Darshan of Swami Krishnananda – 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

15. Modern Physics and the Absolute

(Darshan given on February 19th, 1997)

Swamiji: The world will not bend before you. It is vehement. But if your meditation is equally vehement, it will bend. Even a hard steel rod can be made to bend by heating it. Blacksmiths bend iron rods, though ordinarily they will not bend like that. Even steel will melt in the furnace. So the steel of human egoism can be made into a liquid of accountability, provided your meditation is a furnace. If you simply think something, wool gathering, it won't work like that, because nature knows you are a child of nature.

Scientists, anthropologists, cosmologists and astronomers tell us man is a latecomer in the process of evolution. In the beginning, there was no human being, as you know already. There was only an indescribable cosmic atom, and if you believe in the doctrine of modern physics, there was a Big Bang. And where were you at that time? Do you believe that you were there, or you were not there?

A visitor: In the Big Bang?

Swamiji: When the Big Bang took place, where were you? It is a very important matter. You should not get defeated by that. I will tell you one thing, my dear friend, which is surprising. Even now, just here, you are in the same place where you were at the time of the Big Bang. You will be wondering what is this swami talking. It looks nonsense, isn't it? There was no time; there was no such thing called time at the time of the Big Bang. Time is a falsehood; therefore, you can be at that time, and now also at the same time because there was no time. Time is an illusion created by a maladjustment of the later development of personality with that original that it was. The mind cannot conceive all these things.

Think: “I am just now in the same place where I was at the time of the Big Bang. Millions and millions of years have passed, and I was there, but even now I am there only. I am not in America, I am not on this Earth.” Can you accommodate yourself to this thought? You will melt immediately into the whole that you are talking about, and the whole world will come and prostrate itself before you. Would you like it?

Visitor: It's fantastic. [Laughter]

Swamiji: You see, meditation is not a joke. It is not some routine – just get up in the morning and roll the beads, or anything. It won't work like that. We cannot deceive ourselves like that by being too officiously religious. It won't work like that. There is no use of being religious, and even modern spirituality. Everywhere there is spirituality these days, everywhere yoga. So many centres are there of yoga teaching. They get on. That becomes a kind of business afterwards, a kind of trade – a yoga trade. It will not work.

This kind of thing that I am telling you is a magical formula which will transform you in an instant if you are prepared for it. But how will you get yourself prepared for it? You have got an adamantine individuality which refuses to melt into the Big Bang, and all that. You say: “No, it is not like that. I came just now. I was born some years back, and the Big Bang happened so long ago. How can I be now at the same place?” You forget that time does not exist and, therefore, then and now have no meaning. The then can be now and the now can be then, because at that time there was no time, there was no eternity, and therefore no space. The universe was not big like this. Inconceivable. A little bit of study of modern physics is also good. It is very wonderful. Some of the great masters of modern physics lead you gradually to the height of spiritual thinking, like Sir Arthur Eddington. Have you heard of him?

Visitor: No, I haven't heard of him.

Swamiji: Oh, you can hear him. I will mention some names of great masters in modern physics. They have stumbled upon the Absolute by going the other way around. They have gone the wrong way, and finally they fell on it willy-nilly by mathematical compulsion. Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington. You know there is a thing called quantum mechanics? It was discovered by a German physicist called Max Planck, and it has transformed the concept of the world to such an extent that you will be wondering whether the world exists – whether it is existing or only we are dreaming.

I'm not talking about that subject now. “There are more things in heaven and on earth than our philosophy dreams of.” This is what Hamlet said. You should not be satisfied that you know everything. We are nothing, poor fellows, compared to the vast ocean of knowledge that is there. Heaven is larger than you can think it to be. Heaven is not as the Bible describes it. It is something more than that. And we are also something more than what we appear to be to our own selves. We have to be very humble, very simple, and always bending before the might of the mystery of the universe. And if you want to trust in God, you must trust in the true God. It is not a Christian God, a Hindu god – nothing of the kind. There is a true God who is above all these gods, who will melt everybody together into the liquid of comprehensiveness.

I am telling you something which will stimulate your mind. It will stir your mind into a way of thinking which is not usual, and with which nobody is accustomed.

Now I have said everything. Now you speak. [Laughter]. You have got a standard method of technique of meditation. You said there is a standard way of meditation.

Visitor: It is very simple. Just to… [pause]

Swamiji: You ask them to sit like this. And how do they accommodate themselves?

Visitor: Be still, at ease, and to pay attention.

Swamiji: What are they attending? Attention to what?

Visitor: Nothing specific.

Swamiji: Are they conscious at that time?

Visitor: Very conscious.

Swamiji: It is not consciousness of something?

Visitor: It is consciousness of everything.

Swamiji: Can you be conscious of everything at the same time?

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: Everything – you must know what everything is. How big is everything? There should be nothing outside that 'everything'. If there is something outside the everything, it is not everything. Again I am coming to the same point.

This is a great exercise which is dear to the soul of every person. The soul is wanting it. It is crying for it. You are not giving time for it to come out. That's why everybody is restless. The restlessness and inadequacy and insufficiency that everyone feels in oneself is due to the call of the Infinite. It is telling, “Come on.” When the Infinite calls, the finite feels wretched, miserable. Every type of happiness that we have, and restlessness and inadequacy, is the result of our inability to properly respond to the call of the Infinite. We bungle completely. We make a mistake. Even before God we cannot speak. If God calls – suppose you get a notice tomorrow – if God calls, what will you say? How will you say it? What is He going to do? There is fear, like a judiciary sending a summons. You don't want a judiciary sending a summons to any person. You will think what kind of trouble this is, and all that. The greatest judiciary is God Himself, and you don't want to be summoned like that, unawares. What do you say?

Visitor: I agree.

Swamiji: Our concept of God is very funny. I heard a story. When the great ship Titanic was sinking, people said, “You pray. You all have to pray.” Immediately one of the crew went in and put on good dress – pants and all that. He was asked, “What is the matter?” “I don't want to go to God like a poor man. I must look decent before Him,” he said. He may be honest in thinking like that. When I go to God, will I go wearing a rag? I will go as a decent man. This is also a concept of God if we think that we can go to God in this dress. Strait is the gate, narrow, only one person can go at a time. Narrow is the way. You cannot carry luggage when you go to God. Your body also is a luggage. That also cannot be taken. Anything that is not me cannot go, and the body is not me, so it will not come. You will be stripped of all raiment which is encrusting you with material associations.

You can't imagine what it is. Spiritually stark naked you will stand before the Absolute, and no lawyer will come and protect you at that time. Nobody will argue on your behalf. You have to answer all the questions yourself: “What have you done?” “I went to the hotel and ate, I went here and there. What can I do?” You should not say like that. You must tell powerfully before God, “Great Almighty, You have sent me as an ambassador of Thyself, and I have fulfilled Your command and come successful.” You tell that. You are an ambassador of God. He has sent you for a purpose. He has not sent you here to enjoy in the restaurant, and travelling here and there. There is a mission with which you have been sent here: to spread divinity in the world, to implant godliness in the hearts of people and turn people in the direction of that Almighty. For that purpose He has sent you here. But if you misuse this great blessing with which you have come here…

Our understanding is the blessing. Your intellect is very clear. Suppose your mind is not working; how will you exist in the world? Wealth, property, land, friendship – these are not as valuable as the understanding. Clear understanding, clear perception, powerful reason, clean intellect – that is the greatest blessing. That is your property. If the understanding is misled, what is the good of wealth? If a person cannot think properly, what is the good of the wealth of that person? He may be a millionaire, but his mind is not working. Let the person be a pauper financially but the mind is brilliant, and he is a genius.

Many of the geniuses of the world were poor people. Some of the greatest saints were farmers, carpenters, shoemakers. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a priest, a poor priest in the temple. Christ was the son of a carpenter. Jacob Boehme, a German mystic, was a shoemaker. It doesn't mean that Godmen are always rich people. They will be the opposite of it. The nearer you go to God, the farther you seem to be going away from the world. The more does God want you, the less does the world seem to want you. All Godmen were rejected by the world. They were crucified. They were thrown out. The world doesn't want that because the world goes in a centrifugal direction, and Godward movement is centripetal. Centripetal means movement in the direction of the centre of the universe, and centrifugal means going opposite, in the direction of the periphery or circumference. We are all moving outside, in the outer circle, and cannot know what is inside us.

That is why, in one of the Indian scriptures, God is supposed to have said: “The more I love a person as My devotee, the more I deprive him of all material facilities.” Look at St. Francis of Assisi, and so many saints like that. They were Godmen. They had nothing to wear, not even a cloth. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa I mentioned to you, an illiterate priest of a little temple, and he could contact God. He could visualise the Absolute everywhere. He would tremble by being possessed of the All-being. And other great Masters there were. Great heroes were there – Moses was there, Christ was there, what to talk of that.

There was a great mystic in Alexandria called Plotinus, a Greek mystic. He wrote a book called Enneads. 'Enneads' means a book of nine chapters. He describes the Absolute. He is the only person – he is the only mystic, to my knowledge – who says that he has entered the Absolute three times. Nobody says like that generally. “Three times I entered the lion's den,” he says. Entering God, entering the bosom of the Absolute may look like entering the lion's den. And what will the lion do? It will swallow you. Would you like to be swallowed by God? Even God should not swallow you. You don't want that.

There are great philosophers, professors and masters of thinking who cannot, especially in the West, accommodate themselves to the thought that in the ultimate liberation, personality is abolished and individuality melts. You don't exist at all. That alone is, and you cannot be there. Nobody can accommodate oneself to this thought. One professor from Cornell University came here. He said, “I am not there at all, you are telling me. Then what is the purpose of going there? I will not exist there.” Now, he doesn't catch the point.

Actually, you will be there in a real sense, not in the unreal sense that you appear to be now. There is an original of every person in the heavens. We are the duplicates here sitting. It was Plato who said that we are shadows of the archetypes. We are all shadows of our own selves. That's why we are pulled up every time. We never get satisfied with anything. We want more and more, more and more. Give anything to a person – “No, I want still more” – which is another way of wanting one's own self in the higher heavens. The heavenly archetype of your existence is pulling you up: “Don't be satisfied with anything.” So you feel miserable in this world. Your real status is in the heavens. You have come here as an exile, if you want to call it so. But Plato says you are a shadow cast by your own self, as you ought to be, as you are in the high heavens, in the eternal kingdom of the Ideas, as he calls it. The Idea doesn't mean the mind thinking; it is the Logos of the cosmos, Eternal Idea. That is your home. We are wandering here as people thrown out from the kingdom of heaven, as shadows. Would you like to be a shadow of your own self and bury yourself in the streets? What a shameful thing.

You want to turn the table round and go back to your original archetype, which is in the high heavens, and the high heaven is not only geographically or geometrically high; it is an all-pervading eternity. Time must melt in eternity. Space should melt. And then what happens, you will know when you go there. What do you say? I cannot say anything further. You go there and tell me what you saw. If you can come back and tell me what you saw...

They say you will not come back. A person who has become wise will not want to become foolish once again. If a fool has become a wise man will he say, “My foolishness has gone. I have lost something”? He has not lost anything. If a person is sick and he has gained health, will he say, “Oh my dear illness, it has gone. I have lost something”? Will anybody say like that? Illness is an unnatural state, and so you are not losing anything. So all your property in this world is unnatural possession. You are catching a shadow, but the original is somewhere else. If the consciousness can contemplate on this eternal archetype of everyone's being, I think that would be true meditation.