Through bhakti an untouchable becomes pure and elevated

1)  Through bhakti an untouchable becomes pure and elevated.

2)  God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.

3)  The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.

4)  It is said that truthfulness alone constitutes the spiritual discipline of the Kali yuga.  If a man clings tenaciously to truth he ultimately realizes God.  Without this regard for truth one gradually loses everything.  If by chance I say that I will go to the pine-grove, I must go there even if there is no further need of it, lest I lose my attachment to truth. 

5)  The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves.  A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as 'I am such an important man' or 'I am so and so’.  Level the mound of 'I' to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.

6)  One must be very particular about telling the truth.  Through truth one can realize God.    

7)  The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves.  A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as 'I am such an important man' or 'I am so and so'.  Level the mound of 'I' to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.

8)  One can easily realize God if one is free from guile.  Spiritual instruction produces

quick results in a guileless heart.  Such a heart is like well cultivated land from which

all the stones have been removed.  No sooner is the seed sown than it germinates.  The

fruit also appears quickly.

9)  One cannot attain divine knowledge till one gets rid of pride.  Water doesn’t stay on

the top of a mound, but into low land it flows in torrents from all sides.

10)  Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without

reading books.  But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing.

Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it, but seeing Benares is

different from either hearing or reading.  

  

11)  He who has realized God does not look upon a woman with the eye of lust; so he is

not afraid of her.  He perceives clearly that women are but so many aspects of the

Divine Mother.  He worships them all as the Mother Herself.  This māyā, that is to say,

the ego, is like a cloud.  The Sun cannot be seen on account of a thin patch of cloud;

when that disappears one sees the Sun.  If by the grace of the Guru one’s ego vanishes,

then one sees God.    

12)  Imagine a limitless expanse of water:  above and below, before and behind, right and left, everywhere there is water.  In that water is placed a jar filled with water.  There is water inside the jar and water outside, but the jar is still there.  The 'I' is the jar. 

13)  Suppose a thorn has pierced a man's foot.  He picks another thorn to pull out the first one.  After extracting the first thorn with the help of the second, he throws both away.  One should use the thorn of knowledge to pull out the thorn of ignorance.  Then one throws away both the thorns, knowledge and ignorance, and attains vijnāna.  What is vijnāna?  It is to know God distinctly by realizing His existence through an intuitive experience and to speak to Him intimately.  

14)  "O Mother, I throw myself on Thy mercy;  I take shelter at Thy hallowed feet.  I do not want bodily comforts; I do not crave name and fame; I do not seek the eight occult powers.  Be gracious and grant that I may have pure love for Thee, a love unsmitten by desire, untainted by any selfish ends—a love craved by the devotee for the sake of love alone.  And grant me the favor, O Mother, that I may not be deluded by Thy world-bewitching māyā, that I may never be attached to the world, to 'woman and gold' conjured up by Thy inscrutable māyā!   O Mother, there is no one but Thee whom I mav call my own.  Mother, I do not know how to worship; I am without austerity; I have neither devotion nor knowledge.  Be gracious, Mother, and out of Thy infinite mercy grant me love for Thy lotus feet."

15)  No book is useful unless open your own book (mind).    

16)  No results of genuine and lasting spiritual value will be achieved by mere lectures regardless of how well intentioned they may be.  The fire of realization is necessary to ignite hearts; without operating solely by the divine command the limited intellect intersperses the true teachings of scripture with its own obviously or subtly erroneous interpretations.

17)  Like the deep water of the open ocean so divine really appears dar blue when seen from a distance.  If we draw near to the ocean and take the water directly into our own hands, we discover it to be brilliantly clear, perfectly transparent.  The same holds true if one has courage enough to come close to this ocean of Being, Consciousness and Bliss that appears from a certain distance as the dark blue Krishna….If we were to come close to the Sun, we would no longer find the sky or even ourselves, only the Sun in all its inconceivable intensity.    

  We must cultivate direct acquaintance with the true nature of God.  Then divine reality will no longer be experienced as bent in three places, dark blue, small in stature.   What an extraordinary attainment it is to make this direct acquaintance!  This intimacy with supreme reality is not possible through ordinary modes of perception, knowledge or belief.  Only total concentration of our conscious being, called samadhi, can actually take us to the shore of the ocean or to the surface of the Sun.  Beyond that no words apply….

  Where there is butter there is buttermilk; the two are not two.  They are called purushA and prakriti in the technical language of the yogis—Krishna and Radha in the ecstatic parlance of lovers.  Krishna’s entire attention is focused upon the flashing dark eyes of Radha; Radha’ entire being is plunged into the shoreless ocean of Krishna’s gaze.                       -Ramakrishna

……