Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume
A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday
An Expression of God-Experience
by Swami Brahmananda
The time is Brahma Muhurta, between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. It is a cold chilly morning in the month of January. A gentle cool breeze is blowing over the sacred Ganges. A sincere spiritual Sadhak is sitting in Padmasan over a comfortable seat of Kusa grass, deerskin and a thick woollen blanket spread one over the other, on a flat rock, on the bank of the Ganges. His whole body, excepting his face, is covered over with a woollen shawl. His eyes are half closed and he is absorbed in deep meditation, Nididhyasana. Like the effulgent light spreading forth from the sun, spiritual aura is seen emanating from him.
He is not one among the several neophytes in the spiritual path seen here and there sitting and meditating on the Ganges Bank, but a far advanced, mature saint, a very rare soul who has ascended all the steps of the spiritual latter and reached the last one which also he wants to transcend to reach that limitless Great Beyond, that Supreme Peace which, as the Upanishads put it, is That from which the mind and speech return baffled unable to reach It. He has been sitting in that posture and moved like a rock, for nearly an hour and a half. Some thoughts suddenly rush in, in that calm serene lake of his mind. He says to them, “Get away, get away, I want to see God and why do you come here and block my way?” A moment passes. And lo! the very same thoughts shed their veil and appear as the pure Consciousness, the Supreme Truth, which he has been seeking all along. The seeker and the sought now become one. The process of seeking also merges in that one Consciousness. The drop has merged in the ocean. The individual and the universal have transcended themselves. He remains in this supreme, sublime height of Super-consciousness in its transcendental aspect, for a long time, perhaps a few hours.
The sun has risen and is illumining the whole earth. The saint comes down, as it were, from his spiritual heights to realise, as clearly and distinctly as an apple in one's palm, the truth of the all-comprehensive nature of God. He sees God expressing Himself as his individual body and mind, as the whole world at large, as everything here—the so-called real, unreal and the void. All thoughts, words, deeds and objects now reveal themselves to him as God. He himself is none other than God.
This last stage in one's march towards the spiritual Goal is most picturesquely described in four simple verses preceding the famous Manisha Panchakam, a quintuplet on Wisdom by Acharya Sankara. These verses dramatise an incident that took place one day in the Acharya's life, so beautifully, that any Sadhak who reads and re-reads them will not fail to visualise before his eyes a clear picture of that unique incident enacted in one of the narrow lanes of Varanasi on the bank of the Ganges, leading to the great temple of Lord Viswanath. Deep enquiry and Nididhyasana on the import of these verses, hidden behind the words and between the lines, will surely result in the realisation of the Truth.
The great Acharya Sankara, the greatest expounder of the Advaita philosophy, referred to by his followers and devotees as Sri Sankara Bhagavadpada, and considered by them as an incarnation of Lord Siva, flourished in the first quarter of the 9th century A.D.
Once, Sankara was staying in the city of Varanasi. One day we see him, after his early morning bath in the holy Ganga, walking along the narrow street leading to the temple of Visvanath. A low-born man, an otutcaste, clad in dirty and torn rags, with his equally ill-clad wife, hand in hand, suddenly appears facing the Acharya and blocking the narrow passage to the temple. The Acharya asks the couple to get away, to move to one side, so that he could proceed onwards to have the Darshan of the Lord.
The couple is really Lord Siva and his spouse Shakti—Purusha and Prakriti—the two inseparables in disguise, for whose Darshan he is walking towards the shrine of Lord Visvanath. There is a common adage that when the devotee takes one step towards God, God takes ten steps towards him to give His Darshan. God will not allow His devotees to undergo the trouble of walking the whole distance. For, is He not the ocean of compassion?
Anyone else, hearing the words of the great Acharya shining with spiritual effulgence, would have moved to one side of the path and given way to him. But this outcaste couple's reaction to the words of the Acharya is unique. They do not move an inch, but stand on the very spot. The "ill-clad, low-caste man" now puts a question to the Acharya.
"Oh wise man! There are only two things here, matter and Consciousness. Your body, my body and the space in between, and everything in this universe is made up of the same matter, the five elements. This universe is one organic whole. Even if you and I are considered as part of that whole, how can this body of mine get out of the whole?! One thing cannot get away from another, as both are in the indivisible homogeneous whole. It is impossible. As regards Consciousness, it also all-pervasive and indivisible. How can the Consciousness in me move away from the Consciousness in you and in whole universe?! So, that also is well-impossible.
"Oh great one! The effulgent sun the sky is reflected in both the pure water and in the polluted dirty water. Is the sun in any way affected by the reflections? Is the sun purified by the pure water or polluted by the dirty water? The reflection has no existence as something different from the original. When seen separately, it is unreal and non-existent. Oh wise one! There is space inside a golden pot and a mud pot. The former, the golden pot, is costly, shining and used for taking water for holy worship in temples while the latter, the mud pot, is cheap, dirty and used in the toilette. But, does this in any way affect the space inside the two pots, the space which is one, homogeneous, undivided, all-pervasive, and unaffected and untouched by anything and everything that it contains! Similiarly, when this Atman, the pure Consciousness, nameless and formless, and at the same time, having all the names and forms, looks as though it is contained in your body and our bodies, like drops contained in the vast waveless ocean of Bliss-Consciousness, how can the delusion of difference and separateness arise in It?"
When these few words of wisdom fell on the ears of the Acharya, he instantaneously recognises that the 'low-couple' is no other than Lord Siva with His Shakti. He falls at their feet and washes them with his tears of Bliss. He is raised by the Lord himself. When the Acharyasankara looks up, he sees Lord Siva with his consort Parvati, in their divinely beautiful and sublime form. The Lord embraces him. The individual merges in the Cosmic. There is no a Acharya separate from the Lord and his Spouse. Acharya Sankara, Lord Sankara and Shakti – all the three are now one, the pure Awareness. The I, God and the world are now realised as one, non-dual, pure Consciousness.
A few moments passed. The Acharyasankara himself standing alone on that narrow path. There was no one there except those persons who, like him, are on their way to the temple. He goes to the temple, and after worship there, returns to his residence.
Thereafter, he gives expression to his God-experience in five verses which have come to be known as Manisha Panchaka. These five verses express in human language the divine experience. A doubt may arise whether God and God-experience can be expressed in words. There is no room for such doubt when one realises the fact that all words are His expressions only. God manifests Himself as the world of names, forms and action. God in the world are not different. This is illustrated in the Murti of Ardhanarisvara, where God is depicted half as Purusha and half as Prakriti. A mere outline of the contents of the five verses expressing the God-experience of the, is attempted in the following paragraphs:
“God expresses himself very distinctly through the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep, by pervading the whole creation, and remaining as the Witness. One should have the firm conviction, 'I am He'.
"The 'I' is God alone, as also the whole universe which is nothing but an expansion of pure Consciousness. That which is considered as not God, as different from Him, as the three Gunas and their effects, is my superimposition due to ignorance.
"Having come to the firm conviction through one's Master's instructions that a universe seen separate from God, as other than Him, is ever perishable, one should practise continued reflection through one's own calm, pacified mind, on the eternal God-Consciousness, which fills the universe leaving no space whatsoever devoid of It. Then, what happens to such a man? All his Sanchita and Agami Karmas are burnt out, without any trace, in that fire of pure Consciousness, leaving the Prarabdha Karmas to be experienced by his body which also falls when they are exhausted.
"The Supreme God shines as the innermost 'I' in all beings, illumining the body, the organs and the mind which are by nature inert. They shine through the power of God's consciousness alone. The effulgence of the sun appears to cover the resplendent orb of the sun. What is the truth? The very existence of the former depends on the latter, for we are able to see the effulgence because of the sun. Similarly, though this world is considered as something other than God, which covers or veils God, really speaking, this world is His glory which eternally reveals Him—by its presence in the waking and dream states and by its absence in the deep sleep state and Samadhi. Thus meditating, one gains fulfilment and one enlightens others.
"All the celestials revel in an infinitesimal part of a drop, a flying spray over the ocean of the infinite Bliss which is God, while the sage of perfection is immersed in that ocean of Bliss and remains quiescent in the pure Awareness. His intellect slides, or melts, as it were, into the eternal ocean of Bliss to become one with It. He is now no more a knower of Brahman. Then what is he? The Acharya says, from his own direct experience, that such a person is Brahman Himself and that his holy feet are worshipped by all the gods. But, such souls are very rare in this world". Thus concludes Sankara's quintuplet on God-experience.
Indeed, souls who have scaled the stupendous heights of God-experience are very rare. But, at no period in history, the world was wanting in such great souls. Even in this Kali Yuga, in the fag-end of the Twentieth Century, in this scientific or atomic age, we have had and still have a few such God-men walking on the face of this earth. One such rare soul we had in our midst was our most revered Gurudev H.H. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, who, through his own personal life and work, had conveyed to the whole of the aspirant world the Supreme Truth that this world is nothing but God. Another such rare soul we find in his worthy disciple, H.H. Sri Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj, who is immersed in that ocean of Consciousness-Bliss, for as the great Acharya has declared, he is one whose intellect has slipped, melted into that ocean of Bliss. His Holiness is no more a philosopher, not even a saint or a sage, but he is Brahman Himself. Encased as he is in a human body, Swamiji Maharaj acts like an actor on the stage of this world, the part he has assumed, to its perfection. Following faithfully the foot-steps of Gurudev, he has been, all these years, propagating the great sacred and secret Truth about God to the world. He is still continuing same work. Whether in his writings, or in his formal discourses and discussions, or in his informal talks, Swamiji's subject is always God and God alone, not a God who remains in His transcendental aspect only but a God who is also here and now amidst us, present in and through the so-called creation of His. "As God is perfect, His creation also is perfect", says His Holiness very often. If one sees in this God-world or world-God, anything but perfection or anything other than Infinity, it is an unreal projection of one's mind a non-existent entity. But, there is no such thing as unreal projection or non-existent entity, for it is also the express of God. This mystery of God and of His so-called creation, His Holiness is never tired of revealing to the devotees again and again.
Let us join with all others, on the holy occasion of the Shashtyabdapurti of His Holiness, on the 25th of April, 1982, in praying to the Almighty Lord to grant him long life, free from physical ailments, so that he may continue to bless and lighten the spiritual aspirants who take refuge at his holy feet.
Glory to such sages, glory to the scriptures, glory to the Supreme Knowledge! Glory to God!! Om Tat Sat.