Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

42. Nothing Is an Other

(Darshan given in November 1998)

Swamiji: There is no communication between yourself and anything which is not you. You have already called it 'not you'; you have dubbed it like that, so why should it come to you? That is why nobody can possess anything in this world. The very attempt to possess something has the implication of keeping it apart from you. Anything that is apart from you is not you, and it does not belong to you also. You cannot use the word 'my property' when you have kept it outside you. Your property is yourself only.

So this kind of attempt to melt down the externality of the object into the universality of yourself is called samadhi. Only in samadhi... 'Samadhi' is a big word; it means anything and everything. It is nothing but the embracing of the world into yourself. “The whole world is me. You are my friend.” It will come to you. You should not consider anything as external to you because there are no external things in the universe. The universe is one complete organism, and in that, which part can be called external? Who is the subject and the object in a universal integral existence? That condition of existence is called God.

There are no subjects and objects, the seer and the seen. These are all some maladies arisen in the mind of human beings. It is a kind of illness that you see something other than you, whereas really, the word 'other' should not be used. “Other people are there. I serve other people,” people say. But the people whom you call other, they will consider you also as an other. So who are the others actually in the world? Who are the other people? It is only a linguistic jugglery. You should not use such words: 'other people'. “I will serve other people,” you say, because you are also one of the other people. Who will serve yourself?

Humanity is a total mass of inclusiveness. It is not existing in America and India and all that. It is a total living principle in which other people and myself do not exist. Life is integral, inclusive, and no bifurcation of this total can be conceived. You are a whole, like everything is a whole. You cannot know anything finally unless you yourself are that thing. Then the whole thing will come up. This is the art of meditation and yoga.

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad there is a powerful statement. Sarvaṁ tam parādād yo'nyatrātmano sarvaṁ veda (B.U. 2.4.6): “Everything will run away from you if you consider it as other than yourself.” You have used the word 'other'. You have spoiled the whole thing by saying that. The other is not your friend because you have dubbed the thing as other. You are other than me, so what have I to do with you? If I am related to you in any way, it's good, but the other cannot be related because already you have told it is other, so now what relation is possible?

A visitor: Advaita really, you are talking about.

Swamiji: I am not talking of Advaita. I am talking common sense.

Visitor: Isn't Advaita common sense?

Swamiji: You should not use jargons. Simply a very intelligible word I am using. If one thing is different from the other, who is to know that one thing is different from the other? There must be something very interesting about it. If one thing is totally different from the other, the one thing cannot know that there is another thing, because it is different. So who is saying one thing is different from the other? It is neither of them. So who is making that judgment?

Ishapriya is different from Vandana Mataji. Who is making this statement, because if you are totally different from her, you cannot know that she is existing. There is a relation. That relation is neither you nor she because relation is that which connects you with the other. So the connecting medium is neither of the two terms. So what is that third thing?

Visitor: Love.

Swamiji: It is the Ultimate Being; it may be love. There is something very mysterious operating between one thing and another thing. That mysterious thing, whatever it is called, is the reason why you are recognising one thing in another thing. How can I know that there is a mountain in front of me? Because the mountain is not jumping into my eye, how do I know that it exists? There is something mysterious operating between my eye and the mountain, and it is neither the mountain nor me. And it says, “I am here.” You catch hold of that I. What do you say? It eludes the grasp of everyone who tries to know it. It eludes the grasp of everyone. Nobody has succeeded in finding out what it is.

This mysterious thing, as it is mentioned in the Kenopanishad, appeared one day in the heaven of the gods, and sat on a tree – a very frightening being. It was sitting on a tree, and somebody went and told Indra, “Something frightening is sitting there.” It was that mysterious thing between you and me. Indra said, “Go. Go find out who is he.” He sent Agni.

He asked, “Who are you?”

“I will burn anything,” Agni said.

“What will you burn?”

“The whole world.”

He took a little grass piece and kept it there, and whatever effort Agni put forth, the grass would not burn. He came back and told Indra “I don't know anything” because he didn't want to say he was defeated. So Indra sent Vayu.

“Who are you?”

“I am the wind.”

“What do you do?”

“I will uproot the whole world.”

“Uproot it?” One grass he kept there.

They were humiliated: “We are mighty people, and you are asking us to lift a piece of grass.”

Why that intriguing thing appeared on the tree was to teach a lesson to these gods who had won victory over the demons. They were saying they had won. “These fellows, they cannot even lift a finger without me, and they are saying, 'We have won, we have won!'”

The one who causes the finger to lift is beyond space and time. It is a silly act of moving the finger. Unless the centre of the universe gives an order, this finger cannot move. All action is universal action. There is only one thing that is doing everything, but we have got such a flint-like ego, which will not permit us to accept this truth.

It is good to be humble. We lose nothing by standing on the ground, but there is fear in climbing the tree. Why do you climb the tree and then there is a fear of falling down? “He that is low feareth no fall.” And why do you so adumbrate your ego? “He who is last shall be the first, and he who is first shall be the last.” So be the last. Why do you want the first seat? “First seat I want. They gave me the last seat. They have insulted me.” You should not say like that. Suppose in a conference you are given the last seat: “I have come for the conference as a scholar to speak, and they have given the last seat.” Would you not feel hurt? But you must sit where people are keeping shoes. In the conference, people keep shoes outside. You sit there only. Why do you want a front seat?

You should not show ego in any way. Somebody is seeing everything that you are thinking. Even before you think, someone is there knowing what you are going to think. There are humble people even in our society. Once a great physicist came here. He was called Dr. K.S. Krishnan, the Director of the National Physical Laboratory in Delhi. Swami Sivananda told, “He is coming, and in satsanga you must give a chair.” They kept a chair. Before Gurudev no one sits on a chair, but this was a special guest. All the brahmacharis were running about here and there, “Dr. K.S. Krishnan is coming.” They put a chair separately. And it so happened K.S. Krishnan came first, before anybody came, and he came and sat on the chair unwittingly. The brahmacharis drove him out. “Hey, this is for Dr. Krishnan,” they said. “Oh, I see. Okay, it doesn't matter,” he said. He went and sat somewhere in the corner. After that, Gurudev came and sat. “Where is Dr. Krishnan? Hey, come here. Why are you sitting so far away?” And he sat on the chair after that. Then everyone knew this is Dr. Krishnan, and that brahmachari was ashamed of what he did. But see the humility of the man. He could have said, “I am Dr Krishnan.”

The greater you are, the humbler you feel. An elephant does not care for a dog's barking. Let it bark. The elephant is elephant only. We must be humble before everyone.

There is a story that wherever Ramayana Katha is going on, Hanuman will be present there. And one devotee asked Saint Tulsidas, “I want to have darshan of Rama.”

He said, “You can have it only through Hanuman.”

“But where is Hanuman?”

“You see, wherever there is Rama Katha going on, he will be the last man, sitting near the shoes of people, an old man, very humble. He will not sit in the front. He will be the last one. He is Hanuman,” he said.

Never ask for a front seat. Be a humble soul. “He who is first is the last there, and who is the first here is the last there.” This is Christ's statement. Everybody feels he has got some importance.