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Darshan of Swami Krishnananda – 1996
by Swami Krishnananda


28. Becoming the Cosmic Mind

(Darshan given on March 27th, 1996)

A visitor: We have so many desires, and if we become desireless we can achieve Brahman.

Swamiji: Actually, it is not that you achieve desirelessness first and then reach Brahman. You reach Brahman first, and then the desires go away. It is like saying you remove the darkness of the night first, and then the sun will rise. When the sun rises, darkness goes away. Why are you worrying about desires?

Visitor: But it is said that every desire of man must be fulfilled.

Swamiji: Desires of man are as many as all the leaves in all the forests the world. Can you fulfil them? There is only one way. Suppose in the dream world, you are dreaming that you are living a family life or a business life or a factory life full of desires. How will you fulfil those desires? There is only one way: Wake up from dream. So waking up is the fulfilment, and not fulfilment in the practical sense. When you rise to the consciousness of completeness, which is called Brahman, the meaning of desire vanishes. It cannot exist at all, like mist before the sun.

Another visitor: You have mentioned that you bring the consciousness between yourself and the person you're talking to.

Swamiji: This is a point on which many people were raising a question. That people have found it necessary to understand it is also a great blessing. It has not escaped the notice or attention of people because I have repeated it again and again with such emphasis that it has gone into the minds of people, though they find it difficult to understand what this mystery between one thing and another thing is.

There is a consciousness which is operating as an undercurrent unknown to this person and that person because the consciousness of this person is limited to the operation of the mental psyche. So is the case with the other. The general consciousness, which is pervading inside the mind here, inside the mind there, and between them also, cannot be known to exist by either this mind or that mind because it is limited to the operation of a little action taking place within the skull of a person. If you liberate this confinement of consciousness in the psychic operation, you will find streams of consciousness flowing from here to there; if it is to flow from here to there, it must be in the middle also, so it is there permanently. Since consciousness is the only thing that is of any value, there is no other thing which can be considered as valuable in the world.

This consciousness is not a mental operation. It is a solid substance, you may say. It is the mind of God that is operating, to make it more clear: the Cosmic mind. The Cosmic mind is the mother and father of your mind, my mind, everybody's mind, so that Cosmic mind is working everywhere; hence, it is working between the two also, so it is more important than the mind here and the mind there. If you can appreciate that, you will deeply contemplate on that 'between' rather than this side or that side, so you will be very happy because you are not connected with this side or that side. You can understand the joy of a person who is neither belonging to this side or that side. He is like an umpire. If you can become an umpire between two things, and between any two things – between inside and outside also – then you will see it is a wonder. You cannot contain that. The whole flood of the Cosmic mind will enter you, a flood which you cannot contain.

Visitor: Swamiji, the first thing that was mentioned, about intellectual meaning, it comes up to here. How does it go beyond so that it becomes part and parcel of you?

Swamiji: It cannot go inside the skin because you have got a prejudice. Everybody has a prejudice which makes one feel confirmed always: What my mind thinks is correct, and it cannot be that the thought of another mind is also correct. My mind is correct; it is telling the truth, and it cannot be anything else. If that is the case, no other truth can enter it. The idea that this little mind is telling the entire truth will prevent a larger truth from entering into it.

A person who is so much attached to his family thinks, “The welfare of my family is all in all, and others are not of any consideration.” He forgets the fact that if the whole nation is in trouble, his family cannot exist. This is the same thing. This universal Consciousness, or the Cosmic mind, is the national consciousness of the universe, you may say, but when a person is clinging to his family…

You are having a family inside the body. You don't want anything to happen to these members of the family. Let anything happen that side. This is a very strange attitude, not knowing that the general consciousness determines even the welfare of the particular consciousness of the family. But this prejudice is in every person, so that is why the general consciousness enters only to the skin. The ego inside says, “I don't want.” Personal assertion, the conviction that I am always right and you need not actually be right, will prevent the actual truth from entering into you. As every human being has this trait, no one can fully understand this greatness, this mystery.

Another visitor: Swamiji, the main problem is every person thinks of himself, and does not think of the consciousness here and there.

Swamiji: No human being can believe that this is the case because this is something always eluding the grasp. No one can understand this point because it is not visible to the eyes.

Visitor: Then Swamiji, who experiences it? You don't experience it at all then. You just have to develop it; you just get rid of this feeling that you are always right.

Swamiji: If you have not got an experience of it, you will not talk about it. Something has already entered you. Any conviction, especially a conviction of this kind, is based upon an intuition that has suddenly arisen. Therefore, it so vehemently pursues itself and says you are making a mistake every minute thinking this side and that side, but not thinking that which gives life to both the sides.

Visitor: Swamiji, this is why I have come here, to ask this question.

Swamiji: My dear friend, people require a new education. Whatever you have studied is no education because a person does not know how to live in the world, but he knows other things. He knows physics and the moon, and all that, everything, but how to live in the world he doesn't know. It is a question of your ability to accept that this truth is the final thing and allowing it to sink into your feelings so that it may never leave you afterwards.

Visitor: But Swamiji, as you rightly said, for fifty years I have been telling my mind, my family that whatever I think is not correct. My buddhi says, “I know it is not correct…”

Swamiji: What you say may be relatively correct, but you must accept there is an Absolute correctness. There is another, larger correctness, in the light of which you must be subordinated. That you should save yourself is correct, but that you should save the nation is more correct. It includes this correctness. You don't move from untruth to truth, but from lesser truth to higher truth.

Another visitor: The work I'm doing is a disturbance to me. I want to remove that disturbance and be a universal man.

Swamiji: If you consider that work is to be removed from your mind, and incidentally you need not work, then it is in your hand. But if you are working because it is necessary for you, you cannot remove it from your mind. When you want a thing, how will you remove it from the mind? If you don't want it, you can remove it.

Visitor: But it is a problem.

Swamiji: It is not a problem. You are unnecessarily confusing yourself by saying two things. You want to work, and at the same time you say you don't want to work.

Visitor: I want to work, but then it is difficult to do sadhana.

Swamiji: Why are you saying work is against sadhana? You cannot have a divided personality: work there, meditation here. Then during meditation, work will enter the mind unless you are able to convince yourself that work also is meditation; that is called karma yoga. Any karma that is opposed to the meditation is not going to help you. What does the Bhagavadgita say? The work is a divine action taking place through you; therefore, it cannot bind you, so it cannot be outside the purview of meditation. The work also is a meditation only because meditation is a cosmic process. It is not something individually taking place. You are thinking meditation is something individually taking place, and work is outside. No, it is not so. There's no such thing as individual meditation because you are connected with the whole universe, and the total mind should think. You have to think like the total mind of the whole world, not like an individual. You are not an individual at all. An individual cannot meditate because the individual is opposed to the external world. You must make friendship with the external world in such a way that it merges into you. You become one integrated being where the world and yourself join together, and somebody else meditates, not you. That consciousness which is the consequence of the combining of the individuality and the outsideness is the meditation. You are not meditating as an individual. The individual idea must go away. It is a blend of the outside and the inside that meditates; otherwise, what is the good of meditating inside if you are opposed to the whole world? This is a subtle matter. External things and internal things must blend together and form a total transcendent perception. This requires great training.

Visitor: What about the ego and self-respect?

Swamiji: All the ego and self-respect vanish in one minute if you do this exercise of combining the external and the internal because we generally throw emphasis on externality. I told you the externality must blend with you; then who is going to trouble you? The trouble comes from your idea that the troublemaker is outside, but it is not so. It is a nonalignment of your personality with the external atmosphere, and hence, a psychological rift between you and something else. But in meditation, at least practically, you cannot do that. In meditation at least you combine the area occupied by the whole external world, and the area of your mind, so that it becomes one Cosmic mind meditating. This deep meditation, carried on for a long time, will automatically reveal to you an answer to your question. The answer comes from inside. It doesn't come from outside, from the marketplace. It requires deep exercise.

Another visitor: Yesterday Swamiji was mentioning the clay and the pot are the same. It becomes a little bit to what Swamiji just said. Who was witnessing this?

Swamiji: There is nobody to witness.

Visitor: But who is saying this?

Swamiji: The saying itself is the error. You should not say it because you are the pot and the clay combined, so the pot cannot speak, and the clay also cannot speak. But you have a wrong notion that you are outside the clay. You yourself are made of the same clay of which the whole world is made.

Visitor: Swamiji, who is witnessing this?

Swamiji: There is no witness. The consciousness that is above yourself and the world, that witnesses. There is something connecting both you and the world; otherwise, you cannot know that there is a world. If the world is totally outside you, what is the connection between you and that? You will not even know that it exists. But there is a transcendent consciousness which connects your mind and the world consciousness, and then it operates through you, as it were, but actually it is a transcendental operation. Somebody else knows the whole thing. You are not knowing. You are only an instrument through which the whole consciousness is working, and that connects you to the whole world. If the connection were not taking place, you would not even know that the whole world exists. You would be locked up inside yourself. I'm saying the same thing, in another way. It is not in you, it is not outside you, it only is.

Visitor: Swamiji, you said it seems to be above.

Swamiji: 'Above' means that which connects you both. The seer and the seen are connected by a transcendent witness. It is God who sees through you, and God who sees the world and makes you feel that you are looking at the world.