Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

48. We Are Wonderful

(Darshan given on December 10th, 1998)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: This is a strange thing about our own selves. We are inside us, but we are also everywhere, in another context. How would you contemplate on the Self if it happens to be everywhere uniformly, in and out, enveloping all things, and constituting all things also? If this meditation could be carried on with intensity and power of will, and honesty of purpose, then such a person would be the happiest person in the world. No problem will be there.

But there is a basic misconception about the Self. People generally say it is inside, as if it is inside the body of people. But it is inside the body of everybody. In that sense, we may say it is outside also. And if it is inside everything, then it is universally existent, so the word 'inside' has to be used with great caution. It is inside, no doubt, but inside even an atom, even a leaf, inside the sun, moon and stars, inside space and time. So the word 'inside' has to be defined in a different way altogether, as a cosmically enveloping eternity, that's all. Here words fail. You can't say anything at this time. You will find that you are a great person. You are a great person because your Self is everywhere. You are touching the skies, and the stars, and the Milky Way, all space and time.

If you are present in all these things simultaneously, at all times, how would you contemplate on your own Self? Initially it will look like something strange and unheard of, very difficult, but when you move along this line of thinking for some days continuously, you will find that this is the only way of right thinking, and there is no other way necessary afterwards. You will feel that you are floating with the cosmos.

So this is your true nature. You are not coming from any country – America, Columbia, and all that. These are all small thoughts, like a frog thinking that it is inside the well. We are all greater than what we appear to be. We are wonderful. You must accept that. We are all wonderful persons – not poor, not supportless. We have got every support. The winds of the universe are blowing over you, beckoning you and wanting you, eager to serve you and make you a whole, integrated being. Thus you meditate.

[Later on]

Swamiji [to another visitor]: The subtle body, which includes the sense organs, the mind, the intellect and the prana, these things will not perish with the perishing of the body. They will depart from this body, then congeal into a shape, which is called rebirth, that shape being determined by the remnant of the karmas which have not been exhausted by experience in the earlier body. This will go on endlessly until you have the means of severing this karmic result following you like a creditor. Wherever you go, the creditor is behind you. It cannot be severed like that. Any amount of effort, any charity, any goodness cannot allow you to be free from the repercussions of past deeds.

Past deeds need not necessarily mean the deeds of the previous birth. It can be the deeds of many earlier births also. They all join together to fructify at a convenient time. Some karmas are very strong, some are weak, some are middling. The strong ones take first preference. That makes you take rebirth. Then the middling ones will come afterwards. The faint karmas will come finally. But the whole problem is, you should not imagine that one day you will exhaust all these karmas by experience. That will not take place because in every birth you create new karmas. You do wrong actions, selfish deeds, and go entirely out of gear, as you say. So the karmas will never get exhausted. If by the experience of the past deeds you are going to be free from them, that is a wonderful thing. But the foolishness of the human ego is that it will again and again entangle itself in the same thing afterwards.

So birth and death will not cease until you adopt a series of meditations, of which many people have no knowledge. A person may be doing japa, going to temple and worshiping; he goes on pilgrimage, he is a holy man. It looks like that, but he may be terribly attached to his family, his wealth, his possession, his honour, his prestige. So all this japa and temple-going will not cut ice because he has held his point secretly inside, and that will not allow him. Outwardly performed religious practices have no meaning finally as regards freedom from bondage because the whole point is that everything goes, but you are existing. You also should go, and then only the freedom comes. But who will permit one's own self to go? That is to say, you abolish your ego. That is not possible. That attempt would be like attempting to climb on one's own back. You will never succeed.

But there is one method. The I, the ego, the me that we are generally referring to, is this consciousness that you are existing in one form: I am coming from Dharamshala, I was in the Army, I have got this, that. This idea should go completely because you are really none of these things. You have become an army officer and gone to Dharamshala, etc., due to some effect of some karma. That has to go. You should not exist, and allow God to occupy the place which you are occupying. You are sitting on a chair. Let God sit on that chair.

How will you do this? This requires a lifelong effort of meditation. Instead of thinking this finite personality, transfer this consciousness of finitude of personality to the infinite, all-pervading Creative Principle, if this could be done. Don't think that there is anything outside you, because outside the Infinite nothing can be. If this feat could be possible, you will never take another birth. This is, briefly, what I am suggesting.