Master And Disciple

After a time the Master came back and said to Vijay: “What devotion to God your mother-in-law has! About the worldly life she said to me: ‘Oh, you needn’t tell me about the world.

No sooner does one wave disappear than another rises up.’ ‘But’, I said, ‘what is that to you? You have knowledge.’ She replied: ‘Where is my knowledge? I haven’t yet been able to go beyond Vidyā-māyā and Avidyā-māyā. It won’t help me much to go beyond just the illusion of ignorance; I shall have to transcend the illusion of knowledge as well. Only then shall I have true knowledge of God. I am quoting your own words.’ " While they were talking, Beni Pāl, their host, entered the room.

BENI (to Vijay): “Sir, please get up. It is already late. Please begin the worship.”

VIJAY: “What further need is there of worship? I find that according to your arrangement the rice pudding is served first, and then the soup and other dishes.”

MASTER (with a smile): ‘The devotees provide offerings according to their temperaments. The sattvic devotee offers the Deity simple rice pudding, and the rajasic devotee, fifty different dishes. The tamasic devotee slaughters goats and other animals.” Vijay began to hesitate about going to the platform to conduct the worship. He said to the Master, “I shall conduct the worship from the platform only if you give me your blessing.”

MASTER: “It will be all right if you don’t feel any egotism, if you don’t have the vain feeling: ‘I am giving a lecture. Listen to me.’ What begets egotism? Knowledge or ignorance? It is only the humble man who attains Knowledge. In a low place rain-water collects. It runs down from a mound.

“A man achieves neither Knowledge nor liberation as long as he has egotism. He comes back again and again to the world. The calf bellows, ‘Hamba! Hamba!’, that is, ‘I! I!’ That is why it suffers such agony. The butcher slaughters it and the shoe-maker makes shoes from its hide. Besides, its hide is used for the drum, which is beaten mercilessly. Still no end to its misery! At long last a carding machine is made from its entrails. While carding the cotton the machine makes the sound ‘Tuhu! Tuhu!’, that is, ‘Thou! Thou!’ Then the poor calf is released from all suffering. It no longer says, ‘Hamba! Hamba!’ but repeats, ‘Tuhu! Tuhu!’ The calf says, as it were, ‘O God, Thou art the Doer and I am nothing. Thou art the Operator and I am the machine. Thou art everything.’

“Three words-‘master’, ’teacher’, and ‘father’-prick me like thorns. I am the son of God, His eternal child. How can I be a ‘father’? God alone is the Master and I am His instrument. He is the Operator and I am the machine.

“If somebody addresses me as guru, I say to him: ‘Go away, you fool! How can I be a teacher?’ There is no teacher except Satchidananda. There is no refuge except Him. He alone is the Ferryman to take one across the ocean of the world. (To Vijay) It is very difficult to act as an Āchārya. It harms the Āchārya himself. Finding a number of men doing him reverence, he sits you put four seers of milk in a one-seer jar? If God, through His grace, ever reveals Himself to His devotee and makes him understand, then he will know; but not otherwise.

“That which is Brahman is Śakti, and That, again, is the Mother.

He it is, says Ramprasad, that I approach as Mother; But must I give away the secret, here in the market-place? From the hints I have given, 0 mind, guess what that Being is! Ramprasad implies that he has known the truth of Brahman. He addresses Brahman as Mother.

“In another song Ramprasad expresses the same idea thus:

Knowing the secret that Kāli is one with the highest Brahman, I have discarded, once for all, both dharma and adharma.

Adharma means unrighteous actions, actions forbidden by religion. Dharma means the pious actions prescribed by religion, as, for instance, charity to the poor, feeding the brahmins, and so on.”

VIJAY: “What remains if one renounces both dharma and dharma?”

MASTER: “Pure love of God. I prayed to the Divine Mother: ‘O Mother; here, take Thy dharma; here, take Thy adharma; and give me pure love for Thee. Here, take Thy virtue; here, take Thy vice; and give me pure love for Thee. Here, take Thy knowledge; here, take Thy ignorance; and give me pure love for Thee.’ You see, I didn’t ask even for knowledge or public recognition. When one renounces both dharma and adharma, there remains only pure love of God-love that is stainless, motiveless, and that one feels only for the sake of love.”

A BRAMO DEVOTEE: “Is God different from His Śakti?”

MASTER: “After attaining Perfect Knowledge one realizes that they are not different. They are the same, like the gem and its brilliance. Thinking of the gem, one cannot but think of its brilliance. Again, they are like milk and its whiteness. Thinking of the one, you must also think of the other. But you cannot realize this non-duality before the attainment of Perfect Knowledge. Attaining Perfect Knowledge, one goes into samādhi, beyond the twenty-four cosmic principles. Therefore the principle of ‘I’ does not exist in that stage. A man cannot describe in words what he feels in samādhi.Coming down, he can give just a hint about it. I come down a hundred cubits, as it were, when I say ‘Om’ after samādhi. Brahman is beyond the injunctions of the Vedas and cannot be described. There neither ‘I’ nor ‘you’ exists.

“As long as a man is conscious of ‘I’ and ‘you’, and as long as he feels that it is he who prays or meditates, so long will he feel that God is listening to his prayer and that God is a Person. Then he must say: ‘O God, Thou art the Master and I am Thy servant. Thou are the whole and I am a part of Thee. Thou art the Mother and I am Thy child.’

At that time there exists a feeling of difference: ‘I am one and Thou art another.’ It is God Himself who makes us feel this difference; and on account of this difference one sees man and woman, light and darkness, and so on. As long as one is aware of this difference, one must accept Śakti, the Personal God. It is God who has put ‘I- consciousness’ in us. You may reason a thousand times; still this ‘I’ does not disappear.

As long as ‘I-consciousness’ exists, God reveals Himself to us as a Person. “Therefore, as long as a man is conscious of ‘I’ and of differentiation, he cannot speak of the attributeless Brahman and must accept Brahman with attributes. This Brahman with attributes has been declared in the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantra, to be Kāli, the Primal Energy.”

Way to Brahmajnana

VIJAY: “How, sir, can one have the vision of the Primal Energy and attain Brahmajnana, the Knowledge of the attributeless Brahman?”

MASTER: “Pray to Him with a yearning heart, and weep. That will purify your heart. You see the reflection of the sun in clear water. In the mirror of his ‘I-consciousness’ the devotee sees the form of the Primal Energy, Brahman with attributes. But the mirror must be wiped clean. One does not see the right reflection if there is any dirt on the mirror.

“As long as a man must see the Sun in the water of his ‘I-consciousness’ and has no other means of seeing It, as long as he has no means of seeing the real Sun except through Its reflection, so long is the reflected sun alone one hundred per cent real to him. As long as the ‘I’ is real, so long is the reflected sun real-one hundred per cent real. That reflected sun is nothing but the Primal Energy.

“But if you seek Brahmajnana, the Knowledge of the attributeless Brahman, then proceed to the real Sun through Its reflection. Pray to Brahman with attributes, who listens to your prayers, and He Himself will give you full Knowledge of Brahman; for that which is Brahman with attributes is verily Brahman without attributes, that which is Brahman is verily Śakti. One realizes this non-duality after the attainment of Perfect Knowledge.

“The Divine Mother gives Her devotee Brahmajnana too. But a true lover of God generally does not seek the Knowledge of Brahman.

“There is another path, the path of knowledge, which is very difficult. You members of the Brahmo Samaj are not jnanis. You are bhaktas. The Jnāni believes that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory as a dream. To him, ‘I’ and ‘you’ are illusory as a dream.

“God is our Inner Controller. Pray to Him with a pure and guileless heart. He will explain everything to you. Give up egotism and take refuge in Him. You will realize everything.”

The Master sang:

Dwell, O mind, within yourself; Enter no other’s home. If you but seek there, you will find All you are searching for. God, the true Philosopher’s Stone, Who answers every prayer, Lies hidden deep within your heart, The richest gem of all. How many pearls and precious stones Are scattered all about The outer court that lies before The chamber of your heart!

He continued: “When you mix with people outside your Samaj, love them all. When in their company be one of them. Don’t harbour malice toward them. Don’t turn up your nose in hatred and say: ‘Oh, this man believes in God with form and not in the formless God. That man believes in the formless God and not in God with form. This man is a Christian. This man is a Hindu. And this man is a Musslman.’ It is God alone who makes people see things in different ways. Know that people have different natures. Realize this and mix with them as much as you can. And love all. But enter your own inner chamber to enjoy peace and bliss.

Lighting the lamp of Knowledge in the chamber of your heart, Behold the face of the Mother, Brahman’s Embodiment.

You can see your true Self only within your own chamber. The cowherds take the cows to graze in the pasture. There the cattle mix. They all form one herd. But on returning to their sheds in the evening they are separated. Then each stays by itself in its own stall. Therefore I say, dwell by yourself in your own chamber.”