Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

48. Day-to-Day Activity and Meditation

(Darshan given on September 11, 1997)

A visitor: Right now I am reading Yoga Vasishtha.

Swamiji: What do you understand from Yoga Vasishtha?

Visitor: That everything is unreal.

Swamiji: Unreal? But something must be real.

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: You pursue that. The Yoga Vasishtha has given a complete picture of what a person should do in one's life.

Visitor: But also, at this moment I'm talking to you. Day after tomorrow I will be in Lucknow or Delhi or wherever. That's also unreal or real, or I don't know what it is. I have to take decisions, I have to do things, which doesn't...

Swamiji: What are you finally asking me? I cannot make out. You asked me a question. What are you telling me?

Visitor: I'm asking a question. I'm not telling you. The question I'm asking is that day-to-day actions...

Swamiji: Every day you go on with your activities, no objection. It is perfectly all right. Any work is good. No work is bad. But meanwhile you do something for your blessedness also, along the lines indicated by a scripture like Yoga Vasishtha – deep meditation and prayer, collecting of yourself, the strength of your sense organs, keeping your mind calm and quiet, having some leisure early morning or evening, being alone to yourself. Everybody should be alone to oneself for some time. You should not be in the midst of family and people and all that. For one hour be alone to yourself. Don't talk to anybody. For one hour don't speak to any person, don't see any person. If you have got a private room in your house, close the door and sit. Don't use telephones, etc., at that time.

Be alone to yourself and feel that you are alone existing in this world. Nobody exists anywhere, and one day you will realise that this is the truth. Though you imagine that there are many people around you, a day will come when you will realise that there are no people around you. You will find that you are alone in this world. One day you will realise that nobody wants you, and nobody cares for you afterwards. When you came, you came alone from the mother's womb. Now you have created many friends. Multitudes are around you, but slowly these multitudes will diminish; they will evaporate. They will find there is no worth in this man. When your money has gone, your factory doesn't work properly, you cannot pay salary to the workers, they will slowly leave you. When money is not there, when you have no property, even relations will not like you. “It is a good-for-nothing person,” they will say. Brother or sister or relation, or whoever they are, will slowly distance themselves afterwards; further on you will find you are diminishing in your importance, and then you will find that you have nobody. Why should you wait for that time? They say when there is a going, it is good to go honourably. You don't have to be pushed out. Why should you wait for that time? Go honourably like a gentleman, not like a poor, unwanted person.

The world may not want you. Actually, even just now it doesn't want you. In Hindi they call it matlab friendship. All have got some motive behind being friendly with you. If they can get nothing from you, who will talk to you? When you have got possessions, then there are friends, but how long will you have possessions? There is a limit for that also. And when the time for the completion of the sojourn in this world is over, the world will not want you. You will be transferred to another world. When you are transferred to the other world, you do not carry luggage with you. When you go from one country to another country, you carry your luggage. Without luggage you cannot travel. You cannot carry even your body there, let alone luggage. There is a pure, uncontaminated, unbefriended, single loneliness when you depart from this world.

Sometimes before passing, people feel, “I have wasted my life.” People come here crying and weeping, “I am a big officer. I have committed my pension to my children. They don't want me in the house. I am helpless. I want refuge in the Sivananda Ashram.” I asked him, “What have you done with your earnings?” “I have given all to the wife and children.” “What are they doing now?” “They don't want me anymore.” Then he is repenting. “I have shared all my property with brothers, sisters and family. Now they are showing ungratefulness to me. I want to stay in Sivananda Ashram.” People come here like that. Why should anyone reduce oneself to that condition? You are a strong man and a well-built personality now. Continue that, and develop an inner strength. When nobody wants you, still somebody will want you. Catch hold of that person. There is somebody who wants you always. This is your duty, my dear friend, and don't forget that. Okay? This is my answer to you.

Visitor: In the pursuit of Self-realisation, or blessedness, can one draw up a checklist to function in a manner in this business or whatever, so that one doesn't go out of line in the pursuit?

Swamiji: Tell me exactly what you are thinking about a checklist. What is the meaning of 'checklist'?

Visitor: Ideally it should be emptiness; one should focus on emptiness ideally.

Swamiji: I do not believe in emptiness because everything is filled with something. There is no such thing as emptiness. It is a word without any meaning. The mind that thinks of emptiness is itself emptiness, so the mind has no existence at all. So this is a wrong philosophy of certain people who do not catch the truth properly.

When they ask, “What are you doing?” you say, “I am meditating on emptiness.” There is no such thing as that. Everything is existing. There is no such thing as non-existence. It exists in some form, in a lesser degree or a larger degree. Non-existence is inconceivable, so emptiness cannot be conceived. There is no such thing as emptiness. It is a lesser degree of fullness.

Articulate your question. What is the trouble you have got now in this matter? You are not able to reconcile between Day-to-Day Activity and Meditation. Is it so?

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: Who told you that meditation and day-to-day activity are two different things? How this idea came to you?

God has not created meditation. God has not created activity also. He has created the world, and you are inside the world. Whatever you call activity is the activity of the world. It is not your activity. If you say, “It is my activity,” you will be shunted out of the world. The world will say, “I am doing all things, and you are saying you are doing.” There is only one activity, and that is the activity of the world. The whole nature is active, the entire creation is active, the whole universe is active, and you are not outside the universe. So when you say 'day-to-day activity', it is a part of universal activity.

It is up to you to understand how your activity can be the same as universal activity. This is called spiritual education. A person who does not know how one's own activity is the same as universal activity is not properly educated spiritually. That person is thinking like an ordinary villager. If you bestow a little thought over it, you will find it is a very simple thing. As you cannot exist outside the universe, your activity also cannot be outside the universal activity.

There was a villager who was travelling in a railway train. The train was moving, and the man who was sitting inside also started running inside it. People asked, “Why are you moving?” “I am increasing the speed of the train,” he said, “because if I add to the speed of the train, it will go faster.” This is the mentality of people. You cannot increase the speed of the train by running inside the compartment; likewise, however much you may run about, you are not adding a whit to the cosmic activity. That one cannot understand this is the cause of sorrow in the world.

Actually, it is not necessary to be in a state of sorrow. God does not expect you to be in sorrow. He is a blissful being, and He has created a blissful universe, in which you are included. From bliss the universe has come, by bliss it is sustained, and to bliss it will return. This is what the Taittareya Upanishad says. But the fantastic, contorted thinking of the individual thinks it is like the villager running inside the compartment: “I will also do something. Let God do, but I will also add something to God's activity.” What can you add?

All activity is not a personal action. It is only a participation in the cosmic work. You are cooperating with the activity already going on. When the whole mechanism is working, every part also is working simultaneously. The part is not doing an independent work. It is contributing proportionately to the total output of the mechanism itself. Every action is a participation, and not an individual's doing. That this cannot be appreciated and cannot be understood is the sorrow of the human ego. The attachment to isolated individuality, which is called egoism, is so hard like flint that any amount of teaching is like pouring water on a rock.

Everybody should have sufficient time to think. A person should not be so busy that he cannot think properly. Day and night he is working in a factory, and in the evening he comes tired. He takes some food and sleeps, and the next morning he takes breakfast and runs. What is the use of this activity? What purpose? You have to earn money enough to maintain your life. All people are justified in doing as much work as is necessary to survive in the psychophysical individuality. You need not have to earn more than that. Needs are sanctioned by nature; luxuries are not sanctioned. A luxury is a theft in one way because to have something more than what you require is like taking away what belongs to another person. You convert another person into a poverty state by yourself becoming rich. Nature will not permit that. It will punish you if you do that.

However, coming to the point, there is no such thing as personal activity. If you say there is a personal activity, you are cutting yourself off from the cosmic life. You are separating yourself from God Himself. You are saying, “God is doing some work. I will also do some work,” so you are adding to the work of God. So there is no conflict between daily routine... Even a little bit that you are doing, like washing your face, cleaning your teeth, taking bath, they are not unnecessary things. They are part of the cosmic activity. You cannot even lift your finger and clean your teeth unless the centre of the universe operates. The central point of the cosmic operation tells you, “Lift your finger, clean your teeth.” Otherwise, it will fall down with paralytic stroke. Nobody can do anything in this world. Everything is done by that.

But your wisdom consists in realising that everything that you do is done by it, and your action is not somebody's action. Whatever you do justifiably, necessarily and in the manner it is required is sanctioned by the law of the universe. Then the world will take care of you; God will take care of you. Who will take care of you? That will take care of you of which you are a part. The whole will take care of the part. The part cannot add anything to the whole.

So your question is answered. There is no conflict between Day-to-Day Activity and Meditation. Meditation is the assemblage of the parts of the mind into a total whole, of which the activity is also an integral part, so that everything is one completeness, call it activity, call it meditation. Existence and action are identical. They are not two things. If you know this, you will be happy in one instant, just now. You will have nothing to tell afterwards. You will feel a relief in your mind. You will feel that problems are solved and everything will be taken care of by the powers that be. But, there is a 'but'. The ego will say, “Be careful. You are losing everything.”

Visitor: But with such Absolute knowledge, sir, why there are so many management schools opening up right from Harvard to the Indian Institute of Management? Nobody provides us with this knowledge in that education.

Swamiji: You can open anything, provided it participates in the cosmic activity. But for that you must know what is cosmic activity, towards what end it is moving. The whole universe is moving towards self-recognition in the Absolute, and if Harvard also is a part of that, okay, go on, no objection. So be happy.