Ananda recently held its second International Kriya Yoga Retreat in Gurgaon, India. You can watch and listen to all the talks here. I would like to expand on something I mentioned in one of my classes there.

There is a great deal of talk in modern times about investing wisely for a hoped-for future retirement. Most people invest their most valuable resources—money, time, and energy—into feeding, clothing, and sheltering the body, stimulating the senses, and feeling comfortable. What people don’t understand is that they are investing everything in a “rapidly depreciating asset”—since the human body is guaranteed to decrease in value until it is “pushing up daisies” in the end.

On the other hand, when we put our time and energy into feeding the soul, spiritually changing ourselves, and dedicating to a practice such as Kriya Yoga, we are putting our resources into an asset that will continue to appreciate over time—even over many lifetimes.

What if you don’t believe in reincarnation? You can compare the end of life of a worldly person who has lived selfishly, to the lives of saints. Saints’ bodies have ‘depreciated’ just like everyone else’s, but they are living in a state of divine joy, and are able to share that joy with others.

I have seen this truth proven in the lives of many Kriya Yogis, even those who may not have yet reached the most exalted spiritual states. Compared to people who have lived selfish or worldly lives, I can say unequivocally that dedication to spiritual practices is the best investment of time and energy one can possibly make.

People sometimes think, “It’s too late. I should have begun practicing Kriya Yoga when I was young. Now my worldly life is all I have, so I guess I’ll just keep living like this.” This is called “throwing good money after the bad.” It is similar to a homeowner who keeps throwing more and more of his hard-earned money to put a new roof on a house with a completely rotten foundation.

It is never too late! Paramhansa Yogananda told the story of a woman who took up his teachings late in life:

I once met a lady in the state of Washington. She was 80 years old, and all her life she’d been an atheist. By God’s grace, at our meeting she became converted to this path. Thereafter she sought God intensely. For the better part of every day, whenever she wasn’t meditating, she would play a recording of my poem “God! God! God!” She lived only a few years longer, but in that short time she attained liberation.

It is never too soon or too late to dedicate yourself to living a spiritual life. It is the greatest investment we can make for our future, and in the end, it is the only thing we can take with us when we leave this world.

I haven’t posted for a couple months – life gets very full with a family of five! We all seem to be going separate directions these days, but part of me really enjoys all the activity and seeing three children grow and explore their potential is fun.

Many friends my age are watching their children grow up and leave home, and most are also watching their parents grow old and leave this life. A child’s independence is a joyful challenge; an elderly parent’s increasing dependence and passing can be a sad one.

My daughter and I recently visited my mother, who lives in the Napa Valley, near my sister and her family. My father passed away over 10 years ago and my mother has managed to live a life of joyful independence and adventure, despite her loneliness. However, she fell and suffered a broken pelvis over 5 months ago and has had a difficult and painful recovery. She was finally ready to transition back to her own home, after months under my sister’s loving care, and my daughter and I had the pleasure of being there.

Our days were filled with organizing and preparing her two-level condominium so everything was accessible and safe for her to manage alone. My siblings were counting on me to make an honest evaluation of her ability to handle things, so I scrutinized her every move. She couldn’t navigate the stairs, take a shower or lift a frying pan without me watching. She took my supervision good-naturedly because she was so happy to be feeling better.

It’s natural to think of when she leaves this body and when we will not be able to visit and chat. But instead of feeling sad, I was filled with gratitude for the opportunity to be her daughter.

I walked to a lovely pioneer cemetery a few times during my visit and was able meditate there late one afternoon. One could get melancholy reading the headstones and reflecting on all those people long forgotten. But one of the deep blessings of the teachings of Yogananda is the expansive view one gets of life.

I thought of all those souls represented on those gravestones, and I know that after playing through the life of a California pioneer, they all moved on to new adventures and new lessons that would one day lead them home to freedom in spirit. And I thought of my mother and my children – they too, will move on to new roles and new lessons, and I was so grateful to understand.

The life we have is not to be spent carelessly, it should be treasured and celebrated with spiritual adventuresomeness. But it is good to remind ourselves and our children of our true identity as immortal spirit, deathless, changeless and free.

In divine friendship,

Lorna

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.

“Be restful in your heart” is one of the daily sayings from Swami Kriyananda writing in his small book called “Do It Now”

Sunset During Seclusion

Upon reflection, during this past week’s seclusion, it seemed that as I have been less caught up in daily “to do’s” and requests, I noticed that as the week has progressed, the mind has relaxed since it had little to do externally all week (walks, and chores notwithstanding) and also my heart seemed to relax.

Seven years ago, while shoveling snow on February morning outside our home here at Ananda Village, I experienced a mild heart attack. I had only lived at Ananda Village for 18 months or so, having left a career which involved a tremendous amount of stress. This lead to the inevitable trip to ICU, etc., yet I was home shortly thereafter, more deeply committed to recuperation and changing some lifestyle habits. Thirty pounds later and as I learned more about these teachings, I discovered that the heart chakra resides behind the physical heart but there is also a tie in. As I relaxed and rested my heart chakra, my physical heart seemed more rested. This is not to suggest substituting meditation for exercise because moderate exercise each day can help keep most of us, not only in better physical shape but it helps our meditations because the body wants to then relax and we usually find ourselves more calm during meditation.

Yogananda urges us to practice energization exercises daily prior to meditation. This subtle tension and relaxation techniques often helps calm the body, energize the nervous system in a calming way and thereby I find my body and heart more relaxed yet awake. Ananda Yoga is also about preparing the body for meditation but that is another story told by authors much more understanding so I will not dwell on this.

When we relax or rest our heart, we also open up to new energies within. I often almost naturally feel more loving towards others for instance. More willing to listen within to the sounds of the Divine.

Yogananda, in one of his prayers says: “Father, teach me to be calmly active and actively calm…”

All this is fairly easy to accomplish as we progress in seclusion with concentrated effort to relax our hearts. It almost sounds almost contradictory to make an effort to relax but it is also good practice for daily lives. Recently at work, I was running late to an appointment and didn’t feel very relaxed. As I was rushing out the door, a co-worker wanted to ask me to do something for him and it couldn’t wait until later to discuss it. I was not very relaxed at this point feeling a lot of tension in my body as I didn’t want to deal with this issue right then. Upon reflection later, I saw that, while the issue was important then tension was not.

So for this next year, as we progress into celebrating Ananda Village’s 40th anniversary, my goal is to remember this prayer: “Father, teach me to be calmly active and actively calm” and be more restful in my heart.