Spiritual Message for the Day – The Goal is not Far from Us by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 10 March 2015 19.30 EST | New York Edition

The Goal is Not Far from Us

Divine Life Society Publication: The Background of the Foundation of Spiritual Life by Sri Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on Oct 28, 1972)

A life of spiritual discipline is one of constant vigilance over the small details, not only of one’s thoughts and states of consciousness but also of one’s daily conduct and reaction. Spiritual seekers are likely to be carried away by grand ideals in their spiritual quest while forgetting, in a state of untutored ignorance, that the details, the small units of practice, are going to make up the large achievement of the spiritual goal.

Among the majority of cases a failure to achieve success in spiritual life can be attributed to a sheer overenthusiasm in respect of the large and the distant, while being completely oblivious of what is under one’s own nose because the object of our quest in the spiritual field is something unique and not capable of being equated with the objects which we are generally accustomed to see with our eyes or perceive with our senses. It is next to impossible for an uninitiated mind to comprehend the extent and magnitude of the details of spiritual practice.

The goal, which is the realisation of the spirit, is intimately related to the processes that are involved in the practice. As it is usually said, the end that we are going to achieve is nothing but the culmination of the evolution of the means that we are adopting in the practice. The fruit that we enjoy from a tree is the finality of a long process of evolution of what we call the tree, which has arisen from the seed, arisen from an incipient stage of invisibility and comparative unimportance. We know how large, strong and spacious the tree is and how delicious is the fruit that it yields, but all this has come from a relatively insignificant factor that we call a small seed, which we are likely to cast away without giving it much value or meaning. But unfortunately, the small seed has been the mother which has been nurturing this spacious tree and embodying within its bosom the luscious fruit which delights the senses of man. It is, therefore, no use merely gazing at the possibility of having a large tree and delicious fruit without paying any attention to the factor of the seed involved in it because without the seed there is no tree, and without the tree there is no fruit, notwithstanding the fact that the seed seems insignificant. The timber of the tree is so costly and the small seed has no such value, yet the tree and timber have come from this seed. But for the seed, there would have been no tree.

In a similar manner, we may say that the vast achievement of spiritual realisation, the yoga siddhi, perfection in the practice of yoga, which is so attractive and so very charming, so enrapturing even to think, is constituted of very fine, subtle factors which come before us every day but which we totally ignore as not connected with the goal of our realisation. But this is a mistake. The goal is not far from us. It is not a distant ideal spatially disconnected from us so that we can cut off the means from the end. We cannot sever the relationship between the end and the means, and in this particular context, this relationship is more intimate than the connection that we usually see between temporal means and temporal ends.

We work hard and earn a good salary. Earning a good salary is the end, and the working hard for it is the means. Now, there is some sort of connection between working hard and acquiring a good salary, but this connection is not vital, not a living relation; it is a made-up connection in a social pattern of understanding and arrangement of things. The connection between work and the fruit of the work in the form of salary or wages is not an organic tie between the two but an accepted connection due to a social rule that we have made to prevail under certain principles adopted in common. But the relation between the spiritual means and the spiritual goal is not merely a contrived relation in a social sense or a mechanical relationship, but a living, growing, vital process of inseparable links in a chain of living forces. The connection between the body of a child and the body of the same child grown into an adult is organic. It is not a mechanical relationship. The same thing has come up into this present condition of growth, expanded in various aspects but containing within this expanded form the vitality of the original condition which preceded this stage years back.

The practice of spirituality is constituted of organic units all related to one another in an inseparable bond of spirituality. The relationship of the units also is spiritual, and the more we advance in the path of the spirit, the more we will be able to realise that things are essentially spiritual and not material, physical or externally related. The lower we are in the strata of evolution, the more physical and more external do things appear to us, and the more distant is the relation between the means and the end. We try to cheat people, are dishonest, and are one thing inside and another thing outside because we are under the notion that the end and the means are not connected with each other, and so if we are dishonest, a bad result may not follow from it. This is our belief. We think we can deceive without being deceived.

This notion is the cause of malpractices in personal life as well as in social life, but this is a grave error of thought. There is a connection between the means and the end, so we cannot be one thing inside and another thing outside. This will not work because what we are inside is the means, and what we are outside cannot be completely unconnected with it, though we try to be different. The rule of nature, the law of the cosmos is so constituted that the seed must grow into the structure that is already inherent in it. It cannot grow into something else. We cannot expect an elephant to come out of a mango seed. It is impossible. It is only a tendril of a mango plant that will come out of it. But ignorant that man is, in spite of his so-called qualifications, he is bankrupt of understanding of the natural laws that prevail in the world and work throughout the layers of the cosmos.

What paves the way to the particular conduct of a person is also going to be the factor contributing to the manifestation of its inherent nature. More cautious than ordinary people in the world should a spiritual seeker be because the law operates more strictly in the case of a spiritual seeker than in the case of ordinary persons. The reactions set up by natural forces in respect of spiritual seekers are more immediate and more vehement than in the case of people who are thick-skinned, or buffalo-skinned, as we call them. The reason is the subtlety of thought and the greater capacity to receive the reaction from forces of nature. It does not mean that the forces of nature do not react in the cases of other persons, but the sensitivity of normal people, ordinary people, is much less than the sensitivity of spiritual seekers, and so they feel the rebuff much more quickly than others.

Hence, any palpable achievement in the field of spiritual work and spiritual sadhana can be expected only if we take care of the penny, as they say; we do not have to see that the pounds also are taken care of, because the pounds are made up of pennies.

Thus, the large fruit of God-realisation, yoga siddhi, atma sakshatkara, spiritual perfection, is nothing but the evolution into perfection of the methodology that we are adopting in our day-to-day life.

Excerpts from: The Goal is not Far from US - The Background of the Foundation of Spiritual Life by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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