Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

18. Materialism is One Aspect of the Manifestation of God

(Darshan given on March 1st, 1997)

A visitor: Too many times I feel like a coward on the spiritual path.

Swamiji: Why? Why like that?

Visitor: I don't know. I still have one foot in the material world. I'm like a half-hearted seeker.

Swamiji: The material world is not outside God. So there is not one leg this side and one leg that side; that question does not arise. There are no two legs there. There is one leg only. You have made a mistake of thinking that the world is outside God, so when you search for God, you are thinking that the world is causing some obstruction. This is what you are feeling. That is what you meant by saying 'materialism' and all that.

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: There is no materialism. These words should not be used. It is one aspect of the manifestation of God Himself. When eternity manifests itself in time, it looks like the world. There is no world, really speaking, apart from God. It is a spatiotemporal condensation of the timeless eternity in the form of space and time – a little hard thing to imagine. The mind cannot conceive what happens at that time.

Gas can become liquid. For example, hydrogen and oxygen become water – H2O they call it. H2O. Two particles of hydrogen and one of oxygen blended together become water, but originally they were gas. Water can solidify itself and become ice. Ice can get hardened after many years into a rocklike substance. It can become hard like stone if it goes on condensing itself in intense frigidity and cold. Now, you cannot say the hard substance is outside the gas. The gas itself is a hard substance. Eternity itself is time. Time itself is the world, and you are inseparable from it. So there is a holistic manifestation, which is called the universe. The universe is the body of the Almighty.

So there are no two legs, as you said. It is the lower and the higher appearing to be different from one another, like a baby and an adult. The baby itself becomes the adult. Now, you cannot say when you are a baby you are in one world and when you are an adult you are in another world. Only the degree of density and comprehension has changed, but the same person has become the adult person. So the world is a condensation of the time process, not existing outside eternity, which is God. It is a vertical ascent and a similar descent, but not horizontal. The world is not outside us. It is involved in the entire cosmic operation, and you are inside it, so you are in one stage of the evolutionary process. The world cannot be considered as an outside object, just as you are not an outside object to your own self. If you consider yourself as integrally related to the whole creation, you will not find that the world is outside you, because that would mean that you are outside your own self. It is an impossible thing. It requires a little bit of hard thinking. The world is not outside you, and you are not outside the world. You are involved in the world. You are inseparable from the world. So when you think, the whole world thinks, as it were. This is the beginning of spirituality. Spirituality begins with your attempt to think as the world thinks, and not as Mr. so-and-so thinks. Mr. so-and-so does not exist outside the world. You are integrally connected with the whole structure of the world. You are organically connected with the whole world, like the limbs of the body. The limb is not outside the body; so you are not outside the world. So in that case, when you think, the whole world thinks; and if the whole world thinks, it is like God thinking.

Okay? This is how you have to raise your mental operation from the lower wholeness of individuality of your own body, and raise it to the wider comprehensiveness of the whole world, and raise it further up to the eternal comprehensiveness of the whole of creation, so that you rise gradually from your body consciousness, individuality consciousness, personality consciousness, to world consciousness, from world consciousness to space-time consciousness, from space-time consciousness to Absolute consciousness.

So spirituality is a rise from the bottom to the top. It is not moving horizontally from this side to that side. There is no world outside you, so you cannot say one leg is in the world. Give up that idea. Did you catch what I said?

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: This is the essence of spirituality, the essence of meditation, the essence of yoga, the essence of anything whatsoever. Everything worthwhile I have told you in a brief compass.