Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

20. The Troubling Mind

(Darshan given in March 1999)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: Who is troubling you?

Visitor: Mind.

Swamiji: Where is the mind? At present where is it?

Visitor: It's within me.

Swamiji: Why don't you give a lesson to it: “Don't trouble me.” You are carrying it to Rishikesh as if it is a great treasure, and now you are saying it is a troublesome thing. Why did you carry it here? Ah, a very serious matter!

Your ideas are all very pious, but things are not as they seem. The mind is not troubling anybody. You are troubling yourself. The mind is you only. The entire thing I am seeing in front of me is an embodiment of mind. The mind, so-called, has taken the shape of this person, and it is talking to me: my mind. There is no such thing called 'my mind'. I am the mind. You are yourself the mind. You are a concretised form of psychological activity.

This is a great aspiration, and also dangerous. It is like lifting fire or walking on the edge of a razor. You should not attempt such things unless you have fulfilled all the desires of this world. All the desires in the world should be fulfilled by whatever means. If even one millimetre size of desire is persisting, then this will not work. It is a kind of abolishing yourself in order that God may exist.

You cannot attain God by any activity. You have to be better than what you are until you reach the great Being that is supreme Be-ness. Your being has to rise from the lower level to the higher level. It has nothing to do with pranayama and all that because these things come under what is called doing: I am doing something. But doing and being are two different things. Your being should be enhanced to the largest dimension conceivable until it becomes Supreme Being.

Any kind of activity cannot make a person go to God because God is not a bundle of activities. It is just existence. If you have got even a little bit of worry, a little desire, something telling you, “No, you are not all right. I want this, I want this” – then this sorrow comes. Have you any desire? Something, some trouble in the house? There must be something. Sometimes it looks like searching for God, but actually it is a skipping over the problems of individual existence. You have some problems. Now that you must tell me.

Visitor: A problem with my routine office work.

Swamiji: Tell me. That is also a part of your life. What is the trouble with the routine office work? Who is troubling you?

Visitor: My mind.

Swamiji: Why are you telling like that? The office is not the mind. It is a conglomeration of many people sitting together and working for some purpose. These people are troubling you?

Visitor: Nobody works. All the burden comes to me. I get frustrated doing all the work.

Swamiji: Practical difficulties should be solved in a practical way. You should not think of God at that time because you are jumping from one level to another level. Any little thing, psychological obstruction, properly understood or not understood, that is desire only. The whole world is working on desire, but in different shapes.

[Later on]

Swamiji [to another visitor]: This universe is one huge Being. That is called God Almighty. It is a mighty Purusha. In the Purusha Sukta this great Being is described as a huge mass of existence, and in the same way as you have got hands and feet, nose and eyes, legs and all sorts of limbs in the body, we are all limbs of that great Being. There are no many things. These many things are limbs of the great Almighty. So you cannot call the limbs of your body – your hands, feet, etc. – as many things. They are one thing, yourself. Are you bothered about your hands, feet, nose? You are one whole being, though the diversity gets integrated into one being by the consciousness inside. This person you call Raj Shekar, who is Raj Shekar? Is it the hand, is it the body, is it the head? Which part of the body is Raj Shekar? It is a total thing. It is a total thing that you are that is Raj Shekar, not a part.

As there are no parts in your existence, there are no parts in the world also. You are seeing things through the eyes, but you don't look at yourself with your eyes. You are sure that you are. Why don't you go on seeing whether you have got hands, and all that? Nobody sees that. You yourself are a complete being. So God is complete being, in which you are included. Therefore, the world does not exist except that, just as your limbs do not exist except as Raj Shekar. There are no separate limbs and body. You yourself are appearing as the limbs.

Similar is the case with everything in the world. Just as you are not worried about your limbs of the body, you should not get troubled by anything else in the universe. Just as you are one complete person, there is another complete person who is managing the whole universe. That is God, and you are a part of it. Just as your hands and feet are parts of you and you don't bother about their existence or not, so is the case with everything else in the universe. They are all like cells and particles or limbs of this great Being.

So you should not say 'many things', and all that. There are no many things, just as there are no limbs in the body for you. “I am here,” you are saying. You don't say, “A bundle of limbs are coming.” You don't say like that when you come here; you say, “Raj Shekar is coming.” Do you say that a bundle of limbs are coming? “My nose is coming, my leg is coming.” Nobody talks like that.

Similarly, nobody exists except that one Being, and this wrong notion that there are many things, many persons, is like the wrong notion that you have got many limbs separately hanging outside your body. Just as you are one whole person and you don't bother about your limbs, so the Creator of the universe is one whole person, of which everyone is a part. So there is one thing only in the whole universe, not many things.

This requires emotional composure, intellectual clarity, and freedom from desire. Then only you can understand what this is. Emotion must be calm, it should not be disturbed, and your mind should be very sharp to understand it. And persist in thinking like this totality of existence. You are a totality of limbs, but yet you are not many limbs. You are one person. So is the whole universe, whatever you see – sun, moon, stars, mountains, rocks, everything – they are all many limbs of the Almighty Purusha. Read the Purusha Suktam. That is the remedy for every problem.

Very difficult to imagine this. The mind will not permit you to think like this. It will harass you and throw you out of gear, but you must assiduously concentrate again and again. When a person strikes a nail on the brick wall and the nail does not go in, he tries many methods, going on hitting, hitting it; then it goes in. So you must persistently think like this day and night. Then the forces of Nature, the forces from above, will enter into you, and you will feel happy that you have got everything. Don't ignore all these things. This is the highest kind of meditation I am telling you.