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Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1998
by Swami Krishnananda


2. An Impersonalised Outlook

(Darshan given on January 17th, 1998)

A visitor: Swamiji, the last time you spoke you spoke about the three granthis, and how when Sivananda, before he left, one by one…

Swamiji: Yesterday I explained what it is, to some extent. The abolition of the consciousness of universality is one granthi, the projection of externality is another granthi. This is called ‘adding salt to the wound’. Abolition of the consciousness of universality is a wound, and to make it worse you are forced to involve yourself in the consciousness of externality, that is, adding salt to the wound. And then something worse takes place. That is a third granthi: engaging oneself in intense activity in a field which looks like a total outside. You can think this. You can say tragedy has befallen humanity.

We are not living in a world of milk and honey. Life is a tragedy if it is an exiled life, being thrown out of heaven, and seeing things topsy-turvy. All these things we are doing. Our true location is in heaven. It is not on the earth. And even on the earth we are not seeing things properly. We are seeing things topsy-turvy. The inside looks like outside, the outside looks like inside. So the remedy for this tragic experience is an intense effort to melt oneself into the liquid of all-pervasiveness, and feel oneself everywhere, which is another way of saying you will see nothing outside you. This is briefly the answer.

Another visitor: Swamiji, is that a permanent state when you do have that experience of that oneness, or does it develop? Does it get deeper and deeper as time goes?

Swamiji: What do you say? You go deeper and deeper?

Visitor: Yes. Does enlightenment develop deeper and deeper? If one has an experience of enlightenment at the beginning, a flash…

Swamiji: In the beginning, it is a hard effort. Then it becomes a flash. Then it looks like a miracle and a wonder. Then it becomes a deep, joyous experience. There are stages. Mystics, saints and sages say there are many levels of experience – stages of interiority of experience. We become more and more interior to our own selves, in a cosmical sense, as we advance.

The magical touch to this sorrow of life is to feel oneself as a pure subjectivity and not an object of perception for any person, and concede that everyone also is a subject. If I see you as an object, you will see me as an object. That means to say, there are no objects. One who sees is the subject, and one who is seen is the object. But everybody is seeing, so you can say everybody is the subject, everybody is the I. That means the whole universe is an I. There is no you and no object. This will solve your problem.

Visitor: In that development of enlightenment, the levels of experience, is that without effort? Does that like a stream just flow, and the person just goes deeper and deeper, or is there effort involved still?

Swamiji: Yes, it goes deeper and deeper and it expands itself more and more. In the beginning, a lot of effort is necessary. To forget your own personal existence and affirm your cosmic existence is not an easy job. It requires tremendous effort, which is called meditation, in other words. It may take years for you to come to some sort of satisfaction in this effort. After many years it may become a spontaneous experience. The effort will not be a painful pushing of oneself forward, but an automatic experience. What is effort in the beginning becomes spontaneous later on, and you will think only in that way. There is no other way of thinking.

Another visitor: Swamiji, is there a way to find more passion in myself for liberation?

Swamiji: If you are accepting that you are in a totally wrong position, it will propel you in the right direction with such vehemence – which you may call passion, if you like. A person who has lost everything and is in utter poverty would, with such vehemence, want to be wealthy that you need not explain what it is. It is intense craving for what one does not have, and what one would like to have. If you feel that you are well enough, well-off, and you don‘t require anything – I have got a good job, I have got property, land and money, I have got family, I have got everything – then that passion will not arise because then that passion has got diverted to the outer world.

“I am the whole humanity.” What does it mean? Can you make any sense out of this? One of the ways of appreciating this truth is to intensely feel that you are the whole person manifested as all the people in the world. You are the total person. Very difficult to imagine this. You are such a big person, so high and so wide that you have encompassed the length and breadth of the whole area occupied by humanity, and all the people in the world, whom you call humanity, are your limbs, as it were. You are the person. You become a universal person.

When you carry this logic to its ultimate perfection, it becomes God Himself. A total person is God only. He is the person, and ultimately there is only one person. If you can imagine the association of the entire living beings in this world all associated with you vitally, and expand this idea into a larger area of the whole of creation, you are thinking as God thinks.

Ultimately, meditation is thinking as God would think. It is not thinking something else. You have to be the whole humanity – in which case, you cannot see humanity with your eyes. Now you are seeing many people seated here. At that time you will not see them because they have become you. You will see them as yourself only, like a tree seeing all the branches as itself. You can imagine that the tree knows that there are many branches, but it will know that all the branches are itself. Thousands of leaves on the tree are also tree itself. All the limbs of your body are yourself. In this way you carry the logic of perception from multiple visualisation of all life into a large coextensive, co-eternal associated mass of living entity, so that the world becomes one living entity.

What will happen to you at that time? The world will be yourself. The world is I, and I is the world. Yesterday I mentioned instead of saying ‘I am’, you can say ‘I is’. You are so much attached to this physical body, and would like to deny that concession to other people, that we assert ‘I am, I am’, but you don’t know that others are also ‘I am’, so how many ‘I ams’ are there? There is only one ‘I am’. So this ‘am’ goes away and becomes ‘is’. God also feels ‘I am what I am’, but it is better to say ‘God is’ instead of saying ‘God I am’, and all that.

This is, to put it briefly, the art of impersonalisation of the otherwise-personal outlook of things. If this habit of impersonally beholding things is developed, our sorrows will slowly diminish, and you will take upon yourself, as you put it, the burden of humanity. It is not actually the burden that you are taking up; you become the humanity itself, so there is no burden. You are the elephant. You are not carrying the heavy burden or weight of an elephant on your head. The elephant is not carrying its own weight. The question does not arise. It is the weight. When you are identical with the thing, it ceases to be a terrorising thing. It is yourself.

You cannot go near a tiger, but a tiger‘s little cub jumps on the mother‘s body, bites her ears, kisses her, and rolls itself on the body of the tiger. Why someone else cannot do that? Because there is a vital, organic relationship between the cub and the mother tiger, whereas in other cases that relationship is absent. It is biological attraction which keeps the child and the mother so very close to each other. So there is a biological connection; though the attraction is not visible, the connection persists even among human beings, so that you consider the fate of human beings as more important than the fate of insects and the animals in the jungle.

People say, “I want to serve others.” Everybody says, “I want to serve others.” When you speak like that, you mean only human beings. Do you want to serve the snakes and the scorpions? So what do you mean by ‘others’? You are clinging to your own species. This is also a kind of biological attraction in a larger scale. Why do people love only people, and not any other species? Why don’t you hug the tree as your own self, but you hug your own child? This is a miraculous tendency in the species to hug its own species, and a terrible universally prevalent attachment is seen everywhere. This has to be overcome.

It cannot be overcome, and such an achievement is not practically possible, except by deep meditation. The I-amness of God… Have you heard that God has declared Himself as “I am what I am”? When Moses saw the brilliant light in the burning bush, that burning thing told him, “I am what I am. I am that I am.” There is no other name. There is no name for God. It is the great I of the cosmos, of which you are all parts, organically connected to one another, vitally related, inseparable from one another. Let this meditation continue, and then you will feel a thrill in yourself, as if walls are melting and entering into you. Can you imagine the walls are melting and entering into you? You will be wondering how walls can melt. You think walls have no sense? They have got sense. Walls have ears; you have heard it said. If that is so, they have eyes also.

There was a mystic called Ouspensky. He had a power of mystical perception. He has written so many books. In one of them, he says he went to a hotel. He saw an ashtray on the table. By looking at that heap of ash on the tray, he could visualise all the people who have smoked there. He could see them. “Oh, these are the people who have smoked here.” And he looked around the walls. He could visualise all the people who lived in that room earlier. So walls are not dead bricks. They are as much conscious as you are. They can speak to you.

In Hindu mythology there is a story that on one occasion God burst through a brick wall, a brick pillar. You thought, or you are thinking, that God is only in heaven. This story of India tells that He could manifest Himself from a brick pillar. How would you expect God to come from bricks? Unthinkable! If He is all pervading, He is in the bricks also.

Trees know what you are thinking. Botanical researchers these days have demonstrated that if you think something about a tree, by the side of which you are walking, it will know what you are thinking. If someone says, “This tree must be cut tomorrow,” it will vibrate, like this. “Oh, this person is telling this!” and next day when you pass, it will shake inside. By electromagnetic experiments people have found out the vacinity of that person who said the tree must be cut disturbs the tree, and it shows agitation: “Oh, this person has come who said yesterday that he will cut me.” On the other hand, you say to a plant, “How beautiful you are. Oh, I shall take care of you. I will water you. I will manure you. Oh, how tender you are. Oh, beautiful rose.” You go on telling; it will smile when you go the next day. You think that roses have no brain? It is not like that. By an electromagnetic demonstration, they have proved they can know who you are.

You know a plant called touch-me-not? Why is it behaving as it is? Do you know what it does? If you touch the leaf of that little plant, it will close itself. When you go away, it will open. Look at this. What sense it has got! Can you say they are lifeless things?

Are we the only important things in the world? How is it that we arrogate to ourselves as human beings all the value of the whole world? “Mankind, humankind, this kind, that kind,” we say, as if other things don’t exist. Did God create only human beings? Cosmological doctrines tell us God did not create you first. He created the earth, the water and the sky, the sun and the moon, and the trees, the plants. They came first. The plants and trees are our ancestors. We are latecomers, though we arrogate to ourselves the great importance of our own selves. So it is necessary to know all these things and be aware that every atom has an eye. It sees you. There is nothing in the world which does not know you; therefore, be careful.

This is a kind of meditation of expansion of consciousness. I have nothing more to tell now. If you want to ask me anything, you tell me.

I can learn something from you if you can learn something from me. Everyone has got some wisdom, some knowledge, something to give. There is no one in the world who is incapable of giving something to others. They may look small, but no, they are not. You have got something with you which would be beneficial to other people. Everyone is rich in something, though not in the same thing which others have. This is my short outpouring in the context of our discussions.

A visitor: From what you just said, I understand it and I believe very much that everything is alive and everything has a consciousness. Because of that I’m also vegetarian, and how then do you go about when you’re eating vegetables, they also have consciousness? What can you say?

Swamiji: You are perfectly right. We are not really perfect in every sense of the term. We are inadequate in many ways. None of us has achieved perfection to such an extent that we should not eat even a leaf. This deficiency in every one of us must be accepted. We have to accept our faults and difficulties and deficiencies, whatever they are. What you have said is perfectly correct.

There was a person who was the son of a very great, saintly lady. He used to do austerity, tapasya. He will eat only leaves from the tree. He will pluck green leaves and eat. The mother, who was a greater saint than this gentleman, asked him, “How are you surviving? What are you eating?” “I eat leaves from the tree.” “You take green leaves from the tree?” She caught hold of him and started pulling each hair from his body. “Do you feel happy?” she said. “Do you feel happy that I pull your hair? This is what you are doing to the tree. You are pulling live leaves from the tree, and it feels the pain of losing one living part of itself.” Now, what do you say for this? She has risen to a cosmic state far above all normal people.

But there is one thing in answer to what you say. The lower is capable of being swallowed by the higher. In the evolutionary process, there are lower categories and higher categories. The power of the higher can mitigate the problems created by the lower. If a person kills an animal, like a deer in a forest, he is not called a murderer. Nobody calls him a murderer and hauls him to the court. But if he has done the same thing to a human being, he is subject to the law. Why is it that killing a human being is an offense, and killing a deer is not an offense? You may say it is the super-arrogation of the human being in one way. The higher consciousness is more valuable than the lower consciousness. Human consciousness has a greater value to existence than animal consciousness and plant consciousness and tree consciousness, etc.

In a similar way, when you go on expanding your consciousness, the larger absorbs the lower into itself. In ethical scriptures it is said for the sake of the welfare of the family, one naughty member of the family can be thrown out. The naughty person is also a member of the family only, but that person’s presence is an irritant to the welfare of the family, notwithstanding the fact that this individual also is a part of the family. The family is not a bundle of people. It is a consciousness of an organisation. Many people sitting together do not make a family. A hundred people sitting in a railway compartment do not make a family. So a family is not a bundle of people. It is a consciousness of an internal unity among certain people. If any member is causing disruption in that consciousness of unity, in the interest of the maintenance of the unity of the family, which is a consciousness rather than a person, that person can be thrown out. You simply exile that person. Suppose a family, which is very good indeed, is operating in such a way that it acts against the welfare of the whole nation, the nation can take steps to see that the particular family is penalised in a proper way. The nation is a greater reality than the family, and the family is a greater reality than the individual.

So likewise, the higher consciousness, which is the human consciousness, absorbs into itself all the lower categories – animal, tree, etc. This explains the permissibility of a human being eating a leaf or a vegetable and yet going scot-free. The reason is, tree consciousness and plant consciousness is a lower category of value than human consciousness, which is higher. The higher and higher you go, the lower ones get sublimated into the higher. Everything will be set right by the higher meditation that you are doing. Cosmic forces will join together and see to it that all the performances in your case, like actions, will be put in order. So this is sort of explanation I am giving, very subtle and mystical in its nature.

When a war takes place, soldiers march. Suppose two nations clash. One country is in war against another country. Soldiers are marshalled in the field, and two thousand soldiers die and win victory against the other country. The country that has won victory says, “We have won victory.” But it does not say, “We, who are minus two thousand people, have won victory.” It does not say like that. The nation is not minus somebody who is dead. You catch my point? The nation does not feel… Suppose twenty-five percent of the people have died. The nation which has won victory does not feel that it is now only seventy-five percent alive. The nation is one hundred percent alive even if twenty-five percent have died. So this shows the nation is not a human being. The total of humanity is not a nation. It is a consciousness. So ultimately, I am coming to the point, all value is in consciousness and not individuality, whether it is a plant or tree or whatever it is. The individual is not the value; the consciousness behind it is the value, and that explains every question.

The whole universe is an idea, a consciousness. ‘Nation’ is an idea only. Nation does not mean the ground of the earth. ‘Nation’ does not mean trees and plants. ‘Nation’ does not mean rivers and mountains. When you say ‘my country’, what do you mean? Do you mean the earth, a tree? They don’t want you. You mean people. And when I say seventy-five percent is alive, twenty-five percent have gone, still you say we are whole. Don’t we say “I am a whole person”? Even if the limbs of the body are amputated – legs are amputated, hands are amputated for some purpose – would the person feel that he is only fifty percent alive? Now you have got the answer. So you are not what you appear to be. You are not the individual that you are. So is the case with everybody. The ultimate reality is consciousness. That explains everything, and answers all questions. A deep thing it is, requiring further thought.

I am a simple, poor person. That is all I can say about myself. But I am a happy person inwardly. I feel I have everything. That feeling arises due to the blessings that we have received from our Guru. That’s what I was telling yesterday. A guide is necessary. We have no property to call our own. Nothing belongs to us. We have no parents and brothers and sisters, and all that. We stand alone, which is the worst thing that can happen to a person, Yet we are happiest. And what makes us happy can be explained only by the divine blessings coming from a great Master or from God Himself. Can you be happy when everything leaves you, everything goes, and you are standing alone? If that is possible, you are a divine person, not a human being.

What else can I tell you? I have nothing more to say. What I have told just now is adequate – adequate for the whole of your life. You need not have to ask me questions again and again. You ask questions again and again because you have forgotten what was told earlier. But why should you forget? Whatever you have heard should be remembered in the book of your memory. Don’t say, “I don’t know,” and ask again. The habit of putting the same question again and again is not a good qualification of the student. Why should you ask the same thing again and again? Nothing has entered the head. A brilliant student does not require to be told the same thing again and again.