The Soul is the Ultimate Existence
Spoken on
Swamiji’s 56th birthday on April 25,1978
The great truth
The more one has the
opportunity to think, the less one feels the need to speak. The bestowal of
greater and greater thought implies the drawing of oneself towards oneself more
and more. That means to say, the more we become ourselves, the less we become
the other. The ultimate purpose of all these means of communication, speech
included, will amount to, finally, a coming back to one’s own self, if we
deeply ponder over it. The human soul has found itself in a predicament where
it sees through the senses, the bodily apparatus, and it moves under the
impression that it is moving towards something other than itself for the
purpose of completing its own need. It searches for values in things, and not
merely the existence of things.
The existence of things is the highest value of things
The search of the soul for
perfection outside is due to the fact that it makes a distinction between the
existence of things and the value of things. Otherwise, where would be the need
for anyone to move towards things that exist if existence itself would be a
satisfaction? We create a distinction between the value of the object and the
existence of the object. We are never satisfied with the existence as such of
anything. A flower may exist in the garden, but we are never satisfied unless
it becomes ours. It must be plucked from the plant and brought home, and
perhaps it should adorn our head, etc.
The bare minimum of existence
does not satisfy us. We always want to enhance that existence by adjuncts from
an apparent external source, under the impression that the adjunct is something
which is other than existence. The values that we are trying to impose upon the
existence of things are also existences by themselves, unfortunately. So there
is no such thing as a value other than existence because a non-existent value
cannot add to the quantity or the quality of the existence of the object which
it is supposed to qualify.
Never can we be happy in life
until we are satisfied with things as they are. There is a great supreme
manufacturer, the Reality of realities, which cannot be regarded as an external
source of inspiration. All our scriptures – Ramayana, Mahabharata, Srimad
Bhagavata, Bhagavadgita and all religions and scriptures of the world hammer
upon the point of the omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence of God, which
gets defeated the moment we begin to impose our personality on this superior
operation of the Absolute.
It appears many a time that
our practical life is a refutation of all that is studied in the scriptures
because, on the one hand, there is an acceptance of the omnipresence of
perfection everywhere. The omnipresence of perfection means that every point of
space is filled with perfection. That is the outcome of what we learn from the
great masters, the saints and the sages, the prophets, the avataras and the
scriptures.
Theory is nothing but a technique of practice
There is nothing in theory but
the methodology that has to be adopted in our day-to-day existence. What is the
use of theoretical knowledge in engineering if it has no use in practical
existence? The connection between theory
and practice is so vital that they are inseparable. They are the obverse and
reverse of the same coin. What we know, we act; knowledge and action are
identical. Perhaps this is the principle of karma yoga. When action becomes
knowledge, it is karma yoga. Otherwise, it becomes binding karma which has a
nemesis and a retribution which rebounds upon us like a boomerang.
The great principle of
spirituality is the affirmation of the spirit, and nothing but that. The
affirmation of the spirit is not merely a chanting of the mantra of the
omnipresence of God, but the soul’s acceptance of the perfection of the Supreme
Being.
The reality of life is the soul of things
The great pity of human
existence is that life and knowledge have become two different things. Religion
fails when knowledge is isolated from life. The reality of life is the soul of
things. Our reality is the soul, and it is the reality of everything. So when
we speak, the soul has to speak; when we think, the soul has to think; when we
act, the soul has to act; and when a need is fulfilled, the need of the soul
has to be fulfilled. There is no use merely fulfilling the need of our tummy,
or our sentiments, or our social circumstances, or our whim and fancy. This is
not going to do anything for this world.
The soul is the ultimate
existence, and when we are satisfied with the ultimate soul of all things, the
existence as such of things, we begin to love all things as we love our own
selves. ‘The love of all things as we love our own selves’ is another way of
putting the love of soul for itself. The love of one’s own for another is
nothing but soul of the individual soul for the Supreme Soul, which manifests
itself in various gradations.
Ultimately there is nothing but the Self in the universe
Even what we call the world outside is a self
that is empirically manifest in space and time. What we call the family or the
society is also our outwardly projected self. The whole cosmic manifestation is
nothing but the self which is apparently seen in space-time causal relations.
So when the Self is affirmed in its true connotation, in its indivisibility of
being as existence and not a value isolated outside, we are spiritual, we are
religious, we are God-loving.
To love God is not merely to
go to a temple or a church or even 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.
So there is a drama of the
Mahabharata, the Ramayana going on always through the centripetal and
centrifugal forces, which is the battle of life. The Mahabharata and the
Bhagavadgita tell us that the symbol of life is a battle. The Bhagavadgita was
given in a battlefield, which means to say, struggle is the law of existence,
and the struggle is nothing but the law of the higher self and the lower self –
existence and value, perception and reality.
May we imbibe the true wisdom
of the soul of all things, and not merely an empirical knowledge, and live a
religious life, which is nothing but a spiritual life. May God bless you all!
Excerpts from:
The Soul is
the Ultimate Existence by Swami Krishnananda
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