Ramakrishnananda (13 July 1863 – 21 August 1911) was one of the direct disciples of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Known for his “Gurubhakti” [Service to the Guru], he served the Baranagore Math for 12 years without missing a single day.
Maya is like a painted harlot appering on the stage. The moment she is detected to be an old woman, she gives up her tempting coquetries.
In the dualistic meathod, to taste the bliss of God is the ideal. In the monistic, freedom is the ideal. By the first the lover gets his Beloved at last, and by the second the slave becomes the master. Both are sublime. One has on need to go from one ideal to the other.
As the Self resides within, every man is a temple of God. Wise man of the past realized this. They built these outer temples to show man how he must go from enclosure to enclosure of his being until in the innermost shrine he will find God seated.
External experiences are like pieces of glass which reveal more or less of your own nature.The opaque glass, whichveils the face of happiness,is what is called pain;the clear glass, which lets the flame shine through, you call joy,buy that flame is always burning inside you and nowhere else.
This then is the difference between an incarnation of God and the ordinary created beings of the universe. Man is always consciously finite and unconsciously infinite, while an incarnation ofGod is always consciously infinite and finite.
