Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

49. Sadhana is an Enhancement of Being

(Darshan given on November 28th, 1996.)

Swamiji: Actions cannot take you to God – any action, no matter what it is. Actions have no connection. God is being, He is not becoming. He is called Being, not doing. We don't call God as the great Doing, we call Him as the great Being. We call God as Supreme Being, not as Supreme Doing. There is a difference; being and doing are different. What is the difference? We are thinking of doing only. The being has gone away.

You have to take many births to understand this. In one birth it won't come. There is the encrustation of wrong thinking right from childhood, and that encrustation has to go first. That is called purification.

A visitor: Very difficult.

Swamiji: If it had been so simple, there would be movement to God by all people. That is not taking place.

Your yoga should be a being, and not a doing. You must be something more than what you are by yoga. If you are the same person tomorrow as you are today, your doing has no meaning. Sadhana is not doing; it is an enhancement of being. This secret nobody knows.

Visitor: But then you do something.

Swamiji: No, it is not doing. You have not done anything to grow into an adult from a child. From a little baby you have grown into an adult. That is not doing anything. The being in itself has expanded into a more mature state. In every stage of development, your being expanded. You have not done anything. You have not put forth any effort to become an adult. It automatically takes place by nature's action.

Visitor: So automatically we come to God-realisation.

Swamiji: You must, first of all, have a clear idea of what God is. What is your idea of God? It is Universal Being. 'Being' means it is just existence, existence as such. That existence includes your existence, my existence, the existence of everybody, the existence of even mountains and trees and rivers. It is Total Existence, a total existence with nothing outside it. Can you conceive in your mind Total Existence, outside which there is no existence? Because if there is an existence outside Total Existence, then that would not be total. It would be partial. Very difficult it is to conceive this. Total Existence includes every kind of existence, even a stone, even a particle of dust, space, time, cause, sun, moon, stars, everything. Everything goes into that Existence. That is God.

How you will think like that? How can the mind catch such a thing? If you can think like that even for one second, you are a blessed person. Even if for one second you can really appreciate this, you are a most blessed person. You will simply vibrate with a force which you cannot imagine in the world. If God enters you, do you know what will happen to you? It is Universality entering into particularity, if you want to put it in the philosophical style: Universality entering into particularity, the Total entering into a fraction or a part, the ocean entering into a drop. If the whole ocean enters a drop, there is no drop. It becomes ocean only. If the drop wants to become the ocean, what should it do? Should it do rituals, pujas, worship, going here, there, pilgrimage? Will the drop do that? It has only to sink down; that's all. The dimension of the drop gets enlarged into the dimension of the ocean. The drop does not have to move here and there; it is the ocean itself. Where will it go? No pilgrimage is necessary, no ritual. The drop does not do any puja to become the ocean; it has only to adjust its consciousness to “I am the ocean” and it becomes that. In one way, it is the easiest thing that you can do. Even to go to a marketplace you have to put forth effort, but to become God, no effort is necessary.

It is stunning to hear all these things. God is nearer to you than your throat. Your throat is a little far away, but God is nearer than that. But you cannot appreciate it. The mind is so cussed, and is taught wrong education right from the beginning. Right from childhood society has spoiled every individual by giving wrong education, telling wrong things right from the beginning: “This is you, this is not you,” etc. You should think as God thinks at the time of creation, the Total Whole in which you are merging. All action goes into it. You will be simply thrilled. You will vibrate inside. You cannot contain the thought if you are able to adjust your consciousness like this. It is a blessedness which you cannot imagine in the mind. One minute thinking like that is sufficient. You will shudder. The whole space enters into you; all time, sun, moon, stars will melt and go inside. What will happen to you? Think over that. That is called the Cosmic Form.

Because it is difficult to understand what it is, we have got analogies, like the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita where Sri Krishna is said to have shown the Cosmic Form. Everything is inside that, everything. Even the one who beholds it is inside that. Such a wonder it is! That picture is drawn for us in the epic of the Mahabharata because we cannot think abstractly. The mind is poor, so this analogy has been given to help us think like this. Day and night you have to think like this. You have no other duty in the world. You cannot play jokes with God. It is a very serious matter.