Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

Undated-1

A visitor: Kant, Descartes, Hegel, Hobbes, Edward Kail, W.T. Sates, Bergson, Bradley, Debunke—all these are great philosophers, but not alike in their views, quite often diametrically opposite, the one even decrying the other logically and philosophically. Sankara's works, on the other hand, constitute an omnibus, as it were. Whom should we read, Swamiji?

Swamiji: They are all great masters of thought who will chisel your thoughts and make them very sharp. You may agree with them wholly or partially or not at all, that is a different matter, but they can help make your intellect sharp. That is a great help. I am very glad to hear all this from you. Very good. After that, you read Acharya Sankara. Acharya Sankara should be read to give flesh and blood to their thoughts.

Visitor. Yes, Swamiji; and Yoga Vashishta contains Berkley's thoughts.

Swamiji: Berkley?

Visitor: And I read his work, and Yoga Vashistha also.

Swamiji: They have great similarities.

Visitor: Not merely that, it looks as if Berkley plagiarised it!

Swamiji: [Laughs heartily] He might not have plagiarised, but it looks as if it is done! All this is good. Have you read Paul Deussen? You must read his exposition of Sankara, because Sankara's original commentaries are very long; Paul Deussen has given an exposition of Sankara. It is a beautiful volume, the system of Vedanta. Yes, very exciting to talk of all this. You practise meditation on these thoughts, on the maker of all things, and you will get all the answers—isn't it? Answers will come from everywhere, from every nook and corner and even from the very bricks, not merely from masters and teachers, kings and sannyasis. The very bricks will give answers to your questions when you are able to commune yourself with all Reality, because when you become friendly with anyone, that friend will tell all his secrets to you. He will not tell all his secrets to you unless he is a real friend. So the brick will not tell you what it is unless you become friendly with it and become one with it. Likewise, the secret of the whole universe is known when you become tuned up to its essentiality.

Visitor: Why are dogs far more faithful than men? Is it a silly question?

Swamiji: Animals act on instincts, and instinct is supposed to be nearer to reality than intellect. At least, according to Bergson, this is so. There is some point in it. Man is very untrustworthy, unreliable, and he suddenly changes his attitudes, but dogs are not like that. Even if you give it a kick, it will follow behind you.

Visitor: But why can't it be argued that they act so because they have not got reason?

Swamiji: That reason is a 'bondage' which has made you fall into the hell of this social life, whereas they are happy without that. What is the use of reason which tells you wrong things—that you must punish somebody, wreak vengeance on somebody? Is this reason for your good?

Visitor: But I will at least know that I should not sit near the person who will kick me. But the dog doesn't.

Swamiji: Reason is like a double-edged sword. It can tell you that it is doing a wrong thing and yet also remember some evil done to you. You will remember it for ever! "The evil that they do lives after them, the good that they do is interred with them." You can never remember the good done to you. But always you will remember one wrong done to you out of the hundred good things I have done for you. This one wrong will wash off all the hundred good things. But dogs are not like that. Everyday you give it a little bread and it will always go wagging its tail behind you.

Visitor: Why? Why is that so? [The question came from someone in the gathering.]

Swamiji: Because the intellect takes you away from reality to some extent, though it has a virtue also, because it can tell you what is truth.

Visitor: Is the intellect all the time taking you away from the reality?

Swamiji: Not always, sometimes. When it gets mixed up with emotions, it takes you in the wrong direction. When it stands independently it will say to itself that it is also committing a mistake. Reason has this other aspect also; it can find its own limitations. Sometimes it asserts its absoluteness when it goes with sentiment and feeling, etc. By reason you know you must love all children in the same way you love your own. But emotion dictates that your own children are better! Emotion speaks and says mine are dearer to me than others' children. But reason tells you no, it is not the proper attitude, all children are equally good. So in certain attitudes there is a mix-up of emotion and reason.

Visitor: Are reason and intellect the same thing?

Swamiji: Yes! Reason is a higher power of the intellect, like the electricity that is working through the bulb. Electricity is the intelligence—that is the reason. The bulb is the intellect; it is the vehicle.

Visitor: What is the meaning of satsang, Swamiji?

Swamiji: Satsang means holy company. Spiritual company is satsang.

An ashramite: Why is the same piece in the Veda recited in three different and very difficult styles? Were all the Vedas learnt to be recited in this manner only?

Swamiji: Yes, the Vedas were memorised so that you should not forget them. And they have created such a complicated method that you can never afford to forget it. If, for example, you go on troubling me every day, I cannot forget your existence. That is one way of making me keep remembering you. Every day you harass me, and I remember you without effort. Like that it is a harassment to the brain to such an extent that you cannot forget it.

Ashramite: Ingrained in the brain!

Swamiji: Yes, like the repeated visits of your creditor! Now, will you forget a creditor? Every day he comes and gives darshan. His visit gets imprinted in your mind, does it not?

Another visitor: Why did Krishna play that lila with Rukmani who, he said, had made a terrible mistake in choosing Lord Krishna as her husband when there were so many other suitors who were much worthier than himself. Lord Krishna goes on telling her that he is a poor man, that he has been called a thief, that he has got many enemies, like Sisupala, who hate him, and so on. Poor Rukmini swoons, and Lord Krishna revives her. With eyes filled tears, Rukmini explains how she is unworthy of his greatness. Why did Lord Krishna frighten Rukmini like this?

Swamiji: Lord Krishna wanted to present an unpleasent picture of himself to test whether it was the essence, the real qualities in him that she liked. He tried to put off Rukmini. Lord Shiva is represented as a tapasvin full of ashes, as a meditator in the burning ghat, as a beggar with not even a good begging bowl except a skull. Further, he does not even have clothes to wear and goes about wearing tiger skin or elephant skin. And he lives on Mount Kailas. Even Parvati complained that he had no house, no roof over his head and he had no respect for the guests who, when they came to see him, sat on the snow. She wanted him to build a nice place for her. Lord Shiva tried to dissuade her, reasoning that it was useless wanting a house and such other things. Parvati would not listen, and she insisted on building a nice place worthy of Lord Siva and his consort. Brihaspati, the divine purohit, was called and told of the plan to build a palace at once. He said that the period was such that if Shani (Saturn) had one glance at the house, it would burn up. Shani was bound to come to know of the building of the house, and he was bound to see it, and the house would burn away. If Shani could be stopped from coming at the grihapravesa (House warming) time, then everything would be all right. Parvati agreed to keep Shani away, and she requested Lord Shiva to go to Shani's house and keep him in his house until the grihapravesa was over. If Shani insisted on coming to see the house, Lord Shiva should play the damaru, at which she herself would burn the house. Lord Shiva agreed happily and went to Shani's house, and innocently explained everything so that Shani understood that Lord Shiva had come to keep Shani bound to his house and if the damaru was played Parvati herself would burn the house! Cunning as he was, Shani started praising the Lord, "O Lord, this is sandhyakal (the meeting of day and night) and it is wonderful to do kirtan with you. At pradoshkal (the sacred hour of twilight), you dance wonderfully. Let me see that glorious sight. Let us sing and dance." The Lord was happy, and he started dancing to the beat of the damaru. Parvati, who heard the damaru, thought that Shani was insisting on coming to see the house, so she herself burned the house! The point of the story is that Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva are quickly pleased because they are simple in their nature. That is why Lord Shiva is called a simpleton, Bhola Nath. This aspect, namely, the simpleton's attitude, can easily please the Lord. And like a mother who plays with the child, covering herself with a cloth to frighten it, the Lord plays such lilas.

Another visitor: When you are in doubt, another doubt and yet another doubt comes. How to clear the doubt?

Swamiji: When in the first doubt, best remove it first before the other doubt crops up. How will you remove it?

Visitor: By study?

Swamiji: Yes, And by frankly placing yourself under your Guru. A Guru need not be a spiritual Guru only. Anyone who helps you to understand things better is your Guru.

Visitor: What is grace? Is there any particular type of yoga which can bring this?

Swamiji: Effort from outside, you may say, is grace. Effort from within the individual is effort, but the one cannot exist without the other. That is, they follow one another. Do not speak of the yogas as either effort or grace. It is their transcendental finality. One is supposed to often enter into the other. This is something which the mind, with its capacity to think only in three-dimensional pattern, cannot transcend this stage. To enter into the fourth dimensional consciousness, if the mind is forced it is not fully prepared for it and will even go berserk—mad. This fourth dimension, this transcendental state, is like the fourth state, known as turiya, which is difficult to comprehend, though a sense of understanding of it may exist. It is said that a shadow is a second dimensional concept of the third dimensional physical body. In the same sense, in a continued sense, the body is the third dimensional concept of the fourth dimensional Brahman. It is the reaching to it that is the point, and this is the finally transcended consciousness, or the fourth dimension, mentioned at the start.

Anothr visitor: While Adi Sankara's philosophy expresses most clearly the concept of the illusion of maya, both Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan are critical of this attitude and comment that we should give the world its due and not overemphasise this maya aspect.

Swamiji: Before we go to this state of critical thinking, we must first obtain enlightenment of the Absolute by a clear concept of the steps in yoga, and progressively fix upon the higher steps by which you get enlightenment one by one. How can you know how you will act and be, unless you reach the fourth stage of consciousness; in other words, in that state in which we have changed the content of our consciousness. And when the mind sees separation in space and time, and the mind gets gross, then the mind can see only the gross things, you cannot get into the higher state of consciousness. Vritti-bheda is the cause of the mind feeling that I, the drop (of the ocean), is different from the ocean. The Cosmic Being is the split-personality so to say: it is all the three: the drashta (the seer), the drishya (or the act of seeing), the dhric (or the object seen).

Another visitor: Swamiji said the other day that when God comes, He swallows you like the ocean. The world or God comes to swallow you, that is, swallow my ego, my dearest personality?

Swamiji: God will swallow you. The world and God are the same thing. You have seen people committing suicide when they are defamed. What is suicide? It is throwing off the physical body; one throws off the physical body merely because one does not want to throw off the ego. Getting a bad name means having the ego defamed, the ego which is shaken. He does not want that. Even if the body goes, the ego should not go. It shows the intensity of the ego of the person and his attachment to his personality: the psychical, not the physical. It is not possible to exist without personality, because it is the dearest of possessions. Similarly, what is the use of going to God and losing my existence itself by merging in Him, is the question the ego asks.

Visitor: Is meditation a means to conquer the body, the soul and the ego?

Swamiji: The meditational stages are explained in the Bhagavad Gita in the arrangement of the chapters. First, second and so on—in which chapter are you? You find that out. You can find out where you are. Each successive chapter is a description of a higher ascent, and when the last stage is reached, you become like Lord Krishna. And what is it to become Lord Krishna? Nobody can understand that, except Lord Krishna himself. You become a Cosmic Person. You get adjusted to everything, tuned up in one second to every cell of the cosmic body. When you wake up from dream, you get tuned up to your waking consciousness. Every cell of the body is your cell only. There is no cell outside you. Likewise, when you wake up into this universal consciousness, you get tuned up in every cell, in every atom of this cosmos, and just even as you say every cell is 'I', the whole universe, you will say, is "I". That is the God-experience that the Bhagavad Gita tells you.

Visitor: Swamiji, why is the last chapter not the Eleventh Chapter? You have the Viswarupa in the Eleventh, and thereafter seven more chapters?

Swamiji: The Eleventh Chapter is not the end of the story, the end of the experience. The Cosmic vision is not the end; it is only a terrifying vision which Arjuna sees. He has not entered into it. The entering takes place afterwards. Merely seeing is no good.

Visitor: Yes, in Chapter Eighteen Arjuna says, “Now all my doubts are gone." So there are seven more chapters after the Eleventh.

Swamiji: Yes, I suddenly bring you face to face with all the wealth of Rockfeller. You only see it, you cannot get it. If you get it, then it is a different thing [laughing] and is the end of the matter. I just show it to you, but you cannot get it. In Chapter Eleven, He has shown all the tremendous magnificence, but as yet that vision is not yours. You don't even touch it. But if it becomes yours, then you can have it, then you really get it. This great achievement cannot be by just seeing the Vision. It must go on till then, so the Eleventh is followed by more chapters.

Visitor: Is there any significance in the Twelfth Chapter describing bhakti following the (Cosmic vision) in the Eleventh Chapter, that is, if you are a dedicated bhakta even this terrifying vision becomes a beautiful form to you.

Swamiji: There is an old saying in Zen. Before you reach Zen (and by the word Zen they mean the ultimate experience) the mountain is a mountain, the tree is a tree, and a river is a river. But in the process of reaching Zen, when you try to gain Zen you do not see a tree as a tree, a mountain as a mountain. This is the answer to your question. The Cosmic experience is not a stunning resolution of the existing law. This is the middle stage only where a tree is not a tree, a mountain is not a mountain, a friend is not a friend, an enemy is not an enemy. Everything changes when you are in the middle stage. In the third stage, the tree is a tree, and so on. You don't have to abolish the existence of things in God-realisation, or Zen. And, this is the experience when you transcend the middle stage to the final—the ultimate realisation of God, when a tree is a tree and a mountain is a mountain, because it is no more a renunciation. First you get attached. Then you withdraw. Then you go back to it with a new vision. These are the three stages. First stage is attachment. But afterwards there is no attachment, but efforts towards detachment.

In the first experience, you want the world only. You don't want God. That is usual, and that is the first experience. A normal man's experience is I am concerned with the world and not concerned with God. The second experience is, I am concerned with God, not with the world. I don't want the world. That is renunciation, vairagya—tyaga—giving up. Then the third stage is when everything is okay. There is no withdrawal because there is no attachment. There is no attachment, and therefore no renunciation is called for, for everything is perfectly okay.

Suppose a person has schizophrenic experience. There was a very learned philosopher. He was master of all philosophy, Western and Eastern. But he was in the mental hospital where Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited him in the course of his visit to the hospital. The man very learnedly discussed all schools of philosophy with Pandit Nehru. He spoke beautifully. At the end of their interesting hour, Panditji met the doctor-in-charge (the Superintendent of the hospital) and asked him why such a learned man, discussing philosophy in such an excellently cogent manner, was kept an inmate of the mental hospital. There must be some mistake. The doctor listened to Panditji and said, "You want to know why that man is in the mental hospital. Come with me, I will show you." Together they went back to the philosopher. The doctor put out his finger to touch the patient. Immediately the philosopher screamed, cringing away from the doctor's finger, "Don't touch me! I am made of glass. I will break! Don't touch me." (Swamiji acted all this bit of narration). The doctor turned to Pandit Nehru and said, "You see why he is here." He may be master of all philosophy and many such things, but he thinks he is made of glass. This is the mental problem that he has.

Now, I have given you an example. When a person thinks he is made of glass, the purpose is to treat him with a medicine so that he may realise he is not glass, that is, the consciousness is withdrawn from the so-called imaginary object which is glass. That is called renunciation. You are saying this is a tree, this is a mountain, this is my father, this is my mother, this is my property, this is my land, this is my building. This is exactly the kind of identification that man did. In imagination he was a thing which he was not. There is no tree, father, etc. They are all imaginations in the mind, just as there is nobody made of glass.

So you are treated by an antidote that is called vairagya. The withdrawal is what you call renunciation and you go to a chapel or a monastery or a desert, renouncing everything. That is an antidote you are giving to this wrong feeling that something is yours. When you come to the consciousness that you are not the body made of glass or that you are not the building, tree, etc., you are in the second stage. You realise that you are a human being made of flesh and blood. But afterwards, that medicine of renunciation is not necessary. You need not repeat the injection. So once you come back to the realisation that things are what they are, the attitude of renunciation becomes irrelevant and is not applicable any more. What are you renouncing? You have already renounced the wrong idea, and the right idea has come, and so further renunciation of things is not called for. Thereafter you live under normal conditions. The first stage is wrong thinking, the second stage that of medication—not meditation but medication. The third stage is the normal realisation.

Now, in which condition are we? That each one should understand for himself. We are mostly in the first stage, with a little of the second stage mixed in. Some 75 per cent in the first stage, and 25 per cent in the second stage. The third stage has not come. It may not come in this birth. God knows in which birth it comes. We are wrongly thinking and are in need of an antidote. That antidote is this medication: spiritual study, and going to satsang, and good company, and renunciation, etc.—all that you usually call the religious life. We always make a distinction between religious life and secular life, just as we say there is a difference between medication and illness. But that difference exists only as long as there is illness, and when the illness goes, the medicine does not come into the question at all. So we have a tremendous hope of transcending the first stage, where we believe that this is a building only. We cannot say it is but a building. You may read any scripture, you cannot get out of the idea that this is a building of bricks and that it is my house, my garden, my plantation. Who can renounce this idea? However religious you may be, however spiritual you may be, however God-fearing you may be, you will still say this is my garden, etc. This idea will not go.

So for most people in the world, real religion has not started yet. It is still in the preliminary stage of spirituality. But when you come to the decision that this is not correct and you require a rectification of this idea, you decide to undergo the tremendous discipline of the practice of yoga. Now you are in the second stage. Even the practice of yoga is not a healthy condition, just as the necessity to take medicine is not a healthy state. Medicine must be continued, for you are still sick. But you cannot say it is a natural condition and go on eating medicine indiscriminately. Likewise, this meditation and yoga are not natural conditions. They are necessary as an antidote, as a counteracting element for your earlier mistake. These clash at each other and cancel each other. Then neither illness is there, nor the medicine. So is the case with the practice of yoga and meditation, for instance. You don't go on meditating. "I am the daughter of so-and-so." You know that, so there is no need to meditate on it. Why were you meditating? To make this clear. If a thing is clear, then you don't need to meditate on it. Why you meditate on is it daytime? It is very clear that it is daytime. Are you going on meditating: Oh, it is daytime, it is daytime, it is daytime! Why will you do that? It is foolishness. Only if a thing is not clear, then you need to think it out. If a new vision comes in, no renunciation is needed, for there is no attachment. When the third stage comes and everything becomes so clear, no practice of yoga is necessary. No meditation. No God-realisation. No bhakti. No devotion. Nothing. They are all only methods, like medicines and drugs.

So this is what the Zen master said. In the beginning it is a tree—a mistaken notion. In the second stage it is not a tree; you withdraw yourself from the idea. You are now in the third stage, and so a tree is a tree due to the new vision that has come. You are seeing the same person with the idea "I am not a glass, but a human body". The mistaken idea has been rectified.

So the answer to your question has come. The Viswarupa is only the second stage, where it is a counteracting force for Arjuna's wrong notion. Things are not different from one another. They are all integrated in a Cosmic whole. That is what is shown in the Viswarupa. But afterwards, what happens? You have to continue to live in the world only. That Cosmic consciousness tells you that nothing is different from another and that there is no need to have to abolish that duality, because that duality does not exist, then that idea of duality has gone completely from you, and you are free—after this realisation. Suppose you have a microscope for your eyes instead of what God has now given you physically normal eyes. Then you won't see bricks and trucks, you will see only atoms! If nature had made your eyes microscopes, then you would not struggle to get out of the ideas of bricks and wall and this and that, but see the atoms alone. So at that time you have eyes with which you see things as they are. And no question of the practice of yoga arises to get that vision at that time, because you are perfectly in a normal condition.

This is what has been said in the last six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, which state that we are on a dangerous path, for we are asked to see the spirit, the soul, through everything, and be spiritual. Spirituality is a dangerous path, in view of what I have told you, the desperations you have to pass through in traversing it. And if you think of it, you will not go near it. It is such a terrible thing. "Namaskar, I go my way," you will say.

Suppose you have to suffer like Christ. Will you like to pass through that stage? You will say, "I don't want to go. Next time, not now. Now I cannot undergo all this amount of suffering." But that is absolutely necessary. You cannot escape it if you want God. He comes like fire, like the Ocean, like the wind, and you cannot stand the wind or the ocean or the fire. It is not possible with your ordinary strength as a man. God does not come like that. In the beginning, that is, in the first stage, everything is satisfactory to the body. The body and the ego are our enemy. We have no other enemy in the world. These two will not want to give themselves up in favour of spirituality and God.

Visitor: But the body only exists because of the ego.

Swamiji: Yes, the body is the outer expression of the ego. The one is a gross form, and the other its subtle form. Two troubles you have. Hunger, thirst and sleep, they are all problems of the gross form, or the physical body. Who can bear them? If these three attack you, you cannot resist them nor exist without them. That is the body-ego problem. You know what the ego is. Everybody calls you an idiot. You don't like to be called such names. You think it is better to go away somewhere instead of continuing to live here. But at the time of going, the going is with such force that it looks as if the disease is made worse, such as in Homoeopathic treatment. This is the same case when the need comes to surrender to God in every instance, like Jesus did.

This ordeal you cannot understand by reading any book on philosophy, because philosophers are not saints. They are only expounders of the logical implications of your problems. If you read the life of saints, you will come to know how to meet such problems. You read of Buddha or Christ, and of the Desert Fathers—you must have heard of Desert Fathers who lived in the deserts of Egypt? The worst that can confront us is not to be wanted by anybody; it is the worst experience you can imagine. Even hunger and thirst will not be so bad as the feeling that nobody wants you. This is so very strange a thing that you cannot live with it a day longer. You cannot understand what such a wretched feeling means, unless you go through that stage. If you are hungry, you know what is hunger. By reading a book you won't know what hunger means, what poverty means. Only a poor man knows what poverty means. A rich man cannot read a book on poverty and understand it. You will like to go to hell rather than live a life where no one wants you. You will pray to God to throw you into hell, which you would say would be better. Do you now understand why?

Why doesn't God come, though you pray so much? Because you are not wanting that kind of God who gives such wretched problems. You want a nice God who speaks nicely, smiles, and is motherly. Your illness is so intense that the medicine must be equally intense. It has become chronic, and it is such an illness that no medicine on earth can cure. It requires surgical operation of a divine type as makes you pray to God to give hell rather than this, and that would be a help! And God is prepared to help you if you consent to be treated thus and surrender yourself to Him and if you accept His ways. Otherwise, even through the ordinary routine of meditation, nothing will be achieved because you have got a subtle lurking feeling that you belong to this world still, and you don't belong entirely to God even when you meditate. You say, “God, I will meditate on you, but still don't take me away from the world. That is the ego speaking. That is the desire of the ego to exist without an end—never to die!

An ashramite: Are the world and God not different?

Swamiji: (Emphatically) Yes, they are! You always make a distinction. We cannot say they are identical. If they were identical, it would be still worse for you. You cannot believe that people are God to you. You think it would be good to divide them as separate from God, and keep the meditation for the temple and the world for shops and shopping, etc. If you believe they are identical, you have to behave with the shopkeeper as God Himself will! It is a very difficult thing to imagine what that would be. So you are not prepared to undergo that ordeal, which is a great experience.

What you say is worse than what the other alternative is. To behave like judge in the Court and a father in the house is better than to be like a judge everywhere. You cannot exist like that. It will be a very difficult thing to do. Even to your wife, you are a judge, and to your son also. To the shopkeeper, you are also a judge. They will say, he is a horrible man [laughs]. To a shopkeeper you are an ordinary customer, though in the Supreme Court you are a judge. Of course, if you can become like that and you can bear the consequences of behaving like the Divine Being everywhere and with everything, it is wonderful. In that case, you are immediately in the soup—in one second! Your identity is in God! You don't want to slip into the soup all that quickly. But slowly, slowly, perhaps?

There is another thing. Sometimes you would like to do something, you want to get out of all this confusing problems and in trying to do that something, you don't know whether you are doing it out of your volition or God is impelling you to do it. This is another problem for you. You cannot immediately make a distinction between God's impulsion and your ego. You will say, "Well, I am going to the mountain top for meditation. I am not going to live in this terrible city of noise and foolish, stupid things." Now, who is telling this? If God is ordering you to do it, very good; He will help you at the top of the mountain. But you may be doing it for some other reason. It may be that you are unable to bear the pain of living in the midst of anti-social persons. It is a pain, isn't it? And you are trying to avoid the pain. That will be a subtle psychological reason behind your getting out of a city and wishing to reach the mountain top. But worse things are possible at the top of the mountain. So now are you going to the mountain top because you want God or because you don't want pain? Which is that reason? These are all very subtle matters, not easily to be left out on the basis of simple assumptions.

Visitor: But Swamiji, God is supposed to be wanting to receive us with open arms. He is pulling us to Him all the time.

Swamiji: He wants to receive you, the Y capital. He does not want the lower y. He wants you with the capital Y alone. He wants you, the Real you. Not the legal you or a social you or the gender you—masculine or feminine you, He does not want these. That is not the real 'you', and so it is the unreal. You will ask for the unreal God only. It comes to that when your prayer is conditioned by the footnote: provided that… The proviso of the law usually takes the edge off the law. Now it is clear why God does not come when you pray, 'I am Thine' etc.

Visitor: Yes, Now it is clear why God does not come.

Swamiji: You want God. Who are you? Tell me. If the individual you is wanting God, then a corresponding thing will come. He will send an assistant, not come Himself (laughs heartily). When you do japa by rolling the beads, God will say “Mind your business. Do not trouble Me unnecessarily.”

Visitor: And has He also told you what your business is?

Swamiji: [laughs]: When you tell a man "mind your business", you do not intend anything in particular. Your intention is to get rid of the man. Whatever it is, mind your business is an idiomatic way of talking. God does not tell you what the business is. I don't want you to talk to me. Don't interfere with me unnecessarily. There is no mystic greater than God. God is the highest mystic. That is why Lord Krishna is depicted as a tremendously naughty boy. Otherwise, why do you depict the incarnation of God as mischievous and naughty. That is how Vyasa depicts Lord Krishna. He could have depicted him as a wonderful, beautiful, sympathetic person instead of as a very mischievous and troublesome element. It is a spiritual interpretation of God's attitude towards you that the author has given you. Sri Krishna marries a thousand wives, he is a householder, yet he is described as a Brahmachari. Every social law is broken in his life. He has his own law, and his law is a super law with which social laws have to be consonant.