Spiritual Message for the Day – Knowledge and Material Power by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 7 February 2015 13.14 EST | New York Edition

Knowledge and Material Power

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 47 Your Questions Answered by

Sri Swami Krishnananda

If the mind is subsidiary to the body, whatever the mind does is not of any worth – it has no value. Education comes under mental activity; therefore, it will have no value. A person would like to be a wealthy businessman, rather than a highly educated man. The desire is not for education. You will not like to be an educated genius so much as you would like to be wealthy businessman wielding power. Here is the essence of empirical thinking.

Behaviorist psychology says that the mind is an exudation of the body. As fire is emanating from a match stick, to give an example, the mind is exuding from the body, so that the body is the source, the cause, and the mind is the effect. The effect cannot have so much importance as the cause. So, anything that satisfies the affirmation of the physical body, the ego included – what you call egoism, self-respect, are all names for the affirmation of the body – attracts. Physical affirmation includes acquiring wealth and also name and fame. All these are connected with the physical body only, and supersede any mental or intellectual activity under the wrong notion that the mind is an exudation of the body.

Very learned, highly capable, scientific thinkers of the West have come to the conclusion that the mind is subsidiary to the body. The body is the primary thing; the mind is number two.

This is the fundamental defect in human thinking, as such, from which I cannot say any person is exempt. Education is not attractive; and therefore, an educated person does not receive so much respect as a millionaire magnate. The magnate has greater force than an educated person. This again is a fundamental defect in thinking, which cannot be rectified unless a divine orientation takes place, a tremendous shirshasana of consciousness.

Can anybody believe that mere thinking in the mind is superior to physical existence? Nobody will believe that. Physical existence is more important than merely thinking. What is the good of thinking? This is the reason why meditation also has no effect in the case of many. That meditation which one does becomes useless, because you consider the mind as secondary, and the body as primary. So, in meditation, it is the body that is thinking, rather than anything else!

Think over this issue. It is the body that is vibrating and thinking, and then you are imagining that you are meditating on God, which is not true. The truth is otherwise; the mind is the cause; the body is the effect. The body has come from the mind; it is not true that the mind has come from the body. This kind of philosophy is wrong, but the body is so strong that it can defy the mind and say, "You keep quiet. I am strong; that is all."

All political activity, all warfare in the world, anything that you see in the world taking place is an activity of the body conditioning the mind. The body is affirming itself. The world does not want a mental genius so much as a physical potentate – call him a king or a minister. Who is greater, a minister, or a learned man? The President of the country is great, or the highly qualified genius is great? Who is great?

The answer will decide the fate of all educational institutions, and anything that you call learning. The earthly calls can defy even a divine aspiration. The world vies with God.

It is not easy to know God, however much you may chant and jump, because the body will say, "I am superior to God. What are you talking?" And even the idea of God is only an emanation from the body only.

Unless the idea becomes God, the meditation will not yield its result. So you must find some way where the idea and God do not stand apart. They are to be identical. Thought is being; consciousness is existence. If this is asserted, then meditation will succeed well. If consciousness is not existence, then existence will run away from you, and you will have only consciousness minus existence, which is another way of asserting non – existence.

Visitor: But can one think something which is not existing?

SWAMIJI: It appears as if it is existing. That is another trick of the mind affirming that it is existing, but it is the body that it is existing. It is the body that is saying, "I am existing," and making you feel that something else is existing; otherwise, materialism would not have succeeded so much in this world. Materialism is the ruling law of today, and do you think that everybody in the world is a fool? But, it looks like that. I asked just now whether a highly qualified, learned man is great, or a Commander-in-Chief is great. Who is great? That is, whether the mind is great or the body is great?

When a President comes, what do you do? And, when a learned man comes, what do you do? See your difference in behaviour. This is the trick of the body. The body says, "I am great," under any circumstance. Though you theoretically accept that the mind is there, but it is "me" that is operating, says the body. It is the body that is operating as the mind also. So even the learned man is afraid of the Commander-in-Chief. Then, what happened to that learning? Why is the mind afraid of the body? The whole essence is here. The fear of the Commander-in-Chief, or the President, is the fear the mind has for the body. The mind is afraid of the body; and such a mind is meditating on God. What happens?

Visitor: Swamiji, if a learned person is afraid of something, it means he is not still learned.

SWAMIJI: This is the mind that we have. It is that kind of mind only that we are endowed with. The real metaphysical mind is not present, and is not operating. Only the empirical, sensory mind is working. You require mighty grace of God in order to get over these problems. Or, you may say, the mighty grace of a spiritual master, a Guru; otherwise, the devil of this body will not allow you to think correctly.

 Visitor: But in meditation, don't the two work together? Doesn't meditation work through sensory perceptions, and watching the breath?

SWAMIJI: The mind is not supposed to work through the sense organs, and in terms of the physical body in meditation; but, unfortunately, the mind is slavish to physical existence, and is conditioned by the operations of the physical body, and is afraid of losing itself. Fear of death is the greatest fear. It is not the death of the mind that you are afraid of. You are afraid of the death of the body. Nobody likes to die. Actually, in death, the mind does not die; it continues. But the body will vanish. The fear of death is nothing but the fear of the loss of one's physical existence. That shows the wrong connection of the mind with the body. The mind is independent of the body, actually. It is not a slave of the body. But in ordinary thinking, we imagine that the mind is an emanation of the body, and so the love of body is much more intense than the love of the mind. Meditation or true knowledge is non-empirical identity of thought and being.

God bless you.

Excerpts from: Knowledge and Material Power - Chapter 47 Your Questions Answered by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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