SRI SARADA SOCIETY NOTES Dedicated to Holy Mother Winter 2000, Volume 6, Issue 2 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> A SIGNIFICANT MEETING: SISTER NIVEDITA AND HOLY MOTHER Adapted from a talk given in Calcutta by Pravrajika Ajayaprana of the Ramakrishna Sarada Vedanta Society of NSW, Australia, on November 16, 1998 on the occasion of the Nivedita Centenary. *********************************************** The Holy Mother was Primal Energy Concentrate, the First Principle, or to use the words of the Jesuit philosopher Marcilio Ficino, "the Unchanging, a Single Stillness" -- the "Point of Singularity, to use the terminology of modern science. On that Point was Holy Mother, remaining ever stationed and poised in perfect equilibrium, the point where infinity and eternity coalesce into one homogeneous entity. Our duty today is to tap that energy, get close to that universal heart, become enlivened, rejuvenated, and thus become ready to plunge into lifešs whirlpool with renewed zest and vigor. Sister Nivedita did just that. She has shown, through her meeting with the great Mother, her observations, and emergent actions, how we should launch this scheme and work it out. Ebullient, energetic, beaming with fresh ideas about education and social service, and fired with zeal, inspiration and vision, Miss Margaret Noble was dedicated to spiritual ideas from early in life. Her intellect was keen and clear, sharpened on the battlefields of the debating societies of the Sesame Club in London. The Irish lady, after coming in contact with her Master, Swami Vivekananda, was chastened, chiselled and modelled into "Nivedita, the Dedicated," ready to be offered at the altar of Universal Energy. The meeting was not between two women hailing from the two ends of the earth. Neither was it between the ancient and the modern, nor between spirituality and materialism. It was a communion between the infinite, universal heart and the individual heart pulsating within the inside of the common man, of each of us. Language was no barrier in this communication, where heart spoke to heart. Differences in caste, class, culture, country or color could not place any obstruction in the path of the free flow of unsolicited universal love and energy into the heart of the expectant and fully-prepared recipient. Sister Nivedita wrote: "In Holy Mother one sees realized that wisdom and sweetness to which the simplest of women can attain. And yet to myself the stateliness of her courtesy and her great open mind are almost as wonderful as her saintliness. I have never known her hesitate in giving utterance to large and generous judgement, however new and complex might be the question put before her... She rises to the height of every situation... With unerring intuition she goes straight to the heart of the matter, and sets the questioner in the true attitude to the difficulty." Through her words and example, Sister Nivedita pointed out the uniqueness of Mother's great power. She had the keenness to penetrate though the veil and get connected to the silent dynamo that the Holy Mother was. Nivedita represents truly and fully the natural temperament in each of us, especially the women of the current age of the West and of the East. Like her, we need to equip ourselves with all the qualities of truth, unselfishness, purity, service-mindedness and a spiritual outlook and plunge into action. Let us remember the Holy Motheršs assurance that She is always behind us. Our duty is to remember that we have a Mother, that is our part of the contract. Once we do this, She will play her part. Feel her delicate hand placed on our shoulder, say the left, and just try to experience a gentle pressure whenever we feel helpless. Love will flow, solace will flow; succor, strength, courage, vitality and the reassurance of fearlessness will flow steadily and freely and fill us to the brim. Let us plunge forward, drawing inspiration from the mighty Nivedita, and invoking the grace of Holy Mother, to make our life a blessing to ourselves, the whole world and to humanity in general, thus stamp a mark on history, as Swamiji wants us to. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In Mother's Words: "One must do some work. Through work alone can one remove the bondage of work, not by avoiding work. Total detachment comes later on. One should not be without work even for a moment." <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Page 2 ENTERING THE UNIVERSE Of Swamiji's commentary We invited Sister Gayatriprana of the Vedanta Society of Northern California to share something of the sense of adventure and discovery which no doubt accompanies an exploration of Swami Vivekananda's commentaries. The fruit of her study, "Swami Vivekananda on the Vedas and Upanishads," is currently being released via the Internet by Jay Lakhani of the Vivekananda Centre, London, at http://www.vivekananda.co.uk/veda.htm. *********************************************** Strangely enough, I had not really thought in a connected way about my personal responses to the work, nor am I sure how "personal" what I have to say will seem. There is no doubt, of course, that over the fourteen years I worked on the project, my vision of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta has expanded and deepened immensely. How could it not have, sitting as I was, like a tube-worm feeding on the nutrients pouring from the thermal vents of Vedanta? I began my serious study of Swami Vivekananda's thought with a compilation of his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. Having struggled for 19 years previously to find an English translation of the Gita that I felt was thoroughly authentic, I suddenly realized that Swami Vivekananda, a fully realized Vedantin, spoke perfect English and had used that language to express his insights into the Vedantic texts. It took me six years to put together his interpretation of the Gita. I was not disappointed in what I discovered. On the contrary, I was bowled over by the directness and freshness of his approach, and amazed at his mastery of English in expressing nuances and depths of meaning, found in none of the 35 English translations I had gone through before taking up the Gita compilation. Whatever he touched was not only illumined in itself, but from it a whole universe of interrelated meanings and connections opened out, like a shimmering network stretching out, it seemed, into infinity. In tackling the Upanishads I began to enter more fully into the inner core of Vedanta. As I began to pull the materials together, there could be no thought of 'a method' or 'a system' or 'an interpretation.' I was simply sucked into a black hole through which I passed, typing away in the garage morning after morning, in a sort of daze. I realized I had gotten myself into something that was compiling me, rather than the other way around! What one might call, in Indian English, a 'different' experience! The first hints of any kind of sequence or order came when I focused especially on the four mahavakyas or great sayings: "Thou art That," "I am Brahman," "This Self is Brahman," and "Brahman is Intelligence (or Consciousness)." The great medieval systematizer of Vedanta, Sri Shankaracharya, had pinpointed these from the Upanishads and held them to be the core of Vedantic belief. As I entered more and more into their voluminous ramifications, it seemed to me that there was a sort of empirical sequence between these four statements about the divinity of the universe: "thou" puts the divine outside; "I" brings it within; "The Self" carries it to a more universal, metaphysical level, while the Intelligence of Brahman Itself is the connecting factor between the previous three. Each of these four relationships is, you might say, a different mode of the divine. As I worked through Swami Vivekananda's translations and commentaries on these four great sayings, I began to feel that, corresponding to each saying there is whole universe of experience and meaning, which is totally colored by the mode of the saying. It was as if these mantras were all coming together in closely related constellations which spanned four different levels of experience. Moreover, I later realized that in Swamiji's commentaries a fifth dimension is also present, and indeed, pervades all the other four. That was the relationship. Whatever exists, without exception, is Brahman. This idea takes concrete form in such mantras as, "Thou are the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the girl, Thou art the boy. Thou art the old man, tottering on a stick. Thou art the young man walking in the pride of his strength. Thou art all that." To this Swamiji added, "Such a wonderful living God who is the only fact of existence." With its characteristic thoroughness, Vedanta has, I believe, brought out this and other archetypal patterns of the human mind more clearly, perhaps, than any other religious or philosophical system and systematized them in the four traditional great sayings. However, by emphasizing the mantra "All this is verily Brahman," Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta has brought a new approach, applying the core truth of Vedanta, not only to spiritual (i.e. subjective) realms, but also to the objective facts of experience, what we have thus far called the world of science. The development of this approach expands the traditional relationships with Reality to include the acceptance of the universe Itself as Spirit. As and when we look on everything, without exception, as Spirit, we shall see, not only the intrinsic divinity of what we see, but how, as a direct manifestation of Spirit, they interrelate with everything else. Spirit is interacting with, transforming, realizing, evolving into Spirit; and, finally just being Itself. There is no fundamental separation at any level. No doubt, as we think now, all this is very strange. Perhaps that is why the commentaries seemed so much like "black holes" when I first encountered them. Where this odyssey will go from here is a big question, but this much I can say: So far, it's been quite a ride! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Who We Are: Sri Sarada Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the furtherance of Holy Mother's inspiration in the West, particularly as it manifests through women. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Page 3 Pravrajika Vivekaprana WE ARE ALREADY FREE The following is from a talk given by Pravrajika Vivekaprana of Sri Sarada Math, New Delhi, during her visit to La Paloma, Uruguay, this September, following her six-week stay in the United States. The full transcript of the talk was sent to us by Caroline Giorgi. *********************************************** Q: How does one become free? Whatever I have understood I can share with you. Advaita Vedanta tries to show me I am already free. Instead of thinking that I am not free, and I have to become free, what makes more sense to me is that I am already free. I just do not know about it. Supposing it was true I am not free or that I have to become free Would it even be possible to become free? I would say that the idea of living free is what appeals to me most. When I look at my own experience, I realize that it is vanishing every moment. It is a question of whether I wish to hold on to the memory of my experience and feel bound by it and become rigid or whether I will let it go as the time and the moment passes and feel free all the time. It reminds me of a story. A guru and a disciple are sitting on the bank of a river. It is winter and something black is floating in the river. The disciple says, "Should I go and bring this blanket? It is going to be a very cold winter and we will be needing it." And the guru says, "If you like." It was a black thing, so the guru says "If you please, if you want to." So the disciple jumps into the river and in a short time there is shouting, "Guruji! Guruji! Help me!" So the guru says, "What's the problem? Why don't you come out? Why don't you bring the blanket?" And the disciple says, "The blanket won't let me go!" It was a black bear. So think of freedom like that. I want to catch hold of something, that is my rigidity, and when I catch hold of it, it doesn't let me go. So it is a very strange state of human existence that we do not like to pass through life as if on a journey. It is as if we want to get hold of these things that mark the distance on a highway, and catch hold of them and just remain there, not realizing that we are on a journey, not seeing the movement of our own mind that does not stop, cannot stop, and instead of flowing with the movement, somehow we have the mental capacity to feel ourselves to be bound. I am not speaking about detachment or renunciation, I am speaking about going with the flow in the sense of enjoying each moment, giving whatever is to be given, experiencing whatever is to be experienced. Not to see the dynamic nature of my own mind is bondage. I accept the idea that as experience, I am dynamic, tremendously dynamic and as the experiencer, the mind itself is very dynamic, so there is no rigidity in me. To accept the idea that there is no rigidity in me, is freedom. That is as much as I have understood. Of course, there are books which say a person who is detached does not feel the duality. However, I feel that this concept implies the dynamic nature of human existence. And this dynamism has to be accepted as very real rather than describing it as an illusion. Our experience is vanishing all the time, therefore don't be attached. A positive kind of understanding is that our nature is tremendously dynamic, you are dynamic, your experience is dynamic, therefore simply let go and accept it as it is. Q: And why are we trying to catch every movement? Fear. It is a very deep fear. A deep fear which makes us see our freedom partially in space/time and we are scared of losing it and don't realize it is my awareness that is making the play possible. I see and there is play. I don't see and there is no play. So that I am the basic freedom that is being projected outside myself through experience. We somehow think of experience as coming from outside, whereas actually this is not possible. Outside my participation there is no experience. So why do we feel this fear? It is because we don't realize our own freedom to begin with. That I am free. I am free all the time because I give rise to experience. It is not experience that gives rise to me. It's very subtle, I know. But this is the only way the human mind can really understand it... ------------------ I am very happy you have raised the question of freedom. We need to get back this simplicity. I am free. Nobody ever bound me, nobody can bind me. Nothing can bind me. If I want to feel bound after that, nobody can stop me. It surprises me tremendously that we have these ancient sages in the Upanishads telling us directly, "You are free" and "You are nothing but joy, existence, consciousness" and I say, "Oh no! I am not that!"... I often think that the greatest disease of this Age is to feel depressed, helpless, and in despair. And supposing somebody says, "All right, come, I'll take you out of this depression." But you pull in the other direction with so much energy that you can't be pulled out (of depression). So are you powerful or powerless? Don't feel helpless. Never say "! am helpless." The greatest sin in this Age is to say I am weak." Swamiji says in one of his lectures that the greatest sin is to call a man a sinner. So if you want to worship a God in this Age, the God is Swami Vivekananda. In our imaginary theories, he is called the incarnation of man and he has given the message that you are free. Just accept it. If you don't want to accept it, what is the alternative? So many masks, millions of masks all around, which are trying to say, "Look at me. I am this mask. I am not free." <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> How To Contact Us: Sri Sarada Society P.O. Box 38116 Albany, New York 12203 Phone (518) 869-6088 Fax (518) 869-6084 E-mail info@srisarada.org, Holy Mother's Web Site http://www.srisarada.org/ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Page 4 A GUIDING LIGHT We are thankful for Usha Gulati's assistance in continuing our series on women who have helped in shaping Vedanta in America. In recalling her friend, Judith Savadge, Usha writes, "Judy lived for Truth...Her guru inspired her to live a well-disciplined life, full of compassion and helpfulness to all including myself. I truly found spiritual sisterhood in her. I only knew her for nine years, but I feel like I have known her forever. She inspired many devotees to Develop their inner life as she developed her own." *********************************************** On the morning of January 8, 2000, Judith Ann Savadge passed quietly away surrounded by members of her family. Her twin sister Barbara chanted from the Gita. Another sister, Debra, had been singing hymns. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect closure to a life dedicated to service and spiritual commitment. Judy's spiritual journey found expression through her natural desire and willingness to serve. Judy was born in New York City. After majoring in psychology at Grinnell College, she worked for New Jersey Psychiatric Institute, teaching emotionally disturbed children. She later moved to Chicago to work as a counselor at Bettheheim's Orthogenic School, where she taught autistic children. In Chicago she became an active civil rights volunteer and worked for open housing. The move to Chicago was significant and life-changing. Continuing her service-oriented career, Judy got her masters degree in psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and became a rehabilitation counselor at its Psychiatric Institute. By this time, however, she had met Swami Bhasyananda, the late minister of the Vivekananda Vedanta Society, Chicago. With the teachings of Vedanta now before her, Judy embraced them without hesitation. As Judy advanced professionally, her spiritual life was making great strides. As a result she decided to dedicate herself completely to Vedanta by serving her guru and all who came to him for spiritual instruction. Judy made three pilgrimages to India. During one visit she was blessed to live at Sri Sarada Math for 18 months. As Judy's life drew to a close her contributions did not go unnoticed. In a letter dated September 29, 1999, written within four months of her death, Swami Tathagatananda, minister of the Vedanta Society of New York, wrote, "I am extremely sorry to know about your gradual deterioration of health. It is extremely painful for most of us who know you for so many years to accept this fact. But there is one great consolation for you and for us: that you at the prime of your youth devoted your talent and energy for Vedanta... "Your exemplary life, your passion for spiritual development, your ability to control your lower self at the height of your youth -- are they not a signal achievement in your life that will endure and ennoble your character and inspire others? So-called ordinary life, in spite of its glamour and enticement, that captivates every single mind, could not dare to invade your inner sanctuary, which was pure and unswerving... "Perhaps God's dream was fulfilled through you to create a noble example of sincere devotion before society. The rich legacy of your devotion will ever enkindle others, will inspire many, and human culture will be sweetened by having your dedicated life as perfume does to a person. That being over, the purpose of your life is also over." "In his eulogy to Judith, the Swami drew this comparison, "To me she was something like a lighthouse seen accidentally by passengers sailing on a storm-tossed ocean who are expecting death at any moment." <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Editorial Staff: Joan Shack, Hema Iyer, Janet Walker, and Jayanti Production/Layout: Jayanti <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>