Swami Shivapadananda on congruence and Jesus

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 520

[Pictured: The small temple that now stands on the spot where Sri Ramakrishna was actually born.]

 
 

Be Guileless. You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven until and unless you become guileless; until and unless you have the directness of a child, the frankness of a child. Until then you will find that your thought, word and deed do not correspond; you will find that you are thinking one thing and saying another; or you are saying something and you are thinking something else; or you are doing something and not meaning it.

We find this directness displayed so much in a child, this corresponding of all the different stages; the subtlest to the subtle, and the subtle to the gross – thought, word and deed. The Lord says that this is the quality you must have. (He does not say you must become childish, for when you become childish you become foolish.)

There is a vast difference between a child and a saint. The child acts unknowingly, ignorantly, but the quality of directness is still there. The saint acts knowledgeably, he knows God and therefore will not deviate from God. He is direct, straight-forward and this comes down to us. In between, we cover it with our own thinking, we cover it with this thing called maya [the power to delude]. This maya is of our own making, of our own thinking. A child's knowledge is expressed unknowingly and the saint's knowledge is expressed knowingly, by knowing God directly.

It is said that on this ascension day Christ ascended to heaven. Ascension day to me means that he realised himself today – the complete Self. Thereafter he could not live on the plane of the physical. Rather, he then gravitated to the plane of Spirit, the plane of samadhi [superconsciousness], nirvakalpa samadhi [the non dual state superconsciousness], nay, the Absolute, Mahasamadhi [final 'great' samadhi in which the body falls away]. For is it not said in the scriptures that if a man lives in that state for twenty one days his body falls off like a dry leaf? Before that, did not the Lord worship and pray? Did he not struggle hard while doing this, that the perfume of good deeds, that the perfume of obliterating the sin of imperfection in others, would manifest itself?

Thus he ascended. This was the day he realised his Real, his true nature. Not only did he realise it but after realising it, it was impossible for him to remain on the relative plane. We are all waiting for this day, this beautiful day.

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