Anything that is outside us cannot be ours

Swami Krishnananda

It is a sense of fullness that everyone endeavours to reach in one’s daily occupations. On days when a sense of satisfaction arising out of fullness has not been achieved, there is restlessness, an agitation, and an absence of peace of mind because that inscrutable thing called a fullness of feeling has not been inducted into oneself.

That which is outside cannot bring us a sense of fullness. That which has entered us alone can make us full. What we have eaten makes us full. A bag of rice in the godown cannot make us full, though it is there as our property. It is a property, a belonging, but it is not ourselves. Therefore, no wealth, belonging, land, property, building, bank balance, family relations, and so on, can make us full because they are outside us. They imaginarily appear to belong to us. Imaginary belonging cannot bring a real sense of feeling of fullness.

So this contorted attitude of our capability to be happy only through connection with external persons and things should not be foisted upon the great Masters and the Gurus. They are not outside us, because nothing that is outside us can be ours. This is a point we have to remember always. Anything that is outside us cannot be ours. In a sense this body is also outside us and, therefore, it is not ours. It is also not capable of fully satisfying us.

God and the Masters are transcendent, above us. They include us, they absorb us, and therefore they can fill us, and it is only when we are filled that we are happy. Purnima is the fullness of the moon. It is also, incidentally, said to be a kind of fullness the mind achieves on this day, a thing which is known to astrophysical and psychological experts. Therefore, on this full moon day, Sri Holy Guru Purnima, we invoke fullness—call it God, call it Guru, call it whatever we like.

But may we bear in mind that what we invoke and consider as the only thing that can bring fullness to us has to be ours. It cannot be somewhere else. Anything that is somewhere else, anyone who is somebody else, anything that is something else, whatever it is, inasmuch as it is not ourselves, cannot make us happy. That is the reason why we are normally in a state of absence of peace of mind, restlessness, with a submerged attitude of agitation in the psyche.

Without a sense of having achieved anything we reluctantly, restlessly and agitatedly go to our bed at night, and so do we wake up also in the morning to continue the whole drudgery of psychological entanglement and confusion. This has to be streamlined and set in proper alignment by tuning what we are with what the great Masters are, and the Almighty is. May this great fullness of the Spirit be with us.

Excerpted from swami-krishnananda.org