Religion and Social Values

by Swami Krishnananda

Have you not heard it said again and again that meditation is communion with the object of meditation? It is not thinking the object. It is establishing a vital connection with the object, becoming en rapport with the object, establishing relationship with that which is inseparable from the object. And, finally, the intention is to enter into the object, to think as the object thinks—to think as the tree thinks, to think as the world thinks, to think as another man thinks. You have not been taught this art. How can you think as another man thinks? How can you think as a brick thinks, or a stone thinks, or a tree thinks? Meditation is this.

Once you succeed in this adjustment of your mind in the way I suggested, the whole of yoga is known by you. All the yogas, all the scriptures, all the admonitions, all that is religion and spirituality is summed up in this single, simple technique of your capacity to see things as things see themselves—wherein comes the possibility of your entering into the ecstatic possession of yourself in a larger consciousness, called samadhi in yoga parlance. Samadhi is the condition where you are united with that which you are thinking in your mind. What are you thinking in your mind? There are many people sitting around you, and a large world around you astronomically expanded in space and time—unthinkable, astounding, miraculous and fearsome. This is the object which is ahead of you, in front of you.

If you can think in terms of the very same thing which you regard as an object, you will walk on this world as a tiger cub walks on its own mother, and it will not terrify you. You cannot go near a lion or a ferocious Bengal tiger, but its own child walks over it, bites its ears, sniffs its nose, scratches it. The little cub is not afraid of its mother or its father. Why are you afraid? It is because the intimacy of the mother to the child and the child to the mother is greater than the intimacy that seems to be among ourselves, even as family members, friends, relations, etc. The whole of yoga is summed up in this great art of your capability to unite yourself with things which are now the objects of your thought. Let a few minutes be spent in this manner when you get up in the morning, and make this a daily practice.

All this is hard thinking. You will find it is not so easy. So take up a scripture, a book, a text which will enable you to rouse thoughts of this kind if you yourself are unable to dig them up from the deeper layers of your mind. In the early morning, chant the name of God, reciting the mantra in a loud tone so that the distractions pulling the mind in different directions may cease, to some extent, in the divine vibration produced by the recitation of the mantra.

There is no need to be too anxious over things and excessively busy, as if the world is sitting on your head and you are the owner of things. Nothing is going to happen to the world even if you die. It has been there, and it will be there. Too much enthusiasm over it is a foolishness and a foolhardy attitude. You are always thinking that you are carrying the world on your shoulders and if you are not there, the world will perish. It shall not. Therefore, too much anxiety over the world is not called for. A little bit of time for thinking in this right manner is essential for your own good, to accumulate assets to prepare for your future journey into a realm where altogether new laws operate, and the present laws will not work. You will be taken by surprise to find yourself in a kingdom where these rules and regulations do not work. Somebody else catches hold of you and accosts you in a language which you may not be able to understand.

A little japa, a little meditation of this type, and a little study—these three should form the essential features of your daily sadhana in the early morning. The first thing in the morning would be a little meditation, as I suggested; then a little bit japa of your mantra; and then, thirdly, study of the scripture because these sublime thoughts will not always come to the mind of their own accord. They have to be forced, to some extent, by a habituation of oneself to study the Bhagavadgita or scriptures of this character which are filled with such invigorating feelings and thoughts.

In the evening, again follow the same program when you return from your office or finish your dinner—only, in the reverse order. Instead of meditation first, japa afterwards and study third, let the study be first, the japa second and meditation the last item, so that when you go to bed, you wind up all your problems and involvements and your dues to things. Do not go to bed with unpaid dues. Struggle hard to pay all your debts before you go to bed because today may be the last day, and it is not proper that you wake up with a pending list of undone works, or dues to be paid, or commitments not attended to, etc. Every day is a clean day. Go to bed with a clean mind—a slate which is perfectly washed of all its impressions of the earlier day.

There should be meditation, japa and study in the early morning, and study, japa and meditation in the evening. And a habit should be formed that throughout the day, at least for one or two minutes in the midst of your work, you recall to memory your duty, the purpose for which you were born, and that which God expects from you, the universe expects from you, people expect from you—not what you expect from people. Do not bring that into the forefront. Do not always be contemplating what you expect from people, from the world and from God. Why should you expect anything? Let others expect something from you. It is better to be humble than to be important.

Thus, in the midst of your office duties or your itinerary, obligations—you may be a railway official moving in a train, or an executive engineer in the Public Works Department having to go here and there and never finding time to sit in one place; or even if you are seated in a particular office, you are overwhelmed with papers and files and problems and difficulties to such an extent that you have difficulty in finding even a moment’s rest, but put down your pen for a minute. The world will not go to the dogs just because you have put down your pen for one minute. Withdraw your mind, and contemplate in the way in which you have practised in the morning and evening. Let the day pass with intervals of a minute at least, periodically, with deeper convictions and satisfactions of a superphysical nature.

Remember, God will love you to the extent you love Him. To the extent we want Him, to that extent He also wants us. Often it is said that He wants us wholly, though we want Him only partially. This also is a great truth. But His wanting us wholly is partially manifest and reflected through our narrow individuality. This is why it appears as if He wants us only to the extent we want Him. As sunlight is not restricted to anybody—sunlight shines on everybody, and no one can say the Sun is stingy or miserly in shedding its light on them—still, it may look as if it is stingy and miserly and giving us only a little of it. This is because in our rooms there is only a little slit through which the light can pass, since we have closed the windows and doors and put a curtain all around.

God is all compassionate, and the whole of Him is ready to be at our advantage every moment of time. God is not helping us partially, a little bit, like a stingy man; yet, it may appear that the whole of the grace is not working with us because of the difficulty of our opening ourselves before the influx of these rays of grace.

So open your hearts and repent! You may find it difficult to weep before others on account of the shyness and the difficulty of presenting yourself before the public, so sometimes you may have to weep within yourself due to your contrition and the melting of your heart for the sins you have committed in the earlier days. The faults, the selfishness, the errors, the blunders and the wrongs that you have done to people, even to God Himself, may have to be repented for, wept for, and a vow has to be taken that this shall not be in the future. There is no greater medicine than repentance. All sins shall be destroyed by the melting of the mind in respect of all the errors of the past. Knowledge of God, love of God and surrender of oneself to God is a panacea for all the errors and even the wickedness through which you might have passed in your early life. Nothing in this world can stand before the light of the sun of God.

Let us have this faith. Faith works miracles. Faith is the greatest treasure in this world. It is faith in God that we need today—not learning, not much work, and not running here and there. It is a deeply felt conviction that God is within us and around us. This conviction will draw into ourselves the grace of the Almighty in all the abundance of the light of the Sun, which is radiating through the vast space. 

Never harm other people. Never even think harm to others. “Let that man die!” Do not think like this. “Cursed be that man!” Do not say such words. Do not utter harsh words. Do not call someone a dog, etc., even when you are in an angry mood. After all, anger is a passion. It is an unnatural condition of yours. In sober moods, such words will not occur from you. Regard others as you regard your own self. The whole of ethics and morality is centred in this little admonition that others are exactly as you are. What you think, others also can think; what you do, others also can do; and how you behave, others also can behave. Hence, any unwarranted attitudes in respect of people and things in general have to be overcome, with great difficulty, by severe self-discipline. 

Occasionally, you have to find time to sit before a great master because no book, no meditation that you practise will be of such advantage and benefit to you as a few minutes of seatedness before a radiating personality of a God-centred person. Again, these are difficult things in this world. But God is not dead, and righteousness is still alive. Dharma cannot perish, and goodness is still active, and the problems of life shall not persist always, just as one cannot always be in a state of fever or high temperature. These are temporary phases through which we pass. The world is not going to be destroyed. We are not heading towards doom, as astrologers may predict or astronomers sometimes tell us. Doom is not the end of the world. Perfection is the end of the world, as God is the centrality of the universe.

As the evolution of the universe is towards the realisation of God, we are moving from lesser perfection to larger perfection. The goal ahead of us that we can expect in the long run is largeness, abundance, plenty, perfection, and finally, deathlessness—and not the opposite of it. We are not descending into hell, but are ascending, which is the urge of the universe. The world is not going down and down; it is going up and up. Even in the apparent descent of the world process through history, etc., it is actually trying to ascend—even as when we are physically ill, we are not going down in our health; it is only a temporary descent for the sake of regaining health under the existing conditions of an onslaught of toxic matter, etc., in the physical body.

The turmoils of life, the difficulties and problems, are the temporary phases through which the world passes in confronting untoward atmospheres around it, finally aiming at the health of the universe. The world is positive and not negative. And we are bound to succeed. We are not going to be defeated, finally. Victory is not only the birthright of everyone, but of the whole world. Satyam evam jayate: What ultimately will succeed is the truth of things. Nanritam: Untruth will not succeed. So you should not be afraid that untruth may succeed one day. Though it sometimes appears that it does succeed, it will not. All undivine forces appear to succeed in the beginning. In the earlier stages they appear to be stronger than God, but this is only a drama that is played by the will of God Himself.

Therefore, undaunted and hearing nothing, with deep conviction in ourselves that truth shall succeed and nothing can be a greater truth than God’s existence, our duty in this world is a bringing together of our love of God with our relationship to mankind. This is the coming together of jnana and karma, as they say. The duty that we owe to people outside has to go hand in hand with the devotion that we have to evince to God Almighty.

Thus, religion and practical life are not opposites. They are two aspects, two faces of a single duty which is the yoga of life. What is the yoga of life? It is the movement of the spirit of man towards the Godhead of the universe. In this movement, which is not merely personal, social or individual but a larger universal movement, we take with us not only our relationship to little things like family but our larger relationship to the whole world, until we go to the Super-Relative Being where all relationships find their ultimate form, their true being, and fulfilment becomes the final career of things—a complete satisfaction of all sides of our nature.

Every desire is fulfilled in its true form in God. Nothing is abandoned, nothing is lost. You are not a loser at any time. You are always a gainer, so that in God you find the greatest gain wherein the whole world is involved. All your family members also will be seen there, all your wealth, all your position, all that you wanted here is found in its true form—not in the reflected, distorted form in which it is realised here.

These thoughts may, with benefit, be carried by you when you leave this hall, when you leave the Ashram. Train yourself, and do not forget to keep these noble ideas in your pocket as your treasures, as your vade mecum, as that which will bring you all that you need and protect you at every moment— here, as well as hereafter.