A bold and powerful self-affirmation
Jesus Christ, even among great masters, was exceptional in his mission, and in his need to affirm his own importance to that mission. Sometimes he spoke in terms that, from anyone who had attained a union with God less perfect than his, must surely have seemed almost embarrassingly boastful and arrogant. He said, for example, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” *

Jesus’ self-affirmation did not indicate any lack of humility. He had no ego of which to be either proud or humble. Jesus came, however, with a particular expression of the eternal truths, and it was necessary for him to focus people’s high spiritual aspirations in himself as an instrument of divine grace. Otherwise, the many schools of thought that were rampant in his day would have diluted his message and made it seem merely another “school of philosophy,” from whose teachings people could select as they chose.

Reading his words in the Bible, one is nonetheless surprised at how powerfully he affirmed the importance of his own mission on earth. Repeatedly through the New Testament we find Jesus referring, without the slightest hesitation or reticence, to himself. Sometimes he spoke of himself as the “son of man;” sometimes, as the “Son of God.” It was, however, necessary for him to speak in that way. Very little valid spiritual tradition remained among the Jews of his time. Few would have been accepted his new expressions of eternal truth had he declared them self-effacingly.

A way-shower and conqueror of unknown territories
The age Jesus lived in was a hard one. He had to survive a public mission in a rough, dogmatic, and intolerant society. Never did he hesitate to “thunder” when the occasion called for a divine rumble. To those who like their saints “soft and cuddly,” Jesus would have been—shall we say?—an embarrassment. Indeed, to some people he must have seemed glaringly offensive!

It is, indeed, perfectly understandable that the self-assertiveness with which Jesus so often spoke would have seemed offensive to the unenlightened rabbis of his day. They were, in their own opinion, the supreme authorities in Judaism. If Jesus were to appear and teach in the same way on earth today in any country in Christendom—not as himself, but as someone unknown—I venture to say that almost every priest, pastor, minister of religion, and every other sort of prelate would probably consider his bold self-assertion quite as outrageous as did the Pharisees.

To those at the top of any social ladder, Jesus might well have seemed “pushy” and “a bit over the top.” In fact, he was “pushy.” It wasn’t himself he was pushing, of course, but divine Truth and God. He had come as a way-shower, a road builder, and conqueror of unknown territories. The more restrained and socially approved way of expressing oneself, always with tactful care, was not at all what was needed in his times.

One wonders, even, how the expression — “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” — ever got started. Jesus fitted perfectly the Vedic description of the man of God, as Paramhansa Yogananda quoted it in Autobiography of a Yogi: “Softer than the flower, where kindness is concerned; stronger than the thunder, where principles are at stake.”

A “firebrand revolutionary”?
Certain modern writers have claimed that Jesus Christ was a firebrand revolutionary, citing, among other things, his statement, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

Viewed literally, it would be easy to take Jesus’ words as bellicose. Viewed in the broader context of his life mission, we quickly see that he was not issuing an inflammatory call to arms, but speaking thus only to light a fire of divine courage in the hearts of devotees. The conflagration Jesus sought to ignite was a fire of pure love for God, underscored by renunciation of every lesser attraction and attachment.

Jesus’ reference to “sword” was a reference to the “sword” of discrimination, essential for slicing through the chains of outward attachment. He also meant “sword” symbolically, referring to the determination one needs to find God.

As for revolutionary zeal, the only “uprising” he encouraged was to urge people to “revolutionize” their inner, spiritual outlook. Jesus Christ came on earth to inspire people to seek union with God. “My kingdom,” he said, “is not of this world.” Constantly he urged them to seek God-consciousness: “He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.” Christ’s message was that the spiritual path is not for armchair devotees but for spiritual warriors, for those who would embrace death itself, rather than abandon their divine search.

Fiery power, conviction, and courage
Nor did Jesus comport himself like a rabble-rousing firebrand—a suggestion that a few modern commentators have also made. He spoke with magnetic courage, joy, and unshakable faith, but it is very evident from the Gospels (Yogananda, too, corroborated this statement), that Jesus never spoke with personal anger. He could, however, when the occasion demanded it, speak with fiery power and conviction, reflecting the wrath of God, as when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple!

Jesus, as a human being, was joy-filled, loving, and, to an amazing degree, courageous. On the occasion the Jews accused him of blasphemy and were about to stone him, he replied (I paraphrase), “I’ve done all these good works among you. For which of them do you intend to stone me?”

There could be no other explanation than courageous openness to anything, based on perfect non-attachment, in the way he replied. Only such supreme detachment could have made possible his good humor. Think of it: There he was, threatened with disaster by a hostile mob. Could what he said have been due to self-pity? (“Just look at all the favors I’ve done you. Is this your way—sniff!—of showing gratitude?”) Absurd! He challenged them, almost with a laugh!

Small wonder the orthodox Pharisees rejected him as fiercely as they did. One might almost say that Jesus, by his outspokenness, virtually invited their rage, causing it to erupt, finally, in the Crucifixion!

The Sermon on the Mount: “a revolutionary teaching”
Though Jesus himself was no “firebrand revolutionary,” his Sermon on the Mount has been described as “a revolutionary teaching.” And indeed so it was: its summons to live for God alone was uncompromising. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” he declared, “and His righteousness; and all these things [the requirements, in other words, for human fulfillment] shall be added unto you.”

The sermon is the longest single statement by Jesus in the New Testament. It includes some of his most important teachings, including the Beatitudes. Tradition depicts Jesus as delivering this sermon to the multitudes. It is more likely that he was addressing his disciples. The orthodox rabbis of the day were accustomed to the spiritual compromises demanded by worldly people. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount challenged their lukewarm devotion.

That Jesus was speaking to a more intimate group is implied at the very outset of the Beatitudes: “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth, and taught them.” His statement, “Ye are the light of the world,” would hardly have been directed at everybody. Jesus was addressing devotees whose deep desire was to dwell constantly in the consciousness of God.

Personal sincerity is what Jesus demanded. Jesus wanted to inspire all to seek God with the same ardor he showed, the ardor of dedication to the divine search. His mission was to help those refined souls whose egos were still trapped in limitation, but who desired earnestly to get out of their egos and to know God.

Why Jesus scolded his disciples
If Jesus sometimes scolded his disciples, it was to urge them to deepen their spiritual insight. Thus, when Peter asked him why it isn’t what goes into the mouth, but what comes out of it that defiles a person, Jesus answered, “Are you still unable to grasp these things? Don’t you see that whatever goes into a man’s mouth passes into the stomach and then out of the body altogether? But the things that come out of his mouth come from his heart and mind.”

Peter’s request for an explanation on a question that should have been clear to someone as spiritually developed as he showed how powerful prior conditioning can be. His thoughts wavered between the orthodox Jewish teachings on which he’d been raised and the new statements of eternal truth that were being taught by Jesus Christ.

Jesus seldom, if ever, explained his meanings either to the Pharisees or to the spiritual wanderers. The people of his times, and to some extent even his own disciples, were not ready for teachings that were too far ahead of the general knowledge of their day. It was to his disciples that he clarified them, even when their understanding fell short of his expectations of them.

“The truth shall make you free”
Jesus issued a stirring summons to the highest adventure there is: the quest for truth. By his self-affirmation and example, he challenged everyone to deepen his experience of life until he stands face-to-face with Truth itself. Thus, to Nicodemus he said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.”

The challenge Jesus gave us was to make truth our own. “Ye shall know the truth,” he said, “and the truth shall make you free.” By “truth” he meant the intuitive perception of our essential nature, which is one with God.

From Revelations of Christ and The Promise of Immortality, by Swami Kriyananda, available from Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order click here

*Bible verses in order:
John 14:6
John 18:36
Mathew 10:38
Mathew 10:36
John 18:36
John 10:30-31
Mathew 6:33
Mathew 5:14
Mathew 15:16-20
John 3:11
John 8:32

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Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the heart is the center for the primordial feeling element (chittwa) in consciousness. Furthermore, we perceive and respond to the world primarily through our feeling nature rather than the intellect, which follows feeling. One of Patanjali’s most important sutras says that “when we can neutralize the whirlpools of feeling (chittwa), we automatically attain union (yoga) with God.” The neutralization of the energies in the heart center is the key because the heart is the central “switching station” for the control and direction of our consciousness.

The two movements of the heart
It helps to understand that there are two movements of the heart’s energy we must learn to control before we can attain Self-Realization. The first is the outward movement of energy away from unity with God and into the delusion of matter-attachment. The second is the heart’s movement upward and downward — upward toward the higher chakras and expansive, happy feelings or downward into darkness, negativity, and contraction. Let’s discuss first the outward and inward movement of the heart’s energy.

Whenever Paramhansa Yogananda talked to his close disciples, one of his main themes was non-attachment. Attachments reinforce the delusion that material things — money, fame or circumstances — can make us happy. They can’t. The most they can do is fulfill a self-created condition on our happiness. Ultimately the power to be happy is completely in our mind, but when we look for fulfillment in material objects and circumstances, we give away our control.  The root cause of all pain and confusion is the forgetfulness of our unity with Spirit.

Today the world is in a state of great anxiety and fear due to widespread economic and political instability. Around the globe many people have assumed: “The more money, fame, or power I have, the happier I’ll be.” That delusion is now being shown to be false and as a result many people are confused and unhappy.

Harmonizing the heart’s energy
The first step to gaining control of the heart’s energy is releasing the attachments and bringing the outward flow of energy into a state of harmony with Spirit. Here are two stories that illustrate how dramatically things change when we expand and harmonize our heart’s energy.

One of the best movies we’ve ever seen is Schindler’s List. This movie, which is based on a true story, presents a deeply moving portrayal of how one man’s heart shifted from selfishness and greed to a loving and selfless concern for others — from separateness and contraction to unity and expansion.

One man’s inner journey
Schindler was a German and a Nazi. As a businessman, he saw that large profits could be made by producing materials needed for the Second World War, so he moved to Poland in order to start factory. He chose Poland because he knew that the Polish Jews were in terrible circumstances and couldn’t find work. He realized that he could hire them for a pittance. His factory was very productive and he was very well paid by the German hierarchy.

But then Schindler had a turn of heart. He began to see the atrocities being committed by the Nazis. First he tried to ignore them but soon realized he needed to protect his workers. When the Germans began rounding up Jews who lived in the ghettos to send them to concentration camps, Schindler created a housing area near his factory for his workers.

Toward the end of the war, the Nazi’s wanted to destroy all evidence of their atrocities and began to exterminate all remaining Jews. The only way Schindler could protect his workers was to convince the German hierarchy that he was going to move them en masse in order to start another factory elsewhere and continue helping the war effort. The Nazi’s agreed but insisted that Schindler pay for each worker he moved — over a thousand people. Schindler eventually gave away his entire fortune in order to save them.

Initially, all Schindler wanted was money. Dehumanizing and taking advantage of the Jews was just a means to his end. But as his heart’s energy expanded from a sense of separation to unity, he began to see these very same people as reflections of himself. Spiritual advancement requires that we, too, expand our heart’s energy from separation to unity, that we see all creatures as extensions of our own true self. And that we learn to love.

A different kind of bus ride
There’s another beautiful story that shows how one of our Ananda members shifted her heart’s energy in a similar way. In the 1980s, Ananda had a bookstore and restaurant in San Francisco. We also had an ashram San Francisco but on the other side of town from the bookstore. The woman who was the manager of the bookstore couldn’t leave the store until 11:30 or 12:00 at night.

Since she didn’t drive, she had to take the bus through a very downtrodden area of town. Many people, including drunks and drug addicts, would ride the bus late at night, and she found the situation very difficult. She sought Swami Kriyananda’s advice. Since she couldn’t drive, he suggested that she take a taxi or have someone from the ashram pick her up. It soon became clear that none of those options would work, and that the only way she could get home was by bus. Kriyananda said, “All right, then, I suggest that you to do this: When you get on the bus, pick out one person who appears to need help and pray for that person the whole way home. If that person gets off the bus, pick out a second person and pray for that person, and so on. But concentrate your whole bus ride on praying for others.”

About two weeks later, this woman told Swami Kriyananda that the bus ride had become her favorite part of the day. By praying for people, she shifted her heart’s energy from a state of separateness and fear to one of unity and joy.

Take back your power
These two stories dramatically illustrate how shifting the heart’s energy from separation to expansion is the most important step we can take spiritually. Techniques are obviously important but techniques alone will not give us Self-realization. We need to gain control over the direction of the heart’s potential to expand until we experience everything as a part of our own Self.

Ultimately, our happiness is under our control. If something is making us unhappy, it’s because we’ve given it the power to do so. Take that power back.

Working with negative emotions
Once we’ve decided to take our power back into ourselves, there are still the emotions of the heart’s upward and downward flow to deal with. An important key to working with emotions is remembering that in this world of duality every emotion has a dual nature. If we’re feeling a negative emotion, there will always be a polar opposite, and we can turn our negative emotions positive by focusing on that opposite.

For feelings of anger, the polar opposite is love. If we’re angry with someone but then decide to give that person love and understanding, we’ve taken control of the heart’s energy. We’ve turned on the heart’s positive “switch” which lifts us up to the higher chakras and ultimately into union with God.

We perceive and respond to the world primarily through our feeling nature. The mind actually plays a secondary role because the mind follows the heart. When we like or dislike something, the mind will automatically rationalize reasons to support our feelings.

Two very important attitudes
To bring the heart’s energy into a state of harmony with the Divine, it’s very important that we learn to feel certain attitudes resonating in our heart center. Love obviously is the most important feeling of all, but almost as important as love is gratitude.

Gratitude is important because it directs the energy flow upwards. By being grateful for the circumstances and people in our lives, we open up a positive flow of energy from the heart up to the spiritual eye. It’s simply impossible to be negatively directed while we feel gratitude. You don’t have express it outwardly — just silently allow that feeling of thankfulness to resonate in your heart. Start by being habitually grateful for things that are easy to accept. Then train yourself also to feel appreciation for things that are difficult.

Forgiveness is another very important attitude. Paramhansa Yogananda said that the highest expression of Christ’s love was his statement on the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” In the most difficult of circumstances, and fully aware that his persecutors were acting wrongly, Jesus’ attitude was one of love and acceptance. In fact, he was blessing his persecutors by asking God not to allow them to suffer the karma of their wrong actions. If we can do that even a little bit, it will begin to transform us spiritually.

From talks during Spiritual Renewal Week, August 15, 2011 and Inner Renewal Week, Feb 9, 2011.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide. Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Dear ________:

Partly it is a question of re-training one’s subconscious habits.  Partly, too, one must learn to live more superconsciously. To learn to live superconsciously, God’s presence must be experienced, not merely affirmed.  The more actually aware one becomes, in meditation, of God’s presence within, the more this inner awareness spills over effortlessly into his outward activities.

Inward awareness of the Divine Presence awakens also the understanding that there exists a Divine Law, and that all things are in fact ruled by this Law, and not really by our own little human efforts except to the extent that we serve as its willing instruments.  One knows then that the most important thing in life is to serve and please God alone, not man.

Again, when tests come, if one can hold onto the inner peace born of meditation one will find the inner strength to overcome them. But without this peace it is difficult to handle even minor nuisances without fairly disintegrating emotionally. Next to meditation, the most important thing is sat-sanga, good company. Among devotees a subtle magnetism is exchanged that gives to the strong as well as the weak added strength to maintain their calmness in the midst of daily activities.

Finally, to re-train your subconsciousness, always sing inwardly to God.  Japa this practice is called in India. And remember, when your love for God becomes a constant, silent yearning of your heart, all other things will melt away like morning mist before the rising sun. The greatest way to cling to God is to cling first to love.

May God and our Gurus bless you.

From Letters to Truthseekers, Crystal Clarity Publishers (Currently out of print). Related reading: In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection by Swami Kriyananda. To order click here

Q: How can I develop self-confidence? Every book I’ve read about achieving success stresses the importance of developing confidence in one’s self, of knowing that one is good at whatever one wants to do. Unfortunately, I simply haven’t that confidence. No matter how hard I try, I never seem to do things as well as I’d like to do them.

SK: I’ve glanced through some of those books, and find that what they’re trying to do is promote egotism. Egotism means pride, which Paramhansa Yogananda said is “the death of wisdom.” Without wisdom, any success achieved will be fragile. What I suggest is that you study the different kinds of success, and the kind of self-confidence that led to that success, and see which works the best.

Q: Are you saying that some kinds of self-confidence work better than others?

SK: Yes. Self-confidence that is not boastful, but rooted in calm self-knowledge, is much more effective than the “crowing rooster” kind.

Q: Well, I’m not interested in outstanding achievements! I just want to be able to do well whatever I do, without dreading the possible consequences.

SK: Evidently, then, you’re struggling with an inferiority complex. Most supposed “cures” for an inferiority complex focus on helping a person to build up his self-esteem. Their purpose is to resuscitate a weak or ailing ego. That can be helpful if the ego has been damaged, but it doesn’t take into account the fact that having an ego at all can be damaging. Why? Simply because it is self-limiting!

The goal of life is to find God. In that search, the first thing you need to overcome is the usual focus on the egoic self. What those attempts at creating self-esteem and self-confidence accomplish, generally, is to replace an inferiority complex with a superiority complex. Both of these “complexes,” Yogananda said, are more or less equally obstacles to true and long-lasting success.

Q: Can you explain further why both of those complexes are obstacles to success?

SK: Ego, considered as a flaw, is simply exaggerated self-involvement. To be insecure can be as much an expression of exaggerated self-consciousness as to be over-confident.

An inferiority complex is like a sponge. It sucks energy into itself, leaving little energy for what needs to be done. Over-confidence, on the other hand, cuts one off from the source of life-giving energy, rendering dry and uninspired whatever one accomplishes.

Q: Can you suggest ways to help me overcome this weakness—this inferiority complex?

SK: Certainly. There are essentially two ways. One is to shift one’s focus away from self-preoccupation, and direct it toward whatever is being done. Once people become really good at doing anything, they usually accept that competence. Self-confidence is no longer an issue.

The second way is to focus on seeking to channel a higher power.

Q: I think I understand that I need to focus less on myself, and I can see the importance of praying for God’s help when the work one does is for Him. My problem, however, relates to work I do for personal ends: seeking work to support my family, or even doing something trivial like defending my point of view in a discussion.

SK: The devotee should always try to include God in everything he does.

Q: But isn’t it somehow wrong to ask Him to inspire me with ways of winning a discussion on political issues?

SK: I agree with you. In my desire to rise above ego, I have always refused to pray for my own needs—such as for a healing when I am ill, or even for reduced pain when I am suffering. Once I had an acute kidney stone attack, and suffered for several hours from the most intense pain I had ever experienced, but I didn’t want to bother God with a plea for help.

It was only hours later, when I suddenly realized that in fifteen minutes a roomful of people were expecting me to give Sunday Service, that I finally said to God, “If You want me to give that service You’re going to have to do something about the pain!” Unbelievably, almost like breath fading from steel, the pain vanished from my body and was replaced by an equally intense joy!

Still, you see, I didn’t pray for myself: I prayed to be able to serve those people if God wanted me to. It’s important to exclude ego-motivation as much as possible. I have held to this principle throughout my life of discipleship.

Q: I do see your point, and hope I won’t forget it. Here’s another point: I find my self-confidence failing in situations where I’m expected to “produce”— such as to speak in public, or even to express my ideas before a small group of people. Under such circumstances, I certainly do pray to God for help — desperately! But I’m so worried about the impression I’ll make that the thought of Him gets crowded out of my mind when I’m speaking.

SK: What I’ve always done, and it has helped me also as a public speaker, is to keep in mind a “worst case scenario.” I’ve said to myself, “What am I afraid of? Isn’t it the thought that people might think me a fool? Very well then, I’ll just accept that maybe I am a fool! If that’s really my problem, what concern should it be of mine that others find out about it?”

If in any other way I turn out to have bungled anything, well, I’ll certainly try my best the next time, but all I can do, even then, is leave the matter in God’s hands. I can’t be responsible for being something I’m not. My only responsibility is to do my best, trying always to improve.

Q: Some of the books I’ve read tell me to visualize myself doing a good job. Might it have helped you to try to visualize yourself as a good public speaker?

SK: Most of a person’s ability to succeed at anything comes from attuning himself to whatever state of consciousness most closely resonates with success in that field. Yogananda one time, as the young director of his school at Ranchi, India, hired a well-known artist to paint a portrait of Lahiri Mahasaya, his guru’s guru. When the job was completed, Yogananda saw that the artist, though competent, had not captured the spirit of that great Master. The artist was upset by Yogananda’s response and challenged him to do a better picture.

Yogananda accepted the challenge, bought a set of paints and brushes, and set to work on creating another painting. His first few attempts were unsuccessful. Each time he failed, however, he tried again more carefully, gradually attuning himself to the skill required for the task. After a week, the new painting was finished.

When the artist saw the new painting, he had the humility to admit that it was better than his own. Yogananda, I suspect, had felt his sincerity, and therefore took the trouble to show him the importance of concentrating more on the deed than on oneself as the doer!

So you see, you must bring God into your work. However, don’t just pray, “Make me successful.” Say, rather, “Guide me, that I understand how to do better whatever it is I do.”

Q: This idea of attuning oneself to the task to be done is new to me. Can you elaborate some more?

SK: Yes. Whenever I’ve really wanted to do something well, I’ve found that by asking God to guide my understanding, rather than asking for the blessing to succeed, I’ve done many things for which no experience could have prepared me better. I’ve found, moreover, that by tuning in to what was needed the answers simply came to me, almost without effort.

Strange as it may seem, I’ve never had much confidence in myself about anything. Writing, I suppose, might be considered an exception: I’ve always known I could write. It is probably safe to say that my self-confidence here was a memory carried over from a previous incarnation and the only exception I remember to my usual lack of self-confidence.

On the other hand, I’ve always been certain I could do anything well I set my mind to — not because I considered myself particularly adept, but because, instead of holding the thought hopelessly, “I can’t do that!” I’ve told myself, “Even though I don’t see how I can do that, I know God can do anything, even through the poorest instrument!”

When I was asked, years ago, to write a book for Ananda’s twentieth anniversary in 1988, my schedule was such that I only had one week free to write it; after that, I had other commitments. With regret I replied that it just wasn’t possible.

Afterward, however, I suddenly thought, “It’s true I myself can’t do it, but God can do anything! Let me open the flood-gates and see what flows out.” Banishing all doubt as to my own ability, I sat down and, not affirming that I myself could do it, simply let come from God what would come. Ideas, and the right words in which to clothe those ideas, simply poured through my fingertips onto the computer keys. I was able, in spite of the time limitation, to write the book within that week.

So here, for the devotee, is an important solution to the problem of lack of self-confidence. If you think, “I don’t see how I can do it,” remind yourself, “but God can do anything!”

The matter goes even deeper than that: It shows that lack of self-confidence can actually be an aid, not a hindrance, to successful accomplishment. Frankly accepting one’s own incompetence will dismiss from one’s mind the whole agonizing process: “Can I? How can I? Do I have the experience to make the job even remotely possible? Couldn’t others do it better? ”

Remember the formula: “I can’t, but God, through me, can do anything!” How many times have I found my solution in that simple thought! In fact, one consequence has been that my own deep-seated self-doubt, brought over from past lives, and its accompanying lack of self-confidence, have been important keys to what perhaps few would deny has been a successful life. That lack of belief in myself, directed outward from myself, has resulted in finishing innumerable projects simply because, in self-forgetfulness, I was able to concentrate one-pointedly on the projects themselves.

Q: Is that formula another reason why you’ve never been nervous about public speaking?

SK: In part, yes. My initiation into public speaking was surely as dramatic as anyone might wish for. I was only twenty-two years old and had been with Yogananda only eight months, when I was asked to take the Master’s place in giving the Sunday morning service at our church in San Diego, California. The announcement had already gone out that he would be speaking that day.

When the curtain opened on the stage that next morning, to reveal this callow youth standing there instead of the great Guru everyone was expecting, a tangible shock went through the whole congregation. Strange as it may seem, I wasn’t nervous. Slightly apprehensive, yes, but I was so keenly aware of the letdown everyone was experiencing that I could only pity them; I hadn’t energy left over to feel sorry for myself.

Well, but that’s another key for overcoming lack of self-confidence: Lose yourself in the thought of (or, in my case, in my concern for) the people, or of the job at hand. Don’t make a big issue of getting yourself out of the way: simply focus all your attention on what needs to be done, and on the people you’re serving.

I’ve found it very helpful to focus also on the “worst case scenario.” I’ve imagined the most dreadful results that might loom before me. Then I’ve asked myself, “Well, so what else? Such things happen, and most people manage somehow to survive them.” Even death, when it comes, is not really the end of very much: just of another phase of existence. Thus, even if death should be the outcome of that “worst case scenario,” think to yourself, “What of it?” Death will have to come some day, so why not prepare yourself for it now?

With that thought in mind, I’ve found I can relax and forget all about being nervous. I should add that it does take a certain firmness of resolution to entertain such thoughts as these.

Q: Frankly, it would be difficult for me to focus on the “worst case scenario.”

SK: Doing so will contribute greatly to your own peace of mind. Often, people fear what will happen, but accept the thing calmly once it has happened. Thus, that “worst case scenario” can help as a visualization. Visualize that worst, then mentally accept it. In this way you’ll stop worrying about your competence, or lack of it, or anything.

Basically, I think the reason I haven’t had a problem with lack of self-confidence is not that I lacked it, but rather that I simply accepted that lack. I haven’t had enough self-confidence even to bother about not having it. By accepting it, and telling myself that God, on the other hand, can supply every lack, I’ve always found there was nothing to worry about.

The whole secret lies in accepting that we, of ourselves, really can’t do anything right, but that God through us can literally do anything!

From the essay, “How to Develop Self-Confidence” in Religion in the New Age, (Crystal Clarity Publishers), and other writings. To order: click here

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

When a dietician expounds upon the wonderful results of a certain dietary system, Mr. John is very enthusiastic. However, because he never tries out that system of diet, he loses interest in it. But if another dietician visits town, Mr. John goes to listen to him because he remembers the enthusiasm he felt while listening to the first dietician. Mr. John does not try out this new system of diet either, or if he tries it a little, he soon falls back on his unhealthy eating habits. In this way, Mr. John, impelled by a theoretical desire to eat properly, develops the habit of listening to all the new dieticians who come to town without ever following their instructions.

But Mr. John should remember that he cannot follow all dietary systems at the same time and that he should not discard a good system of diet for a lesser system, just because it happens to be new to him.

Carefully select the best teaching
The above principles apply to religion as well. Most people try to follow a variety of  teachings yet stick to none. Led only by curiosity, they love to listen to new ideas from new personalities without ever assimilating the ideas. They are like people who set out on a path to reach a certain destination but become so enamored with walking that they keep on walking and forget all about the point they wanted to reach.

Just as there is more than one true religion, so also is there more than one path that leads up the mountain of divine attainment. In the beginning of the spiritual search it is wise to seek truth through books and lectures and to compare different spiritual paths and teachers. But it becomes important at a certain point to carefully select the best teaching and the best teacher.

You can find the best teaching expressed in books, but to attain spiritual perfection, you also need the assistance of a guru. The willingness to accept divine guidance through one of God’s awakened channels differentiates the sincere seeker from the dilettante. To try to achieve spiritual perfection through a variety of channels shows not only a lack of commitment, but a lack of understanding of the universal path by which all souls find enlightenment.

The potential for confusion
Once you’ve made your selection, it is important to be firmly loyal to your way. You must simply accept that it is not possible to follow more than one teaching at a time, any more than you can reach a destination by following more than one route at a time. Once you’ve found a true teaching, the restless searching should cease.

Unfortunately, many students, even after finding a true teaching, continue to read other teachings and to investigate other paths, perhaps hoping to find easier, shorter routes to divine attainment. I once had a student who read other teachings all the time. She was a very nice person, always kind and polite to everyone. But I used to tell her, “Why don’t you read your own teachings?”

“Oh, all teachings are the same,” she said.

“That’s true,” I said, “but just the same, if you keep reading everything else you will get confused. You have to realize the truth behind those teachings. Only then will you know from realization that they are the same. Until that time, it will be like trying to cross a river with your feet in two boats. When the boats separate, you will fall between them and drown. Some differences do exist between the various teachings. With wisdom, they can be resolved. To the unenlightened mind, however, though they are superficial, they can be a cause of confusion.”

Unfortunately, this student didn’t heed my advice but kept on with her eclectic reading. After a time, she drifted off.

Loyalty is the first law of God
The very thought, “Oh, all teachings are the same,” has just enough truth in it to constitute also a pitfall. Until you have risen above your conscious mind and learned to live more by superconscious guidance, the differences between one teaching and another can easily lead into a bog of confusion.

To one who lives by superconscious guidance and is planted firmly on his own path, the differences between one teaching and another become superficial. Such a person understands the underlying purpose of each path, and sees why the good advice of one teacher may differ in some respects from the equally good advice of another. Newcomers to the path, however, may not perceive the unifying rationale behind those differences, and are often confused by them.

Always be wise in your seeking. The emotional excitement of finding new ways must always be balanced against the truth that “loyalty is the first law of God.” Eclecticism indicates a lack of serious purpose. This is not to say you should be fanatical, but on the other hand don’t be wishy-washy. If you would unite your soul with Him who is the foundation of the universe, you must be firm in what you stand for. Unswerving loyalty to one’s chosen path is necessary.

Seek God with deep sincerity
Why do so many people truly long for God, yet do not find him?  It is because they do not seek Him with deep sincerity and give up too soon.

Always be completely sincere with God. Without sincerity, the necessary focus and intensity will be lacking. God already knows what you are thinking, but sincerity lends power to your thoughts and prayers by focusing and centering them in Him. God never fails to listen to true soul-calls.

The devotional call, if sincere, deep and continuous, and supplemented by sincere efforts at deep meditation, always brings a divine response. The sincere truth-seeker tells himself, “I know what an arduous task it must be to achieve perfection, but I will give it all I have. With God’s help, success surely must be mine!”

What happens if you fall?
We are living in a new age when the standards of living are less strict. It becomes even more important, therefore, to remember always that the correct spiritual way to live is to go within and ask yourself whether what you are doing is right or wrong. Be absolutely sincere with yourself. If you are sincere you will rarely go wrong, and if you do, you will quickly correct yourself.

Sincere repentance for past wrong actions is needed before a person can go forward and make the kind of effort needed to attain divine freedom. For this reason, Jesus wanted to test the character of his fallen disciple, the woman of Samaria, to see if she could be helped. The woman of Samaria had had five husbands and was then living with a man who was not her husband.

To determine the degree of her degradation, Jesus asked her to call her husband. When she responded honestly by telling Jesus that she had no husband, he was pleased. Her truthfulness showed that her moral degradation was only temporary. Because of her honesty and recognition of Jesus as the promised Messiah, he was able to heal her. Thereafter, she became one of his disciples and devoted herself to the spread of his teachings.

Never indulge in hypocrisy or insincerity
No matter how far a disciple has strayed from the spiritual life, he can be saved if he is sincere and honest with his guru. Insincerity and prevarication toward the guru are the greatest sins for these are deliberate transgressions, unlike flesh transgressions which are often due partly to instinctive compulsion. It’s possible to help wayward souls if they sincerely confess their faults and are willing to accept the guru’s advice and blessings. But if the disciple practices insincerity toward his guru and tries to hide his moral disease, he shuts the door to the guru’s healing help.

Never indulge in hypocrisy or insincerity. Always remember: no matter how far you fall from the grace of goodness, you are spiritually safe if you sincerely try your utmost to become good again.

It was this all-important quality of sincerity that Jesus praised in his disciple, Nathaniel, upon their first meeting. As Nathaniel walked toward him accompanied by the disciple Philip, Jesus said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” — meaning, “Behold a soul who is completely free of all insincerity.”

Sincerity and courage attract divine strength
You can attain divine consciousness if you are sincere and persistent, and convince God that you want Him more than anything else. You must apply yourself energetically and put forth continuous personal zeal. No matter what your difficulties, you must not give up. Those devotees who never give up reach the divine goal.

Salvation is possible because sincerity and courage attract the strength needed for its attainment. God gives to the sincere seeker the power to achieve victory.

From books, articles, and lessons (1938).

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1. Forgetfulness of God
For many of us, forgetfulness of God is the main culprit holding us back spiritually. When we go days at a time forgetting our spiritual quest, the path gets dry and we lose our inspiration.

Some years ago, I (Devi) had a beautiful week-long seclusion at Paramhansa Yogananda’s retreat at Encinitas. I meditated for many hours every day and immersed myself in Yogananda’s consciousness. In the early evening I would watch the sun setting over the ocean. There was one day when the sunset was especially beautiful. The sky’s iridescent pastel colors looked like beautiful shimmery chiffon and the ocean was like rolling waves of velvet with streams of silver.

I remember thinking that the sky looked like Divine Mother in the most beautiful gown I had ever seen. There was a feeling of perfect, beautiful omnipresence, and I was part of that omnipresence.

Then I looked down and saw a bit of movement on the water. My focus descended from the vastness and beauty of the sunset to that little point of movement. Three or four people were surfing, and I began watching them and thinking to myself, “Oh, look he’s falling. No, he’s going to make it all the way in.” Suddenly all I could think about was that little human drama. I had totally forgotten Divine Mother’s beautiful presence. When I realized what had happened, it was like a slap in the face.

But that happens so often in our lives as devotees. We set a resolution—we say we’re going to remember God, but subconsciously there are contrary inclinations, and we lose sight of the high mountain of Self-realization and the expansiveness of Spirit. It isn’t enough to say we shouldn’t be forgetful, because the very nature of the mind is to flit and forget. We need to build in constant little reminders like japa or chanting. But the main antidote to forgetfulness is introspection. Yogananda talked repeatedly about introspection and how important it is for our spiritual progress.

Yogananda recommends that we practice introspection twice a day, morning and evening. In the morning we should set our resolutions for the day and in the evening, review our day and ask ourselves: “Did we use our will power to keep our resolutions, or did we become the tool of bad habits?”  Yogananda says that by “ever-watchful introspection” we can banish all the contrary inclinations that make us forgetful of God.

2. Negativity and avoiding the light
Paramhansa Yogananda spoke very strongly about not speaking negatively. His position on this issue contradicts much of modern psychology, but he said we should never talk about past hurts or bad experiences, or about any of the things people have done that bother us. Any form of negative expression opens the mind to negative thinking.

Yogananda said it was an abuse of God’s gift of memory to remember bad experiences and to dwell on them. We should use the gift of memory to recall uplifting and positive experiences. Using memory in this way helps to free us from karma.

Negativity can also take the form of watching movies or reading books that pull us down. The negative content of modern media can easily pull the mind into negative thought patterns. The same is true of certain kinds of news programs and political commentary. Most political commentary these days tends to be negative and polarizing.

Negative thinking is such an easy habit to fall into. Think of a river: When you step into it at the edge of the bank, the river doesn’t have much power. If you take only one or two steps into that negative current, it’s easy to get out. But the more you go toward the center of the stream, the more forcefully it will carry you into increasing negativity. It is important to catch your negative thoughts quickly and turn your mind toward something positive or beautiful.

People who are habitually pulled into a spiritual slump by negativity tend to avoid the very things that would help draw them in an upward direction: satsangs, group meditations, Sunday service. If you’re stuck in a downward pulling direction, one of the antidotes is to force yourself to go to uplifting events and places. Everything in the world has magnetism – people, places, thoughts – and environment is stronger than will power. Put yourself in the presence of upward pulling magnetism.

When you’re really stuck in a downward pulling thought pattern, the antidote is to work with the body, not the mind. Passive negativity doesn’t have enough energy to be redirected upward, so the first step is to do something that gets positive energy going — deep breathing, exercise, a walk, or some form of sport. Once the energy is moving again, find a way to help someone. Serviceful activity will help get you out of the negative stream and into the stream of positivity.

3. Restlessness and comparisons
The next culprit on the list is the tendency to get restless. We can be going along perfectly fine in our spiritual life and then all of a sudden we get the thought: “I need to go to the mall,” or “I need to relax and see a movie…” or “I’d like to have an outing with my friends.” Obviously it’s not a bad thing to get out and change our environment once in a while but if we have a habit of becoming restless, then we need to work against that habit. The complexity of the world is infinite, especially in this age of the internet. There are so many things we can get involved in—but the net effect of all this outward involvement is to draw us into a rajasic mode and away from God.

A less obvious form of restlessness is comparing ourselves with others. Once while still fairly new on the path, I (Devi) asked an Indian yogi who was visiting Ananda and giving a satsang, “How do we develop the kind of commitment that keeps us on the path for our entire life? He said, “Never compare yourself to other people.”

I thought, “What has that got to do with staying on the spiritual path?” Since then I’ve realized how important that advice was. Comparing ourselves with other people takes us out of our higher self into a sense of separation. It takes us into ego competition, into such thoughts as: “He’s so spiritual, she’s not so spiritual. I’m more spiritual than they are.” We can easily slip into feelings of superiority and negativity, or we can become discouraged about our spiritual potential.

Swami Kriyananda suggested a way out of a tendency to feel superior. He said we should strive to put our egos in a position of disadvantage, to look for ways we can take a back seat. This helps us disconnect from the sense, “I am important.” For feelings of discouragement, the solution is to offer such thoughts up to God, knowing that God is pleased when we strive to do our best with the karma we’ve brought over from the past.

One of the most powerful of all spiritual techniques is to keep our consciousness focused at the point between the eyebrows, the spiritual eye. Keeping our consciousness there banishes all restless thoughts.

4. Material desire and “unnecessary luxuries”
For many people material desire would be at the top of the list of things that hold us back from God, but most devotees aren’t strongly pulled by the usual material desires. Devotees are more challenged by what we might call “unnecessary luxuries.” These are the ways we indulge ourselves emotionally and psychologically: “I don’t really need to get up for meditation every morning. I’ll give myself the luxury of sleeping in twice a week.” “Though I need to lose weight, I’ll give myself the luxury of eating two big pieces of that dessert.” Every time we give into those indulgences, we’re giving in to our lower nature.

Sometimes those who’ve been on the spiritual path for awhile begin to think: “I’m a devotee. I’ve given my life to God. It’s probably okay if I go see that R-rated movie.” But it’s not okay. The consciousness is very malleable, and those images penetrate deeply. The downward pulls of delusion are so strong that we can never relax our vigilance. In a way, the longer we’re on the spiritual path, the more vigilant we need to be because it’s easy to allow bad habits to start creeping in.

We received a letter recently from a friend who as a young man had struggled with alcoholism, and was able to overcome it through a 12-step program. He was looking forward to his 30-year anniversary as a non-drinker. He wrote that he had attended a gathering of friends he hadn’t seen for a long time, and that he was the only one who wasn’t drinking. And he could feel a pull —“What’s one drink going hurt? You’ve been sober for 30 years.” He felt this battle going on within himself. He concluded the letter by saying, “I left the party, and I made my 30th anniversary.”

5. The non-use of Yogananda’s techniques
The ultimate culprit that holds us back spiritually is the non-use of Yogananda’s techniques. The failure to use the spiritual tools given by the Guru puts us out of attunement with him. The antidote is to start doing the very simple things he suggested. Sit and practice Hong Sau for an entire meditation. Try to go deeper and deeper. Ultimately the goal of Hong Sau is to go beyond the breath, into breathlessness. Try also to practice the AUM technique more, and especially Kriya Yoga.

We’ve listed five things that hold us back spiritually, but you don’t have to give into them. A simple formula that applies to all five is this: Anytime you feel pulled in a negative direction ask yourself: “What is the opposite of this direction?” Then put your energy into that positive direction. Yogananda says if you bring in the light, the darkness disappears even though it’s been there for a million years. As soon as you flip the light switch, it becomes light. You don’t have to wait another million years for the light gradually to cancel the darkness.

*******

What draws us to God?
Ultimately what draws us to God is the help of God and Guru. We can’t do it on our own. The Guru is that expression of God who has been designated to lead us out of darkness and into the light. Do everything possible to increase your attunement with the Guru. Draw from his power. Keep him in your heart. Try to feel you are a channel for the Guru’s vibration and that nothing exists except that vibration. More than anything else, being a channel for that vibration is what will draw us to God.

From talks at Ananda Village during February 2010 and August 2011.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide.

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Paramhansa Yogananda told us he’d once gone to see “The Song of Bernadette,” a movie about the life of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, France. “I was deeply moved,” he said, “for there were many similarities between her life and my own. And then I chanced to look up, and saw the light coming out of the projection booth. Everything taking place on the screen was an illusion, created by variations of shadows and light. Such is human existence. It is all God’s light producing everything. Yet how completely real it all seems to human beings.”

The “cosmic motion picture” is true not only to two human senses, sight and hearing, but to all five. It is presented to us three-dimensionally, and includes the illusion of smell, taste, and touch. And yet, just as the light emanating from the projection booth in a movie house produces mere images of reality, so also does God’s light produce mere appearances. For all its persuasiveness, life is as fundamentally unreal as any movie.

The universe is only a projection of shadows and light. Everything is produced by God. Indeed, not only does He produce a movie true to the five senses, He also writes the script, directs the action, plays all the parts, composes and plays all the music, and even provides the audience!

*******

Learn to say: “What a fine picture!”

When the English novelist, Charles Dickens, was writing his famous tale, The Old Curiosity Shop, he realized at a certain point that it would be necessary to the integrity of his story for Little Nell, his main character, to die. It is said that when this understanding came to him he walked the streets of London for hours, weeping. Yet he had no artistic choice but to “kill” her. Otherwise, he would have been untrue to his own story line.

God, Yogananda said, also weeps for mankind: for man’s follies and sufferings. He weeps for human wickedness, also, for though it produces grief for the recipients of wickedness, it produces even more grief, in time, for the wicked themselves. Yet the Lord lets His show go on. He created it without any sense of personal involvement. The drama of every individual’s life must work its slow way, by however winding a road, to its eventual, inevitable conclusion: reabsorption in the bliss of Satchidananda.

Yogananda once said: “When we go to a tragic motion picture and see death and suffering on the screen, we may leave saying, ‘What a fine picture!’ Why then can we not say as much of this motion picture of life? For the truth is, we are only shadow players on the screen of life. We are immortals sent here on earth to act our roles and then depart. We should not take the play seriously. Whatever picture is showing, we should not let it disturb our minds.

“Let us just say, ‘This is a good picture. I am learning much from this experience.’ If you can face life with this attitude, you shall see the light of eternal bliss dancing through all life’s experiences.”

*******

The Story of Narada

Though an illusion, life is the most convincing movie of all. The Indian scriptures relate a story that allegorically describes the illusory nature of human existence, and how easy it is to become ensnared in that illusion.

Narada, an ancient Indian sage, after years of meditation, realized God  in the form of Vishnu. When the Lord appeared to him as Vishnu, he asked if Narada would like to request from Him a boon.

“Yes, Lord,” replied Narada. “Please help me to understand how people get caught up in Your maya—the cosmic delusion. It all seems so simple to me, now that I’m out of it. How can people be so foolish?  Help me to understand that power of delusion which keeps humanity roaming in spiritual ignorance for so many countless incarnations.”

“Very well, My son,” replied the Lord. “Come, let us go for a walk.”

As they went, they came to a desert. The day was hot, and the sand made it much hotter. After some time, both of them felt the need for water to drink. And then, on the horizon, they saw a wisp of smoke rising, giving evidence of a village.

“Narada,” said Vishnu, “I am very thirsty. Would you go to that village and fetch me some water?”

“Certainly, Lord!” replied Narada.

He trudged over the hot sand until he reached the small village. At the first house he came too, he knocked on the door. It was answered by a beautiful maiden. Anciently familiar she seemed to him. In an instant he forgot everything else! Her parents, who were at home, welcomed him as their own. He and the maiden were married, and set up a home and business in another part of the village. Years passed. They had a son; then another one.

After twelve years, his wife gave birth to their third child. While this third one was still a baby, there came all of a sudden a flash flood from a swollen river high up in the hills. In little more than a moment the flood wiped out their home, their business — the whole village. Narada escaped with nothing but his little family and the clothes on their backs.

As the flood waters rose all around them, they set off together in desperate search of high ground. They waded through the swirling water, as high as their knees. Narada held one child by each hand, and slung their baby over one shoulder. His wife struggled along by his side.

Suddenly Narada stumbled slightly on a submerged stone. As he tried hastily to regain his balance, the baby slipped off his shoulder into the water. Desperate to save it, he released his other two children’s hands and reached out to rescue the baby. Alas, it was swept away before he could catch it. The older boys, lacking his strong grip, were swept away also. At that moment Narada’s wife, her knees buckling with grief, fell also and was carried off in the flood. In just a few minutes Narada had lost everything he had worked so hard, over twelve years, to create. Despondent, his will failed him, and he collapsed, letting the water take him, too.

Long afterward, it seemed, he came back to consciousness. Looking around him, he saw on all sides what looked like a muddy expanse of water. “I must,” he thought, “have been swept onto a little mound.” Then, recalling his tragedy, he began softly to weep.

“Narada!” sounded a voice nearby. Why did it seem so familiar? He looked about him again, and realized that what he’d seen around him was not muddy water, but a vast expanse of desert sand.

“Narada!” came the voice again. He looked up. To his amazement, he saw Vishnu standing there.

“Narada, what happened?” inquired Vishnu. “Half an hour ago I sent you for a drink of water, and now I find you sleeping in the sand. What has happened?”

*******

For all its persuasiveness, life is as unreal as any movie. There is no substance at all to the manifested universe—except inasmuch as movies are real: as appearances, merely. The vast drama of time, space, and active life is a colossal fiction!

*******

From Conversations with Yogananda by Swami Kriyananda and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained, by Paramhansa Yogananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

VISUALIZATION
A World of Virtual Reality

by Swami Kriyananda

Paramhansa Yogananda stated that spiritual progress can be greatly accelerated by keeping one’s mind focused all the time at the point between the eyebrows, the Christ center. However, one problem with visualizing the Christ center during activity is that it represents mental fixity. Everything we do outwardly, however, involves motion. It is difficult enough even while meditating to bring the mind to a still focus. During activity, this difficulty is increased a thousandfold.

Here, then, is a suggestion: Visualize a video screen at the point between the eyebrows! Project your mind through the screen, as if through a window, into a world of “virtual reality.” That is in fact what everything around us is: a world of virtual reality. It is an illusion, simply—more real to us than any video we see only because it is faithful to all five of the senses, and not only to the senses of hearing and sight. Nevertheless, it is not more real, fundamentally, than any video movie.

As you act and interact with the world around you, and with others, project your consciousness and energy out to them through the “video screen” of your spiritual eye!

From Meditation for Starters, by Swami Kriyananda, available from Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order click here

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With this goal in mind, the Hindu philosopher asked, “Boatman, have you studied the first Hindu bible?” The boatman replied, “No sir. I don’t know anything about the first Hindu bible.” The Hindu philosopher, looking very wise, remarked pityingly, “Mr. Boatman, I am sorry to declare unto you that 25 per cent of your life is lost.”

The boatman swallowed this insult and kept on quietly rowing his boat. When the boat had gone some distance across the Ganges, the Hindu philosopher, his eyes sparkling with unholy wisdom, exclaimed loudly, “Mr. Boatman, I must ask you: have you studied the second Hindu bible?”

This question roused the boatman and he replied, “Sir, I tell you definitely that I know nothing about the second Hindu bible.” To this the Hindu philosopher replied with cool amusement, “Mr. Boatman, I am very sorry to declare unto you that 50 per cent of your life is lost.”

The boatman angrily settled down to his work at the oars. When the boat had reached the middle of the river and the wind was blowing a bit strongly, for the third time the Hindu philosopher’s eyes glistened with superiority and he demanded, “Mr. Boatman tell me: have you studied the third Hindu bible?”

By this time the boatman was beside himself with wrath and he shouted, “Mr. Philosopher, I am sorry you cannot find anybody else to practice your knowledge upon. I told you I don’t know anything about the Hindu bibles.”

The philosopher, in gloating triumph and with pseudo-wisdom resounding in his voice, declared nonchalantly, “Mr. Boatman, I am sorry to announce unto you that 75 per cent of your life is lost.” The boatman kept mumbling and somehow swallowed the words of this impossible philosopher.

Ten more minutes passed. Suddenly a demon of a storm seared the veils of the clouds and sprang over the waters of the river, lashing it into furiously excited waves. The boat began to rock like a little floating leaf in the madly raging river current.

The philosopher was shivering and trembling, while the boatman with a smile of assurance on his face looked at him and said, “Mr. Philosopher, you pelted me with many questions. May I now ask you one?” Receiving an affirmative reply, the boatman said, “Mr. Hindu Philosopher, knower of the four Hindu bibles, you established that 75 per cent of my life was lost. Now I will ask you a question: Do you know how to swim?”

To this question the Hindu philosopher tremblingly replied, “No, dear boatman. I cannot swim.” Then the boatman, with victorious indifference, smilingly replied, “Mr. Hindu Philosopher, knower of the four Hindu bibles, I am sorry to declare unto you that 100 per cent of your life is soon going to be lost.”

Just at that moment, as if fulfilling the prophecy of the boatman, a furious gust upset the boat, drowning the philosopher. The boatman, by powerful strokes, overcame the waves and reached the shores of the Ganges in safety.

*******

The moral of this story: No matter how prosperous or powerful you are, unless you learn the art of right behavior and right living, you will drown in the seas of difficulty. But if you know the art of swimming across life’s tumultuous river by initiating the right actions at the right time, with powerful strokes of will power, you will be able to transcend the tests of life and reach the shores of perfect contentment.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1938.

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Beginners on a ski slope make a good study in worry-consciousness: chins jutting forward, rear ends jutting backward, knees bent as if they thought the slope was planning to attack them, arms stiff and flailing as though they expected, after the fall, to be reincarnated as windmills. But most people have to be extra attentive to the details of a thing while they’re still learning it. The worrier goes them one better. He remains at his post far beyond the call of duty. He goes on acting the novice — tense, apprehensive — long after he should have learned to “stand up and flow with the slope.”

I remember a friend of mine in college (in fact it was Julius Katchen, whose remarkable talent as a pianist later brought him fame) passing my window one day, shaking his fists in the air and crying, “Problems! Problems!” That image has always lingered in my mind as epitomizing the attitude so typical of the worrier. Julius couldn’t have had all that much to emote over, except maybe finding another tenor for the glee club. But he looked as though the problems of the universe were nesting in his hair.

The basic problem of the beginning skier is too much concern for his own body. The basic problem of the chronic worrier is too much concern for himself. This concern may express itself in various ways — as excessive self-consciousness, or an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the success of every undertaking, or a tendency to hover protectively over others like a mother hen, or even (strange to say) as absent-mindedness and inattention to the outward details of living — a result of being absorbed in too many inward-drawing, mental vortices. The first lesson, then, for every worrier is to learn to relax, to offer himself more and more freely into life’s flow.

Unfortunately, the worrier even more than most people finds it difficult to see life as a flow. As his exaggerated sense of ego (please understand, I don’t mean egotism, or pride) separates him mentally from the rest of the world, so he tends to fragment things objectively, too, to see them in terms of separations. Details of one kind and another, usually minor, absorb him. Again, over-attentiveness to his little self creates in him a bias toward minutiae, such that even if an enemy army invaded his country his chief concern might be over what the invaders were doing to the condition of the roads. In other words, he loses the sense of objective proportion.

But the world is not divided into two classes of people — the worriers and the non-worriers. Most of us worry sometimes, and most worriers are at times full of confidence. I’m writing here of a general line of human development, not of rigid categories of people and behavior. In fact, the tendency to break things up mentally into categories is both a symptom of worry-consciousness and, to a greater or lesser degree, a weakness of most of the human race.

Even moderately good skiers, who can afford to forget their bodies and think more about the problems of the slope, betray their lack of expertise in the exaggerated attention they give to every bump and turn. The mark of an expert is not only the fact that he knows how to execute the necessary movements, but that he sees the slope as a continuity; he absorbs the obstacles as they come, into a sense of graceful, flowing movement.

Remember, faith is a dynamic practice, not a passive acceptance of whatever you believe to be true. Try exercising more of this sort of faith — in life, and especially in God. Even if life doesn’t always seem like much of a flow to you, depend more on God’s power to work things out always for the best. The more you dynamically, lovingly offer your life and ego to Him, and the more you think of Him as the real Doer even when it is you who seem to be acting, the more amazed you will be to see how very capable He is of running things quite competently Himself!

Our job as human beings is to try to do His will, but at the same time to understand that we can never be more than willing soldiers in the eternal war of light against darkness. We must do our best, but it is not for us to decide the outcome even of minor skirmishes. That is why the Bhagavad Gita says that one should act willingly, but leave the results of his actions to God. (Nishkam karma the Gita calls it: desireless action.)

Always remember, worry-consciousness, and the tendency to fragment reality into separate, static, mental images, not only creates problems where none really exist, but actually interferes with one’s efforts to resolve problems where they do exist. The worrier tends to think that he alone is realistic in a world of daft dreamers, but in fact he would be much more realistic if he saw himself as he really is: a humble soldier in the struggle of life, not a general; and if he saw life as it really is: a divine flow.

From Letters to Truthseekers, Crystal Clarity Publishers (currently out of print). Related reading: In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection by Swami Kriyananda. To order click here

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My imprisoned soul cried at last for freedom from the prison of confining flesh and solicitous maternal care. No more did I want to dwell within the fenced garden of the senses. Yes, I cried for freedom.

Then at last the cloud of silence within me, holding Thee remote, burst, and Thy mercy rained upon me, cleansing me with Thy grace. The rising waters of Thy Spirit broke the narrow boundaries of my soul, baptizing me in Thine expanding waters of infinity.

The power of Thy flood of cosmic consciousness broke the embankments of my senses, and every little bubble of my consciousness dissolved, to be baptized in the waters of Thine omnipresence.

From Whispers from Eternity by Paramhansa Yogananda, edited by Swami Kriyananda. Available from Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order click here

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Cast out all negative mental habits, substituting in their place wholesome, courageous thoughts. Apply these in your daily life, with unshakable confidence.
How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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Divine courage comes from living in the awareness of God’s presence within, and the realization that He is the sole Reality. Live more in Him, for nothing and no one can touch what you really are.
Affirmations for Self-Healing by Swami Kriyananda.

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Fear has a very deleterious effect on the heart, nervous system, and brain. It is destructive to mental initiative, courage, judgment, common sense, and will power. Uproot fear from within by forceful concentration on courage and by shifting your consciousness to the absolute peace within.
Praecepta Lessons, 1930 by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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God is most pleased with courage even in the face of defeat. The true devotee is not one who cries, “Lord, please, I beg You: Please save me!” This is defeatism! We should stand lovingly before God, with the confidence a son has in his loving father.
The Promise of Immortality by Swami Kriyananda.

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True courage is not blind stupidity. Stupidity, for example, is jumping off a diving board without first looking to see if there’s water in the pool. True courage means facing reality, and not wishing that inconvenient facts would somehow just disappear.
Life’s Little Secrets by Swami Kriyananda.

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Be courageous in your decision making. Even a poor decision may be preferable to making no decision at all: At least it will keep the energy flowing, which may, in time, attract good decisions.
Do It NOW! by Swami Kriyananda.

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People who breathe freely sideways tend to be courageous, expansive in their outlook. A deliberate effort to breathe outward sideways can help one to develop these wholesome attitudes.
Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness by Swami Kriyananda.

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Learn to perform all your duties with courageous cheerfulness welling up from within you. Then you will see a flood of vitality move through your entire body and all your daily actions.
Praecepta Lessons, 1935 by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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Karma is best worked out by meeting life’s tests cheerfully and courageously. Don’t try to avoid life’s tests but rise above them by dwelling in God’s joy within.
How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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To fully embrace divine love takes heroic courage. Yet only in doing so can we find the fulfillment we all seek in life.
The Promise of Immortality by Swami Kriyananda.

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Spiritual success comes by looking upon all things cheerfully and courageously, with the realization that everything is marching towards the highest goal. Place your absolute faith in God and always acknowledge His power working through you in everything you do.
How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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Be even-minded and walk with courage. Go forward from day to day with calm, inner faith. Eventually, you will pass beyond all tests and difficulties, and behold at last the dawn of divine fulfillment.
How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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Science tells us that everything came from vibration and that all things in this universe are nothing but different rates of one vibration. Therefore it is one vibration which has created the solids, liquids, gases, and all substances. Isn’t it so?”

He said, “Yes.” Then I asked, “How is it that one vibration becomes solid, another becomes liquid, and another becomes gases, and how is it that these vibrations are so coordinated that human life becomes possible? Doesn’t it show that there is an Intelligence behind all this?” He said, “Yes, I have found the answer.”

All matter is composed of vibration. The difference between solids, liquids, and gaseous substances consists only in the different rate of their vibration. Heat a piece of iron and it will liquefy; further heat the liquid and it will evaporate into gas. Science does not tell us how this one vibration differentiates itself, but vibration could not differentiate itself into different forms if it did not have intelligence.

In support of human life
Intelligent vibration creates and guides the universe. The human body is simply a combination consisting chiefly of 16 elements that can be found almost anywhere in Nature’s realm. Unless intelligence is in the body, it is only a combination of these elements and nothing more. With intelligence added, it becomes a living and thinking human being.

If vibration were not intelligent, the earth might be a meaningless mass of mud without human beings or a food supply to support human life. Seemingly, the earth and the whole universe have been placed on a routine so that human life is possible.

For instance, there is the sun far away and here we are on this little earth and yet, due to the direction of a living intelligence, there is a cooperation between the sun and our lives. Without that sun we could not exist. Even the stars govern our lives to some extent. We have hunger, and Nature supplies our need for food. Some mysterious power transforms that food into energy and the tissues of our bodies. Why doesn’t one hand become longer than the other? Why is not the head as long as the body?

Everything we see in creation shows thought and design. Even the fibers of the tree show thought and design. The tree breathes and has sap pressure. Why do the seasons come on time? Why is the earth the earth, the ocean the ocean, and the solar system a solar system? Why is there this perceptible beauty and orderly arrangement in the universe?  It is because an intelligent force is guiding all things to a definite destiny. Not only do we see evidence of intelligence in everything around us, but the harmonious arrangement of all things suggests a conscious prearranged plan.

Human beings, the solar and stellar systems, the earth with its physical laws and routine of seasons, all stand in harmonious relation to each other. This shows the universe to be the work of one governing Intelligence or Universal Spirit who creates all things and arranges them in harmonious relationships according to an unseen plan.

The Factory of Cosmic Intelligence
The Infinite is inconceivable, but the finite gives us a starting point. Can the intelligence reflected in Nature come out of nothing? Is it not reasonable to suppose that somewhere there is some sort of “factory” that produces intelligence? We humans are only one of the many products of that Factory of Cosmic Intelligence. God is that invisible Factory of Intelligence from which stars, planets, and all manifest things are created, born and harmonized.

Despite Nature’s many pranks, throughout the universe there is a rhythm. This rhythm, and all things, are products of the Factory of the one All-Ruling Intelligence. In fact, the whole universe works in a coordinated way. It is a universe conducted in perfect order. Different rates of vibration, balanced in the cosmic rhythm, produce before us the majestic cosmos.

Beauty, morality, & nobility
You will observe that this universal Spirit is also trying to manifest beauty and a moral and a noble plan. Not only do we see intelligence at work, but we also see the beauty of Nature, of mountains rising in the ever-changing canvas of the sky. We see the beauty of magnanimous souls, the loftiness of certain minds, the depth of saintly love, the fountains of human mercy. Why is there this perceptible beauty and inspiration all around us? No doubt the universal power sometimes works under adverse circumstances, but it is evident that a secret force is at work trying to bring order out of the chaos of creation through beauty, and a moral and spiritual plan.

Everything in the universe is related. Hidden within us is the germ of an Almighty Power that has linked us all together. We find that our wisdom is a reflection from an infinite light of wisdom. We can say, “God is wisdom, the wisdom behind all wisdom, of which we can see glimpses through the intelligence of human beings and the intelligence expressed in all Nature.

The goodness of God
God is very good to us. If He wanted to punish us, He could give a little push to this earth and we would be gone. The earth is going at a terrific speed around the sun, but think what would happen if it whirled a little faster or a little slower–we would be completely wiped out.

Just like a man with a lot of luggage, so is this earth with its moon going around the sun. Even though many natural forces try to pull it away, the earth goes on its path. We think we are perfectly safe, but if the earth trembled just a little, where would we be? Think of the insecurity of earthly existence; and yet so many people go on forgetting God and His power!

The surest proof of God’s existence
God lies beyond the circle of our imagination and finite understanding. We can not prove God’s existence through the limited powers of the intellect. Intellect gives only a partial and indirect view of things. God is the cause of all things, but He is also beyond cause. Only our superconscious mind or intuition can fully grasp this truth. Intuition carries the conviction of direct experience.

The surest proof of the existence of God can only be found within, by the whole-hearted deep, daily practice of meditation.  When we have stilled the waves of thought within us and are calm, we can perceive the Infinite. Then the God that is templed in all creation manifests within us as the peace and bliss of meditation.

When that bliss comes over you, you will recognize it as a conscious, intelligent, universal Being to whom you may appeal, and not an abstract mental state. The experience of bliss is the surest proof of God’s existence. Finding Him within, you will find Him everywhere.

God gives us many incentives
Many incentives are given us outwardly to inspire us to seek a higher reality. There are Nature’s countless beauties. There is the amazing adaptability and precision evident in the natural order, the signs of a mighty, guiding Intelligence. And there are inspiring qualities in human nature, which sensitive people, as they become aware of them, want to develop in themselves.

It is evident that the harmony in Nature and the mathematics of planetary order reveal an intelligent law and cosmic plan. The unthinking person ascribes the law and order in this world to chance and nature, but the divine man, who consciously perceives God in everything, knows that everything, including all planetary and stellar systems, are linked to that one Infinite Intelligence and governed by His will.

From books, articles and lessons.

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Karma in the spiritual realm is the equivalent to Newton’s law of action and reaction in physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we put out positive, loving energy, we receive positive, loving energy in return. If we put out negative energy in the form of judgmental attitudes or dishonesty, that same type of energy comes back to us.

What makes karma “bad” or “good?”
Swami Kriyananda describes good karma as anything that brings us closer to God and bad karma as anything that takes us farther away from Him. Is winning the lottery good karma? Not if we spend that money on ourselves and increase our sense of ego. Is having everything we’ve worked for crumble before our eyes bad karma? Not necessarily. Many people have become saints by responding to adversity with great will power and courage.

The power of a particular karma is determined by the energy and will power that went into creating it. These same two factors can also change our karma. For instance, if in the past you tried to hurt people by unkind acts, you can neutralize that karma by devoting equal energy to helping and uplifting others. The more energy and will power you put into changing that karma, the sooner it will dissipate, and the sooner the good karma you’re now creating will start to bear fruit. If you don’t know what you might have done to create a difficult karma, use your imagination as to what likely caused it.

A step by step approach to changing your karma
A dear friend at Ananda Village, who passed away early this year, exemplified perfectly how we should respond to karma. Three weeks before her passing she learned that she had inoperable brain cancer and little time left to live. Within five days of the onset of the first major symptoms, her body stopped obeying her brain. Her husband had to wheel her in a wheelchair into the hospital for brain scans.

She could feel how upset he was over what she was going through, and she said something to comfort him which we should emblazon in our minds: “Detach yourself, control the reactive process, and live the teachings.” Her succinct statement sums up exactly how we should meet karmic tests if we want to undo karmic patterns. Many of us now have this advice posted on our desks at work.

“It’s not my fault”
When we’re facing a difficult karma, the first thing we need to do is to detach ourselves. One of the most important ways of detaching ourselves is to accept karmic tests as coming from God. How do we know that our karmic tests come from God? Everything comes from God. If we don’t accept that, then we are pushing away the lesson we need to learn.

Secondly, we need to control the tendency to blame others. When something bad happens, how often our first reaction is to blame other people. We have layers of protective devices around the ego, but one of the biggest is: “It’s not my fault.” Suppose you were obeying the traffic laws, and someone ran a red light and collided with your car. If you blame that person, you’ve done absolutely nothing to change your karma. But if you detach yourself and think: “There’s something for me to learn from this experience,” you bring a positive reaction to it.  Your positive reaction will help expiate the karma.

So the first step in detaching ourselves is: Don’t blame people or circumstances. Nor does it particularly help to blame yourself. Just accept what’s happening as coming from God for your own spiritual freedom.

“What comes of itself let it come”
Detachment also means accepting whatever comes and being grateful for it. It means not wishing that certain things happen or not happen; not wishing you could have this thing or that. Yogananda beautifully described acceptance when he said, “What comes of itself, let it come.” Accept not only what comes, but also what doesn’t come.

Though often difficult, expressing gratitude for our karma is an important aspect of changing it.  Paramhansa Yogananda explained that Jesus Christ was referring to how we can change our karma when he said, “And to him that smites you on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that takes away your cloak forbid not to take your coat also.” (Luke 6:39.) When seemingly bad karma comes, accept it with gratitude and say: “Thank you — I welcome it!” Welcoming bad karma is not easy, but as we learn to control the reactive process we begin to understand that all karmic tests are truly for our benefit.

Controlling the reactive process means catching yourself when you first start to have a negative reaction. If you can catch yourself at that moment it is easier to neutralize the karma.

Becoming free of karmic patterns
When we respond to karma in the right way, we pass the test and don’t have to repeat it. Otherwise we get to retake the test, sometimes over a period of lifetimes. It’s important to become aware of your karmic patterns, the things that happen repeatedly. Karmic patterns are very complex. We don’t always know why a certain karma comes but if the karma is repeating in your life, that’s a sign you should spend time working on that particular karma.

A wonderful artist friend of ours told us a story about how she changed a negative karmic pattern. One day she called her financial advisor, who was also a friend, and asked a question. He reacted angrily, saying: “Why are you calling me at work? Can’t you understand I’ve got business to do?  I don’t have time for this now.” And he slammed the phone down.

Our friend was very fiery and tended to be reactive. She immediately picked up the phone and called him back, but the line was busy. After calling back several times and getting a busy signal, she became engrossed in her work. Several hours later she remembered the call.  However, by this time she had calmed down and had begun to think, “I wonder why he reacted like that? That’s not like him.” She called him and asked, “Is something wrong? That was such a strange reaction from you this morning.” He started crying and said, “I’m having a very difficult time at home and at work,” and they went on to have a deep and loving conversation.

For our friend, the way out of a repeating negative pattern was to respond, not with anger or aggression, but with patience, understanding, and kindness. In so doing, she neutralized the reactive process and also created good karma.

So: “Detach yourself, control the reactive process, and live the teachings.” The teachings point us to the attitudes and practices that get us out of these karmic patterns. Bringing that simple formula to mind when we have a spiritual test will help free us from much suffering.

A subtler form of bad karma
Generally speaking, if we respond to adversity with the right attitude, then what initially looked like bad karma becomes something positive spiritually. But there’s a subtler form of bad karma that comes from identifying with the body and the material world. This type of karma can make us restless, impede our efforts to meditate, or prevent us from going deeper into the spiritual life. Often it limits our faith in our own spiritual potential.

To overcome karma of this type we need to work on removing the subconscious blocks and inner conflicts concerning what we really want in life, and who we really are in our deepest nature. Remember always that overcoming any kind of karma depends on how much will power and positive energy we direct toward the process of self-transformation. We can eliminate all subconscious blocks by focusing our energy strongly in positive new directions.

Kriya Yoga and the grace of God and Guru
The most powerful antidote for our past bad karma is the practice of Kriya Yoga, which works directly on the vrittis in the spine, where our karma resides. Paramhansa Yogananda said, “Seeds of past karma cannot germinate when roasted in the fire of wisdom.” Through the deep practice of Kriya, we burn up, or “roast,” the seeds of our past karma.

The teachings of India say that the law of karma rules supreme, but higher than the law of karma is the grace of God and Guru. There are many stories in the Autobiography of a Yogi and the Indian scriptures that tell of how the guru “takes on” the karma of his disciples. The guru’s purpose is not only to give us his consciousness, but also to protect us. If it’s our karma to lose an arm, we may only get a little scratch. If it’s our karma to receive a fatal blow, it will be deflected.

The grace of God and Guru is our ultimate karmic protection. The more we attune ourselves to their will, the more that grace surrounds us. Our job is to respond to karma with the right attitude and effort, but it is the grace of God and Guru that ultimately frees us from all karma.

From February 2011 talks at Ananda Village.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

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SK. You should offer yourself to God and forget about finding your guru. When the time comes, God will lead you to the right one.

Q: Can you speak about how we can deepen our love for God?

SK: The spiritual path, in a sense, is very narrow. There’s no room for both your ego and God. The more you think of yourself, the less you think of God. But the more you think of God and forget about yourself, the more He gives you of His love.

God is love. You don’t develop your love and then give it to Him. It’s only with His love that you can love Him. The more open you are to Him, the more you find your heart becoming flooded with that love. He gives you that love when you get yourself out of the way and offer yourself up to Him.

Q: Do you have any advice for newer devotees?

SK: In the beginning of the spiritual search you have to put out as much energy as you can because if you don’t, the world will pull you away. If you do that, then you’ll have the strength to carry on. The middle period of the spiritual search is more difficult, but if you get a strong flow of energy going in the beginning, you’ll get through the middle period just fine.

Otherwise my advice for newer devotees is very simple: love God!  Just love God and everything will work out.

Q: The Bible* states that when the Israelites were trying to escape from Egypt, God said He would “harden the hearts” of the Egyptians to enable the Israelites to escape. How can we reconcile God’s action with the concept of free will?

SK: These concepts are difficult to understand, but when things are destined to happen, God makes them happen. In the case of the Egyptians and the Israelites, the Egyptians’ hearts had to be hardened for the Israelites to be able to separate themselves from Egypt.

The only free will we have is to turn toward God or to reject Him— to love Him or to spurn Him. Otherwise, since God is omniscient, everything that we do — and will do– is already known, even what color shirt we will wear this morning. Nonetheless that degree of free will determines whether we move toward happiness or toward suffering, and how long we will wander in delusion. You can become free of delusion when you make up your mind that you want to love God more and more.

Q: How we can know if we have a divine friendship with someone?

SK: A divine friendship is one in which your energy is more toward giving than receiving; there’s mutual giving, not mutual taking. You think in terms of what you can do for this other person. In the process, you of course also receive, but when the energy of giving is pure, there’s no expectation of return. We have wonderful friendships at Ananda just because of that principle.

Q: What would be the most important piece of advice you could give to those who are trying to start communities in today’s world?

SK: Things were very difficult when I started Ananda. Most of those who came in the beginning had their own ideas about what communities ought to be like. I found, however, that by giving energy to those who were in tune with my vision, and ignoring those who were not, the naysayers fell away and the solid core became stronger.

Now that Ananda has established the pattern for successful community living, the best thing for someone wanting to start a community would be to come to Ananda Village, live among us for a while, and learn how we do things. Successful community living is a matter in which understanding must come largely by osmosis. After that, they can leave and start their own community and add whatever changes are needed to make it their kind of community. They don’t have to do things the way we do at Ananda. But if they take with them an understanding of the principles that have made Ananda successful, it will free them from endless burdens and headaches.

Q: Can you speak about developing calmness within one’s activities?

SK: Krishna gave a very good answer to that question. He said to act with non-attachment– nishkam karma, action without desire for the fruits of action. With non-attachment, you can act calmly and still do whatever you need to do.

God has given me an ability to write without difficulty, in a flow, but one reason the writing flows is that I have no thought for the future. I’m just doing it for the fun of it. I wrote The Time Tunnel, which will be published soon, in two weeks.  I’d never thought of writing a children’s story, but without any effort at all, it flowed out of me, including all the ideas about ancient Egypt and ancient Atlantis.

So, to develop calmness:  Don’t have any desire for the fruits of your actions. In addition, try to feel that God is acting through you, keep a joyful attitude when you work, and meditate every day.

Q: How do you conquer fatigue?

SK: Paramhansa Yogananda gave us the principle: “the greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” Your level of energy depends entirely on the strength of your will power. When you use your will power to generate enthusiasm, you’ll find that you have energy. If you can generate even a little enthusiasm, you’ll find that fatigue doesn’t bother you anymore.

Q: How important is it to go to group meditations instead of meditating alone? Is it a solely a matter of personal preference?

SK: Magnetism is one of the most important things in life. When you have a group of people doing the same thing there’s much more magnetism than when you’re doing it alone. When you have a group of people meditating together, there is a power that comes that helps each person in the group to meditate more deeply.

Magnetism can be used in so many ways. In The New Path, there is the story of how I passed the Greek exam in college by convincing myself that I was a Greek. With the very strong thought that I was a Greek, I had the magnetism to attract that knowledge. I had a similar experience in Bali. There came a point when I thought: “I’ve just got to learn this language.” I was there only two weeks but by the end I had a vocabulary of 600 words and I was able to talk about philosophy and all kinds of things. How? By having the magnetism that allowed that understanding to flow through me. Magnetism creates that flow.

When you have electricity going through a wire, the stronger the flow of electricity, the stronger the magnetic field generated. And the same is true with you. The more energy you put out, the greater will be your magnetism, and through that magnetism there is virtually nothing you can’t accomplish.

Very few people realize how important magnetism is in their life. Some people go into a new field of work and suddenly everything flowers for them. With other people, no matter how they work, nothing succeeds. If you develop magnetism you can learn languages, you can succeed in business, you can attract inventions, you can attract ideas for a book, you can attract friends.

How is it that people become friends? When you love somebody and that person dies, you don’t lose them. Your love becomes a magnet that draws you together again and again. You can live on the opposite sides of the world but you’ll be drawn together.

Q: I have trouble thinking of God as “he” or “she.” Can you talk about that?

SK: God is neither masculine nor feminine, but He’s also both. In the West, because Jesus talked of God as the Father, we have the tradition of calling God, “He.” But although I say “He,” in my heart I always think “She.” To me, God is my Divine Mother. It’s easier to love God as mother than as father because the mother is closer to us than the father. She forgives us always. Women are more merciful by nature than men because men go too much by reason. I think many of the troubles in the world come from that rational bias.

Man represents reason. Woman represents feeling. Feeling, however, is the essence of consciousness itself. You can’t reason your way to understanding; you have to feel it. Of the two, I think the feminine is the more important because it’s the most basic. Without the feminine aspect, man would be very one-sided. Kali Yuga, the dark age that ended in 1900, was one-sided in its emphasis on masculine energy. I think that in the new age of Dwapara Yuga feminine energy is going to become very important.

Q. What is my first step to getting out of depression?  I have low energy. What should I do?

SK. Being with high-energy people will give you higher energy. Bring your energy upward with positive thoughts and positive expectations. Don’t let your energy go downward. You can have higher energy—anybody can. Your karma is pulling you downward but by your will power, you can change that.

From satsangs and classes in Los Angeles and at Ananda Village in April 2011.

Related reading: The New Path by Swami Kriyananda, To order click here

A Place Called Ananda by Swami Kriyananda, To order click here

*Exodus 10:1

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The little frog thought to himself, “If I give up I will die, so I must keep on swimming.” Two hours passed, and the little frog thought he could do no more. But as he thought of his dead brother frog, he roused his will, saying, “To give up is certain death. I will keep on paddling until I die, if death is to come, but I will not give up trying, for while there is life there is still hope.”

Intoxicated with determination, the little frog kept on paddling. After hours, when he felt paralyzed with fatigue and could paddle no more, he suddenly felt a big lump under his feet. His incessant paddling had churned the milk into butter! Standing on the butter mound with great joy, the little frog leaped from the milk pail to freedom.

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Remember, we are all in the slippery milk pail of life, trying to get free from our troubles like the two frogs. Most people give up trying and fail like the big frog. But we must learn to persevere in our effort toward one goal, as the little frog did. Then we shall churn an opportunity by our God-guided, unflinching will power, and we will be able to hop out of the milk pail of trials onto the safe ground of eternal success. By not giving up, we develop will power and win in everything we undertake.

From the Praecepta Lessons.

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Judas was a prophet
I once had an interesting talk with my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, on the subject of Judas. He told me, “Of course, Judas was a prophet.” When I expressed surprise at this astonishing description of the greatness of Judas, Yogananda replied, “Oh yes! He would have had to be, to be one of the twelve disciples. But he had to go through two thousand years of suffering for his treachery. He was finally liberated in this century. Jesus appeared to Judas’ guru in this lifetime, a great master in India, and asked him to give Judas final liberation.”

As an interesting aside here: to be a prophet means to be united in consciousness with God. Paramhansa Yogananda, however, included in the meaning of the word prophet those disciples of a great master who, even if they are not yet liberated, are highly advanced spiritually.

Pausing a moment, Yogananda added, “I knew Judas in this lifetime.”

“What was he like?” I inquired, naturally eager for more information.

“Always very quiet and by himself,” my Guru responded. “He still had some attachment to money, not in the sense of desiring it personally but as a means of helping others. The other disciples began to tease him for it one day, but the guru said to them, ‘Don’t. Leave him alone.’”

A terrifying lesson
Lest anyone doubt the power of delusion to draw people into actions that are diametrically opposed to everything they believe, the fate of Judas must stand as a salutary, even a terrifying lesson. Judas fell so deeply into the delusions of money attachment and worldly acceptance that he was capable, as if in a dream, of accepting silver from the chief rabbi for the betrayal of Jesus. Committing suicide, Judas met his death in a crash of remorse and horror at what he’d done.

Nevertheless, he was a great soul—far greater, indeed, than the many peripheral disciples who had come to Jesus more recently in their divine search.

It is better, in other words, to seek God and fail in the attempt—and even to fail greatly—than to be a lukewarm seeker—or, worse still, not even to seek Him at all. Judas Iscariot was, spiritually speaking, far ahead of the most successful materialistic businessman.

Karmic causes and effects
It is important to understand that it was not Judas’ absolute destiny to betray Jesus. Yogananda explained that Judas could have overcome the bad karma that ultimately led to the betrayal. Jesus, in fact, predicted his betrayal by Judas in order to warn him, so that he might reform and refrain from committing the evil act. Karma is almost always mixed. Judas, for example, could not have betrayed Jesus if he not also had the good karma to be born as a direct, close disciple.

There was, however, a definite destiny in the betrayal itself — it would have come about in one way or another. Judas had to suffer personally the consequences of the part he’d played in that drama.

The bad karma Judas incurred from the betrayal was especially great because he had sinned and blasphemed against Jesus, someone who was one with God. One of the greatest sins is to inflict harm on a saint who has achieved Self-realization. In so doing, one commits an offense against the Christ consciousness itself, which resides within us all, but is fully manifested in those who have realized God.

Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was, however, an even greater sin because it was a “sin against the Holy Ghost” (AUM), with whom Judas had already been blessed to commune. To experience God’s presence as AUM, and then, subsequently, to turn away from it, can finally be “forgiven” only by the seeker himself, by embracing once again the divine experience he has spurned. The return is not so easy, however, because that particular sin sets up an inner vibration of restlessness, or uneasiness with one’s self that can only be overcome by great personal effort.

Nonetheless, it is a karma that can be overcome. Yogananda, in his commentaries on the New Testament of the Bible, wrote that Judas, instead of hanging himself for betraying Jesus, should have devoted the rest of his life to seclusion and meditating on God. In other words, Judas could have started the process of redemption during his lifetime, had he summoned from within himself the inner strength and courage to do so.

You first extend the invitation
It is interesting that the Biblical account of the betrayal of Jesus describes “the devil” as putting the thought of betrayal “into the heart of Judas.” Indeed it so happens because, as Yogananda said, “Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted.”

We first tap the source of negative consciousness in the universe by ourselves thinking wrong thoughts, and by mentally toying with any wrong desire we harbor even lightly in our hearts. Those thoughts and desires send rays of magnetic energy into the infinite, attracting a compatible energy, depending on whether our “invitation” is positive or negative. Thus it is that our thoughts and desires can lift us either heavenward, or cast us down into ever-deeper darkness and suffering.

Yogananda used to say: “Here is a line. On one side of it is God; on the other side, Satan. Neither can influence you until you yourself turn toward the one or the other. Once you allow yourself, however, to turn either way, the divine or the satanic influence will begin to act upon you consciously.” You yourself, in other words, first extend the invitation. God or Satan then comes to you, and influences you further in the direction you’ve already indicated.

Invite goodness into your consciousness
If you want to cleanse yourself of impure motives, or to strengthen your inner purity, the best place to start is by spurning every impure imagining, which people tend too easily to “play with” mentally in an effort (they may tell themselves) to “understand” and reason their way out of that thought. Instead, you should concentrate on raising your feelings from the heart to the higher centers in the throat and the head. If you can harmonize those feelings, uplift them, and then channel them to the spiritual eye (the “Christ center”) in the forehead, you will find that your tendency to harbor impure feelings will change completely. Almost automatically, those feelings will be purified.

Above all invite goodness into your consciousness. The battle will be half won when you realize that you are not the source of any virtue that you manifest, or of any delusion, but that you can, if you choose, become an instrument of divine love and bliss in the world. Yoga emphasizes the importance of keeping the heart filled with what Jesus referred to as “good treasure”: kindly thoughts, devotion, love, calm feeling, non-attachment to everything material.

No one, however, is safe from delusion until he is firmly established in God-consciousness. Jesus, like Yogananda, placed the strongest emphasis on inner communion with God. It is God alone who can save us through our ever-deepening inner communion with Him. The tragedy of Judas shows that even highly advanced disciples can still fall spiritually until they reach the final stage of liberation— nirbikalpa samadhi—when at last they attain full awareness that only the Infinite Self, God, exists.

Not a permanent state
Although Judas acted under the influence of Satan, the story of Judas must be understood as not indicating a permanent state of alienation from God. As great as was Judas’s betrayal—owing, my Guru said, to “a little bad karma”—its fruits were only temporary. Judas was, inherently, a great and true disciple. His problem was merely that there were in him still a few deep-seated faults that remained to be worked out. He suffered greatly for that betrayal, but his good karma stood him in good stead also, and flowered at last by taking him to divine liberation.

Yogananda was once relating to his students the story of Sadhu Haridas, an eighteenth century holy man in India, who fell from the spiritual path even though he was highly advanced. Yet, my Guru said, he achieved full liberation in that same lifetime. A student of Yogananda’s, who was present when Yogananda related this story, objected, “How can that be? Isn’t the punishment far greater for one who, though knowing the law, breaks it?”

“Mm-mm,” replied the Master, shaking his head. “God is no tyrant. When you have eaten good cheese, then resume eating stale cheese again, you soon realize your mistake. If, then, you once again want only the good cheese, God won’t deny you.”

Yogananda made a similar observation about one of his own close disciples who had betrayed him in nefarious ways. As Jesus had done with Judas, Yogananda had predicted that betrayal. Yet, that disciple was nonetheless a great soul. Yogananda stated firmly that he would be liberated in another three lifetimes.

God will do the rest
For ourselves, we must understand that no matter how many times, or how far, we fall, God will ever wait for us with outstretched arms until we return to Him. Never fear, therefore, but give to God as much of yourself as you are capable of giving. He will ever do the rest.

Excerpted from: Revelations of Christ, proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda, Presented by his Disciple, Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers, and other sources.

*“And Jesus answered him, The first commandment is: ‘Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord.’”

There was a time when I believed that Satan was a figment of the mind, but now I know from personal experience and add my testimony to that of Jesus Christ and countless others that Satan exists, and is responsible for the creation of evil on earth and in the minds of men. He is a universal, conscious force whose sole aim is to keep mankind bound to delusion. Many times I have seen Satan trying to obstruct me by mysterious misfortunes, and by taking on materialized forms.

Satan is part of God’s drama
Philosophically, Satan represents the outward flowing creative force which brings creation into manifestation. Without Satan, there would be no creation; no universe; no cosmic drama.

Satan is necessary to God’s drama, just as the villain is necessary in a stage play to personify evil. Without the villain, we might not feel the necessary incentive to love the hero, who represents the good. Similarly, evil and its painful after-effects are meant to awaken in us love for goodness and God.

Both evil and good exist only in the realm of maya, of duality. God is beyond them both. God could destroy Satan in a minute, but He would be going against His own laws if He did so. God knew that some evil would result from His creation, but He also knew that the power of love was stronger than the lures of evil, so He is trying by love to draw us back to Him and away from the influence of Satan.

The origin of all evil
Some intellectuals, while not denying the existence of evil, claim that evil does not originate in an objective power such as Satan, but arises when man yields to temptation and, by his repeated transgressions over many incarnations, creates in himself evil habits. According to this view, evil is wholly man’s fault and neither God nor any conscious evil power is responsible for the evil in the world. This viewpoint asserts that evil is wholly subjective, originating in the bad judgment of man.

This viewpoint fails to answer many questions. Why do millions of bacteria and virulent armies of germs move silently about the earth seeking to destroy human lives? Why do millions die by floods and cataclysms? It does not seem possible that the ten million people who perished in the 1931 flood and famine in China all suffered that fate due to past actions in previous lives. Think also of the innumerable diseases which infest plants and animals who have no free choice and who, consequently, could not attract evils due to bad karma.

The eternal warfare of bacteria, germs and diseases, and the unceasing upheavals and cataclysms in Nature, distinctly show that there is an evil force trying to thwart the efforts of the Infinite Good to express His infinite goodness throughout creation. Knowledge of an objective Satan explains the origin of all evil, which cannot be explained by the individual or collective subjective ignorance of man. Satan can work as wrong subjective consciousness in man, or he can become the objective evil in Nature.

Remember: the conscious evil force of Satan could not influence human minds if they did not allow it. It is therefore better to know all the lures of evil and the ways to combat them than to blindly deny their existence. Knowledge only, not indifference, can produce final emancipation from the lures of Satan.

The two realms of conscious cosmic energy
The two distinct realms of conscious cosmic energy, the heavenly and the satanic, can be found within the human body and throughout all space. In the human body, the heavenly region extends from the heart center up to the Christ center at the point between the eyebrows. The satanic region — the region of the senses and man’s lower instincts – is located in the three lower centers below the heart. People who do not meditate find their consciousness falling from the heavenly region of the brain down to the region of the senses, rendering them vulnerable to the lures of Satan.

There are also two vast rivers of consciousness that flow through the universe, one of them heavenly, the other satanic. All good is organized by God, His angels, and the enlightened masters sent to earth to awaken in humanity love of goodness and God. All evil is organized by Satan, who uses a vast horde of evil spirits to carry on his cosmic campaign of wickedness. To the ordinary man, Satan appears as subjective temptation subtly luring him according to the quality of his thoughts and feelings.

Patterns of good and evil
Do not deny the existence of an objective evil power, but become aware of the destructive patterns of evil as temptation within yourself and as imperfection and strife in Nature. We find that Jesus, whose knowledge was born of intuition, did not deny this evil. Jesus spoke of a conscious Satan who lured Him to the wilderness and tempted Him with destructive patterns of evil arrayed side by side with the good patterns of God.

What are those good and evil patterns? They are manifestations of duality, or the outward flowing cosmic energy that brought creation into existence. Thus, for every good pattern created by God, Satan has created a corresponding pattern of evil. For love and forgiveness, Satan has created hatred and revenge. For wisdom, Satan has created ignorance. For calmness, fearlessness, unselfishness, peace, and happiness, Satan has created restlessness, fear, selfishness, anger, and sorrow.

Man stands in the middle, with God on one side and Satan on the other side, each ready to pull him in whichever direction he wishes to go. Conscience, the voice of God, always beckons you to do what’s right. Temptation, the voice of Satan, coaxes you to do wrong.

Remember that you are a free agent endowed with free will, and that Satan can only influence you when you allow yourself to yield to his temptations. Strengthen your consciousness of goodness, and in its light drive away the darkness of evil. Perfect self-honesty and dynamic self-effort will help you eliminate forever the influence of satanic delusion in your life.

Meditation—the way out
Meditation is the only way to escape permanently the net of satanic delusion and to return to your true home in God. No matter how busy you are with work or other affairs, strive always to enter the inner silence to attune yourself with God. Contact with God through meditation reminds the soul of the unending fulfillment of bliss and destroys all seeds of earthly desires.

Make it a point always to keep your most important engagement: your daily appointment with the Lord. Twice daily, enter the inner silence. Worship God on the altar of the dawn. At the day’s end, sit quietly in the temple of the night; let darkness conceal you from the distractions of the day. Meditate deeply if you would know God.

When one goes into deep samadhi (oneness with Spirit) one perceives Spirit as the only Reality, the only eternal substance existing. Then you know that only ever-new, ever-joyous Spirit exists and that Satan is a delusion. Before attaining this exalted state, one must acknowledge the existence of duality. God and Satan are facts, even if the latter exists only in delusion and not in reality.

Freedom comes not by uttering wheedling prayers, but by attuning oneself deeply with the all-loving Inner Silence. When the influence of Satan is completely terminated in the soul, the liberated devotee finds only the presence of ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss. All evil disappears as forgotten shadows from the consciousness of the illumined devotee.

There is no eternal punishment
People do not intentionally love to be evil. They are evil because they do not know the greater fulfillment of good habits and are unable to compare and select the best. As soon as man realizes that evil promises happiness and results only in unhappiness, he begins to wish for emancipation and for God. This wish for goodness and freedom serves as a portal through which God is again invited to come into the life of the prodigal son and lead him to the abode of freedom.

Even fathomless evil cannot destroy man’s soul, for he is essentially immortal and eternally good. If man continuously listens to the whisperings of conscience within himself and gets used to better ways of living, he ultimately discovers the eternal good in him and that he is made in the image of God, and thus becomes liberated.

From articles and books.

A wonderful flow of sharing
We were blessed with a wonderful learning experience in the truth that “nothing is ours” the year we lived at Ananda’s Italian center, which at the time was near Lake Como. It was the early 1980s. Ananda had only recently opened this new center. We were there to support the new work, and we worked in close association with the current leaders, a husband and wife team.

What I (Devi) learned right away in living at the center was that nothing was really ours in fact! We had our own little room, and our own closet and dresser—or so we thought. That thought didn’t last long. The female director, who was also a good friend, would come bursting in on us any time, night or day, no matter what we were doing. She would say, “What can I wear today?” and start going through the closet and taking things out of the drawers.

At first I was a little taken aback, until I realized that she was also completely giving of what was “hers.” Just as she had burst in on us, she would also come rushing in to give away everything she had. For many years afterwards, nearly every article of clothing I received compliments on had come from her.

There was such a wonderful flow in that sharing. We found that nothing was ours, nothing was theirs, nothing was anyone’s. It was just a flow. Because of this flow, we would receive huge boxes of clothes from people from all over Europe. Beautiful things would come from Germany, England, and Italy, and we would pass them around and share them. We began to realize that because we didn’t think, “this is mine” or “this is theirs,” we had more clothes than we knew what to do with.

There is a flow of God’s abundance that passes through us in true sharing. The identity and power that we draw to ourselves is so much greater than the identity of just “us.”  The more we learned the lesson that nothing was “ours,” the freer we felt.

The best Easter we ever had
As time went on, God asked us to give up more and more, which produced in us a kind of a tug of war. We would ask: “Lord, are You really going to ask us for this and this?” And, of course, He did.

Many guests were coming for Easter in 1983, and we realized that we even had to give up our rooms for the guests, because there simply weren’t enough rooms for everyone. Some of our staff went to live in the little outbuildings and small sheds.

We found a room in the sub-sub-basement of the ashram house, our main building; through our room ran all the pipes for the building. The room had no windows or heat. One little light bulb hung from the ceiling. Everything was rather damp, and there was a thick layer of mildew on the walls. The moisture permeated our blankets when we slept.

As we were preparing the room, we kept thinking: “Divine Mother, You’re really not going to have us stay here, are You? When Easter weekend arrives, we’ll really get to stay in our own room, right?”

The weekend came, very cold and very rainy, and with all the guests who had said they were coming. So we did spend all of Easter in what we fondly called “Gyanamata Grotto,” after Sister Gyanamata, Paramhansa Yogananda’s foremost woman disciple, who had a wonderful spirit of renunciation.  Each morning our pajamas would be wet from the moisture condensing off the walls. But we realized that it was the best Easter we had ever had, because nothing was ours. Everything we had, we shared; and in that sharing we found great joy and freedom. We had the absolute certainty that God would take care of us and provide all we needed.

“I’m giving it to God”
We don’t have to worry about getting that extra $50 in the paycheck. We don’t have to worry about anything. It’s just the pull of the world that makes it all seem important and we become frightened.

Swami Kriyananda tells the story of the time, while traveling, he met a man who gave him a hard-luck story and asked for money. He didn’t know if the man’s story was genuine, but he gave the man most of the money he had in his wallet. As Kriyananda gave him the money, the man said, “I’ll be sure you get it back, because I don’t want you to lose faith in human nature.” Kriyananda replied, “I have faith in God. I’m not giving this to you; I’m giving it to God.”

When we share, we are affirming our faith in God, and that we are a part of everyone. This is how we all need to live. Everything we do, we should do for Him. When we live that way, we find that whatever we give comes back to us a thousand-fold.

“Nothing is mine”
In the Art and Science of Raja Yoga, ** Swami Kriyananda discusses the yamas and the niyamas, the do’s and don’ts of the spiritual path. He says that the yama “non-greed” means not to be attached to what is rightfully one’s own, and to be able to share everything you have without a sense of limitation. And interestingly enough, the power that comes with perfection of non-greed is the ability to remember one’s past lives.

What’s the connection there? When we attain “non-greed” or perfect non-attachment, we overcome any identification with our own body and can then remember our past lives — our identifications with other bodies, places, and events.

When we no longer think, “This body is who I am. This house is mine,” but start to ask, “Who am I?” What is mine?” we begin to awaken to our true reality—the soul, which in its essence is infinite and eternal. How many little dramas have we lived? How many times have we said, “This is my house; this is my wife or husband, or my children?” How many times have we died and woken up without a body and without a house, without any of those attachments?

We go through it again and again until finally one day it starts sinking in: that no matter how tightly we clutch what God has provided, we will lose it. It all has to go. Even the bodies we cherish and pamper, they go one way or another—painfully or easily, but they go.

And we begin to realize that in giving, we break through the delusion that makes us identify with our bodies and possessions. We begin to say, “God, nothing is mine. I’m just playing a little role now, but I want to wake up to my infinite, eternal reality in Thee. I know that giving freely of what I have will help me achieve this awareness.”

What we give comes back blessed
There is a beautiful poem by Tagore, which we’ll paraphrase here: God comes in the form of a prince to a beggar. The prince approaches the beggar and says, “What can you give me?” The beggar is shocked, of course, thinking that the prince should give him some alms. In his shock, the beggar gives the prince only one little grain of rice. Later, when he opens his sack in the evening, the beggar finds that just one little grain of rice has turned to gold.

That which you give away comes back to you in a more blessed form. This is especially true of love and friendship. Whenever you see someone in need, share with him, share even if you think you have nothing to give, even if you think you have no wisdom, or peace, or joy, or love. You have more than you know.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was walking the streets of London one day and saw a very lonely, sad-looking man sitting there. She walked up to him and took his hands without comment. He said, “Your hands are so warm.” “My hands are always warm,” was her reply. Of course they were. They were warm from a lifetime of giving the vibrant energy of divine love to others. The man said, “It’s been so long since I’ve felt the warmth of a human hand.”

Being able to give the warmth of a human hand doesn’t need years of spiritual study to learn. All it takes is the understanding that we were born on this earth to give—not to see what we can acquire for ourselves, but to be a channel to give to others whatever God has given us.

Based on an article that appeared in Clarity Magazine, January 30, 1989.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide. An earlier version of this article appeared in Clarity Magazine in the 1980s.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and  Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

*The yamas and the niyamas are the ten “do’s” and “don’ts” of the spiritual path, as described by Patanjali in his comprehensive Yoga Sutras. Patanjali also describes the particular spiritual strength or power that comes as a result of perfecting each of the yamas and niyamas.

* *Crystal Clarity Publishers.

“Yes,” the man said. “All my life I’ve been weak, thin, and unwell. I would like in my next life to have a strong, healthy body.

In his next life he was given a strong, large, and healthy body. He was poor, however, and found it difficult to keep that robust body properly fed. At last, still hungry, he lay dying. The angel appeared to him again and asked, “Is there anything more you desire?”

“Yes,” he replied. “For my next life, I would like a strong, healthy body, and also a healthy bank account!”

Well, the next time he had a strong, healthy body, and was also wealthy. In time, however, he began to grieve that he had no one with whom to share his good fortune. When death came, the angel asked, “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, please. Next time, I would like to be strong, healthy, and wealthy, and also to have a good woman for a wife.”

Well, in his next life he was given all those blessings. His wife, too, was a good woman. Unfortunately, she died in her youth. For the rest of his days, he grieved at that loss. He worshipped her gloves, her shoes, and other memorabilia that were precious to him. As he lay dying of grief, the angel appeared to him again and said, “What now?”

“Next time,” said the man, “I would like to be strong, healthy, and wealthy, and also to have a good wife who lives a long time.”

“Are you sure you’ve covered everything?” demanded the angel.

“Yes, I’m certain that’s everything this time.”

Well, in his next life he had all those things, including a good wife who lived a long time. The trouble was, she lived too long! As he grew older, he became infatuated with his beautiful young secretary, to the point where, finally, he left his good wife for that girl. As for the girl, all she wanted was his money. When she got her hands on it, she ran away with a much younger man.

At last, as the man lay dying, the angel again appeared to him and demanded, “Well, what is it this time?”

“Nothing!” The man cried. “Nothing ever again! I’ve learned my lesson. I see that, in every fulfillment, there is a catch. From now on, whether I’m rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, married or single, whether here on this earth or in the astral plane, I want only my Divine Beloved. Wherever God is, there alone lies perfection!”

Related link: click here to learn about our online course, Karma and Reincarnation

From: Karma and Reincarnation, by Paramhansa Yogananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order click here

And so began Swami Kriyananda’s work with Paramhansa Yogananda’s commentaries on The Rubaiyat—a work not completed until nearly 50 years later, with Crystal Clarity’s publication of Kriyananda’s edited version of Paramhansa Yogananda’s, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained. Kriyananda did not undertake the final editing until he felt fully ready spiritually to serve as Yogananda’s channel for this great poem that Yogananda called a “true scripture.”

“The soul of Omar Khayyam’s writings”
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained is organized to guide us as readers from enjoyment of the poetry itself to ever-deeper levels of understanding. In your own reading, take time to meditate on the poetry itself; especially try to tune into the joy Yogananda felt in his reading of the quatrains.

Yogananda saw that Edward Fitzgerald, in translating The Rubaiyat, “had been divinely inspired to catch exactly, in gloriously musical English, the soul of Omar Khayyam’s writings.” So moved was Yogananda by the “true soul-inspiration” of Fitzgerald’s original translation of the poem that he decided, even in preference to his own collaboration with a Persian scholar, to use Fitzgerald’s as the basis of his interpretations.

A soul-conversation between Omar and Yogananda
Each quatrain is followed by Paramhansa Yogananda’s “Paraphrase,” in which he gives his intuitive understanding of Omar’s meaning. As Kriyananda expresses it, the book is “like a meeting between old friends in God. One of them speaks; the other answers, calmly but enthusiastically, ‘Yes! Yes! And then here’s another point….’” While working on the book, Kriyananda realized that Yogananda had tuned into Omar’s consciousness and was, in his interpretations, allowing Omar Khayyam to speak through him.

In what Yogananda calls the “Expanded Meaning,” the third part of his interpretation of each quatrain, he takes his paraphrase to a deeper, more universal level of wisdom: Sanaatan Dharma, “The Eternal Religion”— as expressed in this soul conversation between a great Sufi mystic and a great master of yoga.

Next comes Yogananda’s “Keys to the Meaning”—explanations, in yogic terms, of pivotal phrases in the quatrains. The “Keys” help the dedicated reader more clearly and deeply to feel the consciousness behind each word and phrase of the quatrain.

Finally comes Swami Kriyananda’s “Editorial Comment,” in which we as readers can reap the fruit of Kriyananda’s more than half a century of careful study and practice of Yogananda’s teachings. Kriyananda’s comments take the inspiration and spiritual power of Yogananda’s interpretation, reach out to the unspoken questions of people everywhere, and provide not only answers but specific techniques to enable us to experience for ourselves the truth behind these teachings—to make them our own.

A springboard for spiritual practice
While reading The Rubaiyat, let the book serve as a focus and springboard for your spiritual practice. Read one quatrain a day. Take a moment to enjoy the imagery and musical cadences of the poetry. Pause frequently in your study to absorb in meditation what you are reading. If Kriyananda has included a specific meditation, end your practice with that meditation.

You will find that the loving clarity of the commentary will bring light to your understanding, and energy to your spiritual practice. You will feel that a stream of divine power is flowing from Omar Khayyam, through Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda, into your own consciousness. In Kriyananda’s words:

Every time you study this work, try to tune in more deeply to the consciousness of these two great poet-sages. Feel their silent blessings within, as you pursue the daily adventure of discovering the source of your own being.

The content of the book
To give you a feeling for the content of the book, here are a few of the practical applications contained in Kriyananda’s “Editorial Comments”:

•    The spine and nervous system: pathway to inner freedom.
•    The importance of an erect spine
•    How to be centered in the spine.
•    How to concentrate at the spiritual eye
•    Living for pleasure vs. living for eternity
•    How to overcome guilt
•    How to “be happy, now!”
•    How to relax
•    How to live in the Self
•    Meditation on freedom from the body
•    Meditation on freedom from worldly desire
•    How to “practice the presence”

In his final editorial comment, Kriyananda takes us to the very heart of the wisdom of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained:

The single greatest statement in this book: Yogananda describes the nervous system as, “the one and only path to spiritual enlightenment, regardless of a person’s formal religious affiliation.” This simple declaration contains the essence of true wisdom: Overcome addiction to worldly pleasures by withdrawing the life-force from the senses. Stimulate the nerves at their opposite extreme instead—at the inner source in the Self.

Bathed in the light of inner vision
In preparing to write this review, I looked up Edward Fitzgerald’s poetic translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in several standard references. Mainstream scholarship shows us that Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat was perceived by its Victorian readership as depicting an unjust God, with man pitifully snatching what pleasure he can from a transient, doomed existence. In late nineteenth-century England, the poem became a justification for a kind of melancholy hedonism.

How far from such a reading is Yogananda’s vision of divine joy, and from his description of the poem as a “true scripture.” In Yogananda’s commentaries, the “wine” becomes the bliss of God-realization; human love becomes the divine romance of  devotee and Infinite Beloved. Yogananda’s own introduction to his interpretation of The Rubaiyat shines a brilliant light on his true way of understanding the Sufi poet:

One day, as I was deeply concentrated on the pages of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, I suddenly beheld the walls of its outer meanings crumble away. Lo! Vast inner meanings opened like a golden treasure house before my gaze.

Yogananda’s interpretations are divinely intuitive, springing from inner vision:

As I worked on the spiritual explanation of The Rubaiyat, I found it taking me into an endless labyrinth of truth, until I was rapturously lost in wonderment. The veiling of Omar’s metaphysical and practical philosophy in these verses reminds me of “The Revelation of St. John the Divine.” Indeed, The Rubaiyat might justly be called “The Revelation of Omar Khayyam.”

Truth clothed in beauty
I grew up in a family of readers, and was myself immersed in reading great literature from an early age. I read hungrily, looking, quite literally, for guidance on “how to live.” My search for answers in literature during college and five more years of graduate school, far from illuminating my life path, left me all but incapable of discriminating.

Finding Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi placed my soul immediately in the presence of all that I had for so many years been seeking in wrong places. The book radiated light; what Yogananda was saying was simply, incontrovertibly, the truth. The same can be said for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained. Both books can be described as “truth clothed in literary beauty,” what literature worth reading can (and should) be.

Nayaswami Prakash is a long-time member of Ananda. He currently serves at Ananda Village doing forestry and landscaping work.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

In response to his mother’s concern, Jesus replied: “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”* (See sidebar below for Bible account)

From then on nothing more appears in the Bible on the life of Jesus until his apparently sudden arrival on the scene at the age of thirty. Often people have asked the question: What transpired during those missing eighteen years?

Jesus had begun his mission
Assuming that what we find in the Bible is true—that Jesus returned to Nazareth with his parents, and was “subject unto them”—his “subjection” to them can hardly have lasted for eighteen years considering the “declaration of independence” he made to them at the age of twelve. Christian tradition has him working as a carpenter. Jesus, however, seems flatly to contradict that tradition, for his own words were, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”

After this strong statement, it is unthinkable that he would have simply gone home, remained there for eighteen years, and become a common apprentice and journeyman carpenter under Joseph until the age of thirty, and only then commenced his life’s mission. At twelve he had already told his parents he had God’s work to do. And, as he strongly implied, he had begun that mission already.

Westerners are likely to object, “But twelve is too young for any boy to begin a life mission!” His parents evidently held the same view. It is obvious, however, that Jesus did not hold it, for we find him telling them in no uncertain words—words very different, moreover, from what one would expect of any child of twelve—what he must do. In fact, he seems almost to have scolded them for finding him. Reflect that he made that statement after he had been missing for three whole days. Surely the event was extraordinary.

The tradition in India
The only episodes I know that were comparable to this story about Jesus, who was virtually renouncing every blood tie to his family, have occurred in the lives of great reincarnated masters. Paramhansa Yogananda recounted the following story to me as a historic fact: Swami Shankara told his mother at the age of six that he had decided to renounce the world for God. When she tried, quite naturally, to hold him, he jumped into a river and allowed himself—so the story goes—to be caught by a crocodile.

“Look, Mother!” he cried. “Either you give me your consent, or I will let this crocodile take me. Whatever happens, you won’t have me anymore!” Hastily she gave her permission. And the child, who had been born with divine power, made the crocodile release him, whereupon his life mission began.

Another example which occurred more recently involved Swami Pranabananda, a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya.** Pranabananda, my Guru told me, attained full liberation and left his body. “In his next incarnation,” Yogananda said, “he left home at the age of six. His declared purpose was to join Babaji in the Himalayas.” After a brief pause, Yogananda continued with a smile, “It caused a lot of commotion in that village at the time!”

In the light of spiritual tradition—especially in India, where the lamp of spirituality has burned brightly for centuries—the declaration by Jesus at the age of twelve, that he must “be about his Father’s business,” was not unique. That he had, moreover, a karmic tie with India had already been indicated by the visit, soon after his birth, of the three wise men of the East.

Clearly then, those eighteen years must have been deliberately omitted from the official account of Christ’s life. Two vital questions forcibly intrude themselves on this picture: What was omitted? And, What was the reason for that omission?

The decision of the early Church Council
In 1958, I had an interesting conversation with a prominent spiritual leader in India: Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the Shankaracharya of Gowardhan Math. He was at that time the senior representative of the ancient Shankara Order of Swamis. Throughout the land people respected him highly as a man of truth and honor. My own experience with him, which covered many months, supports that reputation. I will quote something he told me, in his own words as exactly I can remember them, about one of the early Church Councils of Constantinople. He told me the date of that council, but I don’t recall it:

Some years ago I came into possession of one of only three copies of an ancient document which purported to be an account of the proceedings of one of the early Councils of Constantinople. In that council, the question was raised as to how the Church should deal with the record, which still existed, of the missing eighteen years of Jesus Christ’s life.

The problem raised was that the account might unsettle the faith of devout Christians. The Bible stated that Jesus had spent at least a number of those ‘lost’ years with great masters in India, to which land he had gone to study with them. The question raised in the council was whether Christians might not be shaken in their faith if they thought that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had studied under anyone. The general feeling of the prelates was that the account should be removed in order to protect the devotion of the faithful.

At that point, someone in the audience got up and stated, ‘I am a layman, not a priest, and am aware that it is not customary for such as I to speak at these councils. However, I feel I must speak out. What I have to say is, if the apostles themselves were not shaken in their faith by this revelation, why should we who truly believe, all of us, that Jesus was the Son of God, have less trust then they? Surely the simple truth will not in any way diminish his stature in people’s eyes!’ The man’s objection was not considered, however, and the account of those eighteen years was removed forthwith from the Bible.

Testimony of a Master
Let me submit, also, what to me is the strongest testimony of all: the fact that Paramhansa Yogananda himself declared many times, as a definite fact, that Jesus Christ did visit India, and that he lived there for some years.

I had been with my Guru for just a month when he invited me to his desert retreat at Twenty-Nine Palms, California, where he was dictating his revised correspondence-course lessons. During one evening’s session he stated during dictation: “The three wise men who came to honor the Christ Child after his birth in Bethlehem were the line of gurus who later sent me to the West: Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Swami Sri Yukteswar.” This was heady stuff, especially for a young neophyte!

Yogananda announced to us also, “Jesus, in his youth, paid a return visit to India to study under the ‘wise men’ who had come to honor him as a baby.” People may wonder, as those prelates did at the Council of Constantinople, why an Incarnation of God needed to learn from anybody.

A liberated master, whose mission it is to mix with the public, must comport himself in such a way as not to impose his wisdom on those who hear him. It would be no help to them were he to overwhelm them with his omniscience in everything. He must, for their sake, seem down-to-earth and, in that sense, perfectly normal. Thus, it was perfectly normal for a great master—indeed, for an avatar like Jesus, which is to say an Incarnation of God—to assume for a time the slight veil of delusion, as well as the behavior of a normal human being, in order to help others, later.

The discovery of an ancient manuscript
There are records in India which support the claim that Jesus lived in that country for several years. In 1887, the Russian writer Nicolas Notovitch discovered in the ancient Tibetan monastery of Himis, in Leh, a province of Ladakh in northern Kashmir, an ancient manuscript which detailed the life of Jesus (called Issa in that work). It recounts that Issa had traveled there as a young man, and had later “preached the holy doctrine in India and among the children of Israel.” It tells how Jesus (Issa) left home to avoid pressure from his parents, Joseph and Mary, to take a wife. Legend has it that he traveled by camel caravan over the “Silk Road,” which was the main passage between the East and the West. Notovitch published a book which became famous in his time, called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. In it he described Issa (Jesus) spending time in Puri, Orissa, among the priests at the famous Jagannath Temple.

A prominent disciple of the great Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Abhedananada, later (in 1922) went to Ladakh in order to verify the account by Notovitch, and actually succeeded in doing so. Later still, Nicholas Roerich, the Russian artist who was then already well known as a veritable “Renaissance Man,” wrote in 1929 of the many legends he had heard in Kashmir about the visit of Jesus Christ to that land, and about the manuscripts at Himis monastery. In 1939, Madam Elisabeth G. Caspari, a Swiss musician, and her husband visited the Himis monastery and also learned about the manuscripts, which were shown to them.

The account of Jesus leaving home as a boy to avoid marriage is very much in keeping with ancient tradition in India. Marriage in Israel, too, was arranged in those days after a boy reached the age of thirteen.  Jesus himself explained his return  to Israel, after the “lost eighteen years,” when he declared that it was his destiny to fulfill his mission in Israel. He therefore returned to Israel.

* Sidebar
Luke 2:41–52

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem. And, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. They, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey and then sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances.

And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, and after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” And he said unto them, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

** An account of his life appears in  Autobiography of a Yogi.

From Revelations of Christ, proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda, presented by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order click here

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Made as you are in the image of God, you have within you God’s hidden power. That power is your own, but God-given, and comes from soul levels deep within yourself. It is impossible to live without using this power. Without the use of will power you cannot walk, talk, think, work, or feel. Even the slightest movement of the muscles or the winking of the eyelids is initiated by the use of will power. The challenge of life is to learn to live and work from a sense of His strength and guidance within, and not from ego-consciousness.

A strong will always finds a way
Learning to use your will power dynamically is the first step in this direction. There is dynamic will and mechanical will. Mechanical will is an unthinking use of will power, but dynamic will is a vital force involving continuous, never-discouraged determination and effort. When your will power is dynamic, your silent slogan is: “I will continue my efforts until I achieve my goal, no matter how difficult the task.”

A strong will, by its own dynamic force, creates a way for its fulfillment. It sets into motion certain vibrations, and Nature responds by creating circumstances favorable to its accomplishment. But dynamic will power alone is not enough. It’s also necessary to use your will power constructively, for wholesome purposes. When will power is used for harmful or trifling ends, it becomes weaker due to the lack of support from Truth. By developing dynamic will power, and using it in the right way, you will be able  to attune your will to God’s infinite will.

Three important rules
There are three important rules for making your will power more dynamic:

• First, determine to do some of the things you thought you could not do. Attempt simple tasks first. Then, as your confidence strengthens and your will becomes more dynamic, you can undertake more difficult accomplishments.
• Second, be sure you have chosen something constructive and feasible, and then refuse to consider failure.
• Third, devote your entire will power to accomplishing one thing at a time; do not scatter your energies or leave something half done to begin a new venture.

Fitful explosions of energy
By keeping your concentration at the spiritual eye, at the point between the eyebrows, it’s possible to develop great will power. But this practice must be combined with, and supported by, the heart’s devotion. Otherwise, the development of strong will power can lead to fitful explosions of energy that serve no practical purpose—or even worse, to harshness, cruelty, and the use of power to control or abuse others.

Fear is one of the greatest enemies of will power. Avoid it both in thought and action. Fear depletes the life force flowing through the nerves, and causes the nerves themselves to become as though paralyzed. Fear doesn’t help you to get away from the object of fear; it only weakens your will power. You must be cautious but never afraid. When the consciousness is kept on God, you will have no fears. Faith and courage will enable you to overcome every obstacle.

Other enemies of will power include: worry, indifference, timidity, restlessness, boredom, mental and physical laziness, pessimism as regards the future, and an unmethodical life. Worries are often the result of attempting to do too many things at once.

Acting in attunement with the Divine Will
God made you in His image, so that you might guide your will with wisdom, even as He does. Your ultimate task in life is to find your way back to God, but He has also given you a task to perform in the outer world. Often, however, God’s plan for how you are to fulfill that task is buried beneath the conflicting desires of human life, and you fail to receive the guidance that would save you from error.

Always sit in silence and ask God for His guidance and blessing, especially before deciding about any important undertaking. Always be sure, within the calm region of your inner Self, that what you want is right for you and in accord with His purposes. Then use all the force of your will to accomplish your objective, while keeping your mind centered on the thought of God, the source of all power and accomplishment. When you act in that way, behind your power will be God’s power; behind your mind, His mind; and behind your will, His will.

Human will, no matter how powerful, is limited by the boundaries of the human body and the perceptible physical universe. Divine Will has no boundaries; it works in all bodies, in all things. Divine Will can change the course of destiny, wake the dead, put a mountain into the sea, and change the course of the solar or stellar systems.

You must exercise your will in every undertaking, until it drops its mortal delusion of being human will and becomes one with the all-powerful Divine Will. You will not know what Divine Will is until you have developed your own will and learned to harmonize it with God’s supreme will.

Why struggle is necessary
People often demand to know why life is so challenging, and filled with so much tragedy and pain. Life was made purposely difficult for you, that you might develop your inner powers by directing will power and discrimination toward the solution of life’s mysteries. If the world were perfect, with nothing but angelic beings soaring about and singing everywhere, there would be no struggle, no inner growth—and, in the end, no worthwhile victory.

The Divine has given you the power to overcome your difficulties, and you must learn to use it. You were not meant to await passively the declaration of God’s will, but to strive actively to be His channel of divine love and joy. Only by arduous effort can you bring out God’s image in yourself.

Live more dynamically in the awareness of God’s presence, attuning your will to His infinite will. The more you do so, the more you will find His power strengthening and guiding you in everything you do. Through soul attunement, you will be able to think correctly concerning life’s challenges and difficulties, and if your thoughts or actions go astray, you will know how to realign them.

Awaken to divine truth
The power of will is yours. If you make a determined effort to awaken to divine truth, you will no longer walk nervously in fear and uncertainty on the path of life. The Cosmic Power will light your way, bringing you health, happiness, peace, and success. Power from the dynamic source of your being will flow through you.

From articles and books.

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Q: Peter, what is cooperative healing?

A: For me as a doctor and devotee, cooperative healing at the highest level is based on the understanding that taking care of our health is a cooperative process with God. As devotees, we  sometimes have karmic tests that involve our physical or mental health, and how we work with those tests is an important aspect of our spiritual development. In making decisions about our health care,  it’s important that we try to tune into God’s will for us, and that we cooperate with His will.

How we work with our health care practitioners should also be a cooperative process. One of the most challenging situations for me as a physician is trying to help someone who isn’t taking responsibility for his or her part in the healing process, who wants the physician to do all the work and provide the “quick fix.”

The people who get well the fastest are those who say, “I want to be well. Give me some suggestions on what I need to do and I’ll try to follow them to the best of my ability.” We make it a cooperative process — doctor and patient work together in the healing process.

Cooperative healing also includes cooperating with our bodies. If we’ve come into this life with knees that don’t work very well, we have to cooperate with our body’s physical limitations and not try to run a marathon. Swimming or walking might be a better choice. So, cooperating with who we are physically, mentally, and emotionally is an aspect of the cooperative healing process.

Q: How exactly does a person cooperate with God in the area of health?

A: It’s tempting when facing a serious health challenge that may require surgery or a potent form of medical treatment to decide that we simply want to focus on an alternative method of healing. But as devotees, we always need to keep in mind that God-realization is our highest priority, and that God may want us to work with our health challenge in a way that differs from our personal inclinations.

What I often say in such situations is, “How do you think you’ll feel about this treatment issue at the end of your life? What are you really going to care about?” A devotee, at the end of life, is going to be concerned about such things as, “Did I make my search for God my top priority? Did I deepen my relationship with God? Did I focus on serving others and serving God in others?” Having this kind of discussion helps people gain perspective on their current health crisis and treatment options, and to become more accepting of a treatment that’s in their long-term best interests.

Q: Do you have this kind of discussion only when there’s a serious diagnosis such as cancer or diabetes?

A: Sometimes it occurs in those contexts, but more commonly the issue arises when devotees feel that a recommended medication might interfere with their immune system or when they are already using a form of healing where taking pharmaceuticals is discouraged. Another common situation is when devotees first hear that they need to be on an antidepressant for six to nine months, and they’re not happy about it. Or perhaps someone has tried unsuccessfully to cure an infection with alternative therapies.

In all of these instances, I try to help them to see that success on the spiritual path is not dependent on avoiding allopathic medications in every circumstance. I encourage them to always keep as their highest priority that God’s in charge. Basically, I try to help them reach a point of understanding where they can say: “As a devotee I’m trying to find God, and I’m just going to have to get my ego out of the way and be practical.”

Sometimes I’ll say to them, “Remember, God invented this surgery,” or “God invented this medication. These things came from God and we need to see God in them.” Or, I might explain to someone, “Remember, when you take your penicillin tablets, you’re taking them because the infection’s not likely to go away otherwise. God is in that tablet.”

Q: Have there been times when your approach didn’t work?

A: Yes. One instance in particular stands out. It involved a devotee with a fairly serious health problem that was affecting not only him but his entire family because his symptoms were making him so miserable and irritable. But he was determined to rely solely on an alternative form of healing, which wasn’t working. There was no harm in his having tried it, but clearly it hadn’t worked. He was still very sick when he didn’t need to be.

Since the situation was having an impact on quite a few people, I decided to discuss it with Swami Kriyananda. Kriyananda thought about it for a minute and said, “You know, Peter, sometimes it’s better to take a pill than to be a pill.”

I sometimes quote Swami Kriyananda’s statement to patients and everybody laughs, but they all get the point. What it helps them to see is that, “I need to keep my priorities straight. My current health challenge is something I have to deal with, but I also need to maintain a good relationship with God, with my loved ones, and with those I’m serving. If I have to take a medication to keep those priorities paramount, well, fine.”

Q: In your medical practice you work with both devotees and non-devotees. Do you find it more challenging to work with devotees?

A: I actually find it easier to work with devotees in general because they’re very interested in being well and are usually very cooperative. For example, if I recommend walking briskly twenty minutes twice a day to someone who is not getting enough exercise, perhaps one out of five people is willing to do that. The number of devotees who cooperate with that kind of advice is much higher.

Devotees usually want to be able to function at a high level so that they can meditate and serve; most of them do all the important common sense things that help a person maintain good health — eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep. It’s surprising the number of people who ignore these common sense practices.

At the same time, it’s not at all surprising that devotees will seek out subtler ways of working with their health care. Now that we’re well into Dwapara Yuga, devotees especially are much more oriented to working with energy and thought, and not just with the physical body. But if these alternative methods don’t work, most devotees are grateful to know that standard medicine is available as a back up that often will work when subtler means don’t.

Q: Do devotees ever suggest to you new or different allopathic ways of treating their health problems?

A: Yes. An important aspect of being cooperative with my patients is to always keep in mind that they often have very good intuition and insight into what’s happening with their own bodies. Rather than just looking at a laboratory test or going by what I’ve learned from their physical exam, it’s important for me to listen to their suggestions.

If people have been meditating on their current health challenge, or really thinking about it, I take their suggestions more seriously because God may be speaking to them through their intuition. When we do a laboratory test based on that kind of suggestion, it often turns out that they were right, and it would have been detrimental to their healing had I not listened. Such experiences keep me humble and remind me not to get so caught up in my professional viewpoint that I dismiss their intuitive insight simply because it’s not clothed in proper medical terminology.

Q: Do you have this kind of experience often?

A: Yes, in fact. Listening to patients’ suggestions is an important aspect of cooperative healing. But a lot of physicians refuse to do that. They say, “If you want my care, you have to do it my way.”

Q: So, for both practitioner and patient, cooperative healing requires humility and receptivity, important spiritual attitudes.

A: Yes, for patients and practitioners, the challenge is not to have a lot of ego invested in a particular point of view. Often I find that I have to encourage devotees not to view their health problems as a stigma or as a spiritual failure —unless, let’s say, they’ve been meditating for twenty years and are still smoking cigarettes. But that’s the minority. The vast majority of health challenges come from inherited predispositions or are just one of the many common ailments that occur as people age.

I’ve always appreciated something Swami Kriyananda said: “Remember nobody gets out of this life alive.” We all have to die someday, and it will be some type of ailment or illness that triggers that process. The best approach for devotees is to avoid self-judgment and to work with their heath problems very practically. Illness isn’t a sign that we’re fundamentally flawed and don’t deserve to be devotees. In fact, for devotees, having significant health challenges is one way of burning up karma.

I might add, however, that devotees as a group are healthier than the mainstream. Their immune systems seem to be stronger, and they tend to recover from illnesses and surgeries more quickly than average. I’ve also found that I can prescribe lower dosages of medication to get excellent effects, especially with anti-depressants. This has been my experience in working with literally hundreds and hundreds of devotees over thirty years.

Q: Swami Kriyananda writes that the highest kind of healing is to stimulate a person to be his or her own healer.  Is that the goal of cooperative healing?

A: Yes. For practitioners, rather than seeing ourselves as doing “something” to someone, it’s better to see ourselves more as facilitators or coaches. We may be able to offer diagnostic procedures and medications, but in the end we’re simply trying to help people attain their highest potential physically, mentally, and spiritually.

I’ve often tried to imagine myself a hundred years in the future, sitting around with healing practitioners from other traditions and saying, “Can you believe that we used to give people medications —and vaccinations? And the acupuncturist answers, “I know, but can you believe that we used to stick people with needles? I can’t believe it, but we really didn’t know any better then.”

I find that it’s good to keep this perspective lest any of us think we have a corner on the truth as health care practitioners. Probably in a hundred years, much of what we’re now doing in health care will be laughable.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer and resident of Ananda Village, is the founder and CEO of Sierra Family Medical Clinic near Ananda Village.

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Victim consciousness puts the blame on other people. It’s the kind of thinking that says: “I have these difficulties and problems because of what people did to me. I am the product of my environment, of the way I was treated as a child, or of the way my boss treats me.” But this perspective is wrong. You’re the way you are because you made yourself that way—if not in this life, then in another.

Your consciousness creates your life
I saw this kind of thinking in one of my college friends. He had an unfortunate habit of excusing his personal weaknesses, whenever they were pointed out to him, by blaming them on his parents. “I know I’m weak,” he would cry, plaintively, “but how can I have more self-confidence? You see, I had a domineering mother. My father never shared my interests. Besides, my parents always favored my older brother.”

It is true that our outer circumstances are often the outcome, the “materialization,” of other people’s energies as well as our own. It is also true, however, that we attract those energies according to the quality of energy that we first manifest ourselves. An instructive instance of this involved Bernard, a brother disciple of mine at Mt. Washington, who was prone to getting involved in car accidents. Our guru would counsel him to be more careful.

“But Master,” protested Bernard, self-righteously, “none of these accidents has been my fault! One car crossed into my lane from behind, and hit me. Another hit me when it went through a red light. Twice my car was actually hit after I had parked it!”

“You must be more careful,” repeated the Master, unimpressed by these explanations.

Bernard thought the Master was simply being difficult. But one day it dawned on him that he did, at least, have a careless attitude. To his astonishment, once he had changed this attitude, his seemingly unrelated accidents ceased to occur.

Your life—in the last analysis, all of it—is the outward manifestation of your own consciousness, through the medium of the energy that you generate. Even the unexpected, the undesired, is drawn to you because of some attitude in your own mind. For it must be understood that our consciousness functions on various levels, many of them too deep for immediate, conscious recognition. This is, in fact, the greatest difficulty that we encounter in changing ourselves or our outer circumstances: We are not always aware of those deep currents of consciousness which have made our lives what they are.

How, then, can we change those currents? To become fully conscious of them, deep meditation is the surest and most direct method.

We want to pay for our mistakes
Suffering is familiar to all people but very few understand why they suffer. People’s natural tendency is to seek the cause of their suffering outside themselves. One often hears the cry, “I didn’t ask for this!” If people can find no one else to blame, they sometimes rage in anger against God Himself.

The truth is that on certain levels of our consciousness we actually do ask for the pain we experience in our lives. In some part of ourselves, we want to pay for our mistakes, and to be healed of our ignorance. On a soul level, we understand that no earthly suffering could approach the eons-old agony of exile from our true home in God. Human beings experience suffering because, although created as God’s children and welcome to dwell with Him forever, we have chosen to wander afar.

The wrongs we have done in life must sooner or later be paid for. Our mistakes must be righted. Isn’t it better that our mistakes be righted while we are still here on earth? For then, when the time comes for us to leave this world, we shall enter the other one in a state of freedom.

We need our difficulties
The truth is we need our difficulties, our trials. It’s only with opposition that we can grow. When we become strong enough in ourselves, we are able to transcend anything that comes to us.

There are people who have had tremendous adversity in life, and yet they have come out as heroes and heroines. Richard Wurmbrand is a good example. I first heard Wurmbrand lecture in Lugano, Switzerland. It was a deeply inspiring experience. Wurmbrand was an orthodox Christian, and a very spiritual man. He was arrested and thrown into prison because of his religion and his outspoken criticism of the communist regime in Rumania. He spent many years in prison where he was subjected to cruel punishment, and often torture.

Wurmbrand was able to endure and transcend such punishment because he took it with courage, faith, and love—love for God and love for God in his tormentors. Most people would be broken by that kind of experience but Wurmbrand came out stronger and more joyful than ever.

We need to learn to take responsibility for our lives. This understanding is one of the most important contributions that the yogic teachings of India are giving to the world. Not only do life’s trials help us to pay off old karmic debts, when accepted with understanding, they help us develop the inner strength to focus our love single-pointedly on the only reality where joy is never dimmed: union with God.

A way out of victim consciousness
Victim consciousness puts a person in a contractive mode. His perceptions turn inward on himself—he concentrates on how others treat him, not on what he can do for them. The way out of victim consciousness is to get into an expansive mode by affirming a more generous, giving attitude toward others.

When you are in a giving mode, you grow. But when you are focused on receiving egoically, with great concern over how people are treating you, you contract and suffer. Only after cultivating an expansive outlook can a person see himself accurately in his relation to others, and to the greater scheme of things.

Here’s a simple example: If at a party I see that there’s not enough cake for everybody, am I going to rush in there and get mine? Most people might think that way, and they may feel good in the short run. But there’s something inside that says, “It would have been nicer to share it, or to let somebody else have it.”

As we grow more sensitive, we reach the point where we find that happiness comes not from getting the cake for ourselves, but from seeing that somebody else got it. And as we grow spiritually, we want to include the happiness of other people in our own, even to the extent of not wanting the cake for ourselves, but wanting it for them. We discover that there’s real freedom in realizing that nothing outside ourselves makes us happy, but that our happiness is something that we can carry with us all the time.

Our allotted task
The world is God’s dream. Our allotted task is to wake from our own dreams within the cosmic dream, and to live in obedience to the Dreamer’s plan for us. Wise are we when we are able to perceive God as the hidden Doer behind His multifarious roles in creation.

Wise are we also if we give God the credit for anything we do well, and attribute any trials or misfortunes to a deficiency in our attunement with Him, if not in this life then in the past. To blame our upbringing, or to hurl accusations at others, is futile and self-defeating.

From books and talks.

Related link: click here to learn about our online course: How to Be Happy.

God created man in his own image, male and female created He them. And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and out of the ground God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and also the tree of life in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil….And God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden and commanded the man, saying: “Of every tree of the garden thou may freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die….

Now the serpent said unto the woman: “Hath God said, ‘Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’” And the woman said unto the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it lest ye die.” And the serpent said unto the woman: “Ye shall not surely die….” And the woman took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened….Therefore God sent them forth from the Garden of Eden.

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Originally I thought it ridiculous to think that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden just for eating an apple. Later, when I understood that there is a message for all humanity in the Adam and Eve story, I made up my mind to broadcast its allegorical truth to the whole world. As an allegory, the story of Adam and Eve tells how the first human beings fell spiritually by allowing their spiritual energy to be drawn downward in the inner spine.

What is the Garden of Eden?
God or Divine Will materialized the original man and woman, symbolically called Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve represent the two natures of God, reason and feeling, expressed in separate bodies. In man, God kept reason uppermost and feeling hidden; and in woman, He kept feeling uppermost and reason less prominent.

In the original plan of creation, man and woman, ideal soul mates, were to lead a heavenly life by keeping their minds in the “paradise” region at the point between the eyebrows, the spiritual eye. Spiritual marriage consisted of woman or feeling, uniting with reason or man, and attaining oneness with God through the perfection of that union.

The “Garden of Eden” represents the inner bliss Adam and Eve knew when they lived focused at the spiritual eye. The “tree of life” in the midst of the garden symbolizes the inner spine that runs through the center of the human body. When focused at the spiritual eye, the divine energy flows upward through the inner spine.

Adam and Eve, having been made in God’s perfect image, were in constant communion with the Almighty. God told them they were free to enjoy all the different “fruits” or senses in the bodily garden—attractive sensations of sight, hearing, smell, and taste—but not to partake of the “fruit” of the tree of life in the middle of the garden. The fruit of this tree, the sex instinct, is sometimes spoken of as the “apple.” God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate of this fruit, they would surely “die,” meaning they would fall from divine consciousness.

A lingering subconscious memory
Why did God issue this warning? The first human bodies appeared on earth as a special creation of God. When God materialized the first man and woman, he created bodies with a brain and nervous system that allowed for the full expression of divine consciousness.

Yet the souls of Adam and Eve had once been in animal bodies. Evolving upward from lower animal forms, their souls had attained a level of development that fitted them for a more refined physical vehicle for the expression of their consciousness. God caused the animals’ souls, for further advancement, to reincarnate in specially created human bodies, beginning with Adam and Eve.

However, the memory of past sex indulgence in lower animal forms lingered in the subconscious of Adam and Eve. God’s warning was intended to prevent them from awakening that subconscious memory. As children of the Divine, Adam and Eve inherited the free will either to obey God’s warning or to affirm a separate egoic reality and forsake their divine attunement.

Falling under the sway of duality
The “serpent” that tempted Eve is the powerful kundalini energy at the base of the spine, which stimulates the sex nerves and draws the energy downward in the inner spine. When tempted by the serpent, Eve, the feeling aspect in human nature, subconsciously recalled the procreative process in the animal kingdom, and felt an attraction to sexual expression. Feeling or emotion, once awakened, overpowered the faculty of reason, symbolized by Adam.

Through their misuse of feeling and reason, Adam and Eve came under the sway of duality or maya (“the knowledge of good and evil”) and lost their attunement with the Divine. Their “sin” was in choosing the outward sexual energy over the inner bliss to which God had invited them.

A unified harmony of Eden
When Adam and Eve were in perfect attunement with the Divine, they could produce physical offspring in the same manner as God, materializing them by the power of will. By indulging in physical union, Adam and Eve forsook the heavenly union of reason and feeling in divine spiritual marriage, and were relegated to the physical method of propagating the species.

The germ of Adam and Eve’s error remains in all human beings, and is experienced as the first temptation of the flesh. Ever since Adam and Eve’s fall, each individual has had to do battle with this cosmic temptation. When the sex instinct is not controlled, men and women are driven away from the “paradise” of happiness that accompanies a life of self-control and moderation. In spiritual marriage, pure love must predominate.

The dual nature of reason and feeling symbolized by Adam and Eve exists within each individual, male or female. The personal responsibility of all persons is to restore their dual nature to a unified harmony of Eden. That perfect balance comes only through ever-deepening divine contact. In God alone lies perfection.

The missing link is a myth
Adam and Eve’s fall has contributed to the widely held impression of human nature as inherently sinful. It was no great leap, from that view, for Darwin and others to attribute mankind’s very appearance on the stage of evolution to the monkeys.

According to the theory of evolution, all animal bodies are interrelated and evolved from the lemur, and the lemur from the fish family. Science has uncovered in the earth’s lowest strata seashells, then vegetation, then animals, then different kinds of primeval man, but no one has found any missing links of half-man, half-animal in the strata where human or animal skeletons were found. Why? Because the missing link is a myth. There is no missing link. Human bodies appeared on earth as a special creation of God.

How do you explain man’s animal characteristics?
The evolutionist asks: “If man is a special creation, how do you explain the existence of animal characteristics in man?”

It is true that man has animal characteristics and that his body reflects the pattern of animals: Human ears resemble sea  shells, and the tail at the end of the human spine is reminiscent of the tail of primates. The Darwin point at the top of the ear is the vestige of the long ears of the donkey, and our intestines resemble the snake. Man’s quick movements, restless eyes, and grinning face resemble the monkey. The running power of man suggests the racing power of the horse. Man is brave like the lion, foxy like the jackal, cruel like the tiger, meek like the lamb, and hypocritical like the quiet cat who has just eaten a tame canary. He can sing like the nightingale and is ferocious like the wolf.

The answer to the evolutionist is this: Man’s animal characteristics reflect his long evolutionary history through mineral, plant, and animal lives. But beginning with Adam and Eve, God caused the souls of animals, for further advancement, to reincarnate in specially created human bodies.

Our original perfection in God
Modern science points downward to the subconscious and to man’s animal origins, claiming that therein lies man’s basic reality. The ancient Hindu view of life, however, saw life’s deepest motivation as a reaching out toward its true origins in infinity, and not as a blind instinct to avoid being slain and gobbled up as propounded by Darwin.

The ancient rishis gave mankind a vision of where he is headed on his long evolutional journey. They perceived man’s longing for self-perfection not as a distortion of his animal nature, but as the result of a deeper-than-conscious memory of his eternal divine reality. They understood that the soul, though temporarily identified with various sorts of bodily and mental states, tries gradually and naturally to return to its original perfection, symbolized by Adam and Eve when they lived in the bliss of divine attunement in the Garden of Eden.

From the 1934 Praecepta Lessons and articles and books.

Transformation: Women, far more so than men, have the potential to uplift humanity. For feeling, not reason, is that aspect of human consciousness which can inspire, purify, and transform. The Hindu Way of Awakening, by Swami Kriyananda.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Some years ago, I read a story in the book My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Remen, and was deeply inspired by its message of how we can break out of our imprisoning self-definitions. What follows is a summary of that story.

A paralyzing self-definition
At age seventeen, David was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. The diagnosis shocked him and filled him with anger and despair. Suddenly, his life required great care about when and what he ate, when he took insulin, and what activities he engaged in. David responded like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars of its cage — not following his diet, forgetting his insulin. The self-definition that paralyzed David was: “I’m a diabetic and that makes finding any happiness in my life impossible.”

Seeing that David was endangering his life, his parents brought him to Rachel for therapy. For six months the therapy seemed to do little good. Then, one day he came into Rachel’s office after having had an extraordinary dream the night before.

David had never had any interest in religion, but in the dream he found himself sitting in a large room with no ceiling, facing a small stone statue of the Buddha. The face of the young Buddha attracted him greatly, as also did the feeling of peace and stillness the Buddha emanated. In the Buddha’s presence, David became aware of feeling more at peace within himself. He sat for quite awhile enjoying the connection he felt with this statue.

“Why is life like this?”
Suddenly, from somewhere behind him, a dagger was thrown that pierced the heart of the Buddha. David responded with shock, anguish, and a sense of betrayal. A question rose up from the depths of his being: “Why is life like this?”

The face of the Buddha, however, remained unchanged in its serenity and contentment. As David watched, the Buddha statue very slowly began to grow and grow, never changing its expression. David understood that this growth was a response to the dagger. Gradually the statue became huge. As David looked up at the enormous statue, the dagger, which had remained its original size, now appeared to be a tiny dot.

Something in David’s heart released at this sight. He understood that his diagnosis of diabetes, which had filled him with such despair and anguish, could become, just as the dagger had, not the entirety of his life, but a smaller and smaller part of it.

A cage with only two bars
Reading this story, I was deeply inspired by the message it gives to spiritual seekers, and not only to those with physical problems. As devotees we are trying to break free of our limitations and experience the limitless peace and joy of our soul nature. Yet we often hinder ourselves by focusing on our faults and limitations, just as David did when he defined himself initially by his diabetes.

I once saw a cartoon of a canary with the tips of its wings holding on to the bars of his cage like a prisoner in a jail. What made the cartoon humorous was that there were only two bars on the cage, the ones the canary was holding onto. The rest of the cage was completely open!

Our egos cannot limit us if we continually try to attune to something much larger: the presence of God within us. The yogic path and Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings offer tools to help us experience the expanded part of our being.

A verbal ping-pong match
I had a dramatic experience of the effectiveness of these tools a number of years ago. I was teaching a five-day course on Superconscious Living with about eight guests at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village.

Two of the women in the course had come to The Expanding Light together. They were obviously on a spiritual journey, and one woman, whom I’ll call May, seemed to be the spiritual teacher for her friend, whom I’ll call June. I don’t know if they followed a specific path, but they were familiar with spiritual principles and terminology.

Near the end of the first class on Monday, I presented some aspect of Yogananda’s teachings and May said, “I don’t agree.” I enjoy lively class discussion, so I responded by asking her what she thought and then tried to build a bridge between her views and what I’d said.

No matter how I responded, she continued to come back with disagreement. The last twenty minutes of class became a sort of verbal ping-pong match. May would say something rather argumentative. I’d try to accept what she’d said so we could move on. And she’d disagree again—with everyone else in the class watching first one of us, and then the other.

I didn’t disagree with what May said—it seemed to me that we were using different words to say basically the same thing. Perhaps I was missing something! But it was obvious that if the week continued this way, it would be a tedious experience for everyone.

When I tried to reach out to May with a friendly comment at lunch afterwards, she responded quite rudely. Hmm….maybe the problem wasn’t with our teachings, but with me as a teacher. I definitely had a problem to deal with—without delay!—if the coming days of class were to be useful to the participants.

“I know there’s a solution”
After a quick lunch, I went to my desk in an office I shared with several staff members. While people around me worked on their computers or talked on the phone, I put in my earplugs and began to pray.

First, I said to God and Guru: “I have a problem and I really need help with this.” Then it occurred to me that God and Guru already had the solution to the problem, and that the essential thing was for me to get on their wavelength—to change my “problem-focused” thinking. So, I began to focus strongly at the spiritual eye with the thought, “solution — I know there’s a solution.” My goal was to leave behind all restlessness and to attune to the superconscious mind, the Higher Self, which sees life as a whole and has solutions for all of our needs.

As I focused in this way, my subconscious mind would occasionally chime in, “This is a disaster! What are you going to do? This is impossible!”  Essentially I would say, “Be quiet. I’m not interested in your way of thinking!” My conscious mind also tried to derail me by pulling me down to the lower level of thoughts: “Don’t you think you’d better use this time to plan your class for tomorrow?” But I was not interested. The most important thing was to lift, not lower, my consciousness.

The longer I concentrated at the spiritual eye with the focus of “solution,” the calmer and clearer I became. By the end of twenty minutes, I felt very uplifted and I knew there was a solution. I also knew that remaining in “solution consciousness” was much more important than knowing the details of how that solution would come to pass. God had a solution for me, as long as I remained in this uplifted state of consciousness.

A shift of energy
I had to stop this “meditation” because I’d offered the class the option of private conferences, and June had signed up for one that afternoon. I went to the dining room to meet her. June and May came in together, and June apologized for being late. As we sat together in the conference room, June said, “I don’t know why I signed up for this—I don’t really have any questions.” Then May said, “I have a question.”

May then asked what happens to a person when he dies. Yogananda’s teachings on death are very clear and inspiring. I shared these with May, and she then asked further questions, continuing the theme of the soul and death. Her questions were deep and heartfelt. It seemed that she was dealing with some challenging issues in her life. Whatever had been going on in class earlier, May seemed now to appreciate every answer I gave her. By the end of the session, the energy between us had entirely shifted.

The rest of the classes that week flowed very smoothly. Interestingly, the person in the group I came to feel the most rapport with was May.

We can never perfect the little self
What I have learned from that and other experiences is the power of stepping out of littleness, and aligning my energy with God and Guru. In our little bodies and minds, we are limited. But God and Guru are unlimited. Our job is not only to ask for Their help, but to do our best to align our energy with Theirs: to release the grip of limitations and fears, and to attune to the solutions that always exist in our higher Self.

Early in my spiritual journey I read a quotation by Sister Gyanamata, Yogananda’s most spiritually advanced woman disciple. Through the years, I have repeated it to myself countless times: “Let your weakness be dissolved in the worshipful thought of His strength.”

We can never really perfect our little self, but if we continually attune ourselves to the greatness of God, we discover a part of ourselves that is, and has always been, perfect—not the little ego, but the divine soul.

Nayaswami Anandi is a founding member of Ananda and a Lightbearer, and was initiated into the Nayaswami Order in 2009. She is on the staff at The Expanding Light guest retreat at Ananda Village and does teaching, organizational work, and writing. She also works as an editor for Crystal Clarity, Publishers. She is married to Nayaswami Bharat.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswami Anandi are listed under “Anandi Cornell.”

Transformation: If we direct the mind wisely, instead of letting it rule us, we can transform failure itself into victory. As Yogananda put it, “The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.” Money Magnetism, by Swami Kriyananda.

As soon as she agreed to wear the cap, he stopped insisting and put the cap away. He had only wanted her to surrender that little bit of ego that says, “I won’t be recognized as stupid!” Her reluctance to wear the cap seems like a small thing, yet Yogananda later told her: “I saw God and Satan on opposite sides of you. If you had turned toward the wrong side, you would have been lost for this life.”

We are always at that point of decision. Our aspiration for soul-enlightenment takes us upward toward the Divine, but there is also the downward pull of past habit and subconscious tendencies. Which way will you go? Once you go the wrong direction, you then see all the reasons why it’s the right direction for you. Don’t risk these things.

Two types of failed seekers
There are two ways of failing in yoga practice. One of them is fairly common: to return to a worldly life. Such failed seekers may wander for incarnations after such a fall, until the desire for God reawakens in their hearts. For although that desire may seem to disappear, once it has been wakened in the heart, it can never die.

Another type of fall takes place, so to speak, on the battlefield. A person practices yoga zealously at first. After some time, however, he relaxes his efforts and loses his focus on the divine goal. Doubts assail him: “Is there, possibly, no hope for him to rise any higher?” “Is it really worthwhile to sacrifice everything to find God?” Unfortunately, the farther the devotee slips into delusion, the less he is likely to realize his mistake and return to the divine search.

It is always very sad for me to see the grief in the eyes of those who have decided that they didn’t need God after all. They have turned away from the spiritual path, but they can never get away from the feeling in their hearts of having left something precious. Fortunately, most people manage to pull out of their tailspins before losing their discrimination altogether. If anyone, however, rejects life’s higher goals, he may retain a superficial hold on morality but he will end up shrinking in consciousness.

There can be no stasis in life. The choice between seeking God or turning away from Him is absolute. Not to seek Him, or, worse still, to turn away from Him, is to opt for delusion.

A seed cannot suddenly become a tree
The chief reason people become discouraged and abandon their spiritual efforts is their expectation of specific results. There was a man, for example, who came to Mount Washington and was accepted by Yogananda for training. The man received Kriya Yoga initiation and practiced it with great fervor for a few months. Impatient, however, with the seeming slowness of his progress, he left at last in discouragement.

Spiritual growth is rarely sudden. Unless an individual is already blessed from birth with exceptionally good karma, spiritual growth can take a long time. The aspiring yogi would do best simply to love God, and leave the decision as to his fate in the hands of the Divine. Nishkam karma — action without desire for the fruits of action — should be his motto.

A seed cannot suddenly become a tree. The seed will grow if it is watered regularly. That watering process, for a devotee, is daily meditation, constant practice of the presence of God, and devotion.

Ultimately, devotional love is what lifts the devotee’s consciousness toward the Divine. Without love, one lacks the necessary urgency of desire to reach the divine goal. Whether meditating, discriminating, or acting, a devotional attitude must underlie everything one does.

“But it’s so difficult!”
Another common lament among devotees who abandon their spiritual calling is: “But the spiritual path is so difficult!” Well, of course it is! Can the pearl of great price be won without serious effort? A friend of mine recently said, “I’m tired of suffering; I just want to rest.”  That friend will find his true rest only in God, and then only by putting out all the energy he can.

God is ever near. If people will do the work needed to calm their thoughts and, above all, their feelings, they will find Him. They need only apply principles that they know already from the challenges of daily life. If they want worldly success, they sooner or later learn that they must work for it! No one is going to drop it in their laps. Similarly, effort—indeed heroic effort—is needed to win in this most challenging but most important of all struggles: the search for God.

Karmic bombs of restlessness and desire
It often happens on the spiritual path that selfish desires spring up from the subconscious mind with surprising vigor to attack one’s devotion. The devotee may be progressing steadily, confident that God is all he wants in life; then all of a sudden, worldly opportunity knocks and he thinks, “Here’s my chance—perhaps the only one I’ll ever get.

“Karmic bombs” is what Yogananda called the restlessness and selfish desires that spring up from the subconscious mind with surprising vigor to attack one’s devotion. I’ve never seen such desires, if pursued as an alternative to seeking God, end in anything but disappointment.

Unfortunately, these desires can be so strong that even the guru’s warning is of no avail. There were two disciples of Yogananda, for example, who talked of very worldly things while returning from Encinitas on the bus. When they arrived at the gateway of Mount Washington, Yogananda met them and repeated everything they had said. He told them, “Don’t mix with each other.” Unfortunately, they didn’t listen and fed each other’s weaknesses by talking of worldly desires, which eventually resulted in their leaving the ashram.

Always watch the heart for any ripple of attraction there. You may feel safe from worldly desires, but if in your heart you find the least tremor of excitement, even on hearing about the pleasures of the senses, shun them like the infection they really are. People may scoff, saying, “It’s just in the mind.” Exactly so! The mind itself is the battlefield. There is no other. In the very act of “pondering” objects of the senses, the energy flows toward them, and with energy, feeling. With feeling comes ego-involvement and personal attraction.

Regular habits of meditation are the best defense against “karmic bombs.” Once the habit of daily meditation is firmly established, one can cruise steadily through many a storm.

Self-honesty is essential
To remain steadfast on the spiritual path, it’s very important to overcome the tendency to hide from the truth and to justify oneself. Mistakes on the path are always possible. The devotee should acknowledge his mistakes sincerely and then simply forsake them. There is no need to make a big issue of it. Just say, “I’ll do better the next time.”

You don’t need to tell everybody what you’ve done—it’s hard to overcome your faults when other people hold them up to you. But you must tell the truth to God, to yourself, and to those who are wise and are trying to help you. Many times I see people make mistakes but say nothing because I know they lack the self-honesty to admit that they were wrong. One of the most important things is the willingness to admit when you are wrong.

The help of the guru
Without the help of the guru it’s impossible to get out of delusion. Yet, so many people come to the guru and think, “Well, I have my own will.” A brother disciple once said to me, “I don’t feel that it would be right to submit completely to Master’s will. It’s important for me also to develop my own will. Otherwise how would it be called ‘free’?”

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. When Yogananda’s disciples followed his will, they found inner freedom and bliss. And when they didn’t follow his will, they couldn’t achieve anything spiritually and most of them fell away. That same brother disciple who refused to submit completely to Yogananda’s will was among those who fell away.

The guru’s assistance is primarily inward, in the form of blessings and needed strength. Gradually, as the disciple tunes into his guru’s consciousness, he finds his own consciousness changing. Old habit patterns disappear and new ones manifest, opening him to superconscious inspiration and guidance. Negative tendencies the disciple has unsuccessfully tried to eradicate by his own efforts disappear suddenly in attunement with the guru.

“God will never let you down”
The spiritual path requires courage, dedication, and the absolute conviction that only God can ever satisfy the soul’s yearning for true happiness. Whether a fall, when it occurs, is permanent for this lifetime depends on whether you still put God first in your life, and refuse to accept even the severest setback as a final defeat. “So long as you continue to make the effort,” Yogananda said, “God will never let you down.”

“The only solution,” Yogananda said, “once one knows deeply the true meaning of life, even if, afterward, he abandons his calling to it, is to turn back to it again: to resume a life of meditation and devotion.” You were born to know God. This is the only purpose of human life.

From: recent talks and the following books: Essence of the Bhagavad Gita by Paramhansa Yogananda as remembered by his disciple Swami Kriyananda; Conversations with Yogananda by Swami Kriyananda; and Rays of the Same Light, by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Transformation: It isn’t sufficient merely to have a guru: You must do what he tells you. If you follow his prescription even a little bit, your life will be transformed. Conversations with Yogananda, by Swami Kriyananda.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Because of this wholesale murder of birds, the remaining birds, having eluded the hunter’s evil-eyed guns, became so intuitively wise that they flew away at the faintest sound of his approach. When the hunter realized that he had so scared the birds that they now avoided him, he became beside himself with wrath and began shooting at random through the thick foliage of the jungle.

His wrath spent, and completely dejected, he walked for a long time and finally emerged from the jungle. The spectacle that greeted him stirred fresh hope in his breast. To his amazement, he saw an orange-robed saint standing knee-deep in the lake on the outskirts of the jungle, with all kinds of game birds trustingly perched on his head, shoulders, and hands, and peacefully flying around him.

A sudden idea flashed across the hunter’s mind: “If I put on an orange robe every day and pose as a harmless saint, then I can create enough trust in the birds that they will perch on me, and swarm all around me. Then, at my convenience, I can club quite a few of them to death. In that way, I can get even with the birds for flying away at my approach.”

The hunter watched motionless from behind a tree to see how the saint, like St. Francis of Assisi of yore, fed and sang a sermon to the birds. After the saint finished his bath in the lake and began to move away, only with difficulty did he get away from the birds, who kept flying after him.

The next day the hunter concealed several guns and knives on his body and dressed himself in an orange robe, as is customary among the saints of India. So attired, he calmly walked into the same lake. To his great glee, and scarcely believing his eyes, the very same birds that used to fly away at the sight of him now trustingly, like little children, perched all over his body and swarmed around him.

The hunter was happy beyond dreams. But as often as he made up his mind to pounce suddenly on the birds and choke them to death, his hands froze. He could not do it. He did not have the heart to betray the birds that so innocently and trustingly found shelter with him.

He began to sermonize within himself: “I have been a hateful hunter shunned by all the birds. But behold the magic of a saint’s outward orange robe. Even though it covers a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it has caused the birds to trust even my very hateful self.” “Just think,” the hunter reflected, “if the mere outward garb of a saint can create so much trust and confidence in dumb animals, how much more trust and wholesome influence could a real saint create in people.”

Thinking this, the hunter threw his knives and guns into the water and walked away, determined to become a genuine, full-fledged saint. As he did so, the trusting birds followed him as long as they could, and finally parted from him reluctantly.

After the hunter became a saint, he was known to wade daily into the lake and to feed the birds and sing to them. He made so many bird friends that all the watery seats of the lake were fully occupied by an audience of feathery folks. After making friends with the birds, the hunter-saint became a great spiritual teacher who attracted all kinds of human friends, whom he served with the song of Truth from the core of his heart.

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We find that the hunter, just by imitating the garb of goodness, ultimately became good. Never forget that even though you cannot overcome your inner weaknesses all at once, it is all right to wear the garb of goodness if you are sincerely trying to be good. It is better to imitate goodness than to imitate wickedness. One who imitates good actions, even outwardly, gets a chance to smell the alluring fragrance of goodness, whereas, one who  imitates evil, no matter what the reason, smells the repulsing odor of the polecat of evil.

Of course, to deliberately use goodness to deceive people is the greatest blasphemy against God and yourself. But if you are sincerely trying to be good, don’t let it bother you if people call you a hypocrite on account of a few failings. Why should those who are sincerely trying to be good be labeled as hypocrites when they are discovered doing wrong? To do so is a great blasphemy against God and His children.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Naughty or good—all are equally loved by God. God rejoices when His good children come back to His home of wisdom, but it gladdens Him most when He finds His naughty, prodigal children returning home from their truant wanderings.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1934.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

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When one realizes that self-transformation requires time, he develops a more tolerant attitude toward himself as well as towards others. He takes his daily step at a time. One day, all in a flash, he realizes that the job really hasn’t been so difficult after all! Cities of Light, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Without inner transformation, any outer improvement in the human lot would be like trying to strengthen a termite-ridden building with a fresh coat of paint. The Path, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Self-transformation occurs, finally, when the resolution to change is charged with superconscious awareness, and thence fully absorbed into the subconscious. Meditation for Starters, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Wisdom descends from superconsciousness. It is from that level that our personalities truly become transformed, our faults eradicated, and our virtues brought to perfection. Awaken to Superconsciousness, by Swami Kriyananda.

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The validity of superconscious experience can be tested and verified by every sincere devotee. It will have transforming power over his life. Rays of the Same Light, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Once the disciple’s consciousness becomes transformed through the practice of meditation, it ranges like wind through the vast skies of Omnipresence. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained, by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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The more deeply a person attunes himself to God’s love and to the subtle workings of His law, the more he finds himself able to transform his life and the lives of others as if with a magic wand, awakening the world about him to divine harmony, happiness, and peace. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained, by Paramhansa Yogananda.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

After we’d parted, I mulled over his words. His grandmother’s sensitivity, I thought, was greater than his. Granted, the radio itself wasn’t aware, but how else could she demonstrate her gratitude to God outwardly for the truths she’d been hearing? To her, the radio was simply a symbol, as also was the flower she placed on it.

“I Myself accept their offering.”
Certain images remind us more naturally of God and noble qualities, but any expression of selfless love—to images as well as to people—can help to stem the tides of natural selfishness in the heart. Images in themselves are neutral. Their influence is positive or negative depending mainly on our reaction to them. One might worship a stone if, through that symbol, one invokes God and views the stone as a reminder of the Infinite Lord. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita: “In whatsoever form people worship Me, I Myself accept their offering.”

Because it is difficult for people to feel love for something completely formless and without personality, Paramhansa Yogananda recommended clothing God in a form—for people to think of God as their Divine Friend, their Cosmic Beloved, their all-compassionate Divine Mother, their Heavenly Father.

Devotees may also be inspired to love God by visualizing Him as manifested through one of the great masters who are sent to earth by God as messengers of His love. In visualizing a master’s kind eyes and loving smile, it is often easier to visualize the infinite love of God. Others may feel more devotionally inspired if they visualize the Lord as an invisible Presence in every tree, every flower, in the mountains, and in all creatures.

The Hindu, for example, visualizes God not only as omnipresent but as consciously expressed everywhere. Consciousness, according to the Hindu teachings, even in its dimmest manifestations, is actively manifested throughout the universe. The Hindu imagines God smiling from the hearts of clouds, from the rocks, from the rivers. All things, viewed in this light, are seen to belong to a universal awareness in which we, too, participate. Everything is inter-connected—like the members of an extended, and indeed cosmic, family.

A means of activating God’s response
Visualizations are helpful not only for the devotion they inspire in the devotee, but also as a means of activating God’s response. The Divine responds consciously according to whatever form we visualize lovingly. If we look to Him in Nature, He responds through Nature. If we look to Him as our Father, He responds as a Father, with deep wisdom and understanding. If we look to Him as our Divine Mother, He responds to us with motherly love.

Many Protestant Christians oppose the Roman Catholic practice of worshipping the Mother aspect of God in the form of Mary, pointing out that the scriptures don’t describe Mary as being one with the Father. However, in condemning this dogma, they close themselves to God in His motherly aspect: Her sweet concern for humanity, Her kindness, Her compassion. The Mother aspect of God is not limited to a specific form. Mary was the mother of Jesus, but she also symbolizes, and may be thought of as expressing, the Divine Mother of the universe, whose Son is the Infinite Christ.

Through great masters, and to a lesser degree through saints and angels, God responds in a special way. As conscious emissaries of His love, their mission is to help those who long for spiritual understanding. The best practice is to call to God in whatever aspect you find most inspiring, but then also to invoke the help of a great master, saint, or angel in order that, by attuning yourself to their love for God, you deepen your own love for Him.

Spiritual masters: only a hint of infinity
One should not lose sight, however, of the fact that God is infinitely beyond any devotional symbol or man’s ability to visualize Him. In no single expression, nor even in the sum of all of them, is the Infinite Consciousness fully manifested. “The wave,” Paramhansa Yogananda used to say by way of explanation, “is not the ocean.” Nor can the combination of all the waves ever describe the ocean as it truly is.

Even the spiritual masters, enlightened though they are, cannot express fully through their physical bodies the realization they enjoy inwardly. Infinity can never be more than hinted at through a finite vehicle.

Above the human level exist angels, or advanced astral beings. These devas, as they are called in Sanskrit, are less highly evolved than spiritual masters, even if a master is still living on this earth, for the devas are still evolving spiritually, whereas a master has transcended evolution itself. The devas hasten their evolution by stooping down to help human beings. To pray to a deva or angel for help need no more imply lack of faith in God than would a request for help from a brother or sister instead of taking all of one’s problems to one’s parents.

The universe abounds with innumerable entities
Indeed, the Supreme Spirit seldom, if ever, intervenes directly in the affairs of man. It may be compared in this sense to a power station, the voltage of which must be stepped down by transformers so as not to incinerate the wiring in people’s homes. The universe abounds with innumerable entities that actively direct the growth of plants and of living creatures, the manifestation of new species, and the working out of individual and group karmas.

The majority of these astral entities, whom we might call “nature spirits” or even “astral functionaries,” thrive on love, and give us more energy if we offer them our love and appreciation. If they feel unloved and ignored, they withdraw in much the same way people do when their expressions of good will are misunderstood.

The more love we give out, the more all things respond, reciprocating our feelings with harmony and abundance. Indeed, to express love toward the lower astral “deities” is, in the great scheme of things, one way of sharing God’s love, particularly if, by expressing that love, we are offering appreciation to Him, above all, for His inexhaustible bounty.

Human beings, even if unenlightened, express the Infinite Consciousness more fully than do the lower animals. Having achieved some measure of self-awareness, human beings have a duty to help uplift creatures on lower levels of evolution. Kindness to animals helps them in their spiritual unfoldment and helps us, too, for it increases our attunement to the Source of All Love.

A need for heroic dedication
It’s important, at the same time, to remember what Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita—“Those who worship the lesser gods, go to their gods. Those who worship Me (the Infinite Consciousness), come to Me.” He is referring to the different grades or levels among the forms used by devotees to focalize their devotion. Not all of these forms lead to the inner purification, and the deepening awareness and love, which gradually lead the mind to perfect stillness within.

To find God takes serious effort: the sincere offering of every thought and feeling up to Him. Ultimately, you have to offer your own self. The Bhagavad Gita tells us that God is pleased with any sincere effort to know Him, but that same scripture reminds us that if we want to know Him, we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that the task is easy. Only by heroic dedication can we reach the spiritual heights; not, be it noted, by mere belief.

A quest for transcendence
The ultimate purpose of visualization and devotional images is to lift the mind into communion with the Absolute. Always, the quest must be for transcendence. Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, “Even if God comes to you in vision, as for example the Divine Mother, try to see shining in Her eyes the consciousness of Infinity. Don’t be attached to form of any kind, but concentrate on achieving union with the Absolute.”

In light of Yogananda’s statement, it would be well to add that the deeper a person’s devotion to God, no matter what his religion, the less interested he or she will be in its outer forms and symbols. Why, indeed, study the advertisements for a product when you have the product itself in your hands? As your devotion grows, you will naturally incline to seek God more in the formless Self within.

Formlessness is the higher reality. Saint Teresa of Avila in Spain once had a vision of what she called the “formless Christ.” Her spiritual confessor expressed doubt. How could Jesus appear without form? He found corroboration, however, in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, foremost among Christian theologians. The formless Christ, St. Thomas had written, is indeed the higher spiritual experience.

I myself, on entering a Hindu temple, prostrate with love and devotion before the form I see displayed there, but afterward I close my eyes and meditate on the formless Spirit within, for which those forms are but symbols. I worship above all that One who resides in my own heart. For the true temple is the human body.

Behind all their symbols, what all true religions teach is communion with God and the upliftment of the individual’s consciousness into ever-broader, ever-deeper perceptions of Truth. The devotee who at first loves God as his Divine Mother, and visualizes Her in a human form, comes in time to perceive Her everywhere: formless, infinite, and omnipresent.

From: The Hindu Way of Awakening, The Promise of Immortality, and Rays of the Same Light, Crystal Clarity Publishers; and the 1996 talk, Kriya and the Evolution of World Religions.

Growth: “The secret of growth lies in finding more and more strength inside yourself.”  Eastern thoughts—Western Thoughts by Swami Kriyananda.

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The “writing on the wall”
It all began one January day at Ananda Village when the director of The Peace Treaty asked if I would be in the play. My response was brief and to the point: “Umm…No!” Not willing to accept my answer, she replied, “Well, what if I write to Swami Kriyananda to see what he thinks about the idea?” How could I say “no” to that? I agreed to discuss it with her again once she heard from Kriyananda, but already I could see the “writing on the wall.”

We met a few weeks later after Kriyananda had replied to her email. The director told me she had never known him to be so enthusiastic about someone being in the play, adding that it is wise to listen to his advice if we want to grow spiritually. “So,” she concluded, “would you like to be part of the play?”

A tug of war was going on inside of me. I had always seen myself as a “background person,” with no interest in being in the spotlight. One side was saying, “NO! I like the way I am! Think of all the rehearsals, and how hard I’ll have to work to get over self-consciousness.” But the other side, the voice of the soul, was saying, “Yes! I want to grow and change. I want to be free!”

I observed these two warring energies for a moment. Did I want to listen to the voice of the ego or did I want to take a step toward soul-expansion and freedom? At that point there was no longer much of a decision to make. I knew what I had to do.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll do it.”
I hadn’t won the whole war in that moment, but I had agreed to fight the battle. By saying “yes,” I had affirmed the truth that I was more than the ego, and that I was willing to raise my energy and try to break through  limiting self-definitions.

“What will they think of me?”
The rehearsals involved a fairly constant battle to expand beyond my comfortable little shell. My main challenge was not easy—to open up, get myself “out of the way,” and to project energy. Repeatedly the director encouraged me to try to “flow with it more.” Whenever I thought I achieved what she was asking of me, invariably there was more to learn.

My biggest battle, however, right up to the day of the performance, was nervousness. Unlike most plays, The Peace Treaty is performed only once each year, during the summer. Knowing that everything hangs on that one performance didn’t help my nervousness. I was constantly battling the consciousness of “what will they think of me?” and dealing with that part of myself that was afraid of making embarrassing mistakes.

A great flow of power
The day of the performance, my heart was racing as I stood backstage, waiting for my cue to go onstage in the first scene. I was becoming more and more nervous. In desperation, I gazed out over Lotus Lake, directly behind the outdoor amphitheater, and silently prayed to my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda: “Master, I can’t do this on my own. I need your help. Please help me!”

Shortly afterwards, I got my cue and stepped out onto the stage and faced the crowd. I was saying my first line when suddenly, I felt a great power flowing through me, and out to the audience. All nervousness was swept away in that current of energy, and I knew that God was right there with me.

In fact, there was a moment in the first scene when I was able to tune into the audience, to feel its joy in the play’s comic moments, and somehow know exactly how to say my lines to increase its enjoyment. The audience was no longer a faceless crowd but a friend with whom I had formed a mutually enjoyable relationship. I realized that this, too, was the Guru’s grace because it took a certain amount of relaxation to be able to relate to the audience this way.

The same tests and lessons repeat
After that first year’s performance, I asked myself, “Do I still need to do this? Haven’t I learned what The Peace Treaty can teach me?” Foolish thought! At least I was aware enough to realize that my very desire to pull away from the play meant I still had more to learn.

When rehearsals began again the spring of the second year, I was more than a little frustrated to discover that I was still dealing with nervousness and resistance to performing. Although I now know that the same spiritual tests often repeat themselves until the deeper lessons are learned, this was my first experience of it. In fact, I seemed to be having more resistance than ever. I prayed to God and Guru for help, but it wasn’t until the director spoke to the cast before the dress rehearsal that an answer came. She told us: “The ego gets nervous, the soul loves to share.”

How helpful that was! Now I had a formula to work with. Any time I felt unwilling and nervous, I could simply say to myself, “Aha, that’s the ego, let it go. The soul loves to share.” I could then focus on that expansive attitude of sharing. I realized that nervousness is simply the ego starting to feel vulnerable. By focusing strongly on the soul’s love of sharing, I found it easier to transcend my counterproductive energies. The only times my formula didn’t work was when I was already too locked into the “what will they think of me?” consciousness. Fortunately, all nervousness vanished during the performance.

A very humbling thought
With my third year of involvement with the play, nervousness became much less of a problem and different lessons came to the fore. The Peace Treaty addresses not only the issue of how to bring about lasting peace after a war, but also many of the spiritual challenges we face as devotees. There is a charming scene in which a soldier named Baltan exclaims loudly that certain other soldiers are “vain braggarts!” His friend Ponder quickly reminds him that we need to, “Be careful. From the things we criticize in others, we reveal what we are, ourselves.”  It is of course Baltan who exemplifies the quality of being a “vain braggart.”

Now, to be sure, I had heard these lines many times and had appreciated the truth they expressed. But on that particular day that truth hit me like a lightening bolt. Suddenly I was able to see very clearly that the things that annoyed me in others—things that weren’t even necessarily bad—were qualities that I rejected in myself. A very humbling thought!

For example, I have a sensitive and soft nature, but because in our culture, masculine strength is often equated with a sort of callous toughness, I had mistaken sensitivity and softness for weakness and was critical of it in others. I had also rejected it in myself and had tried to conceal it by erecting a protective shell of callousness. But I now understand that one can possess great inner strength and still be soft. In fact, it takes great inner strength to be able to stand firmly at your center while keeping an open, loving heart, no matter what life throws at you.

A joyful celebration of devotion
My third year of involvement with the play also brought a new understanding of renunciation. Each year there are scenes that sink in more deeply. In this instance it was a dance by Gazella, a deeply devotional young woman for whom dance is a form of prayer. In the graceful movements of the dance, and the beautiful way Gazella expressed her great devotion for God, I felt and understood renunciation in a deeper way.

I saw that renunciation is not a denial of life and love, but a joyful celebration of the soul’s freedom and devotion in God, and of the determination to seek love in God alone. It is, after all, in God that all love originates. Anandamoyi Ma once said to Swami Kriyananda, “There is no love except God’s love.”

Renunciation means understanding that any love I feel, even for another person, is God’s love, and need not result in attachment. By loving impersonally, my love becomes all the greater because I expect nothing in return.

Rich with wisdom and blessings
As I approach my fourth year of performing in The Peace Treaty, I look forward with almost eager anticipation to the lessons this year will bring. In a sense, the play has become a teacher for me. The experience has given me the self-confidence to embrace a more positive image of myself, and the determination to try to say “yes” to whatever life asks of me. It has also helped me to see the spiritual path as an ongoing process of growth and expansion beyond my limiting self-definitions.

Swami Kriyananda writes that spiritual “evolution never ceases, until at last time itself becomes timelessness, and the ends we seek end in endlessness.” After three years of performing in The Peace Treaty, “endlessness” seems less like a dream and more like something I might actually be able to attain.

Peter Kretzmann lives at Ananda Village and serves with Ananda Sangha’s IT (computer) Department. He also works part-time for his father’s business, MeditationBench.com

For information about the Summer 2010 performance of The Peace Treaty click here

Growth: “We can–we must–rise above the contractive tides and swim energetically with the expansive, for thereon depend our continuing growth.” Expansive Marriage by Swami Kriyananda.

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One day as the King’s procession passed along the boulevard, he saw two blind men, sitting about twenty yards apart, shouting for alms. The king stopped his carriage to investigate. The first blind man was shouting, “To whom the King gives, he alone becomes rich.” The second blind man was shouting, “To whom God gives, he alone becomes rich.”

Whenever his procession drove along the boulevard, he heard these demands for riches from himself and from God. At last, the King, feeling flattered by the first blind man’s utterance that “To whom the King gives, he alone becomes rich,” ordered a large loaf of bread to be baked with the inside filled with solid gold. The King gave this loaf to the first blind man, and completely ignored the second blind man, who believed that God alone could make him rich.

After being away on a hunting trip for several weeks, the King again passed along the boulevard and came to the first blind man to whom he had given the loaf. This man was still shouting, “To whom the King gives, he alone becomes rich.” The king asked, “What did you do with the loaf I gave you?” The blind man replied, “Your Royal Highness, the loaf you gave me was too large and heavy. I’m afraid it was not well baked, so I sold it to the other blind man for ten cents. I was happy to receive those ten cents.”

The second blind man was no longer on the street. Upon inquiry, Akbar discovered that the second blind man had given the loaf to his wife, who had opened it and found the gold. With this she bought a home.

Upon learning this, the King, with inner humility but with outward wrath, rebuked the first blind man, saying, “You fool, you gave away my gold-stuffed loaf to your friend who depended upon God and not upon me for wealth. From now on you must change your motto and shout, like your friend, “To whom God gives, he alone becomes rich.”

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This story has a wonderful moral. Millions of people today think that all wealth comes from banks, factories, jobs, and through personal ability. This great depression* has proven that America is the most prosperous starving nation on the face of the globe. When the wealthiest country on earth, without any national catastrophe, can be suddenly thrown into poverty, it proves that there are divine laws that govern our physical, mental, spiritual, and financial lives.

Every day, as you try to become better and happier, strive also to help others become better and happier. Learn to include the happiness and welfare of others in your own happiness. The happiness of  individuals, families, and the nation depend entirely upon the law of mutual cooperation, unselfishness, and living up to this motto: “Father, bless us, that we may remember Thee always, and that all things flow from Thee.”

*This article was written during the 1930s depression.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1934, and How To Be a Success, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Growth: “The first condition for any genuine growth in understanding is an openness to receive.” The Jewel in the Lotus, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Dear ___________:

The truth does seem to be that when we put our faith in people and in circumstances we are doomed to disappointment. There is only one who disappoints us never: God.

But if we act in the right way—not to please people, but to please Him—then it is true that all things begin to flow smoothly, and a world so full of a mixture of circumstances, pleasant and unpleasant tumbled and tangled together, suddenly is seen to be basically good and right.

Our own outlook is the most important thing to be improved. With a right attitude, even harsh-seeming treatment may appear full of hidden purpose, even kindness. To act kindly toward others with nothing but a view to buying their kindness in return would imply a selfish, mercantile attitude. The merit of kindness could never be proved in this way, for the initial act would have little in it of genuine feeling.

Rather, an attitude of true kindness will be its own greatest reward. In whatever way people respond, the kind person sees kindness somehow being reflected back to him from all sides. He is able to turn even curses into blessings, and hurts into an opportunity for inner growth.

But what I said remains true objectively also. You are looking at the short view. What we draw to us now is the result of many attitudes of the past. If people treat us harshly despite our present kindness to them, it is because the seeds of harshness have not been completely erased from our own subconsciousness. For the short view, you can certainly say that goodness begets more goodness in return than badness does. Then is it not reasonable to suppose that, if you perfect that goodness, those relatively desirable returns will improve proportionately?

Still, as I said, in the end only God can never disappoint us, for only God is real.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

From Letters to Truth Seekers, 1973 (Currently out of print).

Growth: “Every growth in awareness is, in the last analysis, a growth in Self-awareness.”  Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness by Swami Kriyananda,

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The sky seems bright or sad according to our own changing moods, not to its own. True growth comes first by improving our own attitudes. Eastern Thoughts—Western Thoughts by Swami Kriyananda.

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The emotions are our “demons,” for they obstruct our growth in understanding. These demons range themselves in grim determination to combat expansiveness and soul-aspiration of any kind. Out of the Labyrinth by Swami Kriyananda.

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To be a true disciple, we must be open to life, open to truth wherever we find it. In that way, we find many opportunities for growth. In that openness which is true humility, we find that we can learn from the stones, from the clouds, from everything. Lessons in Discipleship by Swami Kriyananda.

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When we try to transform ourselves by self-effort alone, we limit our potential for healing and growth. Affirmation should be lifted from the self-enclosure of the mind into the greater reality of superconsciousness. Affirmations for Self-Healing by Swami Kriyananda.

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Even failures should act as stimulants to your will power, and to your material and spiritual growth. Weed out the causes of failure and with double vigor launch what you wish to accomplish. The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. The Attributes of Success by Paramhansa Yogananda, 1944.

Editor’s Note: Additional “growth quotations” can be found at the end of most articles.

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It’s very important to understand that your dharma is uniquely your own, the things you need to do. There’s a general dharma that’s true for everyone—we all need to love, to forgive, to be in joy, to live peacefully, to be honest and truthful. But there are specific things that are inwardly right for you because they will help you to find God—and they aren’t necessarily the things you’re good at. You may be a good actor, but it may go against your dharma to be an actor because doing so could feed your ego.

It says in the Bhagavad Gita: “It’s better to fail in your own dharma than to succeed in someone else’s.” Whatever is the right way for you, that is your dharma. This principle is very important to understand because it follows from this that there are no more or less important roles in life. There isn’t anything important except knowing God, and the position you hold is totally extraneous.

I met a saint in India who had received a few letters from someone I knew, and he asked me what her work was. I explained that she was the head of an organization and described her responsibilities. He said: “Because of her position, she is able to work out her karma more quickly. It happens to be her karma to do it that way—not good karma, just karma. But it would be a misfortune for someone without that karma to be in that position because it wouldn’t help them to move forward.”

Work is not important for its own sake
People on the spiritual path sometimes make the mistake of  thinking that what they do is important for its own sake. They begin to think: “Oh, we can do big things,” or “We can accomplish wonders,” or “We can teach the multitudes, and won’t it be wonderful when everybody in the world is meditating because we got the message across to them in the right way?”

It doesn’t ever happen that way. The world drifts along in its own direction. You do things on the spiritual path with the ultimate purpose of helping yourself. If it’s other people’s karma to be helped, then they will find that help. They’re not waiting for incarnations until you arrive on the scene to help them. They will get what they’re meant to get.

And even if we can do some good in this dream-world, it isn’t good to think so. It’s much better to focus on the deeper purpose for all spiritual activity, which is to bring good things out of yourself.

The key to dharma: doing it for God
Dharma means “duty” but often, when we think in terms of duty, we think of something that’s a burden, something that goes against our desires. And, in fact, there were times in my life when I felt that way.

When I was first trying to build the Ananda Meditation Retreat, I had to leave Ananda for many months to earn the money to pay certain debts; otherwise I would have lost the land. I kept thinking, “Divine Mother, why have you given this to me?  I’ve never been interested in money, but now I’ve got to devote nearly all of my time and energy to earning money when I’d much rather stay here.”

But there came a very important lesson. After I’d met the challenge successfully, I realized that my gain wasn’t the money I’d earned. It was a spiritual gain: I felt stronger in myself. And slowly I came to understand that we don’t need to make a distinction between higher and lower duties if we act in joyful surrender to God’s will. When we understand that our joy lies in doing whatever God has given us to do, then what we do is no longer a burden but a wonderful opportunity to grow spiritually. And when we act in that spirit, He blesses us.

Succeeding against impossible odds
A very interesting example of this involved one of my fellow monks at Mt. Washington. When he first arrived at my Guru’s ashram, he had many physical problems. He only had one lung, double curvature of the spine, and there was no cushioning between many of the vertebrae. Every time he walked, it was painful. In the morning he would wake up totally paralyzed and couldn’t get out of bed. By sort of rolling from side to side he’d get up enough momentum to fall onto the floor. His muscles would then slowly begin to move and he could start his day’s work.

Yogananda put him in the kind of work that seemed impossible for a man in his condition. He had him driving the tractor, climbing scaffolding, and plastering the sides of buildings. Yet this monk did it joyfully and eventually did it very well, without difficulty. He transcended all that pain and became a person of great energy and drive.

Unfortunately, his ego later started to get strong and he became out of tune. He began to think, “I shouldn’t be doing this kind of work with a body like this. I’m getting a little older.” (He was only 35.) “I should let the younger men do this hard work.” After he began having a few physical problems, he asked Yogananda to give him a different job. Yogananda gave him a nice room and outfitted it with file cabinets and whatever else he asked for. Later Yogananda said, “No matter how much I do for him, he keeps getting worse because he’s not in tune.”

When people are in tune and work joyfully with the thought of pleasing God, then, somehow, everything seems to go well, even against impossible odds. God gives us the energy we need. Even if we don’t know all the rules, the Divine is always there, supporting us and preventing us from making disastrous mistakes. That’s one of the main lessons of the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna never took part in the battle, but his very presence on the side of the Pandavas insured their ultimate success.

You must act with the right consciousness
It’s also important to understand that unless you act with the right consciousness, your dharma won’t take you any closer to God. You may get good karma but you won’t get divine freedom. The consciousness with which you do your work is the most important aspect of all, not the outward form.

For devotees, the purpose of all work is to put into action those divine qualities you’re developing inside—kindness, love, joy, peace, and calmness. If, when working, you allow yourself to become frazzled and to think, “Oh, I only have a little time to get this done; I’ll think about God later”—then there’s something wrong with the way you’re doing it. While working you should always be reinforcing those feelings of peace, calmness, love, and joy.

Your only responsibility in this drama is to express that divine inspiration as perfectly as possible. This means that you should act with the understanding that this is God’s world, not yours. You should try to do as good a job as possible without involving yourself egotistically. And you should always be trying to express those divine qualities.

Dharma is not black and white
The laws of dharma must be understood on a spiritual level, above all, and secondly, on a relative level, in the sense that there are different degrees of dharma. As it says in the Indian scriptures, “When a lower dharma conflicts with a higher, it ceases to be a dharma.” It ceases to be a right action. This is a very subtle teaching and it’s not always easy to apply.

Take the example of marriage and divorce. One of the great mistakes in this country is that people get divorced for trivial reasons—because it doesn’t “feel” right anymore, because it’s become “inconvenient.” And, of course, divorce, for such reasons, is not right. Divorce in principle is not right.

But there are times when it’s necessary. Suppose you’re married to someone who is holding you back from your spiritual life? Which is the higher duty—to waste another incarnation or to use this incarnation to find God? The Indian attitude is that if a marriage conflicts with the higher dharma of deeply offering your life to God, then it isn’t right.

There are different levels of dharma, and choosing between them is not always easy. How do we know what the right choice is?

To be truly guided by dharma in such situations, you must be able to pull back from your desires and get in touch with your soul. Only from a soul level can you understand dharma perfectly. Otherwise, you can easily come up with all sorts of rationalizations to justify what is obviously a wrong act, and you end up using this teaching as an excuse to get out of a duty rather than as a reason to cling to a higher duty.

You will receive the right inner guidance only when you have developed the inner freedom to be able to say to God in meditation: ”Everything that I have I offer at your feet. If I should die tonight, I will die a free soul because I’m not attached to anything in this world. I don’t need or want anything. I work enthusiastically for you, not for myself.” When you say that with deep sincerity, then and then only will the right guidance come. Otherwise, seek the advice of those more advanced on the spiritual path.

There is only joy
Always remember, dharma is that which leads you toward the Divine. Whatever your dharma is, it’s an opportunity not a burden—a wonderful opportunity to grow. Even if your dharma may initially be difficult because it requires of you a new kind of discipline, once you’ve got all your energies moving in the right direction, there is only joy.

From talks at Ananda Village: Following the Highest Dharma, August 11, 1985; Being and Doing, August 13, 1981; and Reincarnation, Service, and Love, 1979. To order a CD or MP3 of these talks, click here or call Treasures Along the Path (530) 478-7656.

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Roaring with sadness and hunger, and heavy with the baby lion, the lioness fell asleep at the edge of the forest near a pasture. As she dozed, she dreamt of seeing a flock of sheep grazing. When, in her dream, she pounced on one of the sheep, she jerked herself awake. With surprise and great joy, she discovered that her dream was true: a large flock of sheep grazed in the pasture right near her.

Forgetting the heavy baby lion in her body, and impelled by the madness of hunger, the lioness pounced on one of the young lambs and took it into the depths of the forest. The lioness did not realize that during the exertion of her mad leap at the lamb she had given birth to the baby lion.

The flock of sheep were so paralyzed with fear by the attack of the lioness that they couldn’t run away. When the lioness had departed and the panic was over, the sheep woke from their stupor. They began to bleat out lamentations for their lost comrade, when, to their great astonishment, they discovered the helpless baby lion crooning in their midst. One of the mother sheep took pity on the baby lion and adopted it as her own.

The young lion grew up amidst the flock of sheep. Several years passed, and there, with a flock of sheep, roamed a huge lion with long mane and tail, behaving exactly like a sheep. The sheep-lion bleated instead of roaring and ate grass instead of meat. This vegetarian lion acted exactly like a weak, meek lamb.

One day, another lion strolled out of the nearby forest onto the green pasture, and to his great delight beheld this flock of sheep. Thrilled with joy and whipped by hunger, the great lion pursued the fleeing flock of sheep, when, with amazement, he saw a huge lion, with tail high up in the air, fleeing at top speed ahead of the sheep.

The older lion paused for a moment, scratched his head, and pondered within himself: “I can understand the sheep flying away from me, but I cannot imagine why this stalwart lion should run at the sight of me. This runaway lion interests me.” Ignoring his hunger, he raced hard and pounced upon the escaping lion. The sheep-lion fainted with fear. The big lion was puzzled more than ever, and slapped the sheep-lion out of his swoon. In a deep voice he rebuked, “What’s the matter with you?! Why do you, my brother, flee from me?”

The sheep-lion closed his eyes and bleated out in sheep language, “Please let me go. Don’t kill me. I’m just a sheep brought up with yonder flock.”

“Oh, now I see why you’re bleating.” The big lion pondered again, and a great idea flashed upon him. He caught the sheep-lion by the mane with his mighty jaws and dragged him toward a lake at the end of the pasture. When the big lion reached the shore of the lake, he pushed the sheep-lion’s head so that it was reflected in the water. He began to shake the sheep-lion, who still had his eyes tightly closed, saying, “Open your eyes! Look! You are not a sheep.”

“Bleat, bleat, bleat. Please don’t kill me. Let me go. I am not a lion, but only a poor, meek sheep,” wailed the sheep-lion.

The big lion gave the sheep-lion a terrible shake. The sheep-lion opened his eyes, and was astonished to find that the reflection of his head was not, as he expected,  a sheep’s head but a lion’s head, like that of the lion who was shaking him with his paw. Then the big lion said, “Look at my face and your face reflected in the water. They are the same. My face roars. Now! You must roar instead of bleating!”

The sheep-lion, convinced, tried to roar, but could only produce bleat-mingled roars. As the older lion continued to exhort him with slapping paws, the sheep-lion at last succeeded in roaring. Then both lions bounded across the pasture, entered the forest, and returned to the den of lions.

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The above story aptly illustrates how most of us, though made in the all-powerful image of the Divine Lion of the Universe, have been born and raised in the sheepfold of mortal weakness. We bleat with fear, lack, and death, instead of roaring with immortality and power, and preying on wisdom and unlimited prosperity.

These teachings are the new lion that will drag you to the crystal pool of meditation and give you such a hard shaking that you will open the closed eyes of your wisdom and behold yourself as the Lion of Divinity, made in the image of the Cosmic Lion. Those of you who strive continuously will forget your mortal fears of weakness, failure, and death, and will learn to roar with the power of almighty immortality.

From: Praecepta Lessons 1934; See also, How To Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence, Crystal Clarity Publishers. ( See ad on homepage).

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

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Spiritual awakening is accompanied by a rising energy and consciousness in the spine. In this spiritual state, one may indeed dance, laugh, and sing with unending gladness, wrapped ever in breezes of inner joy. The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, by Swami Kriyananda.

The awakening of the chakras comes only after long, careful discipline. Great joy, as well as great mental and spiritual power, come when the seven “gates” are open. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained, by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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Divine awakening depends upon channeling all of your energy upward, and focusing it at the point between the eyebrows. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength.” The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Pranayama means control of the energy in the body, and its direction upward through the spine to the brain and to the Christ center between the eyebrows. This alone is the pathway of awakening. Essence of Self-Realization, by Paramhansa Yogananda.

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The awakened kundalini alone can bring healing to the “poison-bite” of delusion. St. Teresa of Avila described her ecstatic experiences as resembling “the upward shot of a bullet through a gun”—an acceptable account of kundalini awakening. The Promise of Immortality, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Despite the diversity of outward religious forms, the path of inner, spiritual awakening is essentially one. Rays of the Same Light, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Yoga practice awakens the faculties, clearing away impurities that have too long kept the mind in a state of ignorance. The highest purpose of yoga is to facilitate the awakening of divine awareness. Eastern Thoughts—Western Thoughts, by Swami Kriyananda.

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Will power is the key to awakening energy. Yogananda used to say, “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” We can apply this principle to the task of keeping the body in good health and healing our illnesses and also to drawing inspiration at will. Art as a Hidden Message, by Swami Kriyananda.

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The guru acts like a lighthouse, shining the Divine Light with a mighty blaze of awakening into the darkness of human delusion. Without such a high influence it is impossible for the devotee to rise to great heights. The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, by Swami Kriyananda.

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The attitude needed for spiritual awakening is one of joyful surrender and receptivity to the inflow of divine grace. Rays of the Same Light, by Swami Kriyananda.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

But this, dear students, is a jellyfish philosophy. It is not the way to truth. What is true is that if your father died of cancer and you continue to live as he did, you may follow in his footsteps.

Sickness is the result of breaking some mental or physical law, either in this life or in a past incarnation.  It is your job to free yourself from the shackles of undesirable hereditary tendencies, including habits of ill health. Like everything else worth attaining, you must work for it!

Divine healing at Bethesda
The mind controls the body. The will of a person who has been ill for a long time becomes so weak that he cannot overcome the illness. However, faith can revive the power of his will and effect a healing. The Bible tells of such a healing.

In Jerusalem, Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda, where a crowd of people waited to bathe in the healing waters. At certain times the waters vibrated and emanated healing currents. The first one to enter after the waters moved was healed.

Jesus saw a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years lying by the pool. He had no one to help him, and when the waters vibrated—someone else always got in ahead of him. Filled with compassion, Jesus asked, “Wilt thou be made whole?”  When Jesus found that the sick man was receptive and desired very much to be healed, He said, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.”

The man was healed by his own awakened faith and the revival of his will, which aroused the latent life energy of his own brain and served as the antenna for the cosmic energy from Jesus.

The power of the mind
Most physical diseases have their roots in the mind. You can produce disease in your body merely by allowing yourself to be hypnotized by the thought of disease. In trying to get rid of an illness, people often concentrate more on the gripping power of the illness than on the possibility of a cure, and thus permit the illness to become both a physical and mental habit.

It is a mistake to think this way. Never allow your mind to entertain thoughts of illness or limitation. The subconscious habit of “disease consciousness” exerts a strong influence on the continuity of chronic diseases. In fact, chronic mental or physical diseases always have deep roots in the subconscious mind.

That is why all affirmations ought to be impressive enough to become mental habits in the subconscious mind, which will, in turn, influence the conscious mind. In this way, strong conscious affirmations can influence the mind and body through the medium of the subconscious.

Fear: the enemy of will power
Will power is the main dynamo of the body, converting cosmic energy into life force. The stronger the will, the greater the flow of energy into the tissues and body parts.

Often during illness, however, people become discouraged and permit subconscious tendencies to hamper the will. If the illness is serious or prolonged, memories of previous ailments, as well as past failures and disappointments, often fill the mind with fear that the body cannot recover.

Fear is one of the greatest enemies of will power and health. It paralyzes the will, disrupts the life force flowing through the nerves, and lowers the vitality of the entire body. Physical health slowly fails from want of life force. If, however, a person resolutely refuses to be afraid or disheartened, his will can produce the life force needed to heal the body.

Health: your divine birthright
Fear of sickness belongs to the domain of ignorance. Of course, if you are stricken with ill health, you should strive for health without being afraid of failure. While struggling, however, you must understand that the struggle for health is born of delusion, for you already have what you need in the inner Self.

Once a healthy, wealthy, and wise prince dreamed that he was poor and ill. In the dream he shouted, “Oh, I am suffering from cancer and I have lost all my wisdom and riches.”

His wife, the queen, woke up and roused him, saying, “Look, prince. Laugh and rejoice, for you are neither suffering from sickness, nor have you lost riches and wisdom. You are comfortably lying at my side in health and wisdom, in your rich kingdom. You were only dreaming about these catastrophes.”

So it is that many people are dreaming about lack when they might claim their birthright of joy, health, and plenty as children of God. Only by meditating and attuning to God’s consciousness, do we realize the truth that this universe is God’s dream. In a dream you may think that you are ill but once awakened, you see it is not true. When awake in God, so also do you  know that this life is nothing but a dream.

Meditation leads to permanent success
We can change certain aspects of our own ego-dream by altering the way we think. For example, when we are ill we can make a strong affirmation of good health and become well again. But meditation alone leads to permanent success.

By connecting your individual energy with the unlimited storehouse of inner cosmic energy, you can overcome ill health. To achieve permanent success, you must meditate morning and night, and concentrate the superconscious peace rays on the brain, scorching out the seeds of past failures and stimulating the success tendencies.

During meditation, you feel the power of concentration in the will center at the point between the eyebrows, as well as a feeling of complete peace throughout the body. To scour the seeds of past sickness from the brain cells, you must transfer the power of concentration felt at the point between the eyebrows and the peace feeling of the body, to the brain. This impregnates the brain cells with peace and power, and modifies their chemical and psychological composition.

By repeatedly concentrating this vital power on the brain for long periods of time, you will eventually destroy all lurking disease tendencies from the past.

Right approach for devotees
Illness can be a serious obstacle on the spiritual path. Do your best, within reason, to achieve health, but always keep your efforts proportionate to the true, long-range goal of life, which is to find God.

Many saints have had serious illnesses. The test of spirituality is one’s inner state of consciousness, and, above all, the purity of one’s love for God.

There was a saint who fell ill. His disciples pleaded with him, “Master, so many have been healed by your intercession. Why don’t you pray to the Divine Mother to heal you, too?” This seemed to him not a bad idea; he accepted their suggestion. When he prayed, the Divine Mother appeared to him.

“Of all things!” She rebuked him. “You, who have realized your oneness with the Infinite, and who have so many bodies you live through, want now, by praying for this one little form, to limit yourself to it? For shame!” The saint deeply regretted his error, and prayed, “Mother, Your love alone is all-sufficient!”

It is wisest to be impartial. If you have health, but are attached to it, you will always be afraid of losing it. And if you fear that loss, but become ill, you will suffer. It is better to rise above outer conditions altogether, so that they cannot affect you. Try to rise above the pairs of opposites: pleasure and pain, heat and cold, sickness and health.

Conditions are always neutral
Remember: conditions are always neutral; they seem happy or sad owing only to the attitudes of the mind. If a man is ill, afflicted with arthritic pain, and slogging through deep mud on a winter night, he can yet be happy just the same. With a strong will, he’d be able to ignore every difficulty and his happiness would remain unaffected.

Not that those circumstances would have been pleasurable. Nonetheless, a human being can be happy under the worst circumstances. Mind has no connection with the body apart from whatever connection you choose to give it. To pass life’s tests, you need to develop elasticity of the mind.

When your mind can remain completely apart from the body at will, you will be free. Why not remain forever joyful in the Self? By tuning into God and waking up in His consciousness, you will know that this life is nothing but a dream.

From articles, and books, 1930-1942.

To view Swami Kriyananda’s talk, “Attaining Radiant Health and Well-Being,“click here:

The Bhagavad Gita is the story of how to fight that battle and reunite with eternal bliss, our true nature. It’s not an easy battle. While a part of you is saying, “I want freedom, I want joy, I want the higher Self,” the other part is saying, “Oh, no! Please let me hang onto this!”

To fight this battle and achieve the highest attainment takes a great deal of will power and determination.  It’s not enough to say, “Well, I’m trying.” No, don’t just try. Do the right thing until you can do it with all your will power. God won’t be satisfied if you just “mean well.”

Summoning sufficient will power
I recall a monk who lived at Paramhansa Yogananda’s Mt. Washington headquarters while I was there. This young man experienced many high spiritual experiences, but his karma, our Guru told him, was very complex. He had good spiritual karma, which gave him his deep experiences, but those experiences were, as the Master hinted, the result of the disciple’s soul desperately trying to keep him from leaving the spiritual path.

Yogananda once said to him, “If you leave the spiritual path this time, you will wander for another 200 incarnations before you return to the point you have reached already in your spiritual evolution.”  Alas, the young man did leave the path. Later, he visited the Master and wept “so bitterly” that, Yogananda told us, “I wept with him.” There was nothing our Guru could do about it, however.

Yogananda did say to him, when he paid that visit, “If you try hard now, you may reduce the number of those incarnations to seven.” But the young man’s directional flow of energy was already too strongly toward worldliness. From all I’ve heard about him since then, he simply resigned himself. Instead of saying, “I haven’t yet succeeded,” he accepted, sadly, that in this life he had fallen completely. He wouldn’t have had to accept this conclusion, had he summoned sufficient will power.

Right attitude toward mistakes
The Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield to help us understand that to find inner peace we must fight against those qualities that pull us downward from our higher aspirations—anger, jealousy, passion, greed, and so on. The natural tendency of human beings is to go downward. But only by reversing that flow, which means bringing our energy up to the spiritual eye and the brain, do we find freedom.

So be very firm. Remember yes, you can make mistakes; and yes, you can go in the wrong direction; and yes, if you do so, it is not going to be easy. Every step toward darkness is a step toward suffering. Those who suffer are those who are out of tune with the Divine.

But the more in tune you are with your higher Self, the more blissful you always feel. Then nothing can touch you. People can persecute you, martyr you, but it won’t touch you. Nothing will bother you when you have that consciousness of God’s peace within yourself.

Which side won?
The Bhagavad Gita tells us that at the end of every day we should ask: “Which side won?” This is very important. Before you go to sleep, meditate and then ask yourself: “Did I err in any way? How have I improved? What shall I do tomorrow to improve myself?” When you see that you made a mistake, admit it honestly to yourself. Don’t feel badly; just say, “I’m trying and I will do better.” But you must be absolutely ruthless in your truthfulness.

There’s the story in the New Testament of Jesus meeting the woman of Samaria at the well. Paramhansa Yogananda said she was a fallen disciple of another lifetime and that Jesus had purposely gone to Samaria to find her and, if possible, to redeem her.

When Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband,” and she said, “I have no husband,” he was pleased with her answer. He told her, “You have had five husbands and the one you are living with now is not your husband.” He didn’t ask the question to bring out her moral degradation; it was to test her truthfulness. When he saw she was completely truthful, he knew she was fit to be redeemed.

Don’t bury your mistakes under the carpet. If you honestly face your faults and say, “I will fight this tendency in myself. I am not that”—you can be free.

“Get Thee behind me, Satan”
We need to understand that as we meditate more deeply, our lower subconscious tendencies become a little anxious and try to stir us. You sit there meditating and the ego begins to think, “Ah, a glass of milk would be pretty good right now, or a walk —and I’ll get back here sooner or later.”

This is the symbolism of Yudhisthira in the Bhagavad Gita. Yudhisthira represents the soul-quality of calmness, and the tendency, when a person feels very calm and very much in tune, to think, “Well, I can gamble; it can’t touch me.” I’ve seen people do this. They say, “Oh, I couldn’t be hurt by that delusion.” But the world has its own power and unfortunately the dice are loaded. If we go in that direction, that’s how we’ll get caught. Yudhisthira had a weakness for gambling. He gambled against a skilled gambler who knew how to win by cheating, and he lost everything.

Temptation always comes to spiritual seekers at their points of special weakness: pride; sexual desire; the longing for romance; a desire for money, fame, vengeance, or worldly power. These are examples, merely. Delusion can assume countless forms.

The world is full of angels and demons. It wouldn’t hurt to realize that any time you feel angry, lustful, greedy, or any of the negative attitudes that come to people—that this is not you. This is something you have accepted into your aura. If you treat it as a separate being, then you can say, “Get away from me!” As Jesus said, “Get thee behind me Satan!”

How to fight temptation
In trying to decide whether or not a thing will be good for you, always ask: “Will it raise or lower my energy?” Things may seem like great fun but if they will lower your energy—stay away from them. If they will seriously lower it—shun them like the plague. Remember, you should always try to turn your energy inward and upward toward the spiritual eye and the brain.

The principles of self-control are primarily sexual, but self-control in all ways is very important—not to drink too much, not to eat too much, not to laugh too much, not to do anything too much, because it will spill your energy outward. But the greatest spill of all is through sex.

Temptation is anything that tempts you out of yourself. If your want to find God, a part of you should always be somewhat withdrawn, observing.

The power to uplift the inner energy
In fighting the battle with your lower nature, the key is to reach the point where it becomes more pleasurable to sit thinking of God, praying to Him, and feeling his presence, than forgetting Him and becoming restless. Focusing within on God, and on the higher attractiveness of His love and bliss, is the best way to overcome any lower sensory attraction.

The most important thing on the spiritual path is to love God. It’s not enough just to get good karma. You have to open your heart to God, and that doesn’t mean simply keeping an open mind. (“Yeah I’m willing.”) There has to be an aspiration for the light, for divine love.

From that heart quality comes the power to uplift the inner energy from the senses and the body. As you lift one hand up to God, God will lower two to pick you up. Divine grace, ultimately, is the key to everyone’s salvation.

The need for a guru
So, it’s very important to reach the point of knowing that you want to know God and to feel the bliss of His presence in your heart, and that these are the most important things in life. To achieve that, you also need a guru.

A true guru is the highest kind of saint, having attained oneness with God. This means he is able to infuse into receptive disciples his own spiritualized consciousness, and raise those who are spiritually ready to the same exalted state as his own. The power of God and Guru is greater than all delusions. As you meditate deeply, that power will come more and more to the fore.

When “efforts end in ease”
So, in the beginning there is a constant struggle between your higher and lower tendencies, but there comes a point when, as Yogananda put it, “efforts end in ease.” After a while, as you meditate more and more deeply, there’s no struggle involved.

The truth is that you can be liberated in this lifetime if you work hard at it, especially with the practice of Kriya Yoga, which gets the energy flowing right where the battlefield is: in the inner spine. When you can bring your energy strongly into the spine, it dissolves all those things that are holding you back, and you become free.

From Religion and the New Age, Keys to the Bhagavad Gita (Crystal Clarity Publishers) and recent talks on the Bhagavad Gita.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Curious, one day he hopped over to the well to take a look at his brother-frogs. As soon as he looked into the well, all the well-frogs greeted him in frog language saying, “Hey, you homeless derelict, jump in and enjoy our spacious home.”

The sea-frog smiled but shook his head, gently declining and saying, “Some other time. Not now, friends.”

On the way back, the sea-frog nearly burst out laughing as he recalled Mr. Big-Talk, the narrow-eyed leader of the well-frogs saying, “Come into our huge home.” The sea-frog pitied the frog-leader’s ignorance and was disturbed to see the frogs living like sardines in the little well.

The sea-frog thought, “Maybe here’s a chance do some good. Perhaps I can help the over-crowded well-frogs by bringing them to my spacious home.” Thus thinking, the sea-frog retraced his footsteps back to the well. The well-frogs croaked out another welcome.

The sea-frog jumped into the well and, instead of falling into the water, landed on the back of a brother-frog. The well was so crowded that the frogs covered every inch of the water. Mr. Big-Talk, the frog leader, came hopping on the backs of a few slave-frogs and greeted the sea-frog.

After entertaining his guest with delicacies, the frog leader asked, “My friend, whence comest thou?”

The frog of the sea replied, “From a very vast place called the sea.”

The well-frog then asked, “What is your purpose in honoring us with a visit?”

The sea-frog replied, “To take you all to my sea home, where you won’t die of suffocation and can live in freedom and security.”

In response, the proud frog leader answered, “But pray tell me first the size of your sea?” Jumping the distance of one foot, he asked, “Is your sea as big as that?”

The frog of the sea replied with a slight smile, “Nay, nay, my friend, the sea is much bigger than that.”

The well-frog, with a smile of superiority, jumped two feet and asked, “Is your sea as big as that?”

The sea-frog, smiling more than ever, replied, “Nay, nay, my friend, it is much bigger than that.”

The well-frog then jumped from one side of the well to the middle and hoarsely asked, “Is your sea as big as that?”

The frog of the sea, now laughing loudly, said, “Nay, nay, nay, my friend, it is much bigger than that.”

Then the poor well-frog puffed up in wrath to his full strength and jumped from one side of the well to the other and said, “Can your sea dare be as big as that?”

The frog of the sea, restraining his laughter, confidently replied, “Nay, nay, nay, my friend, my sea is much bigger than sextillion wells like yours.”

The frog of the well was completely beside himself because he could not inflate himself with more wrath. He shouted, “Imposter! Impossible! Nothing could be bigger than our great big well!”

After many hours of word-battle in frog language, the sea-frog persuaded the frog of the well and his brother-frogs to visit the ocean.

The frog of the well, upon seeing the great body of water, bowed at the feet of the sea-frog and exclaimed, “Mighty brother-frog, indeed your watery mansion is much larger than we ever could conceive. We never would have known this if we had remained in our confined little home in the well. It is only by comparing our home in the well with your huge sea home that fortunately, we now understand the littleness of our own homestead.”

The frog of the sea shook hands with the frog of the well, and all of his brother-frogs, and they all lived happily in the sea forever afterward.

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The above story illustrates how worldly people live in the over-crowded “well” of sense-happiness, clamoring and shouting for a little room for peace. The sense-bound man cannot comprehend the inner experiences of the spiritual man who communes with God and roams in the sea of Bliss. Only if the materially minded man actually launches his consciousness into the ocean of Bliss, which is reached by meditation alone, can he understand the limitations of his meager happiness.

Similarly, a bigoted religionist gets a little joy from following a hide-bound religion, but he can never even imagine the boundless happiness of seeing all churches as one church of God, all religions as one Truth, and all religionists as the  children of the same one God.

The dogmatist in life lives in a prison of limitation, and after he passes the portal of the grave, he can only expect to live in another prison of dogma there. However, a wise man, after death, finds each speck of space a temple of Spirit, each spark of wisdom a tabernacle of His Presence, and each heart the sanctum of the Infinite.

Leap out of the well of limitation and plunge into the sea-bosom of unending wisdom and bliss, which is continuously roaring on the banks of your inner silence.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1938.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

He predicted that there would be worldwide economic instability, hardships, and other upheavals—things that sound very negative if they didn’t presage extraordinary spiritual opportunities for us individually, and also for society as a whole. These difficulties, he said, will bring about a widespread change in values, away from materialism toward simplicity and a greater dependence on God. He prophesied three hundred years of peace, with prosperity becoming relatively equal throughout the world.

For devotees, such a time presents an extraordinary opportunity for service and spiritual growth, greater than any in recorded history. Especially because of the difficulties, and because there is so much to be learned, there is an opportunity to accrue great good karma, even to be freed from all delusion, if we think in terms of being instruments for the Light.

I read a book by a woman who regressed people to the time before they were born and asked them, “Why did you choose this particular time of upheaval and suffering that we are likely to experience?” She found that not one spoke of suffering. Every single one spoke of opportunity. This is one of the most wonderful times in the history of mankind to be alive.

A new wave of consciousness
Understandably, no one wants to hear predictions of doom and disaster. I don’t insist that you accept this view of the future. I do consider it my duty, however, to share with you what I consider to be more than likely developments. The events Yogananda predicted are already unfolding. The change from one yuga to the next is often the normal time for such things to happen.

With the start of Dwapara Yuga in 1900, a new wave of consciousness entered the world—one that emphasizes energy and flow; that sees religion not as fixed and dogmatic but as based on individual experience; that sees the world as one community, not just separate little countries all fighting for their own rights.

Opposing this new Dwapara Yuga consciousness are old Kali Yuga institutions and ways of thinking. This opposition has been building up for over a century and it’s coming to a head. We need to be prepared for upheavals and hardships, and one of the best ways to prepare is to band together with like-minded friends and start communities.

Paramhansa Yogananda’s urgent message
Paramhansa Yogananda had a vast mission. It included not just the enlightenment of a few disciples but the upliftment of an entire civilization. An important step toward the accomplishment of that mission was the creation of cooperative spiritual communities—“world brotherhood colonies,” as he put it. In his last years, Yogananda repeatedly urged his listeners to start such communities.

“Band together,” he would cry, “those of you who can do so, in small spiritual communities where you can grow your own food, produce your own vegetables and eggs, and, if possible, have your own fresh milk!  Live simply, close to God, and with other people who love God.” Such communities, he said, would serve as models for the new age, when countless similar self-sustaining communities will popularize voluntary cooperation over competition as the true key to lasting prosperity and inner fulfillment.

Yogananda’s message went beyond simply presenting people with an attractive idea. There was urgency in his plea because he foresaw the challenges and hardships that awaited mankind. A community is the best insurance possible when there’s hardship, because a group of people can support one another in ways that individuals living separately cannot. I offer this as a fact, but not as an inducement to join Ananda; I want people to join Ananda because they love God, and want to find God.

I believe these communities are the wave of the future. Many of them will form for the selfish reasons I’ve given because they’re valid reasons. Today anyone who is truly aware of human directions believes we’re in for very hard times. Friends have been sending me articles which advise people to think seriously of living close to the land, where they can grow their own food and live simply. We no longer need to rely on prophecy alone to instill a sense of urgency.

Why a spiritual focus?
In the 1960s, hundreds of communities were started in a great “back-to-the-land” movement. Why did most of them fail? They failed because the people involved didn’t put spiritual principles first in their lives, but concentrated on outward material goals: solar energy, new economic systems, revolutionary architectural concepts. Their idea of heaven on earth was of some system where everything material would function perfectly. Given this materialistic approach to the ideal of finding a new way of life, they were bound to fail.

One of the most persistent human delusions is the belief that good systems will produce good people. It’s people, not systems, that need perfecting. Good systems will function well if the people running them have the good will to make them work. If people have good will, even bad systems can be made to limp along somewhat successfully.

It’s people who make communities and, more than that, it’s people in tune with a divine state of consciousness. For a community to succeed, you have to love God. You have to dedicate yourself to a principle that transcends the potential pettiness of human nature.

Love of God is the first and most important ingredient in a community’s success. One thing that love of God accomplishes is that it opens the heart to wisdom and joy. Without love and joy, judgment and intolerance will surely enter the scene, sooner or later. Judgment, whether of others or oneself, is discouraging and keeps one from rising in inner freedom.

When you live with people who have God as their ideal, you find that it’s much easier to raise your own consciousness. One very important thing you learn is self-giving and sharing. If you want to find God, a self-giving life is essential.

Choose one spiritual teaching
If you start a community, it certainly doesn’t have to be an Ananda community. I hope that long into the future Ananda will be inspiring the start of other communities, but not supervising communities. Try, if possible, however, to spend some time in one of our Ananda communities—live among us for at least a few weeks. Successful community living is a matter in which understanding must come largely by osmosis. It cannot come only through the written or spoken word.

Without the strength and inspiration that come from affiliating with an already-functioning network of communities like Ananda, the wisest thing may well be to “think small.” Paramhansa Yogananda himself recommended to most people that they pool their resources with a few friends.

It’s important that a community agree on certain basic spiritual principles and dedicate itself to one spiritual teaching.  During Ananda’s first years, when people in the kitchen at the Ananda Meditation Retreat were cooking with onions, someone would come in and say, “Oh, Krishna doesn’t like onions.” After this went on for a while I said, “Listen, this is not Krishna’s kitchen. It’s Yogananda’s kitchen and Yogananda liked onions.”

You don’t want to have to tiptoe in your own “living room.” If there were lots of people living at Ananda Village who didn’t believe in reincarnation, out of consideration and respect, in their presence we wouldn’t be able to talk about something central to our beliefs.

The social pattern of the future
Paramhansa Yogananda said that the idea of communities would spread worldwide and become the social pattern of the future. During hard times, the Ananda communities will offer an answer on how to live simply and put God first. In more than 40 years of existence, the Ananda communities have demonstrated that people can live by high ideals, love all, and have communal harmony.

It’s by having communities where people can see spiritual truths being practiced by a number of people that this way of life becomes convincing to people. Ananda offers an example that can be useful to people wherever they live. From all over the world people write and say that their lives are more meaningful because of what Ananda is doing. This is a model that can change the world in a positive way.

When you can’t live in a community
What if you can’t live in a community or start one? Place your faith in God above all, but God expects you to use common sense also. Since it’s evident that there is a likelihood of  hard times ahead, it would be wise to make a few preparations, at least, for the possibility of upheavals.

But don’t concern yourself too fearfully with creating a situation, or finding a place, of perfect safety. Your very fear might attract danger like a magnet. Do what seems reasonable to you, then leave the results in God’s hands. Be sensible, however, and don’t expect to be protected by faith alone—unless, indeed, your faith is so strong, and focused so one-pointedly, that all your energy flows toward God.

Wherever you live, try always to be a channel for the Light. How do you serve the Light? By giving joy, not sorrow; peace, not nervousness; love, not hatred. It’s people who love God and think of God who are keeping this country and world afloat. If it weren’t for such people, this world would plunge into even greater darkness.

So don’t be afraid. When you love God and act sensibly, He takes care of you whatever happens, wherever you live. Even if you’re going in the wrong direction, He’ll correct you. This is something Paramhansa Yogananda promised. I know it’s true because I’ve seen that protection again and again in my life, and in the lives of other devotees.

From a July 4, 2009 talk at Ananda Village; books and publications; and the following recording, “Preparing for Challenging Times.”  To order a CD or MP3 of these talks, click here or call Treasures Along the Path (530) 478 7656

To view Swami Kriyananda’s talk, “How To Overcome Worry,“click here:

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Never discourage a dying person
Once two students of mine, a brother and sister, had a very interesting experience. The sister lay dying in a room with her brother and doctors in attendance. When the brother left the room for a moment, his sister had a spasm and appeared to have died. The doctors exclaimed, “All is over; her pulse has failed.”

As soon as the brother came back, he ordered everybody out of the room, and then shook his sister vigorously, crying, “Sister, remember what Yoganandaji told you: If you make the effort you will live.”

His sister made a supreme effort and her breath returned. She sat up and told of her experience: “I was trying through my will power to stir the life force in my inert body, but as soon as I heard the doctors say, ‘All is over,’ I lost the will to live and experienced a complete inertia in my muscles and internal organs.”

So remember, never say anything to discourage a sick or dying person from making the effort of will to live, even if death appears certain. It is the exercise of will power that connects the life-sustaining energy to the body.

To keep your will power strong, try never to lose interest in life. Death comes when your will gives up. You become so tortured by illness or pain that you say, “All right, let me go.” And you give up.

The process of dying
When the average person dies, the entire body usually becomes paralyzed, just as when a part of your body sometimes “goes to sleep.” In the beginning the dying person is conscious of this process.

When the heart begins to grow numb, there is a sense of suffocation because without heart action, the lungs cannot operate. This sense of suffocation is a little painful for only one to three seconds, but because souls reincarnate many times, they retain the memory of this painful feeling of suffocation. This memory causes fear of death.

During this feeling of suffocation, attachments to possessions and loved ones sometimes come strongly to mind and there is a struggle to bring the breath back. At this time, a condensed review of all the good and bad actions of this lifetime takes place in the mind of the dying person. The senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing then vanish in succession, with the sense of hearing being the last to leave.

The soul next finds itself suddenly relieved of the body’s weight, the necessity of breathing, and any physical pain. When the soul realizes that its body is gone, it becomes reconciled to dying and experiences a sense of soaring through a very peaceful tunnel.

When a person dies suddenly, as by a gunshot or sudden accident, he experiences practically no physical pain. If he has lived a good life, he seldom suffers any mental agony.

The period between death and rebirth
In the astral world, people of worldly consciousness enter a sort of gray mist. Some of them are vaguely conscious, depending on the sensitivity of their perception, but for many it is like a dream. They aren’t quite sure what is going on.

If your intuition is even slightly developed, however—especially if you’ve meditated and prayed some in this life, but also if you’ve served others, even as a soldier who fought heroically in battle—you will find that the astral world is far more beautiful than this one, and extremely enjoyable!

What binds us to this world?
Many superficial devotees are haunted by the fear of death. Rather than lament the inevitability of death, they should try in every way to become free of all earthly attachments by tuning in to Spirit in meditation.

There is the story of a man who, as he lay dying, saw that the oil lamp in his room was burning too high. He called out to his son, “Hey, Ramu, turn down that light: It is wasting oil!” There the man was, on the point of leaving his body—the “oil” in his own “lamp” was nearly exhausted. And still he worried about wasting the oil in that lamp! Such is worldly attachment. Even at death, people cling to what they call life.

Most people lose all interest in this world at the time of death. That is natural and right: After all, they are soon going to have to leave it! Besides, this world is God’s, not ours. That mental disinvolvement at the approach of death should remind everyone of the need to be inwardly non-attached throughout life, even while busily engaged in worldly activities. Eternal bliss awaits you if you remain non-attached to this world, and “attached” only to God.

Always be vigilant and monitor your reactions
Devotees haunted by the fear of death must learn to separate the immortal soul from the consciousness of the mortal body. You are sent on earth to witness earthly experiences—heat and cold, disease, war, famine, pain and suffering—as unaffectedly as you would watch a motion picture. When you are able to watch your own life’s experiences as unaffectedly as you watch motion pictures, you will leave this earth in death as a free master.

Earthly experiences do not create attachment until the heart is touched. The heart, through its likes and dislikes, binds an individual to the wheel of birth, death, and earthly suffering. So always be vigilant and monitor your reactions. Gradually learn to control your reactions to both agreeable and disagreeable experiences.

Remember, however, that renunciation of material objects, of itself, does not insure freedom from attachment. It is by communing with the greater bliss of Spirit in meditation that a person learns, through deep inner conviction, to rise above the likes and dislikes of the heart and to relinquish the lesser joy of earthly experiences.

The devotee who meditates deeply and experiences the pure joy of Spirit attains an unwavering mental calmness and is able to rise above the duality of pain and pleasure.

Learn to die “consciously”
Although the ordinary person at the time of death is not conscious of his soul moving through the spiritual eye, devotees who are unattached to the body, and who have  achieved control over the life force, experience no loss of consciousness at death. They move consciously through the spiritual eye and experience what is known as “conscious death.”

In the superconscious state of meditation, the eyes become fixed at the spiritual eye at the point between the eyebrows. As human beings, we are like the unhatched chick in the shell. By meditation and concentrating on the spiritual eye, we can bore a hole in the roof of the shell and the soul can slip out into the infinite.

In other words, by deep concentration at the light of the spiritual eye, we gradually learn to send our energy and consciousness through the spiritual eye into the infinite.  Many devotees have beheld this tunnel of light (the spiritual eye) ushering them into the infinite at the time of death.

An unshakeable inner conviction
The ordinary man fears death, but the wise man sees birth and death as changes playing on the bosom of Spirit—just as waves repeatedly rise and fall on the bosom of the sea. A soul awake in omnipresent Spirit loses his delusive nightmares of births and deaths.

A poet or religious fanatic may imagine this cosmos to be only a dream in the mind of God, but that will not help him overcome death and attain immortality. The yogi, however, through ecstatic communion with God in meditation, achieves an unshakeable inner conviction of the unreality of the physical cosmos. By beholding the universe as a dream of God, he becomes one with the omnipresent Spirit and attains immortality.

From articles and lessons, 1930-1938, and Conversations with Yogananda, recorded by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

But, because the change is recent, attachments to old thought-forms still haven’t completely faded. In a kind of dying gasp, the old ways of thinking are trying to block the new and inevitable changes. Much of the worldwide conflict, upheaval, and economic instability that we see in today’s headlines is due to the turbulent transition between these two ages.

What is the best way to live during such challenging times? We need a two-pronged approach, a balance between practical action and faith. We can and should take steps to prepare for the possibility of economic depression, natural disasters or warfare. God helps those who help themselves. But we must also understand that this world will always have uncertainty and its accompanying anxiety. To find true peace of mind we must learn to live more by faith.

A divine power sustains you
Faith is much more practical than most people realize. There is an infinite reservoir of divine love and support, and if you open yourself to that flow it will sustain you.

The great saints—those who know God—can live by that power alone. One time, St. Francis (whom Paramhansa Yogananda called his patron saint) called a convocation of his brother monks. About five or six thousand from around the world gathered on the plains below Assisi.

As more and more monks arrived, Brother Elias, a monk who tried to “organize” St. Francis’ work, began to get very upset because St. Francis had made no arrangements whatsoever for feeding the group. Brother Elias said to St. Francis, “This is terrible! Even though we live by begging, such a large group can’t go out begging. Think this through, Brother Francis. What you are doing is irresponsible!”

Not knowing how the group would be fed, yet filled with faith in his beloved Jesus, St. Francis ignored Elias’ concerns. Soon, without anyone asking, the townspeople, out of love for their beloved Francis, came with wagonloads of food to feed the brothers.

Having true faith, St. Francis was able to call upon God’s abundance. But Brother Elias, filled with doubts as he was, would not have been able to draw that Divine response. The point is, we must always act according to our current level of understanding, but also learn to deepen our faith in God. The more we give ourselves to Him, the more He will sustain us.

Swami Kriyananda said: “My experience is that the most practical thing of all is faith, because it works. If you really have faith, somehow things work in incredible ways—not blind faith, but faith born of the experience of God’s inner presence. That’s the real meaning of faith. The deeper the experience, the deeper the faith.”

Lack of faith creates tension
When circumstances force us to live beyond the actual level of our faith, it creates tension—the same tension Brother Elias felt. Most of us still have underdeveloped faith and anxiety. We say, “All right God, you have managed to take care of me every month for 45 years but I’m not sure you will be there this time around.”

St. Francis was above that kind of doubt and anxiety and so also was Paramhansa Yogananda. In his latest book, The New Path, Swami Kriyananda relates the following story as told by Yogananda: “In the early days of Mt. Washington, a visitor once inquired of me superciliously, ‘What are the assets of this organization?’

“‘None!’ I replied unhesitatingly, ‘Only God.’”

The great saint, Anandamoyee Ma, had that same deep faith. One time Swami Kriyananda asked her about world difficulties. Her reply was simple and memorable, “Don’t you think that He who created this world knows how to take care of it?”

Above all, God wants us to grow and expand. It wouldn’t help us if He resolved our fears by saying, “Oh, poor you. You’re a little worried? Let me give you whatever you think you need—money, savings, security. Then you won’t have to worry.” What He says is,  “Why don’t you develop more faith so you need never worry again?”

Our true security
As devotees who are consciously seeking God, we’ve signed on for the “fast track.” Our souls have chosen this turbulent time to reincarnate because it will bring us the lessons we need to evolve spiritually. Often those lessons will push us over the edge of our self-imposed limitations. Our choice is whether to welcome our lessons with gratitude or to reject them and have them heaped upon us unwillingly. When the ego resists this process, we suffer anxiety and pain.

We’ve always appreciated something a friend said to us years ago. Talking about difficult times in the future, he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I haven’t saved much, but I’m like a cat. Drop me, and I’ll land on my feet no matter what happens.” Gaining that kind of centeredness and inner confidence is much more important than outward bulwarks.

Our true security lies in our deepening attunement with God and Guru, and the sense of God’s inner presence. That comes not only through sadhana and deep meditation, but also by living your life with the consciousness of God’s presence.

As you go about your day, feel that He is doing everything through you. Feel Him acting, not just in big ways, but also in the hundreds of little decisions that you make every day, every hour. Paramhansa Yogananda often said, “The minutes are more important that the years.” Each night before sleep, review how well you sustained this practice throughout the day.

Ultimately, when our faith is deep enough, we can say to Divine Mother, “I’m putting all my eggs in your basket. You take care of the details.” This is not irresponsible if our attunement is profound. As our faith deepens and we rely more on God, we will be guided to make the right choices outwardly. More importantly, what happens to us outwardly just doesn’t matter very much.

So, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Depend more on God than on the things of this earth. Depend more on God’s abundance and on your own inner ability to draw whatever you need.

Will God make it easy for us?
Does that mean He’s going to make it easy for us? No. Does that mean that He’s going to provide everything that we want? Absolutely not! That would destroy our chance to advance spiritually.

Just love God and let come whatever may. Don’t love God because you think it’s a sneaky way of getting all your desires fulfilled.

In the times ahead we may be riding some rough waters. Anandamayee Ma said something very important. She said, “In times of world testing, the devotee will be supported as though on the surface of the waves, like a little boat riding the waves. But those whose minds are immersed in materialism and matter-consciousness, will be drawn under as though in an undertow.”

“I will go forth in perfect faith”
Life has but one true purpose, and that’s the expansion of consciousness. We will go on and on until we achieve that state of perfect consciousness known as satchidananda—ever-new, ever-existing, ever-conscious bliss. Our soul has far greater vistas to explore than this little mud ball of a planet. We might as well get on with it.

There’s an affirmation from Scientific Healing Affirmations that’s very powerful for these times: “I will go forth in perfect faith in the power of Omnipresent Good to bring me what I need at the time I need it.”

So love God and work on deepening your attunement. Everything you are seeking flows from that attunement and the deep faith that it brings.

Based on talks given at Ananda Village on March 25, 2005, September 11, 2005, and August 15, 1999.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Jyotish and Devi Novak are listed under “Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi.”

Are moral values a matter of social convenience, or do they exist in the natural order?  Are moral values only subjective?  Or are they universal?

The Western either /or approach
In the West, moral values traditionally have been viewed as absolutes—right or wrong, good or bad. This type of moral rigidity actually makes a person less moral, not more so. The extremes of self-righteousness which this view permits has led to the Crusades, the witch-burnings, the Spanish Inquisition, and countless other ungodly acts committed in the name of God.

How, you might ask, was it possible for religiously minded people to imagine that they were serving God by such deeds? Only one answer suggests itself. They believed in the absoluteness of right and wrong. Convinced that the authority of the Church was an absolute good, they persuaded themselves that any challenge to that authority was a threat and therefore absolutely evil and wrong.

They considered themselves the champions of the good. Whatever means they used in defense of their convictions were thus, to them, inconsequential.

Nihilism: life has no meaning
The discovery of the relativity of time, space, motion, and nearly everything else in the universe has undermined people’s faith in the existence of absolute moral values. Not only the young, but many people now insist that values are “merely relative” and that no higher law exists. Many have embraced the philosophy of nihilism—that life has no meaning.

Jean-Paul Sartre, a proponent of this philosophy, maintains not only that life is meaningless, but that every human being is free to determine his own moral values, and no one else can decide questions of right and wrong for him.

Are moral values truly arbitrary and subjective?  Can we really say people can just do what they like, and that there are no personal consequences they will have to suffer, outside of the need to maintain social order?

The example of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin was the ideal of Sartre’s philosophy. Here was a man who was completely lacking in conscience. He bowed to no God, honored no laws, and scorned the most time-honored traditions. His only values were those which suited his own convenience. If the populace opposed him, he was perfectly capable of causing millions to perish.

But he was not free. He was a slave of countless fears and suspicions. As he had dealt fairly with no one, so also was he incapable of imagining fairness or goodwill to be genuinely a part of anyone’s nature. Always he was steeled to meet his foes, lest they spring on him unawares.

Stalin’s life was an example of a simple, universal fact of human nature: If a person acts to hurt others, or if he ruthlessly opposes the interests of others, he will automatically—indeed, necessarily—steel himself to receive their opposition in return. The man of ruthless ambition can never relax trustfully. Forever tensed (since he knows not when the opposition may strike), he is unable to find even a moment’s peace.

And so, too, for other crimes. Anyone who makes his living by thievery may be completely amoral, and not at all perturbed that he is behaving in a way that others consider wrong. But he punishes himself nonetheless.

The thief has several fears. He has the normal concerns of ownership. He also knows that  what he’s taken is not rightfully his and is therefore in constant danger of being reclaimed. And, since he sees the world with the consciousness of a thief, he suspects that the world is full of people who want to rob him of all that he owns.

Happiness—the key to moral values
Paramhansa Yogananda writes that everybody wants basically only two things: to find happiness and to avoid pain. What we see is that some people find it and some people don’t. Why?  Because there are principles involved, and they’re universal.

One of the most natural impulses in life is toward self-expansion. All creatures reach out for new experiences, new knowledge, broader identifications. To help someone in need is a virtue not because scripture or society says so, but for the simple reason that nature implants in us an urge toward self-expansion.

When you think of others, you’re expanding your own awareness. Jesus Christ taught, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” It is more blessed, indeed, because giving is self-expansive and creates joy in the giver. The generous heart beholds a trusting, not a hostile, world.

A self-serving attitude, by contrast, is contractive because it goes against that natural impulse toward self-expansion. To kill someone, to desire to hurt another living being in any way—or even to harm our environment, which too, in varying degrees, is alive and conscious— is to go against that natural urge for self-expansion.

The moral justification for behavior
Moral principles thus have their roots in our own nature. The moral justification for generosity is not that some deity, or society itself, demands it of us, but that our own fulfillment depends on expanding our awareness and sympathy from that which we know to infinity. Sooner or later, everyone who lives in the right way will find himself becoming happier and happier.

Similarly, it is wrong to steal from others, or to injure them, not because of societal or scriptural strictures, but because one is punished by his own nature, which causes physical contraction and tension, and a mentally self-defensive attitude. As a consequence, we experience pain.

If the goal of every person is to avoid suffering and attain happiness, then the eternal question of right and wrong can be decided quite simply by this criterion. What makes an act right? The answer: its capacity to increase happiness. And what makes an act wrong? The answer, again: its power to lessen happiness and increase suffering.

The more selfish you are, the unhappier you are. The more selfless and giving you are, the happier you are. It’s a formula that never varies.

Judging the rightness of an action
The philosophy of nihilism is thus ultimately self-defeating. But the answer is not a return to moral absolutes. Values, along with everything else in the universe, are subject to the vagaries of relativity. In the realm of daily, practical living, right and wrong must be considered in the context of specific acts and situations.

To give an example: Were a lazy fellow one day to declare with energy, “I’m going to go out and get a job, and then work hard to become a millionaire!” everyone, including saints, would applaud. Were a nobler person like Gandhi, on the other hand, one day to make the same announcement, his decision would be met with universal dismay, even by worldly people.

In true moral law there are no absolutes, only directions. We should therefore view moral and spiritual perfection as a directional development, and not demand absolute perfection of anyone.

The Indian attitude toward morality is directional, not absolutist. In India, perfection is viewed as a goal toward which one must strive. The Indian attitude accepts everyone as being at a different stage of development, and encourages him to grow toward perfection, however distant the horizon may seem at the moment.

Is it not better, after all, to encourage a baby to crawl than to scold it because it can’t run? A truly generous person, for example, might find joy (as St. Francis did) in giving away his last possession to a beggar. A selfish person, on the other hand, might suffer acutely in being forced to give away even his second piece of cake.

There are degrees of maturity. The rules must necessarily change according to the degree. Action that too far outstrips a person’s actual understanding may result only in frustration; certainly it will not result in meaningful growth. That is why the Bhagavad Gita says, “In doing the activity appointed to one’s own state of being, one does not acquire any fault.”

Expanding beyond relativity
Values at every level of society should be taken out of the rusty enclosure of absolute definitions and viewed as a directional development. The “good” should motivate one to achieve the “better,” and the “better’ should inspire one toward the “best.”

However, the spiritual challenge that every great master delivers to humanity is no mere exhortation to be “moral.” It is to become as perfect as God is! We are asked literally to expand our sense of selfhood to infinity.

It is in contact with the deeper Self that the natural urge toward self-expansion comes into its own. Ego-consciousness belongs in the realm of relativity, but true bliss is found in that deep state of consciousness which is the very heart of existence, and is beyond relativity.

From Out of the Labyrinth, Crystal Clarity Publishers, and talks and articles.

To view Swami Kriyananda’s talk, Self-Abandon vs. Self-Control,” click here:

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

The Buddha and his disciples were all vowed to celibacy and the renunciation of carnal love. And yet, one day, when the great Buddha and his disciples were resting in the cool shade of a tree, a courtesan approached him, attracted by the glowing body and face of the Master.

No sooner had she seen the celestial face of the Lord Buddha than she fell in love with him, and with open arms ran to Buddha to embrace and kiss him, exclaiming loudly, “O beautiful Shining One, I love thee.” The celibate disciples were astonished to hear the Buddha’s reply to the courtesan. He said, “Beloved, I love thee too. Do not touch me now, however. Not yet.”

The courtesan replied, “You call me beloved and to me you are my beloved. Why, then, do you object to my touching you?” The great Buddha replied, “Beloved, again I tell thee, I will touch thee later; not now. Then I will prove my true love for thee.” The disciples were shocked, thinking that the Master had fallen in love with this courtesan.

Years later, as Buddha was meditating with his disciples, he suddenly cried out, “I must go! My beloved, the courtesan, is calling me; she needs me now. I must fulfill my promise to her.” The disciples ran after their Master, hoping somehow to save him, though he seemed madly in love with the courtesan.

The great Buddha, followed anxiously by his worried disciples, came to the same tree where they had met the courtesan before. There she lay, with her beautiful body covered with putrefying, odorous smallpox sores. The disciples cringed and held themselves far from her.

The Buddha, however, took her decaying body, held it like a child, and placed her head on his lap, whispering to her, “Beloved, I have come to prove my love to thee, and to fulfill my promise to touch thee. I have waited a long time to demonstrate my true love, for I love thee when everyone else has ceased loving thee. I touch thee when all thy summer friends fear to touch thee any more.”

Thus speaking, Buddha healed the courtesan and invited her, now purged by him of all carnal desire, to join his growing band of disciples.

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****

Personal love is selfish, and considers its own comforts—often at the cost of everything else. Divine love is unselfish; it seeks the happiness of the object of its love, and is not limited or partial. God loves both the wicked and the good equally, for they are His children. All those who aspire to know Him must prove to Him that their love, like His love, is for all.

When a soul proves to the Heavenly Father that he loves his good and evil brothers equally, then the Father will say, “My noble son, I accept thy love, for thou lovest all with My love, even as I do.” To love those who love you is natural, but ego-inspired. To love those who do not love you, or who even hate you, is to express supernatural love and to see God in all.

From The Praecepta Lessons, 1934. See also Spiritual Relationships by Paramhansa Yogananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Pitfalls of luxury
Fostering the desire for luxuries is the surest way to increase misery. Day and night the worldly man thinks of money, clothes, food, drink and other material objects.

Though he obtains these things, he does not enjoy them fully, for he is never satisfied. Either he is always looking for more or he is afraid of losing what he has. Often he becomes so engrossed in making money that he doesn’t have time for the material comforts after acquiring them.

A luxurious material life is pleasing only to the eyes; few realize “what price material comforts.” Overly luxurious living results in an excessive expenditure of nerve and brain energy and a reduction in longevity.  Worries, lack of freedom, and misery are the harvest of a materially busy life, devoid of God and the appreciation of God’s beauty in life and nature.

Don’t be a slave to money or possessions. Those who work for the ego and its desires become entangled in the net of ever-recurring earthly desires. Learn to live simply, renouncing unnecessary “wants” and constantly increasing desires.

What are your real needs?
People are so busy multiplying their material comforts that they end up considering many unnecessary things as essential. Often they are in debt from buying new automobiles and clothes on the installment plan, while ever grasping for more things and plunging deeper and deeper into prolonged work.

It is important, therefore, to differentiate between true “needs” and “wants.” A desire for a pleasurable sense object is often mistaken for a need instead of an artificially created want. Very few people know the real meaning of needs or necessities.

What are your real needs? Shelter, food, clothing, health? There is little difference between eating food from a gold plate or an iron plate. The food in both cases is equally satisfying to hunger. Learn to use cheaper things in an artistic way. Your needs are few, while your wants can be limitless.

Concentrating on needs is an antidote for the insatiable greed for money or possessions. Boil down even your needs. If the need is boiled down to specific things, it can then be easily satisfied. Focusing your attention on one “need” at a time is the first step in the right direction.

Your real needs must be met, but too much time is wasted in rushing about acquiring more and more transitory “necessities,” which merely support the impermanent bodily house of the immortal soul.

God will give you what you need
Houses, money, and automobiles may be necessary to modern existence, but unless you give some time to God and meditation, you can never make life truly happy. To cut life off from its divine invigorating source depletes it of the truly satisfying joys of existence.

Seeking first the Kingdom of God, as Jesus taught, is the surest way to lasting happiness. When by meditation you reclaim yourself as a true child of God, you will receive not only God’s imperishable kingdom of everlasting bliss, but also all the perishable things you need. The imperishable Kingdom of God contains within it all the perishable goods of the world.

The essence of true spiritual living
When Jesus told people to seek God first, he was not telling them to neglect the material life. He was speaking only against giving it one’s entire attention.

Few people, however, know how to balance the material and spiritual life. Many people think they must first have prosperity and only then can they think of God. But those who ignore God to seek perishable material things end up wallowing so deeply in the mud of desires and mundane worries that they cannot extricate themselves.

Everyone can follow the inner teachings and true essence of Christianity. They can avoid luxury and satisfy only their real needs. True Christian living, and all spiritual living, consists of seeking God’s peace and joy in meditation and making one’s material life very simple.

Balancing the material and spiritual life
The material life should not be neglected but it should be lived in God-Consciousness. You must put your principal thought on God, the Giver of life and its necessities. Acquire everything you need with the thought of God, with your attention resting on Him.

Most people, however, are unable to balance the material and spiritual life. The material man acts with the consciousness that he is the doer and makes himself miserable through his likes and dislikes. He is unaware of the joy and freedom that come from knowing that God is the Doer and working with one’s attention focused on Him.

By regular meditation, people can train their minds to perform all the duties of daily life with the consciousness of God within. All materially-minded men and women should understand that their lives can be freed from endless physical and mental ills simply by adding deep daily meditation to their schedule.

Make service your goal
People must also realize that all work and business activities are for the sole purpose of serving others. Without this understanding, strenuous work and business activity produces nervousness and greed for money. Make service to mankind, rather than money, the goal of all your activities and you will see your life change for the better.

God has sent man into this life so circumstanced with hunger and desires that he must work. Whoever eats has to pay for the food, and it is better to be able to buy your own food than to live on charity.

A man of God, however, works diligently not for any selfish desire but to please God and to share the fruits of his actions with God’s children. Learn to work with the consciousness that God is the Doer and with the goal of serving others. That is the sure way to happiness.

Simplicity leads to happiness
Happiness blooms naturally in the hearts and minds of those who are inwardly free, contented with simple living, and willingly renounce the clutter of unnecessary, so-called “necessities. True happiness is lasting, because it is spiritual in nature, whereas the “happiness” based on sense pleasure soon turns to sorrow.

God is the source of all life and all prosperity. When, by meditation, you achieve a deep contact with God, you will know that whatever God has, you also have. It isn’t what you own, but what you can acquire at will, that is real prosperity.

From articles and lessons, 1930-1942, and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Explained, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Resources: To read, “What is True Wealth?” by Swami Kriyananda, click here To learn more about Money Magnetism by Swami Kriyananda, click here

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

This book represents a complete revision of a former book of mine, DO It NOW!  Today, fourteen years later, I offer this revised version both because of  my continued enthusiasm for the book, and out of my continued growth in the insights it expresses.

Feb. 7. Never lend money unless you can feel, in your heart, that you are giving the money away. This practice will spare you much grief. For as Shakespeare said (through Polonius in Hamlet), “Loan oft loseth both itself and friend.” Tell God that you place the money in His hands. He will then see to it that you will not lack. Be sensible in your lending, however. Make sure you are helping someone whose need is real. I’ve often pondered movie actors who carelessly gave away vast sums of the money they were earning, but years later died in penury.

June 10. Honor your commitments, even those you make to yourself. If you’ve told someone, “I’ll go out and buy a newspaper today,” and the news you wanted then reaches you by some other means, go out and buy the paper anyway. Do so purely to maintain your promise—to him, and to yourself. For you should view even casual commitments in the light of promises. To do so will give you such a power of truth that your mere word will have materializing power.

July 5. My bottom line for many years has been, not money or profit, but inner peace. I’ve refused to allow anything to stress me to the point of stealing away that treasure. It is better, I’ve felt—and experience has borne me out—to leave undone even important things, if attention to them might undermine my peace. For without peace, one is all too prone to error. From inner peace, moreover, come enlightened decisions. People’s expectations of me can never equal what is expected of me by God.

July 16. Is there any subject on which you feel sensitive? If so, decide, “I will change myself.” A sore spot on the body tells us something is wrong there. When people “rub you the wrong way,” see what is wrong in you, that you’ve been made to flinch.

July 25. Why is there so much violence in the world? Surely it is that people are disharmonious in themselves. Today’s terrorists imagine they’ll improve the world by making it over in their own image. Were they ever to succeed in destroying everyone who disagreed with them, they’d only turn their energies to butchering one another. Ultimately, the only way for the world to know peace is for people everywhere to seek it within themselves.

July 27. Never resort to self-justification. If people are interested in hearing your explanation, state the facts simply and impersonally, but never descend to the embarrassment of self-defense.

Aug. 23. Live as much as possible at the center between every duality. Everything is dual; that is how the one Spirit manifested its Creation. Every up is balanced by a down; light is always balanced by darkness; pleasure, by pain; emotional love, by hatred. I say “emotional love,” because there is no opposite to divine love. Nor is there a balancing opposite to divine joy. Eternal truths lie at the center between all opposites. Therefore I say, live more at that center: in the heart center, or chakra, of your own spine.

*From the Forthcoming book, Do It Well, (a completely revised version of Do It Now), Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Master and disciples woke with the dawn, spreading their prayers with the sun rays and subsisting on jungle fruits and roots. They slept beneath the Nature-hewn caves on the lower spur of the forest-hills.

Disciple Rama had renounced the sophisticated environment of his parental manor and had joined the jungle hermitage in order to live its very simple life. As time went by, however, Rama began to display his usual over-critical spirit and started finding fault with the simple disciplinary duties of the hermitage.

His Master had warned him not to go to extremes, but nonetheless, one day Rama said to his Master:

“Honored sir, I find I have left one family only to get into another, larger family here. I used to perform duties at home and here I have to do the same thing. At home we ate and worried about food and cleanliness, and I see that we do the same thing here.

“Master, I am fed up with the material duties of your hermitage, which are nothing but substitutes for the worldly duties I performed at home. I want to get away from all materiality and live in solitude by myself in the temple of contemplation.”

The Master answered warningly: “Son, you may go, but beware that you don’t get enmeshed in delusion by living surrounded only by your own erroneous thoughts. You may escape the good people of the hermitage, who are far better than worldly people, but it will be very difficult for you to fly from your own restless thoughts, which may lead you astray.”

Rama paid no heed to the entreaties of his Master and fellow-disciples and sallied forth in search of a solitary spot. To be free from all encumbrances, Rama left behind all the simple belongings of his hermitage-life, taking with him only two pieces of rag to serve as loincloths, and a begging bowl for water.

At last Rama found a very quiet place on the top of a hill at the outskirts of the jungle and the local village. His home was now a hollow rocky ledge under a huge shade tree. The first night passed in peace, though he was lulled to sleep by the howling of jackals, coyotes, and jungle tigers.

When dawn arrived, the young anchorite, Rama, was dismayed to see that a mouse had made a few small holes in the second piece of rag, which he had hung on a tree branch. That silent thief–a nocturnal monkey–had stolen his begging bowl.

Rama thought: “Heavenly Father, I left all for You and now You have taken my bowl and sent a mouse to make holes in my very last possession — the piece of rag.”

At this moment a villager was passing by the rock, and having caught sight of the young anchorite, halted to pay him respect. Seeing that he was worried, he inquired: “Honored Saint, prithee tell me what is worrying you?”

On hearing about the rag, the villager advised, “Your Holiness, why don’t you keep a cat to frighten away the mice?”

“That is a marvelous idea, but where will I get a cat,” remarked Rama anxiously. “Well, that can easily be fixed, for I will bring you a cat tomorrow,” replied the villager.

The next day Rama added to his possessions a fuzzy Persian cat. This solved the problem of the rag, for the mice knew better than to hazard death for a tiny bit of rag.

Every day, with a newly acquired begging bowl, Rama would go to the village to fetch milk for his cat. A year went by and the villagers ungrudgingly supplied free milk for Rama and his cat. Then one day, the village elder said to Rama as he begged for milk, “Holy Rama, we are tired of supplying you with milk.”

“But how is my cat going to live?” retorted Rama. “Why don’t you keep a cow?” replied the village elder. “How can I get one?” asked Rama. “I will give you one right now,” was the village elder’s happy answer.

Rama, beside himself with joy, returned to his sylvan home with a cow. Now Rama, the cat, and the cow formed a nice family, cheering one another in mutual language of affection. This cow, which was known as the “Saint’s Cow,” would roam about, marauding the paddy fields of the villagers for food, causing them extreme anguish.

Another year passed, and finally one day the villagers came in a group and complained about the ravages wrought by the “Saint’s Cow.”

“Well, how am I going to feed my cow?” asked Rama. “Why don’t you have your own land? We will give you a twenty-five acre piece of land,” the villagers said.

Rama was delighted with this. He gathered together the children of the village and, exhorting them in the name of God, had them build a cottage-hermitage, till his soil, feed his cat and cow, and, in short, do all the hard work required on his farm, for no pay.

The villagers mutely tolerated these saintly privileges for two whole years until they found that they could not get their children to perform their own duties at home. In a body they went to Rama and complained.

“Your Holiness, we shall have to stop loaning you our children to do the work on your farm. Our own farms remain neglected without the help of our children.”

“Well, how am I going to manage my farm without the help of your children?” asked Rama.

“Why don’t you get a mate and raise your own children? Any of us will be happy to give you a marriageable daughter. It will be an honor, for you will be a wonderful spiritual husband,” cried the villagers in unison.

“That is a brilliant idea,” cried Rama.

In a month Rama was getting ready to be married, when his Master, alerted by intuition, came to the rescue. The Master, on meeting Rama, said, “I thought you left the hermitage to get rid of material duties, and now I see you have a cat, a cow, land, home, and I hear that you are going to get married. What is the matter with you?”

“Well, Master,” cried Rama, “This is all for a rag. I got the cat to save my rag, and took the cow to feed my cat, and accepted the land to supply my cow with fodder, and now I have planned to marry to have children to work on my farm because the villagers refused to lend me their children.”

After Master and disciple had indulged in a hearty laugh, Rama left his newly acquired family and farmhouse and returned to live under the benign wisdom-saturated influence of the jungle hermitage.

*******       *******       *******

This story illustrates that if you leave the world for God, see that you also  forsake worldly thoughts from within. Otherwise, wherever you go, your worldliness will go with you, attracting to you a worldly environment.

Live simply if you are a renunciate. Do not complicate a boiled-down material existence and entangle yourself in material things, gathered in the name of spiritual necessity.

This story illustrates also that one must never go to extremes in the spiritual life, but by gradual steps, conquer the sense-inclined mind.

Finally, this story shows that no one should live without performing some material duties. But it is better to perform material duties in the company of wisdom-guided people than among materially-minded relatives, or in the company of one’s own habit-governed mind.

From the Praecepta Lessons, Vol. 3, 68-70, 1938.

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He was no misanthrope, shunning the society of men because they displeased him. He loved people, and endeared himself to them by his kindness, his wit, his ability to inspire them. But he wanted God, and he knew that to find the Supreme One he would have to be one-pointed in his inner search.

After coming to the hermitage of his guru, Sri Yukteswar, he became if possible more in earnest than ever. Other disciples talked instead of meditating. Yogananda spent many hours in solitary communion.

Other disciples forgot God, whether they worked or loafed. Yogananda kept his mind all day long focused at the Christ center, mentally talking to Divine Mother. Wherever he went, in his heart there was a never-ending song of divine love.

He had been sent to earth charged with a tremendous mission. Lesser teachers would have bowed under the mere thought of the responsibilities involved. Lesser teachers would have destroyed their health and their peace of mind worrying, struggling frantically to get everything done. They would have consumed themselves with a sense of their own importance.

But Yogananda never forgot for an instant that the real Doer was God. He was only an instrument. God’s was the hand that guided that instrument. Inwardly, he was always free and at peace.

When organizational responsibilities threatened to take his mind from the Divine Mother, he never said, “Well, I will do this work first; it is more important. Later I shall think of God.” “No work is possible,” he wrote, “without the power to perform it borrowed from Thee.”

He would put everything aside to chant or meditate until his mind was firmly rooted in God. Only then would he return to his work. That is how he was able to accomplish such tremendous things in his life. He never acted from ego-consciousness.

Man’s power is limited, but God’s is without limitation. And always Yogananda’s prayer was, “Lord, guide and strengthen me, for without Thy help I can do nothing.”

*Excerpted from Letters to Truth Seekers, copyrighted 1973. (Currently out-of-print)

“O thou of little faith”
Doubt is a common obstacle on the spiritual path. Even Peter, Christ’s leading disciple, succumbed to doubt. Peter, by the power of faith, had become attuned to the Divine and free enough from matter attachment to be able to walk on water. When Peter saw Jesus walking across the lake toward the boat carrying him and the other disciples to their destination, Peter — at Jesus’ request — left the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus.

But when the wind grew strong, Peter became afraid and started to sink. He cried, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus caught him and said, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” *

By “faith,” Jesus did not mean mere mental belief, but the deep intuitive realization of the body’s immaterial nature that comes through meditation. Only by the unshakable conviction that God is the sole reality can a devotee permanently transcend the consciousness that matter is real and the habit of doubt. When the devotee attains that realization, he is able to walk on water or fly in the air, at will.

The blind alley of curiosity
Devotees who are trying to contact God through meditation often fall into doubt from spiritual curiosity. I would find great joy in contacting God by meditation but then, suddenly, my mind would become very curious and ask: “If you know and feel God, why not ask Him what happened to Jesus, Shakespeare, Krishna, and other great human luminaries — or your own departed relatives?” When God did not immediately respond to my questions, I would become a “Doubting Thomas,” thus losing the joyous contact of God in meditation.

Beware of the dangers of spiritual curiosity. Many devotees would have found God and understood all the mysteries in the cosmos had they not strayed into the blind alleys of spiritual curiosity. The only way to know the beginning and end of all beings is to contact God in meditation.

Pitfalls of the mind
Don’t depend too much on your reasoning faculty. Wisdom can’t be achieved through reason and intellectualizing the truth. With too much reasoning comes hesitation, confusion, and doubt. In the end, you may find that your will power has become so paralyzed that you are incapable of acting at all.

Similarly, the long-continued over-study of all sorts of philosophical principles and treatises, without assimilating and testing them in one’s own life, results in doubt and disbelief in all spiritual laws. Such practices not only kill the hunger for truth, they also destroy your power to discriminate between good and bad teaching.

The harvest of wisdom
With God-consciousness comes unlimited powers, but there are few people who steadily develop themselves by meditation and form an unshakable conviction of the all-powerful nature of God. God does not speak in words. Being a Spirit, He vibrates His consciousness through the vibratory sound of AUM, which can be heard in meditation by devotees with developed intuition.

When less receptive devotees first hear the cosmic sound in meditation, they are filled with delight by both the sound and its wisdom vibrations. But as soon as they are tempted by material pleasures or persecuted by tests, they fall away — that is, they cease to meditate.

But there are those devotees who, surrounded by good company and good thoughts, contact the cosmic sound in meditation and patiently continue their meditative efforts until they contact God more deeply as bliss. By contacting God as bliss, they reap a harvest of wisdom far beyond their dreams.  Those with any lingering  questions as to the “whys” of life — the disparities of fortune,  the seeming injustice of life, the intricacies of karma — find all their questions answered.

The vast image of God
God made us in His image, and as we meditate more, the image of God becomes predominant. Our tests are only designed to show us that we are Spirit. So never give up. Earth-life is not perfect. It is the arena in which we test our spiritual attainment. We must be able to behold the image of God at all times.

The physical body is a dream, and death is a dream. Every time you are tested, just say, “I am dreaming.” Ultimately nothing can really happen to you. The big fish eats the little fish, and both are dreams.

* Matthew 14:22-31.

Excerpted from East West and Inner Culture Magazines, 1925, 1934-1942; Conversations with Yogananda; and The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita.

Sometimes that’s also all you can do with yourself. You’re not able to understand something mentally, but if you do the right things by living in a godly way, gradually the energy flow will be right and mental clarity will follow.

Learning by doing
My Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, sometimes wouldn’t even allow us to talk about things. Instead, he would give us certain things to do because only in the process of doing them would the understanding come. He’d put us in situations where we would have to learn our lessons, and once we’d learned them through that experience, we had something worthwhile.

For example, there was a young man at the SRF Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades who each day was given the job of clambering up and down the steep and rather muddy hillside watering the plants with the hose. The work was wet, muddy, and cold, and he just hated it.

Yogananda never sat him down and said, “Look it’s good for you to learn to accept whatever you have to do. It’s good for you to overcome your likes and dislikes.” He never gave him any kind of explanation at all. He just let him fight it out within himself.

Every morning this young man woke up thinking, “God, I hope I’m not given that job again,” and every morning he was given that job. Finally he woke up one morning saying, “Well, if I’m going to be given this job, I might as well learn to enjoy it. So today I’m going to enjoy it.” He went to breakfast actually looking forward to the work. And that was the day he was taken off that job.

Again and again I have seen that we learn our lessons by going through certain experiences, not by mentally learning them. It probably took this young man quite a while to be able to look back and say, “Oh, that’s what I learned by that experience.” That’s certainly been my experience with lessons I’ve learned. Often I would know that I had changed, but sometimes it took quite awhile, even years, for me to understand exactly what the change was.

Avoid an overly mental approach
Our culture is far too overbalanced on the side of intellect. It’s very important not to rely too much on mental understanding. We think we’re going to understand something when our brain has grasped it, but often the brain is a barrier to understanding.

People in this country have fewer spiritual experiences than in many other countries because we’re so intellectual, so rational. Sometimes a person may get into a deep state of meditation and suddenly start seeing lights, or feeling an expansion of consciousness. Then the mind says, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to understand this.” And the experience is gone.

You don’t have to pick a thing apart and understand it with your brain. In fact, an overly mental approach can actually hinder you from ever really understanding something.  People who think too much go in circles and are often in a continual mental cloud.

I remember a woman at SRF headquarters in Los Angeles who wrote letters. She would spend days on one letter, thinking that if she could just say it exactly right, she would be able to manipulate and guide the development of SRF’s work in Europe. And the longer she wrote, the worse it became.

She finally began to lose her own common sense and become slightly crazy because she thought that everything had to come from the brain. She had the idea that she was keeping these centers in Europe from exploding. And it just became too much for her. She exploded.

True understanding is intuitive
Understanding never comes on a purely rational level. It comes on an intuitive level, and the more we seek that plane of understanding, the more we’ll understand.

Sometimes when trying to discipline or train someone, Yogananda would say something totally irrational. Faced with a statement that made no sense at all, the person would just stop for a moment in amazement. Yogananda’s only purpose was to get that person to stop for a moment in amazement, so his brain would quiet down. And when his brain was calm, Yogananda was able to speak in a way that would reach those deeper intuitive levels where understanding really occurs.

You understand a thing when you are that. You develop humility not by analyzing it but by doing those things that will help to instill humility—acting for God, acting without desire for the fruits of action, seeing God as the Doer. Even if you can’t explain it clearly, you will have become that.

So the important thing is to get into the practice of doing what you need to do. You don’t have to understand; you simply need to do it.

A process of attunement
The other thing to keep in mind is that it’s not what you do that imparts the spiritual lesson. It’s using what you do to attune yourself to the consciousness that can flow through your service.

Ramakrishna used to tell a lovely story of a play about Krishna in which the audience could see two rooms with a divider between them. Krishna was in one room and the gopis were in the other room singing, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare,” and getting more and more excited. Krishna paid them no attention. He just went on doing certain things.

After the gopis left, Radha came into the room and sat down. She softly said, “Oh, Krishna.” Krishna dropped everything and ran to be with Radha. Why?  Because she had called with her soul. In whatever work we do, we need to do it with our souls — in attunement with God. Some people can give a beautiful sermon simply by walking silently down the street. You feel their peace.

The more we use our service to attune ourselves with the Divine, the more we begin to express Him and the more things go right. And we don’t even know how it happens. It just does.

Excerpted from the following recordings: The State of Superconsciousness, and Receptivity. To buy a recording (CD or MP3) call Treasures Along the Path, (530) 478 7656 or email treasures@ananda.org.

In ancient times, Hindu householders would eat beef or veal, and they offered veal, especially, to distinguished guests. Later, beef and veal eating were condemned because it disturbed the vibrations of the human body and also because cows were needed to supply orphans with milk.

When Saint Sananda and his group of forty disciples arrived at the home of a rich farmer, the farmer arranged that a calf be killed in order to entertain the saint. Saint Sananda accepted the veal dinner, but strictly prohibited his disciples from eating any meat. He explained that they were under training to learn how to control their passions and appetites, and should subsist only on fruits, herbs, and vegetables, which had a calming effect.

Saint Sananda ate a hearty veal dinner and, in the presence of some of his disciples, even took a second helping. After dinner, the saint ordered the disciples to take up their little bundles, which they carried over their shoulders fastened to bamboo sticks, and to begin a fifty-mile march under the over-zealous tropical sun.

Saint Sananda walked briskly ahead but repeatedly went around to the lagging disciples, urging them to walk cheerfully and quickly in order to reach the next village before nightfall. The saint, however, could feel the rebellious vibrations of a disciple named Markat, who was both a Judas and a “Doubting Thomas.” So he exhorted his disciples to use their mental powers to transcend the body and dispel fatigue.

No sooner had Saint Sananda finished his encouraging speech than Markat began whispering to a few nearby disciples, “Look at our teacher and listen to his veal-vitalized speech. He can walk cheerfully because of his second helping of meat, but the rest of us are sustained only by the energy of fruit juices, which have already evaporated under the seething glare of the sun.”

Saint Sananda, being highly advanced spiritually, was aware of Markat’s words and the doubt and dissatisfaction they incited. So he turned and walked back to Markat. In front of other discontented disciples, he casually said, “Dear Markat, would you like to eat what I eat? Can you digest what I eat?”

Markat, thinking that the Master was offering him veal cutlets, said emphatically and with assurance, “Honored Sir, just try your food on me and see how fast I can melt it with my digestive fire.”

When the forty disciples reached the end of their fifty-mile journey, Saint Sananda casually told them to tarry a while at a huge fiery furnace where a blacksmith was preparing red-hot nails. On the other side of the furnace a big calf was being roasted.

After being welcomed by the blacksmith, the saint said, “Well, children, sit in a circle around this fire, for I am going to offer you some very vitalizing food, which I have long prevented you from eating. But before I invite you to eat, I want Markat to come and sit by me, for he has assured me that he will eat and digest what I eat.

The hungry Markat, beside himself with joy at the sight of the veal roast, leaped to the seat beside the saint. No sooner was Markat seated than Saint Sananda put his hand into the pile of red-hot embers and nails and began to swallow them as fast as he could.

While doing so, he smilingly but forcefully said to his disciple Markat, “Come on, keep your promise and eat what I eat, and then we will see whether you can digest it or not.”

Markat, highly chagrined, hid his face in shame and fell at the feet of his Master, sincerely asking his forgiveness.

*******       *******       *******       *******

This story illustrates that a disciple should follow with faith the discipline enjoined upon him by a true Master. Doubting the motives of a true Master only retards the disciple’s progress while willing obedience leads to freedom.

From The Praecepta Lessons, 1938.

I thought it might be useful to talk about things I have learned from my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda.

True Learning Is Not Intellectual

He talked to our souls: With Master, learning was a form of recognition; it was not intellectual.  He would state truths so as to reach your soul, and your soul would rise in recognition to whatever level it could. In a group, each person might understand him differently.

Those who teach on behalf of Ananda should remember this truth: People will understand according to their own maturity. Don’t feel you have to hammer your points. Touch on them lightly. Those who are ready to learn will understand, and those who aren’t will let it pass.

Always a deep message: In everything Master said or did there was a deep message. He didn’t explain himself; he expected us to intuit his meaning. Over the years, I’ve come to understand his meaning on deeper and deeper levels.

Once, for example, I asked one of the monks if Master was doing things in certain ways to teach us organization? “Organization, heck!” He replied. “All he ever does is disorganize!” Well, that attitude took him off the path. But I felt he must be teaching us something, and I later understood he was teaching us that you don’t organize things; you go by an intuitive flow. This is how I built Ananda.

One with the Infinite

The Infinite in human form: Master said, “Don’t focus on this personality.” He never would tell his age and urged us not to tell ours. He said, “I have no age; I feel timeless.”

I never focused on his personality. I would look into his eyes and there was no ego; he was the infinite consciousness in that form. But he was also a person and it’s through the guru’s humanity that we can begin to understand the different aspects of God (love, joy, peace) and what we need to become.

The highest octave of human love is the unconditional love a guru gives to a disciple, which means that he’ll hang on to you until you find God. To find God, we must learn to love Him the same way: unconditionally.

“The blueprint”: He never gave us any “blueprint.” He said again and again, “The blueprint is in the ether.” It was through my attunement with him, and having to understand his will from within, that I knew what to do. He would sometimes give little suggestions or hints, but he didn’t tell me.

When people ask, “What is the blueprint for Ananda?” I say, “God will show us.” Each step of the way he shows us what we should do. God’s will is not fixed and determined; it depends on many things. Yogananda himself would sometimes look for signs.

For example, I was to go to India with him in 1951 but he said, “Don’t tell anybody.”  One of the monks tricked me into telling him and he complained to Master, who took it as Divine Mother’s sign that he shouldn’t go that year.

God through him: A monk once said to him, “Whenever I see you I see Divine Mother.” Master said, “Then behave accordingly.” He always knew it was Divine Mother working through him.

It’s important that we, too, in working with people, learn to allow the Divine to work through us. For teaching and leadership that’s very important. Be in the Self; let God do it through you.

The most important thing you can do in any work is to put your vibrations into it. Master said that when you lecture don’t think only in terms of words; put your vibrations into the words. Your vibrations will change people more than anything else.

Learning from His Example

Always positive: Through Master I learned that the answer to everything is to have a positive attitude. Some disciples have described him as a stern disciplinarian and intolerant of anything being wrong.  He wasn’t that way at all. Once he entered the monks’ dining room when it was an absolute mess. He sat down and said, “Well, it might be worse.”

Whenever he encouraged us to strive to be better, it was always in a positive way. I once behaved very judgmentally toward a devotee who loved visiting Master but never kept his appointments with me to learn the meditation techniques. When he next visited Master I was present, and I wouldn’t even look at him.

Master later said, “How dry you were with him. How many people would still be here if I had been so judgmental of them?”

He taught me to be loving, forgiving, and to always look for the good in people. When you look for the good in people, you see God there. You can help them if you focus on their goodness. If you criticize them, they erect defenses.

Listen to others: He taught me to listen to others. One time he was telling me a story and I anticipated the ending and gave it. He calmly went on and stated it himself—it was a  little different from what I’d said. Then he looked at me and I understood: I should not be bristling with my own opinions.

Always listen to what other people have to say before you answer. Don’t jump in there bristling with your opinions.

Humility: Master was so humble and childlike. He sometimes spoke with firmness but he never put himself above anybody. He was completely capable of saying, “Well, I was wrong then.” That was his greatness.

Credit to his gurus: Master always gave credit to his line of gurus.  Somebody asked him once, “Why are you teaching the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible, especially?” He answered, “This is what Babaji wants.”

In the chapter, “The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar” in Autobiography of a Yogi, Master describes himself as awestruck at what he was learning from his Guru in 1936. In 1932, however, Master had written an article giving those same descriptions of the astral world.  He already knew it all, but he gave credit to his Guru.

The last word: I noticed many times that he would leave the last word with other people. For example, when he discussed Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolence in Autobiography of a Yogi, he left the last word with Gandhi even though he didn’t fully share his views. Master believed in nonviolence as an inward attitude, but he said there are times when you must do certain things for a higher motive.

Respect for everyone: It was wonderful how he had respect for everybody. Once there was an Indian man who was a bit drunk and being too familiar with Master. In Bengali, Debi, one of the monks, said something deprecating about the man. Master signaled to Debi to stop. Master saw the man with respect as a child of God.

Always have that little distance of respect for those closest to you. Respect will endure under all circumstances.

True to myself: He allowed me to be true to myself. Some of my fellow disciples would say to me, “Don’t you think you should be so and so?” Master never said that to me. He told me what he thought I should do, and I did it, but he allowed me to be true to myself.

It’s important for a teacher to allow each person to be himself. An institution will try to mold you into one form and make you toe that line. I don’t ever want Ananda to do that.

“A Saint Is a Sinner Who Never Gave Up”

Our highest potential: Master always saw us in our highest potential. He said, “A saint is a sinner who never gave up.” No matter how many faults a person had, he would always try to help them aim for the highest.

This was perhaps the most important thing he gave me. There were times when I felt discouraged, but I always remembered that saying, “a saint is a sinner who never gave up,” and I kept trying. We should always see ourselves as potential saints.

Attunement and right effort: What Master emphasized most with the disciples was, “to be in tune,” to open our hearts to him and ask him to take charge of our lives. We have to act, but we should always ask Master to guide our thoughts and show us what he wants.

Ask him even in little things, “What should I do?” If you make a mistake, say, “God, I want to be good, help me to be good.” His help will be there.

Unconditional love: One time he had been away and I felt a deep longing to see him. I drove down to Encinitas and he welcomed me with great love. He said, “I have missed you.”

That same night, I was with the monks and we were discussing a book one of them had read, and I lost a little of that attunement. The next day, at the San Diego church, Master blessed me and said, “I have missed you.” It was a slight reprimand. I had fallen a little in my attunement but his love was always there.

How often I have remembered that occasion to help me understand that he loves me, no matter what. He loves everyone that way.

Share with Others

How to use money: Master said if you use money for the welfare of others, then you grow spiritually and it’s a great blessing, but if you use it only for yourself, then it becomes a misfortune.

I once saw a group of gypsies begging outside Calcutta and one of them was a young girl whose look said, “What am I doing here?” She appeared to be a reincarnated queen who had lost everything through selfishness.

The truest disciples: There were two prayers Master said were the greatest. One was, “I will reason, I will will, I will act, but guide Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right path in everything.” The other was, “Give me Thyself, that I may give Thee to all.”

I believe the truest disciples of Master are those who try to share the blessings they’ve received with others. That was the essence of his life.

Resources: My life With Master (Yogananda)

Our ability to get this message out will be hampered, however, if we allow contractive self-definitions to limit us. When we view ourselves affirmatively, we increase our ability to be a channel for God’s power. But, if we have the thought that we can’t do something, or that we won’t do it, the idea becomes self-fulfilling.

Our consciousness might be compared to a balloon. As a balloon expands there’s more open area inside the skin. If you were a little fly on the inside you could move around quite freely. However, when you come to the skin of the balloon, there is a barrier that you can’t pass.

It’s the same with our consciousness — our self-definitions are like the skin of the balloon. We can move around quite easily in those areas where we have expanded our awareness, but contractive self-definitions create a barrier. One great challenge of life is to rid ourselves of self-imposed limitations. In a recent talk Swami Kriyananda gave us a perfect example of how to do that.

“Master, through me, can do anything”
He spoke of an experience when he had only four days in which to write the book, Cities of Light. “I can’t do it,” was his first thought. That “I can’t do it” mindset epitomizes what I’m describing— it is a false and limiting self-definition. But then Kriyananda caught himself and said, “Maybe, I can’t do it, but Master, through me, can do anything.”  With that attitude came a superconscious flow. And that thought in particular, “God can work through me,” is what we need to develop.

We will be well served by increasing our faith that the Guru acting through us makes it possible to accomplish our goals.  As we strengthen that understanding, we begin to break the great delusion of separateness, and realize ever more deeply, that we are the soul, not the ego.

Deeper and deeper self-offering
Swami Kriyananda gave us a New Year’s suggestion that can help us with this. He proposed, as the theme song for the year, “Lord, I am Thine, be Thou mine.”  Many of us chant it regularly, but to have real power those words must be more than just lyrics in a chant. We need to go deeply into the feeling behind the words and make them an individual dialogue with God and Guru.

The way to attunement with the Guru is through ever deeper self-offering into his vibration. By “self-offering” I mean, especially, offering up those false, limiting self-definitions in which we’ve wrapped ourselves. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to cast them into the light of the spiritual eye during meditation.

Each of us has a certain mega-issue that we’ve come into this lifetime to deal with. And for each of us there will also be something that we’re currently dealing with, some area of resistance. Until we offer that into the light, it will continue to darken our consciousness and dim the realization of who we truly are. Even if we don’t succeed completely, the very effort of daily self-offering will be transformative.

So, in particular, what I would urge for the coming year is that we each make an intense effort to offer up whatever it is within our consciousness that limits us. There will be something that’s ready and waiting to be dissolved. Find one or two things—a wrong belief, a habit, an inertia—and try diligently to release it.

That’s the individual challenge that each of us needs to take up in these times. Let’s try very hard to break the hypnosis of limitation. If we each take up this challenge individually, then the power and the magnetism of our whole group will increase dramatically. And, as a group, we can accomplish great good for the world.

The life of a disciple can be summed up as ever deeper self-giving into the vibration of God and Guru. As we offer up our limitations, we open ourselves to their influence and they can enter our heart of hearts and change us. When, finally, we offer our hearts completely, we become filled with light and pass beyond all self-definitions.

Deep, conscious sharing
The need to transform ourselves is the first and foremost thing that has to happen, but then we also must powerfully, dynamically, and consciously do whatever is in our power to share God’s love and joy with others.

Yogananda came to show us the way to Self-realization and to implant in us the desire to help others achieve that state. He said that the highest prayer is, “Lord, give me Thyself that I may give Thee to all.” These two together: the deep self-offering to the Guru and the dynamic sharing of what we’ve been given—that should be the focus of the year ahead.

From recent talks.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are Acharyas (Spiritual Directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Jyotish and Devi Novak are listed under “Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi.”

It is love of God that gives you the power, as Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “to stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds.” This is something to remember, to write on your heart, because it’s the truth: Nothing will take you down if you inwardly always love God.

In fact, when you’re really in love with God and in tune with the divine flow, you find that nothing else matters very much. You understand that things happen as they ought to and that ultimately, everything works out for the best.

Let God solve your problems
People who are very worldly have a tendency to laugh at devotees as “impractical.” What they can’t figure out is why things somehow go so well for those devotees who don’t worry too much about any of the things worldly people consider so important.

But when you love God and put your trust in him, you find that He solves your problems for you, through you. All you need is to be enough in tune and your intuition will guide you. The way to achieve that attunement is through devotion and, in that devotion, to uplift yourself in Him and let Him work through you.

A very interesting case in that context is that of Jacinta, one of the three children in Fatima in Portugal who had the visions of the Madonna in 1917. Jacinta was seven years old and lived in a tiny village. Her entire life was one of devotion, prayer, and helping others through prayer.

Because of her devotion, and the intuition that resulted, she was able to give counseling to adults concerning the kinds of problems and difficulties that only adults have. She was able to understand their problems, not necessarily from the mind, but she said things that showed a deep understanding was coming through her.

That kind of understanding comes from being in tune with the divine flow. Saint Teresa of Avila said, “In a moment of ecstasy, you understand things that it would take you many years of study to grasp on a mental level.”

The mind functions at a very low level of your total potential but in ecstasy, in that experience of oneness with the Divine, suddenly you understand. You understand how God manifests in the world—how He manifests through languages, through food, through the flow of history, through an individual’s problems. You understand without reading, studying or thinking.

God watches the heart
I have often seen people on the spiritual path who think they can have their feet in two boats, who think they can combine a worldly life and a spiritual life and do well at both. Rama Krishna used the illustration of a woman who had lost her husband and before casting herself on the ground in an “agony of bereavement,” carefully removed her glasses and jewelry for fear of breaking them.

Many people pretend great love for God, but first they want to be sure that everything’s in order, that the stock market’s behaving itself, and that they’ve been practical on every possible level. They say, “Oh, Lord, I give myself to you,” but one eye is on the door to make sure it’s locked.

It’s not possible to have your feet in two boats. Inevitably, a moment of decision will arrive and it will be necessary to decide whether to please the world or to take the more difficult step of pleasing God. God watches the heart. If you love Him but give Him a secondary place in your heart, He won’t be able to come to you.

What is true devotion?
True devotion means to love God purely and not to think of anything except, “I long to know You. I long to serve You. I long to be one with You.” In pure love, there are no ulterior motives, no likes and dislikes, only the desire to please Him.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux said, “I would like to go to hell to be able to love God even there.” It is beautiful to think: “Wherever I am, I don’t want to lose my love for You, Lord. This would be the worst possible mistake. You can put me wherever You wish, if You give me the grace not to lose my love for You. This is all I ask.”

So pray for devotion. It’s a gift of God and by your very act of prayer you will be putting out the magnetism to draw that gift to you. Pray this simple prayer as often as you remember: “Divine Mother, awaken your love in me, and then help me to awaken that love in all.”

When you meditate, do so with an attitude of self-giving, with no thought of any reward, only of His pleasure. Try to develop the kind of love that says, “I want Him now but if it be His will, I’m willing to wait forever.” The more you offer yourself up to Him in that way, the more His love will be able to flow through you.

“God, my life is in your hands”
A very good attitude to have when difficulties and trials come to you suddenly is: “God, my life is in your hands.” Try to develop that attitude by practicing over a period of time until you can come up with it instantly. It’s very helpful to imagine the worst.

God will give you joy if you live in Him and even if calamities come to you, his blessing will be there. People who leave their bodies with God in their hearts don’t suffer; any pain they might feel is minimized or non-existent. Those who die thinking of God or for God, like a Joan of Arc, go in bliss.

If in the face of death itself you feel joy, that itself is a great victory. All victory depends upon being in tune with God, the source of all truth. So try to love in a divine, unconditional way as much as possible.

Excerpted from September 2008 talks at Ananda Village and the following recordings: Devotion vs. Emotion; Overcoming Obstacles to Spiritual Growth; and The Wisdom of the Heart. To buy a recording (CD or MP3) call Treasures Along the Path, (530) 478-7656

When you yield to bad habits, they become stronger and your will power becomes weaker. Nonetheless, there is no evil habit, however strong, that you can not overcome through meditation, good company, and the continuous effort to adopt the counteracting antidote of a good habit.

Importance of will power
Weak will power is one of the main reasons people fail to overcome their bad habits. Most people are “half-hearted” in their thoughts and actions; hence they do not succeed.

Find out, through daily introspection, whether you eat, work, and meditate according to the dictates of your will power, or whether bad habits undermine your efforts. Then, convince yourself that you want to “overthrow” the undesirable habit.

Self-pity, sorrow, self rebuke, and even violent but spasmodic rebellion are of little avail. You are the maker of your habits and you must undo them by strong, persistent effort.

Remember: the greater your will power, the less the enslaving influence of your bad habits. One of the best ways to strengthen your will power is always to follow through, no matter what the obstacles, on any decision you make to do something you know to be right.

Avoid discouraging influences
People are often unsuccessful in overcoming bad habits because their families or friends have infected them with habit-forming, discouraging thoughts. To overcome bad habits, be especially aware of the kind of people with whom you associate. Watch to see how family, close friends, or others with whom you regularly spend time influence you.

Watch also how books, movies, and other leisure time pursuits influence your thought-habits. Distance yourself from anyone or anything that reinforces your bad habits.

Use good habits to overcome bad
Good habits are your best helpers. Reinforce their strength by good actions and use them to crowd out all bad habits.

If, for example, you have a bad habit of telling lies, cultivate the opposite good habit of telling the truth. Similarly, if you are suffering from ill health or poverty, use thoughts and affirmations of health or prosperity to crowd out thought-habits of ill health or poverty. By affirming the new attitudes morning and night, with full attention, you will also strengthen your will power.

Give your new actions enough time, attention, and energy to gain strength and don’t become discouraged over an occasional lapse. A bad habit takes time to attain supremacy, so why be impatient about the growth of its rivaling good habit?

Meditation cauterizes bad habits
If a person carries over from past lives the seeds of bad habits, his efforts to create good habits will bring only limited results unless, through meditation, he cauterizes the pre-natal seeds lodged in the brain. Thus, for a person with a prenatal tendency towards ill health, affirmations and other actions will not, of themselves, create good health.

Meditation, which cauterizes “evil-saturated” brain cells, is the best way of uprooting bad habits. In a non-meditative person, the life force is concentrated in the muscles and senses. During meditation, the life force relaxes away from the body and sensory motor nerves and accumulates in the brain. The superconsciousness uses the relaxed energy in the brain to go deep into the brain grooves, seeking out evil habits. It cauterizes the “evil-saturated” brain cells with divine energy, changing them into “good-saturated” brain cells.

The time needed to form new habits through meditation varies with an individual’s nervous system and brain cells, but is determined chiefly by the quality of attention. You can install new habits in the brain almost instantaneously through the power of deep attention in meditation.

The receptive power of love
A divine soul like Jesus has the power to charge the brain of another with cosmic energy and cauterize all evil-saturated brain cells. In the Bible there is the story of the sinful woman who sought Jesus out when he was visiting a certain house. Weeping remorsefully, she washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair and anointed them with ointment.

Jesus healed the woman of her sinful tendencies saying, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.” By the receptive power of her love, the woman was able to draw divine energy from Jesus, which cauterized all seeds of sinful tendencies lodged in her brain.

The moral: No matter how error-stricken you are, when by meditation you feel God’s love deeply, you can attract the grace of the Guru and overcome all bad habits. The Guru is able to transmit cosmic energy into the brain of the disciple and burn out habits of ignorance from many incarnations.

What is true freedom?
True freedom consists in doing such things as eating, reading, meditating, and helping others based on right judgment and conscious exercise of will, and not being compelled by habits. The way out of the dark delusion of habit lies in using your will power to meditate deeply each day until you can achieve the bliss-contact of God at will. A person of unbounded will power can fix a new habit in the brain instantly.

Excerpted from East West Magazine, 1926; Praecepta Lessons 1933-1935; and Inner Culture Magazine.

I was thirty years old and had been playing the cello since I was six. I had played with symphony orchestras and string quartets, and was then playing in the Portland Opera Orchestra.

I had also explored other kinds of music: avant-garde, renaissance, new age, and rock and roll. Along with my orchestra job, I was in a band called Pink Martini, which played an eclectic mixture ranging from classical pieces to Latin, to pop, to “forties Hollywood.”

A complete change of consciousness
Soon after finding Ananda, I joined the choir and found myself slated to sing a solo in the Easter concert of Kriyananda’s oratorio, Christ Lives. I was driving home one day in a terrible mood after a frustrating orchestra rehearsal. Since the concert was nearing, I decided to practice my solo, This Is My Son.

I sang the song through once, and nearly had to pull over to the side of the road. Gone was the sour mood. My consciousness had changed completely. I was now feeling so uplifted that it mystified me.

How had this simple music been able to move me in thirty seconds in ways no other music had ever done? I decided then and there to devote my life to understanding this mystery.

Listening with the heart
Still mystified, the next day I purchased a collection of Swami Kriyananda’s printed music and began playing my way through it. Often I became so enthralled, and experienced such deep bliss, that I couldn’t move a muscle.

I went to the next choir practice humbled and ready to experience the music with an open heart and less of the classically trained “discrimination” that focuses on imperfections. I had spent years listening with the head; I now needed to learn to listen with the heart.

The power of divine attunement
A few months later, I played the cello at the oratorio performance in Palo Alto along side a hundred-voice choir of devotees from different Ananda colonies and elsewhere. Stunned by the beauty of their singing, I was shocked to learn that the choir had rehearsed together for only a few hours. How was this possible?

I was told that people who meditate regularly develop an attunement with the Divine, and with each other, that gives cohesiveness and harmony to their combined efforts. Since then, I’ve learned how to invite God’s grace into countless under-rehearsed performances and not to be anxious about what might go wrong.

That evening was my first time accompanying Swami Kriyananda as he sang two solos depicting Christ on the eve of his arrest. I realized as I played that Kriyananda was not an ordinary performer. He sang very freely, not adhering to a strict beat. It was poetic rather than mechanical.

As I followed along on the cello, it felt as if Kriyananda had tuned into how Christ himself had experienced those extraordinary events two thousand years ago. Kriyananda had “stepped aside” and allowed Christ to sing through him.

At the end of the concert, Kriyananda came to the front to acknowledge the applause and receive a bouquet of flowers. Having seen hundreds of musicians, soloists, and conductors on stage, I usually can get a good sense of who they are just by how they take a bow. Some are open hearted and humble, others more egoic.

In the few minutes that Kriyananda stood before the standing ovation, I witnessed true humility. He stood with his head bowed in humble appreciation, not gathering energy to himself but directing it upward to his source of inspiration: God and Guru.

Channeling divine inspiration
Since moving to Ananda Village in 2001, I’ve performed and recorded Kriyananda’s music, directed the choir and orchestra, and helped coordinate the music throughout the Ananda colonies. I now understand a statement attributed to Beethoven: “It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer.”

Swami Kriyananda’s music consciously channels divine inspiration with the sole purpose of uplifting human consciousness. To sing Kriyananda’s music with divine attunement puts you in touch with the divine source of his inspiration.

Our greatest joy as performers is to tune in consciously to that inspiration and channel it to the audience. At our choir rehearsals, we try to remain silent after each song, feeling the changes in our consciousness. Often we’ll sing the song again, this time with the feeling that we’re broadcasting that consciousness.

After we’ve connected with the source of Kriyananda’s inspiration, the music itself hardly matters because we’ve entered into that great divine flow. During one of the performances at the 2007 Joyful Arts Concert, one could feel the divine presence flowing through each musician. Another time, when performing in Seattle, I went into a state of deep timelessness where all that existed was the joy of the music.

Not a substitute for meditation
Musical performances are not, however, a substitute for meditation and other spiritual practices. For me and other musicians, this can be a challenge. I feel God’s presence most strongly when performing and conducting, and in the time period immediately after.

But I’ve discovered that, without regular meditation, I can have dry spells. It takes meditation and conscious tuning in—and putting that first—for the musical inspiration to flow. The deeper I go in meditation, the better the performance.

A unifying influence
Having played Kriyananda’s music on three continents, I’ve experienced its unifying influence. One of the greatest joys is to sing with someone who doesn’t speak your language. How is it possible to feel so close to someone with whom you can’t communicate?

It’s because sound, through the medium of music, is the connecting link between the mind and feelings of one person and those of another. All things not only respond to sound, they are sound and they affect one another by the subtle law of vibratory exchange. The divine inspiration, running through the hearts of all who sing, unites us through the music.

Children naturally tune in this way. Unhindered by an adult intellect, they can readily feel the consciousness underlying the music. At the Ananda schools where I teach music, I’ve seen repeatedly how receptive children are to the divine qualities expressed through Kriyananda’s songs.

The heart’s deepest feelings
At the end of a 2007 concert in Seattle, I was struck with how empty my life would be without Swami Kriyananda’s music. Tears of gratitude flowed as I inwardly tried to convey my thanks to him.

But alas, words cannot encompass the entirety of the heart’s feelings. Thanks to Swami Kriyananda’s music, however, we can find expression for our hearts’ deepest feelings: gratitude, devotion, joy, and longing for God.

When I found Ananda in 1996, I realized that deep down I had always been searching for a way to share higher consciousness through music, and for like-minded musicians. I am eternally grateful to be able to serve others in this way.

David Eby lives at Ananda Village and serves as Director of the Ananda Music Ministry.

When they hear the bridegroom approaching, all of them arise to light their lamps, but only the five wise virgins have remembered to bring more oil. The foolish virgins ask the wise virgins for some of their oil and are told to go buy their own. By the time the foolish virgins return, it’s too late and they are not allowed into the wedding.

The oil of devotion
The timing of the parable, and the circumstances under which it was given, are very interesting. Jesus gave this parable three days before the crucifixion, when he had withdrawn to the Mount of Olives and was only with his close disciples. This was probably his last opportunity to teach them directly.

Through this parable, Jesus was instructing them on the attitudes they needed to carry on without him. Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the oil in the lamp symbolizes devotion, and that the coming of the bridegroom signifies the advent of Christ Consciousness.

Jesus was telling his disciples, “Keep your devotion strong and your heart attuned to me. Be ever-watchful and ever-prepared to receive the Christ Consciousness, for you never know when it will descend upon you.”

Was it mere selfishness that caused the wise virgins to refuse to share their oil? No — we can’t give our devotion to others because each person has to develop it on their own.

In part, this parable is about perseverance versus failure on the spiritual path. Devotion and attentiveness are qualities that help us go forward on the path. The “oil and fire” of devotion give us the power to go deep enough in meditation to experience the presence of God, who is love itself.

Don’t be too goal oriented
To persevere on the spiritual path, it’s also necessary not be too goal-oriented. The spiritual path is not like a hike on a sunny morning where you can reach your goal quickly and easily. It’s a long trek, akin to walking across the country.

You don’t know when you’re going to reach the coast, only that you must keep going day after day. While keeping the goal in mind, you don’t want to hold overly optimistic expectations that could cause you to lose heart when what’s needed, is more perseverance.

Each day has a certain beauty
Although a cross-country trek may last a long time, if you’re not overly goal-oriented, you can appreciate the beauty of the forests, streams, and mountains along the way.  Each day will have its special beauty.

In the same way, a key to persevering on the spiritual path is to enjoy the path itself. Enjoy each day’s meditation for its gift of peace and joy, even if you haven’t achieved the goal of samadhi.

Being able to appreciate the present moment will make you more sensitive to all the ways in which God is continually showering you with love and blessings—in meditation and in every life experience. Knowing that God’s love is always present, and that you can draw on it, makes it easy to stay on the spiritual path.

An exercise in remembering
There’s an exercise you might try that will make God’s love more dynamic to your awareness. Try to remember, from your earliest childhood, those times when you felt the touch of God in your life. We’ve all had these moments, some of them very vivid.

Maybe it was a time when a loved one died, and you felt a wave of blessing take away your sadness. Maybe it was a moment when you were at the end of your rope, in despair and depression, and you felt a ray of light enter your life. Or perhaps you were trying to develop a new talent and felt a flow of grace giving you the extra impetus you needed.

Remember those moments and then understand that God has always been with you, watching over you, protecting you. Weave those times into a beautiful mala of divine grace and wear it.

And if you ever feel alone or discouraged about your spiritual progress, remember those times of blessing and grace and lovingly call to your Father/Mother God. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, “If you think me near, I will be near.” Meditating with the thought that He is already with you will deepen your awareness of His presence.

Negative attitudes push God away
To persevere on the spiritual path, it’s also important not to fall into the trap of pushing God away by projecting your own negative attitudes on to Him. God doesn’t have negative qualities. In Him there is only pure light, love, and joy.

If, however, we don’t try to attune our consciousness to His will, our awareness of those qualities begins to fade. The shadows become deeper when we turn away from the light.

How God views our misdeeds
In the early years of Ananda Village a real character named Ram Lila lived here—he has since passed away. He was about five feet five, and nearly as wide as he was tall. He’d been a biker and part of Hell’s Angels, and although he retained some rough mannerisms, he had a wonderful heart.

Being a moody fellow, he went through ups and downs. At a certain point he went through a negative period for a year or so, left Ananda, and talked against us. But the time came when he regained his center and showed up at a Spiritual Renewal Week talk.

When Swami Kriyananda saw him, he said, “Ram Lila, come here.” So, Ram Lila shuffled up in front of about two hundred rather apprehensive people. Kriyananda took a lock of his hair, tugged it a bit, and said playfully, “Ram Lila, I hear you’ve been a bad boy.”

Ram Lila looked at him and mumbled, “Yeah, Swami, I have.”  Kriyananda said, “Don’t do it anymore.” Ram Lila replied, “I won’t, Swami.” And that was it.

That’s a good example of how God views our misdeeds. He kind of pulls our forelock and says, “I hear you’ve made a mistake.” And, for ourselves, it’s important that we admit we’ve done something wrong. Then God says, “That’s okay, just don’t do it again.”

There’s nothing we can ever do that will cause God not to love us. There are, of course, certain things He prefers that we not do. I recall the time when our son, who was then three or four years old, asked Swami Kriyananda, “Do you like bad people?”

I don’t know what little mischief prompted his question, but Kriyananda answered the question in his heart. He said, “I love bad people, but I don’t always love the bad things they do.”  God always loves us. He doesn’t always love the things we do, but nothing can ever diminish His love for us. Naughty or good, we are still His children.

Like a day without food
For devotees, the main thing is to keep your lamps filled with the oil of devotion and to keep offering your love to God. As you do that day by day, and year by year, it becomes both habitual and deeply fulfilling.

After a while, if a day goes by when you don’t express your love for God, it’s like a day with no food. Your soul, nourished as it is by divine love, will impel you to turn back to Him.

So keep your devotion strong, knowing that He is giving back a thousand fold, the love you give to Him. For your love for God is only a tiny reflection of His love for you.

From a December 7, 2007 Sunday Service and an October 24, 2007 satsang at Ananda Village.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Jyotish and Devi Novak are listed under “Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi.”

All negative attitudes spell our own undoing because they draw the mind away from God and affirm a separate reality. Only when you’ve overcome the carping, doubting spirit can you uplift your mind in attunement with the Divine.

Should we repeat negative statements?
I once had a very interesting conversation with my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, which taught me an important lesson about negativity.

After reading Autobiography of a Yogi, I went to Encinitas, California expecting to be greeted by Yogananda with open arms and accepted immediately. Instead, I was greeted by Sister Gyanamata, his most advanced woman disciple, who told me it would probably be months before I was accepted.

I became very resentful. My first thought was that she was just one of those little old ladies who tend to choke religious organizations. Later that day, however, I recalled her eyes, which were very deep, and I prayed and asked her forgiveness for having misjudged her.

When I told this story to Yogananda, including my initial negative view of Sister Gyanamata, he said, “Why did you say that?” I replied, “Well, I later understood that she was a saintly person. In the beginning I didn’t understand that.”

He said, “You shouldn’t talk about such things. That’s just being negative.” In other words, Sister Gyanamata was a saint. Why mention anything else? He always wanted us to be positive and to focus on goodness.

The power of negativity
Yogananda also cautioned me against speaking about negative situations. He once asked me to attend an installation ceremony at the Masonic lodge of one of our members. The ceremony ended in shambles, with half the lodge members walking out in angry protest.

When I told Yogananda what had happened, he said, “Don’t say anything about it.”  At first I was surprised, since the Masons would never get wind of my remarks, but I realized that he was warning me of the power of negativity itself.

“Avoid speaking negative things,” he would tell us. “Why look at the drains, when there is beauty all around? When we concentrate on the good, we take on goodness. When we look at the negative side long enough, we ourselves take on negative qualities.”

Radiate love and harmony
Always try to keep away from negative influences. Mixing with people who are negative tends to influence one to see things in negative terms.

Learn to radiate love and harmony. By loving others, you will overcome the tendency to judge them. Therese of Avila trained her nuns always to think something positive about a person whenever they came into view. This would be a good practice for everyone to adopt.

A negative wish or feeling
Is a critical attitude invariably negative? A critical attitude becomes negative to the extent that it has a negative feeling behind it. We might be offended by what someone does and even need to reproach him. The important thing is never to disapprove of him as a person.

You become negative when you have a negative feeling, or a negative wish about a situation or person. Judgmental people, for example, want only for those they scorn to be hurt or destroyed.

Practicality is not negativity. It’s important to have both feet on the ground, to be able to see where things could go wrong, and to respond accordingly. That’s being realistic, not negative.

The yes-saying principle
In overcoming negativity, it’s very important to learn to say “yes” to life.  Instead of becoming angry and resentful when something unpleasant comes to you, say, “Yes, “I attracted this to myself. There’s something I’m meant to learn from it.”

Anger and resentment are useless emotions, but you can change things if you say, “It was energy I put out that drew this experience to me. What can I do to prevent this from happening again?” With that attitude you place yourself in the driver’s seat.  No longer are you a leaf blowing in a wind over which you have no control.

Accept everything that comes to you as coming from the hand of God, as His gift even, and you will see that your greatest challenges in life turn out to be your greatest blessings. They are His way of helping you to see things more deeply, more beautifully.

“God gave it to me”
There is a lovely example of this from the life of St. Francis. At the start of his mission, St. Francis would go to people’s houses with a bucket and ask for whatever food they could give him. In the beginning, no one respected his way of life, so people gave him horrible stuff from their garbage pails. His first reaction was a turning sensation in the stomach.

But then he would say, “This is wonderful because God gave it to me.” And he would eat the food with joy. With that positive, accepting attitude, he brought people to the point where they began to treat him differently, too.

Importance of meditation and centeredness
To overcome negativity, mental resolutions are not enough. You need to introduce meditation and the higher dimension of the superconscious.

The more you meditate, the more you become centered in yourself, which gives you the ability to direct your will in a positive way and to filter out negative thoughts—you simply don’t accept them.  When your will power is strong, you can quickly and easily say “no” to whatever you want to exclude from your life.

Otherwise, you get caught in the ego, which will feed back thoughts and attitudes from the subconscious mind—thoughts that you are weak, a failure, that it’s all right to be angry, and so on.

Why saints aren’t negative
You will transcend negativity when, like the saints, you have completely overcome the tendency to wish ill toward anyone or anything, and when you can accept this world as it is, without criticism or judgment.

Saints are non-judgmental, forgiving, and accepting of all things. As Yogananda wrote of Master Mahasaya in Autobiography of a Yogi, they see the world “without a breath of criticism” because they have realized that behind all the pain, disappointments, and challenges, there is only God’s love and bliss.

They’ve understood that even the most evil people are a part of the divine play and that they, too, will eventually turn toward God. It may take many, many lifetimes, but it will happen.

Excerpted from an August 26, 1985 talk at Ananda Village and a 1979 seminar on superconscious living. To buy a recording of the 1985 talk (CD or MP3), call Treasures Along the Path, (530) 4870-7656 or email treasures@ananda.org.

Like the good child who is unaware of his goodness, the devotee who is absorbed in the beauty of God is unaware of his own divine qualities. Just as a child lives happily and confidently secure in the protecting power of parents, so also does the devotee, by becoming a divine child, relinquish all fear and depend completely on the all-protecting power of God.

By contrast, the person who does not cultivate the childlike qualities latent in the souls constantly tortured by self shyness, worries, fear, and attachments, which drown his peace in an ocean of misery.

Before our Heavenly Father we should be like little children.  He likes that.  He doesn’t need from us carefully contrived theological definitions.  And He doesn’t want prayers that are chiseled to perfection lest they give offense to His imperial ears.  He wants us to love Him in all simplicity, just like children.

Excerpted from: Inner Culture 1938-40; Essence of Self-Realization, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

A. Years ago, I discovered that one of my biggest challenges as a nurse was attachment—attachment to the person I was serving, and also to my role as a caring professional. My first big awareness of this came when I found myself in tears because I was unable to be present at the childbirth of a favorite patient. This was in the 1970s, long before I came onto the spiritual path.

Q. How and when did you come onto the spiritual path?

A. In 1984, after hearing an Ananda minister, Asha Praver, give a talk in Seattle, Washington on “How To Bring God into Every Moment of Your Life.”  Her talk affected me profoundly, especially in helping me see how much I yearned for a spiritual life.

At the time, I was teaching nursing at the University of Washington School of Nursing and also seeing patients. After hearing Asha discuss the eight aspects of God, especially peace, calmness, love, and joy, I realized that what I most loved about teaching and nursing was being able to express these divine qualities, and helping students and patients express similar qualities.

Q. As you studied Yogananda’s teachings and began to meditate, were you able to bring those qualities more into your work?

A. Yes, and I was discovering that when attuned to the divine qualities, one’s energy becomes more deeply healing.

Q. You mentioned that attachment has been one of your biggest challenges. Have you been able to resolve that?

A.  I took a big step toward resolving it when I made the decision to leave for a desert retreat, even though a friend had suddenly become severely ill, with the possibility of dying. I was then living at Ananda Village (I moved there in 1987), and I worked as a Nurse Practitioner at the nearby clinic founded by Dr. Peter Van Houten, an Ananda devotee.

Q. How did this decision help you overcome attachment?

A. This woman and I were very good friends and I was also one of her caregivers. So it was natural for me to want to be with her during her crisis. At the same time, she had been through several such medical “crises” previously, and she always came through them just fine.

The situation forced me to introspect and try to figure out what was the dharmic or “righteous” decision—to stay, in order to be part of her support team, or to go ahead with my plans to take time off and nurture myself with a much-needed rest.

My first inclination was to stay, because staying seemed so obviously the right thing to do. But the thought kept coming that I was attached  both to being with her, and to my image of myself as a good friend and caregiver, and that for my own spiritual growth, I needed to go.

So, after much agonizing and trying to tune into inner guidance, I decided to go as a conscious act of non-attachment and faith that God was the Doer and fully in charge.  I also believed I would be an even stronger part of her support team while away because I would have much more time to meditate and pray.

Q. Ultimately, did you feel you made the right decision?

A. Ultimately, yes, but I had a great deal of self-doubt about it for some time. My friend died while I was away, which was very difficult for me. I so deeply regretted not being with her when she died that it wasn’t easy to break through my emotions and see how my leaving might have actually been good for both of us. Only after a lot of meditation, prayer and soul-searching was I convinced that I really had made the right decision.

I felt my friend’s presence very strongly the whole time I was away, and I know my prayers and visualizations reached her. Spiritually, this experience was an important turning point in my learning to trust my inner guidance, to trust God, and to trust the power of prayer.

Q. Being able to help people from afar is the foundation of Ananda’s healing prayer ministry. Was this your first experience of the truth of this teaching?

A. I was part of the healing prayer ministry and believed this to be true, but in this situation I was actually able to experience that it was true.

Q. In this experience with your friend, you resolved a potential conflict between your role as a nurse and what was right for you spiritually. Have you faced that potential conflict in other situations?

A. Many times! There was another big lesson around this issue involving this same friend who died. When I first learned of her diagnosis with a very serious and usually fatal illness, I wanted to mobilize a community support system to assist her in coping with her illness. My training as a nurse had taught me how important this was.

Swami Kriyananda, however, told her that she shouldn’t share the diagnosis with any more than the few of us who already knew. This surprised me, but at this point in my spiritual development, I knew enough to accept that Swami Kriyananda’s inner attunement with the Divine was likely to be more “right” than my “professional” knowledge.

Months later, I was able to see the wisdom of his guidance. He had wanted my friend to become strong enough in her acceptance of the diagnosis, and in her commitment to make it an opportunity for spiritual growth, that she wouldn’t be weakened by the fears of others.

Q.  How might others’ fearful thoughts have weakened your friend?

A. My friend had been told that she probably had only about eighteen months to live. She was frightened and in shock, and her aura was weak, which made her susceptible to becoming even more ill from the negative, fearful thoughts of others.

After taking a few months to become stronger in her mind and in her attunement with her Guru, she was able to share her situation with others without their fears weakening her resolve to fight as a spiritual warrior. By giving full energy to her spiritual practices, she lived another ten years with vitality and joy.

Q. Have there been other experiences that strengthened your faith that God is fully in charge of our lives?

A.  It’s been a major recurring issue for me. A key situation involved a devotee who was dying of cancer and came with his wife to live his last days near Ananda Village—to be in the vibration of other devotees. Toward the end, the man’s wife was having difficulty coping with his physical needs and his impending death.

One day, while driving back to the clinic after changing his dressings, I prayed to Paramhansa Yogananda: “Why can’t you just take him? He’s ready to go!”  In that moment I “heard” a response, “But what if by staying in his body a few more days his soul could be liberated?”  Immediately I retracted my request!

From then on, I’ve had a much easier time accepting that God has a plan, and that the only appropriate prayer in situations involving peoples’ lives and health is: “Thy will be done.”

Q. Can you share any other instances of where you came to see that God was “in charge” when it wasn’t immediately obvious?

A. I learned another aspect of this truth while treating a woman at Ananda Village who had sustained a severe injury to her leg. As the doctor and I were cleaning the wound, which was very deep, I apologized because our efforts were obviously increasing her pain.

She looked at me very seriously and said: “About a week before the accident, I dreamed that I had lost my leg.  I know that it’s only by Guru’s grace that instead of losing my leg, I got this nasty wound.  I’m very grateful it wasn’t worse.”

I’ve always remembered this dramatic demonstration of how much worse things could be if it weren’t for God’s grace, and how easy it is to forget that a loving God is in charge and taking very good care of us, even if it doesn’t seem so from our limited perspective.

Q. Currently you are serving as director of the new “Lifestyles for Radiant Health” program at the Expanding Light at Ananda Village. How does this tie into your efforts to integrate spirituality and health?

A. Ultimately, the course enables participants to see radiant health as a bridge to spirituality. Yogananda says that the highest level of healing is spiritual, and involves opening to God’s presence within.

For this, there are no better tools than those Yogananda brought: Energization Exercises, meditation techniques, affirmations and visualizations. These same spiritual tools also enable us to achieve radiant health on all levels—physical and mental as well as spiritual.

Q. You’ve offered the program twice now. How have people responded?

A. Participants have loved the course for how it empowers them to move to their next steps in radiant health of body, mind, and soul.

Q. It seems, then, that this course is very much in alignment with your spiritual goals?

A. Indeed, it is. It brings me great joy to help others awaken to their soul natures.  And for some people, the doorway to that awakening is their health.

Mangala, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and serves as Director of the “Lifestyles for Radiant Health” program at the Expanding Light.

I am not advocating neglect of one’s duties; that, of course, would be contrary to the laws of spiritual development. I am entreating my students, in whatever walk of life, to devote some portion of each day to personal physical improvement. This will speed one’s spiritual unfoldment. Nothing is gained by physical neglect; in fact, it retards spiritual evolution.

Life itself is God-given and our physical vehicle comes from the same source. How, then, can we in good conscience abuse or neglect that which is lent us for our earthly sojourn?

The care we give ourselves enables us to render greater service to mankind. While we cannot force salvation upon another, we can do our best to set an example of overall well-being. Bodily health is a magnet that draws others to us.

Whether we are blessed with it at birth or acquire it, good health is a symbol of spiritual progress. Sometime, somewhere we have worked for it. If we are suffering now, then health is a treasure we have lost, and its absence points to an important lesson we came here to learn.

“In all things, moderation”
We are told: “In all things, moderation.” This admonition applies to health in its various aspects: work, eating, rest, and recreation. Most of us over-do, at least in one direction.

Practically all of us overeat. Few, indeed, ever leave the table feeling only partially full, yet that is one of the chief secrets of maintaining a healthy body, and getting real benefits from our food.

Others have so great an appetite for their work that all else is subservient, and health suffers as a consequence. For the over-conscientious worker, frequent periods of complete relaxation are recommended, and also some form of amusement. Without “respites” that take the mind completely off work, one’s perspective narrows and the sponge of energy is squeezed dry.

Then there are those in whom the play spirit is hyper-developed. Though it is good to indulge in some form of amusement, that, too, taxes our time and energy if done too often.

Everything we eat, think, and do affects bodily health. Periodically, we need to take inventory and ask ourselves: What we are aiming toward? How are we progressing toward that goal? Is it at the expense of our health?

Cultivate personal attractiveness
Contrary to the views of many teachers, we do not advocate developing the spiritual at the expense of personal attractiveness. Even though your work may involve serving humanity, you nonetheless must make the most of your personal appearance.

Beauty