Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

58. Parallel Seeing

(Darshan given on December 5th, 1997)

Swamiji: This example is of people who are prisoners tied by a chain so that they may see only the shadows cast on the walls of the prison by people walking outside in sunlight, but they cannot see who is actually walking. All the forms and the actions of this world are shadows cast by certain events taking place in the original archetypes, as they call it. But we are also included in that shadow play. Yourself, myself, everybody, everything is a shadow cast by something which is taking place elsewhere.

The solution is a simple thing: Everyone is seeing. I am seeing, you are seeing, everybody is seeing. Every atom has got eyes. Every sand particle can see. Walls have ears, people say. Walls have eyes also. Every leaf in the tree can see you. They are not dead things. You are seeing the mountain, but the mountain can see you. It is mentioned that everywhere are His eyes. Sahasraśīrṣā puruṣaḥ sahasrākṣaḥ says the Purusha Sukta: millions of eyes. 'Millions of eyes' means 'endless eyes', which means to say, every eye is His eye only. There is only seeing. See the picture of Viratsvarupa. Everybody's head is there inside it. Everybody's eye also is there, everybody's hand, everybody's feet. Now He is seeing. What is He seeing? He cannot see anything because He is just the seer only. God is a seer without an object that is seen.

If you can apply your willpower for a while and concentrate your mind on the fact that what you are seeing is seeing you, then you don't love yourself. You don't want to possess yourself. You want to possess that which is seen by you, but you don't want to possess that which sees. That is called an object which is seen, but not that which sees.

You cannot consider any person in the world as an object of your satisfaction. They are as important as anybody else. The world is the kingdom of ends only, not of means. Nothing in the world is a means to an end. Everything is an end in itself. Even a dog cannot be treated as dirt. It has to be treated as a living being; then only it is satisfied. You cannot touch anything by considering it as an outside object. It repels you immediately, and turns away. Anything that you consider as outside your consciousness will run away from you. It will never be caught by you afterwards.

So you adjust your mind in such a way: The whole universe is I; only it sees. Then you will have no attachment to anything, because that which you are attached to is also a seeing consciousness. Everybody is parallelly seeing, like this. The other day I gave the example of railway tracks. Two rails are moving parallelly. If you can imagine that the rail has consciousness, one rail will not consider the other rail as an object of itself. It is like two bullocks walking with a bullock cart. One bullock is not an object of another bullock. They are parallel movements. Likewise, everything in the world is a parallel movement towards its own universality. There is only universal perception, universal seeing, universal being, universal consciousness. There is no object anywhere.

Creation is a misconception of consciousness, but not a real, existent thing. Creation does not exist. It is only a wrong perception of God Himself. An example is like a snake and a rope. The wrong perception of the rope is called a snake. The rope has not created the snake by any effort. The scriptures say that God thought one day, “Let me create the world.” It is like saying the rope one day thought, “Let me become a snake.” The rope never becomes a snake. It cannot think like that. It is a perceptional defect that makes the rope look like a snake.

An ashramite: Who sees that, Swamiji? Who is the seer of that?

Swamiji: The seer is... Who is seeing the rope? It is like the rope seeing itself. If the rope has eyes, it will consider itself as a snake. It is a possibility. Here the rope itself is looking at it as a snake.

Ashramite: But a third person is there to perceive...

Swamiji: There is no third person there, because the snake is identical with the rope. The seer and the object are identical. Everything that you are considering as an object is a subject. Everything is as important as anything else. Nothing is your possession, or object. If something is an object, why don't you be considered as an object? If you consider me as something to be possessed, I can consider you as something to be possessed, so there will be a clash of objectivity only. There is nothing to be possessed. You cannot possess anything.

Finally, it means there is only one seeing taking place. Everything must be considered as parallel to you, and not in front of you. Nothing is in front of you. Everything is parallel to you. That means to say you are not seeing anybody. You are only seeing, pure consciousness. You are seeing, and also conscious that you are seeing, and your consciousness is existing. The existence of the consciousness which only knows itself, that is Viratsvarupa.

You cannot get attached to anything, because there are no objects. They are also seeing centres only. They are the eyes of God, they are the brain of God, they are the hands of God, they are the legs of God. Sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṃ tat sarvatokṣiśiromukham, sarvataḥ śrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati. Read this sloka again and again from the Gita. Everywhere are legs, everywhere feet, everywhere hands, everywhere eyes, everywhere ears. Can you imagine such a thing? Where there are eyes, ears cannot be there, but in this case ears are eyes, eyes are ears, and they are legs also, they are brains also, they are fingers. Legs can think and the brain can walk. The ears can see. Anything can be done anywhere because it is one total action. There are no sense organs in God; it is consciousness operating in any form. It is the rolling of the waves on the ocean, wherein the ocean cannot consider the waves as its object. The ocean does not see the waves as its object. It is itself rolling. So the self-rolling of consciousness is pure seeing only, sata matra, existence only, which is seeing itself only.

Everybody is parallel to you. Remember this. Never think that he is in front of you. Even this table is not in front of me. It is parallel to me. It is my own limb extended like this, so I cannot get attached to it. Everything – mountains, stars, sun, moon, space, time, they are all parallel to me so that they are not only my friends, they are inseparable limbs of my cosmic existence. This is called Viratsvarupa.

There is nobody in front of you. This idea must be removed. Everything is parallel to you. You go together. You may call them brother, if you like, but it is much more than brother. It is inseparables. A brother can be separated, but here is an inseparable connection of one with the other. They are limbs. Everything is a limb of one being. There is only one action, one thought, one existence. Don't look at anything like this [outside]. It should not be done like that. You look at yourself. If you feel like seeing something, remember that it is also part of the seeing process.

You are seeing this lady sitting there; she looks like an object. She is seeing you; you look like an object. But if you are parallelly seeing, you will not see her and she will not see you. And there is nobody to be seen afterwards because everybody is the process of seeing only. This is Virat-darshan.

So a simple trick you have to play. Everything is parallel to you, and nothing is in front of you; and you cannot be attached to that which is equal to you, or parallel to you, or of the same nature as you. Attachment is to that which is not of the same nature as you, because if it is of the same nature as you, attachment cannot take place. There is an element of inferiority that you are imputing to that which you are trying to possess, and you are superior. That is a mistake. The object is not inferior. It is not an object at all. That is a mistake. You are simply unnecessarily exploiting something, which you should not do. You cannot exploit anybody in the world.

It is a difficult thing, but the simplest thing. Both things I have told.