Divine Messages - 96 : Glimpses of the Divine Vision by Swami Ramdas - Self-Surrender - 1/2

An extract from the book “Glimpses of the Divine Vision” by Swami Ramdas – Section “Self-Surrender”

·         The path of pure and simple Bhakti is one of the easiest means to reach the all-powerful feet of the Lord. Self-surrender is the goal. Pure aspiration and ceaseless meditation constitute the path. All else is secondary.

·         Take refuge in the Almighty God who resides in your heart. Surrender yourself entirely to Him and you will gain inexhaustible strength, for overcoming the passions, Kama and Krodha, that assail you. Feel always that you are in His hands, and therefore always safe. With the weapon of God-remembrance with you, you can dwell in the very midst of temptation and remain unaffected. By constant practice, keep your mind ever tuned to the infinite Truth.

·         Self-surrender denotes a life lived in accordance with your exalted spiritual nature. Dwell in the Divine and act as inspired by Him within you, having no doubt or fear. No movement in your nature-revealing in action-is by itself either evil or sinful. True life depends upon the standpoint from which it is lived. Self-surrender is therefore a state in which all your actions are performed in utter dedication to the indwelling Reality. Here the question of good and evil does not arise. Life is then regulated automatically, ever tempered with moderation and self-control. Doubt and hesitation have then no place here. Be a child in the hands of the Divine Mother. Know that at the basis of your life stands the immutable and unaffected spirit of God, and that your eternal nature is the very nature of the Mother who is but the manifest aspect of the supreme Lord. Dependence on and submission to Him in all matters contribute towards the realization of eternal peace.

·         Rest assured that the spiritual struggle of an aspirant ceases, the moment he puts himself entirely into the hands of God. This is the culmination of all Sadhanas. Give up all thought of your slackness or the insufficiency of your spiritual practices. Rest completely on the bosom of the infinite Mother. You are after all Her all trusting and ever dependent child. Her guidance and protection are all that you need to wish for.  She is so benevolent and merciful. Be ever conscious that you are eternally Hers, and Hers alone.

·         Realization of God is the fruit of self-surrender, i.e., handing yourself over to Him totally with the result that you have no care or anxiety left to harass your mind. So long as you are impatient and fretful, you push away from you the goal of attainment. Be calm and self-sufficient, and you are face to face with your ideal.

·         The secret of Tapasya and solitude lies in your feeling about them. The moment you realize that all your activities and works belong to the supreme Lord of your heart and of the universe, you will become conscious that you are at once in solitude in the midst of the crowd and that you have reached the end of all Tapasya. Believe, in all things that you do, you are driven by a power which is all masterful, all loving and all beneficent. Don’t crave for a state of external renunciation of activity; but for the victory of peace and resignation in the midst of activity. This is possible when you are grounded in the truth that you are merely a willing and submissive instrument.

Swami Ramdas Web Site - anandashram.org

Divine Messages - 95 : Glimpses of the Divine Vision by Swami Ramdas - God - 4/4

An extract from the book “Glimpses of the Divine Vision” by Swami Ramdas – Section “God”

·         As devotee you are at once one and different from God. You are like the river. The river is one with the ocean; still it is ceaselessly flowing towards the ocean. This is the wonderful mystery of God and His Bhakta.

·         You are all He. To realize this is the common aim of you all- the one real end of this human existence. When God puts you in situations, in which you are forced to remember Him and to pray to Him earnestly to take you to His holy feet, is He not kind? Is He kind when He gives you some transient baubles of this world which bring pain and misery? He does grant these things also when you pray for them. But He warns you at the same time-”You have asked for the perishables; but you cannot have permanent happiness from them. Pain, anxiety and sorrow are always associated with them. Seek the Eternal-seek Me alone. I am Sat-Chit-Anand, infinite existence, consciousness and bliss.” So, pray for His grace and vision. You are already free and immortal. Pray to Him to give you this knowledge-to give you this realization.

·         The Divine Mother who presides over all activities, events and happenings in the universe means always well. The sole purpose of Her work is only to bring about harmony and peace. The doubting mind sees discord and confusion in Her activity. The Mother is a veritable personification of love. So, none of Her actions can be for anything but good. The sun by his very nature can shed only light and is incapable of producing darkness. Similarly, the Mother’s doings are always in every way beneficial. In Her there is no evil. The socalled evil is the product of a mind that has no faith in Her. Pray to Her this wise-”Oh, Mother of the worlds, I am Thy ignorant child. Guide and control me as Thou wilt. Thou art my only protector and I am Thy child. I am ever Thine. Bear me always in Thy bosom as Thy eternal child. This is the refuge I seek. Eternity is the link that unites me to Thee. Being ever in tune with Thee, let me be Thy child.

·         God arranges all things in His own way and at the time He appoints. Yours is to work in the free and cheerful spirit of a child, leaving all the results to be determined by Him. God himself is a child, playing this universal game. Everywhere is He and everybody is He.

·         Sri Ram is infinite love, light, power and bliss. He is the most loving Mother and the most powerful Master of the universe. He is seated in all His glory in the hearts of you all. Indeed Sri Ram’s name is marvellously potent. It has transformed a robber into the great saint Valmiki. It has helped Kabirdas, Tulsidas, Ramdas and many others to cross the ocean of samsara. That great name is as sweet as nectar itself. When, by His grace, this name has firmly settled on the mind and tongue of anybody, that person becomes blessed and attains eternal freedom, bliss and peace. Sri Ram is pure love, a veritable sea of love, absorbing, permeating, nay flooding the whole universe. O mind! Ever be intoxicated with this supreme, indescribable love; be merged in it and realize all, all that you behold, as the expression of that love. When all forms, all things, all actions, all happenings have their source in this love, where is pain, sorrow, doubt or fear? You live, move and have your being in this love. Sri Ram is this love. To think of Him, to meditate on Him, to repeat His name, to talk of Him, to write of Him, is to realize Him, to realize and attain this love. Through love alone you have to reach Him. He is without form and name. He is beyond all Dwandwas and Gunas, but you can go to Him, only by worshipping Him through name and form. Sri Ram is that name. Universe is that form. Love Him with all your might. Let your mind find its perfect union with Him, and let the body be active as an instrument in His hands.

Swami Ramdas Web Site - anandashram.org

Divine Messages - 94 : Glimpses of the Divine Vision by Swami Ramdas - God - 3/4

An extract from the book “Glimpses of the Divine Vision” by Swami Ramdas – Section “God”

·         Be conscious always that the God that you pray to is within you and everywhere about you. His protection and grace are there ever for you. Be always aware that He is guiding you from within.

·         True, God’s power is manifest everywhere. Prakriti is He in His universal revelation. His light and glory fill all things. To surrender to Him and realize His unthinkable and inexpressible greatness is to attain immortality and bliss. Where are bondage and pain for the soul that has tuned itself with this magnificent Life or Truth? The supreme Lord is the very breath of your breath. You are ever His, He and you are not different. All glory be to Him!

·         The world is a grand display of the Lord’s lila. In fact each one of you, playing an individual part in it, is Himself in His self-expression. In the light of this knowledge and vision, you are all eternally one; the appearance of diversity belongs only to the surface.

·         The whole universe is indeed a blissful manifestation of Sri Ram. Every form in it is a wave and movement of His infinite love. Diversity and discord are unreal-offsprings of a mind deluded by ignorance. Unity and harmony are the true attributes of that Truth, in whom God, universe and man are one. There is no existence but He. He is eternal truth, love, power, light and bliss. What words can describe Him, who transcends all speech and thought!

·         Where is your most loving Divine Mother and Master? Oh-what joy it is to be conscious that this Supreme Being is ever enthroned in your heart. You eternally dwell in Him and He lives in you eternally. Sri Ram fills and permeates the entire universe. Every particle, every atom, is thrilling with divine music. The glow of His splendour illumines all. He is the inexhaustible spring of delight, peace and bliss. He is the infinite fountain of love and compassion. All glory to Him!

Swami Ramdas Web Site - anandashram.org

Divine Messages - 93 : Glimpses of the Divine Vision by Swami Ramdas - God - 2/4

An extract from the book “Glimpses of the Divine Vision” by Swami Ramdas – Section “God”

·         Give up the notion that you are the doer. It is the Divine Shakti that propels you to all action. Root out all doubts, and rise above the Dwandwas such as joy and grief, gain and loss, honour and dishonour, friend and foe, virtue and sin, etc. Take it that God alone is-who is Shakti or Prakriti in form, change, movement and action, and who is Shiva or Purusha as the formless, immutable, unmoving, actionless, all-pervading Spirit. Shakti in movement and action stands for infinite love and bliss, and Shiva for absolute peace. Purusha and Prakriti are the two eternal aspects of Purushottama who is both these and beyond them. Enjoy the perfect calm and peace as Purusha, the witness, and the bliss of universal love as Prakriti or Shakti.”

·         Change is the order of the universe. The how and the wherefore of events, great and small, happening in the world are questions which do not admit of any answer. The Lord’s will is supreme in all things. In the early stages of Sadhana, when the individual and egoistic will persists and makes progress difficult, to subdue it, surrender to the Almighty will of God is indeed an easy path. A really independent will works in you only when you are actuated by God's own will. The saint has made his will God's will and vice versa. The surrendering of the weak and faulty will of the individual to God's will, for eliminating thereby the ego sense, is truly easier than the assertion of Divinity within you so that the individual will may be transformed into the Divine Will. In the first case, you have an Almighty hand to lift you up and guard you against any fall, whilst in the latter, since you depend on your own gradually developing will, there is always the danger of a fall. You have heard of the instance cited of the kitten and of the young one of the monkey.

·         God’s will means God’s power. God’s power is the manifested universe. All movement, all change in it, belongs to that power. To realize this truth is to surrender to the power or will of God. The individual “I” is utterly unreal. He and His power are the truth. His power is infinite love and infinite joy. Just as the Sun’s power lies in the heat and light he gives, so God’s power expresses in love and joy. God and His power are at once one and different, like the milk and its whiteness. God stands for absolute stillness and peace, His power for eternal movement and joy. Love denotes movement. So love belongs to God’s power- which therefore makes for joy. Power creates, maintains and destroys. It is all the work of love and for joy. The visible universe is a manifestation of power, i.e., of love and joy; the unmanifest is the calm, silent, still, all pervading, immutable Spirit.

·         A top is rotating at the highest velocity. To all appearances it is perfectly at rest. A piece of iron is lying before us. It seems to be resting, while its particles are in a state of intense vibration and motion. Here rest and motion are combined in such a way that they exist simultaneously with regard to every object. Apply it to the whole universe. It is eternal movement co-existing with eternal rest. Eternal rest is the ideal; eternal movement is the real. The one is Spirit and the other is Matter. Ideal and Real, Spirit and Matter, are the two eternal non-moving and moving aspects of the Transcendent One-the supreme ultimate Truth.

·         Indeed Sri Ram’s ways are inscrutable. Yours is to watch the workings of His divine lila-His wonderful world-play. The concepts of the pairs of opposites that you have are nothing but unreal bubbles on the calm ocean of Sat-Chit-Anand. But how often you are deluded into the belief that they are real! You see the mirage from a distance, you take it for real water, while in truth there is no water at all. Such is this world. But the irresistible Maya tries her best to fix up firmly the curtain of ignorance between you and the Reality. There is a way out. Surrender to Sri Ram, the Infinite existence, splendour, power, knowledge, purity and bliss, who tears off this false curtain that shuts your eyes to His glory and magnificence. How to surrender to Him? Universal love; universal love-that is the path. Let your life be attuned to and guided by that Love. Oh, how grand, how sublime is that Love. You then lose yourself in the vast expanse of a depthless, limitless, all-pervading ocean of love. To taste it is joy, to enter into it is bliss, to merge into it and become one with it means unutterable rapture and inexpressible divine ecstasy. Then the world is not a world of diversity and discord for you, but you behold that harmony reigns everywhere, love pervades everywhere, and it is the deluge of bliss everywhere.

Swami Ramdas Web Site - anandashram.org