Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

20. A Double Activity

(Darshan given on July 21st, 1998)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: It is a double activity going on inside. What I am thinking, people cannot know. They only know what I am doing and what I am speaking. I am involved in two different realms of existence. There is the realm of the world where you eat and sleep and talk and work and write, and all these things. But all these things have no meaning finally when this body is dropped. There is only one meaning finally in life: what you are thinking. What you are doing has no meaning. It is absurd, finally. The other world, into which we go, will not recognise whatever service you have done to people. It will recognise only what you have been thinking in the mind.

What are you thinking the whole day and night? All the thoughts entertained throughout the day for years and years together will congeal into a solid stuff, as it were, like butter churned out from the milk, and that will come with us. Why with us? We ourselves are that only. We are not carrying the mind. The mind is we only. We should never use the word 'my' mind. I am the mind, so what is the use of saying 'my mind'? This is a confusion in thought. When you say 'my mind', you are mistakenly thinking that the body is yourself. Who is saying 'my mind'? The stupid body is super-arrogating into itself the idea of it being the supreme thing, like a creditor catching hold of the debtor and not allowing him peace of mind.

We speak of peace of mind. There is no such thing as peace of mind as long as we are servants of this body. It is a very difficult thing to understand. We cannot reject the body, nor can we be subservient to the body. The world is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is like a needle that you use for injection. You cannot say a needle is a very nice thing, but it is a necessary thing. Everything is only instrumental. It has no ultimate meaning. We are involved in the whole world, not only in one place – Rishikesh, Delhi, and all that. The entire world of space and time is concentrated in our personality. All the elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether – are dancing in every cell of our body.

We are not sons and daughters of anybody. This idea also should go. A human being is basically an idiot, without understanding anything. We always say 'my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife', and all that. There is no such thing finally in the other world. Only a spark emerges out, and that spark is neither a man nor a woman. It is said in the Upanishads, when the body becomes feeble and the time comes for departure, a light emerges from the tip of the heart. That light you may consider as the soul, if you like, and when it rises up it pulls the prana out, and that's why there is so much of writhing and wriggling at that time of passing. Then, like a rocket rushing with great speed, this light will shoot up. But in what direction will it go? The idea of direction is due to the idea of space in our mind. When there is no space, there is no direction, there is no distance. “I move somewhere.” The idea of somewhere arises on account of space. We talk of God. God is not inside space. We glibly utter the word 'God' like children blabbering, without knowing any meaning in it.

We have no friends in this world. Everybody will desert us. All the wealth will be thrown away here. All the relatives will wait until you depart, and bury this body, cremate it, and then nobody will remember that we existed. All those who consider you as a great person will not remember you after three days. This is the world. Each one is alone. Nobody has friends; nobody has relatives.

What you really are can be known only how you came into this world from the womb of the mother. What you really are can be known only from what you will be when you depart from this world. Helplessly we come, helplessly we go. How did it happen that in the middle we become kings, emperors? Is it any wisdom? That illusion of an importance that we associate with ourselves in the middle is what is called samsara. That which we have not brought with us, that which we will not carry with us, how does it become our property? People have land and property, money, bank balance, so many things. From where it came? When we did not bring even one piece of straw with us, and we will not carry even one piece of straw when we go, how did a person become rich in the middle? It is a dark illusion spread out, and if we get caught up in that and depend on it day and night, then we will have to repent.

God does not care about what you are doing. He cares about what you have been thinking in your mind, because God is a great thought, and we are also a thought. A thought rises up to another thought. The individual thought merges into the cosmic thought. Day and night we have to think. Nobody should believe that he is safe in this world. Safety is unknown. The world evolves. In an evolving world, where is safety? In a river that is moving, every minute, every second there is new water. The river does not exist, really speaking. It is only a continuity of little, little movements. Because of the impossibility of our eyes to catch up to the speed of the movement of water, we think that it is a solid water. Actually, they are all little, little bits, drops, and even the drop is constituted of some vaporous thing. Nobody knows that.

So is the case with our body. Millions of cells join together to create a form we call our body, like brick and mortar and steel and cement give the appearance of a building. There is no such thing as a building at all. The building is nothing but a conglomeration of cement and brick and steel and whatnot, so that everything we think is an illusion. There is nothing valuable in this world. What is valuable is what we are thinking in terms of the Ultimate Being, which is not in space, not in time.

When you start thinking like this, you are likely to be saved, at least in the next world. Otherwise, go on getting attached: I want, I want, I want. What is the use of wanting? People acquire large property. This property cannot be possessed by anybody. It existed before the person was born, it will exist after he dies, so what is the meaning of possessing property? It has no meaning.

If you analyse properly, you will find there is nothing meaningful in this world. The whole thing is an absurdity, but it cannot be known on account of an illusion created by the conflict created between the mind and the body inside. Even the idea of money – does anybody know what money is? If there is a hundred-dollar currency note, we call it money; but what does it mean, actually? It is only a piece of paper with some ink stamp. Can we say that a piece of paper with ink on it is money? So what is money then? It is an idea that we have impressed upon a peculiar symbol, which is nothing but a piece of paper and ink. So money is in our head only, actually speaking. We are carrying the whole world inside our brains – call it money, wealth, property, relations, whatever it is. Our brain is our property, and however we may think, that we shall become.

It is very difficult to understand all this. We don't have anybody to call our own here. If we had somebody to call our own, we would have brought that person with us when we are born. Why did we come alone, and then afterwards say that we have got so many things? The world is a great illusion. It is really not existing except as a great phantasm, like a magician's trick which people say God is playing, and everybody is caught in it.

What else can I tell you, doctor sahib? I have spoken to you one gospel.

A visitor: You have opened my mind.

Swamiji: This is what I am thinking in my mind. Whenever I may be looking like, that isn't what I am. I have a double life. Inside I am one thing, outside I look like another thing.

Visitor: I think what you have said about the shock of the body through the mind when you attain the consciousness... The causes of disease and other things are not known. These all are mere hypotheses.

Swamiji: It is a kind of tension, some kind of tension. Varieties of tensions are there in the world. We cannot even explain what they are. It is some conflict between two issues. When it is a huge historical conflict, we call it a war; but that takes place in every cell of the body.

Visitor: How to get rid of this conflict? Sometimes we know that we are in conflict, but we cannot make it all right.

Swamiji: All this I have told you is the answer for that.

Visitor: But how to practise it?

Swamiji: You must have time to think. You must devote one hour at least for you.

Visitor: Time and space.

Swamiji: There is no such thing. It is like in the dream world. In the dream also there is time and space, there are people, there is property. In the dream you can become a king. When you wake up, what happens to that king? Where is that king and property and space and time, and all the world that you saw? The same thing will happen to this world when you attain God. It will vanish as if it never existed. This will never enter the brain of any person.

Visitor: But the greatest shock is to witness. Nobody wants to witness.

Swamiji: It requires deep meditation. Every day, for one hour, you must think this only. Otherwise, the mind will not...

Visitor: What to meditate? Whom to meditate? What is the focal point for meditation, because by just asking the word 'God'...

Swamiji: No, God is only a name. It is the totality of the whole universe, totality. Can you think the total universe?

Visitor: No.

Swamiji: That is the whole thing. That is meditation. You should not think one thing, two things, a hundred things, and all that. Think the total universe, of which you are an integral part. You should not be afraid that you are meditating on that, because you have gone into that only because you are an integral part. You don't exist at all. Only the universe exists. And then transfer your mind to that total whole and meditate as the total whole thinks. That is equal to God thinking. Total thinking is called God thinking, and very great effort is necessary to transform the mind.

We are wedded to ourselves so much that we cannot believe this. We are a part of the universe. We cannot exist for a second apart from it. Then how is it that we are thinking that we are different? We are looking at the world outside with eyes. The world is not outside. We are inside it, so what are we looking at? So everything is a confusion right from beginning.

Spiritual life is not an ordinary thing. It is not meant for common folk. They may do puja, ring the bell and all that, but this will not cut ice finally. The world is too much for ordinary persons. Years and years of effort of meditation is necessary. You have to live only for that finally. But you should not say: “So much work is there. How will I meditate?” This is another foolishness. All your work, all your office, all your desk and paper and pen and everything, is inside your universe, and it is not standing outside. So when you contemplate the whole cosmos, you are also contemplating every fountain pen inside it. It cannot leave you like that. You will become richer by thinking like this than by thinking of the property and money that you have. The property does not belong to you. What belongs to you is the whole cosmos. You are pursuing a will of the wisp, a phantasm. People think that if we reach God, we will lose everything. This is another foolishness. There is no 'everything'. Everything is inside that only, and that is inside yourself, also. You also go inside.

The brain cannot contain these thoughts. People say: “I have got a lot of work to do. How will I meditate?” What do you mean by 'a lot of work'? The universe contains all the works of everybody, and you are one with everybody's work. Even Mr. Clinton's work and Russia's work and China's work, they are all inside your brain only, but you are thinking you are sitting outside. The universe does not exclude anybody. What you consider as good and what you consider as bad, beautiful and ugly, they are all transformed into an amalgam of perfection in the total thinking, which is God thinking, which is your way of thinking also. So you will not lose anything. You will gain much more than what you are struggling to get here. All the wealth of the dream world is nothing equal to the wealth of the waking world. Do we feel grieved: “Oh, I am waking up and have lost it! All the kingdom is gone, all my relatives are dead.” Like that do you think?

Visitor: No.

Swamiji: Then why are you thinking like this inside the world? This world is exactly like the dream world. If you have lost nothing by waking from dream to the waking condition, you will lose nothing by going to God. You will carry the entire universe with it.

There is a necessity to use the power of will and understanding a little, but our stupidity is such that everybody feels that going to God means losing the whole world. It is like saying that waking up means losing everything in the dream world. All the property and kingdom that you had in the dream world you have lost. Then why did you wake up at all? You could have been in dream only. But nobody thinks like that. The waking consciousness is greater than the dream consciousness of the dream kingdom. The same thing will happen here. This is a cosmic dream; that is an individual dream. The whole thing will vanish in one second, and you will find it in yourself. As a whole kingdom of the dream world is in your waking mind, you will find the entire waking world, the whole cosmos, is in the central total mind. So, have no fear of losing anything. You will gain everything.

But the idiot mind will not understand. This requires deep meditation. Nothing is greater than meditation. One hour everybody should sit.

Visitor: Any particular time is required for...

Swamiji: Any time. Whenever you are hungry, you can eat. There is no time for that.

I have spoken to you a small book by itself. Because you asked me, I said something.