Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume
A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday
A Living University
by J.A. Gunasekaran
In the month of August, 1968, I had Darshan of His Holiness Sri Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj. I heard his Vedanta lectures. During his lectures, some devotees asked questions. Swamiji cleared the doubts in one word. It was my first visit to the Ashram. His English writings are in the style of Aurobindo. When we read and hear his philosophy, we are reminded of Veda Vyasa, Patanjali, Buddha, Adi Sankara and the four Saivite saints of Tamil Nadu. The vast knowledge and erudition of Swami Krishnananda, surely, is not just the knowledge gained in this birth alone. A lot of it must be previous-birth knowledge.
In 1969, one day before Guru Purnima, I met Swamiji before the Ashram Samadhi Mandir. I introduced myself and told him that I studied in a Christian school and followed Christianity. At once he replied that God was one. It was my first meeting with him. I was so lucky to become his disciple and to receive Mantra Diksha from him.
In Swami Sivananda's "Universal Prayer", we pray, "Free us from egoism, lust, greed, hatred, anger and jealousy. Fill our Malts with divine virtues". His Holiness Swami Krishnanandaji is already freed from egoism, lust, greed, hatred, anger and jealousy. His heart is already filled with divine virtues. His room and office doors are always open for devotees to enter. He does not like fame, name and wealth. The eighteen 'ities I read in Gurudev's well-known song I find in Swamiji's life. His life is full of the eighteen 'ities. Gurudev
mentions in the last line of the song, “You can't attain this in the university." But we are very lucky to see and know these virtues by having Darshan of Swamiji and observing his life. He is himself a living university. His life is very simple, but his thinking is very high. I learned punctuality from Swamiji. He is a lamp lighting all lamps. He is a Gitacharya. Lord Krishna cleared Arjuna's doubts. Now. Swamiji is clearing our doubts.
In his book, "Resurgent Culture”, Swamiji says: "A successful life, and a happy life, is possible only when one is able to adjust and adopt the different sides of the personality in a harmonious way and the entire personality with the others that form the constituents of the world". If we follow these words, our life is bound to turn out successful and happy.
Kanchi Ka.makoti Jagadguru Sri Chandrasekharendra Swamigal says: "God has created some souls to serve others only”. I have no doubt that God has created Swamiji to serve us.
But the digging also raises a lot of dust which can even blind one's eyes, and hard stones and pricking thorns may not infrequently be found side by side with the treasure that is buried in the deeps. The spiritual urge can suddenly wane, being beclouded by the dust and dirt which may be kicked up by the forces insisting on an attachment diversity, which may for a time even eclipse the brilliance of the sun of the Supreme Spirit planted in the heart of man as his very Self and beckoning him from outside as the illimitable Infinite. A lethargic condition, one of torpidity, callousness, and sleep may be the stage immediately following the upsurge of religious enthusiasm and longing for spiritual liberation, with which the seeker may enter a monastery or find a place in the vicinity of a Master. A falling back upon the principle of least resistance and least action can be the outcome of this state of mind. The spiritual urge gets pressed down at once by the cumulative effect of a dark and cloudy reaction set up by the powers of desire, otherwise normal to a human individual, which have been relegated to the limbo all the while when the spiritual urge was predominant, though for a short period. The sense and the ego are like the devil and the deep sea, between which the seeking individual is likely to get caught, and whichever of the two ways one moves, one's fate is sure to be destruction.
After a lull of inertia and sleep for a few years, there can arise an irresistible desire for sense-enjoyment, the very thing which looked undesirable years ago when a fit of renunciation drove the seeker to the hermitage or the monastery. The usual form of desire is actively sensory and herein it is that one may become prone to yield to the pressure of the subhuman side of passions that insist on having their fill. These are the impetuous instincts of the animal world, the savage nature, which have no regard for the good of the individual concerned, because their objective is only physical satisfaction. This is the immoral nature, so much condemned in the science of ethics, since it has no concern with the welfare of others. The seeker may become neurotic and eccentric when the outlets for his feelings and urges are blocked by the regulated atmosphere outside. The greatest enemies of the spiritual aspirant are wealth, sex, fame and anger. A craving for silly satisfaction through even the pettiest objects of sense, of play and diversion, may rise to the surface and press for fulfilment. There is always an interplay of inertia (Tamas) and craving (Rajas) in the mind of the seeker who is still on the path of struggle and is groping in darkness. The achievement, if at all there has been any, upto this stage, is a suppression of desire simultaneously consequent upon the burning of the fire of renunciation and love for God, which showed its head in an earlier stage. It is something like an ocean sweeping over dust-bins and locations of drainage and sewage, flooding them with its overwhelming rush and force and submerging them for a while, but not actually transmuting them into purer substances. The initial spiritual urge of the jubilant enthusiast, our youthful hero on the path, is of this nature. The dust and dirt and rubbish are all there when the oceanic waves recede and when the daylight of sense activity falls upon them, reverting them to their original form of rot and stink. Spiritual seekers, beware! It is not all rose-bed or milk and honey that is the path you are treading. A razor's edge, verily, it is!