Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

2. Finding a Teacher

(Darshan given on January 8th, 1996)

A visitor: Does the length of life depend on one's spirituality?

Swamiji: It is just karma. It has nothing to do with spirituality. The length of life depends on the karma of the past, spirituality or no spirituality. It is irrelevant.

Another visitor: How can one find a teacher?

Swamiji: You find a teacher who will be able to clear your mind. When God wills, He will bring a teacher to you. When you are ready for it, the teacher will come to you. Or, the other way, you have seen thousands of people in the world. One of them might have attracted you as the most important person. You can take that person as your guide. The most important of all those people whom you have seen in this world, that person you can consider as your Guru. Nobody is equal to that person, that person who you take as your Master. You might have seen thousands, and one of them must have attracted you as the chief. That person is your guide. Otherwise, wait until God sends a Guru to you. There are two approaches. Either you do the work yourself by selecting the person you like best or, if it is not possible, wait until the light comes from God Himself. But if you cannot wait until God's light comes, use the other technique of choosing by yourself whom you like best. There must be somebody whom you like best. It is not that you don't like anybody. So that person is your teacher, according to your conscience.

Another visitor: How can I stop wanting things for myself?

Swamiji: If you become one with the whole universe, then you don't want anything afterwards. If you become one with the whole cosmos, there is no question of wanting anything.

Visitor: How do I become one with the whole cosmos?

Swamiji: By deep meditation on the whole cosmic structure as identical with you. A little meditation is not sufficient. The whole day you must think only of this. You should not have any other occupation. You may be doing work, but still there should be a background of thought that you are one with the whole creation so that there is nothing outside you. Then desires do not arise because you have got everything.

But your mind is a trickster. It will not allow you to think like that. Hammer this point into your mind again and again that you have got everything because the whole universe is abundantly rich; therefore, there is no poverty in the cosmos. You stand outside the universe; therefore, you look poor. Meditation is nothing but this simple technique of identifying yourself with the whole structure of the cosmos so that you become physically, mentally and spiritually strong. Because you have isolated yourself from creation, you feel weak and troubled. Briefly I have explained to you the technique of meditation, but you will forget it.

There are tremendous issues in life that you cannot take as a joke. It is not a little lecture that you are hearing. It is a medicine that I am injecting into you. But the mind is so fickle that you cannot remember this for more than two seconds. You are busy with other things rather than concentrating on this great issue, which is in your heart itself. Keep quiet. You should not talk to anyone; mind your business and be one with the whole creation, and it will protect you. You don't require policemen and an army to protect you. The whole cosmos is at your back, but you have no faith. You are doubting, “Is it like that?” The mind will say, “No, be careful.” Both God and the devil are sitting inside you. God tells you what I am telling you, but the other man says it is nonsense. Hence, the positive voice of God must work powerfully in you, and it will reject all this empirical thought that invades the good thought in your mind.

Great training is necessary in meditation. It is not a little job that you sit there for a few minutes, and think, and get up. Deeply involve yourself in this great structure of creation, and never believe that you are inside it or outside it. You are that only. Then, in a few minutes, you will see energy entering into you. Nature has repelled you because you have repelled nature. You are thinking that you are an independent person. There is nothing independent anywhere. Everything is one with everything. Everything is connected to everything else. There is an interconnection of every atom with every other atom, which includes yourself also.

The mind will not allow you to think like this. It is a trickster, as I told you. The body has got its own calls; the mind has got its own whims and fancies. That is why good company is necessary, a good Master is necessary, and you must have patience enough to wait for the results to follow, even if it be after a long time.

Another visitor: Swamiji, the other day you said that enlightenment is knowing the future.

Swamiji: No, it is knowing the past, present and future included in the total time process. The time process has no past, present and future. It is only a mental creation that they are three different things. Every moment is a future or a past. The moment you think, the present has become the past, and it immediately places its leg on the future. So every moment it is past, present and future together. Actually, time is an eternity. Because of the peculiar inability of the mind to catch the process of time, we make a distinction between past, present and future.

You need not worry about that. If you carry on the meditation properly as prescribed, time will take care of itself, and you need not bother about it. The main thing is this point which I have been telling you now. That will allow you to solve every problem.