Larry: Why was the universe created?

SWAMIJI: The answer is inside the cause; it is not in the effect. If the effect has entered the cause, immediately the answer comes. The effect cannot carry the answer. The effect can only carry a question. The answer is hidden inside the cave of the cause, from where the effect has come. It is like trying to climb on one’s own shoulders. The effect has to enter the cause and then you will find “by knowing which, all things are known”, as the Upanishad says. What is that by knowing which, all things are known? Know It. That is the cause. Now you are the effect. The effect must enter the cause and you will then find everything is clear like daylight. For that purpose, you have to practise Yoga. Do something in right earnest.

Larry: And is it true that the effect, when it enters the cause, can understand the cause? Does it not give up its mind?

SWAMIJI: There is no question of understanding the cause. It has to become the cause, and it becomes omniscient then. It becomes God-conscious.

Larry: And that is possible on the part of a human being?

SWAMIJI: There is no human being in that stage. There are only two things: the cause and the effect. You can call yourself human, if you like. Every effect has to enter the cause—it must go. There is no question of possibility. It has to; there is no other alternative. Every effect has to enter the cause and be it.

Larry: And then it understands why the effect took place?

SWAMIJI: There is no understanding. It becomes being itself. It is much more than understanding.

Larry: And that is the natural evolution.

SWAMIJI: Yes, perfectly right.

Larry: I don’t have any more questions.

SWAMIJI: It is a great achievement that you have exhausted your questions. Nothing can be greater. It is a wonderful achievement.

Larry: Yes. And I guess I have to figure out what to do now that I have exhausted my questions.

SWAMIJI: You feel empty because all the questions have gone out? When you empty yourself, you will find that you are also filled automatically. “Empty thyself, and I shall fill thee,” is a great proclamation. The world will enter you like a cyclonic flood when you have emptied yourself of the ego-personality. The whole sea will enter you. Now you have blocked its entry. The whole universe will enter you in one second; like a whirlwind it will come and dash upon you and invade you and take possession of you and melt you down into its bosom. Be prepared for that day.

Sarah: In Western religions, when people purify themselves and reach to a high level, they still see God as a king or maybe as Jesus, but still as a figure. Even though they’ll say God is one, they don’t go to the point to say that He is a Universal Absolute Being in the same expressions that people use here. What has stopped them?

SWAMIJI: Their mind can go only to that level; it has not gone further. The mind stops at certain levels. There are stages of evolution of the mind. It can accept certain things, and beyond that it cannot go. It does not mean that the mind will be thinking only like that forever. For some time it will think like that; afterwards, it will evolve further. You cannot expect everybody in the world to think alike. Do you want all people in the world to think the same thought? How is it possible? They are born at different times and so they will also think differently, but everybody will think everything at the proper time. It is a question of time and evolutionary process.

Evolution is an ascent. It is a rising, as you have come from mineral to plant and plant to animal and animal to man; and even in the stage of human thought, there are varieties of levels, and everyone is not in the same level. It is not possible for everyone to be in the same psychological level. Otherwise, everybody would be the same—all people in the world would be thinking the same thought. That is not possible because of differing stages of psychological evolution.

Sarah: So, does that mean that things began at different stages? It did not all begin at the same time?

SWAMIJI: It began with matter, and then became vegetable. Vegetables do not think of God, and you cannot find fault with them merely because trees are not meditating on God Almighty. What do you say? They are also existing in one level, and it is perfectly all right. Just because you have some idea of God, you don’t expect a cow to also think like that. Why should you so expect? It has got its own way of thinking. It has one level, one stage, and you should not compare. The mind can think only up to one level; it cannot go beyond. But, afterwards, it will change its vision by a further advance of perspective.

Sarah: How come there are still rocks? Is evolution connected with chronological time?

SWAMIJI: It is not chronological; rather, it is an all-round, universal movement. It is not beginning somewhere and ending somewhere else. It is a wholesome cosmological self-adjustment.

Sarah: And why are some minds allowed to develop?

SWAMIJI: Nobody is so allowing. It takes place automatically. No one is allowing a child to grow into an adult. It is a spontaneous movement of the universe into higher levels. It is automatic; nobody is ‘allowing’ it. There is nobody there to do that work. There is none outside the world. The world itself is doing it within itself.

Sarah: When one gets to a high level, let’s say of God as king or Jesus, what. . .

SWAMIJI: That is one stage of thinking. You are thinking in terms of time. When you think of anything in terms of time and space, it looks very far and distant. That is why God looks distant. You are thinking in terms of space and time—because space is very wide and it has distance; therefore, when the mind thinks in terms of that, naturally, you foist the distance on God also, and He seems to be far away. God, however, is not a temporal level. It is eternity.

Sarah: Why doesn’t the Truth, or Brahman, break through those misconceptions? If people have gotten so high at that point, why wouldn’t their misconceptions break? If they were real seekers of Truth, why didn’t it?

SWAMIJI: That misconception also will go away in due course. It cannot always be there; it has to pass. Everything has its own time and course. It will break through; it is a question of time.

Larry: Swamiji, this morning you said that the effect cannot know the cause—unless through meditation or through Self-realisation, there the effect can know the cause. In Western religions, I think the concept is a little different in the sense that, for example, in the Jewish religion, the cause has come and spoken to the effect.

SWAMIJI: It cannot speak to the effect. How can it speak, as if they are two different things? The speaking is possible only when the effect has surrendered itself to the cause.

Larry: The cause can speak to itself.

SWAMIJI: Then why do you call it an effect, if that is the case? Why do you bring an unnecessary word when the cause is speaking to itself? You have already created duality by using the word ‘effect’.

Larry: Nonetheless, the appearance is that we have a limited consciousness.

SWAMIJI: ‘We’ means that effect only. ‘You’ are the effect.

Larry: I am the effect, so I live in a state of ignorance.

SWAMIJI: Forget all these words, ‘ignorance’ and all that. You have placed yourself outside the context of the cause. That is what you mean by ignorance. Ignorance is only that much, the effect standing outside the cause and looking at it as an ‘object’.

Larry: I have placed myself outside. . .

SWAMIJI: Yes, outside the context of the cause. And you are looking at it as if it is outside you, and then calling it the world. All the things that you are talking about are this much. You have projected the cause as an external object and are placing yourself outside it, as a subject looking at it, while the truth is the other way round. You cannot consider the cause as an object of yours. It came first; you came afterwards. That is why you consider God Himself as an object and are thinking of Him as something sitting somewhere else. This is what has happened to us.

Larry: The different states of consciousness—deep sleep, dream, waking—are not differences in consciousness?