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For Scholars Posted on: 09/08/2006The logic [tarka shastra] shows four types of authorities [valid means of knowledge] to decide any point. The first is perception (Pratyaksham), in which anything is directly experienced through senses in this world. The second is inference (Anumanam), in which anything is inferred based on a characteristic sign. For example, smoke is coming from a mountain and fire is inferred. In this authority also the perception is the basis because the relationship between fire and smoke is already perceived in the kitchen. The third authority is simile (Upamanam), in which an unseen...
To earn money for basic needs is Bhukti.
Relief from the worldly stress is Mukti.
First is generation and second is preservation of Shakti.
God is the source of both these, devotion is Bhakti.
God is the main aim of life, concentration in it is Rakti.
Arjuna is fighting for his kingdom, which is essential to meet his basic needs. This fight caused lot of stress both physically and mentally. This point relates to your professional work, in which also, lot of stress and strain accumulates on you. Love on grandfather and anger on Duryodhana created confusion and emotion. Love and anger bring the stress and create lot of mental...
God is the Ultimate Basis of Creation: Starting from Energy, up to the form, the entire creation is Maya only, which means wonderful because with respect to God, this creation is unreal by itself, yet it attracts and confuses every soul as if it only exists. The ultimate basis is God. Without God, Energy is unreal and does not exist at all. Without Energy matter and awareness do not exist because matter, awareness, light, heat, etc., are forms of Energy only. Without matter, form cannot exist and without awareness quality cannot exist. Thus Maya exists at three levels. The highest level is Energy and Energy can be unreal for God only. This Energy-level is called as the Mula Maya. The second higher level is Maha Maya, which is conversion...
Devotion is of two types. The first type is called simply as Bhakti and it consists of prayers or songs through words and emotional feelings through mind. This Bhakti gives only temporary happiness. Knowledge is related to intelligence, which is the discrimination between the real and unreal through logical analysis. By such discrimination, you can realize that all the forms of matter and all the feelings of awareness are unreal. When you have realized that all the forms (rupa) and feelings (guna) are unreal even before the level of yourself, which is pure awareness, your life completely becomes an entertainment in both happy and unhappy situations. Self realization makes...
Energy is inert because it is only a property i.e., it is the work of God and so it depends on God. Energy appears as matter and awareness, which are its different forms. Beauty is a property of matter. The face of a girl is made of matter. Beauty is a form of matter. Apart from [physical] beauty, you also see the shine on her face, which is light. Apart from matter and awareness, energy also exists in the form of light, heat, sound, electricity etc. You are more attracted to her internal personality too, which consists of beautiful qualities like love, generosity...
[This is telephonic Divine Discourse given by Swami on June 25, 2006, in response to questions asked by devotees from various places in the world. The questions asked by devotees were pertaining to practical worldly problems faced by them. Swami has answered the questions based on the essential message of all the religious scriptures of the world such as the Veda, Bible, Gita, Quran, the Puranas and the great epics.]
Guru Selection: Mrs. Bhargavi (USA), who has created a website on the human incarnation and is a devotee of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba, bombarded Swami with a question: “Why have You advertised Your miracles in Your website and propagated about Yourself? We are in search of a Guru, please guide us”. Swami replied, “If you give Me the appointment order to join the duty as your Guru, I shall join at once. I shall be very happy if you select Me as your Guru after conducting an interview and analyzing Me patiently.” A saint from Varanasi came to see Sai Baba. On his arrival, he found a procession in which Baba was walking for relaxation...
Love and Sex: [Replies to some phone calls from USA:] Getting the grace of the Lord is more important than pleasing yourself with worldly pleasures here, which includes getting fame. Pleasing the Lord is more important than getting the grace of the Lord. The sages tried to get the grace of the Lord through penance, to save themselves from hell. But the same sages in the form of Gopikas tried to please the Lord even at the cost of going to hell by offering the dust of their feet to Lord Krishna. Therefore, the Gopikas are treated higher than the Lord by the Lord Himself and the life of the Gopikas is more sacred than penance. Bhagavatam, which explains the life of the Gopikas, should be the highest aim of this human life. All the greatness of Bhagavatam is due to the Gopikas. Radha, who even became mad in the love of God, stands as the queen of the Gopikas. The grace of the Lord indicates...
For Scholars Posted on: 15/06/2006Chit [awareness] is gold and Jnanam is a wonderful design expressed in that gold. All the value is for that wonderful ornament and not for the lump of gold present in it. Brahman means great. The greatness is of that ornament and not of gold. A lady is attracted to the ornament but a businessman sees only the weight of the gold. Similarly an ignorant person thinks that chit is Brahman where as a realized scholar thinks that a great preacher with exceptional knowledge like Shankara is Brahman. Chit is the awareness present in every living being...
[Smt. Padma, wife of Shri Sarma passed a comment “God seems to be interested in money”. Sarma became angry and told her that she will be punished by God for commenting like that. Sarma came to Swami and complained about the matter. Swami told him, “You should not threaten anybody like that. You should analyze the topic and convince people through knowledge. By threatening, the thought is only suppressed and not removed”. Sarma came back along with his wife to Swami and Swami delivered the following divine discourse to the devotees.]
Why Is God After Money?: People say that God is [interested] in money. It is correct because money is Goddess Lakshmi. Lord Narayana is always in her heart. Money is also in the heart of God because Goddess Lakshmi is in His heart. Whatever is in the heart of Lord, the same came out in His word which is the Veda. The Veda says that sacrifice of money alone can please the Lord (Dhanena Tyagenaikena)...
[Hanumat Jayanti Day, the birth anniversary of Hanuman] The festival of Hanumat Jayanti is coming in 2-3 days and happens to fall on this Monday. How to celebrate this festival? The low level of celebration is done when devotees worship Hanuman by offering leaves, fruits, special food items and prayers and then finally ask for worldly boons. The second middle level of worship is doing Bhajans on Hanuman with emotion, which represents the love for Hanuman. Since in the middle level there is no desire for boons, certainly the middle level is higher than the low level. But the best and highest level of worshipping Hanuman is to analyze what Hanuman practiced...
[Shri Ramnath asked a question to Swami as to why human beings feel and talk like immortals].
Every human being is a composite of three bodies which are the outermost gross body and the pair of inner most subtle and causal bodies. The inner most subtle and causal bodies can never be separated. The causal body is like gold and the subtle body is like its ornament. The ornament cannot exist without gold. But the gold can exist without the ornament. In a realized soul, the subtle body which is a bundle of qualities subsides and only the causal body or the soul is leftover. Only in an ordinary human being does the subtle body...
[The following is the discourse given by Swami in reply to the criticism of a saint (monk), from Varanasi. The saint is a well known scholar, well versed in the Advaita school of Vedanta, other darshanas and six Vedangas. He was told about Shri Datta Swami and His teachings by Swami’s devotees. He severely criticized Swami on several points and was concerned that the devotees of Swami are not on the right path. Swami gave the following brilliant discourse in which He has refuted all the criticisms of the saint and has given a teaching for the upliftment of the saint.]
Shankara’s Commentary: There are two items. One is the memorization of knowledge called as vyutpatti. The second is Pratibha, which means the assimilation of the real interpretation by sharp analysis. A debate will be meaningful if the opponent has Pratibha. There is no meaning in arguing with a person who only has Vyutpatti. He will repeat the same text again and again for any of your arguments. He may have memorized the commentary of Shankara very well. But insight is needed for any development. Vyutpatti only leads...
When any facility is available in the nature, the Lord will use it. Only when extreme necessity comes, the Lord uses His superpower [to overrule the laws of nature]. Shankara walked all over India for debates because there were no computers, emails or telephones through which arguments could be done. Once He wanted to argue with Kumarila Bhatta. But when Shankara looked through divine vision, the Bhatta was burning his body as self-punishment for a sin he had committed. He was sitting in a heap of paddy husk and had ignited it, so that it burnt his body slowly. For Shankara there was no time to reach there by foot. Therefore, there was an extreme necessity to use His superpower. Immediately He traveled through space...
[Discourse given by Swami in response to question asked by Nikhil, Smt. Devi and Smt. Gayathry] Jesus preached wonderful knowledge. The ordinary fishermen were convinced and followed Him as the Lord. The priests of the church were great saints, who were unmarried and left everything for the sake of God. Those priests were certainly higher than ordinary people. The ordinary people followed Jesus because they were convinced in their minds, intelligence and consciousness...
For Scholars Posted on: 16/04/2006Such entertainment is not full because the knowledge of Himself continues and it is not removed completely. The ignorance is like the dim light of the evening in which light and darkness are mixed. But the soul is in complete ignorance and is fully entertained. The ignorance is very intense so that the soul forgets even the concept of entertainment. A producer with the film is Brahman. A producer seeing the cinema is Ishwara. An actor who is seeing the cinema is a realized soul. But this actor is neither the producer nor the director...
For Scholars Posted on: 15/04/2006[The following is a discourse given in response to questions asked by Nikhil as to why there is no uniformity in the preachings of different human incarnations as regards the ultimate goal. Even if they preach at different levels, can they not all agree on what the ultimate goal is? All science teachers, teaching at different levels, universally accept the highest concept in their science even though they may be teaching a lower concept to their students.]
Every human incarnation knows the whole truth and the whole concept because the same God enters every human body in the case of each human incarnation. The revelation of the complete or partial truth depends on the level of the human beings who receive that knowledge. For a scholar, revelation of the whole truth is sufficient...
O, Brahmin priests! Even today you are the qualified agents for the propagation of divine knowledge of the Lord. Even today the public is inviting you alone to perform religious ceremonies, which are either auspicious or inauspicious. Every human being has to attend the ceremonies and spend some of his time, energy and money either willingly or unwillingly. Everybody is forced by tradition to attend these ceremonies. Even a human being who is busy with his business or profession and does not spend even a single minute for spiritual knowledge and God also has to attend these ceremonies...
For Scholars Posted on: 25/03/2006From the beginning of the creation of this world, man was searching for God. Some people were satisfied by realizing the existence of God, which was experienced by them through some items of creation and through some important incidents in life. They never claimed that they have detected God [known Him completely]. They had only analyzed the entire creation and found that no item of the creation is God. They declared that nobody could detect God [know His real nature]. Therefore, they concluded that God is unimaginable. But they said that God exists because they have experienced the existence of God...
For Scholars Posted on: 20/03/2006Lakshman asked about the existence of ‘I’ [I-thought] in deep sleep as referred to by Shri. Ramana Maharshi.
The existence of ‘I’ requires the existence of awareness, which is nervous energy. In deep sleep there is no existence of the nervous energy and therefore there is no question of the existence of I in that state. The I requires the awareness of itself. This awareness or nervous energy is only a special form of inert energy. The inert energy produced by the chemicals in the brain and flowing through the nervous system becomes awareness...
The meaning of the word Narayana is the Lord who has taken the shelter of a human body. The word ‘Nara’ means the human body. ‘Ayana’ means the person who has taken Nara as his shelter. This meaning of this word exactly coincides with the verse in the Gita “Manusheem tanumasritam”. The Lord is beyond the scope of even the intelligence and logic. You cannot understand anything about Him in any angle as said in the Gita “Mamtuveda Nakaschana…”. In the Veda there are several statements which say that He is beyond the words, mind...
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