Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

8. Cosmic Meditation

(Darshan given in February 1999)

A visitor: ...provides a foundation for enlightenment, and...

Swamiji: You mean enlightenment follows meditation? You mean meditation is prior, enlightenment is...?

Visitor: No, not at all.

Swamiji: When you meditate, you feel enlightenment follows?

Visitor: No, Swamiji, but in meditation we have a rare opportunity to actually directly sink into that enlightened state.

Swamiji: You sink into that enlightened state in meditation?

Visitor: Yes, Swamiji.

Swamiji: That means you must have some idea of the enlightenment even prior to entering into meditation.

Another visitor: Swamiji, that’s not what I said. I said meditation is a metaphor for enlightenment.

Swamiji: You cannot meditate on something about which you know nothing, so you already know something about that on which you are meditating. What is it that you are meditating on?

Visitor: Letting everything be as it already is. Allowing a thing to be as it already is.

Another visitor: Yes. This is the natural condition. This is the natural state.

Swamiji: Being is the foundation of what, I cannot say, because being is the foundation of being, and it is not becoming. This is the distinction between being and becoming. Becoming is a process, and that process seems to be emanating from being. Rather, more precisely in modern language, I can say being is the ontological principle; becoming is the empirical process moving from that. ‘Ontological being’ means it is what it is. It does not require any qualification, and its very being is everything. Everything is just being only. There is nothing else anywhere in this creation, if at all you think there is a creation, or there is no creation. It was, it is, and it shall be. And you should never consider being as something outside you. Being cannot be thought because in order to be able to think being, you must assume the position of a thinker. You are inside the being, and you are part and parcel of being. And how big is the being? What is its size? Has it any dimension? No dimension?

Visitors: No.

Swamiji: Can you imagine anything which has no dimension? Then it will be like a small particle, an atom, because you cannot avoid the concept of space when you think anything. Space is the reason behind the concept of dimension. Height, width, this is dimension – bigness, as you call it. Like a balloon when it is filled with air, its dimension expands. Being does not expand. When it appears to be expanding, it is called activity. Being does not do any work, because work is included inside being. The Sun does not do any work; the Sun is in the sky. He has no hands and feet, and he has no duty to perform except to exist, but that existence itself is tremendous activity. That activity is such that it moves all the planets and allows us to live and breathe and feel satisfied that we are existing, but he himself does not do anything. He doesn’t prompt.

The most powerful influence, which the Sun is, is really indescribable. We cannot say what it is. It is something like God Himself. According to Indian cultural thinking, the Sun is a representation of God. Everything that you find in God is here. It is a very mysterious thing. We say that the Earth came from the Sun, it is a little chip of the Sun. And the Earth is abundant with all wonderful things. The Earth has resources. We have got everything. Jewels you find under the earth; you have got plants and trees, you have got harvest growing from the earth, fruit trees. This is an effect that has followed by the shooting off of some part of the Sun.

So if you believe that everything that is in the effect is also in the cause... You understand me? Everything that is in the effect should also be in the cause, and what is not in the cause cannot be in the effect; then all these glories of the Earth must be in the Sun also, in a highly potentised form. These glories, in a crude material form, we find on the Earth and in the form of the Earth, in the form of the planets, etc.

People say the Sun is energy, but what is energy? What is it made of? These are all indescribable terms. Even scientists cannot say what is energy. It is energy, that’s all. Electricity is energy. It is a force, a power, and in the case of the Sun, it is not an ordinary power as we find in human beings or machines, etc. It is vitality.

In the Upanishads we hear passages like prāṇaḥ prajānāmudatyeṣa sūryaḥ (Prasna 1.7): When the Sun rises, the life of people also rises. We feel energised. When the Sun rises in the east, we automatically get up from sleep. All this activity and moving is caused by the energy flowing from the Sun. And it has no distance. Any distance it can travel. They say the distance that the Sun rays travel is incalculable. To conceive such a thing, we must be part and parcel of the Sun itself.

The breath cannot flow without the Sun. Suppose the Sun does not rise for one week; what will happen? Can you imagine the consequence? Suppose the Earth does not move on its axis, and there is no day and night; what is the consequence that follows? One side of the Earth will boil, the other side will freeze, if this tilting of the Earth is not there. But who asked the Earth to do this action? Who asked the Earth to move like this? People boast of their greatness. Let the greatness be there. Let us see if the Earth does not move. One part of the Earth will freeze people to death; the other will boil with heat. So somebody, in His great compassion, has caused the Earth to move in various ways. It moves in three ways. We simply give scant respect to all these occurrences in the world. It is rotating on its axis, due to which we have day and night. If this was not there, we cannot exist afterwards due to half of the Earth being hot, the other cold. It also revolves around the Sun, causing seasons, and it tilts also, tilts, due to which we have summer and winter. So like a dancing girl, it does so many things at one time. This magnetic action is taking place in the cosmos without any conceivable motivation.

Are we grateful to somebody that we are alive in the midst of this kind of mysterious operations, a part of which we are ourselves? We are cosmic beings, actually. We are not coming from one country, another country. We are not even human beings. You cannot call the Earth as a human being, but it is more than a human being. The power of the Earth in gravitational pull, and the things that it produces, and the action in which it is involved, they are all inhuman or superhuman – or it is divine, you must say. It is impossible to think. And we are involved in it. If the Earth is not a human being, we are also not human beings.

Due to some egoism, we have created nomenclature for ourselves: “I am Mr. So-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so. I am from this country.” There are no countries, actually. On the Earth there are no countries. It is one ball of Earth. Simply imaginary lines you have drawn on the surface of the Earth and call it India, France, America, England. The Earth itself may not be conscious that there are lines on its body which are pragmatically called by the names of countries. And it may not know that we are existing. We are only offshoots of that energy of the Earth.

So it is finally that we are not localised individuals. We are not sitting anywhere, in the same way as the Earth is not sitting anywhere. It is a vibratory activity of the solar system. The whole solar system has one operational policy, and it affects and makes all the planets move in a systematic way. And we are the smallest of planets. Earth is small, and others – Jupiter, Venus, and others – are big, big ones. We think that ours is the best. Everybody thinks one’s own self is the best.

We are not only human beings, we are divinities, gods looking like shaped personalities. Sometimes we say we are gods in exile. ‘Gods in exile’ means we have been thrown out of heaven, for some reason. We are topsy-turvy gods. A ‘topsy-turvy god’ means you see the top as bottom, and the bottom as top, the right as left and the left as right. Stand on the bank of the Ganga and see the reflection. The feet will be the lowest, and the head will be the topmost. Usually your head is the topmost, the feet are the lowest. If you do shirshasana in yoga, your head is the lowest, the legs are the topmost. If you see yourself in a mirror, your left side will look like right side, and right side will look like left side.

In the same way when, as it is told us, we have been hurled from heaven, we ceased to think like divine beings. We see the world as an outside object, and we think ourselves to be subjects. We are the perceivers of the objects in the world, but in the creational process, the world came first and man came afterwards. So the subject must be the world, and not human beings. Human being is the effect, but the egoism of the human being is such that it abrogates all the value that is in the world to himself and says: “We are the maker. We are the makers of destiny. We conquer the world.” What kind of authority the human being has got to conquer the world? It has produced the human being. In the evolutionary process, if you go on creating the evolutes from the lowest to the highest, you will find that man came as the last one, the last evolute.

You must do a sirshasana of consciousness, not physical sirshasana. You make the headstand of your consciousness. You should think topsy-turvy. Instead of believing or feeling that the world is outside and you are inside, you transfer your consciousness to the whole world, and it sees you instead of your seeing it. You are the object of perception; it is the subject. You perform this feat. Mentally imagine: I am the whole world, and if there are people or any kind of living beings, they are my objects. If the world looks at you, what will it think about you? Can you imagine?

But we have some idea about the world, supposing that we are the perceivers of the world. The perceiver conditions the perceived object by the components of the process of perception. But we came later in the process of evolution. God made the world. God did not make man first. The heaven and the Earth were created by God, and what follows afterwards is immaterial. The preceding thing is more powerful and more important than the succeeding. As I mentioned, the cause is more important and is the determining factor of everything that follows, which is the effect. We are the effects, come down gradually from higher levels of evolution.

It is said there are seven levels of creation. The highest level is God’s abode, which we generally call heaven. The atmosphere of God’s abode is ubiquitous. It is not located somewhere. The idea of location arises subsequently when lower categories of beings manifest themselves, until we come. Then we find ourselves small, little things, having a small location, and we don’t expand ourselves like the world.

Meditation requires an effort of consciousness to identify itself with the preceding cause. I am the whole universe. You forget this Earth, and all this. You just think in the mind. You can even open the eyes, and cast your eyes everywhere: I am the whole thing that I am seeing. I am the sky, the air, the heat, the Sun, moon and stars, space and time. I am not some human being. The whole space-time complex is me. You will have a shakeup. You will not be sitting like this calmly. You will feel a shudder. If you think, “Oh, I am an elephant!” what will you feel at that time? You know the strength of the elephant, and you feel you are the elephant. You feel something, a jerk, as if energy has come. This is not a joke. In Yoga Shastras, scriptures of Yoga, it is said meditation on an elephant also is one form of meditation. Immediately you will feel you have got great strength. The mind is very powerful. It can convert itself into anything.

Now, meditation: The whole conceivable universe is I. There are so many people sitting here. They are me only. They are not sitting outside you, because nothing is sitting outside the universe. You should not think at that time that you are a man from some place. The cosmos is not a man. It is not human. It is a superhuman expanse of inconceivable perfection. Such a state is sometimes called God Himself. We utter the name of God, go on saying, “God, God, God,” but we cannot conceive what it is. When you think of it, you cannot think anything else afterwards. That which has nothing external to it is called ‘the infinite’, and you also cannot exist outside it. Then you enter into God.

You see, you must actually practise it. Listening to it merely is not sufficient. Close the eyes. Chant Om. [Swamiji chants Om.] Feel that you are a centre of vibration. You have no hands and feet. It is vibration congealed into a spatiotemporal form looking like what you are. Melt it down into the potential of energy that it really is. Expand it, and unite it with the similar melting down of the congealed form of other people. It will be like many oceans joining together. All the oceans have joined. You are one ocean, there is another ocean. There is only ocean, and there is nothing but the ocean to see with the eyes. The whole universe is I: I am that I am. I am what I am. I alone is. Don’t say, “I alone am.” I alone is.

Can you conceive these things? This is to say something about lofty types of meditation. You will not think like a human being afterwards. You have no sorrows. You will be always positive in your thinking. Everywhere you will succeed. There will be no negative phase in your life. Whatever you want will fall at your feet. You need not run after things, because the things are yourself. If the whole cosmos is you, all that you want also is you only. So you don’t search for yourself. Just be that which is, and all your wishes, if there are any, will roll down and metaphorically, I may say, they fall at your feet. Instead of you touching the world, the world will fall at your feet. Great sages and saints have become famous on account of their satisfaction that they are the world, and therefore, everything in the world also is me. The Sun and the moon and the stars, space and time, they are me.

These are the meditations prescribed in the Upanishads. The Upanishads are sacred texts. You must have heard of them. There you will find these secrets mentioned. You suffer because you see something outside you. Truth has no second. It alone is. And if you believe that you are also a part of the truth of the universe, then there will be no second. For that purpose you must be as large as the truth itself.

It requires deep power of will. You cannot meditate like this in a short few minutes. You must decide: “This is like that. I must be like that.” “Ask, and it shall be given.” This is the word of Christ. Ask and it shall be given to you. Ask anything, and it will come. But the asking should come from the soul, and not from the lips. Your whole being should rise up and ask. The whole being does not rise easily. When a person has lost everything, the Earth itself is crumbling, the whole soul will rise up, and you will not like to exist afterwards. When you have possessed the whole world, and you are the emperor of the whole world, then again the whole soul will rise up. Ordinarily the soul will be sleeping. The soul wants everything. This is manifested in experiences like utter loss and utter gain. Either you have lost everything in the world or you have got everything in the world. Immediately the soul will rise up and show its power. In ordinary experiences, the soul sleeps. When we are happy because we have taken a cup of tea, these are all poor things, and the soul may not be interested in taking tea, and all that. But if the whole universe has entered into you – “I have got everything” – then the soul will jump up with joy. Or sometimes people lose everything. All the belonging has gone. The feet cannot be standing on the Earth. The whole thing is crumbling. The soul comes up at that time, because the soul is complete. When there is complete success or complete loss, complete gain, complete possession or complete dispossession, the soul will rise up. Utter positivity or utter negativity, both are experiences of the soul. But we are in the middle. We have not been dispossessed of everything, nor we have got everything, so we cannot be so happy. We are always having some dubious considerations: It may be, it may not be. There is no ‘may be’ or ‘may not be’ in that condition.

This is meditation: sinking yourself in your own utterly expanded being. Sink yourself in the cosmos, or ask the cosmos to sink into you. Either you sink in the cosmos or the cosmos sinks into you. It is a great joy even to think there is such a thing called cosmic thinking. Cosmic thinking is the same as Pure Being because it is not thinking of something. In cosmic thinking there is no object outside it, so generally when you say ‘thinking’, you think of something, but there is no ‘of’ there. It is thinking sinking in itself. God is just thought thinking itself. When thought thinks itself, God emerges out. But nobody can think thought itself. Thought thinks something other than the thought. Therefore, there is no success. All these difficulties will vanish if your thought is cosmic thought.

What do you lose by meditating that you are the whole universe moving on the road when you go for a walk? What do you lose? You will feel miserable in the beginning, isn’t it? Am I the whole universe walking on the road? But you are the universe walking, with the thud of the cosmic feet. But you must have faith. You are not friendless. Friendship is flowing from all sides. All the quarters of creation are your friends. The Upanishads say the quarters of heaven will bow down before you and offer tribute. How many quarters are there? Any number of quarters of the heavens, they will bow down to you and offer tribute, as if you are the king and they are the vassals. You should not doubt this. If you doubt, it is finished. Doubts are the traitors of all thoughts: “This is not possible. This is not possible for me. God is very far away. I am not for it. I may take many births.” This kind of thinking should go. “I am fit for it. I am perfectly fit. I will enter into Pure Being with this birth itself. I will be a universal presence, as anything can be. I am the most perfect being.”

In the Upanishads, great sages who had this experience were making all kinds of sounds because there is no word in any language to explain what kind of feeling it is. They will make any kind of queer sound because they are bursting, they are bursting with completeness. “I am the food that is eaten; I am the eater of food.” One saint says, “I who am food is the eater of food.” Can you make out any sense? “I who am food eats the eater of food.” This is the way they are speaking. “I have covered the whole universe. I am the flame of gold, molten gold flaming. I am that.” They have to say something because there is no language. No English or American or German or French can explain this. They make only sounds. That is the expression of the joy of being inundated by the Cosmic Being. You are possessed by the whole universe. Then you cannot contain yourself. Great saints dance in ecstasy. If you really believe in this truth – yourself being the universe itself – then you will not know what to do. You will simply get stunned. You cannot speak afterwards.

But such a state does not easily come. There are desires inside: “You must put a stop to this kind of exercise. What about your obligation? What about your family? What about your office work, your work in the factory? What about your money in the bank?” The mind will tell this inside; then the universe will melt into the money only, the whole thing. To convert the money and the property and everything into the Universal Being, I cannot say how it is possible. You may say, “This is all impossible. I cannot convert my factory into a Universal Being.” But it can be done. The Universal Being will run the factory.

But human weakness persists. But, but, there is always a ‘but’: “All right, whatever you have said is okay, but...” You should not put ‘but’ like that. That ‘but’ must be removed. Every time they say, “But there is something.” It requires strong willpower. You must go to sleep with a sense of completeness, not with a negative bank balance. Your bank balance should be full when you sleep. Your balance sheet is complete. Don’t go with a debit balance sheet when you go to bed; otherwise, after you leave this world you will carry that debit and take another birth. Who wants that debit? Very important things. “Oh, I have something left undone.” You should not say like that. If there is something left, do it. Don’t go to sleep like that. If there is something important and irking your mind, and you have to do it, do it and then go to sleep. Otherwise, even food you should not eat. When you have to catch a train, just in ten minutes you have to run, you should not eat lunch at that time. It is useless. That food has no meaning because you are not giving respect to the food. You are respecting only the railway train. So, very important – you must give respect to everything.

Visitor: Thank you, Swamiji.