Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

43. Questions from a Western Teacher

(Darshan given in November 1999)

Swamiji [to a visitor]: Rituals cannot be considered as spiritual. Rituals, religions, pilgrimages, worships – they do not constitute spirituality. A person may be doing so many things, but yet he may be empty inside. Unless consciousness is centred in the acceptance, at least, of the existence of a mighty Absolute, you cannot say that spirituality has entered into that person. Every action of that person will be conditioned by the consciousness of the existence of the Absolute, and all the actions that he performs may be good actions because God cannot do wrong action.

This is a metaphysical definition I am giving you of the significance of spirituality. It has nothing to do with religions. Spirituality is not Hindu, it is not Christian, it is not Muslim, it is not anything. It is the law of pure Existence, Existence as such, without any qualification – pure Being. The law of Being, that is spirituality.

It is not easy to go deep into these things in a few minutes like that. It is a very large, large subject which requires long study and contemplation, and company with saints and sages. Company with saints and sages is number one. Everything comes afterwards. Have you got any specific question?

Visitor: Well, one of the problems someone like myself has trying to understand this spirituality is the ways in which you get in touch with it, the way in which you communicate with this spirituality, and you have to do it through yourself.

Swamiji: No, we are not communicating with spirituality.

Visitor: You are somehow receiving it.

Swamiji: We are feeling it.

Visitor: Feeling it, yes. Now, what aspect is feeling it? You have many ways of talking about the self, the ego, and...

Swamiji: I have not uttered one word about the self. I have only talked to you about the Absolute.

Visitor: Can you now tell me how the self gets in touch with the Absolute?

Swamiji: By intense contemplation on the Absolute, the Absolute will descend into the self, and the self will be absorbed into it as the ocean absorbs the rivers. All the rivers can be consumed by the ocean. So in the Absolute, every self goes inside and ceases to exist afterwards. The self does not exist when it enters the Absolute, as rivers do not exist when they enter the ocean. The mighty Being alone is.

Visitor: That's a very difficult concept to understand.

Swamiji: Why should anybody understand it? A human being should not dabble with such questions because the mind is not sufficiently purified.

Visitor: Possibly. Swamiji, I am an academic. I am a teacher. I have to make myself clear to my students. I have to communicate.

Swamiji: Can you make yourself clear, with your intellect, the cosmic mysteries?

Visitor: No, I probably can't, but I have to make the effort, so I'm up against a problem of talking about the self, which I...

Swamiji: I never talk about the self. For me, the self doesn't exist at all. It doesn't exist. Only the Absolute exists.

Visitor: Yes. But you are now telling me about this Absolute. You are Swami Maharaj, and I can see you sitting on this...

Swamiji: I am not Swami Maharaj. I am only a pressure point in the Absolute. There is no Swami Maharaj in this world. They don't exist.

Visitor: No, probably not, but I can see you all the same.

Swamiji: Everybody sitting here is a pressure point in the Absolute Being, but they are wrongly conceived as human beings. We are not human beings. We are cosmic stuff. We are pressure points of the universal energy. That idea doesn't enter the mind of a person who is confined to bodily consciousness, national consciousness, linguistic consciousness – all sorts of things.

Visitor: Yes. So you would tell me that I as a human being cease to exist in the process of...

Swamiji: In the ultimate sense you cease to exist. Only one thing can exist, and not two things.

Visitor: How do I cease being this human being and become a pressure point?

Swamiji: You look like a human being, and there is nothing wrong with it. You can introduce human characteristics in your daily performances, yet at the same time knowing you are not the human being. There are people who act in the theatres. The person can act anything, but he knows that he is not the one whom he is acting. The background is something else. You can act as a human being. You can act as anything that you like. You can be a professor, you can be a teacher, you can be a dramatist, you can be a musician, you can be an artist. Everything is fine. But yet, you are not that. This is only an outer form that you are.... In the world of space and time you have taken some forms outside, but basically you are something else. You belong to the whole cosmos. You do not belong to England and America, etc. You are a child of the cosmos, and it sees you. It has got millions of eyes. This is a step toward spirituality.

Visitor: How important is yoga then as a means to achieve this?

Swamiji: Yoga is the process of intensely contemplating the relationship of oneself with God.

Visitor: How do we go about that?

Swamiji: I cannot tell you all that. Just now you are coming and telling me to give you entire Indian wisdom like that [laughter].

Visitor: Yoga is the most important method, is it, by which you can achieve this contemplation?

Swamiji: Yoga means meditation. These physical exercises, breathing, these are not really actual yoga.

Are you writing any book?

Visitor: I am writing a book. I have written several books. I've just produced a collection... I've written on Mahatma Gandhi, and I've written on Rajagopalachari, the great South Indian leader, and I've written...

Swamiji: Why don't you write on God Almighty?

Visitor: I have written on God Almighty indirectly. I've written on Protestant missions in India, called...

Swamiji: What is Protestant religion?

Visitor: Protestant religion is one of the Western versions of Christianity.

Swamiji: But in India there is no Protestant religion.

Visitor: No. There were attempts at spreading Protestant Christianity in the nineteenth century, not very successful and not very acceptable, so mine is a fairly critical account of these people.

Swamiji: Why should people protest against anything?

Visitor: Well, it's because they were protesting against the Catholic faith, so it was a breakaway movement.

Swamiji: Is God Almighty a Catholic? Is He a Protestant?

Visitor: He is everyone.

Swamiji: Why do people quarrel unnecessarily?

Visitor: Quite. My book was saying how silly it all is. But they do, unfortunately. There is a strong aspect of religious conflict. And I've just produced a collection of essays called Gurus and Their Followers, which looks at some of your great social and spiritual leaders.

Swamiji: This kind of book has been written by many people – Gurus in India and Guru-shisha relationship, and all that. It is an old, old hackneyed subject. I am least interested in that.

Visitor: Why is that now? Because the Guru-disciple relationship is very important to Hinduism.

Swamiji: It is an ancient tradition which actually does not work these days. It doesn't work. We don't have such Gurus here nowadays.

Visitor: Why doesn't it work anymore?

Swamiji: Guru is a person who will take the disciple up to the state of immortality. He must take the responsibility. Nowadays we have got Gurus. A little bit of commercial relationship also is there and, to my mind, it appears to me that type of Guru... There were certain great Gurus like Shirdi Sai Baba. He was a Godman. There were other great people like Sri Ramakrishna Parmahamsa Deva. He was a Godman. I can consider only those people as Gurus who are really Godmen.

Visitor: Was Ramakrishna a Godman?

Swamiji: I really feel he was a Godman.

Visitor: And Ramana Maharishi, was he a Godman?

Swamiji: Yes, he was a Godman. Right.

Visitor: Sai Baba, the second Sai Baba.

Swamiji: He says that he is incarnation of the Shirdi Sai Baba.

Visitor: You don't believe him?

Swamiji: I don't know. I have not thought of it. I cannot say anything, so why should I unnecessarily introduce any idea into it? But he says he is a... He came here once. Twice he came. He said he is an incarnation, rebirth of Shirdi Sai Baba, and he will take another birth now somewhere else. He said like that. But we didn't pay much attention to it. It doesn't matter.

Visitor: Do you think the role of the Guru is now finished, that we must stand on our own two feet and make our own religious inquiries? Is that what you're saying? Do you think the Guru is no longer a practical role?

Swamiji: I do not say there are no real Gurus. I don't say like that. The truly enlightened ones, I think, are reticent in their behaviour. They don't want to speak much. They do not want to call themselves Gurus. They are interested in nothing. They just sit and think, and are satisfied with what they are. But there are others who are helpful. I cannot count their names at present. It is difficult to tell you where who was sitting, and all that.

I am a disciple of Swami Sivananda. I consider him as a Godman, and I have never seen such a great man in my life. I am not saying that there are no great people but, to my mind, he is the greatest, and I don't think I will again see another person like him. A superman he was. You have not seen Swami Sivananda.

Visitor: Alas no, I had no chance because he died some years ago.

Swamiji: Are you in search of a Guru, or what?

Visitor: I am not personally necessarily in search of a Guru, but the people I am studying are always anxious to have some kind of religious counsellor or instructor. I'm writing about an English novelist called Christopher Isherwood, and Isherwood had a very strong relationship with his Ramakrishna Mission Guru, Swami Prabhavananda.

Swamiji: You have seen him?

Visitor: No, again not, but I have been reading about both these people a great deal, and I'm interested in how important this relationship is if people are to mature as spiritual beings. How important is it for someone to have a spiritual instructor, and what is the relationship between the disciple and the Guru? What is going on inside that relationship? How are they interacting?

Swamiji: The relationship is teacher and student.

Visitor: Yes. Is it more than that?

Swamiji: Because it is charged with spirituality, you can say it is a little more than the relationship of a college teacher and a college student. It is not a mechanical relationship, but an organic, living relationship. That makes the difference.

Visitor: Yes. And is it a necessary relationship?

Swamiji: It is a necessary relationship.

Visitor: Yes. And when do you know? I mean, you have never ceased to look upon your Guru as your Guru, so the founder of this movement remains your Guru even though he's passed on. Is that right? How did you come to be a member of the Divine Life movement?

Swamiji: I found him by chance.

Visitor: Chance? Literally? Here, you came here?

Swamiji: I heard of his name, but somehow I gravitated myself towards him, and found that I am in the best of places.

Visitor: I get the impression that your Ashram, your movement, it is not highly structured, whereas in the Ramakrishna Mission...

Swamiji: Swami Sivananda did not want a structure. He was himself everything. His word was final. He had no organisation. Whatever he said was final. The organisation grew later on, afterwards, when it became a trust, and the trustees started giving a structural pattern to the organisation. During the lifetime of Swami Sivananda, he was all in all, so the pattern did not arise.

Visitor: Yes. And today, people do what the movement wants them to do, what the Ashram asks them to do. You don't make a specialist commitment. You don't become involved just in teaching or just in social work. You do a whole range of things. Is that right?

Swamiji: We are doing, you may say, a whole range of things. Almost everything we are touching.

Visitor: That's very different from the Ramakrishna Mission, which has much more specialist assignments, and it's much more like a Western organisation.

Swamiji: No, no. We are not like a Western organisation.

Visitor: How does it work then? How do you set about doing particular tasks, like the Orissa famine? One of your people has just come back from Orissa. Did you send people to the Orissa state to offer help? How many people went to Orissa?

Swamiji: No, we have not started doing anything. The Government of India is doing it on its side. Now it is premature to say anything – too early.

Visitor: Yes, you are waiting for more information.

Swamiji: Yes, yes, yes.

Visitor: Well, I won't ask many more questions. I will ask one or two more. What do you see as the real relationship between your social work – looking after the destitute, looking after lepers, looking after indigent students...

Swamiji: What is the relationship?

Visitor: Between your social activities, your social service, and your religious life, your spiritual practice?

Swamiji: We do not make a distinction between these two things. They are two arms of one single being. We don't make a distinction between the spiritual and the secular. The secular also is spiritual because the secular is an outer manifestation of the spiritual intention of a human being. So I don't believe in secular things, and all those things. No secularity, because the secular would mean unGod, unspiritual. No, it is not like that. I do not believe that there is anything unspiritual in the universe. If God created the world, He created spirituality only. God is not urban, He is not a secular man, so this kind of confusion in the mind of people should be first of all removed. It is a kind of cobweb in the mind of people – secular, religious, and all that. I don't believe that there is any such thing. There are no secular things. It is spiritual only. It is God pervading everywhere. Why are you talking about secular?

Visitor: There is no choice. It is part of a continuum. There is a spiritual character to it all.

Swamiji: We are not living in the world merely for the sake of getting on somehow or other. We are living only to prepare ourselves to move in the direction of our ultimate goal. We should not play jokes with our life. Somehow something you are doing, and go here and there. This is not the thing. Life is not merely getting on. It is an actual consistent, vital relationship between God and man. Life is a relationship between God and man. It is not just doing something. Doing has no meaning minus this relationship. We are strong believers in God, and that is the ultimate belief that we have.

Visitor: Are you a monastic community? Do you have a kind of organised daily life?

Swamiji: We belong to a community, you may say, established by the Adi Sankaracharya. You know Sankaracharya? He established various centres of teaching – one in the south, one in the north, one in the west and one in the east – and we belong to one of these.

Visitor: Which of his centres do you belong to?

Swamiji: We actually belong to the Sringeri Math, Sringeri Sampradaya. Yes, yes.

Visitor: So did he draw up some kind of rule or some kind of set of observances for the community? Do you follow any kind of rules, any sort of rules in the monastic life?

Swamiji: Yes. We have got very systematically framed rules. It is what they call the tradition of Advaita; that is our tradition.

Visitor: But at one point you say you have no kind of set pattern, you all follow your own path.

Swamiji: The set pattern is included in the concept of one's relation with God. We have no doubts in our mind. Everything is clear. We never ask questions, and we don't go anywhere. We stay in one place only. Everything is here only, it is not somewhere else. This conviction is Swami Sivananda's. This conviction has been driven into our minds also, being humble disciples of that great Master.

Visitor: So you don't itinerate. You don't move around the country. You tend to stay in the Ashram here.

Swamiji: No, there is no objection to moving around the country. I am just talking about myself. I don't move anywhere, but there is nothing wrong in moving about. You can do some good work.

Visitor: Some people move about.

Swamiji: Many people go around. They are doing very good work.

Visitor: Have you all taken vows, sannyas, to this community? Are you all pledged to stay here? Have you all made some kind of vow, commitment?

Swamiji: Sannyasa is a vow.

Visitor: Yes. Have you made that sannyas to this community or are you, as it were, committed to...

Swamiji: Sankaracharya's community is of sannyasins only, no householders.

Visitor: But you are a sannyasin?

Swamiji: Yes, I am a sannyasin, a disciple of Swami Sivananda – one of the first disciples.

Visitor: So you have taken sannyas here, a formal pledge.

Swamiji: I took sannyasa from Swami Sivananda himself. And there are many others also.

Visitor: So in that sense you are similar to the Ramakrishna Mission, which also has a period of training, brahmacharya, and you become a sannyasin, you take a vow.

Swamiji: In a way it is like that. Correct.

Visitor: But I have a sense you think of yourselves as different from the Ramakrishna Mission.

Swamiji: I cannot say like that. They are also lovers of God. They are spiritual people, so why should I say that we are different?

Visitor: Just last night I was talking to people, and I had a sense that they see the Ramakrishna Mission as much more highly structured, much more organised, and you are much more free spirits, as it were.

Swamiji: You are right. We are like that. We are like that only.

Visitor: Yes, that is a distinction.

Swamiji: Very good. We had a good satsanga now.

Visitor: Yes.