Dear Ones:

The statue of Madonna at Medjugorie

As many of you know, I went to Medjugorie recently. This little village is in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is where the Madonna appeared to six children in 1981, and has been appearing to most of them ever since. I have always wanted to go to places where the Divine Mother aspect of God is especially manifested.

I went with Nandini, who had been there before and “knew the ropes,” and with Miriam, who for some years has been my nurse. I can’t imagine better companions for such a trip.

In going, was not interested in the intellectual or dogmatic aspects of the scene there. I know that Catholics think of Mary as having been only the mother of Jesus Christ.

At Medjugorie, however, the Madonna has repeatedly told the visionaries that all humanity are her children, and that She is above all sectarian differences, even between religion and religion. I ask, Before the birth of either Mary or Jesus, was there no Mother? Of course there was! And at Medjugorie She makes it very clear that that is who She really is.

I wore my Nayaswami robe throughout my stay there, and felt completely comfortable with it. Everywhere I went, people respected it without questions. It also helped me to get inside places from which others were excluded.

Nayaswami Kriyananda and Vicka

Vicka (pronounced Vitska) is perhaps the main visionary, though I’m not quite sure of the distinctions. She hasn’t been seeing people for many months — perhaps for three years — owing to great pains she is suffering in her spine.

Much of her time seems to be spent in Zagreb (where, incidentally, my father was being transferred from Bucharest when World War II broke out). We were fortunate to see her at her home on one day when she came back there. I think we were the only ones who got to see her in, maybe, months. And, as far as I know, millions go to Medjugorie every year.

We were fortunate to arrive during a very quiet time, for most of the pilgrims would be arriving for December 8th, the Festival of the Madonna, and, later, for Christmas.

Left to right: Mario, Miriam, Vicka, Nayaswami Kriyananda, Nandini

I have to say that this visit to Vicka was the highlight of our visit. She spent quite a bit of time with us, was extremely loving. Her husband, Mario, asked me privately for a blessing, and both of them were an inspiration to be with.

I asked Vicka if she would ask the Divine Mother for me whether there was anything more I could do for Her in this life. I told her I’ve been serving Her for over sixty-one years, and have done nearly everything I can think of in this service. She promised to ask that question.

So far, I’ve had no outward answer from her, but I returned from Medjugorie with what I feel is Divine Mother’s answer: “Love me ever more deeply, in your heart.”

And sometimes, even more so since my visit there, I feel so much bliss in my heart that I find it difficult to bear!

Meditating at the Blue Cross

Marjana (pronounced Maryana) had a “visitation” in her home on the second. I was allowed inside, despite the crowd, and sat hardly two yards from her. I had my eyes closed throughout, however, feeling great bliss. It wouldn’t really have mattered where they put me.

The next day (I think) she had a public meeting outside her home. Again, I was allowed in the courtyard, though almost everyone else had to stand outside. When she came out, she came straight over to me and shook my hand.

I found her extremely clear minded and intelligent — really, a joy to listen to. There was quite a bit of emphasis on everyone going to confession, to mass, fasting, and reciting the rosary every day.

Catholic stuff, beautiful in its own way, but things we translate into other terms. Confession, to us, means opening our hearts with complete honesty to God, and to one who we really feel can help us.

Mass, to us, means inner communion. The rosary was beautiful in its way, but all that outwardness I found a little distracting. When people recited, “Pray for us sinners,” I substituted the words, “Pray for us, who love You.” Why keep on affirming our sinfulness?!

When Marjana spoke of listening to the priests, she used the word pastors, which seemed to me deliberate, and more suitable.

I was extremely well impressed with her.

We also went to the home of a lady called Nancy, who has built what she calls an outward replica of St. Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle.” This lady also spoke beautifully, with deep inspiration, but sounded the note much too heavily (for my tastes) of submission to the priests. I couldn’t help remembering the words of St. Odo of Cluny, “The floors of hell are paved with the bald pates of clergymen”!

Nayaswami Kriyananda and the men from Cenacolo

We went to an institution, called the Cenacolo, which rescues drug addicts and the like. A very noble enterprise. And we also went to a place where music is composed and sung, some of it beautiful and inspiring.

I was taken up Apparition Hill in a chair by a group of young men from the Cenacolo. A wonderful experience. The way was so very rocky that even Miriam had a hard time coming down it.

The weather was mostly very rainy, windy, and cold. But even so, the trip was very inspiring.

Have I covered everything? Probably not, but I hope I’be given you at least a flavor of what was, really, a high point in my life.

Love,

Nayaswami Kriyananda

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” (Isa. 55:8)

To find God, it will help us to try to see, feel, and think of everything differently from what we are accustomed to doing. That is why, among devotees in India, much is made of the importance of bhav, right spiritual attitude. We must try constantly to rise above seeing everything in reference to our egos, and stop thinking, “My home, my wife or husband, my children, my clothes, my job, my friends, my position in the world, my reputation, my talents, my strengths, my defects, my advantages, my disadvantages.” You can see that the list might be endless. Everything that most people see, even impersonally, they tend to relate back to themselves. Even when they step out under the heavens at night and contemplate that infinite vastness, with its myriad stars and its inconceivable reaches of space, their usual reaction is to think, “How small I feel myself, by comparison!”

An artist sees a beautiful sunset and thinks, “I wonder if I could paint as beautifully?” Someone else contemplates a great deed performed by some other human being, and his first thought is, “Could I ever do that? Well, if not, here’s what I can do, probably better than he.” And so the drama plays itself out, in each scene the hero or heroine being one’s own little self and the parts (s)he plays on the stage. Every actor is the central character, even if only the butler who announces a visitor.

One time, years ago, I made a recording of some chants: traditional Indian and others also by my Guru. A young Indian tabla drummer played the accompaniment. It was very evident, later, in listening to the recording that in his mind he himself was the whole show. Someone asked him afterward, “How did the recording go?”

“Fine!” he replied. “I played such-and-such a tala (rhythm).”

If we want to find God, we must strive from the very beginning of our journey to look at everything very differently from that to which most people are accustomed. New vision will of course come to us automatically as we progress on the path, but it would help us if we tried from the start to adopt those attitudes which will come to us ever-more clearly, as the veils of maya drop, one by one, from before our gaze.

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How does the enlightened soul view everything? From the passage I quoted above in Isaiah, we see that there is much we shall have to learn, and much also unlearn.

For one thing—indeed, for much more than that: for everything—we shall no longer think of things egoically. That is, we shall no longer refer everything, or even anything, back to ourselves, unless the reference is part of a completely impersonal view of reality. To give an example: a good singer-saint may know that he has sung well, but he will never think, “I have sung well.” He will think, “God sang His beauty through me.” That is to say, he will be well aware, and perhaps even more so than most people, of the beauty itself. But he will never think he himself produced that beauty. He will see God alone in everything, as the Doer.

For another thing, he will begin to look at everything from the inside, out: to view everything and everyone in terms of the divine consciousness which resides at the center of all things.

I haven’t read these things in a book, and perhaps I should make the fact clear, lest someone wiser than I tell me someday, “You’ve perceived (this or that point) incorrectly. What you’ve said is partly true, but here is another aspect of the matter which you’ve overlooked.” That may happen; I don’t know. All I can say is that this is, so far, the understanding I’ve reached, and I think it worthwhile to share with others.

For when I think of that divine center in all things and in all people, I find that I see everything and everyone quite differently. When I relate to other people from my own center to theirs, instead of from my ego to theirs, I find that I feel toward them in a different way altogether. I understand them better. I also evoke a new reaction in them. Even strangers look upon me more as though I were their own. Somehow, they know me as their friend, someone in whom they can confide their troubles, someone they can depend on to give them support and to help them in their difficulties. I understand them from inside rather than from their mere outward appearance. Perhaps that is why, as Asha noted in her book, though I am usually intensely conscious of color, I never notice the color of people’s eyes.

When I look at things in that way, from my center to theirs, I feel in some way related to them.

Best of all, perhaps, when I ponder the vast drama that is life, I see more clearly, in such a way as to fill me with love and bliss, that it is God Himself who directs the whole show. Through all the ups and downs of life—the joys and the sorrows, the victories and the defeats, the fulfillments and the disappointments—I feel as if life were a great symphony. Marvelous chords emerge. The dissonances resolve in exquisite harmonies. The melodies, from sobbing grief to upward soaring in joy: all of them give expression to the overall wonder of the great story of adventure and love. And I know that, for everyone, it will all end in thrills of ecstatic bliss and undying gratitude for everything that ever happened.

The countless stories, both short and long, of friendship, romance, tenderness, misunderstanding, enmity, revenge, and reconciliation: all—all these work out innumerable tangles, to emerge in a beatifically divine simplicity and delight.

It all seems almost impossibly complex. And yet in fact it is all so completely, so fundamentally simple as to make one, after years of struggling on the path, shake his head in wonder and ask himself, “How could I have failed to understand?” It all becomes so utterly obvious! Of course what we all want is eternally the same, one thing: not money; not power; not the Lethe of alcoholic forgetfulness; not sex; not self-importance; not respect and deference from others. What we all want is Bliss. It was bliss alone we sought in all lesser fulfillments. The reason everything has disappointed us and has proved itself at the end of each episode to have been no fulfillment at all, is due simply to the fact that those denouements were all dancing at our periphery: none of them sprang from our own center; none of them resonated with who we really were and are, inside.

When disappointment or pain come to me, now, from any source whatsoever, I remind myself that my center lies elsewhere—that indeed, since my true center is omnipresent, my reality comprises vastness itself, of which the center is the calmness in my own heart. Thus, I have undergone the sort of pains that make most people shudder—in the dentist’s chair, or in the intensive care unit of a hospital after major surgery—and all I feel is bliss. What happened to my body never happened to me: it was a mere incident in an infinite, timeless reality, like a fleeting ripple on the great sea of life. And though I cannot claim to be conscious yet of my actual oneness with that Divine Sea, yet the mere affirmation of it as my deepest reality has enabled me again and again to be calm in the midst of any turmoil that surrounds me.

I see all life now as a dream. For such is its fundamental “reality.” The entire cosmos is God’s dream. Nothing is real except in His consciousness. Living in that thought, even without the final realization of its truth, helps me to perceive with conviction that this is all I am, and all that life itself is.

I see someone fulfilling some ambition and think, “That is how it will be, when I find God! It will be a surcease, a release and relaxation from all striving—but it will be eternal, and will not last for that mere moment which human fulfillment brings, and which is always followed by boredom, disappointment, failure, or (sometimes) by great sorrow. In God, fulfillment itself is final, complete, and eternal!”

If I see two human lovers joyfully united at last, perhaps after numerous trials, I think, “Yes, that is what it will be like in God: divine unity in the very perfection, for eternity, of all love!”

I remember watching Walt Disney’s cartoon movie, “Cinderella.” Indeed, I have watched it many times, and always my reaction has been the same: soaring devotion to God in the thought of all the trials, sorrows, betrayals, and disappointments of life, and how they must end—not in that ephemeral embrace of human love, but in the perfection of union with God—He who embraces our souls and unites us to Him for eternity!

If I see people exulting in some worldly gain, whether success, or fame, or anything else, I think joyfully, “Oh, how wonderful it is to contemplate that zenith of all longings, knowing that, in having Him, we’ll have everything!”

And if I see people suffering, or weeping with the pain of bereavement or of some other personal disaster, or with some unexpected personal suffering, I think, “How wonderful it will be for them at last, when they realize that all this was a dream!” And I long to help them to see it as such indeed—to show them not merely how to escape their present suffering, which in this world of dwaita (duality) is only temporary—but how to escape every possibility of ever suffering again.

For the more one learns to see things in an impersonal and divine way—and this has to be God’s view, whose consciousness is omnipresent and omniscient, and for Whom time and space don’t even exist because past, present, and future, and also here, there, and everywhere are all one reality—the more one realizes that the greatest service one can render anyone is the knowledge of his own Divine, Inner Self. That alone, through eternity, has been, is, and ever shall be our sole reality.

Trying to see things with divine vision means to view everything, even if only in imagination, as an ever-changing play of light, shadows, and color on the cosmic screen of duality.

It means to contemplate the vastness of the universe and to tell oneself, “At my own deepest center, I am in touch with all that. I am that! Whatever happens in the most distant galaxy happens in some way also to me!”

It means to see the inconveniences of life—the bothersome insects, the excesses of heat and cold, the physical discomforts, the disintegration of everything we love and appreciate in this world—and to think, “I am grateful! These things help me to keep in mind constantly that my home is in Him alone.”

It means to see life’s countless joys and sorrows, and to think, “How wonderful is this drama, that after all the suspense, uncertainty, and tragedy man endures, it all ends in a way so supremely and utterly satisfying! There is no other story even imaginably comparable to the one God has written for each of us!”

Life’s bubble-existence makes us experience either a constant renewal of disappointment, suffering, and pain, or else ever-new joy in the discovery that it has always been Him alone we ever wanted and loved. He alone can—and will, eventually—grant us all that we ever wished for in life.

And so we should view birth, life, death, tearful comings together and partings, laughter and sighs of sadness, and through all of them let our hearts soar upward in song, knowing that all of it has been for a supremely good reason: it all has a wonderful purpose! Life itself should be, therefore, a song of constant gratitude and bliss.

Copyright © 2008 Hansa Trust All rights reserved

In these pages I aim to show how a spiritual mission, regardless of its name and tenets, can be made to relate to the whole world.

Paramhansa Yogananda prophesied that some day the purpose of all religions would be accepted as being one and the same: Self-realization. Included in that understanding would be a sense of the non-sectarian fellowship of all truth seekers. His own mission as he stated it was, above all, to teach “the original teachings of Jesus Christ, and the original yoga teachings of Krishna.” He stated that he had come, further, to unite all religions in an understanding of their higher purpose. His mission to show the underlying oneness of two great religions, particularly, may therefore be seen as symbolic also, being meant to demonstrate the underlying oneness of all religions, for humanity everywhere is seeking the same eventual fulfillment: bliss in God. Self-realization—the realization of God as the indwelling Self of all beings—is then, in the broadest sense, the true goal of all religions and the deepest desire in every human heart.

The great master, in his teachings, also drew to a focus countless truths that have been expressed diversely through the ages. He showed that the highest wisdom has always been the same essential truths, the first of which is that all men are rays of the one Divine Light, and the second, that man’s ultimate destiny is to merge back of his own free will into that Light.

For this reason, in my book Revelations of Christ, Proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda, I proposed that this highest truth be called “Sanaatan Dharma, the Eternal Religion,” for in all the universe this has to be the supreme truth: union with God as the final reality of all beings.

Yogananda presented a way of life that was unitive—one that would make spiritually relevant every aspect of human life: business and the art of self-support generally; marriage; education; the fine arts; self-expansion through service to others; and the supreme art of how to live happily in this world.

Finally, he proposed a life-style designed to enable people everywhere to incorporate their varied pursuits into a harmonious, God-centered existence. Through the years that he taught in the West, he urged his audiences to adopt this life-style by gathering together in what he called “world-brotherhood colonies.” I was blessed to be able to found the first Ananda World-Brotherhood community in 1968 on what are today some 1,000 acres near Nevada City, California. At present there are eight functioning examples of this ideal in various parts of the world.

The sheer breadth of the Master’s vision, and its practical relevance to the needs of our age, demonstrate that he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a World Teacher, and not the guru only of a particular group of disciples. In fact, he’d been sent to be the way-shower for a new age, and savior for the “many millions,” as he put it, who would tune into the divine ray he had brought. For mankind has arrived at the dawn of new awakening into a globally heightened spiritual awareness.

Swami Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Paramhansa Yogananda, stated in his book The Holy Science that the whole of mankind is now, scripturally speaking, in a new age. The earth itself entered this age in the year 1900 after an interim, or bridge (sandhya), of 200 years, during which time the new rays gradually grew in strength. The ancient teachings of India gave this age the name, Dwapara Yuga.

The first of four yugas, Kali (the dark) Yuga, was an age when most people perceived everything narrowly, both in material and in fixed terms. Men needed outer as well as inner forms. Outwardly, the more solid those forms the better; and inwardly they felt comfortable with carefully formulated dogmas and fixed ideas. Organizationally, they were comfortable with firm structures; they liked everything to be established and in its own place. They believed the universe to be geocentric, and God, to them, was a bearded old man seated “somewhere up there” on an eternal throne of judgment. The earth being conceived of as flat made it easier, of course, to visualize heaven as literally high up above them.

Dwapara Yuga is bringing greater fluidity to people’s consciousness. This is an age, above all, of energy-awareness. Many people, aware of some new awareness stirring within and around them, welcome it exuberantly as though it gave unbridled license to indulge to excess in everything they liked. In the fine arts (painting, sculpture, and music), traditional forms have been cast aside in favor of the grotesque, the trivial, and the blasphemous. In children’s education, certain experiments have brought more confusion than enlightenment. The same may be said of people’s understanding of morality, and in their social behavior.

Thus the term, “New Age,” is also viewed with anxiety by those who believe in the old traditions. In fact, what we are witnessing is a struggle between the old ways—ways that once seemed “carved in stone”—and a new, more flexible spirit that is struggling for clear self-expression.

This struggle between the old ways and the new, though still rather amorphous, is in evidence everywhere. We see it in religion also, in the struggle between those who adhere to the traditions of the past and those who reject all tradition as antiquated. To the religious traditionalist, the mere hint of a new age “sets his teeth agrinding.”

For Moslems, the cornerstone of whose religion is the saying, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet,” no other way is acceptable.

For Christians, time itself is measured from the year of Christ’s birth. Fundamentalists, especially, are convinced that the world is fast approaching the “end times” that were predicted by the Bible with the Second Coming of Christ. Among Moslems also, there are some who believe that something approximating those “end times” is approaching.

Naturally, a world view in which mankind, after centuries of relative darkness, is postulated as poised and ready to soar up into new realities is fiercely rejected by anyone who believes that the past two thousand years virtually defined the term, “Christian enlightenment.”

Much of the present antagonism on the part of orthodoxy toward the “new age” is due, I think, to the arrogance of some who have embraced it mainly for its novelty. For “new age,” as a concept, appeals especially to the young whose tendency in any case is to reject the old. Many scientists, too, have arrogated to themselves the role of “heralds of a new wisdom,” basing the claim not on any suggestion of being better human beings, themselves, nor on any but the thinnest hope that their discoveries will someday make anyone such a human being, but on the simple fact that a few scientists (the very few real pioneers) have discovered unexpected facts about the universe.

Writers since Einstein have had a hey-day with the theory that morality, far from being absolute (“all things being relative”), may even, with a little manipulation, be discarded altogether.

“Avant garde” artists of all kinds, again, having milked the “new age” concept for every ounce of its shock value, offer nothing to replace the rubble created by their iconoclasm, which still litters the countryside.

And self-styled trend-setters, finally, have no clear notion as to where, why, or how to direct people’s attention. They offer only trivia—or, worse still—blasphemy in place of the worthwhile and the meaningful. Indeed, I personally have reached the conclusion that anyone who follows the dictates of “style” shows himself to be without taste.

The public, quite naturally, finds itself bewildered. Nor is it surprising that many today gaze back for comfort to past traditions which, to them, are at least recognizable. The relativity of time which Einstein claimed, has not, after all, thrown any clocks out of kilter. Scientific discoveries have altered no fundamental human reality. Works of art may titillate or outrage a few people, but the meaninglessness they suggest neither inspires nor offers any hope of new insights. Indeed, the most that the dogma, “art for art’s sake,” will ever accomplish will be to inspire a certain smugness on the part of those who accept it, as they consider themselves favored with insights that are unavailable to the “canaille.”

What is most notable about the times we live in is that, in every field of endeavor, human perceptions are expanding and new windows opening onto the vastness and subtlety of the universe. The need is growing everywhere in human hearts to make sense of these insights. We cannot simply reject them. Nor can we merely embrace them, in the exuberant manner of adolescents, for their shock value. We must assess them and do our best to understand what their implications are for human life.

We must accept first, of course, the simple fact that these new waves of insight are, in fact, unprecedented. We must also transcend any fear we may harbor that eternal values are being threatened. Indeed, Truth cannot be a house divided. Self-proclaimed “wisdom,” moreover, that is rooted in neither Truth nor tradition, is almost always mere superstition.

In this essay I propose to explain at some length what Sri Yukteswar said and meant about the new age, and his reasons for claiming that we have entered it already. I will present facts that support his statement, and that he himself could not have presented back in 1894, when he wrote his book, for science had not yet made the discoveries that would justify his claims.

The first part of this paper will present the general basis for Sri Yukteswar’s predictions, and will explain at some length what is implied by the term, “new age.” The last part will focus more specifically on Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission in this age.

One of the results of the new energy that is now flooding our planet is that people are being challenged to assume more personal responsibility for their lives. In a sense, certainly, religious organizations may continue to obstruct the spread of true, inward religion. I shall also show, however, how religious organizations also can be beneficial and expansive, in the spirit of Dwapara Yuga, and how Paramhansa Yogananda himself set the tone for this new type of organization.

Copyright © 2008 Hansa Trust. All rights reserved.

The full text of the essay will appear in a book by Crystal Clarity Publishers later this year. Click here to pre-order.