Ripe Bhakti

VIJAY: "Is bhakti alone sufficient for the attainment of God, for His vision?"

MASTER: "Yes, one can see God through bhakti alone. But it must be 'ripe' bhakti, prema-bhakti and raga-bhakti. When one has that bhakti, one loves God even as the mother loves the child, the child the mother, or the wife the husband.

"When one has such love and attachment for God, one doesn't feel the attraction of maya to wife, children, relatives, and friends. One retains only compassion for them. To such a man the world appears a strange land, a place where he has merely to perform his duties.

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 173
  (14 December 1882)

Prema-bhakti

... it isn't any and every kind of bhakti that enables one to realize God. One cannot realize God without prema-bhakti. Another name for prema-bhakti is raga-bhakti. God cannot be realized without love and longing. Unless one has learnt to love God, one cannot realize Him.

There is another kind of bhakti, known as vaidhi-bhakti, according to which one must repeat the name of God a fixed number of times, fast, make pilgrimages, worship God with prescribed offerings, make so many sacrifices, and so forth and so on.
By continuing such practices a long time one gradually acquires raga-bhakti. God cannot be realized until one has raga-bhakti.

One must love God. In order to realize God one must be completely free from worldliness and direct all of one's mind to Him.

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 172
  (14 December 1882)

'I want to Eat Sugar’

'I don't want to become sugar; I want to eat it.' I never feel like saying, 'I am Brahman.' I say,
'Thou art my Lord and I am Thy servant.'
It is better to make the mind go up and down between the fifth and sixth planes, like a boat racing between two points. I don't want to go beyond the sixth plane and keep my mind a long time in the seventh.

My desire is to sing the name and glories of God. It is very good to look on God as the Master and oneself as His servant. Further, you see, people speak of the waves as belonging to the Ganges; but no one says that the Ganges belongs to the waves.

 The feeling, 'I am He', is not wholesome. A man who entertains such an idea, while looking on his body as the Self, causes himself great harm. He cannot go forward in spiritual life; he drags himself down. He deceives himself as well as others. He cannot understand his own state of mind.

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 172
  (14 December 1882)

Hatha-Yoga not for this Age

Those practices are not meant for this age. In this Kaliyuga people are short-lived and their
existence depends on food alone. Where is the time now to make the body strong by practicing hatha-yoga, and then to call on God through raja yoga?
If one wants to practice the techniques of hath-yoga, he should stay constantly with a perfect guru and follow strict rules regarding food and other activities, according to the guru’s instructions. Even the slightest deviation from those requirements causes serious health problems, and sometimes the aspirant can die.

So it is not necessary to practice hatha-yoga. Moreover it is for the sake of controlling the mind that one controls the breath by practicing pranayama and kumbhaka. One can have automatic control over the mind and breath through meditation on God and devotion.
In this Kaliyuga human beings are short-lived and weak, so out of compassion God made their path for Self-realization easy.

A person feels anguish and emptiness at the death of a spouse or child; if one has that kind of longing for God for twenty-four hours continuously, God will definitely reveal Himself.

- Sri Ramakrishna,
Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play, P 229-30

The "Wicked I"

The 'I' that makes one a worldly person and attaches one to 'woman and gold' is the 'wicked I'. 

The intervention of this ego creates the difference between jiva and Ātman. Water appears to be divided into two parts if one puts a stick across it. But in reality there is only one water. It appears as two on account of the stick.

This 'I' is the stick. Remove the stick and there remains only one water as before. 

Now, what is this 'wicked I'?

 It is the ego that says: 'What? Don't they know me? I have so much money! Who is wealthier than I?' If a thief robs such a man of only ten rupees, first of all he wrings the money out of the thief, then he gives him a good beating. But the matter doesn't end there: the thief is handed over to the police and is eventually sent to jail. 

The 'wicked I' says: 'What? Doesn't the rogue know whom he has robbed? To steal my ten rupees! How dare he?' 

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 170

  (14 December 1882)

Maya Creates Upadhis

The jiva is nothing but the embodiment of Satchidananda. But since maya, or ego, has created various upadhis, he has forgotten his real Self.

Each upadhi changes man's nature. If he wears a fine black-bordered cloth, you will at once find him humming Nidhu Babu's love-songs. Then playing-cards and a walking-stick follow. If even a sickly man puts on high boots, he begins to whistle and climbs the stairs like an Englishman, jumping from one step to another.
If a man but holds a pen in his hand, he scribbles on any paper he can get hold of-such is the power of the pen!

Money is also a great upadhi. The possession of money makes such a difference in a man! He is no longer the same person. A brahmin used to frequent the temple garden. Outwardly he was very modest. One day I went to Konnagar with Hriday. No sooner did we get off the boat than we noticed the brahmin seated on the bank of the Ganges. We thought he had been enjoying the fresh air. Looking at us, he said: 'Hello there, priest! How do you do?' I marked his tone and said to Hriday: 'The man must have got some money. That's why he talks that way.' Hriday laughed.

A frog had a rupee, which he kept in his hole. One day an elephant was going over the hole, and the frog, coming out in a fit of anger, raised his foot, as if to kick the elephant, and said, 'How dare you walk over my head?' Such is the pride that money begets!

One can get rid of the ego after the attainment of Knowledge. On attaining Knowledge one goes into samādhi, and the ego disappears. But it is very difficult to obtain such Knowledge.

- Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, P 169
    (14 December 1882)

First Vision of Sita

One day at that time I was seated under the Panchavati. I was in a state of ordinary
consciousness, well aware of my surroundings.

All of a sudden a luminous female figure ofexquisite grace appeared before me. Her radiance lit up everything around her. I could see her, and at the same time I could see the trees and plants of the Panchavati, the Ganges, everything. I saw that she was human, for she had no marks of a divine being upon her, such
as a third eye.
But the sublime qualities reflected in her face – love, sorrow, compassion, and fortitude – are seldom to be seen even among goddesses.

Slowly she advanced towards me, from the direction of the north, all the while looking at me with gracious eyes. I was amazed. I was wondering who she might be when suddenly a monkey uttered a cry, fell at her feet, and rolled on the ground.
Then it came to me in a flash that she must be Sita, the daughter of King Janaka, who had suffered so greatly all her life, and whose whole life had been devoted to her husband, Rama.

Overcome by emotion, I cried out ‘Mother’ and was about to fall at her feet when she instantly passed into my body and became merged in it. Overwhelmed with joy and wonder, I fell unconscious on the ground. This was the first vision I ever had with my eyes wide open, and when I wasn’t meditating. It seems that it is because my first such vision was of Sita in her sorrowful aspect that I’ve had so much suffering in my life.

- Sri Ramakrishna,
  Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play, P 228