Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

December 21, 1978

In winter we gathered in the open terrace in front of Swamiji's kutir under the open sky and shining sun for warmth and fresh air. During these months foreign visitors also came in groups and in numbers and the open terrace had space for all to sit around informally. To begin with, there were about half a dozen people.

A visitor: Swamiji, I wish to ask you a question. In the cosmic consciousness there is no compassion; there seems to be injustice.

Swamiji: These don't exist in the cosmos. These are all human feelings.

Visitor: It is difficult to live with this idea.

Swamiji: Which idea?

Visitor: Well, see the suffering and...

Swamiji: No, no. When you see the suffering naturally you cannot escape reacting to it. And when you see it, you are not seeing the cosmic consciousness. It is out of your sight. You can't see the two things at the same time. When you are sleeping, the waking does not exist. You can't say what you shall do with the waking consciousness; in the dreaming also, you cannot put this question because you have not woken up. If you wake up, you do not put questions about dreams. The matter is closed. And you know very well why you should not put such questions. You will never ask me questions about your friends in dream. Perhaps one fell and broke his limb in that dream but on waking up you do not ask, "What happened to that man. I have to take him to the hospital." You do not put such question for obvious reasons which are known to you very well.

For the same reason, you will not put these questions when you are in cosmic consciousness. But these questions will certainly be there so long as you have not woken up into cosmic consciousness. When you fall from a tree in the dream you certainly feel the pain at that time. But this is only in a dream. When you wake up, you will not say anything about the pain.

Another visitor: So when I am in a cyclone-hit area, I cannot think that it is a cosmic action.

Swamiji: You cannot think like that; the mind will not go there to the cosmic consciousness.

Visitor: It does go. God's will, etc. we say.

Swamiji: No, no ! Only theoretically the mind goes there, and that is useless. It has no utility for the mind.

Visitor: [laughing]: What does it want, and how does the mind in a practical sense go to the cosmic consciousness?

Swamiji: Practically it means you will become that. Just as you become practically waking—you are not theoretically thinking it is the waking state. Are you simply arguing that it is the waking state, or is it really so? Now you are only arguing that God exists. You are not seeing it. It has not become part of your life. But waking is part of your existence, and you would not have any question about it. It is very clear that in the waking state the sun is rising and is bright. You will not ask any question about that. But you ask questions about God, cosmos, and all that. This is because it is not a part of your life. When it does become a part of your life, you will not ask questions. You came from England, you didn't ask from people, "Am I coming from England?" That is very clear to you and you'll never ask such questions. Your name is very clear to you, do you ask others, "Am I called by this name?" These are part of your existence, and questions can't arise. That which is outside you, and not part of your life, raises doubts. Cosmic Being and God are outside your personality and so you have so many questions. So 'practically' means practical experience and the cosmic consciousness absolution into your personality. Anything that has become one with your personality does not bring doubts. You've no doubt about your being a citizen of England, but you have doubts about your being a citizen of Paradise. If you are connected with another British national, you are connected with the citizens of England. This is very clear to you, it is a part of your existence, you will not ask any question. If you see the world at the cosmic level, you will see it in a different light altogether. Answers to questions will be as clear as daylight.

First visitor: Many traditions talk about the Compassionate God.

Swamiji: That is only man's creation of God. What man himself has created traditionally, it is that God. There are two kinds of God: God created by man, and God as He is. [laughing] And the God created by man is like this—He thinks as man thinks. But there is another God who does not think like man but has got His own ways of thinking. And you've to participate in that. He is not prepared to participate with you. [laughing] There are people who do not believe in God. When, for instance, a child dies—if my child dies I can't believe that God is good. He is a very cruel, hard-hearted person if at all He exists: He has killed my little child. But if you win elections to be the Prime Minister of England, God is very compassionate. He has given me success in the elections. This is your God whom you have created and who is of this type. Whatever you say, He does. So He is like a servant. You can't call Him a God who does whatever you like. In that case He is only your slave. If you want wealth, He must give it; if you want that your enemy should die, He should kill him. A very strange God that would be! Whatever you say He must do, otherwise you have no faith in Him.

This is exactly what I have been rebelling against for years and years. [Swami K. laughs.] As a poet beautifully said: "God is the greatest creation of man. Man has created many things like robots and engines and aeroplanes, and also God for his utility. And this God is not going to help you. This is your creation. But there is a God who has created you and that is the real God. If you are able to understand Him, well then, you'll be a superhuman being, and you will not think in the human way.

Even mathematics is of three kinds. There is empirical maths and a cosmic maths, 2 x 2 = 4, 3 angles of a triangle make two right angles. These are arithmetic and geometry of the empirical type. But there is an arithmetic of subatomic physics and cosmography, of the theories of relativity, for instance. There 2+2 do not make 4, and the 3 angles of a triangle do not make two right angles. How do you say that it is absurd! No, it is a geometrical truth.

But this empirical mathematics is not applicable at that level, and has nothing to do with it. Only a person whose mind has risen to that level will understand what it is. Now, length, breadth and height—this is called three-dimensional perception. But it is not true. It is only an erroneous perception. According to the Theory of Relativity, these are made in four dimensional structure. What four dimensional is, God alone knows, the mind cannot grasp. You have reduced everything to three dimensions—length, breadth and height. Everything is in space and time. They say there is no such thing as space and time, there is only a complex of space-time continuation. This is one mathematics. And what this gentleman, this scientist, said, God can't understand. Only he can understand.

According to the Theory of Relativity, there is no past, present and future. The past can be future and the future can be present. There is no distinction of the past, present and future; time does not exist. And if the past and the future do not exist, the world also does not exist. It comes to that. The world is based on this conception of the past, present and future. The human basis doesn't exist. The whole thing collapses. If the theories of modern physics are to be accepted, you can't even believe that the world exists—except in your head. And this is what men like Einstein have demonstrated, to the horror of ordinary thinkers. If physics can revolutionize your brain like this, well, God is something different, and you will never think in such terms as this. Your daily life will get completely transformed in God-consciousness. It will not be as it is lived ordinarily, because God will direct your course of actions in the light of the cosmic set-up of things, not in the light of empirical perception of values.

Where is the difference between these? You have no connection with the person sitting next to you. That is your ordinary way of thinking. You may think you are connected with that person who is your sister, etc. But in the cosmic setup of things it is not true that this other person is not connected with you. There is nothing which is not connected with you. Everything is connected with you, just as your nose and hands are connected with you. And if that is the case, what will be your attitude to things? I ask you, if everything is connected with your personality organically, what will your attitude be? You can yourself judge. You can yourself answer this question. If everything is organically connected with your personality, and is inseparable from your being, what will be your attitude to things? You will have the same attitude to things as you will have to your own self. You can neither like nor dislike anything. You cannot pass judgment on anything. No opinion about anything, just as you have no judgment or opinion about yourself. And then you will see some miracle taking place, and what that miracle will be you will see at that time only.

People will start appearing in a different light altogether, and everything will come to you on its own. They are away from you now, and you have to go here and there to get them. At that time you need not go to things, they will come to you. And you do not have to run after them because they are away from you. At that stage they run after you; the tables are turned. Now you are dependent on the world. At that stage, the world will depend on you because you are not an individual, you are something else. Not only the world, but also that which is beyond it will look unlike what it was before. You are now a representative of the cosmic substance. Even the world looks like a dot before the might of the cosmos. Naturally, nothing exists before it, and everything has simply to bow its head before it. Now everything in the world, which looks so big, frightens you. But at that stage, nothing can frighten you because you have transcended it in your awareness, and you become a superhuman being. Your logic fails, your mathematics fails and even your ethical consciousness fails. It is super-moral; not immoral, but super-moral.

Second visitor: Swamiji, you have said that during meditation, a change takes place in every cell of your being. If there is no concentration will this still happen?

Swamiji: No, there is no change taking place when there is no concentration; nothing will happen. If you throw a grain of sugar into the ocean, there is no change in the ocean. A spoon of sugar is not sufficient to sweeten it. It is true that you are concentrating, but it is not strong enough to bring about that change. When a strong wind blows, even a tree can be uprooted. (Acting the words) But if you puff and blow before the tree nothing happens. [Swamiji leads the laughter from all]. You will say, I am blowing but nothing is happening! See! Your blowing can have no effect on a tree just near you. How can poor concentration affect the cosmos which alone brings about the change in your individual self?

Visitor: So any unusual experience, when there is no concentration, is not valid? It is only one more phenomenon the senses are creating under these conditions.

Swamiji: Y-e-s.

Visitor: Even if it repeats itself, it is only the senses that are projecting the experience, and so it has no validity. Is it only the senses affirming their say and trying to convince us that they are not protecting it?

Swamiji: Yes, if the experience is not projected by the senses by themselves, you will never have a doubt whether they are true or not. You do not doubt that it is daytime now; you don't ask people around whether it is day or not. The minute you ask questions, it means it is not true. If you are free from doubts, the experience is true. The minute you ask questions, it means it is not O.K. It is not the real thing: of the real thing you, will have no doubt.

Visitor: Swamiji, you have said that the eight ways in which the Vedas are recited drives them into the mind. Are all the four Vedas recited in all these eight ways?

Swamiji: Yes, but especially the Rig Veda is sung like that.

Another visitor: What should be the aim of one's life?

Swamiji: Let me first explain who you are. You are an individual. An individual is a social being, a member of a certain society. We think of each person in the society as separate individuals. You do not think that one soul is connected with another soul. Suppose you sit here without having any connection with one another. In that case, you cannot call it a society. It is only like a heap of pebbles on the road which looks connected with it with each other, but is not really so. In fact, society does not mean merely a group of people. Society is the relationship between individuals, and not merely a group of people. There is a difference between a group of people and society, though on the surface it appears that society is nothing but a group of people.

There is, therefore, a difference between group psychology and individual psychology. You may think something individually, i.e. as an individual, but when you are in the midst of a hundred people, you think differently. Why is this so? What happens to you? You become a part of the group. This is the difference between society and the individual. This relationship between one person and another is the primary concern at present. Whatever you do is in the light of society, the social relationship. You are not doing it absolutely from your own individual point of view, though ultimately that is your intention. You cannot impose upon it your own personality inasmuch as you cannot extricate yourself from social relationship.

But social relationship is ultimately to be transcended in one's understanding of the great fact that society is not independent of individuals, notwithstanding the fact that it is the relation between the individuals which is society. If individuals were not there, society will not be there. So individuals are tremendously important. You have an importance in your individuality because you are an individual. And the importance of one individual is the same as that of any other individual. If you know yourself fully, you know everybody else because everybody is made of the same substance. So from social psychology, you come to individual psychology. Though the primary intention is to face society ultimately, that will not decide all your questions unless you read the psychology of human nature. And the way in which human mind works decides the manner in which society works. Because society is a relationship of individuals, it is essential that you know what is the structure of the human mind and human nature. It is made up of certain factors. It is constructed of certain forces and works in a certain manner, and you have to take into consideration the structure of the human personality, the human mind, the intellect, the emotions and whatever there is of the psyche.

But this is also not sufficient. Why should the mind work in that way? This is another question. The human mind works in a given way because of its pattern of thinking, understanding and desiring. And one has to conform oneself to the way in which the mind works. There is the question why the mind works in that manner and not in any other manner. This question cannot be answered by psychology because psychologists study only the pattern in which the human mind works, as also the way of the working of the mind. The why of it cannot say. This is the question which leads us to philosophy, to philosophical enquiry, which is in the higher realms of spirituality, religion, yoga, etc.

Your relationship with the universe is the reason behind the way the mind works in that particular way. As human society is determined by individuals, the individuals themselves are determined by cosmic relationship. You are constituted of a particular relationship with the universe of the world outside. You are connected with air, water, fire, ether, sky, the moon, the sun, the solar system and what not! So the way in which you are related to the cosmos outside is the determining factor of the manner in which your personality would work—the way in which your mind works and, incidentally, the society works. And your relationship with the universe outside is the subject of philosophy. From sociology, we go to psychology, and from psychology to what they call epistemology, that is, the way of thinking and understanding of things outside and the manner of our perception. Then we go to cosmology, the creation of the universe.

When we go to the creation of the universe, the question of the creator arises. Who created this universe? So we go to metaphysics and the Absolute. Just imagine! You are related to so many wonderful things which are unthinkable, and it is enough to make one giddy. Your head will start reeling if you have the time to think of the various relationships in which you are involved. Though it seems you are connected with only little things like shopping and standing at a counter to encash a cheque—silly matters for you—but these things are connected with the Absolute. And this will become clear to you only if you have time to think deeply about small situations. Even the littlest thing of the world is connected with the Absolute. Now I come to your point. You asked me how can I decide the aim of life. Do you think you get some inkling as to the answer to this question? Some idea as to the implications of your question?

Visitor: Yes.

Swamiji: What should be the aim of your life? Tell me.

Visitor: You should see to your own qualities, your own intelligence and…

Swamiji: You should not look to your own quality. You have to look to the various stages of life. I mentioned to you the various stages of the development of thought; from lower to the higher, you go gradually. You are not looking to any particular thing—neither to yourself, nor to society, nor the world, nor even to God Himself, but you have to look to all things at the same time in different gradations or ascents, and you must know where you stand. You should not jump too high, thinking that you are on a higher level when you are actually on the lower. Generally, we suffer and come in conflict on account of our theoretical imagining that we are on a higher level while practically we are on a lower one. That is called worry, mental tension, etc. Tension is the problem that is created by a theoretical future and a practical present. [laughs] So you should be very wise. You should not try to soar to the sky very quickly. When your feet are planted on earth, you must know that they are on the earth; you should not think you are in heaven.

People say, “Oh! I am concerned only with God, spirituality and yoga.” That is not true. This kind of statement will not work, and it is not a fact. The fact is that you are in the world. When the wind blows you feel cold, you have hunger, you have thirst, sleep...See? And many other considerations. So you must eschew the idea that you are thinking only of God. One must be realistic. Though the aim should be to transcend these lower limitations, you cannot ignore their presence when they are there.

First visitor: Swami Sivananda says that while he was doing ordinary things, he had his consciousness on the higher level. He does not talk of any level of perfection but says you should be conscious only of the higher values

Swamiji: Yes, yes, that is so.

Visitor: There is no link between the ordinary level without real perfection and the higher consciousness within oneself.

Swamiji: Why do you say there is no link? A link between them is actually present. In fact, the very art of perfect living or aim of living life is the maintenance of a higher purpose. It need not necessarily be the highest purpose, it is the purpose immediately higher, just above your present level. That is what you are concerned with, not with the supreme level. That is not your concern. When you say this is right, that is not right; this is good, that is not good; it should be like this, it should not be like that—when you say this, you have already set a higher standard than the standard you are following. Otherwise, you will not say this is good and that is not good. You have something in your mind as the proper standard, to which you make a reference to find out what is right and what is wrong. So your idea of it is already there. If it is not there, you will not know what is right and what is wrong. The very fact that you are thinking this is right, that is wrong shows you have a link with a higher idea which you are maintaining in your mind and from the point of which you want to judge the lower level. Similarly, when you have reached that you will find a still higher level. You go on like that until you reach the highest step. So, as I said, you must concern yourself with the immediate higher level.

The immediate higher level for an ordinary individual is the social norm. You cannot break the social norm, you know that very well. Otherwise, you cannot live in human society. Whether the people in society are correct or not is a different matter. For you, it is correct. The Western society has one norm, the Indian society another, and the Japanese still another, different from both. It is very strange that every society has its own norms and neither this is nice nor that is nice. But that is a different subject. You belong to a particular society, and you have to follow its norms. So at the earliest stages of existence, social norms become the higher level. When you transcend that, then you are independent and you do not have to hang on society for your existence, and you have strength and value of your own. Then you start judging things from the point of view of your own conscience. Sometimes your conscience will rebel against social norms. You will think society is stupid. But you cannot live, get on staying in society with this feeling; you have to get out of it, and that is a different matter. When you are in it, you have to follow it. So when your society relationship is transcended, you begin to follow the higher reason with which you are endowed. What we call conscience is the next step.

There is no need of thinking too far into the higher levels because the mind is not used to it and will not, therefore, go to that level which it has not reached, though it will go to the cosmic level itself in time. Your reason may not be of the final norm because that is also an empirical thing. It is conditioned by your body and your needs. Your idea of the necessary and unnecessary is dependent on the needs of the body and mind. Whatever is necessary for the body and the mind, you regard that as really necessary. And this something is necessary for the body and mental well-being, and you have got to give in. That is the temporary and tentative judgment of the values of things. But you will transcend this value afterwards. What is good at this level is not necessarily good for the body and your individual psyche from the point of the law that operates in the cosmos. And that is the next step. Then finally the highest good is that which is in consonance with the existence of God Himself, and anything else is not good. But you cannot reach that level immediately. As I told you, slowly and gradually you must go from the lower to the higher purpose; otherwise, you cannot make judgments. Every judgment logically is the standard that is set as the next higher level. In any opinion that you express, whenever you pass an opinion on anything, hold an idea or a concept or a judgment about anything, you have connection with a higher purpose which becomes your standard. Otherwise you cannot know what is right and what is wrong, what is perfect and what is not perfect, what is true and what is false. So there is a real link. But the link will develop into higher and higher dimensions. You cannot see the higher dimensions, but only the immediately higher.

Third visitor: What is Shakti? How does it work?

Swamiji: What is Shakti? Which Shakti? First of all, you tell me what you mean by Shakti?

Visitor: Well, Shakti like creature power, Shakti like the Divine Mother.

Swamiji: It works everywhere and in everything, and everything is its manifestation. It is cosmic energy. And everything is constituted of that. Do you know what the latest modern scientific discoveries say? They say that every material object, apparently looking material, is nothing but a formation of cosmic energy. Everything, including your own body, is made up of that one energy, Shakti, which means energy, power, force, etc. It is the stuff of everything, right from earth to heaven—nothing else except that. And the more you are able to participate in its working, the more strength you derive. Shakti is not merely physical, but also psychological, and even spiritual. But you must know how to participate in its working. That means you have to transcend your ego, and to some extent also your personality and your individuality. Because cosmic substance is all-pervading, it is not affiliated to some particular individual. So to participate in the universal substance means to get over the limitations of personality, that is, to transcend it. What else do you want to know. What is your question?

Visitor: Is the Shakti connected with feminine quality?

Swamiji: No, no! It is not connected with any quality because it has no such distinction as masculine or feminine. II is a universal, impersonal force. It may split itself into various shapes, into not only feminine and masculine but also into matter in the animate and the inanimate, etc., etc. This is a discussion of animate and inanimate. Even that is the creation of the ways of human perception. It has no such distinctions in itself, but it looks as if there is distinction when you look at it from your point of view. It is not male or female, it is impersonal. It is endogenous.

Visitor: It works also in the individuality.

Swamiji: It works also in the individuality; it works everywhere—in every atom of the world it is working. It alone exists through all that appear as substances. But it looks, to your empirical perception, as if it is divided, whereas it is cosmically integrated.

Visitor: There are such things as positive and negative forces. Can the male and female be regarded as such?

Swamiji: This would be a very gross and crude form of expressing the two forces, positive and negative. These two forces of electricity, for instance, you don't call them feminine and masculine. That is a very peculiar human way of looking at things. They are two electric couplings—neutral forces: one becoming complete by combination with another, and they appear to be different on account of the manifestation of the space-ime causal relationship. There is further distinction of male-female, positive-negative, etc. But in what people nowadays call the fourth dimension, there is no such distinction of positivity and negativity. The split of positive and negative, male and female, arises after space and time have been divided. So what you say in this context it is correct. But everything is contained in the fourth dimension and, in its essentiality, has no division within itself. There's a difference between the head and the legs, for instance. You have a head and you've legs. They are not different; you can't say either that one is the same as the other. But you don't feel the difference; you feel it is one whole. You feel one living mass or personality extending from head to foot. You don't see the distinction from one part to another part of the body.

Likewise, the energy will not see any difference such as that which the mind sees. It is one mass in which everything is comprehended: pure awareness.

Visitor: What is the meaning of yoga, please?

Swamiji: The meaning is the realisation of the mistaken notion—that of the isolation of the individual from the cosmic, your feeling that you are cut off from the world. You feel that you are outside things, isn't it? There are so many things like the sun, the moon, the stars, etc. You think they aren't connected with you, but it is not true: you are connected with them. The solar rays and the cosmic rays constitute the substance of your body itself. But you feel that you aren't connected, and this is your mistake. Our mind is not so made as to appreciate the connection of our existence with other things. This is the inability of the mind to think correctly. That is our problem. And the practice of yoga is nothing but a gradual process of self-identification with the different levels of reality, until gradually you identify yourself with that to which you originally belonged. A great art, a tremendous, life-long process—life-long, not a question of a few days and months. And you exist only for this purpose, and have no other duty in life. Every other duty is only for this purpose. What can you do in this world is a step in the achievement of this purpose.

Visitor: So yoga is connecting the individual reality with the Cosmic Reality?

Swamiji: Yes, yes; right, right!

Visitor: Have you to use the mind to…

Swamiji: In the beginning, you've to use nothing else. You've got no other faculty. The only faculty you've got is the mind and the intellect in the beginning. But later on, there is no need for you to use the mind and intellect. The soul itself will act. Your soul is your total personality. It is not working always. Generally only a partial part of your total personality works.

Visitor: It is the individuality that works.

Swamiji: Yes. Personality is the outward expression of your individuality. Your individuality is superior. Either the intellect works or the emotions etc. but the soul does not work. The whole intellect works, emotion works, will works. And the soul does not, only very rarely it acts.

Visitor: Is it because the intellect and the mind are conditioned very much?

Swamiji: They are very much conditioned, and they are not going to be of help at all times. But when you have nothing else, you have naturally to take their help for the time being. When you have no apparatus to rely upon, you have only the mind and intellect, hence you have to take their help.

Visitor: What about the feelings? Is it conditionless?

Swamiji: It is equally conditioned, as much as the intellect and mind. It is no less conditioned. Your whole vision of things is conditioned in a particular manner by space and time. As I mentioned to you, you cannot get over this conditioning. But the intellect will help you finally in knowing its own limitations. That is, when you know your own limitations, you have automatically outgrown your limitations. When you know, you can go up higher and further to this level, you have to some extent known what is above you. When you know the limit of a thing, you also have an idea of what is outside that limit. So when your intellect has reached its farther limits of logic and understanding, you would get a flash from the higher level. And then the soul acts and the intellect stops.

Visitor: What happens to your own personality afterwards?

Swamiji: It all just goes, afterwards. It will not exist then. You will become something different. You will become a larger personality, and not an individual personality. You become inclusive of all other factors in you. That is what is called a superman. You must have heard of super-beings. Superman is nothing but a higher being in whose personality the existence of other personality is subsumed. He is a larger individuality with greater dimensions tending towards still higher realisation, stage by stage.

Visitor: What is the difference between Jnana Shakti and Kundalini Shakti?

Swamiji: Kundalini Shakti is everything. Jnana Shakti is knowledge. Jnana is a Sanskrit word; the power of knowledge is Jnana Shakti. Kundalini Shakti includes the power of understanding, of feeling, the power of action. It is every kind of Shakti, action, volition, feeling—all these are comprehended within it.

Visitor: Is it included in the practice of yoga. Can we use this term?

Swamiji: Yes! Kundalini Shakti is included in yoga. All types of energy are included therein, and it is inclusive of everything.

Visitor: What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

Swamiji: Knowledge is the lesser of the two—wisdom is deeper—almost bordering on intuition. Many times in practical life, we have knowledge but not wisdom. You know that very well. When you know how to live properly, that is wisdom.