you see when we classify various spiritual personalities on the scene
there is a minimum requirement that i insist on and i always tell our youngsters
please make sure the minimum requirement is fulfilled the minimum requirement is this
unless the person you are dealing with interacting with is god realized you are asking for trouble
it's like blind leading the blind if your perceptor he himself is not good realized
how can he possibly lead you to go to realization it may happen you know because you are so devoted
but it's more risky and more difficult it is very likely that you are taken on a blind tour
so the minimum requirement is that the the person that you relate to must be god realized
now who passed this sentence so who gives marks credit credit credentials to who is good realized
not me why should i take that responsibility you all have your own rational faculties use
it to the full to decide for yourself whether a personality is god realized or perhaps is deluded
sometimes they are self-deluded and sometimes they are out to delude others
you need to decide there are certain signs that you can watch out for
one of the most important signs is this a god-realized person will not just fall back
on the scriptures of the ancient times or the teachings of ancient times he will come
come up with a very novel way of presenting spirituality because it comes from personal
experience it is not book learning if it is book learning he'll fall back on the books and say the
scripture says so bhagavad-gita chapter 3 he'll keep quoting like that there's a poor sign it's a
bad sign i'm not saying that the new teacher says something that is in contradiction with the old
scriptures but i'm saying they will not fall back on it once in a while they might use it for fun
to show a continuity of the process but otherwise every time they open their mouths new scriptures
formed and presented to mankind every time so whenever a personality focuses on just ancient
scriptures watch out it's a bad sign it's a poor sign here they are here to present a more evolved
more modern more relevant face of spirituality first thing look this will immediately a lot of
people that you thought were you'll immediately feel well i think they're just falling back on
the scriptures the only way they can validate the argument is to quote bhagavat or bhagavad-gita or
bhagavad-gira they will do keep doing that nothing more this is a bad not a good sign
first thing secondly you see to what extent what they see is exactly how they lead their lives
if a person is god realized he will not be attracted to worldly objectives
simple rule how can he be that means he's really not tested this superb thing called god and if he
has not tested he will of course be easily kind of valid by you know name and fame and money and
these things will immediately attract him so again he should not have that kind of kind of strong
attraction for worldly objectives this is the second thing and again you see it is really as
i said i'm throwing the responsibility to the viewers to decide who they think
is god realize and who who they think is not good i'm not here to pass sentence on anybody
but it's important to bear this in mind but this is still the minimum requirement for making
spiritual so you could relate to somebody who has got real life this is the minimum requirement
otherwise you don't start your journey even but there is a higher requirement
and i'm going to talk about that you see when you come across this is a marvelous example
used in this story of ramakrishna he said suppose you are kind of confined in a room with no windows
everything is closed and somehow you're able to make a hole in the wall i'm talking about indian
houses made of mud not talking about brick houses where you need drill to make a hole
suppose you may need to make a hole in the wall and you look out and you see
the marvelous blue sky the infinite blue sky stretching forever the fields you see that
and you see this confined room can never reflect that reality and you are aware of that reality and
you sing and dance and get wild because you see this greater reality and you are charged up by it
there are some personalities who reflect that particular perspective they had a glimpse of
a greater reality marvelous they are then there are those who make the whole bigger and bigger
they don't just have a little tiny hole where they can just speak through at a greater reality they
like to make a big hole so they really big you know with mud hurts is possible so you make a
big hole and you go in and out so he's able to step out and look at the grand sky and say wow
and then he was able to step back in it keeps going in and out these are the second category
of spiritual kind of personalities now what is the difference the first ones are those
who are able to experience good for themselves and sing and dance and all of us watch him say
what's happened to him why is so excited because you speak through that hole and he's excited
but there are there then there are those who are able to kind of stay both in this world and
also stay in the world outside the spiritual world they're able to step into it at will
in the click of a finger they can arrive or enter this spiritual realm at the click of a finger but
the story doesn't stop there you've only got a small hole you can just speak through you've got
a huge hole not only can you go out you can hold somebody's hand and take him with you
this is the magic of spirituality not just able to seek god for yourself
or clean a greater reality but to pass on this experience to others to be able to take them
and lead them to the spiritual realm this is the kind of category that i am talking
about so it's marvelous to come across spiritual personalities who are good realize and they're
dancing and singing and say wow wow marvelous it gives us inspiration better still is to find
somebody who can hold your hand as your wife you understand what i'm saying and pull you through
and there are personalities of that caliber too and this guy is in that caliber he himself gave
an example he was not talking about himself he was very self-effacing very humble person he
never made any claims about himself throughout his life other people would do it and he would smile
he gave an example he said you see when you go to a river you see various things floating by
you might see little little kind of you know blade of grass floating by
if you try and hold it and try and swim by holding on to this little blade of grass you will sink a
little twig passing by hold it you'd sink there might be a little larger piece of wood and maybe
it'll carry one person who can just kind of hang on to it and you know come across go across
but then once in a while you got huge logs flowing past huge ones huge circumference you know like
the redwoods in the united states huge ones floating by and there are lots of people clinging
on to them happily they can take loads with them not one or two loads can be carried i'm talking of
these kind of huge logs who are able to draw many people across the sea of the ocean of life these
are the marvelous wonderous personalities who come once in a while who can not only inspire but pull
us through the nose put a ring around our nose and pull us through and take us to a greater role
they're able to drag us into the greater rock these are these kind of personalities this is the
caliber why can i say that if you classify all the lovely personalities i'm not putting anybody down
god forbid you see that around certain personalities whoever came also became god
realized some of the main disciples of buddha were also enlightened personally like his main
chief disciple anand there are human personalities again when you look at various spiritual giants
of ancient and modern india you find that around them you find personalities who also could claim
firsthand experience of god who could make that claim happily
you