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October 22, 2021
“God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in love. Does not that simple thought, rather than erudite reasonings, offer solace to the human heart? Every saint who has penetrated to the core of Reality has testified that a divine universal plan exists and that it is beautiful and full of joy.”
“The one who pursues a goal of even-mindedness is neither jubilant with gain nor depressed by loss. He knows that man arrives penniless in this world, and departs without a single rupee.”
Immortal words from the Bhagavad Gita 4 rose to my lips in reply: “ ‘Even he with the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past bad actions. Becoming a high-souled being, he soon attains perennial peace. Know this for certain: the devotee who puts his trust in Me never perishes!’ ”
“No matter what the disciple’s problem, the guru advised Kriya Yoga for its solution.
Continue ceaselessly on your path to liberation through Kriya, whose power lies in practice.’
“I myself consider Kriya the most effective device of salvation through self-effort ever to be evolved in man’s search for the Infinite.”
“Through its use, the omnipotent God, hidden in all men, became visibly incarnated in the flesh of Lahiri Mahasaya a...
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“God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.”
India’s unwritten law for the truth seeker is patience;
Outward frailty has a mental origin; in a vicious circle, the habit-bound body thwarts the mind. If the master allows himself to be commanded by a servant, the latter becomes autocratic; the mind is similarly enslaved by submitting to bodily dictation.”
“How does he remain in the air, defying the law of gravitation?” “A yogi’s body loses its grossness after use of certain pranayamas. Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even saints who do not practise a formal yoga have been known to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God.”
“The divine order arranges our future more wisely than any insurance company.” The master’s concluding words were the realized creed of his faith. “The world is full of uneasy believers in an outward security. Their bitter thoughts are like scars on their foreheads. The One who gave us air and milk from our first breath knows how to provide day by day for His devotees.”
Hindu scriptures teach that the incarnating ego requires a million years to obtain liberation from maya. This natural period is greatly shortened through Kriya Yoga.
“My mother once tried to frighten me with an appalling story of a ghost in a dark chamber. I went there immediately, and expressed my disappointment at having missed the ghost. Mother never told me another horror tale. Moral: Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you.
Moral: Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire.
Moral: Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched.”
“Be comfortable within your purse,” he often said. “Extravagance will bring you discomfort.”
Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.’
“All creation is governed by law,” Sri Yukteswar concluded. “The principles that operate in the outer universe, discoverable by scientists, are called natural laws. But there are subtler laws that rule the hidden spiritual planes and the inner realm of consciousness; these principles are knowable through the science of yoga. It is not the physicist but the Self-realized master who comprehends the true nature of matter. By such knowledge Christ was able to restore the servant’s ear after it had been severed by one of the disciples.” 11
“Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating!” he would say. “The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.”
A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”
“The darkness of maya is silently approaching. Let us hie homeward within.” With these cautionary words Master constantly reminded his disciples of their need for Kriya Yoga.
“Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady,” he remarked on suitable occasion. “Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon’s knife, effective but unpleasant. Candour with courtesy is helpful and admirable.”
“Tender inner weaknesses, revolting at mild touches of censure, are like diseased parts of the body, recoiling before even delicate handling.”
Enjoyments of wine and sex are rooted in the natural man; to appreciate them one requires no delicacy of perception. Sense wiles are comparable to the evergreen oleander, fragrant with its rosy-coloured flowers: every part of the plant is poisonous. 19 The land of healing lies within, radiant with the happiness that is blindly sought in a thousand outer directions.
“Keen intelligence is two-edged,” Master once remarked in reference to Kumar’s brilliant mind. “It may be used constructively or destructively, like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate oneself. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law.”
“Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing quietly all the tributary rivers of the senses. Daily renewed sense yearnings sap your inner peace; they are like openings in a reservoir that permit vital waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful, activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; don’t let the frogs of sense weakness kick you around!”
“Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary,” he remarked. “Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Otherwise, continual intellectual study may result in vanity, false satisfaction, and undigested knowledge.”
“When your conviction of a truth is not merely in your brain but in your being, you may diffidently vouch for its meaning.”
“Softer than the flower, where kindness is concerned; stronger than the thunder, where principles are at stake.”
even a little meditation saves us from the dire fear of death and of after-death states.
The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses, while the body performs its daily duties.
“Those who attain Self-realization on earth live a similar twofold existence. Conscientiously performing their work in the world, they are yet immersed in an inward beatitude.
Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence.
After the mind has been cleared by Kriya Yoga of sensory obstacles, meditation furnishes a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of His existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also, in meditation one finds His instant guidance, His adequate response to every difficulty.”
The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.
“Man, in his human aspect, has to combat two sets of forces—first, the tumults within his being, caused by the admixture of earth, water, fire, air, and ethereal elements; second, the outer disintegrating powers of nature. So long as man struggles with his mortality, he is affected by the myriad mutations of heaven and earth.
Sri Yukteswar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age. 4 The cycle is divided into an Ascending Arc and a Descending Arc, each of 12,000 years. Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called Kali, Dwapara, Treta, and Satya, corresponding to the Greek ideas of Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Golden Ages.
A vision appeared of a hilltop mansion in a distant land; the lofty Shankara temple in Srinagar became transformed into the edifice where, years later, I established Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in America. (When I first visited Los Angeles in California, and saw the large building on the crest of Mount Washington, I recognised it at once from my long-past visions in Kashmir and elsewhere.)
As entries in a scenic beauty contest, I offer for first prize either the gorgeous view of Xochimilco in Mexico, where skies, mountains, and poplars are reflected, amid playful fish, in myriad lanes of water; or the lakes of Kashmir, guarded like beautiful maidens by the stern surveillance of the Himalayas. These two places stand out in my memory as the loveliest spots on earth.
To his new name a swami adds a word that indicates his formal connection with one of the ten subdivisions of the Swami Order. These dasanamis or ten agnomens include the Giri (mountain), to which Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri and hence I myself belong. Among the other branches are Sagara (sea), Bharati (land), Puri (tract), Saraswati (wisdom of Nature), Tirtha (place of pilgrimage), and Aranya (forest). A swami’s monastic name, which usually ends in ananda (supreme bliss), signifies his aspiration to attain emancipation through a particular path, state, or divine quality—love, wisdom,
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Sri Yukteswar was both a swami and a yogi. A swami, formally a monk by virtue of his connection with the venerable Order, is not always a yogi. Anyone who practises a scientific technique for divine realization is a yogi. He may be either married or unmarried, either a man of worldly responsibilities or one of formal religious ties.
Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control.
The Yoga system of Patanjali is known as the Eightfold Path. 9 The first steps are (1) yama (moral conduct), and (2) niyama (religious observances). Yama is fulfilled by noninjury to others, truthfulness, nonstealing, continence, and noncovetousness. The niyama prescripts are purity of body and mind, contentment in all circumstances, self-discipline, self-study (contemplation), and devotion to God and guru. The next steps are (3) asana (right posture); the spinal column must be held straight, and the body firm in a comfortable position for meditation; (4) pranayama (control of prana, subtle
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The Bhagavad Gita, however, has pointed out that the methods of yoga are all-embracing. Its techniques are not meant only for certain types and temperaments, such as those few persons who incline toward the monastic life; yoga requires no formal allegiance. Because the yogic science satisfies a universal need, it has a natural universal appeal.
The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga 11 also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic and scientific, but also philosophical; in its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos.... “Yoga practice...would be ineffectual without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual in an extraordinarily
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The Sanskrit root of kriya is kri, to do, to act and react; the same root is found in the word karma, the natural principle of cause and effect. Kriya Yoga is thus “union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite (kriya).”
Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which human blood is decarbonated and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centres. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues. The advanced yogi transmutes his cells into energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir, and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to materialise and dematerialise at will. Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri
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Kriya Yoga is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost exponent of yoga, who wrote: “Kriya Yoga consists of body discipline, mental control, and meditating on Aum.”
Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum that is heard in meditation.
