Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

24. Everything Is One I

(Darshan given on September 1, 1998)

Swamiji: Whether you meditate or do japa, it should be a spontaneous, happy process.

A visitor: This is the best way, as you just said, to dissolve externality.

Swamiji: Externality? There is no externality because by 'externality' you mean something outside you. That outside you is I only. Even the tree is self-conscious. The mountain – everything is I. So externality is only an unnecessary egoistic projection of one's own self as superior to other people. When you say, “You are outside me,” you are condemning that person as if it is inferior to you. You don't like anything external. You want yourself, and anything related to you: “It is my relation.” But if you tell a relation, “You are external to me” will he like it? The word 'external' nobody likes. It is exclusion, and there is no necessity to have exclusion anywhere because everybody is me. Even an ant is me. It is I. It does not say 'you', and all that.

If you extend this concept indefinitely, up to outer space, you will find the universal I, and you need not bother about yourself because you are also a part of that one I. When I say 'one', it does not mean two, three, four. It is an amalgam of one, like an ocean. Every drop is an I, but in the ocean they are all one I. The ocean is not many I's put together. The many drops, which look like many I's, cease to be many I's. They become one I. It is not a mathematical or arithmetical I. It is something different, because an arithmetical I is different from number two. But here there is no number two. The ocean does not feel it is full of drops. It won't feel like that. There is no drop there. It is an amalgamated, single I. This I is not arithmetically computable. It cannot be counted because the ocean contains all the drops, but it does not mean that many drops are sitting inside. They don't sit inside. They are the ocean only. That is the meaning of the total I. There is only one I, and in that sense you must consider this as one – not one, two, three, four, five. Very clear understanding of it is necessary, and a strong will is necessary to assert it. You must have a powerful will.

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: Be ONE. But if it is difficult, you forget it. Do tryambakam mantra japa. The point is, you should not strain your mind. If it is possible to conceive it easily, spontaneously, happily, you can do it. But if it is very difficult to stretch the mind like that to a cosmic level, then give it up. At least for five minutes you can try. Afterwards, when you feel it is tiring, leave it. Five minutes you do. Every day for five minutes you try this kind of thought: expanding your being to the extent of cosmic being. In a few seconds you may feel you are tired and can't exercise the mind like that because it is fatiguing to the will; the will is not accustomed to think like that, so in a few minutes you stop it. Then do your mantra japa.

Visitor: When you were giving meditations, this was so easy when we were meditating.

Swamiji: Each one was doing independently something. There is no uniform meditation. What each one was thinking, I do not know. They were doing something.

Visitor: But it was very easy when we were in the meditation. At that time it was easy to...

Swamiji: I have only one way of meditating. I don't go on thinking twenty things. I think one thought, and I don't think anything else. No other thought will come.

To come to this conclusion of the possibility of one thought which is not other than itself, to come to that conclusion with certainty, it will take several years for a person. Otherwise, it will not agree. One cannot sit on a horse. It will give a kick and throw the man out because horse riding requires great training. You cannot sit on a bicycle. You will fall down. A lot of exercise is necessary to sit comfortably and jump on it and go. There are boys who simply throw the hands and feet over it, and go. But in the beginning they will break their heads.

Everything is exercise. It looks very impossible, but the impossible becomes possible by repeatedly doing the same thing again and again, again and again, again and again. So your sadhana is all right. No problem.