Mind and Nature’s rhythm
[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]
[now a Centre of the international Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission]
DAILY READINGS
Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.
Day 961
One gets a fairly good idea about God's mood and God's beauty from nature. Keep watching nature and see how nature changes and how calm it becomes. You can actually get God's nature out of its beauty and the whole day you can feel how His moods change. Because it's a natural element, natural phenomena and natural things are not going to be imitation. It is always natural. The natural is God and God cannot be separated from that which is natural – eternity. It cannot be separated from Itself.
Thus you find saints and sages, when they looked around when they found leaves and other things were agitated or full of activity – [in harmony] with the mood of nature outside, the mind behaved. If it's windy you'll find your own mind getting agitated. If it's too windy you want to run away and take shelter. But yet look at when nature is so calm. Your mind actually behaves how the external nature does. It [nature] has a control but you may think you are the boss. You are no boss. It has a control over you and this control, if you can [just] capture it, in sattvic [calm, balanced, harmonious state] attitude, this is sattvic attitude now – calm, quiet.
Look at the colour, look at the beauty, look at the water on the dam. Just look at it. You know, if you look at the water from here, if you look into the distance, just look at it. It's calm, quiet. But you see, there's another aspect to this. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa advised Nag Mahasaya [a saintly lay devotee of Sri Ramakrishna], he said, 'Wherever you see a mass of water, just sit and meditate.' Sit and meditate on what? Now you see, that's Sat-Chit-Ananda that is. That reminds you of Satchitananda. [meaning] Existence, Knowledge, Bliss Absolute. Everything is in that water.
In that water there is we'll say, fish, germs. Isn't that existence? It doesn't rely on outside. And among those germs you'll find it [natural consciousness] is knowledge. Where you find consciousness is manifest. When consciousness is there, knowledge must be there. The fish have a particular way of behaving. It's intelligent. God's knowledge is manifest in that. And then you'll find that the whole thing is contained in what? In water. The life-giving, which is in reality the supreme Brahman [the One universal consciousness]. The whole thing is in that water. And if you can sit and meditate [as if there is] water above and water below, you are right in the middle, your body is made out of ice supposing we say – and you are in that water. Water above, water below but your body slowly, because it's ice, it melts away – you become one with the water. It's just like you become one with God. Because you are spirit in reality and God is the supreme spirit.
Spirit surrounds you everywhere. If God is everywhere, down below and above and you are concretised spirit captured in this body, slowly as it becomes in touch with spirit it melts away and becomes spirit. Just like the ice doll gets in touch with the water around, melts away and becomes one. And if you can just get this and go beyond thought, beyond word – once you melt away there is no thought of your own. You have got no individual thought, no individual mind. God's mind becomes your mind, because God's mind merges into your mind. Like you take a bowl of water, take it and put it in the river, what happens? It merges with it. You become one with it. And how beautiful it will be the day you can forget your individual self and become the universal self – because there won't be any separation, there won't be any fear. There won't be any pain.
The only pain is in separation but in uniting there is no pain whatsoever. If we separate from the people around here we'll feel a certain pain, isn't it? But in uniting, how much happiness came? Just like that, if you unite with God, unite with Satchitananda, Parabrahman [the supreme Brahman] – all bliss is yours.
[Swamiji concludes the session with recitation of the peace- shanti – mantra.]
1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.
2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.
There are currently available, over 100 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order.
Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and teachings.
For more about the Holy Trinity, and also the founding Swamis of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, please mouse over their names below:
Sri Ramakrishna Sri Sarada Devi Swami Vivekananda
Swami Nischalananda Swami Shivapadananda
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online
Reference websites – please mouse over the name and click to connect:
Ramakrishna Math and Mission Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa Ramakrishna Dham