Thinking as God Thinks
Divine Life
Society Publication: Thinking as God
Thinks by Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on May 10,1997)
Aloneness in this world… Even
the state of liberation is called aloneness. Because of that term, it is called
kaivalya moksha in Sanskrit. To be
alone is to be in a state of liberation. That is called moksha.
But what is the meaning of
being alone? Suppose a person has no relations, no father and mother, no
children; that person may feel he or she is alone. They complain, “I have
nobody. I am alone.” That is one kind of aloneness. There is another kind of
aloneness. A person has lost all property; all his belongings have gone. There
is nothing. He feels alone. Sannyasins who renounce everything go to
Uttarkashi, to a mountain top, sit there and calmly meditate. They feel alone.
But there is a strange type of
aloneness which is connected with our freedom. A limited aloneness and an
unlimited aloneness are two kinds of aloneness. A perfectly free person has no
limitations of any kind. He has got wealth, he has got family, he has got
authority. Nobody interferes with that person. He is enjoying life alone.
There are some people who lose
their sense of individuality and want to die immediately, to commit suicide. These
are all tentative, empirical, pragmatic types of aloneness, through which
practically everyone passes. If today it is one kind of aloneness, another day
it is another kind of aloneness.
But why is moksha, liberation,
called aloneness? It is something quite different from the other types of
aloneness which I mentioned just now. Moksha means perfect freedom. Perfect
freedom is not possible if there is another thing sitting near you. Two persons
cannot have one hundred percent freedom.
We are a free society. Everybody
is free to the extent that the free person gives equal freedom to other people
also. So this also is not perfect freedom because it is limited by the freedom
to be given to other people. But moksha is none of these things. It is the
non-existence of another thing beside me. It is not that I am unaware of the
existence of another thing beside me; it does not exist at all.
The Sankhya philosophy made a
mistake in thinking that pure consciousness attains the liberation of its own
existence if it is detached from the consciousness of another thing, outside which
is called prakriti, or matter. But
unconsciousness of the existence of something is not freedom. The snake is
crawling, and you are unconscious of the existence of the snake. It is not a
very happy thing. You must be conscious of the non-existence of the snake. They
are two different things.
Sankhya imagines, that, when
the detachment of consciousness from its awareness of another thing called
matter, or prakriti, is achieved, it is free.
It cannot be free because there is another thing. Just because you are unaware
of a trouble, it does not mean the trouble does not exist. This kind of
aloneness propounded by Sankhya is also not correct. It should be absolute
aloneness.
There is a difficulty in
understanding this. We have never had any experience of this kind of aloneness.
If you are spiritually inclined and are doing meditation in an isolated place
with nobody around you for five hundred miles, you may say, “I am alone.” But
even the consciousness of space outside is a limitation to that aloneness. Our
consciousness that we are existing is due to the limitation imposed upon us by
space and time. They also should go.
Can anybody search one’s
consciousness in such a way that space and time also are included in
consciousness itself? “I am aware, not as one person among many other people,
but as the only person.” You may say there is no such thing as ‘the only
person’. This difficulty in knowing what can be in being the only person arises
on account of an eternal limitation imposed upon us by the extension of space
outside. This space outside is terrifying us. It divides everything. It creates
distance. Even if no one is there around us, at least the stars are there. They
also cause limitation. The sun and moon are there. The mountains and rivers are
there. They also should not be there. There should not be even the utmost
possibility of something being there outside us.
This great technique of
meditation is the ultimate solution for our misery in this world. Our misery is
not due to poverty of money, land, and all that. Our misery is due to the
terrible, inextricable bondage of limitation created by space and time; that is
all. Can you include space in your consciousness so that you will never feel
that there is space outside you? Here, you have to exercise your will very
powerfully.
Space is conscious of its
being: I am space. If that unlimited expanse of being (space) becomes conscious
of itself, what will be the experience at that time? Meditate like this: “I am
not conscious of the space; I am myself space. And who is this ‘I’? It is space
itself. Where is space? Unendingly expanded everywhere. So on what am I
meditating?” A shocking answer will come.
It is said moksha is a
shocking experience. It abolishes every kind of convention, every kind of
logic. Any kind of calculation will not work there. Nothing that has any sense
in this world has sense there. All the values of life are abolished at once. Everything
that you consider as meaningful in this world ceases to exist there. Then you
will say, “Oh, I will lose everything.” The mind is such a trickster. Whatever
you do, it will put an obstacle.
This kind of thinking is
actually God thinking. If you want to reach God, you have to think like God.
You cannot go on thinking like a foolish person and then attain God. Only
equals meet each other, unequals cannot meet each other; and if you are equal
to God, you will meet God. You will be terrified: “How I will be equal to God?”
because you forget that you are included in God. If God is everywhere, you are
also inside Him.
Your whole body will tremble
if you try to think like this. No virtue, no good work, no charitable deed, no
philanthropy can equal this thought. This one thought is equal to all charity.
All goodness and any service that you do will pale into insignificance before
this tremendous earth-shaking thought. It will shake up all your karmas, all
the sins that you committed in all the world, and the whole thing will be wiped
out like the debt that you incur in the dream state gets wiped out in the
waking condition. By the very fact of
waking, you have paid the debt.
No human being will be able to
think like that. You cease to be a human being. Otherwise, this thought cannot
arise. A human being’s thought cannot contact God-thought. It is only
God-thought that can contact God-thought. Nobody can imagine such things. If
this can continue, if you do not forget this idea and are drowned in this
thought, in this birth itself you will get liberation. There is no need for japa,
yatras or pilgrimages. The whole world will melt into you, and the doors of
heaven will be opened instantaneously.
The body may continue due to
the persisting old prarabdha, which
has given birth to this body. Even a liberated soul cannot shed the body
because liberation is a conscious condition. The body is the result of the
karmas that you performed in the previous birth. That has to exist and continue
until the time when the effect of those actions which have given birth to this
body cease and the body is shed automatically. But you are liberated.
You will be overjoyed. You
will sing and dance. You will smile. “Oh, wonderful!” The Upanishadic seers
used to say, “Oh, wonderful! Oh, wonderful!” They had no words.
So here is the glory before
us. We are not simply meaningless persons. There is a great heritage hidden
inside us. God is calling us, and everything will be well. So be happy.
Excerpts from:
Thinking as God
Thinks by Swami Krishnananda
If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
If you would
like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact
the General Secretary at:
No comments:
Post a Comment