The Joy of Spiritual Practice | Pravrajika Shuddhatmaprana

0:10 [SPEAKER_03]: Good morning, everybody, and welcome. [SPEAKER_03]: Our speaker today, Pravaji Koshu Dapma Prana, is a well-loved friend of our society and has spoken here several times. [SPEAKER_03]: She is an ordained non-of-the-vodante society of Southern California, currently resident at the Vivekananda retreat in richly, New York.

0:35 [SPEAKER_03]: For many years, she's been active in the publication work of the Ramakrishna Order, editing numerous books and articles. [SPEAKER_03]: She's also the author of two books, The Divine World of the Alvas and Indian Saints and Mystics. [SPEAKER_03]: The subject of her talk today is the joy of spiritual practice.

1:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Mataji, thank you. [SPEAKER_04]: saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu saana vatu [SPEAKER_04]: on shanty shanty shanty [SPEAKER_04]: Now, and then Ramakrishna was a visit various religious groups in Calcutta, just to gauge the religious condition of the city.

1:59 [SPEAKER_04]: And once he told the following story, [SPEAKER_04]: He said, once I went to a meeting of a harisaba, the preacher of the day was a pundit named Samajai. [SPEAKER_04]: And can you imagine what he said? [SPEAKER_04]: He said in the course of his sermon, God is dry. [SPEAKER_04]: We must make him sweet and fresh with our love and devotion.

2:25 [SPEAKER_04]: Well, Krishna says, I was stunned to hear these words. [SPEAKER_04]: Then I was reminded of a story. [SPEAKER_04]: A boy once said, at my uncle's house, there are many horses. [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yes, his whole cow shed is full of them. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if there were really a cow shed, then horses could not be kept there.

2:46 [SPEAKER_04]: Possibly, he had only cows. [SPEAKER_04]: What did people think on hearing such an incoherent statement? [SPEAKER_04]: He said, just fancy, to describe God who is the very nature of love and bliss as dry. [SPEAKER_04]: It only proves that the man has never experienced what God is like. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, as spiritual aspirants, our goal is to experience that love and bliss of God.

3:15 [SPEAKER_04]: But we also want to feel the joy of God now when we are doing our spiritual practices. [SPEAKER_04]: After all, as Swami Vivekananda reminds us, we are children of immortal bliss. [SPEAKER_04]: We are inheritors of God's own nature. [SPEAKER_04]: So why don't we feel that joy, that love and bliss when we practice our spiritual disciplines?

3:38 [SPEAKER_04]: So often, devotees say that repeating the name of God is tiresome, or that the mind cannot be controlled. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, there are various reasons for missing out on this experience of God's joy. [SPEAKER_04]: It might be that we have become blinded by Maya and stubbornly hold on to wrong ways of thinking or behaving, or perhaps we are due to our karma, we encounter obstacles on our path, or perhaps we just succumb to laziness.

4:15 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, God's nature cannot change, so the fault is surely ours. [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we need to overcome these obstacles, these faults, but there is something else we can do also in the meantime. [SPEAKER_04]: We can also try to move forward by increasing our desire for God. [SPEAKER_04]: After all, is Ramakrishna says if you move towards the east, then the west is left behind.

4:44 [SPEAKER_04]: So let's try putting our attention on moving towards the east, and maybe our obstacles and faults will fall away. [SPEAKER_04]: Now let's look at some ways we can take a joyful approach to our spiritual practices to remind ourselves what God is really like, so that we can feel that presence of His divine love and bliss.

5:07 [SPEAKER_04]: But let's also remember that God is closer to us than anything or anyone else. [SPEAKER_04]: No matter how we think of Him or her, our main goal is to remember that God is right within our hearts as our own inner self. [SPEAKER_04]: Now there are two ways to recharge our spiritual life to feel joy in our practice.

5:31 [SPEAKER_04]: The first is to cultivate appreciation, and the second is to cultivate enthusiasm. [SPEAKER_04]: But before we work on these things, we should take a look at our faith, [SPEAKER_04]: As we need the strong dose of faith, faith in God and faith in the teachings to activate all this, it won't do to try to appreciate our spiritual traditions and practices if we do not have deep faith in them.

6:01 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, suppose after due discrimination, [SPEAKER_04]: We have made the decision to take up a recognized spiritual path that has its roots and verified scriptures and in teachings of recognized saints. [SPEAKER_04]: So now, after making this decision, we should accept with faith the scriptures and teachings of that path.

6:26 [SPEAKER_04]: Let's call this the basic premise. [SPEAKER_04]: Other things may be questioned, but after we have made our decision, then there has to be that basic promise, that foundation from where we start. [SPEAKER_04]: And that is what we should have faith in. [SPEAKER_04]: I myself have seen the tragic consequences of the doubting Thomas Attitude.

6:52 [SPEAKER_04]: It's painful to see someone struggling like that. [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm sure it's even more painful for the person struggling. [SPEAKER_04]: Having our doubts and questions answered that the beginning is one thing. [SPEAKER_04]: That's good. [SPEAKER_04]: That's the way it should be. [SPEAKER_04]: But to hang onto them for year after year, that's a problem.

7:14 [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, I'm not saying that we should swallow every crazy idea that comes our way. [SPEAKER_04]: But once we take up a path that we have found to be legitimate and start practicing it under the guidance of a trusted teacher, then we should put our heart in it. [SPEAKER_04]: Here we need faith.

7:35 [SPEAKER_04]: Guilness, faith, the faith of a child is Ramakrishna says. [SPEAKER_04]: Without this, our appreciation and enthusiasm will take flight at the least difficulty. [SPEAKER_04]: And there will always be difficulties. [SPEAKER_04]: That's just life. [SPEAKER_04]: So now we'll turn to appreciation.

7:56 [SPEAKER_04]: Many of us have been initiated with a mantra or mantras, or we repeat om or a name of God that we have a particular attraction to. [SPEAKER_04]: Do we ever stop to think where these mantras have come from? [SPEAKER_04]: For example, perhaps we repeat the Gayatri mantra every day. [SPEAKER_04]: Do we ever remember that this mantra has been repeated by most of the great saints of India?

8:24 [SPEAKER_04]: Just think of it. [SPEAKER_04]: Shankara, Ramanudha, Madva, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, and so many other saints. [SPEAKER_04]: They all did spiritual practices with this mantra. [SPEAKER_04]: And this is not to speak of all the great reshees and sages, men and women, yes, women too, in ancient times who also repeated this mantra.

8:50 [SPEAKER_04]: The Gayatri is a Vedic mantra, so it has been handed down from teacher to student for thousands of years. [SPEAKER_04]: So many saints and stages have added their power to an already powerful mantra. [SPEAKER_04]: So before we repeat this mantra, it would be good to first stop and remember that we have inherited this mantra from all of them.

9:13 [SPEAKER_04]: We should make good use of it. [SPEAKER_04]: I personally like to remember Kudaram, Ramakrishna's father, it is said that his face and chest would become red with emotion as he repeated the Gayatri. [SPEAKER_04]: We should also remember what a profound and beautiful mantra it is, whether we think of it, whether we think of the effulgent one here as the sun or as Brahmin or as the sun as Brahmin or whatever way.

9:47 [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, it's such a beautiful mantra that many other guiatries have been made since then. [SPEAKER_04]: You can go on and on and on extending how many guiatries you can made because it's such a beautiful and profound mantra. [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, I should have, I myself repeat, four different Gayatri mantras every day, such as, and this is not the end of them, I'm sure.

10:21 [SPEAKER_04]: Now similarly with our Ishtam mantra, the mantra of our chosen deity. [SPEAKER_04]: Ishtam means the chosen deity. [SPEAKER_04]: These mantras have all been handed down to us from those who have attained perfection through them. [SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps these mantras may not be as old as the Gayatri mantra, but if we think about those great saints who came before us and repeated them and attained perfection through them, we will be deeply grateful to them as well as grateful for being a recipient of such a blessed mantra.

10:57 [SPEAKER_04]: I've heard that in the Ramakrishna tradition, all the mantras that are given in this tradition were originally given to Sri Sarda Devi, Holy Mother, by Ramakrishna himself. [SPEAKER_04]: So they are all awakened mantras, mantras with a power to awaken our spiritual consciousness. [SPEAKER_04]: So if we keep remembering this, we will have great appreciation for them.

11:25 [SPEAKER_04]: Again, we should have deep gratitude and appreciation for the teacher who has imparted the mantra to us. [SPEAKER_04]: He or she has been found worthy by his or her teacher as being a fit recipient to receive the mantra and then in addition a fit receptacle or transmitter of the mantra to others.

11:47 [SPEAKER_04]: Our teacher has then offered this priceless gift to us in an initiation. [SPEAKER_04]: And we should remember, too, that an initiation is not just a ceremony, an ordinary ceremony. [SPEAKER_04]: A ceremony does not necessarily mean that something has been transmitted within the ritual. [SPEAKER_04]: But this is precisely the meaning of an initiation that there is a special, subtle power imparted along with the mantra, when the mantra is given.

12:21 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, you may not feel that or recognize that immediately, but in time you will understand. [SPEAKER_04]: It's a great mystery, and we should remember that and appreciate that. [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, I've heard that some of the saddubs take a moment to remember their initiation every day.

12:43 [SPEAKER_04]: Still, we sometimes feel that people do not have much faith in the mantra. [SPEAKER_04]: This is because the mantra is such a subtle thing, and so is its power. [SPEAKER_04]: It's very difficult to comprehend how such a subtle thing works. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna often spoke about the effects of repeating the name of God.

13:06 [SPEAKER_04]: Once he said, if a person repeats the name of God, his body, mind, and everything become pure, have faith in his name. [SPEAKER_04]: Again, he said, there is great power in the seat of God's name. [SPEAKER_04]: It destroys ignorance. [SPEAKER_04]: A seat is tender, the sprout soft, still.

13:27 [SPEAKER_04]: It pierces the hard ground. [SPEAKER_04]: The ground breaks and makes way for the sprout. [SPEAKER_04]: Swami's supprecation on He used to describe this in that way too. [SPEAKER_04]: How, at the time of initiation, when one receives a mantra from the group, it is as if the group has planted a seed in one's heart.

13:51 [SPEAKER_04]: So it's up to us then to water and nourish that seed by repeating it every day. [SPEAKER_04]: And not just repeating it mechanically, but repeating it with love and devotion and faith. [SPEAKER_04]: If this is done, then the seed will eventually sprout and grow into a beautiful plant with flowers and fruit.

14:13 [SPEAKER_04]: But of course, patience is necessary. [SPEAKER_04]: Just as you cannot expect a seed to sprout and grow in one day. [SPEAKER_04]: So also, we cannot expect results very so quickly from our job. [SPEAKER_04]: I like to think of the practice of meditation and job as like tuning into a radio station.

14:37 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean the old fashioned type of race. [SPEAKER_04]: Not the newfangled Wi-Fi ones. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know how those work. [SPEAKER_04]: Many of you know how easy it is to get distracted when you do meditation and job. [SPEAKER_04]: It's like not tuning into a radio station properly.

14:56 [SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps if you don't quite get the right frequency, you hear two stations, both scratchy at the same time. [SPEAKER_04]: This is distracted, Japa. [SPEAKER_04]: Or perhaps you get another station altogether if your mind is totally distracted. [SPEAKER_04]: But we want God's radio station.

15:14 [SPEAKER_04]: We want the waves of the mind to tune into his frequency. [SPEAKER_04]: If we can do our job in meditation with an undistracted mind, we can tune into God's frequency, perfectly, and reach him. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, again, Ramakrishna said, God and his name are identical. [SPEAKER_04]: There is no difference between Rama and his holy name.

15:41 [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I always had to wonder about that. [SPEAKER_04]: How is it possible that the name of God and God himself are one and the same? [SPEAKER_04]: So let's look at this right. [SPEAKER_04]: A mantra is made up of a series of sounds, which if we repeat them, take the form of subtle waves.

16:05 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if we see sounds on a special recording device, we will see that each sound creates a particular wave. [SPEAKER_04]: Yet, according to science, every material thing also in this universe is also composed of waves, waves and particles. [SPEAKER_04]: One moment they are seen is waves and the next is particles.

16:27 [SPEAKER_04]: Everything is both at the same time. [SPEAKER_04]: So if the name of the Lord and the Lord himself are both waves, then those waves of the mantra and the waves of the form are identical. [SPEAKER_04]: Regarding the process of this Swami Vivekananda says in his bhakti yoga, [SPEAKER_04]: In the individual person, the thought waves rising in the limited mind must manifest themselves first as words, and then as the more concrete farms.

17:08 [SPEAKER_04]: Moreover, Islamically says, the same personal God can and does take various manifestations. [SPEAKER_04]: And each of them, therefore, must have a particular word symbol to express it. [SPEAKER_04]: These words symbols, which evolved out of the deepest spiritual perception of sages, [SPEAKER_04]: symbolize and express as nearly as possible the particular view of God and of the universe they stand for, and they are all helpful to divine meditation and the acquisition of true knowledge.

17:47 [SPEAKER_04]: For example, suppose you like the form of Mother Durga and you repeat the mantra that represents her. [SPEAKER_04]: That form of the mother and the mantra together bring up in your mind a particular view of God and of the universe, a view that specifically appeals to your mind. [SPEAKER_04]: And this is the same with other mantras and deities.

18:15 [SPEAKER_04]: As we said before, in addition to having appreciation for the sanctity and power of the mantra, one must also have appreciation for and reverence for the Guru who has graciously planted that mantra in us. [SPEAKER_04]: And one should also have love for and faith in the aspect of God, whose mantra we have been given.

18:38 [SPEAKER_04]: This revision of a commentator, Pillai Luka Charya, says, if one has abundant love for the mantra, for the subject of the mantra that is the aspect of God, and for the Acharya who bestows the mantra, then the mantra will succeed. [SPEAKER_04]: No, most of us here, especially if we have been initiated by a grew, have also been have received some instructions on meditation.

19:11 [SPEAKER_04]: Where do you think these instructions have come from? [SPEAKER_04]: These instructions too have been handed down for perhaps thousands of years from teacher the student. [SPEAKER_04]: And in fact, we have to wonder how many thousands of years ago did people begin to understand that the way to know the divine reality is to look within our own self.

19:35 [SPEAKER_04]: So these instructions have been handed down because the hip and found to work. [SPEAKER_04]: But do we really think about and appreciate how amazing they are? [SPEAKER_04]: One of my favorite commentaries on meditation on the personal God was given by Ramonujah. [SPEAKER_04]: Regarding remembering the Lord, Smaranam.

19:59 [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna gives a wonderful teaching in his three-bash, his commentary on the Brahma Sutras. [SPEAKER_04]: He equates remembrance to both meditation and seeing God. [SPEAKER_04]: He says meditation is a constant remembrance of the object meditated upon, like a continuous stream of oil being poured from one vessel to another without a break in the flow.

20:28 [SPEAKER_04]: This form of remembering is as good as seeing. [SPEAKER_04]: Remembrance when exalted assumes the same farm as seeing or direct perception. [SPEAKER_04]: In other words, he's talking about a state of samadhi here. [SPEAKER_04]: He says this constant remembrance which is the same as knowing when practiced throughout life is the only means to the realization of Brahman.

20:59 [SPEAKER_04]: A meditation is extremely important to Ramanuja because meditation that is this continuous remembrance or smart enough. [SPEAKER_04]: It not only awakens the consciousness of the deity within us, it actually awakens the deity within us. [SPEAKER_04]: The divine gradually becomes a living presence within us in a very real sense.

21:33 [SPEAKER_04]: Saint John of the Cross had another way of looking at it. [SPEAKER_04]: For him, meditation was simply a conscious allowing of the Lord to enter us. [SPEAKER_04]: He said, contemplation is nothing else by the secret, peaceful, and loving, infusion of God, which, if admitted, will stop the soul on fire with the spirit of love.

22:01 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, perhaps some of us don't care for the idea of a God having a farm. [SPEAKER_04]: And we prefer to think of God as farmers. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna was, say, yes, by all means, go forward in this way. [SPEAKER_04]: You will succeed. [SPEAKER_04]: But then Ramakrishna will also tell another person, meditate on such and such form of the Lord in your heart.

22:23 [SPEAKER_04]: You will see him there. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, for Ramakrishna who really knew both are true. [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, God is farmedless, and yes, God has farmed. [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, according to Ramakrishna, this is how we know that God loves us, because from the farmedless absolute, God actually assumes qualities and forms for our sake to draw us to Him.

22:52 [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna sometimes gave a beautiful illustration of water and ice, my very favorite illustration in Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: He said, such ananda that is existence, consciousness, bliss, absolute, God, the absolute. [SPEAKER_04]: This is like an infinite ocean. [SPEAKER_04]: Intense cold freezes the water into ice, which floats on the ocean and blocks of various farms.

23:21 [SPEAKER_04]: Likewise, through the cooling influence of devotion, one sees farms of God in the ocean of the absolute. [SPEAKER_04]: These farms are meant for the baktas, the lovers of God. [SPEAKER_04]: But when the sun of knowledge rises, the ice melts. [SPEAKER_04]: It becomes the same water. [SPEAKER_04]: It was before water above and water below.

23:48 [SPEAKER_04]: Everywhere, nothing but water. [SPEAKER_04]: And it's God, the absolute. [SPEAKER_04]: But Ramakrishna said, but you may say that for certain devotees, God assumes eternal farms. [SPEAKER_04]: There are places in the ocean where the ice doesn't melt at all. [SPEAKER_04]: It assumes the farm of quartz.

24:07 [SPEAKER_04]: Well, we hope that continues to be, let's see. [SPEAKER_04]: So what Ramakrishna is saying is that there is a mysterious connection of love between the Lord and the devotee. [SPEAKER_04]: Out of love that limitless, farmedless Lord assumes farms and qualities just for our sake so that we can get some hint of his love for us and his desire to intervene in our lives to draw us to him.

24:40 [SPEAKER_04]: Moreover, through his devotees, the Lord can taste the bliss of his own self. [SPEAKER_04]: He can taste his own love. [SPEAKER_04]: This is why God wants to attract people to him, and wants to attract it. [SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't want to let them go. [SPEAKER_04]: So the Lord, God with form, has some stake in attracting devotees.

25:02 [SPEAKER_04]: He exists in his forms solely for us. [SPEAKER_04]: But you may ask, why then, to see Deluge us with Maya to make us forget him? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but we should remember, he also has his yoga Maya that draws us towards him and helps us remember him. [SPEAKER_04]: Whenever the Lord sees that there is a decline in people's love for him, he sets about arranging things to renew that love.

25:31 [SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps he sends some special soul to this world, or sometimes a Lord himself might come along with some special souls, and he himself will teach people devotion. [SPEAKER_04]: In this way, a whole paradigm shift takes place in people's thinking and more people become drawn to God. [SPEAKER_04]: So going back, you may wonder where these forms of God come from, according to Ramakrishna's illustration of water and ice, they come from us.

26:04 [SPEAKER_04]: They come from the divine self within us, whether we know what they're not. [SPEAKER_04]: So how can we not love them? [SPEAKER_04]: So now I'll turn to enthusiasm. [SPEAKER_04]: If we can really get our appreciation stirred up, we can then get the enthusiasm we need to practice our spiritual disciplines in a joyful manner.

26:31 [SPEAKER_04]: Bit of our enthusiasm nods off, we can still prod it in various ways to awaken it. [SPEAKER_04]: Spiritual seekers have different ways of doing this and we'll look at a few here. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm giving some suggestions here, but I'm sure as you go on with your spiritual practices, you will find your own ways, even little things that will help.

26:55 [SPEAKER_04]: First of all, if we want to feel enthusiasm, we should keep in mind that our Ishta is living. [SPEAKER_04]: whether our ish to took a human farm and lived many years ago, or here she is a god or goddess in some mythology, either way, our ish to is living, living, now, here, and now. [SPEAKER_04]: We should give this fixed on our mind and meditate in this way.

27:29 [SPEAKER_04]: Then we should really want to know everything we can know about our ish to. [SPEAKER_04]: Reading or hearing is a good start. [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, being satisfied with reading mere basic facts about air-ish-to-is-life and teaches is not really being enthusiastic. [SPEAKER_04]: Who if we want to love our issue, even the smallest details of our issue's life or our issue's divine play, they're important to us.

27:57 [SPEAKER_04]: Next, we need enthusiasm to assimilate the moral principles that our issue embodies. [SPEAKER_04]: We need to understand that without a lot of enthusiasm and a willingness to let go of our pettingness and selfishness, we cannot move further. [SPEAKER_04]: How can we get a feeling for our ish dislife if we do not try to follow his or her example in teachings?

28:23 [SPEAKER_04]: Our is, our ishda is the embodiment of love and selflessness. [SPEAKER_04]: Our ishda's life is grounded in moral principles, such as truth, nonviolence, impurity, and so on. [SPEAKER_04]: So only if we try to put their love and selflessness and their moral principles into practice, can we get a true understanding of our ishda's life?

28:49 [SPEAKER_04]: And here is where we can get a big push by having enthusiasm for a holy company. [SPEAKER_04]: Really, I have seen in my own life nothing beats association with a great soul. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna praised it again and again in the gospel. [SPEAKER_04]: This Tulsi dust wrote, without Holy Company there is no talk of God, without talk about God, there is no chance of getting rid of the delusion of worldliness.

29:21 [SPEAKER_04]: And without getting rid of this delusion, there is no possibility of seeing God. [SPEAKER_04]: But sometimes that's hard to do, get association with a great saw. [SPEAKER_04]: As we read books by or about great souls, we almost feel as if we are living with them, especially if we make a habit of reading a favorite book every day.

29:52 [SPEAKER_04]: Books of conversations with great souls, such as Ramakrishna, Holy Mother, Ramana Maharishi, like that, I feel are especially effective. [SPEAKER_04]: Some people read from the Gospel of Ramakrishna every day. [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, the conversations in the Gospel can even be meditated on as if you yourself are present in Ramakrishna's room in the company of Ramakrishna himself.

30:19 [SPEAKER_04]: And this is the way you may not know, I'm intended these excerpts of the gospel. [SPEAKER_04]: He recorded them and he intended them for them to be meditated on. [SPEAKER_04]: That was his purpose in doing it that way. [SPEAKER_04]: Another book that some people read every day is Sri Ramakrishna and his divine play.

30:42 [SPEAKER_04]: Though it seems at first to be just about Ramakrishna's life, [SPEAKER_04]: As one reads it again and again, one finds that it's actually a manual of spiritual life. [SPEAKER_04]: It's a manual of the spiritual practices that Ramakrishna himself took up, and he took up many, many practices for a particular for the purpose of teaching them and showing that they were all true.

31:12 [SPEAKER_04]: There are incredible spiritual instructions in it. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, even after reading these books, the gospel, the three-room Christmas Divine Play, even after reading these books, four to your 50 years, they never get old. [SPEAKER_04]: You always find something new in them. [SPEAKER_04]: But on top of this, we might also add some new material to our holy reading, including books about other religious traditions.

31:43 [SPEAKER_04]: It's actually amazing how much we can learn about our own tradition by reading books about other traditions. [SPEAKER_04]: For one thing, we discover how these other traditions are not so different from our own as we thought. [SPEAKER_04]: And we also see things in our own tradition that we had not seen before, just from reading about another.

32:06 [SPEAKER_04]: I know that from my own life, I was brought up a Christian. [SPEAKER_04]: I never saw things in Christianity that I see now, but after I came to Padanta. [SPEAKER_04]: The Dante showed me what was in Christianity. [SPEAKER_04]: I had never seen that before. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, new discoveries like this are very joyful experiences because our hearts and minds expand.

32:32 [SPEAKER_04]: Swamiji, Swamiji Viva Kanani is to say expansion is life. [SPEAKER_04]: And that implies that the opposite, that is, the narrow-minded attitude, is death. [SPEAKER_04]: Now one of the things that struck me when I first started reading the gospel of Sri Ramakrishna was the songs. [SPEAKER_04]: I was amazed at how much Ramakrishna sang and such beautiful songs, too.

33:00 [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, in the English version of the gospel, we get the songs as poems. [SPEAKER_04]: So we get the songs as poems without the music and many of you have been gollies or other Indians might know what the music is to these songs, but we don't know, at least until later when we hear them.

33:21 [SPEAKER_04]: But either way, whether you get the songs as poems or you know them as songs or as poems, you get an amazing experience. [SPEAKER_04]: Like all art forms, poetry is a wonderful conveyor of religious sentiment and experience. [SPEAKER_04]: And this is conveyed through beauty or sorrow, such as reflecting on death or sometimes even through humor.

33:47 [SPEAKER_04]: And to add music to the poems, creates another kind of joyful experience. [SPEAKER_04]: But besides the songs you are familiar with, have you ever looked into poems of other poet saints, such as Tukuram, Andal, or Mirabai, or Sordas, or Rhinomaria, Rilki? [SPEAKER_04]: What a joy to see the many ways the Lord is endured in these songs.

34:14 [SPEAKER_04]: We've never even thought of before. [SPEAKER_04]: For instance, have you ever contemplated being a pet dog to the Lord? [SPEAKER_04]: I call it the dog, Baba. [SPEAKER_04]: He is a song by Tukuram. [SPEAKER_04]: God just loves his dog. [SPEAKER_04]: I am no slave, I am his pet. [SPEAKER_04]: He's taught me to sit by his side to be where he is.

34:41 [SPEAKER_04]: I'm allowed nothing more than to growl now and then. [SPEAKER_04]: says to go, when he caresses me, I feel almost like a saint. [SPEAKER_04]: It really makes you want to be a pet dog to the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: Again, who hasn't wondered if the Lord really listens to us? [SPEAKER_04]: We often feel he must certainly be deaf.

35:06 [SPEAKER_04]: It took her on raise the complaint to the Lord for all of us. [SPEAKER_04]: He wrote, I shouldn't speak, but the situation compels me. [SPEAKER_04]: The whole world goes, go, world goes horse, appealing to you. [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Conjure, who has spread out this vast show, I know you are really a beggar worth nothing.

35:29 [SPEAKER_04]: Having become your dependence, we have become shameless, and therefore we put up with you. [SPEAKER_04]: We do not know how you will contrive to end all this clamor created by us. [SPEAKER_04]: Says, to God, you are fair indeed, my Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: You accept my service without any response.

35:52 [SPEAKER_04]: Then only a poet and a true lover of God like Surdas can put in words what it is like to have that divine love. [SPEAKER_04]: This is one of my favorite songs. [SPEAKER_04]: Our love for you is the life inside of us. [SPEAKER_04]: If we lose it, how can we your servant survive? [SPEAKER_04]: It's like being alive without life.

36:19 [SPEAKER_04]: It's like a deer being mesmerized by a sound. [SPEAKER_04]: The hunter kills it without even shooting an arrow. [SPEAKER_04]: Like the chakra bird, who stares at the moon, the very act of looking is his joy. [SPEAKER_04]: So do the sweet traits of harry, sword us as large, always resound in our ears.

36:48 [SPEAKER_04]: Now here's another practice that brings joy to our spiritual life. [SPEAKER_04]: That is establishing a particular relationship with the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: This is, in fact, the easiest way to focus the mind on God. [SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps we love a certain form of the divine mother, maybe Durga or Pali or Luxemir or some other form.

37:11 [SPEAKER_04]: When we see a picture or image of her or repeat her name, we automatically feel that we are her child and she is our mother and that we are being protected and loved by her. [SPEAKER_04]: Or perhaps we like Krishna, or Shiva, or Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps we feel we are a friend of Krishna.

37:31 [SPEAKER_04]: And we imagine that we play with him. [SPEAKER_04]: And we can freely say anything to him. [SPEAKER_04]: This is also true. [SPEAKER_04]: If we think of the Lord as our child, that we are the mother or father and the Lord as our child. [SPEAKER_04]: In this relationship, we can have a focus for a tender, loving parental attitude.

37:54 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, why take up a relationship? [SPEAKER_04]: There are three major benefits for doing this. [SPEAKER_04]: First, a relationship is like a chord that binds us to our chosen deity. [SPEAKER_04]: And taking up a relationship with the Lord, we make a commitment to ourselves and to the Lord to belong to Him or her in a particular way.

38:20 [SPEAKER_04]: Second, a relationship with a Lord makes it easier for us to surrender to the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: We understand that we belong to the Lord and that the Lord belongs to us, so no matter what happens, the Lord is there for us. [SPEAKER_04]: And third, it makes it easy for us to fix our mind on the Lord.

38:42 [SPEAKER_04]: As soon as we put our mind on the Lord, we immediately identify with our relationship. [SPEAKER_04]: I am the Lord's front, we play together, or I am the Lord's child, I am totally under his or her protection. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, after all, we have a natural relationship with all those whom we love in this world.

39:06 [SPEAKER_04]: We love our parents because they're our parents. [SPEAKER_04]: We love our friends because they're our friends. [SPEAKER_04]: No one needs to tell us to love our parents or to have a relationship with them. [SPEAKER_04]: So also, if we want to love God, we must feel some relationship with him or her.

39:28 [SPEAKER_04]: But how do we know what attitude or relationship to take up? [SPEAKER_04]: In some cases, the guru might tell the disciple what relationship to meditate on, but more often than not, the relationship grows gradually in the heart of the devotee, when the seed of the devotee's devotion begins to sprout.

39:52 [SPEAKER_04]: But this is not to say that we cannot experiment. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna did not tell us that we have to reach the certain stage [SPEAKER_04]: We can take up a relationship from whatever stage we are at. [SPEAKER_04]: The relationship may change in course of time, but that's all right.

40:17 [SPEAKER_04]: Meanwhile, we have had the benefit of feeling close to the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: Now at this point, we can hear the critics non-dualists scoffing and ridiculing this practice is blatantly anthropomorphic and not worthy of being taken up seriously. [SPEAKER_04]: An answer, we can say first, that it was certainly worthy of being taken up by Ramakrishna.

40:50 [SPEAKER_04]: as he himself not only practiced all these attitudes, but he also experienced the Lord through all of them, and he also, as we have seen, recommended this practice to the devotees. [SPEAKER_04]: And, in fact, you may not know this Swami Vivekananda also had his relationship to the Lord.

41:13 [SPEAKER_04]: His attitude was Sakyababa, the attitude of a friend, and his brother monks and disciples could see all of us in his relationship with Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: There's a story about this second tell, but I don't want to go into it later. [SPEAKER_04]: It's not enough time. [SPEAKER_04]: You can ask about it later, but what if you look at this practice from a different standpoint, a psychological standpoint?

41:46 [SPEAKER_04]: We can then see that it actually has a genuine purpose behind it for a spiritual life. [SPEAKER_04]: You can see the goal of our sovereign is first to remove our identification with our present reality. [SPEAKER_04]: Reality. [SPEAKER_04]: That is what we think of now as reality, our identification with our psychophysical system and the world as we see it.

42:13 [SPEAKER_04]: Then it takes us our spiritual practices take us to the ultimate reality. [SPEAKER_04]: Isn't that what all spiritual practices try to do? [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, the term ultimate reality means different things in different religions, and to different people. [SPEAKER_04]: Yet, most religions agree that in order to attain this ultimate reality, we have to, [SPEAKER_04]: We have to transform ourselves.

42:46 [SPEAKER_04]: We cannot attain it as we are with our present identification with our body, mind, and ego. [SPEAKER_04]: Our body, mind, and ego can't go there. [SPEAKER_04]: Yet our present identification is so strong and stubborn that most of us cannot even imagine giving it up. [SPEAKER_04]: So this is why many spiritual teachers say that the easiest way to affect this transformation is to establish a relationship with the Lord.

43:15 [SPEAKER_04]: For this through this relationship that we can transform ourselves, we transform our ego. [SPEAKER_04]: As we become more and more able to identify ourselves as a servant or friend, parent or lover or child of God, then our identification with our present state receives and our love for God becomes more and more natural and spontaneous until it eventually becomes part of us.

43:48 [SPEAKER_04]: Now there are various relationships with God, and if we can really get to the point where we automatically feel our relationship, when we think of the Lord, then the joy of having a spiritual life really starts becoming established. [SPEAKER_04]: And if we can really focus on this during our meditation, then our joy is unlimited.

44:11 [SPEAKER_04]: We really feel then that we are in the company of the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: Then, as Ramakrishna says, instead of the Lord being the magnet and we, the devotees are the iron filings that are drawn to them, then the devotees become the magnet. [SPEAKER_04]: And the Lord is drawn to us like iron filings.

44:36 [SPEAKER_04]: But then there's another aspect of devotional sababa to consider. [SPEAKER_04]: Once Swami Brahmananda said, generally, we think that a lover of God wants to feel a relationship with God, such as that of a servant or friend or so on. [SPEAKER_04]: So we do not think of a devotee as desiring to feel that the Lord is within us.

45:03 [SPEAKER_04]: I want to eat sugar, not be sugar, and that is the devotee's attitude. [SPEAKER_04]: But then Swami Brahmananda says, the true devotee of God likes to feel that the Antaryama, the internal self, is within us. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna also said, by constantly meditating on God, the Bukta loses his ego.

45:27 [SPEAKER_04]: He realizes that God is He and He is God. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, the fact is we first have to feel that we are inseparably united with the Lord, that the Lord is within us, and thus we first awaken some consciousness of the Lord within us, how can we feel that we have a real relationship with them?

45:50 [SPEAKER_04]: if we feel that we are forever and intrinsically separate from something, then we can never really feel an intense desire to be united with it. [SPEAKER_04]: We would know that it has nothing to do with us. [SPEAKER_04]: But the very fact that the divinity knows without a doubt that he or she is eternally and intrinsically united with God, [SPEAKER_04]: This creates a painful feeling of separation when the realization of that union is not experienced.

46:22 [SPEAKER_04]: And this is the feeling that Swami Brahmananda says, we must arouse in ourselves that the Lord is within us near than the nearest, dear than the dearest. [SPEAKER_04]: According to the poet, A.K. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramanujan, [SPEAKER_04]: A book to is not content to worship a God in Word and ritual.

46:44 [SPEAKER_04]: North is he content to grasp him in the theology. [SPEAKER_04]: He needs to possess the Lord and be possessed by the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: So at some point we come to realize that this whole business about spiritual practices is not just about us. [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, most of us have an intellectual understanding that the Lord is within us.

47:09 [SPEAKER_04]: But what we don't realize is that the Lord wants to possess us entirely. [SPEAKER_04]: He wants our mind, he wants our heart, and what he wants, he will eventually take one way or another. [SPEAKER_04]: After all, the Lord is inside us, and He is outside us, we are His possession, but He wants us to finally get to know it.

47:36 [SPEAKER_04]: He wants us to know that we are possessed by Him. [SPEAKER_04]: The South Indian poet, Saint Namavar, once wrote about this from His experience. [SPEAKER_04]: He said, poets, beware, your life is in danger. [SPEAKER_04]: The Lord of Gardens is a thief, a cheat, a master of illusions. [SPEAKER_04]: He came to me, a wizard with words, sneaked into my body, my breath, with bystanders looking on, but seeing nothing, he consumed me, life and limb, and filled me, made me over into himself.

48:19 [SPEAKER_04]: So these are various means we can use to feel joy in our spiritual practices. [SPEAKER_04]: As you progress in your spiritual life, you will, I'm sure, find more. [SPEAKER_04]: But we must always keep in mind that Swamiji used to say, we are children of immortal bliss. [SPEAKER_04]: That joy is already there.

48:41 [SPEAKER_04]: It is always with us. [SPEAKER_04]: We just have to uncover it. [SPEAKER_04]: And let's talk, we've given some suggestions about how to do that. [SPEAKER_04]: Yet there's one more way we can mention. [SPEAKER_04]: In one of his poems, Swamiji added something else. [SPEAKER_04]: In the poem to a friend, he wrote, I born heir to the infinite thou art.

49:16 [SPEAKER_04]: give, give away, whoever asks return his ocean dwindles down to a mere drop. [SPEAKER_04]: So, as Swamiji says, you must give that love and joy to others. [SPEAKER_04]: It won't do the practice spiritual disciplines and ignore others or treat others badly. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure you were all familiar with the saying, if you don't use it, you will lose it.

49:45 [SPEAKER_04]: I tell myself this every day. [SPEAKER_04]: You must keep walking or using other limbs of the body, otherwise you will lose them. [SPEAKER_04]: You won't keep your body in shape. [SPEAKER_04]: But here in this context, we can say the same thing. [SPEAKER_04]: If you don't give your love away, you will lose what you have and not receive any more.

50:09 [SPEAKER_04]: So many thought on this are there. [SPEAKER_04]: But the best one of all, according to Swamiji, is to give your love to others. [SPEAKER_04]: If you want joy, if you want love and bliss and give it to others, give it, give it away. [UNKNOWN]: What do you take questions? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

50:40 [SPEAKER_03]: If you have a question on your time, please, I'm mindful. [UNKNOWN]: We won't feel that I think we've got a customer over there. [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I think I know what you're going to ask. [SPEAKER_04]: That's story about swamiji. [SPEAKER_02]: That too. [SPEAKER_02]: But I have a question on this.

51:01 [SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned about Ramanujam, who says that true japa, you can obtain some of these? [SPEAKER_04]: Through, he didn't exactly say, he's talking about meditation. [SPEAKER_04]: Meditation, he is referring equating meditation to remembering, smart enough, remembering, [SPEAKER_04]: is also is meditation, it is seeing God, it is meditation, that he's calling it remembering Smyrna.

51:42 [SPEAKER_04]: because the mind is continually thinking like oil being poured from one vessel to another without a break. [SPEAKER_04]: So this is what he's equating it. [SPEAKER_04]: It's actually, he would talk about meditation not exactly job, but it could be job also because it's also a way to [SPEAKER_04]: And when you're remembering, you're seeing.

52:10 [SPEAKER_04]: And he's saying, this is actual, when it gets deep enough, when it continues without a break, that seeing and remembering is actual seeing. [SPEAKER_04]: This is what he's saying. [SPEAKER_04]: I have one, two more questions. [SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned in the last part of you talk about giving selflessly.

52:37 [SPEAKER_02]: Giving love, yeah, selflessly, can you describe a practice where we can do that? [SPEAKER_04]: You can practice that at any moment, at any moment you're coming in contact with somebody. [SPEAKER_04]: Whatever it is, you know, maybe a good experience or a bad experience, whatever it is, [SPEAKER_04]: to say what you're saying, do what you're doing with love.

53:09 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is something we have to practice every day. [SPEAKER_04]: Whenever we come in contact with people, it's not a question of on this situation what should I do. [SPEAKER_04]: It's a continuous practice [SPEAKER_04]: We have to, if we feel that love in our hearts, we must give it with no matter who we are with.

53:43 [SPEAKER_02]: So, if you, to have love for everybody that we come in contact with, because sometimes we don't. [SPEAKER_02]: So, the question is, is it a result of a spiritual practice that we then begin to feel love for all? [SPEAKER_02]: Or is it a practice that we should adopt in order to feel that way?

54:05 [SPEAKER_04]: Your spiritual practices will give it. [SPEAKER_04]: But like what Swamiji is saying, practice giving itself will be a spiritual practice. [SPEAKER_04]: It will give it will also mean receiving it. [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of an open-ended thing as you're giving the love will come. [SPEAKER_02]: In the more you give, the more will come.

54:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Mother Gee, and finally the story that you said you would say. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, I live at the Regile Manor at the Kanada Retreat at Ridgely. [SPEAKER_04]: So, there's Swalmaji came there three times. [SPEAKER_04]: The third time he was there for ten weeks.

55:03 [SPEAKER_04]: And now Betty Legut, Frank Legut's wife, Betty, Josephine McClaude's sister, [SPEAKER_04]: She had been married previously and she had two children, a son and a daughter. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, the son's name was Hollister. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I don't know if you've seen the house originally, it will be easier to understand if you see the, when you come on the Fourth of July, everybody come on the Fourth of [SPEAKER_04]: So one day, Hollester, Betty's son, he wanted to see Swamiji.

55:49 [SPEAKER_04]: So he came upstairs and went to Swamiji's room. [SPEAKER_04]: But Swamiji's, the door was closed to Swamiji's room. [SPEAKER_04]: And he could hear Swamiji laughing and laughing in the room. [SPEAKER_04]: And Hollester was puzzled, well, who was in the room with Swamiji? [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe new or other people was, he couldn't figure out, who is in the room with Swamiji?

56:16 [SPEAKER_04]: Who was he talking to? [SPEAKER_04]: So this went on, so it's Hollister left. [SPEAKER_04]: And later when Swamiji came out of the room, Hollister asked him, who are you talking to in the room? [SPEAKER_04]: And Swamiji was puzzled. [SPEAKER_04]: He said, I was so long, I was meditating.

56:40 [SPEAKER_04]: And Hollister said, but what was all that laughing about? [SPEAKER_04]: And Swamiji had to think for a moment about his meditation. [SPEAKER_04]: And then he just said, oh God, it's so funny. [SPEAKER_04]: That's all he said. [SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, you know, he was not always an adviceist.

57:03 [SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, he was having some devotional meditation, maybe some lealish marina, leal ameditation, and remembering the Lord. [SPEAKER_04]: There's the bed that was in Swamiji's room is now at Bellermott. [SPEAKER_04]: Josephine McLeod decided after Swamiji left that Swamiji should have that bed he used at Ridgely Manor.

57:38 [SPEAKER_04]: He should have that in India. [SPEAKER_04]: So she had a packed up and shipped to India to Swamiji. [SPEAKER_04]: And so there's a couple references to that bed in Swamiji's conversations. [SPEAKER_04]: In one place he says, my friends in America sent me this bed. [SPEAKER_04]: It's not very comfortable.

58:00 [SPEAKER_04]: But there was another story, Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: And now all of Ramakrishna's brother monks and his disciples knew that Swamaji had Sakyabhava. [SPEAKER_04]: And it was Sakyabhava, the Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: And he actually, Ramakrishna gave Swamaji his own Ramamantra. [SPEAKER_04]: So, maybe his issue was Rama, if he got a Rama mantra, then his issue must have been Rama.

58:31 [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, but he had sucky Baba to Rama Krishna himself. [SPEAKER_04]: It was a unique relationship. [SPEAKER_04]: It was not an ordinary guru disciple relationship. [SPEAKER_04]: They were friends. [SPEAKER_04]: So one day, when Swamiji was in his room, after that bed came, he looked at the bed and he remembered one incident from his early days with Ramakrishna.

59:00 [SPEAKER_04]: And so the incident was that one day Swamajit came to Dukshana, as far as to see Ramakrishna. [SPEAKER_04]: And he was nicely dressed and cleaned, starched clothes. [SPEAKER_04]: He had a hair nicely combed and parted. [SPEAKER_03]: And he walks in the room and Ramakrishna looks at him, and goes up to him and goes, shh.

59:23 [SPEAKER_04]: Muscles his head. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: And he says, this rubbishness doesn't suit you. [SPEAKER_04]: And, well, we're on a swamiji, they're friends, they're teasing, they like to tease each other. [SPEAKER_04]: So, he's not going to take this lying down. [SPEAKER_04]: So, he said, oh, well, what about that bolster on your bed?

59:46 [SPEAKER_04]: Why isn't that rubbish? [SPEAKER_04]: And, Robert Christian, it goes into this mood. [SPEAKER_04]: And he says, you know, I've done so much austerities. [SPEAKER_04]: If you can do one-sixteenth of the austerities I've done, I'll see that you get a bed with a mattress so fit. [SPEAKER_04]: And he said, how thick are we?

1:00:07 [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if you're seeing the bed originally man and you'll see the huge thick mattress enough. [SPEAKER_04]: So how would you just took it as a joke? [SPEAKER_04]: Because they were joking around. [SPEAKER_04]: And then, but years later, when that bed came to him, he looked at the bed, and he remembered that incident.

1:00:33 [SPEAKER_04]: So in one version of the story, Swami Chaitan and then on to told me, I haven't found it, but he told me. [SPEAKER_04]: He said, Swami, do you took out a tape measure and measured the mattress, and it was exactly what Ramakrishna had said. [SPEAKER_04]: And then he was in tears remembering those days.

1:00:54 [SPEAKER_04]: But they were friends. [SPEAKER_04]: And when Swamaji used to do the worship later at Bellarmad to Ramakrishna, he would do the worship and eat column Bundu. [SPEAKER_04]: So it's a word for a friend. [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, friend, here. [SPEAKER_04]: Here's a flower. [SPEAKER_03]: Have any more questions?

1:01:26 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the different name. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the one. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think there was a question over here. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be right there. [UNKNOWN]: I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: Is that a question? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, talker used to say, um, when you read the scriptures, take off that head and the tail.

1:01:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What did he mean by that? [SPEAKER_04]: Um, have you ever read the Bhagavatam? [SPEAKER_04]: The stream of Bogovata, is something that won't appeal to you. [SPEAKER_04]: You don't just take the things that mean something to you, that appeal to you, take that. [SPEAKER_04]: You don't need to take everything that's in this, not everything that scripture is for you.

1:02:19 [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Hi. [SPEAKER_01]: My question for questions were about Istha. [SPEAKER_01]: My questions are, if you don't feel that you [SPEAKER_01]: have found your Ishta. [SPEAKER_04]: How do you find it? [SPEAKER_04]: If you don't feel what? [SPEAKER_01]: Then you have found your Ishta.

1:02:50 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you find your Ishta? [SPEAKER_01]: If you feel like you maybe have a possible Ishta, how do you spot them from the candidates? [SPEAKER_01]: And if you feel like you have found an Ishta, is it common or are there any thoughts around having a second one? [SPEAKER_04]: OK, your first question, take your time.

1:03:20 [SPEAKER_04]: And you want to get it right. [SPEAKER_04]: But then also, you also have faith in your teacher. [SPEAKER_04]: Your teacher may know you better than you. [SPEAKER_04]: Then you think you know yourself. [SPEAKER_04]: Either way, if your teacher, if you're not sure and your teacher gives you an ishta, know them, that that's yet.

1:04:00 [SPEAKER_04]: And the mantra will take you there. [SPEAKER_04]: Will take you to loving that ishta. [SPEAKER_04]: Then what's the second question? [SPEAKER_04]: The second part, that. [SPEAKER_01]: It made that on both, first and second. [SPEAKER_01]: The third question, though, is that? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, OK, what was, I guess the third question is, how do I put this?

1:04:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it frowned upon to have more than one issue to have? [SPEAKER_04]: If you feel that your [SPEAKER_04]: Your basic issue, the one you have the mantra for, if you feel that this other deity or saint or whatever, is the saint, is if you can identify yourself with that other deity or saint, feel that they are one, think of them, say, [SPEAKER_04]: If you're, say, if you're, it's just Ramakrishna, but you also, you also like Shiva.

1:05:11 [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Ramakrishna, as Shiva. [SPEAKER_04]: There's no harm at all in that. [SPEAKER_04]: Ramakrishna is Sabha David Davy, Surupaya. [SPEAKER_04]: And you're, whatever is to you have, and maybe it's not Ramakrishna, maybe Ramamahar's here, somebody, [SPEAKER_04]: Think that, that is to, is the embodiment of all deities.

1:05:38 [SPEAKER_04]: And there's no harm in that at all. [SPEAKER_04]: That's, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it, but this is the way I'm thinking in terms of it. [SPEAKER_04]: There's no harm in it. [SPEAKER_04]: So, did I answer all of it? [SPEAKER_04]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: So Mataji, thank you so much.

1:06:22 [SPEAKER_03]: You certainly brought joy to our morning, and please come back again soon. [SPEAKER_03]: It's been too long. [SPEAKER_04]: That's been a while. [SPEAKER_03]: It has been, I think you was 23, wasn't it? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so yeah, it's not a couple of years. [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it has. [SPEAKER_03]: So don't be a stranger.

1:06:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you again. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.