Summary: Explains that desire has a place in the evolution of life and that finally the desire for enlightenment is transformed into a devotion. Further explains the necessity of making our realisations and sadhana dynamic, by bringing them into our actions also. Discusses the paradox of evil present in the Reality which is ‘all-Good’, and explains it by the varying degrees of light, so that even ‘ignorance’ and ‘darkness’ is light in the making.

(Chanting)

‘Om pûrṇamadah pûrṇamidaṃ pûrṇatpûrṇamudachyate

Pûrṇasya pûrṇamâdâya pûrṇamevâvaœishyate’

Om. That is Fullness, this is Fullness,

From Fullness Fullness proceeds;

Fullness taken of Fullness,

Fullness yet remains.

K.: A statement like this can actually only occur when you have reached…

Until such time it is a prayer, a chant for remembering. So they pray, so they chant. This is the experience, realisation and therefore the seeing of those who have had the revelation as to the secret. And they handed down their revelation as a legacy, as an inspiration, and as a means of sadhana. It was a spontaneous poetic outpouring of the Seers when the revelation came, which became a gift of legacy for all humanity in the form of the chant to remember, seek, and find.

K.: As we are singing, it does not make sense because it is not my experience. I can only say, “Please lead me to the insight, the experience.”

To the secret, to the revelation…

K.: This is a statement of somebody who has reached to that insight, whose experience it is. What we experience on this side of the river is the opposite because our whole life is dominated by desires – and desiring is a state where you are not whole and complete. So what I experience is: That is complete, this is not complete!

It is like saying, “I am the self,” even though one does not really understand what it means. “I am the blissful self, I am bliss, I am light.” It is a remembering and therefore an inspiration for seeking and finding. And there can be a moment of inspiration when this experience can happen because these moments of harmony can happen at any time, to anyone – because It is present, it is just that we are not connected to It, that is all. But life contains It within itself – this secret. That is why I said it is a subjective thing, and yet it is there in the objective outside also. It is here, and it is there, because what is here is there, and what is there is here – it is one Reality.

Normally one sees oneself as separate from everything – from the world, as an individual from other individuals. But as you start to open out and awaken to the Reality, you start to perceive the oneness of things – for it is one Reality. And even in its multiplicity and diversity, it is complete. It is a growing completeness; it is a growing perfection; it is a growing wholeness in terms of manifestation which deals with relativity. Again, it is a motionless, absolute completeness, beyond movement and manifestation and at the same time a moving and growing completeness in manifestation. It is static and dynamic at the same time.

One can chant for the sheer joy of it, and it can be chanted as a prayer, seeking to reach. And yet it is a statement, a fact – and can also be a moment of spontaneous joy.

Again, coming back to desire: is desire an imperfection? For the soul has to pass through desire – even the desire for enlightenment. The desire for enlightenment is also a desire – until it becomes a devotion. There is the region of desire, and there is the region of devotion. Even with devotion, there can be the desire to want, to have, to reach, to arrive. If you had no desire you would not seek. It just depends on what you desire: if you desire coffee, you will seek coffee; if you desire enlightenment, you will seek enlightenment. And as you seek so shall you find.

K.: There is a longing for this from time to time, and at the same time there is a mental desire, ‘I want to get enlightened… and if possible before others!’ This is the whole thing about enlightenment that you see everywhere. So it is another desire, whether you want coffee or enlightenment – I want.

That is right. There is competition. It is quite natural. It is common to all and therein also there is this oneness, you see? Everyone can feel like that. And yet it is a fact that there is this strong individual feeling, and so the separation, and so the competition.

K.: In that sense, we are all one.

Yes, even in separation and competition, because we can feel the same emotion and we are in the same states. It is common to all; it is a universal phenomenon. It is a common phenomenon. So of course when one starts to see this repeatedly, then it centres oneself in the understanding of oneself and the Reality. Then there is a certain maturity that comes, even at that level – while there are other levels where it is easier. There is a level where there is natural competitiveness, and this feeling of ‘me first’. It is our vitality; it is our motive force – our individuality. And that is how life has continued to survive and move on. And because of the competition so much in life has manifested. Without that you would never have a certain excellence also. It is again this one Reality through its many faces, through its competitions, bettering the other face – producing greater excellence, in things, in acts – whatever.

In fact when in socialist countries the competition was taken away, and they had all government, public sector companies producing things and there was no other company in competition – it was all owned, ruled and governed by the government – they continued producing the same thing for years and years, without ever improving upon it. Then inertia took over, and all creativity died out. But when there is competition there is also the motivation for betterment, even if it be for survival. Otherwise you pass away, or you remain and stagnate. So that motive force to compete has behind it also something positive. That is the completeness of life – to excel itself each time.

K.: In that sense desire is nothing wrong…

It is now unripe, leaving aside whether it is right or wrong. It is the way it is. But as one opens out into the Reality and is enlightened in one’s being – more awake to the Reality – even though it may seem the same act outside, yet the space within is different. The whole consciousness has gone through a change. There is an opening, there is a maturity, there is a way of going about it – there is a freedom. So it is just a matter of opening out to the Reality, of going from the egoistic ‘I’ to the true ‘I’. The ‘I’ is there. Even when Krishna tells Arjuna, “I am the Supreme, I am Purushottama” – there is the ‘I’. He uses the ‘I’ to refer to himself. It is only in the absolute transcendence that there is no ‘I’, there is no ‘thou’ – because there is no relative anymore.

But in creation, in manifestation, there will always be the relative, except in one instance it can be ignorant and confined to a very limited space, while in another it can be open, wide and enlightened. And that is where life is reaching out to, always looking, seeking for a completeness. There is a dynamism to life – can life be dynamic and yet whole? Like Krishna having sons, or children – could that be without a desire? And yet it would be different, where it would not be a slavery. This is what we are talking about – about a mastery. You would be the master of the situation, master of your energies, even of your desires. So, very simply, even one like Krishna participates completely, fully in life. And when He participates just like everybody else, all are only fulfilling the Reality. It is in the nature of the states of consciousness wherein lies the difference, that is all, and from there moving up the evolutionary spiral.

S.: To live this perfection in action, one has to reach perfection first. As far as I am concerned, I cannot live perfection in action because I am not perfect yet. Before I can live perfection, I have to reach it, as a state.

I find it strange that you speak like this, when actually you were taught in the past of a growing perfection rather than a state – although I say it is both: a process and a state. One without the other is incomplete. There are absolute states of perfection and a growing perfection in and of life. To have them both in an integrated existence – which is how it was always supposed to be – is what we are talking about. This is completeness. How else will you reach the completeness of perfection if you do not act?

S.: Through sadhana, through meditation.

Is action not sadhana? Can living through life-actions not be sadhana? Is sadhana only in sitting? Can meditation not be action? Can action not be a meditation? When you develop your meditation only through your ‘sitting’, the active dynamic side of your being remains undeveloped, it lags behind. Even your way of thinking develops a resistance to action and is quite content to remain passively meditative.

To reach perfection in action you must go through action. Your being has to develop through action. For you to be perfect in action you must live your actions. To reach perfection without action – if there be such a thing – is to reach a passive perfection, whereas a perfection which includes action is a dynamic and a complete one. And usually such passivity has tamas, inertia, as its basis. Are you sure it is not inertia that is making you think in this way?

Again, say, from this passive subjective state even if you were able to perceive in the Reality the secret of its dynamism, you would still have to actually act it out, if not before then after. And then, who knows, you may be too inert, too lazy, or too conditioned by your state of passivity to even see it and work it out. Do you want to take that chance? You may have gone too far in your passivity to even consider to actively work it out. There are enough of these examples amongst enlightened people throughout history.

You may see the Reality, you have realised, you know this is the Reality, you have seen it, you talk about it, you discourse about it – but the dynamic part of your being still requires to be integrated, and your actions would still take a time before they are drawn into and reflect that. And you may find that there is a certain lag between what you perceive and know, and your actions. But if sitting for meditation and living action go together, the integration is continuous, and there is no lag or hardly any, and is easily taken up. You have then the joy of meditation and the joy of action, integrated and complete. This is why we talk of the complete being. To be integrated in your approach is to reach to a completeness in the Reality. This is complete sadhana – meditation in totality – and therefore completeness of the Reality.

So you cannot just sit and meditate and deny action, for in fact it is through action that you learn about life and action, and integrate your meditation in your daily living so much quicker. Even meditation is an action! Meditation and action are two inseparable aspects of the one Being, of the one Reality, of the one Existence, like two peas in a pod. And when you act you actually bring your perception, your vision, your meditation and your realisation into living action. Meditation makes your actions conscious and awake, and actions give your meditation life and dynamism. They go together. Anyway there is no life without action. And the way you live becomes your personality and it is your personality that will reflect your meditation. A passive personality is to a passive meditation what an active personality is to a dynamic one – and so the reach and so the philosophy.

Broadly speaking, one can say, through sitting for meditation you get insight; through action for meditation you get foresight. Both together make for complete sight. Insight + Foresight = Wholesight, Complete sight. So also through action you can reach to it, and besides each time as you act and express, you learn from it for the evolving life of actions. That is why you have to become conscious in your actions, so even that becomes meditation. And for you to be conscious in your actions, you have to practice through your actions, consciously.

Action is also meditation. Sitting and reaching to meditation is also action. Because there are always two sides present, the static and the dynamic side. It just depends what side you are using at any given moment. Even sitting meditation can be dynamic: for example, when we do techniques to open out, you are in action to come to the state of silence, or the state of awakening. This way you work both ways: through action to meditation – through meditation to action. You make your actions conscious and you become aware. And of course that is when sitting and meditating helps also, because you can complement one with the other. And that is when the joining comes, so that you can be in action and yet have your meditation: you will be meditating and yet you do not deny the dynamism. Otherwise in the approach to reach perfection in such a hurry you may end up to nirvâṇa – but having denied the active dynamic side of the Reality and its realisations.

Even Krishna used to meditate. He used to meditate in the night; at daytime he used to be in life-action. So you can perceive the absolute completeness as the basis of all things and at the same time know that for life there is a growing completeness, an evolving completeness. There can be movement of completeness in completeness, from completeness to completeness. For example, you can be blissful and complete in yourself, joyful in yourself, and at the same time through interaction with another you could rejoice. So, joyful being alone, and joyful in the multitude. Then the play in life is not denied. The relative dynamism is also affirmed.

I have given this example before. I give it again. There is this fellow who sits by the wayside, the roadside, and watches the traffic moving up and down. He watches everything – the chaos, the disorder or the order, the conflicts, the left movement to the right, the right movement to the left. The whole traffic he watches. He is by the wayside, he is a witness. He is rejoicing in himself, complete in himself. He does not participate in that traffic but simply is a watching witness. Then there are those who are in the traffic, and they are completely involved in the traffic. The one who is going left is going left, does not have the perception of the movement the other way. And the one who is going right is going right: his is absorption, involvement. But this fellow by the wayside has the capacity to watch, and is free in his watching. It is like watching two people playing chess. He can see both sides, while the ones who are in competition, or in opposition, they only see their own side. But when they start to see the other side also they become better players.

Now this witness is just a passive rejoicer in himself, he does not participate. But what if he were to actively participate also: moving left, moving right, and having those relative experiences as an individual but with all that freedom of watching and being a self-witness, in self-bliss, containing the whole experience? It would be an experience which is more than just sitting by the wayside. It would have another side also, the dynamic side – of course different from those that are just involved in it only.

Again, if you were to be just a witness and you watched everything passively, seeking to transcend all the movements of life, all expressions, keeping beyond like the Buddha, then you would be attaining to nirvâṇa, reaching to the absolute state of nirvâṇa, and then perceiving things from and in the light of That. Then if there was the Buddha-like inclination and compassion towards life, teaching-action would follow but without taking the evolution of the embodied life-being¹ into consideration.

But say if you – evolving through life, participating in life while you work towards meditation, growing in meditation, and from beyond coming into action at various levels, and therefore also continuing the movement of evolution – integrated your inward experiences, realisations, revelations and the contact with the Absolute, then this would be the dynamic and complete approach to the Reality.

K.: You would be furthering your own evolution in life and at the same time participating in the evolution of life at the planetary level.

Yes, yes, yes, that is the intention of the Reality! That is why every individual in a way – I would go so far as to say even the criminal, is participating and contributing, because through that he or she is fulfilling, albeit unconsciously, the will of life-Reality in its evolutionary curve to a greater manifestation. What is the position of the devil in Reality? What is the devil? How did the devil come about? Now, what is perfection? And if perfection is – if from perfection, perfection alone manifests, then what is the position of the devil? Is it part of the perfection? Then why does one turn away from the devil? What is the idea of perfection? We are saying everything is perfect. But then how do we look upon something that is evil, or the devil? What constitutes evil, what makes for the devil? Is evil and therefore the devil a necessary albeit temporary inevitability of the creative phenomenon in its manifestation curve for a fuller, more complete growing perfection of light, to be ultimately eliminated in its evolutionary march? If That is perfect and if the perfect alone comes into manifestation, then how does that perfection in manifestation also contain within itself the imperfection? Or that which is good, all-Good… It can be a concept also as to what is good, because good can be relative. One culture may look upon something as good, another culture looks upon that same thing not necessarily as good – they may have different ideas as to what is good. There can be societal conventions that can differ from society to society, culture to culture, and therefore different perceptions of right and wrong, good and bad. But is the devil, or evil, a concept or a reality? And if it is a reality, and if That, which is the origin and source of all, is perfect, and if in manifestation It is also perfect, then we have a contradiction, because evil and therefore the devil is not accepted as perfection – therefore the opposition to them.

Let us see what the chant is saying. Pûrṇam of course implies fullness, wholeness, completeness. But if we use the word perfection, what do we understand by perfection? In perfection, for example, you would always assume that there is no suffering, there is no unhappiness, and there is only goodness. There are of course many concepts of what comprises goodness, but I am speaking of goodness in a sense that can be universally accepted – there is no imperfection. Now for example somebody who was born without a limb, would you call him or her physically perfect?

B.: Sometimes you go through a difficult situation, but when you perceive it a couple of years later, you can see it was meant for you to be in that position…

Yes, of course. That is how life grows and learns. A lot of times we may not appreciate a certain moment in our life, but later on we appreciate and understand that moment. What is lacking is the understanding in the moment itself. Now, understanding takes a while in coming; when it becomes instant, life will grow in leaps and bounds – minus the stumblings and grumblings and wastage of time and energy.

Again, for example somebody who is born lame – life sees this as an imperfection. And humanity through its sciences is seeking ways and making researches so that these things never happen. In that, life is not accepting this to be perfect! In one sense one could say, yes, maybe there is some meaning behind it, some hidden secret. But if you were to reach to specifics in life, life does not see that to be perfect. And it is therefore that life is seeking reasons as to why, and how to improve upon it.

Then again, there is darkness, there is ignorance – but how did it come about from perfection, from light? When there is supposed to be only light, when there is supposed to be only perfection then how and where did darkness, ignorance come from? And we say this is good, that is not good. Again it can be a concept, it can be a convention. Sometimes the same thing which is inapplicable and unacceptable at one moment, at another moment in time is applicable, appreciated and accepted. This is from the inherent relativity in time and creation, with its shifting circumstances and changing perceptions. Of course you create a certain norm in the society so that it works according to a certain structure and convention, and continues to function – ideally not for a complacent and stagnant existence but for a dynamic growing one. But is there such a thing as absolute evil? Does it have a basis, self-existence? And if not, it must have some origin somewhere, for the existence of evil in life is an accepted fact.

Again if the Truth is all-Knowing, then how did ignorance come about? We can say because of ignorance in life there can be greater manifestation – fine – but its origin? How can something like darkness come from light? How can ignorance come from knowledge? For example in a dark room you can bring in light, the darkness disappears; but in a room which has light, you cannot bring in darkness. Now if there is light, where did darkness come from? Where did ignorance come from? There is only light, it is supposed to be absolute Light, then why and how did darkness manifest? All is a manifestation from, of and within the one Reality. So it means within It there must be the possibility of darkness also. But if there is darkness in the Absolute that means it is not absolute Light – there is still duality.

B.: But duality does exist…

Of course, but now that means there will always be two, there will never be One – which is what is meant by Absolute. And there can never be absolute perfection; there can only be relative perfection. Then there can never be an absolute wholeness; there can only be a relative one.

B.: Absolute would mean the acceptance of the duality, would it not?

Yes, but duality is in the realm of the relative. And then Reality becomes two – a duality never to be resolved in the One – and yet it is known to be one. Duality exists within the wholeness of the Reality and anyway what about absolute transcendence then?

K.: Could it not be that at the top floor there is only light, and on lower floors there is both?

Yes, but then where did the lower come from? I mean, the higher has become the lower. Like you have the ocean, there is only the ocean, and then when the manifestation happens there are many waves, right? But the waves have come from that ocean, they are not outside it – they are in the ocean, within the ocean, okay? Now being within the ocean and coming from the ocean, all that exists in terms of waves and manifestation must exist in the ocean. So inferentially it follows that in the Absolute there must be the possibility of darkness. So what do they mean by That being fullness, That being perfect, and This being fullness and perfect when in life-reality there is the experience of being incomplete, feeling discontentment – all the ‘dis-s’ and the ‘un-s’ and the ‘anti-s’: the oppositions, the positive, the negative, the birth, the death…?

B.: If God exists, then everything comes from Him…

Even evil? The human mind will not, does not accept this concept wherein God and evil are associates – leave alone God manifesting it. But then where did evil come from if not from the same Reality? For there is only one Reality.

B.: If we see how the devil emerged, he was an angel and then he was sent down.

Sent down to earth! For what? Why? Even to send down, and to be what he is, it must be all within the Reality. So God is even in evil; at least His intention must have some working in the evil too. This is what seems to logically follow.

B.: Going back to the story in the Bible, when God created the Earth, He made it perfect, and then put Adam and Eve on it. And then the forbidden tree, the apple…

But there was a serpent! How was the world perfect, then? Even before Adam and Eve came in, there was this serpent. When God made the world it was perfect they say – and yet there was a serpent! It is just that that poor man and woman, they had to become the victims!

B.: God created the serpent to put man to a test.

That again only brings us back to what we have been saying: the serpent with its deceptions – evil – exists in God the Reality, so darkness therefore could be manifested. And why should the serpent have to play that role? And who is the serpent? Who is man, who is woman – and who is God? Because if the Reality is perfect it implies that whatever is present in it is perfect, in the sense that the design and the intention behind is perfection, while the serpent represents and acts out of deception – which is perceived as an imperfection, and that too by the will of God! All the more unacceptable to the human idea of God – a God that induces deception actively! It therefore can only imply that it is a growing perfection through the working out of all possibilities, even so of darkness and ignorance. Because automatically when there is manifestation the opposites would follow as a possibility, contradictions would follow as a possibility – because there are viewpoints that can oppose each other. When you stand and look in, you can also stand and look out – because time and space get created, then various positions follow, even so the angel and the devil. And the inherent power of relativity makes the opposites, the contradictions and the conflicts possible.

So light also becomes relative and therefore you can say there are degrees of manifestation; you can have half-light situations: degrees of light like a sixty-watt bulb, a hundred-watt bulb, a twenty-watt bulb – and you can have a no-watt bulb also, because nothing seems to be impossible for That, for the Reality. That is its magnanimity, its omnipotency. This seems to be the only answer then: all this was there and is possible – even the impossible! In the sense that even though That is all-Light, it still can manifest ignorance in relativity.

Now for example it is said you are all-Light, you are the blissful self but you do not know it! And you are always That – eternal. You are eternal but you never experience it. One has to reach to That and that takes time. And yet it always was and is – this is the paradox: it always is, and yet you have to work it out in time.

So there was in manifestation that moment of ignorance, of going into ignorance. Who is going into ignorance? That which is all-Light, all-Knowing! This is how it seems to be. But then who created all this ignorance? Did It itself self-create? Yes, it must be so: that Reality itself must make everything possible – even the not-knowing – in the relative manifestation. That is why it is termed omnipotent, because it can even manifest ignorance: darkness, limits and limitations even though it is limitless, manifest the finite even though it is infinite, bondage even though it is free. Otherwise it would still imply that it is not omnipotent, for these things are not possible for it. We conceive through our minds that it should be like this, infinite – but it has made the finite possible! Time is finite – even though it is a measure of the Infinite – in terms of looking at it in relative positions, in terms of fixed positions.

For example the day and night sequence. This phenomenon seems to be infinite; it keeps coming and going. But today will pass away – it is finished! The day and night phenomenon is infinite, but this particular day will not return. This day is over, this time is gone – but time itself continues, endless. It follows conclusively that each moment is finite and at the same time infinite.

Again, is ignorance an illusion? Or is it just light in the making? For example in the ocean when it is quiet, when the lake is quiet there are no waves. We say it is quiet because we do not see the waves. But the waves are there, we just do not see them. So then the implication of this seems to be beyond the concept of how one ordinarily conceives what perfection is and what it is not. If there was not not-knowing of oneself, if there was not this unawareness, if there was not being unenlightened, you would not be seeking this enlightenment, meditation.

K.: If there were no war there would be no peace.

There is a peace which is not opposite of war and conflict – it is self-existent – “The peace that passeth all understanding.” The peace that is opposite of war is not a permanent peace; it is just an absence of war for the time and therefore relative, and at any point it can be altered.

We have an idea as to what is perfection, what is right, what is wrong, what is the concept of goodness – to kill is not supposed to be such a perfect thing to do, is it? And yet there may be relative situations where killing even becomes commendable. That is why honour and privilege are conferred on people who stand and protect. They are raised to the heights; they are even raised to the altar. And yet killing at another instance is considered a sin and an evil.

B.: Even in the scriptures they always have this constant fight between the devas and the demons.

Yes, the struggle between light and darkness – that is what it implies. Even the struggle between two ideas, two people wanting to do the same work: there will be conflict. One wants to do it in a certain way, another wants to do it in another way – they both want to do the work, yet there is conflict.

B.: Does duality only exist in the mind?

In the mind as well as in the objective reality outside the mind. In the manifestation duality co-exists with non-duality, and the mind is part of manifestation. It is a Reality that has both subjective and objective existence. Even when the mind is quiet there is conflict out there. Conflict has an objective existence. And of course, conflict is not the only proof and measure of duality – the whole of manifestation and its multiplicity is. Some philosophies suggest that the world exists only as long as you see it. Of course, subjectively, when you switch off as you go to sleep, for you the physical world does not exist. But the world still exists – for and in itself. It has an objective reality.

K.: Right now the duality is perfect – in order to reach to non-duality, which is then seen as the absolute Perfect.

And then what happens to duality – does it still exist?

K.: On that level it would exist no more. I assume that in that state you would not have any conflict.

Yes, there, there is no more conflict because there is no separation in the Absolute. There is no ‘I’, there is no ‘you’. There is no other. There is what Is – with whom then will you have conflict? There is no world… there is no world of relativity. But say, in manifestation you look at a tree, life as a tree – it is perfect. Then you see life as an animal – it is perfect. Then you see life as a human – then you do not see perfection!

K.: A tree has no conflict, it just stays there, it does not complain. Only man has conflict because only man has mind, hence duality, schizophrenia – one part going A, one part going B.

Man’s mind allows him a greater field of action and participation in life and therefore a greater possibility of conflict and dissatisfaction. And you are saying this out of a reaction because you are not happy with your situation. This is how one then seeks an escape into Buddhistic nirvâṇa, or advaitic absolute, denying oneself the evolutionary process of a growing perfection in the manifestation and therefore what is to be for life and being in the world of the relative absolute.

B.: How would you explain the statement, ‘Jagat mithyâ’?

The world is unreal. The world is an illusion. They seek the transcendent Reality, an Absolute wherein is no change, no movement, no time, and from the heights of transcendence the world seems insignificant – even an illusion, or a passing appearance, and therefore unreal. When you look at something from a great height it seems very insignificant. When you are looking at the valley from a high mountain it seems ‘unreal’, an appearance, insignificant. But if you were to climb down and be in the valley and become part of that, then everything becomes very, very significant. So the seekers of absolute transcendence say the creation is an illusion, is unreal. The Buddhists say it is a suffering, and they use that motivation to turn away from it. Although the Buddha had not his own suffering, he saw and felt the suffering of others which made him seek the Reality in his own way.

Arya Vihar

9 May 1998