Sri Swami Sivananda and His Mission

by Swami Krishnananda

The world is frequently visited by stars coming from Heaven, shedding their light throughout the atmosphere of the Earth and giving everyone a living fillip, as may be required under the conditions prevailing at that hour. This coming of the divine power under prescribed conditions and circumstances is called an incarnation, or the sudden rising into action of a luminary, sometimes known as a great sage or saint. The word ‘incarnation’ suggests the coming into form—or, more popularly, the embodiment in flesh and blood—of that which is essentially formless and capable of assuming any form. A potential which has the ability to work in any fashion whatsoever can also work in only a given fashion and under a given condition. The principle of medicine is a general policy of setting right the functions of the physical organism, but it manifests itself as a specific prescription under a given condition. This is an analogy before us of how a formless methodology and a principle can take form for the purpose of activating the exact energies and powers that are required to set in alignment those components which have been placed out of gear, as it were, for some period, for certain reasons.

In a broad sense we may say that the powers of the world maintain themselves in a state of balance, just as the physical and psychological conditions of our body try to maintain a balance so that mostly we are healthy people; rarely are we ill. Normally we maintain a balance, and that is the usual way of our conducting ourselves physically and mentally. We are not basically sick people; basically, we are healthy. Illness is due to certain abnormal conditions arising in the system for certain specific reasons. In a similar manner, this world maintains an equilibrium in itself. It does not fall sick always. People in the world—living beings in general—are positively happy. They are not always weeping. Weeping is not the natural condition of things. But an occasional situation which may not be regarded as natural may insinuate itself into normal conditions, impelled by certain pressures into whose fundamentals we cannot enter so easily in a few minutes of discussion. It is like asking, “Why do we fall sick at all?” This question is also the question, “Why should there be any trouble in the world?”

The reason behind the troubles and sorrows of life is also the reason why we sometimes have physical illness. We do not have an easy answer to this question of why we fall ill, though we may have a tentative answer such as, “I went out in the rain and caught a cold”, “I walked in the sun and got a headache”, “I travelled at night and now my body aches all over” and “I ate something wrong yesterday and my stomach is disturbed.” These answers may be from a ready-made repertory, in order to explain the condition. Though these causes just mentioned may be regarded as the immediate propulsions for our illness, there are certain susceptibilities in our personality without which toxic matter, even if it enters our body, could not disturb us so badly. Biological science and medicine tell us that disease-producing factors are everywhere. They do not manifest themselves only at times or only for our sake. They are suspended in the air even now, at all times of the day and night, but we do not feel their presence because of the capacity of our system to resist them. Our mental and physical strength is so great that most of the time these adverse disease-producing conditions are not felt by us. They are acutely felt when there is a susceptibility of the organism, for important reasons which each one has to understand for himself or herself. Umpteen are the reasons.

The conditions of life are equivalent to the conditions of our physical body. Whatever obtains to us, obtains to everyone else and to creation as a whole; and so, if we want to understand the world and want to find a solution to the difficulties of life, we may have to turn inward into our own selves and see what our personal problem is. How have we got into this rut of difficulty? What are the causes? What are the factors? In these enterprises of ours, we may make a mistake. Rarely do we judge dispassionately, because our personality always comes to the forefront and assumes an abnormal importance for itself. We will find that we are the most important person anywhere, in any condition. If we go to a hotel or a marketplace or a bus stand or a railway station, we are the most important person there; all others are secondary. It is very difficult to understand how each one thinks he is the most important person and others are secondary. Any kind of neglect of the requirements of a particular individual is an affront to that person on the part of others who remain there as just ‘others’, and not as people like one’s own self.

This is the tragedy of the psychological operation in human beings. Due to a non-alignment in our own internal psychic apparatus, we are also not in a state of universal psychological alignment—because the world of human beings is nothing but a constitution of people like me, like you, like everybody else; and many such drops make the ocean. Many a non-alignment, individually considered, is a mass non-alignment politically, socially or economically. We make the world; there is no world independent of us. Many people like us together are the world; and whatever the world is, is exactly what we are. Therefore, any kind of evaluation of circumstances in life may have to start from an evaluation of one’s own self because many ‘one’s own self’ make the so-called ‘others’ in the world. This is to probe a little into the deeper background of the general issues manifesting themselves outwardly in our daily life.

We are not here to go into the cosmical condition that may be operating behind the problems of life. The theme of our present discussion is something different, and is more practical. It is our adjustment to the conditions of the world and to the conditions of our own selves in relation to divine powers that come into action whenever there is a necessity felt for such a descent—when the world finds itself in a state tending towards illness, which manifests itself as what we call the problems of life.

History is supposed to be a study of the movement of human enterprises, thoughts and actions, and those who believe and feel convinced that human history is just what people do of their own accord or what people are compelled to do by other people may not be good students of history because there are historical forces which are independent of and different from people, the embodiments of human action. A historical force is not to be confused with historical personalities. This force, which is the Time Spirit, we may say, is the dispensing authority behind the activities of people and the prompting of the minds of people—which, incidentally, become the immediate causes of historical occurrences, whatever their nature be. We seated here are considered to be especially blessed in the sense of having been endowed with a fair amount of impersonal judgement of things. This is what we mean by a person being a spiritual seeker: one who has the power to judge impersonally and dispassionately in a required or at least adequate measure. We may console ourselves that we who are here in this hall at present have achieved at least a passing mark in this exam of being endowed with a power to judge things by not unnecessarily protruding ourselves into the atmosphere of judgements and, also, for considering other issues which are equally contributory to the coming into action of any event or experience in life.

The Bhagavadgita says that God incarnates Himself in the world. Whenever there is a necessity to introduce structure into life in the world, an administrative authority which is beyond human capacity—a supernormal power—is supposed to manifest itself. There are certain problems which we ourselves can independently set right. But human problems are not always entirely human, and there are certain aspects of human difficulty which may not be under the jurisdiction of human endeavour and capacity. When such a difficulty arises which is the difficulty of humanity in general and not of me or you in particular—not a local difficulty of a family or a community or even a country, but a general issue which torments the minds of all people—no one can come forward as a redeemer or a remedying element under such conditions. A problem which is everybody’s problem cannot be solved by any person in the world, because every person is involved in the same problem. Such difficulties arise occasionally in the march of human history; and it is at such times that a supernormal power finds it necessary to emerge.

Such an emergence of a supernormal power is called avatara, incarnation, the coming into formation—embodied in flesh and blood—of an invisible pervading strength. These incarnations have taken place many a time in history, right from the time of creation itself. We read in the scriptures that God incarnated Himself; and mighty leaders were born into this world. There were leaders in different fields of human endeavour who shook the whole Earth. There were mighty political geniuses, statesmen whom we remember with admiration even today. There were wondrous artists, painters and musicians whom we cannot afford to forget even today. In every language of the world there were masters whose poetry and writings are a blessing upon the world of intellectuality even today. Many great geniuses have come into this world through the process of human history, and they came for a certain purpose. The purpose was to fill up a particular lacuna in the all-round growth of the human personality—which includes political security, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual enjoyment, and so on.

But the greatest need of the human being, apart from political protection, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual necessity, etc., is a spiritual touch—spiritual security. We may be growing healthily by being blessed with political, aesthetic, intellectual and economic security, but spiritually we may be ruined. We may be rich from the point of view of money, but be bankrupt in the spirit. Then, what will happen to us? We will be adorned corpses, decorated physical frames minus life, and we can imagine the value of that physical frame—a royal personality dressed in silk, gold and silver, minus life. The world can sometimes enter into such a condition. The world can become a decorated corpse, mightily adorned with wealth and every conceivable physical comfort, but the soul has left.

This happened many times in human history; and if we bring the name of God into this issue, we may say that God does not act always. The secondary forces of divine operation manage the issues themselves. But occasionally, when everything seems to go out of order, God Himself may act directly. This is like the centre of administration not always concerning itself with minor issues which can be handled by lesser powers. But a crisis of the whole world, which we may call a state of emergency, may call for the central authority to open its eyes and unleash all its energies. Occasionally we have certain difficulties of this type. Those who are good students of history know the manner in which people have lived in this world, right from the dawn of human history. It is necessary to read history because, as I tried to point out, history is not a story of people’s doings, of the coming and going of kings and the battles that they wage. Nothing of the kind is human history.

Actually, the study of history is the study of the forces operating behind the events we normally call the recorded history of mankind. This requires a scientific attitude of the student—a philosophic grounding, I may say—and it is not just the story of England or India or America or any country, as is taught in our educational institutions. That is not history. What happens is one thing, but why it happens in that manner is more important than the knowledge of what happened. Why did that catastrophe take place? This is the subject of many great students of history. Many of us do not even know the existence of such great researchers of human history. We should be abreast with the conditions that are necessary to make us appreciably educated. I do not say that we can be entirely educated; perhaps that is beyond us. But to an appreciable extent, at least, we must be enlightened in respect of what is at the back of the operation of things. And one of these things is the study of the powers behind human history.

There was a time, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when physical science strode like a peacock and strutted with pride as the be-all and end-all of all things, and mathematics became the explanation of life. It was a ‘eureka’ of humanity which began to feel very, very wrongly that it had found the solution for the difficulties of life. This was the complacency into which physical science landed itself, and it was a great joy of discovery, especially when it was coupled with the Industrial Revolution that took place sometime in the middle of the nineenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. What do physical science and mathematics tell us? What is the import behind the Industrial Revolution?