A Master Message of the Ancient Rishis : 4. : Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, March 24, 2022. 06:00.

Thinking the Cosmic Totality- 4.

(Spoken on April 25, 1972 during night satsang on Swamiji's 50th birthday.)

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But we know very well that the law, the rule, guides all things. And as long as we are not in a position to understand this law, things in the world look like opponents, enemies standing against us and requiring us to conquer them. We often say these days that science is conquering nature. There is no such thing as conquering anyone. We have only to make friends with everyone. If we try to conquer others, they too will try to conquer us. What prevents them from doing the same thing? If we regard others as nature and want to conquer them, well, we are also nature for them. They shall also try to conquer us. So there shall be only war in the world rather than friendliness, amity and happiness.

The world outside us is not our enemy. People are not estranged from us in such a way as to make us afraid of them. Forces in the world are friendly, ultimately. They clamour to be friendly with us because the essential substance and principle of all things in the world is coextensive and coeternal with our own nature. If this is the truth and the fact of life, why does it look that we are weaklings, poverty-stricken, and in a very precarious position in the world? We have cut nature off from our personalities. Nature is not outside us. Even by common sense we can understand that we are ourselves in nature. How can nature be outside us? Nature is the vast creation, of which we are also an integral part. How can we say that anything is outside us? There is no need to refer to scriptures or use intuition; even by common sense can it not be understood that the world is one, that nature includes even our own selves?

But a peculiar twist of understanding in us has made the whole situation very difficult. We have regarded the world as external to us; therefore, there is a tit for tat played upon us by nature. As you do to me, I shall have to do to you. This is the law of everything in the world. As we approach it, it also approaches us in a similar manner. As it is humorously said, the world is something like our own reflection in a mirror. If we smile at the mirror, we see someone smiling at us there. If we frown, it also frowns. If we show our teeth, it also shows its teeth. If we call it names, well, we are also called names.

The world is a cosmic reflection of our own minds, and as long as we deliberately estrange ourselves from nature, keep nature apart from us, there shall be samsara. Samsara is nothing but this psychological estrangement of the outside world or the objects from our own selves, whom we regard as the percipients or the selves. We think that we are the self, we are the subjects, and everyone else is a thing or an object. We forget the fact that we are also objects from the point of view of other persons and other things. Instead of converting the whole world into a conglomeration of objects where everyone is an object to another, why not convert the world into a beautiful family of subjects where everyone is a subject to one's own self?

Just imagine how easy it is to create a heaven out of hell, and how easy also it is to create a hell out of heaven. This is perhaps also the difference between the way in which man thinks and God thinks. What is the difference? Just concentrate your mind awhile to note this simple distinction made by consciousness itself in its own attitudes. You are a seer of other persons and things. They are objects to you, whom you want to put to use for your own purposes, whom you offer to utilise as instruments for your satisfaction, regarding them as objects outside you. You are also an object to them, so they too wish to use you as a kind of instrument or a tool for their own purposes. So each one regards another as an object. This is man thinking. This is samsara. Everything else other than your own self is an object. You never say or think for a moment that you are an object, and likewise, every person in the world regards every other one as an object.

End.

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