Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

May 1979: Part 1

A visitor: Revered Swamiji has said that a true disciple never asks God for anything. What if you ask for liberation?

Swamiji: In that case you are asking for God Himself and God only; you are not asking for another entity. You must not use God as a means to achieve some end. God is an end in Himself.

Visitor: How are disciples classified?

Swamiji: (Laughingly) There are three kinds of disciples, according to their ability to get ignited with the fire of wisdom. One type is like a banana stem or wet wood. No matter what you do, it won't burn. Yet if it stays in the fire long enough, some effect will eventually be seen. The second type is like firewood. One must blow on it, tend it carefully, and it will catch fire. The third category is like gunpowder. It catches fire immediately.

Referring to the warm weather (it was the middle of a very hot summer), Swami Krishnanandaji compared our attitude to the weather to the attitude of ordinary people who think they are bhaktas of God. When these bhaktas get a lot of material things which they wish for, they praise God as if giving Him a Certificate. When the Oxford University wanted to confer an honorary degree of Doctorate of Literature on George Bernard Shaw, the latter said: “It is an insult for you to offer that to me.” God does not care for your praise. It is all purely subjective. It gives you pleasure when you praise Him. This is like the way you admire the sun in winter. But when these bhaktas suffer materially or physically, they condemn God, in the same way you curse the sun in summer!

Visitor: What is the meaning of darshan?

Swamiji: It is seeing a holy thing. The influence it has on you can be great, depending on the strength of the source. For example, you sit for an hour out in the sun today at noon and you may get sunstroke (or at least a good tan), but a candle light will not affect you in such a way.

Visitor: What is prasad?

Swamiji: It is a consecrated thing. Taking it may affect you immediately or much later.

Visitor: Is pilgrimage of any use? So many pilgrims are daily passing through the Ashram on their way to or back from Badrinath, Kedarnath etc.

Swamiji: It depends on your motive. What is your motive? Is it for going to heaven? Any action may produce good reaction, bad reaction or a mixed type of reaction, according to the attitude of the doer. Pilgrimage is an action, a karma. To get moksha, you have to go beyond all karma, good karma as well as bad karma—that is, in other words, all types of motivated action. A jivanmukta also engages in action, but he has no selfish motive, and the action does not affect him in any way. A jivanmukta without karma would vanish, so he must have some prarabdha karma yet to be worked out, which makes him engage in good actions; otherwise, he would not act at all.

Visitor: Is there really such a thing as Grace? Karma seems so relentlessly binding.

Swamiji: (light-humouredly): You want God to be partial? Why should He be partial to you? God is just. He has established the law and fixed it permanently. God's nature is His law. But this law, the law of karma, is not like the laws of physics, for example. It is not mechanical. The cause-effect relation of karmas has always been there, but not a fixed mechanical law for everyone. When Ramana Maharshi attained Realisation at such a young age, it is not that he got there quickly, as it may appear. He must have passed through all the preceding stages in his previous life or lives. In a few minutes at the convocation ceremony you may get the Ph.D. degree, but you have laboured for it for many long years.

Visitor: What is the difference between mantra japa and meditation?

Swamiji: Japa is the verbal or mental repetition of words, whereas in meditation we are dealing with concepts. Usually you cannot separate the two, that is, words and concepts. When you think of a tree, for example, you also think of the word 'tree'. Practically the two are inseparable, but theoretically they can be distinguished. A mantra is that which protects you and elevates you. All mantras are equally good. Different mantras are selected because of different temperaments, but they are all equally good.

Visitor: What is the definition of Brahmacharya?

Swamiji: Brahmacharya is living as a Brahman lives. It is not merely a vow externally imposed. If it is only that, then the mind will rebel against it. It should be spontaneous. It must come from within. If there are lapses now and then in the beginning, don't worry about them, but carry on. After a while it will become a habit.

Visitor: What is your definition of morality, Swamiji?

Swamiji: Morality is the attunement of oneself to the atmosphere one finds oneself in at any time. It is always changing with the evolutionary process to which the individual is subject. Morality is relative from place to place, time to time, but the necessity for morality is absolute. You cannot sever yourself from the environment, because you are virtually related to it. To find out if an action is moral or not, apply it to everybody and imagine what the result would be. Suppose everyone tells lies, for example, then lying will not work! Suppose everyone is a thief, then stealing will not work! If it works when universalised; then it is good, it is moral. Morality is realising that everyone is an end in oneself, not a means to some end. Others are also subjects, not objects to be exploited. Anything that conduces to the higher integration of personality is moral. Anything that leads to disintegration of personality is immoral. The intention behind the action is what is most important. A man may be making a hole in this wall; it is quite all right if he is a construction worker fixing a door there. But the same action is not all right if it is done by a thief intending to steal.

Visitor: They say that the path to hell is paved with good intentions?

Swamiji: Only if the intention is bereft of understanding, then it is merely emotional, and you may get a bad result. All factors must be taken into consideration. A king had the good intention of giving away one thousand cows to poor people, but by chance a cow belonging to another, a Brahmin, got into the herd, and the king unknowingly gifted away the entire lot. Later, when the mistake was found out, the king offered to compensate the Brahmin with ten, twenty, fifty or even a hundred other cows, but the Brahmin would not agree to accept any other cow but his own and he cursed the generous king, who had to be reborn as a lizard. Suppose a man takes Sannyas, you would say it is a very good thing. But suppose his wife dies the next day because of her sorrow at separation from her husband, she suffers a heart-attack, does he incur sin?

Visitor: But is the really spiritual man beyond the laws of morality?

Swamiji: Firstly, at that time you cannot call him a man. Rather, he is a Universal Being. Though he is beyond the law, he cannot break the law. The law works only for individuals, not for space, for example, which is universal. According to circumstances one may modify one's rules of behaviour. When you travel on the train, you modify your programme somewhat; you cannot take a proper bath, and the like. You have to change even more if you are a soldier at war. There you cannot act as in peacetime. One might even have to steal, rather than die of starvation! The spiritual man knows the exigency of the prevailing circumstances, and hence it is imperative for his disciple to obey him.

A disciple and his Guru journeyed to a land where they found any quantity of food cost only half an anna. The Guru said: “We must leave here immediately, this is a place of fools.” The disciple, however, stays and becomes very fat. After two years, a wall collapses and a man is injured. The king of that place wants to hang the man responsible. They find the mason who built the wall, then the cement mixer, then the water carrier, and each claims that he is not responsible for the bad construction. They bring a woman who is very thin and are ready to hang her, but they discover the loop of the rope is too big for her neck. The king says, “Bring a stout man and hang him.” That disciple, who stayed back unheeding his Guru's warning, has now become quite stout, and so he is brought. He prays, “O, Gurudev, please save me.” The Guru was an omniscient jivanmukta, and he immediately appears in that place and says, “Don't hang that man. I want to die. This is a very auspicious time. Whoever dies now will be a king in the next birth.” They report this to the king, and the king goes to the gallows saying, “Oh! In that case, let me die.” Thus the disciple is saved, and the Guru tells him, “You should have listened to me. I told you this is a place of fools.”

Visitor: Which is good to wish for: a short life or a long life?

Swamiji: If you want to live a hundred years, it could be an error. If you want to die, it is also a mistake. You should not condemn life outright. Make the best of your life here. A hundred years is only symbolic. A negative, pessimistic attitude of utter condemnation of the world is wrong. But excessive love, being captivated by the beauty of the world, is equally wrong. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Visitor: Is it a sin if a mantra is mispronounced due to ignorance or physical defect?

Swamiji: Some people become fanatics and think only their mantra works and only if pronounced correctly. A devotee in Tamil Nadu used to recite 'Namah Chivaya' (instead of 'Namah Sivaya') with such faith that he was able to walk on water reciting 'Nama Chivaya'. One day a grammarian taught the devotee to pronounce the mantra correctly as 'Namah Sivaya'. But with the correct pronunciation the devotee could no longer walk on water. He fell into the water because he was concentrating on the pronunciation of the mantra and had also lost faith in his Guru who gave the mantra.

An ashramite: Swamiji this story is like the "Tapla Curry" story.

Visitor: Please tell me that story also.

Swamiji: There was a sweeper woman who approached her employer, a proud Namboodiri Brahmin of Kerala, for a mantra she could recite. He was angry that she should ask for a mantra, as she was of a low caste. But she persisted. The Namboodiri got angry and yelled at her contemptuously "Go and recite 'Tapala Curry', meaning frog curry. The woman took it in good faith and went on repeating the phrase with such devotion that she became enlightened. People asked her who her Guru was, and when she told them they went and praised his disciple's saintliness and how good a Guru he must be. But the Namboodiri had forgotten all about the low caste woman. Now he remembered the incident and felt sorry for himself, for he was still in samsara while she had become enlightened with the 'frog curry' mantra! All these parables emphasise the importance of the attitude or Bhava in mantra japa. The attitude is much more important than the mere sound of the word.

Visitor: Some sages had families. Is not celibacy compulsory?

Swamiji: I may live in a garden, but I don't think of it as my garden. So I am not affected. The Rishis had no psychological attachment to house, wife, children, etc. The mere physical presence among wife and children, did not, in their case, mean anything. So they have to be regarded as celibates.