Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume

A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday

Swami Krishnananda: A Paragon of Indian Culture

by Swami Jivanmuktananda

The culture of India is eternal and impersonal in its nature. The sages and seers of ancient India realised by the highest sacrifice, self-effacement and self-surrender, and revealed the Vedic knowledge which became the source and fountainhead of Indian culture. The culture of India is not material or intellectual, but spiritual, based on the supreme insight of perfect sages. Indian culture is a conscious affirmation of the nature of the Spirit. The Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their foremost work to found a spiritual basis for Indian life and to effect the spiritual unity of the many races that constitute the people of India.

Spiritual aspiration is the governing force of Indian culture which has been cast into a religio-philosophic mould, which forms the scaffold to build the temple of the spirit. The soul of a human being survives not so much by the physical or the mental thinking or outward organisation, as by the indelible spiritual force.

Indian culture is neither an entirely metaphysical and other-worldly system nor too intellectual and materialistic, devoid of a strong vital stimulus. It has sufficient power for fortifying and ennobling our human existence. Our culture searches for the spirit in everything. It controls the gallop of the egoistic passion and vital urge and spiritualises the same force for the higher spiritual ideal. Our culture is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. The vigour of it has remained persistently the same through centuries, though the form has undergone a remarkable change.

Indian culture has left no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual life. It recognises the spirit as the truth of our being and our life as a growth and evolution of the spirit. So, Indian culture has been rightly judged by its essential spirit, by its accomplishment, by its power of survival and by its stubborn elastic force of rebound. A spiritual man is greater than a thinker or a man of action. The soul in God is more powerful than the soul in mind. Above all, Indian culture is the reflection of soul of the human being and implies voluntary self-restraint for the attainment a higher life. Swami Krishnananda, a divine personality, a mighty man of the age like Vyasa and Sankara, has rejuvenated, revitalised and upheld Indian culture by his own life and work. The teachings of Swami Krishnananda recognise the Truth as a universalised impersonality into which one has to enter by the extinction of duality. This surely is the heart India's culture.

The central aim of Swamiji's philosophy is the living of the highest life. The goal of his philosophy is not an abstract idea, but immediate realisation of Eternity which is consciousness and bliss in one. Indian spiritual philosophy is based on its practical value and not on purely rational gymnastic of speculative logic. Vedanta is a synthesis of all philosophies and is a living one and not simply a theory of the universe. Swami Krishnananda is a practical Vedantin to whom the Vedanta is a commentary on life. He brought out a synthesis of all Yogas. His teachings on Yoga are soaked in Vedanta. People are stunned by his knowledge of Yoga-Vedanta. Swami Krishnananda has drawn the whole of Indian culture into the vortex of his writings. His writings,

full of esoteric meaning, are not dense informative texts on general philosophical themes but are full of scintillating ideas based on practical experience.

True to our culture, Swami Krishnananda finds oneness in all religions. He is a prophet of the harmony of faiths and toleration. He has harmoniously blended the fundamental tenets of all and eschewed all sentiments of dissension and religious animosity.

Swami Krishnananda is an impersonal instrument of Master Swami Sivananda and his profoundly subjective divine works are an expression of his Karma Yoga. By right action, and not by inaction, comes the real knowledge. He says: "If you want to work more, meditate more; if you want to meditate more, work more".  Swami Krishnananda is dynamically busy, active all day, working ceaselessly with an exceptional capacity which is the expression of God's Will.

Swami Krishnananda exhorts seekers after truth from the bottom of his heart, pouring his soul force into every word, sincerely feeling that behind the apparent negative qualities in everyone there lurks a positive dynamic virtue, waiting only to be established. The absolute desirelessness, egoless feeling, impersonal calm and dispassionate equality of Swamiji serve as practical examples to inspire others and enable them to rise in the ladder of Yoga. Swamiji says: "Yoga is not individual; Yoga is universal. Yoga is not personal;

Yoga is impersonal". Swamiji exhorts people to spiritualise all activities—whether physical, mental, social or political—for the great purpose of liberation which is the core of the Vedic teaching. Swami Krishnananda adopts Sama, Dana, Bheda and Danda in a most subtle way to educate others; Swamiji thinks that life is a great educational process towards the realisation of the goal.

Swamiji says: "Man is a significance, a connotation, a suggestiveness, the state of an integrated consciousness, and not merely a physical body, a psychological unit or a social personality. Man is potentially divine, but due to space-time intervention, the self undergoes a process of externalisation and forgets his universal nature, but maintains his self-assertive nature. Law which is prior to man, thus, is an operation of the system of the Absolute. Man-made law is the reaction set up by the universal law which is prior to man. One has to reach the goal not by satisfaction or suppression of desires but by sublimation of them which is the aim of Indian culture. Spirituality is the vision of God's presence in the world. God, man and the world come together in a fraternal embrace in the concept of the oneness of life. Life in the world and life in God are not incompatible. Meditation on the Eternal Being is the supreme form of love as it is the highest sacrifice of the self to God, and is, therefore, redemptive of phenomenal consciousness". Swami Krishnananda, like a seer of ancient India, opens the inner secrets of the highest knowledge (carefully disguised so far by symbols in the Vedas and the Upanishads) to the proper Adhikaris and trains them to develop a moral and ethical nature to purify the heart to conceive the idea of higher Reality. The entire life of a human being in India is vivified by the force of righteousness for the grand purpose of spiritual liberation and the masses of India are cast into the mould of righteousness or Dharma. Swamiji's contribution to this grand ideal is unique and unsurpassed.