We visited Kashi (Varanasi) recently; an ancient city, hallowed
by saints and sages, and uplifted by millions of pilgrims seeking moksha,
liberation from endless rounds of birth, life and death. Quite nearby, just
outside of town, Buddha gave his first sermon after his enlightenment. In our
line of gurus, there lived or came to Kashi Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Sri
Yukteswar, and Paramhansa Yogananda. Legend has it that Jesus Christ, too,
travelled to India, including Kashi. Few of India’s great sages for the last
many thousands of years failed to at least visit Kashi at one time or another.
The list of saints and sages who have walked its lanes, bathed at its ghats along
the Ganges, and soared in superconsciousness is impossibly long.
We found there in our visit, therefore, a deep sense of
continuity and timelessness. Indeed, my reflections this Easter Day, are that from
the ancient city of Kashi has been resurrected in our times, through the
instrument of Lahiri Mahasaya (at the behest of the peerless Babaji), a wisdom
that is timeless, timely, universal and nonsectarian. This wisdom, and the
practices which offers to each of us its revelation, has been resurrected in
answer to the prayers of millions of sincere souls. Humanity, torn by greed,
racism, nationalism and sectarianism, yearns for an antidote, a way out to save
ourselves, our planet and our souls.
The city of Kashi (Varanasi) is so ancient that we could
have just as easily walked the narrow and crowded lanes of Jerusalem at the
time of Jesus Christ. Here we found hawkers selling religious articles,
blessings, rituals, indeed, everything but animals for sacrifice! The hubbub is
like a page right out of the New Testament.
This Easter, which has jumped up so suddenly upon us (having
been in India nearly a month), I am easily transported to the days and life of Christ.
At that time, two thousand years ago, the Pax Romana held sway, feeling, for
those under its iron feet, like a heavy coat on a hot and sultry day.
Palestine was, like Kashi is still, a hot, dusty place. For
the Romans, it was a difficult land to govern, inhabited by a querulous people
with odd customs and a cultish religion. A small time preacher appeared in the
rule of Caesar Augustus and made a temporary sensation in that land but fell
out of favor with religious leaders who prevailed upon their Roman procurator
to have this preacher condemned to death by crucifixion. So far as we know
there are no records of his mock trial.
Yet, in only three hundred years, followers of this uneducated
rabbi conquered the very empire that had once sought to cruelly exterminate them.
Into their harsh world of “might makes right,” where human life had little value
and the general populace were like slaves and serfs, came the call of God’s
love, incarnated into human form, sharing their suffering and brutal life,
teaching that each of them is a child of God bound for eternal life! What a
revolution! The old pagan gods of Rome and Greek were already dead: made
lifeless by their aloofness and capriciousness. There was little hope in that
so-called Pax Romana. Only slavery and nonstop political intrigue and war.
But this descent of divine love, in the person of Jesus,
carried forward into the Roman world by self-sacrificing disciples was later to
merge with that particular form of Roman genius — the rule of law — to produce what
was in later centuries was to become the inalienable rights of man and the
freedom each person to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Imagine! All from a guy who trod the dusty
roads of Palestine and taught on the steps of the Temple of Jerusalem, who was
derided and criticized, and finally condemned to an ignoble death.
This respect for the individual has its source in the simple
truth that we are a soul, not a body, and, as a soul, we are a reflection, a
child, of God. This truth has the been the teaching of the disciples of Christ
and, rightly employed by men and women of truth and devotion, it has lit the
flame of freedom around the globe.
Oppressed and exploited people in every land have found consolation and hope in a rising tide of consciousness which, today, is considered more political than spiritual but which has power only because of its source in God.
Oppressed and exploited people in every land have found consolation and hope in a rising tide of consciousness which, today, is considered more political than spiritual but which has power only because of its source in God.
A byproduct of this dawning sense of individuality was made
manifest during the European Renaissance period. This further expanded into the
age of exploration and then later into the explosion of scientific inquiry,
with its fruits later becoming the industrial age, then the age of commerce, the
age of energy, and now the age of information.
We have extracted from Mother Nature much of her power and
energy, sufficient, unfortunately, to destroy her very gifts, and, ultimately,
our lives and that of many creatures and living things.
The time has come and is now for a new dispensation of
divine grace and wisdom. A new ray of divine inspiration has come to earth through
Paramhansa Yogananda and those who sent him to the West that our powers be harnessed
for the good of all, and for the good of our own spiritual freedom.
Paramhansa Yogananda was sent to the West as we entered the
twentieth century (a century of unprecedented human slaughter). In this century
in earnest saw the dawn of globalization. The era of colonialism was fast
outliving its purpose and was, in any case, only a transitional era which set
the stage for bringing humanity together.
Now, as we see more and more nations acquiring knowledge,
technology, and harnessing their natural resources, brother nations will either
face mutual destruction or opt for cooperation and integration.
Interest in and practice of meditation is exploding
throughout the world as high-minded souls instinctively go within to find
meaning and peace. In the crush of our fast paced planet, where no one creed,
philosophy, or lifestyle holds sway over disparate population groups and
nations , we know intuitively that truth is within us.
The practice of meditation, and especially the liberating
technique of kriya yoga, is encircling the globe in an aureole of
in-lighten-ment to offer individuals a direct perception of their divinity.
Like Jesus, Paramhansa Yogananda has begun a quiet and not
yet noticeable revolution: Self-realization. Now, to divinity incarnate we can
add divinity within. In this way we see all nations, all peoples, races,
gender, cultures, creatures and all life as our very own: united by the
indwelling presence of God which alone is the only reality behind all seeming.
This teaching has been resurrected for a new age and just in
time it is sweeping the globe. Those who draw upon its ray, whether conscious
of Yogananda and this line, whether directly practicing the technique of Kriya
Yoga which he brought, will find upliftment and some measure of freedom and
inner harmony.
Cooperation, simplicity, sustainability, and moderation,
united to devotion to God through personal meditation, will be the salvation of
humanity and the planet. There is much
work to be done and there will be reverses and setbacks and, indeed, great
suffering, as the forces of existing power and greed retaliate against the
movement that empowers and enlightens individuals throughout the world.
Never miss your daily appointment “with God” in meditation.
Some day all of our appointments will have to be cancelled. We don’t know the
troubles which lie ahead of us as the world turns ever faster and all sense of
security and prosperity hangs upon a slender thread of karma. “The time for
knowing God has come!” Yogananda proclaimed.
From the ancient city of Kashi, a new dispensation, a new
ray of light has appeared.
Blessings,
Nayaswami Hriman
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