Swami Dayatmananda: Three Expressions of Reality

Interview with Swami Dayatmananda
by Paula Marvelly

Swami Dayatmananda is the current Center Leader of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Center, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, UK.

PM: Could we first speak a little about one of the greatest teachers of all, Sri Ramakrishna. There’s that wonderful story about when he was young, it was a very cloudy day, and he looked up and saw a flock of white cranes flying against black clouds. The beauty of the moment completely overwhelmed him and I was similarly taken by his recounting of the event. It was a prefect aesthetic moment, if you will.

Swami Dayatmananda: That’s a very good beginning for us. Swami Vivekananda used to say that Religion, Science and the Arts are three expressions of reality.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about Advaita, emphasizing certain things to the exclusion of others. There is no one philosophy the followers of which all agree. That’s one of the reasons why many people, including myself, follow the Advaita that was practiced by Sri Ramakrishna and propagated by Swami Vivekananda. We are inclusivists; we include everything.

I am a Hindu and a monk. According to Hinduism, the life of a monk is a very natural state towards which we all have to evolve, in this birth or the next. Hinduism teaches us that life is divided into four parts: the learning stage; the experimental and experiential stage; the withdrawal stage; and then the stage that involves the complete integration of reality. So in other words: brahmacharya; grihastha; vanaprastha; and sannyasa.

PM: The fourth state is a forest dweller?

Swami Dayatmananda: No. A forest dweller is different; a forest dweller is someone who chooses to live in the forest – it is Hinduism that has made that exclusive interpretation. But you can be in your home and could be a perfect nun, which is the ideal in oneself.

According to the followers of Shankaracharya, sannyasa means a formal, external renunciation, and one must live a particular way of life. Although we are followers of the lineage of Shankaracharya – Sri Ramakrishna’s guru, Totapuri, was a follower of Shankaracharya – that’s where we have a certain amount of difference.

Hindus strongly believe that now and then, God takes a human form called an incarnation or an avatar, in order to show us the right way. We believe that Sri Ramakrishna is the incarnation of God. An incarnation doesn’t only come for Hindus, however; he comes for the whole world because the whole world is God’s manifestation.

So what is an incarnation? He is the ideal, who shows us what man can become if he wishes to. He is the very model that unifies all the working expressions of the spirit of a particular age.

Science has developed very strongly in this day and age; it’s a particular way of looking at the world. One of the aspects of the scientific world is that for anything to exist, it must be provable. Sometimes people can go very much off the mark, not understanding what this statement really means. For example, can God be proven in the laboratory of the scientist? No, of course he can’t.

In some ways, it is good to trust in that which is provable because so many superstitions can be exposed; but if you think that what science cannot prove must therefore not exist or must be wrong, then we will go very wide off the mark. Take for example The God Delusion, written by Richard Dawkins…

PM: Richard Dawkins is an atheist…

Swami Dayatmananda: Yes. We do not believe that anyone can be an atheist, for the moment you say ‘I am’, you are a believer!

The God Delusion clearly shows that Dawkins doesn’t understand the limitations of science and reason. Reason is not excluded in religion or spirituality but reason is very inadequate; there’s a limit beyond which it can never go.

PM: Yes. A lot of Advaita Vedanta people say that realization is in the mind. But I think Sri Ramakrishna says that it has to be known in the heart.

Swami Dayatmananda: In Hinduism, the word ‘philosophy’ in Sanskrit is darshana; darshana means ‘direct experience’, uninterrupted by any other medium – the mind or thoughts, etc. For example, you are looking at me but you are not looking at me directly. Your eyes have taken in my image, which has fallen on your mind; however, the first moment you saw my face, you formed certain ideas about me – good looking, bad looking, etc. – and thus you are interpreting whatever you see through those ideas. That is paroksha or ‘indirect experience’.

Direct experience means the two instruments of the mind and body must be completely switched off. Only then can a person be said to have direct experience. So how do we know when a person has direct experience? We can never know, only the person themselves can ever know.

What this means is that you can never know who is a saint; you can only infer that he or she is a saint. We can only infer if someone has realized God by seeing a person’s behaviour consistently over time but we can never actually know.

If you taste a sweet, only you can ever know what the sweet really tastes like, even if you tell me about the sweetness. You can bring it as close to my tongue as possible but even then, I would remain ignorant about this sweet until it actually touches my tongue. Only then, will I know what you are talking about.

So darshana is not at all intellectual. What is meant by realization is direct experience, and direct experience transforms our actions and reactions. And through that, we can infer that a particular person is a saint or not.

PM: Sri Ramakrishna says that realization is available to everyone; it’s not just for the chosen few. If you partake in spiritual practice, realization is available.

Swami Dayatmananda: Right. What is the real teaching of Vedanta? Vedanta says there is only one reality – that is the very essence of Vedanta. And that reality is called Brahman in the Upanishads and Hindu scriptures. There cannot be two gods. If there is only one God, if there is only one reality, then anything that we see must be that reality alone.

Everything in this world, not only human beings but also animals and all non-living things, are manifestations of Brahman. It’s a very wonderful truth.

Once Sri Ramana Maharshi was asked by a Western devotee, ‘Even dogs can realize God?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ That means anything with life will realize God. He also said, ‘Not even animals, but also the very slabs on which you are sitting because they have life.’

PM: So what is realization?

Swami Dayatmananda: Realization is to know that there is no multiplicity. ‘I am’ is the simple truth. I am everything. I am Brahman.

PM: I can see that intellectually. I have been interested in these teachings all my adult life. The rub for me is when will it be realized? When will be the transition from it being a mental process to one that is consistently known?

Swami Dayatmananda: That is why there are spiritual disciplines leading to this realization. Spiritual practice, sadhana, is in fact negative – neti, neti. It is not getting something new but getting rid of the delusion, the ignorance. So, we have to choose a teacher first of all.

Secondly, we must be very serious, very earnest; and thirdly, having faith in the teachings of the teacher and the scriptures. We must go on practicing certain disciplines. Without them, many people unfortunately, especially in the West, are always intellectualizing the teaching – I hope you don’t mind my making that statement. That is not the Hindu way of looking at things; even in India, Advaita is practiced by very few.

So for realizing that Advaitic state, what we have to understand is there are certain steps, gradually leading to this perfect realization, which is the ultimate realization. The two steps are dualism and qualified nondualism, leading to the final destination, Advaita, or nondualism.
 
For as long as we are identified with this physical body, we have to have the attitude that Brahman is a personal God, and that we are devotees. Then we achieve what is called devotion. What is devotion? Gathering all our emotional faculties, purifying them and directing them towards one object, and fixing all our emotions in that direction. This is also called bhakti.

Ultimately we are all Advaitins in the end, but that’s not the point. In the beginning, we can have an Advaitic goal, but not Advaitic practice. This is one of the most interesting and important differences between the teachings of the followers of Shankaracharya and the followers of Sri Ramakrishna Vivekananda.

The followers of Shankaracharya say there is only one path, and that is the path of knowledge. But many of these so-called followers of Advaita Vedanta do not realize that there is a distinction between Advaita as a state of experience and Advaita as a state of spiritual practice.

Also, Sri Ramakrishna Vivekananda doesn’t accept that there is only one path. There are four paths, four yogas: karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga.

Every religion is one or the other of these particular paths. Why are there only four? Because every human being has four faculties: intellect, emotion, will and activity. Even though there are four faculties, in each one of us one particular faculty, assisted by another faculty, dominates in our lives, and most of us are dominated by emotion.

There is a home test. Suppose, Paula, I say to you that you are most marvellous, the most beautiful woman in the world, do you become happy?

PM: Yes!

Swami Dayatmananda: And if I say horrible things to you, criticize you, how would you respond?

PM: I would probably feel hurt.

Swami Dayatmananda: Then you are, therefore, an emotional person.

You have told me you are following the path of knowledge. If you follow an intellectual path, you are going to find it very difficult.

PM: That’s interesting that you say that. Many people I know believe that there is effectively a hierarchy of paths, with the lowest being karma yoga, then bhakti, with jnana at the top. So of course, I want to follow the highest path. But you are saying it is not suited to my nature?

Swami Dayatmananda: Yes. For example, if a student says to me that in their heart they only enjoy literature and the Arts but their intellect says they want to become a doctor and do good deeds, then that kind of conflict would forever remain in their life.

PM: So are you saying that aesthetic experience, the path of the Arts let’s say, is no less valid than reading the Upanishads? Like Swami Vivekananda said, Religion, Science and the Arts are three expressions of reality.

Swami Dayatmananda: Right. Anyone who says a particular yoga, a particular path, is superior to another path doesn’t know what they are talking about, is an utter fool! The path is not an option, according to authentic teaching, because if you are an emotional person, emotion is the only path for you.

There are also intellectual people; for them, the path of jnana yoga is the only path, though truly intellectual people are very rare.

There are also people who have tremendous will power and they are perfectly happy sitting and concentrating on one particular idea, so for them it is raja yoga, the path of meditation.

Then there are people in whom the faculty of action is very dominant. For these people, if you tell them to sing songs praising God, they can’t do; if you tell them to meditate, they can’t do it; if you tell them to analyze the content of their minds, still they can’t do it. But if you tell them to build a hospital, they can do it, so for them the path of karma yoga is the way.

So this is the difference between so-called followers of Shankaracharya and the followers of Sri Ramakrishna Vivekananda. For both, the goal is Advaita, but Sri Ramakrishna made it very clear: Advaita is our destination and every path is valid in its own right, owing to our different natures.

There is nothing such as a lower or higher path. Every path takes you to God because the path itself is the goal! Do you understand? Brahman is here, not over there. If the path and goal are the same, it is not a journey in the conventional sense. Every path will take us to the same Advaitic experience, but because we are composed of different faculties, we have to harness our particular faculty to tread the right path.

Another question that is always asked is whether God is personal or impersonal. Followers of Shankaracharya look down on those who believe God is personal. The real Advaitin says you can’t say anything about God; however, if you put on black spectacles, something will appear black to you, if red spectacles, then red. So, if we are looking at God with a particular form, then we emphasize the aspect of form; if we are looking at the formlessness, then we are looking at God as formless. Sri Ramakrishna says he is with form, he is without form and he is both beyond form and formlessness.

See what a difference it makes! You can’t say God is with or without form – he is and he is not. That is not his problem; it is our problem, the way we look at it.

What is the benefit of this? We don’t quarrel with anyone. If you want to follow Sri Ramakrishna, God bless you, you will reach the goal. But if you want to follow nature, for example, God bless you, because what is nature? It is nothing but God.

So Sri Ramakrishna says it would be wrong to impose a particular path on a particular person who does not possess that particular faculty. Jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, raga yoga, karma yoga: all are valid paths and take you to the same goal, the destination, which is Brahman.

One faculty always dominates but Sri Ramakrishna also said that there is another faculty, which is closest to you. In your case, Paula, if I understand you correctly, first, yours is the path of bhakti, devotion, but you can be assisted by jnana, knowledge.
 
PM: Yes, there has always been a love of knowledge but there is always a knot, a blockage, and I feel sometimes I am forever stuck.

Swami Dayatmananda: That itself is not a very good thought. What you should really ask yourself is whether you are following the right path. That’s why a teacher is needed.

We believe that God came in the form of Sri Ramakrishna. He wanted to clarify what the real teaching of the scriptures is and this is the clarification he gave: all of us are divine because there is only one reality called Brahman.

The goal of life, whether we know or not, is a manifestation of this divinity and we are all struggling for that. How are you struggling? The name for God in Sanskrit is satchitananda. It has three words: sat, chit and ananda. Sat means ‘being’ or ‘pure existence’; chit means ‘pure awareness’ or ‘consciousness’; ananda means ‘pure happiness’.

Satchitananda is the name of God and this is what we are all struggling for with every single breath: we want to live forever; we don’t want ignorance; and we want unbroken happiness. Even if someone is an atheist, we only want this – satchitananda. We know that it is not possible to be immortal, we know that it is not possible to know everything, and we know that it is not possible to have unbroken happiness and yet we still never give up hope!

Why? When this question is asked, the only answer that can come is because it is our very nature. We are simply struggling to be ourselves, but owing to ignorance, we think we are not what we really are; however, an evolution will slowly carry us towards that end.

If we are intelligent we can lend a hand to this evolution. We are all like people standing on an escalator. This is what is called evolution; there is no choice, the escalator is always taking us to our destination. But some just stand there, some are impatient and walk up, and others try and go back, though of course they can’t get very far. So life is taking us to our destination whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.

Satchitananda is our destination. How do we know that we are progressing? We grow in goodness, sat; grow in wisdom, chit, and we grow in happiness, ananda.

There is another expression: satyam shivam sundara – truth, beauty and goodness. If you recognize which is the best faculty in you and strive to do your best to manifest that particular faculty, everything will fall into place.

PM: You are being authentic towards yourself.

Swami Dayatmananda: Yes. Be authentic, be yourself. That’s a beautiful expression. So that’s what Sri Ramakrishna taught. Everyone is divine because there is only one God, Brahman, one truth, one reality, and it can be expressed in infinite varieties.

The Vedic sages recognized that Truth is one but various sages call it by various names. Let us not quarrel with the names and forms, different paths; ultimately we are only manifesting, unfolding, our divinity.
 

For more information about the Vedanta Center UK, visit vedantauk.com.

For more information on purchasing Pathways to Joy: The Master Vivekananda on the Four Yoga Paths to God by Dave DeLuca and Selections from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, visit the StillnessSpeaks online store.