What Are You Saying?

Mahima: When the mind has gone up to Him, does one then stay with the family any more?

Sri Ramakrishna: What are you saying? Where will you go if you don’t stay in family? I clearly see that I am in Rama’s Ayodhya wherever I may be. This family life, this worldly life, is Rama’s Ayodhya. Having received spiritual knowledge from his guru Dasharath, Rama said, ‘I will renounce the family life (world).’ Dasharath called Vaishishtha to make Rama change his mind. Vaishishtha saw that Rama was under deep dispassion. He then said, ‘Rama, first reason it out with me; you may renounce the world later. Well, tell me, is this world without God? If that be so, you may renounce it.’ Rama understood that God Himself has become the world, its creatures ­ everything. It is because of His power that one perceives everything as real. Rama became silent then.

“You have to fight against lust, anger and so on in the worldly life; you have to fight against various desires. You have to fight against attachment. If the fight is given from inside the fort, it is convenient: ­ it is better to fight living in the household. Here you get food, the wife helps you in so many ways. In Kaliyuga, life depends on food. It is better to be at one place than to roam about from place to place for food. This is as if fighting from inside the fort of household.

....

‘‘A person who is jivanmukta (liberated in this very life), may live the family life if he so wills. For a man who has attained jnana, there is nothing like ‘here’ and ‘there’. It is all the same for him. Everything ‘here’ as well as ‘there’ belongs to Him.”

-- Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, Volume 1, Section XIII, Chapter 4

Ineffabilis Deus Mater

Pius IX, after consulting all the bishops of the world, issued Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854, declaring the immaculate conception a doctrine revealed by God:

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful." [See here for background; see also Timothy G. McCarthy. The Catholic Tradition: The Church in the Twentieth Century. 2nd Edition. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1998, 373.]

The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a profound doctrine. Within it are hidden the foundations and implications of Christian Avataric Non-Dualism.

Christian dogma has no limit. That is, the literal meanings of the dogmas do not exhaust the dogma's meanings. The literal meanings of the dogmas do not exclude additional implications, implications easily dismissed or rejected when only the literal meaning is considered. The dogmas are experimental hypotheses, working definitions, if you will, whose practicality and reality must be tested in the laboratory of one's own body-mind. In fact, to paraphrase the Buddha Shakyamuni, the final origin and end of Christian dogma cannot be seen. Dogma arises, shines, and subsides within the very Heart. The final origin and end of Christian dogma can only be known from, in, and as the very Heart.

Wisdom and Love

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.

-- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questions to Swami Premanandaji Saraswati

Q. A question was put about a quartet of Sri Ramacharitmanas and replied by Swamiji Maharaj purporting to point out that according to Sant Tulsidas, devotion to God is as easy and enjoyable as taking a morsel to the mouth and eating it. Food gives satisfaction and strength and removes hunger. So devotion to God gives contentment and confidence and removes attachment to the world. In the path of jnana, one has to renounce everything. In bhakti, a devotee can progress on the spiritual path without giving up attachment—but the attachment should be to God alone. Once you completely surrender to God, He looks after all your needs.