Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995

by Swami Krishnananda

14. Existing for Moksha

(Darshan given on August 8th, 1995.)

A visitor (a sannyasin): I want to serve humanity.

Swamiji: Why do you want to serve humanity?

Visitor: Service is my habit.

Swamiji: A person cannot exist for any purpose except for moksha, and to think he is existing for service is a travesty of the whole situation in life. Why should you exist in the world? You need not exist, also. What is the purpose of existing? We can abolish our existence. Each man is born alone, and you will die alone, and nobody will come with you. All great people will desert you in one second. You are the great people, as far as you are concerned, but God will care only for you, and not for what you have done here. What you are before God, that only is virtuous, and what you are to other people has no meaning. You are thinking erroneously, like a politician. Politicians have a way of thinking: We shall uplift the world, build a dam and have hospitals, and so on. Finally they perish after doing all these things.

Unless you reach the Supreme Being, you are not a human being. You are simply useless. Your whole life is a misery and a travesty. So we should not distract our minds here and there in unnecessary activities, especially as we are sannyasins. We are examples of spiritual supremacy before all people. Your face will shine with a divinity, and your very face itself is a teaching, like the sun. If God is pleased with you, the whole world will be pleased with you.

You are here only to spread the greatness of God, and if that is not done, all other things will be like straw. You will get burnt into ashes. I am speaking for the good of every person. Otherwise, you will become politicians, canvassing agents for the next election, and become ministers, and build dams. This is not our duty. It has no purpose finally. We can also build dams. Why should the government do that? I will build dams, and everywhere bridges I will build. It is a great service to people, but we are not meant for that. We are intended for illuminating people, and not to do merchandise work and marketing work, and all that. It is not our duty.

Visitor: I surrender, Swamiji. Suggest to me something.

Swamiji: If your heart is yearning, God will bless you, but your heart should really yearn. You should not doubt: “I made a mistake. God may not come.” If that is there, then He will not come. You must be a saint and sage. Your very existence is a light. Wherever you go, you will spread light by your personality.

I am not saying that you should not do some good. You can do some service also, but not at the cost of your spiritual welfare. Actually, you will realise you have no friends in this world. Don't be under the impression that you have got friends. They will desert you at any moment. Even the nearest relatives will desert you when the time for it comes. When you have something to give to people, they will come to you as friends. When there is nothing to give, they will desert you. People are wanting to exploit you finally.

Side by side with your little capacity to be of help to people – it is all right, there is nothing wrong – your rootedness must be somewhere else. And if everything goes, still you are great. Your greatness does not depend upon what you possess. It depends upon what you are in your own self. If everything goes, if even the cloth goes, still you are a great man. That you must realise. This requires deep meditation, conviction, and your heart must rise to God.

If you think doing service is more important than moksha, you have not thought properly as to what moksha is. It is only a word for us. When you say you don't want moksha, it means the mind has not understood the very meaning of life. It is not easy to understand it because it requires a new education altogether. A whole reorientation of thought is necessary. An ordinary way of thinking is purely mechanical. It is not transcendental, so it will work for a few days and afterwards it will collapse. You require guidance from great Masters, satsanga with great souls. What you want is satsanga with great souls, not building hospitals and so on. They are not going to bring anything. Everywhere you have got hospitals. The whole world is filled with hospitals, and what are you going to do by adding one more hospital? That will satisfy your personality, but your spirit cannot be satisfied.

I am saying this because you are a spiritual man, a sannyasin, and you are a guide to people for enlightenment. Wherever you go, you spread light. That is your duty.

Swamiji:  [To another visitor] What are you wanting? What is in your mind, tell me.

Visitor: I wanted to ask you one question. Five years before I was here with you in your darshan. You asked me, “What are you doing in India?” I replied, “I want to look for God more inside.” You said, “No, you look for God outside.” That was very difficult to hear for me, and I wrote it down, and I took it in my heart, and I was working on this, but I think I didn't succeed too well.

Swamiji: Tell me what you are trying to succeed in?

Visitor: You told me to look for God outside. I wrote it down. And it was right because I was supposed to look for God in every person and everything I meet.

Swamiji: That concept of God being everywhere and everything may look as if it is outside because people are sitting outside. Do you feel these people are inside you or they are outside you? What do you say?

Visitor: I see them outside but I feel them inside also.

Swamiji: That is very good. So if you consider the world as if it is outside, then it will appear that God is outside. But if you feel that the world is not outside you, then God cannot be outside, and also not inside because the idea of outside and inside goes away by the acceptance of God's presence everywhere. Do you catch this point? You practise it.

Another visitor: I want to find the Lord in my husband because my husband doesn't accept my way of praying and belief in God.

Swamiji: Why didn't you bring them here?

Visitor: He doesn't want to come with me to India.

Swamiji: He doesn't like India?

Visitor: No.

Swamiji: What does he like?

Visitor: To stay in Europe.

Swamiji: What does he believe in? He must be believing in something.

Visitor: I think he has a strong belief inside, but he has a very strict Catholic education.

Swamiji: If it is a Catholic education, what is wrong with it?

Visitor: Nothing is wrong with it, but he felt very comfortable with it.

Swamiji: No, you are perhaps saying he is an Orthodox Catholic Christian. Let it be. Why are you worrying about it?

Visitor: He had this education in his childhood, and he did not like it, so now he rejects God and everything.

Swamiji: Has he rejected Christianity also?

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: Then what is he now? If he has rejected something, then he must have embraced something else.

Visitor: He likes people very much, and he thinks that with my belief in God I go far away from him. He is afraid that when I go to India and find my own spirituality, that I will stay here. I will go away from him.

Swamiji: How does he know that you are always thinking of God?

Visitor: When I do my meditation.

Swamiji: When you do your meditation, do you make a gesture and pose, and make a very unsocial posture? Or are you looking normal?

You see, I am now talking to you in a normal manner. I am sitting with people, but I am still meditating on God, and I am not making any faces or anything like that, and nobody can know that I am meditating on God because I am talking to people. So if you are an expert in meditating on God, nobody will know that you are meditating on Him.