Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

28. God Is the Only I

(Darshan given on September 21st, 1998)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: According to you, where is God? Where is God just now? Where is He sitting?

Visitor: He's everywhere, I think.

Swamiji: If He is everywhere, He must be everything also.

Visitor: Yes, it could be.

Swamiji: Now, if God is everything, in that everything you are also included because you are not outside the everything. The word 'everything' means all things, including yourself. So God is present in you also, is it not? Otherwise, the statement “He is everything and everywhere” will not be valid. Now, if He is everything and there is no place where He is not, you will have no place to sit. He has occupied your seat; otherwise, He won't be everywhere. Then you have no place to exist. Your existence is cancelled by the existence of God. You do not think like a lady from Lebanon. You will not be existing at all, because God has occupied your place, and in this situation of your not separately existing outside God, you cannot even think in your mind except as God thinks. Do you understand the seriousness of the matter? If your individual personality is abolished by the entry of God into your location, then there is no Mirya existing. What exists then?

You have to think carefully, stage by stage, in this particular issue. If your personality, individuality and isolated location is abolished completely by the entry of all-pervading God into the place where you are sitting, then what remains at that time? Where are you at that time?

Visitor: I am in Him.

Swamiji: Ah, if this idea has really entered into your mind and you will not flicker...

Visitor: No, but sometimes I say maybe God is also mind. I think...

Swamiji: What is also?

Visitor: This also is what I think is my ego.

Swamiji: You should not use the word 'I', and all that. God will not tolerate such words. When you say 'I', you have separated yourself from God. There is only one I in the universe. That is the I of God: I am what I am. You should not think this merely for 2-3 minutes. Continuously think as an individual, as a person from Lebanon, as Mirya or somebody, whatever it is. “This imagination of myself that I am coming from such a place, my name is like this, I am isolated, truncated from God's all-pervading nature” – that kind of existence is an illusion. Any existence which is not God's existence is an illusion. It is not true. It doesn't exist. It can pass away at any time. An untrue existence will pass away.

Now, we do not want to pass away like that so easily. We want to be in the state of permanent existence. “I don't exist” – you should not use the word 'I', saying, “I don't exist.” You will feel giddy by thinking such a large thought. 'Giddy' means your mind cannot accommodate universal thought because you have never entertained a universal thought in your life, at any time. You have only a particular thought: I am here, He is there, this is there, so many things are there. This is called particularised thought. But as your existence cannot be tolerated by God's all-pervading nature, so also God cannot permit the isolated existence of anybody else. Not only people, but even mountains, trees, sun, moon, stars – they all get abolished at that time. They become the light of God only. And at that time, what happens to your mind, your consciousness? It becomes the consciousness of God only.

You will be trembling with the uncontrollable joy of being the universal Spirit, and you are neither a man nor a woman nor anything. Everything has gone away. You are a spark of the conflagration of the fire of God. A spark is the same as the original conflagration, but the spark may look different from the conflagration. It shoots off, and it looks like a separate thing. But here, this does not shoot off. It is like a ray of the sun, and the sun and the rays are identical. The rays do not lose anything by becoming rays. It is an emanation of the glory and the light of Sun himself. So you become an emanation and light of God Himself. Remember then that you don't exist as a human being. You become a divine emanation of utter perfection, which is God.

Can you meditate like this? How long can you meditate like this?

Visitor: I don't know. Maybe one hour.

Swamiji: As long as possible, every day. Every day. It is the foremost duty of a human being. We are cluttered with unnecessary, foolish occupations, and then think that we will be happy. Only the original is valid. The shadow is not valid. Our aspirations, our happiness, our occupations, they are all shadows of a reality, which is your higher nature. That pulls you up. The higher nature is called archetype, and yours is a shadow. You are the shadow of your own self. There is another Mirya sitting in heaven, which is the original form of yourself. That is pulling you, “Come on!” like the ray of the sun pulling the shadow. That's why you are restless in the world. No human being can have peace of mind here because you have alienated yourself from your real nature, which is in the high heavens. So the true I, which is you in the high heavens, beyond the cosmos, pulls you up, the shadow. “Come on, I am here.” You yourself are telling yourself, “Come on!” Because of the permanent pull of the higher nature of yours, which is a high heavens, if you want to call it, you cannot have peace of mind because you as a shadow cannot have peace of mind. The shadow should merge with the original, which is yourself.

You have got two selves: the lower and the higher. The higher pulls you, and makes the shadow, or the lower self, miserable. That is why people say, “I have no peace of mind.” You have alienated yourself from your own higher nature. You are creating problems for yourself by splitting your being into two parts: the lower and the higher. That which wants things in this world is the lower self, which is the shadow. That which does not want anything because it is all-pervading and it is everything, that is the higher nature. If this meditation has entered your mind, and you have no doubts about it...

It is a very difficult exercise. The ego, the sense of individuality, the sense of isolatedness, will not allow you to easily think like this. You will be repelled. That's why people say meditation is difficult. The ego sometimes looks harder than God Himself, though it is not.

The traditional view of religion is there is always a war between the gods and the demons. In Biblical theology you have got the fall of the Lucifer. The Lucifer is every one of us who has fallen upside down, opposing God's supremacy. If God says, “I am,” you say, “I am also here.” You should not say like that. Two I's cannot exist. The I is only one, because anything other than the I is a you, it, and so on. The 'you' cannot be friendly with you. Nobody can be friendly with you unless that person who is imagined to be outside is also an I. Everybody calls oneself as I: “I am coming.” There are so many people standing. Everybody is an I. “I am sitting, I am doing work, I, I.” So there is only I in the whole universe. There is no you, and all that. Nobody should be called you, he, she, it, and so on. It is wrong. The whole universe is one I, an amalgam of cosmic I's. There cannot be a distance between one I and another I. Because you are here and He is here, there is some distance between, as it were. That distance also cannot be there unless it also exists. If it exists, it is an I by itself. So there is nothing called you, it, this, that.

This is a very crucial exercise of great mystical meditation. The harder the ego, the greater the sense of isolation, the more difficult is the meditation. But if you have understood the technique of this meditation, and the value of it, it will take action immediately. When God enters you, He doesn't take time to enter because God is above time and space. So God does not come tomorrow, but just now, if this meditation goes on sincerely and with great force: “I want it!” There is no other virtue than to want a thing: “I wholly want it!” But you should not say, “I want this, but I want something else also.” You should not say like that. Then your want is split into two parts, then that will not materialise. You should want only one thing. If everything, everybody, every insect, and every tree, sun, moon, stars are I only, there can be only one I in the whole universe, and that one I is you and everybody else.

Very difficult to think like this. It is not an easy job. God will not drop like a fruit from the tree. You have to do tapas, as we call it, intense justification of God's existence. Now, up to this time, we have been justifying our existence only, and simply brushed aside God. If God is there, all right; if He is not there, then also it is all right. That is what we are thinking. What do I lose if God is not there? Let Him mind His business. This is the callous attitude of human beings. But now, by this little analysis I presented before you, you feel the importance of abolishing this sense of I, individual case only, and enter into the universal I-ness where nobody exists except one I only, which is another way of saying God alone exists. This is called meditation.