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This website is devoted to Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality and Science. We bring in articles on teachings by Great Saints like Sri Shirdi Sai Baba, Adi Shankara, Swami Sivananda, Swami Krishnananda, Aurobindo, Mother of Auroville and others.
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The Stature of the Spirit of Swami Sivananda
The Stature of the Spirit of Swami Sivananda by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 8 November 2013 21:30
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We deeply contemplate at this moment the great stature of the spirit of worshipful Sri Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. To me, the ‘stature’ of his spirit is the proper word to describe his true personality, his being, and his renunciate mastery over the spirit of God. Some of us who have lived with him physically had this experience of observing that he was, on the one hand, a renunciate par excellence, and on the other hand, one who was rooted in God and thought of nothing else.
He was a great combination, a great blending of apparent contradictions. The world and the spirit came together in his personality. He was a lover of all, but a friend of none. Such great souls are described in the scriptures as Mahakartas, Mahabhoktas, and Mahatyagis. Those who are stationed in the spirit of God are Mahakartas. They can do anything, incomprehensible though it be to the workaday human mind. Mahakartas can do anything in any manner they like, without adhering to the common norms of human conduct and thinking. They are also Mahabhoktas. They can enjoy anything, and there is no norm fixed for that. They are also Mahatyagis, and can renounce anything in utter abandonment; relinquishment of even the notion of belonging to anything is abandoned. We cannot conceive such persons in minds that are small, bound by rules and regulations of human stereotyped creations of what we call a Procrustean bed type of norm.
His meditations were his strength. That was everything. He maintained no connection with anybody in this Ashram, though he maintained an intimate connection with everybody and looked after all as his own children. But it took only a moment for him to renounce everybody and to consider that he had nothing to do with any person. His meditations, as he had told us personally on some occasions, were based on the great Vedic cosmological hymn known as the Purusha Sukta.
The first person that he would see in the morning was the karmachari who came to clean his room, and a few flowers would be placed on the head of this person with a mantra meaning, “One of the heads of the Cosmic Being has come.” Afterwards his attendant would come, and another flower would be placed with a mantra meaning, “Another head of the Cosmic Being has come.”
It is difficult for untrained minds to imagine that the heads of everyone are the heads of God only. All the eyes are His eyes; all the ears are His ears. These ears with which we are listening now are the ears of God. This mind with which we are able to think just now is the mind of God. These feet with which we have walked up to this place are the feet of God. These hands of ours are the hands of God. It is God that pulsates in our hearts, breathes through our lungs, speaks through our mouths, and understands through our intelligence.
We have heard all these things any number of times from the scriptures, and from saints and sages during discourses, but this will never enter the mind of any person. Hard-headed is the human being. Flint-like is the stiffness of the ego, the human nature. It does not permit the entry of any nobility or greatness that is external to itself. If there is anything great, the ego says, “I am great.” Everywhere this “I am” comes in. Because of that affirmation which is so very unfortunate, the great ‘I’ of the Absolute God does not enter us. Any amount of effort on the part of a frog or a mouse will not permit it to think like this, and if we are like frogs and mice, and are content to be what we appear to be to our own selves, then the true spirit of our stature of Being is not being followed.
We are told that there are three kinds of disciples. Even before the Guru speaks, the first type of disciple knows what the Guru is intending in his mind; the Guru’s very existence, being and demeanour become an instruction. The second type of disciple is one who has to be told, “Do this.” If he is not told anything, he will not do anything. The third kind of disciple will not do anything even if he is told to do something. He will have his own way.
This is the attitude we develop towards God also. Even if instructions come that this has to be done, we shall not follow them because we believe that our way of living will continue for a long time, and we can easily be comfortable with all the mechanisms that we have created for prolonging our life and keeping ourselves happy.
There are some who follow the letter of the instruction: the Gita says, the Bible says, the Upanishad says. What does it matter what they say, when the import has not been comprehended properly?
Gurudev was a Godman, to mention briefly. Some call such great beings Mangods. All the gods are within them. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Deva was also called a Mangod. At times he could appear as a particular god, and at other times appear as another god. Sri Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to say to us, “Do you know who I am? I can be Vishnu, and I can be Rudra, both. Lovingly I will take care of all of you, protect you, love you, and caress you as your father and mother. But I can be Rudra; I can turn you out, and I will not look at your face.” He could be highly creative like Brahma, protective like Vishnu, and dispassionate like Rudra.
Many years have passed since he became invisible to this world, and he is remembered more now than even when he was physically observable to mankind. His work seems to be getting more and more accelerated, much more than when he was physically available to us. The discarnate spirit of his universal presence seems to be operating in a more vigorous and expanded manner than the comparatively limited way that the work was going on earlier. You must have seen with your own eyes that there is expansion everywhere—expansion of the comprehension of the values of life, expansion of the very concept of human existence, and expansion of the reputation that this great Ashram has established in the eyes of the committee of nations.
There are liberated souls of various categories. There are those who have managed to maintain a relationship with the Ultimate Reality and with this world at the same time. They are discarnate Jivanmuktas—not incarnate ones, whom we generally call Jivanmukta Purushas. The connection that one can maintain with this world and with God simultaneously is the symptom of a Jivanmukta. This is generally believed to be the characteristic of a person who is physically alive. But there are others who can be discarnate and yet maintain this relationship between the higher and the lower.
There are seven stages of knowledge and Self-realisation. The first three stages are the stages of aspiration, spiritual effort and struggle in sadhana, to which category the people of the world may be said to belong. But there is a fourth stage where the spirit ascends above the world and attains a state called sattvapatti. Flashes of the light of God become the light of day for that perception. They do not see the world with sunlight, but with flashes of another sattva which is emanating from the higher realm. This flash illuminates their own vision as well as the world below, so they can see themselves clearly, as well as the Reality that flashes the light, and the world below. That is the condition where we can contact them directly, even in our meditations. They will descend into our hearts, into our workaday life, and operate by their very thought. Such great Masters are many who can act for us and work for us, and do things for us by the very thought of them. Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has been operating in this way. We must consider that he is in Brahmaloka, the universal, interconnected, internally organised centre of the universe, which is illuminated by this light of God. Such were his contemplations.
This Purusha, the great mighty Being, is connected with this world, as well as not connected with this world. So are the great Masters. Having enveloped the whole world of perceptibility, they stand above it to a large extent, uncontaminated, untouched, unrelated in any manner whatsoever. Even to contemplate in this manner is to invoke them in their true spirit into our own hearts. The greatest service that one can do is to meditate on the values of life—that which controls the destiny of mankind and the power that operates through nature.
Hands and feet cannot do service adequately. True service arises from the thought of the mind. We are told that there were great Masters who came to this world whose names are not known to everybody. Their names do not appear in newspapers, or even in scriptures. Their names are not mentioned in books. They come and they go. But what do they do when they come? They think. They leave their thoughts, and then go. These thoughts that they leave are the protective forces of this world. They do not advertise themselves; they do not write books; they do not speak. No one can even see them. They are energies operating in the form of what we may call invisible incarnations of divinity.
There are others who work with hands and feet, and so on. What I mean is, there are great people of varieties of intensity of behaviour. Your thought is what you are. What you do with your physical limbs is not what you are. Do not say, “I have done so much. I have been serving so much.” This counts little in the eyes of the higher values of life. Tell me what you are thinking in your mind. The whole day, from morning to night, what have you been thinking? What are the ideas that arose in your mind? That is the service that you have done, not the running about here and there, and seeing and doing many things.
Such is the series of thoughts that occur to my mind at this moment when I recollect my association with the great Master, Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. I offer my humble obeisance to him, and request you to offer your obeisance to him in his great masterly stature of spirit.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Lest We Forget
Lest We Forget by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 6 November 2013 21:15
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The 8th of September, the sacred birthday of His Holiness Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, marks the occasion when seekers, disciples and devotees bring to their minds their relation to the Preceptor—the fact of a disciple having surrendered himself to the Guru, the necessity to attune oneself with the wishes and commands of the Master, and the imperative of rigorous sadhana on the path, according to the behests of the Guru. To the disciples, the day is the sacred moment when they worship God in human form, or sometimes even in forms other than human, and invoke Divine Grace to descend into their being. The adhyatma-marga, or the spiritual path, is the inner way of the introversion of the senses and the mind. A secret ‘strait gate’ marks its beginning (hence the difficulty of treading it), and the aspirant free from heedlessness undertakes the arduous journey with the hope that the Light from the Above will illumine his way throughout. The Guru is the focusing medium for the spiritual splendour.
At intervals of time, a being from the higher regions finds its way to this planet of ours, bringing with him the power, majesty and glory of that far-distant region from whence he came. He knows the purpose of his visit, shares the life about him, and enters into their joys and sorrows. Such a one, it may be said with justice, was Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. Swamiji’s sense of selfless action was so intense that he worked himself to fullness for the fulfilment of his noble, divine ambition, viz., to be a guide on the path in the distress and darkness of seekers, nay, to become the spiritual food by which humanity lives, and to render kind, benevolent acts and daily services with a willing heart and an open purse to strugglers known and unknown. Through the pages of his numerous books, Sri Swamiji’s mission reveals that the secret of reflective action lies in the knowledge of the true Self and in the annihilation of the ego. He endeavoured to acquaint people with the knowledge of that full life which neither psychology nor philosophy can convey, as all knowledge is futile if the basics are not mastered, and transmute that knowledge into character. Sri Swamiji averred and exemplified that man only works well when he is working with the whole of himself. The universe is an indivisible whole; one cannot break it up, seize some part and call it his own without that part slipping from his grip and belonging to the universe undivided. He emphasised that our ineffectiveness and paltriness are due to the philosophy of fragmentation. We feel atomised because we have sadly lost our sense of belonging to the whole, of being conscious participants in the affairs and patterns of the universe. And, therefore, revising our entire outlook, let the whole become our unit of measure. This, said Swamiji, is a method of approach to a loftier expression of being.
We, as disciples of His Holiness Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, should follow the lofty examples that he has set before us in blending together the relative and the Absolute. The world and God blend in our own life. We do not reject anything. The specific nature of the sadhana and the philosophy as propounded by Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj is this: he neither rejects God nor the world. In his philosophy there is no rejection; it is only inclusion. He was one of those saints, sages and seers who had nothing to avoid, abandon or reject in this world; everything was to be absorbed, sublimated, transformed and redeemed. That was his philosophy, and sadhana is naturally a practice of this philosophy.
The putting into practice, to the extent possible, of this supreme principle in our own life is sadhana. According to him, sadhana is essentially a mental act, not a physical feat. Sadhana is an attitude we have towards the Supreme Being, and it means the requisite adjustment of our personality in social life also. It is a movement as well as an expansion. It is a movement, vertical and horizontal. We move towards God in an ascent, and then we also expand ourselves in social life, so that we take the world with us when we reach God. With this attitude, if we endeavour to work in life and fulfil our duties, whatever they may be, it will be observed that there is no occasion for feeling ill will or disgust towards anything. To see God in the world is the highest sadhana. They say the footprint of an elephant includes the footprints of all other animals, because it is the biggest footprint. This supreme concept of the immanence of God in the world is inclusive of every concept which is spiritually valuable.
To contemplate on God in this world is the highest sadhana, and this automatically implies love towards all beings. We cannot see God in all and yet not love all people. These are contraries. To see God in all and love all equally is implied, and we need not mention it separately; and this also implies service to all. To recognise one’s own self in others and to work for the fulfilment of this in life is a part of our sadhana. Love all, serve all, because God is in all. The Christ said, “Love thy neighbour as thy self.” What did he mean, and what is the reason behind it? Because our neighbour is our own self, we have to love him as our own self. There is a rationale behind this teaching. In daily life we have to conduct ourselves in a manner which is in consonance with this supreme principle which is our ideal, our objective, and the object of realisation.
With what words could the wisdom of saints and sages be praised? In a world where struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, or in other words, selfishness and hatred, would seem to be the order of things, these saints and sages had the foresight and wisdom to choose renunciation and divinity as their ideals, and boldly exhorted mankind to adopt them for the noble purpose of retrieving humanity from perdition. As these great ones are truly free from selfishness and egoism, it is really God that speaks and acts through them. Through these saints and sages, God shines in the world. Yes, God manifests Himself through all, but our egoism suppresses and veils that manifestation as the dark cloud hides the sun; but these being absent in the sage, he is God himself, and whatever he does is really the work of God. Bhagavan Sri Krishna says in the Gita, “I regard the sage as Myself.”
Such are the qualities, the nature, the far-reaching and lasting results of the activities of saints and sages on this Earth. Therefore, it behoves us all as human beings to keep in mind, with a deep sense of gratitude, the facts, principles and lessons indicated in connection with their lives and teachings.
Lest we should forget, let us all, on this auspicious birthday anniversary of Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, resolve that we shall exert ourselves to the utmost to study these exalted teachings, assimilate them and make them, as far as we possibly can, the working principles of every moment of our daily life. The water drawn up and stored as clouds during hot summer manifests itself in plentiful showers that usher in the advent of fresh life everywhere. May we all, likewise, begin now to seriously put into actual practice all the theory that we have stored up in us through patient study, and thus commence spiritual life. Let all that we have read, heard, seen, learnt and imbibed become, through practice, transformed into a ceaseless outpouring of universal love, loving service, prayer and worship of the Lord seated in all beings. Let us generate fresh waves of spirituality. The day is sacred to the memory of a great sage, a man of wisdom; and our true Guru dakshina is to live up to what our Master’s lofty heart aspired for and expected of us. May God and Guru bless us all to that end!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Branches of the Divine Life Society
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The Branches of the Divine Life Society by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 5 November 2013 20:32
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The branches of The Divine Life Society are actually the ramifications of the spiritual, cultural and social aims and objectives of the headquarters, for which the venerable founder, Revered Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, stood and lived his life as a great example before us of the practical implementation of the ideal. Whatever the headquarters stands for, that the branches also stand for. The ideals of The Divine Life Society are pervasive, and they apply equally to the headquarters as well as the branches, as also to the members and whoever is associated with The Divine Life Society in any manner whatsoever.
It has to be mentioned at the very outset that the objective of divine life is not any kind of activity for the sake of activity, but activity for a higher purpose, towards which it has to be directed. All work is a means to an end and not an end in itself, though work can become an end in itself when it gets divinised and universalised. Then it reaches the status of God, which is a far-off ideal; and as far as we as human beings are concerned, it is a means to an end. This is the great goal that is ahead of us.
Therefore, the programme of The Divine Life Society branches should be such that it should include, to the extent practicable, humanitarian ideals which comprise all that human nature requires. What man needs essentially is not easy to explain. We require food, clothing and shelter; it is true. But it is not true that we require only this much. There are other things, perhaps more important things, than food, clothing and shelter, notwithstanding the fact that these are essentials. So, while it is true that members of The Divine Life Society and the branches of the Society should work in the direction of the amelioration of poverty, disease and ignorance in their various aspects, they have also to work for the great ideal for which the Society ultimately stands.
We work for existence in this world. Finally, we will realise that all activity tends towards an assurance that we should exist in the world, that our life should not be cut off or abolished. But we do not wish to exist as trees or stones. We ask for an existence with a quality, and not merely an existence without any meaning or significance. Our activities tend towards helping people in the direction of fulfilling this aim of existence, not merely in a comfortable way from the physical or material point of view, but in a valuable way from the point of view of the ideals for which humanity exists and which humanity seeks.
We have hunger and thirst, we feel heat and cold, and naturally we have to work for protecting ourselves against these odds of nature. But we have also secret aspirations from within us, which cannot be stifled in the name of a mere physical satisfaction. We have physical needs, we have vital needs, we have psychological needs, we have rational needs, we have social needs, we have political needs, we have spiritual needs. What is it that we do not need? Our aspiration is all-comprehensive and engulfs everything that one can think of, and in the effort towards the fulfilment of these requirements of human nature, we must always give preference to the more pressing needs first and the general ones may be taken care of later on. We may say that hunger is the most pressing need. Remedying disease is a pressing need no doubt, but there is a conditioning factor behind all these so-called empirical needs. We do not wish to die of hunger. Yes, it is perfectly true; but we also do not wish to live as idiots knowing nothing. There is a necessity to get enlightenment, together with the needs we feel for physical existence by means of fulfilment of hunger and thirst, etc. The cause is more important than the effect, though, while we are engaged in the effect, it appears to be important enough, and it attracts our attention as an all-in-all. When we are in the midst of a particular environment or circumstance, that appears to be the immediate reality and, perhaps, the only reality. But there is a cause behind it, a foundation on which it is rooted, which should be regarded as more important because it conditions this appearance of the immediate environment. The physical needs are the least important things from the point of view of a larger comprehensive approach to human nature in general. More important than the physical needs are the vital, the psychological, the rational, and the spiritual.
The word ‘spiritual’ is a hard nut to crack. One cannot easily understand what it actually means. ‘Spirituality’ is the most abused term anywhere and the most misunderstood, and it is difficult to believe that many people understand its true significance. We suddenly get thrown into a fit of emotion the moment we hear the word. Most youngsters, in their juvenile enthusiasm, go out of gear when they hear the words ‘God’ or ‘spirituality’, and they get into a mood of renunciation, a throwing off of responsibilities and cutting themselves off from duties, services, etc., in the name of the God that they have in their minds and in the fulfilment of the idea of spirituality that they are entertaining.
Every level of life is important in its own way. God, the Ultimate Spirit, reveals Himself in various degrees, and every degree is equally important as a necessary stage in one’s progress. The importance of a particular experience can be judged only when we take into consideration the atmosphere in which it is generated. There is a relationship between the subject and the object, as we know very well. The subject is yourself or myself—any experiencing unit. The object is the atmosphere, the environment. It may consist of human beings, it may consist of physical nature, or it may be anything, for the matter of that. That which is immediately present around us and has some impact upon our personal life is a degree of reality which we cannot ignore—it may be social, it may be natural. To imagine that God will take care of us and to reject the immediate reality would be a folly, because God is not merely a transcendent reality but He is also an immediate reality. That which is present under our nose is also God’s manifestation. And so we should not be under the erroneous notion that God is above and not below.
With this comprehensive approach of realism blended with idealism we have to live, and the life of Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a practical demonstration of this coming together of realism and idealism. He was not merely a dreamer in the idealistic sense, though he was the foremost among contemporary geniuses who held God-realisation as the goal of life. In that we may say that he was the topmost idealist of modern times. But he was not merely an idealist, he was aware of the present realism of the physical circumstances and the social life in which man is placed. And no one could be more realistic than Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. He would take care of even the smallest things. The littlest needs of man were his concern, and not merely the realisation of the Absolute. There was nothing unimportant before his eyes, nothing that he disliked, nothing that he condemned, nothing that he regarded as not his own. He lived a life of fraternity with all and he followed in letter, not only in spirit, the great gospel that we have in the Bhagavadgita, sarva bhuta-hite-ratah: one who is intent upon the welfare of all beings, not merely human beings, but even beings other than human.
The great man that he was, it is difficult to know what he was thinking in his mind, and it is even more difficult to know the significance of the kind of life that he lived as an example before us. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj’s life was a commentary on the principles of divine life, as we often say that the life of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is the best commentary on the Bhagavadgita. Our life is a commentary on our principles, our ideologies and our aspirations. Divine life, truly speaking, is a practical living of the ideal that one holds as supreme in one’s life, and is at the same time a torchbearer to others in their higher evolution.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Swami Sivananda and the Divine Life Society
Swami Sivananda and the Divine Life Society by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 4 November 2013 21:32
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(Spoken to the residents of the Sivananda Ashram on January 31, 1998)
We are here in the Sivananda Ashram, officially known as The Divine Life Society. From Haridwar onwards, even up to Lakshmanjhula, people know this centre as Sivananda Ashram; they never use the words ‘Divine Life Society’. Everywhere—the bus stand, railway station—they know this place as Sivananda Ashram, to the glory Swami Sivananda, the great spiritual Master who lives in the minds of all people throughout the world even today. Glory to his name, glory to his power, glory to his compassion, glory to his wisdom!
The Divine Life Society is the official designation of the institutional aspect of this centre. The Sivananda Ashram connotes more properly the religious and spiritual side of the people who live here, and to where people come from outside. In some other religious organisations they completely separate the buildings and the organisation; they do not mix up the two things. Here we have one location, one set of buildings, everything looking one only, though there is the religious and spiritual side of the Sivananda Ashram and the service aspect, which is connoted by the words ‘Divine Life Society’. The Divine Life Society works for the welfare of all people. It is a service wing of The Divine Life Society Trust.
Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a combination, a blending, an integration of inward contemplation and outward service. He was not two institutions. He was himself the inner glory and the outer service and work. A question arises in the minds of people, especially those living here: What is this inwardness and the outer side of our daily activity?
We are busy. With what are we busy, actually? Usually the novitiate, the Brahmacharin or even the Sannyasin who is not accustomed to go deep into things in daily life is likely to think he is working in some department. “I am in the Publication League”, “I am in the Post Office”, and so on. But you are also in your own self. You are not always in the Publication League, Post Office, Annekshetra, or some other department. That we are also in our own selves at the same time is to be known very clearly.
When we work for the people of the world—work in departments—are we going out of ourselves and placing ourselves entirely in the context of the dust on the table? Do we cease to be in our own selves at that time? This is a question which each one should raise to one’s own self. “I am very busy. I have no time.” This is the usual plea of people for anything and everything. We are very busy, we are hardworking persons, and we have no time. Have we no time even to be in our own selves? Have we gone out of ourselves to such an extent—to the desk or the table—that we are not existing inside ourselves?
This is the old, refuted conflict between the cloister and the church, as they call it. Even in European history we hear about the conflict between the cloister and the church, the church and the kingdom. The kings and the pope were not reconcilable. The pope represented the kingdom of Heaven, the church represented a replica of God in Heaven, and the king represented the power of the Earth. There was a perpetual clash between the two.
Here we do not have kingdoms, churches or kings. What we are in our own selves represents the spiritual side of our existence—very important to note. What we are in our own selves is one thing; and we are also doing many things outside, which seems to be another thing altogether. Humanly it may be impossible to reconcile these two aspects of life—the so-called outer and the inner. The push of the external phenomena is so vehement that it often seems that like a wild gale, our inner personality is thrown out of gear and cast into the winds of the propelling force of the workaday world. Everybody is busy. There is no time to sit. This is like being drifted by a whirlwind and moving in any direction it moves.
The spirit which Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj worked for, for which he established this Sivananda Ashram, was the spiritual side of our existence, which he never forgot to emphasise in every book that he wrote, wherein mostly the first sentence is, “God-realisation is the goal of life.” In all his writings, especially his early books, we will find the first sentence is, “God-realisation is the goal of life.” It is not that work is irrelevant. Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was one of the most hardworking of persons. Anybody who had the occasion to live with him would know how hardworking he was. He was a disciplinarian on the one side and a tapasvin on the other side. He was not blending two conflicting sides of nature in his spiritual depths and outward activity; it was one and the same thing.
In an analogy we may ask, “What is the difference between the existence of the Sun and the activity of radiation emanating from the Sun?” The existence of the Sun and the process of the radiation of the heat and light of the Sun cannot be distinguished one from the other. The light that is shed by the Sun is not a work that is done by the Sun every day. His existence itself is activity. This is something difficult to understand. Our existence itself is activity. But, what kind of existence? As a little worker, as a servant, as a boss, as a pujari, as a cook—is it that kind of existence we are referring to when we speak of existence being the source of the emanation of the activity that we perform? Can anybody imagine that activity is an emanation from our being? It is not arising from the desk and pen and paper—nothing of the kind.
Those who are accustomed to read the Bhagavadgita and probe into its deeper significant aspects would have found time to note that Sri Krishna, who speaks the Bhagavadgita and embodies in himself what he taught, was himself existence as well as action. He was not a person. In the Bhagavadgita, personality is not emphasised anywhere. The impersonality of the person is insistent throughout the Gita. “Mattah parataram nasti” is the oft-quoted verse in the Bhagavadgita: Outside me nothing is. If outside me nothing is, activity also is not outside me.
Any activity which is outside us is binding—karma bandhana, as it is called. The work that we do as an outward phenomenon will react upon us as a rope to bind us for rebirth. But if the work that we do is not a phenomenon, it is a noumenon itself, it is our soul itself flooding itself out, as it were, in the so-called outer world, then it becomes spirit dancing within itself in the form of activity. When God creates the world, He does not have desks, tables, typewriters, servants, etc. That overflowing of the abundance of the power of God is the active world that we are seeing before us. If we are also evolutes from God Himself, we are miniscule divinities embodying in ourselves all the potentials and comprehensiveness of God Himself. We are not topsy-turvy emanations from God but veritable sparks of the conflagration of God Himself.
Why did Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj start this Ashram? Is it just because he wanted us to keep busy and run about? He wanted to build up our personalities along the path of God. Did he not emphasise again and again that God-realisation is the goal of life?
Does anyone here find time to think along these lines, the lines chalked out for us by Swami Sivananda himself? Are we doing work which we resent, without which we would be very happy? We would like to take leave of work. Holidays are blessed days. Don’t we think like that? “Oh, three holidays have come. Let us be free.” Work is an evil. This is generally what we are made to think. Yes, work is evil in one sense of the term. In another sense, it is unavoidable. Did not Lord Krishna tell us, “Na hi kascit ksanam api jatu tisthaty akarmakrt”? Do not call it evil and then dub it in dark colours. Not even for a second can a person sit without doing something. The physical personality with all its cellular activity inside is throbbing with agitation. This agitation of the psychophysical personality is also work. Do you think it is sitting stone-like when we are not doing any work? Our personality is not made up of granite or steel that it does not act and react to any circumstance. The components of our psychophysical personality are part and parcel of the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Prakriti is the cosmic evolutionary process. It will compel us to take part in its activity. We may close our eyes and keep quiet, but we are still active. The forces of nature will drag our whole being towards it either by apparently sitting quiet in a tamasic mood, or rajasically running about in the form of work that we seem to be doing for others, or sattvic activity which is contemplation.
There are many teachers of the Bhagavadgita everywhere. We have schools of the Gita and the Upanishads. What is the use of all these schools, finally? What is the meaning that we make out from the Upanishads and the Gita? There is some Sanskrit, some words, some grammar, some recitation, some holy attitude towards the book. Many people only worship the Gita; they do not even read it. They keep it on their heads and walk about. What does it mean? It is a guidance for our day-to-day life. It is meant for living, and not merely reading and reciting.
God exists, and the world exists, and we exist. Existence is the primary meaning of everything. The primary essence of God is called existence. There is no other way we can describe God. Since everything is created by God, is an emanation of God, everything is existence as meaningful as the existence of God Himself. If God has not performed an outward activity by way of creating the world, we, as part and parcel of God, also cannot do any outward activity. If God has nothing outside Him, we too have nothing outside us, as we are replicas of God. That we seem to be having many things outside us in which we are sunk, which we dislike, is the consequence of sensory activity which is the peculiarity in human individuals and other living beings, contradistinguishing us from God.
God has no sense organs. His organs are everywhere. “Sarvatah panipadam tat sarvato’kshi siromukham, sarvatah srutimal loke sarvam avrtya tishthati”: God’s feet are everywhere, God’s eyes are everywhere, His ears are everywhere. This is to be noted carefully. How could the legs be everywhere and the eyes only in one place? Have you heard of such a thing? Where the legs are, the eyes are also there. The legs can see, the eyes can walk, and the ears can eat in the case of God. But we cannot do that. We are sense-ridden individuals. The particular occupation of the sense organ is to project us as a phenomenon rather than a reality in ourselves. What does it do? The Upanishads tell us that it is perhaps God Himself who is responsible for plunging the sense organs outwardly in the world of space-time, making one forget one’s own existence.
We are involved in sensory activity. Even when we do mental activity and intellectual work, still it is conditioned by the operations of the sense organs. We sometimes think intellectual activity is superior to sensory work. It may look like that. But the intellect only analyses, purifies the judgment part of the mind in respect of the reports received by the sense organs. They supply evidence and reports, as in a court, which are brought together into a focus of concentration by the mind, and judgment is passed by the intellect, with evidence as the beginning of all judicial activity. So whatever the intellect be, however intelligent we are—philosophers, etc.—we are incapable of freeing ourselves completely from the tinge of externalisation communicated to us by the senses. We judge everything as an outward thing. “I do not like this.” “Why should I do this?” This particular thing we call ‘this’ is outside us.
There are no things outside us, really speaking. It is the evil nature of the sense organs that becomes responsible for throwing certain things as outside phenomenon and keeping ourselves intact. If the world is a phenomenon, we should not forget that we are involved in it. The world is a phenomenon, philosophers tell us. It is a transient fluxation, a movement. This is the world, this is all creation. But we are involved in it. We are moving together with what moves in the form of the world. But because of the eternity which is also lighted up in our inner personality, we have a double consciousness. We seem to be afraid of destruction such as death, etc. Because of the involvement in the phenomenal side of our nature, we hate death at the same time. We know that we are going to die, but we dislike it intensely because of the eternal voice that is telling us we will not die. On one side we are a phenomenon, on the other side we are a nomenon. A deathless being is within us, and a thing which is completely subject to death is also present within us. So we are dying and not dying at the same time. If it is clear that death is inevitable and unavoidable, why is it that we are trying to avoid it? Because eternity, which is inside us also, says that we shall not perish like that.
The relation between the phenomenal side and the eternal side is actually the meaning of life. This also explains the relation between work and meditation. Actually, we should not use the word ‘and’ between the words ‘work’ and ‘meditation’. Work is meditation; meditation is work. There were great mystics in the West who said, “If you want to meditate more, do more work. If you want to do more work, meditate more.” You will find it intriguing. What kind of thing is being told to us? Greater work is impossible without greater concentration, and greater concentration is not possible without greater participation in the cosmic substance. Meditation is an inwardisation of cosmic activity.
We are all friends, devotees, disciples of Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. We should learn the art of thinking like him and working like him. Nobody worked as he did, but nobody was so free as he was. Where comes the complaint? It is because we are mixing up values. We do not know whether we belong to this world or to the other world. Where are we actually sitting at this moment? We cannot answer this question, really speaking. Are we on the Earth? Are we in the Solar System? Are we in the Milky Way? Are we in the space-time complex? Where are we sitting at this moment? That is a frightening question indeed. Are we sitting on the Earth? Where is the Earth sitting? It is revolving around the Sun, which is what we call the solar orb, the centre of the Solar System. The Solar System is in the Milky Way, people tell us. It is a little piece of cosmic matter floating in space and time. Where are we sitting now? We are sitting in the vast spread-out space and time. The Earth is like a spaceship. It is not a solid, stable thing as we are imagining. Every moment it is moving like a spaceship. We are actually in mid space just now. Can you imagine that you are in mid space? Why do you say you are on the Earth? “Oh, I am in mid space. Oh, I am in a ship. It is moving fast in space.” You are wonderstruck by thinking like this. You will never say that you are sitting on the Earth at that time. You are in a cosmic setup. To which place do you belong? “I do not belong to India. I do not belong to America. I belong to no place. I belong to space.” You are a denizen of the spatial and temporal system. Who will guard you? Whoever guards the world will guard you also. The substance of the world is the substance of your personality. The purpose of evolution in the world is the purpose of your existence also.
Again I revert to the Bhagavadgita. What does Bhagavan Sri Krishna say? It is difficult to understand what the Gita says, really speaking. The Cosmic Person is giving a cosmic gospel; that is the Bhagavadgita. It is not one man speaking to another person in some remote historical time, as we are likely to think about the Bhagavadgita. It is an eternal message given by an eternal cosmic essence. We do not know how to describe it, so we call it Visvarupa in a childlike manner. Such a stupendous message which comprehends the whole work of the cosmos is spoken by God Himself. And it is spoken to us. God speaks to man. It is not Krishna speaking to Arjuna. Eternity speaks to the phenomenal. Deathlessness, immortality speaks to the passing fluxation of the world. We are sitting in it.
Are we friends among ourselves? Are we happy to see each other? Do we dislike one another? These questions can be answered easily by such a kind of analysis. Where is the question of mine, yours, his, her, its, and so on? Does the Bhagavadgita tell us all these things? “My property—who are you to take it?” Don’t we speak like that? All right, say that. But you will be carried away by the very thing which will carry your property also.
If we are true disciples of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, we have to follow his footsteps, of course; but we have to live as he lived. When we came to the Ashram, we were like small boys. We used to ask him, “Swamiji, give us lessons.” He would say, “Hey, what kind of lesson do you want? See how I am working, how I am behaving. In different contexts and different circumstances, how do I behave, what do I say, how do I act? Observe me. That is my lesson, my teaching to you.”
Some of us had the blessing of living with him personally, as if we were rubbing shoulders with God Himself. We have been blessed immensely by contact with him. If we are happy today, it is because the happiness of Swami Sivananda is implanted in us. He disciplined us. Disciplining does not mean imposing some pain upon somebody else. It is the art of adjusting our total personality in the context of our position in the whole universe. It is very difficult to understand. We cannot think anything without bringing the universe into our feelings. We cannot say, “I am living in a little building here.” There are no buildings, really speaking. There is only a world, and all the space-time complex. So we have no reason to get attracted to anything, no reason to be repulsed by anything, no reason to show a wry face against any other person. There are no other persons here, really speaking. I have mentioned this again and again on earlier occasions. There are no such things called other persons, because you are also an ‘other person’ to other people.
Here again we are caught by the phenomenon of sense activity. When I look at you, you are the other. When you look at me, I am the other. Now, who are the others in the world, really speaking? If everyone is other, to whom are the people other? Is it not a chaos that we create when we say, “I am serving other people”? Who are the other people except yourself? Are you not one of the other people? Social workers also make mistakes. They think they are apart from the people whom they are serving. Unless they are involved in the very structure of humanity itself, social welfare work will not succeed. They should not consider it as an other activity that they are doing. If it is an other activity, their soul will not be present in it. Soulless activity is not worthwhile in any sense. Afterwards they feel frustrated and give up all that they thought was worthwhile.
Can you imagine that it is possible to think like this? The otherness of things is a fallacy. The tree is not an other to itself. A river is not an other to itself. I am not an other to myself. None of us, no one, is an other to himself or herself. Now, who is the other about which we are talking? This is a very shrewd, cunning idea introduced into us by the activity of the propelling sense organs. The otherness of things is the world; the inwardness of things is yourself. But you are also other, so the inwardness becomes a cosmic inwardness. In this case you may have to look at things with a different eye altogether. You can see the whole world by closing your eyes. You will be throbbing with happiness and joy.
God is very kind. Swami Sivananda has been very kind. Here in this Ashram, The Divine Life Society, we have a world of facility of every kind. We have the facility to rise to heaven, or we have the facility to bury ourselves under the earth. Swami Sivanandaji has given us all the facilities. But the sense organs, which are so vicious in their nature—egoism being the propelling factor behind the sense organs—will not allow us to think. In order that we may refresh ourselves and have the power to think correctly, we have to live with saintly souls.
I have been tirelessly saying that satsanga is the most important thing. By satsanga I do not necessarily mean a huge gathering; it can be a friendly relation with a good person, even if it is only one person. If we go to a great saint and sit with him, this is satsanga. Santaha, sangaha, satsanga: Contact with a sant is satsanga. It may be a large group or it may be only one or two persons, still it is satsanga. If two people sit together and discuss the nature of God and salvation, it is satsanga, though there are only two persons.
“Tat chintanam tat kathanam anyonyam tatprabodhanam, etadekaparatvam cha brahmabhyasam vidur budhah.” Thinking only that—as when we lose a valuable treasure we will wholly be thinking, “I have lost my treasure. It is very valuable, and I have lost it.” Tat chintanam: thinking that only. Tat kathanam: talking to people on that subject only. If we lose something, we will go on saying, “I have lost, I have lost.” Everywhere we will go on telling it. Anyonyam tatprabodhanam: awakening people among ourselves. If we ask anything or we speak, we must speak elevating words. “May I be of some service to you?” What do we lose by saying these words? “Are you well?” “Anything from me?” Actually you don’t want anything from me, but these words act like a balm. “How are you? Are you feeling well? Do you need anything, any service from me?” Are we poor even in words? We cannot utter even these words.
It is difficult to go on speaking much about Swami Sivananda, except by those people who lived with him. His life itself was a spiritual biography. So we have a monthly gathering here. We are always speaking of management matters, and so on. That is very wonderful; management is necessary. We have to look to the working of The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram, and everybody has to be taken care of. That is perfectly right. But we should also be happy. We should not be grumblingly living in the Ashram. Many times we are tired of our own selves. Even to exist is often a fatigue, because the existence is not utilised for a proper purpose. There is a difference between existence and drudgery. We can drudge, and not actually do any work. We can be sitting quiet for days and months, and we will be not really existing at all. It is called vegetating, rather. Vegetating is different from living. We know the difference. What is vegetating? It is simply getting on. “How are you?” “Getting on. Getting on.”
Life is meant to be utilised for the purpose for which we were born, and it is necessary to know what that is. We have no time to think about that. What are we here for? Any day the wind of fluxation of the world will come and catch hold of our throats, and we will leave this world. All our clinging will vanish. Do not cling to anything. You should not keep even a wristwatch if it is a question of clinging. One of the principles of saints is, you should not keep anything with you by the loss of which you will be sorry. Think over: “Is there anything with me by the loss of which I will be grieved?” Then you should not keep it at all because any moment you will go, together with the grief. God will give you anything that you want, but you should not go on clinging. Asking from God is different from clinging to things.
We remember Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj always. I cannot forget his existence even for one moment. Everything is a miracle here, if we think of it. The way in which a large number of people are fed in this kitchen—we allow people to go into the kitchen and take food without any kind of disciplinary restriction, the like of which we will not see in any other place. The way in which we give books free to people, we will never hear anywhere people giving away lakhs of rupees worth of books like that. Give, give, give, give, give, give—this is the only thing Swami Sivananda liked. This is a phenomenon. The Sivananda Ashram is a phenomenon. We have blessings from all sides. Great souls have blessed us, God has blessed us, Swami Sivananda has blessed us, all the saints and sages have blessed us. We have everything here. There is no cause for complaint. Whatever we want, comes. From where does it come? Who is the force behind it? I don’t know whether it is Gurudev Swami Sivananda or God Almighty Himself.
So, all be happy. May peace prevail everywhere!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Founding of The Divine Life Society
The Founding of The Divine Life Society by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 3 November 2013 18:45
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(Spoken on January 13, 1996)
This is Tapobhumi, holiest of all holy places. The name Rishikesh occurs in the epics and the Puranas as Devabhumi or Brahmabhumi, a land where gods took their abode and saints and sages lived. Such great spiritual stalwarts as Rama and Krishna, Vasishtha and Vyasa trod the sands of this holiest of holies, Rishikesh, where long ago there were no roads and no facilities whatsoever, and there was not this population that we now see around us. We hear that pilgrims walking to holy Badrinath used to carry fire on their heads from Haridwar onwards. Perhaps in those days, due to certain geographical conditions, cold was more intense than it is now. There was no facility of any kind. And such a far-off place at the foothills of the Himalayas was chosen by the great Masters for their penance, for their tapasya, for their abode.
It was this place that was chosen by Worshipful Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. He belongs to the lineage of one of these great Masters. He came to this holy place many years back, sometime around the year 1922, and took his abode on the other side of Ganga, living a life of rigorous tapas, austerity. Alone, unbefriended, unknown, uncared for, he lived the life of intense self-restraint and meditation for twelve years. On the sacred sands of the Ganga he used to sit and meditate, bathe in the Ganga, and move out to the present Lakshmanjhula and a little beyond, which was the area of his tapas and activity.
It was later that Sri Gurudev saw people coming to him. When his name spread everywhere as a Mahavairagyi, Mahatapasvi, Mahajnani, Mahayogi, people gathered around him. I will not try to recount the names of all those Swamijis and sadhakas who were associated with him. Swamiji moved from this area and travelled through the whole of this state, which is now known as Uttar Pradesh—previously known as United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab—and carried on a vigorous Sankirtan movement. Many veterans followed him in this Sankirtan movement. One of his close associates was Ronald Nixon, who was later on Krishna Prem of Uttar Brindavan, a Vaishnava-bhakta himself; and many others joined. His movement spread like wildfire, especially in the areas of Punjab. He was known as Sankirtan Samrat.
When this wonderful rejuvenating, reviving, resuscitating spiritual movement took momentum, those associated with him—devotees, admirers, bhaktas—suggested to Sri Gurudev that he should strengthen this movement by the establishment of a strong organisation, which is a necessity because unorganised activity, though it may go on for some time, may not continue for a long time. Let this wonderful work be done through a centralised structure of an organisation. Gurudev agreed, and a legally recognised trust was formed at a place called Ambala, which was in Punjab in those days and is now in Haryana, on the 13th of January, 1936. This is now the Diamond Jubilee occasion of this holy and sacred Samsthapana of this esteemed organisation, The Divine Life Society. It is a trust.
This institution was started by a stalwart tapasvin, and it is continuing through the tapasya of its followers—by the devotion and unselfishness that his followers have been taking as their guide in their divine activities. ‘Unselfishness’ and ‘tapas’ are the watchwords.
The Society has survived for sixty years. This is a hallmark, to complete an entire cycle of the period of the rotation of the time process. It is a wonderful achievement for anyone, any person, any organisation.
Swamiji followed the doctrine of what he called DIN: Do it now. When an idea arises in the mind, whatever that idea is, it must be implemented then and there. It may be any place—it may be on a street, on a road, in a jungle—it does not matter. Start! The idea has come, now start. It happened that he was in Ambala at that time, and the idea was allowed to take root, and it was registered as a trust there, with many ardent, venerable followers—some Swamis, some householders, some Brahmacharis, many admirers, and so on. How it happened, how he did it, and what was the strength of the will that was the back of the foundation of this great Institution—the divine will of this stalwart Master—is for anyone to imagine and contemplate.
Here we are at this moment, the 13th of January. It was Makar Sankranti. This occasion of Makar Sankranti sometimes falls on the 13th, sometimes on the 14th, and this year it is the 14th. But that day it was the 13th, so it was registered officially as The Divine Life Society Trust on holy Makar Sankranti, the 13th of January, 1936.
Our hearts well up with deep devotion to the feet of this spiritual hero who strode this Earth like a colossus, shook the world, changed the hearts of people, and did what many cannot do—left his name as an immortal trail of the glorious life that he lived. May his blessings be upon us all!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Gurudev's Mission in this World
Gurudev’s Mission in this World by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 2 November 2013 19:32
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(Spoken on Guru Purnima in 1973, ten years after Swami Sivananda’s departure from this Earth.)
This is the most auspicious occasion, presenting itself before us annually so that we may contemplate a little on the nature of the great mission with which Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj can be said to have veritably incarnated himself as a ray of divinity on this Earth.
The great significance of his mission in this world is to be the object of our contemplation. This would be perhaps the greatest service that his humble followers and disciples would offer at his holy feet as their seva because no service to the Guru can be regarded as perfect, as complete, as to attune the inner being of oneself with the intention of the Guru. Physical service and the external forms of service are there; but when there is no inner attunement with the purpose, the intention and the meaning of the vision of the Guru, physical service becomes inadequate and does not serve its purpose. So together with the ardour, fervour and devotion to the outer forms which his great mission has taken as this Divine Life Society—service to humanity through cultural revival, etc.—we would do well to focus our attention on the central point of his mission, which is the be-all and end-all, we may say, of his entire life and the whole gamut of his activities and works in this world.
That mission for which he came is the reconstruction of the concept of spiritual life. The concept of spiritual life is as old as creation itself. Spirituality is not the new innovation of any saint. But every saint and sage comes with a peculiar purpose: to accentuate, emphasise or floodlight certain aspects of this concept which, through the passage of time, gets diluted into the ordinary life of the individual, and spirituality becomes one of the aspects of human activity rather than the vital centrality of the very existence of people.
We may simply say that Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was one of the greatest spiritual personalities of our times, a stalwart of the spirit whose main teaching was the lesson that he imparted concerning the goal of life. All other functions, all other works, duties and activities contribute to the fulfilment of this spiritual purpose which is struggling to gradually unfold itself through the personality of man. This is a very important point which he came to emphasise in our lives, lest we should forget its meaning, its importance, lest we should mistake it for one of the several functions and duties of our life. It is not one of the functions of life. It is the only function of life as a whole, of which other functions are auxiliaries, accessories, preparations and contributory values.
As I mentioned, he came to reconstruct the concept of spirituality itself—which mainly lies in the fact that the spiritual is the background and the rock bottom of the entire evolutionary process of all beings in the world. Life is an onward movement towards God. Life is a Godward movement; and the mystique of life does not necessarily mean human life. Life is larger than what can be included merely in the species of humanity. The whole life of the universe, the entire function of creation, is an irresistible tendency towards God-realisation. In this sense it is that people say that the universe is a process. It is not a static mass of matter before us, lying as if it were dead. Matter and life, mind and intellect, are all stages of the unfoldment of life towards spiritual realisation. The work that you do in your offices, the duties that you perform in the various vocations of your life, your very existence itself, the breath that you breathe, the thoughts that you think, the words that you utter—everything is a manifold form of spirituality.
Vairagya and sannyasa, renunciation and spirituality, were the very stuff and fibre of the personality of Gurudev. He was a fire of renunciation and a fire of the spirit, a flaming spiritual personality before us, the like of which it is difficult to see. This personality of Gurudev is clinging to us in another language even today, even now at this moment, even though his physical personality may be said to have withdrawn itself into its causal elements.
The relation between the Guru and the disciple is not a physical one. It is not a connection temporarily established between two bodies or individuals, ending with the end of the body. Not so! Far from it be the truth. The initiation which the disciple receives from the Guru is the contact that is established between the Guru and the disciple inwardly, spiritually. It is a relationship between two souls, not two bodies.
In this sense, the Guru never dies, nor is the Guru ever born. God Himself, Paramatman, the Supreme Ishvara comes as the great teacher to mankind through the vehicle of these personalities of the Gurus. While the personalities may oftentimes be human, and the vehicles or means through which this great message is conveyed to mankind may be visible forms, the message itself is eternal. It is the light of the spirit which cannot be extinguished by the winds of the world. Such light was shining in the personality of Gurudev Swami Sivananda. Should we not regard ourselves as thrice blessed that most of us had the blessing and the opportunity of visibly seeing him, living with him, and physically coming in contact with him every day—to see God moving among us, as it were?
Well, he is yet alive. No one but he, nothing but his invisible hands could be responsible for the increasing rapidity of the movement and work of The Divine Life mission. It is continuing in leaps and bounds, we may say. He has withdrawn himself from one form and entered into another form. Change of form is not destruction of personality; it is only a difference introduced into the mode of working of the very same power and force. Immanence is his form at present.
In this immanent form of his spiritual personality, he works through us, speaks through us, drives us, sustains us. The Divine Life Society itself is a wonder. It is a miracle. Many disciples, many admirers of this Society have asked: “Did Swamiji work miracles? Did he work wonders in this world, as we hear of in connection with the lives of great Masters?” What could be a greater wonder, a greater miracle than the existence of this Society itself—the way in which it works and the effect which it has produced upon the mind of mankind, the transformation that it has brought about in the hearts of people, and the emphasis that it has laid on the importance of the life of the spirit? What can be a greater wonder than the incarnation of the Spirit itself in the heart of man? This miracle he has worked, and he is working. We are indeed happy. We are blessed.
We are thrice blessed and most fortunate. There is absolutely no doubt that God has been immensely gracious upon us. Gurudev has been kind to us; and I for one can confidently say that I see God is definitely pleased with us. Though we may be moving with faltering steps, yet it is honestly and sincerely towards the reception of this Divine Grace.
May this central point of the great mission of Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj—the focal point of the life of the Spirit in this universe—be the object of our contemplation on this auspicious day. God bless you all.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Sivananda—The Fire of Sannyasa
Sivananda—The Fire of Sannyasa by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 28 October 2013 19:27
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Swami Sivanandaji was known as Dr. Kuppuswamy in his purvashrama. He arrived in Rishikesh in the year 1922 when there was practically nothing in Rishikesh except a few almshouses (kshetras) and sadhus staying in isolated thatched huts. It was the year when there were unprecedented floods. Everywhere there was water and water alone. In all the rivers of India there was flood beyond limit. It was the biggest flood ever seen in Rishikesh. The next big flood we had was, of course, in July 1963, immediately after Swami Sivanandaji’s Mahasamadhi, when it flooded Sri Gurudev’s Kutir neck-deep. After that we did not have a flood of that kind. It was in that year 1922 that Gurudev H.H. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, then known as Dr. Kuppuswamy, came to Rishikesh and stayed on the other side of the Ganga in Swargashram, which is an ancient institution. A few sadhus and Sannyasins were put up there, living on alms and practising their meditations. Perhaps the Swargashram kshetra was functioning in a small measure even then.
Two years afterwards, in the year 1924, he came across a great saintly person known as Swami Visvananda Saraswati, whom he met, as it is said, only for a few minutes, and from whom he received initiation into the sacred order of Sannyasa as Swami Sivananda Saraswati. This was on the 1st of June. This Swami Visvananda Saraswati is little known to the public and, perhaps, personally he was not even acquainted to Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. It was a unique coming together of two personalities, as if ordained by God Himself, and Jnana Sannyasa, as it is known, was offered to Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. Jnana Sannyasa implies Sannyasa without ritual. The ritualistic confirmation of this Jnana Sannyasa was subsequently performed by the great Sri Swami Vishnudevanandaji Maharaj of Kailas Ashram. Thus, Swami Visvanandaji Maharaj was his Diksha Guru, while Swami Vishnudevanandaji Maharaj was his Sannyasa Kriya Guru. But Swami Sivanandaji had equal regard for both.
From the year 1924, after he received Sannyasa, Swami Sivanandaji started a rigorous life of tapas, or austerity. People who had the blessedness to see him in those days described him as a fire of renunciation. There was an old Swamiji in the Kailas Ashram, who is now no more, who used to come to our hospital for medicine. He was a regular patient. Every day he used to come with some trouble or other. He had seen Swamiji in those days—1924 and onwards. He gave us an idea as to what Swamiji looked like, in what esteem he was held by people in Swargashram, what was the type of tapas he was performing to the astonishment of the other sadhus, and the great reverence which he commanded from all the mahatmas in Swargashram.
The only two centres in Rishikesh which had a little population then were the Swargashram on the one side and the Kalikambalivala Kshetra in another place. There was nothing here where The Divine Life Society is situated now. This place, known as Muni-ki-reti, was an uninhabited forest. They say wild animals used to roam in these areas. When the land was dug up for some construction, they even discovered bones and skulls. No one knew exactly what the situation or condition of this area was. It was completely deserted, uninhabited by human beings. Such were the days when Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj entered the life of austerity in the Swargashram.
From the year 1924 till the year 1936—for 12 years—he was an incognito mahatma doing his own tapasya for a purpose which he alone knew. None of us were there, and no disciples were there. He had neither associates nor friends. What we hear from people who had seen him in those days amounts to this: that he wore little clothing and ate no delicious diet—which, of course, was not available at all even if he wanted. The only food that was available to mahatmas in those days was dry bread (chapattis, rotis, which had no ghee or oil) and dhal which also had no fat, neither ghee nor oil. People say that Swamiji did even not take the dhal; he used to take only the dry bread from the kshetra and drank Ganga water with it. You know what will happen if you eat only dry bread and drink Ganga water. You will have diarrhoea instantaneously in that atmosphere. Anyhow, he bore it. He was a doctor himself, but he had no medicines with him. He continued to live that austere life with dry bread and Ganga water. There was no question of milk, or tea or coffee—not even dhal, not even pulse. Vegetables were out of the question. This went on for some years, and people held him in great regard for his tremendous renunciation which he held as his ideal of personal life.
From another little information that we gathered from Swamiji himself during his later years, we understood that he used to go to the other side of the Laxmanjhula Bridge. His kutir was somewhere directly opposite the Darshana Mahavidyalaya of the present day, and he used to be put up there. But he did not stay in the kutir for most of the daytime because of fear that people would frequent him. He was a worshipful figure, even from the very beginning of his life in Rishikesh and Swargashram, on account of the distinguished life of austerity that he led. It is difficult to live a life of austerity. Only if you live that life will you know what it is. It is like death itself. You may even prefer death to a life of that kind. So it was a terror to see him leading a life of that kind, with no clothes on his body. Who would give him clothes? There were no charities of any kind in those days.
As I have already said, he used to absent himself from his kutir to avoid frequentation by visitors and other mahatmas by going to the other side of the bridge. It was then some kind of a rope bridge. Now we have a modern iron bridge. There is a sandy bank which can be seen even now, and Swamiji used to sit there during the night and do his oblations and austerities. During the nearly 26 years of life that we led, physically, with him, I did not get even an inkling as to what sort of meditation he practised, what was the japa he did, and what was the purpose for which he meditated. He would never say anything about these things, nor were we in a position to get any information about them. This is all we knew: that he was staying on the sandy bank on the other side of the Laxmanjhula Bridge during the larger part of the day and night, and he would come to the Swargashram for his bhiksha at the appointed time.
The calibre and austerity of the life of Swamiji began to be known by people who had occasion to come to Badrinath and Kedarnath. In those days there were no motorable roads as we have now. From Haridwar onwards pilgrims had to walk on foot, as there was only a footpath. There was a possibility of coming by vehicle up to Haridwar only. I used to hear, in my younger days, that Haridwar was a place full of ice. Perhaps in those days it was very cold, colder than it is now, and people had to carry fire with them to keep themselves warm. Such legends were in vogue then. People who used to go by the footpath to Badrinath had to cross the Laxmanjhula Bridge and walk through what is called Phul Chatty, and other wayside halting places. It was all jungle throughout. Swami Sivananda was then known as the great mahatma of Swargashram. There was neither The Divine Life Society nor the Sivananda Ashram, even to dream of. He was familiarly known as the great saint of Swargashram—the Virakta Mahatma of Swargashram.
One of the pilgrims who happened to go to Badrinath, and who was a lover of saints, heard of the name of Swami Sivananda. He was a teacher in a high school in Nagpur, and his name was Hari Ganesh Ambekar. He later on joined this Ashram and took Sannyasa. He was our gurubhai, Swami Hariomananda Saraswati, and he was one of the earliest disciples, if we could call them disciples. They were disciples not in the sense of students who sat at the feet of the Guru, but in the sense that they admired the saint and wanted to keep him in their memory. Swami Hariomananda Saraswatiji—Hari Ganesh Ambekar in his purvashrama—used to send a money order of one rupee per month. That is what we have heard from Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj himself. In those days, one rupee was a very big amount. Those were the days when one kilogram of rice used to cost only one and a half annas or nine paise. So, you know the value of one rupee. He was one of the donors.
But this one rupee, Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj never used to spend for himself. He purchased some medicines or a cup of curd—not for himself, but for a neighbour who was sick, suffering from dysentery. We know very well that dysentery was quite common among sadhus, as they were compelled to eat a diet without any fat or anything soothing to the walls of the stomach and intestines. Illness was very common, especially diarrhoea and dysentery. They were the common illnesses of having a dry stomach, without any lubrication. Swamiji used to purchase a little curd and a little medicine and then started his philanthropic activity in a meagre way, which culminated in a small dispensary in Laxmanjhula called Satya Sevasrama. It became a government hospital, and it was functioning until recently. Now it is closed. Thus he commenced his ministry of humanitarian and spiritual service which continued simultaneously, or side by side, with his life of austerity, till the year 1936.
It is very unfortunate that we have no information as to what transpired between him and his Guru, his austerities, and what sort of meditation he practised. His reply to queries from his disciples was: “You do not bother about what I did, but you do what I say.” From the attitude he held in regard to life, till late in his life, we could gather by reading between lines that he was a combination of the heights of Vedanta philosophy and the pinnacle of austerity or tapas. He used to define tapas as “flaming like fire by sense-control”. One day he put a question to me: “What is tapas? Can you define it?” But, before I could say anything, he himself gave the definition: “Tapas is burning like fire by sense-control.” I remember this definition even today. Tapas is the heat that is produced in our spiritual body by the control of the senses, as their outward movement depletes our energy and makes us the weaklings that we are. Can we dream or imagine for a moment that the status and the spiritual dignity which this Institution commands today is the efflorescence, the flower and the fruit of his tapas and his spiritual stature? All success is the result of tapas. This is his teaching. There cannot be a saint without tapas. There is no spirituality without tapas. And tapas is the same as Sannyasa. It is not wearing an ochre-coloured robe. It is neither an order of life, nor a stage into which one enters socially. But, it is an entry into the dedicated life of austerity and control of oneself.
Today, being Sri Gurudev’s Sannyasa anniversary, we should contemplate on the spiritual spark that blazed itself forth as the great Swami Sivananda Saraswati whose presence and tapas, whose spirituality, goodness and large-heartedness became the nucleus and the seed for this large institution which vibrates today in the hearts of many people in the world—not as buildings or constitutions, not as visible bodies or institutions, but as spiritual aspirations, noble longings for God-realisation, charitableness in nature and a conviction that the realisation of God is the only goal of life. “God-realisation first, everything else afterwards.” This was, is and will forever be the teaching of this saint. Everything else follows automatically from this great surging longing of the heart. There are very few who could so forcibly proclaim this most unpalatable of truths that God-realisation is the primary aim of life. Many like to dilute this concept with ‘plus world’, ‘plus humanity’ and so on. They say, “God plus world”, “God plus humanity”; but here was one who would not add anything to God or God’s Perfection to make it complete. As a matter of fact, to add something to God would be to diminish the Perfection itself. God’s presence and the recognition of Him is the primary objective of all human activity, human longing and desire of every kind. There is no such thing as adding something to God’s perfection, because God is another name for Perfection itself. Can you add something to Perfection? No, for then it would cease to be Perfection. That is Perfection, to which no addition is necessary, and also Perfection is of such a nature that one cannot subtract anything from It. That Perfection is God.
Most of his earlier writings began with this proclamation: “The goal of life is God-realisation.” He would commence his work—be it a book, or an essay, or a message, or even a lecture—with the sentence, “The goal of life is God-realisation.” Slowly, this concept is becoming more and more academic these days, i.e., it is accepted only by the intellect as a logical conviction and a rational acceptance of spiritual values but has little bearing on the practical life of people. But to saints of the type of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, it was a calling of life and not a mere intellectual conviction or a rational acceptance. When we say that the goal of life is God-realisation, we have said everything that needs to be said. Vairagya, renunciation or sannyasa, spontaneously flows from the acceptance, from the heart, of the fact that the goal of life is God-realisation. It follows as a necessary consequence. We need not make another statement about it. Vairagya, or sannyasa, is the necessary result that follows spontaneously and logically from the acceptance of the reality that the goal of life is God-realisation. If the goal of life should be God-realisation, God should be the Reality, because we cannot regard an unreality or a lesser reality as the goal of life. Only that which is Real can be the goal; the unreal cannot be the goal of life, nor can a partial reality be the goal of life. It is the full Reality that alone can be the goal of life. So, God has to be the fullest of realities. And that which is fully Real has to exclude everything else that is tagged on to it externally by associations temporarily contrived by the weaknesses of the flesh. So the Sannyasa of Satgurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was an inner spiritual fire which burnt forth in his practical life and in his teachings, and in the instructions which he gave to his disciples.
He had no disciples, and he never said that he had any disciples. On the other hand, he positively used to say, “I have no disciples.” He also used to say that he had no organisation or ashram. He was the same Swami Sivananda who came to Rishikesh in the year 1922 under the name of Kuppuswamy, the same Swami Sivananda who lived through the life of Sannyasa and spirituality and service to mankind, and it was the same Swami Sivananda who attained Mahasamadhi in the year 1963 without any change in his attitude to this world.
Such are the sparkling ideals that he set forth before us. Every first of June, we celebrate and observe the anniversary of this momentous event of his entering into Sannyasa, many years back. And no greater homage could be conceived to this saint than a sincere determination to lead the life that he himself intensely led, and to develop a similar attitude towards life as a whole: that the whole world is enveloped by the Presence of God. The Isavasya Upanishad says, “Isavasyamidam sarvam, yat kincha jagatyam jagat.” Whatever is moving or unmoving, sthavara or jangama, whatever is visible or invisible, all this is indwelt by the Supreme Being of God. The Upanishad also says, “Tena tyaktena bhunjithah.” _Here is the seed of _vairagya and sannyasa at the very commencement of the Isavasya Upanishad. It says, “Renounce and enjoy.” Enjoy by renunciation, not by possession. The enjoyment that comes by renunciation is more intense than the enjoyment that comes by possession of the things of the world. That satisfaction or pleasure or enjoyment which seems to come to us by the acquisition of the objects of sense is a pain that comes to us in the guise of satisfaction. But that joy which comes to us by renunciation is a real and permanent joy. Why is it so? It is because renunciation is the relinquishment of false values, the abandonment of falsity in our attitude to things, which brings about a spontaneous inflow of God-consciousness and the substance of Reality into our hearts. When our substance or being commingles with our consciousness, there is a manifestation of delight, ananda. But, in possessing things, in grabbing objects and in coming in contact with the temporary, fleeting values of the world, we do not come in contact with Reality, rather we flee from Reality. The more we believe in the reality of objects, the farther we are from Truth or Reality. The more we come in contact with things, the more also are we unwittingly running away from the Reality of God. The more we ask for pleasure from the objects of the world by sensory contact, the more is the pain that we invite from them, because all sensory contacts are sources of pain, for they have a beginning and an end. Contact with objects is the opposite of contact with Reality because while objects are external, Reality is Universal. So the more is the contact with objects, the lesser is the contact with Reality; and, consequently, the greater is the pain that we suffer in this life. So, “Tena tyaktena bhunjithah”: Renounce the false values of the world on account of which you have a craving to come in contact with the transitory values, and enjoy the bliss of that union with Reality, the Supreme God indwelling all things. The Isavasya Upanishad adds: “Ma gridhah kasya svid-dhanam.” Covet not the things of the world. Do not ask for things which do not really belong to you. The things of the world do not belong to you, because they are unreal. How can unreality belong to you? Therefore, do not ask for the things of the world, which are untrue. Renounce all false values with this awareness that God indwells all creation, both movable and immovable. This is, in some way, the quintessence of the gospel of Divine Life which inspired the teachings and the writings of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj.
To him we pay our obeisance by directing our thoughts and contemplating on these eternal values, and by proclaiming once again, in the same tone and intensity of feeling and fervour, that the goal of life is God-realisation. Everything else follows in the wake of this acceptance, as a shadow follows the substance or, as they say, the tail follows the dog. One need not separately tell the tail to follow. All the things of the world and all values that are regarded as covetable in life will come in abundance and in plenty, if we accept from the bottom of our hearts that the goal of life is God-realisation, for which ideal Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj lived and sacrificed all his life. Such is his Sannyasa, such is his Vedanta, and such is his teaching for our practice. May his Grace be upon us all!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Rising Stars of the 20th Century
The Rising Stars of the 20th Century by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 15 October 2013 20:15
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Human nature, in its present state of achievement, is in a struggle through which it is passing. It is being pulled at the lower end by the instincts of the brute nature from where it has arisen through ages of evolutionary process; and simultaneously with the anguish and uncertainty characterising its involvement in lower nature, it is being pulled up by its great destiny through certain indications of that possibility planted in itself.
Every stage of the earlier levels is present in the human being. There is appetite, like the vegetable and plant kingdom. There is lethargy and inertia, like a stone or a mineral; there is rapacity, cruelty and violence characterising animal nature, and selfishness which is the hallmark of undeveloped human consciousness. Even when the lower levels are transcended, in the earlier stages human nature remains semi-animal, semi-vegetable and semi-stonelike, and these historical evidences are available in the lives of prehistoric cavemen. It is half-conscious of its own self, and semi-conscious of the outer world. Then there is self-consciousness of an intensely assertive, selfish nature—each for oneself and the rest takes care of itself. Then there is a further development by the rise of ages in the process of time, when community life becomes a necessity and it is felt that even individual existence is not comfortably possible if social life is absent.
The rejection of the presence of others will so interfere with one’s own self that every need that is felt by a person can be jeopardised by the similar reactive rejecting process exercised by other people. So, the consciousness of community life arises. This also is a kind of selfish life only. Society is not an unselfish existence, because each one has to survive, but this survival is not possible without the cooperation of others. Higher up still is the consciousness of doing good for good, and bad for bad—tit for tat. Whatever you do to me, I shall do to you. That consciousness rises further, and it realises that this is not true human nature. To be human is to be humane at the same time. Goodness arises, which is a semblance of the reflection of a higher realm of existence; or rather, a beam of light arises from the soul within itself, until which time it was sleeping. It is waking up gradually in the good person who aspires to become a holy person, whom we call a saintly person.
It is not enough if we are good. That is also inadequate in the spiritual evolutionary process. We have to be sanctified in our spirit. The presence of God has to be adequately reflected in human nature in order that it may be saintly or holy. Holiness is the name we give to a quality of behaviour and existence which can be seen only in the most holy—the holy of holies.
God does not make Himself felt in individual life until a very advanced stage of human evolution. Men and women always consider themselves as men and women only. The human being considers himself or herself only as a human being. In this stage, the presence of divinity is not felt. People who are engrossed in social work, and erroneously consider a rule that they take upon themselves as the goal of life, get into the mess of involvement in sufferings from which they wish to redeem people, and enter into it themselves. Often many die when they cross the feelings of people in their eagerness to reform them. Those social workers who went beyond the limit of understanding of people outside suffered themselves while they worked for the relief of the suffering of others.
It is not enough if we have enthusiasm. We have also to develop understanding. It is only at the level of the manifestation of understanding and superior reason that we can say that God has descended into us. Social life is not necessarily spiritual life. God is not a social being. He is not a leader of a house or a parliament. He is not a community leader. He is not one among the many; He is One Alone. The need for another does not arise here.
I mentioned that in the earlier stages there is great confusion in the development of consciousness. Warfare, rather, takes place within itself because of not knowing where it is moving, with several progressions and retrogressions, ups and downs, almost simultaneously. After aeons and aeons and ages of development through the evolutionary process, the presence of God is felt by a pull upward against the gravitational downward pull of lower animal instincts. Here, such a presence is felt in our purified reason. The reason can also go wrong by justifying the acts of the sense organs and emotional upheavals.
Often, it so happens that the reason acts only as a justifying medium of emotional deeds and sensory inclinations. But we have two kinds of reason: the lower reason and the higher reason. The lower reason, which we generally call the mind, is just a logician confirming the validity and system adopted by the working of the sense organs and the emotions; but the higher mind is an ambassador to God. It reflects the light from above. The sun shines in this level of consciousness.
Spiritual seekers will find themselves in great difficulty when the Earth pulls them down on the one hand, and Heaven pulls them up from another side. Who wins victory is for anyone to say. This is the battle, the war of the gods and the asuras—Heaven and Earth pulling an individual in different directions. It is at this juncture of human history that great Masters are born, saints and sages who practically inundated the twentieth century with their meteoric birth and life. Such a great Master is our Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. The process of time is so long that the life of a human individual, though it appears long, is really short. That is why I use the word ‘meteoric’—it just flashes forth and afterwards disappears, but during this short time of the flash, it sheds light. It brightens the whole atmosphere, the whole firmament, and leaves; and it is for anyone to know what it was.
Thus, Swami Sivananda came to this world. He came, not as a seeking human individual struggling against heavy odds, but as a potential Godman himself. His sadhana must have been over in his previous incarnation; otherwise, a person cannot suddenly reach such heights of spiritual power in one incarnation. Any amount of sadhana, japa and worship cannot make people so great, powerful, majestic and divine like Master Swami Sivananda. This greatness and glory should be attributed to their spiritual practices in earlier incarnations, as we may say in the case of Buddha. The individual who was to become Buddha had already passed through hundreds of lives, until he became the matured great being called Gautama Buddha.
Saints mature from within, and their maturity is seen only when they manifest it outside. The work that Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has done in this world of human history may be a perpetual record, a great chapter in the story of civilisation and human development. He realised the deepest truths of life, and broadcast that knowledge through every means possible. He is one of the spiritual Masters who adopted every available means of spreading knowledge. His main purpose was not to prepare an incarnation or a great disciple; that was not his mission. His mission was to wake up slumbering humanity, to shake it up from its lethargy and to leave it at that, so that when we wake up, we will know what is to be done by ourselves.
Such a great Master some of us have seen with our eyes, to our own blessedness that God has bestowed upon us through our past karmas of whatever nature. And today we remember him again. It is no use merely remembering him once in a year. He has to be remembered perpetually. He has created an atmosphere of a powerful resuscitation of values. Today there is no country in the world which has not heard the name of Swami Sivananda. Though he never travelled abroad, his power of thought was such that it reverberates in the hearts of people everywhere. He never moved anywhere. He had no house. He had no bungalow. He had no physical comforts. He had the Ashram, of course, but he was contented living in a cave-like, hovel-like residence on the bank of the Ganga. He wanted the Ganga and nothing more.
This is the great Master whom we are remembering now—a Godman, a saint and a sage, a mastermind, and a great exemplar for everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. May you all remember him, not as a person who has written books, who has given you prasadam when you saw him. This is not the way in which you have to remember him. You have to remember him as your leading light, who has shown you the path along which you have to move—the path of ascent, and not digressive descent.
Like him, there were many other great Masters born in the twentieth century. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Deva, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Baba Ram Das, Mahatma Gandhi and many others who we can recount came like sudden rising stars in the heavens, and they vanished almost at the same time. They came together, almost, and went together, really. It appeared as if the twentieth century was intended to have the blessing of these great veritable giants of the Spirit, who came all together, shook the Earth, and then left us. Verily, they shook the Earth, and left this Earth. Our hearts were shaken, remoulded, refurbished, and made to rise to a capability to receive the call of the higher nature.
As I mentioned, we are living in a state of struggle. We do not know who is pulling us. Are the lion and the tiger pulling us, or is God pulling us? There is a dubious feeling, oftentimes. Sometimes we are lions and tigers. Sometimes we feel, “No, it is not like that. God is calling me.” At this crucial juncture of cross purposes, as it were, in human life, one has to be very cautious. One cannot be one’s own leader; otherwise, the lion will come instead of God coming, and we will not know who is coming. One thing will look like another thing. Guidance of a great Master is necessary. Have the company of sages and saints. Live with good people—or at least not with obstructing people. If nobody is available, be alone to yourself. Thus, build up your personality for the great coming.
Physical life is very short. We should not imagine that we can live in this body for ages together: “What does it matter? Slowly, I will do it.” There is no question of doing it slowly. By that time, kala will come and catch our throat.
A bee was engaged with great avidity in drinking the nectar from the filaments of a lotus flower. It drank nectar and got intoxicated. It went on sucking from morning to evening. When evening came, the lotus closed, and the bee could not come out. “What does it matter?” it said. “Let me drink the nectar throughout the night, and in the morning the sun will rise and I will fly with my joy.” During the night it was drinking the nectar with these feelings, but the sun did not rise. Wild elephants trampled the pond where the lotuses were growing and crushed everything, together with the bee, and its salvation was over in one minute.
So, we should not imagine that life is a comfortable dinner party of honey, milk, and everything pleasant: “I will do sadhana tomorrow; let me eat today.” Tomorrow will not come, because the wild elephant may come before we wake up the next morning. A caution should be exercised by every one of us. “Heedlessness is veritable death,” says Sanatkumara in a great admonition to Dhritarashtra in a wonderful scripture called Sanatsujatiya. There is no such thing called death. Heedlessness is death; foolishness is death; carelessness is death, especially regarding one’s own self.
To rouse people from this predicament of unfortunate sluggishness and carelessness, Swami Sivananda, the great Master, came and made us what we are, pulled us to this Ashram, and made us all sit here the whole day from morning to evening. It is a blessing that has come from him. May it come to you for ever and ever.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Message of Swami Sivananda
The Message of Swami Sivananda by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 5 October 2013 20:05
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(Spoken on August 25, 1985)
Om Namo Narayanaya.
Om saha navavatu; saha nau bhunaktu;
saha viryam karavavahai;
tejasvi navadhitamastu;
ma vidvishavahai;
om santih; santih; santih .
At this moment we contemplate the basic fact of the great system of this universe of which we are inhabitants, citizens, in whose great purposive activity we are participants. We may characterise the structure of the universe as one of immense peace and internal coordination, stability and integrality. It is well known that man is a microcosmic symbol of the whole universe. The peace that we generally conceive in our minds is what we experience within ourselves, and the coordinated activity of the internal mechanism of the human personality is well known to be at the back of all experience of internal peace.
Generally, when we speak of peace in the world—peace of mankind—we very easily forget that it is an experience, and every experience is attended with a sober mental operation. It is an inward acceptance of the operation of a great law and justice which we may call peace. As far as the human being is concerned, the peace that is longed for, aspired for, while it is an internal experience, it is to a large extent conditioned by outer circumstances so that the events outside, the conditions prevailing in the world, act upon the human individual; and here we have an obvious indication that though peace is an internal experience of every person, it is not totally isolated from outer circumstance.
The immediate vicinity of a human individual is the family. The family circumstance—the situation of the members within a single group we call the family—conditions the peace, happiness and security of each member of the family. So while the experience of peace in a family is an individual affair because each one experiences it within himself or herself, it is a total operation taking place because the peace of each individual in the family is an organic part of the total action called the peace of the whole family. Hence, we may say that the peace of an individual member in a family group is related to the total structure of the peace of the entire family in the same way as an integral part is related to the whole to which it belongs.
The peace of the family is not a conglomeration of little bits of individual peace. The peace of mind of many people put together is not to be considered as the total peace of the family. The family is more than a group of persons; it is a wholeness of purposiveness and a totality of intention. This analogy of the relation of the individual to the family can be extended further to the larger atmosphere of human existence which, in a similar manner, conditions all lower levels. The larger community in which a family lives is the conditioning factor of the peace, solidarity and security of the family. It is well known that a single family in the midst of others cannot have peace if the others are not in peace. And we know, in a similar way, a community of people is, again, a part of a wider, still larger atmosphere called the nation. The country, the nation to which each individual belongs, stands above each individual. We may say that the national spirit is a transcendent operation; it is not merely an external or outward atmosphere. The nation is a spirit of obedience and internal coordination and cooperation. It is an awareness that arises in a total mind of what we may call the nation or the country; and it far surpasses in character, in quality, the geographical shape the country may take. The country is not a piece of land. It is a spirit operating in the minds of the people. Thus, the peace of the country is the peace of the community. It is also the peace of the family and the peace of every individual.
While we strive for world peace and the well being of humanity as a whole, it must be clear to our minds as to what we are actually seeking. The conditioning factors cannot be totally segregated from the aspiring centre. The world is, today, far wider than it appears to the naked eye. This little Earth which enshrines all humanity and all living beings is one of the members in a larger family in the Solar System. Any sufficiently educated intellect would be able to appreciate the fact that the Earth can have no peace if the whole Solar System is not in order. This appreciation does not require much of deep thinking. This system of living, which is superintended by the great energy-centre Suryanarayana, the Sun in the sky—this belonging of ourselves to this great operation in the firmament, this Solar System to which I made reference—is not outside us. The Sun is not above our head; it is the centre of our life.
It has to be borne in mind that the factors that determine our security, existence and peace are not external, but transcendent. In this sense we may say that the soul of a particular structure is neither inside nor outside, but above—not above physically, but in a logical sense. Scientists sometimes tell us that the Solar System is something like the working of an atom, or conversely, the atom is working in the same way as the Solar System operates. That means to say, the central nucleus of this cosmic atom, the Solar System, is the Sun, comparable to the soul of man; and in Indian tradition, the Sun—Suryanarayana—is regarded as the superintending principle over the Atman, or the soul of man. This Solar System, therefore, is transcendent to each one and not outside. It is a part of the large universe, which also should be considered as a transcendent inclusiveness rather than an externality.
The idea of the external is what limits us. The universe is not outside us, and we are not outside it. The operation of the whole of creation is a single act, as is the case with the operation of the physiological organism of a human individual. The working of any organ of the body is the working of the whole system. If the finger moves or if the legs walk, it is the entire organism that acts at one stroke, simultaneously. Thus is the manner in which we may awaken ourselves to the facts of creation. The world is one whole; and the peace of the world, which is so much needed at this moment of human history today, is not a matter that concerns merely this physical Earth, but it is a grace that has to descend on the Earth from above, which is the larger family to which the Earth belongs. This intelligence, this centrality of the cosmos which is the governing principle behind every historical operation, natural or human, is the great God of the universe. The vision of man has to be integral in order that it may be successful, which means to say that it is necessary for every thinking person to be able to conceive facts in a total fashion and not piecemeal, segmented or in little bits, as if they are disconnected one from the other. This is a hard job. This kind of concentration of mind in an unselfish manner—namely, the way of a sense of belonging of each one to a larger purpose and duty, an organisation or a great goal—is really a great education.
In this world we have many a Master come as ambassadors from the centre of the universe, as it were, to proclaim this message of the great Reality of the universe. These are the Incarnations, the Avataras, the sages and the saints, and while throughout its history the world has been fortunate enough to be blessed with the coming of these lights from above, India was indeed thrice blessed that it had throughout its history a continuous line of these comings—Avataras, rishis, munis, sages and saints. They are sustaining the whole country even today and, in the language of the great scriptures of this land, the freedom of the country is called atma swaraja, or the freedom of the spirit. The spirit is that which enlivens every part of the organisation of which it is the centre.
The analogy that I mentioned just now by way of illustration—the individual, the family, the community, the nation and the universe—is only to bring out the fact that the centre of every system of action, operation or life is everything that matters here. We may call it the soul of the organisation. In the lowest sense it is the physical body; and then we have the larger dimensions of the very same soulfulness of the different degrees and levels of organisation reaching up to the greatest generality we call all creation, of which there is the final spirit that enlivens every cell. It is in this sense that we say that there is only one soul in the whole universe—the unlimited absolute Godhead. To visualise life in this fashion would be to entertain a spiritual outlook of life. The sages and the saints, the Masters and the Incarnations, come as representatives of this great fact of the universe that the Atman of the cosmos, the Godhead of the universe, is our sustenance.
At this moment I am face to face with a most glorious incident in the history of this country and the chronicle of this world, namely, the message that was spread by a superhuman Master recently before our own eyes, a veritable Universal pressed into action through and in the form of a visible personality—the great Master Swami Sivananda, who stood for God and man at the same time. It is now nearing one hundred years since this great soul incarnated itself on this Earth. And some of us had the blessing of living, almost rubbing shoulders with him, and imbibing this universal message of world solidarity and peace directly by personal communication. At this hour of the coming of his great Centenary, which culminates in the year 1987, all blessed souls who received his grace, who knew him and know him as he was, as he is, and as he worked, are girding up their loins to hoist the flag of this universality of world peace by an inwardness and togetherness of cooperation among themselves, with which they wish to gather the spirit of all people in the world and broadcast in their own personal lives, through their messages and in their deeds, this veritable gospel of world peace, universal solidarity and the final blessedness of man. This message, this life, was embodied in the very person of this great Master, Swami Sivananda. His personality was his action, his very life was his teaching, and to see him was for every one of us to see before our own eyes a physical form of what unselfishness actually means. He did not live for himself, because he never was. He was fixed in that which was more than what appeared through his person.
A little analogy, here again, will make the matter clear. An official in the government stands for more than what he appears to be physically. A representative of a large administrative system called the government is not a physical person. It is an operative force which is as large as the jurisdiction over which he holds sway. In a similar manner this great person, Swami Sivananda, stood above the visible personality of himself, above the physical limitations of his body, beyond the normal limitations of human thought, and comprehended the entire gamut of the spiritual unification of mankind. Utter givingness, dedication, and working for the cause of people in the name of the Almighty who sent us here for His own great purpose was what he lived for and what he stood for. His writings, which run to more than three hundred texts, touch upon almost every theme in the different branches of learning. His themes were medical science, astronomy, ethics, aesthetics, history, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and all those subjects which relate to the welfare of humanity. And I should not forget to reiterate that his writing, his message, was embodied in his actual life. He lived his thought, and he spoke what he thought. A coordination of the inward comprehensiveness of the spirit of this great Master with his thought, speech and action stood for the welfare of our country and for all mankind. ‘Godman’ is the word we may use to designate such great personalities.
At this hour we also remember Swami Sivananda for his service towards the unification of the religions of the world. He considered every religious faith, creed or cult as a very necessary pedestal in the ascent of the spirit to its universal, immortal goal. The facets of human approach to the fulfilment of purposes were actually the facets of a single crystal of the total life of creation as a whole. To this great Master, every living being—not merely human beings, but everything that lived and breathed on this Earth—was a friend, not merely in a social sense, but a veritable replica of one’s own self. Thus, love was the law of his life. The law that operates in this world is love. Where love is absent, law is a carcass. It is a mechanism without vitality in it. Such is the law, the satya and the rita which the Vedas, the great scriptures of the country, speak of.
What is our duty at this moment in the context of the coming of the great Centenary? It is to endeavour in our own humble way from whatever be our placement in this world, in society, to be what Sri Gurudev was in our own individual lives so that we may emanate as the Sun emanates rays from itself. As rays project from the Sun, in a similar way we may emanate from our own purified integrated soulful personality the strength of the world. The whole world is operating through every person. This is a great solacing message indeed. As the whole body is operating through every limb of the body, the whole creation of God is active in every cell of every living being and in every atom. This is a great message which will keep us in peace for ever and ever.
In this organism of the universe, how could there be competition? Do limbs of the body fight among themselves? Is there not a coordination which is most beautiful and astounding among the limbs of the body—the eyes, the ears, the nose, the lungs, the heart, the hands, the feet, and what not? Has anyone seen one limb contending with another? And if man is the replica of the cosmos, the universe, the world, then mankind is to be considered as a similar organism in which competition has to be ruled out. The law of life is not contention, not competition, not strife, not battle, not war, not exploitation, not subjection or putting another thing for the utilisation of one’s own self, but to visualise every person, every living being, every object, everything everywhere as an end in itself, as we consider every part of our body as an end in itself and not as a means to somebody else.
This is a great vision of what we may call the soulfulness or the atmatva of things, in which vision, we may call it spirituality, is included every other kind of vision. It is only this vision that can bring peace to this world; else, human individuals will belong to contending parties who work for their own mutual destruction. Is the world going to ruin, or is it to work for its own survival? The survival of an organism is, in its internal capacity, to coordinate the parts of itself into a singleness of the soul. I am again coming to the point of the soul being there in this whole world. And there is a single soul which is reflected in every little individual soul. Thus, where the soul does not determine thought, action and speech, life becomes a dead mechanism, a lifeless movement.
To infuse this kind of cosmic life, a spirit of cooperation, love and affection, charitableness and unselfishness—the spirit of giving rather than taking—is the law of life, which is the expression of the love of life. All great saints and Masters stood for a perfect obedience to law, which is the law of internal affection in the light of the souls which enliven all living beings everywhere.
Such a large vision Swami Sivananda had before our own eyes. His physical presence vanished out of sight in the year 1963; and some of us, like myself, should be considered as indeed blessed for having physically served him and visibly having received concrete emblems of grace and blessing from him. I for one can say that whatever I am today, or whatever those like me are today, is because of what he was.
May this message spread everywhere throughout the world today when there is anxiety and anguish in the heart of every person even in regard to the morrow. The political atmosphere and the social conditions prevailing in the world at this hour have created such difficulties in the psyche of man that one cannot say what will happen to the mentality of people. There is no saying what will happen tomorrow. Have we come to this world to live in this state of anxiety? Are we actually living, or are we dying? This anguish-born, anxiety-ridden, tension-torn life is veritable death indeed; and to infuse the real life into this impending deathlike existence, these great Masters have come to us. We contemplate this great Master today who silently, without adumbration, without announcement, proclamation, or without even being known much to the public, worked for the solidarity, integration and the welfare of the whole country, and blessed the whole Earth.
Today there is possibly no country in the world which has not heard his name, though he himself physically did not go outside India. Every nation in the world knows who Swami Sivananda was, as very few can there be in this world who do not know the name of Mahatma Gandhi. Such a great personality lived with us, and I take this opportunity of communicating my heartfelt feelings to all, not merely in India but the world over—my feelings that we have an obligation to these great servants of humanity, which obligation we can fulfil only by our becoming servants. May we be the servants of this great servant of God Almighty. We shall be blessed. Unless we invoke this great spirit of final blessing and peace to the world, we shall not see the light of peace anywhere.
To reiterate, again, it was the message of immense cooperation with everything and every person, a spirit of sharing what one has with others, to see humanity in human beings as one sees humanity in one’s own self, and to keep in mind that to be human is to rise above the animal level of competition and the law of the jungle. The saint lives for others. The animal lives for itself. The animal cares not for the world; it cares only for itself. The saint cares not for himself; he cares for the whole world. Here is the difference between a saint and an animal. And even for a human being, who is just a stepping stone to the sainthood and the sagehood of humanity, the superhuman ideal of humanity is to be expected as something above the animal. The animal considers another animal as an object to be exploited; it can be even a diet which it can gobble up. But man cannot eat another man. Humanity—human quality—is represented by the capacity to see in others what oneself is. Another person cannot be my diet, which means to say, we cannot convert any person into a utilitarian, exploited object. No man is a servant in this world. Everyone has an independent status and a selfhood in himself. If I would not like to be exploited, I would not like to be a servant, and I would not wish to be utilised as a tool under the pressure of somebody’s thumb, how would anyone else like that? What I am, that others are. To be able to feel like this in this expected charitableness of vision is to be human; and the human alone can become the divine. From matter there is evolution to the kingdom of life in vegetables, plants and trees. Above is the animal, which works on instinct. Still above is man who works on reason; and beyond man is the superman, the Godman, the sage who represents the Ultimate Reality.
Evolution has brought humanity today to this level of rationality and an ability to think and form judgments systematically with consideration of the pros and cons. And evolution has not stopped. The impulse in man, the urge within us to be better, to expand more and to become more perfect, is an indication that human life or the state of humanity is not the end of evolution. We have to rise to Godhead, which is to embrace all space and time in a blend of eternity.
Swami Sivananda—the great Master, I should say from the bottom of my heart—stood, lived, and worked for the great God of the cosmos. We owe a duty to him, and what is the manner in which we can express our dutifulness, obedience, affection and gratitude except by living in the manner that he lived and to communicate his message, din this knowledge into the ears of all people so that mankind may be in peace, the world may be blessed, and the kingdom of God may descend on this Earth for the immortal glory of this whole creation. This is the message of Swami Sivananda and this is the message of peace of mankind. This is God’s message for the well-being of all. May peace be to the whole world.
Om purnamadah purnamidam purnaat purnamudachyate,
purnasya purnamadaya purnamevaavashishyate.
Om Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Branches of the Divine Life Society
The Branches of the Divine Life Society by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 26 September 2013 20:42
*READ MORE \* The Branches of the Divine Life Society
The branches of The Divine Life Society are actually the ramifications of the spiritual, cultural and social aims and objectives of the headquarters, for which the venerable founder, Revered Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, stood and lived his life as a great example before us of the practical implementation of the ideal. Whatever the headquarters stands for, that the branches also stand for. The ideals of The Divine Life Society are pervasive, and they apply equally to the headquarters as well as the branches, as also to the members and whoever is associated with The Divine Life Society in any manner whatsoever.
It has to be mentioned at the very outset that the objective of divine life is not any kind of activity for the sake of activity, but activity for a higher purpose, towards which it has to be directed. All work is a means to an end and not an end in itself, though work can become an end in itself when it gets divinised and universalised. Then it reaches the status of God, which is a far-off ideal; and as far as we as human beings are concerned, it is a means to an end. This is the great goal that is ahead of us.
Therefore, the programme of The Divine Life Society branches should be such that it should include, to the extent practicable, humanitarian ideals which comprise all that human nature requires. What man needs essentially is not easy to explain. We require food, clothing and shelter; it is true. But it is not true that we require only this much. There are other things, perhaps more important things, than food, clothing and shelter, notwithstanding the fact that these are essentials. So, while it is true that members of The Divine Life Society and the branches of the Society should work in the direction of the amelioration of poverty, disease and ignorance in their various aspects, they have also to work for the great ideal for which the Society ultimately stands.
We work for existence in this world. Finally, we will realise that all activity tends towards an assurance that we should exist in the world, that our life should not be cut off or abolished. But we do not wish to exist as trees or stones. We ask for an existence with a quality, and not merely an existence without any meaning or significance. Our activities tend towards helping people in the direction of fulfilling this aim of existence, not merely in a comfortable way from the physical or material point of view, but in a valuable way from the point of view of the ideals for which humanity exists and which humanity seeks.
We have hunger and thirst, we feel heat and cold, and naturally we have to work for protecting ourselves against these odds of nature. But we have also secret aspirations from within us, which cannot be stifled in the name of a mere physical satisfaction. We have physical needs, we have vital needs, we have psychological needs, we have rational needs, we have social needs, we have political needs, we have spiritual needs. What is it that we do not need? Our aspiration is all-comprehensive and engulfs everything that one can think of, and in the effort towards the fulfilment of these requirements of human nature, we must always give preference to the more pressing needs first and the general ones may be taken care of later on. We may say that hunger is the most pressing need. Remedying disease is a pressing need no doubt, but there is a conditioning factor behind all these so-called empirical needs. We do not wish to die of hunger. Yes, it is perfectly true; but we also do not wish to live as idiots knowing nothing. There is a necessity to get enlightenment, together with the needs we feel for physical existence by means of fulfilment of hunger and thirst, etc. The cause is more important than the effect, though, while we are engaged in the effect, it appears to be important enough, and it attracts our attention as an all-in-all. When we are in the midst of a particular environment or circumstance, that appears to be the immediate reality and, perhaps, the only reality. But there is a cause behind it, a foundation on which it is rooted, which should be regarded as more important because it conditions this appearance of the immediate environment. The physical needs are the least important things from the point of view of a larger comprehensive approach to human nature in general. More important than the physical needs are the vital, the psychological, the rational, and the spiritual.
The word ‘spiritual’ is a hard nut to crack. One cannot easily understand what it actually means. ‘Spirituality’ is the most abused term anywhere and the most misunderstood, and it is difficult to believe that many people understand its true significance. We suddenly get thrown into a fit of emotion the moment we hear the word. Most youngsters, in their juvenile enthusiasm, go out of gear when they hear the words ‘God’ or ‘spirituality’, and they get into a mood of renunciation, a throwing off of responsibilities and cutting themselves off from duties, services, etc., in the name of the God that they have in their minds and in the fulfilment of the idea of spirituality that they are entertaining.
Every level of life is important in its own way. God, the Ultimate Spirit, reveals Himself in various degrees, and every degree is equally important as a necessary stage in one’s progress. The importance of a particular experience can be judged only when we take into consideration the atmosphere in which it is generated. There is a relationship between the subject and the object, as we know very well. The subject is yourself or myself—any experiencing unit. The object is the atmosphere, the environment. It may consist of human beings, it may consist of physical nature, or it may be anything, for the matter of that. That which is immediately present around us and has some impact upon our personal life is a degree of reality which we cannot ignore—it may be social, it may be natural. To imagine that God will take care of us and to reject the immediate reality would be a folly, because God is not merely a transcendent reality but He is also an immediate reality. That which is present under our nose is also God’s manifestation. And so we should not be under the erroneous notion that God is above and not below.
With this comprehensive approach of realism blended with idealism we have to live, and the life of Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was a practical demonstration of this coming together of realism and idealism. He was not merely a dreamer in the idealistic sense, though he was the foremost among contemporary geniuses who held God-realisation as the goal of life. In that we may say that he was the topmost idealist of modern times. But he was not merely an idealist, he was aware of the present realism of the physical circumstances and the social life in which man is placed. And no one could be more realistic than Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. He would take care of even the smallest things. The littlest needs of man were his concern, and not merely the realisation of the Absolute. There was nothing unimportant before his eyes, nothing that he disliked, nothing that he condemned, nothing that he regarded as not his own. He lived a life of fraternity with all and he followed in letter, not only in spirit, the great gospel that we have in the Bhagavadgita, sarva bhuta-hite-ratah: one who is intent upon the welfare of all beings, not merely human beings, but even beings other than human.
The great man that he was, it is difficult to know what he was thinking in his mind, and it is even more difficult to know the significance of the kind of life that he lived as an example before us. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj’s life was a commentary on the principles of divine life, as we often say that the life of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is the best commentary on the Bhagavadgita. Our life is a commentary on our principles, our ideologies and our aspirations. Divine life, truly speaking, is a practical living of the ideal that one holds as supreme in one’s life, and is at the same time a torchbearer to others in their higher evolution.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]