only thought of it and it began to work -- even before it was properly sent in the form of a message to Kaloo. That is why wise men say that such an energy, such a power should not be used, otherwise it will harm the seeker and impede his progress. They strictly prohibit its use: a seeker should just allow it to rise and watch it. That is enough use of it. But Vivekananda did otherwise, and he soon succeeded with poor Kaloo, whom he had so long failed to persuade in spite of all his cogent and logical arguments. What he could not achieve directly, he achieved through the backdoor when a tremendous meditative power became available to him. Kaloo was busy with his gods when Vivekananda had thought of him, and suddenly and un knowingly he stopped his worship, put all the statues in a bag and moved to the Ganges. Ramakrishna was sitting on the roofed porch of his house, which faced the Ganges, and his eyes fell on Kaloo. He called to him and asked, "What is the matter, Kaloo?" Pointing to his bag, Kaloo said, "They are no good; I am going to consign them to the Ganges." Ramakrishna scolded him saying, "Go back to your room and put them all in their places. I know who is speaking through you. I am going to take that rascal to task." Ramakrishna rushed to Vivekananda, shook his body and said, "This is your last samadhi; you are not going to have any more of it. I am going to keep the key to your samadhi with me, which will be re turned to you only three days before your death." Vivekananda was shocked and he burst into tears, crying, "Pray, don't deprive me of my SAMADHI." But Ramakrishna said firmly, "You have a great work to do; you are going to be my instrument and my messenger to the world. If you enter samadhi you will not be able to come back, and the great work will suffer. What I have known has to reach to every nook and corner of the earth. Don't be selfish; give up your attachments, and don't hanker for your samadhi. You have to build a huge temple sheltering millions of thirsty seekers from all over the world. That's why I am taking away the key to your samadhi." This key remained with Ramakrishna. And Vivekananda had it back as promised, three days before his death. It was only three days before he left this world that he had his second samadhi. But let me tell you that if someone else holds the key to your samadhi, it means it is only a psychic, a deep psychological samadhi, and not a full experience of the absolute. A samadhi, a superconsciousness that depends on another is not real and ultimate; it does not transcend the mind. The samadhi that made Kaloo think of parting with his statues cannot be said to be deeply spiritual; it is mental. Of course, Vivekananda had transcended his body, but he had yet to get to the soul, and Ramakrishna had to stop him there, because he thought if Vivekananda went deeper into it he would not be able to fulfill the assigned work. It is through Vivekananda that the world came to know of Ramakrishna. But Vivekananda had to sacrifice much. However, such a sacrifice is worth it, and it is very meaningful. Ramakrishna had to deliberately stop his further progress, because he thought if Vivekananda transcended the psychic state of samadhi, he could not be made into an instrument. Ramakrishna was not like Buddha who had both wisdom and the skill to express it; Ramakrishna has attained to the same wisdom as Buddha had, but he was not articulate. So he had to depend on Vivekananda for its transmission to the world. It is true that Vivekananda was an instrument in the hands of his Master, but this is not the case with Arjuna. Krishna is not trying to make him into an instrument. He is just pouring his wisdom on Arjuna standing at Kurukshetra. Now, we will sit for meditation.
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Next: Chapter 16: Atheism, Theism and Reality, Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Krishna Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy
Chapter 15
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