The Problems of Spiritual Life

by Swami Krishnananda

Larry: Sankaracharya—he speaks about universality?

SWAMIJI: Yes, he talks about everything; there is nothing left out. Whatever you can think in your mind, he already thought. You cannot say one word more than what he has said in the field of philosophy.

Larry: King Solomon said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

SWAMIJI: Whatever one may say, Whitehead opines, is only a footnote to Plato. There is nothing that he has not written. Likewise, here we can say all is a footnote to Acharya Sankara.

Larry: Swamiji, do you have any advice for me?

SWAMIJI: I have already given you advice during these days, and whatever I have told you is the advice for you. That advice covers every circumstance, every event and every person. It is an omnibus, a panacea for all things.

Sarah: There is a part of myself that stops myself from even really wanting God. There is a side that I see doesn’t want God at all, and it is laziness. Do you know how to overcome it?

SWAMIJI: It is not laziness. The value of a thing cannot be appreciated unless the mind is on a level equal to the value of the object that is to be evaluated. I told you the example of a gold necklace put on a cow’s neck. It does not mean that the gold necklace has no value, but the cow cannot appreciate it. It requires a mind suited to it. You cannot want a thing unless you need it. If your needs are already attended to by other means, you will not ask for something irrelevant.

The mind, which is involved in the physical body and social relations, requires a diet that is physical and social. Unfortunately for us, God is neither physical, nor social. Our needs are physical and social at present—and to some extent, psychological. God is none of these. How can God attract us? If you are not merely a physical entity, not a social unit or merely a mind that thinks, but an ontological existence, then you will not have such a problem, doubt, or fear.

Larry:‘Ontological’ means just to ‘be’?

SWAMIJI:‘Ontological’ means concerning ‘pure being’. One cannot be satisfied by anything but ontological existence. Only then love for God and need for God is felt. Your ontological existence is buried deep under the debris of physicality and sociality and psychological and political associations, and that which is buried cannot act. So we do not feel the need for that which can be felt only by that which is deep within. At present we are not wholly ourselves; we are only partially ourselves. We are on the tip of the iceberg of our personality and we are thinking through that tip on the top; and the larger base, which is heavy, is beneath the conscious level.

Our real personality is deeper than the conscious level, but we live only in the conscious level and, therefore, we are really not living in ourselves. Hence, we do not want God at present. This is the problem, an answer to your question. But when you go deep beneath your conscious level, beneath your subconscious and unconscious also, further down, deeper than the unconscious even, you enter the metaphysical level, the ontological being.

Sarah: So I have to look within myself to find it.

SWAMIJI: Go deep, deeper than what you seem to be. What is inside the body? You will find the mind. What is inside the mind? Intellect. What is inside the intellect? In deep sleep, the body is not there, the mind is not there, and the intellect is not there. But are you there? In deep sleep, are you there, or are you not there?

Sarah: It is both.

SWAMIJI: You are there. Have you a doubt? Are you existing in the state of deep sleep, or are you not existing?

Sarah: I do not know. It seems like it is both—that one is all existence, ultimate existence…

SWAMIJI: Are you alive or dead in deep sleep?

Sarah: Very alive.

SWAMIJI: How do you know that you are alive? Who told you? When you had no consciousness of your existence in sleep, how do you make a statement that you are alive there? Is it a hearsay or a real fact? Now you are stumbling on something that is the mystery of your being. That which you were in the state of deep sleep is your real personality—not intellect, not mind, not the senses, not the body, not relations, not friends, not enemies, not gold, not silver. Without anything you existed, and let us know what it was that existed at that time. That is your ontological status, the answer to your question. I gave a little book to Mr. Krauss—an analysis of consciousness. The name of the book is Self-Realisation, Its Meaning and Method. Read it thoroughly.

Sarah: Why do you use the word ‘personality’ when you say “it is the tip of the…”

SWAMIJI:‘Personality’ is what I am seeing with the physical eyes. This five-and-a-half-foot tall—this is the personality; but your real nature is not that, it is universal and all-inclusive. What you are projecting before a camera, that is your personality, but your real nature cannot be seen like that. No one can photograph what you were in deep sleep. Personality is a name for the body-mind complex, the psycho-physical formation.

Larry: There is no such thing as time?

SWAMIJI: It is there as the measure of experience.

Larry: Everything that is for us, in our present state, and the future, has already occurred. Everything that would be tomorrow, for example, has also already occurred, time being relative.

SWAMIJI: Even that which is going to take place after some centuries has already taken place somewhere else—though for you it has not taken place. The Trojan war is taking place even today, in some other realm, though for you it is some centuries-old story. In some place, it is taking place just now; in some other place, it is yet to take place. The relativity of the cosmos is a mystery to the human mind. If you study even our modern physical Theory of Relativity, you will be stunned. The mind will be boggled to such an extent that you will not be able to think any more afterwards, if you understand what this relatively implies.

There is no fixed time; a linear motion of time does not exist. It is entirely relative to circumstance, condition and position of the observer and, therefore, you cannot say what is taking place at what time. Everything is taking place at all times. The Mahabharata war has taken place, but it is just now taking place in some other realm; and in certain other realms, it has not yet taken place.

For us who are bound to a fixed idea of time that is like a block, the fluid motion of time in this relativity fashion is unintelligible. We can never understand anything that is relatively determined in a mutual relationship of components, because we are unable to think like that. You can never think, even for a moment, that you are related to everything in the universe. If that thought enters you mind, you would not know how to live in the world.

And so we try to brush aside such thoughts and imagine that we are localised in one place only, as little entities moving from one place to another place, in a solid space and a solid time, in a solid objective world. This is what we are thinking, which is totally contrary to fact. The fact is something else. One can summon anything at any time, since even dead things are alive in some other place.

I was told that some mechanism has been manufactured somewhere, whereby you can materialise just now, today, the vibrations which were created by the ancient historical events, though they may be centuries in the past. And you can see today, as you see in a television, the events that took place in ancient history by materialisation of these vibrations which are never dead; vibrations never die. Every event is eternal, in a sense.

Larry: You mean the vibrations that were set up by the event when it took place are captured?

SWAMIJI: Yes. All the television pictures that you see are a materialisation of vibrations. There are no pictures there. They are vibrations materialised through a mechanism. And, likewise, they say, vibrations of the ancient past can be condensed into a particular mechanism and you can see now ancient history; Roman history or Homer’s Iliad you may see dramatised just now.

Larry: Yes, it makes sense.

SWAMIJI: So, everything is in eternity. All things are everywhere at all times. You can summon anything and be with it, if your vibrations can rise to the requisite frequency.

Larry: So for each of us, our futures have already occurred.

SWAMIJI: Our future has already occurred—past, present and future are a compact whole. There is no past, present and future, separately by themselves.

Larry: So I am right now living the first day of my life and the last day of my life.

SWAMIJI: Right! Everything. You can call it first or last or middle—whatever you like. It is a long chain, beginningless and endless. Where you began, where you end, where you are in the middle, nobody can say. It is an entire cosmic movement where you cannot say which is the beginning, which is the end.

Larry: So absolutely no change is possible.

SWAMIJI: You can call it a change if you like, from the point of view of your concept of time. It looks like change, but finally it is a timeless occurrence.

Larry: So all the events in my life have already been determined—every moment of every day, every thought, every feeling.

SWAMIJI: Everything—every moment, and even every thought, every feeling. Eternity—the word ‘eternity’ explains everything. It has no past, present and future and, therefore, anything that you say in terms of the time process is invalid to it. It is just there, and all things are there. Here and now, in a compact integrality—all things can be seen just here. That is the meaning of eternity. But we cannot think eternity; we think in time only. We think in terms of process. So, we are unable to make out what sense it is to have all things in one spot. It is a centre which is not a geometrical point, but a centre which is everywhere, as they call it, with circumference nowhere.

Larry: So the consciousness, my own self-consciousness, right at this moment, is a self-consciousness that feels as though it is in December 15, 1990.

SWAMIJI: Your consciousness is now thinking in terms of body and time process.

Larry: Yes, but the consciousness that was thinking yesterday, December 14, is it still conscious in the same way as I am feeling consciousness right now, December 15?