Early Morning Talk on 7 November 2003
By H. H. Sri Swami Chidanandaji Maharaj
At The Samadhi Shrine of Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj

OM OM OM

Worshipful homage to that Great, All-Transcending Infinite, Eternal, Absolute and Non-Dual Supra-Cosmic Divine Reality. May the All-Pervading and Indwelling Cosmic Being, The Spirit Supreme, ishavasyamridagum sarvam yat kinchit jagat yam jagat – All this is pervaded by That Supreme Divine Principle, isha tatva. Worshipful homage unto Thee. Loving adorations and prostrations to worshipful and beloved Holy Master Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj who imparted the knowledge of that Supreme Being.

The knowledge of the Supreme Being is the greater knowledge or the higher knowledge because; it is a knowledge that has within it the power and capability of raising you from the circle of births and death and rebirths and death and again, rebirths and death. This samsara chakra of birth and death will never stop and as long as you take rebirth, you will have to undergo the trials and troubles. It is unavoidable in this secular outer life of ours.

Krishna briefly mentions them when he defines to Arjuna, what dispassion means, what vairagya means. Vairagya means, “Clearly perceiving the defects of this temporary earth cycle.” Defects such as birth, death, old age, disease and sorrow. It is sorrow to desire much and not obtain what you desire. It is sorrow to desire much, to obtain them and to loose them. Someone else takes them away. Thieves plunder your house and rob you of them, or suddenly an accidental fire burns your building to ashes with all the things that you have obtained with so much effort. Deprivation of things dear to us, being forcibly put into the company of being who you do not want to be with, to be deprived of the company of those who you want to be with, there are so many ways of sorrows. Sorrows have no end and they take away the happiness of the person and inflict the person with sorrow.

They have said that the very object that gives you happiness; is the cause and source of your greatest sorrow. Ponder this point and you will immediately find out. The knowledge which the Master imparted to us during his lifetime and through his books, even now he imparts it to us, they call it higher knowledge because it is spiritual knowledge. It tells you how to attain liberation and it is capable of liberating if you live in accordance with the dictates of that knowledge. So, that which can liberate you forever, once and for all, from all sorrow, pain, suffering, tribulations, once and for all, never to return and in its place, in the place of sorrow, bestow upon you supreme bliss, inexhaustible bliss – sukhamatyantitam – bliss which the mind and senses cannot grasp, paramanandam – greatest of all bliss. Ananda is a state of absolute bliss which has no comparison; it has no opposites whereas pleasure and happiness have opposites. Sukha and dukha are one among the pair of dvandvas. Ananda is not one among the pair of dvandvas – it is absolute perfect, nothing to compare it to, nothing to contradict it. That knowledge which gives this great happiness is called the greater knowledge, the Upanishads call it; para vidya. The knowledge of everything else here with the advancement of science, advancement of literacy, the printing of books, the advancement of opportunities, seminars, lectures, public lectures. Nowadays, all these lectures are available in audio cassettes, video cassettes, CD – Compact Disc. So, there is such an explosion of knowledge in this modern world.

There is nothing that you cannot know. You have access to the knowledge of everything on earth; on planet earth and everything even beyond. They have come to know what is on the moon by people going, actually landing on the moon, walking on the moon, collecting everything and bringing back little artifacts of pebbles and stones and sampling of sand. Now, they are saying to go near the red planet – Mars and they have already established space stations, where they can put an observer. These space stations are orbiting the earth. How many grains of sand does the Sahara Desert, the Gobi Desert have? This also they will calculate and find out one day. Right or wrong, you have to go and count them. How many square feet, cubic feet the Pacific Ocean contains. I used to have wooden cubes here with OMs and things. A cube is a linear object, three dimensional, same length, same breadth and same height. Equal length, breadth and height. And, we can imagine a greater cube, a ten feet cube, ten feet high, ten feet wide and ten feet broad. How many cubic centermetres of water are there in the Pacific Ocean? Why, how many ten feet cubes of water – leave alone that, let us imagine a huge cube, one km long, one km wide, one km deep or how many cubic miles, one cubic measure being one mile long, one mile wide and one mile deep does the Pacific Ocean have? You can know everything, one day they will find out; there is nothing that they will not find out. They have got their own way of calculating. They call this higher mathematics. How many cubic miles of solid earth this planet has got? Because if you go very much deeper, there is only boiling metal, boiling rock, material and all that because there is intense heat in the centre of this earth, intense heat. The outer surface has cooled; it was a fiery planet once upon a time they say. There was no life and over millions and billions of years, planet earth has cooled.

In this way, in outer space, there are great big stars besides which, our planet earth will look like a small pea – a mattur – before a huge football. The British football and Indian football. Two of them, keep a British or Indian football, a fully inflated football and a little pea, before that great planet, that great star, you will be like a pea. Betelgeuse - Everything he knows and he may have answers to all the questions due to scientific knowledge; physics, chemistry, mathematics, zoology, space science and then world remains prana vijna – animal science, living being science, zoology – zoology means earth science. Everything remains in the palm of his hand, all questions he may have.

But, does he have an answer to the question – to the nearest of all objects to the further of all objects – the sun, the stars, black hole – but do you have an answer to the question regarding what is the nearest of all objects? Who can be nearer to you than your self? All other objects you have to stretch your hand to touch or to take. Here you don’t have to stretch. The nearest of all objects to an individual is that individual himself or herself or itself! And the question is, ‘Who am I?’ Ko ham? Have you got an answer to ko ham? The great living Vedantin who was always radiantly immersed in the awareness of his true self; everlasting, eternal, birthless, deathless, permanent, imperishable, immortal self - Gurudev used to sing, “Enquire who am I, know thy self and be free – you are not this body, not this mind, immortal self you are!” One who was established in the perennial experience - he summed up this question and answer in three brief Sanskrit terms. First of all, he told us what we are not; this ‘I’ you are imagining you are this ‘I’ – this earth identity ‘I’, Chidananda ‘I’, Atmaswarup ‘I’, Nirliptananda ‘I’, So-and-so ‘I’, Shivachidananda ‘I’, this ‘I’ is not your real ‘I’, it was not there before your father and mother were married. And, it is not going to be there when suddenly the breath departs. Where is the ‘I’ of Dr. Kutty now? Where is the ‘I’ of Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj at this moment? Where is the ‘I’ of Swami Brahmanandaji Maharaj at this moment? Where is the ‘I’ of Holy Master at this moment? Were is the ‘I’ of Aurobindo Gosh at this moment? Where is the ‘I’ of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa or Swami Vivekananda at this moment? Where is the ‘I’ of Sri Sri Anandamayi Maa at this moment? Where is the ‘I’ of King George V? Where is the ‘I’ of Dr. Sarvapali Radhakrishnan – greatest philosopher? Where is the ‘I’? The ‘I’ is not there. It is an imaginary thought.

Therefore, this ‘I’ will vanish. To, that great man, I am not this one. So, he sets apart who he is not and then he said who he is. First of all he puts the question, ko ham? Then he says, na ham, then he says, so ham. I am no other than that One Supreme Transcendental, Supra Cosmic, Non-Dual Being – ekameva advitiyam brahma, aham brahmasmi - ko ham, na ham, so ham. And, one of the greatest of world teachers, not the formal world teachers who are occupying the peethams, four, peethams, of which Jagatguru Adi Shankaracharaya (Jagatguru means world teacher) established more than 1200 years back in the 7th century. He established one Jagatguru Peeth 18 miles before we reach Badrinath, in Jyotishmath – Jyotish Peeth, he established in the far south near Mysore, Karnatak in a place called Sringeri Peeth – that is the southern Peeth, he established in the east called Govardhan Peeth in the great city of Puri where there is the Jagganath Temple and he established another Peeth in the west near Dwarika called the Sharada Peeth. So, north – Jyotish Peeth, south – Sringeri, west – Sharada Peeth and east – Govardhan Peeth.

All then Pontiffs who are there are called Jagatguru. But, far greater than all of them, raising them to nothing is the Great World Guru who was the visible incarnation of the Creator Brahma, of the Preserver Vishnu and the Dissolver Lord Shiva, all these three, three in one – he was called Jagatguru Dattatreya. A combination of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. He had three faces, six hands and two legs. He was born to an extraordinary lady called Anusuya. She was absolutely chaste, pure wife of Sage Atri. They lived in a forest hermitage. Her fame for her chastity, married fidelity and chastity was the highest in the world ever known; Lakshmi, Parvati and Saraswati were a little jealous. They went on badgering their husbands; Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh – go and spoil her chastity. Unable to bear the pushing of their wives, they come there taking the form of mendicants and appeared before her for begging alms. She went inside and brought some rice and daal and wheat and all. They said, no, no, we don’t want dried food, we are hungry, and we want to eat cooked food. She said, yes, yes – it will be ready in no time. You come and refresh yourself, rest, I will make a fresh hot meal and serve you and she did that. They came in, they sat, and she put plates before them. When she came with a hot meal, they put a condition, this was not gentlemanly – if she fulfilled the condition, she would loose her chastity. She immediately with her divine sight, found out who they were and instantly knew everything. If that is so, I must rise up to the occasion but, that is another story. They loose the contest, the three Gods loose the contest and they eat the humble pie and said that they were defeated. Ask whatever you want? Remain with me always in your real form, as Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar and they granted that boon; that is how Dattatreya came into being. Why he is called Atreya – he became the son of Atri Maha Rishi Muni and Anusuya. Atri’s son is Atreya. Now, he has answered this question. The nearest of all question – he has answered. Ko ham, who am I? By nature, I am the all pervading Atman. This is the essence of all Vedanta. The essence of all jnana and vijnana. Vijnana is the highest jnana. Jnana can be para vidya, apara vidya also. Where there is form, embodiment, a personified form of shuddha vijnana – true higher knowledge. So, being this, why are you weeping and wailing? What a foolish person you are. My child, you have inherited bondage or liberation? Because, I want liberation, it means it keeps the focus of the existence of the non-liberated state. There is never a non-liberated state. You are ever liberated. So why unnecessarily cause something that does not exist? Why are you unnecessarily weeping and wailing – I am bound? You have neither name, nor form. Neither have I name nor form, nor have you name nor form. In these three short verses, the Great Real World Teacher Dattatreya has expounded this truth in a little composition he has created called the Avadhut Gita. Dattatreya was an avadhut, he did not wear any clothes. So, he has answered a great question of that which is closest to you.

Harih Om

Om Namo Narayanaya, Om Namo Narayanaya, Om Namo Narayanaya