Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

18. Renunciation Is an Act of Consciousness

(Darshan given in March 1999)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: Renunciation is the abandonment of the wrong notion that the world of creation is totally outside you, unconnected with you. Can anybody attempt such a renunciation? The world is not outside you, and you are not outside the world. The truth is that. So what is there, really speaking? Neither you are there separately, nor the world is there separately. Both yourself and the world constitute one integral whole. It is a kind of world existence. You are a world individual if you don't consider the world as an outside object. Consciousness has no outside. It is an integrating principle.

These things cannot be discussed like that in a few minutes. It is a long-drawn exercise. You will lose nothing, nor will you gain anything, by pursuing the traditional path of renunciation. People have got a wrong notion of it. What have you renounced? You are standing on the earth and living in the world, and you say, “I have renounced the world.” You cannot stand in the world if you have renounced it. Where are you sitting? You are sitting on the earth. Have you renounced that? Then the ground is cut from your feet.

Renunciation is an act of consciousness. It is not a physical action. Physically you cannot grab anything, nor can you renounce anything. The whole world is one being. But you must be guarded always. At every step of this approach you will find an obstacle because of the fact that you have been indulging in the wrong notion that the world is sitting outside you and it can give you happiness and also sorrow. This is an inveterate habit in the mind of every created being, but that habit is not justifiable. It requires a new type of education altogether.

You are neither a man nor a woman – nothing of the kind. You are a spectrum, a pressure point in the operation of the cosmic forces. The cosmic forces are not constituted of men and women. There is no humanity there. There is no person. There is nothing. Only itself is, and you are a pressure point of that in what is wrongly conceived as space and time. Space-time pressure manifests itself as a kind of individual concentrated spot which is the individuality of everybody – not only human beings, everybody. Individuals don't exist. If that is the case, the world also doesn't exist. There is one conflagration, a masterly awareness of the whole universe as one being. You are not aspiring for anything; that thing itself aspires for itself.

This is high-class thinking. No human being will think like this. If they go on thinking too much, they will go crazy after that. So this is not taught much. Anyway, your aspiration, because it is pious and is going in the right direction, has to be fulfilled. But you should not have any unfulfilled desire in the mind. When you want universal liberation, there should not be any particular desire. You may say, “I have no desires,” but you have brought so many desires from previous births. They are all embedded in the subconscious level, and in the unconscious. They will germinate slowly when the opportunity arises, like robbers rising from ambush. They are all robbers only. These desires are robbers. They want to extract the blood out of you, but they lie in ambush when the circumstances are not favourable. You think that you have no desires, but if you cut off all desires and don't ask for anything, they will come up, and then you must have the strength to handle it.

Anyway, I am glad that you are a very pious aspirant, and your aspiration has to be blessed by God.

Visitor: Why some have good thoughts, and some have bad thoughts?

Swamiji: That is due to the karmas of the past. We have had many births. A chain of incarnations we have undergone and, as is the experience through which we pass now, so many experiences we have passed through. It is said that Buddha remembered five hundred previous births of his, and he was every kind of thing. He was a king, he was a beggar, he was voluptuous man, he was a charitable person. Every blessed thing he had experience of. Then he goes on rising through levels of evolution.

It is also believed, if you can remember one thousand births of yours, previous births, you will find everybody is your relative. There is no one who is not your relative because the relatives of this birth may not be relatives in the next birth, and the relatives of this birth were not the relatives of the previous birth. So everyone is your relative only. If you go on touching your imagination to the top level of evolution, you are connected to everything. You were a tree once upon a time, you were an animal, you were a frog. All these experiences Buddha had. It is not that we drop from the heaven as a human being. It is not like that. Evolution is right from a rock onwards. First the earth was created, plants and trees, and then animals of a lower order. Man is a latecomer, very late. You may say it is a great blessing.

Visitor: Isn't that the ultimate evolution?

Swamiji: Ultimate evolution... Now we are human. We have to evolve further, to superhuman. Now you are human. You have to become superhuman. 'Superhuman' means your knowledge will not be confined to your bodily experiences, but to the whole world experience. That is the superman. You will feel that you are the whole world. You are a citizen of the cosmos. You are not a citizen of India only, you are a citizen of the whole world. Oh, how happy you will feel! “Much more, I am a citizen of the whole universe.” So you have got an obligation to everything in the whole universe and, as a citizen is protected by the government, this elevated citizen of the universe will be taken care of by the universe.

Think of the highest centre of the universe and identify your mind with it. An energy will flow from there. Even now it is flowing, but because of our egoism we have separated ourselves from that centre of force. You know something about the Bhagavadgita? Ananyāś cintayanto māṁ ye janāḥ paryupāsate, teṣāṁ nityābhiyuktānāṁ yoga-kṣemaṁ vahāmy aham (B.G. 9.22). Bhagavan Sri Krishna speaks in the Bhagavadgita: “Those who think of Me only, with undivided attention, and think nothing else beside it, it is My duty to take care of them.” Whatever you want will be given to you. Not only that, 'yoga' means being given whatever you want. Kṣema means protecting what you have got. Suppose you have got large riches; how to protect it? That also He will do for you. God is such a compassionate and loving being that He will give you whatever you want and He will protect it also for your sake. What else do you expect from God? Even a father and mother cannot take such care. “You deeply think of Me only.” 'Me' means the whole universe speaking – I. It is not a single, one person speaking. It is the total Person of the universe.

Visvarupa – you can imagine Visvarupa. That is the form which Sri Krishna showed in the Mahabharata, in the Bhagavadgita. You must read the Bhagavadgita. In the Eleventh Chapter he reveals his Cosmic Form. That is the real form of everybody. We also can become like that. What one achieved, others also can achieve because we are all evolutionary descendants of the one God.