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The Call of Sri Krishna: The Gospel of Super Excellence
The Call of Sri Krishna: The Gospel of Super Excellence by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 2 August 2013 20:11
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(Talk given on Janmashtami, Sri Krishna’s birthday.)
One important lesson of our scriptures which we have overlooked is their call to a life of glory. There are many passages in the Vedas in which the Rishi prays for greatness. “O Lord, make me lustrous.” “May I be the most glorious.” “May the sun and the moon and the earth and the sea, and the sky and the heaven made by Thee, be always favourable to us for achieving greatness.”
The Bhagavadgita has a whole chapter – Vibhuti Yoga – in which Sri Krishna exalts the best or most outstanding specimen in each class of beings by identifying himself with it. For example, he says: “Among immovables I am the Himalaya; among rivers, the Ganga; among trees, the holy fig; among cows, the divine cow of plenty; among sages, Vyasa; among heavenly songsters, Chitraratha; among generals, Skanda; among rulers, Yama; among celestial sages, Narada; among warriors, Rama; among men, the King. I am the glory of the glorious, the victory of the victorious, the goodness of the good-natured. I am life in all beings and austerity in ascetics.”
Sri Krishna summed up the general principle of Vibhuti Yoga in these words: “Whatsoever being is glorious, good, prosperous or powerful, understand thou that to go forth from a fragment of My Splendour.”
In this way Sri Krishna has commended the celebrities in all walks of life but not the mediocre of routine workers. This is the Gospel of super excellence – a clarion call to all aspirants to acquire greatness and glory by their golden deeds. As if to leave no room for doubt, the same previous lesson was taught by Sri Krishna, while showing his cosmic form to Arjuna: “Therefore, stand up! Modern thinkers have made a strong plea for the cultivation of super excellence. Thus Emerson wrote: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
Similarly Swett Marden said: “There is a fitness in doing a thing superlatively well, because we seem to be made for expressing excellence.”
In his book, Excellence, J.W. Gardner, President of the Carnegie Foundation, writes: “Excellence implies more than competence. It implies a striving for the highest standards in every phase of life. We need individual excellence in all its forms, in every kind of creative endeavour, in political life, in education, in industry – in short, universally!”
“An effective personality,” says the noted Seva Dharma requires hard work, but mixed with brains. All work must be done efficiently. According to the Gita, efficiency in work is one of the Efficiency has two sides – spiritual and temporal. The essence of spiritual efficiency is selflessness or other centredness, to do the work as an offering to God or for the good of fellow beings, keeping the eye on the interests of those whom the work is intended to serve rather than one’s own. Strikes, demonstration, go-slow and work-to-rule campaigns and the clamour for more pay for less work are as anti-social and unspiritual as the practice of getting richer and richer by exploiting employees or customers.
The performance must also be satisfactory in the worldly sense. First and foremost, it must be of good quality, neat and clean, free from errors and blemishes. Secondly, speed must be added to accuracy. The work must be completed in time. Usually a good worker is also a fast worker and slowness is a sure sign of incompetence. Nothing big can be achieved without promptness.
Another important factor in efficiency is economy in labour, money and material. A capable person can work for long hours without feeling fatigued. He uses his time and energy, in fact all resources, to the best advantage. He never attempts things which his assistants can do for him. He multiplies his powers by winning the cooperation of others.
Finally, the highest ingredient of efficiency is inventiveness and originality. The really efficient man is not simply a routine worker, doing things as they were done in the past. Rather he breaks new ground, makes new, better and cheaper things, simplifies procedures and makes improvements everywhere. He leaves his organisation better than he found it.
But the Lord of Infinite Glory is not satisfied with ordinary skill; He expects superbness from His devotees.
Very noble are those who practise Karma Yoga and work efficiently for the general good. By their efforts, they maintain the world order. Even more valuable are the few who practise Vibhuti Yoga, serve as exemplars, heroes, leaders or luminaries, and make significant contributions to the knowledge, wealth or well-being of mankind.
The development of talent, which has been so much stressed in the Vedas and the Gita, is a basic principle of the doctrine of evolution. Man starts as a seed with several kinds of powers hidden in him. They must be brought out and put to good use. This is essential for the happiness and progress of the individual as well as mankind.
“Each soul is potentially divine,” said Swami Vivekananda. “The goal is to manifest this divine within by controlling nature, external and internal.”
The possibilities for the development of talent are almost unlimited. Even the most learned, if they only feel humble and sincerely try, can gain deeper insights and climb to greater heights of wisdom. Similarly, age is no bar to the growth of talent. While physical development stops in middle age, intellectual development can go on even in ripe old age. Two ways to keep the mind alert and growing even in the evening of life are to apply it to tough problems and to continue learning something new all the time.
William James, the famous psychologist, used to say that the average person develops only one tenth of his latent mental ability. “Compared to what we ought to be,” said he, “we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”
Alexis Carrel writes in Reflections on Life: “Everyone should realise the full measure of his inherited mental capacities, be these great or small. This obligation is universal. All are equally capable, if they are really determined, of releasing the hidden spiritual energy in their own depths. Though consciousness develops side by side with the body, it does not stop developing when the body has finished growing. Intellect, aesthetic activity, moral strength and religious sense continue to develop even in old age.”
The same lesson of super excellence was taught by an English poet who sang:
If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley – but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail.
If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
It isn’t in size that you win or you fail;
Be the best of whatever you are.
We make use of extraordinary or supernatural powers to perform miracles that benefit rare individuals. Such feats, though spectacular, are of limited utility, as the masses can neither imitate them nor take advantage of them. In contrast, we take little notice of common powers developed to an exceptional degree which extend the frontiers of knowledge or make life easier and pleasanter for mankind. It should, however, be noted that Sri Krishna has identified himself with all celebrities, not only with the religious ones. All luminaries, whatever their nationality, period, and profession, reveal the splendour of God.
Worldly excellence is no less acceptable to God than spiritual excellence. Both are necessary for the maintenance and advancement of the world. Both are in fact one, according to the Vedanta. Elucidating this point, Sister Nivedita writes in her inspiring book Religion and Dharma: “We cannot be satisfied till our society has produced great minds in every branch of human activity. Advaita can be expressed in mechanics, in engineering, in art, in letters as well as in philosophy and meditation. But it can never be expressed in half measures. The true Advaitin is the master of the world. He does not know a good deal of his chosen subject; he knows all there is to be known. He does not perform his particular task fairly well: he does it as well as it is possible to do it…. The highest achievements of the mind are a Sadhana…. The man who has followed any kind of knowledge to its highest point is a rishi.”
Similarly Basil King writes in his book The Conquest of Fear: “All discovery of truth, whether by religion, science, philosophy or imaginative art must be discovery in God. When the Lord restores sight to a blind man, or Peter and John cause a lame man to walk, we see manifestations of God, but we see equal manifestations of God when one man gives us the telephone, another the motor car, and another wireless telegraphy. Whatever declares His power declares Him, and whatever declares Him is a means by which we press upward to the perception of His loving almightiness.”
It should be clearly understood here that ‘superior power’ does not necessarily mean increased spirituality. The true test of spirituality is not power, natural or supernatural, but the service rendered to mankind. Demons and devils are not dear to God, though their powers are very similar, sometimes even superior to those of saints. “Man becomes great,” said Mahatma Gandhi, “exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.”
The primary condition for super excellence is a lofty aspiration of ambition, a conscious striving to know all about one’s subject, or to do one’s work as well as it can be done. This desire appears in the form of a deep interest in one’s work or the particular problem one has taken in hand. It is well known that scientists and inventors give themselves up whole-heartedly to the object of their pursuit.
A powerful interest that dominates a man’s life polarises his mind, which then acts like a magnet and continually draws out from his stored-up experiences and also from new experiences whatever is relevant and useful to the end in view. Deep interest invigorates the mind, awakens its dormant powers and is the key to super excellence, invention and discovery.
Hard work is another condition of superiority. The aspirant must master the knowledge and technique pertaining to his particular job; in fact, he must be a keen and lifelong learner, ready to pick up new ideas and new ways wherever he can find them. He must cultivate the habits of thoroughness, accuracy and reliability; he must take pains to check, revise and polish his work until it acquires as perfect a finish as possible within the limits of time available.
Inspiration only comes as a result of hard study, deep reflection and patient search for the solution. Scientific discoveries are generally preceded by a large number of different experiments, trying first one thing and then another. Edison, the wizard of inventions, made about ten thousand tests with different chemical combinations before he found the right one for his storage battery. Looking for a suitable material for the filament of his incandescent lamp, he tried more than 6,000 samples of bamboo from every corner of the earth before he found the one that made the Edison electric lamp ready for commercial use.
Similarly, good writing requires not only profound knowledge but also enormous labour in writing, painstaking revision and rewriting. Carlyle took great pains over his works and, before writing a page of his famous history books, he would consult all the well-known books on the subject. Tolstoy rewrote his War and Peace seven times. Adam Smith took ten years to write his Wealth of Nations, while Gibbon spent twenty years over his masterpiece, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The story of the discovery of radium is a saga of patient toil in the midst of appalling poverty. It took the Curies four years to isolate a very small quantity of radium from tons of ore. All day and for months they worked together in a damp, rotting shed which they called their lab. For much of this time, Mrs. Curie had to stand stirring a boiling mixture in an enormous pot with an iron rod which was as long as she was tall. The roof of the shed leaked and they did not have enough money to get it fixed. When the rains came, streams of water fell between these two workers and their work. Their labour was indeed tapasya of a very high order.
Super excellence means constant improvement and innovation, thinking in straight lines instead of curves, introduction of simpler procedures, time and labour-saving devices, better and cheaper goods, making two blades of grass grow where one grew before. There is nothing in the world which cannot be improved. The best is yet to be made – whether in books or automobiles, radios or nylons, medicines or men.
The ideal of all-round excellence is very difficult to attain. Only rare persons can become versatile geniuses. But everyone can acquire mastery in some little branch of knowledge or skill. Everyone can do at least some phase of his work superlatively well by developing his strong point or specialising in the part of his work in which he is most interested. And once this is done, superiority in one part of his life will stimulate superiority in other parts. Whatever a man’s vocation, let him not be content to remain mediocre; let him lift himself from the commonplace to the outstanding.
In India, we are fortunate to have excellent human raw material. But the opportunities and incentives for its development are sadly lacking. Religion has, on the whole, a blighting effect on secular professions. Even in other spheres, the strong tendency is to encourage subservience and sycophancy rather than initiative and talent. Had we paid proper attention to this matter, our country would have produced giants in every field of endeavour.
We should recapture the spirit of the Vedas and the Bhagavadgita. We should exalt work. We should discover and encourage talent wherever we can. We must produce not only great saints, philosophers and yogis, but also top class men in every walk of life. We need eminent scientists, selfless rulers, farsighted statesmen, dedicated administrators, educationists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, inventors, sportsmen, artists, explorers, writers, industrialists, managers, seers, dreamers, as well as organisers and leaders. No great man has done his duty until he has made at least ten persons worthy to take his place.
“This very moment,” exhorted Swami Vivekananda, “let every one of us make a staunch resolution: ‘I will become a prophet. I will become a messenger of light. I will become a child of God. Nay, I will become a god.’”
“Arise! Awake! Stop not till the goal is reached!”
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Religion and the Divine Incarnation
Religion and the Divine Incarnation by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 1 August 2013 20:48
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(Spoken on March 30th, 1966, on the occasion of Sri Ramnavmi)
The essence of religion is adoration of God. The permanency of a religion is based on its substantial foundation, which is dependent on the extent of the universality of its outlook. The more universal we are, the more permanent also we are. Religion, to be permanent, to be Sanatana, should cater to the needs of all people, and to the extent it excludes others from its fold, it is subject to destruction. Sanatana-Dharma is eternal religion. It does belong to the creation as a whole. It shows that it is capable of adjusting itself to the vicissitudes of time.
An idea or concept cannot be eternal unless it is capable of endurance. But everything here is perishable. The body perishes. The world is subject to change and destruction. The world is Anitya (impermanent) and Asukha (joyless). How, then, can we have something which is eternal in this transient world? Man is not eternal. Even the greatest saviours have gone. Even the Avataras like Rama and Krishna have cast off their physical bodies. Yet, there is something enduring in the midst of all unenduring things, “the eternal among those which are not permanent”, as says the Upanishad. When everything is unenduring, we speak of an eternal Dharma, Sanatana-Dharma, notwithstanding the fact that none of us has seen it. The culture of Bharatavarsha is identified with eternal religion.
Sanatana-Dharma is capable of adapting itself to changing time. Some opine that the caste system is one of the causes for its endurance. Others think otherwise. Some others hold that it is capable of absorbing everything into itself, and so it is eternal. But, where lies the centre of this religion? What is the substance of religion, which is the cause of its Sanatana (eternality)? As mentioned, it is the adoration of God that is the quintessence of religion.
Now, the concept of God differs in different religions, and, accordingly, the idea of the relation between man and God, also differs. A perpetual relation would be the relation of the essential nature of the human being, and not the outer relation of the body, merely. That which is eternal in us establishes a relation with that which is eternal in the cosmos, so that the relationship, too, is eternal. There cannot be a meaningful relation between the eternal and the non-eternal. So, this eternal relation is the summoning of the inner in the outer. It is the cry of the soul for God. As God is eternal, religion must be eternal, for it is the relation between man and God, between Nara and Narayana, between Arjuna and Krishna.
How can we establish any relation with God? We have not seen God. He is unknown, unthinkable. The relation would fade away if one of its ends is not clear to the mind of man. This is one of the reasons why religions shake at the bottom. Here, a clear understanding is necessary. It is one of the qualifications of an aspirant. He must have an unshakable conviction, and a fixed conception of God. It must be a ‘perception’, a clear ‘vision’. Our seers have emphasised that a person who is to be initiated into the Sanatana-Dharma should pass through the Gurukula. This system of training is not like the present-day education. After coming out of the college, the youth, generally, do not know what to do. The student has not been taught to ‘live’. He is filled with all unwanted information, not useful for a living. But in the Gurukula the inner man is trained, and faith is given the greatest importance. The human intellect cannot function except in terms of duality, such as, “I and you are different”, “The world is outside me”, and “I have a function to perform in the world, which is outside me”, etc. Religion is not rooted in the reason of man, entirely, but in faith based on understanding. It is a symbol of inner culture. This inner training, imparted in ancient times, was of a permanent nature, and was to help the student throughout his life. Today, we see so much gap between education and life. There is nothing which touches the soul of man. This Gurukula training, during the Brahmacharyashrama, was a process of initiation of the soul to true living in the consciousness of a higher life. The students were told that we always live for something higher, as the present life is not complete in itself. Life is taught as a process for higher living, a journey to reach a distant destination. Religion, therefore, takes that higher value of life into consideration. At every step in the journey an inner connection is established between the soul and God. Religion is what we do when we are alone, and not the way we worship in public temples. It is the unfoldment of consciousness towards a larger dimension.
Sanatana-Dharma has the capacity to include every faith and every philosophy in itself, because of its universality of approach. It sees God everywhere. To make this concept easy of understanding, the idea of Avatara, or incarnation, is introduced as a tenet peculiar to religion. Avatara means ‘getting down’. It is the descent of God into the world. How can God descend when He is universal? Then, what is Avatara? This descent divine is not like a person getting down the steps. It is a grander and more profound principle. Avataras, as generally understood, are possible only when there is a collective cry of humanity for redeeming it from some serious calamity. Such Avataras, as the Ten Avataras of Narayana, then come. We have also lesser Avataras, like Vyasa, Dattatreya, etc., called ‘Amsavataras’. It is one of the fundamentals of religious belief that God is in the world, immanent. He sees us, hears us. Hence, religion becomes a matter of the heart, of love, adoration and feeling. God is all-pervading, omnipresent, just here, not apart from us, even by a few inches. This idea is the soul or essence of religion. Mere speculation is not religion. Philosophy put into practice is religion. Religion is, thus, divine living, Divine Life. It is not your or my religion. It is the religion of humanity. It is the relation between Man and God-not the Hindu and God, not the Christian and God-but Man and God. Religion, essentially, cannot be manifold. It has, perforce, to be one sweep of human nature in the direction of Absolute-Universality. Any genuine step taken towards this end is also true religion.
Yet, a universal religion is not possible, because each one’s way is different; the approach is different, due to the difference in temperaments and capacities. Thus, what we can really achieve is tolerance towards other faiths, instead of a homogeneity of belief. Universal religion should, therefore, mean the following of one’s own religion, with tolerance to all other religions. It is impossible to think of God as He is. To think of God as He is, we have first, to cease to be. So, the idea of Avatara is bequeathed, representing God as what He is to man, as He is manifest, relatively. Avatara is the connecting link between the ordinary human nature and the divine reality. Avatara is a manifestation of God through Mula-Prakriti. That is why we have to recognise an Avatara, though God is everywhere and can be worshipped in that highest capacity, if possible.
Whether an Avatara is a descent of God to man or man’s ascent to God, is immaterial for us. Literally, Avatara means descent or manifestation. When the need for the higher values of life is felt more, the Avatara becomes a helpful stepping stone. The farther we are from God, the greater is the need we feel for the higher life. When humanity drifts too much from truth, the Avatara becomes necessary. To some extent, God tolerates our mistakes. When we go too far, He comes down with a rod to correct us. Just as a mother allows a child to play, and go here and there, but when the child is about to fall into a pit she runs to its help, God manifests Himself when it is necessary to correct mankind’s perspective of life.
God incarnates himself in the world, whenever there is decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, for the purpose of the protection of the good, the vanquishing of the wicked and establishment of justice, in every age.
The theory of divine incarnation has been a controversial issue in the philosophy of religion and has been one of the intriguing questions in theology. It is impossible metaphysically to interpret to the mind of man the divine secret of the movement of spiritual force in the world. When a solution is attempted, the Avatara reveals itself as the answer of God to the needs of man. There is an internal bond of inseparable relation between the relative and the Absolute, and the descent of God on earth is the pressure or power of truth forcing itself into the realm of the relative when the harmony of this bond and relation gets dissipated by centrifugal psychic energies that seem to run counter to the integrating centripetal call of God to all manifestation. The descent of God as the Avatara is said to be for the ascent of man to his divine home. As the health-giving forces of harmony in the body perpetually wage a war with the disease-producing toxins, the universal balancing power of the Absolute introduces itself as a corrective element amidst the disturbing forces of darkness. The Avatara is a perpetual activity of God who manifests Himself at every juncture or critical situation (Yuge, Yuge) in the life of the world. The Avatara is the recurring reminder of God to man that it is impossible for the undivine to triumph over the essential goodness and divinity immanent in creation.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Sri Krishna – The Guru of All Gurus
Sri Krishna – The Guru of All Gurus by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 31 July 2013 20:11
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This day happens to be the most blessed and adorable day of the advent of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, which goes by the name of Sri Krishna Janmastami. Sri Krishna is considered as Jagatguru; he is the teacher of all teachers, the Guru of all Gurus – Krishnam vande jagadguru. There is no Guru equal to him. We consider Bhagavan Sri Krishna as an incarnation of the Supreme Being. You may have heard through your studies that there have been many incarnations of Vishnu: Narayana, Mastya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parasurama, Sri Ramachandra, and Bhagavan Sri Krishna.
One of the traits of the human being is to observe and evaluate everything from the viewpoint of the human being only. We judge even God from our point of view. “Where is the goodness of God,” we ask, “when He has created a world of evil – tempests, tornados, earthquakes, sufferings, drought and flood? What kind of God has created this world? God could have created milk and honey through the waters of the Ganga, instead of giving plain water. He could have created a round earth, without ups and downs, so that we may not fall down and break our legs. Why did God not do that, in all His capacity?” This is how we think.
So, the object that we think remains what it is, and it refuses to get into the yardstick of comprehension of the human being. People find fault with Rama and Krishna, also. “What kind of Rama is he? He killed Vali, and banished Sita, and so many things.” We do not understand that these Avataras are the indications and symbols of the development of divine consciousness. There is a gradational ascent through the evolutionary process of consciousness, into greater and greater perfections. Rama was not supposed to have behaved in any other way than he did behave. It was one stage in the evolution of the incarnation. He was Maryada-purushottama, an ideal human being, with all the qualities that we can find in a human being; and we cannot, and should not, expect qualities which are not in a human being, because he is Maryada-purushottama, a perfected human being – God manifested as a gentleman.
Here we have Sri Krishna Avatara, which is supposed to be a symbolic representation of the manner in which God Himself works. Nobody can know how God works, and whatever idea we may have of the manner in which God works, it is not appreciable to us because He devastates our ideas of propriety, ethicality, necessity, human-ness, and social values. Everything is put upside down.
We have systems of observation psychologically, humanly and socially. These are turned upside down by God. Actually, God is nothing but the total topsy-turvy operation of the human way of thinking. It is a Shirshasana of the consciousness of man that is required to understand what God is. We should not stand on the footstool of our consciousness, but on the brain of our consciousness.
The universal comprehensiveness and adjustability in a perfected order is something incomprehensible to a human being. We cannot think the whole universe in our minds; and God is supposed to think only in that manner. God’s thought is universal thought, whereas our thought is social thought, family thought, community thought, national thought, political thought, army thought, police thought, courtcase thought, and any other thoughts we have in our minds.
There is always something that we grab and something that we exclude in our perception, which is the opposite of God’s way of inclusiveness. There is nothing that God can exclude from His thought, whereas in a human being, it is impossible not to exclude something. We seem to be the opposite of God in our way of thinking. We cannot grab the whole world into our comprehension at any time. Our way of thinking is only of our family, our office, our salary, our community, our relations, our property, and whatever belongs to us. When we say we are concerned with whatever belongs to us, we are not concerned with that which does not belong to us; so, to whom does the other thing belong? It is not our concern.
Here is the difference between God thinking and a human being thinking. Inclusiveness is the nature of God’s operation; exclusiveness is the nature of the human way of thinking. Whenever we think something, we have to exclude something from the purview of our thought. That is to say, total thought is something unknown to a human being, and God is nothing but total thought.
I am referring particularly to the great incarnation of Bhagavan Sri Krishna today on the occasion of this spiritual advent. Whatever he said and whatever he did was totally beyond the comprehension of the human psyche. Whatever he did from childhood till the end of his life is a historical incomprehensiveness for us. There is nothing that we can comprehend meaningfully in his actions. Everything looks funny, strange, and out of the way.
Read the Bhagavadgita, which he spoke. Everything is difficult. One Sloka seems to be contradicting another. One thing is said, then another thing is said. Everything is said in the seven hundred verses of the Bhagavadgita, but what is said, finally? We cannot make it out, due to the multifarious and multifaceted instruction that has been given to us through the multi-faced Universal Being, Vishvarupa. The one brain, and two eyes, and one thought of the human being cannot comprehend it. We must have as many heads as the Vishvarupa has in order to understand what the Gita said – as many eyes, as many mouths, as many processes of thinking, and as wide a consciousness.
The necessity to portray the advent and actions of these incarnations is precisely to present before us a picture of the divine way of operation taking place in the world. We do not like floods overflowing, destroying villages and killing people. We do not like cyclones breaking everything, throwing off rooftops and cutting off trees. We do not like tornadoes, or drought. What is it that we like? Sri Krishna’s comprehensiveness is itself an instruction. We do not require any commentary for the Bhagavadgita. The life of Krishna is a commentary on what he has said. As intricate as the multifaceted activity of Sri Krishna is, so intricate is also the multifaceted teaching of the Bhagavadgita. If we can understand who Krishna was, we can understand also what the Gita is.
Suffice it to say that Sri Krishna is considered as the ray of the Absolute, something like total comprehensiveness and infinite capacity, omnipotent in behaviour, with nothing impossible. He can set right anything in one minute, and if the necessity arises, he can dismantle the whole parliament of the cosmos and take up the reins in his own hands, which he did sometimes in his own career. Rules and regulations did he follow, but he could break any rule if the necessity arose, just as we can do anything to our own body for the sake of its sustenance.
We can have surgery performed on the limbs of our body. We can lose half the body by surgery. It is a very unfortunate thing, yet we may go to a doctor, pay lakhs of rupees as fee, and remove half of the body so that we may be happy. Where is the happiness when we have lost half of the body? This losing of half the body is necessary in order that we may exist as a complete human being. A complete human being is not the whole body. Even a half body can be a whole human being. We can ask any person who has lost everything below his thighs, with only the other half remaining, “Are you a half man?” “No, no! I am a full man,” he will say. That means the person is not the body. In a like manner, impossible it is to understand this divinity operating; and it is futile on the part of anyone to understand either Krishna or Jesus.
Another example before us is Jesus Christ. He never behaved like a human being. He behaved like God Himself. All that he said is beyond the comprehension of the world. The way in which he behaved is not the behaviour of an ordinary human being. He toppled the existing laws, and broke the norms; the stereotyped procrustean bed of ethics was broken to pieces and he brought a divine law, which we have beautifully quoted in what is known as his Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament is something like a counterpart of the Bhagavadgita teachings.
Great men think alike, and they perform actions in a similar way. They belong to a different fraternity altogether. God-men are God-men everywhere, and there is no such thing as an Eastern God-man or a Western God-man. And we should not use the word ‘men’, also. They are not men; they are not women – they are persons. We have no language to use. A woman can be a God-man, but because of the linguistic limitations we do not want to use words like ‘woman’ and ‘man’ and all that. So, we have to coin some new word. These days we say it is a ‘person’, a God-intoxicated person. It can be what is called a man or a woman; at that time, they cease to be human beings, and are neither men nor women.
Sri Krishna and Jesus Christ were neither men nor women. They were androgynous perfections, standing for the word of the Almighty, who Himself is not a man or a woman. We may say “God, the Father in heaven” – it is a human, paternal way of addressing God. It is a psychological necessity; but God is impersonality – not human in nature.
That was portrayed dramatically, as if in a theatrical performance, in the picturesque drama of the life of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. This wonderful day we are observing it, and it is up to us to invoke the great blessings of this master so that he may enter into us. Mighty we may become. A mighty person was Jesus Christ; mighty was Bhagavan Sri Krishna. May you all be mighty people!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna
Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 28 July 2013 19:16
*READ MORE \* Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna
In my discourse on the context of the power of Mahayogesvara Sri Krishna being necessarily associated with the performances of the ambidextrous Arjuna, it became necessary for us to delve into the nature of the involvement of yoga in the life of people and everything else. We could notice a peculiar self-exceeding impulse predominant in everything that is taking place in this world—a tendency of anyone and anything to overcome oneself, to grow and move onward or forward, to become more mature than what oneself is in the present moment.
The challenges of time, the movements of history, the comedies and tragedies of human life, the processes of evolution—natural, social and personal—all seem to be characterised by this propulsion to exceed what is already there, and touch upon and become what is ahead. The march of history is just the succession of this continuous operative tendency in nature to compel a self-transcendence of events in the events to come, so that life never remains a static experience but is an adventurous march onward, which feature can be explained only by the acceptance of there being a principle called self-transcendence.
Every action, every thought, every aspiration, every event—everything that takes place anywhere, inwardly or outwardly—has this associated feature, whose secret action is mostly obliterated from the vision of the process which it impels, so that the process becomes conscious of itself as a process and becomes totally unconscious of the reason why this process is at all.
We, as human individuals, grow from childhood to maturity to adulthood. This is a process which is observable empirically with our own eyes, but we cannot visualise why this growth has to be there at all. Why should there be a change of one thing into another? Where is the necessity to work, accepting that work is imperative in life? Here is the invisible operator standing behind the active performer, Arjuna, the one doing everything and yet appearing to be doing nothing, while the other appearing to be doing everything yet actually doing nothing. This is the difference between Arjuna and Krishna. In one case, there is all action, but no one can notice it. In another case, there is no action really, but it appears to be all action concentrated on that particular individual.
The proclamation of Sanjaya, as recorded for us in the last verse of the Bhagavadgita, is that prosperity, success and anything that is magnificent is assured where Mahayogeshvara Sri Krishna is coupled with the active Arjuna. In this statement of Sanjaya, we have a wealth of meaning that would unravel many a mystery not only of outward public life but also the mysteries of an inward movement of the spirit towards God.
Where is the necessity of the bringing together these two features? Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanur-dharaḥ (Gita 18.78). The world of action cannot be explained unless it is interpreted as an event that takes place as a form of a combined effort of two powers which, on the one hand, eternally subsist as the background of all movements in life, the other aspect being only the performance which is phenomenal. Is it not possible for Arjuna to work without Sri Krishna’s aid? Is it necessary for Sri Krishna to have Arjuna with him? Are these two questions capable of an answer?
Certain requirements in this world of activity need this combination of the normal and the supernormal—the noumenal and the phenomenal, as they are usually known to people. It is not possible for the isolated individual to lift even a finger without the cooperation that it has to receive from the Universal, which it cannot see with its eyes. In daily life we have an interesting observation in our own selves: the intake of a daily meal, in which we are engaged every day. It is true that we do this act of eating. We take hold of the item of our diet and place it in our mouth. This much is our action. But eating is not merely the placing of a morsel in the mouth. Certain super-individual powers have to act at the same time, which are beyond the control and knowledge of the simple individual. The digestive process is not under the control of the person who eats food. It is an impulsion that is not merely physiologically oriented or capable of explanation only anatomically. There is a universal operation even in this simple digestive process. Ahaṁ vaiśvānaro bhūtvā prāṇimāṁ deham aśritaḥ, prāṇāpāna-samāyuktaḥ pacāmy annaṁ catur-vidham (Gita 15.14). The digestion is the work of God Himself. The respiratory process, the circulatory action—everything that we can think of as our operative structure—is not the effect of an individual motivation. It is an automatic performance by a non-individual and therefore invisible supernormal nature.
The association of Mahayogeshvara Sri Krishna with Arjuna becomes an absolute necessity under the circumstance of it being necessary to act at all, because while action, or the occurrence of any event in this world, needs the process called movement in space and time in the direction of a target held before oneself, there is a greater truth behind this great truth—namely, that while movement is the observed character of things, it should be possible at all for anything to move. We say nature evolves, but where is the pull or the push that causes this evolution of nature? The evolution is Arjuna; the reason behind this evolution is Krishna. We can have some idea as to how Sri Krishna’s collaboration with Arjuna in the language of the epic described by Sanjaya is also a great cosmic truth of it being it necessary for the Supreme Universal to be permanently associated with all that is individual or historical.
In this light, yoga becomes a universal occurrence, a perpetual action taking place beyond the realm of human sight. Perpetual was the work of Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata war, though there was apparently no action on his side. Do we observe anything taking place within us when the food that we eat is digested? We take it for granted. It happens. But how does it happen? Where are the causative factors of this action of digestion? The action of the muscles, the secretion of the requisite juices, may be considered the action involved in digestion. But how could this action take place? How could any action or movement be there at all? That cannot be attributed to any part of the physical body. The very existence of our personality as a living entity can be accounted for only on the assumption of there being something which is not a human personality. A super-personal power causes, invisible to everyone’s eyes, the meaning attached to individual personality. The greatest of all doers does not require to be proclaimed. The proclamation of the glory of the action goes to the visible personality.
Arjuna won the war. The Pandavas won victory. We say this even today. No one says that Sri Krishna won the Mahabharata battle. There is not one person who will say that, because it is well known that Sri Krishna was not a combatant and, therefore, we cannot say it was Sri Krishna who won the war. We never say that, though we will hesitate not to accept it. The Pandavas won victory; the Kauravas were defeated. Where comes Sri Krishna here? He had no role to play. But he had the entire role to play, and there was nobody else who did anything.
The association of yoga in daily life is similarly an association of an imperative requirement in our life with the demands of ordinary duty, while an unconsciousness of the existence of this supernormal association would nullify the value of all action. If Arjuna were not to be conscious of there being such a thing called Sri Krishna behind him, he would not be a righteous warrior; he would not be a living entity at all. Yoga is not a question of today or tomorrow, in the sense that Sri Krishna’s aid to Arjuna was not a requirement of now or afterwards. It was an eternal requirement. Sleeplessly, winklessly, the aid arose and came out from Sri Krishna, unknown to Arjuna himself.
Unknown to the performer of any work in this world, yoga enters into it and transforms work into yoga. Work becomes worship. A yogi, therefore, is a person who would be in a position to place himself in the very context of that grand association of Sri Krishna with Arjuna—the Universal impulsion with active, adventurous spirit.
We are human beings. We are also students and practitioners of yoga. What distinguishes us from ordinary performance of action, usual performers of duty in the world? How are we distinguishable as students of yoga? The distinction is in our capacity to induct into our daily duties—consciously, not unwillingly and reluctantly—this vital universal element in us which is perpetually goading us on into a forward movement. “I shall do this work tomorrow,” is a statement of a single person. This ‘tomorrow’ will not be there at all unless there is a timeless operation taking place in the otherwise so-called work of time, which is the action of tomorrow, because time is a process consisting of bits of a kind of succession, and many bits put together cannot make a continuity. The pieces of time process can assume a living value only when there is a timeless element operating behind time process.
We are sure that tomorrow we shall be alive. This surety is actually an unfounded hope, because logically we cannot explain how it could be possible for us to be sure that we shall be alive tomorrow. Contrary to logic, opposed to all mathematical calculation and impossible to explain, we affirm that tomorrow we shall be alive, and the work that is pending today, we shall be able to complete tomorrow. Where is the assurance? From where has this assurance come? It defies all known logic because there is no guarantee given anywhere that tomorrow shall be there. A non-temporal element in us assures us that we shall be there tomorrow also. That which is involved in time, which is this physically-oriented personality of ours, cannot account for this hopewe entertain that tomorrow we shall be there.
We live in two worlds at the same time—the temporal and the eternal. We are mortal and immortal at the same time. We are bound by time, and yet we are free as eternals. The eternity aspect in us is the character of the yoga that we are expected to perform, and we are yogis in proportion to our ability to introduce the timeless factor in us; and the extent to which we will be able to imbibe the eternal principles in us, to that extent we will be yogis. If this element is absent in us, if we are only workers, performers, doers, busy people, industrialists, businessmen, important people indeed in this world, we would not be yogis, because yoga is not activity. Every activity has an element of yoga behind it and, in the end, no one can be totally barred from entry into yoga. Every living being is an incipient yogin—incipient in the sense that the living being is not aware of the fact that an eternal argument is supporting this otherwise-mortal frame and keeps it continuing for a period of time until its demands are fulfilled.
Every action can be converted into yoga. Battlefield action was also yoga. The worst of things is war, and that became the occasion for the delivery of the greatest of gospels, the message of eternity on the deathbed of a person. It is the intention of the Gita gospel to tag on the lowest impulses for ordinary action in life to the highest cause of the immortal in man. The weaknesses of the human flesh, including the frail emotions of a pusillanimous, ordinary person, characterised Arjuna’s personality.But such a weakling that Arjuna could be was made to stand up as a stalwart example before all men of righteousness and wisdom because of this injection of the eternal values that Sri Krishna imparted to Arjuna’s psychophysical, mortal frame.
Inasmuch as everything is in a state of yoga, the whole Earth is meditating, as it were, says the Upanishad. The stability of the Earth, the methodology of the seasons occurring in proper time, the great system behind sunrise and sunset, the astronomically perfect movement of the stellar organisations, the meaning that we see in life which is otherwise meaningless, is the yoga thereof. The world is in a state of yoga, is what the Chhandogya Upanishad says. The five elements are contemplating, and are absorbed in themselves. Absorption in one’s own self is yoga. The earth and the other elements are absorbed in the performance of their own duties.
This is to signify that system and method are there, and everything is nothing but the centralising of this consciousness in nothing but one’s own self, excluding no relationship therein which one may have with anything else in this world. This last condition is to be taken note of carefully. The satisfaction that one has in one’s own self, the senses arrayed before us in this external world, is a self-annihilation of one kind because the more are we conscious of another, the less are we conscious of ourselves, so that in our entire consciousness being centred in something else which is totally attracting and absorbing, the death of our own self simultaneously and automatically occurs in the act of immersion of our consciousness in another. This is the extreme to which extroversion can go. While this is, of course, totally opposed to yoga, the other side, which is the absorption of oneself in the psychic introversion, is also not yoga.
Yoga is union. A very intriguing word has been used—full of meaning, of course. It is a togetherness of the grasp of our consciousness in which a kind of selfhood is maintained in a most interesting and striking manner, excluding not oneself in the contemplation of objects, and also excluding not objects by being too much occupied with oneself. Yoga is not the selfish occupation of a private individual. It is not renunciation of the world. It is absorption of the world into one’s own consciousness. The world melts into liquid, as it were, in this contemplation of the true self—which contemplation alone can be called yoga—and at once all activity also gets associated with it because of our being careful in not excluding the world from our contemplation of consciousness.
The universality that is involved here is what is very important. That is the importance of Bhagavan Sri Krishna’s presence in the Mahabharata war. He was the Universal; Arjuna was the particular. All people in that vast arena of the Mahabharata war were particulars, but they were within the bosom of this Eternal, apparently seated in the chariot of Arjuna. Doing nothing, having done nothing, wanting not at all to do anything, here is the statement coming from that so-called non-active individual: that he has already done everything that is required to be done. In what sense is he saying this? Not in the sense of a person sitting in the chariot, but in the sense of another thing of which he is capable, namely, his particularity as Sri Krishna seated there being continuously associated with a non-individual Vishvarupa-tattva. The otherwise friend of Arjuna, the Yadava chief, the heroic warrior, was also the repository of a non-individual potentiality, which he manifested as a reality when the Cosmic Form revealed itself.
So yoga practice is a gradual, stage-by-stage actualisation of this potential for the Universal in us, and to the extent we are able to bring this potentiality of the Universal in us into action in daily life, we not only live a life of yoga, but our work also becomes yoga. All lengthy reading of the Gita will not convince us finally as to how work is meditation.
We may be having some doubt: “The Gita has said it, maybe, but I cannot understand how yoga can be my little sweeping of the floor, cleaning of a utensil, or cutting the wood.” We cannot convince ourselves, and it will never be possible for us to assure ourselves that such earthy, gross, day-to-day impulsions to act can be yoga at all. Modern scientists say events do not take place in space. Where else do they take place? If events in the world do not take place in space, where else do they take place? What is your answer to this question? Events take place in space, but scientists say events do not take place in space. Events take place in a non-spatial context—that is, in a non-temporal field, the seed for temporal action is sown. It is said that marriages and wars first take place in heaven, and then they descend to the Earth. These are some of the observations of philosophers such as Plato, etc. Even a sickness does not originate merely in the physical body. It is deeper than the physical body. We are sick in the anandamaya kosha itself, and then this illness manifests itself gradually into the buddhimaya, manomaya, indriyamaya sarira; then we begin to feel the ache in the physical body. Though the ache is in the physical body, the illness is deeper than the flesh and the bones. We are sick in our very roots.
Likewise, actions have a root, events have an origin, anything and everything has a beginning and causation in a realm that does not belong to this world. The Mahabharata was won by Sri Krishna in this sense. It never took place in Kurukshetra; it took place in all space and all time. It is in only in this sense that we can understand the meaning of the Vishvarupa saying, “I have done everything.” The ‘I’ that has done everything is not a spatial and temporal being. Modern physics tells us something equivalent to the implication that we can draw from this mastermind telling us, “I have already done a thing which has not yet taken place.” The war has not yet taken place, and even before that he says he has already done it. The future has become the present; time has vanished completely before eternity.
These are the wonders that lie hidden beneath our aspirations that are spiritual, religious and yogic. If we are oblivious of this factor being there within us, around us and in everything, we will be in dread perpetually in this world. Even the movement of a leaf will cause us fear, and we will not have peace of mind for even a single second in this world. But the backing of a person like Sri Krishna gives us all strength. Arjuna never felt that he would die. Though death can take place in war, he would not die. He knew it, because here was a person who would see that he would not die.
Yoga gives us a strength which shall protect us like a mother. The yoga shastra tells us that yoga loves us more than a hundred mothers, as Sri Krishna loved Arjuna more than his own mother loved him. “Accepting, realising and knowing that I am the friend of all beings, you shall attain peace.” Have you seen a friend of all beings anywhere? Have you seen a friend anywhere upon whom you can rely at all times, for all purposes? There is no such friend in this world. But here is a friend—that is the Mahayogesvara Sri Krishna, which is the eternal support that is at our beck and call from moment to moment, which is not only within us, but also around us.
The stationing of ourselves in this inner visualisation of the presence of that non-individual power will make us worthy individuals in this world. The non-individual Krishna alone can give meaning and significance to the individual Arjuna. Let the individuality of Arjuna be there, but it has no meaning. Arjuna is a corpse as an individual if the living being that is not an individual, which is Sri Krishna, is not there. After the ascension of Sri Krishna, Arjuna became a lifeless puppet, and he could not lift even a stick. The person who could break hills and threaten Devas was not able to bend his back and lift a stick when it became necessary for him.
It is yoga that gives strength to us. Strength does not come from adulation from society, name, fame and authority. Strength does not come from wealth. Strength does not come from food that we eat physically. It comes from yoga that is ours. It comes from yoga which is not merely ours, but is what we ourselves are. The Krishna within us is our strength; the Arjuna that we are is a frailty. “Two birds are perching on the same tree,” says the Veda and the Upanishad. Non-participating, there is someone seated within us; participating, we are blindfolded, and we are unaware of the presence of this silent witness of our own selves seated in the deepest recesses of our heart.
Let Arjuna forget the presence of Sri Krishna—what would happen? This is exactly what has happened to mankind today. In the arrogance of physical power and the false, vainglorious assurance of strength in money and material amenities, the Arjuna that is today’s mankind has forgotten the very existence of that otherwise-real friend, the unknown Sri Krishna who is pervading in all places.
Mahayogesvara Sri Krishna gave meaning, significance and life to Arjuna’s action and to his very existence. This Universal, the consciousness of which is called yoga, shall protect us; and eternally Sri Krishna is with Arjuna. Just as Nara-Narayana are eternal twins and are always there as inseparables, God and man are eternal inseparables, and yoga and action are similarly inseparable.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Bhagavan Sri Krishna as Mahayogesvara
Bhagavan Sri Krishna as Mahayogesvara by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 28 July 2013 19:16
*READ MORE \* Bhagavan Sri Krishna as Mahayogesvara
Bhagavan Sri Krishna is called Mahayogeshvara. The great Lord of Yoga is supposed to be associated with the master of dextrous action, Arjuna. Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanur-dharaḥ tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama (Gita 18.78). “There shall be peace and happiness and prosperity of every kind where there is the Lord of Yoga, Bhagavan Sri Krishna, and the master of action, the wielder of the instrument of work, Arjuna. When these two powers unite, perfection ensues.” With these words, the Bhagavadgita concludes.
We all aspire for perfection. We would like to have perfect health and a perfected form of education, a perfection in our fulfilment of needs and the acquirement of our appurtenances of life. We resent imperfection of any kind. We do not like a lacuna to be seen anywhere. Everything should be clean, tip-top, and elegant. The word that indicates all these ideas in our mind is ‘perfection’.
It is the dictum of the Gita that perfection is certain to be attained where these two essential factors are blended together. What are these two factors that have to go together, hand in hand, for the purpose of the achievement of perfection in life? Yoga is one of the factors, whose embodiment here in this context is the master Bhagavan Sri Krishna, and perfection in dealing with things, which is embodied in the dexterity of his friend and disciple, Arjuna. As a Yoga Shastra, it is the declaration of an art of living. It is an answer to the question how we can be happy and how we can be free from the pains caused by imperfections of any kind. We have a detailed enunciation of this pithy statement throughout the Bhagavadgita gospel—how an inner communion of spirit which is yoga has to be always in consonance with the impulse to work, to do anything, to perform the duties of life.
The necessity to do anything at all in one’s life arises on account of the very law that operates behind the existence of human individuality. The physical body, the individual person, cannot even survive without an action that is incumbent upon its very existence. The necessity for the individual to act perpetually in some way or the other arises on account of the finitude of every type of individuality and the need felt by this finitude to compensate its imperfection, consequent upon its finitude by association with the outer atmosphere of similar finitudes.
The external finitude is represented by human society and the physical universe, with which each person has to deal. Our function in life is the handling of these two phenomena before us every day—human society and the vast physical nature, prakriti. The rules of prakriti, or nature, bind the individual to such subjection that any violation of its dictates would be detrimental not only to the peaceful existence of the individual, but the very existence of the individual itself. We have to harmoniously place ourselves in the context of physical nature, and also in the context of human society, of which we are ingredients.
It is impossible not to engage oneself in an action of some kind, due to the very fact of there being this twofold phenomenon of human society and physical nature. These do not just stand outside us as things to be dealt with at our discretion, but are there as forces that have a clutch over our very individual constitution, so that it may be safely said that society and nature not only control human individuality but, in a way, constitute the very fibre of human individuality. Briefly, these are the reasons why it is necessary for an individual to work, and it is impossible not to work. This is emphatically mentioned.
But how would we work? It was told that action is a must. Work has to be done. Day in and day out, from moment to moment, we have to be conscious of our involvement in human society and physical nature. They impinge upon us continuously. Any lethargic ignorance in respect of the existence and operation of these two forces would tell upon us and weigh heavily upon us. Here is the principle of the Arjuna in human individuals, the perfected specimen of relation with external nature and external society.
When we deal with things, we are not supposed to merely fumble and create a mess. Every action is supposed to be a decent artistic performance. Our behaviour has a beauty in itself. It is as beautiful as anything in the world that can be beautiful. The beauty of our performance, our work, our deeds and duties enhances in proportion to the intensity of, or the extent of, the harmony that is ingrained in our relationship with human society and nature. Such a person is a beautiful gentleman, a beautiful individual. The beauty of the human personality is automatically implied in the beauty that is inherent in the harmony existing between the human individual and the phenomena mentioned. Thus, Arjuna becomes a specimen of perfect individuality: a mould of humanity into which everyone may have to be cast. But we are cautioned at the same time that all effort that one may put forth in the direction of this execution of perfection in the art of maintaining harmony with society and nature—with all this given and granted—there would be something required over and above all these enthusiasms and honesties of intention; and that is the yoga spoken of.
Arjuna is a perfect man, doing perfect deeds—a specimen of human individuality, no doubt—but Krishna has to be there with him. Not only has Krishna to be there with Arjuna, he has to be within Arjuna himself as a guiding intelligence. This charioteer of the Mahabharata context, Bhagavan Sri Krishna, driving, moving forward the vehicle of Arjuna is not only an external guide in the purely military and political fashion, but also an inner director, an intelligence that helps the very understanding of the person engaged in the action.
The association of Krishna with Arjuna is the association of yoga with work. The Mahayogeshwara Sri Krishna is so-called because of his supreme attainment of atmatva—unifiedness in terms of selfhood, which is the highest yoga we can conceive of. “Through atmayoga I have demonstrated this great vision before you,” says Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. All yoga is finally atmayoga. It is the unitedness of the self with the spirit of all things. This is not necessarily implied in learning how to work perfectly.
A good management expert—a director of a company—may be an expert in his line, but that would not suffice in the end when one faces what they call the brass tacks of nature. The world contains many more secrets, unknown and inaccessible to the human mind, so that no one can be so entirely confident that nature has been mastered, or another person’s mind has been understood. Neither of these is possible, finally, if yoga is absent or is not blended with this honesty and enthusiasm behind perfect work. Arjuna, the great perfected individual, cannot stand for a moment if Krishna is not there.
The word ‘yoga’ is difficult to explain, especially here when we speak of yoga as the power of God or the strength of the superman Bhagavan Sri Krishna. We all have some idea of what yoga is. What is the yoga of which Bhagavan Sri Krishna was a master? We do yoga every day—exercises of different kinds. Exercises are definitely yoga; but exercises, only, need not be yoga. As every work can be yoga, and yet no work need be yoga without a condition attached to it, our sadhanas and spiritual practices well known in daily life may be regarded as yoga practice under given conditions; but they need not be yoga if these conditions are not fulfilled. Even the littlest of work is a divine dedication and can be called yoga; but even the largest achievement in the world need not be yoga, for certain reasons.
The yoga aspect of the work comes in when we have an insight into what yoga is in our daily conduct. It is a cognisance of our being in tune with the vital forces at all times—more than what we conceive ourselves to be. There are powers in the world more than human powers. And even the employing of human resources that are apparently successful before our eyes has a secret backing of certain forces which are not always human. Mere human endeavour cannot lead to final success. Knowingly or unknowingly, we are receiving the benefit and the grace of powers that range beyond the powers of human potentiality; and if we have succeeded anywhere, it is because of some sort of rapprochement that appeared to be there between our active powers of work and the beneficent powers that are superhuman.
This superhuman-associated factor is designated here as the yoga-_shakti_ of the superman Bhagavan Sri Krishna; and as the Gita is a yoga shastra, a scripture of the daily performance of spiritual sadhana, it amounts to saying that not only the so-called spiritual outlook of seekers of Truth, but even what we wrongly call the secular side of work—both these have to be actively cognizant of the operation of forces beyond themselves.
There is the tendency in everything to transcend itself. The dissatisfaction which everyone and everything feels in himself, herself or itself is the urge for a self-transcendence ingrained in all individuality throughout nature. We cannot stagnate in a given condition of our existence. There is growth and change and transmutation seen everywhere, within as well as without. This impulse to self-transcend is the secret working of a power which is not visible to ordinary eyes but which incessantly works everywhere. Winkless is the act of God. Sleepless is nature. Man may sleep, but nature does not sleep. We may take rest, but creation does not take rest. It is incessantly active towards the achievement of a great purpose that it has placed before itself—namely, the gathering of all its forces into a singleness of consciousness and action, meditation and work, which both blend into a single being in that perfect absoluteness which is called God Almighty.
In a very interesting manner, there has been a union between Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna throughout this epic performance. They are companions, friends. Bhagavan Sri Krishna was a friend, a companion, a guide and a philosopher to Arjuna; but he was also a Guru. A Guru is a master who has a say over the very soul of the disciple; and the Guru does not impart mere external instruction as we have in schools, but motivates the growth and impulsion of the soul of the student. God Himself may be said to be a friend of all. God is the friend of all creatures. But he is not merely a friend; He is the soul of all beings, the Lord over all things.
The power of yoga is, therefore, an externally conditioning and restraining power in our day-to-day life. But beyond that it is a disciplining power, internally, in terms of our own consciousness—the very self of ours. Yoga cannot be known by anybody except by yoga itself. Yoga does not arise from some person; yoga arises only from yoga. Intriguing indeed is this statement! Yoga is not a commodity that comes from outside. It is not grown in a field or stocked in a market. It cannot be purchased. It has no weight or any kind of measurement characteristic of things. The practice of yoga, therefore, is not just a physical performance, because everything that is physical is measurable; but yoga is immeasurable. It is also not a work of some kind that we do, because every work is finite and also measurable, and yoga is immeasurable. It is not a good deed and a praiseworthy action, merely, that is commendable to human society, because even that is perishable in its end; and yoga is imperishable.
An imperishable attitude is maintained even when we perform a so-called perishable action. This is the friendship of Bhagavan Sri Krishna with Arjuna. Sri Krishna represents an immeasurable spirituality, and Arjuna represents the pinnacle of measurable performance. Phenomenon reaching its zenith is Arjuna, and what is above phenomena is that inscrutable Bhagavan Sri Krishna, whose thoughts and actions no one could understand. How God acts, man is not supposed to know, because the circumference of human conduct is just the circumference of the psychophysical individuality. And considering the fact that even so-called voluntary actions performed by the individual with utmost intelligence can ultimately lead to success only by an unseen participation of super-human forces, we can well imagine what yoga it is that the Gita refers to when Bhagavan Sri Krishna is regarded as Mahayogeshwara.
It is necessary for every one of us to accept from the bottom of our hearts that in everything that we do, behind every thought that may emanate from our minds—anything whatsoever connected with us—there is an unseen factor before which we have to bend our heads in submission. Ultimately, we cannot give a solution to anything in this world. The ultimacy is not here in this world, because nothing in the world is ultimate. We may reach a penultimate point with the best of our capacities, but there the matter ends; there is still something beyond. This beyondness is the vital factor intelligently and resistlessly operating in the cosmos; and yoga here, at least, would mean the extent of our being aware of this association of supernatural forces in our day-to-day life—the extent to which God is with us in our daily life.
That extent to which we are aware of God’s presence with us and in us, that extent is also the yoga that we perform. There is nothing else required of us than just being an instrument. Things shall take care of themselves, but they will take care of themselves only if we are submissive and project not the fierceness of our egoism—and permanently, perennially, always accept the necessity to receive succour from this supernatural power. The world needs something which is not in this world. The world survives because of a call that it is receiving, eternally, as it were—in answer to which call, nature evolves and runs in a great speed. With all bag and baggage, all things in nature hurry forward, as in the epic context we have the unconscious or the superconscious rushing of the spirits of the Gopis of Vrindavana to the centre that pulled them with the music of the cosmos.
In reply to this great call, the universe gets characterised by restlessness. The more we love God, the more we feel restless within ourselves. It is a divine uneasiness which has to be there if the flame of that response to God’s call has to be properly kindled and kept up forever. Why is everything active in this world? Why are we active every moment, every day, day in and day out? Why is there coming and going of things? Why is there evolution and involution? These are the busy movements of creation as a whole in response to the master’s call—God calling.
Everybody is busy when there is a great performance coming on. For days together, sleeplessly, we find people running about doing this and that, all for seeing that things are set in order for the attainment or the achievement to come: the great function. This great function is yet to take place. It is the celebration of the unity of the world with God. For that great marriage ceremony, we may say, of earth and heaven, man and God, this preparation is going on in the form of the activities of creation in all the business of life.
As St. John of the Cross said, it is an adornment for the spiritual marriage. We are adorning ourselves every day, keeping ourselves spick and span in our performances. Everything must be tidy and perfect, we say. This so-called perfectness that we are keeping before our minds is nothing but the requirement we are conscious of for placing ourselves in a proper position before that great incoming occasion—the ceremony of communion.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Bhagavan Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa – The Guru of All Gurus
Bhagavan Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa – The Guru of All Gurus by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 27 July 2013 21:21
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(Talk given on Guru Purnima in 1987)
On this holy Sri Vyasa Purnima observed in this ashram, devotees have come from far and wide with their heartfelt devotion to the great Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. In Gurudev we all visualise the presence of this great Guru of all Gurus, the greatest Guru, Bhagavan Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, in whose name and memory this particular full moon day is celebrated as Guru Purnima, the blessed occasion when the master Sage Vyasa is seen by everyone in one’s own Guru and adored through this medium of one’s own Guru, master, guide, friend, philosopher. The great Vyasa is adored in many a way on this Guru Purnima.
To bring to our hearts, our memories, our feelings, to implant in our own selves this great gigantic power called Vyasa is, to say the least, a herculean task. The worship of the Guru, the adoration of the greatest Guru, Bhagavan Vyasa, is done through one’s own soul inasmuch as the Guru is the veritable soul of every follower, disciple or devotee as a presence surrounding, enveloping and inferring everything and everyone who adores it from his own, her own or its own heart. The adoration, the worship, the surrender that is involved in this process is indeed very hard since this principle of the Guru – consider him as Vyasa – involves great austerity of one’s own self. Mahatapasvi has been Vyasa.
Great tapasvins adorned this land, this Earth. Many a great master lived in this world, and in our tradition Vyasa is considered as the pinnacle of this concept of austerity, tapas and power. In this great master in whom every Guru is embedded, who is inclusive of every conceivable Guru everywhere, in this great Guru of Gurus is the seed of omniscience. Unbroken by the process of time, unaffected by the vicissitudes of human history, the great master rules the destinies of people.
Vyasa is considered as one of the immortals among several others who, we are told, are stationed on this Earth as something like a vice regal force instituted by the Almighty Lord for the benefit of everyone. The holy shrine of Badri, Badarikashrama, is generally believed to be the location of the concentrated presence of Bhagavan Vyasa, though masters like this have no particular location. They pervade everywhere. They are there at that place where they are remembered. Where they are invoked, they are present there. They have no geometrical location; they have no geographical point or habitat. They have embodied in their supernatural personality the soul of the highest Creator.
This purnima, known as Vyasa Purnima or Guru Purnima, is a tradition instituted by our ancients to bring to our memories certain ancient occurrences such as the work of Bhagavan Vyasa himself. We are told by our elders that on this day, Bhagavan Vyasa Badarayana commenced a writing of the great aphorism on the Vedanta Shastra known as Brahma Sutras. So this is an annualremembrance of the birth of the sutras known as Vedanta Sutras, Sharika Mimamsa or Brahma Sutras. This is one aspect of the importance of this day, as we have heard from mahatmas.
This is also a special occasion where saints and sages, parivrajakas, tapasvins, mahatmas, sannyasins gather together by bring bringing to a halt their parivrajaka vritti and deciding to stay for what is known as chaturmasya, the four months settlement at one particular place for meditation, svadhaya and upadesa. The travels of the itinerary sadhus cease, either for the recognition of the blessed occasion of the commencement of the Badarayana Sutras on this day, or a necessity that arises for another reason also, namely the commencement of the rainy season which makes travel inconvenient. Moving from place to place is a hard job during the monsoons. That is one side of the issue. But the spiritual aspect of it is the adherence to a vrata or a vow of staying only in one place for four months and devoting all the time for study, especially the Brahma Sutras, and teaching the very same thing to their followers, their disciples or devotees.
As I mentioned a few minutes before, we will find it hard to invoke into our own selves a master like Vyasa. We cannot even think a person like Swami Sivananda adequately in our own minds because the dimension of their being is so vast and intense that with difficulty can we accommodate them in our own selves, limited as we are in many respects. We are limited physically, mentally, volitionally, and in every way. But with this harassing limitation that is subjecting us to difficulties galore, we have also a potential within us which can come up to the surface of a face-to-face confrontation with these great masters. The greatest limitation has also the seed of an unlimited potentiality. The atmatva in us is the symbol of the paramatma tattva that decides our creation. As the masters Vyasa or sages of that kind are representatives of paramatma tattva, we shall somehow, at some time or the other, be able to feel ourselves friendly with their natures by shedding all the encrustations that seem to have grown over our own atmatva. The surrender of the student to the master or the Guru is just the representation of the opening of oneself to the inflow of this wider expansiveness of guru-tattva.
The Guru is thus not to be limited to a personality like our own selves. The Guru, as mentioned, represents the highest of forces of knowledge and tapas, which is another way of describing the inclusiveness, the perfection and the wholeness of their beings. Thus, the vastness which is the coverage of their existence should naturally include the dominions of the little individualities of other people. As God is at the root of all things, so Guru also pervades every disciple.
To the disciple, therefore, this is not very easy, human being as he is with the restrictions of bodily encasement, psychological vacillations, and the continuous hammering into one’s mind the feeling that we are just this little body. Great sacrifice of our personal whims and fancies and even ideologies may be required if we are to be face to face with Bhagavan Vyasa or those who represent him in this world. Only a tapasvin can envisage a tapasvin, only a tapasvin can benefit by the presence and the blessings of a tapasvin because the aura of this great master of tapas, austerity, is totally the opposite of the affirmations of the human ego, the self-assertive principle in us which prevents the entry of anything blessed, good or beneficial.
Thus, may we not go with the times by passing the day in the ritual of the usual worship through abhisheka, archana and the recitation of mantras, all which are indeed wonderful and very good. The masters are spiritual flames who light up the visage of our path in this life. We are not just performances, doings, as you all know very well. We have our inward joys and sorrows when we are alone in our own selves, and all our deeds get set at naught, as it were, when we feel alone to ourselves. The true ‘ourselves’ is that which is to be placed within the aura of the great masters. Our worships, which are of an external nature, of a ritualistic type, of a recitation of Veda mantra, etc., will assume significance only when our Atman is present, when our soul is there, when the performer himself is present in the performance. When the performer of the worship is outside the performance, it becomes a mechanised movement, a soulless performance, and the atmatva is severed from the deed which ceases to be any more the movement of the feeling of the performer of the worship. The whole world is divinity incarnate. The whole thing that we call creation, the whole process of natural history is indeed a daily worship of God Almighty. Nature worships God. The sun and the moon and the stars, the galaxies, the great activity of creation are a perpetual adoration of this central nucleus of all life, which is the Supreme Being.
In this great worship that is taking place throughout the world, in all creation, we are participants. We are not independent, doing a little worship to some god in our own little room. It is a great, mighty cyclic movement taking place in all the levels of creation, through all the lokas – fourteen in number, we are told – every atom and nucleus, and everything that we can conceive everywhere. There is a shibboleth in a well-known analogy: a rasa dance is taking place. The great God of the cosmos is attracting everyone and compelling everything that is created to circle around Him and dance in an anguish of desire to commune with that great central nucleus of creation. This is the real inner spiritual worship, without whose impact the outer actions cease to be worships which can summon the presence of this inwardness.
God is inwardness supreme, not externality. That is why we call God the ultimate Atman, the Paramatman. The word Atman is significant of a non-objectivity that is present in us. We are never other than what we are. We can never become something else. I am I, you are you, and everything is what it is. This assertion of everything to be what it is and never other than what it is, this impulsion from within is the act of the Atman. An act of the Atman is not a work like we do in daily life in factories and shops. It is an inward affirmation of itself, and a tendency to maintain its integrality, to maintain itself in the position in which it is and to not allow itself to become anything other than what it is. Such is the Atman. This is also the Paramatman, who maintains himself as a single person, ekam sat, as one cannot become other than what he is. God cannot become non-God. He can become nothing else other than what He is. This is why they say God loves Himself only; and when He loves himself, He loves everything together as in the dance, the rasa, Krishna is present everywhere, in and out of every action of the Gopis who represent the multitudinous particles of the creation of God Himself.
In this great worship eternally taking place permanently, unceasingly, timelessly, we are to be participants. Then it is that we are actually receivers of the blessing of the masters who are just fingers of God Himself operating – Krishna Dvaipanaya Vyasa, Swami Sivananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whoever it is. The fingers of God operate through all these activities and in every performance, every deed, every work, every aspiration that gravitates towards this fulfilment that is complete in itself.
This is the aspect that we can see in the full moon of Guru Purnima. The fullness of the mind is the fullness of the moon; and vice versa, the fullness of the moon is the fullness of the mind. We become complete in our thoughts, feelings, and in a way the various functions of the psyche become centralised in a single affirmation of our inward affirmation. Sometimes we understand, sometimes we think, sometimes we feel, sometimes we arrogate. These are the diversified, distracted aspects of the centrality that we otherwise are.
The full-moon-ness of this occasion is also to be considered as the full-moon-ness of our mind. The moon is supposed to be presiding over the minds of all people. Thus in the full-moon-ness of this mind, may we not be distracted in our perceptions, cognitions, but centrally focus ourselves as a whole in the direction of this whole worship that God attracts towards Himself and compels on the part of everyone. May this Guru Purnima be, therefore, a whole-souled dedication of ourselves to this great master of all creation, God Almighty, who has incarnated Himself through all these Avataras, the great masters, yogis, saints, sages such as Krishna Dvaipanaya Vyasa and Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. May their blessings be upon us all.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
God Descends for the Ascent of Man
God Descends for the Ascent of Man by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 26 July 2013 16:18
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(Sri Krishna Janmashtami Message August 31, 1983)
We are here to bring into our minds the important issue that this collective session here at this moment is not merely a gathering of many people. This is not a parliament; this is not a company meeting. Here is a speciality with which those visible forms looking like people are gathered for a superhuman purpose at this superhuman context of the coming into our hearts of a principle which normally the human mind cannot grasp. Our being here at this moment is not a get-together or a coming together; it is a different thing altogether. If this difference does not enter the minds of those who are seated here looking like people in the world, the purpose of the sitting would not be served.
There is a condition in which we will realise that we are not human beings. Under circumstances or conditions we call normal, we regard ourselves as people, persons dealing with things in an atmosphere we call the world. A religious communion is quite different from getting together for a purpose which is either social or, to say the least, even personal and human.
We may well appreciate that we are in a religious atmosphere, but the atmosphere we consider as religious is also something which requires a transvaluation of values from our own side. In a prayer meeting, man is facing God. He is not facing an altar in a church. This is important, and nothing can be more important. In a very significant manner we are here to offer our prayers to the Almighty, though a prayer is not necessarily conducted in a room built by brick and mortar. We are not offering our obeisance to any manmade institution, call it a temple or a church. It is nothing but the cessation of what we call man in man that is called religion. Here is the crux of the whole matter. We have umpteen celebrations and functions in our the religious circles of the human world. We have the birthdays of great saints, the coming of Incarnations, Christmas, and so forth. All goes well in a human way, and it does not go in any other way. This is something which requires to be underlined as the determining factor of the future of mankind itself.
Religion, which is the attitude of the human spirit before God the Almighty, is not a social performance. It is not an observance with the ringing of bells. The bell has to ring from inside. If it does not ring, the outside bells will bring us nothing. It is hard for the human mind, accustomed to the comforts of physical existence, to bend before the needs of the inner spirit. Nobody would find time to be religious. None has time to go to the temple, or to study a scripture, or to attend a prayer congregation. The business of life floods man and drowns him to the core in the occupation he calls the needs of life, from which he ostracises all the religious requirements. Religion is a hobby, and spirituality becomes a fancy, and the truths, the hard facts, the unavoidable realities of life are what we call the business in which man is engaged, whatever be the field in which this business is conducted. No one can expect peace with this attitude. We cannot have peace unless we pay the price for peace. Receiving salvation as a mere charitable gift should be unthinkable.
When I was coming here, I was cogitating on the poverty of human nature, the futility of the human way of thinking which takes the pleasures of life as realities and religious values as abstract permissions given to leisure hours. Such is the topsy-turvy thinking today. These words of introduction I place before you as a sort of meditation on my own part also. This is not an instruction I am giving to you; it is my own self-meditation, and whatever is said, is said to myself also.
Thus comes the great response of man to the calls of life, which are the multitudinous beckoning from all the quarters of Heaven. It is necessary for a truly religious person to shed all the learning of this world with which you have been brainwashed right from your childhood, to bid goodbye to all your learning and knowledge which tells you that God is in Heaven and the Earth is here as your footstool, and religion is something which is obligatory on your part as a part of many other functions that you perform. Nobody teaches you religion, and nobody can teach it also, because that would be the teaching of your internal responsibility to God Himself. Religion is man’s responsibility to God, and it is not any other thing. It is nothing that you do in this world. It has no concern finally with the blaze of God’s all-seeing eyes which can reduce the values of the Earth to ashes in a second, whatever be the hard concrete forms they assume to the physical eyes of man. Have you not seen even religious people considering themselves as belonging to schools of religious thinking, observing holy days and auspicious moments as if it is a great concession that they give to God in the midst of very serious realities of this Earthly life which they consider as their duty? You are very busy with your duties. It is only for a few minutes that you can show your head in a temple or find a moment’s respite to visit a church on Sunday because God is not your reality and, therefore, religion cannot be your reality. This truth is hidden by a camouflage of hypocritical thinking which tries to throw dust on the eyes of God Himself by the reading of a passage from a scripture during moments of a little leisure when you have no other pressure from your office or from the courts of law, etc. Tragedy should be the name of this kind of attitude.
So I was trying to say that our gathering here is not a gathering of people; it is a gathering of flames of spirit, sparks of the divine flame that everyone is, and while we are here we should be able to shed, with herculean effort for a moment at least, the idea that we are anything else. Only then can there be a response from the universal spirit. The response from the universal spirit will be listened to and welcomed only by the spirit within us. The spirit welcomes the spirit and responds to the spirit in the universe. It is not the body, the sense organs, the family or our social organisation to which we are wedded that can respond in this manner. That in us which is sympathetic to the nature of God will respond to the call of God, and inasmuch as there is an inscrutable characteristic which constitutes God-being, that very nature also has to be roused in us in order that it may respond to the call. If a disharmonious attitude is developed within us, there would be no response in us, and there would be no response from the other side also.
So in our religious observances, call it the holy occasion of the coming of an Incarnation or the birth of a saint, it is not a function of a social group of people as we imagine because, finally, there is no such thing as society in this world. This is only an empirical reading of the facts of existence by the mind which considers the centre of the spirit as a human being – the society that we speak of, a group of people, humanity. This is our particular limited reading of the manner in which the universal forces act and react within themselves. Actually there is neither humanity nor mankind nor anything in here. There is something else dancing within its own bosom in the ecstasy of its purpose which is to be fulfilled on the part of every one of us by participation or by accepting that hidden characteristic within us which is sympathetic with the characteristic of that which is at the back of this drama of life.
We may say, for the purpose of our understanding, that God is supposed to descend in order to set the visible in tune with the invisible. This descent is called Avatara in the Sanskrit language, the meaning of which is difficult to understand. It is a forceful entry of a very pointed focusing energy into a particular historical situation or a physical condition, something like a powerful injection of a potent medicine administered into the human system to bring the organism into balance. Though the pricking is at one spot only and not in all parts of the body, the medicine is felt uniformly by the total organism because of the potency of this descent of the power of the medicine into the organism.
The whole world is an organism of this kind. It is not made up of little bits of bricks and stones, in the same way as our physical body is not made up of little bits of physical matter or biological stuff, though it may look as if the body is made like that. For all normal, classical, physical observation, the world is made up of little bits of matter – stones, gravel, molecules, atoms, etc. A jungle of all these little particulars or spots of material stuff constitute the world, as it were. To think in this way would be to imagine that the human body is made up of little bits of biological substance – genes, chromosomes, cells – but it is nothing of the kind. It is one integrated completeness; otherwise, the medicine that we take cannot permeate the whole system. The potency that has entered into the body will instantaneously pervade everything that is the human body, and we will realise then that we are a total completeness and not a heap of little chromosomes or little particles of physical or biological substance. The world is such a thing, and the descent of God is like that – potent energy which immediately permeates the entire atmosphere to set it right.
This is something different from the working of a saint or a sage. Usually it is said, according to tradition, that a saint is one who has ascended to perfection from a lower level to the peak of achievement. But the Incarnation is the opposite. It is not an ascent from the lower, but a descent from the higher. It is also told to us that God descends for the sake of the ascent of man. All these are mysteries. No intelligence that is locked up within the human brain can comprehend these universal mysteries – how such Incarnations could be possible.
We sometimes hear Christ being called the son of Man, a designation attributed to him in the holy Testament. How can Christ be called the son of Man? Everyone is a son of man, so why should he alone be the son of Man? You would have seen the word ‘man’ with a capital M. It is not a lower-case man’s son; it is man as such that has begotten this divine coming on the Earth plane. The total cry of humanity is symbolised here as the capital Man. The whole mankind is in turmoil. It is not man as I or you, or he, she or it that requires the coming of God on that historical occasion. It is man as a single unified force. Don’t you consider the nation of a country as a single individual? A nation is a multitude of many citizens who can be counted in a census, for instance. You can count heads. But a nation is not to be understood in that sense. A nation is a single organism; it is not made up of many people. This requires a little loftier thinking from a highly elevated point of view of political science. An ordinary politician cannot think like this. It is not that a government is made up of many officers. It is a single, total force that is called the government. Just as the body, as I mentioned to you, is not made up of little pieces of matter, so is mankind. It is the species that is calling. The entire genus called humankind required the coming of a supernal force because it was a condition in which mankind as a whole found itself which man himself, or even mankind put together, could not set right.
The problems of the world cannot be solved by the world itself. A patient cannot cure himself. He requires a medical specialist. As is the case with a patient, so is the case with the world. As a patient cannot treat his own illness, the world cannot set itself right by any effort. It requires a power beyond the world. And that there are realms beyond the physical realm is a truth which does not require much of a mention in these days of great discoveries and findings.
The Avatara or the coming, the Incarnation, is the pressure exerted by the higher realm of reality upon the lower level. The Earth plane receives the influence, the impact of the higher planes. God only knows; it is impossible for us to understand how many planes are there. For all practical purposes, we may count the planes – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – but there can be infinite planes; therefore, infinite are the possibilities in creation, because infinite is the final reality.
The Incarnations are the timely response which the all-pervading omnipresent Almighty gives to that realm which calls for assistance. God is timeless, and therefore, God does not take time to act. We may take time: “I will do it tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.” We say we shall take time to do something, but God is neither in space nor is time applicable to Him, so there is no distance which God has to cover though a vehicle in order to set Himself into action. He has no distance. He has no time. Therefore, instantaneous is the action of God. ‘Instantaneous’ is the only word we can use – the timeless effect produced in the processes of time. This is the reason why man cannot understand God.
But there is a spirit in man which is the representative of God Himself. The Atman is Brahman, says tradition, which, in other words, is to say that man is made in the image of God. If we know ourselves, we have known the universe because man, as a cross section of this cosmos, has in himself the seeds of perfection in a miniature form which one can discover in the whole universe.
So in a religious mood when we are gathered for a prayer to the great Creator of the universe, the Almighty, we do not seat ourselves as little men and women belonging to some country; we cease to be such for a second. The moment we shed these ideas we begin to realise our belonging to that which is God’s creation. Every part of the body belongs to the whole body in a very specific way, and not as a field belongs to a farmer, or money belongs to a rich man, or a property belongs to a particular person. It is not in this sense that the part of the body belongs to the body. The part of the body belongs to the body in a different sense altogether – and in what sense, each one of you knows. The body does not possess legs as a rich man possesses money in the bank. It is a different kind of possession. It is a communion, not a possession, not a content. So we belong to God not in the sense of something belonging to somebody else but as an inward awakening by which we realise our inseparability from that which alone is and which alone can be.
It is only at this moment of lifted thinking, elevated contemplation, that we can be purged of all the dross of what we may call sins. These contemplative moods, these moments, though they are perhaps only a few and may last only for a few moments, these lofty contemplations can burn up all the sins of the past. In a great passage, Madhusudana Saraswati, the renowned commentator on the Bhagavadgita, says a moment’s sincere feeling of belonging to the Almighty will be equal to a thousand sacrifices or yajnas that you perform in the holy places of the world. The effect of many Rajasuyas, Somayajnas and Asvamedhas cannot equal the effect that is produced at the moment when you are sincerely feeling that you belong to that Great Being with the sense that only that Being is and nothing else can be, and therefore you also cannot be. As it is unthinkable that two ‘be’s can be, a complete surrender automatically takes place without any effort from you.
Thus, our historical conventions of occasional observances as functions and celebrations, call them Christmas or Krishna Janmashtami, are temporal symbols provided for invoking into ourselves a non-temporal truth. If this understanding can be awakened within ourselves, we are truly observing the coming of Sri Krishna, and perhaps then we are truly religious. And it is then perhaps that God will listen to what we inwardly seek and it shall be given to us. May this be our prayer.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Life and Glory of Hanuman
The Life and Glory of Hanuman by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 25 July 2013 17:03
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(Spoken on Hanuman Jayanti, April 15th, 1984)
The life of Hanuman is the life of a superman, and unless we can understand what a superman is, we cannot appreciate the dignity and the exploits of this epic celebrity. The Ramayana of Valmiki gives us the details of the life of this mastermind. The importance of this superhuman person can be assessed from half a verse in the Ramayana of Valmiki where he says Hanuman has been chosen as the next Brahma in the coming cycle of creation. It is surprising indeed that in the whole of creation God could not find a better person than Hanuman to be elected for this great post of the Creator for the next cycle. Master of the eight powers of yoga was he, and that is enough to explain the meaning of his exploits.
Tradition tells us that he was born of a superhuman lady, Anjana, of celestial descent. Incidentally, it appears that when some messengers came to Anjana and told her of the terrific exploits of Hanuman and praised him saying, “Great indeed is your son, Mother,” she retorted, “Great indeed is my son? Look,” she said, it seems, and she pressed her nipple, from which milk jetted forth with such strength that it dashed against a distant mountain and broke a cliff off it. “Such milk this man has drunk, and you are telling me he’s a great man?” This is what his mother said when the messengers extolled the glories of this marvellous hero in the war of the Ramayana.
We are told that as a child Hanuman rose to the skies to catch the sun, and thinking that it was a bright and delicious fruit, wanted to eat it. He rose up to the skies in the direction of the sun to grab that substance and swallow it. The story goes that Indra, the ruler of the heavens, was startled at this adventure of a mortal trying to ascend to the heavens and grab the solar orb, so it appears that he gave such a blow on the chin of this little boy with his weapon called Vajra that his chin lengthened a little bit, protruding forward, and he fell down unconscious. ‘Chin’ is called hanu in Sanskrit, and one who has a pronounced and a projected chin is called Hanuman.
He is the son of Anjana through the wind god Vayu, the presiding deity over air, and when the child fell unconscious due to the thrust of Indra, the lord of the celestials, his father Vayu got annoyed. “My son has been treated so badly by these gods. He has been cast down on the rock, and is lying helpless and unconscious. I shall teach these fellows a lesson.” Vayu, the wind god, withdrew himself from all parts, and everyone stopped breathing. Nobody could breathe. There was suffocation and agony everywhere, and even the celestials ran to Brahma, the Creator: “There is some terrific suffering. Our throats are being caught, as it were. We cannot breathe, and we are stifled almost to the point of death. This wind is very angry. Please go and give him blessing, satisfy him, appease him, speak to him a few good words.”
Brahma then condescended and summoned Vayu: “Don’t be afraid. Your child, with my blessing, will be an immortal hero.” When these words were uttered by Brahma, Vayu was satisfied. “Rise up, my dear child,” said Brahma, and the child woke up as if nothing had happened. Not merely this, Brahma showered a rain of blessing on Hanuman, saying, “No weapon can hurt this child. Not even the five elements can harm him. Not even celestial missiles except my own Brahmastra can have any effect on him, and that too for a few moments only as a mark of respect. Excepting this proviso, he shall be invincible and no one can stand before him.” When this was told, everyone was satisfied. Hanuman’s father and mother were excited over these blessings, and everything was fine as it was before.
But an unfortunate situation arose. Somehow this child with mighty powers received by the boon of the Creator, for reasons God only knows, began to play some pranks with the great Rishis, the sages who were doing meditation in their cottages. He threw their water pots, desecrated their yajnashalas, cast mud and stones over their cottage, screamed, and became such a nuisance that the rishis did not know what to do with him because he was invincible. He had the blessing of Brahma that no one could do anything to him. So the rishis were nonplussed. “What to do with this little urchin? He is a nuisance. He won’t allow us to sit.” They thought of a wise plan which prevented Hanuman from doing this kind of deed and yet did not in any way contradict the blessing of Brahma. “You shall not know your power. This is our curse upon you.” And with a compassionate touch of the heart of a rishi, they also added, “until you are reminded of your powers by someone else.” This curse had such effect that Hanuman immediately forgot his strength, and docile, humble, as if he was a nothing, he started crawling. He had all the powers that were bestowed upon him by Brahma the Creator, but the curse deprived him of the consciousness of that power. Wonderful indeed!
So in this condition of the forgetfulness of his own powers he was roaming about in the forest and by chance happened to get into the company of Sugriva, who was the king in those days, and he became the minister of this king. Now, here it is that Hanuman happened to meet Rama and Lakshman for the first time. These two brothers were wandering in the forest and were sighted by Sugriva on the top of a hill, to his consternation, and he sent his minister, Hanuman, “Go and find out who these strangers are, so brilliant, handsome and young. Two lads are standing there far off, on the top of a mountain. Who are they?”
Hanuman had all the powers; but that he was not aware of his powers is something we have to remember. Such was his learning and such was his mastery over all the arts and sciences that there was none to equal him. He dressed himself like an old messenger Brahmin and went to Sri Rama who was standing there with his brother Lakshmana, and Valmiki in his Ramayana tells us that he enquired of them as to their whereabouts. But he spoke with such precise words and with such chosen style and language that, after hearing these words of Hanuman, Rama said to Lakshman: na an rigveda viniitasya na yajurveda dharinah, na sama veda vidusah shakyam evam vibhasitum (Ramayana 4.3.28). These are the words of Valmiki. “One who is not a master of the Rigveda, Yajurveda and Samaveda cannot speak like this.” After all, he did not give a sermon. He only spoke a few words enquiring who they were, from where they had come, what their mission was, and so on – some common things. But those common things were expressed in such a way, in such chosen words and diction, that Rama knew the worth of this man. Anyway, so goes the story. And as they were both renown, they were introduced in the court of Sugriva. Then many events took place in which Hanuman had no role to play.
But he rose to prominence when messengers were to be sent in all directions in search of Sita. One of these messengers was Hanuman himself – that Hanuman who was tremendously powerful but knew not his power. So they were running in all directions in search of the lost Sita, but could not find her anywhere. They reached the shore of the sea, and all the monkeys were sitting there, very much dejected and not knowing what to do. It is said that they wanted to do prayopavesa, which means fasting to death. “What is the good of our going back and saying that we cannot find Sita anywhere? Shameful indeed is this message of failure. Let us sit here and fast and die.” They were sitting there on the shore of the ocean in a highly dispirited mood. As they were thinking of fasting to death, they were speaking among themselves their misery. “Look at this fate of ours. What a miserable plight we are in. Rama lost Sita, and Sugriva is searching for her; Ravana carried her away, and Jatayu the bird met him and died at the hands of Ravana, and now we are dying for no reason and no fault of ours.”
At that time a vulture was sitting on a nearby tree. It was muttering, “I have good food today because they are fasting to death. I shall have a good meal, at least.” When the vulture heard that Jatayu the bird had died at the hands of Ravana, it spoke. “Who are you, speaking about my brother as if he is dead?” Jatayu was the brother of this vulture.
The monkeys looked up and recounted their sorrow: “Here we are, in this condition. This is what has happened, and Jatayu died in this manner. We do not know who you are – looking at us, wanting to eat us – and we are in search of lost Sita.”
“Oh, is that all? She has been carried away across the sea. She is there in the garden of King Ravana.” The vulture which spoke like this had no wings; the wings were burnt. This is another story altogether. It appears this was a divine bird which soared up to the skies, almost near the sun, and got its wings burnt due to the heat of the sun. It was blessed with a boon that its wings would sprout forth automatically into action, become alive, the moment it conveyed the news of the whereabouts of lost Sita to the persons concerned, and it did this immediately. It got its wings, and it flew away. This is by way of a digression.
Now these messengers were sitting like this, helplessly, wanting to fast unto death, but here was a message of comfort. “After all, we know where Sita is. Up to this time we never knew where she is. Now from this vulture we know she is there, but across the vast ocean. How to go?” One of them said, “Well, I can jump a little distance, but I will sink there only. I cannot come back.” Each one was trying to measure his strength. Some said, “I may go, but I cannot come back.” So everyone was looking like this, helplessly. Some cannot go at all, some can go a little distance, some can reach the other shore but cannot come back. So what is the good of all this? It was a very miserable plight.
Then it was that Jambavan, the bear chief, spoke to Hanuman, bringing an end to the curse. When Hanuman was reminded of his powers, he would assume his original strength. The bear chief, Jambavan, accosted and addressed Hanuman: “Why are you sitting like a pusillanimous nobody? Do you know who you are? You are the son of Vayu and Anjana. You have the blessings of Brahma. You are an invincible hero.” When these words were uttered, Hanuman gained his consciousness which was lost by the curse of the rishis.
Immediately, as if he rose from a deep sleep, he woke himself to the consciousness of immeasurable strength. The poet says that he rose up to the height of a mountain, and struck his tail with such force that the earth shook, as it were. “Well, now I know where I am. Let Sita be in Ravana’s harem, in the forest, let her be in the nether regions, let her be in heaven; I have the strength to bring her. I can pluck the whole earth and take her, if I want.” With these words he rose to the top of a hill. Majestic is the first chapter of Valmiki’s Sundara Kanda, which is the longest of the chapters, running to some 200 verses. Poetry, diction, and depth of feeling, force of expression and detail of miracles – all these are charges infused into these words of Valmiki in the first chapter of the Sundara Kanda, and each one has to read it to enjoy it.
Kicking the cliff of a hill, breaking it to pieces, Hanuman leapt into the empty space with such force that the poet tells us that some trees also flew with him, and trees followed him because of the force of his movement. Beautiful, grandiose is the description of all the exploits he performed even on the way – the rising of the mountain in the middle of the ocean, his being tested by a celestial force called Surasa, and his encounter with another demon called Simhita. Finally he entered into the ramparts of the fort of Ravana. He became very small with his power of yoga, almost like a cat or a mosquito, and entered every nook and corner of the palace, not finding Sita anywhere, to his chagrin.
Then again he had a sorrow. “I have come here with all my energy and have done my best, but I have not succeeded in my mission. What will I tell Rama when I go back? I will tell him I have not seen her.” Here Hanuman sat and went on thinking, “If I go back and tell Rama that I have not seen her, Rama will die immediately with heartbreak. Lakshmana will not live afterwards, having seen the plight of his brother. Having heard the death of these two sons, the mothers in Ayodhya will not like to live afterwards. The whole of the population of Ayodhya will be stricken with grief. Will Sugriva like to live afterwards? Never. He will strike his head on the ground and die. The other monkeys who are his followers will also like to jump into the ocean or fall from the mountain, beat their breasts and break their heads. This is the calamity that will take place the moment I go and tell this unfortunate news that I have not seen Sita at all.”
Then Hanuman thought, “I will sit here and become a monk. This is also one way of living. They will think that the man has not come, and with the hope at least of getting a good message they will be alive. Why should I go there and tell this unhappy news? Anyway, effort is not to be exhausted. Let me see again throughout Lanka.” So by chance he went to Ashoka Grove and saw Sita in a state which the poet felt impossible to describe. Glory decked in sorrow. The radiance of celestial beauty covered with the dirt of sorrow and grief. All the powers of poetry are used here to describe her condition.
“Well, this is Sita indeed, there is no doubt. But what shall I do now, after having seen her?” Hanuman sat on the top of a tree, reducing his size to the smallest possible extent, and was thinking in his mind, “What shall I do now? Can I speak to her? In what language shall I speak? If I speak to her, she may scream in fright. Already she has been frightened by Ravana and the ogresses around, and the moment she screams all the demons will come and attack me. All my efforts will fail in one second. How can I speak to her?” Suddenly a brain wave occurred to him. He said, “Well, I shall not speak to her. I shall only sit here, and sing the glory of Rama: There was a king called Dasaratha; he had a son called Rama….” and he went on recounting this tale. “He went to the forest and his queen was taken away by a rakshasa, and she is here sitting under the tree, and I am happy to see her.”
Sita looked up. She did not know what to do. “Am I dreaming, or am I awake? How can I hear the story of Rama in this hell? Who are you?” There was a conversation between them. Finally somehow Hanuman succeeded in introducing himself as the real messenger of Rama, though in the beginning she suspected that he was one form of Ravana only. She did not want to speak to him. “You are a cunning fellow, once again coming in this form.”
When Hanuman succeeded in handing her the ring of Sri Rama, she was satisfied. He said, “Now Mother, why are you sitting here? Be done with that. I shall take you back to Rama. In one minute your sorrow shall end.” He was a small, tiny fellow, a very small, diminished form, and he tolds her, “Sit on my back, and I shall fly across the sea and place you before Rama.”
“What a funny thing you are speaking, such a tiny fellow that you are. You want to carry me on your back? Are you talking sense?” When Hanuman heard these words and felt that Sita did not know him fully, he descended from the tree and assumed his gigantic mountain-like form. He shone like the radiant sun and looked like an iron hill, as it were, placed before her. Then he spoke to Sita, “Divine Mother, I have the strength to carry not only you but the whole of this Lanka, and even a hundred Ravanas cannot shake me.”
But Sita said, “Well, I understand your greatness and am happy to see you in this majestic form, but let Rama come and take me. That is dharma. I cannot sit on your back. Go and tell him.”
But Hanuman’s mind started working in a different way after that. He bowed before the celestial Mother and went a little distance, then thought, “Let me show my power a little bit here before I go. Why should I go silently?” Then it was that he started moving like a cyclone in that forest, destroying everything, uprooting trees, plucking fruits, and creating such a havoc that there was an encounter of the whole battalion and the forces and the army of Ravana, which he routed with his fists and with his physical strength. Then he was carried to the palace of Ravana where he was teased in many ways, and then his tail was set afire. He burned Lanka, and came back across the sea and conveyed the blessed news to Sri Rama: “Found I Sita.” He used the word ‘found’ first so that there may not be any anxiety in the mind of Rama. “I have…” Why should he say “I have…”? Afterwards what has happened? “I have found…” he did not say. “Found have I Sita.”
And so is the glory of the great superhuman Hanuman, whose birthday we celebrate today. Glory to Hanuman!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Sankara's Philosophy of Life
Sankara’s Philosophy of Life by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 24 July 2013 20:52
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Man does not live by bread alone; he lives by the Spirit within. Spiritual hunger continues even if this physical body is cast off. Unless this innate hunger for knowledge and perfection is appeased, one cannot hope to have any rest. The saints, sages and Avataras purvey to man, now and then, the required spiritual food. Sankara is one such great feeder of mankind. It was Sankara who finally and satisfactorily answered the perplexing questions of life – questions concerning the inward, the outward, the above, and their mutual relations, questions which embrace the entire existence itself in their scope. There is the seer, the seen and also something which cannot be either the seer or the seen, as corroborated by a necessity felt for a reality which must be other than the individual who is the seer and the world which is the seen, both of which are known to be appearances due to their inherent character of changing, passing away, and giving rise to something else.
Man exists, and he feels that he exists; he has a direct apprehension of his existence. But he also knows that he is not a permanent being; that death spares no man; that all men, animals and plants have an end. Man also knows that the world which he is in and which presents itself before him as an object of his knowledge, too, is subject to destruction and, therefore, not ultimately real. What, then, is real? If man shall die one day, if all living beings shall pass away, and if the whole world, even the galaxy of solar systems, shall not last, what is it that shall last? Though it is true that everything that is seen perishes, is it also true that there is nothing imperishable? Acharya Shankara, the genius, comes forward and lifts the reason of man above by freeing it from the trammels of empirical vision when he boldly declares that if everything is impermanent, something should be permanent; if all shall come to a limit or end some time or other, there must be something which does not have limit or end at any time. If the whole world is transient, God must exist, and He alone can be eternal.
Sankara was not a dogmatist or a mere authoritarian but a very clear-headed and highly intelligent logical thinker. He established the reality of the existence of God, not simply on the ground of scripture or tradition, but on the unshakable basis of immediate perception and deduction therefrom. It is Sankara’s firm conviction that nothing can be said to be transitory unless something is enduring, that no appearance is possible without a reality underlying it. The fact of the death of the individual, the changing nature of thought, and the fleeting behaviour of the world is enough to posit the existence of a great Reality which does not vanish with the individual or perish with the world. This Supreme Being is God, and to know Him is to know the truth of all things in all forms in time as well as in space.
The destiny of man is unity with God, for man is essentially inseparable from God. Man is a part of the world, and the world is rooted in God; it cannot exist if God is not. The reality of the world is the reality of God. Whatever has any value in the world belongs to the nature of God. Sankara avers that God, or lshvara, is ultimately independent of all things and cannot be related to any externalised condition. When He is thought to be so related, He is called the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer of the world. As He is in Himself, He is the Absolute Whole, Brahman, Satchidananda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss-Absolute). Man being only an appearance, his truth is in God, and man is, in the highest sense, God Himself; the jiva, when it is completely disillusioned, is the same as Brahman.
What, then, is the relation between the individual, the world and God? Sankara would forbid any such idea or use of expressions even suggesting a tripartite nature of existence. Only to man, the blinded individual, the world seems to be different from God and also from himself, who, too, seems to him to be different from God. The moment the screen is lifted, it will be seen that what really is, is an ocean of pure consciousness, the boundless Absolute, where the world and the individual are no more separate beings, but are united in Its indivisible glory of Infinity and Immortality. This is the grand destination of life, the purpose of everyone’s existence, the goal of all aspirations and endeavours. Brahman alone is real; all else has no reality independent of Brahman.
The incarnation of Sankara had the supreme mission of opening the eyes of humanity to the Transcendent Ideal, for the attainment of which life is meant. The human being is asked to discipline and regulate his life so as to conform to the Eternal Reality of God, Atman or Brahman, the direct realisation of which alone is the aim of the activities in this universe. Sankara teaches the religion for all mankind, the one true religion of Brahmanubhava or Absolute experience. The practice of this eternal religion means, as a prerequisite thereto, the culture and nurture of the virtues of non-irritability, self-restraint, peace, fortitude, faith and collectedness of mind, which are to be carefully practised with the aid of clear discrimination of Truth and non-attachment to external objects and states. This implies a spontaneous implementation of personal, social and national as well as international peace as a natural consequence of the Universal Selfhood of Reality. In the history of the human race, there were indeed very few who preached with such an ardour of feeling and clarity of understanding the great doctrine of Truth, that in the realisation of the immortal Atman alone lies the real solace of the individual and of society. Glory to Sankara-Bhagavatpada, the eye-opener, the light-giver, the consoler, the healer of the wound of limitation, the remedier of the disease of ignorance!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 23 July 2013 20:36
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Idam brahma, idam kshatram, ime lokah, ime devah, imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. “This Source of knowledge; this source of power; all these worlds; all these gods; all these beings – All this is just the Self.”
This proclamation is like a Brahma Astra that Sage Yajnavalkya is discharging against every kind of attachment one can conceive in this world. It is somewhat easy to accept that God is everywhere. It becomes easy because we always externalise the location of God, however much we may try to universalise Him. The idea of location in space does not leave us so easily. God is everywhere, this is what we generally believe. The everywhereness of God implies that there is space, and inasmuch as our mind is wedded completely to the concept of spatial expansion, we feel a little bit comforted when we are told that God is everywhere.
Now, here, a thunderbolt is discharged by Sage Yajnavalkya when he says the Self also is everywhere. Imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. All the fourteen worlds are the Self. Here we will not find it so easy to accept it, because we cannot spatialise the concept of Self. Our Self cannot be somewhere else, it must be within us only. But, what does one mean by saying “all the worlds, all the gods, all this is the Self”. What is this that the Sage is telling us? What exactly is the Self? Can anyone tell us what is the Self? What meaning can we attach to this word? There is myself, yourself, this self, that self! The self is something which cannot be externalised, objectified or spatialised in any way. The Self is the utter subjectivity of universality. The universal concept is rather easy to accept because we may spatialise even the universal being. But the Self cannot be spatialised – I cannot be anywhere else than in myself.
But what does this declaration say? Imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. All the created beings, all the worlds, ima lokah – all – sarvam yad ayam atma. Can I place myself in the location of something which is the extended world outside? Is the world outside my self? How can I tear the internal location of my selfhood and place it in the sun, or anywhere else? This is an exercise which is like the Brahma Astra to the human concept of any value in this world. Can anyone believe that his self or her self is anywhere else other than in one’s own self? Is it possible? Is the Self sitting in Brahma Loka, is it in Bhuvar Loka, Swarga Loka? Is it in Patala, is it in the sun, the moon and the stars? Can my self be conceived as being located there? But it is necessary to conceive such a possibility according to this great statement of Sage Yajnavalkya. This will rend the knot of attachment to personality, attachment to selfhood in an individualised form, and the result would be unthinkable. This exercise should not be attempted by anyone with even the least attachment to human individuality, personality, in whom the idea of ‘I’ or ‘mine’ has not gone. When an immature person attempts this kind of meditation and tries to wrench the self of oneself and place it on a tree outside, disastrous consequences may follow. If a purified mind tries this, liberation may follow.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is not intended for everybody. It is a cosmic meditation. In the Chhandogya Upanishad we have cosmological meditations which are wonderful by themselves. But in the Brihadaranyaka we have the cosmic meditation. The whole thing is transcendent, beyond ourselves. How would we think of anything that is beyond ourselves? Even when we think of self, we place it within ourselves. My self is inside me. But this great admonition of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says the Self is not within us – it is within everybody, within everything, within all the worlds and the universes. In all space and all time, the Self is there. Can anyone close one’s eyes and meditate thus? I am present in a far off distance of a world near the skies above! Can you place yourself in the skies and contemplate from there? But, you may say, ‘this is an easy thing, I can do that, I can place myself in the skies’, but when you place yourself in the skies, again you are bringing a spatial concept, which is not permitted in the case of the awareness of one’s Self.
Difficult is this to understand. The Self cannot be placed in the tree, or the sun or moon, or stars, because if the Self is in the sun, then there is no sun, there is only Self there. But then, the idea of distance may be there, persisting again and again, as an inveterate habit.
Never should this meditation be attempted by an impure mind. We are happily conversant with the proclamations of all the religions and philosophies that God is everywhere, Brahman is everywhere, but nobody says that the Self is everywhere. This is a new thing that we hear in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. We feel that the Self cannot be everywhere, It cannot be anywhere except in one’s own self. This ‘one’s own self’ is the crucial matter. That is to say, all the worlds are your own Self. Bhu-Loka, Bhuvar-Loka, Swar-Loka, Mahar-Loka, Jana-Loka, Tapo-Loka, Satya-Loka; – these widespread universal expanses of being are our Self! If you can imagine how your Self could be – that kind of imagination should be extended to all the worlds. The self will shudder, it can break into pieces, or it can melt down into the extent of the whole world in an instant. If this meditation can be continued a miracle can take place.
If anything is dear and lovable, the thing that is loved is not actually loved, it is not dear. The Self in the object is what is actually attracting. The Self in the object attracts the Self in us and then the object looks attractive. It is not the object that is attractive, because a corpse cannot attract anybody, a dead body does not attract. It is the life principle that attracts, the Selfhood in the object is attracting. The beauty and the grandeur of the life principle, it is that which attracts. Where is this Selfhood? Again the question arises – everywhere!
There are varieties of selves. The lowest is the physical self – ‘I am coming, I am going’ – statements like this indicate the physical self. When you speak of ‘my family’, ‘my son’, ‘my daughter’, ‘my husband’, ‘my wife’, you are identifying yourself with the family atmosphere. When you speak of ‘my community’, ‘I am from Brahmana community’, ‘Kshatriya community’, you are identifying yourself with a group of people of a particular category. ‘I belong to Uttar Pradesh, I belong to Gujarat’ – if you say like that, you are identifying yourself with a larger location of human beings. ‘I am an Indian, I am a British, I am an American’ – when you say that, you are expanding your concept of selfhood to a larger area geographically. All these are selves. An American loves an American, a British loves a British, an Indian loves an Indian, a Tamilian likes a Tamilian, a Kannada man likes a Kannada one – they will talk to each other in that language only. Language is the characteristic of the attachment of self to particular cultural patterns. Language attracts.
These are some of the various forms in which the Self finds itself cosily, and seems to be attracting everything everywhere. It is the Self that is attracting the Self in different connotations, in various areas of application. Here we are placing ourselves in a rather dangerous zone. We are habituated again and again to think that the Self cannot be anywhere else than inside us. By ‘us’ we mean this body! What else can the ‘I’ be except this body? “I am going tomorrow to Gujarat.” – Who is speaking this? Which self is speaking? It is the bodily self that is speaking. This habit cannot be escaped from. Now, the Upanishadic dictum is that you cannot go to Gujarat like that. The whole universe you carry with you when you move. The universal Self moves with you who are the universal.
The Selfhood in the object attracts the Selfhood in the observer of the object. The Self pulls the Self. All love is this much. The husband does not love the wife for the sake of the wife, the wife does not love the husband for the sake of the husband, but for the sake of the Self present there. People do not love wealth for the sake of wealth, but for the sake of the Selfhood therein in a widened form. In what we call wealth, we love the Self. Whatever it be, in any part of the universe, in any context, in any location, the Self is present exclusively.
The Self need not necessarily be that imagined self inside the physical body. I have already given some idea that there can be many kinds of self exteriorised outside the physical location of oneself until it becomes the universal Self. The universal Self should not be considered as a pervading thing, because the Self is inside, it is inside something, and it is inside the universe. The universe is not an extended form in space. The idea of ‘all-pervading’ also should be given up, because the Self does not pervade, It is just what It is; It is utter subjectivity incapable of externalisation. We cannot split it into the object seen. The Self cannot be an object that is visualised. It is the visualiser. Thus, ‘everything’ is the Visualiser only. How would you like to know the knower by whom alone everything is known? Who will know the knower?
You must read the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, especially the Second and the Fourth Chapters where Yajnavalkya pours the highest wisdom on Maitreyi and King Janaka, till they become stunned completely.
“Go on, Yajnavalkya, say further, I will give you a thousand cows as big as elephants. Go on, tell me further, further. I am not satisfied. You are raining nectar on me. Go on, Yajnavalkya.” It would be good if we had been present there in that audience. Oh, how blessed it would be! Nectar flowed from the words of Sage Yajnavalkya, and the highly satisfied King said, “Go on, go on further, great Sage, further! I am not satisfied. I’m giving you thousands of cows as big as bulls, take.”
Oh, I cannot find words to tell you what all this actually means or implies. The most difficult thing, the most frightening thing is that your self can be somewhere else. “Oh, it is in all creation! How is it possible? I am sitting here. This person with this qualification, this length, this breadth, this much responsibility; how can I be somewhere else?” You are really somewhere else. This is the meaning of the Universal Self, for want of better words. “Whoever knows this possesses the whole world. He himself is the world.”
Can anybody contain all things inside oneself and be at rest? It is not possible even to hear these things. These admonitions and teachings are damaging to the egoistic individuality which locates the self inside the body only. Enough of it. Can you imagine that your self is sitting in the most distant stars? Can you imagine that you yourself are the stars, you are shining as the far-off luminary, and ‘I am the Self’? You are not seeing the stars; you yourself are the stars. You are the sky; therefore the sky is not extended. The moment you say sky is extended, it becomes an object. But you yourself are the space – then the spatial characteristic of space vanishes. If you go on drumming this into your ears, and go on racking your head, scratching yourself – how is it possible? Is it possible? You will find this is not possible. This is why preliminary qualifications are prescribed: Viveka, Vairagya, Shatsampatti, Mumukshutva – discrimination, dispassion, the six virtues and longing for liberation. These preliminary qualifications are necessary. If anyone is distracted in the direction of anything else than the Self, then the Self will hide itself fully away somewhere.
There are very great things in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which should not be read by impure minds. With these subtle longings, we should not go to the Upanishads to seek, “let me see if I can find something there.” You should not experiment with these things. You should say, “I shall find it.” The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is a supermarket – you can find anything there. It is a forest, a large, large forest of knowledge – Brihadaranyaka. It is aranyaka, a forest of knowledge. That also, brhat very large, impregnable forest for every kind of knowledge. Very vast: it will take one year to say anything about this book. Even one year is not sufficient. You are touching the Self, that is the most important thing. You can touch anything and go scot-free, but we cannot touch the Self and go like that. It will do some mischief afterwards.
“Do not talk much about it,” Yajnavalkya tells some of the questioners in the assembly of Sage Janaka. “Do not talk much about it.” And one Shakalya went on arguing, “Where is its location, where is it located? Where is the heart located? Yajnavalkya said “Hey, don’t ask too much lest your head may fall off.” “Tell me the great Purusha that is declared in the Upanishads. If you don’t understand this, your head will fall just now.” And he did not know the Purusha in the Upanishads that well, and robbers took the head away.
There was a very learned lady in that assembly of Janaka called Gargi. “I’ll challenge Yajnavalkya with my questions. Answer them!” She discharged arrows like Rama’s arrows. “Where is the sky located? Where is time located? Where is Brahma Loka located? Where is anything located?” “Don’t ask more. Don’t ask questions like that,” said Yajnavalkya, “lest your head be down.” Then she did not speak, she kept quiet.
Do not talk too much about the Self, you are interfering with your own Self. You can go scot-free by interfering with other people, but you cannot interfere with your Self and then be all right. You will destroy your very existence. So Upanishadic knowledge is like dynamite – it can burst on your own self if the purity is not enough. That is said because with the Self there is no seeing process. But does it mean that the Supreme Being does not see anything? It does not see, and yet it sees.
Because there is no distinction between seeing and not seeing there, in that condition. God has two kinds of knowledge – general knowledge and particular knowledge. The general knowledge is that the structure of the universe is clear to your mind. Every detail, every bit of the universe is known to you. The particularised knowledge means even the hair of a person can be counted. How many living beings are there? How much hair does each one have? They are all counted. And counting does not require timing; one, two, three, four. It is a non-mathematical calculation at once, an unthinkable mathematical feat is achieved there. God knows every little thing. If a cat is moving on the mountain there, He will know that the cat is moving. You will think that God has no other work.
In the Atharva Veda there is a Sukta called Varuna Sukta. It is available in English translation. If you have any longing, it will melt down in the fire of this inclusiveness of God-being. All these statements of the Upanishads in different places amount to one thing: that by externalizing consciousness we will achieve nothing. It is not enough if you merely internalise it also. You should neither be an extrovert nor an introvert but, if you can coin a word, an omnivert. Everywhere you perceive everything. That ‘I’ is not the physical ‘I’ with which you see the world – it is the soul observing itself in things which look like non-Self. The non-Self does not exist; but even in that so-called non-Self the Self is peeping through Its own eye.
The Plenum, the felicity, the incomparable, is the only source of bliss. Where do you find that bliss? In that condition you have not to see anything; no use of peeping out, and no use of hearing anything. No use of thinking anything or understanding anything – all the sense organs convert into one point of total awareness. That you may consider as the Supreme Self, God-Self, or whatever you may call it according to your wish.
The greatest qualification is wanting It; no other qualification is adequate. You must want It. “I want It and I don’t want anything else. I shall get It,” like Nachiketas insisting in the abode of Yama: “Whatever you have given, take it back. I shall go with this answer to this great question that I have put. Without that I do not want anything else that you have offered me-long life, all joys, suzerainty over all the worlds; no, you take them back. Answer my question.”
Such determination, if there is in any one of us, the Truth reveals itself automatically. The Truth is seeking us much more than we seek it. As it is wider than our concept of itself, it is a greater force, it calls you. God calls you with greater severity of intensity than we are calling Him.
“Maitreyi, I have told you everything, I am now departing from this place,” Yajnavalkya said. All this teaching to his consort Maitreyi ended with this renunciation. This renunciation is of a different kind. It is called Vidvat Sannyasa. It is not the Sannyasa that people take ordinarily for the sake of knowing something. Here, it renounces having already known everything. It is called Vidvat Sannyasa and not Vividisha Sannyasa. It is not Karma Sannyasa. What happened to Yajnavalkya afterwards, no one knows. The whole story ends here with this stunning, shaking, earth-shaking statement. We cannot say anything more than this. Nowhere will you find statement or speaking of this kind.
“The Pranas depart”, we generally say. “Oh, the Prana has departed.” But in the case of this person who is totally desireless, who desires only the Self that is everywhere, who is 100% satisfied, such a person’s Prana will not depart. Where will it go, because his Self is everywhere? And therefore the question of departing does not arise. There is no particular part of the world where the Prana will go. It will melt down here. A drop of water floating on the surface of the ocean wants to enter the ocean. What distance does it have to travel? It has to sink down there itself. So, it has not to depart anywhere, crawling distances; it melts down, the bubble bursts into the ocean.
This is called Sadyo Mukti, immediate salvation, and not a stage-by-stage Krama Mukti or gradual salvation. Yajnalvakya’s instructions lead to immediate salvation-it is not a question of tomorrow but (in our case there is a big ‘But’) the karmas that we have performed in the previous births are sitting inside our mind like a knot, hard knot in the form of Brahma-granthi, Vishnu-granthi and Rudra-ganthi-Avidya, Kama, Karma as they call them. They are the Granthis-they have to be melted down. You cannot cut them like a Gordian knot, but melt them down by dispassion, daily meditation, and wanting That only, and wanting nothing else.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]