Total Thinking

by Swami Krishnananda

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Book Code: EK62
Paperback:
104 pages
ISBN: NA
Book Dimensions: 8.50 x 5.50 x 0.25 inches
Shipping Weight: 150 grams

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Note 5
Chapter 1: The Arduous Task of Self-Analysis 11
Chapter 2: Rising to a Philosophical Realm 23
Chapter 3: The Pursuit of a Hidden Mystery 38
Chapter 4: The Problem of Evil in Religious Life 54
Chapter 5: The First Thought of the Day 70
Chapter 6: Mantra Japa Sadhana 87
Appendix: Remembering the Saints 101
Back Cover  

Publisher’s Note

With great delight, we offer to our readers our new publication ‘Total Thinking’ which comprises a series of discourses given by Worshipful Sri Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj during Sadhana Week in 1980. In these illuminating lectures, Pujya Swamiji Maharaj imparts valuable techniques for spiritual practices for the spiritual aspirants and seekers to illumine their journey unto the Supreme.

It is our sincere hope that the readers will find this book a treasure-trove of wisdom teachings and they will also be immensely benefited by implementing those eternal teachings in their lives.

—THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY


Chapter 1

THE ARDUOUS TASK OF SELF-ANALYSIS

We are here for this Sadhana Week especially to reinforce in our minds ideas and values which are supposed to help us in living the life that we are expected to live in this world. The world blows like a wind, as a strong cyclone caring not for what it sweeps away by cutting the very ground from under our feet. That persons and things in the world are like wisps of straw driven by the power of the winds of the world is a truth which will not always occur to our minds, as we get accustomed to be driven in this manner. A perpetual slave will not be aware that he is a slave because he is used to that kind of living. We as human beings actually live the life of puppets, but inasmuch as we are used to this way of living right from our childhood, we may mistake this utter slavery of subjection to the powers of nature for a sort of independence in our own selves. Hence, it becomes necessary that we take stock of our achievements, and of the expectations that we may hope for in our lives, by a sort of self-analysis, and also an analysis of the circumstances and conditions in which we are living. A life that we can call intelligent should be capable of an assessment which is in conformity with the truths of life as they are.

What do we see in this world, and what is the kind of experience that we are passing through every day? We do not see God here anywhere, and we also cannot see religion and spirituality. When we open our eyes, it is not religion that we are seeing. We are seeing something painful, something that takes us aback, that makes us shudder in our hearts and keeps us in a state of anxiety even about the next day itself. It is an obvious truth spoken to the hearts of everyone that our lives are not as secure as they are made to appear on the surface. No one sleeps with a confident heart regarding the conditions of tomorrow in one’s life. Man suspects man and intrigues against his own brother and, with a smile on his lips, secretly manoeuvres to cut the throat of his own neighbour. Man has turned out to be a shrewd politician and a ruthless, selfish individual. No matter how often he may frequent the church or the temple, whatever be the scriptures that he may read and the number of times he may roll the beads, he has not ceased to be what he is. He shows his true colours when the time for it comes.

Man has not succeeded in demonstrating his humanity in his outward life because inwardly he has not been a human being. Anthropologically and sociologically he has been a human being, no doubt, but not psychologically. He has been a cut-throat at the root. When a man is cornered from all sides and is not allowed any avenue of self-expression, when all channels of action and thinking are blocked from every side, he demonstrates his essential nature which, at that time, is not humanity but brutality. He chooses the beast that he is while all the while proclaiming to be a humanitarian genius, a religious devotee, a spiritual hero. It all goes to dust in one second when he is tested with the touchstone of the struggles through which the world passes, and to which he himself is subject.

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Swami Krishnananda

Worshipful Sri Swami Krishnanandaji Maharaj took birth on the 25th of April, 1922, in Puttur, Karnataka, as the eldest child in a highly religious and orthodox Brahmin family well versed in Sanskrit, and was named Subbaraya. Reading from the Srimad Bhagavata that Lord Narayana lives in sacred Badrinath Dham, the young boy believed it literally and entertained a secret pious wish to go to the Himalayas, where Badrinath is located, and see the Lord there.

Swamiji arrived in Rishikesh in the summer of 1944. When he met Swami Sivananda and fell prostrate before him, the saint said: “Stay here till death. I will make kings and ministers fall at your feet.” Swami Sivananda initiated young Subbaraya into the holy order of Sannyasa on the sacred day of Makar Sankranti, the 14th of January, 1946, and he was named Swami Krishnananda.

In 1957 Swamiji became the Secretary especially concerned with the management of finance, which continued until 1961 when Sri Gurudev nominated him as General Secretary of the Divine Life Society, which position he held until 2001.

Swami Krishnananda was a master of practically every system of Indian thought and Western philosophy. “Many Sankaras are rolled into one Krishnananda,” said Sri Gurudev. Swami Krishnananda, the embodiment of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, lived in the state of God-consciousness and guided countless seekers along the path of Self-realisation. Swamiji attained Mahasamadhi on the 23rd of November, 2001.

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