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Old 03-12-2018, 03:34 PM
Still_Waters Still_Waters is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn
'Q:... Tulsidas and others are said to have seen Maha Vishnu. How did they see Him?
RM: In what manner? Just in the same manner as you see me now and I see you here.
They would also have seen Vishnu in this way only.


.......
Still Waters, Where does all this lead ? Shabd meditation...short answer: Bliss.
Longer answer: As a consequence, wisdom and insights galore, peace and confidence extraordinaire, power and patience humbly...basically seeing God within all.
A supernatural transformation that can only happen when one
experiences Divine Love....
and that It is permeating all ...every rock, every vacuumous space light years away....the infinite and the infinitesimal.
PS This is our destiny....might as well get used to the idea....your ego is yesterday's news!! Boring, humdrum...useless for our purposes.

It's interesting that you should choose that quote from Ramana Maharshi and I agree with it completely. When I was at the Khumba Mela in Haridwar, India, in 1998, there was a being who appeared out of nowhere to my friend and myself in an open field with no one else in sight. Without being asked, he answered my pressing question in six simple words that were completely satisfying. Just as mysteriously, he vanished immediately thereafter. Who was he? Maha Vishnu? Shiva ? Who knows? In any case, the two of us rushed back to the ashram where my spiritual mentor was sitting with various sages. As we recounted the story and described the extraordinary being, they just looked at us in knowing silence. Finally, my spiritual mentor spoke and identified the being as "Sri <don't recall his name>". Knowing the being whom we had just described (since he had been at a bandara/feast the previous day on which occasion the entire spiritual hierarchy had bowed to him and had touched his feet), she added that "he does this from time to time; everyone knows that". She reminded us that this was an auspicious happening upon which we should meditate throughout the day IN SILENCE.

Hence, Ramana Maharshi's response to that question resonates well with me. This being appeared like everyone else and yet, as one can surmise, he was quite different. (It should be noted that this experience has happened more than once in my lifetime, but this particular experience was chosen because others were involved and this was not a personal hallucination which had come to mind initially.) There is more to the story but that should suffice.

As for your response to my question, your longer answer was intriguing though the "bliss" response in the shorter answer didn't do much for me since that word ("bliss") is so often over-used that has become virtually meaningless at least for me.

Since you mentioned in your longer answer that you see God in all (with which I agree completely), what is the process whereby you shift attention from the universal (for lack of a better word) to the personal/actor role? As sages have often said, pointedly stating and acting like God is in all creates some obvious difficulties in functioning in the so-called "normal" society.

In keeping with this question, I will cite one of my favorite Zen quotes: "Equality without differentiation is poor equality; differentiation without equality is poor differentiation."
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