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Philosophical Deliberations

Philosophical Deliberations by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Sunday 16 February 2014 18:07

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The consideration of the nature of the Supreme Absolute is known as Ontology.

Contemplation on the nature of the Creative God is known as Theology.

The study of the nature of the world is Astronomy, Geology, Geography and History.

The study of the individual is Psychology, including Psychoanalysis.

The study of the relationship between God and the world is Cosmology.

A probe into the relationship between the world and the individual is Epistemology.

The study of the relationship between individual and God is Religion.

The study of the relationship between one individual and another individual is Sociology, which includes Economics, Ethics and Politics.

Meditation is just Total Thinking. Now, what does this mean?

Generally when a person commences meditation, there is the initial attempt to concentrate the mind on one thought or a few thoughts as one would like to entertain, and at the same time there is a simultaneous attempt of the mind to reject certain other thoughts which one considers as irrelevant, obstructive or distracting. But here, in this process, one peculiarity hidden behind is mostly forgotten. And that is the impossibility of rejecting certain thoughts and entertaining only certain other thoughts which are regarded as conducive. The question here is: how would the mind entertain some thought and reject some other thought without being simultaneously aware that the rejected thought also is existing somewhere. In order to be able to reject one particular thought the mind, which rejects the thought, should also be present in the rejected thought. Hence no thought has been rejected, for the simple reason that the consciousness of rejection is also a thought. What is the remedy now?

It is necessary here to exercise great attention and bring about a reconciliation between the chosen thought and the rejected thought. How would this be possible since it is only the mind once again that has to effect this reconciliation. This would mean that the mind has to be present in the selected thought and the rejected thought as a third thought altogether, which is something astounding even to imagine. This third thought is not the thought of the chosen object and not also the thought of the rejected object. It is what they call a tertium quid which is for all practical purposes a miracle which ordinary thought cannot comprehend. This third thought is the total thought referred to above because it is present both in the chosen thought and the rejected thought and remains as an umpire between the chosen thought and the rejected thought.

Thus it would mean that the meditator is not the mind that is choosing a particular thought nor the one that is rejecting the thought. But to repeat once again, the total thought here rises a surprising impersonality of observation and the common complaint that the mind gets distracted on meditation vanished automatically. The so-called distraction that people complain about is attachment for one thought and hatred for another thought. Meditation is not on either the chosen thought or the rejected thought but the transcendent thought which rises above both the thoughts and yet is immanent in both.

Now, another trouble may arise inspite of all this effort mentioned above. This so-called transcendent thought is also a thought. But whose thought is it? It is necessary for every aspirant to recognise the tricky character of the mind. No one can be a great trickster than the mind of one’s own self. It is clever in deceiving itself. This transcendent thought, being also a thought, is to be contained in the mind, no doubt, but, beware, in a wider mind than the mind which brought about a division between the chosen thought and the rejected thought. The universe is wider than whatever the mind can think. It is therefore necessary to extend the boundary of this transcended thought further on by making it once again a chosen thought different from what any other thing that there may be in the universe. This process should go on almost indefinitely until the absolute reconciliation is achieved whereby what we call the world does not stand outside as a object to be rejected by gets reconciled with the great subjectivity achieved by the earlier processes. Philosophically this process is designated as position, opposition and reconciliation of thought which exercise the mind rises to the concept of God Almighty in which it absorbs itself in a state of perfect union and there would be no complaint hence forth about distraction and flitting of the mind from one place to another place. A meditator should also be a good psychologist, not to teach psychology to someone else but to understand one’s own mind. The greatest problem arises from one’s own self and not from anyone else.

All this is to say that a spiritual thought should be a total thought, virtually a universal thought.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

The Ontological Argument in Philosophy and Meditation Techniques

The Ontological Argument in Philosophy and Meditation Techniques by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Saturday 15 February 2014 10:33

It is a well-known fact that the process of meditation in the field of spiritual life is centralised in the attempt of consciousness to concentrate itself on Ultimate Reality. Here, in this connection, philosophical circles have been conducting deep researches into the possibility of Thought contacting Reality, and whether it is a possibility at all on account of the limitations to which psychological processes are naturally subject.

The seed of the controversy arose from the affirmation of the Greek philosopher, Plato, that Ideas are the Archetypes of things; that is, the forms of the objects visualised in sense perception and the objects which are the field of phenomena, are like shadows or copies of the Ideas which Plato affirmed as being universals. It was the insistence of Plato that the universal is prior to the particular, more real than the multiplicity of things, and that the Ideas are eternal while the objects of sense are perishable. Aristotle, his disciple, erroneously thought that Plato made a mistake in creating a division between eternity and time-process since the two realms fall apart from each other and eternity cannot invade the realm of phenomena. If this is the case, thought cannot contact reality, or as a consequence thereof, we may say that there is nothing in the world which can touch God by any means whatsoever. However, here Aristotle should be considered as gone wrong in the appreciation of Plato’s foundational doctrine, because nowhere do we find Plato asserting that there is no connection between the eternal Ideas and the phenomenal objects of sense. The very fact of the objects being considered as shadows of the Ideas should give us a clue to the relationship between the Ideas and objects. There cannot be a shadow unless there is an original and the relationship between the two is obvious. This means to say that the faculties which are otherwise considered as phenomenal are not entirely distinct from the characteristic of the eternity of the Ideas, and are not organically dissociated from Reality, and the very aspiration for God arising from the heart of the human being should be proof enough to demonstrate that there is a vital relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal, the world and God.

In the medieval ages, Saint Anselm propounded the argument known as the Ontological Argument for the existence of God, making out thereby that the thought of God cannot arise in the mind of a human being unless the potentiality for God’s Presence is already embedded in the human mind. Else, how does such an idea arise at all? As another great thinker has humorously said, the wonder is not whether God exists or God does not exist, but the wonder is that the tiny mind of the human being can conceive such a tremendous comprehensiveness called the Infinite. Saint Anselm’s argument is that the concept of God is itself proof for the existence of God; otherwise there should be no reason why such an idea should arise at all in the mind of the human being. It is well-known that nothing can arise from nothing and hence the thought of God cannot arise from a vacuum or a totally dissimilar cause.

Rene Descartes, the famous French Philosopher, modified this argument of St. Anselm and followed a mathematically deductive process of reasoning in proving the existence of God. Descartes concluded that a finite mind cannot be expected to generate within itself an Infinite Thought. The Infinite cannot arise either from a finite source or from vacuum. The Infinite can arise from the Infinite only. Descartes concludes that God Himself must have planted the idea of the Infinite in the mind of the human being; else, there is no explanation as to how such a profound thought can arise in a mortal brain, limited to sensory perceptions. His well-argued confirmation of the existence of an eternal Self is something well-known in the history of philosophy. He carried on a process of doubting everything that the mind can think and could doubt even the existence of his own self, but the fact that there is doubting, cannot itself be doubted. Unless the doubter exists, the doubt by itself will have no meaning. We may doubt everything, God, world, individual and everything, but cannot doubt the validity of there being such a thing as doubt. The doubter cannot be doubted. Further it follows from this argument that the doubter must be a conscious being, since there is no such thing as unconscious doubting. The doubter is conscious existence, one feature inseparable from the other. The Self is Existence-Consciousness. It is from this potential certitude of Self and the mind that thinks on the basis of this Self, that we can deduce further on the concept of the Infinite. The eternal is in the heart of man. God exists, because the thought of God exists.

However, the most formidable refutation of the Ontological Argument comes from the German Philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who analyses this Argument threadbare and concludes that the Ontological Argument has no philosophical value. Kant’s proposition is that the human mind can work only within phenomena and it cannot think noumena which transcend the boundaries of its capacity of knowledge. Hence, there is no such thing as Thinking God. Kant’s contention is that the ideas of God, world and soul are just regulative features, which suffice to give a synthetic unity of apperception to the perceptual process through space and time and the conceptual process through the categories of understanding, namely, the obligation on the part of the mind of the human being to think only in terms of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Since God is not a quantity, quality, relation or modality, the mind cannot think God. The Ontological Argument is hereby refuted. But, here, one can observe, Kant deeply errs in his conclusion.

The error of Kant consists in this: That the noumenon cannot be known, cannot be asserted by anything which is within phenomena. It is futile therefore to say that the noumenon cannot be known. If that were so, even such a statement cannot be made. The argument that noumenon cannot be known is self-defeating. The idea of the noumenon cannot arise if it has no connection with the idea at all, which, according to Kant, is within phenomena.

Hegel tries to rectify the deficiency in the argument of Kant that thought cannot contact reality. We have already noticed that Kant makes a mistake in confining all thought to phenomena and simultaneously asserting that the phenomenal thought cannot contact noumena. How does the idea of noumena arise in the phenomenal mind if the phenomenal mind cannot have even the idea of there being such a thing as the noumenon. Hegel turns the tables round by asserting that Kant’s insistence on making a distinction between phenomenon and noumenon defeats his own philosophy. There cannot be a knowledge that two things are separated from each other unless there is a third thing which knows that they are different from each other. The categories, which Kant feels are restrictive, are not actually the categories of the human mind as Kant seems to think. On the one hand Kant says that understanding creates nature, on the other hand he says that understanding cannot contact the real. Now, whose understanding creates nature. Can any human being’s mind achieve this feat? Is there anyone who with his mind can project a whole universe outside? Hegel argues that the understanding that Kant speaks of should be interpreted as cosmic understanding, the TOTAL MIND. This Total Mind is virtually the Mind of God. Thus, God alone can create nature. When the Ontological Argument asserts that thought is reality, it only means that Infinite Thought can contact Infinite Being. Hegel has brought God into the centrality of the thinking process. The Thought of God cannot be separated from God Himself. Universal Thought is the same as Universal Being. Indian philosophers explained this with the nomenclature that Sat is Chit, that is to say, Existence is Consciousness and Consciousness is Existence. Thus the ontological argument is reinstated by Hegel in the West and Acharya Shankara in the East.

Here is the highest technique of the greatest meditation which merges God, world and the individual in one breathless moment of ecstasy.

Comments by Laurence Browne on Swami Krishnananda’s “Ontological Argument in Philosophy”

The main thrust of Krishnananda’s article is, in his words, “St Anselm’s argument is that the concept of God is itself proof for the existence of God.” He says that this must be true because “nothing can arise from nothing”. This is very easily refuted because a) it cannot be proven to be correct, and is therefore simply a statement of faith or belief, and b) it does not necessarily follow, in logic or in practice, that the existence of an idea means that that to which the idea refers has objective existence, e.g. I can have an idea of dragon or a phoenix, but neither of these exist objectively, though they may exist in the realm of ideas, as does say, Tolkein’s Middle Earth or the various Buddhist worlds as described in some of the more grandiose sutras.

In the next paragraph Krishnananda uses Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” to support the existence of a self which can doubt anything except the existence of the doubting. From this he infers the existence of a ‘self’. Then he makes a big jump, again based on faith or belief rather than logic, to say that “The Self is Existence-Consciousness”. In other words he brings in a fundamental Indian concept to bolster his argument without first establishing the premises for that concept beyond saying that Descartes’ analysis of the self is proof that the ‘Self’ exists. He jumps from the small ‘s’ self to the big ‘S’ self with the sort of pseudo quantum leap that is not permissible in philosophical reasoning. In any event, Descartes’ analysis can easily be undermined by the ‘neti-neti’ or ‘vichira’ of jnana yoga, or an application of the Madyamika ialectic. And he ends this paragraph with a restatemant of the ontological proof: “God exists, because the thought of God exists.”

He then moves to Kant, who in his “formidable refutation” of the ontological proof stated that we can can only know phenomena and that the noumenon cannot be known. Krishnananda refutes Kant by restating the ontological argument as if he has already ‘re-proved’ it: “The error of Kant consists in this: That the noumenon cannot be known, cannot be asserted by anything which is within phenomena. It is futile therefore to say that the noumenon cannot be known. If that were so, even such a statement cannot be made.” This is circular logic, based on the notion that his analysis of Descartes has ‘proved’ the ontological argument.

Krishnananda also appears to misquote Kant when he says that “Kant says that understanding creates nature.” He then goes on to say, “Now, whose understanding creates nature? Can any human being’s mind achieve this feat?” But Kant never said that. He said (quoted in Flew’s Dictionary of Philosophy), “The order and regularity in objects, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. The understanding is itself the lawgiver of nature.” There is considerable difference between ‘creator’ (God) and ‘lawgiver’ (interpreter)!

Krishnananda also introduces in his defense of the ontological proof Hegel’s concept of the “absolute mind” and equates it with the “Mind of God”, stating that “Hegel has brought God into the centrality of the thinking process. The Thought of God cannot be separated from God Himself. Universal Thought is the same as Universal Being… Thus the ontological argument is reinstated by Hegel in the West…” Krishnananda makes several logical leaps, not the least being that of equating Hegel’s idea of the absolute (the theoretical summation of dialectical reasoning) with the unconditioned Absolute (Brahman) of Indian thought. Even if it was, the thought of Brahman (a concept, however vast) is clearly not the ‘Thought’ of Brahman (the Sanscrit ‘chit’), and we are left where we started with the ontological argument neither proven nor somehow ‘reinstated’ in Western philosophy; for Hegel’s concept of the absolute remains just that: a concept. The finger pointing at the moon is not and can never be the moon itself. As for the ontological proof it may be worth quoting Frithjof Schuon on the subject:

“To be able to accept the ontological proof of God, which deduces from the existence of an innate concept the existence of the objective reality corresponding thereto, one must begin by realising that the truth does not depend on reasoning – obviously it is not reason that has created it… In every act of assent by the intellect there is an element which escapes the thinking process, rather as light and colour elude the grasp of geometry, which can, none the less, symbolise them indirectly and remotely. There is no such thing as “pure proof”; every proof presupposes the knowledge of certain data. The ontological proof, formulated by Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm, carries weight for the person who already has at his disposal some initial certainties, but it has no effect upon the willfully and systematically superficial mind… Some of the Scholastic philosophers were too Aristotelian to be able to accept the usefulness of the ontological proof; reason was considered by them as leading to a certainty that was in some way new, rather than to Platonic “reminiscence.” (Logic and Transcendence, 1984, p.59)

Concerning the Ontological Argument

I have received a critique offered on my essay, The Ontological Argument, by Laurence Browne, for which I am grateful.

The History of Philosophy, whether in the East or in the West, has been a search for a relevance which remains to be discovered between Appearance and Reality. My purpose has always been not to enter into futile polemic but to arrive at a conviction that a thing called God must exist, without which certitude life would lose meaning. The technical description of the process of arriving at this certitude attempted by Philosophy is what is generally known as the Ontological Argument, meaning thereby Proof of Being. The part of my essay which the critique has not touched is the beginning paragraph pointing to Plato’s doctrine of Ideas or The Idea which acts as the Archetype of everything phenomenal. We need not go here into the further development of this thought of Plato as there being archetypes for everything in the world, something which looks like there being an ‘eternal object’ for every ‘actual occasion’ in the language of A.N. Whitehead. The critique mentions here that the idea of a thing does not mean that the thing indicated by the idea does really exist; that is to say, there need not be an objective existence corresponding to the idea of a thing. Without going further into this subject, I would elicit an answer from the learned critic to Plato’s doctrine of the Idea, which I believe Whitehead deeply appreciates, holding the opinion that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. I would be edified if some light is thrown on this issue.

It was Acharya Sankara in India who formulated the argument for an Ontological Being in his statement that no one can deny one’s own self or one’s own existence. This existence has also to be a conscious existence, because unconscious existence cannot be conceived. In Sankara’s words, this point is expressed as Satta eva cha bodho, bodha eva cha satta – existence is consciousness and consciousness is existence. From the certitude of the existence of one’s own self, the certitude of the existence of anything else also follows, as is corroborated by Immanual Kant in his chapter on the ‘Refutation of Idealism’.

As far as my reference to Rene Descartes is concerned, it is just to say that his point is not much different from Sankara’s dictum that the ‘I’ exists, and it cannot be denied, because to deny the ‘I’, another ‘I’ would be required, a process which may lead to infinite regress. I do not know if there is any jump, as the critique points out, when it is discovered that the self is existence which is conscious. I do not also know if there is any objection to finding a common ground between Sankara’s position as regards self and Kant’s asseveration of a Transcendental Apperception, whatever meaning one would like to associate with Kant’s presuppositions. The finitude of one’s own self cannot rest quiet without finding comfort in a ‘more than itself’. The finite has necessarily to make an automatic reference to a non-finite, which is generally designated as the Infinite. Human aspiration is never complete in its fulfilment without absolute fulfilment.That the existence of an idea does not necessarily indicate the existence of the thing to which the idea seems to refer, is a point to consider. Well, let us go further.

We may cite one sutra from the great Yoga Text, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, from its third chapter, which reads as ‘Bahir akalpita vrittih mahavideha, tatah prakasavaranakshayah’. The suggested meaning of this Sutra is that the empirical thought, which we may consider as a psychological function that artificially relates itself to an object outside is one thing, and the thought precedent to this empirical thought which may be regarded as the way in which Cosmic Thought is inseparably related to the psychological thought, is another thing. The point is that an individualised psychological thought cannot even function as it is distanced from its object by the intervention of space and time, unless at the back of it, integrally related, there is a Thought which does not require an object outside it, as this Thought is inseparable from its object. Here Thought is Being. The sutra makes out that this Metaphysical Thought, when deeply meditated upon, leads to the liberation of the finite thought from getting entangled in space and time and absorbs it into the Overself, which we may consider as the Transcendental Thought, or what we may say in the language of religious devotion, God-Thought – not God’s thought but God Himself as the Thought. This marvellous discovery, I believe, is what Aristotle intends when he makes out that God is Thought thinking Itself, the Prime mover of the world. Thinkers like Sir James Jeans have dared to say that God is just thought, may be a mathematical thought. To Sir Arthur Eddington, ‘The stuff of the world is consciousness.’

This is to say that it need not always be true that the idea does not have any relation to the thing of which it is the idea. Else, Acharya Sankara and Plato would be misled in their doctrines, and even Kant would be wrong if he does not set aside his critical phenomenal shackles with no reference to the noumenon; because a thing that is considered phenomenal cannot intelligibly exist without reference to something which is not phenomenal.

Laurence Browne’s Reply to Swami Krishnananda’s Reply

Thank you very much for your response to my critique. As you say, the purpose is not to get into debate, so I’ll just make one or two points.

Firstly, concerning Plato. Within Western philosophy Plato was the first real metaphysician. So powerful and influential was his system through the ages that Whitehead said – and no-one disagreed with him – that European philosphy had been a series of footnotes to Plato. As a result of creating his realm of Ideas and Forms, Plato became the first philosopher to systematically conceptualise the direct experience of both goodness and truth. After Plato goodness became an ethical ideal and truth the correctness of an intellectual judgment. Here we have the beginnings of the profound difference in the understanding of the nature of truth between the East (direct experience of Satchitanand) and the West (the correctness of an intellectual judgment). The same difference can be seen in Shankara’s understanding of ‘I’ and Descartes’ understanding of ‘I’: chalk and cheese as we say!

Whitehead himself tried to get away from the conceptualisation of experience – and from Plato’s overwhelming influence – and so developed his system of ‘process philosophy’ which is worth looking into. For example, Whitehead regarded space time and matter as abstractions, and in his view to consider them to be real would be to fall into the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ since the conceptualisations of space, time and matter are mental constructs and are not the result of direct perception.

Because truth, in the West, became the correctness of an intellectual judgment, and later, with the scientific method, something for which we must have physical evidence, the traditional proofs of God, such as the Ontological and Cosmological Proofs, are not taken seriously in the West as proof that God exists. The proofs, however, can be used to assist those who already have a sense that there is a Supreme Being and want to become firm in their understanding. I myself found the Cosmological Proof (the idea of a First Cause) a great help to me when I was younger. Perhaps the most beautiful thing I have read on the Ontological Proof comes from Simone Weil: “The Ontological Proof is mysterious because it does not address itself to intelligence, but to love.”

Perhaps the greatest Ontological Proof is our own experience of the inner self, which is the fount of bliss and warmth in our hearts. Ontology means being, and where else but in our own being can we experience its reality and depth? Also, the very existence of the saints and sages, who were and are filled with Sat, Chit and Anand, is a tremendous Ontological Proof, and one that must go hand in hand with our own inner experience. Only hints and indications can come from philosophy and reason, never proof in the modern sense.

A little more on Kant. In the early 19th Century the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher took Kant’s morally independent self (the phenomenonal self, cut off from noumenon) and asserted that it was able to experience its own transcendence through a “feeling of absolute dependence.” Schleiermacher thus shifted the defense of religion from reason (the Proofs etc) to direct experiece. According to Louis Dupre (in ‘Transcendent Selfhood’), “Scleiermacher’s feeling of dependence is more than a merely subjective experience which would fall under the objections of Kant’s critique. It is a total consciousness which is both objective and subjective. Indeed it is man’s most profound awareness of his own nature… The feeling of absolute dependence… reveals the transcendent ground of consciousness, the point in which consciousness is both itself and more than itself.”

So Schleiermacher, both theologically and philosophically, established the connection between the phenomenon and the noumenon, which Kant had denied. He made the shift from thought to feeling, from the head to the heart, and that is the shift that has to be made by each person who wants proof that God exists. As Simone Weil said, “The Ontological Proof is mysterious because it does not address itself to intelligence, but to love.” And love springs from the heart, not the head. (The Simone weil quote is taken from Iris Murdoch’s “Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals” which has a very comprehensive chapter on the Ontological Proof.)

There is a very nice quote from the science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, which you might enjoy: “Logic is an organised way of going wrong with confidence.” I really like that one!

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

God and Humanity

God and Humanity by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Friday 14 February 2014 16:38

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I

A question which is purely technical, which cannot be decided at once by the generality of mankind, arises in the mind of a serious seeker after Truth, viz., his relation to society and to its institutions. Judged dispassionately, the issue of the necessity or otherwise of such a seeker to concern himself either with society or institutions seems to arise due to a thoroughly misconceived notion of the nature of the Truth – the existence of God. The need or the absence of need for relations of any kind, much less obligations or duties, towards society and institutions crops up only if God is an other-worldly being, as is the conclusion of the usual theological concepts in all religions, and his existence somehow falls outside the scope and operation of the world and society. There have been controversies and heated arguments over the extent of importance to be given either to meditation or service, for example, and several schools of thought have risen out of this dichotomy in position. This is, to put it prosaically, the controversy between the schools of Jnana and Karma – knowledge and action – a subject which has been discussed by many scholars ever since the Acharyas wrote commentaries on the cardinal scriptures on which Indian culture is based.

All this is just mentioning in different ways the same old problem of man’s relation to God and to the world or society. Unfortunately, people get emotionally warmed up in themselves whenever this question is raised and it is rare that one finds time to consider the subject in a scientific spirit by objective observation as a research man in any field of learning would actually be expected to do. The factor of emotion immediately rushes in whenever there is a talk of humanity, ‘other people’, ‘our brethren’ or ‘the sufferings of people’, and the general mind would even regard it as heretical to raise the question of the need or otherwise of a person to concern himself with this complexity, which is almost equated with the duty of man.

But, to come to the point again, our approach has naturally to be scientific and not emotional and, really, this is one of the precise conditions of conducting any successful research. Hence, the problem has to be tackled in an unbiased manner, placing oneself in the position of a mere witness and not a party in the game. Thus analysed, it comes about that the question of man’s relation to society and institutions has much to do with the nature of God’s existence and, unless this is first settled, what follows from it is a consequence also cannot be properly ascertained. Now, the existence of God, to define it impersonally, taking God by himself in his own independent status, has been accepted to be free from limitations of any kind, which means to say that he covers all states of being, manifested or unmanifested, and there can really be nothing unknown to him and hence outside the purview of his existence. This would imply that there can be no reality worth its name outside the Being of God, and the world and the individuals have to be summed under his Infinite Being, so that the world and humanity fall within the scope of the Existence of God.

Here, any doubt as to whether God exists or not should be considered wholly irrelevant, since our definition of God is that it is an appellation of the nature of Being in its absolute state, whose significance cannot be set aside even by modern physical science, what to speak of the more amenable sciences of biology and psychology. The theories of electromagnetism, quantum, wave-mechanics and relativity, with many things that follow in the wake of their discoveries, border on the acceptance of the Absolute as the only reality. The more metaphysical and spiritual approaches, both in the East and in the West, have held this premise as the very rock-foundation of the edifices of philosophy.

But there have been a multitude of misconstrued ideas which apparently seem to follow from this definition of God’s Being, viz., that mankind or humanity is God and, as a corollary of this position, that service of man is service of God. But it is forgotten that the concept of humanity is a concept of limitation, while it has already been agreed that God has to be free from limitations. God is neither an individual among many others nor a sum-total of individuals, which is precisely the character of humanity. Hence the identification of humanity with God is an unreasoned result of emotional enthusiasm in relation, which easily takes hold of the mass-man, by dinning into the ears of people slogans, shibboleths and stock sayings on the theme that humanity is God, its worship is the worship of God, and the like. One’s upbringing in family and social conditions from one’s very childhood in the circumstance of an untiring repetition of such formulae and mass-propaganda carried on in such religion, to whose steady effects no ordinary human find can be immune, is responsible for the insinuation of the concept of a socialised God into the minds of mankind. This doctrine, no doubt, carries one to some extent and even appears to succeed for many years through history, as any repeatedly propagated cult can. But propaganda is not and has never been a weapon of final victory. For, it is a uniformly adopted medium of any theory or ideal, real or unreal. The nature of reality, however, springs up spontaneously, slowly blooming like a flower, in the hearts of gifted men who begin to see an indivisible limitlessness extending through and beyond the obvious and natural limitations of humanity and the world.

This urge of reality, when it rises in one’s heart, becomes irresistible, for what is real can never be resisted. It is in the light of this urge, which certain Western philosophers have called the nisus for reality present in all Nature, which rare souls visualise the existence of a transcendence of spiritual immanence in the universe and recognise at once the impossibility of any identification of the finite with the Infinite. No man can be God, not even all men put together can be God – thus God transcends humanity – because humanity is the name of a particular species of individuals whose mathematical total is regarded as a unity only in the psychological sense of one individual thinking the other, but never being the other, but God is Supreme Being. Here is the unarticulated but ostensible difference between the nature of humanity and the nature of God. But this truth can never become patent in an uninitiated mind which is accustomed to think in terms of slogan and propaganda, cults and creeds, and thinks, also, only through the emotion.

Nevertheless, the mass-mind cannot at once be educated, because its main defects are dependence on sense-objects for the assessment of any value and a rather too heavy emphasis on the economic and biological existence of man than any deeper intrinsic worth or meaning in his existence as once having a non-dependent status of its own. It may be added here that much of the cult of humanity-worship and its deification is a cumulative outcome of the urges of hunger, wealth, self-glorification and power, which constitute the triple passion in an individual. When these urges become so dominant as the be regarded as necessities of life, they begin to rule mankind as its masters and what comes out of man begins to subordinate him to the level of a mere tool or puppet that is operated by strings. Psychology and psycho-analysis in modern times have done much research in this line and the nature of the consequences of these human urges, including the gregarious instinct, has been studied and analysed into its components. That man is under an illusion of the spell cast before him by the urges of wealth, sex and power is not something unknown to well-informed minds and the present-day crisis of humanity cannot but be traced to the working of a long rope that has been given by man to these urges that are trying to destroy him from the very roots. A careful study of advanced sociology, history and psychology will prove this fact to the hilt.

The spiritual seekers, mention of whom has been made above, are, however, an exception to the general mass thinking through the gregarious urge and they keep themselves alive to the urge for God, the Almighty, within themselves, as the nisus to perfection. When the urge for God rises within the soul of the seeker, the whole universe would appear to suck him into its bosom, from every atom and part of its extensive mass of creation, and in the initial stages this divine urge would seem to be the shooting of a luminous spark from within oneself and then gradually it increases its proportion into the surge of a rushing star, then the flash of a lightning, a flaming conflagration and, finally, an inundating flood of oceanic force and grandeur. A seeker caught up in any one of these divine manifestations would be able to see inwardly a super-mathematical unit of indivisible existence whose minutest manifestation exceeds the totality of mankind and the world, for the spirit is not magnitude, measurable in terms of the space-time extension. Ushered in by this current of the divine flood, the seeker can no more see meaning in the multitude of finites, and individualities and even the whole of humanity and the world, because all these which have so much significance to the mind that sees through the senses present themselves before the seeking soul as parts melting into the whole to which they organically belong and in which God becomes their very Soul, their very existence. To those souls that seek God in his essential Being, not merely as a transcendence but also as an immanence and absoluteness, the question of their relation to society, institutions and the world does not arise; it just does not exist. Truly, this is the ideal and the goal of anything, anywhere and no man on earth can hold an ideal superior or even equal to this grand consummation of one’s enthronement in Universal Being. And this does not call for any proof or demonstration of its indubitably.

II

But it may be held that the question of one’s relation to the world and humanity shall remain valid as long as knowledge comes through the senses and the world is visible before one’s eyes. This situation of the sensibility of the world includes the perception of others outside oneself, especially other human beings. One’s physical and psychological limitations manifesting themselves generally as hunger, thirst, heat, cold and fear of death and specially as the desire for wealth, sex and power, compel a person to depend upon other persons for the fulfilment or the mitigation of these instincts, and this results in the concept of humanity as a corporate body, an indispensable necessity and where utter selfishness of individuals or a group of individuals does not attempt to ruin other individuals even at its own peril, mankind exercises that understanding by which it recognises the need for a mutual co-operation among people, naturally involving some sacrifice of personal interest, and realises the impossibility of existing in the world without such co-operation. While the majesty of the Absolute in its superabundance and completeness referred to earlier in this section above is mainly the central content of the Upanishads, a divinely related humanitarian concept of mutual service is the preponderating doctrine of the Bhagavadgita. The sage of the Upanishad merges into the Absolute and enters the very fibre of all creation as its very soul and existence, and the Krishna of the Bhagavadgita, while he draws into his personality the dignity of the Universal God, at once becomes the paragon of humanity and exemplifies in his life the integrality of behaviour, conduct and action which sweeps over all mankind and unifies it as a social organism not only spiritually but also ethically and politically. We are here speaking of the position of man who is incapable of avoiding the sensing of a world outside him and Krishna’s teaching is to such a man. It is also with due consideration to this situation of man in the world that the ancient seers ordained upon him the daily performance of the five great sacrifices known as Pancha Mahayajnas, viz., service to the celestial beings, service to the seers of learning, service to the ancestors, service to man and service to the sub-human creatures of the world. This is an all-comprehending system of ritual to accentuate service of others which is obligatory on the part of man as long as he enjoys personally the bounties of Nature and the charitableness of other human beings. This is the position impossible of avoidance so long as the universal flood of God-urge has not yet been stirred within oneself and man perforce hangs on the world and the other individuals for his subsistence in a variety of forms.

With this intention of the fulfilment of duty as mutual service and support, the organisation of people into the spiritual, political, economic and labour groups was formed in ancient times, particularly in India, under the Sanskrit names of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra. These groups were especially classified as mutually inclusive powers and never exclusive elements as they later on got interpreted by habit, prejudice and selfishness of the part of the ego of man. Everywhere, it should be easy to see that fulfilment and complete success of the core cannot be achieved without the mutual collaboration of spiritual power, political power, economic power and man-power. This classification of human groups for the purpose of the constructive activity of society as a whole can never be gainsaid and substituted, much less avoided, by any other means of achieving human welfare. Spiritual idealism bereft of the other three brother forces in the world is likely to get degenerated into arm-chair philosophy and impractical suggestions for the improvement of man’s condition in the process of evolution. Here we have to carefully distinguish between this class of spiritual ministry as a part of the social set-up and those rarer, master-minds who seek to merge and absorb all these four values of life in the universal divine flood about which we have made sufficient observation above. These are the higher classes of an almost super-human type who are a little different from the kind of spiritual teachers and guides who are referred to here as forming a group to minister to the spiritual needs of people. Where the political aspect is emphasised to the detriment of the other three aspects, it may land in tyranny, despotism and dictatorship. The history of the world has seen both these over-emphases through the churches of the religions and the rulers of states. A tendency to emphasise the economic aspects leads to materialism, atheism and hedonism, which is the marked trend of the present day world, especially in the second half of the 20th century. This aspect is, however, linked up with the emphasis of the labour group also, so that, today, we find the third and the fourth groups getting mixed up promiscuously and attempting to rule human destiny. It need not be reiterated that such illogical over-accentuation of any particular group is not only harmful to the growth and function of the other three essential aspects of the life of man but also defeats its own purpose in the end, due to its false isolation of the other necessary aspects of the life complete.

There is also another aspect of this question which has originated in the rising of several institutions in the world whose founders honestly felt a need to serve humanity. But the intention of the founders is with difficulty carried through by their alleged followers not only on account of inadequate spiritual inspiration and understanding but also the intrusion of practical interest of a personal nature that dilutes the original wish of the founder. This deficiency has another awful side and it is the fact that where the spiritual ideal is ignored, the material aspects of life automatically get bolstered up, even as strong winds begin to blow when the sun is covered with clouds. This is natural law and it does not spare anyone from the impact of its operation. Thus, religious churches and institutions may degenerate into centres of mere economic force which may exclusively attract the attention of their heads who may not be aware that they have totally missed the aim for which the organisations were originally formed. But the difficulty does not end here. It goes further head-long into the political field and the institutions may not only engage themselves in their own internal political administration but also take part in the outward politics of the State, far, far from the original ideal of the founders. Now, nothing can be a greater travesty than this, that the intention to do service gets side-tracked along the lanes of wealth and power.

III

Spiritual seekers, to clarify whose position is the intention of this article, thus get bifurcated into the purely God-inspired, whole-timed Sadhakas and the probationers on the path who aspire to seek perfection but cannot escape the shackles of the world and human society. There is little difficulty before the higher class of seekers, but the troubles of the second group are galore. The reason for this is that they are unable to strike a balance between God and the world, the technique of which the Bhagavadgita has endeavoured to explain in great detail. A harmony between the inner and the outer is difficult enough to maintain always because of the strength of sensory forces influencing the mind through out the waking life of the individual. A counter-force from within has to be generated to keep the balance of consciousness so that the outer forces of sense-perception may not overwhelm it and make it merely an instrument of sense-gratification and the physical urges. This art is called Yoga, the union of the inner and the outer of the higher and the lower. If God is indivisible existence in his pure absoluteness, unrelated to externality of any kind, he appears as harmony in the universe of manifestation. Hence we can safely conclude that wherever is this balance and harmony of forces, there is the presence of God in some proportion. The harmony has to be worked out in the body, mind and spirit, as well as in society and the world. Physical harmony is health. Mental harmony is sanity. Spiritual harmony is intuition. Social harmony is the peace of the world.

The consciousness of indivisibility originally receives the touch of the relative in self-consciousness which immediately implies the existence of space outside oneself, though, in this primordial state, the consciousness of space may look inseparable from self-consciousness. Almost simultaneously with this, there is the consciousness of time as a process in which the consciousness find itself. The fourth step is the consciousness of objects outside, which primarily may appear to be organically related to consciousness. Up to this stage, it may be said, consciousness has not been ‘entangled’, in the sense in which this situation is generally understood, But the difficulty commences with the further movement of consciousness when it assumes the mark of an individuality of its own and isolates itself from other such centres of consciousness as well as objects by regarding everyone of them as external. There are, however, certain implications of the consciousness of separated individuality, which are mainly the sense of heat and cold, hunger and thirst and the fear of death of oneself as a bodily entity. The metabolic process is set up into action and sleep then becomes a necessity to cause repair to the wear and tear of the body thereby, as well as due to continued object-consciousness in the ‘wakeful’ condition, one which is obviously unnatural to pure consciousness. The functions of breathing, thinking, feeling and understanding, with their concomitants, follow at once. Up to this stage, the individual may be said to have been externalised into the biological and the psychological make-up of personality. In the case of man, this is pure humanity.

But certain other processes which should be regarded as the abnormal functions of the individual’s psychology now commence with the rise of the desire for material possessions – wealth and property – the desire for sexual contact and the sense of self-respect which materialises into the desire of self-glorification and the exercise of power over those outside oneself, which all come step by step, in succession. Here, the entanglement of consciousness is complete, and this is what is known as Samsara, or the painful earthly life. It is unfortunate that the mind of man does not rest even with this self-degeneration and, by process of time, getting itself accustomed to this condition, as if it is its natural state, forms its philosophy of ‘it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven’. The result of this is the formulation of erroneous philosophies such as materialism, scepticism, agnosticism, pluralism, formalism, such as we find in the addiction to mere ritual, as well as the several arts and sciences which man regards as his highest achievements today but which are intended only to rationalise and perpetuate the condition of entanglement of consciousness with objects of various kinds, into which is has already descended. Even the so-called impersonal sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and empirical psychology appear to be valid only so long as Nature is regarded as external consciousness. A philosophy based on this bifurcation of experience cannot therefore save consciousness from the pains it suffers in entanglement.

The technique of Yoga as a method of striking a balance between consciousness and objects is the first part of the individual’s return to the universal. The second part of this attempt is the still higher stage of meditation by which the realisation comes that consciousness and its objects are not merely in a state of organised balance but form one unitary being. Philosophers like Kant, in the West, with all their acuteness of analysis, came to the conclusion that Reality cannot be known by consciousness, because of the difficulty in getting rid of the usual intellectual prejudice that the object of consciousness has always to be outside itself. This led Kant to the position of what he calls the paralogisms of conflict in philosophical position in regard to the truth of the mutual relation among God, the world and the individual. This difficulty is overcome in the philosophy of the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads, a careful study of which every student of Yoga should make, going to the essential spirit of these teachings. It is outside the scope of this essay to go into details of the great gospels given by these scriptures to humanity, which constitute an independent subject by itself. It is hoped that seekers on the spiritual path will fare well if they take note of all these unavoidable aspects of their spiritual life, and where sincerity is the keynote, God is sure to shower his blessings.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

The Search for Reality

The Search for Reality by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Thursday 13 February 2014 17:54

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What is Reality? Reality is that which never changes, which is absolute, unlimited, and is never contradicted by any other thing or experience. How is it known that Reality is changeless? Well, then, let us take for granted that Reality is changing, that Reality is that which changes. Now, what is change? Change is a modification of something from one condition to another condition. The death of one condition of a thing and the birth of another condition is what is meant by the change of that thing. Now, does the thing itself change, or is it something else in it that changes? If the thing itself, in its essence, changes, the death of one of its conditions would mean the death of its essence or existence itself, so that there would be nothing left in it to undergo the experience of another subsequent condition. If, in change, there is absolute death of a thing that changes, then what is there to be called a change? The very phrase ‘change of a thing’ signifies the existence of a continuous thing, even under different and varying conditions, forms or modes. If there is no continuity of substance, there cannot be change of that substance. Unless there is something which does not move and which is different from movement, there cannot be any such thing as movement. All actions presuppose an actionless being. How does one know that there is change in anything? The consciousness of change means the consciousness of the death of one condition of a thing and of the birth of its other condition. That means, the knower of change exists even when one condition of that changeful thing ceases to be, and it exists also when another of its conditions rises or is given birth to. The consciousness of the distinction between one condition and another condition of a thing is not possible unless the consciousness itself is not thus divided, and does not change with change or die with death. The knower of change does not change. If the knower of change changes, there can be no such thing as knowledge or awareness of change. The changeless consciousness, which is the unaffected and undivided witness of all change, is the Reality. Thus it is proved that Reality is changeless.

Now, can Reality be known? If it is known, what is its nature? What is the conclusion of physical science regarding the nature of the Reality? Do the ultimate particles called protons and electrons to which the whole universe is reduced by science constitute the ultimate Reality? Is one particle different from another particle, or not? If one is different from the other, what is that which exists between two particles? If that is something which is different from these particles, these particles cannot be the ultimate Reality, for, then, there would be heterogeneity in existence, and not unity or undividedness. If there is no distinction among the particles, there can be no particles or protons and electrons, but there can only be a huge mass of energy which is indistinguishable. Is this ultimate homogeneous energy, to which science reduces the whole universe, static or kinetic? If it is kinetic or dynamic it means that energy is in motion, and motion is impossible without division or spatiality. If the energy is motionless and changeless, then, what has science to say about its essential nature? Is it conscious or inert? Is the scientist who is the knower of the existence of this energy made up of this very same energy, or not? Certainly, if the whole universe is but this one energy, the scientist who is the knower of this energy cannot be excluded from it or be outside it. If this energy is inert in its nature, the knower of this energy, also, should be inert, for the knower is a part of Reality, which is this energy, according to the scientist. The final conclusion therefore is that if knowledge exists in the knower, this energy must be knowledge in its nature, so that the ultimate Reality becomes not an inert mass of energy but indivisible consciousness.

The position that consciousness is only an offshoot of physical energy is untenable. Is consciousness identical with this energy, or is it different from it? If it is different from it, consciousness cannot be the effect of material energy. If it is identical with energy, how can the two be different in their characteristics? How is it possible to maintain that intelligence is the result of the transformation of an inert matrix? How can something come out of nothing? What is the basis for consciousness? If consciousness is to proceed from matter or energy, the essential nature of this matter or energy should be consciousness or intelligence. Rarefied matter cannot be intelligence; subtlety is not the only condition to be fulfilled in order to obtain consciousness. Illumination, understanding, constitutes the essential nature of consciousness. And this quality cannot be attributed to material energy, even if it be highly rarefied or made transparent in the process of evolution. If the very existence of consciousness is denied, and if only the existence of matter is asserted, we say that this contradicts the very basis of the argument, for, without consciousness, not even matter can be posited. Matter becomes a myth when it is bereft of relation to consciousness. Consciousness is the fundamental being which can never be gainsaid at any time.

Now, does the scientist admit the existence of an ultimate Reality? He does, and he should, if his statements should be reasonable or tenable, and be based on direct experience. No doubt there are some who claim to have no knowledge of anything except of phenomena; but they, obviously, cannot say that this knowledge should be valid, ultimately. But, if the scientist is to admit that there is a Reality, how can he defend himself? How does he know that Reality exists? He knows this through observation and experiment. His experience consists of the knowledge which he derives as a result of observation through the senses. That means his knowledge of the Reality is what is given to him through the senses. Now, can Reality be known through the senses? If Reality is accepted to be changeless – and we have already proved it to be such – it cannot be known through something which is changing. If Reality can be known through the senses, the senses should be changeless, even as Reality is. But, are the senses changeless? Definitely not. The senses are instruments of knowledge, and it is well known that the nature of the instruments influences and determines the nature of the knowledge of the Reality which is their object. If the instruments which are used in observation are defective, the knowledge which is received through them cannot be perfect. The senses have a particular constitution, they have a particular make-up, and if this constitution or make-up is changed, the knowledge which is received through them also will change. Our eyeballs are something like lenses, and we know what kind of knowledge of the objects in the world we would get if we are to wear different spectacles with lenses of different constitutions or make-up. It is possible for us to see a square object otherwise, a round object as something else, a green object as of some other colour, height as depth, and depth as height, etc., if only we have different glasses to see through. The senses are of such a nature that the knowledge which is given to us through them cannot be relied upon as something eternally changeless. The senses are changing, and therefore Reality which is changeless cannot be known through the senses. Even the changeless, when it is seen through the changing, will appear as changing, for the object of knowledge always partakes of the qualities of the means of knowledge. The senses cannot give us Reality. As the man of physical science has the senses as his sole means of knowledge, he cannot know Reality with his knowledge.

Then, what is Reality, and how can one know Reality? What means of knowledge has man got, other than the senses? The only means which remains to be considered is the mind. But this is beyond the region of the physicist or the scientist. This is the region of philosophy or metaphysics. Can the philosopher know Reality with the help of his rationalistic mind? For this, the mind itself has to be examined. What are the powers of the mind? To what extent can it comprehend Reality? Is the mind changeful or changeless? It may be noted in this connection that the mind, as a means of knowledge, is not much better off than the senses. The mind changes from one person to another person, and from one condition to another condition even in the same person. The stronghold of the mind is reason, logic and argumentation. But the mind works within the realm limited by its own constitution built up by the hypothetical notions of space, time and causation (quantity, quality, relation and modality). These categories which constitute the nature and the workings of the mind limit its operations, and thus it cannot have a changeless knowledge of Reality as such, independent of its modes. Therefore, the philosopher who is totally dependent upon the workings of the schematising mind, too, cannot know Reality. The mind is an individualistic principle, and so it is changeful. The mind works in the waking and the dreaming states. Can one know the Reality in the waking and the dreaming states? The Reality cannot be known in these two states, because here the mind is functioning with its categories, and as long as this mind is the means of knowing Reality, one cannot have perfect knowledge of Reality as such.

What is the means to the knowledge of Reality as it is in itself? If it is not the mind and the senses – the causes of the experiences of the individual – then what other state of experience does a person pass through, unaffected by the modifications of the mind and the senses? There is one more state left, than the waking and the dreaming states. It is deep sleep. In deep sleep there is no action of the mind and the senses. Therefore the individual in the state of deep sleep is not obstructed by the categories of the mind and the limitations of the senses. Therefore, perhaps, there is a possibility of knowing Reality as such in the state of deep sleep. But, unfortunately, one does not have experience of consciousness in the deep sleep state. In this deep sleep state also, Reality cannot be known, for, when there is no conscious experience at all, there can be no knowledge of Reality. And all people have the experiences only of these three states, and nothing else. Hence no man on earth, who is limited to these three states, can know Reality as such.

Now, does a person exist in the state of deep sleep, or not? Certainly he does not die, but does exist in the state of deep sleep. It is evident that the senses do not exist as conscious agents in deep sleep. But the person exists. Therefore, the real person is different from the senses. The mind also does not function in deep sleep. But the person lives. Therefore, the real person is different from the mind. Then, what does exist in the state of deep sleep? It is ignorance that exists there. Then, is the real person who exists in the deep sleep state identical with this ignorance? If it is so, who knows that this person is identical with ignorance? That knower cannot be ignorant, for knowledge and ignorance are opposites of each other. How does a person know that he did exist in the state of deep sleep? This he knows by remembrance, in the waking state, of his having had the experience of deep sleep. Is remembrance possible without a preceding conscious experience? Memory is the effect of impressions left of a past immediate experience. There is a common consciousness which is the link connecting the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. But for this one consciousness there would be no continuity or survival of personality. Therefore there should have been the consciousness of existence in deep sleep, even if it appeared to be covered by ignorance. As everything – ignorance, change, objectness and every phenomenon – is known to a conscious subject, and nothing prior or antecedent to knowledge or consciousness is ever possible, the essential existence of the knower should be pure consciousness or knowledge itself.

Now, is consciousness limited, or not? All objects in this universe are limited by space and time. Is consciousness also limited in this way? If it is so, it follows that consciousness knows that limitation – that it is limited by something outside it. In order to have a consciousness of something outside consciousness, consciousness should exceed itself. In other words, consciousness should extend beyond its limitation. That is, consciousness should be unlimited. The essential existence of the knower, therefore, is unlimited knowledge – absolute consciousness. Only this can be the Reality. Here, the object and the subject coalesce and become one existence. The knower and the known are one. The universe is not objective, not a phenomenon outside. Consciousness is not inert, not divided, not a mass of particles called atoms, protons and electrons, not waves of probability, not an indistinguishable, indeterminable, dark mass of energy, but pure consciousness – indivisible, infinite, immortal, eternal, absolute. This is the only Reality, and it is identical with pure experience as one with itself, not to be known by any other – known as itself by itself, as existence, consciousness and bliss in one, independent of body, senses, the vital energies, mind, intellect, ignorance, cause, effect, and all relative phenomena. Consciousness as such is Reality. It is realised through deep meditation, in direct experience.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

The Search for Truth

The Search for Truth by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Wednesday 12 February 2014 17:15

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The world we live in is mostly utilitarian, for to it utility has been the test of truth. If something is workable and useful, it is also meaningful and therefore real. This is sometimes identified with the pragmatic viewpoint, a purely working hypothesis on the basis of sensibility akin to animal perception. The subhuman instinct seen in animals functions upon the logic of pure utility – whatever satisfies hunger and sex and guards the instinct for life is real. But in man there is an additional factor: ego – whatever satisfies it also is real. Satisfaction of these urges is finally a factor of utility, and they have to be real in order that their satisfactions and their counterparts be real.

But, what is meant by being real? Tentatively speaking, for a thing to be real it has to persist in time and space as judged by a centre of experiencing consciousness. Now, this drags the factor of time and space also into the issue of reality. But what is the reason behind this judgment that to be real is to persist in space and time? We have to conclude that this is the only way in which the experiencing consciousness can decide the nature of reality. This position seems to land us in a question that we shall be discussing shortly.

It was realised by some that pure utility cannot always be the test of truth. Perception of mirage water under the notion that it is real water may bring to the mind of the thirsty man a sense of comfort. But, though the comfort may be real, the cause of it is unreal. A lunch served in dream may appease the hungry man in dream. A false news of having won a victory or earned a lottery may bring a satisfaction whose cause is unreal. An untrue news of the death of the only son of a mother may even kill her, and while her heart-break is real its cause is unreal. Occurrences of this kind and the usual commonsense view of life have made people hold that truths have to correspond to facts. Beyond utility is correspondence.

Now, the idea that correspondence to fact is the test of truth implies that we are capable of knowing fact, and hence truth. But what is fact? Again, we stumble upon our criterion of persistence in space and time. This sounds almost like a vicious circle from which we cannot escape. Even a phantom can persist in space and time, such as mirage water. There seems to be, in the end, no criterion of knowing truth if we are to rely merely on the utility theory or the correspondence theory of truth.

Thinkers have held that the test of truth, ultimately, is coherence. The parts should organically fit themselves into the whole. Utility and correspondence do not satisfy this test because while they seem to satisfy one part of the knowledge-process, they conflict with the other parts. The process of knowing is a self-related, organic whole in which the parts are mutually consistent with one another. There should be no contradiction within its constitution and it should not be transcended by any other experience. Else, it would not be truth but its opposite. Facts should not only be satisfying to the senses, mind, intellect and feeling, thus serving the purpose of utility, but also correspond to existent facts. But the existence of the fact should not be merely tentative; it should also have been existent in the past and should continue in the future. The mirage water, for example, does not exist in the future, for when one approaches it, it recedes from one’s contact and then vanishes at the particular point of difference in the circumstances that caused its appearance. It should also be self-consistent and consistent with the experience of which it forms a part. We say that waking experience is real because we see the same things throughout our life and the objects of waking life have been seen to be workable to our personality as also stand uncontradicted in the past, present and future of our span of life. They satisfy ‘me, you and everyone else’, at the same time. They are coherent to the practical system of our judgment of truth, viz., they are not self-discrepant and are true for all persons, at all times and in every way.

This analysis would amount to saying that there can be no other standard of judgment of truth than what is provided in waking life. We usually forget that there is a subtle snag even in this relative truth of coherence (Vyavaharika Satta). That objects are mutually consistent with others’ experience of them in terms of persistence in space and time is the conclusion of a particular observer to whom everything else stands in the position of the observed. How does one feel sure that others exist and that space and time do exist except by reference to oneself, to one’s bodily conditions, set-up of the sensory organs, mental state and emotional reactions? Often we hear of objective facts, objective reference, and extramental realities. This is a great prejudice of what is known as the scientific way of thinking, which is slowly getting blasted by serious thinkers in the field of science itself, who have latterly come to realise that no scientific observation or conclusion can be regarded as final, so long as they are the outcome of approaches made by the consciousness which works in terms of the sensory and mental conditions of the scientist’s personality which acts like a prism through which the consciousness gets deflected, diversified, mutilated and given a highly artificial structure and form. This would mean that truth as such cannot be known either by science or by philosophy, so long as the methodology employed by these techniques cannot be extricated from the terms and conditions of the psycho-physical organism which limits consciousness and prevents it from knowing truth as it is. Observation, and experiment, logic and argumentation are thus futile, in the end, in one’s search for truth.

But who comes to this decision is a moot question. It is nothing but an inwardly felt self-certainly which is inseparable from consciousness, which does not stand in need of any external proof or verification and splashes forth hints of its absolute independence even when it passes through the contortions of operation through the body and mind. There is no objective way, in the modern scientific sense of the term, of knowing truth, for all ‘objectivity’ is the result of consciousness operating through a medium whose structure would definitely condition it. This would again imply that truth is realised in pure subjectivity of consciousness, which is divested of all externality: in fact truth is consciousness. This selfhood of consciousness is inclusive of the whole of truth. Truth is, thus, non-objective, because consciousness is non-objective.

There is a great difference between solipsism and this position that naturally devolves from an analysis of experience, because consciousness here is not the subject of an obj ect but the pure subject, independent of objects and, so, universal: it is Absolute. Here philosophy and science meet together and experience stands undivided by the difference of subject and predicate or the knower and known. This pure experience free from the limitations of body, mind and its objects is naturally transcendent to all of them though it is present in every one of them. This is the God of religion, the Absolute of philosophy, truth which has been the goal of the quest of all thinkers through the ages. This is the supreme object of the meditation by the Yogis. Self-realisation is thus co-extensive and co-eternal with Godrealisation.

The culture of mankind has to take note of this basic principle, and the sciences and the arts have to be consistent in their pursuits with this ultimate aim of existence. The crass externality of approach adopted by materialism is as far from truth as the poles standing apart. The sciences of man and the technological enterprises based on them are bound to take man far away from truth and drown him in sorrow if these are to constitute merely a means to outer comfort and aggrandisement. It also follows that hatred of every kind, prejudice and war are the noises made by the passing clouds of untruth which try to darken the sun of consciousness that is divinity. For the same reason the modern mechanistic psychology of education is faulty, because it is soulless. The mind carries the dead weight of earthly learning and knowledge of objects, while its life is slowly being sapped from within by its dissociation from truth. The way to the discovery of ultimate Truth rises gradually from unselfish understanding to mutual cooperation, from cooperation to harmony of existence, and from harmony to the indivisible Absolute.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

Gems on the Way to the Absolute

Gems on the Way to the Absolute by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Tuesday 11 February 2014 15:47

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108 sentences selected and compiled from The Realisation of the Absolute on the occasion of Swami Krishnananda’s 72nd birthday in 1994.

Philosophy is the dear delight of the reason; the great joy of the understanding.
True philosophy is the solace of the heart, the peace of the mind, the refuge of the human individual.
Philosophy examines the entire gamut of possible experiences and lifts human thought to the Divine Consciousness.
Only a citizen of the Universe can be an enjoyer of peace – the peace that passeth understanding.
The Upanishads have always been acknowledged and acclaimed as veritable mines of Transcendental Wisdom.
It is a mistake to be interested in the different forms of perception. Nothing is worth considering except the realisation of Brahman.
This intellect is a very inadequate means of ascertaining Truth. But however much imperfect, it is the only human faculty of knowledge nearest to Reality.
To express what is complete is not within the capacity of the knowing process. All knowing is a process, and all process is imperfection.
Intellect is never free from subject-object relationship – and every such relation falls short of Reality.
Reason should always be aided by tolerance, and should not forget its own limitations.
The only condition, however, is that the aspiring intellect should be pure and unattached.
Even death occurs through wrong belief, and even life is saved through mere belief.
Perfection on Truth cannot be two, and there cannot be two Absolutes.
Existence is really the existence of Consciousness.
Nothing that is related to another is real. Relation always means interdependence and not Self-Existence.
Even the emperorship of the entire Universe cannot give perpetual satisfaction as long as it falls short of the Infinite.
The Upanishads are the ripe fruits of fine flowers blossomed out in the light of the Wisdom-Sun.
The quickness of the process of Attainment depends upon the intensity of the power of Meditation – both in its negative and assertive aspects.
The Bliss of unlimited Consciousness is the Zenith of Existence, and every thing other than this is condemned as untrue.
The delight of the Self is the delight of Being. It is the Bliss of Consciousness-Absolute.
Change is the quality of untruth and the Upanishads assert that Reality is self-satisfied, self-existent, non-dual, tranquil and utterly Perfect.
The Truth “Knowing which every thing becomes known” is the subject of enquiry and the object of quest in the Upanishads.
Blessed is he, and he has truly lived a purposed life, who attains to the height of undying joy in this very life; and he is a great loser and has lived his life in vain, who has failed to realise the Truth here. (Kena Up. 2-5)
All is well with him, whose heart is turned towards acting in accordance with the deathless law of Infinite Life. No disease, physical or mental, can ever assault him.
The welfare of society rests in its spirituality.
The ills caused by wrong methods of education, the social and political strife, the individual evils and the world-degeneration are all effected by the one terrible fact, that humanity turned against the law of the Spiritual Reality.
The Upanishads are our guidelights in the Supreme Pursuit. Let us understand and follow them with sincerity, faith, calmness, surety and persistence.
Change is the law of life; nothing is without changing itself.
Tranquility can well be said to be non-existent in the history of the space-time world.
Cognition is impossible without a pre-existence link between the subject and the object.
All contacts presuppose an immovable ground which supports all movements.
That objects exist also cannot be proved unless there are minds to cognise and know them. Each is explained only by the other and not by itself.
The test of Reality is non-dependence, completeness and imperishability.
One Reality appears as the knower as well as the known.
The Substance by itself does not change; only the mode of perception changes.
In order to have the experience of Reality we have to discard the forms as mere appearances.
To assert diversity is to deny Absoluteness.
To say that we are not yet the Reality, and we have yet to ‘become’ It, may be true with partiality to empirical Consciousness, but it is not the Highest Truth.
Realisation is not an actual ‘becoming’, but an unfolding of Consciousness, an Experience of Truth – Truth that already is, Truth that is eternal.
The Self is not really bound by space and time.
The Absolute of the Upanishads is the only Reality and all forms must, therefore, be nonexistent from the point of view of Its exact nature.
A faithfulness to diversity must necessarily end in a failure in the practical walk of life.
Truth is the undivided Absolute. Truth cannot be twofold.
The Absolute and the relative are not two different entities standing like father and son.
If Brahman has expressed Itself as the world, then the world cannot exist outside Brahman.
Even space is Brahman.
If we are not Brahman at present, we can never be That at any time in future. A Not-Brahman cannot be turned into Brahman.
Absolute-Existence does not admit of differentiation of any kind.
Nothing can be said about the Absolute, except that It ‘Is’.
Brahman which is the cause, and the world which is the effect are basically identical, and hence change and causation lose their meaning.
Absolutism satisfactorily solves all the problems of life.
Everyone is inside the prison of his own experience and knows nothing outside his consciousness.
A God, who changes Himself, is not a permanent Being.
The richness of the part is not equal to the magnificence of the Whole.
The world ‘All’ does not refer to the reality of the plurality of things.
Duality cannot survive and individuality cannot exist in the Truth of Brahman.
The infinite Bhuma alone hails Supreme. It is established in Its own Greatness. It is not dependent on anything else, for anything else is not.
All that appears to exist need not really exist as such.
Reaching the Real is not an action.
We seem to be doing many things, though actually we do nothing.
A perishable means cannot lead to an eternal End.
The world exists, because the mind functions on a dualistic basis. There is sound, because there is the ear and there is colour, because there is the eye. The human individual exists as such, because it thinks.
No form is self-existent.
The dance of ideas is the world of experience.
Though no thing exists, it is not true, that nothing exists – for Consciousness exists.
There is no duality. All modification is illusory.
The form of the world of plurality is an illusion, though the ultimate Essence of the world is real.
Truth persists even in the extreme of untruth. Untruth is a lesser truth and evil is a lesser degree of goodness.
The individual is the footprint of the Absolute.
The individual is a copy or miniature of the Cosmic.
Truth is inclusive of everything in the world.
Man begins from the physical body and ends in the imperishable Soul.
Life is a dramatic struggle for Self-Realisation, and Truth-Experience.
The state of perfection is neither an indivisibility nor a multiplicity, – but an indivisible Multiplicity.
The world is not an illusion, but a form of the Absolute.
Even materialism is a step in the path to Perfection.
Death is the beginning of a better life. Evil is the starting point of a state leading to good.
Every thing is only a part of the Infinite Completeness.
We cannot know any thing except in terms of what we are.
The knowledge of everything through the knowledge of One Thing implies that everything is made up of that One Thing.
Thought is objectified consciousness. The greater the objectification, the denser is the ignorance and the acuter are the pains suffered.
The aspiration of every living being is to find rest in the blissful possession of Eternal Life and nothing short of it.
The march of the soul is from the false to the true, from the apparent to the real, from the shadow to the light, from the perishable to the ever-enduring.
There is nothing greater than or equal to the knowledge of the Aatman : “Aatmalaabhaat Na Param Vidyate”.
When we turn our face away from this One Reality, we open the door to Self-imprisonment.
The love of life is based on the love of the Self.
The fervour of a Nachiketas or Dhruva, of a Prahlaada or Meera is expected in every spiritual aspirant.
Even Devarshi Narada’s knowledge is regarded by Sanatkumara as “mere names, mere words”.
Even death is not a bar in the process of the Realisation of Truth. Death is a reshuffling of Consciousness to adjust and adopt itself to a different order of life.
To know Him is to be saved. Not to know Him is death.
The ordinary man of the world has his mind and senses turned extrovert.
Some blessed one turns his gaze inward and beholds the glorious light of the Self.
The Self is imperishable.
Consciousness gets diffused through the distractive intellect and creates the perception of multiplicity.
Forms float in Truth, even as bubbles in the ocean. They cannot exist apart from the Ocean of Truth.
The deceived Soul fears death of its body, death of what it considers as dear. It loves objects, which do not promise real satisfaction.
The dream-objects have to vanish if waking experience is to be had.
Every true civilisation, if it is not meant to deceive itself, has to gird up its loins for Self-Realisation.
The value of a person is nothing if he does not aspire for the realisation of the Eternal Good, the Good not merely of this or that class of men, but of the entire Universe.
Perfection is Absolute-Experience, ‘Brahma-Anubhava’, the Consciousness of Reality.
Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence are said to be the characteristics of God.
Brahman is That, which is permanent in things that change.
The whole Universe is a spiritual Unity and is One with the essential Brahman.
The knowledge of the Self is the knowledge of Brahman.
When Brahman is known, all is known.
There is no seer but That, no hearer but That, no thinker but That, no knower but That.
According to the Rig Veda, even “immortality and death are It’s shadows”. What ever truly exists is the Real.
Brahman is Infinite, the Universe is Infinite; from the Infinite proceeds the Infinite, and after deducting the Infinite from the Infinite, what remains is but the Infinite.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

The Coming and Going of All Things

The Coming and Going of All Things by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Sunday 9 February 2014 14:49

“In the beginning, there was knowledge, but there was no knowledge of another. Then came the knowledge of another, but not the knowledge of the many. Thereafter came the knowledge of the many, but not judgment of the one by the other. Then, finally, came judgment and evaluation of one by the other, and here we are, what we are.” Thus goes an ancient Master’s saying.

These gradations of experience may be regarded as the process of what we call creation. In these few sentences, creation is explained. Though it is stated so simply in a few lines, the implications of these processes are so variegated and involved that everything conceivable can be said to be included in every phase of it, in this gradational coming down of that which is, which was, and shall be, into what is seen now at the present moment.

The freedom of man, the salvation of the soul, is supposed to be a traversing of the very same path through which God may be said to have descended into the form of man, and all that the world consists of. The return of man to God is the movement in a reverse order, from the direction that creation took when the One deigned to appear as this vast involvement.

The word ‘Samsara’ is significant suggesting entanglement and an immense difficulty felt in disentangling oneself from the involvement. It is not an ordinary type of impasse that we are finding ourselves in these days. It is almost an unthinkable and ununderstandable abyss into which we have come down; and, here, in this condition of involvement in the way mentioned, there is not merely a physical or social involvement merely, but there is the worst of things that has happened, the involvement of what we consider ourselves to be in our essentiality, namely, our own consciousness, our own understanding, our intelligence, and the product of our educational career. In essence, anything that is worthwhile in us, meaningful and significant in our lives, is so involved.

There is a submerging of human individuality into this oceanic abyss of involvement and there takes place a tentative awakening of itself by coming to the surface of this ocean occasionally when we seem to know a little bit of the processes of the world. Our understanding of whatever is meaningful in life is conditioned by the dip that consciousness has taken in this ocean of involvement.

We have already sunk into a mysterious kind of the waters of Lethe, as they call it in Greek mythology, the waters of death, or the things into which we have dived, and got up into a consciousness of there being a kind of life in this world. Do you know that this world is called the world of death, Mrityuloka? It is never called the world of life. Though we are all alive, it is never called a life of any standing meaning at all. You will be wondering how this world is a world of death. Why do we call it Martyaloka or Mrityuloka? Because even the life we are living is a form of death only. It is not actually life that we are living. It is an unending preparation towards a catabolic activity in which the psycho-physical organism is engaged, and from moment to moment we are dying.

In this instance I may cite an occasion that arose many many years back, when emperor Aja lost his queen, and he beat his breast, hit his head on the ground, cried before his great Master, Guru Vasishtha, “I have lost the very meaning of my life; I have lost symphony, rhythm and meaning. I have nothing with me. I have lost everything.” This was the expression of king Aja before Vasishtha, the omniscient seer. And what was the reply of Vasishtha to this cry of the king, that he had lost his dear and near, his only value in life? Kalidasa, in his Raghuvamsa, in his own poetic style, tells us what this reply was: “Maranam prakritih saririnam vikritir jivitam uchyate budhaih.” This was the simple, open answer of Vasishtha to the king who was wailing over the joy he lost and the sorrow that had descended upon his head.

What is the meaning of this half-verse? Anything that is embodied is nothing but an embodiment of death only, because anything that is complex has to get decomposed into its original components. As a building is made up of its own ingredients known as building material, anything that is born, – it may be human or anything else, anything that is composed of elements which precede it in the process of creation, has to revert to that out of which it has been made. The building has to return to the condition of bricks one day or the other; it will be only the original that it was. It cannot be the Taj Mahal or anything that attracts your vision of grandeur, because this grandeur of human perception, the beauty of things and the value of life itself, is the tentative presentation before our blinded eyes of a shape or a form taken by causative factors which are precedent to things and to our coming into this world, whatever be our importance in life. Vasishtha held that death, thus, is what is natural to things; it is life that is unnatural!

The birth of an individual into this world is actually a birth into the waters of death. No one can escape this possibility. And the meaning behind this drama of coming and going is to be sought in the few sentences I uttered in the very beginning – that in a gradational coming down of the Ultimate Reality into the present condition of life in the world, there is a final involvement. No one can know how one is involved in this world. Whatever be your understanding and knowledge of things, you cannot know how you are involved. We have a poor, schoolboy’s understanding of our involvement here. A person may have debts to pay; he will say, “I have some involvement.” He has a family, and he is in an involvement. He has to work hard in an office; and he will say, “I have an involvement.” These are little involvements of a totally extraneous nature.

But there is a real involvement which is the source of our bondage, properly speaking. Working in an office, maintaining a family, or paying a debt, is not so serious an involvement, because you may discharge these obligations in some way. But there are certain obligations in our life with which we are born. “Sahayajnah prajah srishtva purovacha prajapatih, Anena Prasavishyadhvam esha vo’stvishtakamadhuk,” says the Lord in the Bhagavadgita. We are born ‘together with’ an obligation. ‘Sahayajna’ means “togetherness of birth with an obligation in the form of a sacrifice.” The ‘togetherness’ of coming into this world with a sacrifice or a necessity to sacrifice is called ‘Sahayajnatva’. Now, this becomes a necessity on our part, merely because of the fact of our involvement in an ununderstandable, mysterious impasse.

We can never be happy permanently in this world, whatever be our efforts to be happy, for the simple reason that we cannot diagnose our own illness. May be, there are means of this diagnosis. But one cannot be one’s own doctor; in a similar manner, we cannot know what our problems are, though we attribute our difficulties to events that take place outside. There is no ‘outside’ in this world, The meaning of involvement is the abolition of anything as external or internal. There is no thread in the cloth which can be called external to the other threads, because they are intertwined in such a way that everything is involved in everything else. So, one cannot be called the ‘other’; the ‘otherness’ that we perceive is an error, and the cause of this error in perception in the form of a conviction of there being something outside us is the reason also for the involvement.

It was said that there was the perception of the many. But we cannot have merely the knowledge of the many and remain quiet without any dealings with the many, because the very knowledge of the many implies a necessity felt at the same time to relate oneself to the many. I cannot simply know that you are sitting there, I have to feel a sense of relation to that which I see. This is the beginning of involvement. And, the freedom of the soul, our final salvation, we may say, consists in our disentangling ourselves gradually from the network of this involvement, which is a hard task, indeed. Sometimes Samsara is compared to a quagmire. A quagmire is a kind of marshy area where, if you keep your foot, you will go in. And if you try to lift your sunk foot with the help of the other foot planted on it, you will see the other foot goes in. And so both feet go in, and you can be sunk neck deep. And you do not know what will happen to you. This state of affairs is called the quagmire-involvement, and our life is something like that. Often, by ancient masters, life is compared to involvement in a quagmire. When you try to free your foot, you will see that the other foot has gone in; and when you lift the other, this one has gone still deeper, so that you do not know where you are. It is an unthinkable misery, unadulterated sorrow.

Where is the salvation, and where is the remedy? The remedy is not in further involvements. Often we try to cure one disease by introducing another disease into the body; this is not a real curative method. You cannot pay your debts by borrowing from some other person, though many a time we do this thing and feel that debts are paid. But we have paid the debt by creating another debt, paying perhaps compound interest and making matters worse. Our search for joy in life is at the same time an accumulation of sorrow from another side. This we forget in our involvements. So, at least from the point of view of man’s present way of involvement and thinking we can say that he cannot attain real freedom. But it is not true that the expectation is absolutely impossible. There is a necessity to go to facts as they are, and not merely opinionate about things and hold judgments on objects in any manner whatsoever, because every judgment is a characterisation of that which you see with your eyes, and, as I mentioned, this characterisation is always infected with a defect caused by your having sunk into the mire of an involvement which is called birth.

The withdrawal of conscious operation objectively in terms of what we see with our eyes, judging things from the point of view of the senses, would be the beginning of the development of wisdom in our lives. Then, to speak in the language of Buddhist psychology, we move from what they call Kama-loka to Rupa-loka. The world we are living in is called Kama-loka_,_ because it is the world of involvement by desires, positive as well as negative. A positive desire is the clinging to something, and a negative desire is aversion to something. And we have a twofold attitude towards things in the world. Whatever be that attitude, like or dislike, it is Kama only, and inasmuch as there is nothing visible in this world except these two types of involvement, they consider this world as Kama-loka_._ You cannot see a person as he or she is in himself or herself. A person, a thing, or an object, whatever it is, is to us what it means to us in terms of an involvement, and minus the involvement, we cannot know what it is. I cannot know what you are except in relation to me. This relation is the undoing of all things. Whenever we understand things or cogitate on any person or thing, we always do this cogitation work in terms of what sort of relation that thing has with us. Independently, we do not consider a person as a tree in the jungle. We do not bother what the tree is about; let it be there! It is not my son, it is not my brother. Whatever happens to it is not my concern. But it is a great concern of mine in relation to that with which I am related. This concern is the bondage of the soul.

Why should you be concerned? That is the externalisation of your relationship. This is overcome by what you call detachment in its true spirit, not detachment in the ordinary ritualistic manner. Detachment does not mean moving from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas, or from one country to another. It is the disentanglement from the involvement of consciousness in this act of judging in terms of what it means to ‘me’ positively or negatively. Then you will reach the next world, called Rupa-loka_,_ where the world may be seen by us, as it is. The beauty of the painting will no more be there; you will see only a canvas and ink spread in a particular pattern. To give an example of how you move from Kama-loka to Rupa-loka_;_ from the beauty that is seen in a painting, you move to the substance out of which the painting is made. The arrangement of the ink on the canvas in terms of a spatio-temporal context, again involved in our way of looking at things at a particular distance also – all these factors considered – becomes the cause of our knowing things as beautiful, or otherwise. So, when this Kama is no more there, we begin to see Rupa_,_ or the forms of things as they are. Are you not something independently in yourself other than what you are to others? You know very well you are something to yourself. Whatever be the opinion others may hold about you, minus all these opinions, you are something, and that is the pure principle of existence, sometimes called Isvarasrishti, apart from Jivasrishti. The ideas of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, and the notions of ‘my belonging to somebody’ or ‘something belonging to me’ or ‘not belonging to me’, etc., are known as Jivasrishti, or the involvements mentioned – the abyss, Samsara_,_ this quagmire. But if I can know you as you know yourself, and I know me as I am to myself, and each one stands by himself or itself as a pure subject unrelated to the objects, relation is abolished, because, really, there is a basic unity of things where the pure subject which is the universe stands supreme in its integrated completeness, which is the universal perception we are waiting for finally, you may say, the vision of God. And when God knows Himself, not as an object of vision by somebody – That is the origin of things, That which is, the Almighty God Supreme, call Him Narayana, call Him the Father in Heaven, the Unimpeachable, Ununderstandable, Non-Externalisable, Pure Being, All-Being, the Bhuma, the Infinite, the Vaishvanara of the Upainshads, the Viratsvarupa of the Bhagavadgita. That is our Goal. And we can have an iota of satisfaction and joy in this world only to the extent of our approximation to this reverse movement of ours in the direction of Truth. But if you try to be happy here by adding more untruths to the already existing ones, purchasing more illnesses to the existing ones already in the body, and piling up sorrows over sorrows, over those which are already there, then the fate of man is booked, for what it is.

May this be a heralding moment to us to find time to brood over these truths of our real state of affairs in this world, what we really are, also what anyone is really in himself or herself, what any thing is in itself, in the eyes of that which alone can see things clearly without the spectacles of likes or dislikes. Such is the mighty Goal before us, into whose facts we are awakened by great masters like Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. Their blessings we seek, and the Grace of the Almighty we invoke upon the whole of humanity at this auspicious hour of mutual communion. May we, then, sing the song of the ancient mystic in a slightly different strain: “In the beginning there was the One, and there was not the many; Then there was the many, but not the consciousness of the many; Then there was the consciousness of the many; but not judgment of ‘the other’; Then there was the judgment of ‘the other’, and, lo, mortal sorrow became the name of all life.”

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

Life – A Process and Activity

Life – A Process and Activity by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Saturday 8 February 2014 17:42

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The philosophy of the Vedanta makes a distinction between existence as such and the experience of any type of existence. We may say, if we would like, that a fact or an existence is absolute so far as it goes, and a subjective experience of it is relative. Human life is a psychological process, and not an immutable existence. A knowledge of the functions of the mind is essential to understand life in its fullness. In the observation of the mind we can have no instrument, such as the ones we use in observing, measuring, examining or cleaning outward things. The mind is the student as well as the object of study, when life as a whole is the theme that we wish to investigate and comprehend. In a famous image given in the Kathopanishad, the inner self of man is compared to a lord seated in a chariot, the body to the chariot, the intellect to the charioteer, the mind to the reins, the senses to the horses pulling the chariot, and the objects of the senses to the roads along which the chariot is driven. The Upanishad gives a caution that the supreme state can be reached only by him who has as his charioteer a powerfully discriminative intellect which directs the restive horses of the senses with the aid of the reins of the mind, and not by anyone else who may have a bad charioteer. The meaning of this analogy is that the human individuality and personality are outer forms and instruments to be properly used by the inner directive intelligence towards the great destination of life, and not to be taken as ends in themselves or mistaken for reality as such.

Not only the body and the senses but even the self conceived as a limited individual centre of consciousness is a process of intense activity, moving, changing and evolving incessantly. The individual self is the basis of knowledge as well as action. Due to confinement to a spatial existence, the individual self is dominated over and harassed by certain urges felt within itself, pointing to certain external objects and states. The desire for food, clothing and shelter, for name, fame, power, sleep and sex, often appears in the human individual as a violent force which cannot be easily subdued or even intelligently controlled. These deep-rooted urges are an immediate consequence of the self’s restriction to a dualistic perception of the world and an arrogation of ultimate selfhood to itself, while the truth is otherwise. The individual has a morbid habit of unconsciously asserting itself as the centre of experience and considering the other contents of the universe as adjectives or subsidiary elements meant to bring satisfaction to it in some way or the other. In this respect, we should say that all forms of human knowledge are different types of activity to achieve certain ends other than themselves. Man never is – he is always to be. This predicament is, as it would be clear, a corollary of the feeling that we are localised entities forming a mechanical whole, which we call the universe, of which it seems that we can never have a simultaneous knowledge. Our perceptions are always in a series; we know things one after another, and not at one stroke. We never see one and the same picture at two given moments in a cinematographic projection, but yet we seem to see a continuity of the existence of forms on account of a very quick succession and motion of the pictures. Strictly speaking, we never see one and the same thing in a particular act of perception, but the rapidity of the psychoses is so tremendous that there is an illusion of the perception of a static existence. And above all, there is that absolute Self behind all mental functions, from which these draw sustenance and borrow existence as well as light.

Every action, viewed in this light, becomes a symptom of the restlessness of the relative consciousness in any of the human sheaths in which it is enclosed. There is an unceasing attempt on its part to break boundaries, to overcome all limitations and to transcend itself at every step. The environment called life in which it finds itself is only an opportunity provided to it to seek and find what it wishes to have in order to exceed itself in experience in the different stages of evolution. The universe is a vast field of psychological experience of multitudinous centres of individuality for working out their deserts by way of objective experience. The universe is another name for experience by a cosmic mind, of which the relative minds are refractive aspects and parts. The desirable and the undesirable in life are nothing but certain consequences which logically follow the whimsical and unmethodical desires of the ignorant individuals who know not their own ultimate destination. What is desirable today need not be so tomorrow, and today’s painful experience may be a blessing for the future. It does not mean that all that we want is always the good. We often grope in darkness and find a cup of poison which we avidly drink, while we are really in search of some soothing food to appease our hunger. There is no error in the world or the objects; it is in the painful fact that we have no knowledge of what is really good for us. It is not enough if a physician knows merely that a particular drug has the power to suppress a particular ailment, he has also to know what other reactions the drug will produce in the living organism. In our life, the mind has to act as its own physician, and in this work it has to exercise great vigilance born of right perception. No thought, feeling or willing can be said to be healthy when it is not in consonance with the health and peace of the universe as a whole. That we are members of a single undivided family demands that we have to be mutually cooperative, and think and act in terms of mutual welfare, which, in the end, is the welfare of the whole. When this knowledge is not given to the mind, it acts blindly and errs with the idea that what appears to bring a temporary sensation of pleasure to it is the true and the good. When it does not learn the lesson of life by enlightened reason, it has to learn it by pain.

The mind, in the Vedanta philosophy, is conceived not as any independent entity opposed to matter, as is the case in several systems of Western philosophy, but is understood to be an aspect of the material principle itself appearing in a more rarefied form. The psychology of the Vedanta is a highly scientific methodology evolved out of the fundamental concept that the supreme reality is Absolute Consciousness and anything that may seem to be opposed to it can only be a phase of itself. The fivefold base of objective perception, viz., sound, touch, form, taste and smell, is found to be inseparable from the reciprocally related to the senses of knowledge working under the direction of the mind. The theory of the Vedanta is that the mind, constituting mainly the functions of understanding, thinking, feeling, remembering and willing, is the resultant of the collective totality of the purified forms of the essences of the five substrata of sensations enumerated above. The sympathy that is observed between sensations and their objects is thus explained by the fact that the causes of the appearances of the two are essentially the same. Not only this. There is the presupposition of the greater truth that at the background of the mind, the senses and their objects, there is the Absolute itself as their very reality. The Vedanta psychology is a direct consequence of its basic metaphysics which lays down that existence is non dual. It is on this foundation of the ultimate inseparability of the knower and the known that we have to envisage the law governing the universe and regulating individual and social life.

The highest law is accordingly conceived as Dharma based on Rita and Satya. Rita and Satya are two terms that occur originally in the Vedas, signifying the eternal cosmic order and the same as manifest in the diversified world. Dharma is nothing but one’s duty as an individual stationed in the cosmos, as its integral part. This at once explains by implication one’s duty towards family, society, the nation and the world at large. The fulfilment of this Dharma is expected to be achieved not in a slipshod way or by leaps and bounds, but in a gradual manner following closely the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Material welfare, the enjoyment of desires and relations to society are given due consideration and are equally regulated by Dharma which, at the same time, works with Moksha or the ultimate realisation of the infinite as its aim. Dharma is the ethical value, Artha the material and the economic value, Kama the vital value and Moksha the infinite value of life. As the infinite includes all the finites, the aspiration for Moksha naturally implies the fulfilment of the ends of all other desires and the execution of all other duties in life. This sublime aspiration arises in the mind when it has an inherent feeling of ‘enough’ with the things of the world. This is the ‘divine discontent’ which acts as a forerunner of the struggle of the spirit to grasp and know itself in the Absolute. It is here that true knowledge dawns.

Ordinary psychological experience is usually marked off from a life of spiritual insight. The path of the pleasant is differentiated from the way of the good. What the senses report to us need not necessarily be the true or the good. Often they give us false intimations and involve us in tantalizing mirages which recede from us as we try to approach them. It is because of this unfortunate predicament that we go on experimenting with one object after another, seeking final satisfaction, but do not find it anywhere. This fruitless pursuit continues until thinking of benefit in terms of separateness discovers its own futility and gives way to a search for peace in terms of more and more integrated realms of being. The individual expands to the family, the family to the community, the community to a wider society or the nation, the nation to the whole world, and the world to the cosmos, wherein the process of expansion finds its limit and begins to turn inward into the centre of experience which, in the end, is recognized to be identical with the Supreme Being. Bearing this in mind, the sage of the Upanishad warns us with the great rule that everything shall desert us if we consider it to be different from our own essential self. As we have already noticed, nothing in this world can be considered to be merely a means to the satisfaction of another, for in this mutually determined whole there are only ends, not means. The Bhagavadgita states that all pleasures that are born of the contact of the mind and the senses with the external are a womb of pain, for outward contact is not the way of contacting reality. The dissatisfying consequence of sense gratifications, the fear that usually attend upon them, the chances of getting addicted to the habits and impressions produced by such pleasures, and the inevitability of the rise of further desires and greater distractions, in addition to the wearing out of the senses, should rouse in the man of discrimination a consciousness of the higher life.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

On the Nature of Philosophy

On the Nature of Philosophy by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Friday 7 February 2014 16:42

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Philosophy is not a theory but a vision of life (Darsana). It is not merely ‘love of wisdom’ but signifies a real ‘possession’ of it. The philosophers are therefore not professors, academicians or doctrinaires, or even spectators, but true participants of life in its real meaning and relationship. To be a philosopher, thus, implies more substance than what is often taken to be its value in life. A philosopher is not concerned with human beings alone: his concern is with all creation, the universe in its completeness. His thought has to reflect the total import of existence in its togetherness.

A philosopher’s task calls for a great strength of will and clarity of understanding, side by side with an exalted moral consciousness. The usual prerequisites for a student of philosophy have been stated to be (1) Viveka or discrimination of reality as distinguished from appearance; (2) Vairagya or disinterest in those appearances which are divested of reality; (3) Sama or tranquillity of mind, (4) Dama or self-restraint, meaning control over the clamours of sense; (5) Uparati, or freedom from the distractions characteristic of selfish activity; (6) Titiksha or power of fortitude in the midst of the vicissitudes of life, (7) Sraddha or faith and conviction in the meaningfulness of the pursuit of philosophy; (8) Samadhana or ability to concentrate the mind on the subject of study; and (9) Mumukshutva or a sincere longing to attain the practical realisation of the Absolute. Without the equipment of these necessary qualifications, a student under the scheme of philosophy will be a failure and cannot get at either its method or its purpose. Though the discipline needed is arduous indeed and no one, ordinarily, can be expected to be full with it to perfection, it has to be accepted that it is an inviolable condition of the pursuit of philosophy, at least in an appreciable measure. Else, philosophy would only shed as much light to the student as the sun to the blind.

Philosophy has often been identified with a life of contemplation, without action. That this is a misrepresentation based on ignorance would become obvious from the nature of philosophic wisdom, as has been stated above. Though wisdom is a state of consciousness and implies concentration and meditation, it does so not in any exclusive sense, for philosophic wisdom is all-inclusive. It synthesises the different sides of the psychological nature, e.g., the knowing, willing, feeling and active. Any lopsided emphasis is contrary to the requirements of a wisdom of life. The teaching of the Bhagavadgita, a monumental embodiment of the gospel of the philosophic life, is a standing refutation of the notion that philosophical knowledge is tantamount to actionlessness. A philosopher, in his heightened understanding, has also the power of sublime feeling and action for a universal cause.

Philosophy is not also opposed to religion; on the other hand it is the lamp which illumines the corners of religion both within and without. Philosophy supplies the raison d’être of religious practices, even of ritual, image and symbol. If religion is the body, philosophy is the life in it. Philosophy ennobles religion, sublimates art and stabilises the sciences, such as sociology, ethics and politics. It was the hope of Plato that the philosopher and the ruler be found in the same person, if the world is to have peace. Philosophy is also the remedy for the illnesses which psychoanalysis has been immaturely attempting to trace back to a supposed irrationality of behaviour. Philosophy discovers the rationality behind the so-called irrational urges.

In India, philosophy as Darsana has always been associated with practice or Sadhana. What goes by the name of Yoga is the implementation of philosophy in practical life, with reference to the psychological functions predominating in an individual. Philosophy has therefore relation to one’s being more than to one’s intellectual grasping of outer situations. The philosophic truth is neither the inner nor the outer merely, for it is the whole. The cosmic gets mirrored in the consciousness of the philosopher who lives it more than anything else.

Philosophy is different from any kind of extreme, whether in thinking or living. The golden mean is its rule, which excludes nothing, but includes everything by way of transformation to suit the constitution of the whole which is its aim. To arrive at this finale of knowledge, it considers the cases of perception, inference and intuition; observation, implication and the testimony of experience. It neither denies nor affirms peremptorily. Philosophy is, thus, necessary for every stage and kind of life to make it a joy. There is no satisfaction where there is no meaning. Philosophy is the discovery of the meaning behind life.

Philosophy is impartial judgment without prejudice, underestimation or overestimation. It recognises the values accepted in the different fields of knowledge and iterated in the various viewpoints of observation and logic in order to construct an edifice of integral envisagement. From this it follows that philosophy does not take sides, has a place for every standpoint of thinking in its proper perspective, and its function is to so fit everything into its broad scheme that nothing is either ignored or made to strike a dissonant note in the harmony of its development. Its position is that of the chief judge in the government of the universe. It listens, understands, sifts, weighs and considers the status of any given circumstance not from the standpoint of the circumstance in its isolatedness but in its relation to the whole of existence. No one can, therefore, afford to turn away from the divine gift called ‘philosophy’.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Swami Krishnananda

Created on Tuesday 5 February 2014 25:27

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We are here on this occasion to focus our attention on what, perhaps, we are seeking in this life. This is the theme of this session today: What is it that we are seeking in this life? What is it that anyone is searching for through the vicissitudes, the works and enterprises in the various walks of life? The turmoil and tumult of human endeavour is dinning such a clamour into our ears from moment to moment that we hear only the noise of human activity and desire, and a moment required for considering the motive behind human enterprise does not seem to be available.

Now, these two questions will perhaps form a sort of introduction to the theme we are to discuss. That we cannot find time to pay due attention to the purpose for which we are living and working will be an answer to the manner in which we are living in this world. A machine works very hard and continuously in a very systematic, precise, mathematically operated manner, but the machine does not know that it is working in that way. So there can be a precise and scientific movement for the purpose of an output, as in a mill or a factory, without the movement being conscious as to the very nature of the output. Some sort of stuff is ejected out of the machine, and it is as unconscious of itself as is the operating mechanism behind it.

Today we—men and women, humanity in general—have become accustomed to believe the great ideology that a machine is an indispensable appurtenance of human life. We cannot do anything without the assistance of a machine. This shows the subsidiary character of man in comparison with the gigantic operative mechanisms that he has considered necessary not only for his satisfaction, but even for his existence. He manufactures arms, not perhaps obviously for an immediate satisfaction, but for a security in regard to his own existence. Even his existence is controlled by a machine. He cannot be sure that he will be here for a few minutes unless a machine operates around him; and a machine need not necessarily be a typewriter, a printing machine, a motorcar or an airplane.

I am now trying to bring our minds to the very concept of mechanism, which is a way of thinking, rather than an object visualised with our eyes. There is a philosophy which sometimes goes by the name of ‘mechanism’. We know very well that a philosophy cannot be a machine which we can obtain from a market. It is not a thing, it is not a substance, and it is not anything that is tangible. It is a conceptualisation and a certain outlook of the psyche of the human being—we may say the outlook as a whole of a particular set of people. This is called a mechanistic philosophy, and it has its roots in that which goes by the name of a scientific evaluation of things. In some way, classical science is mechanistic, though I do not say that every science is so. Today the discoveries of science have awakened the scientist himself to a novel presentation by nature—that it is perhaps not working on mechanistic lines, though scientists such as Newton, etc., thought that there is nothing but mathematics working in the universe. Maybe mathematics is working even now, but it is working only at a certain level of human life. We need machines only under certain circumstances of life, and it is not true that we need mechanisms always, under every circumstance. That this is a truth may not occur to our minds, since we have not found time to think of conditions of living where machines may not be of any utility to us, or even help to save us. There is something in us which cannot be amenable to the operation of a machine. None of us would believe that we are only machines, though from the point of view of a behavioural psychologist, or a pure atomist, or a physiologist, we may be appearing to work like stereotyped machines, measurable by the rods of medical science and intelligible from the philosophy that is behind this approach.

Today we are speaking on a very well-known but intriguing theme: man in relation to his soul. Here we are likely to commit an error at the very outset when we utter the words ‘man’ and ‘soul’. Though we may be well-educated and mature persons, it may not be true that we have a correct understanding of what man is in relation to what we hear of as a soul. With all our age and experience and learning, we cannot escape the childish notion into which we have been born that the soul is something that is residing in this body.

Now, does such a thing called the soul exist, or does it not exist? If we feel that there is a soul independent of the body and yet existing within the body, illuminating, vitalising, energising this body which we sometimes mistake for what we really are—if this is our understanding of a so-called existence called a ‘soul’ and a mystery called ‘man’, then we would not be able to answer this great query that is raised by the very theme of the discussion. What is happening to man today, and what he is today, is perhaps a necessary background on which we have to base our further considerations in the direction of a solution to this great question, or ask, “Is man searching for a soul, or is he searching for anything at all?”

A machine has not a soul, we know very well, and when we say that a machine has not a soul, we know what we mean. Everyone knows what is meant when a statement is made that a motorcar has not a soul, an airplane has not a soul, a robot has not a soul, or any mechanism has not a soul. When we say this, what do we mean? We are making a statement without being clear as to what we are saying. We have a vague notion of the necessity of the presence of something which will permit our acceptance that there is a soul. Naturally when we say that the machine has no soul, we do not mean something moving inside it like a light, in the sense that we understand a soul to be operating within ourselves. We speak of a soul, and use that word oftentimes. “The whole activity has been without a soul.” “The entire enterprise lost its soul.” “The whole project has no soul in it.” Do we not make statements like this? “The whole performance was minus a soul.” When we say that an important theme that we expected in a large gathering or conference was absent, we say, “Oh, the soul was absent.” We expected a very powerful dignitary who would give a tremendous influential power to the whole organisation by his very presence, but he was not there. It might be a great genius of a scientist, or a great philosopher, or a great politician, or it might be anything—something uplifting was absent, and we say the soul was missing in spite of all the din and noise and activity there.

What do we mean by saying that the soul is missing? If one person in an audience is missing, how can we say that the soul is missing? Every person has a soul. If some important person whom we regard as very valuable, more worth the while than anybody else, and who has a pervasive influence over everyone else is missing and, therefore, the soul is missing, we do not mean that other people have no souls. Just imagine what ideas we are perforce entertaining in our minds when we are thinking of a soul. We are not thinking of some little thing inside the body of a person when we conceive of a soul; otherwise, if a crucial person is missing from an audience, we will not say that the soul is missing. It would mean to say that other people have no souls and only that person has a soul, which is not a fact; others also have souls. So what makes us say that the soul is missing? “The entire show was without a soul.” Why?

This is an occasion for us to dive into the mysteries of what a soul is, and then we can know whether we have missed the soul, or whether we are in search of a soul for modern man or ancient man or any man—particularly modern man, as the word has been used for a specific reason. I will touch upon that theme shortly.

We have missed something in our lives, and if I use the word ‘soul’ it may be so enigmatic and intriguing and eluding to our understanding that I prefer not to use this word frequently, though it cannot be escaped. It has to come, one day or the other, in a new light altogether—which I tried to introduce by bringing these illustrations of there being a soul which is not necessarily identical with the souls of all these people, though everyone has a soul.

What man misses in life seems to be something which keeps him in unison, in harmony, and in a state of cohesion. A dismembered society, a dismembered political organisation, a dismembered bodily organism, a dismembered psyche of man is something like a machine without a soul. So a soul is that which prevents the dismembering of organisations, whatever be the nature of that organisation. It may be a little body; it may be the body of an ant. It may be my body, your body, or the body of a family. There is a soul in a family. Though every member of the family has a soul, one may miss the soul of the family. If the chief organising, influencing, potent force in the family is missing, we will say that the soul of the family is gone. Yet the members of the family are there, and they also have souls. Listen to me very carefully, because these are very subtle analyses.

Likewise, when we speak of any type of living arrangement or organisation, the word ‘organisation’ also has to be understood in its true spirit. An organisation is a coming together of various parts, and parts cannot come together unless there is something which brings the parts together. We do not see the wheels of a vehicle automatically joining together and making a motorcar. Nothing happens automatically. No part of a machine will join with another part unless there is a cohesive, pervasive and immanent force which envisages the arrangement or the pattern that is to be projected in the form of a machine, and that may be considered as something independent of the machine, though it cannot be totally isolated from the machine.

‘Organisation’ is a very subtle, eluding word. This body also is an organisation. It is made up of various parts which work in collaboration; it is a machine. The body is a machine in the sense that it is made up of various parts, nuts and bolts, and there is a dynamo, and a pulley, and every blessed thing; but nothing will work unless there is a system introduced into this mechanically placed multifaceted arrangement which we call an organisation. There is no organisation without something which organises these parts of the organisation. We have to consider what that something is.

There may be a leader of a huge organisation, and his presence, his influence, his activity brings all the people together, though they may be millions in number. We may be wonderstruck as to how one person can bring together thousands of people, because thousands are larger in number than this one single person. Now again I am coming to a sort of answer to this query raised by this theme. If we can find some answer within ourselves as to the circumstances under which one person can rule millions of people or how one field marshal can command a whole battalion of men, none of whom are physically, mechanically, or intellectually inferior to him, then there is also a possibility of lifting our minds to an area of consideration which is not necessarily mechanistic, physical, or purely visible to the eyes. There is some invisible thing which seems to be an unavoidable and inviolable presence everywhere, without which the organisation cannot function.

Take this example of a huge army being commanded by one man. What strength has this man got over these people? Mechanistically, physically, materially, economically considered, he has no strength whatsoever; yet he has strength. That strength is that which pervades everyone in the whole army which is constituted of individuals like him. This is something very surprising—thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of persons like him are organised into a single focus of consideration and attention and action by the presence of one individual who is also like them. We have to think deeply here, and this type of thinking is called philosophical thinking. This is not scientific thinking, because science cannot recognise what it cannot observe and experiment upon, and if we observe an army, experiment upon an army and see the army though a microscope or even a telescope, we will see nothing except a huge mass of people. But it is not a mass of people; there is something else in it, which is the reason why we do not call it a huge heap of people, but an army.

It is organisation and a unified force. What makes us feel that a large organisation, such as a parliament, a political system, an army, or any such thing, forms one single organisation, notwithstanding the fact that we cannot see any organisation there? We see only different heads and different legs moving about in different ways. This eluding, mysterious yet impossible-to-avoid thing is the soul. We cannot say that it is inside the body, because the body of a person who organises a large gathering is like the body of anybody else, and if we say that his soul controls everybody, well, our consideration that the soul is inside the body rules out that argument. We cannot expect one man’s soul to jump on somebody else’s soul and then organise everybody. What is it that is intriguing us and stirring us and stimulating us, keeping us restless in spite of all our estimations, properties and social securities? We have missed something.

I was told that there was a doubt in the minds of some people whether there is a soul for which man is searching, or there is only the soul. This difficulty, this question also arises due to a misunderstanding of the very meaning of the soul itself. A mere academic bookworm cannot answer these questions, as one cannot find an answer to these questions in books. Though there are hints in the great scriptures as to what all this means, we do not have that intellectual calibre to go into the depths of the implications of these scriptures, much less the time to study them.

What is man searching for? All of us are well-educated, cultured persons with time enough to think deeply over this matter. We cannot say that we are searching for money and status merely, though it may be one of the things that we are searching for. We have seen learned people who are not happy. We have seen very rich people who can burn money but are unhappy in many, many ways. Potentates, politically powerful, ruling a large dominion are terribly insecure day in and day out; they have no peace of mind. There is something that everyone is missing, whatever be the acquisitions of a person physically, materially, economically, politically. Something is missing which keeps us anxious all the while. A very rich man is always anxious about something. He is brooding, thinking, and scratching his head. He does not rest quietly, thinking: “Everything is fine, like milk and honey. Let me sleep.” No rich man will sleep like that; he is worse off than a poor man as far as anxiety is concerned. Similarly, every person with any kind of acquisition is insecure for various reasons. A healthy man is insecure that he may fall sick and cannot be eternally healthy.

So, there is a lacunae, unintelligibly though, felt by each person, and one would like to search for an answer to this insecurity, this restlessness, and this elusive character of that which one is searching for in life. No one seems to have got what he wanted in this life. When the time comes for us to leave this world, it appears very few will go with the satisfaction that they have got what they wanted. There was always something receding, like the horizon, and not permitting the grasp of the human being—psychically, intellectually, mentally, much less physically. We cannot know so easily what we have lost. This is the reason why we are kept in this suspension. We may concede that there is some terrible lacunae in our life, and we are hollow, a vacuum, empty inside in some mysterious way in spite of our material possessions and social status.

Perhaps every one of us may be aware there is something lacking, but it is not easy for us to know what it is. We go on experimenting with various circumstances. “Perhaps I lack material wealth.” We struggle, experiment with it and get something, and find that it is not the thing that we wanted. We go on searching in various ways for other things such as power, authority and doership, and we find that we are not really seeking them, and they are not at all what we expected. We have been experimenting with the location of something which we have lost in the various persons and things of the world, and to our consternation we have realised, and some of us are yet to realise, that these locations—call them persons, things, events, circumstances, situations—are not the spots in which we can discover that eluding something which we seem to have lost.

This mysterious, eluding something which cannot be confined to the body of an individual is what we very glibly define as the soul. Since it is an abused word whose meaning has never been understood clearly, even to this day, it is very difficult to project this word again and again as if it is very clear to the minds of people, because in all this explanation and analysis we will not forget that our soul is inside the body. We may touch our chest and say, “My soul, my conscience, my Atmanspeaks.” This Atman, this little thing we are indicating within the location of this physical body, is not what we are seeking—though it is present there also—because it is an influence, it is a force, it is to some people something like an abstraction; and yet we will find that all life finally is an abstraction. Our life is an abstraction; it is not a concrete thing. We are not living a concrete life. For instance, when we touch money, we are not touching a substance but are touching a value, a conceptual evaluation which is in the head and not in the hands.

When we are friendly or when we are inimical, we are not encountering a person or a thing; we are encountering a circumstance which cannot be identified with the physical location of a person or a body. We are face to face with some situation which cannot be identified with a solid object. When we are happy or unhappy, we cannot attribute it to the presence or absence of some physical object. It is, again, a condition that has arisen, a condition that cannot be seen with the eyes, and we use this word again and again without knowing what it means. “I am in a very bad condition” or “I am in a prosperous state” are glib statements whose meaning is not so clear. This is the reason why we cannot easily be happy in this world; if it had been so easy, we would have purchased it in one minute with all the dollars and pounds that we have. That cannot be done because the physical appurtenances and configurations in the form of people and things are not the thing that we have lost. When a person has lost his power—he has resigned or retired from a very powerful position—he has lost something. What has he lost? He is the same man that he was. The retired man is the same man that he was while in that position. This thing that he has lost is that which he cannot see with his eyes, but it can make him utterly restless and put him out of gear. One can even go crazy if he is demoted and thrown down from a high pedestal. This pedestal is not a physical seat; it is a concept.

So are we living in a physical world, really speaking? Or are we living in a world of concepts, ideas, notions, evaluations and aspirations? Do we believe that this is a physical world? I am not going into the philosophical aspect of the doctrines propounded by Sankaracharya and others that the world is maya. We will slowly open our eyes and find there is some truth in what he has said. We are seeing a table, we are seeing trees, this building, and the world is there so hard and solid; how do we call it maya or unreal? We will realise one day that we are living in an unreal world.

The people that are around us are not our people. The things that we seem to possess, we have really not possessed, nor have we been searching for them. We have only been experimenting with them as tools for the discovery of that which we have lost. These friends of ours, these associations, these family members, this money, this status, this power, this authority, this land, this building—these are not the things we are asking for, though in a terrible state of ignorance we imagine that this is the soul that we wanted to grasp in life, and we will realise one day that this is not what we wanted. Otherwise, there could be no sorrow and bereavement. These are the tools that we have selfishly employed. We have been exploiting people and things in a very subtle manner to see whether they are the locations of that which we have lost in our lives.

We have not lost anything physical. The physical world is still there; we cannot lose it. We are sitting on it; how can we say that we have lost it? The whole Earth is under us; we have not lost it. We cannot say, “I have lost the physical Earth.” What have we lost? What are we searching for? What is it that is keeping us restless and unhappy?

In the light of what I said a few minutes ago concerning the word ‘soul’, I will use the word ‘soul’ only in that light, of course, and that evaluation is to be before our mind’s eye when we utter the word ‘soul’. Man is in search of a soul or the soul. I will tell you why it is a and the both. We cannot think of the soul; we are not made in this way, because we do not see it. Who can believe there is one soul everywhere in this audience? We are all independent souls. When we search for a soul in our lives, we are searching for a meaning in our existence. We are not searching for a substance; we are not asking for a thing. When we have lost the meaning in our existence, we can say, “I have lost my soul.” People who are bereaved and who have lost their property and all their belongings sometimes feel that they have lost a soul. “I have lost all significance and meaning—everything.” They have not lost meaning, because they have never discovered the meaning in their lives even earlier when they were physically in possession of all the appurtenances of life.

As I mentioned, the appurtenances, the physical associations, social connections, etc., which were bringing us some sort of a satisfaction and making us feel that we discovered the meaning in life, were not the meaning in life. They were very, very unfortunate instruments that we had been utilising for experimenting upon the thing which we have lost and which we consider as the meaning, and their disassociation appears to us as a disassociation from the meaning of life. The meaning of life is a pervasive influence, a power or authority, and everything in the world is only an ideological arrangement. A deep philosophical mind alone can probe into these mysteries. Therefore, it is true that we are searching for a meaning in life. We know very well how unfortunate it is to lose the meaning in life; we will go crazy in one second if the meaning is lost. And what is that meaning? That is the soul of life.

Each person has his own concept of the meaning of life; that is what we call a philosophy of life. Everyone has his own or her own philosophy. We have an outlook of life, we have an interpretation of things, and we have an evaluation of all things in the world. That is our philosophy, and that is the meaning that we want to discover in things. Anything that keeps us in a state of tension and isolatedness in any level of our being is the tendency to lose the soul. Even ill health is a tendency to the loss of what we can call the meaning of a healthy body. A soul is a force; it is not a thing. It is a force which keeps in cohesion the parts of the being we call a person, an organisation, a world, a humanity, an everything. So the soul can be a force that is keeping the limbs of our body in cohesion, and in that sense we may call it a soul, because other people also have the need to feel a meaning in their own lives. There is, similarly, a necessity to keep in cohesion the organisation we call a family circle or a community, or even a larger one like the whole nation or the entire humanity; otherwise, there will be no humanity. ‘Humanity’ is a word that we use without understanding what it means. It is not a heap of people sitting together; it is a conceptual unity that we introduce into the presence of these isolated particulars called ‘people’. Humanity is one, though people are many. We can imagine that there can be one meaning in the midst of many people. That one meaning can be said to be the soul of humanity.

Hence, the soul is large, and it is small. When it is large enough to comprehend the meaning discoverable in the whole of creation, we call it the soul—yes, it is true. But the process by which we discover the location of the soul or the meaning in life is by degrees. The soul may be one, which is a different matter, but in our lives it does not always reveal itself as one. There are degrees of the manifestation or descent of this concept of the soul. I do not say there are degrees of the descent of the soul itself, but the concept of the soul has a descending character and an ascending character. This is the reason why we feel that there are many souls, and each one is searching for one’s own soul, which perhaps is the reason why one is sometimes impelled to become selfish in spite of the fact that there are similar souls in other people. Yet we are occasionally altruistic; we think in terms of larger circles and the welfare of many other people, and we are serviceful, which tendency cannot be explained if the soul is only inside our body. So there is a larger soul than our own soul, yet we are searching for our own meaning.

In our individual lives we have our own predilections and we stick to our guns, oftentimes. “What I say must be done, and let anything else go to the dogs.” When we speak and think like this, we are imagining that our meaning in life is conditioned by our own body, and our soul is only inside the body, whatever it be. But we are not always like that. We oftentimes have a cultured attitude to discover a similar meaning in other people’s existence also, which requires us to recognise the national soul: “I work for my nation.” When we work for the nation, for whose sake are we working? It is not the number of people considered as the citizens of a country that are called a nation. It is, again, an invisible thing. I am driving the point that the world is unreal, finally. It is only an idea in our heads; it does not exist physically, if we go deep into the matter. But this larger ideology of the national spirit, though invisible, is that which can shake the hearts of people. People work day and night for the welfare of their nation, which is not merely a heap of people.

Likewise, we can extend this dominion—the dimension of this concept of the meaning of life, the spirit of existence—into wider circles until it reaches the furthest limits of infinitude itself. That meaning that we discover, the one meaning that we discover in the whole creation, may be said to be the soul, because there can be many universes and many infinitudes.

There are gradations in an army hierarchy, for instance. The lieutenant colonel is a soul of the group which he commands, and the colonel is a soul of a wider group that he commands. Now, are there two souls? Is the lieutenant colonel one soul and the colonel another soul? And there is the brigadier, the lieutenant general, major general, and so on. Each one is a soul. I have already said that the soul is not a person, because one person cannot control so many other people. It is a pervasive influence, a larger immanence of an invisible something—a meaning, an authority, a soul, intelligence, consciousness, whatever we like to call it. That thing exists, pervading all. Perhaps the general’s soul pervades the souls of all the lower categories. The soul of the general is immanent in the souls of the lieutenant generals, the soul of the lieutenant general is present in the souls of all the major generals, and the soul of the major general is present in all the souls of the brigadiers, etc. So are there many souls, or is there only one soul? We can answer this in any way because there are gradations of the concept of organisation, the concept of authority and the concept of pervasive influence, which is the soul that we are speaking of. Thus, there is a soul, and there is also the soul; both are correct. The larger dimension appears to comprehend the lower levels, absorbing the existence of the lower categories of soul in the higher one; yet the lower ones exist in their own capacity, notwithstanding the fact they are subsumed by the operation of a higher soul. In that sense we are searching for the soul, but we are also searching for a soul when we are ascending the series from lower levels.

I do not think I should go too far into this question, and I propose to conclude merely by saying that what I have endeavoured today in these few minutes is only to stimulate your minds into finding a solution, an answer to a great question that will not allow you to keep quiet at any time and which you will pursue until death. I have not tried to give an answer, but I have tried to stimulate your minds to a need that you will feel, and must feel, for an answer which you cannot escape giving to the question of your own life. Please consider it for yourself.

[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]

The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita

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