Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

48. The Mind is a Pressure Point of Consciousness

(Darshan given on November 27th, 1996.)

Swamiji: There is no such thing as mind, really. It is only a concentrated pressure point of consciousness. When it is pressed concentratedly in one imagined location of space and time, it looks like mind. We call it mind because the moment it gets isolated from other such pressure points, it looks upon other points as objects of its own awareness. Everybody in the world, everything, is a pressure point. Every drop in the ocean is a drop in the ocean, but if the drop insists that it is a drop and is consciousness of itself as an isolated drop, it has to look upon other drops as objects, whereas the other drops are not objects. They are internally, organically blended together with the very substance of that which imagines that other drops are objects. This requires a deep analysis of the structure of the process of our thinking. It is not somebody thinking; the whole ocean is thinking in its diversified imagined form of drops. So the process is practically like waking from dream. In an instant, all the multifarious diversified phenomena experienced in dream ceases to be diversified and multifarious when it gets absorbed into the waking mind, which is the sea or the ocean behind these multifaceted drops that appear as dream objects. This requires deep affirmation of consciousness that it is so.

There is a story. A lion cub strayed away into a group of sheep. It was such a little cub that the shepherd took it as one of the sheep. Because of continuous association with the sheep, hearing their bleating and so on, this little cub also started bleating. Lions don't bleat. Their sound is quite different, but because of living with the sheep and the daily observation of what is around it, it thought it is one of them because it cannot see its own face and sees only the faces of the others. It went on like that, bleating. One day the real lion from the jungle happened to pass by, and he saw this little lion bleating like a lamb. He took it aside and said, “Do you know who you are?”

“Yes,” said the cub, and it started bleating.

“Look at me. See my face. Do I look like a sheep?”

“You do not look like a sheep, but I am a sheep.”

“Come on,” said the lion, and he took the little cub to a pool of water. “Look down. See your face. Does it look like my face?”

“Yes.”

“Then what made you think that you are a sheep? See what sound I make. You do like that.” He roared. “You are like me only, but you think you are a sheep.”

“Oh,” the cub said. So he had to meditate on being a lion now, when he previously thought he was a sheep. By practice, practice, he started roaring.

Likewise, we are thinking that we are sheep because we have strayed among the objects of sense. The lion of Guru or God must tell you, “You are like me only. Why are you looking at the sheep of the objects? Look at Me. Look at Ishvara, the great Creator, and you will find that He is not a sheep. You are also like me only. Roar!” He will say, “Now you are bleating. So you roar like God.” What do you say? This is a humorous story.

The whole point is that we have the inveterate habit, formed right from childhood, of being convinced that we are what we appear to be in a mirror, but it is not like that. The very consciousness of the finitude of a person is not possible unless there is a simultaneous awareness of something which is beyond the finite. You cannot know that you are limited unless hiddenly, impliedly, there is a consequence following that there is something which is not finite. The finite cannot know that it is finite unless there is something which is not finite. So your consciousness of the infinite is hidden behind your acceptance of being finite. This point is missed always. So the lion is behind, and you are thinking you are a sheep only. You cannot know that you are a finite, limited, localised individual unless there is something wider than this finite localised individual. The consciousness of finitude is not possible unless there is a hidden consciousness of the infinite, so it shows who you are. On that you meditate. The mind will melt into the ocean of consciousness. Keep it in mind.

A visitor: So the difference between mind and being disappears.

Swamiji: You give up the idea of mind. There is no such thing as mind. It is only a localised pressure of consciousness only.

Another visitor: It is not possible to emulate the life of Sri Krishna because we have not reached that stature as yet.

Swamiji: Suppose you are attempting to reach that state – everyone is to attempt to reach that state – then would you do that? There is an inherent conflict between the human way of thinking in its present empirical form and the ideology of the Absolute way of things. We are combining in our mind two things: the ideology of utter Universal perfection and the compulsion of the human way of thinking. Both are working in us. They do not always coincide because man cannot be God and God cannot be man. The whole problem is that. And yet we are trying to infuse godliness into the human nature and reverse human nature into God in the Incarnation. This applies to every Incarnation, whether it is Krishna, Rama, Jesus Christ, or anything; otherwise, you must simply say we are not supposed to meddle with these things.

Another visitor: I am worried about the future. I have experienced states of agony and fear, but not of anything in particular. It is just a state of darkness and depression.

Swamiji: Unless there is a source of fear, fear cannot be there, so you must find out the source. From which source does the fear come?

Visitor: Maybe it's not fear. Maybe it's a lack of energy. Sometimes I feel very strong and sometimes I feel very weak. I ask myself what I am missing.

Swamiji: Everybody has that question. Everyone is missing one's own self. Your self is not sitting here in this body. I am saying something which is quite different from what you are speaking. You are not sitting inside this body. That is a misconception arisen on account of psychobiological involvement. You are a centre of awareness. If awareness is absent, you are also absent. One who is not aware of oneself actually doesn't exist, so to exist is to be aware one is existing. Now, in what form are you existing? You are thinking that you are existing as a body, but it is not like that. Your awareness of your being in this physical body has, at the same time, a suspicious feeling that it is limited. You are a limited person, and nobody likes limitation of any kind. You want to exceed the boundaries of limitation. The awareness of your existence is locked up within this body. That is an agony for this awareness, which otherwise they call a soul. What people generally call a soul is nothing but the awareness of your existence.

Now, you are aware, at the same time, of other people's existence also. That is the trouble. This awareness, to put it briefly, is a kind of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be locked up in one particular place. Now, very carefully you have to listen to what I am saying. If consciousness is limited to one particular location, it should know that it is locked up in that particular location, and it cannot know that it is locked up in a particular location unless it simultaneously knows there is something outside it. The consciousness cannot know that there is something outside it unless it has already broken the boundary of this body. So you are not actually inside your body. You have now, by this analysis, found out you are a little outside your body also.

Now, imagine that you have gone outside your body, and your existence has transcended the limitation of this physical body, because by this analysis you found it is impossible for the consciousness to be always aware of itself inside the body. All right, it has broken the boundaries, gone outside. To what extent has it gone outside? You cannot put any extent to it because the moment you say a limit is there, again it will be conscious of something beyond it. Likewise, you will go on extending your awareness until it reaches endlessness; finally, you will find your consciousness is an endless, all-pervading existence.

This is the trouble with everybody. It is not the trouble of any one person. The whole world is suffering with the agony of self-limitation and the fear of there being something else outside oneself. The greatest fear is the presence of another outside you, which you cannot tolerate because another can do anything to you. You have no control over another unless another becomes yourself by an extension of your own personality so that it gets absorbed into your being and that all-being becomes Total Being. Actually, this is called God-consciousness. I am leading you to what is called God-consciousness. You are inseparable from that Universal Being, which is said to be the Creator of this universe. Can you think like this? This is meditation. Centralise yourself in this deep thought of your being, not a thought of a limited awareness, and then this fear will vanish.