The Medication of Yoga and Meditation (Continued)

Visitor: Are the world and God not different?

Swamiji: Yes, they are! You always make a distinction. You cannot say they are identical. If they were identical, it would be even worse for you. You cannot believe that people are God to you. You would rather divide them as separate from God, and keep the meditation for the temple and the world for shops, etc. If you believe they are identical, you have to behave with the shopkeeper as God Himself would. It is very difficult to imagine what that would be, and you are not prepared to undergo that ordeal, which is a great experience. What you say is worse than the alternative. To behave like a judge in the Court and a father in the house is better than to be like a judge everywhere. You cannot exist like that. It is a very difficult thing to do. If you are a judge even to your wife and children and to the shopkeeper, they will say that you are a horrible man. A judge is an ordinary customer to a shopkeeper even though he is a judge in the Supreme Court. Of course, if you can become like that and you can bear the consequences of behaving like the Divine Being – the same everywhere and with everything – wonderful! In that case, you are immediately in the soup, in one second. Your identity is in God, and you don’t want to slip back all that quickly. But slowly, perhaps?

There is another thing. Sometimes you would like to do something to get out of all these confusing problems, but in trying to do that something, you don’t know whether you are acting out of your volition or whether God is impelling you to do it, and this becomes another problem for you. You cannot immediately make a distinction between God’s impulsion and your ego. You will say, “Well, I am going to the mountain top for meditation. I am not going to live in this terrible city of noise and foolishness.” Now, who is telling this? If God is ordering you to do it, very good; he will help you at the top of the mountain. But you may be doing it for some other reason. It may be that you are unable to bear the pain of living in the midst of anti-social persons. It is a pain, isn’t it? And you are trying to avoid the pain. That will be a subtle psychological reason behind your getting out of the city and wishing to sit on a mountain top. But it is possible that there are worse things on the top of the mountain. So are you going to the mountain top because you want God, or is it because you don’t want pain? Which is the reason? These are all very subtle matters which cannot easily to be left out on the basis of simple assumptions.

Visitor: But Swamiji, God is supposed to want to receive us with open arms. He is pulling us to Him all the time.

Swamiji: He wants to receive You, with a capital Y; He does not want the lower y. He wants you, the real you. He doesn’t want the legal you or the social you or the gender you – the masculine or feminine you. That is not the real you; it is the unreal you. You ask only for the unreal God when your prayer is conditioned by the footnote “provided that…” The proviso of the law usually takes the edge off the law. Yes! Now it is clear why God does not come when you pray, “I am thine” etc, is it not?

Visitor: Yes, now it is clear why God does not come.

Swamiji: You want God. Who are you? Tell me. When you do japa by rolling the beads, God will tell you to mind your business and not trouble Him unnecessarily!

Visitor: And will He also tell me what my business is?

Swamiji: (laughs) When you tell a man “mind your business”, your intention is to get rid of the man. Mind your business is an idiomatic way of speaking. He does not tell you what the business is. He means, “I don’t want you to talk to me. Don’t interfere with me unnecessarily.” There is no mystic greater than God. He is the highest mystic. That is why Lord Krishna is depicted as a tremendously naughty boy. Otherwise, why would the incarnation of God be depicted as mischievous and naughty? That is how Vyasa depicts Lord Krishna. He could have depicted him as a wonderful, beautiful, sympathetic person instead of as a very mischievous and troublesome element! It is a spiritual interpretation of God’s attitude towards us that the author has given us. He married a thousand wives, He was a householder, and yet He is described as a Brahmachari. Every social law is broken in His life. He has His own law, and His law is a super law, with which social laws have to be consonant.

Visitor: How can yoga practice get us strength?

Swamiji: Your affiliation to God is your strength. It will save you in this life, and in your future life also. What I am telling you is yoga, without giving it a label, yet it includes all the yogas. You want a living yoga which is helpful in your practical existence, not a yoga only for demonstration or for an institution. This is a thing with which you can exist and keep yourself balanced and happy and without any complaint against anything. The yogi sees everything in its proper place. When you see a thing misplaced and then complain, it is not yoga. Yoga is nothing but a comprehensive outlook on things. Yoga is not just the Bhagavadgita; it is not just the Upanishad. You may call it by any name you like. But because of the weakness of the mind and the incapacity of the understanding to grasp all aspects, you cannot be a comprehensive person. You always miss some points, and then say something is wrong. If you see every point, you will say that everything is okay. You will have perfect peace. Your peace will spread as an aura of peace around you. You will become a magnet of completeness – radiating strength, energy and peace. But if you are a partial being, you become wretched yourself and make others around you also wretched.

Visitor: All right, accepted. But how do I take my pains? Saying that cosmic balance is being set up, that does not help.

Swamiji: Your suffering is due to lack of understanding! Ah yes! It is the philosophy of Madhusudan Saraswati. Have you heard of this man? Madhusudan Saraswati was a great scholar and saint who lived about a hundred or two hundred years ago. He was a master of philosophy, and also a great devotee of Lord Krishna. He was a jnana yogi and a bhakti yogi. He believed only in Krishna and in nothing else.

Visitor: The intellect and heart joined together.

Swamiji: Everything; that is the sign of greatness. He can be reconciled with anything; he is not an irreconcilable personality. He never refuses anything. He never rejects anything. He does not disbelieve anything. He does not say anything is wrong. That is the sign of greatness. Everything is okay and in its proper place, at the proper time, in the given circumstances. So this is, again, yoga.

Visitor: But, Swamiji, it is said that Lord Krishna’s ways, his lilas in his avatar were all a breaking of social norms, so to speak. And that was said to be a spiritual interpretation, an explanation of God’s attitude to man. How can it be a spiritual interpretation?

Swamiji: Because, to say that the water of the Ganges is very cold is just a human attitude. But God does not say it is very cold, because it is not cold. It is cold only to your skin. To the fish in the Ganges, it is not cold. So is Ganges water really cold? Tell me. Now you can very well see that your statement is not correct; for any statement society makes is partial. How can God take it as perfect? You may be right from your skin’s point of view in saying that the Ganges water is cold, but the fish do not say it is cold. The fish do not want a blanket or a quilt, because they have adjusted themselves to the atmosphere. You cannot adjust yourself to it in the same manner. And if the temperature of your body is the same as the temperature outside, you will not say it is winter. So all social laws, personal predilections are judgments made on the basis of experiences from the point of view of your present state of personality, and they need not be correct. They cannot be correct, because they are partial.

You will not see things as before. If you have a microscopic eye, you will not see the wall in front of you. You will not see the building; you will see only vibrations. You will see electrons and protons, and if I tell you it is a building, you will ask where the building is. You will not be able to see any building. But God has given you a very gross eye, and so you see a large structure. So, who is correct? Is the microscope correct or are you correct? The circumstances are different and you speak from different levels of being. God speaks from all comprehensiveness.

Visitor: What is the ear or the eye with which we should see His lilas so that we understand His purpose?

Swamiji: You understand your level of existence first. You speak from your level only. Do not overestimate yourself and try to see as God sees at the comprehensive level.

Visitor: You mean to say, what I cannot understand I should leave alone?

Swamiji: You should not try to disturb your present feelings. The disturbance arises on account of the fact that you try to overcome the limits of your feelings. Whether they are right or not is a different matter. They may be right. They are right only as long as they are incapable of transcendence. When they are capable of transcendence, they become wrong. When you are dreaming, the objects that you see in the dream are real. But now they are not real, because you have transcended them. So when I say it is real or unreal, it depends upon the point of view, the level of being from which I speak. You cannot get over the idea that you are a human being. But it is not true that you are a human being ultimately. You are something else. You are a unit in the Cosmic Force; but you cannot understand it. It is no use talking about it. So what is your present state? I am a human being. You cannot forget that you are an Indian. You cannot forget that you are a woman. All these are false notions ultimately. But when you realise that you are not a woman, then your law changes and you speak in a different language and you experience different things.

So long as your feelings and your conditions are inseparable from your present level of understanding, you have to follow only that law. That is what Bhagavan Krishna says in the Gita: Do not disturb the present state of affairs nor speak to others from your point of view of God. Their point of view may be quite different; do not disturb that. You have to go stage by stage, from one level to another. All yoga is transcendence and not negation. You do not negate anything; you transcend it. You should understand the difference between negation and transcendence. You do not negate the nature of a child, but you transcend it when you become an adult. When a child behaves in a particular manner, you do not call it a stupid behaviour. It is a valid behaviour on that level. But if younow behave like a baby, it is invalid. You have transcended it. Work on that level till you transcend it. And when you fulfil the law of that level, you will automatically be liberated from that bondage, which would mean that you have taken to another level. And then you work on that level. Like that, you go higher and higher until you reach the Absolute. You should be a happy person at every level. You must always be friendly and happy and balanced and coordinated with every type of atmosphere; that is your wisdom, the wisdom of life. Never reject, never disagree, never become irreconcilable and never be intolerant.

Visitor: It is very difficult to decide at what point one should act. I increase my sufferings which could have been forestalled if I could have had…

Swamiji: That is due to ignorance. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Every law is a kind of system which has a reaction.

Visitor: Swamiji spoke of intolerance. That is exactly the point I want to know. Up to what point should you tolerate?

Swamiji: No limit to tolerance. Christ also suffered due to his goodness. But you cannot say he did a wrong thing. And you will be taken care of by other forces which will not let you feel at ease. If because you follow a system of perfection and due to that you suffer, well, really you will not suffer; it is a mistaken notion. If you follow the law from the level on which you are, then you will not suffer.