Sarvabhootastham AtmAnam sarvabhootAni cha Atmani; Ikshyate yoga yuktAtmA sarvatra samadarshanah.
Exercising the power of yoga, see the self abiding in all beings and all beings in the self. See everything the same everywhere.
As of now we see the world as diverse objects. Certainly the world is made of diverse objects. But the substratum, the base of all the objects is unknown to us. This substratum is the very self which is within us. That is what Krishna is pointing out in this verse. Through yoga, one can see the very self in all beings and all beings in the self. Once the base is known then you have known everything.
As of now, we just see the pearls and never the thread, which runs through the pearls. The pearls may keep falling off and new pearls may be added. But the thread is the constant binding factor. Once we know this thread then we have known everything. Wrong knowledge is like knowing the pearls without knowing the thread. Ramakrishna used to give an example of a lake, which is covered by moss. What we see is just the moss and not the clear water below. Once you remove the moss with self-effort the water will reveal itself.
Again and again we fall into the trap of making judgments and opinions. The moment we see anything we have a judgment ready. And this judgment is based on some previous experiences. It happens so unconsciously that we don't even realize that we have made such a judgment. We almost take it for granted. You might have seen this in daily life. Say when a Hindu meets the Muslim, immediately he has formed some kind of opinion about him. Similarly when a Muslim meets a Hindu he has also formed the opinion. We have got into this habit of generalization. We relate to a person only by his caste, his sect and never the way he really is. Not all the Hindus are good or bad; similarly not all Muslims are good or bad.
When seekers come to meet me, they come with some expectations about how of swami should be. They have an idea in their mind about how swami should behave. May be, they expect him to have a long beard and a serious face. But when they see me they see a young man laughing under the Banyan tree. They see me joking with by disciples and having a nice time. This really beats their expectations and some people run away thinking that I don't know much. They think that because I'm not serious, I may not know much about spirituality. Some how spirituality got associated with seriousness. In fact in Zen laughter is considered a meditation.
Likewise when modern seekers come to see me they expect me to behave like a new age Guru. Firstly they see me wearing Saffron and wearing the Rudraksha beads. Then they see me bathing the idols and doing ritualistic worship. Again I don't meet their expectations. They go away thinking that I am too traditional. In both the cases, they have missed the master. You can never expect a master to satisfy all your conditions because the master is beyond all conditions. He doesn't even need to practice what he preaches because he is not the same person to whom he preaches. I keep telling my disciples to do everything with awareness but when they see me eating my food they are astonished to observe that I eat with complete unawareness. I may be reading a book or talking to a few people while I'm eating. I tell people not to watch TV while having food and to just be aware of the eating process. But I myself will watch the TV while I'm eating. One disciple asked me how is this possible? The truth is that a master needs to de-meditate to feel the body. If I eat with awareness I cannot feed the body much because the hunger and survival instinct won't be there. So for the body to get the proper nourishment I need to de-meditate and push some food inside. Any attempt at awareness will put me in Samadhi. So I have to add some amount of unconsciousness for the body to eat some food. When Ramakrishna used to come down from samadhi, he always used to ask for jilebi (a Bengali sweet). People use to think whether he was meditating on God or on the jilebi. In order to regain body consciousness, Masters have to do such things. A mad elephant cannot be tied inside a small hut. The elephant has to be first pacified for it to remain inside a small hut. Similarly for the experience of enlightenment to stay in the body, little amount of unconsciousness has to be injected to keep the body functioning and alive.
Once one disciple asked me that she has a fear of dying when she meditates. When she starts going into deeper levels and starts losing body consciousness, a sudden fear rises in her, which prevents her from entering into meditation. As long as the world interests you, you don't need to worry about giving up the body while in meditation. Your desires will pull you back automatically. I jokingly told her to keep one of her favorite dishes near her while she meditates. This will make sure that she comes back. Even enlightened Masters come back, when they have some work to be done on planet earth.
Everybody has opinions and judgments about things that prevent an individual to see the things as they are. People think that knowledge makes a person intelligent. But let me be very clear that the so-called knowledge, which you read in the books makes you dull. You lose the ability to see things with a fresh eye. You take things for granted because of the words you have associated with those things. The moment you see a rose, the word rose comes to your mind. Immediately you have stopped relating to the real rose. Now you're just relating to the concept or the knowledge that you have about a rose. The more you get caught in words you miss the reality.
People come and ask me that they don't know Tamil but can they attend my meditation programs, which I deliver in Tamil. I tell them that they are the most qualified to attend my Tamil workshops. If you get caught in words, you miss the truth behind those words. Words can be very dangerous if understood improperly. For example say 200 years later if people ask, "what is the essence of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's teachings?" someone might say that THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM used to ask people to be un-clutched which probably meant that we should not drive anything that clutches. So we should avoid using cars that have a clutch. This is the central theme of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's teachings. It might sound funny but this is what happens. If you just go behind the words without knowing the body language and also the intent you might end up totally misinterpreting the master's teachings.
Socrates used to say that he is the wisest person in the world because he knows that he does not know. When you know that you don't know at least you know that you don't know. But if you think that you know then you don't even know that you don't know. It takes great courage to say that I don't know. Sometimes when people ask me some question, I purposely say that I don't know. They are shocked. They asked me, how could an enlightened person not know. He is supposed to be all knowing, he is supposed to know about everything.
Sometimes Master has to pretend as if he is ignorant, else disciples will start taking him for granted. A Master knows everything but still he will act sometimes as if he is totally ignorant. But any such action by the Master is always for the good of the disciple. Once an enlightened Master was asked by one aggressive person "what if I come tomorrow with a dagger and hit you, what would you do?" The Master replied calmly "I don't know". This person was shocked. He was expecting some positive answer. Master was teaching a very important lesson, when he said that. You cannot talk anything concrete about the future, which is unpredictable and unknown. All you can say is I don't know. The very next moment is a miracle so how can you talk something positively about an event or incident that is going to happen the next day.
People come and ask me "Swamiji, how should we bring up our kids?" All the time we ask our kids to be mature, as if we are mature. We give them rules and ask them to behave like grown-up individuals. We are doing them great harm when we try to teach them maturity. We are breaking their innocence into pieces and are building a conditioned individual, full of problems and complexities. A small child, who is not conditioned, sees things with more awareness than a conditioned adult. When a child looks at a rose, he does not bring the word rose into his mind. He looks at that rose with his whole being. We always look at things through association. We match patterns in our memory and create a concept or an idea about anything.
Any idea material or spiritual exists at the realm of the mind. Even the idea of God is based on whatever we have heard or read about God. God exists independent of our concept or idea that we hold about him. Just ask yourself a question, how the idea of God came into existence. It may have so happened that our ancestors were trying to find the source behind the different happenings and incidences in this world. But when they could not find any concrete source they created this idea or concept of God as someone supernatural, otherworldly and all-powerful. Thus the religions came into being, trying to promote different philosophies and doctrines. Really speaking if you contemplate on this, it's very easy to understand that whatever you think of God is nothing but an idea about God but not God.
As long as you have not had the ultimate experience you will always be caught up in wrong knowledge. This knowledge may be material or so-called spiritual.
Wrong knowledge is merely because of a lack of awareness. If we can flood our being with awareness automatically we will start seeing things as they are. We miss things easily because our attention is somewhere else. Just if you learn to bring your mind to the present moment automatically things will look fresh and beautiful. Right now the world appears dull because we don't look at it with a fresh eye.
Let me tell you a small story: once a disciple goes to visit a Zen master on a rainy day. When he walks in the master asks him a question: Did you leave the umbrella near the shoe rack? Yes says the disciple. Then the master asks whether he left the umbrella to the left of the shoe rack or to the right of the shoe rack? The disciple is not able to answer this question. Immediately he realizes what the master is hinting at. Due to the lack of awareness, he was not able to recollect where he kept the umbrella.
Every moment of ours has to be filled with awareness. But for that we need to clean all the dirt that we have accumulated since several years and lives. It does not take a long time if we do it sincerely. But we have got into the habit of living unconsciously so much that we are not able to break free from this habit. So many lives we have been living in an unaware way. So we have a tendency to repeat the same mistake.
With great discipline and perseverance we need to remind ourselves to be aware, the moment we slip. There is no other way. The dirt has to be cleaned every moment. If you miss one moment you have accumulated more dirt.
Sincerity is the key to enlightenment. Even one experience of thoughtless awareness is enough to break you out of this past conditioning. If a room is in darkness for 10,000 years how much time does it take to bring light to that room? All you need to do is to light a bulb in that room. Then automatically the room gets lit. Similarly one experience of thoughtless awareness of Samadhi helps you to break free from the repetitive pattern of unaware living. Only with awareness we can start seeing things the way they really are and move away from the center of wrong knowledge.