Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

16. Only One Event in the Universe

(Darshan given in March 1999)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: All activity, all work, any event taking place anywhere, is actually one event taking place. There is only one event in the universe, and all other apparently divided events are all connected to the central activity, which is not your activity, nor mine, nor anybody's. It is the activity of One Being, but we cannot understand it because with two eyes we are seeing everything. You have got to develop a new eye, a third eye, as it were, which can be had only in deep, concentrated meditation.

The whole universe should meditate through your mind. There is a difference between your meditating and its meditating. The whole universe should enter into you, and your personality should be as vast as the whole cosmos. Then you meditate. Then you find out who is meditating. You are not meditating. You don't exist there. You are only a representative of that cosmic action. There is only one action, which is the Supreme Centre's action.

It is very difficult to think like this. If you can think all things in one thought, that is meditation. You have got so many questions about many things. Bring them together into a single act.

The best example to understand this point is to notice the activity of the ocean. The ocean can do anything, but yet it is one action. When the ocean moves upward or downward, right or left, or makes sound, we feel it is all different things happening; but actually, only one thing it is doing. The universe is doing and the ocean is doing, and no many people are there. There are no many oceans – one ocean only.

The universe is one, so whatever happens in the universe, it is a necessary part of the adjustment that the universe is making to maintain ultimate perfection, balance – ultimate balance. All the activities mean only one thing: They maintain balance. Whether it is yourself or myself, or this person, that person, or even the whole universe, all this individualised activity or universal activity is an attempt at maintaining balance. Nobody wants disbalance. The maintaining of balance is yoga.

You cannot understand the world until you become the world yourself. We are thinking that something is happening somewhere. There is no something and somewhere. These ideas must be removed from the mind. There is no something and somewhere. The idea must be given up. The whole thing is working in all places at one stroke. This is a very lofty kind of meditation. You must think as the universe thinks.

You have got different names, and are coming from different countries. In meditation at least these ideas must be given up. You must think only one thought. That one thought is equal to all thoughts.

[Later on]

Another visitor: What is sadhana?

Swamiji: Sadhana is the realisation that everything is inside you. Even the other people are inside you only. There are no other people. There is only one. That includes everybody, includes yourself also, so where is the question of other people? This is a peculiar trick of the mind: It tells you there are other people. There are no other people; they don't exist, in the same way as you don't exist. It is a high exercise which demolishes all values of life as we see through the eyes, and makes you enter a realm which is inexpressible. Nobody can explain God. Therefore, when any question arises in regard to that, the mind and senses cease to operate. They get a shock. The thought of God gives a shock to the individual, and it melts down and vanishes like camphor with fire on it. Camphor melts when heat is there.

Visitor: What about the Guru and the shisha?

Swamiji: I don't want to hear anything of this kind. When I told you that you have no problem, and I have given you a clue also how you can remove the problem, don't bring any Guru and all that. Of course, you can start with the search for some person who, in your mind, is the best of all people whom you have seen in the world. You have seen ten thousand people, but one person must have impressed you very much. For the time being you can consider that person as your mentor, as your guide, unless you are able to consider the universal Absolute Itself as your Guru. That is the greatest Guru. But in the ordinary sense, somebody must have satisfied you very much. That person is your guide among others in this world.

Visitor: What about sannyas and all that?

Swamiji: I don't want to talk all that. We don't want sannyasa. You be what you are. Don't change it to sannyasa. I am telling you something which is the highest spiritual practice, and so sannyasa – you should not talk about it. It doesn't mean that God appreciates only sannyasins. It is not like that. Non-sannyasins may reach God much earlier than sannyasins sometimes. Great masters, great saints, they are not sannyasins. But there is no harm in being a sannyasin. It neither obstructs nor helps, either way.

Another visitor: Why do people say that Realisation is such a difficult thing?

Swamiji: Because the individual affirmation of egoism is so hard that it will not permit universal thinking; therefore, it is hard. The ego is hard. It won't melt. It will not accept any advice. Everybody says, “What I say is correct.”  They won't listen to advice from anybody.

Visitor: For those who have seen, the question of hardness and easiness doesn't seem to arise.

Swamiji: The hardness can melt in one second. By the fierce rays of the sun, mountains of ice can melt. These mountains of ice are the obstacles. They can melt down by the fierce light of the unity of all things. God created the world, people say. He created from the One to the many. The many are only the rays of the sun of God. The sun's rays are spread out everywhere, but yet it is one ray only, concentrated powerfully and looking like it is separated in a hundred directions. There is only one God, one action taking place, and one universe, and we are all included in that. So we need not worry about it unnecessarily.

Visitor: A person who has realised this absolute oneness – is it true that they don't see deluded people, but they only see realised people?

Swamiji: They will see anything, everything. They will see realised people, unrealised people. Everything in creation they can see.

Visitor: Is it possible to know if somebody else has realised?

Swamiji: No, you cannot see these people unless you yourself are Self-realised because there is no compatibility between your perception and their perception. They are poles apart. You cannot know who they are unless you yourself are competent to rise to the level of those people.

Visitor: I have a question that's kind of cultural. It's not to do with the Absolute, but everything is to do with the Absolute. Easterners and Westerners – in the East people grow up with the idea that realisation is a possibility, and in fact, the greatest good. Even though people may do puja, and so on, almost everybody believes that moksha is the highest good. In the West people grow up with different religious orientations, like the idea of salvation and ending up in heaven, and so on, yet many Westerners have become interested in the idea. Do you find cultural differences? You've taught so many Westerners as well as Easterners.

Swamiji: Western culture is based on extrovert perception. They believe what they see with the eyes, and if something cannot be seen, it doesn't exist. But Eastern thought is not extrovert. It is omnivert, I should say. It is omni: it sees all things at one stroke, not outside. Anything that you perceive with your eyes is not the whole truth because the perceiver's circumstance conditions the nature of the object that you are trying to perceive. You are in the object which you are trying to perceive, so it is not a correct perception because your interference in the process of perception as an individual or a scientist, whatever it is, does not allow you to enter into the object and see it as it is in itself. Unless you become the object itself, you cannot know it.

Visitor: So, generally, one of the particular obstacles that Westerners face is to move from the external to the universal.

Swamiji: They always do things externally, and there is nothing internal there. The scientist who observes does not even know that his perception is involved in what he discovers in the object.

Visitor: What is it in the East that allowed them to...?

Swamiji: I don't know. It is a mystery of the Eastern philosophy, which was in China also, but now it is going slowly, and in India particularly. China and India had a very powerful inwardised appreciation of things, and not externalised perception. Everything is inside. That is India, and that is China. The inwardised perception doesn't mean inside the body. It is interiorised universal perception, as God Himself perceives. He doesn't see the world with the eyes. He sees it as He Himself is.

These are hard nuts to crack. Immediately such things should not be told to anybody. They will not understand, and if you go on telling them too many times when their mind is immature, they may even go crazy. So we should not touch that subject in the case of people who are immature.

Another visitor: I have a question about impermanence and change. You have been talking about this false self, the idea of an I, the ego, that actually what I'm perceiving is just conditions of subatomic particles that are constantly changing, right? So if everything is changing constantly, doesn't there have to be a fixed point in order for us to see change?

Swamiji: Everything is everywhere. That is quantum. Every position that the quantum particle takes is equal to every other position it takes. It is not in one place. It is not a particle in order that it may be in one place. That's why people have stumbled on the wave system. The so-called particle in quantum is a wave, and a wave does not locate itself in any particular point. So it is universally comprehensive. That is something like what I have already said. We are talking in different styles, but same thing.

Visitor: Now, many enlightened people say they actually experience their own impermanence. What are they experiencing? If there is no fixed point, how can you experience change?

Swamiji: There is no change, ultimately. Change does not exist. Again, this idea of change is only an empirical perception. In transcendental perception, nothing takes place – no change. God cannot change; therefore, His creation also cannot change. That it appears to be changing is a fault in our perception.

Visitor: Only perception changes, but the actual creation does not change.

Swamiji: The thing in itself does not change.

Visitor: And is that why we can have universal...?

Swamiji: If everything is going on changing, you will never reach God because God also will be changing. So if God is not changing, His creation also is not changing. That it looks like it is changing is a defect in our way of seeing. We have to rectify our eyes. That is the only thing that we have to do. We should have a new education altogether. What you have studied is not sufficient.

Visitor: And that is why we can have a fixed law of the universe, a fixed law of karma or a fixed law of right and wrong?

Swamiji: There is only one law, not many laws. There is the law of integration of apparent particulars. Apparent particulars and particles, whatever they are, they are totally integrated at one point, which you call God-consciousness. There are no particulars and divided things for God, and if your mind concentrates itself on God-consciousness, you will not see any particulars. You will become the sea, rather than the billowing waves.

Visitor: I understand that. Now if we have to bring that down to a level of morality, how I'm to live today, what's right? If I'm not to kill someone, or if I have to kill someone, can you bring that in the end it doesn't change? If there is no change, can you bring that to a level of morality where you can say that something is always wrong, that action to kill is always wrong, to hate is always wrong?

Swamiji: There is nothing which is wholly wrong, and there is nothing which is wholly right. Then again we are making a division according to our human perception.

Visitor: Sure, but how am I to live?

Swamiji: God does not see good and evil. That is a creation in your mind.

Visitor: So it doesn't matter how I act? Whatever I do, there is no guideline?

Swamiji: Whenever you are, whatever you are, if you are able to conceive the existence of a mighty being called God, you will never put questions afterwards. Your mouth will be shut. In God's kingdom there are no questions and no problems. For that you have to have a highly purified mind, such that you will not speak afterwards. You will be dumbfounded.