The Essence of Dharma: 7. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thurtsday 20, February 2025, 08:00.
Article
Scriptures
The Essence of Dharma: 7.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on February 11th, 1973)

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The universe, therefore, is everything. We can regard it as a person; it will speak to us as a person. We can regard it as a condition of consciousness. We can regard it as a place. Or we can regard it as a spirit. It is everything. I am everythingEverything is that only. I am death and immortality both, day and night combined. Immortality and death are both shadows of this Supreme Being. Even immortality is regarded as a shadow only. It is not Ultimate Reality. Immortality and death are both shadows, as it were, cast by the Supreme Being. What is it?  not existence, not non-existence. Existence and non-existence – both it is, and beyond that also.

Such is the grandest, supreme structural pattern of the universe. It is not so simple as physicists conceive. And that is the determining factor of our conduct in daily life. You can imagine how difficult it is to live in this world, and how difficult it is to conceive what dharma is, because dharma is nothing but the inward growth into the concept of this relevance of our personality with the cosmic existence. That is dharma. Inward growth is dharma. It is not an external performance of a routine or activity. Now, what is this inward growth? It is the growth into knowledge.

Yesterday we had a musical performance. The music was so beautiful; all were thrilled. While listening to that exquisite music, I was thinking of the levels of happiness explained in the Taittiriya Upanishad. The lowest happiness is of food and sex. That is human happiness. This is one unit of human happiness, says the Taittiriya Upanishad, the king's happiness. We have got plenty of it, and so we regard it as a unit of happiness. Higher than that is the happiness of music and dance. That is Gandharva-loka. The Taittiriya Upanishad tells us that Gandarva-loka is higher than the human world. We will not think of food and sex when we are in the ecstasy of music and dance. Even a king will not think of it.

But higher than that is the realm of pure thought. That is Pitri-loka. The beauty of literature, for example, is higher than the beauty of music. When we read Shakespeare we will be simply transported. We will not like to hear music at that time because the mind is in a still higher realm. Or read some passages from the classics of Tamil scholars. I am not a Tamil scholar, but I have heard of the greatness of their masterpieces. Only those who know Tamil will appreciate it. Wonders are revealed in treasures of Tamil literature. Literature is higher than music, while music is higher than the pleasure of physical contact.

Higher than the pleasure of pure thought and literary beauty is the pleasure or the delight of knowledge, Brihaspati-loka. Higher than that is the pleasure or delight of spirituality. That is divinity, godliness. So ultimately the Upanishad tells us that spirituality is the highest happiness. Lower than that is knowledge. Lower than that is literature and learning. Lower than that is music and art. Lower than that is the happiness of physical contact.

So dharma is connected with this tremendous mystery of the gradation of happiness and reality. Gradation of happiness is gradation of reality; the higher the reality, the greater is the happiness. Reality is bliss, sat is ananda. Such being the case, dharma is an inward growth into the nature of reality. It is not performance of an external action. Dharma is, therefore, an awakening of oneself into the consciousness of a more intimate contact with being.

Now I come to another aspect of the subject. What is this being? Why do we say 'being'? Because the universe is being. It is not becoming. Western philosophers and psychologists are wont to say that the universe is becoming, but Indian metaphysics tell us that it is being. If it is becoming, it should be a process. Hegel and Whitehead are the protagonists of this theory of process in the Western world. But what do they mean by a process? It is a movement, but a movement of what? Of the universe. Towards what? Movement is inconceivable without space, but space is a part of the cosmos, so we come a cropper. How can we conceive of a universe of process unless there is space intervening between the parts of the process? And when the space also is a part of the process itself, how can there be a process? So the universe is not process; it is existence. When space and process combine together, we have being of the universe and not a becoming of the universe.

So dharma is growth of consciousness into intimacy with the being of the universe, and this being of the universe is God. What is called 'the substance' in the terms of Spinoza is also called the Absolute, or Reality, Brahman, Ishvara, or Jehovah. What we call God is nothing but this being of the cosmos behind the becoming of the process, and when we grow consciously into intimacy with this being of the universe, we grow in dharma, so the highest dharma is moksha. The highest dharma or duty of man would be to strive with every nerve of his being towards the realisation of moksha.

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Continued

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