SWAMIJI:  It has been well said that every particle of our body—call them cells, or whatever they are—are concretisations, manifestations, solid forms of the cumulative force exerted upon a particular center called the human individuality by the total action of the planets and the sun. So, you are a child of the solar system. You are not born to any father or mother and all that; these are all social interpretations of your position, but you have a larger stellar relation. You are a citizen of the solar system.

We should not be under the impression that the sun is so far away, the planets are invisible to the eyes, and stars are still further. It is nothing of the kind. There is no distance in this electromagnetic field of the stellar region, the solar atmosphere. "Electromagnetic field" is the description we can give of the manner in which the entire atmosphere works. It is not visible to the physical eye. So forceful, so powerful is this influence that it concretizes itself in certain forms which are called individualities. They may be the forms of the plant kingdom or animal kingdom, or human kingdom.

But, there is something more about it. The entire structure of space-time is the parent of how the stellar system operates. Space-time is a complex existence which far surpasses, in extent and range, the whole world that you call the solar system or the stellar region. It is the influence exerted by the very operation of this endless space-time complex that congealed itself in the form of the solar system, the Milky Way, etc., and further down to the bodies like ours, so that we are little, tiny drops in the sea of electromagnetic force generated by what you call space-time continuum. So, you are not sitting in Rishikesh, nor in Delhi, nor in any other place. There is no such thing as earth. It is only a name that we give to a concentrated form of cosmic energy, of which we are a part.

We are born into this body by the cumulative action of various forces. One of them is the food that we eat. The mother's diet has a great influence upon the formation of the child in the womb. Whatever diet you may conceive in your mind is a form of earth principle, water principle, fire principle, air principle, and space-time principle. These put together act upon a personality, and we cannot say whose children we are, to which country we belong, what our nationality is. Our father is somewhere else, of whom we have no knowledge, and about whom we do not think one minute, as if He is redundant.

Every atom of space has eyes. There is cosmic intelligence pervading everywhere. This cosmic intelligence which is ensouling the entire physical cosmos can be interpreted as something cosmically in relation to the intelligence pervading your personality. Dr. Rao or Krishnamurty—they are not what is visible to the eyes before a photographic camera. "Dr. Rao has come." It does not mean that a six-foot physical body has come. It does not mean that. It is a significance; it is a meaning, isn't it? Or is it a fleshy, bony individual walking—because there are many such individuals in the world. The significance is what you call "yourself." There is a meaning in you; that meaning is what you are. This meaning is the creative force behind our existence, so that we exist not because of our individual initiative which appears to be there. The so-called initiative of ours, the effort that we put forth, is an impulsion that comes from the center of the cosmos. If that center does not operate, we cannot lift a finger; it will collapse. The finger does not lift, and the legs do not walk, merely because of the food that we eat or the medicines that we take. It is because of the permission that has come from the center. If the whole body is sick, every limb of the body also is sick.

Dr. P. C. Rao:  Swamiji, is this permission only to act, or to act in a particular manner?

SWAMIJI:  To exist itself.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   To exist, and to act in a particular manner, too?

SWAMIJI:  That also. Now, why should it permit you to act in a particular manner? That also is another question. It can permit you to act in some other way also than the way in which you are working. That is conditioned by your previous incarnations. Why do mirrors reflect different kinds of light?

Dr. P. C. Rao:   I want to ask a few questions. I do intellectually comprehend the message that you have given me, because I am also capable of thinking abstract thoughts. Now, the books that I have helped me at least in arriving at a hypothesis—what I think is a hypothesis. And this is the very thought every day I go through. If this is meditation, I am going through that meditation. But, before I come to the next step, if you say that I am here because of the force given to me by an external force. . .

SWAMIJI:  Yes, yes, yes. It has formed you and conditioned you and made you what you are, including the circumstances in which you are born and even the length of your life, and the mode of your existence, and the manner of your action. Everything is conditioned by that.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   If everything is conditioned by that, I become an agent.

SWAMIJI:  You are not an agent. It itself is doing it. There is no such thing as Mr. Rao or anybody. It doesn't exist. You see, when the finger is moving, the finger is not moving. It is the whole body that is ordering it to get up like that. So, we are like fingers of this cosmic force, and it orders that you move in this particular way. If the finger had, by chance, a consciousness of its own, it would think it is moving independently.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   This analogy may not hold good because if I were to order from a central point this finger to move, the finger does not act on its own. The finger does exactly what I indicate. It does not have an independent existence, Swamiji.

SWAMIJI:  That is what I am saying. There is no independent existence for anything.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   No. If that is so, then, while I go through various births and deaths, where do I evolve separately from the messages?

SWAMIJI:  The whole point is that births and deaths should not take place, really speaking, if this consciousness is already there. But, somehow or other this takes place because this consciousness has not been implanted properly in the individuality. The ego functions as if it is outside.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   But who has implanted it?

SWAMIJI:  That, nobody can say. It is like asking who created the world.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   You said that in the Canadian lawyer Larry’s questions. Exactly the same answer has been given.

SWAMIJI:  Somehow or other the spark or the part has assumed an independence; that independence is called egoism.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   But you say ultimately it has not. It appears to exist, but it does not.

SWAMIJI:  It should not be there and it is not really there also. If this personality called the ego appreciates this position, it will surrender itself to the total whole, to which it belongs, of which it is a part—why a part? It itself is That. Then the whole force of the cosmos will enter it and you will feel an inner strength which cannot be compared with any other strength that you have in this world. So why I am telling all this is, in one minute you are in a state of meditation, provided you are able to collect your thoughts and put them in the proper context. It doesn’t require one hour. Immediately you are That—you are just that which you are contemplating on.

Dr. P. C. Rao:   Therefore, I am thinking of me being That, or That being me, or whatever the whole thing is.

SWAMIJI:  And also, when you say “That,” you should not imagine a distance between yourself and That. There is no distance. It is a total integration of consciousness where distance is abolished automatically.