Self-Realisation, Its Meaning and Method

by Swami Krishnananda

There is also another difficulty that you may have to face. What will you do after Self-Realisation takes place? You may tell me, How can this question arise? It certainly arises and it cannot be escaped by most people because we are bound to the action-ridden world. The world is nothing but a field of activity. We do, and do, and do, and work, and work, and we have nothing else of meaning in life except action, doing something, working. So, naturally, the greatest meaning of life being working, doing, acting and moving towards achievement of something, that being the final meaning, that meaning cannot be abrogated even in what we may call God-Realisation. A heightened form of work may be the advantage we gain after God-Realisation! The Realisation of the Self or the Realisation of God will give me greater strength to work more in this world than I am capable of at present. I may be able to do a greater service to the people than at present. I may live a longer life. I may not die at all after the blessing of God is received. This individual immortality sanctioned to me by the achievement of the Self or the attainment of God will give me such suzerainty over the world that I shall be the master of all things and I shall be a wonder-worker.

Why should not these difficulties present themselves before us? And many of us may have a subtle reason for justifying these arguments. What will I do after the attainment of God? That there is nothing to do after the attainment of God will either make the person go crazy or just give up the pursuit itself, because if nothing is going to be done and nothing is going to happen to me after the attainment of God, it will be a vegetating condition of silent inactivity, a meaningless rotting in a totally void and valueless outcome. These are dangers that are at the back of the human mind. The Self-Realisation that we are speaking of is inconceivable to the human mind, because most of the knowledge that we have is book-born, lecture-born and contact-born by association with varieties of people. It has not come to us through a competent master, whom we have not had the patience to serve.

The ancient system of service of the Guru is not an old-fashioned story or dogma. It is the only way by which the mind can be purified. These difficulties and problems, a specimen of which I am placing before you (there are many others also), are due to impurity of the mind, the non-receptivity of the mind to the entry of Truth in its nakedness. These impurities of the mind are not merely the likes and dislikes and egoisms we are well aware of, but are the very conditions of thinking which prevent true thinking in terms of non-temporal facts. How do I achieve these means by which I can free myself from the shackle of temporal thinking and spatial envisioning? By the service of the Guru, is the answer. What do you mean by service of the Guru? These things are not considered fashionable these days, because we are under the impression that we are over-educated individuals, highly cultured and more broad-minded, advanced in everything, so that we are certainly capable of thinking for ourselves, and we can stand on our own rational and intellectual legs; we do not have to stand on somebody’s feet even if they be the feet of the Guru. Nothing can be a greater blunder in thinking than to think in this manner. The service of the Guru is not an old-fashioned system, and it is indeed the system that will prevail and work even today, and it has to work for all time; because the Guru is not to be regarded as a person, though for all outward vision the Guru may look like any person. There is certainly a mistake in our evaluation of the Guru. The Guru physically, from the point of view of a photographic camera, may look like you, and may not be different from you in any way, from the point of view of the physical contours, but he represents a principle which is wider than you and your individuality. The Guru is not a person, he is not a man or woman; he is a principle which represents a power behind and beyond the visible framework which you call the body of the Guru. There is an aura which is spread by the mentality and the vision of the Guru. That aura is the area which he occupies, and the location of the existence of the Guru is as wide as the reach of his own aura, just as the location of a government official is as wide as the jurisdiction over which he has authority and power. The person will be sitting on a chair like any other, but he is not merely limited to the chair. His power, his capacity and his knowledge in terms of action extend to that limit of space over which he has control and responsibility. In a similar way, we may say that the jurisdiction of the Guru is as wide as the distance of the aura which emanates from him, and, again, to repeat, the Guru is a principle and not a person. And, therefore, to look upon the Guru as a person and then to judge him as you judge anybody else in the world, and to take his word or not to take it from your own point of view, would be to cut the ground from under your own feet.

The purification of the mind is of paramount importance before you study books and imagine that you are on the pedestal of heightened thinking, perhaps on the way to God Himself. To be on the way to God is an immense blessing, nothing can be a more glorious achievement than that—but who can be on the way to God? Which man, which woman, which individual can be sure that he or she is on the way to God, if this humility characteristic of an utter submission to a higher authority, which is the divine principle manifesting itself, is not to be discovered in one’s own self? Many seekers who thought they were after God had disappointment towards the end of their lives.

The realisation of God is mostly identified with the realisation of the Self. And I have no time just now to describe to you why the two should be considered as one and the same thing, while there are others who will portray these two processes in a different way. There is no need to go further deep into these quibbles of academic difference made between Self and God, etc. For all practical purposes, from the point of view of the actual needs of Sadhana we may conclude that Self-Realisation is virtually the same as what we call God-Realisation. But this is a very difficult issue with which one can with hardship reconcile oneself. We have, again, here the inveterate conviction that the Self is ‘within’ ‘me’, well, that may be God. Where is God? The answer is, ‘God is within;’ whose ‘within?’ As pointed out, this concept of ‘within’ is a tantalising thing; one cannot say, where is this ‘within’ and ‘within which person’ is God sitting? We may, of course, say, ‘within everybody.’ Here is a subtle difficulty that may be posed before you once again. That which is within everything is inconceivable to the mind, because that which is within everything has lost the very meaning of ‘within,’ because you have conceded that it is within everything; therefore, not ‘within me only.’ Hence, the word ‘within’ may not apply to God. You cannot also say that God is without. That which is within has also to be without if you conclude that it is within everybody. But that which is within cannot be without, and that which is without cannot be within, and if you say that it is both within and without, your mind will stop thinking. We do not know what we are speaking about. Here is a matter for decision only by a competent master. How are we to encounter in our consciousness that which is the Self, which is God, which is within, which is without, and yet not within and not without? How are we going to think of this? How are we to conceive this? The difficulty in conceiving and entertaining the consciousness of this mystery arises, again, due to the impurities of the mind which we have not got rid of by humble service. I repeat, again, that this is not an old-fashioned system. There is no other way than to be submissive and humble before the might of this tremendous mystery we call God, we call the Self.

There is no end to this process, and the concept of end and terminus also arises on account of the notion of space and time. Someone told me the other day, ‘after all, this effort has to end.’ Why does this idea of end arise in the mind? The end notion arises because of the beginning notion. And notions of beginning and end arise because of the notion of time. God created the world sometime in ancient past—so do we believe. Then, by ‘ancient past’ we mean, again, some beginning of time, though we believe that God is beyond time. Therefore, to calculate the point of the creation of the world at some origin of time would be to defy our acceptance earlier that God is not in time. These are the difficulties, and why do they arise? Why should these difficulties harass us? They all vanish in a second like mist before the sun if the mind is pure. And what is purity of mind? It is the ability to accept simply, humbly and honestly that our knowledge and power is not adequate to the purpose and to accept at the same time that there are powers more than we. We are not the final explanation of things. Whatever education we may be imparted is insufficient here. The great master was approached, even in unthinkable past, by students who were themselves far superior to most us.

Narada, the renowned sage, humbly approached Sanatkumara. Do you think Narada was an unlearned person, an uneducated being? There was no science, no art in which he was not proficient, and no wonder and miracle that he could not work. Such a person devoutly went in submission to the master, Sanatkumara. Where was the need? Indra, the ruler of the gods, who can strike threat and wonder and miracle anywhere, went humbly to Prajapati for knowledge. The Upanishads are interesting demonstrative narrations before us of a series of masters themselves approaching greater masters.

You must have read of the six great men approaching a master, as related to us in the Chhandogya Upanishad. There were five Brahmanishthas, the Upanishad calls so those established in Brahman, not mediocres, not ordinary students—even such people had difficulties. They were meditators on the Atman. They were seekers of the Self. They were after Self-Realisation. But where is the Self? The difficulty naturally arose in their minds. Ah! Where is this Self? One of them asked the other. We are all meditators of the Atman, but where is the Atman? If we do not know where It is, how are we to meditate on It? How are we to conceive It? Five people joined together. They went to a sixth person who was a reputed teacher in the village. But this reputed teacher himself was flabbergasted at these queries. He said, “My dear friends, I am in the same boat as you. I am, too, a meditator on the Atman, to the best of my ability, but I cannot tell you where the Atman is. Let us go to the king of this country. He is known as a master in this Vidya. He is an adept meditator, let us go to him.” We had in ancient India, a tradition of the four classes of people known as Brahmana, Kshatriya, etc. The Kshatriya is the second category, the Brahmana is of the first order. The Kshatriya learns from the Brahmana, but the Brahmana will not learn from the Kshatriya. But all these great gentlemen, the seekers of the Atman, were Brahmanas and the king was a Kshatriya. You will be surprised at the humility with which these Brahmanas went, contrary to the accepted social tradition that a Brahmana will not learn from a Kshatriya. But when these great men went to the king, he thought that they had come for some wealth, because Brahmanas were mostly financially not so well off as the emperors were, and it was the gesture of the king to give charity to all such men as one of his duties. The king said, “Well, I am performing a sacrifice tomorrow, and I shall engage you, and you shall receive the largest benefit.” “We have not come for that, your Highness.” “What for have you come?” “Tell us what you know—we seek nothing else.” “Is this not contrary to tradition, great men, that Brahmanas should come and ask this question with a Kshatriya?” They were good and considerate and generous enough to openly say, “We have not come as Brahmanas, we have come as students, and we regard you not as a Kshatriya, but as a master of knowledge.” And, giving a special concession to the learning and sincerity of these six people, he did not put them to the rack of the disciplines to which students would be subjected usually before initiation is given. “Come tomorrow, I shall see what can be done,” he said. And you know how the story went and what questions were put by the king, what answers came from each one, and how each of the methods of meditation carried and conducted by these different men was examined. There was a flaw which was detected by this master, the king, who was an adept in this Vidya. What was the defect? The very same ones to which I made reference, a few minutes before: Where is this Atman? What is Self-Realisation? How would I conceive It? And, finally, what for is this Self-Realisation? Do not tell me that it is for peace of mind. I have already told you, this is a word which can convey no sense in the end, because no one can say what is peace of mind. It is an un-understood slogan, a shibboleth, whose significance is not clear. What is peace?

However, this is a story which you can read for yourself, and many of you may be acquainted with what I mean, what answers were given by the king. They all pertain to the question of the Self’s location and the way of meditation on It. The defect, the mistake, the shortcoming, the lacuna in the meditation of these reputed six great men was that they located the Atman ‘somewhere!’ It is ‘within’ or It is ‘somewhere.’ Now, the point is that the Atman is not ‘within,’ and It is not ‘somewhere,’ that both these statements are not correct. So, where is It, if It is not somewhere, and If It is not within? And a subtle answer was given by the master, the emperor who was so approached. Likewise, we have the lives of saints and sages of both the East and the West, who served great men with humility, sometimes even till old age, till their hairs became grey.

We need not be carried away by the complacence common to people that everything is clear to our minds. We will find that while everything seems to be clear now, when we proceed further and further, we will find it gets blurred more and more, until we see an iron hill in front of us, a mountain, a dark curtain which we will not be able to pierce, because the egoism of the individual is already there, which told that everything is clear. Humility is the hallmark of the spiritual seeker, and the guidance of a master is essential.