Swami Krishnananda

 

 

The powers that we seek, the joys that we expect, do not come from anywhere other than our own selves. All the powers are inside us, just as tremendous energy is hidden in an atom. It does not come from outside, from somewhere else. It is there inside and has only to be released by adopting certain procedures. If it is not released, it will seem like nothing; it is a meaningless particle of matter about which nobody will bother, in spite of the fact that it is charged with such power and impregnated with incredible energy.

 

Swami Krishnananda Maharaj

 

Swami Krishnananda

We are a moving cosmic operation taking place, and really we do not exist by ourselves.

 

But there is a kind of ego, an assertion of the individuality of an otherwise mere floating bubble. The bubble is asserting its individuality, which makes it feel that it is existing as a person; but it is not existing. It is blown off by the operation of another force, and that blowing off is called death. The force can blow another way, and it is called rebirth. Every action, birth, death or experience is an operation of the centre of the cosmos. We do not exist here. The ego, or ahamkara, is the reason why we understand nothing. This great stigma on everyone will not allow us to think properly.

 

Therefore, you must seek deep meditation and expand your consciousness to the existence of everything in the universe so that when you think, you are thinking the whole universe at one stroke. You are not thinking any particular place – neither a place, nor a country, nor anything. The entire cosmic distance is yourself. In the Vaishvanara Vidya of the Upanishads it is said that you enter the cosmos, and the cosmos enters you, so that you do not exist at all. When you meditate, the cosmos meditates. The cosmos meditates on itself like a river entering the ocean, and there is no river afterwards. When the ocean thinks, it does not think like a river. The rivers are inside it. Though all the rivers are inside the ocean, the ocean does not think, “I am so many rivers.” It will not think like that. It thinks, “I am one mass of existence.”

                                                                                                 

                                                                Swami Krishnanda

Sri Krishnananda

The nature of the experience of space and time depends upon the manner in which the consciousness happens to be objectively modalised. Persons who are in a depressed state of mind or who are in deep sorrow are apt to feel that, a moment of time is like a year, while those who revel in happiness would feel contrary. Space and time are ultimately conditions of consciousness and are not independent of it. In the dreaming state, experiences ranging over thousands of years can be undergone in a moment's time, while at the same time, the mind in this state can also project a moment's experience into a history of several years. In the state of intense spiritual contemplation and Samadhi, space and time are transcended, and only pure consciousness reveals itself. In this consciousness, the entire universal cycle is said to appear and disappear within the millionth part of a moment.

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

When we are after something, we must know what it is that we are after. This clarity by which we know what it is that we want, as distinguished from that which is different from what we want—a discrimination that we exercise in knowing what it is that we are after, what it is that we are expecting, other than what is secondary and redundant—this faculty of inner discrimination is called viveka, correct understanding.

What is correct understanding? It is the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. What is the truth here, and what is the falsehood? The falsehood is the appearance before us in terms of the variety of objects of sense, this vast creation of space and time which acts as a screen before us, preventing us from visualizing what is behind the screen; and what is behind the screen is Truth. The distinction between these two aspects of experience has to be drawn.

Swami Krishnananda

CULMINATION IN IDOL WORSHIP

In as much as God is everywhere, He has to be present in the idol also. There are some people who decry idol worship. They say it is stupidity. It is not stupidity. If God is everywhere, he has to be even in your pencil, your fountain pen, the pig that you offer in sacrifice in homa, and in the idol that you worship, in the portrait, in the yantra, in a diagram – everywhere He has to be. Otherwise, you cannot accept the omnipresence of God. People who consider idol worship as a kind of stupidity and a meaningless caricature of divine devotion do not understand what God is. 

Sometimes the worshipper trembles if he has really equipped himself with this process of self-identification with the parts of Lord Siva, Lord Krishna, Lord Vishnu – whoever it is.

So this performer of the worship gets possessed due to this self-identification of the structure of his being with the structure of the divinity whom he is worshipping.

The cosmic superstructure of the Almighty is represented in the form of the image of the portrait that is worshipped in the temple. The whole cosmos is vibrating there.

- Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

To love God is not merely to go to a temple or a church. To love God is not merely to read a scripture. To love God is to love the higher Self of one’s own self. The self that is conquered is the self that is befitting union with the higher Self; otherwise, our own self becomes the source of our fear. We do not fear other people. We fear our own selves, really speaking. It is the devil that is working from within us that frightens us. Rama and Ravana both are inside. By inside, I do not mean within our physical individuality, but inside the whole creation, out of which we cannot keep our foot apart. There is only inside, ultimately; there is no outside anywhere. The whole cosmos is an inside, if we would like to put it that way, and we are that.

- Swami Krishnananda on "The Soul is the Ultimate Existence"

Swami Krishnananda

"There is no death." Death is an extinction of what previously existed. Death of Consciousness is an impossibility, for Consciousness is presupposed by every mode of existence. What appears to be cast off is the layer of objectified consciousness or materialized thought, called the physical body. But even this removal of the physical sheath is only a state of the changing of individual consciousness. It is the shock felt by the individual at the loss of a sheath which was cherished with the belief that it is an eternal entity since long that makes it feel the apparent death of its existence. That aspect of the physical consciousness which feels its inability to fulfill certain orders of diverse desires in a particular state of existence changes its mode of consciousness into that of a different category which is suited to the fulfillment of its desires. This process of change is termed "death." Hence death is only a stage in spiritual evolution and not to be considered a dread spectre which is hard to be exorcised.

Moksha Gita - Commentary by Swami Krishnananda, Ch. 1

Swami Krishnananda

DELIGHT OF SELF

Swami Krishnananda

The delight of the Self is the delight of Being . It is the Bliss of Consciousness-Absolute. The Being of Consciousness is the Being of Bliss, Eternal .

It does not lie in achievement but realisation and experience, not invention but discovery.

This Pure Consciousness is the same as Pure Bliss , the source of Power and the height of Freedom. This is the supreme Silence of the splendid Plenitude of the Real, where the individual is drowned in the ocean of Being.

The delight of unfettered being is beyond all states of relational joy, however extreme that joy may be. 

The Bliss of unlimited Consciousness is the zenith of Existence, and everything other than this is condemned as untrue.

Swami Krishnananda

ON BRAHMAN EXPLAINED IN BHAGWAD GITA 

The Absolute is Brahman Great,

With no beginning or an end,

Know what it is in fullness now,

The Glory surpassing reason.

With hands and feet spread everywhere,

With eyes and heads and mouths and ears,

As infinite encompassing, 

All worlds at once it envelops.

Looking like all the senses' science

It stands above all sensations;

It's Unattached, though holding all, 

And Undefined, yet beauty grand.

It's out and in amidst all things,

Unchanging, still in greatest speed, 

Subtlest is it as Subjectness

Of all that seems as objective.

- Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Spiritual ecstasy is the subject of the five chapters delineating the Rasa-Lila of Krishna in the tenth Book of the Bhagavata. Here devotion reaches a pitch to the point of breaking and collapsing as the individual is melting down into the blissful menstruum of the sea of God. 

Devotion of this kind, known as Ragatmika-Bhakti, or the devotion of ecstasy, as different from Gauna-Bhakti, or formalistic and disciplined form of devotion, commences with a kind of agitation of the soul within, a stimulation it feels in itself, not through the intellect, mind and senses, but verily as it is in itself, when the devotee attempts firstly to cry for God in a state of bereavement from Him; 

Secondly becomes temporarily unconscious through exhaustion caused by the intensity of longing; 

Thirdly enters into a rapturous impulsion to imitate God, His features and actions, and dances in the spirit of a possession, as if that which one imitates has actually entered the person so imitating. 

The best actors in a dramatic performance are those who virtually become the very part they are playing and lose their personal identity. 

The Gopis were in this penultimate state of actual union with God, which, further on, led them to a state of tearing down all the empirical shackles of personality-consciousness and external relation in a verily maddening reach of giddy heights where it is not merely the devotee that runs after God, but God Himself running to the devotee, God wanting man much more than man wants God. 

It is not enough if the devotee wants God; the highest devotion is where God loves the devotee and behaves as if He is a very servant of the one who loves Him. The lives of the saints who lived such a life of God-possession are examples practically to be seen in the history of religious thought and practice.

Swami Krishnananda

Do you aspire for God Realization?

(A talk by Swami Krishnanada)

Do you aspire for God realization? What is your aim? Do you aspire for God realization? Do you want to enter into the bosom of the creator of the cosmos? What is it that you are thinking? What are you keeping in your mind? Suppose the Absolute calls you, saying, "Come on, I want you." Will you go? 

The Absolute calls every atom of the universe. This is what you call evolution, as scientists would say. Every atom is moving in some direction. This is the evolutionary process. It is a call from the almighty supreme that the world has refused.

We are restless; nobody has peace of mind. This restlessness is caused by the finitude of the personality. You feel limited. You are limited physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, politically, and finally your span of life is also limited. So there is nothing unlimited in this world.

But there is a longing from inside to break this limitation, to break the limitation of space and time itself. You do not like to be confined to a little space. You would like to conquer the whole of space. You want to go to the sun and the moon and the stars and beyond even the limits of space itself. 

What you really want is to have the longest duration of existence, endless permission to live, together with the greatest of intelligence, not like a tree or a stone or a pig. And the greatest of intelligence implies the highest power also. 

The greater the knowledge, the greater the power. So omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence is what you want. Here is the essence of the whole matter. 

Now, briefly, they say this is God. One word. It is impossible to describe what it means. It is a word connoting something which is indescribable and yet impossible to avoid. You are searching for that. In that you will never be cut off by the time process and you will not be limited to a little space. 

There will be all space and all time and all knowledge. This is attributed to what people generally call the Supreme Absolute. 

What do you call this condition? At all times everywhere everything. Can you contain this thought? If you can contain this you are a super-person, you are not a human being. And you will not be a human being after all. You are something different. The whole world will be reflected in you. 

The power of the universe is vibrating through every cell of our bodies. But through egoism, self-assertiveness, pride, foolishness, idiocy—whatever you call it—we repel the entry of the cosmic force into us. We have closed the windows of our house, and therefore the breeze of the cosmos does not enter. 

We're an organism. So there is some sense in people saying, "God only is." Many people say, "God only is; nothing else is." What does this mean actually? This whole universe is animated by one consciousness in which you are also included because you are not outside the universe. What exists finally? Neither I, nor you, nor anybody. But everybody still is. 

Millions of cells are operating in this body and many cells put together make one human being. But when I say, "Who is coming?" you don't say, "Many bundles of cells are coming." You don't say that. So likewise the multitudes of the universe, the trees and mountains and rivers, the sun, moon, stars, galaxies, whatever you can think of, are only part and parcel of the limbs of this cosmic organism which is animated by a supreme intelligence. 

That alone is, that's all. And nothing else can be, because everything is a part of the universal process. You cannot stand outside the cosmos. And that whole cosmic intelligence includes your intelligence, and your destiny is in its hands. And the more you love it, the more blessed you are. Here is the whole of religion, all philosophy, all bhakti [devotion], all yoga, or whatever you call it. Without using words like that, in simple language I told you what the truth of the matter is. 

Your heart will throb by hearing all this. 

God bless you.

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Author's note

(Dear Readers, It was an herculean task for the author to reduce this talk, to remove many paragraph to bring the talk to the above , which itself may seem longer for few.

In Kaliyuga, in between 1900 to 2010, Swami Krishnananda is one of the VERY FEW saints who has not compromised in his writing/ works, who has not come down to the level of a normal human being. He roars from the sky, beckoning a sincere aspirant to fly and reach him, rather than coming down to the level of a jiva and trying to pull him to the level of sky. Salutations to this Saint who attained Self realization under the feet of Swami Sivananda of Hrishikesh)

Love

Swami Krishnananda

All endeavours aim at the common ideal of the perpetual abolition of sorrow and the experience of unending bliss. Bliss is only in the Infinite and sorrow is only in the finite. There is no bliss in the finite, and no sorrow in the Infinite. Therefore, the attainment of the Infinite Life is the supreme purpose of finite life. Knowledge and meditation have both their dear aim in the realisation of the Absolute. 

Moksha is the highest exaltation of the self in its pristine nature of supreme perfection. Emancipation is the Consciousness of the Reality; not becoming something which previously did not exist, not travelling to another world of greater joy. It is the knowledge of eternal existence, the awareness of the essential nature of Pure Being. It is the Freedom attained by knowing that we are always free. 

Knowledge is not merely the cause for freedom; it is itself freedom. Moksha consists in jnana (Knowledge) and is not the effect or product of jnana. Jnana is Existence itself, and hence it cannot be a means to attain jnana of Existence, which is moksha, as a thing does not attain itself. Chit is the same as sat. To be what is, is moksha. It is to realise one’s Self, to be Oneself, and to be Oneself is to be the All.

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

To be able to realise God, you have first to want God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is not merely to ‘think’ but to ‘feel’ through your ‘whole being’ that you cannot exist without Him. 

The entire personality vibrates with a longing that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world. There is a want for ‘That’ alone, and nothing short of it.

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda

Swami Krishnananda