Dayananda

“…Non-Duality Magazine: What are your thoughts on contemporary advaita teachers who say that self-realization is an accident, it happens for no reason, that there is no path, method, or means to do this, that all of these things only reinforce the seeker?

Swamiji (Dayananda Saraswati): I cannot be an accident. If self is myself, I’m not going to be an accident or incident or an event. I am already there. Why they should say an accident? That’s a wrong thing to do. An accident is an incident, the cause of which you don’t know. That’s called an accident.  It’s an incident. If you are not able to figure out the causes of the incident, then you are constrained to call it an accident. Otherwise it’s not an accident. It’s an incident in time and space.

If there is a road accident a cop comes there, and then he has to find out who is the cause for this accident. Then he begins to search for the cause. Then when he finds the causes, the accident reduces itself into an incident. These are the reasons this happened. Therefore it’s a cause effect relationship. Somebody is punished and somebody gets all the benefit. And therefore, there are no accidents at all in life. And the worst thing is, self is an accident – self-realization is an accident. This is a silly thing.

Self is not different from self-realization. Self is self. If I don’t know what that self is, how am I going to come across myself? I am what I am. If I don’t know what I am, how am I going to suddenly recognize myself?  I cannot come across myself accidentally. If I am ignorant of myself and I commit a mistake about myself, to correct that mistake I have no clue. And therefore in life, you may accidentally – it means without expectation – come across something. A lot of discoveries are just made without any planning.

Penicillin was discovered by that man not with a deliberate search for penicillin. He was doing some research on some bacteria, and he was growing this bacteria for his research, and he found all of them were dead. Then he tried to find out why they were dead and he found a formation of fungus. Being a scientist he thought, ‘Is this fungus the reason for their death?’ Then he picked up this fungus and put it in another strain. That also died. The whole strain of the bacteria died. Penicillin was discovered and the quality of human life was never the same afterwards. We didn’t have anything for infection until then. Now they can do transplantation of organs, they can do all these orthopedic surgeries and all that because of the discovery of penicillin. Then afterwards they went on and on and discovered more derivatives. It’s never been the same. One discovery – by accident.

Therefore, you can stumble upon something that you don’t know, and you may come to know, but you cannot stumble upon yourself when you are ignorant of yourself. No way. No way. (Laughter) That there is no path is true because ‘what is the path between you and yourself?”

~ Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930 –2015) was a contemporary teacher of Vedanta and scholar in the tradition of Śankara. Swami Dayananda taught ten residential Vedanta courses, each spanning 30 to 36 months. Eight of them were conducted in India and two in the United States. There are now over two hundred graduates teaching throughout India and abroad. Under his guidance, various centers for teaching of Vedanta have been founded around the world; among these, there are three primary centers in India and one in the U.S. at Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

“Swamiji was born as Natarajan in Tamil Nadu in 1930. He was the eldest of four sons… As a young man He decided to be a fighter pilot at one point and joined the Indian Air Force, but left after six months as he felt suffocated by the regimentation there. While in his absence his younger brother MG. Srinivasan took charge of the agricultural fields of the family household and made sure that the family had the income to survive and live peacefully off the income… Natarajan became interested in Vedanta after listening to the public talks of Swami Chinmayananda in 1953. He became actively involved with the newly formed Chinmaya Mission in various roles and he was made its Secretary in the first year of its inception. Sometime later, he became the spiritual Guru of Prime Minister Narendra Modi….”
~ Wikipedia

Photos ~ Swami Dayananda Saraswati
~ his teacher, Swami Chinmayananda (1916 – 1993)