- Once you acquire faith, your work is done. There is nothing higher than faith.
- One who has faith in God can be saved from the vilest of sins, no matter what he may have done.
- One should have such faith in the name of God that one feels: ‘I have chanted His name. How can I still be a sinner? What sin is there for me? What bondage for me?’
- Spiritually advanced people have the nature of a child. Before God they are childlike; their egos vanish. They derive all their strength from God. It is the strength of the Father – nothing is their own. This is their firm conviction.
- The more faith you have, the more spiritual knowledge you will gain. A cow which is choosy in fodder doesn’t give much milk. But the cow that gobbles anything you give it – vegetable leaves and skin, straw – yields streams of milk.
- Unless you have the faith of a child, you can’t realize God. A mother says, ‘He is your elder brother.’ The child has such faith that he believes him to be his brother without the least doubt.
- God bestows His mercy on him who has the faith of a child. You cannot attain God with a worldly intellect.
- You can realize God by believing in Him without form and you can also realize God by believing in Him with form. What is needed is to have faith in Him and to surrender yourself.
- You have to have some kind of faith to take up any work. You think of your objective and take pleasure from that. Only then will you do the work.
- It is God who does everything. ‘He is the operator and I am the instrument.’ If you can have this faith, you will become liberated in this very life.
- People with such physical traits as a neck bone that is too prominent, and hollow or squint eyes, do not easily acquire faith.
- Jivakotis do not have faith easily. On the other hand, Ishvarakotis need no proof for their belief, they have unshakable faith. Prahlada began to weep suddenly when he wrote the letter ‘K’ because it reminded him of Krishna. The nature of the jiva is beset with doubts. He says, “Yes, it is so, no doubt, but …
- They say that Hanuman had so much faith in the name of Rama that he was able to leap over the sea by virtue of his faith. On the other hand, Rama had to build a bridge to cross it [from the Indian mainland to Sri Lanka].
- It is enough to have the faith that everything is possible in His creation. Don’t allow the idea to come to your mind that what you think is the only truth and that what everyone else thinks is false. Then God Himself will make you understand.
- Why should I meditate on God? If one truly has this understanding, one is already liberated in his lifetime. But not everybody has such faith. They only talk. Worldly people have heard that God exists and everything happens by His will. But they don’t have faith in it.
- One may perform worship, repetition of the Name, sandhya and other ritual practices, but they yield nothing unless one has faith in God.
- Have faith. Depend on Her. Having done this, you will not have to do anything. Mother Kali will do everything.
Sri Ramakrishna Say —
“One looks on God exactly according to one’s own inner feeling. Take, for instance, a devotee with an excess of tamas. He thinks that the Divine Mother eats goat. So he slaughters one for Her. Again, the devotee endowed with rajas cooks rice and various other dishes for the Mother. But the sattvic devotee doesn’t make any outer show of his worship. People don’t even know he is worshipping. If he has no flowers, he worships God with mere Ganges water and the leaves of the bel-tree. His food offering to the Deity consists of sweetened puffed rice or a few candies. Occasionally he cooks a little rice pudding for the Deity.
“There is also another class of devotees, those who are beyond the three gunas. They have the nature of a child. Their worship consists in chanting God’s name — just His name. (Source: Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna)
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“People of bygone generations had tremendous faith. What faith Haladhari’s father had! Once he was on the way to his daughter’s house when he noticed some beautiful flowers and vilwa-leaves. He gathered them for the worship of the Family Deity and walked back five or six miles to his own house.
“Once a theatrical troupe in the village was enacting the life of Rama. When Kaikeyi asked Rama to go into exile in the forest, Haladhari’s father, who had been watching the performance, sprang up. He went to the actor who played Kaikeyi, crying out, ‘You wretch!’, and was about to burn the actor’s face with a torch. He was a very pious man. After finishing his ablutions he would stand in the water and meditate on the Deity, reciting the invocation: ‘I meditate on Thee, of red hue and four faces’, while tears streamed down his cheeks.
“When my father walked along the lanes of the village wearing his wooden sandals, the shopkeepers would stand up out of respect and say, ‘There he comes!’ When he bathed in the Haldarpukur, the villagers would not have the courage to get into the water. Before bathing they would inquire if he had finished his bath.
“When my father chanted the name of Raghuvir, his chest would turn crimson. This also happened to me. When I saw the cows at Vrindavan returning from the pasture, I was transported into a divine mood and my body became red.
“Very strong was the faith of the people in those days. One hears that God used to dance then, taking the form of Kali, while the devotee clapped his hands keeping time.” (Source: Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna)
