Talks Excerpt 716. Swamiji says: Many names, many approaches, but ONE God.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.
In the scriptures it is said that God has many names and yet He is nameless. From one point of view the Atman is that God. Atman can have many names. A realised soul becomes Brahman itself or he realises that he is Brahman. Our scriptures say: ‘The knower of Brahman becomes Brahman.‘
Lord Shiva had realised who he was. In the Ramayana it speaks about faith and guru. Lord Shiva knew that Sri Rama was a Realised Being – one who had realised himself – so Lord Shiva preferred to worship the Atman in the form of Sri Rama. And Sri Rama preferred to worship that same Atman in the form of Lord Shiva. In this way they both worshipped the same Atman but in different names and forms. Lord Shiva and Sri Raam teach us humility.
Both of them are forms of GOD, yet each worshipped the other. We also learn about devotion and knowledge from them.
Some go further saying that they were trying to bring about unity between Saivism and Vaishnavism. This is also correct. It shows that there are not two Gods but one God, which one worships through different paths – Saivism and Vaishnavism. They are worshipping the Supreme Atman, the Paramatman, which is the Self.
Sri Rama stands more for bhakti, and expresses it through devotion to duty. And Lord Shiva stands more for devotion through renunciation. He was a yogi who had not excluded bhoga. (Bhoga can also mean the householder’s life.) Sri Ramakrishna too did not exclude bhoga. He was married. But even having the object of temptation near him, he was not tempted. So he was the king of the renunciates. Master taught us to see the Divine Mother in all women.
One can be in Shaktism or, to coin a new word, ‘Christianism’, provided one knows that that name stands for the highest consciousness or Absolute Consciousness, Brahman.
When Sri Ramakrishna was asked, ‘When you say Kali what do you mean?’ The Master said, ‘I mean the Atman.’
The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial booklet, ‘Memories of my ashram days‘ at the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.
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 with him at the time.