Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

December 19, 1979

A visitor: Please initiate me in meditation.

Swamiji: Have you been meditating?

Visitor: No.

Swamiji: Then why do you want to do so now? Curiosity?

Visitor: No. I am coming here for the third time, and at first I was not interested in these matters. Now I want to learn to meditate. Please initiate me with some mantras.

Swamiji: Mantras can't be given just like that. Tell me first of all what benefit you wish to get out of such meditation. What is your desire? Which God form are you fond of?

Visitor: I have no desire, Swamiji. I do not believe in saguna forms of God. I believe only in the Absolute.

Swamiji: What objection do you have to saguna forms of God? Why don't you want them? What harm have they done to you?

Visitor: The saguna forms are all manmade. So I believe only in the Absolute.

Swamiji: Describe the Absolute to me, let's have your own idea.

Visitor: The Absolute has no qualities.

Swamiji: You have already given an attribute to the Absolute. Unless you have some qualities in mind, how can you say the Absolute has no qualities? Where is the Absolute then?

Visitor: In my heart and all over.

Swamiji: So again you are giving a definition of the Absolute. The Absolute is not a negation of all qualities. The Absolute is inclusive of all qualities, and that is why It is without any special qualities. Tell me, of all things in the world what is it that you like most?

Visitor: I have no particular predilections. I have no desire.

Swamiji: Then why do you want to do something? To learn how to meditate? There is something that is making you want to do this. What is that?

Visitor: There is no desire, Swamiji. I want to…

Swamiji: Unless there is desire, there cannot be any urge to take action. You don't know what your desire is. And saguna forms of God are as effective as the Absolute in leading you to your goal of life. Now you are a musician, a professor, and you find joy in these and the like. What is that thing of which you are extremely fond?

Visitor: Ragas—more than other types of music.

Swamiji: Many saints have reached moksha by singing ragas to their saguna God forms. It is a very effective way of being in communion with God in the saguna form. I hope you understand me.

Visitor: Yes, Swamiji.

Swamiji: Tell me, whom among the members of your family do you love most? Your wife? Your children?

Visitor: My mother.

Swamiji: [turning to his very worthy wife]: See! He is creating a quarrel between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law! In the presence of your wife you have said you love your mother most! Well, you say the Absolute is in your heart. Meditate on whatever seems to you to be the Absolute, even as you perceive it in your heart, and when you come again, we shall have more chat about this.

Another visitor: I feel confused because I see lots of suffering in the world. At the same time, I feel that one should turn inwards and contemplate on the spiritual aspect of human existence. What should one do? Turn inward or turn outward and relieve suffering?

Swamiji: You are seeing neither side fully—50% that side and 50% this side, and both together are making the confusion in your mind worse. The conflict is between what you see and what you have not seen. Why see only one side? What is meditation? In meditation you are thinking something not seen with your eyes. When you are doing work, you see the world. There is, therefore, a double devotion to both the world and the abstract object of meditation. Hence, confusion and doubt arises as to which one should follow. What you see with your eyes is what is real to your mind, and what you have heard from others also seems real to you, and you keep thinking of what you have heard. Your sentiment makes you see the world, and your faith in the person who tells you that there is something unseen which is real, is the other factor which makes you think of it, because it is different from your sentiment. It requires profound study and learning, and a protracted period of training in the correct way of thinking, if the confusion is to be got over. What you see with your eyes is not real, and cannot therefore affect you. But you erroneously think that it is real. In other words, you behave according to what the eyes tell you. But the eye that has a cataract gives wrong visions. One needs special glasses to see things correctly. You have to find a proper guide who will help you to see things and think about them correctly in due course. Even this idea that you have confusion has come to you only now, after you started to think on these lines. So, everything will come in its own time. All these years, these doubts did not come to your mind. But now, because you are in the proper atmosphere, the idea has surfaced in your thinking. Similarly, the proper guide will appear in time and guide you as to how you should think and act.

An ashramite: I have a doubt about the right way of meditation. First, a small light appears and stays for some time. Then a second light appears on the other side. Why is this? I do not know which light I should concentrate upon.

Swamiji: Who asked you to meditate on light? Your problem is that there is no proper philosophical background for your practice. Your mind should be satisfied with the technique you perform. Otherwise, you cannot answer the questions that come up in your mind. Doubts will come from the very start of your practice. It will even put the question, why do you want God? Every question of the mind must be answered satisfactorily. The horse must know where you are driving it.

Ashramite: I want God. So I am asking my mind to meditate.

Swamiji: You are not wanting God for the sake of happiness, and the mind craves for something which it likes and which will make it happy. So it must be explained to the mind that wanting God means wanting happiness. This is the philosophical point. Your whole idea of meditation is a hotch-potch. Therefore, you are having troubles of all sorts. Wanting God, happiness, knowing what is meditation, and how to achieve success in it—all these require a scientific approach. You cannot simply sit and cry aloud, I want a house. Mere sentiment or emotional spurts will not take you anywhere. You think you are a very important man, and God is a poor man, unimportant! (laughs). God is Ashutosh which means a simpleton, that is, He is quickly pleased by those who approach Him in utter simplicity of heart.

Another visitor: I want to learn yoga.

Swamiji: Yoga begins where philosophy ends. From the social, geographical, geological and astronomical level, you go to the biological level, and from there to the psychological level and again thence to the rational level. You cannot go further because your capacity is only rational. It is only intellectual, and hence you cannot go further. So all philosophies generally stop at the intellectual analysis and rational conclusions. But we are not merely reasoning individuals. We have a status of our own—we have an individuality and an existence of our own. You are not merely a function, but an existence as well. Intellectuality is a function; rationality is an activity of a status or faculty. What is in you? Can you say that you are merely a function or a process or a faculty? You are so-and-so. Can you say so-and-so is only a name for a function? It will be a very poor definition of yourself and something below your dignity. You are not a function, you are a status of your own. People always assert their status. When you assert this status, it is a unique indivisible existence of the barest minimum of the totality of your personality. And this barest minimum is part of the universe. The universe is not merely a function—physical, astronomical, psychological, intellectual, etc. It is a pure existence by itself. These are levels of understanding of the universe. So, on the basis of this understanding of the structure of the universe, you may have to prepare the syllabus of your study of yoga. And you are to study the lower level first, and the higher level afterwards. When you go to school, they teach you only what is visible to your eyes; they don't tell you what is invisible. In the KG class or in the First Standard they tell you a little bit of the nature of your neighbourhood and the people around you to arouse your civic consciousness, and then a little bit of the administration of the country, then a little bit of the geography of the land, and so on. It takes a lot of time to take you further up beyond the earth to the solar system, etc. which will not be taught in the elementary schools. The mathematical or the astronomical geography is never taught in the earliest stages; they are taught much later because if you suddenly start pouring into the young students' ears facts about the solar system, physics and such things as the atomic structure, these will be horrible things for their shallow minds. And these matters won't enter their minds at all.

But the mind can and does grasp things by stages. Gradually, in due course, everything is taken up, and finally you envelop the entire physical cosmos with your mind. This is the conclusion of physical study. Then, as I said, you go to the biological, psychological, rational study, and finally you go to pure existence, which you must consider as the spiritual study. That is reached in a very advanced condition, but they are all layers of personality in the cosmic structure. So in the beginning you have to be acquainted with your political relationship, your social relationship, and then with your personal relationship to the family, the community and the nation. Then comes your physical structure, then the nature of the relationship of this structure to the physical universe, then the higher studies of life, of the mind and reason; and finally of the spirit.

I am giving an idea as to how the study has to be conducted, stage by stage, without hurrying or jumping suddenly to the highest reaches such as samadhi and all such which some people speak of as if it was the second or third lesson of life. Nonsense—nothing will enter the head. You talk of samadhi, but you don't know what it is. It is only a word—a mere word, and in reality it has no sense for you. How can sense come when you are still at the lower level, when you have not reached that stage, when the mind cannot understand the implications of all this? So, finally, a fear catches hold of you in the end, with all your studies. “If I enter Samadhi, or God's body, what will happen to me afterwards? What is my future afterwards?” You don't know anything, only there is a terrible fear. This doubt will persist till the end, even if you see God face to face. Let us say you are seeing Him, a terrible thing in front of you. Afterwards what will happen to you? How long can you keep looking at Him? You don't know anything, you will be tired of seeing him (laughs). Many people have told me, suppose I see God, how long can I go on seeing Him? I will be tired, I will get up and go away [laughs], I will be fed up, I want some work ! [Laughs loud and long.] After seeing God, you want some work (chuckles).

They don't understand that God means a stage of awareness. “After reaching that stage, what will happen to me?” That is the fear. And this “what will happen to me” will not leave you till the end. Such doubts will never leave you. Sometimes these fears are childish. A disciple was once told by a great rishi that when you go to heaven you will not have hunger. The disciple said, “Then, I don't want to go there! It is very bad not to have hunger and thirst! No appetite! No sleep! These are all tedious conditions.” [Chuckles heard from the gathering.] Would you like to be in that condition? It is a state of sickness [chuckles and laughs].These doubts arise because you are still very immature. We are but children in our thinking. Physically grown up, yes, but mentally very immature. We cannot understand the cosmic reality. Even doubts which you may not have imagined in your mind come in at the end. “What stage have I reached? I do not understand. Where am I? I have practised sadhana, studies and meditation, and still I cannot make out where I am.” Let us say, you find this. This is still a stage of a state of doubt only, and in the end you cannot see any relationship between the world and God. Even learned people have this doubt. What happens to the world when I see God? Your family and all these things are here. “When I suddenly soar up into the empire of God, all my children are seen crying!” You wonder what will happen to them. This is another unfortunate thing. You seem to be in a state of anesthesia.

Visitor: They seem to be quite happy!

Swamiji: You are happy because you know nothing about happiness. But if you are aware of it, you are frightened of it!

Visitor: But why has God made it all so difficult?

Swamiji: Since you have woken up from sleep, you are frightened. They, the world-ridden, are still sleeping. A sleeping man has no doubts; when a man is awakened, he is frightened about everything. So the best thing is to sleep, is it not? No loss, no worry, no fright!

Visitor: That also He does not allow—to sleep and sleep.

Swamiji: Because eternal sleep is not allowed. It has to be intermittent. Even the atom does not sleep eternally—it wakes up because of the urge to evolve.

The more the knowledge the more the suffering. So it is better to have no knowledge. Is it not?

Visitor: A devil in the knowing...

Swamiji: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, eh? They say knowledge is bliss. But here, knowledge is sorrow [laughs.] Suppose you have no knowledge that you have lost something; you are happy. When you know of your loss, the knowledge leads to sorrow. Thus knowledge can also be sorrow. Is it not? [laughs.]

Visitor: Why has God gems on Him? Decorations?

Swamiji: No, He has not put on anything; you are unnecessarily blaming someone who does not exist.

Visitor: Why have I put on something?

Swamiji: You have put it on because you want it. One does not do anything that one does not want.

Visitor: It was silly of anyone to want it.

Swamiji: Now you mean it is silly? At that time you wanted it and you were very wise! Afterwards you felt that you were foolish! Many people, even great people, have this doubt: What is better, to have God or the world?

Visitor: Both.

Swamiji: No, you cannot say both—you see a man sitting there and you see only the man, not God; man works for man only. He is not aware of the ant or the frog.

Visitor: Yes, I am aware, Swamiji. I see everything, I see the frog and the ant, the world and the monkeys before me.

Swamiji: Yes, as a nuisance. The monkey is looking at you as a nuisance. It is looking only for the monkeys; frogs work for frogs only, ants for ants. You are thinking of human beings as much more worthy. When a man says, I work for the world, he does not obviously think of the frog or the ant. He is working for man only.

Ashramite: Working for the world also includes working for ants?

Swamiji: No, you aren't concerned about ants. You destroy them and you would not bother; what's the use? Your sentiment will tell you that there is a great use for man's values only. “My brother is greater than my father.” This is the only way man can think. Man can think only as man, he cannot think like a tree, so what can he do?

Visitor: How then to work for God, Swamiji?

Swamiji: [laughs]. You cannot work for God. You have a fear that He will leave you in the lurch in the end. He is unseen, and we do not know what kind of a person He is, so it would be better to leave Him alone. Don't go near Him; He is an unrealistic person! Humanity is near; you know what it is. It is better to work for human beings. God is an unknown thing, and to work for an unknown thing is dangerous! A reliable man (humanity) is better than the unreliable man, i.e., God (laughs).