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Some Thoughts on Commonweal and Education
Some Thoughts on Commonweal and Education by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 18 November 2013 20:04
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(Spoken in 1982 to an educationist)
There is an impasse in which humanity seems to have landed itself in all walks of life. These days, unfortunately, man has found it necessary to suspect man, to exploit and stand against man, a characteristic which can rarely be attributed to man, Homo sapiens. Today the fear of man is man, while at the same time man seems to be working only for the welfare of man. Is it not a contradiction that all man’s enterprises are for the welfare of man, and, yet, the great efforts of man are a demonstration that he fears his own species, both covertly and overtly?
Fear may be an over-mastering predicament causing anxiety from every side of life. There is anxiety due to the rising price of the necessary commodities of life, insecurity incumbent upon malnutrition which mostly results in ill-health, coupled with an incapacity to receive adequate medical aid, which again is a consequence of insufficient economic strength, which, once more, is caused by the high price of materials, all which seems to be creating a vicious circle of human greed, one sorrow causing another sorrow, and no one being able to detect the original source of the malady of people.
But, worse than everything else, is the fear of the susceptibility to a veritable annihilation of life in a world hemmed in by stockpiles of inhuman energies secretly covered under the bushel of the conspiracy of man to gain control over man. If the ego is the ruling principle in the crown of creation which goes by the name of man, and if every such individual is a centre of a more intense egoism than the ego of others, vying with everyone else in enhancing its intensity, there is every justification in calling the human world of today a dreadful Martyaloka, a world of death. If man lives only for preparing himself to die, one can well imagine the value that anyone can discover in the most sacred of things – life itself.
When we note with caution that today even the goodness of man is a highly conditioned form of personal and social adjustment and manoeuvring for the survival of either himself or his group in the midst of an air of psychological warfare, the need for a collective invocation of Divine Power upon mankind would spontaneously come to high relief. Human power exercised merely by the hands and the feet, and even efforts made through roundtable conferences, may not be adequate to the purpose, considering the magnitude of human ignorance, selfishness, jealousy and anti-humanitarian proclivities rampant everywhere. But how is this to be done? Where to start?
An education is necessary to transform man into a true man endowed with human qualities, free from the animal propensities which have always been struggling to gain the upper hand in human behaviour. Apart from a mustering in of the inner powers by means of group prayer, Japa or recitation of the Name of God, control over the natural instinct of self-expression by observing silence or Mouna, by Svadhyaya or sacred study, by congregational worship, by intense meditation, as well as by a common resolution by all to be of service to others in the direction of ameliorating poverty, disease and ignorance, especially in backward areas where assistance of this kind can scarcely be found – these and such other channels of the manifestation of the divine goodness enshrined in man will certainly go far in mitigating the sorrow to which mankind is apparently heading these days.
Unfortunately, the modern youth, or we may say modern man in general, for some intricate reason has been able to think only in an empirical fashion, with acquisition of material wealth and social position as the principal objective of life and the aim even of education itself. You would have observed that modern education does not provide enlightenment into the purpose of life, but remains merely a buttress wall, as it were, to prop up the fulfilment of man’s passion for power and pelf. Considering this general atmosphere in the world today, it would be a herculean task for real educationists to lead such minds from the mire of this sort of thinking into a loftier purpose of education as a process of reconstructing the very outlook of life for the achievement of a higher aim.
The educational guideline should be on an operational level, which means that it should not be too idealistic. But there cannot be total freedom from idealism, if not to be idealistic were to mean not to have any ideal at all. Idealism is said to be the ability to fix up a permanent ideal before oneself in life or in any adventure or project in life, and what is the ideal of our present-day education? Can anyone say that to be socially and economically fixed securely in life is the ideal? If this is not to be regarded as the sole ideal and there is something more to it, the very thought of this something more will land us in what people glibly call religion or philosophy.
Coming to the main problem, the structure of the universe would decide the structure of man, since man is inseparable from the makeup of the universe as a whole. The longings and basic impulses of man cannot be exhausted merely by a study of general psychology or even abnormal psychology. One would be able to discover that there is a universal longing in man, a cosmic urge, which cannot be satisfied by money or power. To probe into this mystery, a study of the very constitution of the whole atmosphere of man – political, social, economic, and even astronomical and what is beyond that – may have to be considered. To fight shy of such an adventure in one’s excessive eagerness for material satisfaction in life, may be like asking for the fruit without planting the tree which bears it. I do not think it is essential for me to go into the details of this subject here, as I have tried to bring the broad outlines of the same in some of my lectures, especially in my Resurgent Culture, Struggle for Perfection, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Yoga and The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita. I do not mean that students can be taught these things directly, but the teacher should have in his mind a background of this altitude of thinking even when he has to come down to the level of a preliminary and purely prosaic subject taught in our schools and colleges.
Latterly there has been much talk that moral and ethical education should be imparted to students in educational institutions, and religion should be precluded. But the protagonists of this strange creed seem to forget that one cannot be forced to be ethical or moral without being convinced of its rationale or its need in the life of the human being. Do our young boys and girls of today not see that the absence of ethics and morality works well in materially well-off people who also gain good social position? How can we expect to drive the conviction for the necessity of ethics and morality into young minds, when they can see with their own eyes that the contrary seems to bring success in life? Here we unwittingly seem to be forced into a realm which is beyond ethics and morality, and which is the foundation thereof. Do we call it religion? Will we call it philosophy?
Educationists should be able to read between the lines of what I have written here and construct for themselves an image of the project that they may have to embark upon in this difficult but very necessary task.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
New Year's Message
New Year’s Message by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 17 November 2013 19:59
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(Talk given on New Year’s Eve, 1995)
Here before us is the holy astronomical commandment that we humbly receive as what is known as the coming of a New Year. This ashram, Sivananda Ashram, the Divine Life Society, has now seen sixty New Years after its birth. Sixty cycles of time have passed in the history of this ashram. This revolution of sixty years is regarded, according to tradition, as a great achievement in the life process of anything.
Whether anything moves or nothing moves, we cannot say because our judgments are based on the apparatus of understanding with which we are endowed, and the instrument of knowledge conditions and determines the nature of our judgment. We are told ever and ever that everything passes. Years roll on, and we have new years. The meaning of the coming of a fresh year is not always intelligible to the human mind. What does actually happen when a new year comes and stands before us? Physically, to normal perception, it will appear that nothing happens. The same today will continue tomorrow. Whatever we have been experiencing today, we will experience tomorrow also.
Then what is the newness of the year? Where is the freshness of it? It is the cussedness of human nature that prevents people from knowing what is actually happening. We cannot even know that we have been growing from our babyhood to adulthood. We did grow, and there was moment-to-moment newness in our life, but never for a moment did we think that we are becoming newer and newer every moment. We felt that we are static, and nothing is happening to us, and nothing has happened to us. What a wonder! Every minute constituent of human personality has changed from its inception in order that it has to become an adult corporate body. But why is such a continuous movement never known to be existing at all? We do not know that anything is happening to us. We are perfectly all right. We are static and solid individualities always, and we never become something else.
This phenomenon of something perpetually taking place and yet not being known by anybody is the mystery of the universe. We belong to different realms of being, and we belong, simultaneously, to all levels of being. At one stroke, we are everywhere. This is the reason why we feel that we are not changing at all. There is an unchanging eternality presiding over all the movements of our nature, due to which we feel that we are solid like a rock and we are perfectly stable.
But there is another world to which we also belong which is called the sense world – the world presented by the sense organs of colour and sound and activity. Involved in it, we are hurrying forward into a destination whose end is not clear to the mind. It is like an animal that has a rope around its neck and is pulled forward by the owner thereof, though the animal may not be aware as to where it is being dragged.
The problem that we are facing in life is this mysterious dual operation taking place in us – a false complacence of everything being fine and stable and secure – and, on the other hand, a helpless hurrying forward through every cell of our body and every part of our mind towards a destination of which no one can have any idea.
How did the world come about? When did it begin? What was there in the world when it started? Where were all of us at the commencement of the world? Or, were we not there? How many years have passed since creation took place? And how many beings lived and died during this process ever since the commencement of the world – if at all we can say there is such as thing called a commencement of time? How can time commence – because, for the time to begin, there must be a prior state where time was not. A timeless situation cannot be imagined to be causing another condition called the time process. There will be no connection between timelessness and time.
We are no wiser in delving into these mysteries of the commencement of time and the end towards which time is perhaps moving. We sometimes designate the time process as evolution; but in what direction is the evolution? There is nothing that does not move in this world; and when it moves, it carries everything inside it -as when a vehicle moves, all those who are seated in the vehicle also move.
Every particle of matter, every plant, every tree, every animal, every human being, anything whatsoever moves helplessly in the direction taken by this wonderful evolutionary process which we call the drama of creation, preservation and destruction. We have heard in our scriptures that God created the world once and He made arrangements for preserving it and he will destroy it one day. But this process of creation, preservation and destruction is going on perpetually even now in our own body. Every moment there is a creation of new components of body. Every moment there is a tendency to preserve the stability of these components. Every moment there is also a tendency of these components to deteriorate, dismember and get destroyed into a vacuous nothingness. Creation, preservation, and destruction are continuous. It is not that yesterday there was creation, today there is preservation and tomorrow there shall be destruction. It is a movement from eternity to eternity. But what we call the New Year is a psychological acceptance of a natural occurrence which rings into our ears the message of perpetual deterioration of everything that is created, and a perpetual longing for the fulfilment of a perennial existence. The New Year is, rather, a reminder to everyone that unconsciously some activity is taking place everywhere, and at least at some time we should be conscious of what is taking place really. Unconsciously being dragged on is one thing, and consciously accepting this movement is another thing.
Everything moves towards God; but conscious movement towards God is called spiritual sadhana. An unconscious activity is no activity. It has no value. Action should be consciously motivated. In the astronomical universe, as we are told, endless activity is taking place in which we are perpetually involved. We are involved in the very process that is taking place in the galaxies which we wrongly imagine are very far away from us. We look at the sky on a dark night when the sky is clear and see the galaxy, the Milky Way and, therefore, we come to a conclusion it is very, very far. But we cannot know we are involved inside it. When we look at the Milky Way, actually what we are doing is looking at part of our own body, to which even the solar system belongs. If the toe has an eye, it can look up and see the head as if it is far away. But the head is not far away from the toe. It is a connected organism. So are the stars; so is everything that is contained within this large expanse of space and time process. We cannot imagine that we are capable of cosily sitting calmly, unknown and undetected by the cosmic forces. Every breath that we breathe is thundering forth with a loud noise in the highest of heavens, just as every little pain in any part of the body is known to the whole body.
Now we must awaken to the fact of our really belonging to a world of which we are inseparable. Otherwise, the toe with its imagined eyesight can imagine that it is some light years away from the head – which it looks at as a distant object. Nothing in the world is distant. The absence of distance in the makeup of a thing is called organism. It is a living completeness. Such is creation, and it has to be so because it is an emanation from an indivisible substance. That which emanates from indivisibility has also to be indivisible. Dividedness cannot proceed from an indivisible cause, just as our own bodily functioning is a wholesome, total operation going on from moment to moment, minute to minute, second to second.
There is one action taking place everywhere, into which we are pulled forward; and we may imagine that we are also contributing something to the activity of the world. But our cooperation is incomplete. We have our own personality, assumed vehemently in our own selves, which objects to its being included in the operation of any other organisation – and, therefore, that organisation to which everything belongs compels this diffident part of it to move with it by transforming it into a new constituent individuality, which is known as the process of birth and death. Our defined attitude compels us to undergo this process of changing of vestures called the body and mind. .
The arrogance of human nature and the assertiveness of the ego – the intense satisfaction one feels of being located in a little six-foot body – prevents the entry of cosmic energy into oneself; therefore, that particular formation of individual constitution perishes for the purpose of remodelling itself into a new condition which will be able to consciously participate in the requirement of the larger organism of the universe. In every activity, God calls man. It is the summoning of God which is the coming of the new years or the going of the old years. God calling is life. Difficult it is to appreciate in the circumstance of inveterate longing to live in the body and a weddedness to the erroneous perception of natural and social living.
What can we expect in the new year that is ahead of us and is now coming on our heads? To accept it humbly. The great lesson that we can make our own in our daily life is an adoption of humility of spirit and a humbleness before the might of God. There is a ‘greater’ than what we are in our own selves. We carry it wherever we go. Something more than what we are is sitting within us and making us perpetually restless and insecure. This ‘higher that what we are’ – which is called the higher self or whatever we may call it – insists that the ‘lower than what it is’ should give access to what is above. It is a war between the lower and the higher within our own selves.
The lower and the higher are not two different physical existences. They are two densities of operation, two pressures continuously being exerted within our own selves – two voices speaking at the same time, one trying to drown out the voice of the other. In this warlike operation of two kinds of voice, we have the history of mankind whereby human history becomes a panorama of perpetual ignorance of the future and an inner longing to live perennially, forever and ever.
Deep meditation on this cosmic mystery may be considered our perennial duty. Everything is meditating, says the Upanishad. In this meditative activity of harmonious arrangement of ourselves with what is actually happening around us, we set ourselves in tune with the powers that rule the world and the powers that direct our vision ahead.
Action, activity, performing, running about – this cannot satisfy you. You may run from the North Pole to the South Pole, but you cannot be sure that you have done anything worthwhile in life. The rootedness of your being is crying from the bottom of its heart, and the physical body runs from one corner to another corner in order to find on the surface of the earth all that you need. Weeping you come and crying you go, and miserably, painfully, you live in the middle of it. That circumstance should be avoided by a deliberate adjustment of your consciousness to that indivisibility which contradicts every kind of divided activity in the world and includes within itself, within its compass, all which is beautiful, magnificent, grand, powerful and eternal.
People have no time to sit quiet. They are busy people. Everybody says, “I am busy. I have no time.” Where has the time gone? And why are you so busy? To what end? What are you gaining by your being busy every day? It is the business of everyone to understand that every business should be a part and parcel of the meditative process. That kind of business and activity which is imperative for the purpose of maintaining a meditative consciousness is allowed. That which is contradictory to it is not allowed.
It is difficult to know what pure, conscious meditation is. It is not thinking something as you think anything in the world. It is an inwardisation of your spirit, a becoming of your Self in the deepest recesses of your being, and going into the depths of what you really seem to be in your deep sleep condition. You imagine that joys are scattered everywhere outside in the world. That is why you run here and there to pick up little granules of happiness. But why are you happy when you are in deep sleep? Where is the dinner, where is the lunch and where is the tea party? Where are the friends and relatives? Where is the position? Where is the wealth? Where is your authority when you are fast asleep?
Everything has gone into the winds, but there you enjoy a bliss that is incomparable to an emperor’s joy in the outer world. Why is it so? How is it that an abolition of every activity and relationship seems to be capable of providing immense bliss incomparable with any other joy that one can think in the world? Are you not greater than what you are? This is the preparation for meditation: “If everything has gone in the state of deep sleep, and yet I have been the most blessed of all people, there must be some mysterious thing within ourselves.” Thus is the meditation where sense organs cease to act, the body is not existing at all, and even the mind does not operate. The body, mind and senses, which are your greatest treasures, do not exist when you are most happy. This means to say that your great blessedness is neither in the sense organs, nor in the mental operations, nor in the body. It is in another thing that you may call your Self. But one cannot delve into this state easily because of the compulsions of physical nature and mental distraction.
It is necessary for even the busiest of people of the world to find time to sit for awhile to deeply contemplate the welfare of one’s own self. Where does my welfare lie, really speaking? Put a question to yourself: “Where is my welfare? My welfare is in my dear relations. My welfare is in my land and property and money and bank balance. My welfare is in the love and affection that I have from the society of people.” This is a wrong notion. Anything that is connected with you can also be separated from you. The dearest and the nearest can get cut off in a moment’s time, as if they never existed at all. To your surprise you will find the nearest and the dearest things have vanished into thin air, and you will find yourself alone.
It is a terror to be alone to oneself because it is a death of all sources of sensory enjoyment and social comfort. Test yourself. Be alone to yourself. Speak not to anybody. Close your doors and be alone to yourself. How long can you be like that? Please verify. When you are alone to yourself – unseen, unknown, uncontacted by anybody in the world – are you feeling miserable at that time? Do you want to open the door and go to the market to see the sceneries of social panorama? Or do you feel that the world has been tormenting you rather than helping you, and you would like to be alone to yourself? This test must be applied to every person. What do you feel when you are totally alone to yourself – unseen, uncontacted by anyone? How long can you sit alone to yourself? How many minutes, how many hours in a day? Mostly you will feel wretched. “Let me go out and breathe, and see people and talk. What is the good of sitting like this? I get nothing out of it.”
This is the usual unhappy phenomenon that follows even the first step in the practice of yoga meditation. There are many pitfalls, hundreds of setbacks and wrong whispers from our own selves. One person met me and said, “What is there in life except social relations, good company, many children, many relatives? Is it not a joy to live with them?” That this is a phantasm before the human being will be shown one day or the other.
Sarvaṁ tam parādād yo’nyatrātmano sarvaṁ veda (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad II.iv.6) is the great statement which you have to remember which was uttered by Sage Yagnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Anything which is outside you will leave you at any moment – whatever be that dear thing and safe thing and near thing and unavoidable thing. Anything that is external to you cannot be with you; and if everything is external to you, then what will remain, finally? Only you will remain. What kind of ‘you’ will remain? Even the body cannot remain for a long time, so when it is said you will remain, you must be clear as to who is remaining, finally. The body goes, together with the bodies of everybody else whom you hugged as your close relations. What remains when it is said that only you remain? Be clear as to what it is that remains. This is how you can go deeper into the question of the realities of life. Don’t be foolhardy and imagine that everything is milk and honey in this world. There is no milk, no honey; nothing is there. It is all an eye-wash, something to befool the ignorance of human nature.
“Guard yourself,” says the Upanishad. After describing the whole process of gestation, birth and suffering as a little baby and passing through the misery of earthly life, old age and death, and getting reborn into any kind of formation, maybe as a human being, or as an animal, or as a plant, or as a reptile, or as a frog, or as a mosquito. After having described all these things, the miserable state of everything that is born, the Upanishad clinches the matter by saying, “Be guarded.” Be watchful. Guard yourself, and if you cannot guard yourself, nobody else will guard you. You guard yourself from the onslaught of phenomenal insecurity and illusory presentations. When you came, you did not bring anything with you. When you go, you will not take anything with you. How then did you come to the conclusion that in the middle you own so much of property? Is there any meaning, even the least sense, that you are very wealthy, rich and possessed of all things in the middle? When in the beginning you have nothing, and in the end you have nothing, how did you grab everything in the middle? From where did it come? Such is the stupidity of life as a whole.
To shed this ignorance of the true welfare of one’s own self would be an undertaking worth the while of everyone in this new year that is to come – to rejuvenate oneself in every way, to reinforce oneself with the energy of the Spirit that is sleeping inside and is mildly presenting itself in the state of deep sleep, saying, “I am here”. When everything goes, something will tell you: “I am here. I am here whom you have forgotten all the while. Here I am now. Come to Me. I am your real friend. Come unto Me.” One day this voice will speak. Let us be prepared to listen to that voice now itself, and not when we are forced to listen to it willy-nilly. That voice is there even now, but the din and clamour of the sense organs prevent this beautiful music of the heavens from being heard.
This may be taken as our New Year message that we guard ourselves against any kind of illusory presentation, against any kind of false promise that the world can give. The world can give us nothing. It always makes false promises. We live by our own spiritual strength, without which even the best of medicines will not protect the decaying body.
I mentioned to you that this ashram has seen sixty years of life, which is actually the life and the message of Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. It was his message briefly that I placed before you just now. He spoke this message, he wrote this message, he lived this message in his life. Here is a great stalwart of spiritual personality before us known as Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj who possessed nothing, who had no house to stay in, who had no property, who had no friends and relations, who wanted nothing and gave everything. He gave all things that came to him because that thing which comes to us is intended only to be given, as that which comes from outside does not really belong to us. Utter renunciation and relinquishment of attachment highlighted the fire-like blazing light of this great master in whose institution we are living, we have been living, and perhaps hope to be living in future also.
May God come into your life – into the life of all people – and guide the destiny of mankind as the one reliable boatman in this sea of samsara. Suhṛdam sarva-bhūtānāṁ jñavatā māṁ śantim rcchati (Bhagavadgita V.29), says the great Lord: Know Me as your real friend. Suhṛdam sarva-bhūtānāṁ jñavatā māṁ śantim rcchati: Peace will be unto you if you recognise Me as your friend. When all things go, I will be with you. Who can speak to you like that? “When everything goes, I shall be with you.” Which father, which mother, which friend can speak these words?
May we befriend this great Being. May the New Year herald blessedness, peace, security and happiness to the whole world, which is now under the pressure of tension and every kind of insecure phenomenon. May the world be rid of this tension. May our deep meditations, collectively undertaken, contribute a new strength to the effort to bring this solidarity, peace, and happiness to mankind. We can bring peace to the world by our meditations and prayers, not by our hands and feet. Physical activity cannot bring peace. It is our meditational, spiritual concentration of a noble motive that can bring peace to the world.
Only a human being can bring peace to human beings; nobody else can do that. A human being means one who is really humane and human in thought, culture and behaviour. Animal man, brutal man, cannibal man cannot be called ‘man’. They are not real human beings. Ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham (Bhagavadgita IV.11): “As you are to Me, so I am to you,” So not only God says, but everything says. Even a leaf in the tree will say that: As you are to me, so I am to you. If this noble meditational impulse is to arise within the hearts of every one of us, this collective meditation will save the world from disaster. We need not be under the impression that the world is going to the dogs. It will not go like that. There is a soul operating in the whole cosmos. It will not allow it to perish like that, provided it embosoms within its own feelings this perennial call or message of God Himself that He is with us as our perpetual friend. Suhṛdam sarva-bhūtānāṁ jñavatā māṁ śantim rcchati.
In your own lives, you would have seen that you have no real friends. Your dearest friends will leave you one day. They will say, “We do not know who you are. I might have seen you, but I do not know who you are.” This is how friends speak, finally. When you cannot trust your own body, how will you trust another body? We can speak of God’s greatness, but to make God our own in our deepest feelings and in our daily life is not easy.
The blessedness of a person is equal to the blessedness of the whole of humanity. World peace is individual peace, and individual peace is world peace. If the world is suffering, an individual cannot be at peace. And if all the individuals are in peace, naturally the world also is in peace. When the part is in peace, the whole also is in peace. When the whole is in peace, all the parts also are in peace. May we delve into our own selves in a collective meditation by bringing into our own hearts the whole cosmos in one gamut. Such meditation may we make our own whereby the entire creation enters into us, sinks into our vitals, and energises every cell of our body. The world stands united with us and when we meditate, the world in its totality meditates. Thus is the meditation. Hari Om Tat Sat.
[Swamiji leads the group in chanting Om and concluding prayers.]
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Passage of Time for the Experience of Eternity – New Year's Message 1993
The Passage of Time for the Experience of Eternity – New Year’s Message 1993 by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 16 November 2013 20:30
*READ MORE \* The Passage of Time for the Experience of Eternity – New Year’s Message 1993
The New Year is approaching. Time passes. The passage which is known as temporal is also the process of the evolution of the universe. There is a progressive march of the constituent elements of things in the passage of the time process. When a particular specialised occasion arises in this progression of the time process, we call that particular event or occasion by a designation as a ‘New Year’s Day’, a ‘birthday’, a ‘holy day’, an ‘occasion of celebration’ and some such nomenclature.
There are pressures exerted by the time process at different times of each march onwards, and one such pressure is what we call the commencement of a New Year. This novelty of the year that is to come is not connected merely with the numbers on the calendar that we have with us. It is something more than a mathematical event. It is not that we just count several days and when a certain number of days are over we say that the year is complete. Though that may be so, there is something more about it at the beginning of what we call a New Year. Otherwise, if it does not have some supernormal significance, why do we make so much fuss about it, feel happy about it, and are exuberant when it comes?
Anything that makes us feel happy, hopeful, and charges us with a noble expectation for the future is something more than the normal, something above the terrestrial—super-physical, not merely Earthly. Actually, nothing on the Earth can make us happy. If at some time, during some moments of our day, we seem to be happy occasionally, we should conclude that something not of the Earth is operating in us, because nothing merely Earth-earthly can satisfy us. This body, which is a part of this Earth, participates in the sorrows of the world and has all the characteristics of the Earth. The body, which is physical, cannot expect anything from this Earth more than what the Earth can give; and the Earth can give us only what this body has. If this body cannot make us happy, the Earth also cannot make us happy, because both these are made of the same substance—physical, material stuff. This body, this Earth which is matter, is not the reason behind our being sometimes happy in this world. There is a super-Earthly operation taking place in us, whether we know it or not. The transformations that are taking place within ourselves, within our own selves, are not always objects of our perception. We may know what is happening outside; we cannot know what is happening above us.
If for some reason or the other the world is celebrating the New Year, it is inspired by some feature operating in this world which is above the world. To say the least, we may say this has an astronomical significance. The revolution of the planets around the Sun is of course taking place perpetually, day in and day out, and these revolutions, rotations of the planets in respect of the Sun which is their centre, have their hallmarks, their specific indications. Some aspects of this process of the revolution of the planets and the movement of the planets on their orbits are known as the houses of the zodiac. There are no built-up houses in the sky. They are only names that we give to certain occasions, significations arising at certain moments of time during the movement of these planets on their orbits; and we people, humans living on the Earth, have the direct impact of whatever the Earth does when it moves along its orbit. Without going too far into the astronomical significances of the influence exerted by the cumulative effect of the planetary system upon us on account of the fact of Earth itself being one of the planets, we may safely say that the New Year is one specific signpost in the process of the march of time, with special reference to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun and its influence on all creatures on it.
I mentioned that the time process is also the evolutionary process. Everything moves; everything hurries forward; nothing is static in this world. Our own life as human beings is an example of this process. We were little children; we were babies. We have now grown into adults and old persons. Time has taken a toll upon us and constructed this body out of its own substance. This very body of ours is a time process—concentrated, as it were, in a visible form. We have not felt the movement of time when we have grown into adult beings from childhood. We can see the movement of a motorcar, of a boat on the river or something moving in front of us, but we are not able to see the movement of our own substance, which is this body, when it has moved from childhood to adulthood and so on. Evolution has taken place in our own self in the form of this growth of the personality. We have grown psychophysically. We thought in one way when we were little children and now we feel that we are more mature, that we are grown up individuals. The body also has grown. The psychic apparatus together with the physical constitution have become different. Every atom in this universe moves in this manner. Restless is every atom, every particle of matter, every planet in the heavens, everything in the skies—what we call the heavenly bodies, the galaxies, the stars. What are the significances of these movements? Why should we grow? Why should anything move? What is the meaning of the passage of time?
Anything can be known by some kind of observation or calculation. We can measure the distance of space. We can see space with our eyes in some manner; but we cannot see time. Time is not the movement of the watch or the timepiece or the clock; it is an inscrutable illusion cast upon us. If we know what an illusion is, it ceases to be illusion. We should be caught by the magic of the magician—only then it is entertaining. The magician cannot enjoy his performance; it is others who cannot understand what it is who enjoy it and are entertained by it. We seem to be somehow or other getting on in this world, with the satisfaction of being worthwhile or doing something worthwhile, because we do not know what time is doing to us. Kalo jagat bhakshah, is an old adage: Time is the consumer of all things. The greatest consumer is time. The work of time is eating, swallowing, digesting, destroying, transforming; this is the work of time. Birth and death are processes of time. As everything, every one of us, is involved in this process, we cannot know what is actually happening. We cannot know when we are born; we cannot know that we are growing after we have been born; we cannot know that death is near. Nothing is clear when it is a question of involvement in the time process. Yet, there is something above time which is working within us in the form of a joy that a New Year of betterment is before us.
Who told us that the New Year is something better than the previous year? We have not seen the New Year; the year has not yet come, yet every year we say, “The New Year is a happy one. It has to be something better.” We never feel that the next year will be worse than the previous one. We always know it cannot be worse; it has to be better. Who told us that it should be better? We are the witnesses of it. The transtemporal, That which is above time working in us, operating in everyone, tells us that the future has to be something better than the past. Why should the future be better than the past? Observational science cannot answer this question. There is no method of experimentation by which we can know that the future is better. Even the study of history is not enough for this purpose. It is only our heart that says that the future is better. “Tomorrow it shall be better. Everything will be all right. All shall be well. Peace shall reign in the world. The millennium shall come. God shall rule the world.” Does not a voice from within us speak in this manner? From where does this voice come? It is That within us which is not involved in time, which is not limited in space, though we are involved in time and confined to space. Spatially we are confined to one particular location; temporally we are limited to our age, our span of life. Yet we always feel that there is a grand thing before us, ahead of us.
“Wish you a Happy New Year!” we cry loudly. Who is actually making this wish? Is it my wish or your wish? It is the wish of the Timeless Eternal in us. The non-temporal Eternity tells us that all shall be well with us, and not to be despondent. Everyone, even the most miserable man in this world, feels that a good day will come to him: “Somehow I shall be free from this misery, this sorrow, this suffering.” The language of Eternity is the literature of joy, happiness, blessedness, irrespective of the fact that we seem to be shrouded in the limitations of space and time. We live a dual life: a life of death, mortality, and the life of deathlessness immortality.
We know that we shall not live in this world for a long time, and yet we feel that we should do good things. If tomorrow is the last day for us, what benefit is there in doing good things today? That which tells us that in spite of the fact that tomorrow may be the last day, today we should be good—that which tell us this, is the Eternity that is speaking to us: “You shall not perish.” Though the temporal encasement in us shall perish tomorrow, the Eternity in us shall not perish. The deeds that we perform have an eternal characteristic also in them, apart from their perishable nature. Every work that we do perishes when the work is over—it has an end, it comes to a close—but it produces an effect which shall not come to an end.
In the same way as we have a temporal vesture, which is this body, simultaneously with an Eternity that is a spark of Divinity within us, there is this temporality in the actions that we perform. All work is perishable in its nature; that is true. Yet, in this perishable framework of our actions, there is an eternal future embedded, a seed sown. It shall be an asset for us in our future. What do we mean by the future? If we leave this body tomorrow, where is the future for us? If all that we have done in this world, all our meritorious works are to cease together with the cessation of this body, what good is this life? This question may arise many a time when we are in a mood of despondency, but we forget that we are not merely mortal bodies and our actions are not entirely perishable or temporal in their nature. Perishable is this body, perishable are our deeds, yet immortal is our soul and deathless is the effect produced by our actions. This is the reason why we feel that tomorrow shall be a better day. Otherwise, what is the rational ground for our feeling that tomorrow shall be better and the New Year is blessed? God speaks within us in the language of the Eternal that is operating within us and tells us, “All shall be well with you.” Suhrdam sarva-bhutanam jnatva mam santim rcchati. The Lord says in the Bhagavadgita, “Know me as your friend. Knowing this, you shall have peace.” Our friend is our Eternal in us; it is our real asset. Whatever we do in this world, if it has even a modicum of the Eternity in it, it shall be a credit for us to be carried forward to our future life.
Thus there are several series of New Years to come. Many New Years have already gone and many more are yet to come. All the New Years that are yet to come in the future are steps on the onward march of the eternal element in us towards its flowering efflorescence in the form of utter perfection. To the extent we are Eternal, we are happy; we smile and we feel that things are fine in this world. We feel that things are okay, fine, to the extent the Eternity is operating in us; but when the other temporal element takes care of us and catches our throat, we feel all is misery and nothing is of any worth in this world.
The God element is stronger than the Earthly element. We have seen this little movie where the power that was material, which is represented by Kamsa, was overshadowed by the Eternal which was Sri Krishna, which was light, radiance—this Eternal Light before which, all the radiation of matter is darkness.
So this New Year that is before us, ahead of us, gazing at us, speaks to us in a language of blessing and gracious abundance. May we therefore collect our thoughts, bring our minds into a focus of attention and realise our true destiny—what we are really and what we are going to be in the future. May we not be caught up by the illusions of the time process.
We have come alone to this world. Is it true that we have come alone to this world, with no friends to accompany us? We came with open hands, with nothing on our palms. Eka prajayate jantur eka eva praliyate, eko’nubhunkte sukrtam eka eva tu duskrtam; namutrahi sahayartham pita mata ca tisthatah, na putradarah na jnatih dharmas tisthati kevalah. This is a ringing message of the Manu Smriti. Alone does the Soul come into this world. It does not bring luggage, treasures, or friends and relations. Alone shall it depart from this world. It will not carry any luggage and bedding. It cannot carry with it one broken needle. Alone shall we reap the fruits of our deeds. Nobody will share our sorrows; our cry will be in the wilderness. And if we have done any good deed, we alone shall reap the fruits of those good deeds.
Eko’nubhunkte sukrtam eka eva tu duskrtam; namutrahi sahayartham pita mata ca tisthatah. Our parents will not come with us. Our relations will desert us. What will come with us? We will come with ourself. When I go, what shall I take with me? I shall take only myself. This is good news. It is happy news indeed to hear that when I go I carry myself only; when I go I take only myself. What is this ‘myself’? This body? It has been left here. The seed that has been sown in the form of a perpetuation of values by the deeds performed and thoughts entertained and also feelings of the mind—these will come with us. When I say, “I come with myself,” my thoughts, my feelings, my deeds in their potentiality will come. These are the historical notes struck by the drama of time; and onward does it march, carrying every one of us like passengers in a railway train, in a single direction. Each one comes alone, each one goes alone—of course it is true—but everyone shall meet at one point, as pilgrims meet in a choultry or an inn when they are on their way to their destination. So we are not fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters or friends and relations here; we are pilgrims on the path. We chat together, talk together, entertain ourselves by telling stories on the way, but we do not belong to one another.
Neither you belong to me nor I belong to you, but everyone belongs to something else. Nobody owns any property here, because all property belongs to one thing, to which we also belong. Towards that we are heading. This is the time process; this is the movement of the whole universe. The entire body of the cosmos is lifted up high above itself to its own destiny, which is what may be called Universal Self-realisation. The world is moving toward a Self-realisation of itself. This Universal Self-realisation, where the universe becomes conscious of itself as ‘I am I’, is the destiny towards which time is moving, reaching which time extinguishes itself as a flame is extinguished when that which feeds it is no more there. The karmas cease, and time also ceases; Eternity reigns supreme. It is towards this glorious consummation of the values of all life, towards this blessedness, that we are moving in the passage of time for the experience of Eternity.
So, blessed is the New Year, and may we take this occasion especially to invoke the invisible presence of Worshipful Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj that the purpose for which we have come here to this Ashram, which is our Self-realisation, be fulfilled in our loving participation with the work of the whole cosmos in its Universal Self-realisation.
May this be our blessedness! May this be the blessedness of all humanity! May the world be in absolute peace! May be this our humble prayer at this moment of the coming of the New Year 1993! God bless you all!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Is Modern Science a Challenge to Religion?
Is Modern Science a Challenge to Religion? by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 15 November 2013 18:45
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The subject that has been suggested is somewhat an involved one, and I do not know how far this would be a very appropriate theme to discuss before an audience of this kind who are basically devotees of God and aspirants of the spiritual ideal of life. However, all visions of life can be consolidated into a system of integrated organisation, and nothing conceivable can be regarded as extraneous to the methodology to be adopted in the pursuit of the spiritual ideal.
“Is there a conflict between the scientific method and the religious aspiration of the soul?” is a moot question. Generally, when people speak of science, what the common populace understands is the comfort that has been provided by applied science, such as fast travelling, telephone, telegraph, Internet, satellite, and television. These are the things that are in the minds of people when they speak of the technological advance science has made; but science does not mean technology. It is a vision of life itself.
What clashes or appears to come in conflict with religion is not the comfort that has been brought to us by these technological inventions of applied science, but the theory of science, which is something very deep, and bordering upon philosophical and metaphysical foundations of life itself.
That the world is external to everyone is the basic foundation of all scientific perception. Observation and experiment being the methods of a scientific process, it goes without saying that what is observed and experimented upon has to be outside. The outsideness of the world is a very important aspect to be considered here, but we may put a question to our own selves: “Is the world really outside us, so that what happens in the world does not affect us in any way, and the world does not care for what is happening to us in our own internal operations? Are the individual and the world, the two principles of consideration here, segregated from each other? Has the world nothing to do with the individual, and has the individual nothing to do with the world?” It looks that there is no communication possible between the individual and the world. The world may not know at all that some individual is dead and gone, and the individual is not concerned in any manner if a star in heaven cools down and extinguishes itself. Let anything happen to the heavens; what does it matter to us? But,”Is it so?” is the question.
This supposed conflict between physical science and religion may be said to have begun somewhere toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the geocentric interpretation of the heavenly bodies was replaced by the heliocentric concept on the discovery of Copernicus. This discovery clashed with the biblical belief and tradition, which holds that the earth is the foundation, and the sun and the moon and the stars move round this earth.
The second thing that opposed religion as it was understood in those days was that the world was created, according to the biblical tradition, some four thousand years ago, but the scientific discovery declares that the beginning of the world must be traced back to aeons and aeons of time process earlier, and the earth is several millions of years old. This again was a challenge to the medieval concept of religion.
But the third thing is most important. When Newton discovered the law of gravitation and concluded that everything that is happening in the physical world can be mathematically deduced by the logical process of conclusion drawn from premises, and the world which is physical in its nature is contained within the cup of space and time, and when his successor or follower Laplace wrote the five volumes on “Celestial Mechanics,” the war between science and religion appeared to have commenced. We are told that the writings of Laplace were presented to Napoleon for his consideration. Napoleon seems to have declared, “Monsieur, I do not see God in your scheme”; and the answer of Laplace seems to have been, “Your highness, I have used the best of telescopes, but I have not found God anywhere.” This is classical science: God has to be seen in order to be believed.
Does it follow then that whatever we see with our eyes really exists? Can we establish logically or scientifically that the world exists at all? Which scientific procedure can establish the truth of the externality of the world? Science is against any kind of hypothesis and taking for granted anything unproved. But is there any proof to substantiate the belief that the world exists, except the assertion that it is seen? The senses come in contact with what we call the panorama of the external world. That is the proof!
Here, science fumbles. It is trying to cut the ground from under its own feet. Taking anything for granted is not the beginning of science. We cannot even take for granted that the world exists unless we prove that it exists. One cannot prove one’s own existence even. How do you know that you are existing? Where is the syllogism by which you have deduced the consequence of your existence from a premise? What is the proof that can establish the truth of your own existence? Bring the argument and let us see what it is that tells you that you really exist.
It was the French philosopher Rene Descartes who took up this question of doubting the existence of his own self: “Some devil may be working in my mind. It may be telling me everything in a topsy-turvy way. The world may not be there. I may not be here. Everything is doubtful. There is no certainty of anything. I can doubt the validity of anything and everything.” But he went deeper into this phenomenon of doubt and discovered that doubt is not possible unless there is someone who is to doubt; if the doubter also is to be doubted, the very fact of doubting loses its meaning. Nobody can be an utter skeptic, because that defeats the very purpose of skepticism. I am thinking, and therefore, I must be existing. This is Descartes’ conclusion.
What sort of existence is mine? I am conscious that I am existing. What is that consciousness? “I am an individual; I am Mr. so-and-so,” is my consciousness of existence. Is the consciousness of the existence of a personality a complete acceptance of the truth of life? He concluded that this cannot be the ultimate truth of life because there is a longing to break the boundaries of personality in everyone.
No one can tolerate finitude. The finite consciousness, which is proved by the very fact of my knowing that I am, establishes the validity of there being something which is not finite. What is it that is not the finite? It should not be a multitude of finites; it should be the Infinite. My existence as a finite being, substantiated by the indubitability of this assertion, also brings about a wider unexpected consequence, namely, the Infinite also should exist; therefore, God exists. If I am existing, God has to exist, because the concept of God is only a cosmic correlative of the acceptance of one’s own being as a finite individual. The finiteness of individuality proves the infinitude of the Truth of life. This smashes the erstwhile concept of the externality of the world, and the dichotomy that is seen between the perceiver and the perceived.
Now I am touching upon the threat that theoretical science poses before religion. Here, it is also necessary to understand what religion is. Though we are trying to analyse the practical and theoretical aspects of science, do we know what religion is? Religion basically is a longing for what is above oneself. There is something transcending myself; but for that fact, I would be a most happy person in this world. I would be carefree, secure ultimately, and perfect in every sense of the term. But no one feels that one is perfect. There is always a complaint that something is wrong, something is inadequate, something is insufficient. Finally, there is a threat of extinction of the existence of the individual himself. Death comes upon oneself.
These are the fears of the psyche, which have a basis and a truthfulness in the sense that they indicate the possibility of the existence of some realm where these insecure conditions are overcome completely.
The truths of life seem to be in several layers of self-transcendence, one rising above the other, and the lower does not satisfy until the next higher one is reached. We can never be satisfied with anything in this world because satisfaction cannot arise from that which is totally outside us. The outsideness of the values of life and the objects supposed to bring us satisfaction defeats the very attempt at acquiring any kind of permanent joy and satisfaction in this world. That from which we seek satisfaction, namely the objects of sense, are incapable of contact by the perceiver because of the fact that they are outside. We have already dubbed the world as something totally external to us, unconnected with us, and therefore, we can expect nothing from the world. Nevertheless, man runs after the pleasures of life in the form of contact with objects which are totally outside. Here is a contradiction in the very operation of desire itself. It is a self-defeating attempt of what we call human desire.
Desire is the longing to possess that which is not within oneself, but which is outside. But the outsideness of the object prevents its coming in contact with the experiencing consciousness. So every desire ends in tragedy, frustration and utter defeat, and no one ever goes from this world with the satisfaction that the attempt has succeeded. Everything is lost. The conclusion of the old man who is about to depart is that the whole life has become futile, and there is no value or worth in anything, because he has lived a life of pursuing that which one cannot expect in a world that is totally outside.
The religious ideal is not based on the concept of the externality of the world, or the internality of anything. The world is neither outside us, nor is it inside. We are integrally related to the world; so is the case with the world in respect of our own selves. We are not sitting outside the world, we are in the world, but not inside the world as something contained in a pot. The relationship between the individual and the cosmos is of an organic whole. To put it in a more plain way, we may say it is something like the organs of the body getting related to the bodily organism itself. Though the hands and the feet can be perceived by oneself as objects of sense, they do not remain as external objects. They are organic parts of the whole body, which is the transcendence of the limbs. Thus, religion rises above the classical scientific notion of the externality of the world and touches upon what we may call the universal concept of the truth of life.
The Truth, which is the ultimate aim of the religious pursuit, is an all-comprehensive universal inclusiveness, and here it does not go hand in hand with classical physics which requires the world to be totally outside. The clash between physical science in its classical form and the religious ideal lies in this fact that on one side it is asserted that the fact of life is a universal inclusiveness; on the other side, it is asserted that it is totally outside.
Later, towards the middle of the twentieth century, the theories of science got modified systematically, and more considerate and investigative scientists found that it is impossible to know anything unless there is a relationship between the knower and the known. A totally disconnected object, as the world is, cannot be known by any individual consciousness. The involvement of the object of perception in the subjective operation of visualising is necessary in order that perception can take place at all. There must be an en rapport between the perceiving consciousness and the perceived object. The two stand parallel to each other. Neither is the world above the individual, nor is the individual above the world. They are coeval in time and space. We are of the same stuff as the world is made of, and we are living in a realm which is just the physical realm of the five elements. The world is a constitution of the five physical elements – earth, water, fire, air, and ether, which also are the building bricks of the individual body. The very substance of our physical existence is the same as the substance of the physical world. The building bricks of the cosmos are the building bricks of our own personalities. Then, if that is the case, what is it that makes us feel that we are different from the world? It is an interference of a particular unintelligible phenomenon called space and time. Though classical physics from the point of view of Newton considered that space and time have nothing to do with the contents of the world, it was later discovered that space and time are vitally connected with every physical event in the world.
It is in the Taittiriya Upanishad that we hear of the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Tasmadva etasmadatmana akashah sambhutah: From the Universal Absolute, the Selfhood of the cosmos, space emanated. Here, we must realise that even space has a connection with the Absolute. Akashadvayuh: The principle of air emanated from the vibrations of space. Vayoragnih; Friction created by the movement of air created heat, which is fire. Agnerapah: The condensation of the heat of fire produced the liquid condition of the world, which is water. The solidification of water became the earth principle, Adbhyah prithivi. Prithivya oshadhayah: From the earth arise all herbs, plantations and trees, which are the foodstuff of animals and human beings. Oshadhibhyannam: All that we eat arises from the plants and trees and vegetables and such edible articles produced by the earth. Annatpurushah: The human arises as a latecomer in the process of evolution. This physical body is annamaya, constituted of the foodstuff which is the earth principle, which again is an evolutionary consequence of the water principle, that again of the fire principle, the fire principle of the air principle, the air principle of the space principle, and the space principle is rooted in the Universal Existence.
So, you can know your connection with the Ultimate Reality. We are sunk deep in Ultimate Being. We are an automatic evolute in the lowest form of its expression, in its physical, material form, which is the spatio-temporal expression of the non-spatial and non-temporal Supreme Being which is Ultimate Consciousness: satyam jnanamanantam brahma.
Lofty is this concept. Today, the more understanding type of physical scientists have practically stumbled upon this great concept of the Upanishads. Mathematicians who declared that the world is only equations, point events, and waves of probability, or a continuum of some indescribable stuff which is incapable of description, have inadvertently been forced to accept that existence is indivisible. This conclusion should be drawn by the consciousness of the scientist himself.
The great physicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, who would not accept that there is God or such a thing as consciousness, fell upon this acceptance inadvertently, unconsciously, as it were. In his great book “The Nature of the Physical World,” he utters a gospel truth: “The stuff of the world is consciousness.”
Science misunderstood is a threat to religion; if you consider it only as a technological process of flying with great speed and working through satellite, television and internet, that would be a poor concept of science. Science is a noble investigative procedure, which can take us to the depths of the secrets of life, if dispassionately we go with it.
Here is an unexpected discovery of science that the stuff of the world has to be consciousness. Why is it so? It is because the world has to be known in order that it may be accepted to exist. Who is telling you that the world is existing? Your consciousness is telling this. How does the consciousness know that the world is existing, unless this consciousness is pervading the world of perception? The imbibition of the very structure of the physical world into the structure of consciousness is the reason why we believe in the existence of a world, and that it is ours. So, there is finally no conflict between the highest discoveries of science and the noble aspirations of religion.
By “religion” we are not meaning Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism – this “ism”, that “ism”, and all that. These are all designated denominational forms of the true meaning of religion. Religion is the aspiration of the soul for its ultimate destiny. It is a search of the individual for the Absolute. It is a longing of the spirit within us for God Almighty. It has nothing to do with any “ism”, and no one can be free from this eternal longing for perfection, which may better be called spiritual aspiration rather than a religious longing, because of the abuse of the word ‘religion’ in modern times, under historical circumstances, and in the studies in schools and colleges.
People who are now considering themselves as scientists and very advanced in logical thinking pooh-pooh religion, thinking it is an old grandmother’s story, because their idea of religion is so poor, as is their concept of science. There is a tragedy that has befallen every one of us in our not being able to be precise in our knowledge of things, whether it is scientific or religious.
There is no conflict. There was a time in the Middle Ages when physical science appeared to be clashing with the theological doctrines of the church. The church excommunicated many scientists, and they were punished with severe indictments from the Pope. An inquisition was set up in the Middle Ages – for us, very unthinkable, indeed. People were burnt, thrown into the flames by dogmatic religious followers, and science retaliated and disconnected itself from the Pope.
Today we are in a different world altogether. The conflict has ceased; at least, it is appearing to be ceasing. Though it was once said, “The East is East and the West is West, and the twain shall never meet,” I think today it is attempting to come together, and is meeting. The West and the East wish to shake hands with each other and accept their common heritage as human beings, rather than Westerners and Easterners, scientists and religious followers, seekers of God and seekers of material values.
There are several textbooks written these days, where powerful monographs have gone into the depths of this harmony that is already existing between the external and the universal. Though the external may be different from the internal, it cannot be external to the Universal. The Universal is a transcendent element which rises above both the subjective side and the objective side. We cannot even know that there is anything outside us unless there is a third element which is not ourselves, and not the object that is perceived, also.
Because of the externality of the object of perception and the internality of consciousness, there is no connection between the two, and knowledge is impossible; no one can know that anything is. But there is a transcendent principle. Eastern thought considers this as adhidaiva, a spiritual principle operating as a transcendental element – unknown and unperceivable, but operating between the subjective side and the objective side.
The subjective side is called the adhyatma, the objective is adhibhauta, and the transcendent is adhidaiva. All the three have to work together in order that there may be perception at all. But we are so poor in our understanding that we know little of ourselves, and much less of the world, and nothing at all of this transcendental operation. Gods are behind our eyes and ears, our nose and tongue, and our sensations. These gods which are the denizens of heaven are the operators of this mechanism called the physical body with its sense organs. It is a presumption on the part of the egoistic individual to think that he or she is working. The workers are the great divine beings which are transcendent adhidaivas – gods in heaven, as we call them. But they are invisible. They are invisible because they are neither inside nor outside; they are “above”.
Here is a path-finding direction for both science and religion, so that if they work together in harmony they can create a world of joy and satisfaction that life is worth living. Do you want to depart from this world with the tragic feeling that nothing has been achieved? The world has eluded the grasp of everybody. Kings have come, empires rose and fell, and the earth has not changed. It appears to be so because of our wrong evaluation of the historical process. History is actually a natural process of the cosmos. It is the total operation taking place in the whole of creation, even when a little event is taking place somewhere in a corner of the world. Our learned speaker mentioned about quantum mechanics and the discoveries of relativity, etc., which highlighted the astounding truth of sudden and simultaneous action taking place in the universe. Every event is a simultaneous event. It is not taking place yesterday and tomorrow; it is just now, everywhere.
Did not the poet tell us that we cannot touch the petals of a flower in our garden without disturbing the stars in the heavens? It is not poetry; it is the truth. Every event is a universal event. Anything that is taking place anywhere takes place everywhere, and we are living throughout the universe, in all parts of the cosmos. Our individuality is not confined merely to this earth planet. It is everywhere in different parts.
Scientists today have discovered the possibility of worlds within worlds, and the possibility of many worlds, and our being inhabitants of all these worlds simultaneously. “Simultaneously” is the word we have to underline. We are not inhabiting these many worlds in succession – today here, tomorrow somewhere else. At one stroke, in a timeless manner, we inhabit the whole cosmos, and we are world citizens working in different forms. Unknown to our own selves, one part of ourselves is here on this earth performing activities in this way, and another part of our own archetypal nature is in the heaven, even today.
Our higher self in the heaven is pulling us and summoning us: “Come on. You are not here, where you appear to be. You are in the heaven.” That is why we are longing for the higher values of life, and we can never be satisfied; we are always unsatisfied because we are not in this world. We are really in some other world – not only in some other world, we are in all the worlds. This universal operation of individuals is a great discovery of modern quantum mechanics, which is quite different from that science which appears to be in conflict with religion. Science has become spirituality; physics has become metaphysics.
This is a wonder toward the end of the twentieth century that we are seeing; we believe that God shall come. The kingdom of heaven is within us; it is within us, because it is everywhere. How can a large kingdom be contained within our little frame of physical existence? It is because the inwardness of our existence is not actually the physical inwardness. The whole universe can be within us.
It is the Chandogya Upanishad which tells us that whatever is happening in the outside world is happening within us. If the sun is shining there, it is shining inside, also. If it is hot outside, it is hot inside, also. If it is raining outside, it is raining inside, also. If there is thunder there, there is thunder here, also. But we are so stupid that we cannot realise these events are taking place within us, commensurate with all the things that are happening outside in the world.
We are the world; thus, the discovery of science today tells us. This is what the great Yoga Vasishtha scripture tells us. This is what the Upanishads tell us. It is not merely the twain of West and East that is coming together; God and man are shaking hands with each other in this vast kingdom of universal creation.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Swamiji Answers Questions on Illusion, Karma and Rebirth
Swamiji Answers Questions on Illusion, Karma and Rebirth by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 14 November 2013 22:15
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Visitor: The scripture speaks of our dream state and our awakening state; but, at the same time, it says that everything is illusion.
SWAMIJI: It is not illusion. As long as you believe that it is there, you can see it. It is illusion only for the person who cannot see it, and will not see it. When you are seeing it with your eyes and you are believing that it is there, then why do you call it illusion? Who told you that it is illusion?
Visitor: No one.
SWAMIJI: Does your feeling say that it is illusion?
Visitor:No I don’t think that it is…
SWAMIJI: Then what is the good of saying it is illusion? Somebody is saying something, and you are quoting it. Your heart should say that it is illusion;then, you are free from it. You will not cling to an illusion. Who clings to an illusion? It is an illusion only when you transcend it. When you are experiencing it, why do you call it an illusion? It has a relative reality. It may not be absolutely real, but it is relatively real. It has a workable reality – a tentative reality. What binds you is your feeling that somethingis real. What the scripture says has no meaning; it has no relevance to you. The scripture cannot bind you, and it cannot liberate you. Your feelings will bind you and liberate you. Do you believe that the world is real? Then you are bound, even if the scripture says another thing. But if you say the world does not exist for some reason – “I have got some conviction that for some reason it does not exist” – then it cannot bind you. But your heart should be convinced that it does not exist, and you must also have a reason why it does not exist. What is the reason you say it does not exist? What are the proofs? Bring the proofs. If the proofs are there, the world will vanish. But if you have no proof to say that the world is not existing, it will be clinging. Merely saying something is not the answer. You must have an argument and a proof and a conviction in the heart that, “For these reasons I can really feel that it is not Ultimate Reality. Therefore, I cannot cling to it.” But if your heart says it is very nice, then why do you call it illusion? It is illusion to a person who is convinced that it does not exist. But if you are not convinced, then why do you call it illusion?
Visitor: Because I did not understand when I was saying to Swami Brahmananda…
SWAMIJI: Let Swami Brahmananda say anything. What are you saying?
Visitor: I said, “How can I say that it doesn’t exist, if for me it exists? Right now it exists. I exist and I can touch my body.”
SWAMIJI: To the extent it exists, is a binding factor. You cannot be free from it. But you must find out the way. Ask Swami Brahmanandaji, “Why do you call it illusion?” You ask him tomorrow.
Visitor: I am leaving tonight.
SWAMIJI: You could not find a better time to ask than now? Than one minute before going? You simply throw the world out and go out from here? In one minute? Why did you not ask Brahmanandaji? You were sitting every day and you would not ask him a question?
Visitor: No, I asked him for examples. He said as an example the bangle and the gold – that everything is gold…
SWAMIJI: Are you convinced that it is gold and not the bangle? The whole world is only gold and not the bangle?
Visitor: I can understand that it is gold…
SWAMIJI: You understand?
Visitor: The intellect can understand that I am…
SWAMIJI: Why do you say it is all gold and not bangle? What is the argument behind it?
Visitor: Well, he explained to us that ‘bangle’ is a name that we give to the objects and the subject.
SWAMIJI: We have to deeply meditate on this great truth that all these objects of the world are only variations, formations of a single substance, and, therefore, these variations and forms and diversities are not true. Gold has never become the bangles; it is still gold only, looking a little round.Similarly, the one substance looks like the world because of the shape it has taken through space and time. And you are also included in the various shapes that it has taken. Therefore, neither you exist nor the various forms exist. It is one substance that exists. You should not unnecessarily go on clinging to the form of Mr. So-and-so and the form of something else. It is like clinging to a chain and a ring or a particular ornament, forgetting that it is gold. It requires deep meditation. Whatever you see with your eyes, including your own self, actually is a form of the one Universal Substance. Therefore, when you think, actually the Universal Substance is thinking. You are not thinking; you are not doing anything, nor are you moving from place to place. Nothing is happening, really speaking. It is in the dream world of the Cosmic Consciousness and, therefore, it is one thought that is operating. The Universal Thought is thinking the whole cosmos – which means to say, you are not thinking. The idea that you are thinking must go away from your mind, because you are included in that universal thought; therefore, you are not thinking it. Rather, it is thinking you. Instead of you thinking it, it is thinking you – the other way round. So, all your thoughts should be melted down into one single universal thought, and you should think nothing else but that. Then you will find that what Brahmananda Swamiji said is correct. The world will vanish; it won’t be there afterwards.But, deep meditation along these lines should be carried on day and night.
Visitor: Thank you.
Francis: According to the Panchadasi, avidya is the cause of aviveka. What is the difference between the two of them?
SWAMIJI: The unconsciousness of the existence of a Universal Reality is called avidya, and the incapacity to distinguish between the Universal Reality and the appearance of the world is aviveka. You understand me? The unconsciousness of the existence of the Universal Reality is avidya; the incapacity to distinguish between the Universal Reality and the appearance of the world is aviveka. Do you catch the point? Do you understand what I say?
Francis: Is avidya connectedwith avarana?
SWAMIJI: Yes, you can say that. It is something like that.
Visitor: What is the technical difference between Ishvara and Saguna Brahman?
SWAMIJI: Ishvara is same as Saguna Brahman. There are three stages of the manifestation of the Supreme Absolute, Brahman: Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat. All these three stages – Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat – are also called Ishvara only, in one way. The total concept of the inclusiveness of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat is also called Ishvara, and it is the same as Saguna Brahman. Qualified Absolute – it means Qualified Absolute.
Francis: From an absolute point of view there is no creation, but from a relative point of view there is creation. Do these theories of creation describe a temporal process, or rather do they describe the logical structure of the degrees of Reality?
SWAMIJI: It looks like a temporal process to the human mind which thinks in terms of temporal process. Here you have your great friend Immanuel Kant coming to your aid, who said that the mind of the human being cannot think except in terms of space and time and, therefore, every event is interpreted by the human mind in terms of space and time, which means the temporal process.Though that process might not be temporal, the mind thinks it is temporal. God has not created a temporal process, because God is not existing in time. Do you understand? Therefore, you cannot say that God has created the world as a temporal process. It is not a historical movement that God has initiated. There is no history for God, because that is in time and He is above time. It is a logical process rather than a temporal historical process.
Visitor: How can you prove that perception is the movement of the mind towards the object? How do you prove this movement – that perception is the movement of the mind towards the object?
SWAMIJI: I gave you that little book – you never read that book – that Yoga, Meditation and Japa Sadhana book which I give to all people. The first part of it is only that – and you have not read it. What I meant is, unless your consciousness contacts the object, it cannot become aware of the object. And if the object is different from consciousness in quality, consciousness cannot know that there is an object. Therefore, the object of consciousness cannot be totally outside consciousness. If it is not outside consciousness, it should be within consciousness and, therefore, it is a part of consciousness only. This is the answer. Do you understand the point? Otherwise, you can’t be aware that there is an object, if it is totally outside it. How will you contact the object when it is totally different? What is the link between object and consciousness? Therefore, consciousness must have an inherent, implicit presence in the object itself, which is another way of saying that the object itself is a potential consciousness – concluding thereby that the whole universe is consciousness. Do you catch the point?
Visitor:Yes. When the scriptures say that sound is transmitted by ether and not by the air, how can we make it compatible with the normal physical theory that sound travels through the air?
SWAMIJI: Sound cannot travel without air. When the scriptures say that sound travels through ether, they mean it travels through air, which is in ether. That is the idea. Where air is absent, sound cannot travel. That is the point.
Visitor: About the theory of karma. I think we cannot prove that the things which happen to me in some particular moment are due only to my own previous actions, because it is possible that they are due to the other processes which are external to me.
SWAMIJI: What are the other processes?
Visitor:For example, weather, or somebody comes here…
SWAMIJI: You see, again you are bringing in weather and all that. Weather, etc., are objects of consciousness. And I told you, you cannot have any connection with objects unless your consciousness is implicit in them. So, we should not say some external causes are troubling you. There are no external causes. They are connected with your consciousness. Therefore, they seem to be troubling you. So, there is no external cause. The external cause, so called, is also implicit in your consciousness. Otherwise, you won’t be affected by that. If there is no connection at all between you and the weather, it won’t affect you at all. It has connection with you, because it is also an object, and every object is implicitly consciousness – which means to say, it is connected with your consciousness also and, therefore, there is action and reaction between subject and object. That action and reaction between subject and object is called karma. That is all. It is like the law of gravitation. The whole universe is conditioning you because of your consciousness being connected to everything in the world. Every cell of the brain of a person is connected to every atom in the cosmos; this is the modern theory of physics. Every cell in your brain is connected to every part of the cosmos. And so there is nothing with which you are not connected. Hence, you are a cosmic man basically, wrongly thinking that you are an individual person, and so this action and reaction taking place between your wrong notion of the individuality and the actual Absolute is the cause of this gravitational force, which is morally or ethically called karma. It is like the law of gravitation, which is operative between the individual and the Absolute on account of the wrong notion of the individual that it is separate from the Absolute.Karma will not act if you are identical with the Absolute. Karma acts as long as you are outside it. Do you understand? So, there is no karma for the Absolute. And you also will not have any karma, provided you are merged in the Absolute consciousness in your deep meditation. All karmas will be destroyed in one minute. But if you persist in thinking that “I am Mr. Francis and some separate individual from the cosmos”, it will react upon you. That reaction is called karma. That is the point.
Visitor: Yes, I understand.
SWAMIJI: What I am telling you just now is explained in a little more detail in my book, The Philosophy of Religion, under a section called The Theory of Karma.
Visitor:I am not convinced about the proofs of the theory of rebirth.
SWAMIJI: From where do you come – from Spain?
Visitor: This individual, this body of mine – what you call ‘I’.
SWAMIJI: Are you Mr. Francis?
Visitor: Mr. Francis.
SWAMIJI: From where have you come?
Francis: As far as I know, there was a combination between my father and mother – some biological thing.
SWAMIJI: Who compiled the biological elements into the form of this Francis?
Francis: I don’t know – the biological laws.
SWAMIJI: Who created these laws? Why are the laws so bad that they are creating Francis? They could have created some angel. [laughter] Why are the laws operating so badly? You would have certainly liked to be an angel and a godman instead of a poor little suffering fellow. Why are the laws so bad? Why they are operating in that way? Tell me. Who is initiating it from behind? Without a cause, an effect cannot follow. So you could not have come unless a cause operated. Who is this cause? You cannot say laws, because who made these laws?
Francis: I think that this question may be… It is not possible to ask this question…
SWAMIJI: I want to know who created these laws. Because you want to know the cause of a thing, we are going to probe into the cause. How did the effect follow from the cause, unless the cause has some intention behind it?
Francis: We can speak of causality inside the world.
SWAMIJI: Inside the world? There is no inside the world. Again you are bringing the inside/outside business. In the world there is no inside/outside; it is a total organism. In a total organism, there is no inside/outside. The idea of inside/outside arises because you have separated yourself from the Universal. The moment you separate yourself from the Universal, the Universal looks like an outside. But if you are actually an organic part of the Universal, where is the question of inside/outside? It is a total action taking place – a total action. Actually, rebirth or birth, whatever you call it, is only your desire. You want to be reborn; that is all. If you don’t want to be reborn, you will not be reborn. If you say, “I don’t want to be reborn. Why should I be reborn? I have no business to be reborn. I have no desire for rebirth” – you would entertain no desire at all for anything whatsoever; then, why should you be reborn? The rebirth stops in one second. But you want to be reborn. Your consciousness concentrates itself in a particular fashion according to the laws, as you are saying, and projects itself into that location. Consciousness condensing itself, solidifying itself and becoming a form for the purpose of fulfilling the existing desires is called rebirth.
Francis: But I still need proof…
SWAMIJI: How can I prove that you have got desires? What is the proof?
Francis: I have desires, yes.
SWAMIJI: What is that proof that you have got desires? You yourself are the proof. And you have to fulfill the desire. And you cannot fulfill the desires in this birth, because they are so many in number.
Francis: But then maybe I will never…
SWAMIJI: You will never fulfill them? You will certainly fulfill them. The law of the cosmos is such that every desire has to be fulfilled.
Francis: But if we have faith in… or we have faith in a possibility…
SWAMIJI: It has nothing to do with faith. It is a scientific law. It is a scientific law of action and reaction. Even if you have no faith that if you go to the top of a tree you will fall down, you will certainly fall even if you have no faith. Why you want faith? There is no question of faith here; it is an action between you and the Universal. These problems will not arise if you don’t persist in thinking that you are an individual outside the Universal. You have created the problem unnecessarily by thinking that you are outside, and then going on arguing against the Universal.
Francis: I think this state of consciousness of non-duality …
SWAMIJI: If there is not duality, where is rebirth? The question doesn’t arise.
Francis: I think this question of rebirth is of vyavaharika…
SWAMIJI: It is vyavaharika only. It is perfectly right. The rebirth is vyavaharika and your existence as Mr Francis is also a vyavaharika existence. Absolutely, you are not existing. Absolutely, you are existing as nothing. So, you have not been born. And therefore, you will need not to be reborn. This is an illusion, as this gentleman was talking about. But it is an illusion only when you identify yourself with the Absolute. Otherwise, if you are yourself convinced that you are outside it, all the laws that operate in the universe will act against you because you have contravened the law of the universal whole. That is all. It is the law of evolution. Something evolved from matter to plant, plant to animal, animal to human being. How can one thing become another thing unless the previous stage has ceased and the second stage has started? And the starting of the second stage is the rebirth of the first stage. What you call evolution as the process in biological law is same as rebirth. How can the higher form come unless the lower form has gone? The lower form dies. That is, there is a mutation taking place. And the mutation of the lower transforms itself into the new form which is the higher form. That new form is what you call the rebirth. What you call rebirth is nothing but the law of evolution taking place, and evolution will not take place if your consciousness is identical with the Absolute. The whole evolution will cease in one second.
Francis: So then, there is some progress.
SWAMIJI: It is the progress of the Absolute.
Francis: Is there any purpose?
SWAMIJI: It is the cosmic purpose.
Francis: There will be some moment when this purpose is fulfilled.
SWAMIJI: It will be fulfilled, and you will never see the universe afterwards.
Francis: Not the universe, maybe…
SWAMIJI: You will never see the universe.
Francis: That happens in a new life?
SWAMIJI: The individual will not be there at that time. Then why are you again saying individual? Again you are bringing the individual.
Visitor: During the night of Brahman, it is timeless. Therefore, it must exist in one moment, and there can be no temporal gap between one day of Brahman and the next one.
SWAMIJI: There is no gap.
Francis: There is no gap between one day and the next one?
SWAMIJI: Where is the gap between day and night?
Francis: I mean between one day and the next day.
SWAMIJI: Where is the gap? We are also passing through one day and the next day. Where is the gap? There is a continuity. No gap.
Francis: Is not deep sleep a temporal state also? So there is no separation between my previous…
SWAMIJI: They are continuous. If they are separated one from the other, then you cannot know that you are one continuous person. The sleeping person, the dreaming person and the waking person are one person; and if each state is different from the other, there would be discontinuity of self-identity. Inasmuch as self-identity is maintained in all the three states, it shows that all the three states are continuous and are not cut off one from the other. Otherwise, the sleeping man would be different, the dreaming man will be another man, and the waking man a third person. It does not happen. It is one continuity.
Francis: The right eye is more active than the left one during the day.
SWAMIJI: That’s what they say. As they say, the right hand is more active than the left hand. This is a kind of usual traditional belief. Perhaps it has some connection with the two nadis operating, the solar and the lunar, the solar being more powerful than the lunar, and maybe the right side is influenced by the solar side, which is more powerful than the lunar side, the left one.
Francis: About the idea of rebirth. I will give two arguments – not against the idea but against its importance for spiritual life. The idea of rebirth is not essential in spiritual life because there have been many saints who did not believe in it.
SWAMIJI: Rebirth? If they don’t believe, you need not bother about it. Why are you worried about them?
Francis: There are saints who attained this spiritual state, who have different beliefs.So it is not essential.
SWAMIJI: A person who has reached the highest state will know everything that is taking place in the cosmos. And rebirth is one of the things that is taking place. Otherwise, he will not be omniscient. Omniscience includes everything, and you cannot say you don’t know something. You must know everything. Otherwise, what is omniscience?
Francis: I think jivanmuktas are omniscient.
SWAMIJI: Jivanmukta also is a very lesser condition. There is something higher than that – Cosmic-consciousness. It is Universal-consciousness, even above jivanmukta.And they must know everything – every atom – so there is nothing that they cannot understand. They should not say they don’t know something. That is not possible. They will know everything. They can count how many hairs are there on the heads of all the people in the world, such consciousness is there. They can know how many leaves are there in all the forests in the world, by direct perception.
Francis: If rebirth is true…
SWAMIJI: What is rebirth? It is a kind of transformation taking place in the cosmos. Why are you using that word ‘rebirth’? It is a transmutation taking place in everything in the cosmos. And everybody has to undergo that transmutation. And nobody could have become jivanmukta unless he has undergone this transformation. Otherwise, he would be a pig or a buffalo always. How would the buffalo become a jivanmukta without undergoing transformation? That is called rebirth, which I mentioned to you earlier. The mutation of species for the purpose of a higher state of consciousness is called rebirth. Otherwise, how would you reach God? You would be the same person forever, unless the mutation takes place. It has to take place.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Through Hardship and Vicissitude
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Through Hardship and Vicissitude by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 13 November 2013 20:36
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We have heard the saying that the viaticum for a journey and knowledge that is obtained from others do not last long. Our convictions should guide us, though instructions from others may clear the way.
To come to the point, we are unhappy not because we are not wise, but because we are unable to apply our wisdom to suit the conditions or circumstances in which we live. Wisdom in the wrong place and at the wrong time has led some philosophers to grief. One should not wish to be too wise, beyond the prescribed limits. To adjust and adapt oneself to circumstances, while giving that magical touch of utter faith in the omniscience and omnipotence of God to all that we humbly try to do here is, in my opinion, better than a lofty ambition to transform the earth into heaven—which even Buddha and Christ have not done. The truly wise have often been indifferent to many things in which most people take an avid interest; and this is for a good reason, of course. Absorption, not repulsion, is the way in which Nature works. Even an initial isolation is for a higher inclusion.
If we want to be happy, we should not judge the present by a future ideal or a standard that ought to be, for the ‘ought’ is different from the ‘is’. Though the ideal should guide our present activity, we should not compare the two and feel despair. We seem to be displeased with the present setup of things because we are comparing it with an ideal which is yet to be, which is in our minds. While the ideal is good and should be in our minds always to keep our spirits elevated, we should not become theorisers and forget the causes of the present circumstance, which is differentiated from the future ideal. Our duty is to understand, and not judge. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Essentially, to see the good in things is real virtue, for the so-called ugliness is a phase of God’s mystery.
Nimittamatram bhava: “Be merely an instrument in work.” An instrument has no right to judge or hold opinion, but to take things as they are, and when things go beyond one’s control, leave them to Him, and not lament over the matter. But we should do what is within our capacity without involving our emotions or prejudices for certain things or even for ways of thinking. This is hard to appreciate and harder to practise, but there is no other go.
Man has many passions within him. One of the passions is the ego, which wants its ideas to be displayed throughout the world. People should not wish that their ideas should always prevail over the ideas of others. Ideas are not for lording over other people or imposing on other people’s minds. Ideas should only be expressed, and suggestions sometimes given, and if they are not accepted we should not feel internal agony or annoyance. We should not expect that our thoughts be accepted by others, for appreciation cannot be thrust into people’s minds. We are cogwheels in a cosmic machine; and as the machine works, the wheels move automatically. The Operator of the machine knows things better than we do, and it is not the business of the wheel to intrude or butt in as if it is an independent something. Its duty is merely to cooperate, not to assert. This, in my humble opinion, is the spirit of the karma yoga of the Bhagavadgita—to be in tune with a universal Be-ness.
Wholly unselfish persons cannot be found in the world. Those who are unselfish are only conditionally so. They are good under certain circumstances. Flout their wishes, and they change. It is a pity that even those sworn bonds of love among human beings can become estranged overnight when people assume elevated positions in society. Then they sunder past relations as if they had never existed, and an entirely new life of mutual suspicion, distrust and dislike commences from the time of the appearance of Nature’s illusions called power and wealth. These twin monsters gain access into both public and private sectors. Therefore, no one who is susceptible to these subtle subterfuges of the devil can be said to have a mastery over themselves. Plus, there are two gross forms in which Nature’s impulses reveal themselves in one’s person—sex and self-esteem. The slightest interference with these weak spots throws one into a fit of ireful retaliation. Hence, it is no wonder that the malady of the world has a fourfold root of power, wealth, sex and self-esteem.
Karma works in most intriguing and often annoying ways. That all our experiences are due to our past karmas cannot be doubted, because every event has a cause, and if our karma is not the cause of our pleasures and pains, to what else can they be attributed? They cannot be related to God, since He is free from prejudice and partiality and hence He cannot be held responsible for the variety of individualstic experience. Karma, therefore, is the cause.
Our karmas come back to us as boomerangs, proving that all karma is an interference with the equilibrium of Nature. When the results of karma return to us, we have, unfortunately, no knowledge of their causes, and so we grieve and curse ourselves and the world around us when we hear something that displeases us, when someone speaks ill of us though the criticism is false, when someone imputes motives to our actions that we have never thought of, when we are told that we are good-for-nothings just because we have not been able to abide by the irrational whims of some person or persons, when we are suspected for ill-founded reasons and imagined causes, when we are condemned for acts which we have not done, when we are belittled as the cause of an unpleasantness of which we have no knowledge, when a tyrant rides roughshod over us in expressing his insatiated egoism, when we are done a wrong turn for the good we have done, when everyone turns against us for mistakes which we have not committed, when our friends become unkind to us when they rise to power and pomp, when our righteousness is lost sight of in the complacency and pride of those who do not want to understand others.
Though we may be aware of these shortcomings of human nature, we should have no complaints, no longing to be blazoned to the public eye, no ideas to be forced into others’ minds, and no sorrow that such and such a thing has not been done. Why? I am of opinion that one’s pleasure is not to be sought in doing something, but in being something. Until this is achieved, there cannot be joy either in our actions or in the things that we obtain. These will give us only misery.
This world, which is full of so many bad things, is tolerated by God. Even now, in this condition, it is His. Therefore, let there be patience and understanding of even the worst of things, so that we may be at peace within ourselves even when we are insulted with ungratefulness for the good that we try to do to people. Pericles of Greece raised the status of his country to a golden age, to the height of its glory, but he was stoned to death by his countrymen. As the Lord’s ways are mysterious, we have only to wait with the patience of a servant for the descent of the knowledge of this mystery. We should not be displeased at heart, because we have no business either to be pleased or displeased with anything, though we do our duties as if we are pleased with things. We have neither the requisite knowledge nor the power to do what we want. Then, what is the way out? Should we cry and lament? Definitely not! The way out is to lift ourselves with the faith that God is great always.
Our importance and happiness should not always depend on what others think of us or feel about us. Our destiny is entirely dependent on what we are in the eyes of God. We should do our duty; let the world not respect us. But it is not easy to know what our duty is at any given moment. Particular duties vary from circumstance to circumstance, irrespective of the fact that there is one general duty for everyone, which is God-realisation. Most of our sufferings and griefs arise because we do not understand the shifting of particular duties in our daily life, and we make the mistake of applying the same standard to everyone, to all things and always. When God Himself adjusts His laws to the conditions of the changing times, why should we not also do that?
This superior art of adjusting oneself to circumstances should be distinguished from hypocrisy, which is an artificial attitude born of selfishness. That is why a life of real wisdom is so difficult to live; there are so many slight shades of difference even in the apparently same dharma. Our thoughts, feelings and actions should not defeat the highest purpose for which we are supposed to live. Otherwise, it will not be a correct adjustment. We should not shun the world, nor should we live in such a way that the world shuns us. This is the secret of self-adjustment. At same time, we should not forget our true Goal. Bravo! May God bless us!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Aim of Life
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The Aim of Life by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 12 November 2013 20:12
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Visitor: What should be the aim of one’s life?
Swamiji: Let me first explain who you are. You are an individual. An individual is a social being, a member of a certain society. You think of each person in the society as a separate individual. You do not think that one soul is connected with another soul. Suppose you all sit here, without having any connection with one another. In that case, you cannot call it a society. It is like a heap of pebbles on the road which look connected with each other, but are not really so. In fact, society does not mean merely a group of people. Society is the relationship between individuals, and not merely a group of people. There is a difference between a group of people and society, though on the surface it appears that society is nothing but a group of people.
There is, therefore, a difference between group psychology and individual psychology. You may think something as an individual, but when you are in the midst of a hundred people, you think differently. Why is this so? What happens to you? You become a part of the group. This is the difference between society and the individual. This relationship between one person and another is the primary concern at present. Whatever you do is in the light of society, the social relationship. You are not doing it absolutely from your own individual point of view, though ultimately that is your intention. You cannot impose upon it your own personality, inasmuch as you cannot extricate yourself from social relationship.
But social relationship is ultimately to be transcended in one’s understanding of the great fact that society is not independent of individuals, notwithstanding the fact that it is the relation between the individuals that is society. If individuals were not there, society would not be there. So, individuals are tremendously important. You have an importance in your individuality, because you are an individual. And the importance of one individual is the same as that of any other individual. If you know yourself fully, you know everybody else, because everybody is made of the same substance. So from social psychology, you come to individual psychology. Though the primary intention is to face society ultimately, that will not decide all your questions unless you read the psychology of human nature. And the way in which the human mind works decides the manner in which society works. Because society is a relationship of individuals, it is essential that you know what is the structure of the human mind and human nature. It is made up of certain factors. It is constructed of certain forces and works in a certain manner, and you have to take into consideration the structure of the human personality, the human mind, the intellect, the emotions and whatever there is of the psyche.
But this is also not sufficient. Why should the mind work in that way? This is another question. The human mind works in a given way because of its pattern of thinking, understanding and desiring. And one has to conform oneself to the way in which the mind works. There is the question of why the mind works in that manner and not in any other manner. This question cannot be answered by psychology, because psychologists study only the patterns and processes of the human mind. The why of it, they cannot say. This is the question which leads us to philosophy and the philosophical enquiry which is in the higher realms of spirituality, religion, yoga, etc..
Your relationship with the universe is the reason behind the way the mind works in that particular way. Human society is determined by individuals, and the individuals themselves are determined by cosmic relationship. You are constituted of a particular relationship with the universe of the world outside. You are connected with the air, water, fire, ether, sky, the moon, the sun, the solar system and so on. So the way in which you are related to the cosmos outside is the determining factor of the manner in which your personality would work – the way in which your mind works and, incidentally, society works. And your relationship with the universe outside is the subject of philosophy. From sociology, we go to psychology, and from psychology we go to what they call epistemology, i.e. the way of thinking and understanding things outside and the manner of our perception. Then we go to cosmology, the creation of the universe.
When we go to the creation of the universe, the question of the creator arises. Who created this universe? So we go to metaphysics and the Absolute. Just imagine! You are related to so many wonderful things which are unthinkable, and it is enough to make one giddy. Your head will start reeling if you have the time to think of the various relationships in which you are involved. Though it seems you are connected with only little things like shopping and standing at a counter to encash a cheque, and they are silly matters for you, but these things are connected with the Absolute. And this will become clear to you only if you have time to think deeply about small situations. Even the littlest thing of the world is connected with the Absolute. Now I come to your point. You asked me how you can decide the aim of life. Do you get some inkling as to the answer to this question? Do you have some idea as to the implications of your question?
Visitor: Yes.
Swamiji: What should be the aim of your life? Tell me.
Visitor: You should see to your own qualities, your own intelligence and…
Swamiji: You should not look to your own quality. You have to look to the various stages of life. I mentioned to you the various stages of the development of thought. You go gradually from the lower to the higher. You are not looking at any particular thing – neither to yourself, nor to society, nor to the world, nor even to God Himself – but you have to look to all things at the same time, in different gradations or ascents, and you must know where you stand. You should not jump too high by thinking that you are on a higher level when you are actually on a lower. Generally we suffer and come in conflict on account of our theoretical imagining that we are on a higher level while practically we are on a lower one. That is called worry, mental tension, etc. Tension is the problem that is created by a theoretical future and a practical present. [laughs] So you should be very wise. You should not try to soar to the sky very quickly. When your feet are planted on earth, you must know that they are on the earth; you should not think you are in heaven.
People say, “Oh! I am concerned only with God, spirituality and yoga.” That is not true. This kind of statement will not work; and, it is not a fact. The fact is that you are in the world. When the wind blows, you feel cold; you have hunger, you have thirst, sleep… And there are many other considerations. So you must eschew the idea that you are thinking only of God. One must be realistic. Though the aim should be to transcend these lower limitations, you cannot ignore their presence when they are there.
Second visitor: Swami Sivananda says that while he was doing ordinary things, he had his consciousness on the higher level. He does not talk of any level of perfection, but says we should be conscious only of the higher values…
Swamiji: Yes, yes; that is so.
Second visitor: There is no link between the ordinary level without real perfection and the higher consciousness within oneself.
Swamiji: Why do you say there is no link? A link between them is actually present. In fact, the very art of perfect living or the aim of living life is the maintenance of a higher purpose. It need not necessarily be the highest purpose; it is the purpose immediately higher, just above your present level. That is what you are concerned with, not with the supreme level. That is not your concern. When you say this is right, that is not right; this is good, that is not good; it should be like this, it should not be like that – when you say this, you have already set a higher standard than the standard you are following. Otherwise, you will not say this is good and that is not good. You have something in your mind as the proper standard, to which you make a reference to find out what is right and what is wrong. So your idea of it is already there. If it is not there, you will not know what is right and what is wrong. The very fact that you are thinking “this is right, that is wrong,” shows you have a link with a higher idea which you are maintaining in your mind and from the point of which you want to judge the lower level. Similarly, when you have reached that, you will find a still higher level. You go on like that until you reach the highest step. So, as I said, you must concern yourself with the immediately higher level.
The immediately higher level for an ordinary individual is the social norm. You cannot break the social norm, you know that very well. Otherwise, you cannot live in human society. Whether the people in society are correct or not is a different matter. For you, it is correct. Western society has one norm, Indian society another, and Japanese society still another, different from both. It is very strange that every society has its own norms, and neither this is nice nor that is nice. But that is a different subject. You belong to a particular society, and you have to follow its norms. So at the earliest stages of existence, social norms become the higher level. When you transcend that, there is a racial level. When you transcend the racial level, then you are independent and you do not have to hang on society for your existence, and you have strength and value of your own. Then you start judging things from the point of view of your own conscience. Sometimes your conscience will rebel against social norms. You will think society is stupid. But you cannot live in society with this feeling; you have to get out of it, and that is a different matter. When you are in it, you have to follow it. So when your society relationship is transcended, you begin to follow the higher reason with which you are endowed. What we call conscience is the next step.
There is no need of thinking too far into the higher levels, because the mind is not used to it and, therefore, will not go to that level which it has not reached, though it will go to the cosmic level itself in time. Your reason may not be of the final norm, because that is also an empirical thing. It is conditioned by your body and your needs. Your idea of the necessary and unnecessary is dependent on the needs of the body and mind. Whatever is necessary for the body and the mind, you regard that as really necessary. And this something is necessary for the body and mental well-being, and you have got to give in. That is the temporary and tentative judgment of the values of things. But you will transcend this value afterwards. What is good at this level is not necessarily good for the body and your individual psyche from the point of the law that operates in the cosmos. And that is the next step. Then, finally, the highest good is that which is in consonance with the existence of God Himself, and anything else is not good. But you cannot reach that level immediately. As I told you, slowly and gradually you must go from the lower to the higher purpose, otherwise you cannot make judgments. Every judgment logically is the standard that is set as the next higher level. In any opinion that you express, whenever you pass an opinion on anything, hold an idea or a concept or a judgment about anything, you have connection with a higher purpose which becomes your standard. Otherwise you cannot know what is right and what is wrong, what is perfect and what is not perfect, what is true and what is false. So there is a real link. But the link will develop into higher and higher dimensions. You cannot see the higher dimensions, but only the immediately higher.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Remembering the Saints
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Remembering the Saints by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 11 November 2013 21:01
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(Talk given on All-Saints Day, 1952)
Today we have gathered here to observe All Saints Day—to remember the saints. It is the expression of our wish or ambition to partake of the nature of the saints, to grow into the nature of purity, of perfection—which are the constituents of the personality of the saints.
A saint is one whose consciousness has spread everywhere, whose head is in heaven and whose feet are on the earth. He walks on earth as a human being; but he is here before us as a representative of that which is beyond the earth. He combines in himself the mental and the supramental, the physical and the celestial, the visible and the invisible, the finite and the infinite. It is through him that the Infinite expresses itself. It is through him that we can behold the glory of the Divine Being. He embodies in himself all the qualities and attributes which are found in the Divine Being and which are the best, the highest, which the Divine Being expresses in the universe. He is the embodiment of virtue based on knowledge. That is the very meaning of the word ‘saint’.
What is virtue? Virtue and righteousness are practically the same. We cannot have righteousness without knowledge. One cannot know what virtue is unless it is based on the highest knowledge. People can be partially virtuous, relatively virtuous; they may err at some time or the other. But a man who is grounded on truth cannot err, because he is based on that which is absolutely right. Morality and ethics should be based on the knowledge of the Reality. Unless ethics is based on metaphysics, it cannot be perfect ethics. There should be an ultimate explanation of the behaviour of a saint, and that explanation is his own experience or anubhava.
We observe All Saints Day in order that we may understand these principles and apply them in our daily life and have direct experience of them. There is a great value in the adoration of saints. The mind is of such a nature that it imbibes the character of that which it thinks of. That is the psychology of worship and also of upasana. When the mind contemplates something, it grows into that thing and ultimately becomes that. We can, for example, adore the great sage Vasishtha. The moment the mind thinks of Vasishtha, immediately all desires, all base passions are brushed aside. It is impossible to have evil thoughts in the mind together with the thoughts of Vasishtha or Krishna or some other saint. I have heard it from many people here and have myself personally experienced that it is impossible to have an evil thought in the mind when we are sitting in the presence of our Gurudev—because he evokes in us only virtuous qualities. Since he is the embodiment of virtue, of love, of knowledge, of perfection itself, those qualities alone are evoked in us.
Similarly in the case of those whom we do not directly come into contact with, even if we think of them, it is enough. At the time of thinking of those personalities, the mind expands into the form of the qualities of which it thinks, and becomes pure. This is the value of meditation on the qualities of saints and their personalities. We should, therefore, adore the Great Ones—Vasishtha, Vamadeva, Vyasa, Suka, Dakshinamurti, Dattatreya, Risabhadeva and others—because they are our Gurus, they are our Masters, they give us knowledge. And, they give us knowledge even if they are not visible to us. That is very important to remember. Knowledge is not a gross thing. It is very subtle, indestructible, incorruptible, and remains so always. It can be given to us at any time. It is eternal. The receiver (sisya) is eternal; the giver (Guru) is eternal; that which is given (knowledge) is also eternal. In the Kausitaki Upanishad, we have the illustration of how the Guru comes to help the disciple even after death—where it is said that before reaching Brahmaloka, the aspirant comes in contact with the Guru. The Guru may be on earth, but he is not only there; he is beyond the earth also. The Guru is not confined to a body. Being a Realised soul, he pervades the universe and as he is like God Himself; and he can help the aspirant wherever he goes.
These saints do help us continuously and their grace is flowing to us even now. Therefore, we must be receptive to that descent of Grace. We must open our hearts when we worship the saints. We must remember that we must remove all those qualities in us which are obstacles to the reception of the knowledge which the saint gives us. It is no use trying to approach an emperor without the proper qualifications. When we try to do something, we must be sure that we would be able to do that thing, and the proper qualifications should be there.
It is said in the scriptures that the aspirant comes in contact with the particular kind of Guru who is suited to him at that particular stage of evolution. People frequently ask the question: “Why does not Lord Krisna move on earth even now? He can take a body, as He is omnipresent.” A similar question is: “We hear that obstacles are placed before the aspirant by the gods; for example we hear that Indra sends Menaka, Rambha and others to tempt him. Why are not such things experienced these days?” These things are not experienced always. Difficulties of that kind will be experienced by the aspirant in a different degree, not with the same intensity. When a person experiences a particular condition of his mind, he will come in contact with a Guru and an obstacle of the same kind. This is the psychology of sadhana.
The saints, the Risis and Avataras should be worshipped by us so that we can grow into perfection, to become that. When we worship God, we aspire thereby to come into contact with God, to realise God. We do namaskara; and we become one with That. When we say “Om Namo Narayanaya” and prostrate ourselves, it means we desire to become one with Narayana. This must be our constant attitude. We must feel it in our heart and contemplate it. Let us meditate on saints every day. Let us become pure in heart, thought, word and deed. Let us become saints so that we can fulfil the goal of existence.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Some Guidelines for Practice
Some Guidelines for Practice by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 10 November 2013 18:25
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On Religious Values
Is religion necessary? It may appear that it is not necessary, because it is concerned with ideals, may be even imaginary ones, and not with the realities of hunger, thirst and insecurity which are the obvious values of the visible world. But, religion is not an ‘ideal’, much less an imaginary one; for it is a name given to the consciousness of the totality and unifiedness of all values, whether they are external like the political, social and economic, or internal like health, love, cooperative feeling, knowledge and a sense of the universal element in all human aspiration. In this light, no one can be irreligious.
The philosophy underlying the unity of religions is obviously a system of comprehensive thinking, which would go deep into the very origin of the religious consciousness as it has manifested itself in the course of human history. It will, thus, transcend the limitations set by the formal religions of the world, which go by the name of the well-known ‘isms’. Behind the forms of the manifest religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Christianity, Islam, and the like, there is a universally structured and applicable principle which gives rise to the awareness of the presence of some controlling and determining force, ranging beyond the phenomena of earthly history. Essentially, the religious consciousness is an urge which directs human understanding to an all-encompassing Universal Power which is regarded not only as the source of the world of Nature and of all living beings, but also the regulator of the entire course of all evolution and all history.
The fundamental differences among religions are mainly rooted in (a) their concept of Ultimate Reality, (b) their theory of Cosmology, or creation of the world, (c) their notion of the relation of man with the Creator, (d) the traditional forms in which man’s relation to the Creator are applied to mutual relationship in human society, which, incidentally, decides their concept of right and wrong in human relations, (e) their relation and attitude to the other faiths and religions than their own, and (f) the extent of sanctity or sacredness which they attach to human life, and to living beings in general. There are also other minor reasons behind religious differences.
Regarding a Code of Conduct for religious teachers, one would bear in mind, before framing such a code, that the Teacher is one (a) who lives what he teaches, without which quality the teachings will not carry conviction, and (b) who, while he may be born into the framework of any particular religion, has the intellectual vigour and the spiritual impersonality adequate enough to enable him to stand above the parochial characteristic of formal religion.
The rituals and the traditional functions and ceremonies associated with particular religions may be all equally permissible, furnishing the follower of one religion with the understanding necessary to appreciate the relative value and basic commonness behind such observances by the followers of other religions also, so that there would be mutual participation and collaboration among the adherents to apparently different religions.
A suggested routine for religious training may include (a) an inaugural commencing prayer, (b) a few minutes of silence and meditation, (c) select chants, prayers or hymns to be recited from respective scriptures, (d) study of instructive and relevant passages from standard texts pertaining to the various religions, (e) a discourse, if possible, by someone competent, high-lighting the fundamental unity of all life, the uniformity behind the concepts of the aim of life, (f) the imperative performance of duty unselfishly in the station in which one is placed, with reference to not only one’s own good, but also the larger good of the nation and of humankind as a whole. There is duty to one’s own self as a physical, psychological and spiritual embodiment, duty to the family, the community, the nation, and the world at large.
On God and Spiritual Practice
Though God has no shape and no form, the human mind conceives of God only in some shape and form. The efficacy of meditation does not depend upon the question of form or formlessness of God, but on the manner of the inward visualisation of the Presence of God. The specific characteristic of God is Totality, Inclusiveness, and Non-externality. There can be nothing outside God, inasmuch as God is Infinite. Now, the concept of God in the process of meditation should be so framed that the visualisation includes every conceivable thing in the world, inasmuch as nothing outside God should be posited to exist. The distractions of the mind are caused, not by the visualisation of the form so much, as the feeling that something external or outside the visualised idea exists. In fact, for all practical purposes, formlessness should be understood to mean non-exclusiveness and absence of a second to the object of meditation, because there cannot be a concept of form unless there is something to distinguish it from another form. The point is that God has nothing outside Him to be so distinguished.
The process of ‘gathering oneself together’ means the bringing about of a total alignment of the inner layers of one’s personality – understanding, willing and feeling blended into an integration of being. In the state of self-control or bringing oneself together to a central focus of attention, one feels as one understands, and wills as one feels, so that these three psychological operations do not stand separated from one another, but act singly as a central operation of the whole of one’s being. Or, to put it in more plain language, one maintains a harmony in thought, speech and action, without a dichotomy between one’s inner being and outer behaviour. As a matter of fact, a feeling of oneself as present before the All-seeing Infinite, or seated in the presence of the Almighty, would spontaneously put a stop to all sensory or empiric activity, and bring about this togetherness of oneself at a single stroke.
To foster a continuous awareness of the Presence of God, it would be necessary for one to accept that God is the Ultimate Reality, and is the only Reality. If this is accepted and driven into one’s conviction, there should be no difficulty in maintaining this consciousness. The difficulty with most people is a lack of faith in the sole existence of God, and a subtle feeling that something also is there outside God, such as the world of activity, of human relations, and the like. Study of elevating passages from the Scripture, regularly, everyday, would also assist in the maintenance of this consciousness. But, above all, the best way is to be in the company of great souls, with which blessing nothing can be compared.
Whatever has been stated above would also throw some light on the meaning of ‘God-realisation’. It is the union of the soul of the individual with the Universal Soul, which is what one means by God or the Supreme Being. These are the final secrets which one receives from a Master, after effecting in oneself adequate purification of mind, both ethically and intellectually. God-realisation is attainment of Universal Perfection. It is to remain as Infinity and Eternity blended into One Being.
Different religions are like different medicines for different diseases of people. Every religion has some point of Truth in it. But there cannot be a universally prescribed religious attitude for the whole of mankind, indiscriminately, in the same way as a common medicine cannot be prescribed for every kind of illness of everyone. The variety in the prescription of medicines does not mean that the medical science itself is diverse in its inner constituents. The science of medicine is an indivisible, single system of treatment of human nature, though it manifests itself as a variety of medical prescriptions, due to the difference in the kinds of illness of people. As the science is one and the medicines can be many, the background of religion is single, and in this sense we may say that there is only one religion, the religion of man in respect of the One God. Yet, we may say that there are many religions, as there are many medical prescriptions, all equally necessary and true in their own way, notwithstanding their internal difference.
On Educational Work
The point that nations are built in the classrooms, is not only the fundamental fact of human development and progress, but also the psychological background of any reconstructive programme in human nature. The pre-supposition of adventures in human life is not limited to the social or the political atmosphere, to which generally an excessive importance is attached, obviously on account of the physical and empirical needs of human individuality. The diverting of human attention to the various empirical forms of life is to be traced to a deeper than the visible cause of such a form of enterprise. Human knowledge being limited to what is available to the senses and to the understanding of the intellect, the necessary instrument of right knowledge, which is basic and really competent in contacting, the realities of life, is lost sight of. This predicament is due to the impetuosity of the longings of the senses, and of the intellect which mostly acts as a medium to justify the reports given by the senses and the ego.
The conditions of life as prevalent today are the natural outcome of employing a defective means of knowledge of the world and of people in general. The evils of life are more properly the results of ignorance, rather than an intrinsic cussedness which man deliberately adopts in his personal and public life. All this is tantamount to saying that any project towards the achievement of the goal of human fraternity and well-being should root itself in a re-oriented form of right education, and there is no other way than the implementation of the educational process which is the primary requisite of mankind in general, though it appears superficially that human needs are other than the educational or even the psychological. The inveterate habit to which one is accustomed, not merely by the way in which one is brought up from childhood, but by the impact of many other antecedent causes, forces human consciousness to preclude any association of practical life with this central means of intuitive knowledge, by which alone the truths of life can be comprehended.
The main difficulty which an honest and interested educationist may face is, apart from the question of necessary finance, the finding of competent teachers or instructors who are well-informed in India’s cultural lore and are personally inspiring examples of a truly dedicated and unselfish love and search for knowledge, and love wisdom for wisdom’s sake. I do not say that such people are totally absent in India today, but they are rare to find, since many of them may belong to the older generation, whose age may not fit into the fairly arduous task of teaching in a school or academy. Our modern productions from colleges and universities, at least the majority of them, are likely to lack this essential quality required for instilling into the minds of the modern South the values of life as held aloft by the spirit of India’s culture. There is also the question of place and accommodation for housing teachers and students for the purpose of instruction and residence. There is then, of course, the necessity to have the requisite financial backing for this ambitious project. The suggestions are not difficult to implement if the requisite facilities come forth. I am sure we shall have occasion to discuss these essentials further, in due course.
On Social Welfare
The tensions caused by parochial feelings, anxieties and insecurities leading to tragic results in the outer and the inner lives of people are the unfortunate aftermath of the total absence of a common denomination or cementing background that has to be there in order to unite into an integrated framework human society, whether it is a family, a community, the nation, or mankind as a whole. This cohesive cement is the common purpose and ideal that has to rule over the welfare and destiny of families, communities, nations, and people in general. Else, individuals would fly at the throats of each other and feel like shreds and dismembered parts, with no sensible relation among themselves. Educationists, cultural leaders and spiritual geniuses kept this goal before themselves in all their motions and enterprises, and the same noble purposiveness has to reign supreme in human life even now, and at all times, if there is to be any such thing as peace on earth.
Anything that is in any way contributory to the satisfaction of the personality of man may be said to be related to welfare. Here, again, a great question arises, as to the nature of what is known as satisfaction. That alone can satisfy which is set in harmony with the human being. It is up to everyone to consider if there is anything in the world, or anywhere, which is somehow not connected with the human being. It would be good to take a homely illustration of the concept of welfare itself. A purely selfish individual, centred round one’s own body and its impulses, may regard bodily pleasures as true welfare. But the error in this notion can easily be detected. Even one’s existence is ostensibly connected with external factors, like the family, the community and the national setup, to mention the least. How can one expect one’s own welfare to get materialised in experience, if these essential factors which tell upon one’s real welfare are not to be taken into account? Yet, even this is not enough. For, there is a larger world of mankind, an international sea of human power, which, too, has its impact on national organisations and isolated countries. It looks, thus, that nothing short of world-welfare can assure one’s own individual welfare and satisfaction.
There is a more startling aspect of this issue, still. The larger universe contains this whole earth as almost a speck in space. Our little world may look like a drop in the ocean of a wider existence of unintelligent forces. From the point of view of this larger vision and a more broad-based outlook, it should be clear that no one can be happy, or truly be satisfied, until one is set in tune with creation itself. Is this possible? In fact, this question should not arise, because if this were not possible, existence itself would have no meaning or a worth-the-while significance. It should be possible, and it has to be.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Vows for the New Year
Vows for the New Year by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 9 November 2013 18:19
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(Spoken on New Years Eve, 1972)
What is our duty in the New Year? This is the subject of our contemplation on this eve of the advent of a new light.
Our duty is to be true to God and true to one’s own self – a stocktaking of our previous year’s follies and forfeits, a striking of a balance sheet of what we have done in the last year from January to this day, the last day of December. We have lived for twelve months, and we should take stock of what we have done – strike a balance sheet, as accountants do: what good has been done and also what wrong has been done, how much progress has been made in our soul’s longing and aspiration for its destination, and whether we have been moving in the proper direction or whether we have been sidetracked. Throughout the year we may have been moving in a wrong direction – though we must have been moving, no doubt. Instead of moving in the eastern direction, quite likely we may have been moving in the opposite direction because the east can be reflected through the west if a mirror is kept midway between the two directions, and wrongly we may move towards the rear part of what is visible before us.
The greatest of vows and dedications we can make on this holy occasion, this blessed moment of the New Year, is that we shall be true to our own selves. This is the most difficult part of all observances and vows because while we know what is good for us oftentimes, we deliberately commit a wrong and an error on account of affiliation with our body. We are affiliated to this physical body too much, and therefore we many times play second fiddle to the voice of the senses and the weaknesses of flesh. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak; and the weakness of the flesh can create such a devastating effect if it is given a long rope. Vigilance should be our watchword in the New Year because with all our wisdom and power of will and understanding, we must also remember what caution Bhagavan Sri Krishna has given us in the Bhagavadgita: indriyani pramathini haranti prasabham manah (Gita 2.60). The senses are too powerful for us. They are very active day and night; impetuous, vehement and turbulent are the senses.
So we pray to the Almighty to give us, to bless us, with sufficient knowledge and strength to withstand the onslaught of the senses. We cannot control the senses because they are in the body and they draw sustenance from the body. The bodily needs become bodily passions. In the beginning, our weaknesses manifest themselves as preferences. “I prefer coffee to tea.” We don’t say, “I have a passion for a thing.” We say, “I have a preference.” Then afterwards it becomes a liking, a little more intense. “I would like to have it.” It is not merely a preference or a wish; it becomes more intense. “I must have it.” And it is impossible to live without it. When a weakness becomes an uncontrollable, vehement pressure upon ourselves, we call it a passion. The senses can slowly lead us into this condition from a harmless state of preference and wish to a serious condition where we would have no succour. Awful is life when the soul succumbs to the voice of the senses and the flesh.
Sadhakas, seekers of truth, therefore have to take a disciplined vow that they shall live a life of minimum comfort and maximum vigilance and understanding. The first vow that we take is that we have minimum comforts. We should not ask for luxuries, because luxuries are not necessary for the body. The needs of the body are different from the cravings and the passions, greed and luxury. So the first and foremost thing to tabulate on our diary today, on this New Year, is what are our needs. We will find that our needs are very few. They are not many. Most of the things that we have are not needs, they are only luxuries; and while we have a right to ask for our needs and creature comforts, we have no right to ask for luxuries because that which exceeds the limit of our needs does not belong to us.
Thus, the first vow that we take is we shall have minimum comfort possible. If we can get on with two blankets, it is sufficient, and we should not ask for ten blankets or five quilts, because they become luxuries. They are all right, but they are not needs. If we can get on with one good meal and a light supper, that is sufficient. We need not have a heavy breakfast, a heavy lunch, a heavy supper, and also a heavy tea with some titbits in between. These are not the needs of the body.
The needs of the senses, the needs of the body and the needs of the mind have to be curtailed to the minimum so that we may gain a double advantage. One thing is, we will not be thieves. A person who enjoys more than what he needs is a thief, and he is culpable. He will be punished by the law of nature. Also, this voluntary self-sacrifice that we do by taking only what is the minimum necessity for our lives will be serving society, and to that extent we will be ameliorating poverty in the country. Why should we have greed to earn millions of dollars every month while it is not essential for our life? Why do we corner wealth in a particular part of the land when others may be dying of hunger and poverty? Therefore, the first vow we take is that our comforts should be to the minimum, to the barest necessity of the physical body, merely for its existence and its normal activity.
The second vow we take is: We do not take more than what we have given. This is a very important vow. We are reborn into this world of transmigration, samsara chakra, as we call it, because we have taken more than what we have given. To take more than what we give is to borrow without giving back. Exploitation of every kind comes under this category. We should not exploit even a servant by taking more than what we give him. If we give a few rupees of salary to a servant in the house, it does not mean we should harass him with work for twenty hours of the day just because of his poverty.
Exploitation is of various types. Taking advantage of the ignorance or the weakness of another person is what is called exploitation. If he is a poor man, ignorant, and knows not the tricks of the world and the worldly wisdom that certain people have, people exploit him. Putting to one’s own personal use the ignorance and poverty and the helpless condition of other people is exploitation, which is a sin. So we shall not take more than what we have given.
We shall not eat what we have not earned. We cannot ask for bread unless we have earned it. At least some contribution must have been made in some way, whether physical, psychological, educational, spiritual, or whatever it is. What contribution have we made to deserve the bread of our day? If we have not made any contribution, we will be reborn for having taken what we have not given.
So, minimum comfort is the first vow. We should not ask for more than what we actually need. The second vow is we should not take more than what we have given. The third vow is, hurt not the feelings of others – either in your thought, word or deed. Do not speak barbed words, words which sting and pierce. If possible, give satisfaction and joy to others. If we cannot do it, we should keep quiet. It is not necessary that we should utter words, do deeds or think thoughts which are derogatory to the happiness of other people. This comes under ahimsa, the greatest of vows. We should never speak a bitter word to any person, even to a subordinate or underling. If possible, we should speak educational words. Even if a person is wrong, that wrong can be set right by educational psychology and educative methods of approach. That is our duty.
Among the three forms of tapas mentioned in the Bhagavadgita, one form of tapas is speaking sweet words. If we cannot speak sweet words, we need not speak at all. We can keep quiet. Hurting others’ feelings is an objectionable trait. It is due to the rise of selfishness in us that sometimes we speak words which are not conducive to the progress of the happiness of others. Ahimsa is popularly defined in this manner as not hurting the feelings of others.
The other vow is that we shall not deliberately speak a lie. Unconsciously we may utter a falsehood without knowing things properly, that is different; but wantonly we should not speak a lie. We speak lies for the satisfaction of the ego. That should not be done. This should be one of the vows for the New Year.
And the most significant vow of sadhakas and novitiates is brahmacharya. The control of the senses and the restraint of the mind for craving for objects of sense are vows which have to be fulfilled. Sattva increases when ahara, or the intake of the senses, becomes pure. Ahara means intake of the senses, and not necessarily just the diet which we munch through the mouth. All the objects which are fed to the senses are the diet of the senses. While we should take pure diet, sattvic diet, it also means we should see sattvic things through the eyes, hear sattvic words through the ears, speak sattvic words through the mouth, and touch and smell only sattvic things. All the five senses should be connected only with sattvic objects. That is ahara shuddhi. When ahara shuddhi is there, there is an increase of transparency of character, luminosity of nature. When sattva increases within us, our memory power, power of concentration and meditation also get intensified. When the power of concentration is there, the knots of the heart of bondage are broken. We become liberated.
These are the disciplinary vows which we may undertake as a necessary step in our progress on the path of sadhana and God-realisation. But other than these disciplinary methods, there is the higher aim that we have to keep before us always: the ideal of life. What is the goal of our life, what is the objective behind us, what is the purpose of our activities – what is it that we want finally in our life. This also should be decided, and we had better think it now because we do not know what length of time, what span of life has been allotted to us in this world. “Remember death,” Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to instruct us. “Remember death, and you shall remember everything good for you.” This is because death is the greatest teacher of mankind. The greatest disciplinarian is time, says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. “Among disciplinarians, I am time.” The Time Spirit is the hardest taskmaster in the world. He will not spare even a second. The second that is gone is gone forever; it will not come back. We cannot beg the Time Spirit, “O my Lord, please bring back the time that has gone. I am sorry.” He will not accept ‘sorry’ or anything of the kind; what has gone has gone. Kalah kalayatam aham (Gita 10.30): “Among measurers, among disciplinarians, among restrainers, I am the Time Spirit,” says God.
We must remember the current situation in which we are – that is, any time we may receive the call to quit. There is no saying when this call will come; and when this call comes, we have to go – finished. Come means come, that’s all. We cannot say, “After sometime. My child is in the cradle.” “Let it be there.” “I have not received my salary.” “Okay, you quit, salary or no salary.” “What about my children; what about my wife?” “I don’t know. You quit.” This is what he will say. “You hang yourself – your children and your wife and your property and your salary, nobody cares. You quit just now.” Such orders will come to us, and nobody will hear our cry. Our cry is in the wilderness. “O Lord, what is the mistake I have made? So many years I have lived in the world. What have I done, O God?” At that time, we will weep. So let us not weep in the end. Let us be cautious and prepared now itself. “If the call comes, I am ready – yes.” We must be able to say that. “If it is now, it is now. Okay, all right.” But we are not ready for it because we have commitments. Snapping all these commitments from now onwards is the act of wisdom. We should turn from this bondage of what we call commitment in life, the cause of transmigration. We shall search for the goal of life, which is our supreme father and mother. All blessed things it is. When we go there, we shall get everything. We will find father there, we will find mother there, we will find children, we will find salary, we will find honey and milk; we will find everything when we go there. But we do not want to leave this place. That is our ignorance.
Therefore, the goal of life should be set. And, the span of life is counted. Every hair of our body is counted, every breath is counted, and every minute of our life is counted and checked. It cannot be increased. So, together with a life of discipline we should also keep our goals clear before us, and never be mislead or sidetracked, and be ready to quit, whatever be the time of that order.
Together with this we should also try, as much as possible within our capacity, to the extent permitted by our knowledge, to lead a life divine. To lead a life divine is to live a life of remembrance of God. We get into trouble the moment we forget God. Among Sufi teachers there is a famous dictum: Samsara does not consist in persons and things; samsara consists in the forgetfulness of God. Just because we are in the midst of many persons and things, it does not mean that we are in samsara. Samsara is not things and persons, and it is not property. That is not called samsara. Samsara means oblivion to God’s existence, ignorance of the existence of God. Forgetfulness of God is called samsara, and not the existence of things and persons.
We are caught not because there are things in the world, but because we have forgotten God. Hence, our freedom consists in planting the love of God in our hearts and enshrining Him in our hearts so that we may enter into Him later on and be thrice blessed. Difficult is this path. Sharp, cutting, subtle, invisible is this path to the spirit. We do not know where that path lies to reach God. Where do we have to move – to the east or to the west? In which direction do we have to move to reach God? Nobody knows, because God has no direction. If there was some direction in which we could have moved towards Him, we would have moved, but there is no direction, unfortunately for us, and therefore we are flabbergasted, we are in consternation, we are confused, and the end of it all is that we do nothing because we know nothing. When there is no knowledge, there is no action, no right activity.
Most difficult is to comprehend this path of God, because it is not to be comprehended with the faculties with which we are endowed – not through the senses, nor through the mind, nor through the intellect. It is the soul that visualises God, nothing else. It is the Atman beholding the Atman, God seeing God, as it were, because the soul has no senses, it has no body, it has no intellect, it has no passions. It is pure luminosity of spirit; and it is this soul within us that comprehends God as Universality.
Thus, in this New Year may we pray to the Almighty that we may be blessed, because without His grace we cannot lift even a finger. May this light of the New Year come to us as the light of God, as the light of freedom, as the light of purity, as the light of discipline and as the light of knowledge, the light of strength and power. This should be our prayer.
And when we take decisions in this manner, when we take vows, when we determine and decide to take steps in this fashion, we must also be able to sit for the results. Patanjali says in a sutra that we cannot gain constantly in this practice unless it is continued daily. We should not miss it even for a day. And the practice should be continued not only every day, but with a great intensity of ardour, fervour and intense longing for it. When this practice continues in this manner for a protracted period with intense love for it, we get established. Once we get established in it, nothing can shake us.
But a hard job it is. It requires a long-drawn training of the mind in a conducive atmosphere, in the atmosphere of a teacher, with the grace of God. Dattatreya says that the love of God arises in the soul only due to the grace of God. We cannot say a buffalo loves God; a buffalo has no consciousness of God.
[At this point the clock strikes midnight]
Krishna Bhagavan ki jai! Wish you all a happy New Year of love of God, aspiration for God, and God-realisation in this birth! This is the spirit of the New Year which we have to keep up with: tenacity, and great power of will born of understanding, study of scriptures and regular brushing up of our memory through various sadhanas which have been prescribed.
God’s grace is upon us all! We have to remember again the untiring message of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj: God first, world next, yourself last. Always take God first. In every event, in every action and in every enterprise keep God as the first element and the principle; the world should be taken into consideration only afterwards; and we have to be taken into consideration as the last element because God was first, the world came afterwards, and we were the last after the world was created, so we cannot take ourselves first. Gurudev’s teaching is God is first in everything – in every action, in every enterprise. In every new beginning God is first, and we should think of the world only afterwards, and we should not think of ourselves at all. We will be taken care of by that which is above us. If we forget ourselves in the world, the world will take care of us, and if we forget the world in God, God will take care of both the world and ourselves. This great dictum should be remembered, and we should try to practice it: God first, world next, yourself last.
God is the Supreme Reality and is the only goal of life, towards which every atom, every blessed thing big and small, every soul is gravitating. As rivers rush in to the ocean, all souls move towards God – rush towards God, as it were – because the goal of all life, all creation, whatever be its form, is the realisation of God, the Supreme Being, the Absolute.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]