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Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1998
by Swami Krishnananda


6. Praying for Departed Souls

(Darshan given on February 7th, 1998)

An ashramite: Swamiji, during night satsanga when praying for the departed souls – so, how it affects the departed souls? They depart only physically. How are they affected by our prayers?

Swamiji: Prayer is an act of the mind. It is not the words that you utter. Your mind is thinking, and the mind is not existing only in the physical world. It is in the astral world also. So the moment you think, your thought will be communicated to that place.

Ashramite: To the astral world?

Swamiji: Yes. You are doing meditation so that your mind and thought will communicate itself to God Himself. When in meditation your mind can contact God, so why not some departed souls also?

Ashramite: I didn't see anything. Suppose somebody died. I didn't see anyone.

Swamiji: But you know who it is – name, form, and all that. You know at least who that person is.

Ashramite: Form also I didn't see. Suppose somebody…

Swamiji: Even then, you have some idea as to what it is. It cannot be a totally unknown thing.

Ashramite: Suppose, Swamiji, somewhere in Japan or America, somebody died. I didn't see them. But how it…

Swamiji: You can visualise Japan, and the entire area will be included in it. When your mind can touch God Himself, why should it not touch Japan? It will really touch.

[Later on]

Swamiji: Self-control includes sense-control, but sense-control does not include the whole aspect of self-control. The ego also must be restrained in self-control, whereas sense-control means only you don't see, you don't hear, you don't eat anything, like that. Sense-control is an easy thing. You just don't give food to the sense organs. But the ego will be there. That also must be subdued.

What the Bhagavadgita is telling is self-control, not merely sense-control and the mind is roving here and there. There is no use of closing the doors of the sense organs when the mind is roving. That has no purpose.

A visitor: Why is the tendency of the consciousness to move away from Cosmic Consciousness?

Swamiji: That is because in submission to anything there is a joy. When you flow with the river, it is okay, happy, but when you move against the river, it is a pain.

One must live with a Guru, have satsanga with a Guru, satsanga with mahatmas who have thought like this, who are practising this, who are sunk in it, and who don't think anything else. Without satsanga with such people, it is no use arguing or saying anything. I consider company of good people as the greatest remedy for any problem. Wherever there is an opportunity for satsanga of high value, you must go and participate in it. It is not only one place. Wherever – whether it is Ramayana-katha or Bhagavadgita-katha or Vedanta, or whatever it is – wherever noble, high ideals are expounded, you must attend satsanga. By constant hammering again and again you become transformed. Otherwise, only one hour somewhere we catch some good things and then twenty-three hours we do some wrong thing, that has no effect.

How many times a man has got angry? You test yourself. This is one of the… How many times have you got angry and shouted with a loud voice?

Visitor: Sometimes.

Swamiji: Then what is satsanga, and all that? You can disagree with a thing without getting angry. What is the use of merely shouting? The point is that you don't agree. That is your point. You can say, “I don't agree.” Keep quiet. Why you go on shouting and get irritated inside?

So these are the tests of the extent to which you have absorbed higher truths. That is, you are not satisfied with yourself. The whole point is simply this. You must be satisfied with yourself. You are complete in yourself and you don't want anything else from anyone else. That is the sign of progress. You can sit quietly somewhere under the tree and you are happy. You need not have to run about to the shops, marketplaces, for being happy. That is, there is no faith and confidence in the nature of your relationship to the universe. The confidence is not there. You are doubting.

“How, how?” he was asking me just now. I drove into his mind something, to which he was nodding his head like this because he never heard such things.

[Later on]

Swamiji: Thinking what is different from you… Thinking an object is different from being the object. You will not benefit by merely thinking the palace of Versailles, or Buckingham palace or the White House. What is the use of thinking it? It is called wool-gathering, a waste of time. But if you yourself are that, it is a different matter. Can you yourself become that which you are thinking? This is called yoga, this is called samadhi, and this is the aim of meditation. It is futile to go on thinking something which is totally outside you and unreachable. Everything is unreachable. You cannot get anything. Everything is outside you. You cannot get even a banana which is in the shop. It is not your property. But the object should be identical with you. You yourself are the banana. Then all the bananas will flow into you.

You'll be wondering what kind of thing it is. I am not joking. You deeply meditate: You are a mountain of bananas. People will flock to you and bring bananas to you. [Laughter] You don't know the power of thought. The power of thought – oh, infinite power it has got. So, actually, meditation is the transferring of your mind or consciousness to the location of that which you want to possess or be, so that your consciousness has entered that object. In another way, you yourself are that object.

I am giving an example. You are seeing a mountain in front here. Close your eyes. Transfer your consciousness to the heart of the mountain. It will lift, like this. The mountain will lift if you order it. It is in the Bible, in the statement of Christ who says if you have faith as much as the grain of a sesame, order this mountain to move and it shall move. Actually, it is not the mountain that is moving. You yourself are moving because you have entered it in your deepest consciousness.

Do you not move your body? What is the difficulty you feel? You can just say get up, and it gets up. Go, and it goes. Why? Because the consciousness which you are is identical with the body that you are. So you have no problem in dealing with your body, but you have a problem with even the minutest thing in the world because it is outside.

Yoga samadhi is intense identification of your being with the being of that on which you are meditating. You do not think the object, but you be the object. It may be any object, from the smallest to the biggest. It may be the whole universe. It may be the Almighty God Himself. You enter into Him and see what happens.