Now SR wanted to be in nirvikalpa samadhi , all the time, and who would blame him. After the departure of Totapuri, nobody was there to distract him,SR went into nirvipalkpa Samadhi and stayed continuously in that state for six months. In his own words:” I was in that state for six months from which ordinary mortals never return: because for the body of one attaining to that state lives for twenty-one days only, and then the body falls like a dry leaf from tree.”……….Flies would enter his mouth and nostrils , like they do in a dead body.
A holy man took care of him during that time. To feed him ,he would arouse him by beating him with a stick. Then he became sick from dysentery. Constant abdominal pain brought his mind down to earth.
After his recovery, an inner calmness returned to him. He appeared normal and sought the company of holy men and scholars. He acquired great knowledge by listening to learned people. He did not and could not read books.
He had acquired closeness to God during Samadhi. He realized that since God is only one, other religions must believe the same God, though, through different names. He wanted to explore other religions. He practiced Islam under a Muslim guru, Govinda Roy, and, in 1866, realized God through Islam. He wanted to learn Christianity. In 1874, he began listening to the teaching of Bible. Soon he had a spiritual experience through a picture of Madonna with Child. Three days later he had the following experience:
He saw a man of fair complexion coming towards him. He knew that he was a foreigner. He saw that his long eyes gave wonderful beauty to his serene face. Tip of his nose was flat. He wondered who he was. A voice rang in his soul; " Behold Jesus Christ! The great Yogi, the loving Son of God, one with the Father, who gave his heart’s blood……to deliver man from sorrow and misery". Then Jesus embraced him and merged in him. Years later, he told his disciples, that the nose of Jesus, that he met, was not aquiline.
SR used to say," Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God,…….he will surely realize Him."
His fame spread. When a lamp is lit, moths come, uninvited. People started to visit him. Articles about him appeared in the Calcutta press. Visitors would be struck by his holiness, his simple life style, his love for God, his profound spirituality, his encyclopedic knowledge of Hindu religion, and his samadhis. Many learned people declared him 'an incarnation of God’, just as Brahmini had done years ago.
Long time ago, he had come to know, through his supernatural powers, that one day he will have his own disciples. In his own word ," …. I would climb to the roof of the kuthi (house) in the garden, and writhing with anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice ’ come my children! Oh where are you all’…”
To be continued
Showing posts with label .....( afnta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label .....( afnta. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
14. St. Therese of Lisieux Continued......( afnta, afnta-questforallah, Allah, God, love for God, quest)
St. Therese was about ten years old when she developed a serious illness. She was often delirious. She thought that only a miracle could cure her. Her father, one day, gave some gold coins to his other daughter and told her to write to the church of Our Lady of Victories in Paris to say Masses for her recovery. He looked very sad
There was a statue of Blessed Virgin on her bedside. One day she kept calling her sister, Marie."Marie, Marie" , despite the fact that she could clearly see her. Her three sisters, who were nursing her, were greatly distressed by her calling and failure to recognize.They knelt by her bed and prayed to the statue of the Blessed Virgin for her recovery. She, herself, also turned towards the statue and “ … and beseeched her to have pity on me.”
“ ….Suddenly the Blessed Virgin glowed with a beauty beyond anything I had ever seen. Her face was alive with a kindness and an infinite tenderness, but it was her enchanting smile which really moved me…..”
Years later, she had the chance to visit the church of Our Lady of Victories in Paris. She wrote;” I cannot describe what I experienced in that sanctuary of hers. I was filled with joy and peace. And there the Blessed Virgin , my Mother, told me clearly that it really was she who had smiled on me and healed me.”
When she was fourteen she had a vision. In her own words,” One Sunday when I was looking at the picture of Our Lord on the Cross, I saw the Blood coming from one of his hands….”
Perhaps a year before her death, in 1896, she had a dream, in which she saw three Carmalite nuns, wearing mantles and long veils. She knew they were from heaven. She thought to herself that how happy she would be if she could see the face of one of them. As if in answer to her wish, one of them lifted her veil. She instantly recognized her, as The Venerable Mother Anne of Jesus, the foundress of Carmel in France. Her face had a beauty not of this earth. ……..
She caressed her. Moved by her love, she ventured to say, “I implore you, Mother, to tell me if God is going to leave me on earth for long……….”
She gave me a tender smile: "Yes, soon…..soon. I promise you.”
And then she said these words, which are amongst the tenderest and humblest words that I have come across in all of spiritual literature:
“Tell me also, Mother, if God is pleased with me. Does He want anything from me beyond my poor little deeds and longings?”
As she spoke her face shown with a new splendour…..
She said “God asks nothing more from you. He is pleased, very pleased.”…..
It is not often that you are informed, while you are living, that God is pleased with you. Perhaps ,once in a year? , a century?….
There was a statue of Blessed Virgin on her bedside. One day she kept calling her sister, Marie."Marie, Marie" , despite the fact that she could clearly see her. Her three sisters, who were nursing her, were greatly distressed by her calling and failure to recognize.They knelt by her bed and prayed to the statue of the Blessed Virgin for her recovery. She, herself, also turned towards the statue and “ … and beseeched her to have pity on me.”
“ ….Suddenly the Blessed Virgin glowed with a beauty beyond anything I had ever seen. Her face was alive with a kindness and an infinite tenderness, but it was her enchanting smile which really moved me…..”
Years later, she had the chance to visit the church of Our Lady of Victories in Paris. She wrote;” I cannot describe what I experienced in that sanctuary of hers. I was filled with joy and peace. And there the Blessed Virgin , my Mother, told me clearly that it really was she who had smiled on me and healed me.”
When she was fourteen she had a vision. In her own words,” One Sunday when I was looking at the picture of Our Lord on the Cross, I saw the Blood coming from one of his hands….”
Perhaps a year before her death, in 1896, she had a dream, in which she saw three Carmalite nuns, wearing mantles and long veils. She knew they were from heaven. She thought to herself that how happy she would be if she could see the face of one of them. As if in answer to her wish, one of them lifted her veil. She instantly recognized her, as The Venerable Mother Anne of Jesus, the foundress of Carmel in France. Her face had a beauty not of this earth. ……..
She caressed her. Moved by her love, she ventured to say, “I implore you, Mother, to tell me if God is going to leave me on earth for long……….”
She gave me a tender smile: "Yes, soon…..soon. I promise you.”
And then she said these words, which are amongst the tenderest and humblest words that I have come across in all of spiritual literature:
“Tell me also, Mother, if God is pleased with me. Does He want anything from me beyond my poor little deeds and longings?”
As she spoke her face shown with a new splendour…..
She said “God asks nothing more from you. He is pleased, very pleased.”…..
It is not often that you are informed, while you are living, that God is pleased with you. Perhaps ,once in a year? , a century?….
13. St. Therese of Lisieux .....( afnta, afnta-questforallah, Allah, God, love for God, quest)
Another saint and pope , St Pius X, said this about her, “ The greatest saint of modern times” ( widely quoted from " the autiobiograpy..." see footnote )
I have chosen her to demonstrate that some mystics are preselected by God or His representatives. We know that she was preselected, because she had a “ spiritual event “ in childhood, at the age of fourteen, and thus satisfies the first criterion.
She fulfils the second criterion of ‘holiness’ (which is a mandatory requirement) for a preselected mystic or saint, although it need not be lifelong ( as lives of St Paul and St Augustine testify, who sinned against God ). We are sure of her holiness because she was made a saint not too long after her death . She died at the young age of twenty-four, in a convent, where her life must have been an open book. And we come across this astonishing statement from her confessor, made just two months after her entrance in the convent;
“Before God, the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and all the saints, I declare that you have never committed a single mortal sin……”
We have the added advantage of fulfillment of the third criterion, the truthfulness of the events of her life, because she has left an autobiography (see footnote). She did not write the autobiography at her own behest, to parade her virtues, but was ordered to do so by her superiors. The book is a pure delight to read. It has sold millions of copies and has been translated in dozens of languages .
Love for God overflows from every page. “The only good thing is to love God with all one’s heart, and to stay poor in spirit.”
She also tells us that God loves us, and this is a recurring theme of the book. She is awe-struck at how good and kind the God is. She made a profound statement to her sister a month before her death:” What I have written will do a lot of good. It will make the kindness of God better known”.
Her great desire, in all her life, was to glorify her Beloved, the God. If it meant torment and suffering, that was even better. Few months before her death she wrote:
“… Like you, my adorable Jesus, I want to be scourged and crucified. I want to be flayed like St Bartholomew. Like St John, I want to be flung into boiling oil. Like St Ignatius of Antioch, I long to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, ground into bread worthy of God. With St Agnes and St Cecillia, I want to offer my neck to the sword of executioner and, like Joan of Arc, murmur the name of Jesus at the stake……” “My Jesus, fling open that book of life in which are set down the deed of every saint. I want to perform them all for You.
You have to read the book yourself
I will narrate her spiritual events in the next installment
.....................................................................................
1. The autobiography of St. Therese of lisieux. The sorry of a soul. Translated by John Beevers
I have chosen her to demonstrate that some mystics are preselected by God or His representatives. We know that she was preselected, because she had a “ spiritual event “ in childhood, at the age of fourteen, and thus satisfies the first criterion.
She fulfils the second criterion of ‘holiness’ (which is a mandatory requirement) for a preselected mystic or saint, although it need not be lifelong ( as lives of St Paul and St Augustine testify, who sinned against God ). We are sure of her holiness because she was made a saint not too long after her death . She died at the young age of twenty-four, in a convent, where her life must have been an open book. And we come across this astonishing statement from her confessor, made just two months after her entrance in the convent;
“Before God, the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and all the saints, I declare that you have never committed a single mortal sin……”
We have the added advantage of fulfillment of the third criterion, the truthfulness of the events of her life, because she has left an autobiography (see footnote). She did not write the autobiography at her own behest, to parade her virtues, but was ordered to do so by her superiors. The book is a pure delight to read. It has sold millions of copies and has been translated in dozens of languages .
Love for God overflows from every page. “The only good thing is to love God with all one’s heart, and to stay poor in spirit.”
She also tells us that God loves us, and this is a recurring theme of the book. She is awe-struck at how good and kind the God is. She made a profound statement to her sister a month before her death:” What I have written will do a lot of good. It will make the kindness of God better known”.
Her great desire, in all her life, was to glorify her Beloved, the God. If it meant torment and suffering, that was even better. Few months before her death she wrote:
“… Like you, my adorable Jesus, I want to be scourged and crucified. I want to be flayed like St Bartholomew. Like St John, I want to be flung into boiling oil. Like St Ignatius of Antioch, I long to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, ground into bread worthy of God. With St Agnes and St Cecillia, I want to offer my neck to the sword of executioner and, like Joan of Arc, murmur the name of Jesus at the stake……” “My Jesus, fling open that book of life in which are set down the deed of every saint. I want to perform them all for You.
You have to read the book yourself
I will narrate her spiritual events in the next installment
.....................................................................................
1. The autobiography of St. Therese of lisieux. The sorry of a soul. Translated by John Beevers
Monday, September 15, 2008
12.Preselected persons Sri Yogananda .....( afnta, afnta-questforallah, Allah, God, love for God, quest)
You see the problem of the reader. Therefore, we are forced to examine the life of Sri Yogananda (SY) in greater detail focusing on the opinion of his peers and historical documents, similar to what we did with Shahab (Sep, 9). From the book it appears that SY had attained closeness to God. He was a man of God. He may have attained God-realization ( this nothingness, personally, thinks he did ). Men like him do not tell lies. They are almost all the time truthful although there conclusions may be wrong. Imagine, if he was making up all these stories that are mentioned in his book, his whole life would have been a big fraud. Consider, deliberately misleading millions of people.
Being a monk he never married and lived with his disciples, who had a chance to observe him closely for decades (he had taken the vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, as a monk of Swami Order). Let us see what one of his closest associates, Sri Daya Mata, says about him in her book,” Finding the joy wihin.”She refers to him as Guru or Guruji or Gurudeva (divine teacher ). Here are some excerpts
1. “ he had the power to heal. I have seen his healing of many, many diseases “He healed me of a severe disease by mere touch.”
2. “he had the power to read the mind of others”. “But he never intruded on anyone’s mental privacy unless invited.”
3. “ I was blessed that at a very early age---seventeen---I met Gurudeva. He transformed my life. To him I shall be eternally grateful….”
4. Gurudev was to say in later years,” if I was to display powers given to me by God, I could draw thousands…………I gave the powers back to God, and I never use them unless He tells me to”
5. On his day of death, he was to speak at a banquet, for a dignitary, in downtown Los Angles. Few hours before his sudden death, as he was gazing at the picture of his beloved guru, he said to her ,” Do you realize that within a few hours I will be gone from this earth……..when I am gone.....be so drunk with the love of God that you will know nothing but God………”
6. “For twenty-one days after Guruji left his body, that form remained in a state of perfect preservation.” There is a notarized letter by the funeral director stating that strange, unparalleled phenomenon.
7. One day ( after his death ), as she was praying in front of his picture, for some guidance regarding an important matter, his living form emerged from that photo image.” Guruji blessed me and…..,,,,,,,”
I have related these incidents because they have been told by another person. There are dozens of supernatural incidents which he himself narrates in his book. I have not mentioned them here, because at some future date I plan to discuss the book in more detail. So we have two very truthful persons ( and there is at least one other, Walters or Swami Kriyananda, in his book,” The path.”) giving first-hand account in two separate books.
Sri Daya Mata is now ninety-four years old. She is the president and spiritual head of Self-Realization Fellowship. She was a young American girl of seventeen when she first heard SY speak at Salt Lake City. She narrates that day in her book,” I could only think, ‘This man loves God, as I have always longed to love Him. He knows Him. Him I shall follow.’” And she followed him.
You can find more at http://www.yogananda-srf.org/srf_news/sanghamata.html
Does it make the miraculous events , narrated in these two books, certain, for the reader. No , off course not. To be certain one will have to do one‘s own search which may take a lifetime.
Note: Sri Daya Mata has since expired
.
Being a monk he never married and lived with his disciples, who had a chance to observe him closely for decades (he had taken the vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, as a monk of Swami Order). Let us see what one of his closest associates, Sri Daya Mata, says about him in her book,” Finding the joy wihin.”She refers to him as Guru or Guruji or Gurudeva (divine teacher ). Here are some excerpts
1. “ he had the power to heal. I have seen his healing of many, many diseases “He healed me of a severe disease by mere touch.”
2. “he had the power to read the mind of others”. “But he never intruded on anyone’s mental privacy unless invited.”
3. “ I was blessed that at a very early age---seventeen---I met Gurudeva. He transformed my life. To him I shall be eternally grateful….”
4. Gurudev was to say in later years,” if I was to display powers given to me by God, I could draw thousands…………I gave the powers back to God, and I never use them unless He tells me to”
5. On his day of death, he was to speak at a banquet, for a dignitary, in downtown Los Angles. Few hours before his sudden death, as he was gazing at the picture of his beloved guru, he said to her ,” Do you realize that within a few hours I will be gone from this earth……..when I am gone.....be so drunk with the love of God that you will know nothing but God………”
6. “For twenty-one days after Guruji left his body, that form remained in a state of perfect preservation.” There is a notarized letter by the funeral director stating that strange, unparalleled phenomenon.
7. One day ( after his death ), as she was praying in front of his picture, for some guidance regarding an important matter, his living form emerged from that photo image.” Guruji blessed me and…..,,,,,,,”
I have related these incidents because they have been told by another person. There are dozens of supernatural incidents which he himself narrates in his book. I have not mentioned them here, because at some future date I plan to discuss the book in more detail. So we have two very truthful persons ( and there is at least one other, Walters or Swami Kriyananda, in his book,” The path.”) giving first-hand account in two separate books.
Sri Daya Mata is now ninety-four years old. She is the president and spiritual head of Self-Realization Fellowship. She was a young American girl of seventeen when she first heard SY speak at Salt Lake City. She narrates that day in her book,” I could only think, ‘This man loves God, as I have always longed to love Him. He knows Him. Him I shall follow.’” And she followed him.
You can find more at http://www.yogananda-srf.org/srf_news/sanghamata.html
Does it make the miraculous events , narrated in these two books, certain, for the reader. No , off course not. To be certain one will have to do one‘s own search which may take a lifetime.
Note: Sri Daya Mata has since expired
.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
11.Preselected persons Sri Yogananda .....( afnta, afnta-questforallah, Allah, God, love for God, quest)
The two great legacies of Sri Yogananda (SY) are the Self-Realization Fellowship, which he founded in 1920, and his autobiography, that was published in 1946 ( widely quoted from " autobiography of a yogi....., see sidebar) Through the Fellowship he trained thousands of persons the ancient science of Karia Yoga, the science of God-realization. The work is still going on by his followers. He has left Lessons for their guidance.
His book has been read by millions of readers and has been translated in many languages. The book has introduced millions of persons to spirituality. Through his book his influence will continue for years or centuries to come. The book is full of spectacular events. The reader often has the reaction, which I once heard , from a good friend,” Why should I believe these things?. Just because somebody wrote it in a book does not mean that I have to believe them.”
What my friend said is the crux of the problem. He had no personal acquaintance with the author, therefore, he could not know whether the author was a truthful person. To be certain, that a supernatural incident actually took place, one needs other witnesses which saw that event, or an account by dozens of persons, who were closely associated with the author, , regarding the truthfulness of the author.
You may have heard the expression.”Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”
When one reads about a supernatural incident, such as materialization of silver amulet, out of thin air, in SY’s mother ( Sep, 10), there are three possible explanations
1. Author is lying
2. Author is telling the truth. The event, though it appears impossible, occurred just as it has been narrated in the book
3. Author is mistaken. As for as he is concerned, he may be telling the truth, but he may have had an auditory or visual hallucination or may be suffering from some mental disorder.
If the author was not the witness of the event, dozens of other possibilities exist, such as his mother was lying or mistaken, etc. We will not discuss this scenario any further.
I will continue it in next installment
His book has been read by millions of readers and has been translated in many languages. The book has introduced millions of persons to spirituality. Through his book his influence will continue for years or centuries to come. The book is full of spectacular events. The reader often has the reaction, which I once heard , from a good friend,” Why should I believe these things?. Just because somebody wrote it in a book does not mean that I have to believe them.”
What my friend said is the crux of the problem. He had no personal acquaintance with the author, therefore, he could not know whether the author was a truthful person. To be certain, that a supernatural incident actually took place, one needs other witnesses which saw that event, or an account by dozens of persons, who were closely associated with the author, , regarding the truthfulness of the author.
You may have heard the expression.”Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”
When one reads about a supernatural incident, such as materialization of silver amulet, out of thin air, in SY’s mother ( Sep, 10), there are three possible explanations
1. Author is lying
2. Author is telling the truth. The event, though it appears impossible, occurred just as it has been narrated in the book
3. Author is mistaken. As for as he is concerned, he may be telling the truth, but he may have had an auditory or visual hallucination or may be suffering from some mental disorder.
If the author was not the witness of the event, dozens of other possibilities exist, such as his mother was lying or mistaken, etc. We will not discuss this scenario any further.
I will continue it in next installment
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