True Spiritual Living -3.3 -Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday 09, February  2026, 05:20..
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Yoga & Meditation
True Spiritual Living
Chapter 3: Being Utterly Spiritual in Our Aspirations: 3.
Post-16.

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The precaution needed is that we have to be utterly spiritual in our aspirations. We should not be partially spiritual. We should not have a half-hearted devotion to God. But it is impossible to have a whole-hearted devotion to God as long as man is man. We have our own weaknesses and prejudices, as I mentioned yesterday. We cannot help thinking in terms of other people, other things, the world, and values, etc. They are part of our own blood, veins and bones. How can we get out of these prejudices? Even the best philosophical mind cannot escape this difficulty of having to assert the personality one day or the other, and reaping the consequences thereof.

To continue the trend of the ideas I placed before you yesterday, we have a dual pull by which we have been caught, and we are always placed in the midst of a tension. We are between the horns of a dilemma. On the one side, there is the pull of social values, social etiquette, social ethics and social laws; without relating ourselves with these, life itself would become impossible in our physical personalities. On the other side, there is the pull of our desires and passions which we have repressed with great force. Unless a reconciliation is brought about by us, with effort, between these two forces, we would not be in a healthy state of mind. Before we sit for meditation, we have to be mentally healthy because even if we are consciously meditating in the meditation hall, we may not be meditating subconsciously.

The elephant takes a nice bath in the Ganga, and then it throws mud on its body. This is called an elephant's bath: take a nice bath, and afterwards throw mud on one's body. So after all our conscious meditations, the subconscious impulses will throw dust and mud on us. We will be highly distressed in spite of all our conscious meditations because the subconscious impulses have not been brought out. The secret desires are still lying like coiled-up snakes, ready to hiss and bite.

We look all right to ourselves, and also look all right in the eyes of people, on account of an adjustment that we are shrewdly making on both sides, according to the need of the circumstances. We know from which side the pressure is more. When we take a bath in the ocean and the waves are dashing on us, we sink down into the waves. Similarly, we try to sink down into the pressure and allow the pressure to pass over our heads, and then come up to the surface once again to do whatever we have been doing earlier. Sometimes the pressure from our desires is very intense, and sometimes the pressure from the outside world and society is intense; and merely because we are making an adjustment by dexterously turning ourselves either side, it does not mean that we have conquered these impulses. A shrewd adjustment does not mean sublimation. It is not mastery over these impulses.

We should not be slaves of either a social pressure from outside or an urge of passion from within. These two forces coming from outside as well as from within are one single force, as I tried to say yesterday. They are not two different things. Because the universe is inside us as well as outside us, the macrocosm and the microcosm both meet in our personalities; and if yoga is the practice of balance, equanimity, it follows that the striking of a balance between the outer needs and the inner pressures also is called for.

We go into our rooms or hide ourselves in caves due to fear from society. Why do we fear society so much? Sometimes when the inner forces, urges, passions, desires, are very violent—when they become uncontrollable—we may plunge into the midst of society, not with an intention of conquering these urges, but to forget them. There are people who, when they get very angry, go for a long walk. Well, it is one of the ways of forgetting the trouble that is in our head. But that is not a solution, because we have not found out why we have got angry. Or somebody has insulted us in public, and we cannot bear it. We get fed up, take a ticket to Haridwar and say, “I'll come after three days.” What is the use? The anger is boiling from inside. We have only forgotten the devil that is before us, the tiger that is yawning to eat us up.

We cannot face the questions and problems of life reasonably and adequately. This is a truth that we have to accept. It is partly because we have not sufficient understanding in our own selves, maybe due to the egoism of our personalities, the rajasic and tamasic prarabdha karmas that are obstructing us; and we are not humble enough to sit before a Guru. Who is our Guru? Nobody.

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