The Blessing of Fullness

by Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on Guru Purnima, 1985)

Salutations and prostrations to all the Purna Gurus who abundantly send us their blessings on this holy occasion of Sri Guru Purnima—Masters who are full in themselves as the full moon is, who send their blessings of fullness, inasmuch as fullness is also happiness. That which satisfies is that which is full. Anything that is fractional is out of focus.

It is a sense of fullness that everyone endeavours to reach in one's daily occupations. On days when a sense of satisfaction arising out of fullness has not been achieved, there is restlessness, an agitation, and an absence of peace of mind because that inscrutable thing called a fullness of feeling has not been inducted into oneself. This is a matter which each one has to consider for oneself during calmer moments and leisurely hours. We cannot be at peace with our own selves even for a few minutes if we are not filled with something that can satisfy us.

This leads us to a consideration of the significance behind our worships, adorations and Guru-seva, all which are expected to be matured forms of our daily performances, while the other engagements of our daily existence can be considered immature and inadequate, a kind of struggle rather than an achievement. Our daily life is a struggle. Rarely is it an achievement, though occasionally it may look like some kind of attainment. That day we sleep well, that day we smile, that day we are friendly with people, and that day everything looks like a full moon. On that day when a sense of satisfaction arisen out of fullness has not touched even the fringe of our personality, we are only struggling, having achieved nothing.

Many a day passes in this manner. We work and work, but nothing seems to have come out. It has disturbed our whole person. Mostly we are in a disturbed state. Social relations, social organisations and social ways of living, including family life, have been conceived as a sort of tentative rectifying medium in respect of the disturbed minds of people lest they would not be able to exist in the world at all, because the feeling of having achieved, which is equivalent to a feeling of fullness, has to be induced into us at least artificially by way of social concord. It is artificial because it is not real.

But social and fraternal concordance is different from our attunement with the higher powers, the Masters and the divinities. It is not a social sense of achievement that we expect from worship of God. It may be that God is not a social person. Not even a Guru is such a person. God is not a person, and a Guru also is not a person. In this sense, our relationship with them cannot be social or personal. It is said to be spiritual, which means something more than we can understand. To be spiritually related and not to be merely connected in a personal or a social bond is unimaginable to a social human being because the conception of a higher is not a part of our daily thinking. Our usual and common feeling in respect of persons and things is in light of existences outside us, as we also are. We are unable to free ourselves from a human interpretation of the spiritual teacher, even of God Himself, in the sense that we look upon them as large human beings. It does not matter. Let them be large human beings; it does not affect us. What affects us is something different, namely, whether we are considering these geniuses of the spirit as family members like our brothers. Even if we consider them as fathers and mothers, that would not be sufficient because the father and mother is an outside person, but God is not an outside person, nor is the Guru.

That which is outside cannot bring us a sense of fullness. That which has entered us alone can make us full. What we have eaten makes us full. A bag of rice in the godown cannot make us full, though it is there as our property. It is a property, a belonging, but it is not ourselves. Therefore, no wealth, belonging, land, property, building, bank balance, family relations, and so on, can make us full because they are outside us. They imaginarily appear to belong to us. Imaginary belonging cannot bring a real sense of feeling of fullness.

So this contorted attitude of our capability to be happy only through connection with external persons and things should not be foisted upon the great Masters and the Gurus. They are, to be underlined again, not outside us, because nothing that is outside us can be ours. This is a point we have to remember always. Anything that is outside us cannot be ours. In a sense this body is also outside us and, therefore, it is not ours. It is also not capable of fully satisfying us. The body does not satisfy us well, if we can think properly on this issue.

God and the Masters are transcendent, above us. They include us, they absorb us, and therefore they can fill us, and it is only when we are filled that we are happy. Purnima is the fullness of the moon. It is also, incidentally, said to be a kind of fullness the mind achieves on this day, a thing which is known to astrophysical and psychological experts. Therefore, on this full moon day, Sri Holy Guru Purnima, we invoke fullness—call it God, call it Guru, call it whatever we like.

But may we bear in mind that what we invoke and consider as the only thing that can bring fullness to us has to be ours. It cannot be somewhere else. Anything that is somewhere else, anyone who is somebody else, anything that is something else, whatever it is, inasmuch as it is not ourselves, cannot make us happy. That is the reason why we are normally in a state of absence of peace of mind, restlessness, with a submerged attitude of agitation in the psyche. Without a sense of having achieved anything we reluctantly, restlessly and agitatedly go to our bed at night, and so do we wake up also in the morning to continue the whole drudgery of psychological entanglement and confusion. This has to be streamlined and set in proper alignment by tuning what we are with what the great Masters are, and the Almighty is. May this great fullness of the Spirit be with us.