Attaining Peace of Mind : 10.

It is difficult to think like this because you have been born into a family and a cultural background which is totally unacquainted with the normal, subliminal way of the required attitude in human life. Everywhere you see evil and ugliness and wretchedness and enmity – everywhere. There is nothing good anywhere in the world. This is how we are indoctrinated right from the beginning. When a child is born, the parents say, "The other man is an enemy. Don't go there. The next house is an enemy's house." You are told in the beginning itself, "This land is ours. That land is not ours. Don't go there. They want to grab our property." Animosity starts in childhood itself. "This is mine. That is not mine. This is yours. That is not yours. This is your friend. That is your enemy."


You go on thinking like this right from your childhood. Your blood is infused with animosity and a feeling of incompatibility with everything. You are incompatible with everything; nothing is compatible. You are never in union with anything; everything is at sixes and sevens. Nothing is good for you; everything is useless. You are, yourself, the best thing, and all others are totally extraneous to you. Let this change of the pattern of thinking be developed, and you will find God prevailing Himself from your side. There is no God in the high heavens; you are yourself constraining Him and covering Him with a bush – with a dark cloud of erroneous thinking – regarding yourself as a totally independent person, unconnected with anybody else.


Remember that you are not unconnected with even a little stick on the ground. You are connected with that also. The stick can know what you are thinking. It is not dead. There are no dead things in this universe. Little things, unimportant things, unseen things, uncared for things – they know that you are there; and It knows. It has eyes everywhere. Everywhere eyes – the world is all eyes, everywhere. Sarvato 'ksi-siro-mukham (B.G. 13.13), says the Bhagavadgita. "Everywhere eyes, everywhere ears." They say that walls have ears – well, maybe. There are ears, no doubt, but there are also eyes everywhere. Every atom sees you. It is not a dead substance as scientists may tell us. There is no dead molecule anywhere; it is a living organism, a living being like you. With that you set yourself en rapport – in mind, in intention, in determination, in meditation – and slowly, thought becomes reality.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued   ....