On December
1 this year (2016), the beloved and world renowned classic, “Autobiography of a
Yogi,” by Paramhansa Yogananda, will celebrate the 70th anniversary
of its first publication. Crystal Clarity Publishers is offering a free online
digital copy on that day, Thursday, December 1. To sign up for your free copy go to https://www.ananda.org/free- ay-reminder.
No one
really knows how many millions have read this modern scripture but we know it
has changed the lives of many thousands. I am one of those people! There’s an
expression I hear every week that goes like this: “Truth is one and eternal.” "Eternal" also means timely, as well as timeless. Timeless truths are as fresh and
applicable today as thousands of years ago .... or thousands of years to come.
2016 is
probably the strangest election campaign for president that America has
experienced in, well, who knows how many decades, perhaps well over a century.
Crass, insulting, a blatant disregard of truth and facts….the list of bottom-feeding
characteristics goes on and on. A sad state of affairs that, to those of us who
seek to find the cup of life half-full, gives rise to the hope that the sorry
experience will be a wake-up call to the majority of Americans who are of
goodwill, compassion, high ideals and wisdom.
Paramhansa
Yogananda, author of the “A.Y.” (as the “Autobiography” is often and lovingly
referred to), came to America to live in 1920. As a person of color, he
experienced prejudice and discrimination. But ever ebullient,
upbeat, energetic, and accepting of all, he won friends wherever he went. He
predicted that the time was coming when America and India would “lead the
world.” By this he meant that America and India would come to symbolize and
epitomize the twin ideals of material efficiency and nonsectarian spirituality. He said
that meditation would someday become the unifying practice and ideal of all religions,
regardless of dogma, ritual and tradition.
Yogananda
came to see that just as science has taught us to experiment and to achieve
useful results, so too those of high ideals and spiritual goals would seek to
experiment and find practical ways to achieve states of spiritual consciousness
rather than just theorize about them, embrace mere belief, or
practice only rituals or good deeds. Direct, intuitive experience of God or one
the divine states such as peace, love, or joy would someday, he predicted, become
the goal of religionists in the future.
The 2016
presidential campaign starkly symbolizes the contrast between “materialism” (as
a false "religion") and “consciousness” (as the essence of reality). Materialism
pretends to be practical in its “earthiness.” It upholds for its devotees the "supreme" value of
possessions, prestige, wealth, pleasure and superiority. It disdains those it
deems inferior whether in intelligence, status, race or gender. Donald Trump, a proponent of this false religion, is
more in tune with the likes of Vladimir Putin
than with Pope Francis or Mother Teresa, what to say, Paramhansa Yogananda!
Trump symbolizes a corollary version of ISIS: dogmatic, racist, disdainful of higher values, rude, and generally ignorant of more refined values.
"Consciousness" values intention, the golden rule, and divine states of transcendence. It is expressed by kindness, cooperation, and moderation; by sensitivity to the realities of others, as well as fearlessness in the
defense of the defenseless and righteousness in the struggle for justice.
We see in
the teachings of India, as demonstrated in India’s classic and epic tale, the
“Mahabharata,” and in that chapter of the Mahabharata that constitutes India’s
most beloved scripture, the Bhagavad
Gita, the very same struggle, indeed a war, between higher values and
materialistic (ego-affirming) ones. The message of Lord Krishna in that great
scripture is a call to “arms.” We must, he teaches, fight the “battle of life.”
We must raise our consciousness above the petty demands of the ego with its countless cousins in the form of myriad personal desires.
The history
of America, too, contrasts grasping for natural
and human resources in pursuit of power and wealth versus the high ideals of
freedom and justice upon which our nation was founded.
This election will
soon be a faded and jaded memory but the struggle between light and dark
continues. The “A.Y.” however will stand tall and long in the history of the
centuries to come as a beacon of light from the east. Praising the practicality
of the West while teaching the scientific methods of God realization from the
East, Paramhansa Yogananda symbolizes the best of east and west in what
humanity must aspire to become if we are to survive our long history of
tribalism, genocide, warfare, and prejudice.
In his life
story, Yogananda visits both saints of east and west, and, scientists of east
and west. He renders unto each of them the honor and respect for their
accomplishments and for the example each offers of how to live nobly and
productively in the modern world.
The “A.Y.”
offers to humanity hope for a better world even as it paints its charming stories
in colors drawn from the waning years of what is now, for us, a bygone era.
Yogananda and those whose lives he upholds for us are as ambassadors from a
gentler and nobler race. These men and women of science and of Spirit model for
us a lifestyle and values, which, while timeless, are urgently timely for the
survival, prosperity, and happiness of humanity in the ages to come.
To
participate in the celebration of the “A.Y.’s” 70th anniversary
visit https://www.ananda.org/free- ay-reminder
Joy to you,
Swami
Hrimananda