Swami Shivapadananda on remembering our divine origin
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
Taken from Mother Radha's notes, written at Swamiji's feet.
Day 405
During an Upanishad [Hindu philosophical treatises] class Swamiji said: Brahman [the indivisible Universal consciousness] does not create, he projects. Only a perfect Being projects a perfect Universe. Everything is perfect. What makes it imperfect? Ignorance. Ignorance of what? Of Brahman. But ignorance is also part of the whole lila [divine play] – when you realise that you begin to enjoy the Universe. Sri Ramakrishna said the same in a different way: The world is a mansion of mirth. To whom? To It – to him who knows what the Universe is.
Ego [sense of separateness] prompts action, so there is always a defect in it. Thus from Human Being you degrade yourself. If you meditate and perform pure actions you begin to be gods, and you go on to identify with Hiranyagarbha [lit: the 'golden womb' or originating force. So you re-identify with your divine origin]. But right now you are dependent – and not independent.
Desire leads you to think you want something and this leads to action, to get it. In the Self there is no action whatever, the action is a superimposition.
Through meditation for son, wife etc. you can get results. Any prayer – i.e. that your wife must be beside you etc – is desire. This is because your prayer is not for God realisation.
You think the world experience is a form of the [higher] Self – the Self as name, the Self as form – but the Self has no form.
Because we say 'Neti, neti,' [not this, not this, by way of discriminating between the real and the unreal or projected] the Self is nameless. Anything that comes into form falls into the category of name, form, action.
It's not that the Self gets freed. Its natural state is to be free.
The 100 CDs of Swamiji speaking have been converted to mp3
format. This means they can be played on your computer, an iPod,
certain mobile phones or any other mp3 player. Price is just R100 for
both DVDs inclusive of postage in the RSA.
Contact Tim Hoare on timhoare@webmail.co.za
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.
Reference websites: Ramakrishna Math & Mission, Ramakrishna Centre of Southern Africa, Sri Ramakrishna Dham