DIVINE DICTA ... 1

DIVINE DICTA ... 1 1. Cultivate self-confidence. Do not doubt yourself ever.

2. Have faith in your abilities, however limited they may seem to be right now. Cultivate them and they will increase.

3. Rome was not built in a day. Have patience. Work on. Slowly build yourself.

4. Be sincere in whatever you do.

5. Concentrate intensely on whatever you do. Do not be casual in anything.

6. Steadfastness, consistency, stability---these are essential attributes.

7. Manifest character and firmness but be kindness personified in the same breath.

8. Hopefulness and good cheer are vital for living a fruitful life. A despairing person leads a burdensome existence.

9. The life of one is the life of the many. Learn to rejoice in others' achievements and learn to share your own with others. Isolation now in focussed endeavour, intermingling now in collective enterprise, a concentrated discovery of oneself in solitude and a shared identity in macro-individuality---these are the hallmarks of greatness.

10. When in times of trouble, 

       When the soul is sore,

       Sink in your Self

       To self restore.

       There's none in this 

       world

       So close to you

       As you yourself

       For evermore.

       So be like the rhino

       That heeds not any

       When the ways of the

       world

       Have cast a wound too

       many.

       Live like a princess

       Though the world calls

       you pauper,

       Knowing life to be

       dream

       And empty its coffer.

11. মানুষকে ছেড়ে 'ভগবানের' পূজো | এই না হলে ভীমরতি ? [Worshipping God, leaving man? If this is not lunacy, what is?]

12. To make a mistake is good,

        To learn from it better,

         But not to repeat it is

         best of all.

13. যে দেশে গুণীর সম্মান নেই,

        সে দেশের উন্নতি হয় না | [A nation in which talent is not recognised, can such a nation rise?]

14. Be confident and conquering.

15. Words fail where character isn't. Words rule where character supports.

16. Some people have no self-confidence throughout their lives. Be not one of them. Trust your abilities, your destiny to be great. Have faith in yourself. Wean your faults away but forgive your lapses. Self-hatred opens the gateway to self-degeneration. Do not allow that. Always remember there is someone holding you from behind.

17. Self-doubt is not a good pastime, self-belief is. Affirm your positives and the negatives will drop off themselves. As Thakur said, "If you move towards the east, the west will fall behind."

18. O soul that suffers the toil of life, love hard, so hard that the vast suffering that life presents dissolves to nought by its sheer intensity. Just pulverize the hurdles that bar the way to freedom and joy by its sheer potency, by a concentrated consciousness that irresistible prevails. Let the Spirit by its maddening intensity resolve life's perplexities and raise matter unto ethereal heights. Let the antithetical elements of tortuous life find a superior synthesis that simplifies into foundational unity and a peace that passeth understanding.

19. The Bhagavadgeeta enjoins upon you sustained practice and dispassion by way of perfecting the instruments of work and work itself. The Lord's words are final in this regard. Keep honing your instruments and perfect your performance.

20. The heart that flows is the soul that grows.

21. The head of the ego must be broken. Absolute submission to the Guru is the way.

22. Culture is declining fast. Each one of you have a responsibility towards raising individual culture by way of contributing to its collective output.

23. Let the world talk whatsoever. Thou hearken to the call within.

24. Those that do not value love, lose it.

25. Steadiness, Steadfastness, loyalty and love---these are attributes and emotions worth cultivating in whose absence life becomes a desolate dream.

26. Rectitude or straightness must be the defining feature of an integrated personality. Crookedness, craftiness, cunning or simply over-cleverness to hide intent are degenerate characteristics of one's character that ought to be shunned. Simplicity of approach and attitude is the key but without thereby reducing oneself to being a simpleton. Fools can scarce be spiritual nor clever dealers of life's wares.

27. Be creative always and never an imitator or an undue adulator. Responses and reactions must be intelligent and not boring, nor must they be expressions of indolence in the form of lazy emojis. But responses must be relatively quick because interactions are all that constitute what is best in social living.

28. Be original. Cultivate original thinking. Discover the world anew everyday and do not fall into the trappings of tradition merely. But do not neglect heritage. Interpret life in your own original way. Do not be boring in the slightest manner. Live life your way without hurting others, but live it your way without being either a killjoy or one who guillotines conversation or interaction with a studied stupidity.

29. Look beyond self-interest at the larger picture and carry on the mantle of civilisation in a manner befitting of a worthy legatee. Enlarge your perspectives, extend your horizons and intelligently interpret life to enhance its value both in the individual plane and in the collective. Root out selfishness that kills relations, poisons the tree of life to its root. It is selflessness that is spirituality, it is service that is austerity, it is detachment that is peace.

30. Prompt response is the sign of life and character. Late responses citing work are tantamount to selfishness which is antithetical to both spiritual growth and worldly achievement worth the salt.

31. Society was forged out of raw primitive living to facilitate harmonious cooperative living whose primary basis is communication. Thus, failure to communicate adequately citing professional or personal work is tantamount to admitting that one has reverted to pre-linguistic primitive state. Such a failure to discharge the duty of due communication cannot be deemed progress in work or in life. It is abject selfishness, reprehensible to say the least.

32. Be neither a spendthrift nor a miser. Avoid the extremes and be moderate in expenditure knowing wealth or possession to be not yours but the Lord's in temporary trust with you. Money-mindedness is a vice.

33. Neglecting the Guru is the worst sin. The Guru is God incarnate, the gateway to freedom. No disciple should neglect the Guru. It is the worst spiritual offence. Upon the Guru's pleasure is the disciple's growth. Therefore, it is bounden on the disciple to do everything to please the Guru, not by slavish cringing but by intelligent loving service.

34. Flood the world with love. Let it grow in your heart to overflow the banks. May peace and bliss reign in that supreme self-giving! Totally surrender to this sublime emotion. Let not aught of earth sully this ethereal emotion, this inspirational impulse. 🕉

35. Be not drunk with the wine of desire. Delusive dreams must be smashed to smithereens and the real Self revealed. Let not bundles of desires huddling together block your divine vision. They are the precursors to perdition, the harbingers of death. Deal heavily with them. Deal desires the deathblow of discrimination and in delight witness the glory of the Self, the imperishable Atman.

36. There must be a sense of shame in being indifferent, insincere and inconsistent. Self-respect demands that commitments be kept, the given word honoured and relations rendered their due treatment. Levity in life's dealings leads inexorably to loss of love and purpose in living. Man then becomes a lying mask of a man, as Swamiji puts it.

37. Worship the Guru if you want wisdom, illumination, inspiration, love, light and freedom.

38. Love is where there is constant fear of loss and love is where all fear is gone and losses have been transcended. Rare is the being who knows how to love, rare indeed, for the enmeshed soul calculates too much to comprehend the simplicity of love that has ascended to the sublimer strata of bliss where complexities can scarce reach. Love is but the moment in oscillatory dual delight at the interface of light and the Being.

39. She who loves, lives; she who fails, fears. Love is the panacea for life's maladies, the antidote to this deathly virus called fear. Love and be happy.

40. Whosoever you think of, you become like the one. Therefore, think of great people. But who is great? The one who has realised the Great One in the depth of his being, the God-realised soul who thereby has verily become God-incarnate and worship-worthy.

41. Unless one has a high purpose of living, one is likely to squander one's energy in fruitless endeavours. Therefore, God-realisation which is the highest and ultimate purpose of life must be held before oneself as one's objective and aspired end.

42. Fortunate is the one who has been endowed with three things by the grace of the gods: a human birth, the desire to be free and association with a great soul, that is, one who is Atmajnāni/Brahmajnāni. If these three things one is endowed with, the gateway to freedom opens up. The Guru's grace then showered on the shishyā who has secured his pleasure helps win the evolutionary end for her after her labour of love in the spiritual path has been duly discharged.

43. Stop calculating. Life is not a business, its activities not transactions that you must keep calculating your gain and loss. Life is a pilgrimage of the embodied soul in this Ganga of Karma where desires are to be drowned and freedom obtained from the shackles of Maya, its fetters that bind us all in their deathly grip.

44. Those who commercialise human relations are unfit for spirituality. Their time is not yet come. Self-interest camouflaging as duty and work are sullying their mind as of now and it will take a deal of evolution till they are ready to appreciate the finer features of life beyond sensate pleasures and pecuniary pursuit. Swamiji used to say, "Duty is the midday sun scorching the soul of the householder." And even if it be granted that duty holds one hostage, the range and realm of duty must be extended till it includes the divine. Even to be human is to be loving, more than the self-steeped soul can dream of.

45. Blue tick has been removed on some profiles to facilitate secrecy. Cannot understand when my messages are being seen and when not. This hinders communication as much as late response does. Over-secrecy is not good for the spirit.

46. Out of love a new humanity will be born. Out of hate the old humanity will die. Through the churn of the last few centuries and the existent struggle this slow transition is taking place. The Avatars are expediting the process in harmonious mode while followers fight to resolve the issue along refracted lines. But the change must come, is coming inevitably, inexorably with infirm and firm steps. Its footfalls are being heard by the perceptive person, the eager ear witnessing in whispers this silent change. Beneath the rubble, below the ruins lies the bedrock of a spiritual civilisation long evolving from its primitive past unto the noonshine of its stellar glory.

47. Some care to read my messages in a casual manner, almost neglectful of their import. Some others do not even care to do so citing busyness in life's preoccupations as their alibi. My soul's churn is, though, not for cursory glance but for depth-absorption and assimilation thereof to be made into life-matter and life-giving stuff. It is an insult to churn out nectar from one's oceanic self for it to be cast aside as so much seaside trash.

48. "When a man becomes moneyed, he does not remain a human being anymore. His form is that of a human but nature that of an animal." -- Sri Ramakrishna

49. Today what you do you'll get back in equal measure, good good, bad bad. The Law of Karma is inviolable save to an extent by Guru's grace.

50. Immersed in life's delusive dreams and driven by sensate desire, all of you are oblivious of your divinity and the purpose for which you are here on earth, or seemingly so. Life is of two days, one of growth and flourishing, the other of decay and death. In the interim period must the evolutionary mission be accomplished, that for which over hundreds of millenia you have traversed the face of this earth through countless births and deaths, and rebirths to run the cycle again without count. How many times you have missed the mark! Must you miss it again, this objective of deobjectification of your self and witnessing the Subject by the Subject, the Self by the Self? This Self is the English approximation of the Atman which you are ever, yet how utterly unaware you are, chasing life's tinsel toys.

51. Neglecting the Guru is the worst spiritual offence and leads inevitably to spiritual degeneration of the disciple. Some of you are habitually doing it. It is time to stop it. Else, consequences will be unavoidable save by Guru's sustained grace. If limits are crossed, even that may prove futile.

52. To be a man a man must have manliness. Likewise for a woman who must have womanliness. Unladylike behaviour is an aberration that is best avoided.

53. "I have time for all aspects but have no time for Thee, O Lord. I seek the pleasure of wife and world but seek not to behold Thee, O Lord." -- Ramprasād

54. To some disciples I am one of those things. To some others I am the only thing that matters. Each one looks upon the Guru through her own prismatic consciousness that disperses the pure white beam into its spectral band, each one receiving thereon the refracted beam after passing it through preferred filters. Not to all am I the only imperative in life. They have their own self-interests that occupy their mercenary minds, for after all most on earth do commercial dealings with much of life and its relations. Rare is the one who values love exclusively and can sacrifice all smallness to accept it in its fullest measure. That calls for character which is best exemplified in the personalities of the Vrindāvan gopis. Such is all-consuming spiritual love which has been dubbed 'madhur bhāva', a mood rare on earth but not entirely extinct.

55. People of weak will can scarce achieve anything. It is will-force that triumphs over all odds. The world is in awe of the strong-willed. Strengthen your will if you wish to be of substance in this insubstantial world.

56. "Man is the slave of benefit." -- Raja Rammohun Roy

57. The impure mind is unfit for love. The impurities cover up love which is the essence of the soul. When through austerities, discrimination and dispassion these are removed, the pure shining Self floods the soul with love that then inundates the banks of the embodied being.

58. This world is a delusive dream. Do not get trapped by it. Do not get trapped in it. Break free. Achievements are so many baby's toys that are being offered you to keep the game on, that of limiting the unlimited by magical means. Thou infinite soul, rise to thy true stature and dream no more.

59. Everybody is trying to absolve oneself and shift the blame on others. This is a natural propensity where one is seen to assert oneself thus by way of self-preservation. But this is the wrong way. It is opposed to growth and leads to unrest and spiritual stagnation, if not decay. It creates unhappiness in oneself and one's surroundings. Therefore, the right way is to rectify oneself and move on along progressive lines of light and love.

60. Selective secrecy is privacy but overmuch of it is degeneracy.

61. The greatest souls live in pure consciousness, lesser ones live in thought while the bulk of humanity carry on with the burdensome existence of work as duty to be done for survival and sense-satisfaction. Prioritising work over human relations often kills the sensitivity of the soul and makes one an unhappy person in the long run. It must be remembered that work is for man and not man for work.

62. The purpose of life is not merely self-sustaining work nor so-called societal work aimed apparently at social good---whatever that may mean---but Self-realisation by driving out AVIDYĀ (spiritual ignorance) from the system and letting VIDYĂ (spiritual knowledge) flow in to supplant it. Ask yourself all the time---"Am I on the track of VIDYĀ or AVIDYĀ?"

63. Hopelessness, lonesomeness, despondency and despair, gloom and depression, listnessness and lack of drive---whenever these seem to overcome you, chant the mantra, think of Swamiji, read his life and lectures, and reflect on how great you are in your Guru's eyes. All these negative emotions will vanish in a trice and you'll feel a surge of superior force, an abundance of energy with enthusiasm and vigour coursing through your veins surcharging you.

64. Find some freedom everyday from work to pursue a hobby. It will give you a lasting pleasure, a peaceful respite from the worrisome ways of life.

65. Save when you earn. Do not burn money. But be not a miser. Sri Ramakrishna disliked miserliness. It amounts to pettiness of the mind which is a most unspiritual attribute.

66. Have a nice sense of humour. It is the spice of life you need. Ill-temper, foul mouth, ill-feeling, roughness---these sully your spirit and reduce your joy. Cast aside these and cheer up and enjoy.

67. Read to enrich your life. Books are the best friends man may have. They reveal a world beyond a world where you enter into the chambers of mansions in ruins and of palaces forming in dreams and fancies. But they are real nonetheless.

68. There is no justification for foul temper. It messes up the atmosphere which it is not one's fundamental right to do. There can be no entitlement to undue irritability in the public space or exhibition of righteous anger.

69. Never believe in superstitions. To forsake reason and pin oneself on faith to secure earthly possessions and benefits is demeaning for a self-respecting sane individual.

70. It is better to die a rational being than live the life of a faith-fool who pins his hopes on a superstitious faith.

71. Do not spread superstition in the name of devotion. Religion must be subjected to the rigour of reason for it not to degenerate.

72. Lack of manhood is killing the nation. And yet this effeminacy continues. As if we are hell-bent on self-destruction.

73. Feel like ripping apart the universe. Calculation is the corruption that destroys faith. And yet they propagate faith by calculating ends. The business instinct gets one nowhere in the realm of the Spirit where there is neither gain nor loss. It is pure sameness that reigns there to attain which all manipulation must be given up for now and for good.

74. You are the whole universe. Why bother about a single body? Let life like waves come and go. Thou stand unmoved, the imperishable Self. What dignity lies in forsaking self-respect, forgoing rationality for a materialised necklace or a ring or a bit of divine ash? Does matter prove the Spirit? Must man like bondman go down on his knees before material manifestation, forsaking his divine dignity thus? Is surrendering oneself to superstition to be deemed spirituality?

75. Miracles do not prove God who is pure Spirit. They prove matter.

76. Swamiji must be preached pure and simple. His message of manhood, Vedantic discrimination, selfless commerce-free love devoid of organisational trappings is the panacea for humanity today as it has ever been but never quite understood, pursued or practised. Now is the time. We must give life to Swamiji's life-giving principles that are rooted in the Upanishads. The current corruption of commerce and exhibition of effeminacy must be cast aside, drowned in the ocean, and vigorous expression of manhood in real spiritual teems must be effected.

77. It is not good to be selfish. Generosity of heart and philanthropy are essential features of a noble mind.

78. Live for a higher purpose beyond the aspirations of your work-life. Human life is precious, more precious than perhaps you realise. These delusive dreams will pass, hopefully in time for you to catch the inner tune and synchronize your life with it. Do not waste this superb opportunity in chasing wild geese. Get going with heavy inwardness till you gravitate to the centre, your core consciousness where in existence absolute you are.

79. If work could give peace, watering the deserts could have done so. But fertile soil is what beckons the fluid. Water the tree of life, this world of men that parched lies.

80. If you do the work at hand well, the work afar will have been done as well.

81. It is important to do something for one's motherland. Loyalty and love begin there.

82. Love purifies the soul. Infatuation sullies it. Infatuation causes misery. Love is pure bliss.

83. Man is selfish because he is body-bound. The moment he overcomes his bondage to body, he becomes unselfish.

84. A house was on fire. No help came on time. When the firefighters finally arrived, they were greeted by ashes.

85. Dream no more. Wake up.