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The Next Step in Meditation: Wami Rishnananda
The Next Step in Meditation: Wami Rishnananda
SWAMI KRISHNANANDA
The Divine Life Society
Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India
Website: www.swami-krishnananda.org
Spoken on April 16, 1974 to an Italian group.
Question: Swamiji, you said that we should forget we are human beings. How is it to
be done that is, how are we to forget that we are human beings?
Swamiji: I will tell you one thing now. How can you forget that this is a table? By
knowing that it is wood, that it is made of wood. It is wood or it is a table? Tell me
what it is.
Reply: Both.
Swamiji: Not both. Table is only a name that you have given to the wood that is kept
in a particular manner. When wood is kept in a particular manner, you call it a table.
So it is you that has given it that name, isnt it? Why do you give it the name table?
You say that it is two things, but there are no two things. There is only wood fashioned
in a particular manner. Likewise, you can find what you are made of. Find out. You
are not Moti Ma. That name was given to you by somebody, and you are accepting it.
But you are made of something. When you know what that something is, you will
immediately forget that you are a human being, just as you forget that this is a table.
Find out what the substance is of which you are made, and do not worry about the
shape that it is taken. Why do you worry about the shape? Think of the substance.
Then you will forget the idea that you are a human being, a man, a woman, etc. You
are neither a man nor a woman; that idea also will go.
Swamiji addresses the gathering as a continuation of the talk on the previous day:
I was telling you that there is something which seems to be controlling everything,
something far superior to your understanding, your capacity, your powers. I gave the
example that everything seems to be forced upon you: your birth, your growth, your
old age, and your passing away from this world. You cannot say that you will not leave
this world. You have to quit. What is this mystery? Something is there over which you
have no say at all. You cannot order the movement of the sun and the stars, or control
the seasons. Everything seems to be going on according to some rule or law about
which you have nothing to say. You are a nobody in this big kingdom where some
peculiar law seems to be operating. This is what we were thinking about yesterday.
Well, now let us come to the third point. The first point to be remembered is that it
is everywhere and, therefore, indivisible. The second point is that you are also
included in it, which is perhaps the reason that you are unable to see it. Now the third
point is, what is its essential nature? What is it made of wood, iron, gold, silver? Let
us first of all know what you are made of; then we shall try to find out what it is made
of because you are a part of that. Inasmuch as you are a part of that, what you are
made of must perhaps be the same thing that it is also made of. If you are made of
something different, then there will be a gap between you two; but we have already
concluded that it is indivisibile.
Inasmuch as you and that cannot be divided because it is accepted to be indivisible,
and because of the fact that an indivisible substance should be made up of a
homogeneous character or nature, if we investigate into the nature of your own
substance and find out what it is, perhaps indirectly we can come to know what it is
also made of. Inasmuch as you are not separate from that, your essential nature must
be its essential nature also. So first you have to find out what you are made of.
Your body is made up of five elements earth, water, fire, air, ether which the
world is also made of. So physically speaking, you are one with physical nature because
the five elements outside are also in your body. Your physical existence seems to be
coextensive with the physical nature outside.
Now let us ponder a little further. Are you made up of the five elements only? Is it
true? Or is there something else in you? For all practical purposes, it looks that there is
nothing in you except this body. I am hungry, means the body is hungry; I am
thirsty, means the body is thirsty; I am tired, means the body is tired; I am born,
means the body is born; I am dying, means the body is dying. So whenever we make
any reference to ourselves, we refer to the body only, as if there is nothing else in us.
The body will die one day, so you will cease to exist at that time. But is it true? Will
you cease to exist completely a death? That is a very serious matter because anybody
can die at any time, even five minutes later. Then what is the good of doing so many
things in this world, being so busy, when at any time you can quit, you can be
annihilated, and you become nothing? Then there seems to be no point in doing
anything in this world. This is a very miserable state of affairs.
But are you going to be annihilated? Is it true? This can be known by an analysis of
our own nature. Let us see whether things are really so bad. Are we going to be
abolished completely, root and branch? Our hopes and aspirations tell us it is not as
bad as that, it cannot be, there must be something more.
Now, let us find out if you are only these five elements, only the body, or is there
anything else in you? For this, there is a way of knowing things. Yesterday I told you
other means of knowledge also exist, such as inference, scriptural testimony, etc. Now
let us infer certain things from other experiences that we are having.
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Throughout the day when you are awake, you are thinking that you are only this
five-elemental body, and nothing else. But you have certain experiences other than
this waking state. You go to sleep every day, and sometimes you dream. Now, when
you are dreaming, you may dream very fantastic things. All sorts of things may come
to your mind. You may be wandering from place to place in dream though you are
sleeping on your bed and not actually moving. Sometimes you might have had a good
supper before sleeping, but you may feel that you are hungry in dream, which is quite
different from the fact. The body is not travelling, it is not hungry, and you are not
even conscious of the body.
Let us take only one example of this fact of dream. Do you exist in dream, or do
you die? You do not die. You exist. But what happened to the body at that time? In
dream you were not aware that you are this person. You were something else, and that
means you can exist even without being conscious of this body. You had completely
contrary experiences in dream, quite different from what you would feel when you are
awake. So your existence, your life, is not entirely dependent upon this body. That is
what you can find out by inference. You were alive in dream, not dead, and you can
live even without connecting yourself with this body. This means you are not
necessarily this body, and being conscious of this body is not a necessary part of your
life. If it were a necessary part, it must persistent in dream consciousness also.
Deep sleep is another phenomenon, in which you do not even dream and are
completely unconscious like a stone or a corpse. You do not even know whether you
are a man or a woman, a human being or a stone. And when you get up, you feel that
you had a good sleep.
Now, I will ask you a very interesting question. When you were sleeping, you were
not aware of anything,? You were not even conscious of consciousness. No mind was
working. In the waking condition, the body is working. In the dreaming condition, the
mind is working but the body is not working. Now in deep sleep, the mind is also not
working. It has simply wound up all its work and stopped its functions. It is almost
dead with no consciousness. Now when you get up and say that you had a very nice
sleep, what do you mean by that? This means you remember that you slept, but how
can a person who is unconscious remember anything? That is a contradiction of
psychological phenomena. Unconscious things cannot remember anything, and yet
you are remembering while you are unconscious. Both things were there. Very
strange! You were totally unconscious in sleep, yet you remember.
This is something very interesting to investigate. How can an unconscious person
remember anything? A stone does not remember. How do you remember that you
slept when you were unconscious like a stone? Nobody thinks about these matters.
Everyone is very busy. But it is very interesting that you were unconscious, and yet you
remember.
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To understand what the matter here actually is, you have to understand what is
meant by memory, by remembrance. You went to Rishikesh yesterday, and today you
are remembering this experience because it has produced an impression in your mind.
Just as a camera captures impressions of objects that are in front of it, likewise,
memory is only a groove, a mark, an impression that is made on the mind by some
kind of conscious experience. If you were unconscious when you went to Rishikesh,
you would not remember that you went there. The fact that you remember going there
shows that you were conscious at that time, as remembrance is possible only if there is
consciousness during that experience.
This means that if you remember today that you slept yesterday, there must have
been some sort of consciousness there to create the impression in order to remember
it. Absolute unconsciousness cannot produce a conscious remembering.
Unconsciousness cannot produce consciousness. This is important to remember. If
you were fully unconscious in sleep, you could not have a conscious memory
afterwards; but you do have a conscious memory. That shows you could not have been
fully unconscious like a stone or a wooden log.
What was there in sleep? You were not aware of the body and the mind was not
working, so what was remaining there? You are thinking that this body is essential and
you cannot exist without it, but the dream phenomena shows that you can exist
without this body and even the mind. This is what we conclude now.
Now another conclusion follows. You are very happy in sleep, so happy that you
would not like to get up. Someone has to shake you to wake you up. Your happiness in
sleep is greater than any happiness of this world eating, drinking, and so on. If you
have not slept for days and are offered a good lunch, you would prefer to sleep because
that sleeping happiness is greater than this lunch happiness. As a matter of fact, when
you are overpowered by sleep, nothing can attract you because sleep becomes a greater
attraction than anything else. No beautiful pictures, cinema, will attract you at that
time.
Now, in sleep you could exist without body and mind and be very happy. It is not
an experience of sorrow or grief. If it is a pain, who will go to sleep? It is a great
happiness. So there is existence, there is happiness, and also it could not have been an
unconscious state. That is what we conclude now. If it had been an unconscious
condition, we could not remember it afterwards. So there must have been
consciousness. Something has happened there which covered our understanding of
consciousness. What that something is, we have to see later on. Something is
obstructing your knowing what is happening in sleep. Consciousness could not have
been completely obliterated or destroyed because if that had been the case, memory
would have been impossible. So consciousness must be there, happiness was there, and
you were existing. There was nothing else no body, no mind, no friends, no relatives,
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things. It is not an object that can be known. Because it is everywhere, and because it is
made up of consciousness, and because it is the knower of all things, therefore, it
cannot be a known object. Therefore, you cannot see it.
But you may ask me, How can I see it then? My intention is to see it; otherwise,
why should I meditate? What is the purpose of meditating if I cannot see it at all? You
can see it, but in a very special manner, not like ordinary things in the world. How can
you see it?
Again I repeat, the essential nature is consciousness, which means to say, the
essential nature is knowing. It is the knowing, all-pervading something not the
known object, but the knowing something. That which knows is everywhere, so
everywhere there is only the knower, not the known. Therefore, objects do not exist.
This is also another thing that follows. Objects of perception cannot exist. So what you
see as this world is not real, not correct, because if the objects exist, this cannot exist. If
this exists, they cannot exist. And if this is everywhere as an indivisible being, as
consciousness, the objects which are other than that in nature must be an error of
perception. They cannot be true reality.
The question again comes, How can you know it? I will answer it by another
question. How can you know consciousness? How do you know that you are
conscious? Not by seeing, not by hearing, not by touching, not by tasting, not by
smelling, not by asking somebody whether you are conscious. Even if somebody says
you are conscious, this is not the way in which you know it. You have a direct intuitive
perception of yourself. It is not even a perception. It is something quite different. You
are conscious that you are by a direct apprehension which cannot be explained in
language. You are conscious that you are, but it is not through the eyes, the ears, etc.
But if you are so much engaged in seeing something, a very interesting film, for
example, you will not be even conscious that you are existing. You forget yourself. So
when you are conscious of an object, you are unconscious of the subject, which is
yourself. You forget yourself when you are absorbed in an object, and if you want to be
conscious of yourself, you must forget about the object. If you are thinking of that, this
cannot be known. So if you want to know, if you want to see this all-pervading
consciousness, you must withdraw your mind from object consciousness.
Hence, the next step in meditation is the withdrawal of interest, the withdrawal of
affection, the withdrawal of emotions like love and hatred, the withdrawal of all kinds
of external relationships because consciousness cannot have an external relationship.
It is indivisible, again to come to the point. So meditation is a very, very hard job, not
for ordinary persons. Now you also understand how important it is because that is the
life-maker, life-giver. Without that, life is worthless. You are living like a fool if you do
not understand this great truth. What is the good of living in this world like a fool,
without knowing the truth of things? So meditation is not meant only for monks and
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nuns, or only for people in monasteries or ashrams. It is for every person in the world,
whoever wants to be worthwhile. Otherwise, you are a worthless being.
This is the great objective, the great aim and purpose of meditation. What are you
meditating upon? It is this wonderful thing, the great reality, the marvel, the great
mystery whose laws are working in such a way that you cannot be independent of the
operation of that law because you are a part of that law. You have already understood
that you are a part of that, you are indivisible in the same way as that is indivisible, and
so its law is your law. Therefore, you are not really compelled by any person. It appears
as if you are compelled because you have a false notion that you are separate from it.
When you try to tune your mind and consciousness to that which is everywhere, you
will feel that law and freedom are identical. Law is not a harasser; it is not a
punishment that is imposed upon you by others. It is the freedom of the universal will
that is working through all individuals. When you become one with it, you understand
that law and freedom are identical. But if you are having some wrong notion that you
are separate from it, then you feel that law is a harassing principle. It is punishing you,
troubling you from outside. The universal is a great enemy for the individual as long
as you think that it is outside. But it is not an enemy; nobody can be a greater friend
than that. That is your friend and your enemy. You are inseparable.
This is to give you a general idea of what you should meditate on. There are many
more things. You can go on listening for your whole life; it has no end. I am trying to
give you only an outline of a few essentials which many will not tell you, and it is very
difficult to get this knowledge from books. Whatever you read, you will not
understand much. There are so many things, and you will not find them all in one
book. And even if it is there, it will not enter your mind because it is so subtle. This is
enough for the day. God bless you.