Spiritual Message for the Day – The Interrelatedness of All Things by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 5 May 2015 20.28 EST | New York Edition

The Interrelatedness of All Things

Divine Life Society Publication: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

There are three stages by which the mind attains communion with its object, which is the aim of meditation. The first stage is that it thinks deeply over the object, pays entire attention to it, and does not want to think anything else. So much is the longing for communion that the mind cannot think anything else at that time. The heart fixes itself in its thought, in its will, and in its emotion, upon the object. This is a very important factor to remember. It is not merely the thought that fixes itself – it is also the will, and also the emotion. This is important because we are generally under the impression that concentration is the settling of the thought on the form of the object. But, usually, the emotions are not there and, therefore, the will is also not there. There is no need to repeat, again and again, that the subject which meditates is not the mind in its shallow conscious aspect. It is the very vitality and essence of the whole of the personality of the subject. It is the very breath of the personality that is drawn towards the object – the very prana is moving towards it. We are entirely, wholly, totally, moving towards the object.

What it is to be totally drawn towards an object is something difficult to imagine under normal conditions, because we are never totally drawn towards anything. Intense fright, intense joy and deep sleep – these are the stages or states of mind that may manage to draw the attention of the whole personality.

The achievement becomes quickened if the ardour is intensified. The word used is ‘samvega’. One’s heart should throb at the very thought of the object. We are sunk in it totally, saturated and absorbed, and nothing else remains.

We become superhuman the moment we are able to draw the attention of the total personality in respect of anything. We must have heard of the saying that Lord Krishna has sixteen kalas – which means to say, sixteen powers. These sixteen powers are nothing but the sixteen energies that are present in the individual. The implementation of a thought, or the materialisation of an idea, is nothing but the extent of the union which one feels with the object concerned; that is called the materialisation of the thought. The moment we think something, it happens – and it must happen if the mind is able to unite itself with the object wholly. But if always there is the feeling that the object is totally outside the mind, and the mind has very little interest in the object, it has also, correspondingly, very little control over the object. So, where can there be implementation? Where can there be materialisation?

The communion that we are seeking – which is samadhi, the aim of yoga – is the total merger of the subject with its ideal of meditation. There it has total control over the object, whatever that object be. For this purpose it is that the mind is directed towards the object.

‘Taila dharavatu’ is the term used. Taila dhara is the flow of the oil from one vessel to another. A continuous stream is there, and such should be the stream of the flow of thought of the subject towards the object. That is called dhyana, or meditation. There is no interruption of thought; there is no breaking of the flow of the mind. It is a continuous movement without any kind of intervention of any other thought. In the dhyana, or the meditation process, there is not even the attempt at the elimination of extraneous thought, because there is no extraneous thought – there is only one thought. There is only that which we want, and our heart has gone for it; and it has drawn, together with it, all the accessories – the thought, the will, the memory, everything.

The total absorption of the meditating consciousness on the form of the object, with such intensity as to forget its own existence, as it were, and to identify itself with the object with such force that it looks as if the object itself – not the subject – is meditating;  that is called samadhi. The fixing of the attention of the mind on a particular spot or objective is concentration. At the very point of concentration when the flow of the mind becomes continuous, without any kind of interruption – that is called meditation, or dhyana.

That meditation itself becomes samadhi. How? When it becomes arthamatranirbhasam – that is, the object only shines; the subject has vanished out of sight. We do not exist there any more. We have evaporated like burnt-up camphor, as it were, and our residuum is absent. There is nothing to call our own – our existence itself has lifted itself up to the level of the object. The svarupa is the self-consciousness of the subject, the individuality or the self-sense. That has become absent. There is a vanishing of personality; that is called svarupasunyata – that is called samadhi. The term ‘samadhi’ in Sanskrit means the balancing of consciousness. Sama adhana, the equilibrated condition of consciousness, where it establishes a total harmony in content and intensity between itself and its object, is called samadhi.

In this deep absorption of consciousness, the contact of the subject with the object is not sensory. It is not at all contact in the ordinary sense. It is not one thing coming in contact with another thing. It is the commingling of one with the other – water mixing with water, milk with milk, so that one cannot know which is what; both have become one mass. This sort of experience, where there is an utter equilibration of consciousness with its object so that one does not know which is consciousness and which is the object, where they stand on equal footing in every respect – that condition is called samadhi. It is not merely the flowing of consciousness towards the object. The flowing stops.

We have lived in a world of externality to such an extent that it is difficult to teach the mind the lesson of there being such a thing as internality of perception. How long it will take for us to establish a proper communion with the object, as required in this technique of meditation, will be known only by ourselves, each for oneself, and another cannot make a judgement on this. It depends upon the absence of extraneous interest in the mind. There is no need for us to think of other things, because this particular object maintains a necessary connection with everything else, so all the other things in which we are interested also will be included. This is not to be forgotten. When this focusing of the attention of the mind is done on a particular object, we are converging the forces of the universe on that object. So, all our business also will be there, and we need not be frightened. As a matter of fact, our business will improve, our relationships with the world will become friendlier, and success will be on hand, at the tip of our fingers, in any walk of life. There need not be any fear about this matter, provided we are able to comprehend the principle that the object of our meditation is the focusing point of the whole universe.

Excerpts from: The Interrelatedness of All Things - The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

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