Facets of Spirituality

by Swami Krishnananda

Compiled by S. Bhagyalakshmi

Undated-7

A visitor: Should I search for a Guru?

Swamiji: Who told you about Gurus? How did this idea come into your mind?

Visitor: A certain friend told me that I must search for a Guru.

Swamiji: Take him as your Guru, for you believe that you should do what he has told you. Otherwise, you would not have listened to his words. If there was no need for a Guru in your mind, you would never have put this question. Unless you felt a need to receive guidance at such supernormal levels you would never have put this question: Should I or should I not search for a Guru? That this question has come into your mind means that you want a Guru. Your friend, who told you that you must search for a Guru, has cut the ground from under his feet by saying you must look for a Guru. Guru is one who gives advice and guidance. Your friend has given you both, and has therefore become your Guru.

An ashramite: What does 'Trayi Marga Pradarshakaya' mean? Is it what Gurudev used to call the 'Trisul'?

Swamiji: You are mixing up the meanings. 'Trayi Marga Pradarshakaya' means the one who directs you on the path of the three Vedas—the Rig, Yajur and Sama. The 'Trisul' means, the three disciplines by which you control the mind: (1) the daily fixed routine, (2) the resolve you take to improve virtues and eradicate your weaknesses, (3) and spiritual diary. These three are like the three points of the Trisul.

Another ashramite: The statement “Truth is that which has no contradiction” is unsound logic. The world then has to be negated, and that cannot be because God is the world.

Swamiji: So long as the two words, 'world' and 'God', are not used, this point is correct. Well, if you must have it, what you call the world is what I call God. There should be no duality. Hence, the statement that Truth is that which has no contradiction has to be accepted; it comes to that. Of course, Gaudapada also takes this view. And the Nasadiya Suktam also says “Does God know that He has created the world?” The idea is that the world is a part of God. He Himself is the world; it is like the sunlight, which is just a natural feature of the sun. The world, too, is a natural part of God, so to say.

Ashramite: Even in the state of the Final Deluge (mahalaya) the world exists in its involute form, and so cannot be neglected—no, not at all.

Swamiji: Despite this fact, Mula Prakriti is not independent of God. It is just one aspect of His, so we come back to the point that there is only One, not two. And Truth is that which has no contradiction to it. You can have the world, provided you first state that God alone is.

Ashramite: If I see only God in idli and dosai, I cannot enjoy them! What is the point of my eating them?

Swamiji: When you see God, you would not want to eat idli and dosai as such. You will find the joy in God which you see in them. He is every kind of joy and all joy.

Ashramite: It sounds like that man who said that if there is no sense of hunger or sleep, he did not want to go there to God.

Swamiji: It is said that after taking Varaha Avatara, the Lord became so one with its own Avatara that he forgot His Real Self. And when Mahalakshmi said, “My Lord, we have been here so long and it is overdue for thyself to return to thy true divinity,” the Lord is supposed to have asked, “Do we get this food we now live on there also?” And when the reply was negative, it is said, the Lord observed, “In that case, let us remain here only.” If you want to enjoy idli and dosai, you do not need to see God in them.

Ashramite: The point I wish to get to is that the rishis have lived on dry leaves for their sustenance. Did they taste the dry leaves?

Swamiji: Their mind was not on what they ate; the biological need was satisfied by the act of eating the dry leaves. Their state of evolution was such that they could digest them. You cannot eat them and live. You will fall sick. There was no question of taste or of the mind contacting what it ate. You also become unconscious of the taste of the food or of what you eat when your mind is preoccupied with something else. You eat merely as an act that must be finished to be able to get on the next thing on hand.

Ashramite: Swami Chitbhavananda has written a commentary on Saint Thayumanavar's Guru in Tamil. In this, he says that siddha purusas who have attained such a siddhi as to be able to preserve their physical body for any number of years as they wish to, have an object in so preserving it. And to illustrate this, he cites the example of a saint, whose name was Tipinlinga Swamigal. It is authentic information, he says, that this Swamigal lived as recently as only 500 years ago and had achieved this kaya-kalpa-siddhi. And this saint had preserved the physical body he was born with for over one hundred years. The object in view was that with this single body, without further merging with the Absolute, he could experience the terrors of grabha vasha and reduce them thereby to this single physical birth. It is not prarabha that gives a physical body to the jiva. How can all the prarabdhas of the different births be experienced and exhausted in this single birth itself?

Swamiji: That also has been predetermined by his previous prarabdha. That he should strive for or that he should achieve success in thus exhausting all his prarabdha in the kaya-kalpa-siddhi of this same body—all this is due to his prarabdha only; it is this prarabdha that has determined that all this shall be so. You can keep this body for 500 years or so, for as long as you have willed it, and after that time only it will disintegrate. This is possible, but it needs a very highly developed evolution of the soul and hard work for years, after which you can attain kaya-kalpa-siddhi.

Now, as for the questions. Who gives this urge to acquire this siddhi? Who gives this urge to know God? Who told you to tread the spiritual path? Who gives the knowledge of God the Absolute? No one knows how all these come or from where. The great Sankaracharyat simply gives up further probe at this point and urges that it is God's Grace alone that can induce the urge, this knowledge that there is a higher knowledge [quotes a Sanskrit line from Sankara]. If this were not so, everybody, even the buffalo, could have knowledge of the Absolute.

Ashramite: This grace which God gives, which He alone can give—how does He give it? Like the rain? As a boon? Or...

Swamiji: It is just His nature to shower grace on whom He wills, without any motive; not giving it so that you might return it. God is not mindful of your gratitude about it. It is His own being. God has no motive or discrimination. A blind man was going to the temple to see God. Someone told him, “Since you are blind and you cannot see, what is the use of your going to the temple for the Lord's darshan?” And that blind man replied, “I may not be able to see God, but He will see me!” That is how God behaves. He has no motive or discrimination. He showers His grace upon all, at all times, on all occasions.

Ashramite: Are we not now qualifying God with some characteristics—a mode? The Absolute has neither.

Swamiji: It is His nature.

Ashramite: If every bit is predetermined, as explained in the case of the kaya-kalpa-siddhi prarabdha, it gives one more leg for fatalism.

Swamiji: There is no such thing as fatalism. Fatalism is not a blind mechanical action or reaction. You are unable to understand the whole truth of it and are unable to analyse the cause and its effect—that's all. Every single aspiration or desire, every single impulse or urge leaves its impression upon your prarabdha which works accordingly. Nothing happens outside these impressions.

Ashramite: Swamiji often says that in God there is no dirt, no ugliness, no ugly sights. Is it because they undergo a chemical change in God and so dirt and unsightly matter becomes pure and non-ugly?

Swamiji: Is it chemical change when the sun shines upon you? Is it undergoing a chemical change in its rays when it lights you? It is just its nature to shine, and give warmth and light. Everything is perfect in God. It is when you isolate a thing from God, isolate yourself from things, and see them in a variety of ways that all imperfections come in. There is nothing but perfection in God. And when you are with Him, your consciousness is that of God only, and you see also everything in its perfection. Everything becomes yours when you enter God. There is nothing outside you. At that stage of God-consciousness, nothing exists but yourself. And what is samadhi? You push people and objects outside your being, and then become filled with criticisms of them. People whom you consider your own are always good in your eyes. It is people whom you consider outside you that you find so much to blame for. Nothing is outside God, and nothing is dirty or ugly in Him. Gurudev never found in anyone anything bad. A certain man abused Gurudev, and it made the General Secretary very angry. So he reported the matter to Gurudev, who merely remarked, “The poor man is angry. Take some badam and milk to him.” The General Secretary again got annoyed and grumbled that Swamiji always spoilt people like this. But the badam and milk were given to the man who abused Gurudev. The man was thunderstruck. That act of Gurudev truly made him repent, and he turned a new leaf in his life. That is what is called seeing everyone in yourself and not as external to you. Sivananda Maharaj thus answered a question, saying his disciples should see everyone with equal vision.

What do you understand by 'equal vision'?

Ashramite: The Bhagavad Gita says you must look upon a dog and a Brahmin with the same eye.

Swamiji: What does it mean? The elephant eats grass, cows eat straw. Will you feed the Brahmin with grass and straw because you must see him as you do the animals? Seeing all this with equal vision means seeing everyone in and as your own self, not externally as 'the other', as an 'outsider'. And I told you how Gurudev gave badam and milk to the man who abused him merely because that man was angry and so abused Gurudev. That is what is called seeing everyone with the same eyes. A disciple should just be guided by the Guru. If he understands and obeys, well and good. If there is no understanding, at least he should obey, in the knowledge that the Guru has told him why he should or should not do a thing, because the Guru understands why he is instructing him in that way even if the Guru has not told the disciple of it, the why of it. Gurudev, Swami Sivananda, has written a poem; in the form of that poem he has said all that which he would call being his disciple would mean. The book is in the library. And Gurudev's poems are much better than his other writings, though some may seem to have been written in a light vein. The disciple should be concerned with only what he is told. This is what Jesus said, “Tomorrow's will be told tomorrow.” Now we are concerned with the today, the present. Now I work or chat with you all as my way to God.

Ashramite: When a person fights for justice and gets angry at injustice, it is called righteous anger and, as such, is justifiable. Still, it is not permitted for a seeker. Why?

Swamiji: To follow a principle is not getting attached to the principle. A principle is not an attachment. It is only when you get attached to an idea that you want to fight. Anger is emotion. Righteous anger is therefore meaningless.