A friend sent us some little-known sayings of Paramhansa Yogananda’s most spiritually advanced disciple, Rajarsi Janakananda. I will share one of them with you here.
Before Yogananda died in 1952, he named Rajarsi his spiritual successor, and the next leader of his organization.
Rajarsi lived only a few years after his Guru’s passing. For much of that time, he was ill with a brain tumor. He seldom spoke, and he didn’t write books. But Yogananda had often stated that Rajarsi was fully Self-realized.
He was a self-made millionaire. Despite his worldly achievements, Swami Kriyananda remembers how, whenever he would visit his Guru, he would leave that world behind completely.
When he did speak, Swami Kriyananda remembered, he hardly ever talked about anything but God and Guru. Sometimes his only words were, “Aum Guru, Aum Guru.”
Rajarsi said:
“Throw out your fears. God and Guru are with you. You are their child and they know your heart. My blessings are also with you. Relax from your fears and worries. Where there is faith there is relaxation, for there is trust and love. Fear is a terrible and paralyzing emotion, which we must supplant with love and joy through faith. Feel easy! Just feel easy! Be relaxed. Don’t feel tense. Trust, love, and know that He is with you.”
In the body, our senses face outward. This enhances the delusion that satisfaction comes from the outside world. Only slowly do we realize that happiness is an inner response. Yogananda said, “Conditions are always neutral. Whether we perceive them as happy or sad depends on the sad or happy attitudes of the mind.”
At my favorite Chinese restaurant, I always order one of three dishes. The memory of past enjoyment draws me to experience the same pleasure again. This is how we create karma. We are drawn to experience what we remember as pleasurable.
In truth, nothing in this material world can ever satisfy us. At best, it will only entertain us for a while.
A saint said, “Thou has made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
There is a beautiful Sanskrit word for the inner knowing of our oneness with God: smriti. It means “divine memory” – the soul’s power of knowing its true nature.
Our spiritual efforts help to re-awaken that memory. Another saint said, “Fathomless depths of love for God lie hidden in the human heart, waiting to be uncovered by the Guru’s liberating discipline.”
We look to external joys in a fruitless attempt to find our soul’s undying bliss. We are one with the Infinite. Bliss is our nature.
This is the purpose of spiritual gatherings: to impress so deeply upon our consciousness the reality of our spiritual nature that we will never forget it again. The energy of many souls gathered together to focus on the one reality gives a powerful boost to our individual efforts in prayer and meditation.
When we celebrate holy occasions, it seems as if God walks among us. This is smriti. God then is with us. We have only to improve our knowing.
In divine friendship,
Asha