Who is Paramhansa Yogananda?

Who is Paramhansa Yogananda?

Happy birthday, Sri Yogananda: January 5, 1893!

Tomorrow, January 5, 2013, students, members, friends, and disciples will commemorate the life and teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda (1893-1952). Best known for his life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," Yogananda came to America in 1920 and except for a tour of Europe, the near East, and a visit back to his homeland of India, remained in America (and became a U.S. citizen) until his passing in 1952. He is also known for having introduced Kriya Yoga (a meditation technique) to the West.

Throughout the world, there will be meditations and public programs to celebrate this great yogi and world teacher. At Ananda Meditation Temple in Bothell, we will conduct a meditation followed by a public program, and, the next day, Sunday, January 6, a family service (with skits taken from his life) and catered (Indian) banquet at the nearby Ananda Community in Lynnwood. For more information on these events, call the Temple at 425 806 3700 or check the website at www.AnandaWA.org.

While Yogananda's autobiography is a must-read, there's also Swami Kriyananda's recent book: Paramhansa Yogananda: a Biography. But my interest here today is not biographical. My thoughts are those of a disciple and student of Yogananda's life and teachings. Nor am I making any effort to compare his life with that of other teachers or gurus. Certain qualities of his personality and aspects of his teachings are what I wish to make note of today.

Paramhansa Yogananda came to America as a young man, age 27. His popularity as a speaker and celebrity rose steadily and a time came when his lectures in large and famous halls (like Carnegie Hall) were filled to overflowing. He was dynamic, spontaneous, accessible, youthful, exuberant, witty, child-like, and even a bit of a showman. He expressed both playfulness and deep devotion. He was everyone's friend, yet candid and bold at times.

Though he was to become a respected and renowned spiritual teacher, he was not pompous, aloof, overly-intellectual or grave. As a guru, he was one’s friend and intimate. He promoted all things Indian even as he lavishly praised all things American. ("All" is of course a slight, however appropriate, exaggeration!) He wore his wisdom as a comfortable old coat, easily removed, and lightly donned.

But no intimacy or lightness could disguise the depth of his message, and its radical and revolutionary nature. Declaring his line of gurus and India's rishis of old to be equal in spiritual stature to Jesus Christ should have got him lynched or deported during those times in American history. But his demeanor and vibration conveyed truth and spiritual power and he could hold and inspire a crowd as easily as a soul.

He effortlessly combined devotion with deep philosophy, and practical wisdom with creative action. In consequence, he inspired such responses from others. He reconciled centuries old theological debates in a few sentences. For example, instead of contrasting and condemning the material world in favor of God in His heaven, Paramhansa Yogananda described this world as a "dream" of the Creator, a dream made to seem real by the principle of power of illusion, the ceaseless motion between opposites (duality).

In the long running debate in Christianity as to whether Jesus was a man or God, Yogananda Jesus as a soul who, through many lives and achieved in a past life, the expansion of the limited ego consciousness (identified with the body) into divine consciousness (beyond all form). Jesus becomes not a divine creation but a soul, like you and I. His soul had awakened from the dream that this creation and the ego are real into the full realization of the underlying divine consciousness as the sole reality in and beyond creation. There is no difference, then, between Jesus Christ and us, only a difference of the degree of awakening.

Is God "wholly other" or is God immanent in His creation? In “becoming” the creation, God, being infinite, is both transcendent and immanent in creation. As the wave is but a part of the great ocean, so our soul is a wave upon the ocean of God's infinite consciousness. We, too, possess the divinely rooted impulse to create and to share. Looking outward into form and into matter, however, the soul begins to lose contact with its infinite Self and becomes identified with its limited self. The guru, or savior, having become fully awakened, comes to awaken the sleeping memory of our divine nature and to guide that awakening towards its goal in Self-realization.

In the debate between monotheism and polytheism, Yogananda explained that God is One because God IS the creation. There is no other reality than God: thus the ONE became MANY but the many is but an illusion.

Buddha refused to speak of God not because he was an atheist but because his mission was to help people understand what they, themselves, must do to achieve liberation from suffering.

Yogananda, as the rishis before him, used the human experience of sleep to describe the process of meditation and the state of superconsciousness. Sleep is something anyone can understand (and appreciate!). In sleep, the sense organs are turned off. In deepest sleep, the mind is quiescent but blissful. We always know how we slept upon waking. Sleep is necessary for life itself to go on. Meditation is the process of conscious sleep and superconsciousness is a state of feeling beyond thought but in a higher octave of intensity of awareness that is deeply rejuvenating. Meditation nourishes our creativity, sharpens our intuition, enriches our capacity for deep feeling, while it graces us with well-being and a sense of connection to others and to all life.

Paramhansa Yogananda taught the core precepts and techniques known to adepts and yogis in India since ancient times which he called “raja yoga.” The essence of the yoga techniques of breath awareness and life force control is distilled into the science of kriya yoga. Kriya is both a technique and a body of techniques and teachings designed to still the turbulence of the mind. This turbulence brought upon by the ceaseless play of the senses, thoughts and feelings creates a veil of delusion that prevents us from “seeing” God as our own, true Self. This science of breath and mind is one of God’s greatest gifts that Yogananda was commissioned to bring to the West and to the world. Kriya Yoga is for every true and sincere seeker, regardless of outward religious affiliation.

Yogananda wrote commentaries on the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, and the Rubaiyat to show that all great spiritual teaching points to the promise of soul immortality through union with God, the sole reality, both transcendent and immanent.

All true religions can lead us to God because each reflects various aspects of human nature. We use our thought, feeling, will, and action as “organs” which express our intention and consciousness. Thus the different practices of religion reflect these aspects of human nature: devotion, ritual, prayer, self-improvement, and good works. But the goal of religion is union with God, or Self-realization of our divine nature.

This occurs most directly through consciousness itself. To know God we must lift our consciousness towards perfect stillness, towards His Infinite consciousness. The inner path of meditation works with and upon our consciousness, utilizing our God-given and nature-made subtle life force pathways to Oneness. Combining the inner path with the outer practices to purifies our consciousness and makes us fit to “receive Him.”

Yogananda predicted that "Self-realization" would become the religion of the future. By this statement he was not referring to any particular theology or practice but to the understanding among devotees worldwide, regardless of religious affiliation, that our personal connection with God and its practical expression in daily life are the essence of the religious impulse and purpose.

He saw in individual creativity, initiative and responsibility the solution to the challenges of globalism. He sowed into the “ether” the seeds for the establishment of independent, intentional, self-sustaining communities around the world by people of high ideals living simply, modestly and cooperatively. Imagine! This lifestyle alone can potentially solve all of the key issues that we face today: global warming, pollution of soil, air, and water, destruction of habitat and species, alarming rates of population growth ("simplicity" encourages family planning, quality over quantity), domestic violence (by sustainable, appropriate and committed relationships), ruthless competition (replaced by intelligent cooperation) and inequity of race, class, or cultures (with all types living in harmony). He did not envision that everyone would live in such communities. Rather, he saw that such would serve as examples of “how-to-live” for everyone.

Already in his time, he promoted vegetarianism (ovo-lacto) and encouraged others to reduce intake of red meat or pork, substituting fish, chicken, lamb, and emphasizing fresh fruits and vegetables. This counsel is already accepted and promoted by health “gurus” and government officials.

He taught the principles of success in business, harmony in relationships, health of the body and mind, raising whole and happy children, and the importance of spiritual seeking as the centerpiece for finding true happiness.

The core of his teaching can be summed up in the words of Jesus: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God.....and all these things shall be added unto you." He identified that all beings seek happiness and that the path to happiness lies in seeking God through expansion of consciousness and sympathies through right understanding, meditation, and selfless action. Pleasure and human happiness based on outward conditions cannot bring to us lasting peace and joy. God is joy. Seeking God brings to us ever-increasing, ever-new joy, for God is infinite, omniscient, omnipresent Bliss. This is our nature and it is fulfilled in God alone!

Could this teaching be anything but “hope for a better world?” Could this teacher by anything less than a world teacher for this age?

Blessings to you, and "Happy Birthday, Master!"

Nayaswami Hriman

Cosmic Drama: the Final Chapter: My Redeemer Liveth!

The Cosmic Drama - Part Five (of Five)

"My Redeemer Liveth"

This is part one of a series of articles. It has its origins in a prior blog article entitled, "Who is Jesus Christ?" You may wish to read that first, though not absolutely necessary. This series attempts to describe the Trinity, or, how God can be omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and immanent in creation at the same time. And, what significance this has for the reality we face as individuals. As the prior article on Jesus Christ noted, "Who Jesus is says a great deal about who we are." So, too, who God is addresses who we are.

Returning full circle now to the life of Jesus Christ, we see how “TAT” (the second of the Trinity: the “Son”) appears on earth in human form to awaken the “TAT” within those who are ready! Such awakened ones also sow seeds of awakening in many souls, perhaps for a future lifetime. Those many such “descents” (avatars) have a public mission of uplifting consciousness in a race, nation or civilization and a personal mission to individual disciples more spiritually advanced.

Because the “Son” (the memory of our divinity) has fallen asleep through many lives, it takes another Son to awaken that memory. A further “proof” of divinity in human form is the simple fact that without the possibility of becoming “One with the Father” in human form, there would be no evidence of our divinity (in human form). Giving a coin to a street person may be a nice thing to do but it doesn’t make you a saint and it doesn’t show the power of God over all creation, which, as his “sons,” is our potential! It is natural, therefore, that there have been demonstrations down through the ages of the power to even raise the dead. While this is not flaunted to the masses, it has been witnessed by individual disciples who were willing to give their lives for and to dedicate their lives to their testimony.

The fully-awakened “son of God” is not a God-made puppet, but a soul, like you and I, who has achieved that final Self-realization and returns in human form to enlighten his (her) fellows. While this is said to have taken place in a past life, the point remains that the incarnation of divinity in human form is the natural fulfillment (indeed the divine purpose) of the Christ Intelligence (TAT) in nature and in all creation taken to its penultimate manifestation. Indeed it is said that the drama of creation is that souls make the free choice to reunite with our Creator and become fully-realized “sons of God” as Jesus, and other world saviors in history, have done.

As Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad Gita (India’s revered scripture), this descent of divinity into human form (the “avatara”) takes place in every age and nation as divinely ordained by the call of human hearts. “God so loved the world that He sent his only-begotten Son.” The redemptive power of Jesus’ life and spirit lies in both the message and uplifting spiritual power of Self-realization which has its source and its manifestation in attunement with the will of the Father. The New Testament reveals that Jesus knew of his impending crucifixion and even briefly prayed that it pass, but that he accepted the will of his father. Thus must we all do in placing the ego (and body) on the cross that our soul might be resurrected in the Christ Consciousness of our soul’s eternal and immortal reality.

This is the means by which we, too, can ascend. “No man hath ascended to heaven, but he that hath descended.” The meaning of this odd sentence is simply that we are all children of God and have come from God. To God we must return, like the prodigal son, that we might be free. Jesus was not boasting.

But the deeper understanding of this precept is that the indwelling and universal Christ consciousness (son of God) is that which leads us upward or home to God. But first the child must be born in the manger of our humble heart, in the darkness of material delusion. Jesus, and all other great saviors of humankind, come into each culture and age to wake us up and remind us of our immortality and identity as souls (not mere bodies and personalities). “We are of old!”

But what is awakened is within us. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is with you.” Thus Jesus was the personification (human incarnation) of the Christ which resides, latently at least, in every atom of creation. Christ-in-human-form comes to awaken the Christ within. Whether incarnate in human form or at the still heart of every atom, this, and this alone, is the “only begotten son of God” in creation.

We, too, are potential Christs. When we have “ears to hear” and “eyes to see” this reality, then it is the Holy Spirit (“I will send to you the Holy Spirit, who will bring to your remembrance all these things.”) that leads us back to perfection, back to our home in God-consciousness. God is not in some faraway place but is a state of consciousness, bereft of name and form, and “behind” every atom of creation. This is why meditation is so important and effective as a means of perceiving the God presence within and in all creation.

When the infant child of divine memory is awakened, it is the Mother that nurtures the child to adulthood. The living Christ, or guru, comes only for a short time and fulfills his role by re-lighting the spark of that divine memory in in our consciousness. The Holy Spirit, or Virgin Mother, is that pure vibration (or feeling) of God to which we then attune ourselves that we might grow in Self-realization.

This vibration is the conscious and divine motor or engine of creation. The Bible refers many times to the “sound of many waters,” “thundering’s,” and “lightning.” We chant “Amen” (or “Aum”) with our prayers as a deeper-than-conscious recognition that the “word” of God is neither in English, nor Sanskrit, nor Latin, nor Hebrew, but is an actual sound heard deep in the inner silence. It “knoweth all things” because all things have been created by it (see the first sentences of the gospel of John). We mimic this holy sound with prayers, hymns and chants and various incantations and rituals. The sacredness one might feel at Mass, at prayer, upon a holy mountain, in nature and gazing upon a field is the living, vibratory presence of God AS creation: the Holy “ghost” unseen but felt.

It could be said that the “first coming” of Christ (the TAT, or “son” of God) is when God gives birth to the cosmos. The “second coming” would be the appearance of TAT (the Christ consciousness) in human form (as the guru). The “third coming” would be its awakening in the individual soul. The “fourth” would be the individual soul’s final redemption, or Self-realization: Oneness with the Father.

When Paramhansa Yogananda titled his life’s work, “The Second Coming of Christ,” he was using the phrase from the New Testament. It is a play on words in the sense that he, too, is an avatar, but that what he brought, through meditation (especially kriya yoga), was the “keys to the kingdom” that allows awakened souls to commune with the Holy Spirit (as Aum). Patanjali, author of the famous Yoga Sutras, and other great rishis, have declared that communing with God as Vibration, as Aum, is man’s highest duty for the entire purpose of creation is, as the Baltimore Catholic catechism declares, to “know, love, and serve God.” And, by deeper understanding of this phrase, to “become One with Father.”

Let us celebrate the coming of Christ as the awakening of this realization (of God’s presence) in our own hearts. And let us then share that presence by sharing the gifts of creation, and the greatest gift of all – God’s love – with all whom we meet.

Blessings to you this Christ-mas, and may the New Year bring us ever closer to Self-realization!

Nayaswami Hriman

The above is based upon and inspired by the teachings of the modern Yogi-Christ, Paramhansa Yogananda and the writings of Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple and founder of the worldwide work of the Ananda communities. For additional reading, see “Revelations of Christ,” by Swami Kriyananda, available from Crystal Clarity Publishers, Nevada City, or the East West Bookshop nearest you.

The Cosmic Drama Continues: part 4 of 5: In Walks the Devil!

The Cosmic Drama

Part Four (of Five) - In Walks the Devil!

This is part one of a series of articles. It has its origins in a prior blog article entitled, "Who is Jesus Christ?" You may wish to read that first, though not absolutely necessary. This series attempts to describe the Trinity, or, how God can be omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and immanent in creation at the same time. And, what significance this has for the reality we face as individuals. As the prior article on Jesus Christ noted, "Who Jesus is says a great deal about who we are." So, too, who God is addresses who we are.

When God “sent out” His power through vibration (“Aum”) and seeded it with His reflected Intelligence, the creation (especially the powers and intelligences behind matter) are endowed with procreative power, desire, intelligence, and individuality. Just as the son, who may resemble his father in many ways, is given free will to make his own choices in life, so too, the creation and the souls in creation have been given, and have, made choices. As vibration acquires form, individuality and intelligence it acquires a relative degree of independence. Not absolute, but relative. This power, force and intelligence assumes unto itself a self-perpetuating momentum, not unlike the famous computer HAL in the movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey. The outflowing power of God becomes, by degrees, not only independent but, as it begins to assert its self-identity, either rebelliously or ignorantly, it become satanic. The term “satanic” implies a conscious intention to remain apart and independent. It implies a purposeful rebellion against harmony and attunement with the Creator. It is not sharp line in the sand, but a gradual continuum from divine attunement to forgetfulness to restlessness to ignorance to harm and to conscious evil.

Endowed with intelligence and empowered to go out and multiply and then acquiring the form and feeling of separateness (from God), this outgoing power takes onto itself the responsibility and desire to create, multiply, dominant and remain its own “god.” (Think of the myth of Lucifer or Adam and Eve wanting to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) Thus does the outflowing force begin gradually to make its own way. The further from God its consciousness inclines, the more the good intention becomes gradually an evil one, usurping God’s power and worshipping itself as godlike. (Thus was Jesus tempted by Satan to have dominion over all the earth if he would but worship Satan as the creation itself.) Thus humans set up false gods, worshipping money, the pleasures of the senses, power over others, addictive substances, and so on. Satan, in the form of the creation, invites us to worship him as the summum bonum of existence. In the end he takes our souls, metaphorically speaking (only), in the sense that we lose (temporarily) our soul joy and innocence in God’s bliss. Death, old-age, disease, disappointment—at last, he reneges on his promise leaving us with neither God’s peace nor our moth-eaten treasures on earth.

There is another aspect to this loss of innocence. As Spirit is cloaked in form, individuality, and separateness, it finds itself competing for survival in a world of the senses. Forced to feed, clothe and shelter itself, it finds that the compelling necessities of its outer form cause it to look outward through the senses. The outer world gradually becomes its reality and lost is the divine memory of its own omniscience and immortality. It will take untold incarnations for this lost soul to (ascend first to the human level, and then untold more incarnations to) rebel against the “anguishing monotony” of continued rounds of rebirth, struggle, pleasure, pain, illness and death after having exhausted every avenue of sensory and ego-affirming, but ultimately disappointing, fulfillment.

Thus, the macro-characters in the cosmic drama are God (as the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) and the satanic force which opposes harmony with and union with God. Paramhansa Yogananda put it this way: the satanic force has sowed the creation with patterns of imperfection (pain, disease, & physical death) so that our memory of divine perfection will impel beings to want to return to the creation to make it perfect. But alas, the cosmic drama requires the villain that we might love the hero. The villain must be punished and the hero is applauded. As we act more like the hero we come closer to God. In this way, even the satanic force of maya (delusion and ignorance) act to sow the seeds of our longing for perfection. This perfection, this bliss, this union is found only within our souls—in God alone. We have an eternity of free choices to discover and seek this re-union, just as the prodigal son in Jesus’ story, hungry and famished, decides to begin the journey home to his Father. There he is welcomed and embraced (not punished).

Whether we view the betrayal of God’s divine purpose as the result of the “first man and woman” (Adam and Eve) or as a choice we all make, especially beginning with puberty, is perhaps a matter of taste. The reality is that, from the human point of view, evil exists, ignorance exists, wrong choices and bad things happen and we need to make things better. Blaming God has its place, but only to a point. Doing so doesn’t change the bad things. We have to take action and we have to take at least some responsibility for ourselves and our neighbor. Without this, life would be not worth living. Besides, in truth and at the present moment, most people wouldn’t have it any other way and are not the slightest bit interested in knowing, loving, serving and uniting in love with God.

The "devil made me do it",

Nayaswami Hriman