This lecture was given on February 23, 2020, at the Vedanta Society of Northern California by Swami Tattwamayananda.

-The uniqueness of Sri Ramakrishna’s message and parables: “God is the only Reality. The only goal of life is God-realization.”
-In one parable, Shankaracharya teaches his disciple not to blindly imitate him in assuming that all things are Brahman alone. We need to transform our saṃskāra-s and vṛtti-s through meditation, unselfish service, and prayer in order to turn a concept into our reality.
-In another parable, a Homa bird is born in the sky from his Mother and starts falling to Earth. When he begins to see that he is about to hit the earth and die, he cries out and flies back up to his Mother in the sky. Highly evolved spiritual persons may be born for God-realization. When blows, shocking experiences, or good associations come, we may make a sudden change of course. Spiritual life becomes our only option.
- śabda-aparokṣa-vāda: we may suddenly realize the true implications of spiritual teachings. We feel at home. We may be helplessly (avaśo'pi) pulled toward spiritual life by the force of spiritual practices accumulated in previous lives (pūrva-abhyāsena).
-God’s grace is recognized as God’s grace when we make our own spiritual effort.
-In another parable, an animal is seen by many to be different colors. The one who really knows the animal knows that it is a chameleon. In spiritual life, we can also look beyond the diversities of interpretations of God.