Questioner:
What does it mean to be truly responsible? What are we responsible for, exactly? I’ve heard you say many times, “You control nothing, and you’re responsible for everything.” But what does that mean?
Swami Premodaya:
The statement you are referring to, is I frequently say that we control absolutely nothing. That all ideas of “we do something” is an illusion. And I also frequently say that we are completely responsible for everything. And on the surface, it’s not hard to understand how that could be confusing, how that sounds contradictory. But you have to not be fooled by language.
…A statement like, “You control absolutely nothing and you’re responsible for absolutely everything,” doesn’t have to make sense to be true in Reality. I say lots of things that don’t make sense, but they represent something that most people have felt about what is Real, what Is, what is True.
What I’m doing when I sit here is encouraging you to be open to the possibility that there is something so much vaster, so much deeper, so much more unknown and unknowable than we generally acknowledge. If you can open yourself to just that concept, that idea, that there is something so deep and so big that if you truly felt it, even for a second, it would take your breath away forever. The more you open yourself to that, the more it makes sense, in a paradoxical way, that we are responsible for everything and that we control nothing. The reason is, the macrocosm—(the all, the big)—and the microcosm—(us, the minute, the specific)—are not different and are not separate. They mirror each other; they represent each other. So in you, in every single person in this room, the whole infinity, the whole eternity is right in you. It is what you’re made of. It is where you come from. It is where you are right now. We’re not sitting in a room in Los Angeles; we’re sitting in the middle of infinity and in the middle of eternity. Time is an outcropping of eternity. Space is a little outcropping of infinity, and if you trace it back, that’s where you are. That’s the only place you could be. It’s the only place you have ever been; it’s the only place you will ever be.
Within that context (which, if you really take it in, takes your breath away), the “everything” and the “minute” aren’t separate. In that sense, we are responsible for everything, because we are everything.
We are connected to everything. Nothing in this cosmos is independent. Everything is interdependent. If somebody could wave a magic wand and the trees suddenly disappeared, we would all drop dead in one second because there wouldn’t be enough oxygen on the planet. But we don’t walk around remembering that we owe our breathing and our life to the trees. Well, there are countless examples like that one that prove and demonstrate beyond any questioning the interdependence of all things. If all things are interdependent and all things are in that sense connected, in that sense we are all responsible for everything. Every tree out there, is responsible for every one of us. Every one of us is responsible for everything, “out there.”
…We are responsible, I say, for everything because we are. I’m the outcropping of reality in this chair. You are the outcropping of reality in that chair. Interdependent with everything, not separate in any way.
You are responsible simply by the fact that whether you admit it or not, whether you realize it or not, whether you fathom it or not, you are in intimate relation in every second with all that exists.
Whether you call it God, whether you call it Existence, whether you call it the cosmos, whether you call it the world, whatever you look at, whatever you can identify, whatever you can name, you are already in deep and intimate relation with. Whether you know it or not, whether you fathom it or not. Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, whether you recognize it or not. And, in that sense, everything and everyone is responsible for everything and everyone. At all times, in all things, in all ways. One hair on your head changes, the entire cosmos is affected. I guarantee you that is the truth.