Your Questions Answered

by Swami Krishnananda

Lyle: Swamiji, I have a question about beauty. You have written that beauty is a mild manifestation of the soul. I find myself always looking for beauty, and I want to know how I can work with that as part of my sadhana.

SWAMIJI: Beauty is the characteristic of that object which exactly fits in as a counterpart of the lack in the mind of a person. There is a kind of lacuna in the mind, and the exact counterpart of it is the beauty of the object. It is a purely psychological question.

There is a particular lacuna in the mental structure of a person which keeps that person restless, unhappy, etc. Though everyone is unhappy in some way, the cause of that unhappiness is not uniform in all cases. The restlessness and unhappiness may be caused by different factors in the case of different persons, and a corresponding object must be presented before that particular type of mind in order that it may be made to feel happy.

What looks beautiful to me may not look beautiful to you. People sometimes get attracted even to ugly things. What you may consider as ugly and uninteresting may be an attractive thing for another person, because he/she is in a different kind of mental make-up. Each one has to find out what it is that attracts. Unless you are hungry, the food will not be satisfying. Your particular kind of hunger will determine the kind of diet that you need.

Unhappiness cannot be removed by a uniform remedy or a common medicine for all people. Either you find out yourself what you are lacking, or you try to know it through the help of some person who can guide you and analyse your mind in depth. Once you know why you are unhappy, you can also know the remedy, and you will know what kind of beauty you are after.

Lyle: The curious thing about beauty is that it is undefinable.

SWAMIJI: It is not that beauty is spread out everywhere in the world so that people can go and see it. It is not visible like that. It is visible to the individual eye only, and not to the common perception.

Beauty is not independent of the observer. Actually, there is no such thing as beauty. It doesn't exist. It is like taste. There is no such thing as taste; it is only an action of a particular thing upon the working of the taste buds in our tongue. If the taste buds don't operate, nothing will be tasty. The object as such is not tasty. There is nothing sweet, nothing bitter. There is no such quality in objects, but they act upon a particular structure of our physiological operation, and they feel palatable or otherwise. The world as such has no quality. It is impersonal-neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly. We react to it due to our own unique structural make-up.

Lyle: Then, in what way were you saying that beauty is a mild manifestation of the soul?

SWAMIJI: It is a manifestation of the soul, something like a square rod entering a square hole, when, immediately there is a sense of perfection. The soul is nothing but the symmetry, completeness and harmony of consciousness. If we thrust a round rod into a square hole, there is no perfection in the act. The round rod should go into the round hole only. There is some kind of want in the mind of a person, which craves for its fulfilling counter-correlative.

The soul is not a substance. It is consciousness, a feeling of completeness. The consciousness of completeness is the soul. There is no soul outside or inside; consciousness is the soul. The soul is not directly acting. It has to act through the mind. So, whatever we perceive or conceive is the mental operation. The mind reflects the soul, and only then we become conscious of certain things, but we are incompletely conscious; we are not "completely" conscious of anything since the mind is rarely an undivided function.

There is no sense of completeness in any of our perceptions. Just as when the sun's rays pass through a defective set of spectacles we will not see things properly, we will also not see things properly when the soul is reflected through a defective mind. When the mind is set right, and the defect is removed by bringing before it the exact counterpart of its lacuna, it appears as if the soul is reflected entirely. That entire reflection is the feeling of satisfaction. Then we call that medium beautiful, tasty, nice. It is a deep psychological process.

The need will differ for each person. The kind of perfection that you need will be quite different from another's. And you can't love the same thing for all times, either. Even one's own wish will change according to circumstances. You can never be happy with the same thing throughout life. That is not possible. Our longings are fickle, not of a uniform type.

Lyle: Swamiji, how can we sublimate desires?

SWAMIJI: You will never be able to sublimate the desires until that which they seek is given to them. The important point is how you will give them what they want. The manner of supplying their demand is your wisdom.

You cannot suppress a desire; no desire can be buried down. If you suppress it, it will create further trouble. You have to fulfil it, but how you fulfil it is the wisdom of the seeker.

Sometimes you may supply its need even by not giving it literally what it wants. If you literally start supplying all its demands, then it will be a very difficult problem. Sublimation is different from fulfilment. Fulfilment is a direct sensual process, whereas sublimation is a spiritual integration.

The mind wants some particular things, not all things at the same time. The mind does not want the whole world to be given to it. Nobody asks for the whole world; so every desire is intriguing in its working. When you are prepared to give it the entire thing, it doesn't want it; it will want only certain particular chosen things. This is the sign of lack of wisdom behind any kind of desire.

There are simple desires, strong desires, permissible desires, depleting desires. Desires which deplete your energy should not be fulfiled. Those which are harmless, like wanting to take a cup of tea in the cold weather, will not harm you in any way; but there are other dangerous desires which may exhaust you completely and make you weak. Such desires should not be fulfiled.

From the point of view of a sadhaka (a spiritual seeker), gradually the mind should be educated to feel satisfied with the whole, rather than a part. If you ask for particular things, you will never have an end for these desires, because today you will get this particular thing, and you feel that you are satisfied; tomorrow the very same mind, like a dacoit, will want another thing. If you start supplying the demands of a dacoit, today he will want your purse, tomorrow your house, the next day your land and, finally, he may want your life. So, you cannot go on satisfying the highwayman.

Desires are such things, and you should educate them. Introduce educational ways of thinking, holistic thinking. Don't give just particular things to the mind, but try to give wholesome things. Finally, nothing can satisfy you, except God Himself. All other desires are futile, and they will only bind you into more and more troubles. You must educate the mind to have trust in God and feel satisfied with the beauty of God.

We were discussing about beauty. God is the most beautiful object. No object in the world can be as beautiful as God, but we have been taught by religions that God is an old man, the Creator, Father in heaven, with a long beard; how can He be beautiful?

No religion openly holds that God is beautiful. He is rather a judiciary, lawmaker, a terror sometimes, ready to dispense justice, but no religion says that He is a beautiful person. Here is a mistake of religious teachers. We go for beautiful things, rather than a judiciary.

We must accept that God is the most beautiful, and no beauty can equal that beauty. Then the heart will feel satisfied with that perception of the most beautiful thing before us. God is not merely grand or magnificent; He is also beautiful! Let the heart accept it. Then you will see the desires subside, and you will ask for nothing in the world afterwards. Any other method is not going to be successful.

Lyle: My mind says that God can't be conceived.

SWAMIJI: You can psychologically conceive Him by adjusting the mind in a wholesome manner. Anything that is wholesome is God. God does not mean something far away from you. It is the characteristic of wholesome thinking, total thinking, and not partial or fragmented thinking. The object of perception should be included in the process of perception itself. It should not stand outside you. Our perceptions are partial as long as the objects stand outside the process of perception.

We don't see things properly; we see them partially, as isolated from us. Objects are not really isolated. They don't stand outside the process of perception. You have to educate yourself into the conviction that the object of perception is included in the very process of perception. This is the holistic thinking that I am mentioning. Then you will not desire the object as an "outside" something. When the object is included in the very process of perception, how will you desire it? The desire ceases immediately. Sadhana is also a process of education. One must be very careful in thinking, and not think in a haphazard manner. It is a difficult art, but you will be happy if you succeed in it.

Lyle: So, we should try to include the object in the subject?

SWAMIJI: What you see with your eyes is included in yourself, in some way. We are unable to understand it because we think through a finitised form of the mind. There is a process by which we are able to know that the object exists. If you analyse that process, you will find the object does not stand outside you. If it is totally outside you, you would not be even conscious that it is there outside you. It is an integral process taking place in perception. This itself is a kind of meditation.

Lyle: Swamiji, in the process of meditation, do you suggest a sequence to draw the mind into pratyahara concentration?