Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

11. Humility, Meditation

(Darshan given in March 1998)

Swamiji: Humility is the abolition of ego. You understand me?

A visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: When the ego is abolished, then you are automatically humble. When you do not assert yourself, and you allow the Universal Being to assert Itself in you, then your personality-consciousness gets abolished. That is the abolishing of the ego, which is the meaning of automatic humility, humbleness, goodness and simplicity. All these qualities follow from the extinguishing of the ego and allowing the Universal Being to enter into you.

It is very difficult to understand all this. Every person has an ego, every person can get angry, every person can fight. So where is humility? Very difficult. If God has entered you, then you have no fear. But why don't you allow Him to enter you? Why do you not allow God to enter you? You tell Him, “Don't come!” Then how will He come? If you are here, then He cannot be here. Two people cannot be in the same place. Where He is, you are not. When God enters you, your personality gets identified with God. You understand me? Then you become so humble, simple. You would not like even to speak afterwards. You become a saint at that time. If God enters you, from that moment you become a saint. So become a saint.

[Later on]

Meditation is concentration on unity. So to the extent you are able to free yourself from the perception of external things, to that extent your meditation is successful. Otherwise, you will just be thinking, thinking, thinking, as the whole day you are thinking something, so meditation also will become one kind of thinking.

Meditation is not thinking – very important matter to remember. Everybody can think, but what is the difference between meditation and thinking? The whole world is thinking, but it is not meditation. The thing that you see outside you has to become part and parcel of yourself. How is it possible? Can the thing that you see with your eyes become part and parcel of yourself? Then there is no need to perceive that object.

Meditation is not perceiving, but being the very thing which you seem to be perceiving. Meditation is the process of enhancement of being. This is very important to remember. Whatever you may see with your eyes, whatever you may hear with your ears, whatever you may touch, draw them into yourself, merge them into your being, and there is no need to see them afterwards because they are with you, they are you. Your dimension has increased. You become as large in your being as the area covered by the objects or persons whom you are thinking in your mind. Is it a difficult thing? If it is a difficult thing, to that extent the power of meditation is insufficient.

We are socially bound people, always thinking of human society, other people, other things. But really there are no other people in this world. They are the manifestations of one principle only. Meditation is the art of absorbing all this sense of otherness into the unity of complete being. And the idea that you are meditating also should go because you are one of the objects in the world. I am saying that the object should be withdrawn into the centre of meditation. Now, who will withdraw it? Not you, because you are also an object like anybody else. So you have to centralise your consciousness in a supremely transcendent state, wherein or wherefrom you will be seen as an object like anybody else. You will see your own self as an object, and you will not be the meditating person; you are an object like any other object in the world. That thing which is transcendent to both yourself and others is meditating.

This is a herculean task. Only a very highly purified mind can think like this, and every day you must weep and cry for achieving this purpose. You cannot say, “I am going for a yoga course.” Nowadays there is a fad everywhere: “I am going for yoga teacher's course.” These are all no good – this course, and all that. You cannot forget that people are sitting outside you, that there is a world outside you. As long as this obsession persists, meditation will not bring any fruit. It will simply be going for marketing and wasting one's time. Very serious matter it is. You are touching the vitals of the universe when you meditate. It is not a joke. It is not an exercise. It is not a routine. It is not just a go-lucky system. It is a very, very serious matter which makes you other than what you are. You become a transcendent being, not this person or that person who is seated here. You melt completely down into the transcendent, together with everything you see outside. The whole world melts into that Being, and that Being is meditating on you also, so you don't exist there.

Collect your thoughts along these lines and see how far you are able to concentrate your mind on this transcendent presence.