Summary: Answers a question on the smallness that arises on possessing things. Explains that in life one requires possessions and that interrelations are inevitable. Gives the example of Sri Ramakrishna and Krishna and points out how enlightened souls are internally free while yet experiencing feelings. Concludes with the necessity for realising this vastness.

F. reading sentence of the day: ‘When you no longer possess anything you can become as vast as the universe.’ – The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Why did you choose that?

F.: My understanding is related to what I was living in trying to leave things behind in the past two years to organise my life to be here. I had this strong feeling of all the attachments, the ‘pain’ of leaving certain things behind, but at the same time I could feel in certain moments that when we are attached to things, whether they are your job, objects, relationships, somehow the ‘possession’ feeling keeps everything small. And my understanding is only from a few moments in which I see that if I could get free of that there would be a different sense of vastness and oneness.

But can you do without possessions? To cover your body you need a piece of cloth; to fulfil your hunger, quench your thirst, you need water, you need food; to protect yourself from the weather you need a home, a house or some shelter. You are a living being so you will inevitably interact with things and people, and you will inevitably have feelings and emotions towards those things and people. So what does this mean?

If you do not know somebody, if you have never met somebody, you are free of that somebody, you do not know that person so you will have no feelings towards him. But once you meet somebody, when you come to know somebody, automatically there is a response in you because in your consciousness you have emotions, you have feelings. So whether it is one of like or dislike, attraction, distraction, affection, love, hate, fear, anxiety, whatever it may be it will come up, because these emotions are part of your consciousness and they are your natural response to the environment, to situations, to people. This is the reality. Can you completely do without that, can you completely become dead to your interrelationships, your feelings and your interaction? Can it ever be? Does the sentence mean that? Definitely, possessions and attachments keep you occupied, keep you obsessed, so you get very narrowed down. They do not allow you to expand. That is true. But can you be in life without having interactions, without having any emotion or feeling, or response or reaction to things outside you? So should one negate and deny the world of life altogether? How would it be to live amongst all these varying situations and play of life with its emotions and feelings, interactions and relationships and yet be vast and free, or should one negate and deny the world of life altogether? It is true that when you are attached to things, attached to people, they occupy your consciousness, they occupy your life, they occupy your feelings. If anything happens to those things which you consider your possession or property, or those people you have feelings for, it immediately affects you, narrowing your consciousness down to a point. So how would it be? How would you dispossess yourself from things and people? Is there an inner freedom that allows you your possessions without being possessed? That you have relations and yet be free in them? Parents are attached to the children; children are attached to the parents. How can you be free of the children or how can you be free of the parents? The attachment is there – if anything happens to either, there is pain or there is joy. So it has been said it is better to be alone: have no attachments, have no possessions and have no relations. You definitely reduce certain complications, but inevitably, even if you are alone, you will have interactions and interrelations to some extent, for it can never be completely eliminated as you may get attached to a place and your aloneness also. It becomes inevitable because you are a feeling person; you are a person with emotions. So inevitably you have likes, dislikes, affections or whatever it may be. Therefore any change in the situation, any change in the person will affect you. The important thing is how you deal with being affected: most people get overwhelmed with both good and bad situations, react one way or another and tend to lose clarity, objectivity and reality.

There is the example of Ramakrishna when his nephew passed away. His relatives came to see and inform him of his death. Ramakrishna loved this boy very much. He had known him as a child, as a young boy, who then had become a young man and suddenly he passed away. When the relatives arrived Ramakrishna was in the transcendent vast universal space and for him his nephew was a soul: a soul never dies, it just moves, transmigrates from one body to another. He has this wisdom, he sees this, he knows this as his realisation. He is as vast as the universe. He sees death as the phenomenon of the soul departing from the body. The relatives are crying, they are weeping – they are like any other ordinary human for whom their attachments and possessions are completely overwhelming. They are not in that space or realisation like Ramakrishna who sees differently. Ramakrishna also loved him, he was his nephew, he had played with him, seen him being born, he was the son of his sister and now as a young man he had suddenly passed away. His relatives have come from the village to share with him their grief. They are shattered, they are overwhelmed, while Ramakrishna is sitting there in this beautiful state, cosmic state, vast, universal state, and sees this phenomenon as a vision: the passing out of the soul from the body. Death is inevitable, but most people do not see it in the way Ramakrishna does. In their possessions and in their relationships they see a permanence, but it is not so and therefore are overwhelmed when something goes wrong. You have no control over death; no one has control over death. Even enlightened people like the Buddha pass away. Great Masters, enlightened Masters, they all pass away: Jesus got crucified and he left his body on the cross. The timing and situation may be different for different people but death is an inevitable phenomenon. Some situations you can do something about, certain situations you can do nothing about. For example, you can do nothing about death – death comes to all, whether it is a poor man or a king, whether it is a man or a woman, a child or an old person, whether he or she is enlightened or ignorant. But the enlightened person deals with it differently because he sees and knows the Truth; he knows that things are passing, things are impermanent, things are temporary, while the soul is permanent. Ordinarily this is not seen, not lived, so this is where all the problems arise. It does not mean that the person with a vast consciousness does not feel emotions and experience pain and sorrow – in fact he is much more sensitive to feelings, pain and emotions, especially to the pain of others, because he is so much more conscious. But he is also internally free and wise, enlightened, illumined about the reality of things, therefore the consciousness is not bound and restricted to a small existence. Such a one can interact, live, feel and at the same time is free to have that expanded consciousness and vastness also. Ordinarily that is not the case, so any situation seems absolute; one lives only the narrow and constricted state of consciousness.

Ramakrishna is in a state where he sees the soul of Akshay, his nephew, leaving the body, but the relatives cannot see it and therefore they are crying, they are overwhelmed, they are in a state of shock. “We have lived twice his age, he was so young and he is gone. He was such a young man, he should not have passed away, this is so unfair.” So they lament; but existence is existence, everybody has his own journey. What will be will be. Ramakrishna knows this, he sees it. He has become one with the Reality, the Truth of the Reality. He knows the permanent and he knows the impermanent. He knows the noumenon and he knows the phenomenon. He looks benevolently at the sorrowing people. They do not understand His state because he is not showing any emotion or feeling; he is showing no pain while the others are showing emotional pain. Afterwards they return to their village but are totally overwhelmed and for days they would be sorrowing. Ramakrishna too when descending to the life-consciousness, coming down to being a person in life so to speak, coming down to his individuality and the emotional level then felt the pain and sorrow but in freedom. He can experience the emotions and yet be a free self-observer and watch. He is not bound to the emotions as one is ordinarily; the emotions exist in him and he feels them too at the emotional level but he need not exist in them, live in them. So you can live life internally free while yet having possessions and relations. You can live out of freedom rather than out of bondage.

Krishna lives life totally, completely, but he is internally free. He feels emotions, he feels love, he goes to war, to battle, he plays politics, lives everything – life to the full, and then when the time comes to depart, he just goes, taking and accepting even death in his stride. He knows it is time to go. He goes into the forest, lies down and starts moving his toe. A hunter arrives in search of prey, sees the movement of the toe, thinks it to be a deer and shoots his arrow. Krishna has arranged his own death. He knows his time to go has come. He tells Arjuna, “My life on this planet is over now, so I move on.” He organises himself, arranges things for his departure and takes death in his stride. He has that kind of freedom. He lives life completely, fully, and yet he is a Master of death. He also agrees to depart when the time has come. His consciousness is vast; at the same time he is also a person, an individual interrelating, interacting.

Ordinarily possessions overwhelm you and one is possessed – the small being, the small person gets totally overwhelmed with the situation and suffering becomes total. The suffering in terms of feeling and pain even the enlightened one will feel, but He is not overwhelmed by it. He can experience it in himself without losing his soul to it. That is the difference. This vastness is always available to him, while to the others it is not available at all. So, internally that freedom must be found and secured, then you can be as vast as the universe and at the same time be free in life, and live it fully with all its interactions and relationships.

That is where you have to reach. This is the truth about you.

You are as vast as the universe.

You are as vast as the universe and at the same time you are as small as a pebble.

You are all. This you discover.

You are everything.

You are the smallest of the small and you are the largest of the large.

That is the truth about your existence and through your meditation, through your sadhana, you will discover it.

Arya Vihar

14 Aug 2010