we see various personalities of various caliber used to visit sri ramakrishna
many many look i tell you from what i know you get many different kind of personalities
in the hindu tradition there are those who discovered god for themselves they sing and dance
and thrill the rest of us make the rest of us feel this spirituality god is for real
we get a glimpse by looking at the lives of some of these super person lovely personalities
marvel as they are there are others who are equally enlightened but who can perhaps look
after their own welfare and their own salvation if you like their own their own pathway
but once in a while you find a personality who is able to dish out spirituality left right and
center who can give salvation to others who can carry others lift them up this ramakrishna belongs
to that category he's not a mere bhaktha of kali and we'll look at his life and you'll get a thrill
if you are sincere about spirituality and if you approach a personality of this caliber you can't
go wrong he doesn't only have the power of seeing god or spirituality experience for himself he has
the power to pass it on to anybody who desires who seriously desires spirituality he will dish it out
in fact some people say you know i this is standard stuff let me tidy up
you know when this we ask ram krishna for this we keep asking ram krishna for this
he doesn't give it i think there's a reason do you know why
there are various levels of teachers there are teachers who will say given okay little my little
boys he's asking well let's give it to him he wants what a big house he wants to win the lottery
let him have it this is a hard task master it doesn't give just what you want he will give what
he thinks you deserve what you need he will insist he will not give you a secondary prize he wants to
give the highest prize he will not do any he will others are easy to please there are many deities
who will say what you want come here i give it to you sort you out he will say i will not show you
all sort of you don't need you need the highest don't ask for the silly things he won't listen
he will only give the highest in fact there is a lovely story you know again
taught by ramakrishna he said there are three kinds of doctors in this world now dr kaka will
say yes i think i must listen to this is important the first kind of doctors are you go to them and
the doctor will look at your illness okay you know standard stuff in national service just
prescription send him off they'll give you a prescription and send you off and that's the
end of the story until you come back again and say still not soda another prescription send him off
standard stuff standard doctors okay these are the doctors the lowest caliber the doctors which are
of higher caliber will not only give prescription they'll check up what happened did it make any
difference did you improve they will be concerned about your health and will phone you or find out
for me whether the prescription worked these are the second category of doctors but ram question
these are still not really that good there is a third category the highest category of doctors
they will say i give a prescription did you take it and you said no i didn't take i didn't like you
didn't agree with me they'll come to your house throw you on the floor sit on your chest open your
mouth and stuck it in stick it in these are very tough doctors they will make sure you get better
they won't let you off we wish to find a doctor spiritual a personality and spirituality will be
equally insistent in making sure we are cured they will not forbid off by giving you little
presence and for be off they will make sure you hit the high and nothing less you don't get away
with anything less these are the spiritual giants this is what this guy is all about
very hard task master he won't give you trivial things but if you ask for the highest you can't
find a higher being to ask for the highest than this personality he's that dramatic that
dynamic everybody anybody or everybody who has ever actually really truly desired god
will somehow rather discover this personality and hopefully achieve their target reach their target
let me continue with the story of sriram krishna
so various people come pass through dakshineshwar interact with ramakrishna and story continues
this personality has not just come for his own salvation he has come for the first time see
unique feature about these personalities he has come to reconcile the various strands of
spirituality that were not properly reconciled they were loose and sitting scattered this
personality came to tie them up you see it is like finding a thread a sutra in which you can you can
then then put you know beads of different colors and turn it into a great lovely little necklace
you required a sutra one individual who could link up with the various aspects of spirituality
in one life and reconcile and turn this into a marvelous necklace a colorful comprehensive
necklace which allows us to relate to the idea of spiritually in the most widest possible sense
and this is what it was all about the story continues people not only see that that as soon
as this started i mean his spiritual experience came to maturity various different strands of
different sectarian movements of hinduism started to appear on the scene first we see if you like
the the introduction to this ancient idea of hindus called tantra now the tantric tradition has
required a very bad reputation it is considered something illicit something kind of obnoxious
is called so the first people who arrive here on the scene to get their credentials
to get some marks are the tantrics they appear now on the field in the story of ramakrishna
one day this ramakrishna was standing in the garden looking attending the flowers or something
and they saw a boat arrive on the bank of the river ganga and from there and like enlightened
you know come out a young woman a middle-aged woman really was very fair and very beautiful
and this woman stepped on the stair on the on the shores and this ram krishna quickly went into his
room and told his barney come here they go and call that woman tell her that your mama wants
to see her this man never sees a woman and he wants to see a woman a beautiful woman mama mama
i don't know what he's up to now so let me check so i went to that woman called brahmani and said
my mama who spends his time worshiping the mother goddess is requested that you visit him brahmani
said yes i was looking for him all the time where is he brother they said even she seems to know him
very enough he brought her to the room the moment this brahmani came look let me tell you what this
brahman is little bit of back i told you different characters will appear in the story they are all
individual they're highly different unusual and they're all worn into the story in a most colorful
manner this brahman is an expert tantric in in her time she was very well known she had mastered
the tantric siddhis she was sid and this lady is this ancient idea of tantra somehow has been as i
said misunderstood and misrepresented was a very positive way of becoming spiritually enlightened
it talks about this idea that spirituality can be experienced through kundalini yoga
very ancient practice somehow it has never sat well with the vedantic practice which is more
philosophically oriented and here we see the reconciliation of the tantra with the vedanta
through the arrival of this individual called brahmani and ram krishna called her and she
immediately responded she says i was looking for you i was told by the mother goddess i should
look out for three personalities i already met the other two and i was looking for you
you are special you are chosen and the mother at the beginning of the mother goddess i am here
the story unfolds now this ramakrishna already established in realization of
the mother of the universe as spirituality as a personality super personality is the mother
goddess says oh you've been sent here by the mother goddess what do you want me to do say that
now i'm going there are 64 practices of tantra that i want you to practice and achieve all the
siddhis what are these cities and what's all about you see all of us have possessed tremendous powers
of mind tremendous power but they're latent in us it's an ancient ancient science the hindus have
discovered for a long time it has laid kind of you know not been kind of fully pro invoked in
society it is laid hidden in society and she said i come with the powers to make you if you like
to achieve this tremendous siddhis make you a true yogi and develop tremendous powers
if mother god said let's go for it this is how we did this is the story so now within a few days
this brahmany puts ramakrishna under he undergoes all these various difficult tantric practices
within a few days literally he covers them instantly without any difficulty he's a master
already he has no difficulty and in his life they become reconciled but now let me show you
the power of the sarama krishna he goes to tantra tradition he achieves you know full
marks he passes the test there is you see some people say tantra means you know kind of somehow
involved with sex or with drinking wine with the ram question nothing of nothing of this thought
was ever achieved nothing of the sword was ever used he passed the tantric practices but look at
this person and his abhorrence to siddhis he could not be bothered with any siddhis he acquired them
but he was not bothered while he was there the two other tantric would achieve tremendous powers
came to visit sri ramakrishna all of them will be attracted to him they all came to visit him
and when they one was called girija other was called chandra they came to see him
they had tremendous but this is recording the story of ramakrishnan believe it or not
this girija could actually from his body throw light and in the middle of the night light up the
whole sky from his body and the both of them had the power of becoming invisible at will
as soon as they came near ramakrishna or dakshineshwar see the ramakrishna saw
that these guys have lost their path the aim of tantra is not to achieve siddhis
it is in fact to achieve good realization see these are a distraction they stop your
path they stopped you from making spiritual progress and they had become an obstruction
to these two youngsters the moment they came near aram krishna he pulled the siddhis away
forget about him being a siddha he was able to pull away somebody else's siddhi pulled the
carpet under the floor and they lost the siddhis in front of him they could not do these things
and ramakrishna warned them that tantras are not in order to achieve siddhis you see
again we hear in the hindu stories lots of siddha purush who have got tremendous powers mental power
they can make things make things disappear all that here comes the the if you like the the
ramakrishna's understanding and explanation to what this siddhi is all about he says keep away
they are a by-product and you know when you take medicine you don't want side effects these are
side effects in the process of spiritual enlightenment you don't encourage site you
know side effects i mean if you have a doctor i say when you take medicine even the side effects
have to be demolished you don't take medicine to get side effects that's exactly what you don't do
here are these two practitioners who were using the side effects as the end product
and they came near him and pulled them away again you see a modern vision of hinduism
we recognize the powers of siddhi keep them at bay do not be distracted by them focus on
making spiritual progress deciding discus you know finding your own like path to god
there