Swami Krishnananda - Self-Realisation, @Yoga
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SELF-REALISATION
ITS MEANING AND
METHOD
by
S
WAMI
K
RISHNANANDA
The Divine Life Society
Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India
ABOUT THIS EDITION
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CONTENTS
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PREFACE
“Know thyself and be free” —this perennial wisdom-
teaching rings the eternal message of the ageless quest of all
creation-bound fields of self-awareness, whether these be
persons, things or whatever evolving species. The character
of ‘self’ ingrained everywhere and in everything explains
loves as well as hatreds, war as well as peace, statis as well as
dynamis, life as well as death. But for the assertion of an
inscrutable and transcendent apperception and non-
objective consciousness playing hide and seek and
masquerading through all forms of existence, perpetually, the
drama of the universe would not have remained that eluding
mystery which it purports to be and has been for ever and
ever. Here is an attempt to ponder over this most essential of
all needs, this pressing call from within and without and from
all sides in the life of everyone.
The contents of this book form the subject of five lectures
addressed to seekers in the Ashram of The Divine Life
Society, some years back, and it is hoped that these
suggestions will do some good to many a searching spirit.
Swami Krishnananda
25
th
April, 1994
CHAPTER 1
The few words that I shall be trying to speak today are
intended specially to be of some benefit to those who are not
accustomed to the usual Indian concept of the liberation of
the Spirit, call it Self-Realisation, or God-Realisation. While,
generally, the citizens of India may be considered to be fairly
acquainted with a general notion of what liberation, or the
aim of life is, though there may be some, even in India, whose
idea about the supreme purpose of life may not be perfect
and perspicacious, yet it appears to me that there is a greater
misconstruing of the very meaning of the aim of life in
certain countries like Europe and America or what you call
the jurisdiction of Western culture. The word Self-Realisation
is commonly used in spiritual circles, and is often identified
with what is known as God-Realisation. In spite of this
common usage of what should be regarded as the principal
motive behind every human endeavour, there is likely to be
the possibility of the intrusion of the human way of thinking
even in regard to what is totally transcendent to human
reaches. It is an inveterate involvement in the human vision
of things that should be regarded as responsible for reading
human meaning even in what you may consider as God-
Almighty.
Now, the human way of thinking has certain specific
characteristics: Firstly it is involved in the concept of spatial
extension and distance, and the notion of temporal
succession, process and movement, activity and effort, work
and achievement of the result or fruit of work. There is no
other way in which the human mind can normally think. But
to stretch this logic of what one may call the three-
dimensional way of thinking, thinking in terms of distance
and spatial difference, thinking in terms of temporal process
or a terminus calculated by the movement of time, much
worse, to think always in terms of human needs only, and not
to pay any attention to the possibility of there being things in
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