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The Great Spiritual Master Swami Sivananda
The Great Spiritual Master Swami Sivananda by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 6 September 2013 21:15
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(Talk given on Swami Sivananda’s Mahasamadhi anniversary in 1987)
We are here on a day which is adored as a special pendant in the sacred garland of a series of holy performances, services and worships during this Centenary period of the great Master Worshipful Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, one of the stalwarts that this country has produced, one of the most renowned benefactors of mankind, whose personality towered above the usual classifications of human society, and who symbolised in his own indivisible and disciplined personality the aspirations of all people. He stood, as it were, in his personal life an example for the total aspiration of humanity.
In Christian circles it is oftentimes said that Christ died for the sins of mankind. If that is so, we may equally say that a personality such as Master Swami Sivananda lived for the aspirations of mankind. Not only did he live this noble longing of the human soul in his own disciplined and austere life individually, but he also spread the radiance of this aspiration throughout human society by means of writings, speeches and an infinite variety of services that he rendered, many of them known and many unknown. The known form of the services rendered by this great Master consist of the social welfare projects, many forms of educational services, unlimited charity, and personal guidance which he rendered for ameliorating every kind of human sorrow.
But more than all this, more than the personal, social and visible forms and the gestures of his sacrifice to mankind, is the invisible form of service that he rendered. The greater a personality is, the more difficult it becomes to perceive their services to people. The inwardness and the potentiality for work increases directly in proportion to the increase in that person’s greatness. The word ‘greatness’ is intriguing indeed to most of us because it is not easy for us to characterise what greatness could be, to define what greatness is. It is not immensity of wealth that can be called greatness, as you all know very well. It is not the extent of material possessions or the land that one occupies as a suzerain. One may be rich, wealthy and powerful, but not great.
What is greatness, then? Who do we call a great person? A wealthy man, a powerful man, an army leader or a political head – who is great before your eyes? None of these. Powerful they be, wealthy they be, attractive in many respects they may be, but great they need not be. The greatness of a person lies in the in depth of achievements and the inward realisations that touch the very roots of being, the very subtle seeds of the very Earth, the world in which we live and, we may even say, the extent to which one is able to touch the corners of creation.
The superhuman achievements and the attainments of a human person determine the greatness of that person. To the extent that one is more than human, to that extent one is also great. To be great, it is not enough to be merely human. A humane, very large-hearted towering social worker need not be great because greatness is not a human characteristic, it is a superhuman attainment. In order to be superhuman one has not only to be entirely human, but also live a life which is more than what can be encompassed by entire humanity. A superhuman individual, if at all we can call that person an individual, exceeds the capacities of all humanity. One superhuman person is greater than all the individuals constituting mankind as a whole. Here plebiscite, quantity does not count. Millions of votes of all the people in this world cannot equal a single vote of this one person. Here the greatness of a person counts. In our day-to-day assessments of the power of a person, socially or politically, we go by counting of heads, as is well known. Millions of illiterates cast a larger number of votes than one genius. This is not the way in which we assess the greatness, the value or the potentiality of any person. Great Masters are not quantities in themselves, they are radiant qualities, and it is not difficult to appreciate that quality is more than quantity. It is not the largeness, the extent of the crowd of people that can make for the values of a particular step that is taken or a project that is undertaken. It is something more altogether.
As we grow higher and higher in our inward potentialities, as we reach nearer and nearer to what can be called superhuman nature, we become more and more qualitative rather than quantitative. The extent of the number of friends that one has and the quantity of membership that one can elicit from outside may, to the outward eye, look like the capacity of one’s individuality. The great person is sometimes called a spiritually great person. The spirituality of the person is the greatness of the person. It is not materiality, sociableness or political strength, and not even intellectuality or scientific outlook; it is spirituality that is true greatness.
The spirituality involved in superhuman nature is actually the divinity that is enshrined by that person. All these terms are difficult to ascertain their meaning. We have been told many times that there is such a thing call spiritual living, there is such a thing called divinity, but it may not have had much meaning to us, especially in our practical living. It has been a theoretical concept, a word in the dictionary which has only a linguistic synonym to give its significance, but it has not touched our lives.
The spirit of a person is commonly present in every other person also as the very same spirit that asks for a common goal to be achieved. Do we not, as human beings, sometimes feel at one with the aspirations of all people in the world? Are there not occasions in human history when all mankind can ask for one thing only? Such an occasion may not have arisen up to this time in history, but it will not be difficult for us to infer the possibility of such an occasion. Impulses which are deep rooted are common to all people, and the final longings of humanity cannot be diversified by caste, creed, colour and various other segmentations of human society.
The touching of the roots of the very life of all beings is the achievement of a superman. In that position where he is placed, that person ceases to be a he or a she. It is a superperson, we may say, and not a person at all. Their capacity, their power, their ability to work miracles arises on account of their spirituality, which is what we call the greatness of that person. Such a person we had before us. This great person, Master Swami Sivananda, is remembered by us today. We may call him a yogi or a spiritual leader, a mastermind, a wonderworking social welfare leader, a spiritual hero, a divine individual, a Godman. His anniversary is here observed this day in this ashram which he founded – Sivananda Ashram. In its operative aspect it is called The Divine Life Society, an organisation of divine kindred souls, spirits that spark forth as radiances from the anvil of the aspiration for God. The Society stands for a collaboration of spirits, not merely persons coming from various corners of the country. Luminous sparks are not material contents, aspirations are not material bodies; our longings are superphysical. Thus this organisation, at least as intended by the Master Swami Sivananda himself, can be regarded as a conflagration created by the coming together of millions of radiant spirits of spiritual aspiration.
Here we are in the Society of this kind which is not materially construed or even socially interpreted. It is something even more than all that, a symbol of human aspiration for that which we call superhumanly desirable. That person is remembered today in this worship that we have performed, one hundred thousand offerings in honour of this great spiritual miracle man. His greatness is the potentiality of the greatness of everyone, it is the symbol of the welfare of this nation, and it is also the heralding signal for the great future of mankind.
It is therefore a great privilege for every one of us to be here at this moment and be in a position to offer our heartfelt prayers to this great Master who symbolises veritably God Almighty. May his grace be upon us all.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Inscrutable Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda
The Inscrutable Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 30 August 2013 19:08
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(Spoken during night Satsang on January 22, 1984)
Auṁ sa ha nāv avatu, saha nau bhunaktu, saha vīryam karavāvahai,
tejasvi nav adhītam astu: mā vidviṣāvahai; auṁ śāntih, śāntih, śāntih.
Inasmuch as spiritual life is a process of soul-making and not an academic education, it was necessary for the ancient masters to discipline their students in entirely novel ways. These techniques cannot be easily understood, much less appreciated by modern man with his matter-of-fact outlook of life because he has lost his soul. He lives like a skeleton, like a machine, a dead vehicle that moves without a motivating spirit. Hence, it is practically impossible to get into the spirit of the ancient Upanishadic discipline, for instance, when those few chosen disciples were trained from the very core of their being. That is what is meant by ‘soul-making’. The very root of ourselves has to be purified.
This process of purification is exactly what sadhana is. But we are mostly information gatherers or scientists these days—curiosity mongers, experimenters, observers. This unfortunate way of visualising life has landed us in this ostensible state of affairs where we seem to be reduced to the condition of a dried-up leaf, sustained by watering from external sources and maintained by factors entirely outside us. The materialist experiment which originated as a philosophy sometime in the eighteenth century has practically become the be-all and end-all of existence in modern times. Materialism is no more just a philosophy today; it is we ourselves. We have turned into matter, balls of earth and lifeless automatons.
Hence, it is difficult to understand the teachings of Christ, Mohammad Paigambar, Sri Krishna, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, or Swami Sivananda. We can understand as teachings only that which we gather in conferences, round-table sessions, through exchanges of ideas and a sort of easy manoeuvring of social adjustment, which need not necessarily mean the action of the spirit of man or the soul of the individual.
We would be startled out of our wits if we hear the various techniques adopted by a Tibetan master called Marpa who disciplined his would-be great disciple Milarepa. We cannot understand; we may even stoop down with our assumed importance to judge such great teachers as crude, primitive employers of methods of But the saints and sages are not professors or teachers in kindergartens. They are not the promulgators of empirical arts and sciences—civics, political science, mathematics, and what not. A saint or a sage is a perfected soul, and therefore, the discipline he underwent to become what he was, and what he is, is also that which he would be eager to impart to the receptive student. Lives of saints are perhaps greater instructors to us than science The spiritual seeker, called the sadhaka, is a soul in the making. He is not like a schoolboy or a student studying in a college or university. He is not after some qualification for getting on in this world of human society socially, materially or economically. The purpose of spiritual education is not to make one fit for getting on in this world of social arrangements and political manoeuvres. The purpose is altogether different.
To repeat once again, the percentage of our descent into materialistic ways of thinking, which includes the economic way of thinking, is such that when we are told that spiritual education is a Godward movement we may laugh in our sleeves, again with a little contempt for the ancient primitive methods, as we call them. What was the education that earnest seekers received from Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa? They were thrown out of gear completely when they came in contact with him. They were no more the same person; they were turned upside down, as it were, in their whole makeup, and this is what one can expect from great teachers.
The world has passed through various phases of history, and it is difficult to know what phase it is passing through at this moment because for all outward appearances, we do not seem to be placed in such blessed conditions and circumstances where we can come in contact with great masters. Perhaps the world today cannot contain such great souls and it has freed itself from them practically in a wholesale measure. It would not be far from truth if we say that today humanity is a large multitude of those inhabitants of Lilliput which Gulliver in his travels seems to have visited—little ant-like creatures with mountain-like egos wanting to use a ladder to climb the foot of Gulliver.
The pygmy-like stature of human understanding today has assumed such atrocious dimensions of self-complacency and forgetfulness of the ultimate values of life that the ancient system of education has not only been totally lost sight of in the curricula of modern systems of teaching, but these values are not even remembered.
The first disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, the apostles who rallied around Christ, and perhaps the early associates of prophets and Incarnations can alone stand witness to the glory of the spirit that manifests in a multifarious way in the different saints and sages. One saint does not necessarily behave in the same way as another. We have the Nayanars and the Alvars, the famous spiritual heroes born in southern India. Our hair would stand on end in rapture of unimaginable ecstasy and consternation if we read the lives of these Nayanars and Alvars, Vaishnava and Saiva saints. They were not merely believers in God; they were not merely devotees worshipping as any religious person worships. It is difficult to say what relationship they maintained with God. Words would not be adequate to explain the attitude of these Nayanars and Alvars towards God. We may satisfy ourselves by saying God had entered every cell of their body. Perhaps God was dancing through every particle of their nature. The power that they wielded was godlike, and they would treat God as they would treat anybody. They could summon Him as we would summon a servant. There was no difficulty at all. The inundation of God-being in respect of their own personalities can be considered as an apotheosis of saintly life. Gauranga Mahaprabhu, Krishna Chaitanya, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa are names we adore, no doubt. We adore Krishna, Christ and Rama, and we adore these masters, saints and sages, but we cannot, in our heart of hearts, enter into what they were, what they thought, what they felt, and how they lived.
A disciple is supposed to be one who not merely obeys the orders of the master but participates in his own nature. This is important. The obedience spoken of is not merely a ‘yes sir’ attitude for everything that the Guru says, though that also is implied; it is a submission of the soul, the very spirit of the disciple, to the magnitude of the spirit of the Guru. It is a ‘yes’ that is said by the soul of the disciple, not by the tongue. As saints participate in God, disciples participate in the Guru. This is one way we may understand how the disciple has to maintain his relationship with the Guru.
The other day I was mentioning how the great master Sivananda demonstrated to the world in his own unostentatious way the life divine which he embodied. In his own peculiar ways he was a replica of the ancient Upanishadic teachers such as Marpa or Yajnavalkya, to whom I made reference. The reason is that he was inscrutable in his behaviour. It was not a logical development that we could see in his life. We cannot deduce something from something. For our naked vision, his behaviour was unpredictable, and sometimes non-understandable. He was a thorough-going and out-and-out embodiment of the principle that the more we give ourselves, the more also does God enter into us. Giving ourselves is again to be understood in a purely spiritual way. Humorously people used to call him Givananda, not Sivananda. Give.
I remember even today a little incident which shocked me, and yet I endearingly remember it as a mark of his greatness. Those were hard days when there was not much financial strength in the Ashram. Nobody in the Ashram saw the colour of a fruit, or could have one. A few fruits used to be purchased for Sri Gurudev—only for him. He was a fairly aged person and everyone was eager that he should be taken care of. A few fruits used to be purchased every day and kept in the little kitchen in what is now called Gurudev’s Kutir on the bank of the Ganga. One day some visitors came and prostrated themselves before him, and Swamiji wanted to offer them one or two fruits. He asked the cook, “Have you some fruits?”
“No, Swamiji. There are no fruits here,” replied the cook, because from where could he give the fruits except those kept for Swamiji himself? And they were so few—maybe two or three apples, a few oranges. “There are no fruits, Swamiji.”
“Go and see,” Gurudev said. “There may be some.”
“No,” he said. “There are no fruits.”
The visitors did their namaskar and took leave, and afterwards Swamiji asked the cook, “There are no fruits?”
“No, Swamiji. There are no fruits.”
Gurudev went straight into the kitchen. It was not a large kitchen, just a corner in the kutir itself, and he found a small basket of fruits there—some apples, some oranges. “There are fruits here. Why did you say there are no fruits? I wanted to give them some fruits.”
“No, Swamiji. These fruits are for Swamiji only.”
“I see.” He took the basket and threw it out to the monkeys. The entire thing was thrown. What would you say for this behaviour? He threw out the entire basket. You would not know whether to cry, beat your breast, or try to understand.
I have always felt that no scripture, not even the Upanishads, can equal the lives of saints. We hear these thrilling, touching, heart-rending and stimulating incidents in the Maha Bhakta Vijaya, for instance, which records the lives of many of the Maharashtrian and Karnatakan saints, little nobodies that they appeared to be. Ekanath, Namdev, Purandaradas and Tukaram were not children of rich zamindars or millionaires. Poverty was their only wealth. They owned nothing but poverty—utter poverty. But they could handle God, and one of them handled God as a servant. It was Ekanath or Namdev who was actually being served by Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the form of a little servant boy called Sri Kandiya. He was washing his clothes, sweeping his floor and cleaning his vessels. The story goes that when another saint went to Pandharpur and had occasion to pay his obeisance, he was told in a vision that the Lord was in the house of Namdev. He ran to have darshan, wondering how the Lord has left Pandharpur and gone to the house of a poor man. And it is said that the boy then vanished. Nobody knew where he was. He did not want to be detected.
You will not be able to understand how the apparently painful hardships which early disciples of great masters underwent were also soothing in their nature. Some of us are able to keep in mind some direct information about the latest of saints, Swami Sivananda. Such a stature is hard to find, and that expandedness which you can see only in a Christ—the width of heart, the nature of giving away everything—could be seen only in such masters. Suddenly he would get an idea of indoctrinating his students, and announce it. His announcements were always on the spot. There was no previous intimation.
There was one young boy called Arun Kumar from Calcutta. He was a compounder who worked in the small room that was the dispensary.One day this young man was taken by surprise by Sri Gurudev. In the morning at about 9:00 or earlier, Gurudev suddenly came and locked the door from outside, and went back to his kutir. Nobody knew what the matter was. That boy had not taken his bath, and had no lunch, but nobody bothered. It was nearing sunset, but there was no sign of Gurudev opening the door. The boy had not eaten anything, and could not understand what was happening to him. He was peeping through the window when I happened to pass that way, and he told me what had happened. What could anybody say? We didn’t know anything. We were all startled. He had no water to wash and was miserable, misery incarnate. Still, nobody knew what the matter was. Like that he passed the whole day and night in utter grief, and he was weeping, “What is this?”
The next day Sri Gurudev came with an orange in his hand, and opened the door. “What were you thinking the whole day and night?” You can imagine what he was thinking. “Were you thinking of God throughout the day and night?”
“Anything but that,” said the boy.
“Anyway, you are a good boy. You have done a great tapas, and here is a present for you.” He gave him the orange, and went away.
None of us were exempt from such types of hard behaviour on his part, not even the best among the workers and associates in the Ashram. I remember that one day, for some reason, he told me to go into seclusion somewhere near Brahmapuri and stay in a cottage in the jungle which someone wanted to offer. I was very busy those days with some kind of work. He said, “Go and stay there. Do meditation.” As I mentioned, it was sudden. These announcements were all on the spot, without any previous notice. He would not tell us, “Tomorrow I would like you to go there.” He wouldtell us, “Go just now.”
I said, “There is some work.”
Gurudev was annoyed when I said there was work. “Work? Whose work?” he said. “And what for is the work? There is no world.” These are the words that he uttered. “There is no world before you, so where is work?” he said, and went away. He didn’t speak to me again on that subject. Anyway, that program did not work out, for some other reason.
He was a tremendous believer in the golden mean or the via media of approach. He would condemn a person who was intensely active throughout the day, and condemn a person who would do nothing. Either way, no one would escape Gurudev’s notice. There were people doing japa, rolling beads, who would not participate in any activity. They would read the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, Ramayana, and roll the beads. He would criticise them. “This kind of bhakti will not lead you anywhere. Work hard. Work, work!” he would say. He used to call it the Brindavan method of devotion. “This Brindavan method will not work,” he said. “It will not be adequate.” He would mimic their way of rolling the beads and tell them that the concealed movement of their hands under their upper cloth is a greater demonstration of hypocrisy than the open showing of it, and so on. But if a person was very hardworking, he would say, “You are attached to work. This attachment is very bad. Attachment to work is also very bad. Do japa, do some study. Take some rest.” But if a person did japa and did not take part in work, he would say, “You are an idler. You must do karma yoga. Work hard. You must sweat and work.”
That is, the path of God which the saints followed was the recognition of God in the world, which means to say they blended the experience of the transcendent presence with the world in which the human personality is involved, in whatever percentage it be. I previously told you the earlier part of this great sage’s life, which was, by today’s thinking, more a Purana or an epic, an Arabian Nights tale, and far from the conditions in which we are living today. Those were hard days in many respects, not only from the point of view of diet and clothing and the usual creature comforts, but even intellectual and emotional satisfactions. In the earlier days, Gurudev would never permit a person to read books. Nobody read anything. They would only work and serve, and do whatever he wanted them to do. One day, one swami secretly went to Kailash Ashram but Swamiji came to know that he had gone there. “Where did you go?” Gurudev asked.
“I went to Kailash Ashram,” said the swami.
“What for?” asked Gurudev.
“I was attending Vivekachudamani class,” replied the swami.
“Horns will grow on you,” Gurudev said, and went away. It means that pride will increase. “You started reading Vivekachudamani. Very learned man indeed.”
So Gurudev would not permit reading, not because he was averse to any attempt at intellectual purification, but he was cautious to guard these little ones from assuming any kind of position in their minds and would remove it immediately by some means or the other.
He would never give discourses or lectures, and often people complained that he would not instruct or teach. “Swamiji, we want instructions.” He would be annoyed when he heard such complaints.
“You want instructions? See what I do. That is my instruction.” The way in which he conducted himself he regarded as an instruction. He would not sit and harangue before audiences. But he had a systematic routine of studying scriptures—scriptures which he used to have people read in the satsanga that was conducted for several hours every evening, until 11:00 at night and sometimes even later. This satsanga used to be held on the veranda of his kutir in summer and in the Bhajan Hall in winter. At sunset it would start. Every evening he came up via the zigzag footpath because there was no road or steps that we have now. It was just a hill with a very rugged path.
I had a little taste of conducting satsangas and Sadhana Weeks in those days, which were quite different from the Sadhana Weeks we hold now. I was in charge of the satsangas for years and years, ever since he somehow felt that I should be involved in that kind of work, though I did also akhanda kirtana for one year continuously. The satsanga in those days was also of a different type. My duty was spreading the carpet, putting the seats, keeping the photograph of the different deities on different days, lighting a lamp, keeping the book suitable for reading on that particular day, and commencing the satsanga. After the initial recitation of the prayers and the mantras and the reading from a scripture—it may be the Yoga Vasishtha or the Srimad Bhagavata—there was a very novel policy adopted of seeing that everyone seated there would chant the name of God. Many people used to absent themselves because of the fear of chanting, and some people used to complain that they had a cold or a hoarse throat and that they were not able to chant the name. He would say, “Let the hoarse throat chant, and no exemption.” Everybody had to chant. It was not just one or two persons chanting and the others following, merely listening. Everyone had to recite the Hari Ram mantra or whatever it was.
A very peculiar feature of the human mind it is that even if a person is healthy and vociferous and capable of shouting at other times, when the time for chanting the Divine Name comes, his throat will not operate. No voice will come. He will be fumbling to find a word, and will not know what to say. He utterly fails in that particular hard predicament, whatever be his activity and importance at other times. But Gurudev used to drive that diffidence and discomfiture out of people.
We were all unacquainted with the art of speaking, especially public speaking. We would shiver to think of it. How could we speak before three people? But Swami Sivananda was a hard taskmaster. He would see that we had to speak. I was not at all acquainted with speaking. I could not speak even one sentence, and he knew this, so he wanted to see that this problem of mine was removed. Suddenly he would say, in the middle of satsanga and in the presence of all people, “Go and speak.”
“I cannot speak,” I would say.
“Then say, ‘I cannot speak’. Can you not say even this much? You are saying that you cannot speak. Go there and sit on the dais and say that you cannot speak.” Somehow we would sit there and blabber something. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” he would say. “Wonderful lecture.” And one banana would be given as a present.
He was an encourager of every potentiality in a person. That was his grandness, that was his insight, and that was his greatness. If a musician came, he would see that the potentiality of music is given the freest measure of expression. If a danseuse came, he would encourage that person. If a professor came, he would say, “Professor Sahib, today only your speech and no one else’s.” And he would give a series of lectures.
The goodness of Gurudev’s heart was actually a testimony to the greatness of God, and as days passed he became more and more attractive to the people around him. His little office was a darbar, as people used to call it. In Hindi a darbar means a colossal royal session that is being held. Devotees used to sing about the glories of the darbar or the session of Gurudev. This darbar, this session of Gurudev, was considered as a means of taking people across the ocean of samsara.
Charity was an unbounded expression of himself. There was no management then. He was himself everything. Even then there was some person called a secretary who was managing the whole Ashram with a tight corner pressing from all sides, and it was difficult to make ends meet. In those days Gurudev’s charities increased. Even to a snake charmer he would offer 75 rupees. That snake charmer was startled. He did not know whether he was seeing properly or he had become blind: 75 rupees! Nobody would give him 10 paise, but Gurudev gave 75 rupees to him. People could not understand this.
The economic principle that Gurudev maintained was a defeat to all modern economists. He had no arithmetic and no mathematics. Once he shockingly announced that he would not allow any remnant of finance for tomorrow. Every day has to be that day only, and tomorrow shall take care of itself. This cannot be the word of an expert manager or economist, but that is the word of a saint: Keep not for the morrow. No one can ever accept this philosophy that we should not keep for the morrow. We can accept anything, and any teacher can be respected, but this we cannot accept because our hearts, our spirits, our mortal frames revolt against the needs that are thus refuted by a mathematics of topsy-turvy calculations.
I began by saying that Godmen are inundated by the being of God. That we cannot accept this, that we have to keep a paise for the morrow, and we feel that it is absolutely essential—not merely essential, but absolutely essential—will show to what extent we are able to face the fire of the Almighty. Nobody will touch that. And Swami Sivananda was warning people of the possibility of sinking down into the complacencies and comforts we call needs, while there are no needs.
I am not recounting any chronological series of incidents, but ideas as they occur. “Will anybody come to Brahmaloka?” was his announcement one night after the satsanga. “Does anybody want to come to Brahmaloka?” It appeared that when the second announcement was made the drum was beaten at the time of the ascent of Sri Rama. People say it was also done at the time of the passing of Krishna. The Brahmaloka Gurudev was referring to, to which he invited everybody, was his direction at that moment. He wanted to take us, but nobody could understand.
Miraculous transformations and changes took place in the entire structure of the Ashram after his Mahasamadhi. I call it miraculous because when he left this world, this Ashram was in debt. You know what debt means—something worse than which nothing can be. In that condition the Ashram was. But sixteen days after Sri Gurudev’s passing we held one of the grandest of celebrations here, one of the largest feedings ever conducted in the Ashram and one of the most enthusiastic of functions, which must have cost us any amount of money. From where did we get it? You will be surprised. The people who were being pinched by the thorns of debt had not the least difficulty in conducting this wondrous and beautiful function on the sixteenth day and for a few days around after his passing. It was something like the touch which the divine hands of Sri Krishna gave to the poverty of Sudama, a story well known to you all. Invisibly he blessed us. And today we know how many people eat in this kitchen; we cannot count them. They may be visitors, guests, and persons whom we have not seen.
How Gurudev has spread himself throughout the world—there is no country where Swami Sivananda’s name is not known or heard. He never went out of India. He never went anywhere, except once around different parts of the country. He lived in a hovel rather than a room; minus ventilation, minus any facility, in that he stayed. It was a building which does not even belong to the Ashram; in that he stayed throughout his life. He never participated in the beautiful buildings of the Ashram.
Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji became for us all an embodiment of tapasya, austerity. He lived a meagre life, wearing only a strip of cloth except in winter, but he is showering upon us this blessing that we are enjoying today. In what ways we are enjoying, let each one deeply contemplate.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Meditation on Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj
Meditation on Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 29 August 2013 21:11
*READ MORE \* Meditation on Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj
(Spoken on August 3, 1983, the 20th anniversary of Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj’s Mahasamadhi)
The great soul, the Mahatma whose hallowed memory we bring to our minds today, the spirit that indwells this Ashram and pervaded and exercised an influence upon the world of thought for decades, is a principle which requires deep concentration and understanding. What came, what lived, and what died?
The human mind is just what it is. It cannot be anything other than what it can be. For ordinary mortal thought, a person is a physical body. The father is a physical body, the mother is a physical body. The possessions, the properties are all physical in their nature. What we eat also is physical, and the result of everything that we think, feel, or do has also to be physical. Anything that is non-physical is unthinkable, and so our Guru also was a physical body. There is no other possible way of understanding by a mind which can think only in this manner.
This logic takes us even to the limit of thinking that God Himself is a body. It is a huge structure which is measureable in length, breadth and height, and our exalted notion of even the Viratswarupa is of a magnified body. We live in a world which is purely material, physical, three-dimensional, solid, tangible, sensible, and there cannot be any meaning which is not physical. This is only to point out the extent to which human nature has fallen into the abyss of a total incapacity to understand what the world is made of and how it is made, from where it has come, and what the values that we adore in this world are, whether these values may be our Masters, our Gurus, our adored personalities, our relatives, our properties and possessions, or even our own selves. When we take a photograph of ourselves, we take a photograph of our body.
And so we have a chain of physical The world is not made up of material objects. It is a force that appears before our Non-measurable entities assume measureable forms. That process is called incarnation. The non-measurable, non three-dimensional or four-dimensional, invisible, pervasive, intangible presence appears as a human body, as this world of matter, as The whole universe was space and time only. Ākāśād vāyuḥ, vāyor agniḥ, anger āpaḥ, adbhyaḥ pṛthivī, pṛthivyā oṣdhayaḥ, oṣadhībhyo annam, annāt puruṣaḥ (Taitt. Up. 2.1.1). This is how the concretisation took place as it is said in the Taittiriya Upanishad. There was only space. In the beginning of things, there was no world. Only emptiness was there. How can emptiness become solid buildings, multi-storeyed palaces, and very valuable solid substances which cannot be lifted even by one thousand elephants? Such things exist in this world, but they were originally in the condition of a void, emptiness, space.
Space-time constitutes the whole world. And space and time are not things; they are not people; they are not anything whatsoever. Even now we can think of space and time, but we do not give any regard to them, as if they are not there. Our value is for only small, visible things, titbits we can purchase from the market, but these valuable titbits were originally non-existent. So there is some point in saying that the world is unreal.
You have been told many times that the world does not really exist, but you never believe it. How can you believe when your thought is always ridden over with the solidity of the body and you evaluate everything in terms of body? But by this little analysis of the receding of the effects into their original causes, you will find non-existence was there, and from there the existence came. Asad vā idam agra āsīt, tato vai sad ajayata (Taitt. Up. 2.7.1) says the Taittiriya. From non-existence, existence comes. You will be wondering how existence can come from non-existence. That statement itself seems to have no meaning, but I have given you an idea as to how it could be.
This majestic emperor who ruled the Earth was an invisible force, a potency, before he entered the womb of the mother. He was not even a drop of liquid. He was much less than that; a kind of energy which cannot be thought in the mind becomes ridden over with hands and feet, with eyes and nose, with a self-assertion which begins to parade the whole world with its vanity that “this is mine, this earth is mine, all the heavens are mine, and all these things are mine only”. Thus this little, stupid, small thing which was nowhere once upon a time begins to speak for a few moments when, like a butterfly, it flits before the daylight of egoistic consciousness and then falls when the frost of death catches hold of it, and it is no more there, like these insects that fly over the light in the night and in the morning they are all corpses lying on the ground. Such is the greatness of man on this Earth.
This world, therefore, is not a physical substance. Therefore, our possessions are not physical. Hence, it would be unadvisable on the part of anyone to possess material things in the world. They do not exist. They will pass away; they have to pass away. The passing, the bereavement, the dispossession, etc., of those things which we call possessions, material objects, is the passing of effects into their causes. One day the earth will melt into water, the water will be dried up by fire, the fire will be extinguished by air, the air will merge into space; we will no more be there, and nothing that we call ourselves also will be there. We will be that which was not there, and the thing which is there will not be there.
Thus, our Guru, our Master, even our God Himself are not physical embodiments. The photograph is not the Guru. The painted picture is not God. These are symbolic material representations of that which you cannot conceive with your mind. You cannot say that space and time are absent. As I mentioned, there are circumstances under which the whole world can be melted down into mere space-time. That is called pralaya, the dissolution of the cosmos, which means to say the whole world is contained in that which is not visible to the eyes. So it is immanent, it is pervasive, and it is there even now. The so-called invisible cause is present in the visible object.
Thus, nobody is dead. The Guru, Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, has not passed away. When ice melts it becomes water, and water becomes gas. Nothing is dead. It can once again be manifested in the same form as it was once upon a time. This is the coming and going of great Masters, incarnations, and the materialisation of consciousness forces.
These analogies that I placed before you are intended to detach your mind from unnecessary clingings, attachments, desires, passions, and longings which are meaningless ultimately, which will land you in terrible sorrow one day or the other. Those people who clung to things reaped sorrow as a harvest, and they never went to their treasures. The reason is, the world is not full of treasures. It is an emptiness. It does not exist. It is a nihil. It is a zero before the Almighty’s background of omnipresence.
What do we adore on this holy day? We adore that immanent, omnipresent, universal power which comes in various shapes and forms according to the exigencies of time. There are no Gurus, no Masters, no this, no that; God only is, finally. The branches, the trunks, the leaves, the twigs, the flowers and the fruits are only trees, finally. The waves and the eddies are only oceans in the end. The names that we give are only indicative of their manifestations and diversifications. Their substance is one.
So we may say a prophet has come, a Guru has come, an Avatara has come, an Incarnation has come, a yogi has come, a siddha purusha has come. By any name, they are the concretisations in some necessary particularised geographical form of that which has no geography and no form, no shape, which is not material. Thus, God is an immaterial, universal, inconceivable power, and therefore, what can come out of that as a manifestation in the form of an incarnation or even a prophet or a religious teacher also has to be only that. We cannot have an effect which is totally different from the nature of the cause. If the cause is such imperceptible universality, the effect also is essentially that only.
So we are not adoring the body, the physical samadhi, or a photograph or picture of Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, in the same way as God is not adored as a painted picture, as something that is seen, because that which we see is only a spatial and temporal shape taken by that which can never really be seen or become tangible. God is never dead; God is always alive. Therefore, anything that comes from God is also never dead. It is alive.
There are millions of eyes that see you. There are no secret things in this world. Every eye is open, vigilant, and knows what is happening. Every atom in the world is awake. It is not dead. There is no unconscious anywhere. There is, therefore, a multitude of visions gazing at you, as it were, and you are known throughout the universe. This is one way of recognising yourself as a citizen of the universe. You are not only seen by every atom, it prehends you, comprehends you, reacts in regard to you, produces effects upon you, conditions you, knows everything that you are and whatever you can be.
So neither I nor you can be regarded as human beings. We are only centres, intangible pressures, points of energy which are coextensive and coeternal with the all-pervading eye, which is the reason why we say God has many eyes. It does not mean that His eyes are like our eyes. His eyes are centres of awareness, and every centre is everywhere. Therefore, there is omniscience pervading.
Thus, our adoration at this holy moment of Sri Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj is a veritable worship, obeisance that we offer to the Almighty Himself who, in His various incarnations, Avataras, came down as the great prophets of religion; and masters, poets and leaders in any field of life are veritable embodiments of this one Being only. Therefore Guru is God; God is Guru, is Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, as we say. Our adorations at this moment be to that Almighty who came not merely as the one whom we are acquainted with as Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, but who came as many other multifarious forces also that have been sustaining the world in this present condition.
This meditation is the great contribution that we can make by the power of our thought for the welfare of humanity. The world moves not by bulldozers and machines. It moves by thought. The world moves by ideas. The world moves by deep feelings, and whatever our deepest feelings are, deepest thoughts are, deepest concentrated contemplations are, what our consciousness is, that the world also is. So the highest service that we can do to anyone is to unify our consciousness in this manner with the total power which constitutes this universe.
Here is, therefore, an occasion for a double service that we can perform. An obeisance to the Almighty and the welfare of humanity at one and the same time is my humble prayer.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Inner Meaning of the Devi Mahatmya
The Inner Meaning of the Devi Mahatmya by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 26 August 2013 20:33
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(Spoken on October 4, 1981)
The remembrance of Devi pulls our hearts, draws our affections and fills us with great joy during these festival days at least once in a year, and the reason for this great enthusiasm religiously and spiritually felt by people throughout the country can be regarded as explicable only on the great importance that is associated with this novel occasion.
You have been reading the holy Sri Devi Mahatmya and also listening to messages during the past few days, touching upon the importance of these worships conducted for nine or ten days during this time of year. You are familiar with the names Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Shakti, Prakriti, etc. These are divine appellations with which everyone is familiar, and it appears that we are offering our obeisance and worship to these divinities named in this manner. But we have also been told again and again that the divine Shakti is also the Supreme Shakti, the power which is unsurpassed. The power of the whole universe, the energy of the cosmos can only be considered as unsurpassed because beyond that nothing is conceivable.
But there is something interesting about these battles between the Devi and the Asuras. It is very interesting to hear these stories no doubt, but it is difficult to make out much meaning from these narrations considering the other aspect of the teaching that the Shakti is all-in-all. Ekaivaham jagatyatra dvitiya ka mamapara (Devi Mahatmya 10.4). This is what Devi says to Sumba: “I am alone here. How do you say there are many with me?” If she, or however much we may try to name this power in any manner, is single, it becomes difficult for us to name the location of these Asuras. From where have they come, and with whom is she fighting?
The supernal, indivisible, all-pervasive Shakti is one whole completeness. Therefore, the Asuras have no place to stay, yet they seem to be fighting. This is something difficult for us to understand. Wherefrom do they emerge? Where are they situated? Are they outside this dominion of Devi, or are they also within the jurisdiction of the operation of this power? Dvau bhutasargau lokesmin daiva asura eva ca (Gita 16.6) says the Bhagavadgita: From Being’s nature, two energies manifest themselves in two opposite And a similar situation seems to be here before us when we read the inner meaning of the Devi Mahatmya. With whom is Devi fighting? The Rakshasas, the demoniacal elements. Where are they seated? Within the universe. But the whole universe is pervaded by her. So it would appear as if a dramatic picture is presented before us of an inscrutable occurrence within the bosom of the cosmos, and it is not actually a battle between the Allies and the Axis powers or any other war that you can think of in this world. It is not an outer fight, though it can take an outer form when it descends into lower planes of physical perception and pure material operations. But the wars that are described in the Devi Mahatmya, at least from the point of The whole universe is doubly manifest in two forces, the positive and negative powers. A reference to this is also made in the Bhagavadgita when Bhagavan Sri Krishna says, “My Prakriti is higher and also lower.” So there is what is called the higher Prakriti and the lower Prakriti. While the Asuras with whom a war has to be waged cannot be considered as outside the area of the operation of the universal power, yet there is a circumstance under which such a battle takes place, like the constructive and destructive forces working together in our own physiological organism, which doctors call the anabolic and the catabolic powers. They are both inside us only. It does not mean that the constructive ones are inside us and the destructive ones outside. Both are working in a very mysterious manner inside us – the health forces and the disease forces. So while disease and health can both be inside us – not merely inside us, but inseparable from us – the divine operative Shakti called the Devi and these elements which are opposing divine influence can be within the cosmos itself; they cannot be discovered separately by observation through a microscope, just as disease and health cannot be separated by any kind of observation. They are impossible of perception by any means.
The urges or impulses towards contact – desire, anger, greed, grasping, enjoyment, possession – constitute the demoniacal urges which are also within the universe itself. And there is another force which moves towards the centre of being: God-oriented impulse.
The higher power referred to in the Bhagavadgita – Paraprakriti – is the Devi Shakti, and the lower Prakriti is what we see with our eyes – the five elements and everything that is constituted of them. The physical body of ours and the sense organs, with their impulses towards contact and enjoyment materially, physically, is one side of the matter. But there is an impulse in us to move towards God, integrate things and work for the unity of purpose. Two operations take place simultaneously in the world. While the ocean can madly operate within itself and dash powerful waves causing destruction, devastation and cataclysm everywhere, yet it maintains its oceanhood at the same time. The ocean has never ceased to be the ocean together with its devastating activity and ebullient waves rising up to heights of several feet.
In a similar manner, there seems to be a secret operation within the universe, including within our own bodies, a double action taking place simultaneously, one moving towards the outer contacts of things which is the catabolic action of universal powers, and another moving towards the centre of Reality, God-oriented impulse, aspiration for moksha, or liberation of the spirit, which is the anabolic activity of the cosmos.
So the higher reason that is operating within us is the controlling agency both within our personality as well as in the universe; the battles we speak of are against these outward-oriented urges descending into matter of the five elements of earth, water, fire, air, ether and all the embodiments constituted of these elements. Our bodies, down to animals, plants, and even inanimate matter, are all lower Prakriti urging for self-preservation and struggling for survival even at the cost of others. The lion jumping on the other weaker animals, the tiger attacking cows, the more powerful attacking the weaker, the larger fish swallowing the smaller fish, the law of the mighty as superior to the weaker – these are all the catabolic activities of the lower Prakriti, the Rakshasas operating. All the drama of human life today is the lower Prakriti operating. That is why we are restless. We do not have one moment of peace in this world because the divine power has escaped our attention and we are caught in the mesh of these downward movements of impulses rushing outwardly into contact with physical objects for selfish sense enjoyment, even at the cost and destruction of other people.
To overcome this outward impulse the higher, superior reason, the Mahatattva-shakti, Hiranyagarbha-shakti, Ishvara-shakti, Brahma-shakti, Vishnu-shakti, Siva-shakti, whatever it may be called, may have to act.
Thus is the internal significance of the wars described in the several chapters of the Devi Mahatmya. It is a spiritual drama and not a bloody war as it would appear on a mere literary reading of the chapters. It is a highly esoteric attempt of spiritual ascent that is described in these chapters. It is not a novel, it is not a story, it is not a narration for cajoling you during a few hours of the worship of the Divine Mother. It is a secret technique of spiritual ascendance from the lower to the higher, both inwardly as well as outwardly, is the purpose of these narrations through the Devi Mahatmya and the meaning behind the worship of Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, the power which dominates our tamas, rajas and sattva – the material universe which is tamasic, the subtler higher levels of the planes of being which are rajasic, and the highest sattva which is Brahmaloka. All these come under the purview of Prakriti herself. A brahmabhuvanal lokah punaravartinorjuna (Gita 8.16): Everything, even up to Brahmaloka, is within the purview of Prakriti, the only distinction being that the higher ones are sattvic, the middling rajasic and the lower one are all tamasic.
But there is something transcendent which operates this Shakti. When you say Brahma-shakti, Vishnu-shakti, Siva-shakti, etc., we imply that there is something called Brahma, Vishnu, Siva wielding this force of Durga, Lakshma, Saraswati or Shaktis as fire wields heat, sun wields brilliance, and you wield your own energy when you lift a heavy object, for instance. The Shakti of Brahma, Shakti of Vishnu, Shakti of Siva are not like three women sitting beside them like husband and wife; they are inseparables like fire and heat, sun and light, and your own self and your strength. You have got Shakti. With your Shakti, with your strength, you can lift some things. You cannot say your Shakti is outside sitting somewhere and you cannot see it. It is inseparable from you. It is your capacity to operate that is called Shakti. So the capacity of Brahma to operate, the capacity of Vishnu to operate, the capacity of Siva to operate is the Shakti operating in the creative, preservative and the destructive levels.
Thus, the distinction that we make in our days of worship between Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, the final victorious worship on the Vijayadasami, and the narrations in the Devi Mahatmya all point to the same fact that there is a divine purpose operating in the cosmos, a divine purpose operating within each one of you, and within even a little atom, tending towards the coming together of all things in a fraternal embrace in Godhood. That is the Vijaya, the victory finally won, the great cessation of battle, the entering of all the rivers into the ocean. The tumult and noise and activity of the river ceases when it reaches its parent, the ocean. Likewise, all activity ceases when the purpose of the universe is served, when the opposing Rakshasa vrittis, the downward and outward movements, are turned backwards by a reversal process, by a recession of the effects into their causes so that the effects merge into their causes.
Thus the Supreme Cause operates, and the final victory of the Ultimate Cause is celebrated on Vijayadasami wherein all the truant and the intractable elements, which are the very effects, extend themselves outwardly in space and time towards enjoyment of sense objects; they battle one another and are turned backward reversely into the centre of Being. That is the overcoming of the lower elements called the Rakshasas or the demons by the higher power of supreme spiritual integration demonstrated in the ascending series of the activities of Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati, culminating in final victory which is the union of all the souls in the Supreme Soul, Paramatman.
So here we have a spiritual drama enacted in a most beautiful ritualistic fashion of worship and the epic grandeur of Devi Mahatmya, and also in the form of a deep sadhana that we ourselves are expected to perform inwardly through japa, prayer and meditation during these days of Navaratri which fulfils itself in a purnavati puja during the holy Vijayadasami.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Vijayadasami Message
Vijayadasami Message by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 25 August 2013 19:11
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(Spoken on Vijayadasami in October 1981)
With the conclusion purnavati of the glorious worship of the Universal Mother of things, Adi Shakti, the supreme power of the Absolute—Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati—we humble followers of Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj on the On holy Sri Vijayadasami, a very auspicious day which is also a Thursday, the day of Sri Guru, time has come for not only people like us here in an ashram but for people in general everywhere to assess their own situations, to recognise where they actually stand in this world, and cast a retrospective outlook on their past, analyse with a probing analysis their present, and be aware of the future also at the same time. This is a part of the wisdom of man to assess the value of life, connecting it with the past, relating it to the present, and apprehending the future at the same time in a correlative synthesis.
It is now the moment when mankind has to wake from his deep slumber of complacency. All the kings and emperors were in a state of complacency, imagining that everything is milk and honey in the world. It is all a bed of roses and velvet, and they had nothing to fear. This is what Napoleon thought and all persons of that stature thought. By Napoleon I mean everyone who was self-sufficient, self-complacent, and imagined everything is self-complete.
Nothing in this world that is finite can be self-complete. There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. So is the truth slowly descending on our heads today like a Damocles sword and not permitting us to sleep any more since we are rudely being shaken by the transitions of time and the consequent effects that are being produced by these transitions of the movement of history in the form of time’s process.
That God exists is a great solace to everyone, and nothing can be a greater solace to us than that our Father exists who has the strength to take care of us. Nothing can make us more happy than the conviction that our parent is alive and He has the power to take care of us under every circumstance, in every condition, at every moment of time. This gives us satisfaction, and this must give us satisfaction. But at the same time, we must also be vigilant in the sense that we do not play a double role in our own selves in our recognition of the presence of this Almighty power immanent in the whole universe. Simultaneously with the recognition of the presence of the Almighty’s greatness, magnificence and glory there is the little mischievous weakness of man crawling like an insect and disturbing this glorious heritage of man in his capacity to accept the greatness of the Almighty. Man is mischievous simultaneously with his greatness that he can invoke God’s presence. The mischief is in the mind of man, and nothing can be more mischievous than that. Our devotion to God is hypocritical and therefore we must also accept that God must be aware of this state of our minds.
I always remember the very humorous, touching and most illustrative example given by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Deva. He gives an example by a very humorous story. Our devotion to God, says Sri Ramakrishna in a homely example, is like the sorrow of a woman whose husband is dead and who strikes her head down on the ground before all people as if the whole world is cracking under her feet because she has lost the most beloved object, which is her husband, but simultaneously has the conscious that the ornament in her nose is not affected by the striking of the head on the ground. She is aware of this ornament in her nose because if she strikes her head in too violent a manner the ornament may be broken. So this is the love that she has got for the husband which goes together with this nath, as they call it, an ornament which women wear in the nose.
This is not a story, this is not an anecdote, this is not something at which we laugh, but something that explains every one of us. We are all in the position of this lady. We have a great love for our husband, and we have lost our husband, we strike our head down with great devotion, but we are conscious that we have a large bank balance, we are ministers, we are chief secretaries, we are presidents, and we have very dear values in this Earthly existence. We may have even a little tape recorder, which is enough to pull us down to this Earth. Why go to big things? There are small things—a walking stick, a kamandal, a transistor, a very costly wristwatch—that can pull us down.
It requires a little bit of hard searching. Do we really want God? And as Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to say, it is all a question of demand and supply. God’s constitution emphasises on the principle of demand and supply. When there is a demand, supply has to come. If there is no demand, how can there be a supply? Do we want the protection of God, or are we also strong? We feel that we also have a strength. We cannot deny this little bit of crochet, a kink in our heads that has crept into our hearts, and we can explain our own disadvantages and our failures in life. Man does not want God. He may be a spiritual pundit, he may be a newspaperly advertised mahatma with international yoga centres, but all these will not cut ice before the vigilant eye of God.
All this I am telling because today the Earth is shaking, as it were, with the burden of evil, and I do not know when the Earth will descend to such an extent that an Avatara like Sri Krishna has to come. Such an Avatara descends when the Earth cannot bear this burden any more and she cries before the great Lord. She bears the burden to a certain extent, like a donkey that carries the weight of bricks, but a time comes when it cannot bear this weight. It will crack. The donkey will fall down with the weight of the bricks that has been put on its back too much, beyond its capacity.
So the Earth can bear the evil of man to some extent and God can give us a long rope, but there is a limit for everything. And humankind today is attempting to demonstrate that the Earth should cry from the bottom of our heart and summon God’s force. I do not know whether it is essential for man to descend to such a level to bring about such a catastrophic situation in humanity by behaving like an animal or worse than an animal, with devastating feelings in the heart, hatred gone to the core, and love totally absent in the vitals of human beings.
Are we interested in sinking our spirits to such a low level that the Earth should crack under our feet and God should descend with His wrath? I do not think that we should summon the wrath of God. When Sri Krishna comes, he comes with a double role: to establish the Kingdom of God—dharma samsthapanarthaya—but He will also perform an operation like a physician, like a surgeon, and that aspect may not be a palatable and happy thing. While God plays a positive role of establishing the righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven, He also plays the role of bringing into a subjection of transformation everything that is contrary to the enlightening effect of this Kingdom of God.
So my humble request—I do not call it a message—at this moment before all the seekers, humble servants seated here in this sacred precinct of the ashrama, is that each one of us has to collect our spirits into a focus of concentration which has to work a miracle in its own manner. No one can work a miracle so instantaneously as God Himself, and everyone who is sincerely, honestly, from the bottom of one’s heart united with God can also work this miracle. So while on one hand it appears as if we are in a terrible condition today in every field of existence, there is no need for despair because the strength of God is unthinkable, unimaginable, beyond space, beyond time, and instantaneous in action. No ICBM can stand before Him. On the one hand, we have to be very vigilant about our own weaknesses and pitiable condition of existence; on the other hand, we must also be happy that some element of memory still remains in some people in this world, that dharma is not completely dead, and with this little memory of the glorious capacities and potentialities in man, we can invoke God’s presence. Thus is my humble prayer. May God triumph—_satyameva jayate—_and peace be to His creation.
[Swamiji chants holy mantras]
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Devi Mahatmya, Pronunciation of Mantras and Hindu Gods
Devi Mahatmya, Pronunciation of Mantras and Hindu Gods by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 24 August 2013 20:52
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Visitor: Should all the slokas and mantras of the Devi Mahatmya be treated as three separate portions.
Swamiji: This was done because they were addressed to Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Were the chapters then spoken from different aspects? No. The three deities are the three stages of consciousness – tamas, rajas and sattva – reached in an ascending order.
Visitor: Are the chapters then suitably written to tamas, rajas and sattva?
Swamiji: No, because they are all one. It is our incapacity to see all three as one that brings in the distinction. It is the same one guna that appears as tamas, rajas and sattva.
Visitor: Then the number of slokas in each portion has no meaning as so many mantras? The numbers vary, unlike in the ashtottara and sahasra – namavalis.
Swamiji: There is no significance in the number as such of the slokas. It is all one continuous mantraof
Pronunciation of Mantras
Visitor: Is it a sin if a mantra is mispronounced due to ignorance or physical defect?
Swamiji: Some people become fanatics and think only their mantra works, and only if pronounced correctly. A devotee in Tamil Nadu used to recite Namah Chivaya (instead of Namah Sivaya) with such faith that he was able to walk on water while reciting Nama Chivaya. One day a grammarian taught the devotee to pronounce the mantra correctly as Namah Sivaya. But with the correct
Hindu Gods
Visitor: Swamiji, someone with a definite purpose of his own, in order to provoke me into an argument, remarked, “Hinduism is nothing but one god fighting with another!” I knew his mind and so refused to say anything. But what is the meaning of these so-called wars between Vishnu and Brahma, for instance, when Lord Siva vanquishes them both and quells their pride? Lord Siva establishes at the same time that He is the Most Supreme! Is it because in such contexts the Manifested God gets accretions of their level which is lower than that of the Supreme Being? The Puranas and the Epics are full of such incidents of war among the Gods.
Swamiji: The subject-object opposition in time and space, the affirmation of the ego as superior to and supreme over everything, causes the clash, no matter at what level. This clash of the positive and the negative, both of which are inherent in everything finite, produces a spark as a higher synthesis and is absorbed in the higher synthesis. But this level of the present higher synthesis is, again, not the highest. It is still only in the process of evolution into the next higher synthesis. Hence this clash and this spark are repeated, and so is the absorption of the spark into the next higher synthesis, from level to level. This clash or ‘war’ between the gods – deities of the different levels – goes on until the last higher synthesis is absorbed into the Absolute. This process of the sparks getting absorbed thus is explained in the Puranas and the Epics as one god warring with another and a third god conquering (absorbing) both within Itself.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Navratri: The Worship of Mahadevi
Navratri: The Worship of Mahadevi by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 23 August 2013 20:23
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The worship of Mahadevi—Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati—which is prevalent in India, is a religious Every aspiration that originates from the mind of a human being has several facets and interpretations. When something happens, does anyone pause to think why anything happens at all? Why should anything occur? We generally attribute events in the world to some cause that is visible to our eyes or is calculable intellectually. To that extent we can find out why things happen in the way that they happen.
We have great scientists in this world who are proficient in finding the causes of things; and as science advances, the meaning of ‘cause’ receives newer and newer interpretations. When it poured rain, religious observers thought that a divinity called Indra was lashing forth his Vajra (thunderbolt), a weapon which he wields in his hand; he whirls the forces around, and there is the downpour of rain. The rainbow was considered as Indradhanush, a bow wielded by Indra after the rainfall. We attributed divine causative factors behind visible phenomena: a bow wielded by Indra after the rainfall appeares as the rainbow. But science has nothing to do with religion. It believes only what it sees. As we cannot see Indra in the skies, science cannot agree that he is the cause of rain.
What do we see with our scientific eye? Here, also, observations started advancing gradually from crude perceptions to finer and finer subtleties. There were philosophers both in the West and the East who thought that originally God created cosmic waters, and He brooded on these waters at the beginning of creation. A poem in Sanskrit says that God created waters, and everything emanated from the waters.
There are others who think that this Earth itself is a chip, a block shot off from the orb of the Sun, and evolution took place gradually on this planet over the course of endless time. But why all these things happen was also a question of the scientific mind. They happen because there are causes behind causes. There are minute molecules which are the causes of solid objects such as a rock, for instance. Everything that is solid in appearance is molecular in its structure; and there scientific observation during the medieval period ceased. But then it advanced and discovered finer and finer potentials behind the molecules. Forces seemed to be whirling like eddies in a vast sea of These causative energies which are supposed to be at the back of all occurrences were further analysed by more and more concentrated observational processes, and it was not easy to understand why such a variety should be there in this creation, even taking for granted that the cosmic sea of force is manifesting itself as material substances. The variety of individuality was inexplicable. This was a further advance in modern techniques of scientific observation, whereby it was observed that I differ from you and you differ from me—everything differs from everything else, nothing is equal to another—because of a mysterious activity taking place in the various centres of this cosmic sea of force, though we cannot imagine differentiations in a vast sea of equilibrated energy.
For instance, we do not see difference in the water of an ocean. However far we may Why are we born in different psychophysical states or conditions? Modern scientific inward analysis is based on what is called the quantum mechanics of observation, whereby it is seen that there is an action and interaction taking place between centres of force in this vast energy ocean. There is a central pressure exerted at one spot, and that pressure will be of that character, that intensity, that specification, that form and significance as is its relation to other such centres in this vast sea of energy. It is very difficult to understand what all this means. A particular action of a particularised centre of energy is not an offhand action of that location independently by itself, but is universally determined by its connections through tentacles that it manifests through millions and millions of centres of that kind, so that the world of centres is more a bundle of relations of one with another than a heap of individual solid centres of activity.
We are reminded here of what Buddha said long ago in a similar strain. There is movement only, relativity only, fluxation only, process only, and nothing is stable and located in one place continuously. Even a burning flame in a lamp is not a solid flame. It is an emanation which is jetting forth with rapidity, forces impinging one on the other, so that it is like the flow of the river which looks like a continuous mass of water. Such is a flame, a burning fire. “The world is burning fire,” said Buddha. From this statement one can discover any meaning.
Why does this happen? The scientist has his own answer. There was an original action of the universe, and that original action is the motivation for every other subsequent action. This original action is called by many types of descriptive epithets. Some call it the Big Bang; a large sound was produced. What would be that sound which became the cosmos? We cannot imagine what it is. They posit some such thing as the original cause, which broke the universe into two parts—half this way, half that way. This is corroborated by the Upanishads, the Manu Smriti and the Mahabharata. So what they are saying is not a fairytale. There seems to be some truth behind it because we have it said even before scientists were born. The Manu Smriti says a big anda was there, a cosmic egg which split, as it were, into two parts. We may call one part gold and the other part silver. Who broke it? Scientists cannot answer this question. Who split the universe into two parts? “He became the All. He was the All, is the All, and shall be the All in the future. He, being All, created Himself through Himself,” says the Purusha Sukta. Tasmādvirāḍajāyata virājo adhipūruṣaḥ, sa jāto atyaricyata paścādbhūmimatho puraḥ: From Him arose the cosmos; from that arose the presiding principle of the cosmos; from that also arose that which decides what is to happen in this universe after this split took place.
The beginning of the concept of power, or shakti, seems to be hidden here when we are told that one part was cut off from the other part. This is also the concept of Ardhanarishvara, in our religious parlance. Lord Siva is half man and half woman, but not half in the sense of two differentiated irreconcilable parts. It is an androgynous totality. Lord Siva is not a half-man, and the other part is not segregated from him. It is his energy, which cannot be dissociated from himself.
Descriptions of this are attempted in scriptures like the Yoga Vasishtha, the Vishnu Purana, etc. where we are told that the relationship between one part and the other part—Siva and Shakti, and Ishvara and Nari in this Ardhanarishvara concept—is something like the relationship of sesame to the oil which is immanent in it. Water which has liquidity imbedded in it, fire which has heat inseparable from it, sugar which has sweetness that cannot be separated from it, and so on, are examples given in such scriptures as the Yoga Vasishtha. In the Vishnu Purana, the relationship between Narayana and Lakshmi is described in this fashion. Sesame is Narayana, oil is Lakshmi; water is Narayana, liquidity is Lakshmi; fire is Narayana, heat is Lakshmi; and so on.
All these are intriguing descriptions of certain mysteries which seem to be the cause of everything, and the cause of even our own selves. The person who speaks and the people who are listening and this very building, this very Earth—all these are included in the activity of this comprehensive occurrence that took place originally as, in the language of the Purusha Sukta, a yajna or a sacrifice. God sacrificed Himself, as it were, in becoming the universe. Why is it called a sacrifice? He became other than what He is. The alienation of Himself in the form of another than what He Himself is, is the act of His sacrifice. When I cease to be what I am and give away part of me to somebody else—a share of me goes to another—I am supposed to be doing a sacrifice. If nothing goes from me, it is not a sacrifice. If you give charity but lose nothing by giving that charity, it is not charity. You have not shared a joy of your personality. A millionaire’s donation of one dollar is not to be regarded as a great sacrifice on his part, because he has not shared his joy. He has a joy in possessing the dollars, and he has not lost that joy even in a modicum by parting with one dollar. But if half of it has gone and he has given it voluntarily, he has shared a large part of his joy also, and he has done a sacrifice.
The abundance of the joy of God’s universal existence is supposed to be overflowing in the form of this creation. This is how mystics sometimes exuberantly describe the act of creation: He becomes His own power. “I am death and immortality,” says the Lord in the Bhagavadgita. The Nasadiya Sukta says, “Death and immortality are shadows cast by this Absolute Being.” Immortality also is a shadow; so, what is the original of it? There cannot be anything called immortal unless there is something called death. They are correlative factors, and there is no such thing as independent immortality minus its relationship with the concept of dying. Hence, even immortality is considered as a secondary factor. God transcends death and immortality, life and annihilation, because He Himself is this process.
“One who contemplates this mystery,” says the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, “he himself becomes death.” Death cannot kill that person, because death becomes his very existence. Death itself, which is so frightening, seeming to be totally outside us, controlling us in every way, is the very self of that person who knows this truth. So if the self itself is death, and death is your own self, who will kill it? That is not possible.
Thus, in the act of sacrifice of the Almighty in the form of this creation, He has become Himself in another form, as it were. Siva has become Shakti, Narayana has become Lakshmi, Brahma has become Saraswati, meaning thereby the power of transformation, the power of sustenance and the power of illumination are three phases of one great activity interconnectedly taking place in this sea of energy I mentioned—which, according to modern scientists, is the beginning of all creation.
Namo viśvasṛje pūrvaṃ viśvaṃ tadanu bibhrate, atha viśvasya saṃhartre tubhyaṃ tredhāsthitātmane. This is the commencement of a prayer in Kalidas’ Raghuvamsha Kavya made by the gods when they went to the abode of Narayana and prayed to him for redress from the sorrows inflicted upon them by Ravana. What is the beginning of this prayer? Namo viśvasṛje pūrvaṃ: Prostration to Thee who appearest as the Creator of all things. Viśvaṃ tadanu bibhrate: Prostration to Thee who appearest as the Sustainer of all things. Atha viśvasya saṃhartre: Prostration to Thee who appearest as the Transformer and Destroyer of all things. Tubhyaṃ tredhāsthitātmane: Prostration to Thee who appearest as all these three things. He does not become these three things; He Himself is the judge and the executive and the legislature, if we can imagine such a thing. The legislature, the executive and the judiciary are not identical. They are three facets of the administrative principle. But what if one thing is all three? Previously, the king was all three. He was the judge, he was the executive, and he was also the legislative authority. He could do anything. Such seems to be the manner in which the origin of things operates in this world, and our religious interpretation of this cosmic activity is in the form of the worship of Siva or the worship of Shakti. In whatever manner we may try to understand this mystery, this mystery indeed is what lies at the back of our irresistible urge to worship Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati every year, whether or not we understand what we are doing.
Calcutta, where the Durga Puja is very famous and people begin to prepare for it a month before, is also the place of Marxists. The Marxists say, “What is there; let the Puja go on.” They have all heart and soul for this performance of Durga Puja in the centre of Calcutta, and outside the premises where the worship is going on, they sell the works of Karl Marx. Whatever it is, let Karl Marx be there, but inside him there is something operating, transcending him. And so, finally, what man thinks is not the final judgement of things. All political and administrative dogmas and pronouncements have something behind them which compels them to think in that manner. We have democracies, plutocracies, aristocracies, tyrannies, monarchies. We have peace and war. We have everything in this historical process of the universe. But all this is not finally an original thought contemplated by the human being. He is forced to move in this direction by the requirement of cosmic forces. History is a movement of forces in the cosmic structure, which manifests itself as human, political and historical procession.
There is, therefore, something that remains which is still not properly understood. When we say that God created the world, that ununderstood mystery is the mystery of the relationship between God and his Shakti—Rudra-Shakti, Siva-Shakti, Brahma-Shakti and Vishnu-Shakti. It cannot be understood. Actually speaking, if we dispassionately judge phenomena, one cannot understand what the relationship between a man and a woman is. Though we think that everything is clear, it is not clear. It will become more and more unclear when we probe deeper and deeper in the phenomenon called this duality of the sexes. It cannot be understood unless you transcend both these things. You have to cease to be a man and cease to be a woman; then you will know what the relationship is between you. As a man, as a woman, this relationship cannot be understood because you are one party. One party cannot judge another party. Therefore, human beings are not in a position to adequately understand this mystery, because who are human beings? They are either men or women. They think only in terms of their social relationship; and the connection between Siva and Shakti or Narayana and Vishnu, etc. is not a social connection. It is impossible to understand what connection it is. The fourth section of the first chapter of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad begins by placing a great enigma placed before us. Ātmaivedam agra āsīt puruṣavidhaḥ: The Cosmic Person, as it were, existed in the beginning. This is the concept of the personality of God as is prevalent in Christianity, for instance, and also in the Vaishnava and the Saiva doctrines in India. God is a person.
But we have to carefully understand the meaning of the word ‘person’. It is not a human person; it is The Person, Mahapurusha, the Purusha Sukta’s great divinity, and Purushottama, in the language of the Bhagavadgita. This Original Being, which has become the Creator as well as the created, has also brought out an eternal problem between the relation of cause and effect, to the chagrin of all philosophers right from the beginning. Even today we cannot know how an effect comes from a cause. If the effect is totally outside the cause, we cannot say it has any connection with the cause. If it has a vital relationship, inseparably, with the cause, then there is no such thing as an independent effect at all; only the cause is there. Either way, we cannot know what has happened. The cause has not produced the effect if the effect is inseparable, in a sense, from itself. Clay has not produced the pot. Though we can carry water in a pot, we cannot carry water in clay. So there is a difference between the clay and the pot. Is there not a difference? Yes; but what is the difference? If we break the pot, it will become the original substance from which it came.
So we do not know whether there was a cause for this universe or whether this world has really come as an effect from this cause. Who created it and how did it come? The conclusion of the Nasadiya Sukta of the Veda is: “He Who created it may know it or not.” The poet says, laughingly, as it were, “Perhaps He Himself does not know how He created it.” Ya va veda, ya va na veda: He may know, or He may not know.
Such is the difficulty in understanding the facts of life. We are floating on the surface of wisdom as wiseacres, imagining that we are great philosophers and scientists—neither of which we really are. If we go into the depths of things, even a philosopher ceases to be a philosopher in his bedroom, in his kitchen and in his bathroom. He becomes a poor nothing. He forgets all of his wisdom because of the little pinpricks of real life that seem to pursue him like a creditor wherever he goes. And the scientist knows that he knows nothing finally because he landed on the conclusion that unless he knows himself as an inseparable ingredient in the process of observation, he will not know anything. So what does the scientist—who is a materialist, as they say—finally tell us? Know yourself and you will know all the universe, because you are involved in the very process of your trying to understand this universe which is the object of your perception, observation.
Thus, no one can understand who this Shakti is. In the great prayer the gods offered, as we have it in the Devi Mahatmaya—Namo Devi, Maha Devi—everything is told about her. I do not know whether to use the word ‘her’. It is a defect of language. It is not a woman. How can you regard God’s alienation of Himself as an other than what He is, for the purpose of this apparent creation, as a woman? As you will appreciate, there is no such thing as a woman or a man in this world. They are certain functional features manifested by the requirement of this interaction of cosmic forces, one related to the other, as I mentioned earlier. Impersonality rules the cosmos, and this is the meaning of the so-called differentiation of Siva and Shakti. God is dancing; sometimes we say Shakti is dancing. We do not know who is dancing on whom. In some pictures or portraits we see Kali dancing on Siva’s chest. Why is she dancing on Siva? How is it? It is the power of the cosmos dancing on its rootedness in the Absolute. Indescribable is this phenomenon.
Shakti worship—Devi worship, Durga Puja—is not a female deity’s worship, as some people wrongly imagine. Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati are not females like women that we see in the world. We would describe this very Shakti as is portrayed to us in the Devi Mahatmya: Narasimhi, Rudrani, Kumari, and all sorts of names. She appeared as Skanda with spear in hand, as Narasimha with roaring lion’s mouth, as Vishnu with Sudarshana in hand, as Rudra with Pasupata in hand. Can we call that great being a woman? Man has always counterposed before him this difficulty of having something opposed to him, and so is the case with woman also. This idea has to be shed before we become true worshippers of this great divinity. Otherwise it becomes a kind of Tantric cult and a ritual which may take us to any place, like a firecracker that bursts during Divali. It may burst in the sky, or may burst our face; anything can happen.
Tantra, which is at the back of Navratri Puja, is not a cult by itself. It is the basic explanation behind every activity that takes place in this universe. Even the littlest activity of ours is explicable only in terms of what Tantra describes as the meaning of life; but we are not supposed to understand this meaning merely by snapping our fingers. Dynamite is a powerful force. It can burst open rocks and mountains, and it can also burst open our own heads if we do not handle it properly. It will turn upon us.
Therefore, this is a very, very meaningful and highly significant spiritual occasion provided to us, and not merely religious in the ordinary sense of the term, where we rise to the occasion of contemplating God in all His power in any form whatsoever in which it reveals itself and whatever form it takes—as beauty to the eyes, sonorous music to the ears, fragrance to the nose, sweetness to the tongue, softness to the touch, and intellectual exaltation for a literary genius; all this is Shakti operating. Therefore, during this Navratri occasion it is imperative on the part of an ardent seeker and worshipper of the divinity to be benefited by this worship and not merely pass through it as a kind of routine for nine days. “It has been done for so many years and now, this year, we will do it, and make a noise, and then the whole thing ends.” That is not so. Religious observances have their spiritual import, as we know very well. They are deeply significant as divine occasions provided for us to rise to that occasion now and then for the purpose of accelerating the progress of our soul towards its destination.
Thus, in our worship, what do we worship? God as He is, and God as He appears—God as the cause, God as the effect; God as the male principle, God as the female principle; God as the positive and the negative. Worship is many a time considered as an act of the soul, with no connection with the body. It is Shakti worship, Tantra Sadhana, that tells us that we should not commit this mistake. There are levels of reality, degrees of expression of God Himself, and we have to rise from the lower level to the higher level. We cannot cut off our connection with the lower level, imagining that we are on the top, because everyone is conscious of one’s being in the body. This bodily consciousness has to be transmuted, not severed. Otherwise, the soul will writhe in agony that it has lost a part of itself, and the result would be not yogic attainment but miserable rebirth. The body is not to be discarded; it has to be transmuted into a subtler energy. Molecule becomes atom, atom becomes electron, electron becomes electric force, and it becomes the space-time continuum, or whatever we call it. We do not reject the molecule for the sake of the finer essences, because they are the transmuted forms of the very things which we saw with our physical eyes—a solid object.
In spiritual practice, in Tantra Sadhana, there is no abandoning anything, no rejecting anything. We cannot reject Shakti and catch hold of Siva. That is not possible. It is like abandoning creation for the sake of the Creator. Not so is the case, says the Purusha Sukta. He is the creation. Tasmādvirāḍajāyata: From Him only everything comes.
Spiritual aspiration is an integrated march of the whole that we are, the body-mind-spirit complex, towards that total whole which is Siva-Shakti, Ardhanarishvara, Mahapurusha, Purushottama, Parabrahman, which is the All, the source of power and power itself, that great glory. We can call it only glory. Unable to say what it is, the poet of the Purusha Sukta says, “What can I call Thee? Thou art great glory.” God, or whatever we call this great mystery, is great glory. Shakti, or whatever we call this mystery, is great glory. The universe, or whatever we may call it, is great glory. The whole of life is a great miracle and a wondrous glory. Its worship it is that we are engaged in during this holy occasion of blessed Navratri of Adhyashakti: Mahadurga, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati. May that grace be upon us all.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Dipavali: The Worship of Mahalakshmi, the Glory of God
Dipavali: The Worship of Mahalakshmi, the Glory of God by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 21 August 2013 20:57
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The worship of Mahalakshmi, which is the theme of all these celebrations on this blessed occasion known as Dipavali, is actually the form religion gives to the adoration of the glory of God. The face of God is beautiful. Inasmuch as no one has beheld the face of God, religious prescriptions give us representations of the various types of glory manifest in the world. The glory of God as such cannot be conceived, of course, as everyone knows, but the features of that which gives satisfaction, which looks attractive, which is prosperity in its very nature, that which is magnificence and exuberance, which is robust and grand in every manner can be attributed only to the majesty of God.
Mortal, ephemeral things cannot have that beauty. Perishable objects have within them the sting of the perishable nature to which they are subject. Even when they are born, their death is inscribed in large bold letters on their face. Death always follows birth—not as a sequence in time, but as a manifestation of the process beginning with birth itself. Hence, nothing in the world can be regarded as comparable with the majesty of God’s beauty.
But religion has applied every means to portray at least a modicum of this masterly majesty of God, which can be deciphered even in this world, because behind the wretchedness of apparently visible physical existence there is a grandeur at the core which has to be brought up to the surface of cognition and aesthetic appreciation. This is the function of religious worship and any kind of adoration that goes by the name of religious performance.
Mahalakshmi, who is adored on this auspicious occasion, is represented as the power and the glory of Bhagavan Sriman Narayana, the Supreme Being. As beaming, scintillating rays jet forth from the great glory of the orb of the sun, so the power of God, known as Shakti in religious parlance, manifests itself in this universe of creation He appears to have made. Though there is a distortion in all things in this world which passes understanding at every stage of our trying to grasp its meaning, there is, nevertheless, as we have to accept, the presence of God Himself in what He has created. God also has to be immanent in order that the creation can be sustained. The world cannot be sustained even for a moment if His presence is not there.
That immanence of God’s glory is the beauty of things in the world, and to carry this perception of beauty to the highest point of religious exaltation would be to divinise this form of God and regard it as Brahma-shakti, Vishnu-shakti, Siva-shakti, and other such names—that is, the glory associated with every performance of God, generally known as creation, sustenance and transformation. The lifegiving, sustaining power of God is supposed to be manifest in the conception of religious worship and adoration of Mahalakshmi who is veritably, in her essential nature, God manifest in the world in its purest form.
Prosperity is Mahalakshmi. She is oftentimes also called Moksha Saubhagya Lakshmi—the prosperity which is Ultimate Liberation itself. That also is often associated with Mahalakshmi, who is not to be confused with the power of wealth—gold and silver—as many people think. Mahalakshmi is the inner connotation of anything that we can regard as excellent.
We have a verse in the Bhagavadgita where the Lord proclaims His presence in anything which has excellence in it. Yad yad vibhutimat sattvam srimad urjitam eva va, tat tad evavagaccha tvam mama tejo’msa-sambhavam (B.G. 10.41): Wherever you see prosperity of any kind in its exalted form, there you may see God’s hand operating abundantly.
The worship of Mahalakshmi is not merely an external, ritual act. It is not just garlanding, and waving a holy light, though it can be that also. There is much more about it. Our heart has to adore the glory of God. Where the heart is not present, worship is also not there. The adoration of God in His aspect of beauty and magnificence is not a performance with hands and feet, but a deep recognition of our profundity of feeling, where we surrender the limitation of our own personality to the perfection which is God Almighty.
So, in a way, we worship God Himself when we worship Bhagavati Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati—principally Lakshmi on an occasion of this kind when we light up the atmosphere with a series of illuminating lamps. We call this beautiful occasion Dipavali—a line, a series of illuminations which represents the emergence of the goodness, brilliance and excellence we perceive in people, which is also present everywhere in spite of the ugliness characteristic of human nature, generally speaking, in order to bring forth the beauty in human nature above the surface of its ugliness and distortion, and see beauty, glory, health, vigor, perfection, completeness and inexpressible satisfaction. Such occasion of the rise of human nature from its deepest bottom, the soul rising in its majesty, we may say, is actually the act of worship of Mahalakshmi, who Herself is the exteriorised conceptualisation of the soul of God operating in things.
There are beautiful verses, stotras such as the Mahalakshmi Ashtaka, etc., which people recite every day to focus their attention on all success in life. Success is not merely material accumulation of physical comforts. It is, truly speaking, the adventure of the spirit within to expand its dimension towards its ultimate glory, which is direct perception of God in His supreme glory where Lakshmi is inseparable from Narayana, where God is one with His creation and His power. It is this deep significance that is behind this religious performance which people generally, in an ignorant and innocent manner, observe with firecrackers, lights, gifts, cards and many other things, making it merely an outer gesture. Rarely do they manifest this beauty that is within themselves, and rarely are they prepared to see the beauty present in the hearts of other people also.
So, briefly to say, this is the worship of the beauty present in all things and the prosperity that is at the core of all things, which gradually rises to the perfection of God-realisation. God bless you!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Significance of Dipavali
The Significance of Dipavali by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 20 August 2013 21:28
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The Dipavali festival is regarded as an occasion particularly associated with an ancient event of Sri Krishna overcoming the demoniacal force known as Narakasura, recorded in the Epics and Puranas. After the great victory over Narakasura in a battle which appears to have lasted for long, long days, Sri Krishna with his consort Satyabhama returned to his abode in Dwaraka. The residents of Dwaraka were very anxious about the delay caused in Sri Krishna’s returning, and it is said that they were worshipping Bhagavati Lakshmi for the prosperity and welfare of everyone and the quick return of Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Satyabhama. After Sri Krishna returned, the story goes that he took a bath after There is a third aspect of it which is called Bali Padya, the day following Amavasya. It does not look that the Bali Padya Bali Chakravarti was himself a great devotee, an ideal king and ruler, and having submitted himself to being thrown into the nether regions by the pressure of the foot of Narayana in the Cosmic Form, it appears he begged of Him to have some occasion to come up to the surface of the earth and then be recognised as a devotee of Bhagavan Narayana Himself. This recognition, this hallowed memory of Bali Chakravarti, is celebrated on the first day of the bright fortnight following the Amavasya. Bali Puja, Bali Padya are some of the terms used to designate this occasion, the day next to Amavasya.
So, the sum and substance of the message connected with Dipavali is that it is a three-day festival, beginning with Naraka Chaturdasi, a day prior to Amavasya; then the main Lakshmi worship day, which is Amavasya itself; and the third day is Bali Padya, connected with the honour bestowed upon Bali Chakravarti as a devotee of Bhagavan Narayana. It is also an occasion for spiritual exhilaration, a lighting up of all darkness, socially as well as personally, outwardly and inwardly, for the purpose of allowing an entry of the Supreme Light of God into the hearts of all people.
Dipavali means ‘the line of lights’. ‘Dipa’ is light; and ‘Avali’ means line. So, Dipavali or the festival of the line of lights is the celebration of the rise of Knowledge. It is also the celebration of the victory of the Sattvic or divine elements in us over the Rajasic and Tamasic or baser elements which are the real Asuras, the Rakshasas, Narakasura and others. The whole world is within us. The whole cosmos can be found in a microscopic form in our own body. Rama-Ravana-Yuddha and Narakasura-Vadha, and all such Epic wars – everything is going on inside us. This Dipavali is thus also a psychological context, wherein we contemplate in our own selves the holy occasion of self-mastery, self-subjugation and self-abnegation leading to the rise of all spiritual virtues, which are regarded as lustre or radiance emanating from Self-Knowledge.
Bhagavati Mahalakshmi, the Goddess of prosperity, does not merely mean the Goddess of wealth in a material sense. Lakshmi does not mean only gold and silver. Lakshmi means prosperity in general, positive growth in the right direction, a rise into the higher stages of evolution. This is the advent of Lakshmi. Progress and prosperity are Lakshmi. In the Vishnu Purana we are told if Narayana is like the sun, Lakshmi is like the radiance of the sun. They are inseparable. Wherever Narayana is, there is Lakshmi. Wherever is divinity, there is prosperity. So on this day of Dipavali we worship the Supreme God who is the source of all conceivable virtues, goodness and prosperity, which is symbolised in illumination, lighting and worship in the form of Arati and a joyous attitude and feeling in every respect. So, in short, this is a day of rejoicing over the victory of Sattva over the lower Gunas, the victory of God Himself over the binding fetters of the soul.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Lord Siva, the Master Yogin
Lord Siva, the Master Yogin by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 19 August 2013 20:43
*READ MORE \* Lord Siva, the Master Yogin
(Spoken for Sivaratri in 1973)
Mahasivaratri is the glorious annual It is said that God is the embodiment of six attributes, of which renunciation is one. One may wonder how God can renounce things. He is not a sannyasi, He is not an ascetic like a vairagyi or a sadhu. What is He going to renounce? How can we conceive Siva as an austere yogin or a renunciate? What does He renounce? The all-pervading Almighty, what has He to give up or abandon?
Here is the secret of what renunciation is. It is not renunciation of anything, because there is nothing outside Him. Renunciation does not mean abandonment of any object. If that was the definition of renunciation, it could not The secret behind the concept or the consciousness of vairagya, or renunciation, is here in the As God does not renounce anything, what is meant by ‘renunciation’ in this context? It is the freedom from the consciousness of externality. This is called vairagya. How can we abandon things? All things are there in front of us, such as trees in the forest. There is no abandonment of things, because they are internally related to us. Nobody can renounce anything, because everything is connected to everything else, as you have been listening to my repeating this great fact several times. As everything in this world is connected to everything else, how can anyone renounce anything? Then, what is vairagya?
Vairagya is not a renunciation of any object, which is impossible because everything clings to us. But the idea that things are outside us makes us get attached to them. This false attachment is raja, and its absence is viraga. The condition of viraga is vairagya. As God has no consciousness of externality because everything is embodied in Him, there cannot be a greater renunciate than God, and inasmuch as this consciousness of God is the highest form of wisdom, He is the repository of jnana.
In our religious tradition, Lord Siva is thus represented as an aspect of God the Almighty, who presents before us the ideal of supreme renunciation born of divine realisation – not born of frustration, not born of an escapist attitude, not born of defeatism, but born of an insight into the nature of things, a clear understanding of the nature of life, and a wisdom of existence in its completeness. This is the source of vairagya, or renunciation. We do not want anything, not because we cannot get things, but because we have realised the interconnectedness of things and the unity of all purpose in consciousness. All desires get hushed, sublimated and boiled down to the divine being only when this realisation comes.
God does not possess things. Possession is a relationship of one thing with another thing. But God is super-relation. That is why we call Him the Absolute. He is not relative. Anything that is related to something else comes under the category of relation. God is not related to anything else because He is all-comprehensive and thus, in His all-comprehensive absoluteness, which is the height of wisdom conceivable, there is also the concomitant character of freedom from the consciousness of externality – and therefore, as a corollary, freedom from attachment to anything.
Thus, Lord Siva is the height of austerity, the master yogin portrayed as seated in a lotus pose as the king of all ascetics – not that he has a desire for self-control, but he is self-control itself. He does not practice self-control; self-control itself is symbolised in the personality of Lord Siva.
Such a wondrous concept, such a glorious, majestic picture of the Almighty as Lord Siva is before us for the duration of the Mahasivaratri that we observe in this ashram and everywhere in Bharatvarsha. We observe fast during the day and vigil during the night. The idea is that we control the senses which represent the outgoing tendency of our mind symbolised in fast, and also control the tamasic, inert condition of sleep, to which we are subject every day. When these two tendencies in us are overcome, we transcend the conscious and unconscious levels of our personality and reach the superconscious level. The waking condition is the conscious level, and sleep is the unconscious level. Both are obstacles to God-realisation. But we are shifted from one condition to another – shunted, as it were, from waking to sleep and from sleep to waking every day – and the superconscious is not known to us.
The symbology of fast and vigil on Sivaratri is significant of self-control, rajas and tamas subdued, and God glorified. God is glorified, and senses are controlled. The glorification of God and the control of the senses mean one and the same thing, because it is only in God-consciousness that all senses can be controlled. When we see God, the senses melt like butter before fire. They cannot exist any more. All the ornaments become a solid mass of gold when they are heated to the boiling point. Likewise, in the furnace of God-consciousness, the sense energies melt into a continuum of Universality.
In the famous Rudra-Adhyaya of the Yajur Veda, known also as the Satarudriya, we have the majestic universalised description of Lord Siva, a chant which we are accustomed to hearing every day in the temple. Only those who know what Sanskrit is, what the Vedas are, and what worship is can appreciate what this chant is. The Rudra-Adhyaya of the Yajur Veda is one of the most powerful prayers ever conceived by the human mind. It is filled with a threefold meaning. According to the culture of India, everything is threefold – objective, subjective and universal. Everything in the world, from the smallest to the biggest, has an objective character, a subjective character, and a universal character. Objectively we are something, subjectively we are another thing, and universally we are a third thing. It all depends upon from what point of view we interpret a particular person, thing or object. When we objectively interpret something, it looks like one thing. When we subjectively visualise it, it is another thing. But from the universal point of view, it is a third thing altogether.
Likewise this mantra, the Satarudriya of the Yajur Veda, hymn to Lord Siva, has a subjective meaning, an objective meaning, and a divine celestial, supreme, supermental, universal meaning. Objectively it is a prayer for the control of the forces of nature, subjectively it is a prayer for self-control and rousing of the spiritual consciousness, and universally it is the surge of the soul towards God-realisation. It has an adhyatmika, adhibautika and adhidaivika meaning, as is usually said. The Satarudriya has a tremendous meaning. As the mantras of the Veda have a threefold or even fourfold meaning, it is difficult to understand the full meaning of any of these mantras. Ananta vai vedaha: Infinite is the meaning of the Veda. The meaning of the Veda is infinite; it has no end at all. It is mathematics, it is chemistry, it is physics, it is ayurveda, it is psychology, it is metaphysics, it is philosophy, it is spirituality, it is meditation, it is love, it is ecstasy. We will find everything in every mantra of the Veda. It all depends upon how we look upon it, how we see it. A person can be a father, he may be a brother, he may be a son, he may be a friend, but he is one and the same person. Only the attitudes are different on account of various relationships. So the Rudra-Adhyaya is before us, a majestic prayer for world peace, international peace, subjective peace, universal peace, and God-consciousness.
It is difficult to chant this Veda mantra called the Satarudriya because it requires training. For example, not everyone can sing well. It requires tremendous training for years together. Likewise, the chanting of the mantras of the Veda requires training for years together, and not for a few days only. It is said that just as one who does not know how to sing makes a jarring noise and we would like to get up and go away rather than listen to it, so also when we chant the mantra wrongly, the gods will get up and go away. They will not bear listening to it. So it requires training. But once it is learned, it becomes a protection for you from catastrophes of every kind – physical, psychological and what not.
So those who know the Satarudriya may chant it, recite it, and take part in its recitation every day in the temple, or at least during the worship on Mahasivaratri. Those who cannot do this because it is too difficult can chant the mantra om namah shivaya, a potent force, the Panchaksara Mantra of Lord Siva. It is a kavacha, a kind of armour that we put on, which will protect us from dangers of every kind. It will protect us, and it will protect all those whom we want to be protected. It will protect our family, it will protect our country, it will protect the whole world. It can cease wars and tension of every kind, provided we offer this prayer whole-heartedly, from the bottom of our heart.
Collective prayer is very effective. If a hundred people join together and pray, it will have a greater effect than one person praying. Of course, if that single person is very powerful, even one person’s prayer is sufficient. But where personalities have their own weaknesses and fallibilities, it is better for people to have a congregational prayer. Let all minds put together form a great energy which surges forth into God.
Let prayer be offered to Lord Siva as the master of yogins, as the incarnation of all virtues and powers, as a facet of Almighty God.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]