Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

October 1979: Part 2

The usual audience of various nationalities were gathered under the open sky. Visitors kept trickling in and out. Conversation follows.

Visitor: What is the worth of a man?

Swamiji: You may define it in an aphorism. The worth of a man is his nearness to reality. Now, what is nearness to reality? Not physical contact. An agent of the Reserve Bank is sitting over all the moneys in the Reserve Bank, but he cannot take for himself even a single rupee. So nearness does not mean physical distance. It is the nearness to your own reality to yourself. The Bhagavad Gita says, “Your own self is your friend and your own self is also your enemy.” Now this raises the question again, “What is reality, the self?” You can see and put your hand out and touch the wall. The wall is a reality. What appears as wall is not the reality of the wall. You will see atoms through the microscope! Even so, there are many layers of the 'self'. In dream you are far away from your 'self'. In waking condition you are nearer to your 'self'. Besides the waking and dream consciousness, there are many other layers of consciousness; and it is God's kindness that of the other layers we are blessed in their ignorance. Restlessness, unhappiness, insecurity, etc. are due to the various layers being at variance with the waking consciousness. The waking consciousness summons you in dream. And so also dream consciousness summons the waking consciousness and causes the world of dreams. When your personality, that is, the 'self', is described as having seven or fourteen layers, it only means that you are still on the path to the destination, the Self. And if all these layers were our experiences, like the dream and waking consciousness, then we would be in a far worse position than the merely waking consciousness being at variance with the dream-consciousness. God, in His kindness, keeps us in ignorance of the other layers. Once the destination—the Self—is reached, there is rest and peace. Nearness to Reality is, therefore, nearness to your own Self. What greater thing can be given to you than that of the use of your own Self? Jesus said, “What if you gain the whole world and have lost your soul?” So we have to say that the worth of a man is not his wealth but his nearness to his Self, or the nearness to Reality.

Visitor: I experience pain during pranayama. Why?

Swamiji: You are holding the breath for too long, and hence the pain. Hold it for 1/4 of a minute only. If you hold it for a longer time you will get headache. Also, this holding the breath is not necessary. Deep breathing in and out is quite enough.

Visitor: What was karma-phal-tyagam. I cannot understand it.

Swamiji: Imagine you are a farmer. You plough the field, manure it, sow the seeds, and fence it around. This is the maximum you can do. You cannot push up the sprouts. Your thinking on it is of no use, and your wanting and concern that it must come out is of no use. From now on it is not your concern—not in your hands. There are many factors which have to come into action for the seed to sprout. Lack of rain, onset of pests, hail, etc. are out of your control, but the sprout is dependent on these factors also. The Bhagavad Gita says that the fruit of your action is not determined by your action and intention alone. The Third Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita answers this question. There are various factors that are co-related to your action and motive which also are responsible for the fruit of your action. First, you as the agent; second, your intention in doing that action (and this intention may be different from your action); third, the capacity of your sense organ through which you have acted; fourth, the various motives connected with your present motive (when, for instance, you send your boy to school because everybody does so, but sending him to school is not your ultimate motive; you send him to school to enable him to earn his livelihood later on, and from his learning you want him to be able to earn that much as is necessary for maintaining your standard of living, which is dependent on this and that and a hundred related factors.)

Finally, the fruit of your action is dependent on the ultimate factor of the action being in harmony with the will of the Absolute. If your action is in harmony with that will, you get the fruit of your action. If it is in disharmony, you can't get the fruit. Hence, it is not wise to think that the fruit should follow from your action as a matter of course. It is wisdom to be content to do what you can do and leave the rest to God. Action is the result of an impulsion to achieve something. You never act just for the sake of doing something. In the ultimate analysis, you are made to take action as per the purpose of the universe itself. It is for this reason that if you don't harmonise your actions with the will of this Absolute, you cannot succeed. And you cannot understand the Supreme Will.

Your conscience is a great judge in this matter of whether your action is in harmony or disharmony with the universal will. Even a thief knows that he is not doing a good action in thieving; it is other factors that are brought to justify it. Harming others in the process of your action cannot be in harmony with the Supreme Will. Secondly, what you do in harmony with the will of God cannot harm anyone—for God does not harm A to bless B. So answer to yourself whether in an act, you have harmed anyone else. This is buddhi yoga, or yoga of correct understanding. This lack of understanding is what Chapter Two of the Bhagavad Gita deals with. It is because Arjuna does not understand what is right and what is wrong, what the will of the Supreme is, that he is depressed and confused and bereft of correct understanding. Chapter Three of the Bhagavad Gita answers this question of what is harmful action, what is correct action, etc. The point is that you as an individual are not a separate entity. You are the universe—one with it. The five elements, viz., earth, air, water, fire, and space are in your body, in you as well as in the world. It is the same five elements present in all these, and hence your harmony with these is a law with which you cannot take privileges. Your own individual personality acts. But your action loses its meaning as an isolated fact in the understanding that you and the universe are one.

And yet you must act because you are a part of and within the universe itself. Your hand is like the world. It is outside your body, but is yourself when the hand does something. It is you who are acting, not the hand as such. That the world is external to your personality is the wrong understanding, as in this example: when the hand holds on to something to prevent your falling, it is a spontaneous action of the hand without harming anyone else in the process of its action. And this spontaneous action, arising out of the whole universe, acting simultaneously, is as much a part of you as you are part of the whole universe. This becomes karma yoga. It is like the whole body of yours cooperating in the lifting of your hand. Hence, there is no question of there being a fruit of an action. Because the 'agent' of the action does not exist, it is not an action outside you. It is like the waves out of the ocean; the waves are the action of the ocean, you may say. But they rise on the ocean itself, not outside it. The wave has no individuality; it is the ocean in action, and when it subsides, it becomes indistinguishably one with the ocean. Until you reach this universal consciousness, by your acts, you share your pleasure with others. This sharing is a cosmic tendency, a universal urge, to share pleasure or joy. This is Jesus's meaning when he says, “What you do secretly is rewarded publicly.”

Namaskar. Thank you for a nice satsang.

An ashramite: Swamiji is to be thanked, not us!

Swamiji: No, it is you all also that go to make the satsang.

Ashramite: Thank you for your faith in us, Swamiji, in that we have been Arjuna.

Swamiji: (Laughs and repeats) Namaskar.