Sri Swami Sivananda and His Mission

by Swami Krishnananda

Our life seems to be a medley of a variety of dependences hanging on various factors for our security—a bare permission to exist. If sustenance is not to come to us from outside, we would not be alive. Is this true? If this is true, all glory goes to crass materialism. All life is a product of the collocation of material forces, and all significance, all meaning and all value have to be attached only to the patterns and the formations of the constituents of matter. That this is not true—that the peculiar and uncomfortable status which the observer of things appropriates to himself while converting everything in the world into a lower status—has a great meaning. Why is it that a seer or an observer should have a higher status? Though this is something into which we cannot easily conduct investigations, it is something which we have to accept.

The reason behind this is the presence of a status in the observer and, at the same time, there being no such thing as an observed object. The automatic action that takes place within ourselves when we observe anything—an action which bifurcates the seer from the seen and keeps the seer on a higher pedestal and the seen on a lower—has a super-empirical connotation. We are not made up of material forces. We are not hanging on the mercy that is bestowed upon us by natural forces. Each person has a status of his own or her own. Therefore, dependence is not our birthright. Freedom is our birthright. No one can be regarded as free who is so dependent on external factors. If our life is a dependence entirely on natural world forces, freedom is a misnomer; no one can be free. It is impossible even to conceive it. But, we ask for nothing but freedom. It looks as if we are asking for something which cannot be there, and yet it is the only thing that we are asking for: freedom and freedom and freedom, and nothing but freedom. We want to have a free hand in everything. This is what we ask for.

Dogs lie down in the shade of a tree. They lie down and sleep the whole day. But if a rope is tied around the dog’s neck and it is tethered to a tree and left to sleep, it would not like to sleep like that, though nothing has been done except that a rope has been tied. The dog has been lying there the whole day; but as soon as it is tied to a rope, it becomes unhappy. It goes on whining throughout the day so that the rope may be removed, because its freedom is limited. “Sleeping is alright, but is a rope tied around my neck? Then I don’t want it!” So the dog whines and struggles and tries to break the rope. We do not want the pleasures of life; we want freedom. Pleasures minus freedom are only pains. It is status that everyone asks for, not riches. All riches and wealth minus status and recognition is like a husk. But why is it that we ask for freedom? What is wrong with us, or right with us?

Freedom is the birthright of everyone; and everyone is basically free. Nobody can be bound. There is no bondage, really speaking. Bondage does not exist. A kind of involvement of ourselves in situations which are inextricable and unintelligible produces a sense of bondage. We are not merely essentially free; we are also deathless. Both these statements are very hard to understand. We do not appear to be free at all. We have got harassments from every side—troubles and problems and sorrows, and nothing but these. Who is free in this world, though we are told that we are basically free? Everybody dies, and yet we are told that we are deathless. These two highly intriguing proclamations seem to astound us, and it is so because even when we are conscious that there is a world—for instance, as we are now—we are awake, but we are, really speaking, awake in a different sense. As I stated, sleep is not necessarily a state of total unawareness. It can be something worse than that. Often to be unaware is not as bad as to be aware in a totally erroneous manner.

In the technical language of philosophers, this is sometimes called the avarana and vikshepa - a clouding of consciousness and a projecting of consciousness. The clouding is the preventing factor which sees to it that we cannot know what is there. A thick veil is hung in front of our eyes. But a peculiar distorting lens also seems to be clutching to this, through which we are forced to see a completely distorted figure. That which is inside is thrown out and made to appear as an outward phenomenon, and that which is really outside looks as if it is within. According to the story of creation that we have in the Upanishads and elsewhere, we individual people are later products than the creation of the world. Individualities emerged afterwards; the whole world-stuff was created earlier. It may be due to this reason that Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to say that the policy of our life should be: “God is first, world is next, and we are last.” We are the last because we came last. The cause is the world; we are the effects. Now for us the world looks like an effect, and we are the causes. There is a topsy-turvy perception.

In the epic language of the Upanishads, we are told that at the time of creation celestials fell head-long, upside-down—with legs up and head down, as it were. In biblical language, this is how Lucifer fell and became Satan. Falling headlong is not to be able to see naturally. An unnatural perception is world perception. To put it cryptically, that which is everywhere is made to appear as something which is outside us. That which was produced later, an effect, is given the position of the cause, and the cause appears as an effect. Thus, the philosophy of the dependence of the senses on objects arises as a natural consequence of this erroneous perception. This kind of sleep is a fatal blow to mankind as a whole. It is a hypnotisation of the spirit, and in that condition nothing that is said can be received. A hypnotised person is not a normal person. Therefore, a person who believes in the value of this topsy-turvy perception cannot be instructed. Nothing can go into the head of that person because the mind of that person has decided to think in a completely erroneous manner, in a topsy-turvy fashion; and that fashion of perception determines even the capacity to receive, so even if the right thing is told, it will be received wrongly. Such was the condition of the world. Even today it is not far removed from this unfortunate condition of devaluing the spirit of life and valuing the unspirit, the anti-Christ.

Each one of us is the judge for himself or herself: In what manner do we appreciate things? There is a great joy when riches fall on our heads from the material sources of the world. To be dispossessed of material contents is regarded as poverty—while true poverty is the poverty of the spirit. Loss of self is true poverty; the gain of the world is not to be rich. But, how do we think even today? To gain the world is to be wealthy; and we forget that we cannot gain the world unless we have lost ourselves first. The gaining of the world is a simultaneous loss of the spirit of man. The ‘within’ has become clouded in the dark operations of exterior matter which we call the comforts of life. Hence, a worldly life is the death of the soul. And who is worldly? Let each one consider for himself.

This outlook which is what we call a worldly, earthly, material, crass attitude had to be remedied by a medication which had to come only from the spirit. It is the spirit that has to heal itself. No material force can be a remedy for this illness. Spiritual leaders alone can be the saviours of mankind, if we believe that mankind is nothing but a society of souls and spirits, and not an association of material bodies. The world of humanity is a family of spirits, kindred souls, and not the dancing of atoms. That cannot be called the world.

This was to be brought to the notice of these slumbering souls. Some were actually fast asleep in the unconscious spirit, and the others were sleeping in the consciousness of matter. Both are types of sleep. To be unconscious of the spirit is one kind of sleep; to be conscious of material existence is another kind of sleep. One is called avarana and the other is called vikshepa. They are the twin ailments of mankind; they are two prongs, as it were, of a single attack of wrong perception. A fork, sometimes called Morton’s Fork, is that which catches us from both sides.

There was a minister to King Henry VII of England who was called Morton. He was a tax extractor. He used to apply an administrative fork. If he saw a very well-dressed person, he would tell him, “It seems you are a well-dressed, wealthy, happy, rich man. Pay the tax.” If he saw a poor person, dressed in tattered clothes, he would tell him, “You are pretending. You are a wealthy person. Don’t pretend like this. Pay the tax.” Either way, they were caught. Whether they looked rich or poor, it did not matter; they were caught. This kind of double attack was called Morton’s Fork in the taxation policy that was adopted by Morton during the reign of King Henry VII.

So here is the Morton’s Fork of the two-pronged catch of avarana and vikshepa. We are caught if we are unconscious and we are caught even if we are conscious, because to be unconscious is bad and to be conscious of the wrong thing is still worse. So in what condition are we? Let each one know and try to place himself or herself in the proper position of self-investigation—for delivering which gospel to mankind, Sri Swami Sivanandaji and such saints came.