Are Yuga Cycles Relevant to Self-Realization?

Part 1 - A New Age?

In the introduction to his 1894 book, "The Holy Science," Swami Sri Yukteswar (of Serampore, Bengal) proposed a shocking correction to the Hindu calendar by declaring that humanity was soon to enter ascending Dwapara Yuga! Most Hindus, including scholars and pundits, aver that the earth and humankind are in the midst of a long decline in morals, virtue and awareness. This decline, they insist, is the lowest cycle of the four and is known as Kali Yuga (the Dark era). I've read that when Sri Yukteswar held a parade in India declaring the beginning of Dwapara Yuga (around 1900 A.D.) he was ridiculed. Some onlookers even threw stones.

As best as I can tell, this dim view of humanity's future is shared by fundamentalists in other religions as well. From their perspective, who can argue with them? Rising nationalism, racism, cynicism and selfishness DO NOT suggest an increase in awareness or compassion!

And yet, by contrast, and in the matter of science and technology, no one could dispute that human knowledge is increasing: indeed, quite rapidly! 

So how can morals decline and yet intelligence rise? Isn't there a contradiction here? Is there any hope of reconciling these two? Yes! I believe it is possible.

Paramhansa Yogananda and one of his most prolific disciples, author, Swami Kriyananda, reconcile this seeming paradox by saying that the decline in moral standards represents a temporary dissolution of fixed values and stereotypes in favor of what will gradually become a greater sense of personal integrity and awareness. Behavior based on rules, taboos, customs and dogma must give way to behavior based on self-integrity. First comes the freedom to break the rules; then gradually comes the personal awareness to re-affirm basic truths and human values for one's own greater good, health and happiness.

An example in point is the story of the abdication of his throne by King Edward VIII of England in 1936. Documentaries I have watched claim that the king was forced out of office by high-ranking government and church officials, and people in London's aristocratic society. The controversy focused on the king's desire to marry Wallace Simpson, an American divorcee. But it went deeper than that because the king, young and popular with the common people, was breaking away from the formality of the royal office and the elitism of high society. His errant ways, viewed as "modern," were deemed a threat to the establishment and to tradition. His sympathy for the plight of commoners constituted an unforgivable offense to the high and mighty.  

Part 2 - Self-realization: A Frontal Assault on Orthodoxy?

But another question remains that I wish to explore is whether Sri Yukteswar's re-calibration of the Yuga Cycles is important to the Self-realization teachings he sent his disciple, Paramhansa Yogananda, to share with the world? Wouldn't it have been safer and easier to set this aside? Why did Yogananda explain this version of India's Yuga Cycles in his own life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi?" I ask "why" because by doing so Yogananda contradicted the religious authorities in India both then and to this very day! Why go "to bat" for something so esoteric and arcane? In most other important respects Yogananda's teachings are in alignment with the ancient and accepted teachings by such illuminatos as the Adi Shankacharya, Sage Byasa (Bhagavad Gita), and Patanjali (Yoga Sutras), to name just a few. So why make the Yuga calendar an exception?

I have puzzled over this for many years. Swami Kriyananda wrote a text that has become a classic in our time: "Art and Science of Raja Yoga." It is a text to share the core philosophy and practices of Raja Yoga as Paramhansa Yogananda taught them. Raja Yoga is an ancient tradition and while Yogananda was not its source, he explained it in terms we in the West could understand: free from orthodoxy, dogma and traditional cultural trappings. The text is both practical and deep in its understanding of the human mind, and illuminates for us the ancient wisdom of Vedanta, Shankya and Yoga (of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali).

So why does Chapter 1 of that book begin with an explanation of Sri Yukteswar's Yuga Cycles treatise? Surely a beginning yoga student in America would find it irrelevant! 

I myself made an interesting discovery that suggests an answer to this question. I have found over the many years of teaching that whenever I attempt to give a broad overview of Self-realization teachings even in America which has no understanding of Yuga cycles, I find myself referring to the assertion that humanity has entered the first stages of the ascending Dwapara (Second) Yuga Cycle. The characteristic features of Dwapara so aptly fit our society's consciousness and so clearly provide an explanation for the changes in consciousness that we see unfolding before us. Sri Yukteswar predicted an increase in individual self-interest and personal self-respect, for example. And, sure enough, what else does America stand for if not personal freedom? Moreover, the voice of freedom rings loud and clear increasingly throughout the world. He said, further, that during Dwapara Yuga (1900 A.D. to 3900 A.D.) humankind would demolish the dimension of space (via travel, communication, etc.)

While this "coincidence" is interesting it doesn't answer the real question: why is his explanation of the Yuga Cycles of any particular importance in understanding Yogananda's teachings of Self-realization?

Here are some of my reflections on the importance of Sri Yukteswar's explanation in the context of teaching Raja Yoga (including Kriya Yoga, the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, and the Bible).

Yogananda's teachings are nothing less than a frontal assault on both Christian and Hindu orthodoxy. If humanity is really and truly in the throes of a four-hundred thousand-year decline in morals and wisdom there would be little point in upturning long-standing religious traditions. I suppose humanity, in this case, might need something simpler and easier to practice and understand (as we become dumber), but Yogananda teaches a very subtle and nuanced blend of yoga practices distilled from the yoga traditions of India. He draws wisdom and practicality from the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras and the Christian Bible. While the blend is recognizable for those who research it, it is also creative and new.

Indeed, Yogananda called his teachings A New Dispensation. In a separate blog posting, I compared this New Dispensation to a New Covenant such as Christians claim Jesus Christ brought (displacing the Mosaic Law). 

Why do I describe his teachings as a "frontal assault"? 

In respect to Christian dogma, Yogananda is claiming that Jesus Christ was not the only world savior in human history. John the Baptist, he claimed, was the guru Elias from a past life and he, Jesus, was Elias' disciple Elisha! He even called his mission in America the "Second Coming." I don't know how these could be more radical! (He stopped short of claiming he, himself, was Jesus Christ having returned, but he came very close to that. His only response to the direct question was "What difference would it make?") He claimed, further, that the three Wise Men who came to honor the birth of Christ were none other than his own guru-lineage (Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Swami Sri Yukteswar).

In respect to Hinduism, Yogananda stripped from its attributes as much, if not more material, as the early Christians did in respect to Judaism. The apostles removed the requirement of circumcision, for example, and repeated Jesus' claim that he was the son of God. Yogananda carried forward none of the rituals and only a very few mantras, from India. He challenged the orthodox Hindu view that such saviors as Krishna or Rama were direct incarnations of Vishnu (God). Rather than their being so-called "Purna" avatars, he said these great souls were souls like you and me who had achieved Self-realization in a prior life. 

So, in both cases, his was a frontal assault. Only the dawn of a New Age of Consciousness could be the external, or objective reason for what Yogananda taught. This is what I have concluded over the years. It may be perfectly fine for disciples of Yogananda to say that what he taught is "good enough for me because he was an avatar." But as the teachings continue to spread, they are helped by having an objective context to frame the necessity and relevance of those teachings.

Part 3 - Will Sri Yukteswar's Yuga Cycle Correction Ever be Accepted by Hindu Orthodoxy?

In the biography of Swami Sri Yukteswar by Swami Satyananda Giri (Yoganiketan press), it is described just how close to acceptance came Sri Yukteswar's astrological and astronomical calculations. The (then) famous astrologer in Puri, Orissa (India) Pandit Chandrakanta Shiromani Mahasaya died just before being able to review Sri Yukteswar's work. A group of the Pandit's students and associates had previously accepted Sri Yukteswar's proposals but said final acceptance would require the Pandit's approval.

As evidence of the onset of a higher age, Swami Sri Yukteswar stated in the introduction to his book, "The Holy Science," that, among other pieces of evidence, the average height of humans would increase; that the average lifespan of humans would increase; that we would discover the existence of finer electricities and the knowledge of atoms and other minute particles; that we would discover that energy is the fundamental essence of matter; and, that a star would be discovered to be our sun's "dual." 

I know of two books on this subject: "Lost Star of Myth and Time," by Walter Cruttenden, and "The Yugas" by David Steinmetz and Joseph Selbie. The former points to Sirius as the sun's dual and the latter speaks of a more complex astronomical explanation. In both cases, the existence of the sun's dual is yet to be found. That remains a missing piece to this question. Yet Sri Yukteswar's calculations can presumably be corroborated by Hindu astronomers and astrologists who perhaps need only the incentive to do so. But the implications to Hindu society and the priestly class are deeply profound and one wonders just how long it will take before a courageous and capable pundit will step up to the task.

 

I am not alone in expressing my appreciation for the clarity of insights that reevaluating human history in the context of the Yuga Cycles has brought to me. In fact, this view turns on its head everything we thought we knew about our human ancestors. The "Yugas" book cited above is well worth the read, just be careful who you share it with, lest they recommend to you a psychiatrist. But truthfully, evidence continues to accumulate worldwide for the proposition, held in former times by every great civilization, that humanity had long ago experienced a Golden Age of wisdom and harmony.

Blessings to you,

Swami Hrimananda

 

Do You Need a Guru? Celebrating Guru Purnima

Today as I write it is the full moon and with it India's annual mid-summer day of honoring and celebrating one's teacher, especially one's guru! If I understand the festival, Guru Purnima, correctly, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists celebrate this holy day. It just so happens that the weekly readings at the Ananda temples around the world land on this very same subject: Do You Need A Guru? Tomorrow, Sunday, July 25 is the day Ananda holds dear as "Babaji Day." To add yet more to this, tomorrow at our temple near Seattle we will conduct, coincidentally, a discipleship initiation for a few aspiring souls. So these are at least four good reasons to write this article!

I use these excuses and this occasion to talk not generally about the role of a guru but more specifically about the life and role of one such great yoga master of the twentieth century: Paramhansa Yogananda (author of the now-famous "Autobiography of a Yogi").

Most of you who will read this already know that Yogananda's guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar of Serampore, Bengal (India), made an important and shocking correction to the Hindu calendar in 1894 in his book, "The Holy Science." In the introduction to this book, he announced that according to Hindu astrology and Oriental astronomy planet Earth entered the ascending cycle of the second of four ages called Dwapara on about the year A.D. 1900.

Any student of the history of science and technology would not be the least bit surprised. The defining discovery of the twentieth century took place only a few years later by Albert Einstein who in effect declared the death of matter and the birth of the age of atomic energy.  

Religionists, on the other hand, eyeing the decline of adherence to traditional values and religions and the rise of atheism and materialism have declared the death of God-fearing civilization and the birth of an age that surely will culminate in the end times.

From the standpoint of spiritual awakening, this new age would certainly seem ripe for the appearance of a new Buddha or Christ. Swami Kriyananda, the founder of Ananda's worldwide work, lived with and was trained and commissioned by Paramhansa Yogananda in the last years of Yogananda's life (1893-1952). Swami Kriyananda concluded that Yogananda must surely be a world teacher for this new age of Dwapara. 

But unlike the personality cult surrounding the religion that revolved around Jesus Christ, it is far more likely that Yogananda's role will be seen somewhat more like that of the Buddha: a wayshower. Of course, true disciples will tune into Yogananda as true disciples always do to their guru but by virtue of Yogananda's teachings their understanding will already be grounded in a more universal understanding that Yogananda is one of many avatars sent by God to fulfill specific missions of spiritual upliftment in times of need.  

There are many reasons to see in Yogananda the role of a world teacher for this age. And there were during his life and are now many spiritual teachers on the planet. Comparisons are odious and unnecessary. Instead, some of the characteristics that identify Yogananda as having an important role in human spiritual evolution include that he struck a careful balance between East and West; indeed, he consciously lauded the best aspects of each. He didn't seek to convert his followers into Hindus nor yet did he pretend to be a converted Christian. He taught yoga and meditation and yet built churches and held services remarkably familiar to Westerners. He drew inspiration from the Christian Bible as well as from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. He showed their underlying similarity rather than declaring one greater than the other. 

He expressed great devotion to his guru-lineage as well as to the One God, the Infinite Spirit. He affirmed Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) while at the same time taught that the way to the One was through the Other (I-Thou). He loved saints while he had experiences of cosmic consciousness. He spoke of heaven and hell but as temporary waiting stations on the soul's long journey to God. He spoke of the evolution of the species but averred the special creation and status of the human form.  He affirmed the truth of all religions yet discerned that not all affirmed the highest teaching of union with God. He recognized the equality and yet the differences of the sexes and yet insisted the soul has no gender before God. He taught union with God as the goal of the soul's creation while explaining that consciousness is forever and nothing of our past lives is ever destroyed or obliterated. 

He praised Western technological and commercial efficiency but bemoaned our sectarianism and materialism. He loved India's deep spirituality but hoped that India would raise its standard of living through education, hygiene, and renouncing stifling caste taboos.

Yogananda urged students to get back to the land and form small self-sustaining communities which would grow their own food and have a lifestyle that was both efficient and God-centered. He didn't reject modern labor-saving technology but decried "installment method" consumerism as a modern form of servitude. 

Yogananda created devotional chants and poetry; started gardens and farms; schools for children; a yoga university; encouraged art and theatre with an uplifting message.

Interestingly, apart from the popularity of his life story and notwithstanding the universal respect for him and his contributions, very few outside his own followers, students, and modern-day disciples seem to acknowledge his role in this new and very uncertain age. Phillip Goldberg did the first real biography of Yogananda and included a chapter about Yogananda in his book, "American Veda," but overall it seems that Yogananda has not yet taken his place in history. But history is written "post facto" and many of us believe that in the future Yogananda's life will be seen as a pivotal contributor to the awakening consciousness of Dwapara Yuga.

For members of Ananda worldwide, we also believe that his strong emphasis on the importance of small, intentional communities (which he said would one day "spread like wildfire") will bear the fruit of recognition at some future date. Many alive today agree that humanity's lifestyle is in an unsustainable downward spiral of the consumption of earthly resources. This can only end in great calamity and presumably great suffering. Yogananda himself predicted as much. One easily imagines that this is what it will take for humanity to change our entrenched attitudes and habits. But this particular story also has yet to play out. 

As with all the great world saviors, Yogananda is alive and well on planet earth but perhaps more so for he came especially for us and in our times. He no longer requires a human form to guide anyone who seeks his help. You need not be or consider yourself to be his disciple because his love and wisdom are available to all just as it was when he walked the earth and thousands flocked to hear his words and be in his aura.

Jai guru! 

Swami Hrimananda

"All is fair in Love and War" -- Happy Valentine's Day, 2021!

 

“All is Fair in Love and War” 

Valentine’s Day 2021

Perhaps it all started with Adam and Eve. Formerly innocent in their nakedness, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil opened their eyes to their differences and the attraction between them as man and woman. Thus, it is said, humanity fell from grace, from favor in God’s eyes.

It has no doubt puzzled far wiser heads than mine to reconcile what seems like the perfectly reasonable and useful knowledge of good and evil or the attraction between men and women with the cause of humanity’s fall from divine favor. But there it is. We have to deal with it. Besides, some might say, what’s wrong with knowledge, or romance and sex?

The sexual aspect of this fall is not easily dismissed though it is often ignored by a focus upon the nature of the knowledge of good and evil. One must assume there’s no difference as the two are clearly related to each other in the story.

Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the famous and popular story, “Autobiography of a Yogi,” explains this conundrum in his writings and in his life story. While I’ll refrain from a complete recap of Yogananda’s commentary on the Adam and Eve story, he wrote that sex temptation (“touch”) is the “apple” in the center of the garden (of the body). The sex nerves are stimulated by the movement of Life Force of the body (the coiled up spinal energy, the “serpent”) which arouses the feeling aspect of human consciousness (the “Eve’) which draws into its orbit the reason aspect (the “Adam”). Intoxicated by desire, reason succumbs.

The purpose of placing the story “In the beginning” is to state that our origin as souls is pure and free from gender identity and its related “good and evil” impulses. The purpose of having an Adam and an Eve as characters, personifications of humanity, is to contrast our mind with our heart and to imply that the distinction can be problematical when separated but blessed when united. Furthermore, the story belongs to each and every one of us as “the scales fall” when we reach puberty and begin to notice the other gender. Once, whether in time or in life, our reason and feeling faculties were One, innocent of distinctions, like children. Upon our adolescent awakening, our single eye (unaware of differences) divides into two physical eyes, seeing the differences, so to speak, when sexual impules are stimulated by changes in the body.

So here we have Valentine’s Day celebrating the unveiling of this knowledge into endless variations! Curiously, the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are not just monotheistic but patriarchal. Other faiths, including so-called “pagan” faiths, celebrate this everlasting play of male and female in the stories of the gods and goddesses and in human life. Matrimony only became a sacrament much later in Christian history, in the 12^th century. It was justified as being a symbol and a reminder of the union of Christ with his church as his mystical body. It was thus not a celebration unto itself.

In the Old and New Testaments, it is stated that the basic teaching there is that we should “love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.” And the second part is “like unto the first: Thou shalt love thy neighbor AS thyself.” Thus, the impulse here of human love is first re-directed toward God and then expanded into impersonal or equal love for all. (No mention, that is, of romantic love.)

How far we have come! Gay, trans, pan, poly and every possible variation. Like those temples in India with erotic sculptures, our culture, too, is in the midst of an orgy of sexual and romantic adventurism.

So, how do we reconcile these seemingly conflicting points of view? Perhaps it's less of a reconciliation (which suggests equality) and more of a progression, a direction. At the heart of the issue there is an existential element: do we worship the adventure and play of the creation for what we can enjoy in it and get from it, or, do we see the One, the Divine, playing through the many, playing all the parts and in each part revealing aspects of the One? Might the former evolve into the latter? Or, is it safer to turn away from the creation altogether and focus on God alone?

Just now I read on Facebook that yet another of the young Ananda monks has bit the dust, or is the apple? (He didn’t say. He just said he’s no longer a monk but we usually know what that means or at least where it leads.) As I grew toward adulthood in the 1960’s I observed what probably was in the cumulative was thousands of nuns, priests, and monks leave their vocation only soon enough to become wed.

How can we love someone we have never met? God, for example! Just as Darwinists speak of the evolution of species, so too in any given human life we might find that romantic love leads to family love, which expands over the years to include service to a larger community and a deepening of the friendship between the two who started adult life together in marriage. This is the progression that is easily observable though of course not universally true.

What is meant by “all is fair in love” is mostly the simple fact that once the heart’s feelings are aroused (whether romantically, sexually, or both) there’s very little one can do to stop the emotion from its natural course (even if that ultimately means being thwarted for unrequited love is a staple of life and drama).

From the New Testament: Luke: 7: 36-50

And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat.

37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,

38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

39 Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.

40 And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.

41 There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.

42 And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

43 Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.

44 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

45 Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

46 My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.

47 Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

48 And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.

49 And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?

50 And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

You see, even on a human level, love, as it is perfected, goes from self-satisfying to self-giving. This is both the natural and the soul (sole) purpose of the attraction, whether romantic or otherwise. We are compelled by romantic or sexual impulses, and compelled by biological ones (re children, siblings or parents) but with a friend, we have what, in principle at least is the purest form of friendship: given without compulsion but on mutual affinity and recognition.

There’s another side to the Adam and Eve story. It is the teaching that each of us, as a soul, has a soul-mate. Yogananda acknowledged this teaching but did not give it much emphasis because the human interest in romance is so deeply embedded that he didn’t want his teaching to be twisted into a love-cult, so to speak. Besides, the soul is neither male nor female. Thus, one’s soul-mate is inherently free from gender compulsions or attributes. Think of soul qualities, rather than human differences. A soul that inclines to go more by thought might be best mated by a soul that goes more by feeling. The existence of soul-mates is said to take place at the beginning of creation when the one soul is divided into two. The temptation to say this is male and female is almost overwhelming but it is not what Yogananda taught. It is in this that we can see Adam and Eve as reason and feeling and the serpent and apple as relating to each person internally, not externally, in male and female forms. But their story would have been a lot less interesting if it were devoid of that “which makes the world go ‘round.”

Swami Kriyananda described divine love as bliss in motion; or bliss in relationship; or in creation. Bliss is One; Love is two.

When Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, is asked whether it is best to seek God as the Absolute (as One) or in the I-Thou relationship, Krishna replied unequivocally that for “embodied beings” the I-Thou relationship was easier, meaning more natural. Yogananda worshipped God in the feminine form, in his life, as Goddess Kali. This is NOT the worship of the creation for itself or its gifts but the worship of God AS the creation, donning the mask, as it were: neither denying God's handiwork nor, being fooled by it.

Yogananda frequently made the point that while God IS and HAS all things, He does not have our love (attention, interest and seeking) unless we offer it to Him. “Love—the tie that binds”—is the one thing missing. And as the woman of many sins was forgiven for she loved much, so too it is axiomatic that love for God is perhaps the quickest way to soul freedom. But, it is also NOT as easy as it sounds. As I wrote earlier, how can we truly love someone we have never met? And distracted by our need to love and be loved, it is far easier to fall in love with the face in front of us (like Queen Titania in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream")! [Why do we say "fall" in love? Adam and Eve "fell" too.]

Swami Kriyananda taught us that in India couples are instructed to see in one another the Divine enshrined in one another’s forms: the Infinite Spirit or the Divine Mother. Thus, it is the divine way that human love is intended to become ever purer, ever more expansive until it becomes the pure love of God.

On that journey and with that intention, “All is fair!”

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Swami Hrimananda

 

 

 

Who am I? What is the Universal Religion, the Perennial Philosophy?

Today I fielded this question from a Hindu in the United States:

"I have read from many sources, that Hinduism or originally known as Sanatana Dharma, the eternal way is non-sectarian, and can be applicable to anyone regardless of religion or race. I am Hindu, but don’t understand how the Bhagavad Gita for instance is non-sectarian, as Lord Krishna Himself says he is the Supreme God. I don’t see how a Christian/Muslim would be able to agree? Some of the teachings are universal, but many other religions do not believe in reincarnation either. Please clarify."

Dear Friend,

Paramhansa Yogananda made a distinction between "churchianity" and true religion (or "Sanatan Dharma"). Specific to the example of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita that you mention, the same use of the personal pronoun "I" is found in the Bible as spoken by Jesus Christ. Thus, one has to step back from such statements to understand the broader context of what and who is this "I." 

The famous "Tat twam asi" ("Thou art that" or "Aham Brahamasi" I am Brahma) and similar statements from the very ancient texts of the Vedas and Upanishads hold the key to the underlying revelation of Advaita Vedanta. This refers to the teaching that underlies the form-centric expression of truth as manifested in formal sects or religions. It states that the only truth or reality out of which all diversity and creation comes and which sustains and unites all visible and invisible things is the One: the Infinite Spirit.

The One has divided Itself into three: the "Father" (Sat) beyond creation and untouched by the creation; the "Son" (Tat) invisibly immanent in every atom and every thought as the Intelligence and Feeling which animates all; and, the Holy Spirit (Aum), the Divine Mother in the primordial form of the Aum vibration which is the "stuff" of multiplicity, name and form.

This teaching of Oneness can be perceived as the basis for Hinduism (Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism) by fairly easy investigation; for Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths with a bit more investigation. When Jesus was criticized for saying "I and my Father are One" his response was to quote the Old Testament of the Bible, saying "Do not your scriptures say 'Ye are gods?'"

In Judaism is the famous mantra, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE!" Jesus' beloved disciple, John, wrote "To as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God."

Indeed, this was the core mission of Paramhansa Yogananda which he described as the Second Coming of Christ: uniting the original teachings of both Krishna and Jesus Christ. Yogananda focused specifically on the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament to illustrate this teaching but this focus is easily expanded into other scriptural texts and religions.

At the heart of divine revelation is the question (and the answer to) "Who am I?" Jesus asked his disciples this very same question as Krishna answers it in the Gita when he gives to his disciple, Arjuna, an experience of his cosmic Self. This experience shows that the man Krishna is not the true self but is an incarnation of the Infinite Spirit of all creation and who appears in the consciousness and form of Krishna. This appearance, or avatara, does not purport to limit the Infinite (a contradiction in terms) but is intended to show Tat twam asi. ("Thou art THAT")

Your question is not unlike the question "Is my cup half full, or, half-empty?" One inclined toward dogma and a sectarian attitude sees the half-empty cup that limits God or truth to their own faith. One inclined toward inclusion sees the cup as half-full, inclined toward universality.

The time for knowing the "truth that can make us free" (that is, bring healing and acceptance to the world's religions) has come, Yogananda pronounced (as have countless other hearts and minds).

Part of the conundrum in the history of religion as we perceive it is that the teaching that we, too, are "THAT" finds practical expression in the appearance of the "avatar:" one who HAS ACHIEVED the state of Self-realization. This teaching would not be real if there were never any person who embodied this realization! Moreover, to make matters a bit more complex, to achieve such a state cannot be done (by definition) by the imprisoned self. A savior, or true (sat) guru, is needed to unlock the soul from the prison of ego-identity. So naturally, a Krishna or Christ, taking human form, becomes the object of worship and is treated as separate when the core teaching is WE ARE ONE! (Sigh)

Such is the paradox of duality, you see. We are not ONE until we are ONE. I hope this explanation is not too mental or esoteric. 

We need to walk our path with integrity. Jesus repeatedly used the expression (connected to certain statements of deep truth) "for those with ears (or eyes) to hear (or see)." We recognize truth; we don't create it. So you and I, also, must walk step by step towards our spiritual unfoldment: both watching our step (meaning not go beyond our own experience of what seems true to us) and at the same time keeping our gaze focused on the horizon of Eternity beyond name and form. So take from this what feeds your soul and let go of the rest for perhaps another time.

Blessings to you on your journey on the greatest adventure this is!

Nayaswami Hriman

Seattle WA USA

Can God Be Known?

How to Know God!

The word “God” may only be three letters but this little Word carries a lot of weight in emotional and intellectual baggage. Scoffers and materialists naturally tend to say, “There’s no proof? Where is He? Searching for God, are you? I didn’t know He was lost?”

For many years I hesitated to use the “G” word for all of the confusion and objections inherent in its use. “Who could speak of God who doesn’t know Him,” I would ask myself.

Gravity cannot be seen; radio waves cannot be seen; the solar wind cannot be seen. Yet, we “know” they exist by observation and measurement of their effects. 

We can test their existence and assess their attributes.

Why should God be any different? Gravity doesn’t need our approval or recognition to exist. Why should God be pining away for our belief in Him? In order to explore deep space, the intricacies of higher mathematics and algorithms, split the atom, search for the Higgs Boson particle (the “God” particle), search for the cure for cancer, a person needs a highly specialized education, skills and equipment and must make intense efforts to be qualified even to try. 

It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, if making direct contact with the Creator of this vast universe is going to take a bit of effort, education, skill, and dedication! God doesn’t owe us anything, does He? After all, humanity’s interest in Him is rather lacklustre, wouldn’t you agree?

To know God you have to have refined the most delicate and sensitive instrument in existence: your consciousness! Just as only trained personnel can fly a commercial airliner or operate a chemical plant or work on a nuclear reactor, so too those who know God are those who have put in the effort and acquired the skill and are “eligible.” Those who reach the “top” are called saints: scientists of the soul and cosmos.

Nonetheless, you might object and point out that unlike flying a jet airplane or doing brain surgery, God is (or is supposed to be) for everyone! But given “who” and “what” God is, he’s not going to be like the actor George Burns at the grocery store (who played the part of God in several movies). By any imagined or real definition of God you’re talking about a “pretty big guy!” Just as you’re not going to be able to fly to Washington, D.C. and walk into the president’s office to have a chat over a cup of coffee, God is kinda BIG; POWERFUL; AWESOME; INDESCRIBABLE; INFINITE; even if also charming, loving, and compassionate once you get on a “first-name basis.”

As gravity is evidenced by a falling apple, so God is evidenced by the magnitude, complexity, intelligence, beauty and power of the universe. As love can trump hate, and nature rises above destruction, and life renews in spite of death, so God’s presence can be intuited as the invisible and unifying Force of love and life behind all creation.

The joy of having skills, achieving success, experiencing human love, the companionship of pets, the touch of sunlight, breezes, sand and ocean and so much in life…..even life’s tragedies, perhaps especially life’s tragedies..... touch the human heart and bestow a sense of connection to a greater reality.

But, nonetheless, we have to admit that all of these attributes or signs are indirect: hints of cosmic Joy, intimations of the play of an invisible Hand.

But there are those who aver, indeed, insist that God CAN be experienced directly. In the gospel of St. John, he quotes Jesus saying: “But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him.” God is a Spirit and direct contact with God must be made by and in Spirit. What is “spirit?” God is Consciousness: infinite, immanent, and pure and without condition; beyond or underlying restless thoughts, heaving emotions and ceaseless activity. “Be still and know that I AM God.” (Psalm 46:10)

The yoga of meditation has become accessible worldwide because, as Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “The time for knowing God has come.” In his famous life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi,” Yogananda’s guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar explains to Yogananda: “After the mind has been cleared by yoga of sensory obstacles (restlessness), meditation furnishes a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of His existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also, in meditation one finds His instant guidance, His adequate response to every difficulty.” [Chapter 14 – Experience in Cosmic Consciousness]

“Faith is evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is acceptance, surrender and cooperation with the hidden but tangibly felt joy and presence of God moving through and informing one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our bodies and ego are but vessels, containers, and transformers of God’s infinite power being brought to a practical focus here and now in the present moment and context. Like an electrical transformer that steps the voltage down to where it won’t damage appliances in our home, we are literally transformers of grace……..IF we choose to be.

We receive the gift of life in our bodies and minds but it is up to us to look behind the appearance of our own separate existence for the source of life. We have the opportunity to realize that it is a gift. Life isn’t ours; we receive it. From that awareness, we can choose to attune ourselves to that power, to that grace, to that divine life. By consciously inviting God’s grace into our lives to be used according to “Thy will (not my will),” the endless demands of the little ego are gradually dissolved like salt crystals in water. The result is increasing calm inner joy and strength.

Yes, we can know God. But the choice is ours. God says, “I will wait.” God has and IS all things but awaits our interest, our search, and, ultimately, our love. The skills to conduct the search can be learned; the knowledge is available. Meditation is the key to the search, but so also is purity of heart. It is the heart that must open, like a lotus, to the “truth that shall make us free.”

Be happy; be free!

Swami Hrimananda

May Justice Roll Down like Waters : a new era has begun

Visit my new blog inspired by the Autobiography of a Yogi and find there inspiration and courage for the years to come as our world and our nation struggles against the rising tide of conflict and rebellion.

Here's the link:

https://dailyay.blogspot.com/

Swami Hrimananda

Autobiography of a Yogi : A Life Changing & World Changing Classic

Some 70 years ago -- December 1, 1946, a new scripture for a new and atomic age was born: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI. How many millions have read this book? Difficult to say but millions of copies have been sold and this classic story likes to travel! But let others attest to the facts of its sales and readership. 

[For your own free digital audiobook copy, go to www.GoYogananda.com BEFORE December 1st.]

I join those countless souls around the world whose lives have been changed for the better by this now famous and beloved classic of spiritual literature. It is also a scripture, for during this worldwide celebration of its publication you will read countless stories of men and women who, in times of need, simply open its pages at random for inspiration and guidance. I am, in fact, one of them.

Its author, Paramhansa (Swami) Yogananda, born in India in 1893, was only 53 years old when he wrote it. Having arrived in 1920 to the shores of America, he returned to India only once, in no small part to gather the material needed to write this book. Otherwise he came to America to stay. The completion of his autobiography was to mark the beginning of the last few years of his life. (He left this earth in 1952, only six years later.)

The "AY" as many of its devotees lovingly refer to it, seamlessly blends charming and inspiring stories with deep, spiritual teachings drawn from ancient India and offered with the immediacy of a flash of revelation. 

My own personal search for truth took me to India in 1975-76. I traveled the length and breadth of India "In search of Secret India" (the book that inspired me, by Paul Brunton). Alas, like Dorothy and Toto (her little dog) in the famous movie, "The Wizard of Oz," I did not find what I sought there, in India, but, instead, the "AY" was handed to me upon my return home to the U.S. Years later I was forced to conclude that "when the disciple is ready, the guru appears" applied to me as well! Naturally I don't for one moment regret that life changing adventure to India.

How many readers have commented on the perspicacity of that great work. I say, "perspicacity," because I include the frequency with which unfamiliar, even obscure words are employed amongst its pages. Even apart from its spiritual subject matter, the AY is a marvelous work of literature which will remain in the annals of literature for centuries to come. It deserves to be read, whenever possible, in its "native" language: English.

Its first sentence encapsulates its intention in these memorable words, at once both personal and cosmic: 

"The characteristic features of Indian culture have long been a search for ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple-guru relationship."

As Genesis of the Old Testament begins Chapter 1 with cosmology and descends with lighting speed to the personal story of Adam and Eve (meaning your story and mind) in Chapter 2, so also does the AY rotate between the precepts of India's universal and ancient revelations, Sanaatan Dharma (the eternal truth revelation) and their application to the individual lives of Mukunda Lal Ghosh (later Paramhansa Yogananda), his family, friends, and spiritual teachers.

I too laughed one moment and cried tears of joy or sadness the next. I too could NOT put the story down. Even the footnotes wear the robe of wisdom, connecting the dots between modern science and the hoary Vedas.

The reader is carried to India, to the feet of its timeless tradition and through the veils of its otherwise impenetrable mysteries. Having just returned from India myself in 1976, from its villages, cities, temples, plains, seas, and mountains which I visited on the eve of its explosion into the 21st century, I embraced this book and its author as my very own and have never looked back: not once. 

Like millions of its readers I closed its pages wondering "What on earth do I do now? How will I ever be the same again? Will I forget and revert to striving to fulfill the American dream (and thus falling back to sleep, spiritually)? Never!" came the silent reply.

With my introduction to the AV in 1976 came two other life-changing gifts: my future wife, and her introduction of me to Swami Kriyananda and to the Ananda Village community near Nevada City, CA which he founded. I was blessed with an immediate pathway for my inspiration. 

Swami Kriyananda (1926 to 2013) was a direct disciple of Yogananda's. He came to Yogananda less than two years after the publication of the AY. After reading it, he immediately took a bus from New York City to Los Angeles! This pattern of "read and act" has been repeated so often by readers of the AY that it is all but a "standard issue" discipleship tale! 

I recognize, however, that for countless readers of the AY no immediate pathway for action seems evident. In fact, the most common refrain I hear from students coming to Ananda goes something like this: when asked if they'd ever heard or read the AY, the stock reply is, "Oh, yeah, I read it twenty years ago......" I no longer ask the obvious question, "Well, what happened?" because life's compelling needs, desires, and activities take over in most cases. Thus I count my blessings with those who, like me, found an immediate pathway for our inspiration.

Strangely enough, Paramhansa Yogananda's compelling life story hides from most readers his own spiritual greatness. He appears on the stage of his story as mere seeker, blessed with opportunities to meet modern saints and sages of India. The "story behind the story" is that the saints he met recognized him, the boy Mukunda, to be a great saint. 

As the world teacher he became, Yogananda brings reconciliation and understanding to the core issues that have long separated the religious traditions that we have inherited. And yet, in the AY and in his public teachings, his insights are so natural and so self-evident that few grasp the revolutionary insights he has offered to the world. 

Some of those issues include monotheism vs. polytheism; monism vs. dualism; God as personal or impersonal; the dual nature of Jesus Christ and of other world teachers and avatars; is an avatar a special creation, indeed, God "himself," or a fully God-realized soul like you and I? 

Does heaven and hell really exist? Do we go there for an eternity or? Is our soul absolutely and forever separate from God? Or, does the ego get obliterated in cosmic consciousness? Is the creation an illusion and a mere dream and, if so, therefore are we not responsible for our actions? What is free will? 

Does reincarnation exist and, if so, is it arbitrary and whimsical? Did Jesus believe in reincarnation? Has creation always existed or did it have a beginning? He even answered the question of "What comes first, the chicken or the egg (A: the chicken). 

In the AY Yogananda demonstrates by example the true nature of the disciple-guru relationship as one of divine friendship, not one of master and obedient slave. It is one in which both guru and disciple help one another and fulfill the divinely guided destiny of one another. 

He also explains the inner workings of so-called miraculous powers and their relationship to the findings of modern science. Death is shown for what it is: a change, merely, and an opportunity for most to simply rest before continuing the adventure of Self-awakening. 

Yogananda affirmed the life, teachings, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He shows that other avatars have demonstrated similar power of life and death. 

The AY is truly and clearly a scripture for a new age and a new consciousness. It will remain so for centuries to come, though the impact of its revelations has only begun, its influence will continue to grow exponentially. The AY is the herald of the world-changing meditation technique of Kriya Yoga. Kriya Yoga is spreading throughout the planet and will steadily become available for sincere seekers of every race and nation, and every faith tradition as well. 

Jai Guru!

In joy and with deep gratitude at Thy feet,

Swami Hrimananda

Love: Fifty Shades of Red

It has been well said that "love makes the world go round." More accurate to say, attraction, and its corollary, repulsion, makes the world go round: and literally, at that. Right now, outside my window, two squirrels are playing on the tree, playmates, I suppose.

Today is the day Americans call Valentine's Day: a celebration of romantic love. Our language, and I think many other languages, also, use this word love but it has many shades of red and ultimately describes the attraction one feels towards something or someone else. The shades of red are virtually limitless in human relations. Some might say "pure" love is but platonic (not physical) and exists, assuming it is mutual, only in the heart and mind of the lovers. That sounds wonderful from a spiritual perspective but I can think of adolescent love being platonic but very, very unreal and but a fantasy. So, even here, at the more extreme edge of this amazing thing called human love, we find shades of red. Love is not love that doesn't draw fire: meaning that doesn't draw two people closer together in meaningful relationship, whether constructive or otherwise.

In the metaphysical terms that are part and parcel of my daily life as a meditator and a nondualist (a Vedantan), love is dual. We can speak of Bliss as the nature of God and the essence of pure consciousness but we cannot speak of love in terms of Oneness: only You-ness!

And yet the power of love, when reciprocated, draws the two in the direction of becoming One! Thus, love seeks fulfillment in the bliss of the union of two into one! Our wedding rings are a circle because the circle suggests infinity and oneness.

It is only in our relationship with the One, that is to say, God, that this impulse finds fulfillment. Lord Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, when asked whether we should relate to God as absolute and nondual or whether we should love God in the I-Thou form, replied that for embodied souls (that's you and me), the I-Thou relationship is more helpful and practical. "Arduous," Krishna warns, is the way to the absolute. Our very separateness from God who is all Love and all that is ("I AM that I AM") means that our starting point necessitates a movement and distance. And yet, it is also true that in God we are One and Eternal and have always been so. As Jesus said of himself, "Before Abraham was, I AM."

On the human level, however, there's an intrinsic limit: an unscalable wall. Drawn as we are to another person, we can never become one with another human because it's our very differences, our separateness, that generates the attraction even as it necessarily and simultaneously prevents our union. Our desire to be united has the darker potential of smothering one another! We humans, you see, are trapped in this thing called love. It is one of life's greatest paradoxes.

Human love, to exist and be maintained and appreciated, must operate in a precarious and fragile magnetic zone. Think of the earth and the sun. Each are held in their respective orbits by the opposite forces of gravity and the centrifugal force of their respective orbits.

As an experiment, try holding two strong magnets apart (the one positive, the other negative) at just the exact distance needed to feel the attraction but prevent their crashing together. Human love will always be one or more steps short of satisfaction because we must keep the beloved at arms length in order to see and appreciate her! Just as the atomic structure of our bodies prevents them from merging, so to the electromagnetic forces of our psyche do the same. Strange, isn't it?

Those, who like Icarus, fly too close to the sun of human love, will crash and burn. When couples seek, through lust or friendship, to come and remain too close, strange distortions occur, like the gravitational force of a black hole that bends light rays into itself, absorbing the light. Dominance, submission, loss of respect, boredom, moodiness, or the familiarity that breeds only contempt: these are the fruit of being too much attached to one another. (The same is true for friends, parents, or children.)

Two people simply cannot literally become one. The very power to become attracted to another has its roots in the power which creates and maintains our separateness. Thus on a level of magnetism, when we attempt to merge, there are sparks: heat and light, and a mixture of both, much like the effect of a "short circuit."

Sometimes it is difficult even to know the difference between pleasure and pain. (Like scratching a mosquito bite.) No two people can be everything needed to another. No two people could live solely in isolation with each other, locked in perpetual love. It simply cannot and does not happen, though this doesn't prevent endless numbers of couples from trying.

It is not only for the protection of children and perpetuation of the human species that societies put boundaries around this thing called love. It is a force which is powerful but which must be subject to restraints, lest it turn destructive. The just released movie, "Fifty Shades of Grey" demonstrates by its popularity that eroticism has a primal power to attract. But like an rogue wave in the wide expanse of the ocean of human consciousness, its power must dissipate. As it does, it drowns those who try to stay on top of it hoping that the excitement and stimulation will not cease. And, when it does, we are not thereby returned to our self so easily. We are stained, lessened by our intense but false effort to lose ourselves in the outward experience. Even the story line, itself, is but a fiction. Such activities can only end in boredom and self-loathing, if not violence or exploitation.

A person desperate for human love tends to magnetically repulse potential worthy suitors because human love, being so constrained by its own terms, can only thrive to the extent each person is strong in himself (herself). One who desires to be worshiped is one who desires to dominate. One who desires to worship another is one destined to be dominated. Both will lose self-respect and will ultimately suffer. The best marriage is between two persons who, while they share an affinity and appreciate and respect one another, are centered in themselves. Better yet: centered in love for God.

Human love, therefore, can help us to become strong if we honor its paradoxical constraints: holding our heart's magnetic attraction close, but not too close, to its desired object. To do so takes creative commitment and mindfulness. A few of the qualities of true human love include mutual respect and mutual service; self-giving; forgiving; caring; wisdom; calmness; and, appreciation.No wonder there are so few truly blessed partnerships!

In the Ananda communities (nine, worldwide), couples have the opportunity to place their human love in relation to divine love and divine service to others. By emphasizing our souls and not just gender differences and personalities, we find our natural love becomes expansive. We can grow beyond the self-limiting boundaries of "us four and no more." We have friends of like-mind who share our ideals and way of life.

This new model reflects the emerging trend of spirituality in this new age. Ego transcendence becomes a tool that re-directs our attention toward the bliss of soul-consciousness. It reduces the competition between the sexes which is born of the emphasis upon our differences. We focus, instead, on cooperation, simplicity and moderation so that our higher nature can emerge and be made manifest. Thus can be found a satisfaction and harmony in relationship that is not commonly found.

Yogananda's param-guru, Lahiri Mahasaya, by living in the world as a householder with children and a career, established the model of an ideal life in the world but not 'of' the world. He demonstrated how we might find freedom in God through meditation (kriya yoga) while fulfilling our natural, human responsibilities without attachment or ego-identification.

Our hearts, born of and reflecting the infinite love of God, can never be fully satisfied by the oscillating magnetism of even faithful and true human love. Worse than this is the fact that such friendships are relatively rare. So how much less satisfying therefore are the more fickle, insecure, and co-dependent relationships that pass for human love on the broad expanse of human lives?

This does not mean our relationships have no spiritual value, however. Just as Krishna prescribes the I-Thou relationship to God, so too the divine purpose of human love is to help us refine our love to become steady, true, and harmonious. Those who do not bother or care to love others in a self-giving way, cannot attract the love of God, Paramhansa Yogananda warned. Human love is a stepping stone to perfect, divine love.

The fastest way to purify and clarify our heart's natural love is to follow the two great commandments of the Bible (Old and New Testaments): love God with heart, mind, soul and strength and love others as your very Self. Put in another way, don't think that you have to get it just right in human love before you can even think about loving God. That doesn't work because the attractions of human love are infinite. And, while we have infinity to find God, who would wisely want an infinity of disappointment, disillusionment and suffering? Only a fool!

If we must, therefore, celebrate Valentine's Day, let us celebrate it as a reminder that human love offers to us of the perfect love of God. Let us see in our partner, whether real, merely desired or viewed at a distance, the living presence of God as Divine Mother or the Heavenly Father. God comes to us in the human forms of one another. The human qualities which we find so compellingly attractive, such as strength, wisdom, beauty, and kindness, and which we see or imagine in others, are there to remind us that all goodness comes from God-ness. ("Go-od-ness" is dual; God-ness is One.) As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, (to paraphrase), all admirable traits are rays of God's Light reflected in the consciousness of human beings.

So every time a handsome or beautiful face strikes your fancy, or you are tempted to admire another person for their wisdom, talent, or gentleness, train your mind to think of God as the Doer behind all appearances. Mentally bow to God in that form. Never think that any trait of attractiveness is unique to that one person.

Furthermore, any such trait to which you are attracted should be a trait that you begin to develop within yourself. Perhaps you need to be more beauty-oriented in your life: not for vanity's sake, but perhaps you can more consciously combine pleasing colors in your wardrobe, in your home and your surroundings. Beauty derives from harmony. Think, harmony in thought, feelings, actions and surroundings.

Perhaps you need to develop your strength: physical or mental; or, wisdom by study and association with the wise; or, kindness in thought and (random) acts; or, gentleness in your words and empathy. It is in ourselves, which is to say, in our souls, that these traits, though appearing to our view outwardly, are calling us to develop in ourselves.

The purpose of the attraction between men and women, finally, has for its purpose the soul's call to become One within ourselves: to bring wisdom and love, reason and feeling, into harmony, united in self-giving, in devotion, and in seeking God alone.

"May Thy love shine forever, on the sanctuary of my devotion" (a prayer by Paramhansa Yogananda, author of "Autobiography of a Yogi" and the preceptor of the kriya yoga work of Ananda worldwide.)

Blessings,

Swami Hrimananda! ("Joy through devotion")

That Night When Christ was Born!

What a wonderful story the birth of Jesus is! Did you know, however, that the custom of erecting a nativity scene in honor of Jesus' birth did not begin for a thousand years and was started by St. Francis near Assisi, Italy?

Now, two thousand years later, how relevant is it to assert or deny the virgin birth? Or, the appearance of the heavenly hosts? Or, the presentation of the Three Wise Men from the East?

Joseph Campbell, the famous "mythologist," has helped modern Americans reconnect with the reality that a story can be meaningful and true with or without being a fact. The Bible stories, the Hindu Ramayana and Mahabharata, creation myths and on on show us that "truth is greater and more true than mere facts."

The power of the nativity lies in its hidden message. Like art, including music, it affirms a reality that our intellect is too dull (or distracted) to comprehend (or notice) but which our heart and soul knows, embraces and celebrates.

Orthodox Christians, viewing the nativity story from the point of view of theology and belief, limit their understanding to a literal interpretation of what they believe are the facts of Jesus' birth. I don't have a problem with that but it doesn't address the real issue: the power of this story to uplift generations for centuries in the embrace of its power, love, and light.

Really, after all: millions go to Christmas Eve Services and many don't normally go to church or have an orthodox religious life at all. Is their attendance merely a well worn habit? For some, yes. But for all? No, I don't think so. Millions, some not even Christians, surely feel a special grace or blessing of kinship with all during the Christmas season. There is a famous story from World War I when the close-by but opposing armies in the trenches came out to celebrate with one another one dark and cold Christmas Eve. Stories of spontaneous generosity are so omnipresent during Christmas that it makes no special point to remember any of them!

It is true that babies always attract a fair amount of ooohing and aaahing but Gee Whiz, two thousand years ago? We wax wistful and brotherly (sisterly) at the sight or thought of this child -- his birth, his life, his death, and resurrection. We know this child has for us a message that is true. It is a message of hope, of reassurance, of safety, of security, of love without condition and without end.

The hidden message is, at least in part, said plainly in Sanskrit, from India, from the Chandogya Upanishad: Tat Twam Asi. This "grand pronouncement" of the eternal teaching (Sanaatan Dharma) means, simply, "Thou art That." 

We recognize ourselves in that child for we, too, are eternal and "Before Abraham, I AM." (John 8:15) Further, Psalm 82:6 reminds us that "I have said, ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high."

None of this denies the divinity of Jesus, the Christ (the annointed). The Star of Bethlehem, "His star," presages and symbolizes that this one is a true "son of God" and "one with the Father." So, too, the meaning of the virgin birth. But the difference between Jesus' spiritual realization and our own is matter of degree not kind. We have yet to awaken fully to our sonship in God. And that awakening was the purpose of his birth, and the incarnation of every such son of God whether it be Buddha, Krishna, or any number of world teachers, avatars, who come fully awakened in God. They come for but one purpose: to bring prodigal souls, souls thirsty and hungry for truth and God-realization, back to their home in God consciousness.

This is the hidden message of the nativity. It follows, though more by deduction, than intuition, that the birth of the hidden Christ within us requires action on our part. We must imitate His birth in the meaning of the symbols of his birth: the manger which was but a stable represents humility. Humility is the first condition of our spiritual awakening. Humility does not mean self-deprecation but realization of the wonder of creation, the smallness of our ego, and our need for and desire to love God, that Being of Love who is Infinite and the essence of all Life. To have this realization is the perspective of Infinity and it must needs be a form of humility for the ego.

The quietness of the animals in the stable means that our animal appetites must lie down and render service to this inner Christ. We have need of food, for example, but only in the context of nourishment not food greed, and to keep the body fit as a temple of our God!

The shepherds who watch over the flocks are our thoughts which herd (direct) our actions. These shepherds must come and worship this Christ and in so doing become protectors of our thoughts and actions directed toward selflessness, toward nobility, and toward devotion.

The Three Wise Men who come to worship the Christ child reveal to us that to our aid will come, if we seek and let them, wise teachers, both living and now gone, whose teachings can assist us to develop wisdom, devotion, and self-control.

King Herod, or King Ego, stands ready to massacre this child, and indeed, this child as it is born in others around us. We must flee to Egypt until he dies. Egypt here means we must seek the company of other truth seekers and avoid the soul-killing company of worldly people and circumstances. Until the ego has died (at least sufficiently to no longer challenge Christ the (inner) King), we must remain in the protection of the like-minded. Indeed, spiritually speaking, only highly advanced souls can afford to live apart from society or, in any case, without the ongoing support of other spiritually mind people.

As any newborn child, this inner Christ will need protection and nurturing until he can be "about my Father's business!" We must have daily prayer and meditation, and develop right attitudes of servicefulness, devotion, and right living: compassionate and kindly.

This is the good news of Jesus' birth. What it does mean to be good news because we are "saved?" The appearance of divinity in human form and in one who has achieved oneness with the Father through many incarnations is good news because it means we can do it too. It's also good news because (the bad news is) we can't do it by ourselves alone. It is the ego that awakens to the possibility of soul freedom but it is already trapped. A true savior, or guru-preceptor, has the spiritual power to "lift up the serpent in the wilderness" and thus to lift the serpent of delusion up in the wilderness of spiritual purification, prayer, meditation and self-offering, and, to transform the base metal of ego consciousness into the gold (brass) of the soul.

The good news of the birth of such a one is therefore two-fold: one, "we can do it, too," and two, " And, He is here to help us." Some are more attracted and in tune with other such avatars, like Buddha, Krishna, and in our times Paramhansa Yogananda, or others like Paramhansa Ramakrishna, and even great saints who, while not entirely free, serve to help others spiritually. The realization of others is not our concern. We must walk the path to freedom according to our heart's direction: to Jesus, or to others. Thousands were disciples of St. Francis but he was, in turn, a disciple of Jesus and one of the greatest (and the first to receive the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on his own body).

Let us both celebrate and get to work on achieving soul freedom. "The time for knowing God has come" Paramhansa Yogananda declared. Meditation, including Kriya Yoga, is for everyone and is the greatest single aid to soul freedom through self-effort.

A blessed and bliss-ed Christmas and New Year to all,

Swami Hrimananda aka Hriman

Kriya Yoga and World Evolution & Revolution!

Since the dawn of the scientific and industrial era on this planet, orthodox religion has been in retreat, defeated at every encounter, by reason and its applied powers of experimentation, proof, and practicality. No matter that our reason can also be ruthless and used for exploitation, violence, and destruction. The potential for reason to show the futility of negative or harmful behavior is touted as sufficient -- no other-worldly God, needed, thank you very much!

Humanity is in a race against time and the inadequacies of reason. The godless scientific attitudes of survival of the fittest, the clash of the classes, materialism, win-at-all-costs politics and power, ruthless competition, and the sacred cows of entitlement and self-interest are rushing us like lemmings to our mutual destruction over the cliff of “what’s in it for me?”

Sorry to have to tell you, atheists and scoffing humanists: reason alone is inadequate to the task of seeing the golden rule applied universally among nations and peoples. Put more bluntly: it ain’t gonna happen. What our reasoning minds have yet to admit or even see is that greed, violence, poverty, and abuse (inter alia evils) are powers or levels of consciousness that, while appearing in individual humans and their actions, are greater than any single individual. We are influenced by our family, our culture, and, more importantly (since individual actions often cannot be traced to these environmental or even genetic influences), by subtle influences which can only generally described as “radio stations” of varying types of consciousness enabling prenatal tendencies (from past lives). Why, e.g., might a child raised in a “good home,” turn to a criminal lifestyle? Why do substance addictions or pornography or human trafficking persist (or even grow) in the face of so-called “modern education?”

I will admit together with those who are also “spiritual but not religious” that orthodox religion deserves its fate of declining adherents. But like all institutions of influence it is struggling mightily to keep its place. I read of one church that serves beer as a focal point of interest to attract its congregation!

The body, mind and spirit-numbing and harmful effects of industrialization and now globalization (though not without their benefits) have prompted sensitive souls throughout the world to cry out for inspiration and true spiritual upliftment. As a young Catholic boy studying the life of Jesus and the saints, I recall bemoaning what seemed to be the absence of saints and sanctity in a world that has placed even rainbows in the catalog of ordinary things explained analytically.

Scriptures and saints of east and west have always attested to the role of God, through human  instruments, to intervene in human and planetary history. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna promises to appear “whenever virtue declines and vice predominates.” The Christian Bible, both Old and New Testaments, are nothing less than a story of the “Word made flesh and dwelt amongst us.”

In response to this call of aspiring hearts, there took place in a cave in the Himalayan foothills in 1861, a meeting between renowned but secretive yoga master -- the peerless and now famous “Babaji” -- and a humble accountant from Benares who was initiated into a powerful and central meditation technique to which was given the generic name, “Kriya Yoga.” Babaji told this married-with-children householder, Shyama Charan Lahiri, that this technique would spread throughout all lands and would aid in establishing world peace based upon direct perception of one’s indwelling divinity and kinship with God and God-in-all.

The spread of kriya yoga is now a historical fact. Its use grows exponentially throughout the world. First brought to America and the West by the renowned yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the popular “Autobiography of a Yogi,” kriya yoga is spreading through not only Yogananda and his disciples but through many branches of teachers related in various ways to Babaji and Lahiri Mahasaya. (Not all techniques labelled “kriya” are the same, however. Best to do one’s homework in this regard. The internet, travel and communication have their downside, too,of course.)

Kriya Yoga expresses the spiritual science which is the corollary to the material sciences. As the natural sciences reveal a vast outer universe, so the yoga science reveals the far vaster inner world of consciousness: the source of all created things. As materialistic scientific “progress” brings comforts and knowledge, so meditation brings inner peace and wisdom. As control of nature can yield material wealth, so control of the mind yields happiness free of outer circumstances. As our planet searches desperately for clean, cheap, and abundant energy sources, so Kriya Yoga puts the yogi in touch with cosmic energy: the source of life, creativity, health and divinity.

As Yogananda put it, it is time in the history of humanity for the best of East and West to be united in the common and divine purpose of uplifting humanity in material and spiritual realms. Harmony of earth and heaven and spirit and nature is needed for the survival and sustainability of humanity and all life on earth.

As 19th and 20th century material “progress” shouted down the “old time religions” with promises of unending prosperity, health, security and pleasure, and as science proclaimed the insignificance of human life in the face of the scientific facts and the inviolate rule of the law of survival as the mechanism of life itself, tens of millions suffered or perished in the struggles between socialism, communism, and capitalism. But as science purported to show our insignificance in the face of a vast cosmos and of epochs of geologic time, so meditation reveals the vastness of human consciousness which is “center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” (Autobiography of a Yogi) Our significance is not as an ego with a human body that is tiny and lasts only a brief time, but as a spark of Infinite consciousness out of which this vast universe has come.

Yogananda predicted many challenges for humanity before his death in 1952. Though he didn’t specifically use terms like global warming, he saw the materialistic and exploitative trends of modern society, big business, war-enriched industries, and global power. He foresaw an economic depression on scale far exceeding the 1930’s during which the dollar would become all but worthless. He saw many wars to come and the appearance of what he called international criminals (and we call terrorists). After much worldwide suffering, he said humanity would experience two hundred years of peace--so sick of warfare would we become.

The pace of consumption of natural resources on this planet is unsustainable. The lifestyles of countries whose relative wealth and comfort was leveraged by cheap and plentiful energy resources (both natural and human) at the expense of other nations is doomed. Wealth creation by fiat money without regard to any measure of value or useful productivity cannot last. Many governments, national and local, around the world are de facto bankrupt. So-called democracies are being strangled by their dependency on constituents who demand their entitlements in return for their vote without regard for the fiscal consequences, the greater good or their own civic and personal responsibilities. Increasingly it would appear that multi-national corporations, including makers of weapons of vast destruction, hold the reins of apparent power.

There is, however, a rising tsunami of shifting consciousness that is forming to fight these crushing global forces. We lovers of peace are not yet strong and haven’t learned the necessity of personal sacrifice as modelled to us by Gandhi and M.L. King, but our time is coming to enable the worldwide revolution that is needed and is coming. We are not interested in simply replacing ourselves in positions of power (political, economic, or religious). We are forming networks of sustainable communities (of all types) that emphasize the importance of individual creativity and initiative, and our essential unity as children of God. We are the hope for a better world. But we, too, must pass through the “valley of the shadow of death,” meaning personal commitment and self-sacrifice. Meditation, however, including kriya yoga, is at the heart of our revolution. This not another “ ism “ but a shift in consciousness based not on mere belief but actual, individual experience and Self-realization.  Yogananda predicted that in the centuries ahead the concept of “Self-realization” (the necessity of personal, direct, intuitive perception of divinity) would be accepted by religionists of every stripe. This is seen already in what is now accepted as a growing tide of “spiritual but not religious.”

There are practical ways to prepare for challenging circumstances but that is another subject altogether. The greatest protection, however, lies within you, and meditation is the key. Learn to meditate; check out kriya yoga; find others who share your ideals and practices; move out of cities if you can, especially with others; grow your own food; live simply; be prepared for difficult times; don’t depend on the government!

Meditation is for everyone, regardless of belief or religious affiliation. With meditation one readily comprehends his unity with all life and with Giver of life. No special distinctive creed or ritual is needed. Chapter 26 of Yogananda’s autobiography describes kriya well (read online for free at www.CrystalClarity.com). It is the science of how higher consciousness is developed, experienced, and nurtured in the holy temple of the human body and consciousness. It is the science of “finding happiness.” (A movie of this title has just been released: the story of Ananda and finding happiness within. (http://findinghappinessmovie.com/)

Joy is our “gun!” Stand tall and smile wide! Rejoice, for “We are Won!”

Swami Hrimananda