3. Omnijective Seeing
(Darshan given on January 18th, 1998)
A visitor: You said we should think ‘omnijective’.
Swamiji: I am very glad that you have caught that word.
Visitor: The word, yes, but the meaning I didn’t catch.
Swamiji: I am happy that you caught that word. That will save you. Do you know there is a word called ‘omnipresent’?
Visitor: Yes.
Swamiji: Here ‘omni’ means the same thing, only it connotes another thing. There are two ways of seeing things: subjective seeing from your point of view, and objective seeing from another’s point of view. Neither of these is a correct way of seeing because the truth is not in the subjective side entirely, and it is not also entirely in the objective side. The subjective side and the objective side are fifty percent of the whole truth.
What I was telling is, omni brings the two fifty percents together, and makes it a hundred percent. How do you know that? There is a simple method. In yoga, there is a technique of transferring consciousness from the subject to the object side. It is a special technique explained in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. You are seeing me; you are the subject, and as you are seeing me, I am the object. Your mind is inside you. Your mind is not inside me. That is the difference between the subject and the object. With effort of will, can you think through me? Then I cease to be an object afterwards. This is the first step in omnijective seeing. It requires great power of will.
Transfer your mind to the mind of everyone sitting here. You make your mind enter into the minds of all people here. This is an initial stage of omnijective visualisation. Then you can do this technique with reference to many other things in the world – to the whole town, the whole city, the entire sun, moon and stars. You are seeing them as if they are outside. Transfer your mind to them. Feel that your mind is inside the sun. Then you will feel some energy entering into you. Go on thinking, “I am the sun. See how bright I am. I am the moon. I am the stars.” When you say ‘I’, don’t bring your personality. It is an I that comprehends both yourself and the other. That is the meaning of the word ‘omni’: inclusive. Merely looking at a thing is exclusive attention, but looking at both things simultaneously is inclusive attention. You understand me?
Visitor: Yes.
Swamiji: Suppose your mind is operating through the minds of everybody, and everybody’s mind is operating through your mind, there will be a mass of humanity here, and not individuals. And if you extend this technique to wider and wider areas, you will become a world mind, not some person coming from some country, and all that. And if you extend it still further, the world mind becomes the Universal mind. So who is meditating? The Universal mind is meditating on itself. This is the final result of omnijective perception. Okay?
Visitor: Thank you very much.
Swamiji: It is a terrible grandeur if you can conceive two things together. How can grandeur be terrible? But this is something like that. It is terrifying to think like this, but it is the grandest thing that you can think in your mind, the most beautiful thing to think in the mind. You won’t see any ugliness afterwards, because you have made your mind enter even into the ugly person, so that ugliness vanishes. You understand?
Is it not very interesting to hear all this? Very difficult, yoga is very difficult. You have to think in a totally different way than you would be thinking in a marketplace, railway station, shops, and all that. That kind of thinking is humdrum activity, but yoga is an inclusiveness of all the minds of everything, everywhere. This is, in another way, God thinking. Meditation is God thinking.
Later on to an ashramite:
But what is thinking along the right lines? What is the meaning? By any way – by straight roadway, or zigzag way, or bypass, or any way – your thinking should have some connection with the nature of God. You can reach Delhi through a main highway or through a bypass, or some nali. Any way you can go, but you reach Delhi somehow. So you think over: “I am now busy with doing some building work here. This is what I am thinking just now. It must be having some connection with God, because there is nothing in which God is not present.” Even purchasing bricks cannot be outside the realm of God. Or is it totally outside? What do you say?
Ashramite: There is nothing where God is not.
Swamiji: So why do you say you have no time to meditate? Whatever you are thinking is meditation only, but the whole point is to connect it to the wholeness of purpose. Any silly action that you perform – looking silly – is not really silly, because if it is totally silly you would not be doing it. It has a meaning for your life. Even if you take a cough lozenge for your throat, it is not an irrelevant thing that you are doing. It is necessary in the context of the maintenance of your personality in relation to God. Even if you take a cup of tea, it is not an irrelevant action. It has a remote connection with the purpose for which you are existing. You cannot do anything which is purposeless. Nobody does purposeless action. It is unthinkable. But the purpose is not seen properly because it is very remote.
All these apparently chaotic activities, looking just spread pell-mell in a higgledy-piggledy manner, like shrubs, plantations and trees growing unsystematically in a jungle, they are, ecologically, growing systematically from the point of view of the earth. The earth knows that even a bush is growing on it, and everything connected with spatial and temporal existence is connected to this larger compass which holds together every irrelevant thing. Even an insect is irrelevant for us. Some small insect is crawling. It is not irrelevant, because if it is irrelevant it won’t be existing. Only by comparison of that little thing with a mighty person, like a human being, we say we are relevant beings and these insects are irrelevant. Who cares for mosquitoes and all these? They are all wretched things, but a human being is not wretched. We are working for the welfare of living beings, but not the welfare of mosquitoes. We are not doing that. We will kill the mosquitoes and maintain human beings.
So we have got some conception of welfare. Very difficult to conceive this. In practical life you will find it a great problem in relating an ordinary little activity to the higher one, but remotely they are connected. The whole thing is connected, finally, to your existence. You have to exist first in order that you may know that God exists. If you don’t exist, God cannot exist for you. So your existence is to be securely maintained, in a proper way. You must physically exist, psychologically exist, intellectually exist, socially exist, politically exist. In every way you have to be existing. If one part is shaking, then your personality is shaking, and the whole existence will shake. So it will mean you have to be very secure in every aspect of life. Even when you go to the market for purchasing a vegetable, it is not an irrelevant activity because that is connected with your existence. But what kind of existence? A highly satisfied existence, highly comprehensive existence, which takes into consideration your relationship to everything in the world.
There is a world thinker. That world thinker decides your fate. You cannot violate the sanctions of the United Nations, saying, “Let them go to hell.” You cannot say that. You are connected with them in some way. Visibly your connection is not seen. You seem to be a totally independent man: “What connection have I got with these fellows?” It is not like that. Their thoughts, their decisions affect all the nations, and if all the nations are affected, every person also is affected. Likewise, there is a decision-maker in the whole world; that is the Central thinking of the world, with which you are connected. You cannot say, “I am very busy. I am doing something else.” It is like saying, “Who cares for the UNO?” You cannot be busy like that. Your being busy is a kind of work that you are doing so that you may fulfil your relationship to that Central thinking. So every action is meditation.