Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

41. We are Alice in Wonderland

(Darshan given on August 15th, 1996.)

Swamiji: We are only lines and points. The contour of a person is nothing but the shape of the lines, which are nothing but dots, and they have no space; therefore, we are not in space, which means we are not existing. It is a very good conclusion for all people: We don't exist. We are Alice in Wonderland. We are like Alice, and we are living in the Wonderland.

A visitor: But it is the most wonderful thing, Swamiji.

Swamiji: We can go on thinking this every day, and some good thing will happen. The thing is, we cannot think it always. We cannot always think like that. These ideas cannot enter the mind always. Very rarely, when we are discussing like this, it comes. In satsanga some good thoughts come; otherwise, when we live a humdrum life it will not enter the mind. We are the same old persons drudging everywhere.

These thoughts we are discussing have a great liberating power. They disentangle the personality and, to some extent, melt down the ego. We become much better even by hearing all these things. We tend towards becoming wider in our dimensions, and perhaps we are moving towards universality rather than particularity even by thoughts of this kind, though these thoughts occur only for two seconds when we are discussing.

Swamiji: [to another visitor] …we call evolution. But there are many hurdles on the way. It is not a beaten track that one has to follow and simply go. It is not like that. When the next stage in evolution is about to be reached, or is actually reached, the hangover of the lower category of the preceding stage will also be pursuing, like a man being pursued by his own shadow wherever he goes. So at every stage there is a hangover of the preceding stage, which is the obstacle.

Now, for instance, as human beings we have come from lower stages, but we have all the characteristics of the lower stages. We can sleep like a stone, we can be hungry and appetitive like a vegetable, we can be ferocious like an animal, and we can be selfish like a human being, yet we have a pointer to the existence above human beings, which is called the higher reason. So what is called human beings is a big confusion, actually, but a systematically arranged confusion. We have everything that is above us and we have everything that is below us, and we are hanging in the middle.

Another visitor: In meditation, am I going out of myself?

Swamiji: How can you go out of yourself? There is an explanation of quantum mechanics especially as propounded by one very famous John Bell. It is called Bell's Theorem. It is the most famous theorem, called Bell's Theorem, which propounds great truths that anything that happens anywhere happens everywhere. Can you imagine? Anything that exists anywhere exists everywhere. Now, what is the consequence of this proposition? If that is the case, what do you think in your mind? Accepting this proposition as the absolutely true fact, if you have taken it seriously, what will you think at that time in your mind? What will you think?

Visitor: I am everywhere.

Swamiji: It is a modern mathematical Upanishadic dictum. Sarvam khalvidam brahma: All this is the Absolute. But the moment you utter this sentence, your mind, which is a rogue, will immediately tell you the Absolute is somewhere far away and you have to struggle hard to know it. This mind is a rogue. It will never allow you to do any right thing. You are saying that the Absolute alone is there; okay, but it is not here. It is there, somewhere beyond the stars. You have cut the ground from under your feet even after accepting this.

As you are included in that which you are seeing, what is your position? You cannot see anything at that time. The thing which you are seeing is that in which you yourself are included. If you go to a picture house where there is a moving picture, if you yourself are one of the actors in that movie, you cannot see the movie. Only somebody outside the movie can see it. So a thing in which you yourself are involved cannot be seen. You cannot even think it. The mind cannot operate when the very basis of its thinking is incomprehensible to it. Meditation does not mean thinking in the mind. It is the transformation of your being itself. It is the being that transforms.

Close your eyes. Exert a great power of will. You have entered into the very thing which you are looking at. This is called samadhi. People talk about samadhi using big, big words. It is nothing but your entry into that thing which you are seeing with your eyes so that your seeing with your eyes has stopped. The thing that you are seeing becomes yourself. Then whom are you going to see? This principle should be applied to anything in the world, and you can apply it to the whole world also, the whole cosmos, so that you cannot look at it. Meditation, basically, is a kind of samadhi only. It may be a lower type or a higher type; that is a different matter. There are many varieties of samadhi. Patanjali mentions five or six varieties, but actually there are much more than that. Any attempt on your part to include yourself in that which you are seeing is samadhi itself, though it is an initial step. But if you want to see a thing, then it is not meditation. In meditation you don't see anything; you be that thing. Meditation is a state of being, and not perceiving, not cognition, not thinking, not willing, not feeling – nothing of the kind. As human nature is not accustomed to this way of comprehension of things, we are born with an erroneous psychological apparatus due to which, right from childhood we are seeing something outside. We want it or we are afraid of it. A child cries when it is born because it sees something outside. When right from childhood you are initiated into a psychobiological erroneous perception, how will you suddenly change that perception into a kind of integrated beingness? There are no words for explaining all this, so I'm coining a word: 'beingness'.

Visitor: Swamiji, in between the two thoughts there is the Truth, isn't it?

Swamiji: Why are you worried about two thoughts? The thoughts should not be there at all. When you are aware of the two thoughts, you are not aware of that which is between the two. You are saying that you are thinking of that which is between the two thoughts. That is not possible because already you have decided that there are two thoughts, so the mind is thinking of the two thoughts and the third thing also. It is thinking three things at the same time. It is a very tricky matter. You cannot think the third thing unless you are aware of the other two also. There are two people sitting here, and if I want to be aware of the connection between the two, which is neither this nor that – the connection is an independent thing – I cannot see it unless I first accept that there are two things. So meditation is not trying to think that which is between two thoughts; it is the cessation of thought itself, and the absorption of thought into the being of it.