If we recall our childhood, we will realize that as children we had trusting hearts, we readily trusted people, we never cared whether the other was familiar or a stranger, whether the other deserved this trust or not. We simply trusted. We got a deep connection, a deep bonding with everybody. We never evaluated anybody. That trust was so spontaneous, the bonding was so natural. And wherever we went we felt this bonding, and in this bonding we were growing, our consciousness was expanding. There were no strangers, no enemies,no outsiders. Everybody was part of our being. But as we grew up, we started losing this trust, this precious trust, and then we started living with distrust. We started doubting people more and more. We started rejecting them as untrustworthy. As a result, we started shrinking. Most of the people end up concluding that there is not even a single human being on this planet who is worthy of their trust. They are so heartbroken. So as a child our consciousness was expanding, our whole being was getting larger and larger; and as grownups and as old people, we are shrinking, we are closed. This is why life is so miserable. Life is miserable because we are not evolving.
         What is evolution? Evolution simply means expansion: more and more become part of your being. You welcome things. But unfortunately as we grow up – and this is what we call wisdom – our wisdom is not to trust anybody. The moment we start distrusting people we start shrinking, this is devolution. Thus, as children we evolve, we expand, but as grownups we devolve, we shrink.
         This is one of the major reasons for our agony,for our pain in life, because deep-down we are infinite consciousness that wants to flower, that wants space. But we have closed all the doors and windows, because we are afraid, because we think it is wise to protect ourselves. We have closed ourselves because we want to shut out untrustworthy people. However, we have forgotten that in this attempt to protect ourselves from untrustworthy people, we have rejected the very possibility of meeting trustworthy people as well, because if we are closed how can even a trustworthy person come in your life? He is going to enter through the same door.
         This is what we have done to our consciousness. We have closed ourselves and because the consciousness doesn’t expand we feel misery, inner poverty. Inner poverty simply means that we are shrinking and inner prosperity simply means that we are expanding.
         Unfortunately, as we grow up we start looking upon the world as hostile and so we forget to evolve.
There is an American poet Walt Whitman. He has written a beautiful poem. It begins with these lines: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself / I am large/ I contain multitudes.” Whitman knows what it means to expand, what this celebration of consciousness is, how to grow properly,how to live life, how to evolve; he knows that when he declares “I contain multitudes”. Everything has become part of his being. These trees, these birds those distant planets and the stars, they all have become part of his own being. Just imagine the joy of this man! How immensely, infinitely, unimaginably beautiful this experience is to contain multitudes, to contain Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus and Christians and Americans and Pakistanis, people of all races, people of all places! And not only this, but those distant stars and galaxies! How rich one feels! When you start feeling this connectivity, this bonding with every object with nature,with space, with sky, with rivers and mountains; when you are able to relate yourself with these things, tremendous bliss flowers!And once you know this bliss, you simply sing “Sarvebhavantusukhinah.” Sarve, all, the whole be happy. Then you can never wish anybody any evil, then you can never hate anybody because once everything becomes part of your whole being, how can you curse yourself? How can you hate yourself? How can you ever go against yourself? When all hatred, all ill feelings, all resentment, complaints, enmity, hostility, when all these things disappear, just imagine how much space is available for joy.
         Similar feelings Krishna has. Krishna’s viratswaroop, that infinite form is nothing but a symbol of this expanding consciousness. Virat, everything is part of Krishna’s consciousness. This is what we call Krishna Consciousness. Krishna Consciousness is not limited to Krishna only, it is not limited to a person. It can become your experience,it can become my experience it can become anybody’s experience. Once you feel that your consciousness is limitless you have attained to Krishna Consciousness. But this should become your concrete experience not an abstract idea. There is a book The Karmazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian writer. It is a celebrated book, an immortal classic.There is a character in this book who says that “I can love whole humanity, my love is so vast. But I find it very hard to love my neighbor.” We also find it very hard to love our next door neighbour. Forget about neighbours, there are people in our own family that we have been living with for years we are unable to love them. So this idea that I love humanity comes very easily to us, but it remains abstract. Until we absorb its essence, we cannot know bliss.
         Krishna Consciousness is simply the expansion of consciousness that includes everybody. There is no hatred because everybody, everything has become part of your whole being. So Krishna’s viratswaroop is a symbol of this expansion of consciousness. There is a story in the Mahabharat that once Yashoda, Krishna’s mother, suspected Krishna of eating soil. She scolded him and asked him to open his mouth because Krishna was lying that he had not eaten it. When Krishna opened it Yashoda saw the entire cosmos inside his mouth, the whole universe was there. That was a symbol that the entire consciousness is present in every human being. Further, when Krishna grew up as Arjun’s charioteer there also his consciousness is same: vast, all-inclusive. But as we grow up our consciousness starts shrinking.
This is a very simple criterion to know if we are alive or we are merely breathing. If we are evolving, we are expanding, more and more people are becoming part of our being, there are no strangers that means we are alive. And it is only when we are alive life is meaningful, otherwise it is meaningless.When Mahavir said, “Everything is meaningless, the world is meaningless” and the Buddha said, “There is pain in the world,there is suffering in the world”, what were they trying to say?They must have observed that majority of the humanity was shrinking.
         So take a look within and see whether your consciousness is expanding or it is shrinking. If it is expanding you are living, if it is shrinking you are simply dying.