The Scriptures Are the Form of God:-******************************************** Devotee: Is it proper to consider the scriptures authoritative? Baba: God & the scriptures are interwoven. To doubt the scriptures is to doubt God. To help you understand this, I will relate a true incident I once read. In North India there lived a Brahmin who was a great devotee of Lord Krishna. He had deep faith in the Bhagavadgita, which he studied & recited constantly. Since he had no time for any other occupation, his money dwindled to nothing. Money is like water in a pot. As you go on using it, less & less remains. Finally the poor man was reduced to poverty that he & his family were forced to fast for days, since he could not even receive alms from the town. On the third day, when the brahmin was reading the Gita as usual in a secluded place, he came across the following verse in the ninth chapter: I take up the burden of the well-being of My devotees who are always immersed in Me. At this point he stopped abruptly. He began to doubt the truth of these words, so he underlined them in red ink. He thought, “God promises He Will take care of His devotees, but I have had no food for three days despite my long-lasting devotion. Why is this?” While the barhmin was thinking in this manner, a handsome boy approached his wife with some food & told her to prepare a meal. His wife liked the boy so much that she invited him to stay & eat with them, & she asked him to call her husband from the secluded place where he was reading the Gita. The boy went out & told the brahmin that his wife was calling him home for a meal. The boy had a bleeding scratch on his arm. Pointing to it, the brahmin asked him, “What is this?” The boy replied, “It is the scratch from the line you made in the Gita.” Overcome with remorse, the brahmin fainted, & by the time he revived the boy had vanished. As this story strikingly illustrates, the Gita is God’s body. It is in fact, God. For this reason, the holy books used for daily chanting are worshipped & adorned with sandalwood paste kumkum & flowers, along with incense & lights. Only when when holy books are regarded with such reverence does the knowledge contained in them baer fruit. The Bliss of Jiuanmukti:- Rameshbhai: Baba, what is the state in which there is neitber mental nor physical suffering. Baba :- Pleasure & pain are not experienced in the turiya state. In that state, everything is seen as Brahman. This is what is known as jivanmuhti, or liberation in this very life. Waking, dream & deep sleep are the three states of the individual soul. The Self does not have any such states. The Self is the witness of these three states & the experience of this is turiya. Besides elimination of the non-Self, there is no other activity in turiya. When the mind ceases to be the mind, that is the turiya state. In the walking and dream states, one sees unreality instead of reality, while in deep sleep one sees neither. In deep sleep, the individual soul is not conscious of “I” or “you”; it is unconscious even of non duality. In the turiyas state, however, it sees everything as Brahman. There is one sees reality, and there is an awareness of non-duality. One who has knowledge of the self no longer sees the world as world. The various dualities such as right or wrong, the guru and the disciple, and bondage and liberation all becomes one. Such a realized person does not consider the triad of doer, deed & fruit of the deed as different from the Self. He sees everything as the Self. Such a person has no mandatory duties. Since he does not experience duality, he is a always non-attached. This is the fifth state in Vedanta, called asansakti. This is jivanmukti. Until one constantly experiences the bliss of jivanmukti, one must repeatedly contemplate the meaning of the Vedantic teachings. If the mind has accepted that everything is nothing but Vasudeva, or God, but that idea does not remain steady & the mind & body continue to crave the pleasures of worldly objects, then faith will not become firm. If fairm, the mind will remain restless & will stop the search for the Self. As a result, there will be no experience of the bliss of jivanmukti.