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What is needed today is a spiritual army of souls demonstrating—not militantly or aggressively, but with sincerity declared—their commitment to higher values, to God, and to a firm rejection of worldly values.

Just consider a modern street in the pulsing heart of any city, with crowds rushing here and there bent on the business of profit, acquisition, and involvement with desires. In any such crowd there may be a few people whose thoughts are focused on higher goals. But who, on beholding that crowd, would gain any inkling of the fact?

It is time, certainly, for those few who know from within that there is a higher way of life, to demonstrate clearly, in some outward manner, that they have a more valid goal than mere absorption in materialism and ego-consciousness.

A renunciate order in which people demonstrate their commitment not by shouting their beliefs, waving flags and banners, or in other ways campaigning outwardly, but simply by the garb they wear—this, surely, would be a minimal way to “stand up and be counted.”

Why a new renunciate order?
In my new book, A Renunciate Order for the New Age, I propose a new model of renunciation for this new age of energy. I also propose to open the path of renunciation to all those, whether married or single, who deeply yearn to know God. Both women and men may become swamis and couples may work together toward that goal.

The monastic order of swamis in India was reorganized many centuries ago by the first, or adi, Swami Shankara. The age in which he lived, Kali Yuga, was far more materialistic than the age in which we live today. People weren’t nearly so mobile and their mental horizons were narrowly circumscribed.

To find God, or to realize the Divine Presence in one’s life, was almost impossible for those who were not specifically devoted to spiritual progress. Those who lived in the world, who engaged in profit, and particularly who were married and had families, simply could not expand their horizons to include the divine search.

The old way was right for those days, when mankind’s awareness was much narrower. In modern times, matter is known to consist only of vibrations of energy. People’s thinking is more fluid, more intuitive, more centered in principle than in outer forms.

Renunciation, as practiced in the past, no longer appeals to people in this age of greater freedom of thought and consciousness. It is more uplifting nowadays to concentrate on the positive aspects of renunciation. Burn up all attachments—to home, for instance—but concentrate positively on the complete absence of ego itself. Be humble, but not self-abasing; instead, see God as the true Doer of everything.

The old method of renunciation was world-negating; the new one is samadhi-affirming. One’s concentration, in other words, is on the joy of soul-freedom in God.

It is now possible, in this age of increasing enlightenment, to emphasize such positive aspects of renunciation as soul expansion; the inner freedom of simple living; greater mental and spiritual clarity through sexual moderation or, best of all, through complete sexual abstinence; and the sheer delight of discovering joy within oneself.

Freedom from ego consciousness
During Kali Yuga, most people could not comprehend that the ego really has no existence except in its fleeting dream-reality. Today, however, people are able to understand, at least intellectually, that our separate reality is but an illusion and that we are all, in truth, but a single reality. It is thus easier for people today to focus on ego-transcendence directly instead of approaching it indirectly through non-attachment and strict non-involvement with the material world.

The real delusion to overcome is the bondage of ego-identity. The true goal of renunciation is to help one to rid himself of that self-limiting identity. Freedom from ego-consciousness, therefore, is the primary direction I envision for true renunciation.

More important than working on specific desires, attachments, and outwardly directed delusions is the work we do to eliminate our sense of separatness from the great Ocean of Life. All who would become worthy of the kingdom of God must expand their ego-consciousness to the vast Self of which the ego is but a little part—a mere grain of sand on a vast beach surrounding the ocean of cosmic consciousness. All must seek infinite self-expansion. As Paramhansa Yogananda wrote in his great poem, Samadhi:  “Myself in everything enters the Great Myself.”

The stages of renunciation
To become inwardly sure that you are ready for full sannyas, or complete renunciation, you should first go through the stage of preliminary renunciation— brahmacharya, if you are single, or tyaga, if you are married. Men who practice tyaga are known as tyagis; women, as tyaginis. Single men are called brahmacharis; women, similarly, are called brahmacharinis.

Married people may often do better to wait until they are past the child-rearing years before embracing the stage of tyaga. How long should a couple wait before they commit themselves to a life of tyaga? It should not depend only on age. Young persons, too, may be ready. But all must prove themselves—to others as well as to themselves—before taking this step.

The vows of brahmacharya and tyaga are vows truly, and not mere resolutions. You must have sufficient conviction to be able to say, “I am sure, now, that this is the direction I want to go, and I will build my life around it.”

When you feel ready to proclaim outwardly your complete commitment to the spiritual path, you may embrace formal sannyas and become a swami. At this stage, renunciates ought to no longer see themselves as men or women. Thus, renunciates of both sexes should be given the same title:  swami.

Because this is a new renunciate order, I recommend that all swamis receive, in addition to the title, the designation naya—that is to say, “new.” Thus, my own name would be Nayaswami Kriyananda.

Only God is qualified to judge
What this new renunciate order will emphasize is direction, not fixed attainments. Fixed rules belong to Kali Yuga. The true path to God is directional. It does not consist of fixed and absolute regulations.

Regardless of any future slip in one’s dedication to one’s ideals, so long as the direction of his aspiration is upward, there should be no outward punishment or “demotion” from whatever status he has attained. One is fit to be a renunciate at every level, including that of swami, as long as he shows that his heart is firmly dedicated to achieving final perfection.

Because many of the virtues mentioned here are questions of attitude, one’s worthiness to continue to keep the title tyagi or nayaswami must be left up to the individual’s conscience. There comes a point where only God is qualified to judge.

The important thing is that one’s true direction be toward God, not away from Him. A slip is not a fall, and does not in any way deserve to be condemned. I once said to my guru, “I would rather die than succumb to temptation.” He remonstrated, “why be so absolute? If you keep trying, God will never let you down.”

Why stand up and be counted?
A new order of renunciation would lose much of its spiritual merit were it kept a secret. It is desperately important today for people who long for a higher way of life to be reassured that they are not alone. If there is safety in numbers, there is also the need for reassurance from a sufficiency of numbers.

I don’t say, “Join Ananda.” Rather I say, wherever you are, and whatever your path or stage of life, join this order; embrace its ideals; commit yourself to them in action.

If you are married, discuss this way of life with your spouse. I haven’t asked you to roam the highways like the sannyasis of old but simply to change your attitude toward life. Married couples would admittedly find it difficult—in the streets, or even about the home—to wear the garb of tyaga, but on special spiritual occasions, surely, they can do so.

Brahmacharis, brahmacharinis, and swamis (whether married or unmarried) should be less reticent. To show the courage of their convictions seems to me right, and even necessary. The face they show to the world should normally include not only their eyes, mouths, and noses, but also their life commitment.

A signal to those who share your ideals
Such a social change must be introduced gradually. Paramhansa Yogananda, when in America, dressed in a normal business suit. He demonstrated the differentness of his calling, however, by wearing a scarf—not orange, in fact, but white—covering his chest. In India, he wore the traditional orange garb of an Indian swami.

Although he wanted our daily garb to be normal, he did say that he wanted us someday to wear monastic garb. Has that day arrived yet? Perhaps not in the West. In India? More probably.

Married couples would find it very awkward to wear a special garb except at public spiritual functions. They can, however—indeed, all monastics can—wear something suggestive of their spiritual vocation: turquoise for tyagis; golden yellow for brahmacharis; royal blue for nayaswamis.

They could wear shirts or blouses of the appropriate color. When men wear suits, they could wear an appropriately colored handkerchief folded visibly in the breast pocket; women could do the same with scarves, sashes, or something else that is suitable.

The point in any case is not to stand up and be counted by others, but as a signal to those who share your ideals: “You are not alone.” Gradually the signal would become more and more widely known and accepted. The time when it becomes widely respected will be, I suggest, when a monastic might feel free to go anywhere, fully dressed in the suitable garb.

A non-institutional renunciate order
I have tried to make it clear, and want to emphasize again, that this new renunciate order  is not my movement. It is not confined to one organization nor is it limited to the members of Ananda. It is intended to stand alone.

Since Paramhansa Yogananda was sent, however, to help bring fundamental change to an entire civilization, I have proposed that all swamis of this new renunciate order accept him as their adi (first, or supreme) guru.

But I don’t want to approach the order to the slightest degree as something sectarian. It should become sufficiently widespread to effect a broad change in society. For I deeply feel that this movement can help to uplift the world.

I state urgently that mankind very desperately needs our new renunciate order. Many thousands of people need, now, to “stand up and be counted.”

Excerpted from A Renunciate Order for the New Age, Crystal Clarity, Publishers.

To view Swami Kriyananda’s talk, “The True Purpose of Life”,“click here:

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

Selected from Music To Awaken Superconsciousness, Clarity Sound & Light. To order, click here

Selected from Music To Awaken Superconsciousness, Clarity Sound & Light. To order, click here

Selected from Music To Awaken Superconsciousness, Clarity Sound & Light. To order, click here

Selected from Music To Awaken Superconsciousness, Clarity Sound & Light. To order, click here

Selected from Music To Awaken Superconsciousness, Clarity Sound & Light. To order, click here

The order is based on renouncing the ego rather than renouncing the world, and is intended for people everywhere, including married couples, who are committed to finding God. It is not tied to Ananda, nor will it be centralized or even administered by Ananda. Kriyananda describes it as a “non-institutional” approach to renunciation.

In the book, Kriyananda invites all those who are already living by these principles, whatever their religious affiliation, to become part of the order. He gives vows for single renunciates (brahmacharis), married renunciates (tyagis), and for final renunciation or sannyas (swamis), to which he adds the term “naya,” or new. Thus, a number of us have already become nayaswamis.

With Kriyananda redefining renunciation in ways appropriate for this new age, Dwapara Yuga, one can easily see monks from Christian and Buddhist traditions deciding they would like to live according to these liberating principles. He ends the book with an invitation to swamis everywhere, who feel in tune with these new concepts, to join the order. 

God and Guru are directing the show
Central to this order is the concept that all true renunciation involves dissolving the ego. In past ages one approached dissolving the ego indirectly by controlling outer behavior. While it is important to renounce attachment to possessions, sexual indulgence, and self-will (the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience), it is even more beneficial to renounce the ego, where all desires and behaviors originate.

Renunciation also means developing the faith to live entirely in tune with the will of God. For “control freaks,” this may be a scary thought, because you must renounce not only self-interest, but also the thought that you are in control of your own life.

Even sincere seekers find old karmic patterns of desire and attachment blocking their attunement efforts. So we need to keep reminding ourselves to make attunement with God and Guru uppermost. We always need to remember that God and Guru are directing the show.

Why take an outward formal step?
Some may think, “I’ve already committed myself to the spiritual quest as deeply as I can. Becoming part of this new order won’t change that. Is it necessary to take an outward formal step to make that statement of commitment?”

No, of course not. Our relationship with God is sacred and private. And yet, those of us who have taken formal vows, or are even considering taking them, have found the process to be an enormous aid to our inner life.

Furthermore, the world needs clear examples of renunciation. In one sense, we’re taking this step to show that offering one’s life to God leads to the very happiness that so many are seeking through materialism.

The world seems to promise fulfillment — through fame, wealth, sexuality, power— but every one of these turns out to be a dead end. People find that even if they achieve every goal, happiness still eludes them.

Those who are deeply committed to the search for God have a responsibility to demonstrate that living for God-realization does lead to both spiritual and worldly fulfillment. In the words of Christ: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

A road map to Self-realization
Swami Kriyananda lists fourteen qualities of a “true renunciate” which apply to the three forms of renunciation he presents in the book. (See list at end of article)

One might say that these qualities, as presented in the book, describe a person who has achieved Self-realization, or is close to achieving it. Obviously these states are not easily attainable and are probably beyond most who will be joining the new order. But, those of us who take this step of formal renunciation should assume that these fourteen qualities describe our code of behavior and consciousness. In fact, these are wonderful directional pointers for anyone seeking freedom from ego.

Someone remarked, “Even though Swamiji has been urging us to become jivan muktas (freed while living), it always seemed beyond my capacity. Seeing these fourteen points makes me think, ‘I can do that!’”

Samadhi affirming vs. world renouncing
Kriyananda describes this order as “samadhi-affirming,” rather than “world-renouncing.” In the past, during Kali Yuga, people attempted to spiritualize life by suppressing worldly attractions. Releasing these attachments is still a very important part of the spiritual life. We can’t simply ignore the fact that maya (delusion) exerts a tremendous pull on the consciousness.

But more effective than pushing away or denying desires is to affirm the freedom that comes with getting rid of ego. True renunciation is overcoming the ego from which all worldly pulls arise. To push away desires doesn’t overcome ego. At best it overcomes some of the impediments to getting out of ego-consciousness.

What gets us out of ego is an expansion of soul consciousness beyond the egoic “I” — the soul identified with the body and the personality. By expanding our consciousness, we begin to break that identification. The ultimate expansion of consciousness is the state of samadhi, or complete oneness with God.

So, the new approach to renunciation is to concentrate not so much on what we want to overcome, but rather on what we want to become.

What expands our consciousness?
What are the things that expand our consciousness? Take a concept like non-attachment to possessions. The old method was not to have possessions because of the danger of becoming ensnared in delusion. This approach was negative: “I can’t have this. I can’t have that. All possessions are perilous.”

The new approach is to emphasize the self-expansion and freedom that non-attachment brings. Thus Paramhansa Yogananda suggested that we embrace simplicity rather than poverty. Simplicity is the voluntary release of “unnecessary necessities.” It leads to inner freedom and the realization that we own nothing and belong to no one. This approach is positive, expansive, and samadhi-affirming.

If someone insults you – laugh!
Now, in Dwapara Yuga, we know that energy is the basic substance of the universe and we can understand subtler approaches to renunciation. We understand that it is not outward form, but inner self-offering, that helps us transcend the ego. Swami Kriyananda says that often in his book: “Ego transcendence is renunciation!”

In the chapter in the book called “Ego Transcendence,” Kriyananda gives 27 techniques for transcending the ego. People have a tendency to think that renunciation means never to smile or laugh or enjoy anything. All these old Kali Yuga images come to mind.

But renunciation in Dwapara Yuga is not joyless. Kriyananda’s suggestions are absolutely charming. He says, for instance, “If someone tells a good joke, don’t think you have to tell a better one; let them have the final word. If someone insults you—laugh.

Here are a few other examples from the book:

If someone makes an incorrect statement, don’t bother to correct him—unless you consider it important to do so. Then, instead of flatly contradicting him, make it clear first that you know he is interested only, as are you, in the truth.

Don’t be self-effacing. Simply show calm respect to everyone. Show respect even to foolish people—and more so, if anything, to children, because of the common tendency to speak to them condescendingly.

In conversation, don’t wait impatiently for your “chance to speak your piece.” Listen respectfully, and, if possible, listen with interest.

In group conversations, be neither a groundhog (diving into your hole in fear of your own shadow) nor a lion (beating everyone into submission with the loudness of your roar), but think rather in terms simply of sharing with others.

Be sincere. Don’t “back bashfully into the limelight”—as someone once described Albert Einstein doing. Let your modesty express your true feeling, and not be a show you put on to impress others.

If someone challenges your point of view, never let the discussion sink to a level of personal animosity.

Little points like these are the building blocks to ego transcendence, and make the process so real and doable. And as we read that chapter we realize that renunciation isn’t about what God takes away from us—it’s about finding the freedom of no longer having all those pesky thoughts of “I,” me” and “mine” revolving around ourself.

New ego-transcending colors
Kriyananda selected a “royal blue” color for the nayaswami robes because it supports ego-transcendence better than the traditional orange. In explaining he says:

Orange goes with declamation, blue with sharing and with an invitation to share with others. Orange goes with imposition, blue with sympathetic self-offering. Orange when outwardly directed can induce egotism, blue can inspire self-expansion to infinity.

The old orange color was an image of authority, but if we take that image too far it becomes just another bundle of self-definitions: “I am a swami. I am a renunciate. I’m better than others.” Soon we find ourselves encased in yet another veil of ego.

In A Renunciate Order for the New Age, Swami Kriyananda is creating a new way of life that addresses the needs of spiritual seekers today. It is a crowning achievement of a life of making Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings accessible to people everywhere. Its impact on society will be far-reaching, perhaps beyond anything that we can now envision.

The Marks of a True Renunciate
by Swami Kriyananda

What are the marks of those whom I’d consider worthy of being accepted true renunciates? They would be those who have achieved noteworthy progress toward the attainment of the following virtues:

1. They have no, or very few, attachments or desires.

2. They are without anger. (Anger appears in the heart when one’s desires are thwarted.)

3. They accept without prejudice whatever life gives them, and live by the principle,  “What comes of itself, let it come.”

4. They never seek to justify or defend themselves, but accept all judgment by others dispassionately, as experiences given them by God for their higher good.

5. They keep in their hearts primarily the company of God.

6. They are indifferent to others’ opinions of them.

7. They work without personal motive, to please God alone.

8. They are impersonal in the sense of wanting nothing for themselves, but never in the sense of being indifferent to the needs of others.

9. They see all beings as striving toward the attainment of Satchidananda: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss, no matter how presently misguided the efforts of some people may be. Thus, they feel kinship with everyone, and with all life.

10. They accept nothing as their own, but only as being “on loan” to them, for the benefit of others.

11. They view pleasure and pain equally, as opposite (or dual) expressions of eternal, divine bliss.

12. They have meditated daily for years.

13. Because they are always happy in themselves, they are impervious to insults, outer suffering, failure, defeat, or disaster. They strive to live the ideal that Paramhansa Yogananda voiced when he said, “You should be able to stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds!”

14. They strive to love God unceasingly, and ever more deeply, in a spirit of utter openness to be guided by His will.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

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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:

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

One of the great blessings of meditation is that I am less reactive emotionally and can now view situations more objectively. Gradually I am learning that it’s possible to remain centered and act with kindness even in harsh or chaotic circumstances, whether in my personal life or in my work as a Family Court attorney.

Do we reap what we sow?
A recent experience with a tenant in a rental house I own brought greater clarity around these issues. This tenant—a woman—was living in the house when I bought it. I was counting on the rent payments to help offset the monthly mortgage payments and was pleased I didn’t have to find a tenant on my own.

At first, this woman, who owned a small business, seemed reasonable and paid her rent on time. After a few months, however, she started paying the rent later and later in the month. Over the course of two years, she often experienced financial difficulties in her business and would fall behind in her payments.

My task, which I did not enjoy, was to call her whenever the rent was overdue. Whenever I called, I made a special effort to treat her with kindness and respect. I also prayed for her well-being. From the spiritual teachings, I assumed that if I planted “seeds” of love, kindness, and respect in my dealings with this woman, eventually I would “harvest” the same from her.

As the months passed, however, she responded more and more rudely. Often she accused me of being a “ruthless attorney” for asking for payment, in light of her financial troubles. I disliked her treatment of me but I assumed her anger reflected disappointment and pain about her business difficulties. I continued to pray for her and to treat her with kindness and respect, hoping that the seeds I was planting would eventually soften her attitude.

Toward the end of the two years, things worsened. Without my permission, she rented out one of the bedrooms in the house. By then, she owed three months back rent and refused to discuss any plan for paying the past due amount. There were no signs of improvement in her behavior toward me. In fact, she berated me each time I called and let me know she was paying other debts but choosing not to pay me.

After calling one last time, I served her with a notice to vacate and filed an eviction action. She moved out of the house, leaving it in a condition requiring major repairs.

Disappointed and hurt
I was hurt and disappointed in how things had turned out. I found myself questioning whether the spiritual teachings were even true. If they were true, why, then, didn’t she treat me with the same courtesy and respect I had shown her?  Why didn’t my kindness bring kindness in return? It upset me to think that she had perceived my kindness as weakness and looked upon me as someone she could manipulate.

Worst of all, I found myself wishing the same kind of negative treatment for her! I was ashamed of such thoughts and prayed and did japa whenever they arose. Nonetheless, my negative reactions persisted. When I meditated, thoughts of her behavior distracted my mind and prevented me from meditating deeply.

Gradually, over the next two months, through prayer and meditation, my feelings became more neutral. I felt more empathy for her, less focused on my hurt feelings.

Acting with non-attachment
Calming my negative emotions helped me understand that the spiritual teachings on “cause and effect” were true—the sages weren’t wrong!

But my understanding had been too simplistic. I now understand that when and how I reap the benefits of my positive energy depend on many things, including the strength of my magnetism, my tenant’s receptivity, and whatever karma I need to balance.

I may have behaved well in the situation with my tenant, but I certainly haven’t behaved well in all my relationships. Perhaps I had behaved badly toward my tenant in a former life. Or perhaps she was a “stand-in” for someone to whom I owed a karmic debt.

I had also lost sight of one of the most important teachings of the Bhagavad Gita—to relinquish attachment to the fruits of my actions. Meditation was helping me calm my emotions, but I was nonetheless very attached to my tenant’s responding a certain way.

Today I feel only compassion for my tenant for the suffering she experienced and gratitude for the important spiritual lessons I learned. As often happens, those who upset us the most turn out to be our most important teachers.

Emotional distress and physical pain
Not long ago I reached a point where the emotional challenges of my work as a Family Court attorney were pulling me down. Most of my adult clients are charged with child neglect or abuse. Some are incarcerated and many are emotionally unstable. I also represent abused and neglected children who are in foster care or with a family member pending the outcome of their cases. The eyes of every child I represent express deep sadness even when the child smiles.

Often I carried my clients’ pain and suffering in my own body, as either emotional distress or physical pain. Doing japa throughout the day was helpful, especially in dealing with my emotionally disturbed clients, but I needed something more.

Inner guidance: say healing prayers
At a certain point I felt the inner guidance in meditation to recite healing prayers whenever in the presence of others, and especially during my workday. The next day there were plenty of opportunities to pray for people. Whenever not completely alone, I would say the healing prayers I’d learned from Ananda:

Divine Mother, Thou art omnipresent. Thou are in all Thy children. Thou art in this person. Manifest Thy healing presence in his/her/their body, mind and soul.

Sometimes I used a shorter prayer: “Receive Lord in Thy light this child.”

Praying for others
In the courthouse hallway while waiting for my hearing to be called, I said healing prayers for my client and everyone who passed by. At the hearing, I prayed for the judge, his assistant, the court reporter, the opposing party—and everyone else in the courtroom. Anytime I didn’t have to speak I prayed. I found that I could listen attentively to others and pray at the same time.

While driving home, I prayed for all the drivers on the road, for my loved ones, my clients, my dog, and anyone I could think of who needed a prayer. Time flew as I drove 70 miles from the courthouse to my home.

When I arrived home I felt uplifted and deeply grateful in my heart. Surprisingly, my body and mind felt refreshed, even though I had worked long hours.

Amazing changes in everyone
Each day, whenever I could remember, I continued to say healing prayers, asking Divine Mother to bless all, to heal all. One day, I had twenty hearings that involved extensive contact with clients with major mental health problems. I prayed while listening to my clients and while waiting to speak at the hearings—and I was amazed by the changes I saw.

One teenage client arrived for his hearing looking very distraught. While sitting next to me, his body shook and his face twitched. He moved his hands constantly—either snapping his fingers or hitting his thighs. Within a few minutes of praying for him he was much less distraught and his twitching and hand movements had slowed considerably.

Another time, while waiting for a hearing to start, I was confronted by the mother of an adult client in prison. She had previously phoned and asked for copies of all documents in her son’s case and had not been pleased that I could not provide them without her son’s consent.

Now, when we met for the first time outside the courtroom, her eyes were angry and she breathed heavily. I immediately started saying healing prayers for her. Soon her breathing calmed down and she began to relax. During the hearing, I sent healing prayers to everyone in the courtroom. Afterwards, my client’s mother thanked me and has not called since.

Effects of healing prayers
I find that healing prayers help both my clients and me. Healing prayers take the burden of my clients’ pain and suffering from my shoulders and place it on God, where it truly belongs. Now, whenever my heart starts to ache over a client’s situation, I am reminded to pray and the pain dissolves.

As I feel less burdened by my clients’ suffering, I am freer to help them in ways that I can—primarily with my advocacy skills. As the instrument I too am blessed. I feel more compassionate toward my clients; sometimes a sweet positive energy suffuses our encounters. Where previously I often saw them as a burden, they are now reminders of God’s wisdom and love.

My clients are helped in other ways. Previously my adult clients were very angry and blamed “the system” for removing their children from their homes. However, with time and many healing prayers, they now pull their lives together and are either reunited with their children, or consent to the children’s being adopted or placed in foster homes. Most of my cases are now settled without a trial.

A divine experience
Recently I was driving home after a long day of visiting clients, both children and adults. I was tired, the traffic was noisy, and my business clothes were uncomfortable. Suddenly, my heart was soaring. Tears of joy filled my eyes and I heard myself say, “I love God.”  Never before had I felt such bliss.

Healing prayers have opened my heart to the flow of God’s love through me to my clients. In the process, my heart has become more open to God’s love—and to loving God. That is the greatest blessing of all.

A spiritual seeker since 1991, Daniella Nitya Ferrari is currently the leader of the Ananda Meditation and Book Study Group in Sedona, AZ.  In her work as a family law attorney, she represents indigent clients and abused and neglected children.

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

I was sympathetic because I knew he  believed deeply in the teachings of his church, but I realized that people are no longer content to hear, “Heaven will come after you die.” People want to do something right now that will make them better people.

And science is confirming that you can do things that will make you a better human being. In the process, science is also corroborating some of the most fundamental teachings of yoga.

Meditation: are they just sleeping?
It was my good fortune to participate in one of the very first scientific studies on meditation in the late 1970s at University of California at Irvine. I participated as both a researcher and guinea pig—that’s where I first learned to meditate.

The controversy in science at the time was whether people were doing something unique when they meditated or just sleeping. Well-known physiologists were saying, “When people meditate, they’re just napping and, of course, anyone would feel better with a little extra sleep.”

But the studies showed that meditation is a unique state, distinct from both normal waking consciousness and sleep, and that it has profound effects on a person’s body, brain, and nervous system. Since then, other studies have shown that meditation promotes calmness, uplifted feelings, will power, and a sense of humor, and is especially helpful in overcoming anxiety, depression, and addiction.

A tool for self-change
Paramhansa Yogananda, citing the ancient yoga teachings, was saying these very same things in the 1920s when he first came to the United States. He said, “I bet I can take a group of boys with the worst character and the most restless temperament. I’ll teach them to meditate two hours a day for four years in the way I tell them—and I’ll make saints of them.”

Yogananda was far ahead of science in understanding that these and other benefits of meditation reflect actual changes in the brain. He explained that during meditation, a person’s life force accumulates in the brain and permeates the brain cells, changing their composition. This process replaces harmful negative tendencies with positive, constructive tendencies.

At that time, most neuroscientists would have said, “Impossible. By the time you’re 25, your brain has finished changing.”

However, in the last twenty years, science has discovered that the brain is not only the most changeable part of our body, but that it is extremely fluid in how it responds to our behavior—any new activity, not just meditation, results in changes. When we learn a new language, ride a bicycle, or start a new job, we begin growing new brain cells. Within two weeks, there are significant brain changes.

Similarly, if a person gets into the habit of being very angry, the brain starts laying down new nerve pathways to allow that person to express anger more fully. As that happens, the nerve pathways that allow him to feel peaceful and happy start to wither and become less effective.

A new approach to psychotherapy
These new findings are being applied in very positive ways. Already there are changes in the practice of psychotherapy. In the behavioral health program at the clinic where I work, we use “cognitive behavioral therapy,” which builds on what science has shown about meditation and the changeability of the brain.

We teach everyone in the program to meditate, although we may call it by a different name, such as “relaxation technique.” We also give them behavioral assignments — new behaviors to learn, including affirmations. Our behavioral therapist might say to someone, “Okay, you’re mad at your mother. What positive steps are you going to take in the next week so that you will feel differently a week from now?”

For the vast majority of people, the cognitive behavioral model works far better than traditional psychotherapy’s practice of focusing on old issues and patterns. We’ve seen that people with habits of anxiety, panic, fear, or anger can learn new ways of responding to life. People with a long-standing history of depression can eventually go off medication. Those addicted to alcohol or drugs can overcome their addiction.

Increasingly, there are medical insurance plans that are only approving this type of therapy because studies have shown that it works.

Why is the brain so changeable?
Why is the brain so changeable? Because, as Sri Yukteswar said 120 years ago in The Holy Science, “Matter is only a vibration of energy.” Our bodies, including the brain, are not really solid. They are only holding patterns of energy—an inherently changeable medium.  As Yogananda explained in his early lessons:

All so-called solids that we see are not solid. They are nothing but flying atoms held together by a magnetic force. Even the atoms are an illusion, for behind them lies an ocean of energy manifesting itself through the atoms as rocks, trees, water, and human and animal bodies.

In 1905 Albert Einstein scientifically confirmed this fundamental teaching of yoga—that matter in its essence is energy. However, only in the last 30 years has there been overall agreement in the scientific community. The breakthrough came with the findings of  “quantum physics,” which studies the atomic and subatomic world.

“Vibrating strings of energy”
Quantum physics has shown that at the subatomic level, the universe no longer seems solid, and that we’re dealing with units best described as “smears of energy.”

Subsequent investigation suggests that these “smears of energy” are really tiny “strings” that vibrate like the strings on a cello. “String theory,” as it’s called, sounds very much like what Sri Yukteswar said over 100 years ago: to think of matter not as something solid but as vibrating energy.

More recently, the physicists who work in string theory have been saying, “As we look more closely as these vibrating strings of energy, they don’t even seem like energy; they’re more like thoughts.”

String theory is exactly how yogis from ancient times have described the nature of the universe. God, in creating the universe, first vibrated his consciousness into thoughts. He then vibrated those thoughts more grossly into energy, and finally, He vibrated that energy more grossly into physical forms.

Our environment can change us
If we want to become better people, we need to pay attention not only to our own thoughts and actions but also to our environment. When we move through the world, we’re constantly interacting with it on very subtle levels of energy. To think that we can be in a bar, a crowd, or an airplane and not be affected is a bit like being in a restaurant with a smoking and a non-smoking section, and thinking that all the smoke will stay in the smoking section.

The teachings of yoga have long discussed this influence of environment in terms of energy and magnetism. Yogananda himself often cautioned students to avoid negative, unwholesome environments. In his early writings, he made this sobering pronouncement:

The thoughts we think, the feelings and desires we harbor, are vibrations that affect, and are affected by, those of countless other people. Vibrations of thought are so powerful that if you live in the same building with persons who have wrong thoughts, they will affect you if you are not powerful enough to protect yourself.

The thoughts and the behavior of the scientist
Subatomic researchers are still in the early stages of understanding the exact mechanism by which environmental vibrations affect us, but what we already know is startling—that even minimal interactions between the observer and a subatomic process can change the subatomic energy patterns.

For example, a subatomic process will behave one way while being observed and a different way when being ignored. If the scientist observing a process leaves the room and returns, the process will have changed, suggesting that the process reacted to the researcher’s departure. We also know that the researcher’s expectations about a subatomic experiment can affect the outcome of the experiment.

These early findings suggest that science is well on its way to confirming Yogananda’s cautionary statement. At a minimum, they suggest that night clubs, bars, and loud rap music should be avoided.

A revolution in the spiritual sciences
The last five years have seen the development of a new field in science—neurotheology, scientific research into how spiritual practices affect the brain and nervous system.

Using new medical technology, including brain scans and other imaging techniques, scientists in the field of neurotheology can observe changes in the brain directly. Already they’ve compared what occurs in the brain of a Catholic nun when she does her rosary with what a Tibetan monk’s brain looks like when he’s doing his prayers.

We don’t yet have scientific studies on Kriya Yoga, which works directly on the brain and central nervous system, but I don’t think we’re far from the time when we’ll begin to see such studies. We’ll be able to look at a brain scan and understand why Yogananda described Kriya Yoga as “the airplane route to God”—a means of greatly accelerating spiritual progress.

As that happens, the number of people practicing of Kriya Yoga throughout the world is likely to increase significantly. People in this new age of energy are not only eager to become better people, they are looking for the fastest, most effective means to that end.

Excerpted from talks and interviews.

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

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

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. Don’t think it is 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. And as you lift one hand, God will lower two to pick you up. 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.

I choose to be thankful
So, it may not be surprising that, as a yoga teacher, I specialize in yoga therapy for musculoskeletal issues and bring to my work an expertise and compassion borne of experience. Rather than be resentful of what appears to be more than my fair share of injuries and illnesses, I choose to be thankful for what I have learned and for the blessing of being able to help others reach for optimal health—physically, mentally and spiritually.

I would like to add that I have never thought of myself as someone prone to illness and injury–I have always seen myself as healthy and hardy. You might even say that I had to work really hard to get some of my injuries. As an athlete, ballet dancer, horse rider and trainer, I often pushed myself to limits most people would have avoided.

Injuries led me to my dharma
Looking back, I can see the hand of God and Guru clearly helping me, through my many injuries, to fulfill my dharma as a yoga teacher. The injuries cut off some of the other avenues I might have taken—professional dancing, modeling, acting—pursuits that easily could have prevented me from having a spiritual life.

It was a back injury in the early 1980s that led me to Ananda. After a completely unhelpful visit to an orthopedic surgeon, I was feeling very low regarding my situation. Unexpectedly, I received a flyer from the Ananda San Francisco House announcing  a three-month intensive yoga teacher-training program. I had no desire to teach yoga, but while staring at the flyer I had an unexplainable “knowing” that taking this course would be a lifeline out of my downward spiral.

And it was! I had no idea the course would cover not only yoga postures but also yogic philosophy, spirituality, and the concept of a guru. I learned that everyone had a guru and I looked forward to finding mine.

It took several years for me to realize that I had already found my guru:Paramhansa Yogananda. By then, I had opened my own yoga studio in San Francisco and was teaching yoga.

A blessing not to feel pain
A source of deep fulfillment in my work as a therapeutic yoga teacher is the smile on peoples’ faces—the “light bulb” moments when pain has disappeared or is suddenly no longer acute. Often it’s a blessing  not to feel pain for any period of time. Many students have found pain relief, healing, and have avoided surgery through the therapeutic yoga sessions.

In a therapeutic yoga session, the problem presented by the student is usually physical, but the healing is both physical and spiritual, and often unexpected. This scenario is especially true with students new to yoga who would never seek spiritual counseling.

One example was a student who complained of a chronic shoulder problem. After I led him through a series of restorative poses, he began to open up and mentioned a disagreement with his daughter. Apparently feeling more comfortable, he then launched into a discussion of the issue underlying his shoulder problem: his Catholic background, his deepening feelings for Yogananda and the yogic spiritual path, and the conflicts these feelings caused him.

I spent most of the rest of the class quoting the Bible and pointing out the deeper meanings, and showing how they parallel the yoga teachings. The student found the parallels very reassuring, and by the end of the session his shoulder felt fine. He is now exploring Yogananda’s teachings more deeply with the goal of becoming a disciple.

A way to accelerate spiritual progress
I try to meet people where they are and to help them accordingly. However, when working with devotees, I can talk openly about meditation, the subtle energies, prayer, and spiritual growth as part of the healing process, which can lead to faster results. Devotees already understand the benefits of yoga postures, how they can help us sit for long periods of meditation and redirect our energy upward to the spiritual eye.

One student needed help with his spiritual practices and guidance on a hip problem. After observing him, it became clear that one practice would resolve both concerns. I instructed him to keep his attention at the spiritual eye at all times to the degree possible.

On a physical level, this upward focus lifted his torso enough to take the load off  his hips, and helped correct his hip and postural problems. As for his spiritual concerns—focusing more frequently at the spiritual eye throughout the day energized his entire spiritual life. This is a practice Yogananda strongly recommends for all devotees as a means of accelerating spiritual progress.

I put my trust in Yogananda
In my work as a therapeutic yoga teacher, I always pray to Yogananda  and ask him to guide me in how to work with students so that each one receives what he or she needs. I say, “Master, this is your student, you tell me what to do.”

By this process I have spiritualized my work and it has become a form of sadhana. Sometimes the guidance I receive makes no sense to me but it always turns out to be the right thing.

Once, for example, one of my “student-teachers” was guiding an older woman with a history of lower back pain. Following the teacher’s guidance, the woman was doing leg movements and stretches that had the potential to strain the lower back. My first impulse was to rush over and “correct” the situation. Wanting to be respectful to my students (especially when they are guiding others), I paused and asked Yogananda what to do.

The answer was to “do nothing.”  I asked again to be sure and the answer was clear: “Do nothing.” So, I put my trust in Yogananda and let the situation unfold. Later in the class, when the students gave feedback, the older woman expressed her gratitude and enjoyment for the helpful leg exercises her teacher had given her—the ones that “common sense” told me would not be good for her. I smiled and inwardly thanked my guru.

A different perspective on pain
As I’ve learned to rely more on God and Guru, and to understand that I am not the “doer,” I have become a more effective therapeutic yoga teacher. I receive the inspiration I need and teaching is much easier, with better results for my students. Also, by attempting always to practice the presence of God, I naturally begin to spiritualize everything I do, including my work.

As for my own healing journey, in the years since I first found Ananda, meditation and the practice of Kriya Yoga have given me an entirely different perspective on pain, which allows for a different experience of pain. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, “even a little practice of this inward religion will save you from dire fears and colossal suffering.”

Nicole DeAvilla Whiting lives in Marin County with her husband and two children. She teaches Ananda Yoga at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village and in Marin County, where she also leads an Ananda meditation group.

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

A rediscovery of ancient knowledge
Much modern knowledge, indeed, is not new, but only a rediscovery of what was known before. The ancient Greeks knew, for example, that the earth is round, and that it is not at the center of the universe. The ancient calendar of the Mayas, in Central America, was more exact than the modern calendar. And the writings of ancient India indicated sophisticated knowledge of the cosmos, including the atom.

Modern scholars, however, blithely believe that 10,000 years ago all men were sunk in a barbarous Stone Age. They summarily dismiss as “myths” all records and traditions of very ancient civilizations not only in India but also in China, Egypt, and other lands.

Knowledge of the subatomic world
The “atomic theory” is generally considered a new advance of science, but the atomic structure of matter was well-known to the ancient Hindus. One of the six systems of Indian philosophy is Vaisesika, which deals with the atomic nature of matter.

One of the foremost Vaisesika expounders was called Kanada, “the atom-eater,” born about 2800 years ago. Kanada brilliantly described the atomic structure of matter and assigned the origin of the world to atoms. In the Vaisesika treatises, the atom is described as resembling a miniature “solar system” and possessing an incessant vibratory motion.

The scientific knowledge recorded in the ancient Vaisesika treatises covered a vast spectrum. Other known scientific Vaisesika expositions include:

• The relativity of time and space
• The law of gravitation and its causes
• The movement of needles toward magnets
• The circulation of water in plants
• Heat as the cause of molecular change
• The nature of kinetic energy
• The radiation of heat and light rays (the modern “cosmic rays” theory)

Duality: the “texture and structure” of creation
The ancient Hindu scriptures declare that the physical world operates under the law of maya, the principle of duality. God’s one consciousness took on the appearance of opposites—positive and negative, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, etc. Every great scientific discovery of modern times has merely confirmed this simple pronouncement of the rishis.

Newton’s Law of Motion, for example, is a law of duality: “To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”  To have a single force is impossible. There must be, and always is, a pair of forces, equal and opposite.

The entire physical world reflects this polarity. Electricity is a phenomenon of repulsion and attraction—its electrons and protons are electrical opposites. Similarly, the atom, like the earth itself, is a magnet with positive and negative poles.

Maya or duality is the very texture and structure of creation. Scientists can do no more than probe one aspect after another of its varied finitude.

The limits of scientific knowledge
All creation is governed by law. Natural laws manifest in the outer universe and are discoverable by scientists. But only through the inner science of yoga is it possible to know the subtler laws ruling the hidden spiritual planes. Science, for example, understands that the activity of electrons and protons underlies all material forms. But scientists do not know how electrons and protons rearrange themselves into different forms and create different kinds of matter.

It is the fully Self-realized master who understands the subtle laws governing the material levels. He knows, through intuition, that it is the Divine Intelligence that commands electrons and protons to arrange themselves in different combinations. Atoms and electrons are blind forces, but prana, the intelligent life force, guides their activity according to the karmic design.

Science studies the nature of the universe outwardly, proving its existence by experimentation. But what is true to reason and sense perception is not always true. The only way to know truth is to intuitively realize it. Can you know the taste of sugar without tasting it? No! So it is with the yogi.

The yogi goes beyond experimentation to actual experience–he experiences everything within himself.  The scientist investigates the atom outwardly through experimentation, but the yogi becomes the atom. From within alone can a thing be understood in its true essence.

Future steps in man’s awakening
As steps in man’s awakening, God inspires scientists to discover, at the right time and place, the secrets of His creation. When we think of how fast light and electricity move, the flight of airplanes seems like the movement of an ox cart.

The time will come when man will learn to change the atomic vibrations of his gross body, make them into an astral force—and shoot along with the astral light rays, traveling faster than the speed of light. However, when man learns the full mystery of mind and matter, he will be able to travel faster than any force—material astral, or light. If he wished to be in the sun or the moon or the fastest star, he could be there instantly.

Truth—a constant rediscovery
Yoga is an ancient science, thousands of years old. Its perceptions form the backbone of the greatness of India. However, the truths espoused in the yoga teachings, are not limited to India, nor to those who consciously practice yoga techniques.

Whenever a great scientific or spiritual figure arises, East or West, his message does not differ in any essential respect from the ancient philosophy of India. Truth is One, though men call it by various names. There can be not be two truths.

Destroy all books, all traditional learning, and still the basic truths of life would be discovered all over again, exactly the same, by the inquiring spiritual mind with its penetrating insight.

Excerpted from books and articles.

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Kriyananda explains that there is a third, less well known state of awareness called the superconscious—the source of who and what we are in our highest spiritual reality, also known as the “soul” or “higher Self.”

Superconsciousness is that level of awareness that we experience when our mind is in a calm and uplifted state. It is the hidden mechanism at work behind intuition, spiritual and physical healing, and successful problem solving.

The physical center of superconsciousness is in the frontal lobe of the brain, at a point midway between the eyebrows, also known as the Christ center or spiritual eye. The more we are able to draw our energy and awareness upward to the Christ center, the higher our level of awareness.

Right attitude: key to effective meditation
Kriyananda points out that everyone has the potential to experience superconsciousness, but in most people it lies dormant. Meditation is the most direct way to awaken the superconscious, but to meditate effectively, we must first understand the goal of meditation and the important role of attitudes in attaining that goal.

Since the goal of meditation is to realize the oneness of all life, it’s important to live in such a way as to constantly affirm that oneness. Kriyananda writes that the first step in the development of right attitude for meditation is to learn to see others not as rivals, but as friends:

If I am willing to hurt the life in me as it is expressed in another human being, then I am affirming an error that is diametrically opposed to the realization I am seeking to attain. It is necessary if I would truly realize the oneness of all things, for me to live also in a way as constantly to affirm this oneness—by my kindness toward all beings, by compassion, by universal love.

The “right attitudes” discussed by Kriyananda are the universal moral principles of yoga, the yamas (the don’ts) and niyamas (the do’s). One of the best known of these is ahimsa, or non-injury, popularized by the protest movements of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Ahimsa addresses not only harmful actions, but also the harm caused by negative thoughts.

Passivity and mental blankness
Kriyananda cautions against passivity and the common misconception that meditation consists of making the mind blank. Mental blankness, he says, opens the mind to the lower vibratory influences and can be very dangerous.

And although relaxation is an important first step toward meditating, meditation is much more than just quieting the mind or sinking into subconsciousness.  Proper meditation requires deep concentration and sustained dynamic energy.

The distilled essence of Yogananda’s teachings
In Awaken to Superconsciousness, Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, distills the essence of the original yogic science brought to the West by the great yoga master. He leads the reader step by step through the methods by which we can attain this state of heightened awareness and begin to transform our lives.

Written in clear easy-to-understand language, the book provides a wonderful overview of the nature and purpose of meditation. Each chapter is filled with insights and wisdom from Kriyananda’s lifetime of experience as a world teacher and foremost exponent of meditation and yoga practice.

Beginning with simple relaxation exercises, the reader will find an easy-to-follow approach that combines breathing exercises, affirmations, mantras, guided visualizations and centering techniques as a preparation for meditation itself. At the end of each chapter there are meditation exercises, which help one to become more attuned to the superconscious level of reality.

In addition, Kriyananda offers practical advice on concentration, keeping the spine straight and the body relaxed, the best times of the day to meditate, duration and regularity of practice, and how to organize our time for maximum benefit.

The most meaningful activity in life
Quite apart from the outward benefits, the practice of meditation is, in and of itself, one of the most rewarding of all human activities. Kriyananda describes meditation as “simply the most meaningful activity in my life—indeed, the most meaningful activity I can imagine.” 

Awaken To Superconsciousness is a complete course in meditation and can be practiced with equal effectiveness by anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, whether agnostic or atheist. One’s personal experience is the only yardstick of effectiveness. 

Nayaswami Nakin, a minister and longtime member of Ananda, lives at Ananda Village and serves in the Sangha Office in a number of capacities, including as editorial assistant for Clarity Magazine.

To order a copy of Awaken to Superconsciousness, contact Crystal Clarity Publishers click here.

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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.

**********      **********      **********

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.

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Dear ——:

It is a mistake to think that you will ever find the perfect mate. Life, outwardly, cannot be other than a compromise between the ideal and reality. This is true in every walk of life, even in the ashrams of saints, for the world is limited, relative, and otherwise conditioned in countless ways.

Seek perfection, therefore, within yourself. The more you depend on outer circumstances to give you perfection, the more you will find disappointment. Remember, too, that your path to perfection depends not only on inner growth, but on the application of that inner growth to outer circumstances.

In other words, a relationship that seems lacking in personal fulfillment may be a great spiritual blessing for the opportunity it gives one to be a channel for divine love and service to help the other person. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Service and sacrifice, not outward fulfillment, are the essence of spiritual development.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

Excerpted from, In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection.

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Never will I let my mind dwell on anything that reminds me not of Thee! I will disdain the nightmare of ignorant behavior. I will court all dreams of noble achievement: those of love, kindness, and understanding, for they are Thy dreams.

Though I dream many dreams, wakefully I will ever think of Thee. In the sacred fire of constant remembrance, kept ever alight on my soul’s altar, I will ever behold Thy presence with the watchful eyes of devotional love.

Thy grace has shown me that the dualities of health and sickness, life and death, joy and sorrow are but passing fantasies. I am finished with those eternally self-canceling delusions!

I am persuaded at last that there is but one abiding reality: Thy eternal, ever-conscious, ever-new, ever-thrilling, infinite Bliss.

From Whispers from Eternity by Paramhansa Yogananda, edited by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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

Suddenly, those projects evaporated, no longer having any life or substance. In those first few seconds, I felt the slam of a battering ram to my gut, the breath totally knocked out of me. I was engulfed in horror and disbelief as I watched my worst nightmare unfold before me.

An immediate balm to fears
I went home and a few friends gathered around me. Not until an Ananda minister performed the Ananda astral ascension ceremony* for the soul of my son did I begin to feel grounded again in my body. I calmed down and started to sense that my son’s soul was protected.

I had been so afraid that he would be lost and confused after leaving the body in such an utterly abrupt way. The astral ascension ceremony acted as an immediate balm to those fears—I began to feel God’s inner presence again, and although I continued to have extreme ups and downs, from then on I knew Johnny was safe in God’s hands. Several months later he came to me in a sweet peaceful dream and let me know how fine he really was.

The start of the healing process
During those first few days, friends and family came in a constant stream, offering help on every level. One of my wonderful computer friends created a composite picture of Johnny with Jesus and Paramhansa Yogananda. In the photo Johnny is leaning against them, and they are embracing him.

That photo started my healing process—looking at it reminded me that Johnny was safe. We made an altar around that picture, placing with it many other photos of all stages of Johnny’s life and the many flower arrangements friends had brought. Several nights I slept in front of that altar, finding my only peace there.

A week after Johnny’s death we held a memorial service in the amphitheater at Ananda Village. Over 500 people attended. Johnny had excellent friends from all walks of life, but I had no idea just how many lives he had touched until he died. I could tell by looking into their eyes that many of his friends had no way of emerging from their grief and emptiness over his loss.

A power comes into me
While walking to the amphitheater I felt weepy, nervous, and shaky, but I didn’t have a choice but to speak. I wanted to give those of Johnny’s friends who didn’t have a spiritual base something that would help them transcend their loss.

Suddenly I felt a power come into me, and the nervousness vanished. God was giving me the strength to do this. That same power flowed through the two Ananda ministers who led the service and many of those who rose to speak about Johnny. Throughout the service, there was a tangible feeling of God’s presence.

To try to bring a little peace to Johnny’s friends, I decided to talk about his life and some of his incredible soul qualities. Johnny had a huge heart that embraced many people’s realities, an uncompromising independence, strong energy and will power, and a wonderful sense of humor. He was courageous, loyal, and non-judgmental.

To honor Johnny’s spirit it is important for those of us who loved him not just to appreciate his wonderful soul qualities, but to affirm them in ourselves. It is a tangible way to preserve his memory.

A way to feel close to his soul
Along with his beautiful soul qualities, my son also had a deep appreciation and love for nature. I share his attunement with nature, but perhaps not to the depth that he possessed it.

I have found since his passing that when I pray to perceive his spirit, to feel close to his soul, it happens sometimes during meditation, but more often when I am out in nature. I need to be inwardly still, listening and watching. With each experience, I feel calmed and uplifted.

I have had the experience of a coyote stopping in the middle of the road to make eye contact and commune. The following morning, at the exact same time, another coyote crossed the road and repeated this behavior. Beautiful small grey foxes have appeared and disappeared at regular intervals. Two hawks once engaged in aerial battle in my sight. I recently saw my first bald eagle, circling and soaring above my head.

These beautiful glimpses into nature are God’s gift to me, a way to communicate with Johnny’s soul. I have learned that others have had similar experiences after the death of a loved one. Each of these experiences is unique and has the special “flavor” of the loved one. Each is an offering of love to those left behind. It’s as if our loved ones are saying, “I’m right here. I love you. Just listen and I’ll connect with you.”

The “back and forth” of grieving
Even when we tune into our loved one’s soul nature, we still grieve in a very human way. We can’t help it. No longer can we talk with them, touch them, hold them. The reality of their solid existence is simply over. Grieving is an experience that flips back and forth from the deep calm knowing that your loved one’s spirit is in God and alive in your heart, to the experience of suddenly, without warning, breaking down uncontrollably in the grocery store because you miss his laugh so much.

During Johnny’s memorial service I felt strong and enveloped in God’s grace, at peace with his passing. Two days later I was sobbing over a box of Cheerios that had belonged to him. I am learning to accept both realities as the healing process runs its course, and I move deeper into the center of the experience and find peace there.

A word about how to relate to a person who has experienced a deep loss: Don’t avoid, always approach. Even if you can’t think of appropriate words to express your sympathy, give silent love. Hold the person. Words are so inadequate most of the time anyway. Sensitivity to this reality is important. I have deep, meaningful memories of the ways people comforted me, and I will never forget these kindnesses.

The gift of boundless love
The alternative to shriveling up in pain from the loss of a loved one is to love more. Pain can either contract or expand the heart. When we choose expansion, not contraction, we have room to move around within the grieving process—we have the space to stretch out and touch our loved one’s spirit.

After all, the love we feel for our friends and family is not our love. It’s God’s love, and that love is immense, unfathomable, and forever expandable. It can never be squeezed only into the forms of those few we call our own.

The secret gift of the loss of a loved one is that you get catapulted into a world of expansive love. Along with feelings of deep human loss, I have experienced the gift of that boundless love.

Everyone experiences loss
This is my story. And yet, it is not just my story; it is everyone’s story. We will not avoid the pain of catastrophic loss in this life. There is a story in the Indian tradition of a widow with one beloved son. The son died, and the mother was inconsolable. She went to a holy man and demanded through her sobs that he bring her son back to life.

The holy man agreed. “Yes,” he said. “I will do this. But first you must bring me some oil from the home of a family in the village that has not experienced death.”

The old woman left the presence of the holy man with a spring in her step. She hurried from one village door to the next, asking for the oil. But gradually her elation faded. In her own deep pain she had forgotten that the sorrow of death is universal. She returned to the holy man humbled, understanding that everyone suffers for his lost loved ones.

Our tests are tailor-made
None of us is a stranger to sorrow in this life. Since I had previously experienced another kind of loss, I knew that shock, anger, denial, and eventual acceptance are some of the stages in the grieving process. This test, however, was out of all proportion to anything I had ever been through.

I have read a number of helpful articles on the grieving journey and have found some solace in the sense of common experience. It is a relief to know that one’s emotions pass through a general pattern during this process. And yet, our tests are tailor-made for each of us. I have found that my experience at times fits the pattern of the typical grieving process and at other times becomes uniquely my own. I am attempting to let the process happen through me, not to arrange it, anticipate it, or judge it.

I do know this—I have a connection with Johnny that has not been broken by death. If there is something to be thankful for in this experience it is that in seeking to go deeper in Spirit to connect with Johnny, I have gone much deeper in Spirit. And I have become more aware that there is no separation between Spirit and me.

* An Ananda ceremony to uplift and comfort the departed and the bereaved.

Hridaya Atwell, a Lightbearer and long-time Ananda member, serves in the Ananda Living Wisdom School as co-director and teacher in the junior high and high school.

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

The tumultuous “peace” movement
Back in the late 1960s, I was very involved in the anti-war or “peace” movement, as it was called. With the distance of time, it’s very easy to romanticize what was going on then.

In reality it was a very tumultuous time. There was tremendous friction and very little harmony. Even our peace rallies often erupted into riots. I attended a peace rally in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where one of the speakers was a Buddhist monk from Vietnam. He chided the crowd saying, “You say you want peace but look at yourselves! You will not bring peace with shouting and screaming and name-calling.”

I had been inspired toward social activism by the dignity, love, and commitment to non-violence that Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others had brought to their expressions of protest. Repulsed by the violence and discord of the peace movement, I gradually separated myself from social activism and began reading Indian philosophy. After coming onto the spiritual path, I understood that there can be no peace and harmony without meditation and tuning into the Self within.

Meditation brings rays of harmony to the world
When we don’t have harmony on this planet we have war, disease, and famine. Paramhansa Yogananda lived in this world during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the rise of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and many unspeakable horrors. While all of that was happening, Yogananda and his most highly advanced disciple, Rajarshi Janakananda, a successful businessman, sat on the beach in Encinitas, California and meditated.

By taking time out to meditate were they advancing Yogananda’s mission of unity and harmony? Yes, because by tuning in to the consciousness of God, whether on a beach, under the trees, or in cities and towns, we become channels for harmony. Great souls like Yogananda and Rajarshi serve as spiritual lighthouses, shining divine rays of love and harmony into the world.

Inner peace is contagious
In June I went to the river near Ananda Village with a group of 24 young people between the ages of 18 and 30. All had come to Ananda Village for a two-week “Living with Spirit” program of yoga, meditation, community, and sustainable agriculture. It was a hot day and we went to swim, tune into the natural setting, and practice yoga and meditation.

The river was the usual mix of moms with their kids, a few people swimming, some people relaxing with beer and cigarettes, and a little loud music. At five o’clock, one of the youth leaders said, “Let’s energize.” So we began with a prayer and, facing the river, started doing Yogananda’s Energization Exercises.

As we energized, the people around us and on the opposite bank looked inquisitive but respectful. Gradually the river became quieter and more peaceful. After energization, we sat in meditation and the vibrations became even more peaceful. People who were laughing and joking as they floated down the river on rafts became quieter when they passed us. A calm, harmonious magnetism radiated outward from our group. By the time we ended the meditation, there was no one on the opposite bank.

Swami Kriyananda writes that inner peace is “contagious and has an uplifting effect on those capable of receiving its influence.” I felt that the people who had left, and those who had floated past on rafts, had taken with them a little peace and harmony, and a little more happiness. 

“What is trying to happen?”
What else can we do to bring harmony and peace to the world? Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda, as his disciple, have understood that harmony comes from meditating and listening to the “melody.” The “melody” is God’s will.

When asked if Ananda is developing and growing in the way he envisioned, I’ve heard Swami Kriyananda say, “I didn’t envision it.” His approach has been to meditate and harmonize his efforts with the Guru’s vision, and then to let the chips fall where they may. His total surrender to the will of God and Guru means that we can only do our best by listening to Divine Mother’s plan and watching Her drama unfold.

When Ananda Village needed to start a business to provide jobs for people, Swami Kriyananda suggested that we open a restaurant in Nevada City. At that time, Nevada City had the most vegetarian restaurants per capita of any area in Northern California. We wondered: “Should we go forward?”

Kriyananda encouraged us to look at the situation superconsciously. He pointed out that Paramhansa Yogananda had opened a restaurant in Hollywood as a way to share high vibrations—people when eating are taking in vibrations and are sensitive to the consciousness of the cooks, servers, and staff. He said that if the devotees working in an Ananda restaurant thought first and foremost of serving others, and of sharing vibrations of love and joy, we would succeed. So we opened the restaurant—“Earth Song” —and it succeeded marvelously.

The question that Swami Kriyananda has condensed from the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda is one we always ask: “What is trying to happen?” In everything we do, we try to listen to the “melody” and then go forward in the unity and harmony of Spirit.

In June 1976 a forest fire destroyed 450 acres and 21 of the 22 homes at Ananda Village, all uninsured. The county was at fault and Ananda could have sued and recovered its losses. Instead, Swami Kriyananda wrote the county supervisors to say that Ananda would not be suing. He said: “We don’t want to take our bad luck out on our fellow citizens by increasing the county’s insurance rates.”

I still remember the thrill I felt reading Kriyananda’s letter posted on the wall in the Ananda Village mailroom. I was so happy we could live our philosophy even if it meant foregoing a lot of money.

Awaken to the unity
It’s difficult to watch the world run headlong into war, famine, disease and greed—to watch it besmirch this planet with chemicals and, in the name of religion, wipe out beautiful statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan. It’s very hard to watch all of this foolishness and say, “I surrender everything into the hands of the Divine Mother,” but we must.

The essence of Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings is to awaken to the unity that connects us to every being and every aspect of creation. Whatever our role, we must see ourselves as a part of the great divine whole and have compassion for our brothers and sisters who are acting in ignorance. And we must discover those actions that move us towards harmony, peace, love, joy, and reverence for all life.

This is often the missing element in the ecology and environmental movements. In trying to help the planet, many have fallen into violent or hateful tactics. The need to respect the divine ecology that keeps life healthy and abundant is sometimes lost in anger over corporate greed. Anger is not beneficial to plants or animals. Harmony with nature requires harmony with the Spirit that animates nature and dwells in all of us, even if obscured by the ignorance of greed.

Allow God to channel harmony through you
To understand what each of us can do to assuage suffering and increase the light, we need to meditate, contact God, and pray for guidance. But there are a few simple and profoundly effective things we can all do that will allow God to channel harmony through us:

• At the end of your morning meditation, visualize the light of God radiating out from your body and consciousness, harmonizing each situation of the day. See your co-workers, clients, children, friends, and the people you see on the way to work bathed in a light of harmony and filled with a joyful, harmonious vibration. Pray to be a channel for harmony in everything you do.

• Close your meditation chanting AUM, blessing every situation and person you will come across during the day.

• As you go through the day, try to send a vibration of harmony by silently asking God to bless every person and situation. Feel God harmonizing each person and situation through you.

• If you are interested in ecology, try meditating on the phrase, “You are a part of all there is,” and try to feel the Divine flowing through all ecosystems—rivers, lakes, mountains, soil, plants, animals, and your own body. Let love, gratitude, and peace drive your ecological work and it will be a thousand times more fulfilling and effective.

• Whatever you do, see your work as a service to your fellow human beings. If we concentrate on how our work benefits others, it becomes karma yoga—selfless service. Feel that God is playing your part and the parts of those being served.

And thus, as Swami Kriyananda writes, “the ripples of positive, joyful influence spread outward into the world.”

Based on a July 3, 2009 talk at Ananda Village.

Ananta and his wife, Maria, are Lightbearers and reside at Ananda Village. They currently serve as coordinators of the Youth Ashram, the Ananda Farm, and the Sustainability Program at Ananda Village.

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

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.

This woman (whom I’ll call Nancy) was at her bank, waiting to make a deposit when suddenly, she found herself right in the middle of a bank robbery. Nancy became very fearful and “lost it” emotionally. At the time, her basic response when something challenging moved into her life was to take two steps back.

Afterwards, Nancy was very disappointed in her response and thought, “I’ve got to do better.” To change this fearful tendency in herself, she put a great deal of time and energy into practicing the AUM technique* in meditation.

A way to overcome all fear
Communing with the sound of AUM in meditation is one of the easiest ways to become completely absorbed in the Divine. By regular communion with AUM, we overcome all fear, including the fear of death. Swami Kriyananda said when he first heard AUM in a dynamic way, the whole world could have gone up in flames and it just wouldn’t have mattered.

In addition to meditating on AUM, Nancy also did other things to attune her consciousness to the sound of AUM. She went through her day chanting “AUM Guru,” thereby seeking the Guru’s help in attuning to AUM. She reminded herself that everything she saw—the sun, flowers, birds, plants, people—was a solidified manifestation of AUM. Whenever a tense situation arose, she would silently and lovingly call on the power of AUM to calm herself and others.

A second bank robbery
Three years later almost to the day, Nancy was again at her bank when another robbery occurred. This time it was much more violent, and she was knocked to the ground. But from her three years of practicing the consciousness of AUM, she remained very calm despite all the commotion around her.

The tension was especially high in the area where the robbers were standing with their guns. Nancy decided to begin crawling “discreetly” toward the file cabinets where she would be farther away from the robbers. She said, “I wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem.” A terrified woman on the floor, sensing Nancy’s calmness, began scooting towards her. Nancy grabbed the woman’s hand and guided her around a file cabinet where they were both out of the way.

Later, during an interview with the FBI, Nancy was the only witness who could give an accurate description of the robbers. She was told that the odds of being involved in two bank robberies were incredibly low.

Nancy attributed her calmness to having attuned her consciousness to AUM. She said, “My response to life has become totally different. Now, like my husband, who always takes two steps towards everything that comes his way, I do that too.”

A loving unity with all life
Nancy’s story shows the inner strength and transcendence that come from communing with AUM. Paramhansa Yogananda tells us that by listening to the omnipresent sound of AUM, our consciousness gradually expands from the limitations of the body into the freedom of omnipresence where all life is one.

AUM is the cosmic vibration by which God created and sustains the universe. When we commune with AUM in meditation, we experience the divine unity and harmony underlying all creation—and we know without a shadow of doubt that the universe is not against us, but with us in loving unity. By communing with AUM, we enter into, and flow with, the stream of God’s love and bliss.

We tend to think, “Gosh, there’s so much in life that’s unpredictable.” But we know of other devotees who have been in life-threatening situations and have felt only calmness and a sense of harmony. Like Nancy, whenever a devotee makes a sincere effort in meditation to know God as Spirit and to live in His reality, God, seeing our sincerity, protects us when we’re in danger.

Like so many others, I too have had this experience. After some years of meditating and attuning to AUM, I came very close to drowning.

Trapped under a waterfall
It happened a number of years ago when I gave a week-long nature program at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village. One day I took the people in the program to the river for a swim. It was June and the water was a little high. All of us were swimming near a beautiful waterfall about five or six feet high.

I swam a bit too close to the edge of the waterfall where the water was churning and I  was pulled underwater. Somehow my leg got stuck under the rocks. I tried to free my leg but couldn’t.

Surprisingly, I was very calm. I remember thinking, “Is this how I’m to go, Master?” It was as though I was watching myself going through the experience. I was running out of breath, but I didn’t become nervous. I simply continued trying to free my leg.

Finally the leg pulled loose and I was able to rise to the surface of the water and get a mouthful of air. But I was immediately thrown right back down under the water. Moments later I was again able to rise to the surface. I managed to get another quick mouthful of air before again being pulled under the water.

One of the men in the group noticed what was happening and he and two other men formed a chain. With the chain supporting him, one of the men reached down into the water, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to safety.

Reflecting on the experience afterwards, I was happy to realize that I’d remained calm the entire time. Many of us have had similar experiences where God has stepped in and protected us. From the deep calmness that we feel, we know that He is with us. Whether we live or die, we know we are safely in His hands.

The blueprint of AUM
A scientist at Yale University in the 1940s was studying salamanders and discovered something very interesting that also applies to us. A salamander egg contains an electrical field with the blueprint of the adult salamander. As the salamander starts to grow, the force field of that blueprint guides it to maturity. The same thing is true of plants. Every seed has the blueprint of the mature plant.

This is even more true of us. God has stamped our souls with His image of perfection. As Swami Kriyananda has said, “We aren’t physical bodies; we’re blissful manifestations of AUM.” As we enter into the consciousness of AUM, that image of perfection becomes more and more our reality.

Join the cosmic choir
Try to live more in the consciousness of AUM.  Remember that every sound you hear, even the honking of a horn, is an expression of the cosmic sound of AUM. Listen to sounds in nature as if they were the AUM vibration—the ocean surf, the wind in the trees, the singing of birds. This practice will help you hear the AUM sound in meditation.

The following meditation by Swami Kriyananda will also help attune you to the Infinite Sound:

Imagine a choir composed of every atom in the universe, each one an individual, but all of them singing together in blissful harmony.

In your own mind, join that mighty choir, composed of all life.

Determine from today on to sing in harmony with the universe. Don’t impose on the great anthem of life your little wishes for how you want the music to sound.

Unite your notes to that Infinite Sound.

The more you do so, the more deeply you will know yourself to be an expression of the soaring anthem of Infinity.**

Whenever you feel anxious or inharmonious, use this meditation to attune yourself with God and all creation. Live more in the consciousness of AUM. One who constantly sings AUM during his activities, and with his whole being, makes his life a continuous song of joy.

From an August 12, 2009 talk and other articles.

Bharat Cornell is a Lightbearer and longtime Ananda member. He works in the Sangha Office at Ananda Village as Meditation Support Coordinator. He is also the author of Sharing Nature Book Series.

*One of the meditation techniques introduced by Paramhansa Yogananda and taught by Ananda Sangha.

** From Awaken to Superconsciousness, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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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.

Courtesy
Courtesy is
a healing balm;
it can soothe troubled hearts,
and win cooperation
even from the hostile.

The secret of right understanding
Understanding comes by sympathy,
and still more by empathy.
As undampened notes on a piano
will resonate with the notes
played on other instruments,
so kindness and generosity
remove the “damper” of egotism,
helping one to
“resonate” with others
in their pains and difficulties.

First, be true to yourself
Inner peace is like oil:
It lubricates the machinery of life, and enables
everything to function smoothly.

Reflections everywhere!
People mirror back to you
the feelings you hold toward them.
If you want to be liked, first of all,
show others that you like them.

The loving heart
The heart is like
the door of a building:
The air and light of truth can enter only
when the door is kept open wide.

Face life’s trials
Trials are like dogs:
They lose heart
when we confront them, but give eager chase
the moment we turn and flee.

Spiritual progress
Spiritual progress should
be relaxed and natural,
not forced. Think of it as a growing tree
reaching out gradually to touch
a greater reality. One reason for not
judging others is that one learns thereby
not to judge himself. Remember:
Nature never makes sudden leaps.

Loyalty
Make loyalty the
rudder of your barque of life.
If you stand firmly by high principles, not even
the strongest gales of wrong opinion will be able to
blow you off course. Be loyal above all to
truth as you most deeply understand it. You will
then keep growing in strength and understanding.

True security
The wise have ever said that
one should place his full
trust only in God.
To rely too much on outer circumstances
is like expecting stability of a ship at sea.

You are part of the vastness of life
Accept reality as it is,
and try to harmonize yourself with it.
Truth, like Mohammed’s mountain,
won’t come to you: You must go to it.
In another sense, of course, there is
neither coming nor going:
the pilgrimage you must make is
to plumb your own inner depths.

True understanding
Dogmatism is like still photography.
True understanding is like cinematography:
It helps one to perceive constant change,
and then to observe that change
as proceeding from a single beam of eternal light

Our bridge of ascension
Divine grace, like a ray of light, is needed
to illuminate the darkness of this world.
Only on rays of grace can we rise,
and only by so ascending can we escape
the dense fog of cosmic delusion.

* From the forthcoming book, Images of Wisdom, Seeing God in Everyone, Crystal Clarity, Publishers.

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Through the bursting vibration of cosmic sound and the surging of Thy holy name, I have removed the cork of ignorance which so long separated me from Thee, though we lived together so closely!

Now my body-consciousness will meet Thy all-surrounding, all-pervading consciousness. No longer will I walk heedlessly, in Thee, but never knowing and feeling Thee. Thine image within me shall meet Thine image everywhere.

By releasing the “I-ness” in me, I will know that I am Thou, and that Thou alone art the little egos of us all.

From Whispers from Eternity by Paramhansa Yogananda, edited by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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Dear ________,

Question:
How is yoga of particular importance (for everyone) in today’s electronic, stressful world?

Answer:
You’ve paired two things that needn’t of their own nature be paired. So here, in fact, there are two questions in one. The first is, “How is yoga of particular importance in today’s electronic world?”

The answer is that yoga makes us more aware of ourselves as bodies of energy, not merely of material substance. The more aware we become that we are energy, the greater control we have in our lives.

By increasing the flow of energy to the body, one can maintain good health, and overcome illness and other physical setbacks in record time. By increasing the flow of energy in one’s work, one can be more successful in everything one attempts, and can greatly shorten the time for achieving it. With great energy, indeed, one can do in a few minutes what others may require weeks or months to accomplish.

By increasing the flow of energy to other people, one can vastly increase and deepen the love and friendship between oneself and them, and also affect them for the good in their own lives. By increasing the flow of energy in one’s life, one finds abundant happiness, insight, and wisdom in guiding one’s affairs.

As for the question of stress, yoga helps one to become calmer, more centered in oneself (in a good way—that is to say, it produces the opposite of self-centeredness), it puts one more in control of oneself and one’s own life, and helps one to resolve problems with much greater ease.

Question:
Why do you think yoga is so intriguing to many Hollywood celebrities—that is, why do you think so many of them are getting interested in it?

Answer:
I think that living in a world of fiction helps to develop in those people who are more aware a sensitivity to alternate realities.

Of course, the physical aspects of yoga are attractive to people whose livelihood depends on their looking young and physically fit, which they can accomplish through Hatha Yoga.

But the inward, truer aspects of yoga are most attractive to those whose minds are open and are not enclosed in habit-created patterns of thought. Certainly the movie profession invites new ways of looking at things.

I hope this helps.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

From In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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Master revealed to us that he himself had been Krishna’s closest friend and disciple, Arjuna. (“Prince of devotees,” the Bhagavad Gita calls him.)

We found it easy to believe that he had been that mighty warrior, for Master’s incredible will power, his innate gift for leadership, and his enormous physical strength (when he chose to exert it), all pointed to someone with the tendencies of a mighty, conquering hero.

Divine power is rooted in love
People who knew only of Paramhansa Yogananda’s extraordinary love and compassion, his sweetness, and his childlike simplicity were sometimes taken aback when they encountered his power. Few realize that power and divine love are opposite sides of the same coin.

Indeed, divine love is no gentle sentiment, but the greatest force in the universe. Such love could not exist without power. Great saints would never use their power to suppress or coerce others, but power is, nevertheless, inextricably a part of what it means to be a saint.

It took extraordinary power, for example, for Jesus Christ, alone in a crowd, to drive the money-changers from their tradition-sanctioned places in the temple.

Worldly people fear this power in the saints, and, fearing it, persecute them. They don’t realize that a saint’s power is rooted in love, or that it threatens nothing but people’s delusions and ignorance-induced suffering.

Warrior and conquering hero
Yogananda’s power was not only a product of his divine awareness; his human personality, too, reflected past incarnations as a warrior and conquering hero.

In Calcutta, in his youth, he was approached more than once by people who wanted him to lead a revolution against the British. There was something in his very bearing that bespoke the intrepid warrior.

William: noble, generous, forgiving
He told us more than once that in a former life he had been William the Conqueror. Educated as I had been during my early years in the English educational system, I had always thought of William as one of history’s great villains.

On learning that that supposed “villain” was my own Guru, I made it a point, needless to say, to study several biographies of William in order to get a broader picture of what he’d really been like.

I found that William the Conqueror was indeed, in every way, a great man. Morally, in an age of widespread profligacy, he was chaste and self-controlled. Spiritually he was deeply religious, and never (so I read) missed a day of mass in his life. He was noble, generous, and forgiving.

A divine commission
He lived, however, in an age when conquest could be accomplished only by a very strong will. He told us he had been given a divine commission, which I have since come to understand was to bring England out of the Scandinavian sphere and under the influence of Roman Christianity.

During his lifetime, William promoted the recovery of old monasteries and generally gave great support to the church, endorsing also the concept of chastity for the clergy. William and Archbishop Lanfranc, together, unified the church, and reorganized it from the ground up.

Quite as important in the context of those times, they connected the church administratively and liturgically with Rome. His closest friends were spiritual men like Archbishop Lanfranc (who in this life, Yogananda stated, was Swami Sri Yukteswar) and Saint Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury.

A fierce demeanor
William’s occasionally harsh behavior was forced on him by necessity, and never sprang from personal anger (though, consistent with my observation of Master himself on occasion, William’s demeanor sometimes appeared very fierce).

I asked Master once (I was thinking of his lifetime as William): “Sir, is an avatar [a divine incarnation] always aware of his oneness with God’s omnipresence?”

“He never loses his consciousness of inner freedom,” Master replied.

“The will of a single man”
William’s life, when studied in this light, gains new luster and meaning.

The British historian, E.A. Freeman, wrote in his biography, William the Conqueror: “[What we English are today] has largely come of the fact that there was a moment our national destiny might be said to hang on the will of a single man, and that was William [the Conqueror].”

Earlier, Freeman stated: “The Norman conquest has no exact parallel in history largely owing to the character and position of the man who wrought it. The history of England for the last eight hundred years has largely come of the personal character of [that] single man.”

William’s legacy: a united kingdom
England itself was by no means so Anglo-Saxon as relatively recent writers, including Sir Walter Scott, imagined. The north, according to recent DNA testing of old bones, was heavily Scandinavian, and the east came under what was called Danelaw, and must have been more Danish than Anglo-Saxon.

It was William who united the constantly warring earldoms into one kingdom. His legacy, moreover, which bound every native to primary loyalty to his king, saved England the fate of medieval Europe, which saw constant baronial conflicts.

England’s government dates back to the conquest by William, who brought England to a level of security, stability, and legal organization that made it possible for it to survive the death of medieval society and continue on into the modern age. England is the oldest continuous government in the world, the second being the United States.

Swami Kriyananda: William’s youngest son
Some months after Master’s passing, an inspiration came to me: I suddenly realized that I had been his youngest son, Henry, who later was crowned as Henry I.

I had always known with an inner certainty that I had been a king in the past—not that it mattered to me in the present. Leadership had always come to me naturally, however, and in no way caused me to feel important because of it.

I now went to the Los Angeles public library and read up on facts about Henry that were too detailed to appear in a book intended for the general public. It surprised me to see how many parallels there were, even in little matters, between Henry’s life and my own.

Henry had been born late enough in William’s life to be in a position, after a relatively brief hiatus, to carry on William’s mission. The last thirty-three years of Henry’s life were years of exceptional peace and prosperity in England.

The most powerful king in Western Europe
Though Henry I is considered the “least-known” of all English kings, the reason for his obscurity is that he simply worked quietly to establish his father’s mission. Albeit known in his lifetime as the most powerful king in Western Europe, he never expressed an interest in enlarging his dominions.

All he ever did was conquer back territory that had been lost by his older brothers’ ineptitude. His Coronation Charter became the basis of the future Magna Carta.

An embarrassment to his memory
William’s first two sons were an embarrassment to his memory. He bequeathed Robert, his oldest, the dukedom of Normandy, knowing that he could not give him the crown of England because of his traitorous nature. (Even as William was lying on his deathbed, Robert, with the aid of the king of France, was staging a rebellion against him.)

William Rufus, the second son, was loyal to their father in his fashion, but gave no evidence of understanding William’s mission, and dedicated himself wholly to his own power, position, and glory. Perhaps a hiatus in William’s mission was necessary for his true spiritual heir, Henry, to develop a deep understanding of it.

*******       *******       *******

A different kind of conquest
Yogananda, like William the Conqueror at Hastings, came to America to establish a beachhead—not, in this case, of worldly conquest, but of divine communion.

Like William the Conqueror, Yogananda was divinely ordained to play a very difficult role. He came to a whole new continent where he was completely unknown and opposed by many. He needed an indomitable spirit of conquest to be able to bring God’s message to the world for this new age of energy, the age of Dwapara Yuga.

Yogananda’s mission was to change world consciousness. The model he established on all levels of life has been so all- encompassing that I believe he will one day be called, “The Avatar of Dwapara Yuga.”

Yogananda’s spiritual family
Many have been born and are being born in the West to assist Yogananda in his mission. Many others are being attracted to it for the first time by the radiant magnetic influence, the spiritual “gravitational field,” it has created.

Yogananda’s spiritual family forms part of a greater spiritual “nation” of which Jesus Christ and Sri Krishna (in this age, Babaji) are also leaders.

Such families are like mighty nations. To them is given the real task of guiding the human race—not in the way governments do, by official ordinances, but by subtler, spiritual influence.

*Excerpted from The New Path — Chapters: “Reincarnation,” “The Guru’s Reminiscences,” and “A New Way of Life.”  (Supplemental excerpts from: The Light of Superconsciousness, Crystal Clarity Publishers; and a March 2007 talk in India.)

For a related article, see below: William the Conqueror: Laying the Foundation for an Age of Energy, by Catherine Van Houten.

Resources:
To view Swami Kriyananda’s talk in India discussing Paramhansa Yogananda and William the Conqueror, click here Discussion of this subject starts at 13:27 minutes.

For information on The New Path by Swami Kriyananda, click here

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

]]> http://www.anandaclaritymagazine.com/2009/06/yogananda-kriyananda-gita/feed/ 8 http://www.anandaclaritymagazine.com/2009/06/yogananda-luxury-money-god/ http://www.anandaclaritymagazine.com/2009/06/yogananda-luxury-money-god/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:56:17 +0000 Paramhansa Yogananda http://www.anandaclaritymagazine.com/?p=2699 Plain living and high thinking are among the highest teachings of  the masters of India.  At the very start of a student’s training, plain living is emphasized.

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.

Q. Peter, you started a medical clinic two years after moving to Ananda Village. Since then, you’ve had the responsibility of running a busy rural clinic while also providing medical services to clinic patients. In addition, you’ve often had to respond to medical emergencies in the evening after work and on week-ends.

Under these circumstances, how has it been possible for you to put God first in your life?

A. Since becoming a devotee, I’ve always tried to see my life as belonging to God. Interestingly, I started doing that much more consciously during a period when I was facing more challenges than I thought I could handle.

Q. What was happening at that time?

A. It was during  the late 1980s. The clinic had been open for about five years, but we were still just barely hanging on financially. I was working all the time, doing everything from seeing patients, managing the finances, and being on call most nights.

In the midst of all this, local doctors were criticizing me for starting a clinic with so little medical experience, claiming that we didn’t provide good health care. Then county officials began pressuring us to move to an approved structure, which we simply couldn’t afford to do.

That was the last straw. I began asking myself, “Is it really my karma to be a doctor? Are all these problems a ‘sign’ I should be doing something else?” I started thinking seriously about closing the clinic and wrote Swami Kriyananda for advice.

After consulting with him, I understood more deeply that it was God’s will for me to be a doctor, and on some level I relaxed. I realized that it didn’t matter if the challenges felt crushing, or if my ego was bruised by the criticism from other doctors. What was happening was God’s will for me–His way of making me stronger.

The problems still existed, but I became more resilient in dealing with them because I no longer struggled against them. I relied more on God’s strength and guidance for solutions. It was an important turning point in surrendering to God’s will.

Q. Another important aspect of putting God first involves consciously acting as His instrument and channeling His love to people. Is this something you do in your work at the clinic?

A. Yes, but I’ve had to learn to do it. My inner relationship with God has always been very devotional, and it’s been easy for me to feel love for God. One of my main lessons in this life has been learning to give that same love outwardly to people.

At the clinic we see about 15,000 patients a year, most of whom are society’s dropouts—indigent, homeless, and often mentally ill with difficult personalities. They’re people you have to work at loving—and I’ve had to work at it.

Q. How did you “work at it?”

A. When seeing patients, I would consciously try to feel God’s love in my heart– and then project that love out to them. At the same time, I would also pray for them. Gradually, my heart opened to them, especially as I began to see how deeply healing it was for patients when I worked with them in a loving way.

Q. Specifically, how was it healing for your patients?

A. It had a calming effect on  those who were agitated or disturbed emotionally. In general, their physical and mental health improved, and they had a greatly improved ability to make constructive decisions about diet, smoking, exercise, intoxicants and other things that affected their physical and mental health.

Q. In your many years of practicing medicine, there must have been times when you did your absolute best but something nevertheless went “wrong.” How does that affect you? Have you been able to develop non-attachment to the “fruits” of your efforts?

A. For someone like me who really takes what he does seriously, non-attachment has been very difficult. Many times something has gone very badly for a patient and I thought maybe I was at fault. Usually it turned out that I wasn’t.

But I’ve realized that if I let my concentration lapse for 30 seconds, I could miss a key piece of information and the patient could end up being harmed, or even dying, from my mistake.

Q. Was there a turning point when you became stronger in non-attachment?

A. Yes, about six or seven years ago. I was injecting cortisone into a patient’s back to relieve pain and accidentally punched through the muscle into the lung. The patient ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung. It’s the kind of thing we routinely warn patients about, but it was horrifying to actually have it happen.

The patient made a perfect recovery, but it felt terrible to have hurt someone who trusted me. Still, I’m grateful for the experience.

Q. What did you learn?

A. I realized more deeply the message of The Bhagavad Gita—that in this world we have no choice but to act. Things like this are going to happen even though we try our best. We have to understand that the results of our actions are completely in God’s hands, and always give what we do to Him.

If your work involves a lot of exposure and a high level of responsibility, as mine does, you’re going to make “big” mistakes, not little mistakes. I have to be willing to accept that and surrender it to God. He’s the Doer. The results of my actions belong to Him.

Q. When did you first understand that God was the Doer and that He was working through you in all health care situations, even when the outcome wasn’t what you want?

A. This is perhaps the most important lesson on the spiritual path, and it’s been a gradual process. It started when I was an intern and had no choice but to depend on God because often I didn’t know what to do. After praying, I would know what to do. Even today, when with a patient, if I don’t know the solution, I always pray.

But there’s a deeper level of seeing God as the Doer, when you begin to feel God flowing through you, silently guiding your thoughts and actions. Only for the last five or six years have I begun to feel that more continuously.

Back in the first days of the clinic, I tried to think that way, but it was mostly affirmation. More recently it’s been the reality.

Q. Have there been any dramatic instances of this?

A. Yes. Sometimes I’ll be talking with a patient, trying to figure out what’s wrong, and suddenly find myself talking about something I know absolutely nothing about. I’ll look it up afterwards and find that what I’ve told the patient is correct.

It’s very humbling and always reminds me who’s in charge. But I don’t think I’m unique. If we see what we’re doing as a service and an offering to God, the superconscious will sometimes infiltrate our thoughts and behavior.

Q. Paramhansa Yogananda said that willingness is one of the most important spiritual attitudes. Has willingness been a challenge for you?

A. Willingness has been my hardest challenge because I like things to be organized and predictable. It’s sometimes difficult to stay willing when it’s 6:00 p.m., I’ve already seen 25 patients and would really like to go home—and suddenly there’s one more patient who really needs to be seen. My battle is to not do the easy thing by sending the patient to the hospital emergency room or telling him or her to come back the next day.

As devotees, the pitfall is to decide that we have only so much energy—and no more. Just when I think I’ve done everything I can do, Divine Mother often says, “But there’s so much more you can do,” and then shows me that’s true.

Q. If being willing leaves you with less time for meditation, wouldn’t that adversely affect your spiritual progress?

A. Not necessarily. Recently the clinic went through a very challenging 3-year period when it looked like we might close. We’d been doing very well for a long time. Then gradually we lost most of our top medical staff and couldn’t replace them because finances had become very tight.

For a while I was the only one seeing patients and working 16 hours a day just to keep the clinic afloat. I couldn’t meditate much. Yet it was a period of real growth for me spiritually.

It helped me understand that God will work with us in the ways we need for our spiritual development, and we shouldn’t think that the only way we grow spiritually is by meditating eight hours a day. We just have to be willing to do what God asks of us.

Q. How did the experience change you?

A. I had to confront a number of my fears very directly. The clinic was something I’d worked on for almost 30 years and it looked like it was going to fail. I could have ended up financially ruined. There were so many ways this could have happened.

More than once I felt like I was going a little crazy with the whole thing. I got stretched far beyond what I thought my limits were, and yet, looking back, I can see that God and Guru protected me the whole time.

Q. I imagine you gained a much deeper level of trust and faith in God?

A. The experience definitely took concepts like “faith” and “trust” and made them much more real because I’d lived it. Repeatedly I had to say, “God, you’re going to have to protect me because I’m going far beyond what I think I can do.”

And God came through and produced a miracle. From any standpoint, the clinic should not be standing today.

Q. Didn’t you need a certain level of faith and centeredness to successfully go through a test like that?

A. For sure. Being a devotee for many years gives you the momentum to get through things that would have been insurmountable earlier on the path. You’ve already gotten through many challenges, and you’re more confident that God will carry you through this one too. You learn that God will always protect you, provided you do your best and keep moving forward, no matter how hard it gets.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

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

The dream has now turned dark for many people. Economically, we’re in a very difficult period. Millions have lost jobs. Whether the downturn will become a protracted depression or whether there will be catastrophic events, as some have predicted, we don’t know. But we do know that many people are fearful for the future.

The question for us is: how can we stay open and expansive in this time of uncertainty and turmoil? How do we remember that God is always supporting and guiding us? Three key attitudes will be our allies: Gratitude, Non-attachment, and Generosity.

Gratitude

Several attitudes help generate happiness, but first and foremost is gratitude to God for everything in life. Gratitude invites a flow of grace while grumbling blocks those sustaining rays and leaves us exhausted and bitter.

If we don’t appreciate God’s gifts, how can we hope to feel His presence or keep our hearts open? Without an attitude of gratitude, we reject the lessons He is trying to teach us.

It isn’t enough just to think about gratitude. We must actively feel grateful and express it consciously. When we open our hearts in this way we find that murky feelings of anxiety and isolation fade away. The antidote to negativity is to make it a habit, several times a day, to thank God for whatever you are experiencing at that moment.

Thank God for the hardships
Don’t thank Him only for pleasant things. Thank Him also for difficulties. Life is a mixture of ups and downs—of what we embrace as “positive” and reject as “negative.” But, since we so often misjudge what is good or bad karmically, it is best to thank God for everything: good, bad, and indifferent. Too often we’re like a patient spitting out the very medicine that can make him well.

Paramhansa Yogananda said he would correct only those who gave him permission to do so. How do we give him permission? Not with words but by opening our hearts to him. So, be grateful to God for everything. Sing Him love songs in the silence of your soul. Then see what that does for your heart.

Non-attachment

Second in importance is gratitude’s cousin, non-attachment. Our likes and dislikes splinter the world into little pieces, which is a classical definition of maya or delusion. Attachment is the main obstacle to knowing ourselves as children of Divine Mother.

With an attitude of non-attachment — simply accepting what is happening — we can respond to life according to what is right rather than what pleases us. Non-attachment doesn’t make us into some kind of machine. We still feel and, in fact, can feel more deeply than when we are in a reactive state.

The next time you eat a meal try to deeply experience the various tastes without judging them as either good or bad. You’ll see that non-attachment actually allows you to deepen your experience.

Like gratitude, non-attachment should be practiced on a daily basis. When an experience comes that you don’t like, try to accept it calmly and appreciate its hidden lesson.  Similarly, when something comes that you like, say “Thank you, God. I give any sense of attachment back to You.” By non-attachment we become supremely free inside.

An inner fire ceremony
Swami Kriyananda has suggested a technique to help with non-attachment. Visualize a fire at the point between the eyebrows and offer into the flames everything in your life.  Especially at night, before sleep, it is good to give God all your possessions, your emotions, your likes and dislikes, and, in fact your very life. Offer back everything and then go to sleep in a state of inner freedom.

It is very important to cast into that fire all those things you are reluctant to give up; money, relationships, job, children. These are the attachments that have the biggest grip on you.  When you are experiencing a state of worry or anxiety it is helpful also to practice this visualization as you wake up in the morning. That way you can start the day with a clean slate.

Another helpful technique is to visualize the heart as a golden ball with threads coming out of it. Each thread represents an attachment, some of them tiny and some the size of thick nautical ropes. But, however big, cut them away until that golden ball is completely free. Then polish it until it is bright and shiny. Doing that two or three times a day cleans your aura, develops non-attachment, and allows the heart’s natural love to shine forth.

Gratitude and non-attachment take you a long way toward being even-minded and cheerful at all times, a state of mind that Paramhansa Yogananda suggested we try to hold in all circumstances.

Generosity: Selfless giving to others

Selfless giving to others, even when in difficult circumstances, brings lots of joy. Paramhansa Yogananda and all great masters have chosen, from a life of complete freedom and joy in God, to reincarnate in bodies doomed to suffer hardships and death. Having no karma, they do this solely for our sakes. To be in tune with them, we, too, must learn to give selflessly.

“How can I serve you?”
It is very helpful to keep in mind that we don’t really have anything of our own to give; we are simply channels of Divine Mother. She is the source from which all things flow. To think otherwise is to diminish our potential. If we can but rid the mind of egoic self-definitions, there is absolutely no limit to what She can do through us.

It is very uplifting to pray to Divine Mother every morning, “How can I serve you? How can I see only You in others today?” Every person has something to offer, because God resides equally in everyone. In these difficult times, people desperately need our love and kindness.

A very natural way of giving to others is through simple kindness. When Swami Kriyananda goes into a store, he doesn’t treat the clerk like an automaton; he creates a connection. Often it’s just a little question or comment: “Oh, what a beautiful blue in that broach you’re wearing” —just enough to begin to create a bond that allows the person to open up. It’s habitual with him to shed a little bit of kindness and joy everywhere he goes. We should try, as Paramhansa Yogananda said, to be “smile millionaires.”

Non-attached and inwardly free
When you give to others, it’s important not to carry a merchant consciousness. Don’t think, “If I give them this, what will I get back?” Try to live more in the faith that the law of karma guarantees that you will get exactly what is coming to you. God and Guru will always show you what is for your own highest, spiritual good if you let them.

Your real reward, when you give to others in a selfless spirit, is freedom from want. The more you give away, the more non-attached and inwardly free you become. Then life becomes beautiful.

A poem by Yogananda says it beautifully: “I have nothing to offer Thee, for all things are Thine; I grieve not that I can not give, for nothing is mine, nothing is mine. Here I lay at Thy feet my limbs, my life, my thoughts and my speech, for they are Thine, for they are Thine.”

“Pay it forward”
It is best not to expect rewards for what you give to others. There’s a movie, Pay it Forward, in which a person helps someone who is in trouble. When the recipient says, “I’ll pay you back,” the giver replies, “I don’t want you to pay me back. I want you to pay me forward. Pay off your debt to me by helping three other people.”

And thus, waves of kindness spread in ever widening circles. In this spirit try to help others feel that they too are channels for the light and love, which the world desperately needs in these worrisome times.

These three together—gratitude, non-attachment, and selfless giving — are very powerful ways of attuning to God during times of difficulty. As Paramhansa Yogananda often said, “The channel is blessed by what flows through it.”

When we truly feel that we are acting as a channel for the Infinite, then not only will we be a source of strength to others, but we too will experience great freedom and joy.

Based on talks at Ananda Village, January 31, 2009 and February 11, 2009.

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

What helped me most during the “in between times” was to call on God and Guru’s grace in times of need by doing japa. When my mind became negative or fearful I would do japa by repeating a mantra, and my negative thoughts would usually dissolve.

In stressful situations like driving to out-of-the-way locations, which is often necessary in my job as a family court attorney, doing japa would calm me down and I was able to find my destinations.

Kriya Yoga: a turning point
Receiving Kriya Yoga initiation in 2006 was an important turning point in learning not to compartmentalize my life. Since then, my meditations have become deeper and I find it easier to remain centered in the midst of life’s storms.

As a result, I’ve been able to experience first hand the truth that all life situations, and not just the time spent in meditation and prayer, are opportunities for spiritual growth.

A challenging relationship
A year after receiving Kriya Yoga initiation, I went through one of the most challenging times in my life as an attorney. I had been appointed by the court to represent a woman whose teen-age daughter had been removed from her care and placed in foster care.

This woman was very disturbed emotionally. Initially, she spent most of our meetings berating me, threatening either to fire me or to report me to the state bar association (she couldn’t fire me since I was court-appointed), or fixating on fears not based in reality.

Familiar fears
A year and half into my relationship with this woman, I felt inspired during one of her tirades to gaze at her at the point between the eyebrows (the spiritual eye), and to think of her as a child of God. The effect on me was immediate.

Despite her negativity, I suddenly felt immense compassion for her—and for myself. I realized that in many ways she was my teacher. She had fears that were familiar to me—fears of not being loved, of being rejected by society, of not being appreciated, of being misjudged, of not being good enough.

The differences between us were only a matter of degree. She allowed her fears to overwhelm her to such an extent that she was unable to function. I, on the other hand, was learning to control my mind and transcend my emotions through the practice of meditation, prayer, and japa.

Listening more intuitively
That was a turning point in our relationship. After that, I saw every phone call and every meeting with her as an opportunity for inner growth—for me to remain centered and compassionate no matter what she said or did, and to listen more intuitively to how best to help her.

I learned not to insist that she spell out her exact positions on the legal situation with her daughter—something that was extremely difficult for her to do. Instead, I encouraged her to express her feelings and emotions, which turned out to be far more productive.

I learned to listen to her, to translate her feelings and concerns into coherent legal positions, and to present them in court in an organized manner. She felt that she had been heard and was grateful for that.

She even seemed healed by the process. She was more relaxed during our meetings, less anxious. Her tirades became less frequent and less “dramatic.” At one point she even invited me to join her at a dinner at her church, which was a huge demonstration of gratitude and kindness on her part.

At the end of our 3-year attorney-client relationship, she no longer perceived me as someone who might hurt or abandon her but as an ally, someone on her side.

A mysterious illness
The biggest step forward in my progress toward seeing my spiritual and everyday life as one came in 2008 when I was hit with a mysterious illness. Just a few months earlier I had been enjoying long hikes with my dog, meditating and doing yoga postures regularly, and carrying a heavy family law caseload.

Suddenly I was struggling with dizzy spells, bodily weakness, and a sense of being totally overwhelmed by any minor demand on my time and attention.  In less than two months, however, 15 weekend guests—students and teachers from the Ananda Institute and other Ananda friends—were due to arrive.

One week before their arrival, a blood test disclosed a vitamin B12 deficiency. I wondered: how fast would the vitamin B12 pills make me feel somewhat normal again?

Opening to God and Guru
I considered canceling their visit—the events planned for the weekend included a kirtan, Sunday Service, and a hike and visit to the local Buddhist Stupa Park. How could I, in my state of total fatigue and discomfort, get the house ready, plan meals, cook, set up sleeping arrangements, and look somewhat happy to see them when they arrived?

Though weakened by illness, I was nonetheless determined to find a way to be ready for my guests. After meditating, I surrendered the situation to God and my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and asked them to take charge of my body and flow through me so that things would be ready for my friends’ arrival.

I curtailed my work schedule as much as possible and each day managed to get one thing done.  I was pale and eight pounds thinner the day my Ananda friends arrived, but the house was clean, the food was ready, and I felt blissful to see so many bright faces at my doorstep.

A marathon of joy
The weekend was a marathon, but I felt so much joy I could barely eat or sleep. My home vibrated with music, laughter, singing, love, and devotion.

I have several musical instruments in my house but I am not a musical person and cannot play any of them. During that weekend, those instruments heard beautiful tunes as the students played Swami Kriyananda’s music all day long.

By Monday morning all my guests had left, and I had a few days to rest before the arrival of another weekend Ananda guest and more Ananda events. My body was still somewhat weak, but once again everything got done.

During the Sunday evening satsang in my home, the visiting Ananda minister spoke about energy and quoted Paramhansa Yogananda’s statement that one small gram of human flesh has enough energy to light up an entire city. We did Swami Kriyananda’s Superconscious Living Exercises and my body felt refreshed. What most amazed me were my vitality and readiness to serve.

Many blessings; many lessons
What did I learn from these two experiences? I learned that if I put total effort and willingness into a project, not only do I open myself to God’s wisdom and guidance, I also receive the strength I need to serve.

I learned also that there is no difference between the “spiritual” and the “mundane” when I perceive myself as God’s instrument and am willing to do whatever needs to be done. My willingness opens the door to the infinite source of all energy and strength.

Though I had heard and read many times, “God is the Doer,” this was my first experience of what it meant to act with the sense that God was acting through me. Previously, I had always felt that I was the doer, even when thinking of God during activities or consciously trying to serve God through others.

What a difference it is to experience the truth that God is omnipresent, all-pervasive, and ever-ready to pick us up when we stumble or fall!

Everything is an opportunity
The blessing I most cherish is the growing realization that all situations in life are opportunities for inner growth. It was easier perhaps for me to learn this lesson when the outward activities were of a spiritual nature, like the Ananda events I hosted in my home, rather than my daily mundane duties.

But it has become clear that what’s important is not what I do but being in a state of surrender and alignment with the divine will.

My health and strength have returned. Life’s many duties have become simpler and much less exhausting. I continue to enjoy spiritual retreats but I also enjoy my daily spiritual journey. Everyday I pray that I become a better devotee, more surrendered to the divine will, so that God can flow through me in all that I do.

A spiritual seeker since 1991, Daniella Ferrari is currently the leader of the Ananda Meditation and Book Study Group in Sedona, AZ.  In her work as a family law attorney, she represents indigent clients and abused and neglected children.

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

In late summer 1087, William the Conqueror, king of England and duke of Normandy, lay dying. Tension hung in the air.

The fate of the Anglo-Norman kingdom was now to be decided. Fatally injured by his stumbling horse, and in great pain from an internal hemorrhage, William was nevertheless completely clear in his mind. He  brought all his formidable will power to bear on the question of who would succeed him.

Which son would succeed William?
Twenty-one years had passed since the conquest of England. Even in his extremis, William was surrounded by some of his inner circle: barons and bishops. Each knew that his own future depended on William’s decision in the matter of succession.

Much of the tension in the room was due to the fact that Robert, nicknamed “Curthose,” the Conqueror’s oldest son and previously designated heir, now 33 years old, was in active rebellion against his father. Even now, Curthose and his sycophantic followers were conducting raids on Normandy’s borders, urged on by William’s nemesis, Philip I, King of France.

A very strong Norman tradition, however, held that the lands a ruler inherited from his father should pass intact to his oldest son. On the other hand, anything that a man had gained on his own, through conquest in his lifetime, could be disposed of as he wished.

Robert’s crippling limitations
It took no great insight, however, to know absolutely that Robert Curthose lacked the character to lead others and govern wisely. It must have been a grave disappointment to William, for clearly it had been his intention, at first, to confer on this son both England and Normandy, and he had taken pains to train him in government and in diplomacy.

Repeatedly, however, he had seen Robert’s crippling limitations. He had forgiven the young man’s first open rebellion. Most damning of all was the fact that Robert now, through his alliance with Philip I of France, had been stupid and selfish enough to risk the sovereignty of the Anglo-Norman kingdom itself.

William the Conqueror, as death approached, determined that Robert Curthose should have no part in ruling either Normandy or England. He perceived these two lands not as separate entities, but as one kingdom, united under a single ruler.

Counter-arguments from inner circle
Now, however, William’s inner circle and close companions bore down on their dying lord with counter-arguments regarding the succession. There was Norman tradition to be considered: Robert was the oldest son and so should at least, by right, have Normandy.

Many argued also that they had taken oaths of fealty to Curthose as his father’s successor, at King William’s behest. If Robert were not given some part of the kingdom, then he would be in a strong and easily justified position to attempt to take it by force. Many would feel the righteousness of his claim, certainly to Normandy.

It was surely difficult for any of these men fully to comprehend the Conqueror’s deepest reason for refusing to name Curthose his successor: that this son did not understand or share his father’s vision for the future of the kingdom he had created.

Curthose was ruled by sentiment and self-interest. His father, however, acted to manifest a vast vision for the crucial role that England, in particular, would play in the ongoing future, even up to our own times.

A wise and ever-practical leader
The king also knew the hearts of those who were now urging him to reconsider his decision to disinherit Robert Curthose. It was clear to the dying William that these powerful men were determined to support his oldest son; quite probably they would do so regardless of whom he named now as his successor.

Such was the reality of the situation, and this wise, ever-practical leader made the best decision possible under the circumstances. In great pain, and (as one contemporary chronicler expressed it) “worn out by their importunities,” William the Conqueror reluctantly agreed to name Robert Curthose as his successor to the duchy of Normandy.

The oldest son, however, was to have only Normandy. The crown of England was, William decreed, to go to his second oldest son, William “Rufus” (the “red”), who was now present in the room.

Those present greeted in silence King William’s decision to name William Rufus as his heir to the throne of England. Though they had urged the reinstatement of Curthose as William’s heir, they must have been shocked to realize that William was actually willing to split the Anglo-Norman kingdom, rather than put all of it under Robert’s control.

With war between the two sons inevitable, did the Conqueror have some more long-range plan for resolving this issue?

William’s promise to Henry
As if in answer to this extreme dilemma, King William summoned to his bedside the youngest of his three living sons, Henry, who was then eighteen years old, and whom William had only recently knighted. Like Rufus, Henry had been at his father’s side at the siege of Mantes where William had been fatally injured.

The young man now knelt by his father’s bed. “To you, Henry, I bequeath the great treasure of 5,000 silver coins,” the Conqueror said, smiling warmly on his youngest son, whose qualities and intelligence he had “lost no opportunity to encourage,” as chronicler William of Malmesbury put it.

No one spoke; all were waiting for Henry to say something. “Father, what shall I do with this money, if I have no land on which to spend it?” Henry’s voice was steady as he presented this reasonable question.

In feudal Europe, even a significant fortune was no guarantee of ever having true wealth and power, for these came with land. Land alone, in those days, was true wealth.

The silence continued. Everyone strained to hear the king’s reply. Only a few, however, could hear William’s words:

“Be patient, my son. For in time you shall have all that your brothers now have, and shall be greater than they.” The father placed his hand in final benediction on Henry’s bowed head. His words proved no empty prophecy, for years later they were fulfilled to the letter.

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Why Reincarnate as a Warrior King?

Our exploration of all the ramifications of Paramhansa Yogananda’s statement that, in a previous lifetime, he had been William the Conqueror, has brought us to the final and all-absorbing question: “Why?”

Why would a soul, who has won freedom from any need to reincarnate at all, elect to return to earth as a warrior king?

What was at stake in 12th century Europe, and in England in particular, that caused a Self-realized master to don once again the heavy cloak of a physical body — this time, as William the Conqueror?

Setting a new course for the Western world
Nearly every historian would agree that, on that autumn day at Hastings in 1066, a completely new course was set for England. To gain a truer perspective, we need to compare England on the eve of the Battle of Hastings to what England had become by 1135, the year of King Henry’s death.

Within that relatively short span of nearly seventy years, William the Conqueror and King Henry I not only changed England, but set a new course for the whole Western world.

Rome: a more truly Christian influence
On the general impact of the Conquest there is nearly universal agreement: the cultural and political reorientation of England, deflecting it from a more-or-less pagan Scandinavian influence toward the more truly Christian culture of southwestern Europe. This reorientation toward a wholly new stream of Christian influence is profoundly significant.

Prior to 1066, England had become overwhelmingly Scandinavian. This Nordic influence represented a major departure from the purer stream of Roman Christianity. Nordic Christianity was heavily mixed with paganism, and paid little attention to the clearest fountain of Christianity in existence at those times: the Roman.

Had the Norman Conquest not brought England into a new relationship with the church in Rome, and thereby reconfigured alliances throughout Europe, the Roman papacy would have been isolated. The purest stream then extant for the religion of Jesus Christ, and for the recovery of classical knowledge, would have shrunk to a trickle.

A harmoniously integrated new culture
Much — in fact, very much — hinged upon England’s orientation. Though she was tucked off in a corner where one might not have thought her influence crucial to the development of Europe, she had the advantage of being a separate island, close enough to Europe to have strong ties with it, yet removed enough to enable the development of a new spirit.

The world at that time was emerging from the depths of a dark age. Literacy was on the rise. It was safer to travel. People were seeking a better way of living, as may be seen in the numerous monasteries that began to appear. The development of a harmoniously integrated new culture could be accomplished, perhaps, only in this island setting.

One can infer from the Gospels that Jesus Christ, in launching a new expression of devotion to God, had urged people to form little Christian communities. England may be said to have presented a similar opportunity: a separate body of land, open to new development in social, intellectual, and spiritual ways.

Paramhansa Yogananda also, in sermon after sermon, urged his listeners to create separate, self-sustaining communities where a new consciousness, and a new way of life, could be developed. Though he was not able to bring this idea to fruition during his lifetime, his disciple Swami Kriyananda has succeeded in doing so.

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William the Conqueror and the Church

David Douglas, in his great biography of the Conqueror, stated: “No aspect of the career of William the Conqueror is of more interest — or of more importance — than the part he played in the history of the western Church between 1066 and 1087.”

Opposed centralization of church power
Some of the most forceful personalities ever to occupy the throne of Saint Peter, beginning with Pope Gregory the Great, served as popes during the reigns of William and Henry. William supported Gregorian church reform in ways that strengthened the church spiritually and also the spiritual life of individuals.

However, he steadfastly resisted those aspects of the reform which called for the increased power of the church in secular matters. William was also adamant that all matters pertaining to the church within the Anglo-Norman kingdom would be decided internally by those churchmen closest to the situation.

“God is center everywhere”
Paramhansa Yogananda did the same with the worldwide organization he founded: Self-Realization Fellowship. As much as possible, Yogananda tried to manifest on the material plane the ancient dictum: “God is center everywhere; circumference, nowhere.”

He named his organization itself after that principle: Self-realization. This term would in time, he said, become accepted as embodying the underlying truth of all religions.

Time has brought a greater unfoldment of awareness, but already in the 11th century William not only wanted to bring England under the wholesome influence of Roman Christianity, which more truly reflected the spirit of Christ, he also wanted England to develop its own integrity so that the religious spirit would flower from within the individual.

King Henry’s intentions were precisely the same in every detail as those of his father.

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England’s future role

In this book it is our thesis that the Conqueror’s vision anticipated the role that England, specifically, would play in bridging East and West, uniting the strengths of each to bring mankind to the present time when the general level of consciousness on our planet is rising toward greater unity and also greater subtlety and refinement: an age of energy which promises greatness for the future.

*Excerpted from the forthcoming book by Catherine Van Houten: Two Souls: Four Lives — The Lives and Former Lives of Paramhansa Yogananda and His Disciple, Swami Kriyananda.

For a related article, see above: Paramhansa Yogananda as William the Conqueror, by Swami Kriyananda.

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

If we had the blessing of being suddenly drawn up into that superconscious state and seeing our lives from that perspective, we would realize how utterly trivial it is whether we sign that big contract or get a raise, whether somebody insults or praises us, whether people understand us or not. We would realize that these things just don’t matter.

In the superconscious state, we understand that this world is a delusion, a cosmic dream. We are no longer attached to the body, to the opinions of other people, or to any outward realities.

Live centered in the Self
The whole spiritual life is a process of learning to live superconsciously. To do that, we must become completely centered in our higher Self because that’s where our power and growth begin.

In human terms, you can accomplish a great deal if your will power is strong and you direct your energy with enough positive expectation. But beyond a certain point, the ego can’t accomplish very much unless it is attuned to the superconscious, and it takes a lot to tune in.

You must recognize that there is a higher aspect of consciousness, even of your own consciousness, over which you have no control. You are offering yourself up into something you can’t command, but the consciousness that comes, which is your own higher Self, doesn’t impose itself on you.

You must first be receptive. But when you have the courage, determination, and faith to accept whatever it gives, you find that life’s greatest tragedies can become doorways to the greatest joy.

Right attitude: the main requirement
Years ago there was a movie, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which depicted St. Francis as a sort of glorified hippy, loping dreamily through fields of flowers—nothing at all like the life he actually led, which included many tests and trials.

Many people were inspired by the movie, but if their understanding of the spiritual path remained on that level, they wouldn’t last very long. The spiritual path is very challenging and you’ve got to approach it with the right “weapons.” Those “weapons” are the attitudes we take on when we come onto the spiritual path.

Many people think that the spiritual path is seeing visions and having all sorts of wonderful phenomena, but basically the spiritual path is right attitude.

You can’t run away from difficulties
How do you react when a test comes?  I once said to a brother disciple who was going through a big test: “Well, after all, you’re young. You have at least 40 more years on the path, and you’ve got to get through this sooner or later.” That practically threw him into a pit of despair. That’s because he didn’t have much courage.

You won’t be worthy of God if you try to run away from your difficulties, if you aren’t willing to do whatever work is necessary to achieve freedom. To succeed on the spiritual path you need that level of courage that allows you to think, “No matter how long this test lasts, it will pass in time so why worry about it?”

When a nail is buried in a board, you don’t know the size of the nail, but if you keep pulling on the nail, eventually it will come out. Similarly, you may have very little bad karma left to pay off, or you may have a lot more.

What does it matter? Work at it, and sooner or later it will pass. Remember, God will never let you down if you love Him and keep seeking Him.

Love: the divine wavelength
Love is the most important quality of all. Love is what pulls us out of delusion.

In fact, we can’t put one foot in front of the other on the spiritual path until we begin to develop that devotional quality, that self-giving love—the sweetness, tenderness, and softness of feeling that come when you’re no longer protecting the ego. Ultimately, we must learn to approach God with the total trust and faith of a child.

The first duty of every devotee is to keep alive the lamp of devotion. Without love, you won’t grow spiritually because love is the wavelength on which the Divine functions.

“Maybe I can do better”
An attitude of learning is also fundamental. Always be ready to listen to what seem like silly points of view; they may have something to teach you. We need to feel there’s a great deal of truth we don’t yet know, and to be open to that truth, regardless of the source.

In fact, I’ve seen that the moment I write somebody off as too stupid to teach me anything, God uses that very person to teach me something. We need an attitude that says, “Maybe I can do better; maybe I can learn from this situation.”

Willingness is pleasing to God
Willingness is one of the most important attitudes and something Paramhansa Yogananda always emphasized. When you’re willing to give up your own desires to serve God, when you’re willing to put yourself out that extra bit, when you’re willing to say “yes” instead of “no” —that’s what pleases God.

Remember the principle: “The greater the will, or willingness, the greater the flow of energy.”  The more willing you are, the more energy you have.

When you have an attitude of openness, of saying “yes,” you find that things start to go well for you spiritually because willingness gets your energy moving in a positive direction. The goal of the spiritual path is to get all of your energy moving in that direction.

Calm, cheerful acceptance
Right attitude means being able to accept everything impartially. Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, “What comes of itself, let it come.” That doesn’t mean only the good things; it means anything.  And it doesn’t mean whipping yourself up into a false sense of well-being.

The basic attitude is to be “even-minded and cheerful”—an attitude of neutrality, of calmly and cheerfully accepting whatever God gives.

In the spiritual life, attitude is more important than anything else and it’s something we can keep growing in until we reach the perfection of union with God.

Seek higher guidance in daily life
How do we bring more of the superconscious into our lives?  We must understand that there are two levels here: daily life and meditation. In our waking state we can lift our consciousness up and be guided by the superconscious level.

Always try, if a problem comes up in your life, to put your mind at the point between the eyebrows, the center of superconsciousness. Then withdraw a little into yourself and try to feel in your heart what the right solution is.

Let that calm, inner feeling be your guide. Otherwise all the reasoning in the world can lead you astray, no matter how right it looks. The heart and intellect need to work together. You will be surprised at how easily you can do this once you have the practice, and how much better everything flows.

Open yourself inwardly in meditation
But the other side of this is meditation. We must go deeper and deeper in meditation, because it is there, really, that we come into contact with the superconscious. The more you open yourself inwardly in meditation, the stronger that ray will be on all levels of life.

Years ago, when I was busy building Ananda, I was going through a time of great trial, giving classes in city after city, and putting out as much energy as possible just to stay afloat. The only person helping me was my secretary who answered letters, sent out book orders, and helped set up talks and advertising. One day she decided it was just too much, found another job, and quit without notice.

I felt so hurt that a friend of mine would betray me like this. I had all the tools to reason my way out of it, but my feelings kept getting in the way. I would tell myself, “Well, it’s all a dream,” but it just didn’t work. My mind was going more and more into a tailspin. So I said, “O.K, my rational mind isn’t capable of getting out of it. Let me meditate.”

I meditated and when I became very calm, I asked God to come to me. Suddenly I felt this great peace and love come over me. When I felt that presence very strongly, I said, “God, I have this problem, but I don’t want to think about it anymore. You just show me how I should feel.”

You think in a different way
All of a sudden, a wave of understanding came upon me, and I saw the situation in a completely different light. Suddenly I was concerned for her because she was a friend who had made a mistake.

I was so concerned for her that I no longer thought about myself. I even went and visited her. I discovered that she was ill in bed, and I did what I could to make her feel better.

That may seem like a preposterous way to behave when she was the one who left without notice, but God can give us these superconscious attitudes that make everything look different.

When you’re in tune with the Divine, you think in a completely different way. You look for the hardest jobs, not the easiest; you look for what you can give away, not what you can get; you look for how you can help people, not how they can help you. You don’t think in terms of, “What am I receiving?”  but, “What can I do to please you more, God?”

A deep memory
You will only be happy if you live, day by day, the realities of the superconscious level of your own existence. We carry within us the deep memory of where we came from in God. It’s a quiet voice in the background, hardly to be noticed. By living in tune with it, we become that.

Excerpted from Intuition for Starters and The Light of Superconsciousness, Crystal Clarity Publishers, and from the following recordings: “Right Attitude, The Basis of the Spiritual Life”; “Tools of Superconscious Living”; and “Good Friday.”  To order a CD or MP3 of these talks, click here or call Treasures Along the Path (530) 478 7656

Resources:
To view Swami Kriyananda’s recent talk on meditation, click here
One meditation expert called it “the best short talk on meditation” she’s ever heard.

For information on Swami Kriyananda’s book, Awaken to Superconsciousness, click here

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

Seemingly a daunting task
At the start of my spiritual search, I defined the spiritual path primarily as meditation. I was fortunate to have a very regular daily meditation habit from the beginning. While not always deep, I would tell myself, “At least I’m moving in the right direction, toward the true goal of life.”

It wasn’t until I had been meditating some years, and became involved with Ananda, that it finally dawned on me that success on the spiritual path was not just about meditation. It was a fulltime job that demanded a complete change in thought patterns. I was being asked to look at every moment of every day and to bring God into it, and I was supposed to do this while trying to deal with all the demands of daily life.

This was a daunting task. Even though I grasped it intellectually, my habit of using the rational mind to influence and direct my life was deeply ingrained and much stronger than my attempts to practice God’s presence. Often my daily life went on just as before.

A gradual shift
Once I committed to the spiritual path, God and Guru introduced circumstances into my life that pushed me in the direction I needed to grow.  First marriage and later, a baby, brought new challenges.

More recently I have been asked to serve in positions that require me to work closely with many diverse people, and I get pushed out of my comfort zone more often. As challenges arise, I remember more often to ask Divine Mother in the moment, “What would you do?” and to pray for guidance about specific situations and people.

Nonetheless, I can still get swept away in the busy details of life. I may have a nice morning meditation but then, boom! Here comes daily life.  After a couple of hours of responding to emails, answering the phone, dealing with the crisis of the day, I might remember, “Oh yeah, think about God and Guru.” Then the phone rings again and off I go.

The day will go by, and I will sit to meditate at night and realize that I had not called on God or Guru during the day. I remember more often than I used to, but not as much as I aspire to.

I’ve begun to realize that it’s mainly during moments of adversity that I remember to focus and draw on God’s presence, ask for guidance, or do japa. I’ve come to see how valuable the difficult times are, and how we can embrace adversity as an impetus to remember to practice God’s presence.

So I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned about turning emotional upsets into opportunities to call on God.

A four-step process

Recognize the upset
The first step is to recognize when I am off center. Most of us are really good at recognizing emotional agitation in others but less so in ourselves. In the midst of the upset, we usually see the problem as “out there;” something’s wrong with the world, with another person, not with us. But Yogananda teaches that events are neutral; it’s our reactions that cause us to suffer.

How do we recognize the agitation? It might be an unsettled feeling centered in the heart. It might be thoughts that keep coming when we’re trying to accomplish a task or sit to meditate: “Why did he do that to me?” “Why did they say that to me?” “I don’t want to feel this way.”

Some people live so embroiled in negative emotions—anger, worry, fear, hatred, jealousy, grief, pride, resentment— that an agitated consciousness seems normal. Fortunately, devotees have a meditation practice. The more we meditate, the more we begin to live in that calm inner center. When emotional agitation pulls us out of it, we recognize the need to do something to regain our inner calm.

Step back/disengage
After recognizing the agitation, do whatever you need to do to get out of the emotional whirlpool. Choose a technique: Do deep breathing. Silently chant “Aum Guru” or some other mantra. Focus at the spiritual eye and pray for calmness. Look at a photo of the Guru, especially the Guru’s eyes.

If possible, change your environment so that you’re disengaged from the outer stimulus that pushed you over the edge in the first place.

Separate yourself from the person or persons who upset you. Unplug from the media so you’re not reminded of the economic stresses that worry you, or the undefined fears of disaster that haunt your subconscious. Remove yourself from the surroundings that remind you of the loss of a pet or loved one.

I have found that the calming techniques are usually more effective if I can get a little space from what upset me in the first place.

Redirect the energy
One of the problems I experienced in trying to draw on God’s presence was that my efforts were plagued by low energy. My mind would get distracted, my prayers would be half-hearted, or I would slip into a subconscious state.

However, when feeling negative emotions, I noticed that even though I was in a negative vortex, my prayers and meditation efforts had much more energy and meaning. Suffering can thus lead to positive spiritual changes once we succeed in redirecting our energy and offering it up to God and Guru.

So when you’re alone, redirect that energy by using it to chant, meditate, and call on God and Guru to help you. When we put more energy into calling on God, He is much more likely to respond.

The initial response is usually a reconnection to interior calmness and joy. But, I have found that it can also take the form of alleviating the outward problem that precipitated the upset in the first place.

Gratitude
And then give thanks that someone or something “pushed your buttons,” and for the last several days you remembered to call to God because you were miserable. Thank God for giving you the opportunity to do that. By remembering how much calling on God helped you, you move closer to living always in His presence.

This approach in action
An example of how this approach can solve a problem in a dramatic way involved our son when he was a year and a half old. He became sick and couldn’t keep any food down. It seemed like a normal sickness, but after two days and he was still throwing up and crying, worry began to set in.

This went on for three more days. By day five we had seen a doctor, followed the instructions, but nothing had changed. Our son was still sick, and hadn’t eaten in four days.

More and more my wife and I were becoming caught in a vortex of negative emotions—fear and also anger because we weren’t getting any sleep. All along we’d been reading books trying to find an answer and asking everyone we knew for advice—but we had not called on God.

Finally, on the fifth day, we woke up and said, “Oh, let’s pray.” So we began praying and offering the situation up to God and Guru. We also put our son’s name on the community’s healing prayer list. Within a few hours Divine Mother sent the answer in the form of a community member who approached my wife and asked, “What’s going on?”

My wife filled her in, and the community member (who was Italian) said, “My son had something like that. Doctors in this country don’t usually recognize the symptoms, but it’s called acetona, and it’s a ketone imbalance. Here’s a homeopathic remedy, which I happen to have, that will take care of it.” My wife gave our son the remedy and within three hours, he was completely back to normal and eating.

But, we had been caught in such a powerful vortex that it had taken us five days to step back and remember to bring God and Guru into our search for a solution. Once we had disengaged enough to call on God, our fervent prayers were quickly answered. We still remember this incident, and are grateful for the lessons it taught us about the power of bringing God into our lives.

Transcending the greatest adversities
My son’s illness was a dramatic example of how adversity can remind us to call on God. Many people have transcended the greatest of adversities by clinging to God.

One instance that I read about recently is Corrie Ten Boom’s story. (The Hiding Place and Tramp for the Lord.) Corrie was a middle-aged woman living in the Netherlands with her older sister and father when the Nazis occupied her country. Hers was a very devout Christian family with a deep inner relationship with Jesus.

For hiding Jews in their house, Corrie and her sister were arrested and sent to a Dutch prison. Later, they were moved to Ravensbrook, a concentration camp deep in Germany, with unbelievably horrendous conditions. In both places Corrie and her sister led secret Bible sessions with other prisoners, prayed for people, and constantly drew on Jesus’ inner presence.

Corrie’s sister died in the concentration camp, but Corrie’s deep connection to God and Jesus gave her the strength to overcome her grief, hatred, and despair. She survived, was released, and later traveled around the world telling people that it was possible to transcend the worst adversities if you pray and call on God and Jesus.

She even went to Germany. Once, after giving a talk on forgiveness, a guard who had been at Ravensbrook walked up to her and extended his hand. He didn’t remember her, but she recognized him: he had been one of the cruelest guards.

She wrote that during those seconds, she wrestled with the most difficult thing she had ever done. She silently prayed, “Jesus help me! I can lift my hand. I can do that much, but you supply the feeling.”

Slowly she raised her hand and gave it to this man. At that moment, she was flooded with the most incredible love and joy. She wrote, “I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did in that moment.”

We have to learn our lessons
Life is a school and we can’t really drop out—we have to learn our lessons. The good news is that the masters promise that God will never give us a test we’re not capable of passing.

So remember to embrace the adversities that come. When we’ve made practicing the presence of God a more dynamic part of our spiritual life, we find that we don’t wait five days after adversity strikes to call on Him. It becomes second nature because we’re always involving Him in our lives.

Peter and his wife Marga are Lightbearers who have lived at Ananda Village since 1992. He has served as manager of the Meditation Retreat and the Expanding Light guest retreat, and currently is village manager in charge of planning and day-to-day operations of the community.

Resources:
To read, “Our Greatest Work in Life” 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.

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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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In this letter Swami Kriyananda responds to the question: What exactly do we mean by saying we have been given free will? If all actions are done by God, how are we free?

Dear ___________

I’ll be glad to try to answer your questions.

First, soul freedom is a reality, but it must be understood on a deeper level than that of the ego.

Freedom, to begin with, is true only of the soul. Limitation of all kinds is the meaning of bondage, and ego-consciousness is the greatest limitation of all, from which all others proceed. Ego makes us think we have a separate, individual reality.

As waves on the sea appear individual, yet have no lasting reality except as manifestations of that one great body of water, so we ourselves, in ego-consciousness, rise and fall, wavelike, on the ocean of God’s consciousness, success followed by failure, happiness followed by sorrow, fulfillment followed by frustration, ever subject to the contrasting states of duality. Our separateness from the ocean, however, and even from one another is a mere appearance. Man may be described as simply a bundle of self-definitions.

Paramhansa Yogananda described divine consciousness as “center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” Man’s limited existence is the “circumference” formed by his egoic self-definitions. When those limiting self-definitions are removed or dissolved, nothing remains to prevent his consciousness from merging into and becoming one with God. In that stage it is not that we lose all identity; rather, we expand our identity to infinity.

Being omniscient, it must be added that we retain the memory of having been, each one of us, a separate ego. In this way, Yogananda explained, nothing is lost in the Infinite—not even the ego. We can revive that memory of individual existence again, if ever the Divine wills that we return to earth to uplift and save other wandering souls.

Man cannot be free in ego-consciousness, except in the sense that his soul-consciousness within him can impel him to direct his energies and aspirations toward God, or toward maya. Everything man does in his egoic state is conditioned by his own past actions, and by the countless outside influences to which he is subject. For man is integrally a part of the great Web of Existence. Egoic individuality is an illusion.

Man has only this much freedom: his soul, being a part of God, is not separate from Infinity. Thus, all of us in our souls have the power either to turn toward God or to reject Him; to love Him, or to spurn Him. This, in essence, is our only true freedom. Since karma and worldly influences prevent him from expressing that freedom, it must be added that man is free also to the extent that he can free his mind from all habits and separative samskars.

In other words, if he is self-controlled he has greater freedom than someone who is completely bound by habits. Good qualities, which are the attributes of Sattwa guna, cannot in themselves bring release from ego. All qualities, however noble, being born of ego-consciousness, conceal the inner soul. The Gita tells us they hide it as smoke hides a fire: A little puff of wind, and the fire becomes fully visible.

Sattwa guna is like a thin veil covering soul-consciousness and concealing it. A little meditative effort is all that is needed in order to blow away the last delusions of egoic separateness.

The darkening qualities of Tamo guna, on the other hand, form a thick covering which conceals the soul within them as if in deep darkness. The Gita compares Tamo guna to an embryo in the womb: Time alone will enable the embryo to emerge into the clear light of day.

God does indeed do everything, but He also created delusion, and operates through the three gunas to bring about His cosmic magic show. We cannot operate through the ego without becoming intrinsic parts of the cosmic illusion. Hence, in our egos we are free only to the extent that we turn back, even with great effort, toward God. Only as we shed ego-consciousness can we reclaim our divine freedom, which means becoming one with God again.

I hope this answer proves helpful.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

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My lot is small, and my life’s season is short, yet now I would produce a mighty harvest. I will expand my kingdom of will power. To do so, I must conquer new states of consciousness, enlarge my achievements, and outgrow, in consciousness, every limiting horizon.

But, O Father Divine, there are billions of my hungry thought-families and their little ones to feed! And, for them, I need a big harvest during this short season of my earth-life.

The irrigating waters of my craving many times grew dry, while my soil of inner culture was left undeveloped. Now I will work all the harder, using the machinery of scientific technique in my search for Thee.

O Divine Sower, with Thine unseen hand throw Thy living seeds of inspiration into the cultivated furrows of my awakened resolution.

In this short, remaining season of my earthly life let me reap the largest harvest of all: Thy cosmic vision!

* Full title: “May I Reap the Greatest Harvest in the Short Season of this Earth Life,” from Whispers from Eternity, edited by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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Our Guru seldom praised me for my labor. But he did, sometimes, praise me for my devotion. For he was more anxious that we work to develop and perfect ourselves in this heavenly quality than that we do tremendous outward labor, but in forgetfulness of God. The chief purpose of his mission was to teach us, and all people, an inner, divine productivity.

I knew Master three and a half years. And if there is one point that stands out in my throng of sweet memories, it is the fact that what pleased him always, above everything else, was devotion, and a constant inward remembrance of God. Good work without devotion might have impressed him, but it never thrilled his heart.

How many weep for the Divine Mother as Master wept when he was a boy? Our greatest work in life should be to express that divine yearning, that love. When we can reflect it, we shall be able to work ten times as hard, and a hundred times as effectively, as we do when we draw only on our own scanty powers. When we think of the Lord first, our hearts sing for joy and all our work goes easily.

We must discipline the mind! Divine Mother has given us a project more urgent than the printing of any book, and that is to learn to live constantly in the consciousness of Her. Her deadline of death is more important, and less alterable, than any publishing date.

Our work should be a conscious, loving service to the Lord. It should be a devotional offering to Him.

*Excerpted from Letters to Truth Seekers, copyrighted 1973 (Currently out-of-print).

Who among these, then, was the more truly wealthy? It isn’t merely a matter of how much you have, but rather of how well you know how to use what you have. Wealth cannot be equated with some fixed quantity. If one is wealthy in his mind, or in his spirit, he may require very few material possessions to be perfectly satisfied with life. If, on the other hand, one considers himself wealthy only for his material riches, he may be convinced he is poor even if he has fifty million dollars, perhaps only because some former classmate of his has ninety million.

Wealth is the consciousness of abundance. And poverty is the consciousness of lack. Wealth and poverty are both states of mind. You are as rich, or as poor, as you believe yourself to be.

Essential to my theme in this book is the importance of the right mental attitude, not only for defining the parameters of happiness intelligently, but also for attracting wealth in the first place.

The purpose of this book is to help you to attract money in such a way as not to make it a burden on your peace of mind, but a doorway, rather, to genuine opportunity. It is to help you to learn how to use money wisely, in such a way as to acquire the greatest possible benefits for yourself and for others.

*Excerpted from Money Magnetism by Swami Kriyananda

Resource:
To view Crystal Clarity Publishers’ “Leadership & Money” section, click here

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)

Preparation time: 10 minutes Serves: 5
Cooking time: 10 minutes

Sauté for 5 minutes:

¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips

Add and sauté until slightly soft:

6 zucchini, cut into rounds

Add:

2 tablespoons tamari or Bragg Liquid Aminos
2 teaspoons maple syrup
1 pinch black pepper

Serve warm or cold.
(From Global Kitchen, Crystal Clarity Publishers)

2. Tomato Basil Salad
A cooling salad for a festive or everyday meal.

Preparation time: 25 minutes Serves: 6

Place in a bowl:

3 large tomatoes, cut into crescents
6 mushrooms, cut into 1/8 inch slices
¼ cup olives, sliced
1/3 cup artichoke hearts,* quartered
¼ cup fresh parsley, minced
2 tablespoons fresh basil, minced

In a small bowl, mix dressing:

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 large clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 pinches dried mustard

Pour dressing over vegetables and toss. Add, to taste:

½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Serving idea: Good with Bulgur Garbanzo Salad.
*Use artichoke hearts packed in water, not vinegar.

(From Global Kitchen, Crystal Clarity Publishers)

3. Mexican Salad
A meal in itself

Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time for rice: 45 minutes
Chilling time: 30 minutes

Sauté for 5 minutes in medium skillet:

1½ tablespoons butter
1½ cups cooked rice
scant ½  teaspoon chili powder
1/8 teaspoon coriander
scant ½  teaspoon cumin powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon paprika

Allow to cool. In a large bowl, mix the above with:

1½ cups cooked kidney beans  (canned work fine)
1 head iceberg lettuce, cut into bite-size pieces
¼-½ cup minced yellow or red onions
one 4-ounce can diced Ortega chilies
one 3½-5-ounce can pitted black olives, sliced

Then add:

3 tomatoes, diced
1/3 pound cheddar cheese, cut into small pieces

Top with:

¼ pound corn chips, broken into bite-size pieces

Chill and serve with Ranch Dressing, This salad goes well with corn bread

(From Simply Vegetarian! Crystal Clarity Publishers)

4. Seasoned Spinach Salad
Simple but delicious.

Preparation time: 10-15 minutes Serves: 4
Cooking time: 15-20 minutes

Thaw and drain water from:

1 pound frozen spinach

Sauté in a skillet for 5 minutes:

3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and whole
thawed spinach

Cover and let simmer on low heat for 15-20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Discard garlic cloves. Place spinach in a serving dish and add:

½ cup black olives, sliced

Serve warm.

Variations:
Add ½ cup pine nuts to sautéed spinach. You can also mix this salad with cooked basmati rice.

(From Global Kitchen, Crystal Clarity Publishers)

All the wealth of this earth
All the riches of the universe
Belong to Thee, belong to Thee.

I am Thy child.
The wealth of earth and universe
Belongs to me, belongs to me,
O belongs to me, belongs to me.

I lived in thoughts of poverty
And wrongly fancied I was poor
So I was poor.

Now I am home and Thy consciousness
Has made me wealthy, made me rich.
I am success, I am rich.

Thou art my treasure, I am rich, I am rich.
Thou art everything, Thou art everything.
Thou art mine.
I have everything, I have everything.
I am wealthy, I am rich.

I have everything, I have everything
I possess all and everything
Even as Thou dost, even as Thou dost.
I possess everything, I possess everything.

Thou art my wealth.
I have everything.

From Scientific Healing Affirmations, 1924 edition.

1. Blocks distracting odors
Often, during meditation, the nearby odors from such things as car exhausts, food cooking, cigarette smoke, or even upholstery in the room where one sits can be distracting to the mind, and indeed may also awaken mental associations that have nothing in common with the mood of inner upliftment.

The gentle, pervasive scent of incense can help to block that often-bewildering diversity of smells, smoothing them out into a single, prolonged, and continuous sensation that itself, especially with repeated association, becomes uplifting. Gradually that one, over-all scent becomes an aid, not a distraction, in directing the mind one-pointedly toward contemplating higher realities.

2. Creates an uplifted mood
A second benefit from incense pertains to the sense of smell itself, which is said to be the most memory-stimulating of the five senses. How often does the smell of something become immediately associated in our minds with some memory—perhaps from years ago, perhaps even from our early childhood.

The regular use of incense during devotional and meditative practices gradually causes an association of that scent with those practices. Thus, the scent helps one to return more instantly, without effort, to an uplifted mood.

3. Helps to focus the mind
The third benefit is more particular. During the yoga practice of watching the breath, the best place to concentrate on the flow of breath is the point where it enters the body. I don’t mean the nostrils, but rather where the breath enters the head. This point is, of course, quite close to the point between the eyebrows, the Christ center recommended in yoga teachings as the best point at which to focus one’s concentration.

An awareness of the scent of incense at that point, and the association of the scent itself with devotional upliftment, help one to keep the mind focused on the breath entering and leaving the body.

Excerpted from a longer article in Religion and the New Age, Crystal Clarity Publishers. To read the full article, click here

You don’t have to be a slave to your bad karma. It was energy you put out in the past that created that karma, and if you put out the necessary energy now, you can get rid of it. Every hardship you meet with the right attitude and energy makes you stronger and helps to rid you of some of that karmic burden.

Accepting what is
There are two things we can do to get through life’s difficult periods. We must learn to accept the difficulties and also to overcome them—and we must learn to do both.

When I say that we must learn to accept the difficulties I’m not saying that if the world treats you badly, you should get a hangdog expression and wait to be kicked again. You don’t have to do that, but you don’t have to fight back either.

Success depends to a great extent on one’s willingness to accept reality as it is: as something to be faced if you don’t have the ability to control it. When you accept reality as it is, your energy becomes positive and that positive mental attitude, if directed wisely, will help you transform failure into success.

The real source of success
When I speak of success, I mean the kind of success you attain by sheer hard work. There’s success that comes to you on a platter due to past good karma, but if you just passively ride that wave, you’re not making progress. The energy you put out is the real source of your success.

I knew a group of people who were starting a company and kept talking about all the millions they would make. But I could see that they weren’t putting out the energy necessary to get those millions, and the business never did get off the ground.

Often the most successful people are those who have had the most to overcome because they’ve had to put out a great deal of energy to transcend their challenges. So don’t worry about the obstacles you’re facing. See them simply as things to overcome. If you put out the necessary energy, the results will take care of themselves.

Focused, solution-conscious energy
Success at anything depends upon concentrated energy. One-pointed concentration, if directed with will power and energy, generates a magnetic field that can attract success.

So, do everything with keen interest. People who work with only half their mind focused on their task never really succeed.

Equally important is solution consciousness. Don’t mix with people who only see the obstacles, but with those who find solutions and succeed in their efforts. At Ananda, when I see people with problem consciousness, I keep them at a distance. I don’t mean to be unfriendly to anyone, but low energy people can pull you down with their failure consciousness.

The solutions to our challenges are in the ether. When you’re solution conscious, you put out the kind of magnetism that attracts success, and a higher force begins working in your life. You’ll be amazed how often answers come to you, sometimes out of the blue.

Similarly, when you become deeply concentrated, as in meditation, you reach a superconscious level of awareness, and at that level, God can work through you.
By becoming open to His inspiration, you can accomplish things well beyond your self-perceived abilities.

People are really seeking happiness
What we’re really looking for when we think of success is happiness. Many people think, “When I have money, I’ll be happy.” The truth is that people with a great deal of money are often among the most miserable.

Nor does human love bring you happiness. That, perhaps, is the greatest delusion of all. Everybody wants a mate and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing in itself, but it’s such a compromise with what the heart really wants. We’re looking for perfection of love, and we won’t find it in another person. In fact, you won’t find fulfillment in anything unless you have it in yourself.

The success you’re looking for doesn’t depend on anything external; it depends on your attitudes and inner self. The more you can share whatever life gives you with others, the more you will find the kind of success you’re really looking for—which is happiness.

Seek the best for everyone
I was in Sicily a few years ago, and I went into a shop to buy a hat to protect me from the sun. I don’t usually wear hats so I asked the woman there, “Which hat do your customers like best?” She said, “They pay me and they leave. I have no more interest in them.”

I said, “Here you are, wasting eight hours a day just thinking of how much money you’re going to get, and not seeing these people as an opportunity to make friends? You’re not finding happiness in your work because you’re not thinking of how to make other people happy. What is the use of living like that?” I left, and I didn’t buy a hat.

The next year I was again in that town. I happened to be walking past this woman’s shop, and she was outside. She came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, “Thank you. You taught me a very good lesson.” She was weeping because it was so important to her to have understood that simple principle.

When a person seeks the best for everyone, actively and generously, his chances of finding happiness are great. This is why Jesus Christ said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” When you give, you feel more bliss because you’re expanding beyond the little ego.

Leveling out the duality
The world has a million ways of involving you. The more you get caught up in the outward expression of life, the more you will have to deal with the duality of it. Every success will be balanced by a failure, every victory by a defeat.

But the more you can remain even-minded and cheerful at all times, the more you can level out the duality and achieve the kind of success that is worthwhile. It depends entirely upon your courage and equanimity, especially your refusal to be upset when things don’t go well.

When William the Conqueror landed in England, the first thing he did was fall in the sand, and a gasp of horror went through his entire army. They were thinking, “Oh, what a bad omen. We’ve come to conquer a country and the first thing our leader does is fall down flat on his hands and knees.”

But William was a man of extraordinary courage. He said, “I am so determined to grasp this country that I have taken it in both my hands!” And everybody cheered.

If you take everything that comes to you with that kind of attitude, the worst failure can bring success. I’ve had many failures in my life. I’m grateful for them because they’ve helped me to develop the power to find the success I truly want.

Seek success in the Self
How do you develop that power? The more you can live centered in the spine, the less anything will affect you. This is why Kriya Yoga is such an important science. Kriya helps you to get control over the energy in your spine and to raise your energy and consciousness completely toward God, who is beyond the states of duality.

When your mind is settled within, you find that you are always happy because you experience the joy of the soul, to which there is no opposite joy. You are joy. It’s not something you achieve by getting anything.

Hold your consciousness up
Always remember that God is not up in the heavens. He’s part of your own consciousness. The more you open yourself to Him, the more whatever you need— opportunities, inspiration, understanding—will come to you. But if you turn away from Him, even a little, you begin to lose that grace.

You have to hold your consciousness constantly up to Him. If you can do this, you’ll find success in whatever you do, and also the highest kind of success — realizing God’s bliss within.

From a July 26, 2008 talk in Los Angeles and Material Success through Yoga Principles.

Resources:
How to Be a Success by Paramhansa Yogananda

Many people saw Jesus display miraculous powers, but failed to perceive his spiritual greatness. They were so enamored of the material delusion that they could not intuitively perceive the truth of his existence.

“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 the material dream of matter to be able to walk on water. When he saw Jesus walking across the lake toward the boat carrying him and the other disciples, 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 one permanently transcend the consciousness that matter is real and the habit of doubt. Then the body can 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, 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 relatives of the earth?” When God would not immediately respond to my questions, I would become a “Doubting Thomas,” 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, indifference, and disbelief in all spiritual laws. It not only kills the hunger for truth, it also destroys the 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 vibratory sound, 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. However, 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 Him more deeply as ecstasy. By contacting God as ecstasy, they reap the harvest of wisdom manifold, far beyond their dreams.

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.

Q. Bharat, when did you first realize that nature was important to you?

A. When I was five-years-old. I was in my backyard and looking intently upward into a thick fog when all of a sudden, bursting through a gap in the fog, came a flock of pearl-white snow geese. It seemed as if the sky had given birth to them. Seeing the snow geese thrilled me deeply, and ever since I’ve wanted to immerse myself in nature.

By the time I was twelve, I was waking up at dawn to run through the wildlands near my home. I took such delight in everything I saw that I often ran right through the ponds and marshes.

Q. When did you know that your career path lay in doing something connected with nature?

It was when I was a student at Chico State University and majoring in international relations. In one of my courses I read a statement by a 19th century European leader who said, “I don’t want war, but I want my country to get what it wants.”

This was during the Vietnam War and I, like many others, felt a deep desire to bring peace into the world. But after reading that statement, I realized that the self-interest of people and nations made it very difficult to achieve world peace.

I had been spending many days in the wilderness and feeling at times a joyous sense of stillness and expansion. Recalling these experiences, I thought, “This is real peace. This is something true that I can share with others.”

So I changed my major to Nature Awareness. I was the first student to be accepted into Chico’s special major program, where a student could create a non-traditional degree. I also started a meditation practice to try to experience more regularly the joyous serenity and expansion I often felt in nature.

Q. After you graduated from Chico State, did you find a way to share with people the peace you experienced in nature?

A. By then I knew about experiential nature activities, which I had immediately recognized as a way to imbue nature encounters with a dynamic sense of joy and receptivity. After graduating in 1973, I began developing my own nature activities and sharing them at outdoor schools and camps.

Both children and adults enjoyed them immensely. The activities became very popular among educators and youth leaders, and soon nearly every Boy Scout camp in the western United States was using them.

Q. You later presented many of those activities in your first book, Sharing Nature with Children. What prompted you to write it?

In 1975 I joined Ananda and soon entered the monastery. I was under the impression that monks should not be involved in society, but knowing how much people loved the nature activities,  I decided to write them down for posterity. I thought I was writing the book as a last gift to the world.

Swami Kriyananda, however, had other plans for me. After Sharing Nature with Children was published, he suggested that one of the senior monks begin arranging autograph events to promote the book. It was due to Kriyananda’s encouragement that I began making public appearances.

Q. Sharing Nature with Children has been widely praised as a landmark book. What distinguished it from other nature books?

A. Most nature education books then available engaged only the intellect. I wanted to engage people’s hearts and intuition so they could deeply experience nature. The book was also practical, with easy-to-use activities and inspiring stories that captured people’s imagination.

Paramhansa Yogananda said that rather than explain things to people, we should help them put out the kind of energy that brings them onto the wavelength of what we’re trying to teach. Each nature activity in Sharing Nature with Children is a little discipline that helps children and adults become more sensitively aware of nature and their higher Self.

Q. Why did eight years pass between your first and second book?

A. I was planning to write a sequel to Sharing Nature with Children when Swami Kriyananda asked my wife, Anandi, and me to become leaders of the developing Ananda Palo Alto Center. He said, “The work you’re doing in nature is wonderful, but you’ve come to Ananda to find God and I have to honor that.” So I suspended all of my nature work for the three years we were in Palo Alto.

Kriyananda’s words were really about following God’s will and embracing divine opportunities. Serving in Palo Alto was very helpful to me spiritually and also gave me the understanding and tools to write a much better book. From teaching the meditation classes at the Ananda center, I gained a deeper understanding of the importance of stillness and inner receptivity, not only for meditation but also for deeper nature experiences. Through prayer and meditation, I later found ways to apply what I learned in writing my second book, Sharing the Joy of Nature. *

Q. Can you explain how you were able to do that?

A. I created a system called “Flow Learning,” a way of sequencing nature activities to awaken in people a strong flow of energy and open them to an experience of absorption and expansion. An experience of absorption is the key to deeper nature experiences.

The great naturalist, John Muir, would become so absorbed in the natural world that he would lose consciousness of his own separate existence and feel himself merging with the totality of nature. His great love and reverence for life came from his experience of oneness with everything around him.

For Flow Learning to work, I also had to create many new nature activities. I would think of a spiritual principle from Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings, hold it in my mind, and pray: “How can I create a way for people to easily experience this principle?”

“Expanding Circles,” for example, is based on one of Yogananda’s meditations where you expand your sense of self. In this activity, you sit quietly in nature and gradually, in stages, expand your awareness to encompass everything you see.

One woman who did this activity said, “At first I felt like I was composing a picture. After a while I found that I’d stepped inside and become the picture.”

Q. What has been the response to Flow Learning?

A. Very enthusiastic. Our Sharing Nature leader in Brazil gave a workshop based on Flow Learning for Amazon tour guides. They were skeptical at first but after several activities, one person approached her and said with deep emotion, “You are helping me find the forest inside of me! We don’t know the forest in this way!”

In Switzerland, the professors at a teachers’ college were so enthusiastic about Flow Learning that right after my speech, one professor eagerly asked me, “What was life like before Flow Learning!”

Flow learning shows people how to awaken energy and direct it upwards for superconscious inspiration. For most people this is a revelation. Today Flow Learning is widely used by educators and corporate trainers throughout the world.

Q. Have Flow Learning and the new Sharing Nature activities caused people to become more interested in the spiritual life?

A. Yes. Through the experience of absorption, people achieve a deep level of peace and joyful expansion. Often they become interested in forming a meditation practice to cultivate and enhance the feeling they had during the workshop.

Often people are caught up with the mundane realities of life and fail to appreciate life’s underlying unity and harmony. But the understanding that we are a part of something larger than ourselves is Nature’s greatest gift. As people experience their larger reality, they become inspired and their life priorities change.

Q. You have offered sharing Nature programs in countries like Japan, China, Brazil, and Greece — places where the spirituality varies. What is the response of people who are Taoists or Buddhists or follow other spiritual paths?

A. When people experience divine qualities like peace or love, they become deeply appreciative, no matter what their culture or spiritual tradition.

I recently gave an “Inner Nature” workshop at a Zen community in Devon, England, and the leader there told me, “We wanted to include environmental awareness in our programs, but didn’t know how to do it and stay true to our spiritual calling. The Sharing Nature activities are perfect for us.”

Sharing Nature is based on universal principles. In Greece people said the Sharing Nature program was just the way Plato taught, and in Japan they said it was very Japanese.

Q. Sharing Nature has triggered a consciousness revolution based on direct experience through nature activities.  It has changed the consciousness of millions of people and given them the tools to change others. How can someone receive training to lead Sharing Nature programs?

A. In May 2009 I’ll be offering a five-day training and retreat at Ananda’s Expanding Light Guest Retreat. People new to Sharing Nature as well as Sharing Nature leaders from around the world will be attending. The program includes nature meditations, nature activities for children and adults, Flow Learning, and much more. It’s going to be a wonderful week.

* The name was later changed to Sharing Nature with Children, II.

To read the inspiring story of Sharing Nature around the world and to learn more about the upcoming May 2009 Sharing Nature Training & Retreat Week, go to: www.sharingnature.com

Bharat Cornell is a Lightbearer and longtime Ananda member. In addition to his nature activities, he works in the Sangha Office at Ananda Village as Meditation Support Coordinator. His many books on nature awareness include, Listening to Nature.

Our fathers were U.S. Army officers stationed in Germany, and we were on a day outing with a babysitter and our little sisters. When it was time to go home, we thought it was quite cute and funny to hide, and we hid so well they couldn’t find us.

By the time we realized that the babysitter had left, believing we were ahead of her on the path, the tourists were gone, it was dark, and we were lost. I knew we would be in trouble at home, but wandering alone in a gloomy, empty graveyard was more frightening than any punishment I could imagine.

Fear-consciousness: a common habit
I got out of that mess through the kindness of strangers, and as I grew up my fears grew too. I had a pretty normal, middle-class American life and rarely did any of my fears actually materialize. But fear consciousness is a common human habit, so I kept my fears close to my heart and carried them with me.

The Bhagavad Gita promises that even a little practice of meditation frees one from dire fears and colossal sufferings. When I came onto the spiritual path and my life became consciously God-centered, much of my fear consciousness left. There was a feeling of restfulness and calm as I let go of anxiety about myself. But some habits take a lot of energy to shake loose.

The second big fear challenge occurred after I became a wife and mother. Our neighbor’s beautiful 16-year-old daughter died suddenly. It was a shock to everyone who knew her, of course, but particularly difficult for parents. This is the nightmare all parents share. I watched my own children with gratitude mixed with terrible fear. My husband and I also had to deal with their fear – as they faced death for the first time in their young lives.

My sensitivity to the emotions of the neighborhood was acute during this period. It was not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There was another young neighbor girl fighting cancer and an adult neighbor who had died recently. I could sense the entire block vibrating with confusion, fear and doubt.

Acting with love
The downward pull of the emotions around me needed to be reversed, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I knew, however, how Swami Kriyananda responded to challenges: with great energy and will power. So I walked around the block at night and prayed for every household with deep concentration. I visualized every home bathed in light. And I prayed for a way to act.

It came to me that our grieving neighbor loved roses and a few hours of research revealed that there was a species of rose that shared her daughter’s name. My husband and I thought it would be a small, but meaningful gesture to buy the roses for the family. After more research I found that the roses were only available in Canada and could not be shipped across the border.

I was crushed to have the momentum for the lovely idea stopped so soon. But my husband was more solution conscious – he thought we should go to Canada.

As this idea took hold, I could feel my consciousness shifting into a lighter, more positive direction. It was not a small undertaking, packing up three young children and making the arrangements. We contacted friends and neighbors and received enthusiastic support as well as financial donations for the roses. The trip was fun and successful.

We returned with two rose bushes in the car and lighter hearts. The gathering at which we presented the roses was emotional, but full of love. I tried to put our sympathy into words and invited everyone to add their energy by signing the accompanying letter.

Fear loses its grip
The willpower and energy we poured into acting with love helped to shift the consciousness of an entire community. Others responded with gratitude and relief, as they saw a way to express their sympathy in an expansive way. We were not able to lessen the grief suffered by that family, but we were able to show them that love and friendship were still a part of their lives. And fear lost its grip on our hearts.

Now I act quickly in response to fear. As soon as those thoughts creep in, I move the energy upward and out, away from my little self and into loving concern for others. I’ll write a sincere note of gratitude to a friend, or pour energy into a task that is helpful. I don’t want fear thoughts to settle in and get comfortable.

Keeping company with high-minded souls also helps to change fearful thinking. A friend, the director of a charter school in California, told me of meeting with community leaders and educators to discuss the drastically reduced availability of funding.

Fear and pessimism were strong, but she explained how exciting it was to feel the shift in consciousness as they all began to add up the “intellectual capital” they had access to, and the “creative capital” they shared. The atmosphere of fear and loss changed to one of abundance and infinite possibilities.

New hidden layers of fear
I haven’t totally shaken the fear habit, but now I recognize it and act to change it. Recently, I found new hidden layers to my fears when my husband was facing serious health issues. For weeks we had appointments and tests with four different specialists. Every doctor thought the likelihood of cancer was high, and it took awhile to work through the lists of possibilities and find the answer that ruled out cancer.

One day, during all the doctor visits and tests, I realized my breathing had become shallow, my posture was rounded and my arms were frequently folded across my chest. I was trying to protect myself from outcomes I didn’t want.

“It’s not myself I’m fearful for,” my little inner voice said, “it’s just that I’m afraid for him.” But it’s a trick – all of our fears are rooted in fear for ourselves.

I certainly didn’t want to see my husband suffer, but my thoughts were also crowded with concern for myself: “How could I support the family, care for a sick spouse and see to the needs of three children? What if I couldn’t do what was needed? What if I wasn’t strong enough? What if I failed – as a wife, as a mother, as a disciple? If he dies, how will I face life alone? “

So I began to check myself. I would roll my shoulders back, breathe deeply and affirm, “I welcome everything that comes to me as an opportunity for further growth.” * This simple change in posture was enough to open the energy flow and allow more expansive thinking. I focused on my heart and upper body, because that was where I felt the impulse to cave in. I visualized my heart open and strong and felt calmness replacing fear.

The power of prayer and surrender
As I felt calmness return, I was also able to see God’s hand in every place I had previously felt fearful. Solutions and reassurance seemed to flow through every situation.

The teachers I work with stepped in without hesitation whenever I had to be gone. I unexpectedly had the use of my mother’s car to get to appointments. Anonymous gifts appeared that helped make Christmas possible for my family. The doctors were kind and generous about discounting our bills when they found out we were self-employed.

I could feel the prayers of friends and family all around us. Even the weather seemed to be a blessing as winter storms closed down the city and offered my stressed and worried family the opportunity to be home together and feel comforted, just when we needed it the most.

We now know that my husband does not have a life-threatening cancer, but a chronic arthritic condition that is serious, but manageable. We also know the power of prayer and surrender to God’s grace in all things. I was ready to accept whatever the diagnosis brought because it was so clear I wasn’t alone, and I learned that everything we need comes to us when we can welcome whatever God is giving.

Speculation about the future is natural at the turn of a new year, and as world events unfold, the future, ever uncertain, holds frightening possibilities. Above all, I try to offer my life into God’s hands and to live in the realization that there is no place or circumstance outside of God’s love. Every effort I make to know God more completely brings greater joy and freedom from all fear.

*Affirmations for Self-Healing by Swami Kriyananda

Lorna Knox is a founding member of Ananda Portland and teaches at the Ananda Living Wisdom School in Beaverton, OR. She is the author of Scary News and I Came From Joy!, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Economically and in other ways, the world is headed toward that 100-year flood. Companies that have prospered for 100 years are on the brink of bankruptcy. There is a great trembling in the foundations of the things people have looked to for their fundamental security. Paramhansa Yogananda long predicted this would occur because of imbalances in man’s consciousness.

The eternal wanderers
In The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, Paramhansa Yogananda describes the streams of consciousness that flow through the world as the “eternal wanderers.” We don’t create these streams of consciousness; we tune into them. And there’s always a balance between light and dark, between the upward pulling energies and the downward pulling energies.

The dark streams of consciousness flowing through the world at this time are basically of three types: a consciousness of conflict, of greed, and of fear. And they are causing enormous problems.

The presence of conflict is obvious. It’s reflected in terrorists who blow up hotels and kill hundreds of people; in conflicts between people of different economic levels; and in the minds and hearts of people throughout the world.

How do we overcome conflict? Not by creating bigger conflicts or by building bigger, smarter bombs to kill more and more terrorists. It simply doesn’t work that way. We don’t overcome conflict by adding more darkness, but by adding light and specifically, by increasing its opposite, harmony.

God, the source of all harmony
Those of us who are part of Ananda are dedicated to living in exactly the way the world needs right now, which is living in harmony, not just with each other but, more importantly, with God, the source of all harmony. Not only can we model that for the world but, by living more consciously that way, we can also bring more of the vibration of harmony into the world.

There is also the stream of greed. Yogananda said that the depression of the 1930s was the result of greed.  If anything, that greed has grown stronger over the many decades since the 1930s. How do you overcome greed? Not by taking but by giving; not by thinking of yourself, but of others.

The problem with conflict, greed, and ultimately fear is that they cause you to turn your energies in upon yourself, and pit you against others: rivals, other countries, and anyone who thinks differently. In the end, such divisive thinking shatters the world into separate fragments.

In fact, it’s the satanic force trying to draw people’s consciousness downward into separation.  And those downward pulling energies whisper to us so-called “solutions.”

Choose the positive solutions
For conflict they whisper: “If only you build bigger armies and smarter bombs, you can eliminate the bad people and end conflict.” With greed they whisper: “If only you can rebuild your stock portfolio, and find a way to make a fortune, you will be secure and happy.”

You’ll read articles that say, “There’s real opportunity out there in this down market. If you get in at the right time with the right stocks, you can become a gazillionaire.” And it’s put in such a way that those who are susceptible begin to think that getting more and more money really is the solution to all their problems. Carefully avoided is the thought that your gain may be someone else’s loss.

So, the solution to greed is not more greed, just as the solution to conflict is not more conflict. Greed contracts the heart. The solution to greed is the awakening and expanding of heart qualities such as kindness, compassion, and caring for other people.

And likewise with fear: The solution to fear is not hunkering down and becoming self-protective. It’s opening our hearts with courage to help others. The heart can’t simultaneously contract in fear and expand in love. So choose love not fear.

Attune to God’s consciousness
Most of all, we have to attune our consciousness to the positive flow of God’s consciousness—to the eternal source of all positive energy. Tuning in to the ray that Yogananda brought into this world, and becoming channels for that energy, will help counteract the dark consciousness afflicting the planet.

In fact, we have a wonderful opportunity at this time, because as the downward force gets stronger, the upward potential also becomes stronger. Yogananda said that during the next great depression, people would be half as wealthy but much more spiritual.

So this year, especially, we need to reach out with positive energy—with love of God and each other, with caring about people who are going through difficult times, and with the desire to spread harmony in the world. And as we put our energy and consciousness on the line, we must understand that we aren’t acting alone. We’re acting as manifestations of a great spiritual potential that is waiting, like lightning, to be released.

Seize this opportunity
How does lightning happen? Tremendous amounts of energy gather in the clouds, ready to be released. First a thin thread of energy goes up from the earth into a cloud; then the lightning bolt follows that thread down to the earth. We’re the little thread of energy reaching up into the positive energy of God’s consciousness, which is waiting to be released as a bolt of light to uplift world consciousness.

If we want to be in tune with God, we must seize this opportunity and be a channel for light. There’s an old Chinese proverb that says, “May you be born in interesting times.” We’re in a very interesting period right now and, on some level, we’ve all chosen to be here at this time to help the world.

So let’s all of us be channels for light, for love, and for the consciousness that Yogananda has so wonderfully and beautifully given us. That, especially, is the challenge and the blessing that awaits us this year.

From a December 14, 2008 talk 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.

In The Holy Science Sri Yukteswar describes a recurring cycle of human development called the cycle of the yugas (or ages). He tells us that we are in the ascending half of the cycle, in the second age or Dwapara Yuga. [See chart]

Sri Yukteswar explains that the cycle of the yugas is caused by influences from outside our solar system that affect the consciousness of all mankind. As the yugas advance, mankind increasingly manifests its higher potentials and expresses dharma (divine virtue) more and more completely.

According to Sri Yukteswar, with the start of ascending Dwapara Yuga in 1900, mankind as a whole is developing toward greater dharma. To fully express dharma is to express our highest divine potential.

Today, when many are turning a blind eye to exploitation, inequity, and injustice, it may not seem that the world is actually getting better! However, through the cycle of the yugas and the evolution of dharma, Sri Yukteswar offers a profoundly reassuring vision of where mankind is heading.

Ignorance, passivity, and fatalism
In 500 A.D. at the start of ascending Kali Yuga, mankind as a whole was in a low state and dharma was only one-quarter developed. The intellect of mankind was dull and the average man could only comprehend gross matter, which led to an experience of life lived through and for the senses.

The motivation of the average person was passive acceptance, which expressed itself as a fatalistic acceptance of circumstances, without the will to change, or even the belief that circumstances could be changed. Most people made only simple, basic choices to minimize pain or maximize pleasure.

Human rights as we understand them today did not exist. More often than not people were considered property, either as outright slaves, or virtual slaves, such as serfs, who were tied to the land and subject to the lord of the land. Women were subject to their husbands and fathers. Owners had the power of life and death over their slaves.

Most of the world religions existed during Kali Yuga – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. Though exalted in their origins, the common man’s practice of them was very ritualistic. Religions demanded exclusive adherence. Priests insured obedience and rival religions were abhorred.

Higher spiritual knowledge existed, but it was hidden away and protected in convents and monasteries, temples and ashrams. Only a few were able to understand and use inner-directed spiritual practices.

Though Kali Yuga did produce its high-minded poets, philosophers, noble statesmen, and erected beautiful churches, temples and monuments, the experience of the average man was that of passive and ignorant acceptance of simple, hard and basic lives. The oppressive and materialistic mores of the age meant that each person sought primarily to physically survive and maximize the pleasures of the senses.

The transition to Dwapara Yuga
At the twilight of Kali Yuga and the beginning of Dwapara Yuga, people began to awaken to their higher potential. As Sri Yukteswar puts it, people began to have respect for themselves once more. The brutal ways in which man had treated his fellows, gave way to an appreciation of the dignity of man, humanism, and enlightenment.

We see evidence for this in the timing of the Enlightenment (1600A.D-1800A.D.), involving a switch from a reliance on commandments and authority, religious authority especially, to a reliance on reason and science. The intellect of man had awakened and reason had come to the fore. By the start of Dwapara Yuga in 1900, dharma was one-half developed.

The discovery of personal energy
While mankind’s awareness was limited to matter in Kali Yuga, the advent of Dwapara Yuga brought with it the knowledge that energy is the underlying reality of matter. Just as science has now separated the concepts of energy and matter, so also have many people discovered a subtle energy within the physical body, their life force, and with the discovery comes a greater ability to transform themselves.

With this new awareness comes the conviction that a person can, using one’s own energy, affect one’s circumstances and achieve one’s goals. Thus, with the start of Dwapara Yuga, the motivation of man has been to break free of the passive acceptance of the past, to develop self-will, and to try to shape the world to his liking.

The pursuit of happiness
Today, the average citizen in one of the world’s prosperous nations has more wealth, education, and thus more freedom to follow his or her interests, than nearly anyone who lived during Kali Yuga. With their basic needs assured, many are able to make life choices purely for the sake of their individual happiness.

This may well be the single most powerful drive shaping the actions of billions of people around the world today. And people are taking advantage of their freedom to pursue their happiness with dedicated zeal!

Today’s predominant pursuits are: accumulating wealth, property and other objects; experiencing endless variations of sensory and mental experiences; gaining and using personal power; and striving for personal achievement. And people are pursuing personal happiness without much regard to others.

Not a pretty picture
Like watching a child grow up, we may lament some of the “phases” the child must go through on its way to maturity. So, too, the results in this “phase” of ascending Dwapara Yuga are lamentable: self involvement, personal excess, self-destructive behavior, extreme accumulation of wealth at the expense of others, and greed and self-interest untempered by ethical considerations.

Much of Dwapara Yuga, so far, does not paint a pretty picture, and one can sympathize with those who think the world is going to the dogs.

In our society today, however, there are those who seek a more lasting happiness and fulfillment in selfless pursuits, such as serving others or seeking inner joy, born of meditation and inner experience. Currently, such people tend to stand out significantly from mainstream society, precisely because most people tend to follow their self-interests.

Yet, according to Sri Yukteswar, man is developing toward greater dharma. It is as if mankind as a whole is conducting an ongoing experiment in how to find happiness. Like Thomas Edison, who experimented with thousands of different types of filaments for the light bulb before finding the right one, mankind is also experimenting, and through trial and error will eventually learn to seek happiness in ways that give more lasting results.

Two over-arching lessons
Through mankind’s search for outward happiness, and before Dwapara Yuga reaches its end in 4100 A.D., mankind will learn two over-arching lessons:

One – the experience of happiness, the feeling of being happy, is the result of movements of our life force in our bodies.

There is a hypnosis, a mass conviction, that if we can just accumulate enough things— enough money, enough pleasures—we will break through into feeling truly happy. But if things outside ourselves actually possessed the power to make us happy we would stay happy as long as we had those things.

Seeking happiness outside ourselves, more often than not, makes us unhappy. Most things outside ourselves are beyond our control, and the perfect consummation of most of our definitions of happiness never occurs.

The truth is, it’s our inner reaction to things that makes us feel good, because our reaction releases a flow of our own life force in the body. The great news is that mankind’s newly emerging awareness of energy, of life force, is the seed that will grow and eventually bestow the understanding that happiness and well-being are the result of our life force flowing positively and abundantly through our bodies.

Learn to properly direct your life force and you will be able to experience positive feelings at will. Increase the flow of energy and you will experience them even more generously — which brings us to the second overarching lesson of Dwapara Yuga:

The experience of happiness is enhanced through the expansion of one’s awareness and sympathies.

Once people become more aware of their life force, they will discover that to focus only on one’s own happiness contracts the flow of life force. A generosity of spirit, an open-hearted way of dealing with others, an awareness and concern for the welfare of others, a willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of others—these expand the flow of life force.

Even now we recognize this. People honor Mother Teresa not just because of her accomplishments, but because they recognize the wisdom of her life, and they recognize that wisdom through having seen her shining eyes and joyful face. As the lessons of the years are learned, people will eventually take it for granted that the wellbeing of others is as important to their happiness as their own circumstances.

Dharma’s steady advance
Many people alive today already know this simple truth, but for mankind as a whole, alas, it will take centuries to learn. But the ascending yuga’s effect is inexorable.

According to Sri Yukteswar, the minutely changing awareness of mankind, brought about by dharma’s steady advance, can have no other outcome.

Purushottama Selbie has been a minister, teacher, and business and community leader in various Ananda communities for over 30 years. His education in archeology and Eastern and Western philosophy, with a keen interest in ancient history, combines to provide knowledgeable insight into the yugas.

David Steinmetz, a Lightbearer and Ananda Village resident, has worked as both an astronomer and optical engineer. He has been giving lectures and classes on the yuga cycle model of history for more than a decade and presently teaches a course based on that model at the Ananda Institute for Alternative Living.

Resources: Religion in the New Age

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.” And he went to breakfast actually looking forward to the work. And that was the day he was taken off that job.

What imparts the lesson?
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 a lot longer to be able to look back and say, “Oh, that’s what I learned.”

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. Sometimes you get into a deep state of meditation and are suddenly seeing lights, or feeling an expansion of consciousness, and then the mind says, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to understand this.” And the experience is gone.

People in this country have fewer spiritual experiences than in many other countries because we’re so intellectual, so rational. We think we’re going to understand something when our brain has grasped it. But often the brain is a barrier to understanding.

You don’t have to pick a thing apart and understand it with your brain. In fact, an over-mental approach can actually hinder you from ever really understanding something.  People who think too much go in circles and are in a continual mental cloud. It’s very important to break that.

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. And 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 say what he had to say and to 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 we can’t explain it clearly, we 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. Being receptive in a dynamic way, and drawing on divine inspiration in whatever you do, gets you into attunement with that divine ray.

Ramakrishna used to tell a lovely story of a play about Krishna where the audience could see two rooms with a divider between them. Krishna was in one room and in the other room the gopis were singing, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare,” and getting more and more excited. But Krishna paid them no attention; he just went on doing certain things.

After the gopis left, Radha came into the room, sat down, and said, “Oh, Krishna.” And Krishna dropped everything and ran to be with Radha because she had called with her soul. We have to pray with our souls, and we have to work with our souls. 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 with that divine ray, 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.

Swami Kriyananda has noted that it is “through the focused energy and magnetism of a few that real changes are made.”

In an era known as the “Age of Invention” (1870-1910), Edison, along with Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Luther Burbank, Nikola Tesla, George Washington Carver and others, formed a community of inventors and innovators who led the way into the 20th Century. They knew one another, drew inspiration from each other’s efforts, and often collaborated.

Edison, a deeply spiritual man, was sometimes accused of atheism because he subscribed to no formal religion and referred to God as the “Supreme Intelligence.” For Edison, however, the marvels of science proved beyond doubt the existence of an “Intelligent Creator that rules matter and is mathematical in its precision.” He was well-acquainted with the Bible and the scriptural teachings of the major religions, which he considered to be  “the greatest rules of human conduct every set up for man.”

Throughout his life, Edison dedicated himself to the ideal of honest, loving service to his fellow man. He said, “My philosophy of life is work. Bringing out the secrets of Nature and applying them for the happiness of man—I know of no better service to render during the short time we are in this world.”

“My mother was the making of me”
Thomas Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. His formal education ended after three months, when he refused to return to school because the headmaster referred to him as “addled” and thus unteachable.

His mother, a former schoolteacher, took charge of his education. From her, Edison received a basic grammar school education. More importantly, she discovered that his real interest lay in the physical sciences and encouraged him along those lines. In later years Edison wrote, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint.”

At age ten, Edison developed a passion for chemistry and, inspired by Samuel Morse’s invention of telegraphy, designed his first telegraph set. Two years later, to help support the family, he became a newsboy on the local railroad line. In spite of the long hours, he set up a laboratory in the baggage car and spent his free time in the reading room of the Detroit Free Library.

An itinerant telegrapher
Like many boys of his day, he followed the progress of the telegraph lines across the country and dreamed of becoming a part of this new, innovative technology. At age 16, an opportunity presented itself when he saved a three-year-old from an oncoming train. The boy’s father, a telegrapher, rewarded young Edison by offering to train him as a telegraph operator. Edison caught on quickly and within three months began his career as an itinerant telegrapher.

In the spring of 1868, the twenty-one year old Edison moved to Boston, the hub of electrical and scientific research in the United States. His intention was to become a full time inventor, but not finding enough backers to finance his efforts, he moved to New York City the following year, seeking better opportunities.

Finally, a breakthrough
His breakthrough came when Western Union, the largest of the telegraph monopolies, hired him to improve its stock printers, which occasionally ran wild and spit out crazy figures. He promptly invented a device that brought the stock tickers in line with the central transmitter.

Over the next several years, Edison divided his time between working for Western Union and freelance invention. In 1876, with money from his successful inventions, and subsidies from Western Union, Edison, with his young wife and child, moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey to become a full-time inventor.

His most creative years
This move marked the beginning of his most productive and creative years. Within two years he developed the carbon transmitter and the phonograph.  The carbon transmitter was essentially a microphone that made it possible to hear the human voice over long distance wires, and was crucial to the use of the recently invented telephone.

The phonograph, Edison’s first original invention, brought him international acclaim. When he was unable to find backers to develop the invention, he turned his attention to the development of an incandescent light bulb.

The light bulb: 43,000 experiments
His first challenge was to find a durable filament, which could burn in a high vacuum glass bulb. Over the next fourteen months he conducted over 43,000 experiments using every conceivable kind of material, and finally settled on a carbon-based filament that could burn for nearly 1200 hours.

The key to his success was his unflagging energy and enthusiasm in the face of constant difficulties.”The electric light,” he said, “has caused me the greatest amount of study and has required the most elaborate experiments. I was never myself discouraged, or inclined to be hopeless of success. But I cannot say the same for all my associates.”

Describing Edison’s efforts as “an extraordinary commitment to what seemed an impossible dream,” Swami Kriyananda writes:

Edison tested 43,000 filaments before finding the right one for the electric light bulb. His assistants pleaded with him, after 20,000 failures, to give up the attempt. It was his intuitive certainty that such a filament existed that drove him to keep on trying until he succeeded. Nobody would go through that much work if he didn’t already know he was going to succeed.

Edison didn’t just invent a light bulb. He invented an entire system of lighting that included a central power plant, generators, cables, switches and other equipment. When his financial backers balked at these further expenses, he and his associates put up their own money and created the Edison Lamp Company.

On September 4, 1882, the world’s first permanent electric power plant went into operation in New York City providing light to fifty-nine customers in a square mile area.

Edison’s lighting system transformed the use of energy and electrical power worldwide and was soon adapted to every aspect of household and industrial use. Later, he perfected the phonograph; key elements of a motion picture camera; the alkaline storage battery; and a host of other inventions. By 1911, Edison had created a large industrial empire based on his inventions.

An American folk hero
Though Edison achieved great success and wealth, he was a man of simple tastes. He saw money as the means to further his research and fulfill his vision of a better world. Nonetheless, his “rags to riches” life through hard work and intelligence made him an American folk hero, and he was often invited to speak on various topics. His views reflected the depth and scope of his ideas:

On energy: “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

On war: “Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

On the future of medicine: “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of his body, proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

“It is very beautiful over there!”
Henry Ford, Edison’s best friend, spent time with him a few weeks before his death. After Edison’s passing, perhaps to dispel doubts about Edison’s beliefs, he spoke publicly of Edison’s belief in an afterlife:
When the years increased and he began to think of the natural end of this stage of  life, he turned his thoughts to that great question. He then reached the conclusion that individual life continues through the change which we call death. He felt there was a central progressing core of life that went on and on…. We talked of it many times.
A few days before his passing, surrounded by family and friends, Edison sat up suddenly and, gazing upward into space, said, “It is very beautiful over there!”  He died October 18, 1931 at the age of 84.

Nakin Lenti, a minister and longtime member of Ananda, lives at Ananda Village where he serves in the Sangha Office.

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.

Dear ——:

In any line of work one can’t expect constant wins. What one loses, however, if one reacts unhappily, is that people hesitate even to offer suggestions. In time, they begin seeking help elsewhere, even if they like your ideas better than someone else’s. After all, who wants to face a possible upset when one is only trying to get a job done?

Can’t you see that your distress over their reactions, and not your actual work, is what makes them so often skirt around you rather than work with you? Who wants to upset you? No one! Their natural reaction will be to avoid you, even for your sake.

My point here is that what we need to do in life is seek reactions that work for us, reactions that are useful. The only person who suffers when we allow negative thoughts to intrude is ourselves. And who wants to suffer?

The world is not out to get you. If, however, you keep feeling misjudged and unappreciated, people will leave you to yourself, for your peace of mind as much as for theirs. They’ll suffer in doing so, but who wants disharmony if he can avoid it? And you will suffer even more. Why? It’s all completely unnecessary!

When others don’t like some idea you come up with, don’t look on it as a failure. It’s your discouragement that is your failure—a spiritual failure. For you are on the spiritual path to grow spiritually! The first thing is to develop a right attitude. What you do in your work is of minor importance. What you do in your work on yourself is of major importance, and is the only thing God wants of you.

Be stronger in yourself. Absolutely refuse to feel sorry for yourself. The truth is, whatever attitude you put out will be a magnet that draws back to yourself situations that reflect your expectation. If the attitude is negative, the “echo” will be negative also. If it is positive, everything will turn positive for you. It is you who create your own universe!

Remember, finally, that people like working with others who like working with them. It’s all that simple! Try to learn this truth! It will be the cornerstone of anything you build of your own happiness and fulfillment.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

Whatever treasures have lain in the secrecy of my soul, I
bring eagerly to Thee.

I bring Thee all the honey from the hive of my heart. All
that was ever mine is now Thine alone.

The sunlight of this world, shining upon my eager hopes
and brief, fickle fulfillments, burned me repeatedly with
dissatisfaction.

Now I will quench my thirst forever in Thy radiant waters!

The taper of my aspiration toward happiness will burst
aflame with Thy coming into a conflagration of bliss.

In Thy vast, enchanting sea of light I will swim joyfully
forever.

Teach me to drown in Thee and live, rather than live in a
mirage-paradise of earthliness and die.

From Whispers from Eternity, edited by Swami Kriyananda,
Crystal Clarity Publishers.

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)

In the parable of The Good Samaritan, Jesus marvelously shows the meaning of “neighbor” and every person’s duty to his fellow man: Thieves had robbed and wounded a man, leaving him half-dead on the road. Two people later passed on the same road, but each crossed to the other side. The third person, a Samaritan, had compassion for the wounded man. He cleaned and bound his wounds, took him to an inn, and cared for him.

The meaning of “neighbor”
Here Jesus is saying that you should help any afflicted person who is thrown in your path. If you see someone meet with an accident, you should consider him a neighbor and assist him in every way possible, just as you would like to be assisted if you were in the same position. Helping any such person who happens to be near you, whether in your own neighborhood, or in a foreign land, is to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Thomas à Kempis once said, pointing to a condemned criminal, “There, but for the grace of God, goes myself.” That is true from a limited standpoint, but from a universal, spiritual standpoint, we may well say of every man, “There goes myself.”  From a spiritual standpoint, everyone is your neighbor for God is our Father and we are His children, one with Him.

Selfishness: the root of all troubles
Selfishness is the root of all troubles, whether individual or national. National selfishness is just as evil as personal selfishness. The state of Texas in America could produce enough wheat and corn to supply the whole world. Why, then, is there any starvation in the world today? Because of man’s national and industrial selfishness, which is against the divine law of cooperation, mutual service, and sharing God-given prosperity with other nations of the world.

When a member of a family becomes sick or disabled, he honorably shares the family food and wealth; he is not the object of charity. The same should hold true for each member of the world family. No one should starve because he has no job, or is old or disabled. If individuals and nations followed the law laid down by Christ, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” starvation would cease to exist.

The spiritual law of equal supply
Selfishness caused the 1930 depression in America. Businessmen and industrialists, by their indifference to the needs and sufferings of others, and selfish advancement of their own interests, broke the spiritual law of equal supply. Thus, the richest nation on the globe suddenly became poor.

Even the smartest businessmen became children in the hands of destiny. Businessmen who were certain of their ability to invest properly and preserve their fortunes lost everything. When a materially-minded businessman’s brain is befuddled with greed, his mind causes him to initiate one failing plan after another. This is the price all selfish, materially-minded people are bound to pay eventually.

However, even in the worst depression, an unselfish businessman who keeps his mind concentrated principally upon God, the Giver of all things, will never lose everything, unless it is a divine test intended to help him spiritually. And those who consider the world their home, and work for the advancement of group or world prosperity, will find prosperity even in poverty-stricken environments.

It is a popular error to think that unselfishness involves tormenting sacrifice and loss. Unselfishness is the only lasting way to secure individual prosperity.

The competitive spirit in business
The competitive spirit in business kills the spirit of unselfishness. It breeds the attitude: “Get the money anyway you can, just for yourself and not for your country or your suffering world.”

In business there should be cooperation, not competition and cut-throat methods. If each one of two thousand people in business were to help one another, then each one would have one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine helpers. But when each member of the business community tries to take away money from his neighbor, then each one lives surrounded by one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine business sharks.

The competitive spirit in business must focus on the superior desire to do universal good.  Only when business competition awakens the desire to do the greatest good for the greatest number will there be a real foundation for lasting prosperity and happiness.

Vibrations travel through the ether
We are all indissolubly linked together and bound up in a common fate. Vibrations travel through the ether from one place to another; when depression starts in one place, it starts everywhere. No one can get away with disturbing one part of the world and preventing the disturbance from moving through the ether waves to other parts of the world.

That is why such a monumental disaster as recently occurred in Florida* from the devastating two-day hurricane deserves our universal sympathy and financial assistance. It was occasioned by the sum total of wrong human thoughts. As a world race, we are all responsible for it.

The wrong vibrations of war and industrial selfishness invariably bring about natural calamities. The death struggles of those killed by the civil war now raging in Spain** are floating in the ether, causing floods in America, storms in England and Portugal, and earthquakes in India.

We are the creators of this universe. Our thoughts and deeds have contributed throughout the ages to the making of tidal waves, forest fires, and volcanic upheavals, just as they have flowered forth in spiritual giants, innocent children, and the soft petals of flowers. The more spiritually civilized we grow, the more we control Nature. But Nature rebels when the master of the house of civilization sleeps.

Universal sympathy and love
Disease, universal depression, war—all these are making nations realize more and more that national security, prosperity, and health are dependent upon international development and world unity. We are a part of the world family and cannot exist without it.

To seek world unity only for its practical usefulness to individual nations will give us, at best, a temporary peaceful life on earth by preventing wars. But unless we can unite our consciousness with the cosmic consciousness of God and find the cord of one life, one law, and one wisdom uniting us all, we will not have real world unity. Real world unity and permanent prosperity, peace, and joy require that we feel that we are all children of the One Father, God.

You can only develop this kind of universal sympathy and love through meditation and spiritual effort. Actual steps must be taken to live the brotherhood preached by Christ and the masters of all religions, and to learn to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

From articles and lessons, 1926-1942.

*A hurricane of great magnitude hit downtown Miami, Florida, September 17-18, 1926. There were sustained winds of seventy-six miles an hour for twenty-four hours, resulting in 240 deaths and 115 million dollars in damage. It’s said that the hurricane gave Miami a three-year head start on the Great Depression.

**The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, involved the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties, on one side, and the Nationalist Party led by the fascist General Francisco Franco, on the other. The Nationalist Party prevailed and Franco became the de facto dictator of Spain until 1975.

A. I had been a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and doing Kriya Yoga for three years. When I heard about Ananda Village, I decided to visit because I very much wanted to start a spiritual community based on Yogananda’s teachings.

I immediately recognized, however, upon meeting Swami Kriyananda, the kind of magnetism needed to found a successful community. I felt I could help build Ananda, but leadership required much more attunement and experience on the spiritual path, and in life, than I had at age twenty-three.

Q. When you moved to Ananda Village in 1975, you worked in the Ananda garden.  Did you have an interest in gardening?

A. Yes. My supervisor in the garden was Haanel Cassidy, a Kriyaban and an expert in biodynamic gardening — Swami Kriyananda had invited him to move to Ananda in 1970 to start the garden.

Working under a master gardener like Haanel Cassidy was for me the answer to a prayer. I had always wanted to learn gardening and when I came to Ananda and realized that Haanel was the foremost expert on biodynamic gardening in the world, and also a Kriyaban, I knew Master had answered my prayer.

Q. What challenges did you face in the garden?

A. In 1975, the garden was still very small and underfunded. It was a huge challenge to undertake a garden at such a high elevation, with poor soil, and no money to build the infrastructure. Then, in 1976, the fire came and destroyed everything.

Those of us who could leave were urged to get outside jobs to help earn the money to rebuild. As gardeners, we wanted the garden to be much more than it was before the fire, and for that we needed water for irrigation (dams, pipes, sprinklers); the proper equipment (tractors, implements, backhoe); fencing to keep out the deer; and money for seeds.

So I worked in construction in San Francisco; others left to do tree planting or rice harvesting. As a garden staff we also did odd jobs for a fee. But we were still short of the money needed for big infrastructure items like a dam, which cost $20,000.

I prayed to Yogananda on how to raise the money for the dam and step by step followed his guidance. Using $5000 I had saved working as a contractor before moving to Ananda, I opened a futures trading account in precious metals by phone. I had no investment training but I would meditate on when to buy or sell, promising Master if he gave us the money, it would all go to the dam.

At one point there was a spike in the price of silver and I made $20,000. We built Nandi Dam that fall. Though the garden continued to have financial challenges, Master never guided me to do this again.

Q. Haanel Cassidy has been described as a “hard taskmaster with a heart of gold.” Was that your experience?

A. At Haanel’s passing in 1980, Swami Kriyananda said that the principal lesson Haanel shared with Ananda was “discipline.” He taught us that to be great you had to learn discipline. Most of us were not mature enough to understand the need for discipline. He sometimes called me “his wild Irishman,” but he knew that what I lacked in maturity I would make up for in effort and sincerity.

He required us to be prompt, to work hard, and to speak English correctly, and if we did these, he gave us absolute loyalty and friendship. We met each morning at 7:30 for our garden meetings; 7:31 was late. Often we would work for weeks on end without a day off, sometimes fourteen hours a day, but the wisdom and training he gave us has lasted a lifetime.

Q. In addition to self-discipline and intensity of effort, what else did you learn working in the garden?

A. The garden was a great environment to learn about humility and non-attachment. You could work a whole season and the deer, or a frost, could wipe out the entire crop in one night. It was a training in selfless service, in learning that God is the Doer and that He wants you to serve joyfully regardless of results.

Young apprentices usually found working in the garden very difficult. Only a small percentage would last a season, but the ones who did are still members of Ananda thirty years later.

Q. Did the challenges ever shake your faith?

A. When Haanel passed away, Swami Kriyananda asked me to be in charge of the garden. I asked myself: “Was I really ready to take over the garden?”  “Whom do I ask for advice?”  “Will I let Swamiji and the community down?”

Day by day, I realized that God was the Doer and that he could do things through me, if I let him. The miracles of the Ananda garden helped me understand that Yogananda was guiding this work and that all we had to do was cooperate with His “ray.” Because God always came through, my faith became stronger.

Q. How did God always “come through?” 

A. God and Guru would give us what we needed for God’s work, but not for personal desires. It became clear we needed to attune to His will, not our desires, to activate the law of success. If we kept open to what He was trying to teach us, we found miracles at every turn.

Once, for example, we really needed a cultivating tool that was extremely rare in Northern California. We had only a quarter of the price of a new one, but through an ad in a Yuba City newspaper, we found a used one in almost new condition for exactly the $2,300 we had.

Another time an early storm soaked the garden and didn’t clear until sunset. It seemed certain the entire tomato crop would freeze — there was no way we could protect so many plants. We prayed deeply, giving it all into Guru’s hands, and went to sleep. That night a fog formed and kept the air temperature above freezing. No plants died.

Q. It sounds like working in the garden enhanced your sensitivity to nature and the unity of all life? 

A. This was the greatest blessing of gardening, to see Divine Mother in everything, from the plants and flowers down to the insects and bacteria, and to realize how little our human efforts determine what happens in proportion to the wind, rain, sky and earth.

Through Kriya Yoga and Yogananda’s teachings we learn that we are connected to the Divine and a part of all that exists. So we always tried to see ourselves as channels for God’s blessings to work through these powerful natural forces so they could yield food for people. It was constantly uplifting to work in this consciousness. It gave us a dynamic awareness that God is the Doer.

Q. In 1986, you and your wife, Maria, who also worked in the garden, were asked to lead the Ananda Sacramento center.  Did your garden experience prepare you for your new challenges? 

A. Embracing the impossible challenge of the garden and having the experience of Yogananda’s grace bringing success was an invaluable spiritual lesson. The reality that God is the Doer became more and more ingrained. We left the garden ready for anything the Guru wanted of us.

Q. Some say that establishing the apartment complex community in Sacramento was another “impossible challenge.”  Was Yogananda’s grace involved here?

A. At every turn. As we set out to find the “perfect” apartment complex for our Guru’s world brotherhood colony in Sacramento, we had a brainstorming session with future residents of the community. We listed everything we needed for the perfect community, ending up with thirty-seven items: close to the American River; places for outside Sunday services; community temple and dining room; trees for shade and color; and so on.

Each day we prayed, said affirmations, and meditated, and then surrendered the project to Yogananda, asking him to guide us. We looked at 140 apartment complexes and when we found what is now Ananda Lane, it had 35 of the 37 things we told Master we wanted.

Q. You and Maria will be moving to Ananda Village in early 2009 to be leaders of a new “community within a community” consisting only of “young people.” Ananda Village has never had this kind of “separation” before. Why is it happening now?

A. Starting a community is a wonderful spiritual opportunity. The young disciples need the experience of starting something “from the ground up,” so they can learn what’s involved in building a community, and then pass it on to the next generation.

All of them now serve Ananda. But they need the chance to tune into the Guru’s plan for them, to feel his guidance, and to know they are just as capable as the young people at Ananda Village in the 60s and 70s.

Q. Will gardening be the focus of this community?

A. The direction the new community takes will come from the attunement and intuition of the young leaders. This will apply to every aspect of the community.

Q. What will you and Maria do?

A. We hope we can facilitate the process of starting the community and foster the Ananda vibration. What we will do day-to-day is entirely unknown. It is a new chapter in the history of Ananda, and Maria and I are very eager to see how it plays out.

Ananta McSweeney and his wife, Maria, are Acharyas (Spiritual Directors) of Ananda Sacramento.

Yet some inner doors remained closed to me. In time, I realized the truth of something else that Yoganandaji emphasized: Higher success, whether in worldly or Godly pursuits, requires creativity, intuitive understanding, and direct perception of truth. In short, I needed feeling.

What is feeling?
Feeling is a response that’s awakened in us as we focus our awareness on something: a person, an event, a circumstance. It’s a way of gaining understanding, and it’s very different from the way the intellect understands. The intellect understands via description and analysis, from the outside; it is centered in the brain. Feeling understands via relationship and, in its higher expressions, from the inside; it is centered in the heart.

Examples of feeling include the speechless appreciation of a beautiful nature scene, or the sense of expanded awareness that comes from gazing at a sky full of stars, or a mother’s sense of complete self-giving when looking at her child. Feeling also has negative expressions: emotional reactions like anger, fear or despair.

Feeling is the only way we can truly know something. Reason and intellect can be misled because they are forever at the periphery of their object. Only feeling has the potential to penetrate to its essence.

This is the highest expression of feeling: soul intuition, our ability to perceive reality directly and accurately. It’s only through intuition that we will realize the Self. As Swami Kriyananda has said, “The way to God is through the heart.”

But feeling, too, can be misled. The more we cling to the ego, the more we tend toward emotion, which distorts our perceptions. But as we relax away from ego and calm our feeling nature, we get a progressively more accurate picture of reality, until at last we see reality as it truly is. This higher expression of our feeling nature is what I will call “deep feeling.”

In contrast to willpower, which is all about doing, feeling is more about awareness. It’s subtle, but not mysterious. It simply requires sensitive listening, from a place of calmness, expansiveness, and receptivity.

I’d like to share a few simple ways in which the principles of Ananda Yoga can help you develop and refine those qualities, and thereby deepen your feeling capacity.

The power of calmness
Calmness is the first step toward deep feeling. Without calmness, we can become mired in the shallow feeling of emotion. A calm mind is important, but as Swami Kriyananda points out, deeper feeling requires a calm heart as well:

In teaching meditation, people speak of the need to calm the mind. In fact, it is the heart that needs to be calmed. That is why devotion is fundamental to success in meditation. When the heart is calm and one-pointed in its focus on God, the mind is also still because there are no restless feelings to disturb it.

“Calm” doesn’t mean “inactive.” It’s powerful and dynamic, yet refined and relaxed. The practice of yoga postures is a wonderful way to calm the heart.

Forward bends and twists do this beautifully. So do simple sitting poses like Vajrasana (Firm Pose), which not only quiets the body and mind, but also imparts an inward direction to your energy. Its affirmation, “In stillness I touch my inner strength” helps you still the heart as well as the mind, thus deepening your feeling capacity.

Yoga breathing techniques promote calmness as well. For example, Measured Breathing: inhale 6, hold 6, exhale 6 (or 8-8-8, or 4-4-4, or whatever works for you). The smooth, even cadence calms the breath, which in turn calms both mind and heart. For even deeper calmness, practice it in Vajrasana.

Feeling involves listening
Calmness sets the stage for listening. To truly understand something, we first must slow down and listen to it, feel it. Meditation is the ultimate listening exercise, but for many people, listening to the body is easier. In our fast-paced culture, many of us will benefit greatly from being more sensitive to the body, rather than merely ordering it around. Following are two ways to practice listening.

Select any yoga posture that you enjoy. Enter the pose s-l-o-w-l-y, gracefully, over the course of many breaths. “Place” your body in the pose, rather than forcing it. Notice every little movement; feel the different muscles as they engage and disengage. Listen to how each body part feels. Is it relaxed, or tense? Alert, or dull? Comfortable, or uncomfortable?

That’s a good warmup, but deeper listening is not about myriad details, but rather a single essence or direction. With that in mind, do the pose again, letting your body tell you how to proceed. Don’t think about each movement; instead, listen and follow. Try to feel inwardly the essence of the pose—not the body’s habits—leading you into position.

Do the same thing with Measured Breathing. Listen to your body to feel the right count for you, the count that gives you the greatest degree of calm awareness. Yes, use willpower to ensure the equal counts, but don’t “dominate” your breath. And don’t try to think your way to your perfect count; try to feel your way to it.

Such simple listening exercises can help you significantly to develop your listening capacity, and thereby your capacity to feel.

Expand beyond the “little” self
Another key to deep feeling is expansion. In Art as a Hidden Message, Swami Kriyananda writes, “an inward contraction upon the ego limits a person’s ability to experience deep feeling.”

Just think of the many ways in which people contract upon the ego: a superiority or inferiority complex, selfishness, fear, greed, defensiveness, judgment, desire for fame or power—the list goes on. Here’s a lovely exercise that shows how self-expansion increases your ability to experience deep feeling.

Choose a person whom you know and sit for a minute or two, trying to tune in to that person—to feel some part of that person’s deeper reality in whatever way you can. Then do your entire asana or meditation practice with the thought of sending the benefits of your practice streaming to that other person. Let every technique, every moment, be completely for the benefit of that other person. You’re merely a channel for those benefits.

At the end of your practice, try once again to tune in to that person. You’ll find that you’re much better able to do it, because you’ve expanded your awareness to include him or her. You have a feeling connection, not merely a personality connection.

Receptivity: the most important key
Calmness, self-expansion and a listening attitude prepare you to engage your receptivity, the subtlest—and in some ways the most important—key to deeper feeling. Receptivity is much more than openness; it is magnetic openness, being intensely and expectantly welcoming to what you wish to feel. And there is nothing that fosters such magnetism more than love.

George Washington Carver, the great American scientist and saint, put it succinctly, “If you love it enough, anything will give up its secrets to you.” By giving love, you open a channel of understanding with the object of your love. Whether it’s an inanimate object, an activity (e.g., cooking or a sport), or a living entity (plant, animal, human, or God), love helps you begin to resonate with it, which promotes an intuitive understanding of the object of your love.

Here’s a practice that can help you cultivate love within yourself. In The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, Swami Kriyananda writes, “To practice the yoga postures with spiritual feeling is to find that they help to develop that feeling.”

To apply this in yoga practices, make every movement with love. Love the vitality you get from the practices or techniques as well as the relaxation. Love what you can do, and love the challenge of what you can’t yet do so well. Love the process of ever-easier breathing. Love the quietness of body and mind. Love the blessing of the priceless gift of yoga from the great masters. Feel love as a quality that always exists in your heart, even when you’re not practicing postures or meditating.

Then, at the end of your practices, send that love to another person. (Hint: If you choose a person you don’t know, it will be easier to feel a deeper, impersonal love because your love is not about anyone’s personal qualities.) After a time, stop sending, and simply feel love in your own heart, a love free from any outward associations.

Meditate on that love—a love that is self-existing because it’s not about anything or anyone, and offer that feeling upward. The more strongly you can do this (strong feeling, that is, not strong will; willpower’s only role is to help you stay focused), the more magnetic and receptive you will be to God, the Source of all love.

Small steps to deep feeling
Any of the above practices can help us develop feeling. And like lifting weights to gain strength, exercising our feeling capacity will help it grow ever stronger, until at last we can perceive, we can feel, the subtlest levels of our own being. That is when—and how—we will know God.

Gyandev McCord, a Lightbearer and longtime Ananda member, directs Ananda Yoga Teacher Training and other courses at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat as Ananda Village. He and his wife, Diksha, also lead retreats in other locations across North America.

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.

If I had any regrets in raising my children, it was that I was not as firmly established on the spiritual path as I am now. In becoming a preschool teacher at Ananda Village, God and Guru have given me a wonderful gift — the opportunity to put into practice everything I have learned as a devotee and a mother, and to serve other people’s children as though they were my own.

A frustrating  month
In the fall of 2004, I felt inspired to take the early childhood education classes that would give me the teaching credential needed to teach preschool. Although I was told there were no openings at the Ananda preschool, I knew this was something I needed to do. Three months later, the preschool teacher left unexpectedly and I was called upon to take over her class midyear.

Every day that first month was challenging mainly because I couldn’t get the class calm enough to participate in any activities. There were a few “wild” ones in the group—high-energy, strong willed children whose reluctance to settle down influenced the others.

During “circle time,” for example, the children and I would sit in a circle on the floor for the start of various activities. But as soon as we sat down, one or two of them might get up and walk away; or a few of them might start talking and soon everyone would be talking; or someone might poke the child next to him and then chaos would reign. It went on like this day after day.

One day during circle time I became desperate. I knew I was going to lose control of the class if I didn’t find a way to calm their energy. Silently I called on my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and asked, “What can I do to make this work?” In that moment I received the inspiration for “Quiet Bodies.”

Getting the children to say “yes’
Quiet Bodies is simply sitting cross-legged, with eyes closed, and not moving for a few minutes. It’s unusual, however, to think that three and four-year-olds can sit quietly that long. Learning and growth in the preschool years occurs primarily through the body; that’s why young children are so constantly active. The key challenge of those years is learning to control and discipline the body.

In order to get the children to do Quiet Bodies, I needed to create an aura of specialness around the experience; making an activity “magical” and fun gets them to saying “yes.” With the children sitting in a circle, I held up “Mr. Blue Jay,” a small hand puppet that sits on two fingers. “Mr. Blue Jay” was very special to them because we used it only for circle time.

So while holding up “Mr. Blue Jay,” I told them what “Mr. Blue Jay” wanted them to do (not what I wanted them to do), and that when it was time to open their eyes, “Mr. Blue Jay” would tap each of them on the forehead. From that moment on Quiet Bodies became a regular part of our daily school activities. Quiet Bodies continued to evolve over the course of the school year, but “Mr. Blue Jay” remained a constant.

True teaching is vibrational
I realized soon after, however, that to maintain an atmosphere of calmness during the four hours the children and I were together, I needed to be calmer and more centered myself. Often I became so outwardly engaged with the children that it was difficult to remain in the presence of God.

When I’m not deeply calm, I can’t convey to the children how wonderful it is to sit quietly with their eyes closed. If I can’t still my thoughts and feelings, how can I expect the children to still their bodies?  “True teaching is vibrational,” Swami Kriyananda writes. He says that our vibrations change people much more than our words, and that the best way to influence someone else’s behavior is to be strong in those qualities oneself.

He gives the example of a mother who took her young son to Mahatma Gandhi and asked Gandhi to tell the little boy not to eat so many sweets. Gandhi told her to come back in a week. When the mother returned a week later, and Gandhi told the boy not to eat too many sweets, she asked why he couldn’t have said that a week ago. Gandhi replied, “A week ago I was eating sweets myself.”

Staying in the flow
Strengthening my meditation practice and learning how to work effectively with the preschool children have gone hand in hand. During my child-raising years I often had to put my meditation practice on “hold.”  For twenty years I said an affirmation suggested by an Ananda minister: “I will meditate. I can’t right now but I will meditate,” and it has finally paid off.

My meditation practice is much stronger now and I can share with the children one of the deepest aspects of the spiritual path—the upliftment and centeredness that come with daily meditation and God-contact.

When I’m calm and centered, there’s a “flow” that comes; I know when I’m in it and when I’ve stepped out of it. Whenever the children’s energy is “off,” I first check to see if I’m still in the flow. If not, I raise my energy and call on God. The more “out of the flow” I become, the more energy I put into calling on God and surrendering to His guidance in that moment.

When I’m back in the flow and a child misbehaves, I put my aura around the child and use my energy to quiet him or her. Swami Kriyananda says that when he places people in positions of leadership, he expands his consciousness to include them, supporting and strengthening them. I do something similar with the children.

“I need to do Quiet Bodies now”
Quiet Bodies, however, has been the most important factor in creating an atmosphere of calmness with the preschoolers. Now, when the children sense the need to bring their energy back to center, they either ask to do Quiet Bodies or start reminding each other that it’s “circle time.”

This even happens outside of school. One child was at the river with his mother and suddenly said, “I need to do Quiet Bodies now.” He sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, and became very still for some time.

The children are so pleased when they have brought the physical body under control because their souls know this is what they’re supposed to learn at this time. That’s why they enjoy showing that they can do Quiet Bodies. When visiting her grandmother, one child said, “Grandma, watch me do Quiet Bodies.” She sat down and showed her grandmother how long she could sit still.

The children do Quiet Bodies for two minutes at the start of the school year. Toward the end of the year they usually can do it four to five minutes. By that time I am also encouraging them to listen to the sound of their breathing. I never question them about their inner experiences, nor do I encourage them to talk about them. Doing so might make the experience competitive, which would undermine its value.

A time to plant seeds
These preschool years are the time to plant seeds of good habits. Swami Kriyananda writes that children are especially receptive at this age because, “they’re a little closer to where we’ve all come from. They haven’t yet fully taken on a new personality or a new body with its habits.”

Quiet Bodies is a tool that enables children to tap into their soul nature. It gives them the chance to see and feel the effects of their own energy, and to begin to understand the difference between restless, scattered energy and quiet, peaceful energy. It is the first step on the long journey to becoming calm, centered adults.

Hassi Bazan, a Light Bearer and longtime member of Ananda, teaches at the Ananda Village Living Wisdom Preschool. She also works part-time in the Village Reception Center.

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

In each instance, the people were quite ill and could have died if we made the wrong decision. Their situations were critical, very complicated, and the right type of treatment wasn’t immediately obvious. To top it off, the staff needed my advice on many other things. Whenever I emerged from a treatment room, I was immediately met with a barrage of questions.

“Well, die then!”
I was reflecting on how it had been such an unusually stressful afternoon that I could have easily keeled over with a heart attack. In that instant the thought came to me, “Well, die then!” That was a “wake-up call.” Suddenly I realized I had been feeling sorry for myself, and thinking that my life would be much easier if I practiced medicine in a less demanding setting.

Yet I knew my current job was exactly what God wanted of me, and that it didn’t matter if that day had been especially stressful. I had hung in there and seen to it that each patient received the proper treatment. As much as possible, I had acted with the sense that God was the Doer. That was a victory.

What is “right action?”
So often in our culture we are told that whatever we do, and especially our work, should be something we want to do, something that makes us happy. For devotees, this is a false premise.

The guideline of right action for devotees is not loving what you are doing, but doing it out of love for God. We should perform whatever work we are given as a loving self-offering to God, and with the attitude that He is the Doer, and we are simply His instruments. Then it doesn’t really matter what we do because when we act in that way, we are inwardly fulfilled and very happy.

“Okay Peter, it’s time to go back”
All the challenges we experience in life, even the most horrendous trials, come from God. Before we incarnate, we basically know what our life is going to look like and the difficult times we’re going to have.

I sometimes imagine myself sitting with my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, before incarnating. He is saying, “Okay Peter, it’s time to go back. “You will have a certain number of years and here are the experiences you’ll have to go through. There’s one particular situation that is going to be especially challenging, and here’s another one that will be even worse!”

Would I say, “Please give me something easier?” No! I imagine myself saying, “OK, perfect. These experiences are for my spiritual growth. Just keep supporting me so that I can get through them with the right attitude, and without being crushed.”

Whenever I have that thought, in my heart I always feel Yogananda saying, “Don’t worry, I will be with you the entire time. Your job is to remember that I am always with you, helping you, and that God is on your side.”

Expanding beyond likes and dislikes
Knowing what God wants of us in a given situation is usually simpler than we think. Often we’ll be given a choice between a quick and easy approach and something much more difficult.

It’s very tempting to choose the easy approach because we know we can do it and, on the surface at least, it seems to solve the problem. The alternative is to put up with challenging situations that don’t resolve quickly and perhaps may never resolve in this lifetime. Our spiritual growth, however, often lies in choosing the more difficult route, and the need to make that choice is often a test given to us by God.

A friend of mine once had to make a very hard decision about a relationship and was unable to decide what to do. She finally spoke to Swami Kriyananda about it and, in tears, said, “It is so hard to know what to do.” His answer was, “No it’s not.”

In relating this story she said, “At first that sounded kind of harsh to me, but when I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t. The only reason I found it hard to decide was because I was attached to one of the outcomes.”

When faced with conflicting options, I’ve found it very helpful to ask myself, “What would I decide if I didn’t have any likes or dislikes, if I didn’t have an ego? What would my answer be?” This process is very helpful in stripping away the feeling that favors one outcome over another. Once you strip that away, suddenly you’re left with a much more straight-forward problem. The question then becomes, “Can I live with this answer? Can I expand enough spiritually to overcome my ego attachments and do the right thing?”

This doesn’t mean that we bludgeon ourselves into submission when faced with strong inner resistance. Swami Kriyananda suggests that we think of the ego as a donkey—sometimes you just need to pull it along. But if it’s really digging in its heels, you may need to wait before you start pulling it again.

I’ve found this advice very helpful for working with myself compassionately as I try to overcome my ego attachments—while never losing sight of the necessity to overcome them.

God’s transforming power
Many people in our culture worry about losing their jobs or their incomes going down. They say, “I don’t want my life to change; I want things to stay just as they are.”

But as devotees focused on spiritual growth, we understand that it’s mainly by going through challenging experiences that we grow spiritually. I guarantee that if you are a serious devotee of any path, you will go through challenging experiences because that’s how we get rid of the encrustations of ego: our likes and dislikes, our hurts, and all the things that upset us and make us feel bad about ourselves.

Fortunately, God lets us do it in small increments. It’s a bit like getting into very cold water. It’s easier to do it slowly than jumping in all at once. In the end, however, we will be in up to our necks if we want to grow spiritually.

The good news is that if we keep moving forward, calling on God and Guru, and relying on their power to transform us, at the end of our life we will be grateful for everything. We will have grown spiritually and become a very different person. We will have become more Christ-like, more like Yogananda, which is the divine destiny of each and every one of us.

Excerpted from a May 11, 2008 Sunday Service at Ananda Village.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

A proud prince and his large retinue galloped into a Hindustan jungle on a hunting expedition. After bagging many game birds and animals, the prince and his party lost their way in the jungle. They had food but no water, and though they searched frantically, they found no water.

As the danger-filled tropical night approached, the prince and his retinue rode even faster, now seeking shelter. Just as the sun was silently fading away, they came upon a crumbling, old cottage. The prince dismounted, pushed open the unlatched door, and went in. The cottage was dark except for a faint glimmer of sunlight coming through a hole in the roof.

Looking around, the prince saw the hole in the roof and despaired at the thought the cottage was deserted. He was about to leave when he decided to call aloud: “Hello, anybody here?” To his surprise, a calm, firm, peaceful voice replied: “I am here. Do you want water?” The prince was astounded that this person knew his thoughts even before meeting him.

Soon the prince and his retinue were joyfully partaking o f the water and fruits offered by the holy man who lived in this lonely jungle retreat. “Who are you?” the prince asked the hoary gentleman, who replied, “I am a poor, old hermit.”

“Aren’t you afraid of tigers and snakes?” the prince asked. “Oh, no,” the hermit replied. “The tigers are my pussycats, and the cobras are my pets. We are friends, ever basking in the sunshine of Love, which is in everything.”

The prince scrutinized the hermit and was taken aback to see two cobras hanging from his neck in the shape of a garland. The prince tried to get a closer view of the snakes but, sensing his fear and vengeful spirit, they hissed and lifted their hooded heads, ready to strike at his approach. Just then, a huge Royal Bengal tiger came into the cottage and calmly sat down at the hermit’s feet, causing a near panic among the prince’s retinue. After the hermit petted the tiger on the head, it slunk slowly away into the dark jungle.

Amazed still more, the proud prince thought, “This old hermit is good and kind and saved us from wild beasts and parching thirst, so I want to make him rich and prosperous.” To the hermit he said, “Hoary hermit, your face is beaming with kindness and sincerity. Because I appreciate all you have done for us, I am going to tell you a secret of becoming very rich, a secret I am revealing for the first time.

With this, the prince pulled out a Philosopher’s Stone from beneath his garment. He said to the hermit, “I am going to entrust you with this Philosopher’s Stone for a year so that you may become rich by using it. A great mystic alchemist gave this stone to my father, and it has the power to convert into gold anything you touch with it. Use it every day for a year to convert all the rocks into gold, and then build a golden palace.

“I will return in a year to get my precious Philosopher’s Stone, which I value more than my life. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t lose it!” The hermit did not want to accept the responsibility, but at the prince’s repeated insistence, he agreed to keep the stone and tucked it under the light band of clothing at his waist.

The prince and his retinue left and returned again after a year. The prince was stricken with horror when he saw, not a golden palace, but the same cottage in a greater state of decay. Getting down from his horse, he rushed through the open cottage door and shouted, “Hey, hermit, are you alive?” A deep, sonorous voice responded, “O yes, prince. Welcome to my humble home.”

Without pausing, the prince rudely shouted, “What did you do with my Philosopher’s Stone? Why didn’t you use it to become rich?” Scratching his head, the hermit replied, “What’s this about my using a stone? I don’t want to be richer.” Beside himself with rage and terror, the prince demanded, “Don’t you remember the gold Philosopher’s Stone I gave you a year ago? What have you done with it?”

“Oh yes, now I remember that precious stone of yours. It must have dropped out of my waistband the day I went to bathe in the river while immersed in the deep thought of Spirit.”

The prince cried, “I have lost everything” and fell into a swoon, but the hermit sprinkled cold water on his face and brought him back to consciousness. When the prince’s retinue demanded the death of the “careless thief of a hermit,” as they called him, the hermit laughed and said, “I didn’t know you would make such a fuss about a stone. Come along with me to the river and let me search for it.”

The prince replied derisively, “What? Search for the stone when it slipped in the swift currents of the river a year ago?” The hermit, undaunted, commanded in a loud voice, “Princeling and all the rest of you, come! Don’t make another fuss until we have searched the river bed.”

Under the spell of a strange magnetism, the prince and his retinue followed the hermit to the river without saying a word. At the river, the hermit asked the prince to pull out his handkerchief, hold its four corners with his hands, dip it into the waters of the river, and cry out, “O Prince of the Universe, Maker of all precious stones, give me back my Philosopher’s Stone.”

The prince followed the hermit’s instructions and as he raised his handkerchief out of the water, he beheld two-dozen Philosopher’s Stones, exactly like the one he had lost.  With unbelieving eyes, he came out of the water and tested each stone and found that each one could convert other stones into gold.

The prince then tied all of the gold-making stones in his handkerchief and threw them back in the river. The prince’s retinue cried out, “Hey, why did you do that?”

The prince turned to the hermit and fell at his feet. With folded hands he said, “Honored Saint, I want whatever you have that causes you to regard gold-making stones as worthless pebbles.” And the prince left his earthly kingdom to acquire the imperishable kingdom of Spirit.
*        *        *
Moral: This story shows that you should not waste time striving only for perishable earthly riches. Use the precious stone of your God-given creative ability to store up the imperishable riches of God.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1935.

In all sincerity our first concern can only be for those whose suffering is right now. I cannot honestly spare my heart’s love for the people who perpetrated this suffering. Nor can I love them for the hatred and anger by which they define themselves. Yes, I love their souls, but I must leave their salvation to God. Within my own limited scope of feeling, my love must go primarily to those who are now suffering.

Surely, in an abstract sense I can love those enemies also, but they have invited God’s retribution for their crime. They have lessons to learn if they are ever to become receptive to God’s grace. While I’ve no desire to see them suffer, I leave the state of their souls to God; my present energy is for those whom they have made to suffer. The important thing is not to be drawn into reflecting others’ negative emotions.

What, then, do I pray for? I pray for myself, that I become a clear channel for God’s grace. My prayer goes to my fellow human beings, too, that as many be strengthened as I can reach in the divine light.

An ocean consists of countless little drops of water. If each of us, like those drops, offers himself up to God, praying, “Lord, use me as You will. Give me the strength to channel Your kindness and love to all—impersonally, not with personal pride or desire”—I think we will have done the most we can possibly do.

Thus only may we help most greatly our poor, belabored earth, beset as it is by hatred and ignorance. If we understand that, by loving, it is God’s love we express, He will surely flow through any barrier we erect of ego and self-interest, and uplift significantly the consciousness of the world.

One raindrop adds but a little moisture to the earth. Once, however, it unites with enough other raindrops, they become a mighty torrent of water flowing down to the sea. So also we, by uniting our energy and directing it toward the ocean of divine consciousness, can participate in the great drama that is being waged between the forces of light and of darkness.

In Master’s love,

Swami Kriyananda

From In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Each human being is but
one Flame, separate-seeming
from all others, and also from
Thy Universal Source of Power.

Thou dost appear many,
finite, limited, small or large,
but ever divided, shooting
up as separate entities through
the pores of living organisms.
But Thou alone art that one,
eternal flame. All things other
are but Thy multifarious appearances.

From Whispers from Eternity, edited by Swami Kriyananda, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Nowadays if a person wants to spend all of their time in spiritual pursuits, there is the question of how they will survive. In India, a person who wants to give his life completely to God is supported. People there believe in this way of life and feel that they will get good karma by helping others pursue it.

The way of a sadhu
The classic way of a sadhu is to sit in one place and meditate. People bring him food if they wish to and if not, he’ll go without food that day. A sadhu will sometimes go from house to house, but he never asks for anything; he just stands there. If people wish to give to him they can; if not, he goes on.

He depends completely upon God but within the framework of a society whose teachings support this way of life. This is the ideal, and there are those who, because of this system, are able to dedicate all their energies to seeking God.

That time will come
My dream is for something similar here at Ananda, but it won’t come about quickly. In the West there have been monastic communities in the past that were supported by a church and a large congregation of believers. Today, however, the monasteries are practically empty because people aren’t able to understand the relevance of that way of life.

When we can bring society as a whole up to a level where people commonly include God in their lives, then it will it be time for the next stage, where a group of people can meditate and chant twenty hours a day. That time will come. For now, however, our duty is to seek God but also to help the world.

A hunger for spiritual values
The first step is to create communities like Ananda to bring back spiritual values. Today spiritual values have been eclipsed by the dry, rationalistic approach of modern science. There is such an emphasis on facts and reason, and such a fear of the “corrupting” influence of feeling, that people believe you must exclude all feeling in order to see things clearly.

Feeling, however, is one of the most important aspects of finding truth, even in the scientific world. Einstein said that great scientific discoveries aren’t possible without a sense of mystic awe before the universe. It’s that sense of awe, of feeling, that uplifts the consciousness to where it can receive the intuitions that permit great discoveries.

Society has lost touch with that level of intuition, and one finds, in many parts of the world, a growing hunger for spiritual values and a new consciousness emerging. But it’s unfocused; people don’t know how to express it. They don’t understand that to live spiritually means to live in the consciousness of God, and to bring Him into every aspect of life: work, marriage, child-raising, money, recreation—into everything.

Small communities like Ananda, where people can create new models of living based on spiritual values, will bring this new consciousness into enough focus that it will have the clarity and magnetism to inspire others.

A new kind of marriage
Marriage is one area of life very much in need of redefining. I had a very interesting discussion about this with friends who wanted to join Ananda and weren’t married. I said, “Why, if you have this love for each other, don’t you get married?”

Their response was surprising. They said that a number of their friends had lived together happily for years without being married. After they married, within six months they were divorced.

The couple explained: Without marriage these friends were able to define their own relationship. As soon as they took the formal step of marriage, suddenly there was this weight of social conditioning that says, “Now that you’re my spouse, you’re supposed to treat me a certain way.” With all these new expectations, the relationship became a burden they weren’t able to handle.

A broadening of ideals
Marriage, to be successful, must be based on a free sharing, not on a mutual sense of obligation. Obligation can be another form of bondage. When married people look at each other with the thought, “What’s in it for me?” love flies out the window.

We need to stop thinking of marriage as a closed corporation. Marriage should be a means of dedicating oneself to a broadening of ideals, of vision. It should be a means by which two people give each other the strength to reach out and embrace the world, not to create a little castle with a mote that excludes the world.

Unfortunately, people are not raised to think expansively. There is, rather, a growing tendency in society these days to think in terms of what the world owes us, and of getting ours, rather than of what each of us, personally, can do for others, and for the world, to make it a better place to live in.

Attitudes such as these are threatening the very structure of society. We are living in an atomic age, and if we are to have the maturity to deal with the challenges posed by weapons that can kill millions at a time, we must learn to think in new ways.

Attunement with nature
Our relationship with nature is another area of life in need of redefining. We must realize that we have a responsibility not only to unborn generations but also to this planet that has lovingly given us birth.

To think that we can plunder the planet and take all of its resources for this generation’s needs is totally irresponsible. The saints in India say that the planet has become so erratic in recent years because people are no longer in tune with the harmony of nature. That’s why we have floods, droughts, excessively cold weather, and similar extremes.

Reawakening the divine forces
The divine forces are leaving this planet because we give them no attention. The spring box near my home at Ananda Village is an example. When I bought the land I was told that the spring had never gone dry. Yet, when we moved there, it was giving us only one or two gallons a minute.

I kept insisting that there was more water, and eventually the others started clearing out the spring box, cleaning the spring. More and more water began to come until very soon we were getting ten to fifteen gallons a minute.

Just as a spring goes dry if it isn’t regularly flushed out and used, so also does the flow of the Divine in nature close down if we ignore it. It’s like a person to whom you don’t give appreciation; gradually he stops giving. In our relationship with nature, as with people, there has to be reciprocity.

We recently started the “nature channels” at Ananda to try to reawaken the divine forces. As each person makes it his or her particular mission to see God in the trees, rivers, stars, or some other aspect of nature, it will help to re-open those channels for the Divine.

A shared vision
Ananda can bring these and other areas of life to a focus through expansive new models. By living according to high ideals and setting that example, we will make a tremendous impact for good on society.

Recently a friend said, “I think that Ananda is the most important thing happening on this planet.” I didn’t say what you might expect, “I’m glad you think so.” I spoke rather from a sense of certainty and said, “Yes, I know it is.”

It’s not that Ananda specifically is the important place. It’s rather a spearhead, one of several, of something happening today that’s showing people a way to the future.

Throughout history, the real steps forward have often come when a few people are fired by a new vision and support each other. A good example is the Renaissance in Florence, Italy where many of the artists knew each other and fed each other’s inspiration.

This pattern occurs over and over throughout history. For the current age, it’s communities like Ananda that are laying the groundwork for the future. We are creating a way of life so dynamic and beautiful that it’s destined to become a force to be reckoned with because it’s a solution to so many of society’s problems.

Excerpted from an August 26, 1985 talk at Ananda Village, The Light of Superconsciousness, and Expansive Marriage, Crystal Clarity Publishers. To buy a recording of the talk (CD or MP3), call Treasures Along the Path, 530 478-7656 or email treasures@ananda.org.

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’t 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
Many people are 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, which cauterizes “evil-saturated” brain cells, is the best way of uprooting habits from the mind.

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 is the best way of uprooting habits from the mind. In a non-meditative person, the life force is concentrated in the muscles and senses. During meditation, however, 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 “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 kissed 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 deeply feel God’s love, 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, burning 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 the will power to meditate deeply each day until the all-alluring, bliss-contact of God can be achieved 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.

My practice when I first step on an airplane is to pray deeply to our line of masters and to visualize angels protecting the airplane and carrying it safely to its destination. I also meditate and do japa for most of the flight.

Mainly because of the intensity of my spiritual practices during flights, my fear of flying has gradually lessened. Sometimes I even enjoy it.

A chance to do hang gliding
In the fall of 2006, my husband, Gyandev, and I led an Ananda Yoga weekend retreat in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After the retreat ended, the friend who organized it took us to watch people hang gliding near Chattanooga.

We sat at the edge of a large rock on the top of Lookout Mountain, overlooking a strikingly beautiful area. The weather was warm and the trees were turning beautiful fall colors. Despite the beautiful scenery, seeing people hang gliding caused my heart to beat faster.

As we watched, our friend asked, “Would you like to try it?” She had done hang gliding, and with great enthusiasm told us how much she’d enjoyed soaring like a bird in the air. “It’s a once in a life time experience!” she said.

My husband’s response was a big: “Yes.” Mine was an immediate: “No Way!”

Compared to hang gliding, flying in an airplane seemed easy: in a plane you are encased in a large metal structure. With hang gliding you are tied to a small aluminum structure, fully exposed to the elements.

After inquiring at the office, Gyandev and I arranged to come back the next day. He would do hang gliding and I would watch.

The Guru’s stamp of approval
That night, as I reflected on the courage of those who do hang gliding, I recalled Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings on not letting fears paralyze you. I asked myself: “Is it important that I overcome this fear?” I left the question open.

The following morning during my meditation, I inwardly asked Yogananda whether I should try hang gliding and was surprised to feel his stamp of approval in my heart. I tried to visualize myself hang gliding high above the ground—and the fear returned. Nevertheless, I decided to try it.

The flip of the coin
The weather at Lookout Mountain was very good for hang gliding—clear skies with little wind. We watched a video that explained the process and gave many safety guidelines.

Though nervous, I tried to stay calm. By the flip of the coin, it was decided that I would go first.

The hang glider pilot arrived, a young man in his thirties who seemed knowledgeable and trustworthy. For inexperienced people, hang gliding is done in tandem with an expert pilot.

Instead of taking off from the top of a mountain, the hang glider is attached by a long rope to a small airplane that ascends to between 2000 and 4000 feet. The airplane pilot then disconnects the hang glider.

Before we started, I said my good byes. Since I wasn’t sure if I would make it back, I told Gyandev how much I loved him. I also prayed inwardly to all the masters to protect me.

An exhilarating take-off
The pilot and I put on padded suits. Next, he tied me, then himself, to the pole in the middle of the glider, and I lay on his back. As we took off from a grassy field, I held on tightly to handles sewn onto the pilot’s suit.

Taking off was exhilarating. As we soared upward, Swami Kriyananda’s yoga postures affirmation came to mind: “I soar upward on wings of joy!”  I thanked Yogananda for this wonderful experience.

Dipping and rising
When we reached 2000 feet, the pilot told me we would be disconnecting from the plane and flying on our own. The snap came a few seconds later: we were disconnected!

The hang glider took a deep dip and my heart sank. As we took another dip, my heart sank even more. I had expected the gliding to be smooth since the air looked so peaceful, but we kept dipping and rising, going in and out of what are called “thermals.”

“Thermals” are columns of rising hot air caused by the sun heating the ground. A hang gliding pilot, much like a hawks or eagle, relies on “thermals” to gain altitude and maneuver in the air.

The fear kicks in
While the pilot was adjusting the glider, I looked down and, for the first time, realized how high up we were. At first, my mind couldn’t quite grasp the situation. I thought, “I am up in the air, tied with a few ropes to a flimsy little structure—and flying.  Impossible!”

That’s when the fear kicked in and my body went into a state of total shock.
All the muscles in my body started to tighten; even my facial muscles were clenching. Never before had I experienced my entire body becoming so stiff—nearly frozen.

Instinctively, I knew I had to detach myself from the experience in order to survive. I was afraid that as my body became more and more frozen, the fear would reach my lungs and I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

The way to stay alive
The pilot, unaware of my fear, began pointing to the beautiful scenery. We could see open fields, the tops of trees, the outline of hills, and small houses in the distance.

He asked me to smile so he could take a photo with a camera attached to the glider, but I could barely move the muscles of my face. Then he asked if I wanted a photo of myself with my arms out-stretched, which meant releasing my octopus grip on the handles attached to his suit. With my head, I signaled “NO!”

The pilot tried to cheer me up by talking but I told him I wanted to be in silence. Intuitively I knew it would take all of my energy to stay alive.

The grace of God and Guru
With my eyes open, I focused my full attention at the point between the eyebrows. Over and over I chanted “AUM Guru,” “God, Christ Guru,” and “Lord I Am Thine.”

The glider kept dipping and rising and it took every ounce of my energy to remain focused. Yet, surprisingly, as soon as I tried to withdraw mentally, I became aware of God’s presence within. I felt my mind detaching from the fear and becoming still.

I had experienced mental stillness and detachment in meditation, but now in the air, I was able to achieve it much more quickly. It seemed as if God and Guru were pulling me inward and connecting me to a higher power.

The body remains “frozen”
Though staying focused took all of my mental powers, my mind remained detached, completely still, and free of fear. I felt enveloped in God’s presence and was able to endure (though not enjoy) the experience.

Whenever my mind becomes detached and still in meditation, my body also becomes very relaxed. During the hang gliding, however, my body remained tense and tight the entire time. It was as though mind and body were separate entities—I was aware of the body, but withdrawn into the inner Self.

After fifteen minutes, we finally started to descend. As soon as we landed, my body relaxed. I was relieved and happy to be on the ground—and alive!

Gyandev thoroughly enjoyed the hang gliding and felt it ended too soon. Sensing his spirit of adventure, the pilot added a few challenging dips and turns, and an unusually steep descent.

The practice of titiksha
During my hang gliding experience I consciously practiced titiksha, which Swami Kriyananda translates as endurance, even-mindedness, and inward non-involvement.

The goal of titiksha is to withdraw from the body’s reactive process, and to go within and experience joy. The underlying attitude is: “I am even-minded and cheerful under all circumstances.”

Kriyananda says that titiksha should become a basic life-attitude. We should do what we can to relieve pain or other physical distress, but we should, at the same time, resist it mentally and affirm: “I am Spirit! I am not this body.”

The hang–gliding experience has made me much more aware of the power of the mind, acquired through meditation, to detach from the body and to focus on a greater reality. As yogis, we can always do something, even if the body does not cooperate.

Why didn’t my body respond?
Why didn’t my practice of titiksha remove the fear concentrated in my body?  My fear of flying is obviously very deep seated, with many layers.

However, by continuing to work with this fear, it is gradually dissolving. In a recent airplane flight to Wisconsin, which was bumpy all the way, I was able to stay relaxed both mentally and physically.

If the opportunity ever presents itself, and if I inwardly feel the Guru’s approval, I might try hang gliding again, just to see whether my body keeps pace with my mind.

Diksha McCord, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and teaches at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat.

Describing Thomas à Kempis as “a very great saint,” Paramhansa Yogananda recommended his book “unreservedly” saying, “It is a wonderful book. It is no mere imitation of Christ: It is Christ.”

The book’s message is simple: to become a follower of Christ one must imitate his life. Thomas writes: “Let it be our main concern to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to imitate Christ without first knowing him, and the best way to do that is to meditate on his life as described in the four gospels.”

Thomas à Kempis was a key figure in the Catholic reform movement known as the “new devotion,” whose followers sought to emulate the virtues of the early Christians, especially their simplicity, humility, and love of God and neighbor. The Imitation of Christ, with its deep devotion and commitment to the interior life, beautifully captures the spirit of this movement.

An innately spiritual child
Thomas à Kempis was born in 1379 in Kempen, Germany, a small town near the modern Dutch border, the son of devoutly religious people. His parents nurtured his innate spirituality, teaching him the values of humility, patience, simplicity, and honest labor.

At age thirteen, in 1392, Thomas was enrolled in a well-known school in the Dutch city of Deventer, which was the center of the “new devotion” movement and the home of his brother, John, his elder by fifteen years.

A reaction to corruption
The “new devotion” movement developed in reaction to the widespread laxity and corruption within the Catholic Church. Rooted in the teachings of Meister Eckhardt and the German mystic tradition, it stressed meditation and the inner life, and attached little importance to rituals and outward practices.

The followers of  “new devotion” were known as “The Brothers of the Common Life,” and included both laypersons and clerics. They lived together in-group houses and combined a personal striving for union with God with service to others.

Forbidden to beg, each member was required to support himself and the money was put into a common fund. Many worked as “copyists”—copying Latin manuscripts and books, a well-paid position in the days before the printing press.

Their special mission was education at a time when learning was in decline all over Europe. They sought not only to deepen the spiritual life of the times, but also to provide sound learning for the young. By the end of the fifteenth century, schools of the brotherhood had sprung up all over Germany and the Netherlands.

The “new devotion” movement eventually spread to France and parts of Italy and included communities for women.

An exemplary student
Upon Thomas’ arrival in Deventer, his brother, a member of the brotherhood, introduced him to the superior of the group, the saintly Florentius Radewyns.

Impressed with Thomas’ spiritual potential, Radewyns took him under his wing. He found accommodations for him in one of the brother-houses, paid his first school fees, and planned his course of study. Under Radewyns’ watchful eye, Thomas flourished.

An exemplary student, Thomas strove to progress in learning, not only for its own sake but to show his gratitude for the loving attention he received. He supported himself as a copyist and copied the entire Bible and numerous treatises by the Church Fathers.

Gradually imbibing the spirit and principles of the brotherhood, he fully embraced their way of life. He became a model brother and strongly recommended this mode of living to others, saying, “Never before do I remember having seen men so devout, so full of love for God and their fellow men. Living in the world, they were altogether unworldly.”

Though inflamed with spiritual fervor, attunement to God’s will did not come without inner struggles.  Samuel Kettleman, Thomas’ main biographer, explains:

It is true that as he grew in years he grew in grace and in the knowledge of divine things, but it is true also that it was by perpetually striving against the desires that rose up within him, and by tenaciously keeping hold of God, and seeking His aid through the various means of grace.

A monastery without walls
In 1399, at age nineteen, Thomas became one of the first novices of the brotherhood’s newly formed monastery, Mount St. Agnes, in the nearby city of Zwolle. The monastery supported the spiritual life of the lay communities by providing experienced guides. Thomas’ brother, John, served as the first prior.

In the beginning, Mount St. Agnes was literally “a monastery without walls,” and Thomas’ acceptance into the monastic order and priesthood were delayed until the first buildings could be completed. Finally, in 1413, at age thirty-four, he was ordained a priest.

The power of the written word
During the years leading up to his ordination, Thomas anonymously wrote a number of widely acclaimed short devotional treatises. He tried to conceal his identity as author, but when his name became known, people began to seek him out him for spiritual guidance. Gradually he began to feel that he could draw souls to Christ through the written word.

Thus, in 1415, at age thirty-five, he began writing The Imitation of Christ, a task that would occupy him for the next ten years. After fulfilling his daily monastic duties, he would often write long into the night and early morning hours, seeking to infuse others with a deep love for Christ.

The Imitation of Christ was intended primarily as a handbook for monks, but it was also suitable for a much wider audience. Remarkable for its simple language and style, more than two hundred and fifty manuscript copies were in existence as early as 1450.

A burning love for Christ
Throughout, Thomas urges the reader to seek the joy and fulfillment of the inner life.

In passages that reflect his deep commitment to the experience of Christ’s inner presence, he writes:

Had you but once entered perfectly into the heart of Jesus, and tasted something of His burning love, you would care nothing for your own gain or loss.

To be without Jesus is hell most grievous; to be with Jesus is to know the sweetness of heaven.  If Jesus is with you, no enemy can harm you.

In numerous passages he emphasizes the importance of humility:

Of what use is a learned discourse on the blessed Trinity, if you are not humble? I would rather be humble than be able to produce the most precise definition of it.

Other passages suggest his own personal challenges and struggles:

Always be ready for battle if you wish for victory; you cannot win the crown of patience without a struggle; if you refuse to struggle, you refuse the crown. Without labor no rest is won; without battle, there can be no victory.

Banish discouragement from your heart as best you can, and if trouble comes, never let it depress or hinder you for long. At the least, bear it bravely if you cannot bear it cheerfully.

Inwardly focused on God
Thomas loved solitude where he could devote himself to prayer and meditation.  In the company of his fellow monks, unless the topic turned to God or the divine life, he remained silent and inwardly focused on God.

If he felt inwardly drawn to meditate, he regarded it as a call from Christ. To his fellow monks he would excuse himself saying, “My brethren, I must go: someone is waiting to converse with me in my cell.”

Despite his love of solitude, Thomas was always available to those who sought his counsel, and was especially sympathetic toward the poor and the physically afflicted. During his later years, people came in great numbers to seek his guidance.

A prolific writer
The Imitation of Christ was only one-tenth of Thomas’ lifetime literary output. He also wrote sermons, devotional tracts, books for youths, hymns, meditations on the life of Christ, and biographies of the leading “new devotion” figures.

Active until the end of life, his daily duties included copying manuscripts, the Bible (four times), teaching novices, offering Mass, and hearing confessions.

He died in 1471, at the age of 92. Inscribed at the bottom of an old painting, said to be his portrait, are the words: “In all things I sought quiet, and found it not, save in retirement and in books.”

Nakin Lenti, a minister and longtime member of Ananda, lives at Ananda Village where he serves in the Sangha Office. For further reading on Thomas à Kempis, contact him at nakin@ananda.org.

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.

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.

Upon recovering, Mike, in shame and sorrow, left Philadelphia and moved to Miami, vowing to get even some day.

Paul of course forgot about the hurt he had caused Mile. Mike, however, being the maltreated party, could not wipe the grievance from his mind even though each evening, before going to bed, he affirmed: “Day by day, in every way, I am forgiving Paul more and more.”

After several months, Mike was amazed to realize that during his affirmation of forgiveness, he had been hatching the egg of revenge. In the background of his mind he had been praying for an opportunity to settle his old grudge against Paul.

At last, by the attractive power of hatred or by chance, as the case may be, Paul came to Miami. Not suspecting any trouble, one dark, drizzly evening he was strolling on a lonely road under the tiled roof of an open shed that adjoined a warehouse.

Paul did not know that Mike had learned he was in Miami and was, at that moment, slinking in the dark, following him. Wearing rubber-soled shoes, Mike was dogging his steps, ready to pay him back with compound interest for what he had done years ago.

Under the cover of the rain, now falling harder, Mike noticed a large tile lying unbroken on the ground. Paul walked unheedingly over the tile, but Mike picked it up and struck Paul on his bald pate with all his might.

Struck senseless, Paul lay on the cold, muddy ground much longer than Mike had lain on the sidewalk after the beating Paul had given him long ago in Philadelphia.

When Paul woke up, the sky had cleared. With the moonlight peeping through the opening in the roof where the tile had loosened, Paul could see all around him. He was puzzled to find himself lying in a pool of blood on the cold earth.

Then he noticed the tile lying near his head and looked up and saw the square opening in the tile roof. He gasped: “What blooming chance! Driven by the rain, I ran under the shed and the tile, loosened by the rain, fell on me!”

**********    **********    **********

This story illustrates how easily we forget our misdeeds, though the results of such actions never forget us but silently pursue us through the darkness of our ignorance. Just as the cow can find its calf amidst a thousand other calves, so the results of our good or bad actions, of this life and past lives, find us wherever we happen to be.

If, after beating Mike, Paul had weighed the consequences of his actions and apologized to Mike, then no injury would have lurked for him in the dark womb of the future.

The moral: Judge well before you act, for after you have acted, you must reap the results of your action. Remember that all actions leave traces that are stored as tendencies in the mind. Unless the seeds of evil tendencies are burned up through the power of meditation and wisdom, under favorable evil influences, those seeds may suddenly germinate.

So meditate more and more deeply each day and, in the fires of meditation and calmness, roast all ungerminated seeds of evil tendencies.

From Praecepta Lessons, 1935.

Dear_____

In my relationship with Master, I have found that I’m the most in tune with him when I don’t have the thought of what I’m getting from him, but dwell rather in the thought of what I’m giving to him. When with my whole energy I give him joy, appreciation, openness, service—in short, my very self—I receive from him the greatest energy and blessings.

It has nothing to do with pleasing his ego. Nor—obviously!—does he need my joy. It is rather that that open feeling in myself puts me onto that wavelength on which he himself functions, because his own energy is always directed toward giving, not taking.

If I can lift myself at least somewhat up to that giving level, rather than thinking only of gaining for myself, I am able to receive much more. On a lower, taking level I have found that his energy only trickles down slowly, as it were; I haven’t exposed myself to its full flow.

Perhaps the disciple also helps the guru, by giving him energy for the fulfillment of his mission. At any rate, the disciple certainly gains from what he gives to the guru. Even now, long after Master’s earthly life, I find that my highest attunement comes from thinking not in terms of my work, but rather of, “How can I do your work?”

But whenever I’ve allowed thoughts like these to come in: “What do I want?” or, “How am I going to grow?” or “What am I going to get out of it, because, after all, you’re there already, whereas I’m the one who needs to advance spiritually?”—I’ve always sunk to a lower level, and there has been no blissful inner flow. In self-giving, especially to Master, I have always gained the most, inwardly.

We must try, you see, but our self-effort must be directed primarily toward deepening our attunement with the guru—not as a person, but as a channel for the Infinite Lord.

In divine friendship

Swami Kriyananda

Excerpted from In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection, Crystal Clarity.

Sadly, Thy warning sermons pass unheard by souls deafened with the static of sense pleasures.

O Divine Broadcaster, tune our souls, long distracted by the static of our indifference. “Fine tune” us with the delicate touch of soul-perception. Grant us the privilege of hearing Thy magic melodies in the ecstasy of divine awakening!

From Whispers from Eternity, edited by Swami Kriyananda.

In this 40th anniversary commemorative issue, we invite you to see how “high thinking and simple living,” as Paramhansa Yogananda phrased it, is not only a possible way to live but, in his words, destined to “spread like wildfire.”

There have been specific events and developments in Ananda’s forty-year history that have set an overall direction for Ananda’s work—events such as the start of a householder monastic order; the 1976 Ananda fire; the start of centers and urban communities; the publication of certain books, to mention only a few.

In this 40th anniversary commemorative issue, we review these events and developments, often following them up to the present day. Whenever future directions are apparent, we also take a look ahead.

One of the themes emerging from this account is the over-arching importance of the type of leadership provided by Swami Kriyananda: strong, supportive, visionary, intuitive. Without his leadership, Ananda would never have survived.

This issue also provides glimpses of the spiritual challenges, inner awakenings, and divine blessings that form the heart and soul of Ananda’s forty-year adventure in spiritual living. Through the perspectives of Swami Kriyananda and others, we offer a composite portrait of the many individuals whose selfless dedication and divine attunement have produced the miracle of Ananda.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
Why Has Ananda Succeeded?

Ananda was not so much founded by me as by Paramhansa Yogananda. It was founded by his inspiration, and with his blessings. He declared on the occasion of his garden party speech exhorting people to start communities, “I am sowing these words in the ether, in the spirit of God.”

For this reason I consider him the patron saint of intentional communities, of “world brotherhood colonies,” as he called them. In creating Ananda, I did my best to carry out his teachings and ideals.

The most important factor in Ananda’s success, certainly, has been the fact that every day since our beginning, I have given this whole project to him and asked him to do with it as he would, albeit it through our own physical struggles.

A principle I established—one with which everyone came in time to agree—was: People are more important than things. In practice, this means that people’s spiritual well-being is more important than anything else. If a job needed to be done, but the best person for it would not benefit from it spiritually, someone else was sought for the job. If no one was found, an entire project was sometimes abandoned.

Closely related to this is the second principle: Where there is dharma [adherence to truth and right action], there is victory. This means that any hardship imposed by life will prove, in time, to be a blessing when embraced with courage, gratitude, non-attachment, and deep faith in God.

A spirit of harmony and cooperation has been fundamental to Ananda’s success. We have found that the inner peace that comes through meditation acts like a lubricating oil on the machinery of human relationships. Through meditation we learn also to see God in one another, and in all people, which dissolves all sense of differences between us.

People who are harmonious and do things together, instead of each one battling alone, can move mountains. An Ananda saying puts it well: “Many hands make a miracle.”

Finally, and most important, as a spiritual community, we always try to tune in to the will of God. The essence of life at Ananda is attunement to God and to the universal consciousness that Yogananda expressed. Ultimately, we want only to project God’s will for this time in history, in response to humanity’s needs to which God Himself is responding.

1
The Vision

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Brotherhood is an ideal better understood by example than precept! A small harmonious group may inspire other ideal communities over the earth.

“Far into the night my dear friend–the first Kriya Yogi in America–discussed with me the need for world colonies founded on a spiritual basis. Man is a soul, not an institution; his inner reforms alone can lend permanence to outer ones. By stress on spiritual values, Self-realization, a colony exemplifying world brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond its locale.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“I remember how stirred I was by a talk Paramhansa Yogananda gave at a garden party in Beverly Hills on July 31, 1949.

“ ‘This day,’ he thundered, punctuating every word, ‘marks the birth of a new era. My spoken words are registered in the ether, in the spirit of God, and they shall move the West. We must go on—not only those who are here, but thousands of youths must go North, South, East and West to cover the earth with little colonies, demonstrating that simplicity of living plus high thinking lead to the greatest happiness!’”

1967:  Land purchased for a meditation retreat
1968: Ananda officially starts
1969:  Land purchased for a community

Ananda officially starts
The dedication of the Ananda Meditation Retreat in August 1968 marked the official start of Ananda. The first Retreat buildings had been built, and a few hardy souls were able to stay there during the winter of 1968-69.

The first Retreat season began the summer of 1969, with Swami Kriyananda leading meditations, giving classes, conducting Sunday morning worship services, and leading evening programs. At the end of the 1969 season, Ananda held its first annual Spiritual Renewal Week—seven days of classes, kirtans, satsangs, and concerts, culminating with the first Kriya Yoga Initiation.

On July 4, 1969, Kriyananda purchased land six miles down the road from the Retreat for a community. Soon after, a number of people at the Retreat moved to the new land.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
Spiritual or Not?

Early on, the new community faced a crisis of self-definition as new people came more out of a desire to live in a commune in the woods than for spiritual reasons. Would Ananda be a community of Yogananda disciples and based on his teachings? The issue was resolved when Swami Kriyananda called a meeting and asked that people make a choice, adding that he was willing to leave if people did not want a spiritual community.

He didn’t impose his will, but simply made it clear that people needed to make a choice. I’ve always appreciated his non-attachment, his being ready to leave everything behind if that was what people wanted. Fortunately, most of us wanted a spiritual community. Those who didn’t soon decided to leave.

2
Sustainability—Housing and Jobs

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“To earn money abundantly, unselfishly, honestly for God and God’s work, and for making others happy, is to develop many sterling qualities of character that will aid one on the spiritual as well as the material path.” East West Magazine, 1928

Swami Kriyananda: Regarding the challenge of having to raise large sums of money to launch Ananda: “My gain was far more than the money I earned. Most of all, it was spiritual. I’d grown in inner strength by doing what I’d had to do despite every obstacle, even that of intense personal reluctance. And I’d done it for God.” A Place Called Ananda

1969: The first dwellings
1969-70: Community businesses started

Finding a way to survive
The most difficult challenge the first year was establishing a community that could actually survive. Since there were no suitable living spaces on the new land, most people put up teepees, simple but adequate dwellings. The bigger challenge, however, was to find ways to earn an income.

To earn money and create jobs, a few enterprising people started businesses to make products that could be sold: incense, essential oils, jewelry, granola. By the end of 1970, there were nearly ten businesses, including the Meditation Retreat and the publishing business started by Swami Kriyananda to sell his books and new yoga correspondence course.

The next few years saw the start of a farm, a community market, a dairy, new cottage industries, and a contract with the U.S. Forest Service for seasonal tree-planting work. New people came who started private businesses, including, in 1974, a construction company.

Looking ahead: Earning income
Today it is possible for individuals and groups of people to sustain themselves far away from the big cities without depending on the usual rural means of self-sustenance, like farming. With telephones, computers, e-mail, and fax machines, even isolated areas can be in active contact with the world. There are individuals living in the Ananda communities who support themselves and their families through computer-based work, often from their homes.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
A Strong Spiritual Focus

Amidst the flurry of building homes and starting businesses, we managed to keep a very strong spiritual focus. Swami Kriyananda gave Sunday services and spiritual classes weekly and, in the beginning, his magnetism was the primary force keeping our consciousness focused on God.

Gradually, as we matured spiritually, there developed a large group of people who were unshakably committed to the yogic path. But it took some years to establish a strong spiritual magnetism.

Devi Novak:
Exploring New Frontiers of Consciousness

The life and growth of Ananda, and its story, have become for me my life and growth, my story. From the beginning there was an exciting feeling that we were pioneers, both in the sense of creating a new way of life, and of exploring new frontiers of consciousness. These two concepts went hand in hand.

Through the practice of meditation, we deepened our awareness of being part of a greater reality than we could experience through our individual egos. This, in turn, developed our understanding of how to create these communities.

This openness to the guidance from higher wisdom was one of the keynotes of how Ananda developed. The experience of trying to find the truth in a situation, rather than just responding to our own opinions or desires, began to change all of us who lived here.

3
Sustainability: Farming and Food

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Let every man gather from five to ten thousand dollars and, in groups of thirty, build self-sustaining, self-governing colonies, starting with California. Buy farms and settle down with harmonious friends and have time to meditate and constructively exchange divine experiences.” Praecepta Lessons, 1934

Swami Kriyananda:
“There were several things Master wanted to do that he could not accomplish during his lifetime: a school in America (he tried to start one at Mt. Washington in 1925); “world brotherhood” communities; and another one we might do well to consider now: self-sustaining farms.” January 2005 letter to Ananda

1970: Community farm started
1972: Community market started

A biodynamic farm
In 1970, Swami Kriyananda invited Haanel Cassidy to move to Ananda Village to help develop a self-sufficient organic farm at the new community. Then in his sixties, Haanel was a long-time disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda with considerable experience in biodynamic gardening.

The soil at the community was poor, however, and the climate far from ideal. With hard work and composting, the farm began to produce vegetables, berries, herbs and flowers, and eventually produced nearly six tons of food a year, including, in the summer months, food for the Meditation Retreat and the community market. Ultimately, however, the farm proved uneconomical and the effort was abandoned in the mid-1980s.

Looking ahead: Cooperative farming at Ananda Village
In 2008, Ananda Village entered into a cooperative farming arrangement with a nearby farmer by leasing him two acres of land at Ananda Village for an organic farm. Community members participate in the farming venture on a subscription basis by paying in advance for a percentage of the harvest.

The Ananda Village sustainability effort also includes a new central composting system, the hiring of a gardener to assist community residents to grow food in the housing clusters, the building of green houses, and the planting of more fruit, nut and olive trees.

The tradition of gardening is well established in Ananda’s urban communities. There are flourishing community-wide vegetable gardens and fruit orchards at the Ananda communities in Palo Alto and Sacramento, California, and in Seattle, Washington.

Perspectives: Parvati Hansen
The Start of Master’s Market

By the fall of 1972, the need for a place where people could buy food was becoming very apparent. Swami Kriyananda had been saying to us in almost every satsang: “If you see something that needs to be done here, then do it!”

He was letting us know, right from the beginning, that we were the ones who were going to make this community a reality. He was also teaching us by his own dynamic example of energy and magnetism, how to use the spiritual principles taught by Paramhansa Yogananda.

So starting with a few boxes of fruit, which was all I could afford, the market began in a vacant room in the old farmhouse — the only adequate building on the land at that time. My understanding of how to begin a business was limited, but Divine Mother helped me each step of the way. A few months later, a young man interested in helping the market grow moved to the community and donated five hundred dollars—a huge amount in those years. After that, the market grew rapidly.

Jyotish Novak: “Management by Willingness”

From the start of the community, Swami Kriyananda was the type of leader who let others take responsibility and make their own decisions. By empowering people, he was much more subject to the vagaries of human nature, but it allowed everyone to develop their own strength. As soon as people were willing to take responsibility, he gave them not only responsibility, but also authority—the right to make decisions and to experience the successes or failures of those decisions.

I would call the management style that permeates Ananda, “management by willingness.” As soon as someone begins to show the willingness to take responsibility, he’s given the opportunity.

Devi Novak: A “Dharmocracy”

Over the years Swami Kriyananda had to work out a new style of leadership. In the beginning he made only two rules: no hallucinogenic drugs, and no alcohol. He wanted the community to be guided not by rules, but by the creative exercise of common sense.

He also wanted people to have the freedom to grow in their own understanding and ability, and not to be forced to accept decisions mindlessly, simply because the decision had been made. As much as possible, he allowed decision-making to take place at a “grass roots” level.

Thus, Kriyananda’s leadership style emerged slowly as one based on wisdom, compassion, and enduring patience. In community decisions, he guided people to ask, “What is right?” and, “What does God want?” rather than, “What do I want?” Swamiji has described Ananda’s government as a dharmocracy, “a community dedicated to actions leading to soul-freedom, and not to furthering one’s ego-involvement.”

4
Education for Life

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Paramhansa Yogananda laid much of the groundwork for Ananda’s Education for Life system in the school he established in Ranchi, India.

“Inspired by his efforts, we committed ourselves to the premise that a growing child needs to learn how to live in this world, and not merely how to find and hold a job. He or she needs to know how to live wisely, happily, and successfully according to his own deep inner needs, and not to meet life with the expectation that money and a nice home will give him all that he really wants in life.

“The goal of Ananda’s Education for Life system is to teach children the art of living, while giving them, in addition, the knowledge imparted by a conventional education.” Education for Life

1972: The first Ananda school
1986: Publication of Education for Life

The philosophy
The Education for Life system emphasizes the balanced development of body, feeling, will, and intellect. By developing this foundation, or “tools of maturity,” students are optimally prepared for the life-long adventure of finding ever-deeper levels of purpose, meaning, and lasting happiness.

The first school
Ananda’s Education for Life system got underway in 1972 when Nitai Deranja, a newly arrived teacher, was asked to start a school for seven community children, ages four to seven. Starting out in a ten by twelve shed and a budget of fifty dollars a month, the school moved into one of the first new buildings at the community six months later. Both the elementary school, and the junior high school that came later, soon attracted day and boarding students from outside the community.

To more clearly distinguish them from the Education for Life system, Ananda’s schools have been renamed “Living Wisdom Schools.” Today there are Living Wisdom Schools in Palo Alto, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and Assisi, Italy.

Looking ahead
As a non-sectarian system based on universal spiritual principles, the Education for Life system can be implemented wherever there is receptivity and interest. Hundreds of like-minded teachers in public and private schools have taken the teacher training programs offered yearly at the Ananda Institute for Alternative Living at the Ananda Meditation Retreat.

Beginning Fall 2008, the newly formed Seattle Institute for Living Yoga will offer a week-end teacher training program in both Seattle and Portland led by Usha Dermond, an  experienced Ananda Education for Life teacher and founder of the Portland Living Wisdom School.

Education for Life teacher training is envisioned as one of the main thrusts for The Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom, recently started by Ananda India.

Perspectives: Helen Purcell
Changing the Educational Landscape

In 1986, right after Education for Life had been published, Swami Kriyananda called a meeting at Crystal Hermitage with a number of people to discuss how to disseminate the ideas in his book.

I was surprised when Swami began the meeting by asking us to share our thoughts on the subject of education. However, over the years, I came to realize that this was Swami’s way: to plant the seeds and then let us use own creativity and inspiration to nurture them.

The ideas Swami had articulated in the book thrilled us, both as parents and as educators. We saw Education for Life as a breath of fresh air in a system that has become stagnant. We shared from our own experience how it could be adapted for any classroom, by any teacher who was not afraid to re-evaluate the fundamentals of traditional education.

Swami was emphatic that the Education for Life philosophy is much more expansive than any single spiritual path. He wanted us to share it with anyone who would listen. When the meeting broke up, the energy was high even though the task was daunting—a small group of six or eight people sent out to change the whole educational landscape!

Today, as principal of the Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, I receive emails from teachers all over the country who want guidance to create their own Education for Life schools. Recently I received an email from a teacher with nineteen years of experience in public elementary school. She dreams of opening a school like our Living Wisdom Schools. “Just knowing that your schools exist brings healing to my heart,” she writes.

5
Renunciation

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity. To fulfill one’s earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Renunciation of egoic desires forms the basis of the spiritual life, regardless of a person’s outer calling. At Ananda we’ve based our lives on renunciation, but generally it’s householder renunciation. It was Lahiri Mahasaya who first established this pattern of life. Paramhansa Yogananda approved of it, and, indeed, recommended it for most people.” Sadhu Beware

1971: Start of “The Friends of God”
1987: Start of a householder monastic order

The evolution of new model of renunciation
In 1971, Swami Kriyananda started a renunciate order for men and women, “The Friends of God.” It was not possible, however, at that stage in the community’s development to segregate the men and women as in a traditional monastery and, over time, many of the monks and nuns decided to marry. The monastery was dissolved in the early 1980s.

Building on that foundation, in 1987 Swami Kriyananda started a new kind of monastic order that includes householders, based on the ideals of non-attachment, simplicity, service, and self-control. To live a monastic life as a householder, the primary requirement is not celibacy but a dedication to doing God’s will, even though it may be personally difficult.

Looking ahead: A new monastery
As a spiritually mature work, Ananda is now able to accommodate a renunciate order with a degree of separation from the main communities. In 2005, Swami Kriyananda started a traditional monastic order for men and women, focused initially on a monastery for men in India.  He gives these reasons for the new direction:

I feel that spiritual communities need a monastery to set the example of selfless service, which is harder keep in mind when you have children to support. When you have people who truly feel that they don’t want anything except God, and that all they own belongs to Him, their example will make it easier for everyone else to tune into that attitude.

It would be good if new Ananda residents could get grounded in the monastic attitude before they thought about marriage. In the Buddhist tradition at least the young men live in a monastery for one year.

Let’s first be devotees seeking God. Then, as we bring that level into marriage, we can begin to set an example for people everywhere of a kind of marriage that our culture doesn’t prepare us for. We need to have a different concept of human love than what Hollywood films give us. It’s got to be on a soul level. Future of Ananda, 1999.

Perspectives: Jaya Helin
A Lifelong Commitment

In 1971, Swami Kriyananda invited a number of people to a meeting at his dome at the Meditation Retreat to discuss the idea of possibly starting a monastic order. At the meeting, Swamiji spoke very personally. He spoke about his life with Master, his life as a monk at SRF, the six months he had spent at a Catholic monastery near Big Sur, and the lessons he had learned.

He discussed his vision for Ananda, and whether a monastery would be possible. When he talked about renunciation, it was not in terms of what one is giving up, but as a life lived wholly dedicated to God.

I was enraptured listening to this. At the end of his talk, he looked at me and said, “Would you like to embrace such a life?”

After I said, “Yes, “ I knelt before him and he blessed me and gave me a piece of a rose petal from an initiation by Paramhansa Yogananda. He then asked the same question of everyone else and blessed each of them in turn.

I walked out of there deeply inspired and from that moment forward, my life totally changed. I became a different person. I began to understand what it meant to be a devotee on the spiritual path. I realized that renunciation is not about what we give up. The heart of renunciation is what we embrace, and what we embrace is God. We give our life to God. That’s the spirit of renunciation that Swamiji asked us to embrace that evening.

I eventually left the monastery to marry as did others. But when I left, I didn’t feel I was leaving. I simply moved to another room of the house, you might say. I was still in my heart, and to this day, a renunciate.

6
The Ananda Fire

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“An even-minded individual is like a mirror of discretion reflecting the true nature of seemingly favorable and unfavorable events. He thus holds himself in readiness to act wisely and properly without being misled by emotional disturbances.” Inner Culture Magazine, 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“When you meditate and feel God’s presence, then these things are all just a dream. I don’t mean that the fire was nothing. But in truth conditions are neutral. It’s the way we take them that determines whether they’re positive or negative, whether they’re bad experiences or happy experiences.” From a talk after the fire

1976: Forest fire sweeps through Ananda

A time of testing
A June 1976 forest fire that destroyed 450 acres and twenty-one of the twenty-two homes at Ananda might easily have sounded the death-knell for the community. Ananda had no insurance and no financial reserves from which to rebuild. Many decided to leave the community at that time, and most departing members asked Ananda to pay them for houses they had lost.

It was later discovered that faulty county road equipment had caused the fire. Ananda had sustained the largest loss and could have sued the county, but Swami Kriyananda wrote to the Nevada County Board of Supervisors,  “We don’t want to take our bad luck out on our fellow citizens by increasing the county’s insurance rates. Anything that harms the county will, in the long run, harm Ananda also.”

Ananda eventually repaid all departing members, and with hard work, joyful faith, and God’s grace, rebuilt the community. The fire had tested the community’s commitment to one of its guiding principles, “Where there is dharma there is victory,” and Ananda’s commitment to that principle had held firm.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
“This House Is Yours, God”

The fire started several miles from the community, and we could see smoke for quite a long time before we realized our property was being threatened. At one point, the fire jumped the road and began to move through dense brush towards one of our housing clusters.

My wife, Devi, and I had a geodesic dome about three hundred yards from where the fire was burning, so I hurried back down to our house. I tried to save the house by cutting a trench around it and hosing it down with water.

A teenager, Dwayne Smallen, came down the hill in a truck very excited. He shouted, “You’ve got to get out of here. The flames are really high and will be here in five minutes.” I looked up the hill and saw this enormous wall of fire and it was obvious my little trench wasn’t going to save anything.

At that point I went into a state of complete detachment, saying to myself, “I’m not attached to anything. This house is yours, God. If you want to take it, go ahead. Take everything.”

Dwayne had the presence of mind to yell, “Grab what you can and throw it in the truck.” Devi had recently boxed up everything in our meditation room to clean it, so I grabbed the box, took an armful of clothes from the closet, and that was it. We threw it in the truck and drove downhill through the brush and out of danger.

Only days after the fire, Ananda began to rebuild itself. Because of our strong foundation in meditation, there was no sense of devastation, which was so prevalent among our neighbors. We knew we would have to put out a lot of energy, but the challenge of rebuilding was exciting rather than distressing.

7
Community Planning

Swami Kriyananda:
“Ananda Village has grown from Spartan beginnings to become a place of man-made as well as natural beauty. Simple but charming homes, school buildings, offices, and places of business express in architecture the twin principles Yogananda recommended: ‘plain living and God-thinking’” The Path (1996): Afterword

1974-1978: Ananda develops Master Plan

A community-wide upgrade
The initial “plan” of the Ananda community reflected two main concerns: the desire for privacy and the need to get a road and water to one’s home. The result was scattered, uncoordinated clusters of houses.

The purchase of three hundred and twenty-six acres next to Ananda Village in 1974 was the first impetus for the community to think more seriously about planning, but only after the 1976 forest fire did in depth planning actually begin. By then, county building regulations and Ananda’s desire for a more “conscious” community gave birth to a “Master Plan” for Ananda.

The Master Plan, which went through three drafts in four years before being finally approved by the county, provided for cluster housing and large areas of open land. The plan also allowed Ananda to move its public retreat to the newly constructed Expanding Light Guest Retreat in the early 1980s.

Perspectives: Jaya
Helin Starting Over

Once the new Master Plan was completed, it was as if we were building the community all over again, but this time in a more socially “responsible” way. We couldn’t continue living in teepees, trailers and tiny cabins; everything needed to be brought up to code.

This meant we had to have better houses, better roads, and better water systems. Many people in the community were starting to have families and needed more adequate housing and suitable places to send their children to school.

Devi Novak: Opening to the Light

In time, with hard work and better planning learned from experience, Ananda became more beautiful than ever. Even more importantly, the community had come of age. As one member put it, “We’re not here to build buildings. We’re here to build character, by living for God.”

The challenges we faced in creating Ananda on the physical plane were the exact same challenges we each faced in our quest for spiritual expansion—the ability to focus and commit to the deepest spiritual goal we could perceive.

As each individual at Ananda opened more to God’s light, then that same power was expressed in the community. For the individual, there was a gain of inner freedom; for the community, there was the creation of a physical, social and spiritual manifestation that reflected the inner growth of individuals.

8
A New Phase of Outreach

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Strive to become an apostle of Christ-Consciousness. Try to be one of the world’s ‘Fishers of Souls’ with your inspirational words and writings, and with your voice saturated with the Holy Ghost vibration of Aum.” East-West Magazine, 1932

Swami Kriyananda:
“Emphasize principles. Win people on the strength of their needs. We need to talk in terms of solutions to those needs, not just of the needs themselves. In short, we need to stress positive values: inner happiness, peace of mind, love of high ideals, cooperation, and kindness—in fact, all the good things we’ve learned from Master. We are part of a great tide of loving, joyful energy that wants to give and give as long as people are happy to receive it.” From a 1999 talk

1977: Publication of The Path
1977: Circle of Joy started
1978-79: The Joy Tours
1983: World Brotherhood Retreat opens

Expanding the light
Outreach has been central to Ananda’s vision from the beginning, but the publication of Swami Kriyananda’s autobiography, The Path, his first major book with broad appeal, launched a new, more dynamic phase of outreach.

Swami Kriyananda traveled twice across America in 1978 and 1979 with ten to twelve Ananda members on what he called “The Joy Tours,” addressing large crowds in dozens of cities. The tours drew many new members to Ananda, including some of Ananda’s current leaders.

A spiritual family forms
As Ananda began to view itself as a spiritual movement that embraced like-minded people everywhere, it established the “Circle of Joy” as a way for people to belong to Ananda wherever they lived. The name was later changed to the “Ananda Spiritual Family,” and more recently to “Ananda Sangha.”

Since 2002, Ananda has supported Spanish-speaking members of its spiritual family through its Spanish Ministry, which has focused initially on devotees in Central and South America, Spain, and Portugal.

A new guest retreat
Ananda’s need to expand its guest facilities led to the construction of a new guest retreat on a newly acquired parcel of land adjacent to the community. Initially called “Ananda World Brotherhood Retreat,” Swami Kriyananda was later inspired to rename it “The Expanding Light.”

Since officially opening in 1983, The Expanding Light has attracted thousands of guests from around the world.

Looking ahead: Electronic outreach
The Internet has opened an important new avenue of outreach with the potential of making Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings available to anyone in the world free of charge through website offerings from Ananda Worldwide.

Recent live, interactive videoconferencing with Swami Kriyananda portends another important new direction for Ananda. Swami Kriyananda and others can now address groups from a distance, with questions, answers, and other interactions.

Perspectives: Mary Kretzmann
“A Wave of Peace”

It was 1978 and I had recently read Autobiography of a Yogi.  I was desperate to know if Paramhansa Yogananda was my one true Guru.  I then heard that one of his direct disciples, Swami Kriyananda, was on a national tour, and speaking in Chicago!  My husband, Tim, and I drove the 750 miles from our home in Arkansas to meet him.

At Swamiji’s talk, I was inwardly praying to Master, ”Please give me a sign if you are my Guru.” At the end of the lecture, Swamiji played his piano sonata, The Divine Romance, and I felt a wave of blessings and love fill my heart. I knew without a doubt that Yogananda was my Guru.

One of the Ananda devotees traveling with Swamiji encouraged us to start a meditation group and we agreed. When Swamiji met us and heard of our deep interest, he invited us to come see him again in Houston, several months from then. So this time, my husband and I drove 1000 miles roundtrip to see Swamiji and ended up staying with him in the new Ananda ashram in Houston.

It was powerful staying in the same house as Swamiji. While there, in meditation, I saw Master’s face at the spiritual eye and felt his deep blessing—and I knew that Ananda was my spiritual path. We told Swamiji that we were interested in Ananda and wanted to go check it out but that our jobs made it difficult to get away: Tim had a landscaping business and I was a preschool teacher. Swamiji said, “Why not move to Ananda?”

Riding back to Arkansas in the pickup truck, Tim and I felt a wave a peace surrounding us and we knew, then and there, that we should sell our house and move to Ananda Village sight unseen. We moved two months later.

9
Start of Centers and Colonies

Swami Kriyananda:
“Ananda Village is the model community, and it is taking my energy and presence to get it started. But once the model is established, it will be easier to reproduce it, and others will be able to do so.” Reflections on Living

1977: Start of Sacramento Center
1979: Start of Ananda San Francisco
1984: Start of Ananda Europa
1989-1995: Start of urban colonies

• 1989: Palo Alto acquires apartment complex
• 1991: Sacramento acquires apartment complex
• 1992: Seattle acquires apartment complex
• 1995: Portland acquires apartment complex

2003: Start of Ananda India
2007: Start of Ananda Los Angeles

A common pattern
Beginning with the Sacramento Center in 1977, Ananda’s urban colonies all began either as meditation groups or small ashram-based centers. With the support of local devotees, these small beginnings evolved into apartment complex communities in Sacramento, Palo Alto, Portland, and Seattle, each with beautiful park-like settings and separate temples or mandirs for worship services and classes.

In 1980, Ananda purchased East-West Bookshop, a large metaphysical bookstore in Menlo Park, California. Today the Menlo Park bookstore (now in Mountain View), and  two East-West bookstores in Seattle, Washington not only serve the larger spiritual community, they also attract new members to Ananda and provide jobs for local devotees.

An international work
The interest of European friends drew four people from Ananda to Como, Italy in 1984 to launch Ananda’s first work in Europe. Now based near Assisi, Italy, Ananda Europa includes residents from throughout Europe. Its Temple of Light is dedicated to all religions.

Since 2003, Swami Kriyananda and a small group of Ananda members from different countries have been building a new Ananda colony in Gurgaon, India near New Delhi. They recently purchased land in south India to start a residential community and teaching center.

Looking ahead: New centers and meditation groups
Ananda’s newest center in Los Angeles, California officially opened July 22, 2007 with a dedication ceremony led by Swami Kriyananda. By November 2007, the center was offering ongoing classes and worship services.

As meditation teachers receive training in programs offered throughout Ananda worldwide, many are starting meditation groups and actively spreading Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings in their own areas.

A likely new pattern
The start of Ananda Michigan in 1999 heralds what may be the pattern for other new Ananda centers and communities. Unlike Ananda’s main colonies, which were sponsored by Ananda Village, Ananda Michigan owes its start to the inspiration of a single Ananda individual, Lorne Dekun. (See below, “Perspectives”) Ananda Michigan serves devotees in Lansing, Michigan and the Detroit Area.

Perspectives: Asha Praver
“Babaji Is Very Pleased”

“Babaji is very pleased with this community.” When Swami Kriyananda said those words to the few hundred people gathered for the dedication of our community in Palo Alto in 1989, it caught me and everyone else by surprise.

We tend to think of Babaji as being off somewhere in the Himalayas, overseeing the unfolding of major cosmic dramas but too lofty, too exalted, to be concerned with the establishment of Ananda’s first apartment complex community. Continuing, Swamiji said, “Ananda’s purpose is to show people that because we’re now in an ascending age, Dwapara Yuga, they can integrate spirituality into their every day lives.”

The masters have come at this time to help us, and others like us. Babaji said, “The vibrations of many spiritually seeking souls come floodlike to me. I perceive potential saints in America and Europe, waiting to be awakened.”

Throughout Ananda we are planting seeds for the coming Dwapara Yuga. Will we see the fruit of what we are planting? I don’t think we’ll see a huge amount. We’ll see little bits of growth, little bits of change.

But our masters are avatars. They come with power, and the power they plant is never obliterated. Paramhansa Yogananda said that he had planted the thought of thousands of world brotherhood colonies one day covering the earth “in the ether, in the spirit of God.”  He predicted that his words would “move the West.”

Though we may not live to see it, we can be certain that the divine effort we put forth to establish this everlasting work in the name of God and Guru will go on and on.

Lorne Dekun: A Message in a Dream

Ananda Michigan officially began on May 1, 1999 when I returned to Lansing, Michigan  after spending twenty years in California,  twelve of  them at Ananda Village, Ananda Palo Alto, and Ananda Sacramento combined. However, one could say Ananda Michigan began ten years prior to 1999. It began with a dream.

In 1989, another Ananda Village resident and I went on a book-selling tour in the Mid-West as representatives of Crystal Clarity Publishers. After we finished in Chicago, we drove to Grand Rapids, Michigan and stayed overnight at the home of a good friend of mine.

That night I had a dream of a short conversation with my first spiritual teacher, Yogacharya Oliver Black, Paramhansa Yogananda’s direct disciple. At the time, Mr. Black was ninety-six years old and living at his summer home in Northern Michigan. At least I thought he was living there. I was to soon learn that he had left his body just a few hours earlier.

In the dream, Yogacharya was sitting across from me at a table. He gave me one of his radiant smiles and said, “I want you to help with the work in Michigan.”

After I returned to Ananda Village, I sought out Seva Wiberg who had guided me to come live at Ananda Village. I told her of the dream and the circumstances under which it had happened. Seva smiled at me in friendship and love and said, “I think you need to start making plans to move back to Michigan.”

It wasn’t until ten years later that I made the move. By then, I had been acting in a ministerial capacity at Ananda Palo Alto by teaching classes at the Palo Alto teaching center and giving Sunday Service at two nearby Ananda centers. I felt I now had something to offer Ananda Michigan.

10
Rajarsi Day

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Rather than be always striving for personal happiness, try to make others happy. In being of spiritual, mental, and material service to others, you will find your own needs fulfilled. As you forget self in service to others, you will find that, without seeking it, your own cup of happiness will be full.” Praecepta Lessons, 1935

Swami Kriyananda:
“Service is ennobling. It is a way of offering up our human littleness into the great Reality that is God.” Affirmations for Self-Healing

“It isn’t really important what we do, so long as we see everything we do as an opportunity for service, for working for the welfare of all, for expanding our sympathies and awareness, and for attuning our consciousness to the Infinite Intelligence. Money Magnetism

1981: First Rajarsi Day

A tradition of volunteering
Regular workdays, times when people at Ananda come together as volunteers on community projects, are an integral part of Ananda’s commitment to selfless service. Workdays started with the building of the Meditation Retreat in 1969.

Since1981, Ananda Village has also held an annual “Rajarsi Day,” named after Paramhansa Yogananda’s spiritual successor, Rajarsi Janakananda. Community members spend an entire day working together on community projects such as remodeling buildings, landscaping, creating new walkways, and removing debris.

Most of Ananda’s urban communities now also hold annual Rajarsi Days. In addition, teams of volunteers from throughout Ananda periodically travel to the Palo Alto, Portland, Seattle, Sacramento, Assisi, and Gurgaon colonies to assist with construction projects.

Perspectives: Jaya Helin
Learning Teamwork

Workdays received an important boost the winter of 1971-72 when a group of about fifteen of us from Ananda Village embarked on three weeks of tree-planting in northern California, under contract with the U. S. Forest Service.

We approached everything cooperatively, sharing all risks, responsibilities, losses and rewards equally. Although physically stretched to our core, in the midst of everything, we meditated, chanted, sang, joked, and shared our adventure together as a community.

Out of this experience came teamwork and habits of mutual trust, friendship and cooperation—all things that were used to build Ananda in subsequent years.

Savitri Simpson: “Service is Joy!”

Most people think of a job as a nine-to-five experience; after work you go home and have your own life. Not so at Ananda! When something important needs to be done in the community, we’ve learned to put aside our own desires and concentrate on the project at hand.

I recall the time in the 1970s when I was still fairly new at Ananda. I worked as office manager of the Meditation Retreat and got called upon to wash dishes in the Retreat kitchen on a Sunday afternoon at the end of major guest weekend.

There was no dishwasher and everyone else had gone. I was there by myself washing mountains of dishes and, briefly, the thought came to me: “What am I doing washing dishes? I have a college degree!” In that same moment, however, I realized that this was exactly what was needed at the time.

“Service is joy” is one of the themes of Ananda workdays and Rajarsi Day, especially, epitomizes this spirit of service. The magnetism and joy become very strong when people work selflessly together toward common goals.

A few years ago, my husband and I had guests during the Rajarsi Day weekend. This couple was fairly new to Ananda and had never participated in an intense workday of this sort. We had explained to them that we would be busy all day Saturday and that they could join us or not, as they chose.

Not only did they choose to work along with us, they worked hard. At the end of the day, they were both pretty exhausted but all smiles. And to this day, these friends often comment on how this was one of the most important days in their lives—a day during which they got to see and feel firsthand the spirit of selfless service which is the essence of Ananda.

11
A Music Ministry

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Because man himself is an expression of the Creative Word, sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him, offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Music is the most important of the arts because it affects feelings, consciousness. It’s not just entertainment; it’s not just a nice melody. Listening to certain music and absorbing it, changes your consciousness. That’s why we should listen to music that is born of Spirit.” Music and The Art of Living

1981: The Joy Singers
1983: Christ Lives: An Oratorio

A turning point
Two events in the early 1980s launched Ananda’s music ministry as we know it today: the formation of The Joy Singers in 1981, and Swami Kriyananda’s composing of Christ Lives: An Oratorio in 1985.

In the early 1980s, the newly formed Joy Singers toured California and western states, presenting Swami Kriyananda’s “Songs of Divine Joy”—songs that express in words and music the consciousness of humility, devotion, and joy.

A deeply inspiring pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1985 led Swami Kriyananda to compose an Oratorio of the life of Jesus Christ, Christ Lives. Discussing the Oratorio, he said,  “I couldn’t have expressed myself more sincerely, musically, than I did in that Oratorio.”

In the mid to late 1980s, Ananda singers and musicians presented the Oratorio to Christian churches in northern California and the San Francisco Bay area. Since then, it has become an integral part of musical programs throughout Ananda.

In 2001, a fifty-five-member choir from various Ananda communities toured Italy with the Oratorio, giving concerts in six cities. A French man said after hearing a performance: “I couldn’t understand a word of what was sung. Yet I understood everything! The inspiration of this Oratorio was extraordinary!”

Instrumental music: a new dimension
In the early 1990s, Swami Kriyananda began a fifteen-year period of composing primarily instrumental music, which brought an important new dimension to the music ministry. With the writing of instrumentals, the music alone, without words, could transmit the underlying consciousness.

Today there are choirs and instrumentalist at all Ananda colonies, and the beginnings of an orchestra at Ananda Village.

Perspectives: Bhagavati Nani:
“Something Profound Was Happening”

When I first came to Ananda Palo Alto in 1998, I had been working as a professional freelance flutist and private teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for over fifteen years. I’d never met Swamiji and, although I was well on my way to accepting Paramhansa Yogananda as my Guru, I had a harder time understanding how Swami Kriyananda fit into the picture.

I had picked up a free tape one Sunday after service, entitled “The Spirit of Ananda in Music,” which consisted of a variety of Swamiji’s music—including several selections of him singing solo. So one night I decided to play it while I worked on an art project.  On the one hand, I was enjoying the vibration of the music, but on the other hand, my trained musician’s ears were critically assessing every note and intonation.

When “Love Is a Magician” began and Swamiji started to sing the words, I felt something pierce my heart, bypassing my mind and intellect altogether, and I began to cry. Actually, sob is a more accurate word, and that’s what I did for the entire song. Thankfully, I had some experience of how God works, so I immediately “got it” that something very important and profound was happening to me.

From that moment I simply accepted that Swami Kriyananda was someone I could trust—as my spiritual teacher and friend, and as a musician—and I opened my heart to him.

12
Crystal Hermitage

Swami Kriyananda:
“I remembered how often Paramhansa Yogananda quoted the suggestion made to him by an architect: ‘Immortalize your teachings in architecture.’ The Master agreed with him. A spiritual teaching ought to be clothed in a form that expresses the consciousness it seeks to inspire.” A Place Called Ananda

“I built Crystal Hermitage not as the perfect ‘headquarters’ for myself, but to make it possible for me to share better with others. Crystal Hermitage is a personal statement, but vital to that statement is the wish to offer the energy of this house in non-attachment into a larger flow of energy: into the streams of others’ lives; into the river of humanity everywhere.” Space, Light, & Harmony

1984: Crystal Hermitage created

A beautiful spiritual center
In 1984, Swami Kriyananda expanded the buildings and grounds around his dome to create a beautiful spiritual center for Ananda residents and visitors, and for his own enjoyment, which he named, “Crystal Hermitage.”

Crystal Hermitage includes a large main building used for meetings, banquets, and social gatherings; Swami Kriyananda’s apartment on the lower level, beautifully landscaped upper and lower gardens; a chapel; a museum containing relics of Yogananda, Sri Yukteswar and other masters of this path; a boutique; and a nearby guest house.

The chapel and upper gardens are open to the public for weddings and receptions. The expansive lower garden adjoining Kriyananda’s apartment is used for outdoor concerts and other programs.

Six thousand tulips!
Nearly four hundred people from the local area visited the Crystal Hermitage gardens in April 2008 after a front-page article in the local press announced a Crystal Hermitage Open House featuring six thousand tulips in bloom. Both upper and lower gardens and were open to the public.

One first-time visitor to the community commented, “When I first saw the gardens at Crystal Hermitage, I felt God’s presence in my heart and I understood what Ananda was all about.”

Perspectives: Patrick Lynch
“An Old Dear Friend”

I was participating in a Kriya Prep Week at Ananda Village when I first visited the Crystal Hermitage. Walking into the museum felt like going to visit my Guru.

I was filled with such joy to see relics from each of the masters in Paramhansa Yogananda’s lineage: Yogananda’s meditation mat, instruments he played, his mother’s wedding bangles, Lahiri Mahasaya’s water pot, Sri Yukteswar cane, and much more.

Afterwards, we walked through the gardens to Swami Kriyananda’s home. I went out onto the back deck and gazed across the beautiful canyon. I then went inside for the group meditation. Though I had been having difficulty meditating during this first visit to Ananda Village, the minute I shut my eyes I was powerfully pulled into a deep meditation.

Over the next few years, whenever I visited Ananda Village, I would spend time at the Crystal Hermitage and meditate in the museum or chapel. I had never met Swami Kriyananda or even seen him, and thought I might never have the opportunity. Nonetheless, I discovered I could have a relationship with him as a friend.

Knowing of his receptivity, I would inwardly share with him my thoughts, concerns, and questions, as well as always give him my gratitude. And I always got a response. I would mainly do this in meditation. At other times I would just think about him.

By developing an inward friendship with Swamiji, I learned that I could do this with anyone who is receptive.

In 2007, I learned that Swamiji was going to be at Ananda Village for his birthday celebration, and I wasn’t going to miss it!  I met him in person at his home at the Crystal Hermitage and expressed my gratitude. When I first looked into his eyes it was like seeing an old dear friend.

13
New Ceremonies

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Religious ceremonies are symbols of wisdom.” East West Magazine, 1929

Swami Kriyananda:
“Nothing, perhaps, could so clearly convey our sense of inspiration in the life we lead as the Festival of Light.” Cities of Light

1987: Festival of Light and other ceremonies introduced

In 1987 Swami Kriyananda introduced a number of new ceremonies designed to make Yogananda’s teachings a more dynamic part of spiritual life at Ananda. He also created new levels of ministers, including Lightbearers.

In one of the most important ceremonies, the Festival of Light, God’s light is invoked to flow down to earth, and into the hearts of worshipers both present and afar, through the channels of Ananda’s line of masters and the great saints of all religions.

There are also ceremonies for inner purification, for higher attunement, and for when people leave this world.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
Why a Festival of Light?

For years I felt the need to condense our central message into ceremonial form that would make it possible to repeat it at every service without the repetition becoming tiresome. But whenever the thought arose in my mind, the answering thought came, “The moment isn’t right.”

Then when I felt the inspiration for the first of them, the Festival of Light, it came in a flash. I was in Assisi in seclusion, and the inspiration just flowed. The other ceremonies came almost as smoothly.

The ceremonies we have serve to remind us of the need for inner awakening, for an inner upliftment of consciousness. When, for example, we offer “the little light that is in us” in the arati during the Festival of Light, and again when we receive that light into ourselves, we are reminded repeatedly of the changes we need to effect in our own consciousness.

If you don’t know what to do when you go inward, these things can be helpful. If on the other hand, you are deeply dedicated to the inward path, these outward reminders can still help to make that path more dynamic to your awareness, particularly in your worship with others.

These ceremonies are not a combination of Eastern and Western religious practices. The similarities, such as they are, are more a matter of “feeling.” Otherwise, they express, simply and clearly, the way God’s light has been expressed in this age, through our line of Masters.

We have a message in each of our ceremonies that is universal, inasmuch as it is focused not on single events in human history, but on the cosmic “event” of creation itself. This is the eternal aspect of the ceremonies.

There is also another benefit in having these ceremonies. Not every minister is a born speaker. The Festival of Light enables every minister to give the congregation something living and uplifting.  It even helps the minister to attune himself more deeply to the truths he has to offer.

Master believed in ceremonies, though he, too, stressed the need for simplicity. These new ceremonies came through meditation on him, and I think that it is in keeping with his teachings that we perform them.  Interview, Clarity Magazine, 1988

14
Kriya Yoga

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“‘Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization,’ Babaji finally said with solemnity, ‘will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man’s personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.’ After a vibrant pause, Babaji addressed me again, ‘You are the one I have chosen to spread the message of Kriya Yoga in the West.’” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Kriya Yoga is the most central of all techniques because it helps to magnetize the inner spiritual spine, and thus bring everything into alignment with a higher reality.” The Light of Superconsciousness.

1990: Start of Kriya Ministry

Kriya Yoga at Ananda
Although Kriya Yoga initiations have been given annually at Ananda since 1969, the establishment of a formal Kriya Ministry in 1990 marked the beginning of an especially dynamic phase in Ananda’s dissemination of the ancient science. Since then, Ananda Village has offered monthly initiations and ongoing support to Kriya initiates worldwide via phone, email, newsletters, recordings, booklets and a special website.

Today, there are thirteen Ananda Kriya ministers serving devotees in the United States, Europe, India, and Central and South America, where they offer programs and ministries tailored to the specific needs of the devotees in those locales. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, “The time for knowing God has come!”

Perspectives: Peter Kretzmann
“What Is It They Are Doing?”

Having grown up around hundreds of Kriyabans* at Ananda Village, I always thought that becoming an adult meant that you were an honest, respectable, trustworthy and generally joyful person. After attending the local public high school and meeting my friends’ parents, I realized that this was not necessarily the case!

While some of the adults that I met were good happy people, many were unhappy, jaded, disillusioned, and angry at the world. After seeing this again and again, I had to step back and ask myself, “What is the difference between Ananda adults and the parents of my friends at school?”

Swami Kriyananda has mentioned that when you find such a high quality collection of people in one place, you have to assume that it is not so much the people that are amazing, but more what the people are doing. Naturally, the next question I had to ask myself was, “What is it that these Ananda adults are doing that sets them apart?”

As I had learned growing up, Ananda practices the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, at the core of which is Kriya Yoga. In my heart I knew that Kriya Yoga was what I wanted.

While the world so often offers bitterness and frustration, here right in front of my nose, I had the tools to fill my heart with love, peace, happiness and joy! What a divine blessing simply to be given that choice. With these tools, I knew I could grow to become the person I want to be.

As my Kriya practice deepens, I know in my heart I am on my way to becoming who I want to become and achieving the ultimate goal of Self-realization.

* One who practices Kriya Yoga.

15
Unity of Religions

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“When the blindness of ignorance and denominational prejudice is healed by the Self-realization of God, then the whole elephant of Truth will be perceived as the essence of all religions. Then inter-denominational wars and religious and racial prejudice will cease, and there will be one church, one brotherhood, one scientific highway of religions, and one Temple of Truth everywhere.” Praecepta Lessons, 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“Paramhansa Yogananda told us clearly and repeatedly the kind of religion that will predominate in the new age. He said it would be free from dogmatism, free from rigid institutionalism, and strong in its emphasis on Self-realization.” Religion and the New Age

1987: Publication of Rays of the Same Light
1998: Publication of The Hindu Way of Awakening
2001: Publication of Promise of Immortality
2006: Publication of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
2007: Publication of Revelations of Christ

An inner approach
One of the main goals of Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission to the West was to show the unity of religions through his commentaries on the original teachings of Jesus Christ and Krishna in The Bible and Bhagavad Gita.

Yogananda’s basic message was that the unity of religions is achieved not through outward religious similarities but through the inner experience of divine communion. For as Swami Kriyananda writes: “In silent communion with God there no longer remains Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism, as such.”

It is this inner aspect of the unity of religions that Kriyananda clarifies in some of his most important books, including Rays of the Same Light, The Promise of Immortality, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, and Revelations of Christ, showing it to be the essence of all true religions.

In The Hindu Way of Awakening, Kriyananda explores the subject of unity through the deeper teachings of Hinduism, which he describes as the only religion in the world whose adherents “present Self-realization as the goal of life.”

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
“You’re Doing the Right Thing!”

Master stated that he had been sent to teach the original teachings of Jesus Christ. It is clear also that Master was sent from Hindu India, rather than born into the Church as a reforming Christian saint, because such reform from within would have been impossible, given the realities of the present Church with its rigid institutionalism.

Padre Pio, a modern Christian saint, gave confession many years ago to an SRF member in Italy, a friend of mine. This friend related the story to me.

“During my confession, I told Padre Pio that I practiced Kriya Yoga.

“‘Oh, hush!’ Padre Pio replied. ‘You shouldn’t talk about such things. But,’ he added with a conspiratorial smile, ‘you’re doing the right thing!’”

Saints themselves, you see, are powerless to change the teachings of their own church, heavily institutionalized as it is.

For contrast, look at religion in India. There, religion is not really organized at all. Yet the original teachings of the Vedas—thousands of years older than the New Testament, and indeterminately older than the Old Testament—are still offered in a relatively pristine form.

It is true that Master came also, as he told us, to bring back the original yoga teachings of Krishna. The basic truths expounded in the Vedanta, however, are widely known in India, and are as purely and sublimely expressed today as they ever were.

The difference is that, in India, the purity of the teachings has been preserved from age to age not by some smoothly run institution, but by living saints.

16
“Yogananda for the World”: A Twelve-Year Battle for Freedom

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“We must have fellowship for the good of all, one “Church of God” to shed its light to all mankind, and not sects and “isms” which cause separativeness. The time will come when only souls of realization will give instruction and draw souls and crowds.” Praecepta Lessons 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“God was using Yogananda as the avatar of a new age, to change an entire civilization. Don’t let anyone tell you that one organization, one person, one statement can ever, even remotely, define what he brought to the world. The present legal tiffs are not between two organizations, but between two different ‘takes’ on his cosmic mission.” In Divine Friendship

1990: Ananda changes its name
1990:  Publication of Essence of Self-Realization
1990: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) sues Ananda

A challenge to universality
In 1990, SRF initiated a major lawsuit in federal court to prevent Ananda from using “Self-realization” in its name. SRF also demanded that Ananda not use Paramhansa Yogananda’s “name or likeness” in any advertising or publicity, and that it not use quotes from any of Yogananda’s writings without its permission.

Ananda had changed its name to “Ananda Church of Self-Realization” to convey more clearly the nature of its “religion” and the universality of its work and mission. “Self-realization” was the name used by Paramhansa Yogananda to describe his “religion.”

The universality of Yogananda’s teachings was the focus of The Essence of Self-Realization, a compilation of Yogananda’s statements, recorded by Swami Kriyananda, published shortly before the lawsuit.

After twelve years of litigation, Ananda won on nearly every count—essentially ninety-five percent of the lawsuit.

The court invalidated SRF’s trademarks in the names “Self-realization” and “Paramhansa Yogananda.” Numerous photos of Yogananda, many of his articles and lessons, and all books published by him before 1952, including Autobiography of a Yogi, were declared to be in the public domain.

The court also found that since SRF did not own Yogananda’s publicity rights, it could not control Ananda’s use of his name, likeness, voice, or signature.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
“The Power To Rise”

God has given us countless marks of His love for us. He has given us tests also, and for these we should be just as grateful. For only when we are challenged to our foundations can we know inner peace and love for Him as truly our own. By remaining unshaken during trials, it is ourselves we convince that God is truly our only Beloved, and the wellspring of our existence.

Whatever happens to us in this life, it is God’s dream. If we live steadfastly for Him alone, whatever trials we are put through will generate in us the power to rise ever higher in divine consciousness, until we achieve our hearts’ only lasting desire: oneness with Him.

17
Ananda Yoga

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Through yoga postures we can remove or relieve the congestion in the nerves or vertebrae and permit the free flow of life energy.” Scientific Healing Affirmations, 1924

Swami Kriyananda:
“Hatha Yoga [yoga postures and breathing techniques] is the physical branch of Raja Yoga and its real purpose is spiritual—to still the body so you can meditate deeply. I consider Ananda Yoga to be Paramhansa Yogananda’s system, and that he taught it through me.”  Interview with Gyandev McCord

1967: Publication of Yoga Postures for Self Awareness
1995: Publication of Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness

A new system
Ananda Yoga dates back to the 1960s when Swami Kriyananda gave yoga postures classes in various northern California cities. In keeping with Hatha Yoga’s original spiritual purpose, he introduced a new dimension through affirmations that enable one to attune to the consciousness underlying each posture.

Kriyananda presented this new system in Yoga Postures for Self Awareness, published in 1967. More recent editions of the book have been renamed, Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness.

Ananda Yoga is now taught in most Ananda colonies and centers. In extended programs such at the Yoga Teacher Training program offered at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village, students are introduced also to meditation and Yogananda’s Energization Exercises.

The spread of Ananda Yoga:
Since 1978, thousands of teachers have been trained in the Ananda Yoga system. They remain connected with Ananda through the Ananda Yoga Teachers Association  (AYTA) and its newsletter, “Awake and Ready!”

Similar yoga teacher training programs are now offered at the Ananda colonies in Palo Alto, Seattle, Portland, and Assisi.

Perspectives: Gyandev McCord:
“I Am So Much More Than I Ever Thought”

In January 2008, The Expanding Light began a study of the therapeutic effects of Ananda Yoga, the Energization Exercises, and meditation on 28 people with multiple sclerosis. The experience was tremendously inspiring, starting when participants braved a severe winter storm to come to the initial five-day program. I thought, “These people are doers”—which is, of course, exactly who we wanted.

We taught them a specialized program of the Energization Exercises, yoga postures, meditation, affirmation and visualization. Ananda Yoga, for example, has an entry point for everyone, and we adapted the practice to what each individual could do. We also gave them DVDs to guide their home practice during the four-month study.

These warriors for wellness gave it their all, and we saw gains after just five days. At the tear-filled farewell, one participant said, “I think you guys are onto something here.”

Fast-forward to the joyous reunion and final assessments in May. We knew just from seeing participants move and hearing their stories that they had made great strides. (Analyzing the data will take longer.) Every component of the program made its own contribution. Energization was a valued tool, and meditation proved more popular than we had dared hope.

I had expected the gains to be more physical and psychological than spiritual because we had emphasized the first two more than the latter. Yet many others echoed one woman who said, “I don’t know what lies ahead for me, but I do know this: No difficulty could outweigh what I’ve gained spiritually from this. I am so much more than I ever thought, and nothing can take that away from me.”

Participants departed amid great optimism, love, gratitude, and plans for an October reunion. We too were deeply touched and grateful—to God and Guru as well as to those great souls.

18
Joyful Arts Festival

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“In India, music as well as painting and drama is considered a divine art.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“If art is to fulfill a divine mission—and everything on earth is a divine mission if understood properly—it should help you to uplift your consciousness through color, form, melody, harmony, or rhythm.” Joyful Arts Festival 2007

2005: First Joyful Arts Festival at Ananda Village

Why an arts festival?
Swami Kriyananda introduced The Festival of the Joyful Arts at Ananda Village to increase awareness of the importance of art in producing positive, uplifting changes in individuals and also in society as a whole.
The first Joyful Arts Festival, and those that followed, offered exhibitions of paintings, sculptures and photographs by Ananda artists and others; musical concerts; a performance of The Peace Treaty; and classes and workshops exploring all aspects of artistic expression.

Perspectives: Devi Novak
“I’ll Try To Do Better”

What Ananda brings to the arts is the ability to live from your own center and the divine power and inspiration that come when you do that. The Festival of the Joyful Arts is almost an allegory—a symbol of people channeling a higher power.

While in India in 2004, my husband, Jyotish, and I had the blessing of experiencing how powerfully that can happen. We went to a recording session with Swami Kriyananda where he recorded an album of songs, I Lived My Life as a Stranger. He was accompanied by guitar, tamboura, and piano.

The pianist, a devotee and a very accomplished pianist, had been asked to accompany Swami on the song, “In the Spirit,” but he had never played it before and had only been given the music that morning. When it came time to record that song, Swami had been in the studio three or four hours and he was tired. There were no windows and it about 110 degrees inside.

The pianist started playing, but he couldn’t get the mood of the music, or the melody— he couldn’t get any of it right. Finally, Swami stopped singing and asked,  “What are you doing?”

The pianist said, “I’ll try to do better tomorrow, Swami.”

He spent all night practicing, returned to the studio the next morning, and again played the song while Swami sang. At one point Swami paused. He said, “No one has ever captured that piece like that. You played it the way I heard it, and no one’s ever done that before.”

The pianist later told us, “I played it and I played it and I played it—until I felt it within myself and it was a part of me.” He had gone into his center and attuned to the inspiration Swami felt when he wrote the piece.

19
New Models of Living

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“If God is not conceived in such a way that we cannot do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, when earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is plain that we have not felt any connection between God and life.” Praecepta Lessons 1934

Swami Kriyananda:
“I saw Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings as the hub of a great wheel from which central truths radiate out in all directions like spokes on a bicycle wheel. The hub that formed the center of his teachings had the potential to energize humanity’s entire existence.” The Story Behind the Story

The spokes of a wheel
Some of Swami Kriyananda’s creative applications of Yogananda’s teachings are discussed above. Others include the following training system, books, and lessons:

1979: Superconscious Living (SCL): A system of training that explains the importance of living from the highest level of consciousness, the superconscious, and offers practical techniques and exercises that help people develop that level of awareness.

1987: The Art of Supportive Leadership—A Practical Guide for People in Positions of Responsibility: A view of leadership based on service to others and concern for their highest good, not on personal power or position.

1994: Money Magnetism: A discussion of the universal principles and techniques that enable one to attract true abundance, both material and spiritual.

1995: Expansive Marriage—A Way to Self-Realization: An approach to marriage based on the understanding that the purpose of human love is to expand one’s consciousness to embrace a universal love.

1999: Art As a Hidden Message: A discussion of art as a vehicle for bringing a deeper purpose and vision to life.

2004: Material Success through Yoga Principles: A 26-lesson course explaining why living by spiritual principles brings both inner and outer success, and offering techniques and practices to guide one’s efforts.

Perspectives: A New Approach to Friendship

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“In pure friendship you will find God. If you would be a true friend, you must recognize the soul. When you consider yourself as a soul, then you can be a perfect friend.” Inner Culture Magazine, 1940

Swami Kriyananda:
“Remember, God is the soul’s one, true Beloved. Only when He is loved first can there be true harmony in human life. Seek the Lord first. Be impersonal, even somewhat distant from others. That is the road to freedom. Remember, all that you are seeking can only be found in your own Self.” The Art and Science of Raja Yoga

Nirmala Schuppe: “A Gift from God”

People often think that in the early days Ananda was a cozy little family, because we were so many fewer people. It is a mistake to view Ananda in this personal way. It misses the point. Ananda is not about getting cozy, creating a utopian suburb: having barbecues, singing songs around the campfire, and creating the “good old boy” network!

Ananda is about spiritual support. This is the support Swamiji has given every person, relating to every individual soul to soul. Following his example, and seeing what joy it can bring to life, Ananda people try to relate to the God in each other, not to the personality. This has created many very deep friendships.

These true friendships have a foundation in Spirit; they aren’t a product of “ego vs. ego.” This is why Ananda friends can be apart for years, but when they come together again, it is as though no time at all has passed: the joy and love are ever fresh.

Because Ananda people consciously bring God into their relationships with others, God uses these friendships to help us in countless ways. They are truly a gift from God. That spirit of divine friendship is the same now as it was forty years ago, and available to everyone.

Savitri Simpson: “I See the Divine within You”

I see Swami Kriyananda very seldom these days, but when I do he always greets me and looks into my eyes with a look that says to me, “I see you, Savitri, but not the ‘little you’ with all your struggles and faults. I see the Divine within you.” In that look there is a blessing that far surpasses any human love or friendship I have ever known.

Nakin Lenti: “Invited to a Banquet”

Kriyananda’s influence on my life had been both personal and impersonal at the same time. Personal in the sense that I have a relationship with another human being, yet, it is a sacred trust that doesn’t lend itself to an easy-going familiarity, but demands the highest in me. This impersonal quality is what has made his spiritual leadership at Ananda unique, and very different from other teachers I have known, because grounded in the higher qualities of the soul.

Swami tries to help us in what we are already trying to do, which is to find God. I have found that to the extent that I am inwardly receptive to his help, to that extent is he able to work with me. It’s a reciprocal thing, like being invited to a fine banquet. If you’re not hungry, no one is going to force you to eat.

Dhyana Lynn: “Tune into Master”

Swami Kriyananda describes his role as that of our divine friend—someone who helps and guides us along the path and offers us loving friendship in God. I came to understand in time what it meant to have Swami as our divine friend.

In 1984, when four of us from Ananda USA were helping to get Ananda’s work started in Italy, I was still fairly new to Ananda and had no experience in starting a center. In the beginning, Swami was in Italy with us and gave many talks that attracted large crowds.

When Swami was about to return to Ananda Village, I asked him if he had any advice on developing our work. I was looking for concrete answers and a step-by-step plan. Instead Swami said, “Tune into Master and Divine Mother, and you will know what to do.”At first I didn’t understand what this meant, but as I tried to follow his advice and “tune in,” I began to feel the flow of ideas, inspiration, and inner guidance. I could also feel Swami’s prayers and silent support. Even though he called us frequently and offered advice, it was clear that he wanted us to gain our own strength, and to make decisions from inner attunement to Master.

More than anything else I feel the greatest gift of Swamiji’s friendship has been his attunement to Master and his guidance on how we can develop our own inner attunement to find Master’s guidance within ourselves.

Anandi Cornell: “Meditate on This”

One of the things I appreciated about Ananda from my first days at Ananda Village was the respect with which people treat each other. Everyone is given the space to develop naturally from the inside out — to make their own decisions and to let their own integrity guide them. People rarely give you unsolicited advice.

Swami Kriyananda has been a great model in this. He’s not afraid of people making mistakes because he knows it’s the way people learn, and he trusts that our good intentions, sincerity, and intelligence will bring us to the truth eventually.

In the early years, when I asked Swamiji for guidance about new directions in my life, he gave the questions back to me with the guidance, “Meditate on this. Ask God what He wants you to do.” He wanted me (and all of us) to develop our own intuition, to learn to get our answers from within.

20
Yoga Institute

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Dr. Lewis and I halted above the lotus pool near the hermitage. Below us lay the illimitable Pacific.

“We shall arrange here for many conferences and Congresses of Religion, inviting delegates from all lands…. As soon as possible,” I went on, “I plan to open a Yoga Institute here.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Yoga means union. As a yoga institute we will offer teachings that unite the various branches of learning in a higher vision of spiritual purpose. Basic to this approach will be the universal insights and world mission of India’s great modern yoga master, Paramhansa Yogananda.” Prospectus, Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom

2003: Ananda Institute of Alternative Living (Meditation Retreat)
2006: Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom (India)
2007: Ananda Institute of Living Yoga (Seattle)

A new approach to higher education
Inspired by Yogananda’s vision of a yoga institute, the three Ananda yoga institutes now in existence offer an approach to higher education grounded in Yogananda’s teachings.

The Ananda Institute of Alternative Living that began in 2003 at the Ananda Meditation Retreat, offers a full curriculum of standard academic subjects together with a wide variety of spiritually based courses, including Education for Life, holistic health and healing, dharmic business, and others.

The Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom in India, which got underway in 2006, will eventually address “every essential aspect of modern knowledge.” Already there are programs in inspirational art, leadership, dharmic business, and yoga philosophy, among others.

The Ananda Institute of Living Yoga in Seattle now offers teacher training and certification in Ananda Yoga, meditation, and Education for Life, as well as programs in Raja Yoga and other yogic disciplines.

Perspectives: Gaurja Prasher “The Best of Both Cultures”

I came to America to study at the Ananda Institute of Alternative Living because I believed that whatever I was to do in my life would start here.

I had always been fascinated with America. Growing up in India, I would often be around the American and British people who did business with my parents. Those interactions were very positive and I saw how each side gained from them.

Then, when my mother became involved with the Ananda work in Gurgaon, India, I was introduced to the spiritual side of America. How surprising it was to meet an American swami!

More and more, I’m discovering that all people seeking God are similar. Many of the institute students are from different countries, and it’s been interesting to learn how each of them was drawn to a spiritually oriented education, and especially to Ananda. Six of us are Kriyabans and the rest are very open to Yogananda. Many of the classes are based on his teachings.

As I try to make the most of my time here at the Institute, I am realizing more and more that Master is not just giving me good experiences, but he is also teaching me how to share these experiences and blessings with all. Right now, I am learning the best of both cultures, East and West, and my goal in future is to share that with others in every way I can.

I would like to be actively involved in spreading Master’s vision of world brotherhood colonies, perhaps by helping different groups start communities or perhaps by becoming involved in Education for Life.

But whether I work with children or adults, ultimately I see my life being dedicated to helping others find happiness within themselves through Master’s teachings.

21
The Future of Ananda

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Wars are bound to go on in the world until the United States of Europe and the United States of Asia are evolved, to prepare the way for the United States of the World, with God guiding all nations through their realization of human brotherhood.” Inner Culture, 1942

Swami Kriyananda:
“At Ananda, brotherhood is a living reality, one which readily expands into a kinship with all life. Cooperation, rightly understood, ought not by any means to be limited to the community. It should reach out to embrace the larger ‘community’ of mankind. Hence, of course, Yogananda’s term, ‘world brotherhood colony.’” Intentional Communities

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
The World Is Our Community

People ask me what I see for the future of Ananda. The divine blueprint for Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission is not something that’s fixed.  It’s an energy, a direction. For the future I see more of the same spirit as there is now; how it expresses itself is secondary. If we have the right spirit, then everything will go right.

At Ananda we are not trying to create a beautiful New Age village. We’re here to serve God and to create an environment supportive to our devotion, one that will enable us to grow toward the universal goal of all life: Self-realization in God.

The ideal of communities is something that devotees everywhere should seek. Apart from that, people everywhere would do well to seek another kind of community. Human beings live together in planetary community. The good of each must be sought for the good of all.

Much thought has been devoted in modern times to finding solutions that depend entirely on human effort, without God—and without even such high ideals as love, happiness, and voluntary (as opposed to enforced) cooperation. Is there any hope that a community without such a foundation can succeed?

No, frankly, I see no such hope. If people live selfishly, what hope have they of clambering out of their habit-worn mental ruts? Attempts have been made, and the results always have been disappointing.

No mere economic system can possibly create a successful community. No mere decision to live and work together, without a high purpose in life, can possibly bond people in unity during stressful times. No merely social experiment will ever work.

It’s people who make communities, and more than that, it’s people in tune with a state of divine consciousness. This state of consciousness is something given to us by God, and it’s this consciousness that makes Ananda what it is.

In today’s world where people are adrift in a sea without direction or spiritual values, God wants to use Ananda to show others a positive way to guide their lives. It’s not you or me doing it, but God through us, because He has something to say to the world at this time about the need for communities.

We are living in an age when coming together in spiritual communities will bring new understanding, new perspectives. The world needs a focus for this movement, and Ananda provides this focus.

In our Ananda communities we have shown that people can live by high ideals, love all, and have communal harmony. Through our example, we can be of practical service to those who feel in harmony with what we’ve done.

Paramhansa Yogananda predicted that, “The day will come when this colony idea will spread through the world like wildfire.” Ultimately, Ananda’s isn’t the story of a community. It’s the story of great waves of consciousness that are needed in our times.

Perspectives: Shivani Lucki
“It’s People I Care About”

A conversation I had with Swami Kriyananda that especially stands out in my memory occurred in the mid 1970s while we were at a spiritual conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Swamiji had been invited and introduced as “the father of spiritual communities,” an honorific he gently rejected with this interesting comment: “I don’t care all that much about cooperative communities; it’s people I care about, and their spiritual growth. That is the only reason I’ve created Ananda. And if ever in the future it is not helping people in this way, then it should not continue to exist.”

Vidura Smallen:
“Ananda Exists for You”

From a political standpoint, the core values of Ananda very much represent the early values that America was founded on—in God we trust. Hard work and God’s blessings have made Ananda what it is.

Swami Kriyananda laid down the principle that the primary job of the Spiritual Director of Ananda is to guard the rights of the individual. He once said, “You do not exist for Ananda, Ananda exists for you.”

At Ananda, you have many people living this principle and, as a result, people look out for one another. For instance, the primary qualification of an Ananda minister is the willingness to put the needs of others before his own.

Contributors

Swami Kriyananda is the founder of Ananda Worldwide. Now retired and living in India, he serves as Dharmacharya (upholder of the spiritual vision) of Ananda  Sangha Worldwide.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are the Spiritual Directors (Acharyas) of Ananda Sangha Worldwide. They are both Kriya Ministers. Jyotish is also Spiritual Director (Acharya) of the Ananda Sevaka Order, Worldwide.

Parvati Hansen is the Executive Director of The Janaka Foundation based at Ananda Village.

Helen Purcell is Principal of the Ananda Palo Alto Living Wisdom School.

Jaya Helin is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda India.

Mary Kretzmann is Director of The Healing Prayer Ministry at Ananda Village.

Asha Praver, together with her husband David, is Spiritual Director (Acharya) of Ananda Palo Alto.

Lorne Dekun is Center Leader for Ananda Michigan.

Savitri Simpson is a teacher at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village and also serves in the Sangha Office.

Bhagavati Nani is a flutist and part of the Music Ministry at Ananda Village.

Patrick Lynch, together with his wife, Amber, is Center Leader for Ananda Ashland (OR).

Peter Kretzmann works as a computer specialist for Ananda Village.

Gyandev McCord teaches Ananda Yoga at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village.

Nirmala Schuppe, together with her husband Dharmadas, is Spiritual Director (Acharya) of Ananda India.

Nakin Lenti serves in the Sangha Office at Ananda Village.

Dhyana Lynn is a Kriya Minister and Director of the Kriya Ministry at Ananda India.

Anandi Cornell teaches at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village.

Gaurja Prasher is a student at the Ananda Institute of Alternative Living at the Ananda Meditation Retreat.

Shivani Lucki is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda Assisi.

Vidura Smallen is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda India.

The advent of new understandings
There are new understandings welling up in society based on the scientific discovery that matter is not solid but is actually a vibration of energy. Theoretically, it’s possible to take a loaf of bread, dissolve it back into energy, and then re-manifest that energy as a bar of steel. It’s possible because the atoms that make up the bread and the bar of steel are manifestations of the same cosmic energy.

We see a similar process in our bodies. The energy from the food we eat takes on different forms as it goes to the nails, hair, eyes, tissues, and organs. Each of these parts is different, yet they’re sustained by the same energy. All of this is conducted by a higher intelligence which revivifies the body, replacing dying cells and adding new ones.

Disunity is becoming stronger
This is such a revolutionary way of looking at things that we’ve come to a great crossroads in our thinking. A tension exists between old perspectives, which saw matter only as solid form, and new views, which see the world more as waves of energy. One expression of the old view is the thought that we are all separate from each other.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the nihilistic French philosopher, said, “To be conscious of someone else is to be conscious of what one is not.” This is the perspective of the materialistic mind, which sees everything as matter and all things as separate—people, races, nations, religions.

In our age, disunity is becoming stronger and stronger. People all over the world are thinking in terms of divisions—countries are seceding from other countries or attacking them; races are affirming their differences from each other; there is opposition among religions, with many saying “mine is the only way.”

There’s less thought of what we can do for our neighbor, and more thought of what we can get for ourselves. Increasingly, we see people so much in confrontation with each other that competition has become more a way of life than in the days of the robber barons.

A new world view
Yet there’s a new world view coming to the fore, which Yogananda came to bring—a view of the underlying unity of all people, and all things, based on the inner realization that we are all one with God.

Yogananda’s vision of the unity of all things doesn’t come from putting two disparate things together. It comes from recognizing that underneath each wave, which seems different in size, shape, and movement, there is the one ocean.

From that inner realization, Yogananda brought a new understanding of the underlying unity between the different seeming religions; between science and religion; and between cultures that seemed so diverse as to be forever incompatible with one another. He was a master of identifying and elucidating those things that would help people understand and build a sense of oneness and unity.

“Our community is the world”
In that spirit, he urged people to build what he called “world brotherhood colonies.” He envisioned these as places where people would come together to help each other, and to work in cooperation—not competition. By God’s will and grace, I’ve been able to do that particular work, and Ananda is the beginning of the fulfillment of his dream.

The spirit that exists at Ananda is one of selflessness and concern for others first. I’ve often told our members: “Our community is not just the people living here. It’s our neighbors, our township—it’s the whole world.” Whether or not you are able to live in one of the Ananda communities, try always to develop that consciousness which sees the veriest stranger as a brother or sister.

See God in others
Once many years ago, when I was part of SRF, I had an interesting experience in this respect. I was going to Europe to visit the SRF centers, and was taking all sorts of things, including a harmonium for the classes I’d be teaching. All these things made my baggage quite overweight.

The man in front of me at the airline counter also had overweight baggage, but much less than I, and he was being charged for the extra pounds. He was very angry about it but the ticket agent was firm. At one point the manager came out, but he too was firm: the man had to pay for the excess weight.

I was next in line and wondered, “What do I do now?” I prayed to Yogananda and Divine Mother. Then I thought, “God is in the ticket agent,” and I stepped forward seeing God in this man. The ticket agent smiled, looked at my baggage, and said, “Well, what have we got here?” Then he said, “Oh, okay” —and allowed all of my baggage to go through without charge!

Over and over I have seen that if you reach out to others, not as strangers but as divine friends, they’ll work with you. Many times you will have made a friend and sometimes a friend for life.

A spirit of universal friendship
This spirit of universal friendship is something that Yogananda manifested throughout his life. He would show tenderness toward a complete stranger because he lived in the consciousness of seeing God in all beings. On at least two occasions, hold-up men accosted him. By looking at these men with love, and seeing them as his own, he completely changed their lives.

There was also the time when a ferocious tiger confronted him in the jungles of India. Yogananda saw God in that tiger and looked at it with divine love. Rather than springing on him, the tiger rolled on the ground and Yogananda scratched its belly as though it were a pussycat.

God: the hub of the wheel
In our limited view, we look at things from the outside, which is like looking at the spokes of a wheel from the rim. All the spokes appear to be separate, but when you look at them from the center, you can see that they all radiate outward from the hub and are integral parts of it. That hub is God, and the spokes are everyone and everything in His vast creation.

I’ve spent many years exploring how to approach life from this underlying central reality of Spirit. For example, in the books I’ve written, I try to show how various fields that seem very separate—leadership, business, music, the arts, education—are all guided by the same central principles. I’ve tried to show how, by bringing God into whatever one is doing, life at every level could be given deeper meaning, and one could succeed at anything he attempted.

The owner of a mall near the Ananda ashram in Gurgaon, India said to me, “Business is on one side and God is on the other; they have nothing to do with each other.” That is wrong! God is in everything and if we live in Him, if we bring Him into what we are doing, we can do everything better because in that attunement, God can flow through us and guide us.

A period of world upheaval
In our lives we need to learn this lesson more than anything else. It seems that the world is building up to a real period of destruction and suffering, and it’s all because we’ve looked at things from the outside.

I remember once in the Hollywood Church, Yogananda talking about the future and saying with a very strong voice, “You don’t know what a terrible cataclysm is coming!” It made us quake in our seats.

What mankind will gain after this period of cleansing is the understanding that we’re truly all one. We’re one human race, and we’re one in God. Yogananda said that after a period of world upheaval, there would be an era of harmony and brotherhood such has never existed in known history.

But the cleansing is upon us, and it’s coming because of these two disparate ways of looking at reality—one that sees all things as separate, and the cosmic view that sees all things as one.

The more we can learn to see life as a flow of unity, the more we’ll be able to find what we’re all looking for: happiness, love, and inner peace. Yogananda came to bring this vision of unity to everyone—a vision that he manifested in his words, in his teachings, and in the example that he set for all of us.

Excerpted from: The Light of Superconsciousness, Crystal Clarity, and a September 30, 2007 talk in Mumbai, India.

Parents and children should understand that their relationship is not fortuitous, but is due to a divine plan. Family life is the laboratory in which human love can be transformed into God’s perfect love.

Loving guidance, not harshness
Parents should look upon their child as the honored temple where their conjugal love can be purified and expanded into filial love. They should feel that they are serving God in that little temple.

Children, in turn, should look upon their parents as visible representatives of God on earth. Obedience and respect should activate their behavior.

For parents, kindness and loving guidance should prevail, never harsh treatment.  If parents are harsh or unkind to their children, owing to a lack of self-control, they will surely prevent God from expanding His love from the parental heart to the heart of the child.

Parents should take care never to scold their children before others, or to bring an erring child to rebellion by continuous harshness. Strong, loving suggestions, alongside their good example, will do more to change a child than anger or harsh words.

The reforming power of love
Some time ago, I accepted a boy into my school in India who was much older than most of our students. He had been causing difficulties because his parents did not know how to discipline him properly.

Before accepting him, he and I had a heart-to-heart talk.  I said, “You have made up your mind to smoke, but your parents do not want you to smoke. You have succeeded in defeating your parents, but you have not succeeded in defeating your misery—think of what you have done to yourself.” My “arrow” struck him and he began to weep. He said, “They are always beating me.”

I told him, “I will take you on one condition. I will be your friend but I will not be a detective.  As long as you are willing to correct your mistakes, I will help you, but if you tell lies, I will do nothing for you because lying destroys friendship. You may decide not to tell me everything but do not lie.” Then I said, “Anytime you want to smoke, I will get you the cigarettes.”

One day he came to me and said, “I feel a terrible desire to smoke.” When I offered him money to buy cigarettes, he could scarcely believe his eyes. He said, “Take back the money.”  I kept pressing him to take it, but he did not want it. At last, after a tug-of-war, he said, “You will not believe me, but I don’t want to smoke any longer.”

The result of this discipline was that he finally became a saint. Spiritual growth lies in making a strong inner effort to resist bad tendencies and to go upstream toward real lasting happiness.

Give children necessities only
This is why wealthy parents should not leave too much money to their children. More often than not, it chokes the development of initiative and self-earned success and happiness.

Give children necessities only, not luxuries. Take care not to enslave them to material things or selfish greed by too many possessions or too much money.

A child’s exercise of will power
Parents often impose their wills on their children. Don’t break your child’s will by always denying his inconvenient requests. It’s important that your child develop his will power.

As a child, when I made up my mind that I wanted something that could do me no harm, the members of my family had to consent. I always listened to reason; if ever I was wrong I was willing to be corrected. When I was right, however, I remained firm even if the whole family united against me.

I will tell you of an experience I had as a baby. A baby usually cries because it feels a physical need. This first expression of will, arising from that need, is called “physiological will.” As the baby grows, and the mother directs its will, it expresses “mechanical” or “unthinking will.”

I remember being in that state of mechanical will, always doing just as mother told me. Everyone called me an angel. One day when with my nurse, I saw some little orange-colored candies at a drug store, and I asked my nurse to buy some for me. He refused and took me home.

At home, after having my dinner, I told my mother I wanted some candy. She said, “No, go to bed.” A little later I said, “Mother, I want those little, orange-colored candies.” “Go to bed,” Mother said. Thereupon I cried all the more loudly: “I want those orange-colored candies!”

I continued in my determination to have my way, unheeding of her appeal. Mother finally had to go and wake up the drug store owner to obtain those candies for me.

I was happy. Why? Because I had exercised my own will power. I found it the most wonderful feeling. The next morning I was called a “naughty baby,” but only because I had exercised my will power.

Give your child freedom
Remember, when you’re young children are self-willed about something that isn’t wrong, don’t call them naughty. Listen to their little desires and offer suggestions based on love and understanding. Reason with them, but don’t curtail their freedom.

If they insist, don’t say anything. Let them have their own little hard knocks, if necessary. In that way, they’ll learn much sooner what is right. Try not to ask anything of your child that you can’t back with a good reason.

Quicken your child’s evolution
Children should be taught to concentrate and meditate. By practicing the scientific techniques of meditation, they will, from early life, reveal intuitive faculties that will enable them to grasp knowledge with extraordinary quickness.

Education does not consist of pumping ideas and facts into the brain. It consists of developing one’s intuitive faculties and bringing the hidden soul-memory of all knowledge onto the plane of human consciousness. All new truths are simply the hidden truths of the soul; they give us joy upon rediscovery.

By developing intuition, you also quicken your evolution. Teach children to quicken their own evolution through meditation. Have a little family altar where parents and children gather to offer deep devotion to God, and to unite their souls in meditation.

Excerpted from: Spiritual Relationships, Crystal Clarity Publishers and the Praecepta Lessons, 1934-38.

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.

Widely regarded as a saint in his own lifetime, John’s diminutive physical size contrasted greatly with his spiritual stature. Teresa would later describe him as having reached “the greatest height of sanctity human creature can attain to in this life.”

His was an unusual combination of qualities: asceticism, courage, wisdom, intellectual brilliance, discernment, sweetness, compassion, humility—together withal talent for administration and poetry. John is especially noted for his mystical poetry and spiritual commentary. Often regarded as Spain’s finest lyric poet, his soaring lines were born of his own “dark night of the soul.”

An outstanding student and scholar
Exposure to adversity began in John’s childhood.  His father’s untimely death left his mother with three sons to support by weaving. (John was the youngest.) Destitute, the family barely scraped out a living.

John’s fortunes began to change at age fourteen. The administrator at the hospital where he worked as an orderly arranged for him to continue his studies, and John’s great gifts of mind and spirit quickly gained recognition.
After joining the Carmelite Order in1563, he was steered away from the humble friar’s life he desired and sent to the University of Salamanca to study for the priesthood. An outstanding scholar, John taught classes while still a student.

Yearning for a life of solitude
By 1567, however, the year of his ordination as a priest, John was in crisis. Longing to devote himself to a life of prayer and meditation, he was on the verge of leaving the Carmelite Order when he met Teresa of Avila.

Teresa had launched the Carmelite reform movement five years earlier, in 1562. Having founded several Reform convents for Carmelite nuns, she convinced John that he could assuage his thirst for a deeper spiritual life by becoming one of the first monks of the Reform.

Shortly afterwards, in a tumbledown shack in the remote hamlet of Duruelo, John established the first house of the Reformed Fathers. There he and his companions spent long hours in prayer and meditation, and also visited the nearby villages to minister to the people.

It was the life John had yearned for, but it was not to last. He was destined for a leadership role in the reform of the Carmelite Order, and a life of intense activity.

“Saints are too human to be scandalized!”
In 1572, Teresa was asked to bring the Reform to her old Convent of the Incarnation in Avila. She summoned John to help her by becoming the convent’s spiritual director and father confessor.

John had a gift for guiding others. Gently, yet without compromise, he was able to show people their own unique way to go forward in their interior journeys. Among the one hundred and thirty nuns of the Incarnation, he had ample opportunity to exercise that gift.

Some of the nuns were either awed or intimidated by John’s asceticism and detachment, but as they came to know him, they often loved him for his warmth, humility, and understanding of human nature. One young nun, fearing to come to him for confession because of his saintly reputation, received John’s assurance that not only wasn’t he a saint but had he been, there’d be still less reason to fear because “saints are too human to be scandalized!”

John was most compassionate toward those suffering spiritual dryness or depression in what he later called the “dark night of the soul.” He gave them the encouragement that God loved them and was simply drawing them deeper in faith through their trials. Often he would write on a slip of paper a few words, chosen especially for them, to reflect on.

Kidnapped and imprisoned
While living in Avila, John received his greatest test of endurance. As the Reform effort gained momentum, Carmelites opposed to the Reform intensified their efforts to undermine it.

In December of 1577, John was kidnapped by opponents of the Reform, taken to Toledo, and imprisoned in a tiny cell with no furnishings, little light, extreme temperatures, and bread and water his only nourishment.

There he languished for nine months. Three times a week the monks scourged his bare shoulders in their attempts to turn him away from the Reform. All this the emaciated prisoner bore without a word, exasperating his captors by his refusal to break his silence.

He spoke only to God, and out of the depths of his isolation, deprivation, and physical suffering he began to experience wonderful closeness tithe Divine. Flooded with divine love, he composed and committed to memory the soaring lines oaf poem about the soul’s union with God that would later become The Spiritual Canticle.

Though close to death, he had no thought of escape until the Virgin Mary ordered him to flee and led him through a labyrinth of hazards. In the dead of night, John unscrewed his door lock, stole past the guard, slid down from a window on braided blanket strips, climbed another wall, and leapt to freedom.

At the break of dawn, he finally reached a Carmelite convent where the nuns gave him refuge and arranged for his treatment (in secrecy) at a nearby hospital. Before departing, John told the nuns of the divine love that had flooded his soul during his ordeal and of his deep gratitude toward his tormentors.

A whirlwind of activities
When the conflict with the Reform’s opponents was temporarily resolved, John set out to spread the Reform across Spain and was plunged into a whirlwind of activities.

Sometimes traveling with Teresa, he founded new monasteries and convents; gave support to those already established; dealt constantly with administrative matters; directed the studies for Carmelite students in the university town of Baeza; and had a growing ministry that embraced not only monks and nuns but also lay people. He also completed his four major prose works.

After Teresa’s death in 1582, John shouldered the full responsibility of continuing the Reform. One day, realizing that there was one thing to which he was still attached, he took out his bag of letters from Teresa and burned them all.

In 1588, John had a vision of Christ in which Jesus asked him what he desired. John replied, “Lord, give me trials to suffer for You that I may be despised and held in no account.” Though John had already suffered trials aplenty, his wish would soon be fulfilled.

Dissension within the Reform
With Teresa gone, dissension arose within the Reform itself. John’s courage and forthrightness in upholding Teresa’s vision led to his removal from his various offices and his assignment to one of the poorest monasteries. There John lived as a simple monk gathering chickpeas in the garden, and found more time for prayer and meditation.

Meanwhile, John’s self-styled enemies within the Reform mounted a smear campaign to disgrace him. One of his brother monks, hoping to get him expelled from the Order, went around the monasteries seeking defamatory information. The campaign proved unsuccessful, but some of John’s spiritual brothers, concerned frothier own reputations, began to pull away.

When John fell sick and needed to be moved closer to medical treatment, he was given a choice of going to Baeza, where head many friends or to Ubeda.  He said: “Take me to Ubeda rather than Baeza.” Sensing that death was near, John wanted to end his life in obscurity.

“This is all God’s doing”
The superior of the monastery at Ubeda received John coldly, assigned him one of the poorest rooms, and denied him visitors and adequate medical care. “This is all God’s doing,” John said calmly amidst great physical suffering. A few months before his death he wrote a brother monk: “Where you don’t find love, put love and you will find love.”

Eventually, John’s calm acceptance of his circumstances won over the superior. John died December 14, 1591 at age forty nine. On news of his death, crowds of the poor flocked to view his body and kiss his hands and feet.

One of John’s best-known poems beautifully describes those qualities of humility and selflessness that were the hallmark of his life and the source of his ever-deepening joy:

In order to arrive at having pleasure
in everything,
Desire pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing
everything,
Desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything,
Desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at the knowledge
of everything,
Desire to know nothing.

John’s body remained incorrupt for many years and he was canonized a saint in 1726.

Patricia Kirby, a writer and educator, joined Ananda in 2002, residing first at Ananda Village and now at Ananda India.

An aura is an electromagnetic energy field which surrounds all things. Paramhansa Yogananda explains that the aura radiates outward from a central core of energy within the energy or astral body.  As perceptible light, auras are visible to some people, though invisible to most.

Perceiving  auras
Auras are most often sensed or felt, rather than actually seen with our physical eyes. We may say, for example: “You’re looking bright today,” or “He’s walking around with a dark cloud over his head.” You have no doubt met people whose very presence emanated an indefinable power.

In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda describes the “feeling quality” of certain auras. He writes that Mahatma Gandhi emanated “an all-pervasive aura of peace and devotion”; Therese Neumann, “an aura of peace and joy”; and Rabindranath Tagore, “a soothing aura of charm, culture, and courtliness.”

Yogananda, of course, was also able to see auras. When the train bringing Sri Yukteswar to Serampore was pulling into the station, Yogananda exclaimed joyfully, “The whole train is filled with the light of Master’s aura!”

An inward awakening of energy
There are many indications that people have long been able to see auras. Renaissance painters, for example, usually painted a halo of radiant light around the heads or bodies of saints, angels, or holy persons.

Swami Kriyananda explains that spiritually sensitive persons often see an astral light, or aura, around the bodies of saints, and especially around their heads. In fact, the more one’s inner energy increases through deep meditation, the more one gradually becomes aware of that energy as a light radiating outward from the chakras and around the body as an aura of light.

This light shines with a variety of colors, depending on a person’s state of consciousness. Very generally speaking, the warmer colors like red, orange, and yellow indicate a high level of energy. Blue, indigo, and violet reflect calmness and a spiritual orientation. The brighter the color or light, the more spiritually refined the consciousness.  Around people of lower awareness, the light becomes progressively dimmer.

The auras of saints
Kamala Silva, a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda for many years, describes his aura in The Flawless Mirror:

All through the years, whenever I saw his aura, it was a “pure brightness of light.” A blue radiance extended beyond this light and haloed his head; a golden glow outlined the light around his body.

Swami Kriyananda writes that he tries consciously to expand his aura when speaking or addressing a group:

One thing I have found helpful is to ask Yogananda to expand my aura that it fill any auditorium in which I am speaking, or to encompass any group I address, no matter how small or large. Indeed, I feel this expansion.

People tell me that this, more even than any words I utter, is what reaches them. When I meditate with a group, I try also to feel him expanding my aura to touch all who are present.

In Asha Praver’s book, Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him, a devotee relates an experience of seeing Swami Kriyananda’s expanded aura:

The first time I heard Swami Kriyananda speak…a golden aura began to fill the room. It looked like the angel hair you sometimes see on Christmas trees, only instead of white, it had this beautiful golden color. I watched as it wound itself around the hall until everyone was enveloped in it…. The most important thing was not what Swamiji said. It was being in that golden aura….

“Things” have auras, too
Places also give off a kind of aura. In some places it is very subtle and in others, it is obvious, even to less sensitive people. There are churches where you immediately feel caught up in the love of those who have worshiped there. Similarly, there are homes that seem to welcome you and surround you with warmth.

Even books and other literary works have auras. Swami Kriyananda describes his college experience of seeing a halo of white light around the greatest literary works such as Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s plays. The light he saw around lesser works was diminished in intensity and darker in color. Around ordinary literary works, he saw no light at all.

He notes, also, that false spiritual teachings similarly have no aura except perhaps “some sort of grey mist.” The Bhagavad Gita, by contrast, conveys to the reader “an aura of the highest revelation.”

Aura photos
There are now cameras and various devices that can photograph people’s auras. When Swami Kriyananda visited a metaphysical bookshop in Australia during a lecture tour, the bookshop owners, a husband and wife, offered to take his photograph with an “aura camera.”

The resulting photo, which he later shared with friends, is covered from edge to edge with deep indigo blue, through which his face and upper body are only dimly visible. Most aura photos, according to the bookstore owners, show a mixture of colors, through which the person is clearly visible.

The bookstore owners also showed Kriyananda several aura photographs of themselves. He comments:

The colors in these photographs, and the way in which they blended together, corresponded strikingly to what I sensed about their personalities. They were pleasant people; therefore the colors surrounding them were pleasant also. It struck me how much more effectively these “aura” photos captured them than any normal photograph could have.

The wife showed me two more “aura” photographs of herself. One of them had been taken after a physical healing; the other one, just before the healing. The contrast between these two was remarkable.

People often ask whether they should have their aura photographed or analyzed. Remember that your energy is like a river that is constantly moving and changing. The colors in your aura at this moment will probably be different an hour from now, possibly quite different tomorrow if something in your day goes wrong, and very different right after your next deep meditation. Love, fulfillment, sickness, sadness—these are all reflected in the aura.

Strengthening the aura
We can strengthen our auras on a daily basis, and also in times of special need, by increasing our energy and will power. Especially important is doing everything we can—physically, mentally, and spiritually—to increase the stream of positive energy within ourselves. Saying “yes” to life greatly increases the flow of positive energy.

Energization Exercises, meditation, hatha yoga, Kriya Yoga, devotional chanting—all these are vitally important for helping us keep a strong aura at all times. Here are a few other ways to strengthen your aura.

• Yogananda suggests that devotees wear an astrological bangle/bracelet made of metals (gold, silver, and copper) of specific purity and weight. Certain gemstones worn touching the skin may be used in the same way.

• Whenever you see colors that you like especially, absorb them into yourself; let them vitalize your aura. Liking for a particular color may suggest a need for it in your aura, as the craving for a particular food may indicate elements that are lacking in one’s diet. Try wearing a color you might ‘hunger’ for, or inhaling a bright clear color into your aura whenever you feel the need.

• In the privacy of your meditation room, place your arms down at your side. Then, mentally chanting AUM, bring them upward, straight out to the side, with your palms up, until you join the palms high above your head. Mentally create an aura of upward-moving light around your body. Repeat this exercise several times and also throughout the day, as needed. If you are in a public place and cannot comfortably move your arms as suggested, visualize the process instead.

• As you meditate, feel that the surface of your body is not your skin, but an aura of light surrounding your body. Expand this aura. Feel as if, with every outgoing breath, you were gently inflating a shining balloon of radiant light. Now, reach out in all directions around you with finger-rays of astral light. Touch, feel, and explore the greater reality of the Spirit around you. Try to sense behind everything the subtle presence of divine consciousness.

• Always imagine yourself surrounded by an aura of divine light. Live more within that light. Expand it consciously. Include in it the people around you and the space within which you live. Rest or move surrounded by the aura created by your inner peace.

A cloak of light
If a person’s aura is strong, the negative consequences of his bad karma (and even mass karma) will have a greatly lessened impact. Only when your energy flow and will power are weak can you be influenced in a negative way. In the long run, dynamic energy is the most important aspect of healing. It creates an aura around us that wards off disease or negativity of all types.

Work to strengthen your aura through your spiritual practices. Then strive always to radiate light and joy to everyone, and to the world around you. Swami Kriyananda writes that “the secret of happiness is learning how to pass through life’s storms with a peaceful heart, its aura enclosing you like a cloak of light.”

Savitri Simpson, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and serves in the Sangha Office and as a teacher at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat.

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.

The practice of meditation is different, however, from the actual experience of meditation as a state of being. To experience God in his various attributes, we need to practice those things that will help lift us up into attunement with God’s higher consciousness. For this, there are a number of visualizations and meditations that are very helpful.

For example, if you meditate on peace, and on those things that will help you become peaceful enough in yourself to receive His peace, it will be easier for God to come to you as peace-you will be open at that window of your mind. The more specific your mediation or visualization, the clearer your attunement with it.

The kinds of questions we ask God determine the kind of answers we receive. If we have a clear idea of the experience we’re seeking, we’ll have a  greater chance of having that experience.

Peace
Think of the rays of the moon bathing the countryside, your mind, and your heart, filling you with peace. Feel these moon rays of peace entering in through the pores of your skin and filling your body, even to the marrow of the bones, until your whole body becomes peace. Feel this peace expanding outward from your body so that both you and the moon rays are bathing the whole countryside with that luminous peace. Feel this peace expanding beyond the countryside to the farthest boundaries of eternity until you feel that all space is being illuminated and bathed in the peace of your own being.

Meditate on a calmly flowing river as it moves majestically down toward the sea. Feel that all your life is a river of calmness flowing with purpose, not rushing off in a hundred directions at once, but a calm, sedate flow always moving toward an ultimate purpose—a purpose which is vast like the sea. Feel all the other little movements of your mind being drawn into that one movement, as if in its wake, to flow with the river. Feel that a new movement then takes over and that this new movement contains meaning, and a grand meaning at that.

Calmness
Think of yourself as sitting in the midst of space with stars millions of miles away from you in all directions. Feel that you have no body and that you are sitting on nothing; you’re just a point in space. Expand that point of space to include the sun, the stars, the galaxies. Feel that you’re sitting in that vastness of space, beyond time. This is the truth out of which you have come, the truth in which God lives, and the truth to which He calls you back.

Think of the sunrise on eternity, not the sunrise on a planet full of insects, birds, waving trees, and all the things that keep this world such a busy place–none of these things, just eternity. Think of the sun rising onto this eternity and its rays spreading outward and outward with power, joy and great calmness, until you realize that this is not the physical sun but the light of the Son of God which gives life to everything.

Love
Imagine an angel of light holding a flame-tipped spear to your heart. Imagine him holding it there until your heart bursts into flames of love—a love that’s not painful but exhilarating and that burns everything in you that isn’t made of that love.

Imagine one of the Masters gazing deeply into your eyes. Feel those eyes drawing all pain, all disappointments, all bitterness from your heart, through your eyes, and saying to you: “These are my burdens now; they’re no longer yours.” God in His compassion would take your burdens from you. Let Him do so through His love, drawing these pains out of your heart, through your eyes, and into His all-compassionate eyes.

Send rays of love and hope from your heart to all in this world who grieve. Tell them to release their grief into the soothing breeze of God’s love for them. Imagine this breeze going out from you with God’s power, flowing out to the world, soothing all creatures. Send these rays of love to encourage people to release these pains, these burdens into that ray.

Joy
Imagine yourself in heaven surrounded by saints and angels smiling upon you in greeting. Think that they approve of you. Yes, they know that you’ve done wrong things. Their smiles are for what is good in you, what is Godly in you, and that is the real you. The other things don’t count; the other things you can overcome because you are God’s child. Think of yourself that way, and think of them as blessing you on all sides.  Join them with rejoicing, with freedom. Imagine yourself dancing and singing with God’s joy.

Recall a moment of special joy in your life, perhaps a moment close to nature, or of closeness to another human being. Remove from that moment all sense of excitement or restlessness, so that it’s just the calm moment itself. Then remove from it also all sense of cause so that it isn’t associated with the experience where you felt happy. Just think of the joy in its pure essence.

Focus that joy in a point of bliss at the point between the eyebrows, and know that any ray of bliss that you send out from this point can dispel every cloud of sorrow. Imagine now your own mental sky. Do you see any dark clouds of regret or sorrow? God doesn’t want you to hang on to those things.

Send bliss into the heart of that cloud, and with those rays of bliss, gradually change that cloud into light. Then gradually disperse that light so that there is nothing but space, sky and bliss. Now expand your bliss until it fills the blue sky and then, from the heavens, reflects downward to all mankind, to all creatures everywhere.

Light
Think of how the sun rays shine down through a cloud. Think of a cloud of human darkness or a cloud of your own ignorance, and think of the sun rays shining down into this cloud, into this darkness. Think of yourself as rising up with those rays from this darkness, and bursting through the cloud into the blazing light of the sun behind the clouds. Feel that you are in communion with God’s light, that His light is speaking to you, and that you are absorbing yourself into that light.

Think of a light that is falling like a refreshing rain of rainbow colors. Instead of an ordinary rainbow, each individual drop creates a rainbow. Think of the sun as being so all surrounding that it creates rainbows out of every drop and that those rainbows shine in all directions. Feel that you are being rained on by rainbows on all sides, and that in this beautiful light you lose all sense of being anything other than light yourself.

Sound
Meditate on the ocean surf, soothingly coming upon the shore, bathing it and taking away its impurities. Think of the shore as your own mind, and the surf as bathing your mind and gradually taking away all dross and freeing you to go out and merge into the great ocean.

Meditate on a deep bell reverberating across the countryside and onward to infinity. Think of how, when a deep church bell rings, there are reverberations of that sound that come afterwards and seem to expand outward and outward. Think of yourself expanding outward with that sound into a great ringing voice of God in eternity.

Power
Meditate on fire. Think of that fire burning up all inner dross. Think of it as a great bonfire into which you are casting all attachments, all desires, all bad actions of the past and all memory of those actions. You are casting them into the fire to become purified so that you can lift yourself up in freedom to God’s love.

Meditate on the sun rays filling the world and your whole being with strength, vitality, enthusiasm. Think not just of the physical sun but the powerful sun of God’s great energy. Think of the energy that was required to create this vast universe as the power behind you. Try to attune yourself to this power; don’t be afraid because this is also the power of freedom, the power of victory. Just as we harness the powers of nature, so also we can use this power for our good.

Wisdom
Envision all things as transparent, dreamlike, insubstantial: the earth, the trees, your loved ones, your body, your possessions. Dissolve them all into the infinite. Nothing remains now, only you, bodyless, without thoughts, without personality – only you in your own true essence, your own causeless, infinite, eternal essence, which is that part of you which is a child of God.

Excerpted from: Meditation: What It Is and How To Do It. To buy a recording of the talk (CD or MPs), call Treasures Along the Path, (530) 478 7656 or email treasures@ananda.org.

As devotees, our tendency is to compartmentalize our lives by seeing our meditation times as our “real life,” and the family, work, or health challenges as intrusions. But our goal as devotees is to feel exactly the same when dealing with difficult co-workers, or talking to an angry taxicab driver, as during our deepest moments in meditation.

I recall a time when it felt like I was being crushed by a certain experience, and it suddenly occurred to me, “Well, what did you expect? As a devotee, you’ve ‘signed on’ to go through this process, and others like it, to become more spiritual and of course it’s going to be challenging.”

God takes us very seriously when we come onto the spiritual path; He makes sure that our karma comes to us in ways that will help us to develop spiritually. Our challenging times help us to transcend our likes and dislikes and to realize that behind all the challenges, there’s only one reality: God.

“I am determined to be saintly”
Some years ago, I had an experience that really highlighted how different life is if we approach it with the thought that “I am determined to be saintly.”

When I was an intern in 1980, I had been a devotee for several years. I was working on a ward in a creaky old county hospital taking care of 25 or so highly addicted drug addicts with a wide variety of health problems.

We were stabilizing their health enough for them to be able to stagger out of the front door of the hospital, where the drug dealers would be waiting for them in the parking lot to try to get them re-addicted. It was a revolving door, but they all had health issues that needed attention, and working with them was never easy.

“Don’t go in there!”
I remember the day when I was walking down the hallway to admit a certain woman. This woman had spent most of her life either in jail or in the hospital, and she had been in the hospital as much as she had been in jail. As I reached the door of her room, one of the nurses rushed out just in time to miss being hit by an (empty) bedpan this woman had thrown at her. The nurse grabbed me by the arm and said, “Don’t go in there!”

In that moment, the thought came to me to approach this situation very differently from how I normally functioned as a doctor. I thought, “I know this patient is very difficult, very demanding, and tends to terrorize the staff. Nobody likes her. But I’m going to go in there and pretend I’m Saint Francis. I’m going to go in there and see God in her and try to channel God to her.”

A balm for her pain
I went in and the woman was mean and nasty and swore at me the whole time. She even tried to bite my arm as I conducted the initial exam. But I decided I wouldn’t react to anything. I would just see God in her and keep treating her as my friend, and as a person in a great deal of psychic pain.

I had no medication that would make her psychic pain go away, and there wasn’t much I could do for her physically except give her antibiotics for her infection, which was chronic. But if I loved her, that would at least be a balm for her psychic pain, and a balm for her soul.

This woman was in the hospital for about ten days. Each day I saw her, I would treat her like she had always been my best friend. I would greet her cheerfully and ask her how she was feeling, and tried to make sure that she had everything we could possibly offer as a hospital staff to make her more comfortable.

Her demeanor changed
It was very interesting to see how her demeanor changed. After four days of this, she would know what time I would make my rounds, which was usually around 5:30 in the morning, and she would be expecting me.

She was always awake. Her makeup was on, her pillows were plumped up, and she wore a little housecoat. She had been very disheveled when she arrived at the hospital, but she now looked like someone at home waiting to receive friends. As I entered the room, she would pat the bed where I could come and sit down and talk to her.

By the end of her stay the nurses began asking me, “What did you do?” “Did you give her a tranquilizer?” “Did you put her on an antidepressant?” “She’s actually being nice to everybody.” “She actually said ‘please’ to me the other day when she asked for something.” “What is going on?”

I didn’t say very much, only, “Well, she’s finally feeling better and let’s take advantage that. I think that if we don’t expect her to be bad, we’ll find that she’ll do a lot better.”

“What’s the catch?”
The very last day, when she was in the discharge room and I was preparing to leave, she said, “I want to ask you something and I wonder if you will answer truthfully?” I said, “Sure; fire away!”

She said: “I’m a terrible person and no one likes me. My family hates me; all my ex-husbands hate me; my boyfriend hates me; my drug dealer hates me; everyone hates me. I am awful to people. I am always angry; I am always mean; I am selfish; I steal. Why are you so nice to me?” She was asking: “What’s the catch?”

In that moment, I could feel God in my mind saying, “Well, I couldn’t be any other way.” For a moment she looked perplexed. Then she shrugged and said, “Okay.”

A glimpse of the saintly life
As I walked out of the room, I thought, “Well, of course, I could be another way!” I had quite a temper and could be very unkind to people when I didn’t feel like being nice.

But I realized in that instant how transforming it was, not only for that woman but also for me, to hold the thought that it was God serving God. It gave me a glimpse of what it was like to be saintly, and to always serve others as though you were serving God as your own beloved.

In fact, for all of us, the idea that our lives can be compartmentalized, or that they are separated in any way, is unreal. Whether we are meditating, feeling stressed at work, or having trouble with our finances—every one of these is an opportunity to deepen our relationship with God.

Remember: each one of us has the destiny is to become as great a saint as Yogananda, the Buddha, or Saint Francis, with all the incredible love and interior spiritual power that is our birthright.

Excerpted from a November 11, 2007 Sunday Service at Ananda Village.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

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 in all its myriad forms is part of the divine plan. We see evidence of that everywhere: in the flowers and trees, in the birds and sky, in music and the creative arts, in the face of a child, in a voice. Why, then, if God has seen fit to recognize its worth should we try to eradicate it from our lives in the name of spiritual attainment?

The old idea of a long-faced missionary, moving among his fellow beings clad in ugly, drab costumes, is not an image we wish to implant in the hearts of students. Nothing is gained by disregarding that which will enhance your personal appearance, tempered always, of course, with good taste.

If you are a homely woman, then adopt all the reasonable beauty-parlor tricks to make yourself attractive. Better still, decorate your soul with the rich ornaments of sincerity, a magnetic personality, intoxicating smiles, and all-round serviceability.

Recapture your lost health
If you have been ailing physically, there is no more legitimate ambition, nor one that will pay greater dividends, than making the attainment of your health your one great aim.

By doing so, you will begin to “clean up your own little back yard” of the accumulated debris that each soul comes into this life to overcome. On the physical level, it will pay you dividends beyond your fondest dreams; from the spiritual standpoint, you will have overcome a delinquency similar to selfishness, cruelty, and dishonesty.

Visualize the physical perfection you would like to attain. Refuse to become discouraged at apparent slow progress, for natural healing is not necessarily a rapid “cure.

Be persistent. Demand and determine to rebuild your abused physical vehicle. The earnestness with which you apply yourself will determine the degree of success. In your daily period of meditation, remember to ask God for the help needed to develop physically, mentally, and spiritually. Then, just as when we post a letter, forget about it and go about your other business, trusting in God’s power to answer your prayer.

Nature unaided fails
Remember, the body is the link between our higher and lower natures, the cart which carries within it the essence of all we shall eventually be. Why not speed up the transition?

Resolve to heal yourself, whatever the difficulty. Supplant wrong habits with good, and adhere to them with all the power of will that you can muster.

There is a maxim: “Nature unaided fails.” You must give attention and loving care to whatever you possess, whether talents or health, else they will languish and wither. Particularly is this true of health.

Excerpted from the Praecepta Lessons, 1934-1938

When we asked him what he meant by that, he said, “They’re relating from personality to personality, and divine friendship is relating from one soul to another soul.”

“I see you as light”
Divine friendship is one of the most important things that Swami Kriyananda has expressed in his life, and also modeled for us spiritually. In the early 1970s, a few of us went with him to Reno, Nevada and stayed overnight. When he greeted us the next morning he said, “Hello all you great souls!” That was his usual way of greeting us.

But it was deeper than mere words. He held the vision of us as souls, as God in human form, to help us grow into the understanding that we are not egos, bodies, or personalities but souls, part of God.

That’s how Paramhansa Yogananda related to the devotees around him. He said, “I don’t see you as bodies and personalities. I see you as light. You have no idea how beautiful you are.” It was not that they were a special group. Yogananda related that way to everyone, and Swami Kriyananda was sensitive enough to perceive it and pass it on.

A great flow of divinity
Kriyananda has always related primarily to the divine presence in the world. And he has had the spiritual depth to be able tune into the powerful flow of divinity coming through many great saints—Paramhansa Yogananda, Ananda Moyi Ma, Sri Rama Yogi, and others.

When Kriyananda first met Ananda Moyi Ma in 1958, very quickly a strong bond formed between them. But it was not what we would think of as a close personal relationship. Often, he didn’t relate to her outwardly at all. He would just meditate in her presence and feel the vibration. When they did speak, it was through a translator.

Some of the devotees in Ananda Moyi Ma’s ashram had been with her for thirty or forty years, yet she was quoted as saying: “Many bees have come to this flower, but few have sipped the nectar the way Swami Kriyananda has.”  Kriyananda was able to tune into the great flow of divinity coming through her. He related to her not on a personality level, but soul to soul.

Three radically different personalities
Several of us were with Swami Kriyananda at Ananda Moyi Ma’s ashram in Hardwar in 1974 for a period of three days. On each of those days, Ananda Moyi exhibited a very different outer personality.

The first night we saw her, she was very distant, as if she were somewhere out in the galaxies. When people went up to greet her, with one or two exceptions, she didn’t relate to them at all.

The next day we had a private interview with her, and those of us who were with Swami Kriyananda with asked questions through a translator. She answered our questions and was very kindly, but she also conveyed the sense that we weren’t quite “getting it,” that we were a bit “off.”  A statement she would often make was: “I’m like a drum and as you beat me, so I will sound.” In the outwardness of our questions, we didn’t have the drum strokes right.

The third day we saw her, there was a much larger gathering and she was laughing and giggling like a teenager. At one point, she laughingly threw a garland of marigolds at Swamiji and it landed right around his neck.

Here was an example of the outer personality shifting radically three times in three days. What remained constant, however, was the powerful flow of love, joy, and grace coming through her. Kriyananda related mainly to that flow of divinity because that, not the personality, was the essence.

Holding the vision
He relates mainly to the Divine in us. That’s why it’s called “divine friendship.” People have blossomed spiritually at Ananda in part because Kriyananda has held very strongly the vision of us as souls, not as egos or personalities. When a person thinks of God as residing in others, he invites God to bless those people inwardly. This thought also increases the likelihood of his recognizing the divine presence within himself.

We, too, need to hold that vision for each other. And yes, we can laugh and joke and have our human relationships, but that should be the sub-theme. For devotees, the primary theme should be the relationship of my soul to your soul. Holding on to that vision allows Yogananda’s magnetism to flow through us.

“I want to be your disciple.”
In 1999, Kriyananda wrote a paper about the mission of Ananda, in which he said, “When I met Master, my first words to him were, “I want to be your disciple.”  He went on to say:

Any statement of purpose Ananda makes must be understood in the light of that thought: “I want to be your disciple.” For whatever Ananda is derives not from me, but only through me from Paramhansa Yogananda and his teachings.

Of all the things that Kriyananda has modeled for us, the most important is what a life of discipleship looks like. The core of that discipleship is deep, deep attunement to the Divine as it flows through Yogananda, and complete openness to be used however God and Guru want to use him.

Yogananda told Kriyananda that his life would be one of intense activity and meditation. In thinking about that “intense activity,” we tend to look at the form—at the 400 songs, the ninety books, the communities he’s started, the thousands of lectures, the hundreds of TV programs.

But that isn’t the essence of it. The essence of it is the complete no-holds-barred self-offering to be used as a channel by God and Guru. It was not from personal desire that Kriyananda founded communities and did these various things. He did them because his Guru asked that of him. If Yogananda had told Kriyananda to go to the Himalayas, he would be in the Himalayas. He will do whatever is asked of him, even if it means great hardship to himself.

A total self-offering
Who at the age of 80 picks up and moves to India to start a new work? We were with him in Assisi, Italy when he was packing up to move to India. He threw a couple of items of clothing in a suitcase, along with his swami shawl, and that was all. He was just like a little kid going off into the woods with a little bandana on a pole.

If it were possible legally, he would own absolutely nothing. He would not have a house, a car, or even a bank account. He’s free from that kind of concern or fear. His life is completely offered into the hands of Divine Mother, and whatever She gives him is fine, and whatever She doesn’t give him is fine.

Even if he’s having trouble physically, he’ll do his best to give a talk. And then, because of that willingness, after not being able to get out of a chair, he is able to stand up for an hour and a half and deliver a powerful talk. It is his complete openness to the flow of God’s grace and energy through Yogananda that allows him to do this.

No longer any boundaries
And he’s becoming freer and freer. When taken far enough, the fruit of a life of discipleship is the release from ego—there are no longer any boundaries between you, the Guru, and God.

Recently Kriyananda said he can no longer tell where he stops and Yogananda begins. He relates to himself as an extension of Yogananda.

Not that attunement with the Guru somehow melts who you are; it empowers who you truly are. Yogananda is empowering the divine essence within Swami Kriyananda to be more fully God in that form.

Excerpted from an October 10, 2007 talk 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.

You asked for my suggestions on how you should respond to _____’s letter.

You might write a brief note thanking him for the friendship and concern that prompted him to write as he did. Where you yourself are concerned, say that these are things you sincerely want to work on in yourself: that it is not easy to change oneself, but that we are all living here primarily for that very purpose.

On a more general note, you might say that this is one of the wonderful advantages of living in a spiritual community: that we get repeated opportunities to see ourselves through others’ supportive but sincere eyes.  This is divine friendship, and it is something one rarely encounters in the world, where everyone seems to want only to justify his own actions and character.

Where _____ himself is concerned, yes, the truth often IS spoken in anger, but as Yogananda said, anger leaves a residue of disharmonious vibrations which in themselves are deleterious.

Citing Yogananda’s admonition, add that you hope his anger leaves him, as you yourself feel only friendship and gratitude toward him. Tell him that you hope also that his outburst will serve as a reminder in his work with others not to lose his temper with them, but to speak always with their welfare, as well as that of Ananda, in mind.

Your letter should smooth things between the two of you and preserve _____’s good will and friendship.

In divine friendship

Swami Kriyananda

Likewise, enable me to wash all souls with love,
and to behold even the darkest souls as Thy children,
as my very own—as my sleeping brothers.

Through the kindly strength of tolerance, instead
of the weak brutality of force, let me lead all stumbling
and stubborn ones unto Thee.

Thou art eagerly waiting to reveal Thyself whenever
the world wants to emerge from the sea of
wrong-doing.

Thy silence before an error-steeped world proves
Thy patience and ever-ready forgiveness.

Likewise, soften me with such patience that I shall
ever wait and stand ready to help all truth-forsaken
souls when they wish to awake.

Guide Thou my understanding and powers,
so that I may turn evil, dark minds into sparkling
wisdom rays.

Excerpted from: “Demanding Forgiveness,”
Whispers from Eternity, 1949 edition.

Time and space don’t really exist; they’re basically all in the mind. We think of a star as being light years away but a master is as much in the most distant galaxy as here.

Paramhansa Yogananda said in Autobiography of a Yogi, “God is center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” In your soul nature, you are the center of everything. You will find truth only by going into your center and diving deep into your soul essence.

“Even the worst of sinners”
Yogananda said we should consider it our duty in this life to become at least a jivan mukta, a soul free while still living in a body. You might think, “But I must have a load of karma the size of a planet. What about all that karma?”

It doesn’t matter. If you yearn for God deeply enough, He will come to you. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, “Even the worst of sinners who steadfastly meditates on Me speedily comes to Me.”

Imagine a huge lake of ice, frozen so deeply that thousands of people standing on the surface wouldn’t be able to crack it. How do you get through to the water underneath the ice? By drilling a deep hole in the ice from where you are standing, you will be able to get through.

In other words, by meditating, we go deeply into our center, into the inner Self, and from that point we can break through the ice of delusion and merge into God. The karma from countless past lives, represented by that large sheet of ice, still remains but we don’t need to worry about it. Once you’ve dissolved the ego and merged into God, you can melt that “ice” gradually or quickly; it’s up to you.

Once I asked Yogananda, “Can’t you just say that you’re free, and you are?” He replied, “Yes, you can, but at that stage you don’t really care, because you know you’re one with everything. You may use the burden of past karma just to come back and help other people.

Once you have reached the state of jivan mukta, you can’t fall again because you’ve realized your oneness with God.

Basically, the only difference between a jivan mukta and a param mukta, one who is completely freed of all karma, past and present (fully liberated), is that God can exert much more power through a param mukta. An avatar is someone who has achieved full liberation and returns to the world for the sake of suffering humanity.

Souls go up and down
The Indian scriptures say that it takes from five to eight million lives even to reach the human level. That’s a long time, but it’s nonetheless easy to fall from that state. If you choose to act in an animalistic way, why should you be worthy of a human body? Souls go up and down from the human level constantly.

So don’t waste time—take seriously your search for God. God projected everything out of Himself and He wants to draw everything back into oneness. That’s the only purpose of this whole human drama.

But human beings are very adept at self-delusion, and we can wander a long time. Stop and watch your mind trying to justify its mistakes: “Oh yes, I drink, but at least I don’t smoke.”  “Well, it’s true I smoke, but at least I don’t drink.” Rather than making excuses for yourself, why not try to achieve freedom?

Getting out of ego
It’s very difficult to get rid of the thought that “I’m me.” As you attempt to do so, you will find that the ego keeps trying to insert itself into the picture saying, “Well what about me? I had some role to play in this.” The more you think that way, the more it binds you.

Years ago at Ananda Village, I was walking in a part of the property called Ayodhya where a number of people lived. I saw trailers with lights shining and the thought arose in my mind, “Once this was all darkness, and now there are lights. I’m the one who did this.”

Then I asked myself, “Do I like this thought?” No, I didn’t like it because it was limiting. Why bring “me” into it at all? Why think, “I did this”? I found that I was much freer if I thought, “It was done.”

If you enjoy feeling free and don’t enjoy feeling bound, then what’s the point of clinging to the ego? Yogananda used to say, “If you try the cake and it tastes good—you want it.”

The most practical teaching of all
This teaching isn’t just abstract philosophy, as some people think; it’s extremely practical in two ways. One is in achieving true understanding and freedom, and the other is in dealing with situations in your life.

When you can eliminate egoic desires and stop thinking, “I want this or that,” the divine law works to bring you everything you need. As Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, you will attract riches. Similarly, if you always speak the truth, your very words will come into manifestation.

I have seen it happen many times in my life that when I was centered not in my ego but my higher Self, and shared everything with Divine Mother, she supplied my every need—money, possessions, guidance, inspiration. Everything always fell into place.

It’s not that I have some great power; this is an understanding we can all achieve. If you seek your center in your higher Self, the whole universe will cooperate with you in every possible way.

“With my mental power”
But always keep in mind that you can’t make these things work—you don’t control it. Once I was driving at Twenty-Nine Palms, in southern California, and I saw an old man walking by the wayside. I stopped to pick him up and learned that he was going to the convention of a New Thought group that focused heavily on “mental power.”

And it was obvious that he was thinking, “With my mental power I forced him to stop and made him offer me a ride.” I went along with the game and assumed that when he reached the convention, he would give a testimonial on what he had “made happen.”

This approach only strengthens the ego. You have to work with Divine Mother, with the understanding that it’s all Her power. And I have found that things work out marvelously when you have this attitude.

You become “solution conscious”
The closer you come to your inner center, the more clearly you can understand that center everywhere. The music I write comes to me that way.

How? Once I understand what I want, I go to my center and say, “Divine Mother I want a song that says this, this and this.” As soon as I have made very clear what I want, I am at the center of that other consciousness, and the song comes automatically.

Whatever your problem, instead of worrying about all the facts (too many facts complicate things), try to get to the essence of the problem, to its center. By approaching things in this way, you will understand the problems and also find the solutions.

The American Indians used to say that in the vicinity of a poisonous plant, there is always a healing plant that will cure that poison. I don’t know whether or not this is true, but as a principle it’s true.

Wherever there is a problem, there has to be a solution. The law of duality governs everything in creation: up and down, plus and minus, positive and negative. Wherever there is one, there has to be the opposite.

So, don’t allow your mind to spread out over the world, by reading the newspaper and finding out what’s going on here and there. You can become so concerned about the world that you forget you are the world; that you are the universe. You’re the center of everything, and from this point of reference alone can you ever understand anything.

Give up desires and attachments
You will become a jivan mukta when you have given up desires and attachments. It’s that simple. When you can say, “Divine Mother I only want you. I have no desires,” you will break through the ice of delusion.

This great universe is just a dream. As Yogananda said, “On a tiny piece of thought rests the cosmic lot. If you can rub that thought away, the universe is wiped away.” What remains then is the eternal presence of God beyond time and space, and you will feel His love radiating to you always from the heart of infinity.

From a June 24, 2007 talk in Seattle, Washington and a March 11, 2007 talk in Gurgaon, India.