Question: How exactly would you define enlightenment, this final goal of life that all of us are seeking?

Swamiji: Enlightenment is liberation; liberation of the individual personality from the embrace of the world of matter. Give up this sense of the individual “I”; it is the only way to wake up. The truth is we are Narayana [God], but the precious stuff has been rotting in the sense world for so long that it looks like iron. Gold oxidized with sensuality has to be rubbed and polished until it is clean. That’s all.

Q: You say that we are pushed around by our desires based on past experiences from which we gained a bit of joy, so we repeat the same situation to repeat the joy. But what about the desire to get liberated, where does that come from?

S: It just happens! After tasting the joys and sorrows of the world, you drop all desires for the world, then divine bliss is there—your essential nature.

Q: So you would consider the desire to obtain liberation is an “okay” desire?

S: True, it is an ego-centered desire, as are all desires. However, this is a higher desire, so you may keep it. When all desires have been removed, it will die of itself because it can not exist when all desires have disappeared. Do you see? Carefully now. All desires are gone. Then how can there be a desire to remove desires? If all desires are gone, you have reached the goal. It is the same with sleep; the desire for sleep dissolves with sleep.

The great Sri Ramakrishna, who had such a genius for telling practical stories to point out spiritual truths, gave this example. You are in a jungle and you get a small thorn in the flesh of your arm.

You look around and find a larger thorn. You pluck it off the branch. Then with the larger thorn, you dig out the smaller splinter. Now when it is removed from your flesh, will you keep the larger thorn? No, you’ll toss away both of the thorns. So you use this higher desire as a tool, but, when the goal is reached, you won’t keep it.

Q: What is samadhi like?

S: Sama-dhi—the “dhi”, intellect, becomes “sama”, quiet. At this time the karma drops from you. The world of experience—and therefore the one who experience it—is not there.

It is not in the cosmos, not in a place in the universe. It is a different realm: no time, no place.

Q: Why doesn’t the mind stay in samadhi?

S: Mind can never be in samadhi; mind is a thought flow. So your question contains a contradiction in terms. It is like asking why doesn’t a living body lie down dead? After you have the insight that Brahman [God] is ALL, the state of samadhi is not necessary. To the God-realized one there is no going in or coming out of samadhi.

With Iswara darshan [the vision of the Lord] comes the true Knowledge that God Is. . . that the I-concept is false. The devotee, in a flash of illumination, realizes the Divine play of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching is also nothing but the manifestation of Brahman [God]. When the ego dies away, nothing remains but an infinite homogeneous Bliss Experience, which is God.

Q: So realization in an actual experience that, no matter who experiences it, will always be the same.

S: Yes, exactly the same. If you stick your finger in the light socket, what is your experience? Will it be different from his or hers? No. All experiences of the finger in the light socket will be the same. But you must do it for yourself!

The Guru has experienced God-realization and his experience will not do you one iota of good. You must contact the Divinity for yourself, the Divinity that is one and the same in everyone.
Remember. The finger must be put in the socket! [He makes a gesture of putting his finger into an overhead socket.] But you want to sit there with your pencil taking notes. “Let me see what voltage did you say this socket is?” “Will it be the same experience if I put my finger in a socket in a different country?” I tell you it is the same—Indian electricity, British electricity, African electricity. It is all the same everywhere. Having experienced American electricity, you will not have to go to India and experience it there. Upon experiencing American electricity, you have experienced electricity everywhere.

Electricity yoga! Yes, you must make direct contact, but you sit there and watch another brave fellow. He approaches the socket, then he slowly. . . and carefully. . . sticks his finger into the socket. “Oh! Ouh! Aah!” he shouts as he is knocked away by the force. Sitting there you think, “This is the secret. This is the experience: Oh! Ouh! Aah!” Then you stupidly sit there and repeat this new mantra—Oh, Ouh, Aah—thinking that it is going to give you some benefit. No, I tell you—never! You must approach the socket, lift the finger, and make the contact. Only then will you know electricity yoga. This is the only way you will benefit.

Q: How can I be sure that there is a benefit? After realization won’t I have the same nagging husband, demanding mother-in-law, whining children?

S: They will all be the same, but you will see them differently. Once you realize the Truth within you, you will also see that all the plurality and diversity of creation springs only from that very Truth. Having that knowledge, nothing can ever really disturb you again.

Q: How will I know if I have reached the Highest? Couldn’t one make a mistake?

S: Where there is God, there the I-sense cannot be. Where the I-sense is, there God is indeed far away. In fact you will not reach the Highest because you will not be there to experience it. Only God meets God.

Q: Can’t you describe your personal experience, so we will know when we have had the true experience? I remember several holy men have told of some cosmic experiences.

S: I have nothing to say of personal experience because it is ridiculous to do so. It is only yogis who claim various experiences en route, not at the time of nirvikalpa samadhi. In Pure Being there is no experience.

Q: But there must be some indication of a realized person. . .

S: Here is the golden rule: you will know “All this world is my consciousness in different forms.” It is like entering a dream in full waking consciousness. You have been dreaming, but you awaken from the dream. Then you re-enter the dream state knowing that you are the waker, the person who has awakened. What will be your attitude towards the comings and goings in the dream? In such a position, you are not compelled to do or not to do; you are just being entertained in the dream world.

By no other sign can you say that one is realized.

Q: Once realized; always realized?

S: Yes.

Q: But there are some teachers who do such self-centered, foolish things, even though they seem to have insight that would only come from direct, personal experience.

S: Then it was a partial experience. Take an example: I have lain down on the sofa for a nap and am just going to sleep when the phone rings. I shake my head a couple of times, get up and answer it: “Hello."

Hearing my sluggish, sleepy voice, the caller questions me: “Were you asleep?”

“No, I had lain down, but I had not yet gone to sleep.”

“Oh, then you were awake?”

“Well, no. I was not really awake.”

“What do you mean, you were neither asleep nor awake.”

“Well, you see I was no longer awake, but I had not really quite gone to sleep yet. I was at the doorway of sleep, but I had not completely entered into it.”

Sleep is a condition of the mind when it transcends completely into a different consciousness. The transcending must be one hundred percent. It is the same with the Transcendental Experience; you completely merge into your true nature of sat-chit-ananda [truth-consciousness-bliss].

Q: If we are sat-chit-ananda, why did we leave it?

S: You never did!

Your looking for God is like a ceramic vase looking for clay! Narayana [God] says that he is with us 365 days of the year, but we do not recognize him. It is because we are only looking outward at the sorrows in life.

It’s a mental adjustment. About face! Look within!

Q: Why do some realize this Truth, while others do not, even though they both seem to be putting forth the same effort?

S: The effort is made at preparing the mental apparatus. If too much will power is used, it is fighting against nature. Neither can there be suppression. Suppression is not perfection. So the mind and intellect are prepared before the actual attempt to transcend them is made. The mental machinery must be carefully adjusted to receive the higher message; otherwise the result will be like one of our Indian rocket experiments. The countdown is complete, the button is pushed, there is a blinding light, and a great mushroom cloud billows forth. When all the smoke clears, there is the rocket still sitting on the launch pad!

In America the rockets take off and in India they make a lot of noise, light and smoke. What is the difference? It is the amount of work and effort that was put into the machinery itself. Not that in India, rockets won’t work if they are properly prepared. So it is necessary to have an integrated, pure, disciplined mind.

Q: I have been meditating for four years. I now think that I have been wasting my time because I knew nothing about the Reality you are speaking about in the classes. Does this mean I just have not purified the mind enough?

S: It need not mean that. You have detached your mind from the world of objects, but then you had no knowledge of how to direct it. You have to know what you are searching for to set your course. You are now learning how to take off!

Q: When will the rocket take off? That is the question.

S: When it happens! In the text [Bhagavad Gita, Chapter IX] the teacher indicates what is behind the flux of the world of matter. When you see this unity, that is the first rocketing. The objects of the world dissolve into the Oneness when you reach the higher state; that is the second rocketing. In full realization, you see both modes: the One in the many and the many in the one.

Q: Where does the concept of God’s grace fit into the picture?

S: We all have it equally. When the car is going along the highway, it may break down, even though it has plenty of gasoline. Will you curse the gasoline? No, the problem is in the vehicle itself.

Sunshine is everywhere, giving its light to all—the rose garden, the songbird, the mosquito and the garbage dump—without any discrimination as to type, race, color, usefulness. The sun’s grace is there, but you sit in your house with the shutters closed complaining that it is dark. Open the windows, and the blessing of the sun will flood in.

Q: Do you experience this Divine State all of the time?

S: Experience is of the body, mind and intellect. I am being; I am not experience. I allow experience to exist around me. I am subtle like space, untouched by anything.

It can’t be said that I am in it or out of it, but I am never away from it!