Darshan of Swami Krishnananda – 1995

by Swami Krishnananda

19. A Necessary Desire

(Darshan given on August 23rd, 1995)

A visitor: How do I meditate?

Swamiji: Chant Om for fifteen minutes every day. Then close your eyes and breathe deeply. When the breath goes inside, the chest expands. When you breathe out, it goes back. When you breathe inside, feel the whole air enters into you – not the little air of the house. So much air is there in the whole space, and the whole thing is going inside. When that happens, you feel great strength comes because the air of the whole world is being sucked inside. Feel the whole thing comes in. Far, far, far sky – from there the air is coming, and so powerful, fresh oxygen is entering the lungs. After some time you can hold the breath for two seconds. When you breathe in, the chest comes forward; when you breathe out, the stomach goes inside. Do you catch the point?

Today you do only this, and nothing more is necessary. Do this for half an hour. Then I will see you tomorrow.

An ashramite: I have a necessary desire.

Swamiji: You think that desire is a necessity?

Ashramite: If necessary, then desire comes.

Swamiji: Suppose you want to go and kill somebody. That is also a desire only. Now, is it a necessity or not? Then you will also be getting the same thing afterwards, so are you prepared for that? Only a fool will think like that, because you will get back whatever you have done to others. Suppose you have a necessity to destroy some man; then what will happen? Then it will react and you will be destroyed afterwards. So would you like to be destroyed?

Ashramite: It must be for some higher value.

Swamiji: Nobody can have a higher value by destruction. Destruction cannot bring a higher value. Destruction is a negative activity. Your answer is not correct. Desire does not arise due to necessity. It is due to the weakness of the finitude of personality. The more you are weak, the more is the necessity, as you call it. If you are very thin, you want to become stout, and the greater is your thinness, the greater is the need for becoming stout. It is the counterpart of your present personality. So the more is the deficiency in you, the more is the desire to be compensated by something outside. But will anybody succeed in fulfilling all the desires?

Ashramite: Swamiji, I think the desire is to get a thing that is outside.

Swamiji: So who asked you to think that they are outside you? Why do you create a problem and want to solve it afterwards? This is a politician's work. The politician's work is to create a problem and then try to solve it. Why do you create a problem, and then afterwards try to solve it by a wrong method? You are trying to solve it, but by a wrong method. You cannot get a thing by desiring it because it is as much a subject as you are. The subject cannot attract a subject, and from its point of view you are an object. It can also pull you that side. What makes you so egoistically think that you are the subject, and that others are objects? Why don't you give the credit of being a subject there also?

An ant is as self-conscious and has as much self-love and self-respect as you have got, and you are considering it as an object that you can sweep away. Can you do that? Somebody will sweep you away also, somebody stronger than you. It is a great blunder and uncharitable attitude of anybody to think another thing is an object. It is an insult to call people objects. You should not use such words at all. They are not objects. Even an atom is not an object; it is self-dependent. It has a value by itself. It has a soul. It asserts itself, as you are asserting yourself. It wants to survive in the same way as you want to survive. It does not want to become a servant of yours. Nobody likes to become a servant because to become a servant is to become an object, and that is an error which will not work for a long time. A servant will assert his independence one day or the other. For some time because of weakness we feel he looks like a servant, and one day he will feel that he is an important person and not a servant of anybody. Why should I consider myself as subservient to somebody else? In what way? Is the other person having four eyes and two noses? I am also having the same two eyes and one nose, same stomach, same desire, same importance, same survival instinct. Whatever the boss wants, the servant also wants, so in what way is he insufficient? Why do you call him a servant? You are thinking wrongly that others are inferior to you. To consider anything as an object is to regard yourself as superior, and others as inferior.

That is why nobody can fulfil their desires in the world. There is always travesty, suffering, bereavement and loss. A person who desires cries and weeps and goes on suffering, and gets nothing out of it. The whole thing goes away because it is outside you when you consider it as an object, so how can the outside thing become the inside? It is a contradiction. The thought also is a contradiction.

But if you have got that strength of meditative force with which you identify your consciousness with the existence of the object, you become the object itself. This is what is called samadhi. The object is not wanted by you, because the object is you. Then you will see what happens. It will be you, and when it has become you, you will not want it anymore.

If you are in a position to do this kind of exercise with all the things in the world, then all the things become you. Even space and time become you because they also look like outside things. Even the sun and the moon and the stars become you. At that time, what do you think in your mind, tell me? What do you think? You have got everything, whatever you want, in one stroke. You wanted something; you have got it. And you got it in such a way that you will never ask for it afterwards. If whatever you want is already yourself because your consciousness has identified itself with that, it immediately runs to you because it is the self and you are the self, and two selves cannot exist so they merge into one self only, a larger self. The self becomes larger and larger, larger and larger because of the identification with all things, so that it becomes the universal Self, and then you are not a meditating individual. You are the Universal, conscious of itself only. Then what will happen, nobody can explain.

Now, that which listens to what I am saying is the higher reason in you. It appreciates. But when you go out, the lower personality will pull you down and it will say: “No, this will not work.” The higher mind listens and appreciates: “Yes, it is true.” After sometime the lower mind says, “You are a fool. You do what I say.” The power of the gravitational pull of the Earth and the whole world of externality is so intense that nobody can resist it, and so intellectual appreciation is wiped out in one second by it. The externality is so powerful that it will not allow you to think like this for more than one second. But if you insist on it and submerge your understanding into the feeling and the appreciation and the experience, then you can counteract this lower pull, and then the entire thing that is pulling you down will become you. That also will become your friend. The lower will change its course.

You are living separately, independently. You don't talk to anybody, you have no friends, you have no Guru, and you have no occasion even to think. You don't read anything. If you live like that, you will be carried by the wind of the world. Wherever the wind blows, you will be thrown out. You cannot live by yourself like that. You require a larger support. Your strength is not sufficient because the world is stronger than you. It will pull you in any direction, and afterwards you will feel the whole thing has gone.

Why don't you sit one hour alone to yourself? Why do you talk to anybody? What is the purpose? You have left your home and come here, not to go on talking to somebody. You could have talked there also. What is the use of it? Here you have come for thinking differently altogether. Why do you talk to any person? Nobody can give you anything. You must remember that. You cannot expect anything from anybody. They will simply put you out when the time for it comes. You have to stand for yourself, and that strength you have to develop from inside. It cannot come unless your mind changes thoroughly in the thinking process.

Tremendous faith is necessary that this will work: “My heart is pure. I am sincere.” And it will certainly work. If you think like that, in three days you will find a difference. In three days, because truth is stronger than untruth, so even a few minutes of thinking truth will completely overturn all the untruth of nature.

What is the harm in sitting alone for one hour? “I will not talk to anyone for one hour. I will be by myself only. I have come alone, and will go alone, and will also live alone. I didn't bring anybody when I came, and when I go I won't take anybody, so why should I have so many things in the middle? Now also I am alone only. I want nothing. I am self-sufficient, and I can get what I want by thought itself.” Have this confidence. That is the characteristic of a superman. You should aim to become a superman. Why do you want to remain a little boy? What is the good of it? You should not go on thinking “I am a little boy”, and so on. Why does this thought come to you?

The whole world can come to you in one minute if your heart is sincere. Call it, and it will come. When it comes, God also comes. You have no time to think. For a few minutes you come here, then you think of the Annekshetra, and that you have to go here and there. It is not that you should not do that, but this is more important than that. Who prevents you from thinking correctly? You do whatever you like, but why do you change the thought also? Is it necessary? Nobody can compel you to think in any particular manner. They may ask you to do this work or that work, but they cannot say “Think like this”. You are the master of your own mind. You can think whatever you like. Even in the railway station, who troubles you? Social conditions may not make you feel that you are totally independent, but in mind you are totally independent. Nobody can compel you to think only in this way.

Ashramite: But there are things outside that I have to think about, Swamiji.

Swamiji: The mind has to first understand what is necessary for it to think; then outside business will not arise. Again you are talking about 'outside'. 'Outside' means the object only, so I told you how to bring it in tune with yourself. The outside has to become the inside. Every day you should sit alone. You should not talk to anybody for one hour. Keep quiet, and don't even read books. Don't do any work for one hour, and deeply think this matter, this little thing. Every day you strike on this more and more, more and more. Otherwise, you lose this world, and lose the other world also afterwards. This world has gone because you have left everything and come here. Now the other thing also will go away if you don't pursue it. That is very unfortunate. You cannot lose both worlds, this and that both. At least something must come. You could have got a job and large salary, and the world would have come to you, but you rejected that. Now what else is there? If that has been rejected, something else must be there. That also goes because you have no time to think it. Then you are in a very miserable condition. That state of affairs should not come to you because a day will come when you are alone to yourself. Nobody will help you. At that time you should not feel miserable, and it is not necessary to feel miserable. You have got friends everywhere if you are really conscious of them.