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“Draw your own conclusions from the story I am going to tell you but don’t be in a hurry to do so.”
A minute of kindness is more precious than a hundred years of intense austerities. You have to compensate for it.”
Kaladi Mastan
Ramakrishna Paramahansa even went to the extent of saying, “if a holy man exhibits magic powers, run away from him as far as you can.”
Only when you go out, be careful. This is kaliyuga, and most of the sadhus and sanyasins are frauds. They will promise you short-cuts to the ‘Truth’ and you will end up frustrated.
‘To be religious is not to be foolish.’
‘the law was made for man, not man for the law.’
miracle.Where was this fire, before it manifested, asked the ancient thinkers. Surely, it was hidden in the wood always and needed the right conditions to manifest. So, fire became a symbol of the spirit, all pervading, yet manifesting only under certain conditions.
just one spark is enough to set a whole forest on fire. You can light a thousand candles from one flame with no loss to the original mother flame. What better symbol of the spirit?
“I now understand the meaning of what the Isavasya Upanishad declares,” I said, “Isa Vasyam Idam Sarvam. For a long time, I had thought that it meant that Isa, the Supreme Being, resided hidden inside everything, but now I have realized that all that is: what we see, and smell, and touch, and taste, are no different from Isa. There is no need to search anywhere.”
Kayakalpa
‘Sri Gurubhyo Namah.’ Anyone who chants that with attention and humility is immediately blessed by Sri Guru Babaji.”
But you are still far away from the Brahman you seek because the burden of knowledge and scholarship that you carry on your head acts as an effective barrier to your understanding of ‘Reality.’
“You are so full of the knowledge that you have acquired, that there is no space to receive the ‘Truth,’ which is waiting to enter. Unburden yourself. Throw away all that and embrace emptiness, so that you can receive in abundance.”
‘he who worships knowledge enters into greater darkness’ – from the Isavasya Upanishad,
The fact is knowledge, by itself, is an obstacle to understanding the Absolute Truth.
“Now,‘Truth’ cannot be something in the past. It is the ‘eternal present,’ and therefore, cannot be stored in the memory, which is a thing of the past, the dead past. ‘Truth,’ on the other hand is in the present, the now, eternally flowing, pulsating with life, and therefore, cannot be touched by knowledge.
“The doors and the window panes, thick with the dark tint of pride and second-hand knowledge, have to be left open for the sweet, divine breeze to enter.
“All the different theories and practices are moulds into which the shapeless, pliable, virgin material needs to be put in to bring about some order. But remember, you cannot take the product out until you break the mould.
Adapt your behavior to suit circumstances, as long as it does not hurt anybody. ‘Each according to his capacity, each according to his needs’ is a fine Sufi dictum. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
learnt, for instance, that the founder of Islam, among other things, said, ‘Man arafa nafshu, fa khad arafa rabbu,’ which could be translated as ‘he who knoweth his self, knoweth his Lord.’
“The deeper the humility with which we conduct ourselves, the better it is for us. Everything that is offered to others is really an offering to the One Self. Not to desire anything extraneous to one’s self is Vairagya or dispassion. To hold on to one’s true Self is Jnana or Enlightenment. Vairagya and Jnana are the same. Everyone must dive deep into himself and realize the precious Atman. God and Guru are one. He that has earned the grace of the Guru shall never be forsaken but the disciple should....”
