Talks Excerpt 463. Swamiji says that avowed Advaitin Adi Shakaracharya, didn’t condemn ritual worship.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
In days gone by the mother and father of a family were godlike and they studied dharma from an early age. They did not stand in the way of the child trying to realise God.
It is said that you must never disobey your father or mother except when it comes to God-realisation. Sri Sarada Devi confirmed this, as did other great saints and sages.
Vibhishana acted against his elder brother Ravana when Ravana went against dharma. Mirabai went against her own husband when he stood in the way of dharma. The gopis and the gopas also went against their parents. We find Prahlada went against his father Hiranyakashipu who stood in the way of dharma.
In the life of [Adi] Shankaracharya we read that a crocodile caught hold of him, and his mother, knowing that he was dying, gave him permission to take sannyasa. You can say that the river was samsara and that the crocodile was death. He was in the jaws of death and said to his mother, ‘Ma, the only way I can be saved is if I realise my Self by giving up this world and clinging on to God.’ Instead of saying, ‘by realising God’ he used the words, ‘by giving up this world’.
So his mother gave him permission, and he realised God. He became immortal – a jivanmukta while still living in the body. Then he took the vow of sannyasa and promised his mother that he would come back to serve her. That was the guru dakshina he gave her. Later on, he came back to pay his guru dakshina and performed his mother’s funeral rites.
By the very fact that Shankaracharya performed ritual worship for his mother, he sanctioned ritual worship. He did not condemn it. He knew that ritual worship does not give you God-realisation but it can fulfil your desires.
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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.