There’s a wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita that tells us of God’s compassion for our souls.
“Whenever virtue declines and vice predominates, I take visible form to drive out the darkness and bring back the light.”
To understand these words is to begin to understand the role of the guru, and the consciousness of the avatars who come to rescue mankind from its folly and darkness.
I’ve been working on a book about Swami Kriyananda and my experiences with him over the years, and I’m finding it slow going, because with each paragraph I find I have to stop and wonder, all over again, “What was I really witnessing when this happened?”
None of the glib answers that I might have lived with seem adequate now. So the book has been quite a challenge.
While reviewing my notes, I came across an incident that demanded special attention and reflection. It happened in the winter of 1975, when Swami was busy editing The Path. On Thursday nights he would invite us to come over and listen to him read the latest chapters.
It was a marvelous experience. And you have to understand the context in which it happened. At the time, we knew very little about Paramhansa Yogananda and his life, apart from what he’d written in Autobiography of a Yogi. And we really didn’t know very much about Swamiji’s life, because we’d only been with him for a few years. And now he was sharing the story of his life and his time with Yogananda, and there was a great deal that we’d never heard.
When he finished reading, he would ask us, “So, what did you think?”
And it was not easy to comment. To listen critically enough to make suggestions was well nigh impossible, because the ideas were deep, and Swami wrote so well, and he was reading aloud, so the words and sentences flowed along and you didn’t really have a lot of time to reflect on them.
And it wasn’t made easier when you dared to venture a suggestion, because although he was very open to hearing our thoughts, they had to be up to the level of what he was writing. And they couldn’t just be random reactions on your part. “Oh, Swami, it’s all so wonderful!”
As anyone who’s in the business of writing soon discovers, it always seems to happen that you’ll think the meaning is crystal clear, and then you’ll realize it isn’t clear at all. It may be clear to you, but you haven’t made it crystal clear to your readers.
And then people will do incredibly creative listening, where they’ll draw all kinds of meanings from your words that you didn’t intend. And sometimes the lack of clarity is because you’ve actually used the wrong words, and this is what Swamiji wanted us to help him clear up. But let’s just say that we had to meet him on his level of energy, and it wasn’t easy.
You couldn’t get away with shabby thinking. And I’ve always felt that this was a great benefit of being with him. There were a thousand benefits, countless benefits really, because a thousand doesn’t begin to do justice to them. But you had to keep your energy high.
With most people, you can get away with an idiotic remark now and then, and they won’t notice. But he always noticed. Whether humorously or seriously, he would always notice.
I remember referring to P. G. Woodhouse in Swami’s presence as “ridiculously entertaining.” And he immediately corrected me: “Entertainingly ridiculous.”
You see, the meaning is different. And I had meant “entertainingly ridiculous,” but I hadn’t said it. And then I looked at him, and he said with an amused expression, “The editor never sleeps.”
After that, it became a kind of byword between us, so that whenever either of us would correct some absurd little thing that was really of absolutely no world-shaking importance, we would say with a wry smile, “The editor never sleeps.”
But he would ask for our feedback, and we just couldn’t do it. And I remember how exasperated he became, and for good reason.
He said, “You’re being too passive.” Sometimes we’re just floating along, because it’s easier than summoning the energy that the spiritual life is asking of us.
Trying to drift past our challenges isn’t the same as working hard to overcome them. So Swami became impatient with us – and “exasperated” is actually a better word.
He said, “You’re treating me like a jukebox. You’re putting in a quarter, then just sitting there listening to the song.” And he said, “I need your help.”
That simple plea of Swamiji’s has stuck in my mind – “I need your help.” Because, at the time, my concept of his reality was that he didn’t need any help in this world at all.
Years after he wrote The Path, I was talking to him on the phone while he was in Italy. He said he’d finished writing Conversations with Yogananda, and that he was at a very low ebb physically. He said that his heart had slowed the night before, and he felt that he could have easily slipped out of his body.
I said, “Sir, you’ve done the work of ten men, and you’ve helped so many of us. We just couldn’t possibly ask you to stay longer than you feel to.”
I said, “But it won’t be as much fun to be on this planet anymore after you’re gone.”
And, very seriously, he said, referring to his own brief time with Yogananda, “I know. I’ve been through it.”
I often think of how fortunate we were to have had Swamiji with us for so many years, when by contrast, he was just twenty-five when Paramhansa Yogananda left his body.
In that conversation, he said that once he left this world, he never wanted to come back, because he was finished with it.
But then he added, “But I know myself. I know I’ll be called back to help you all again.”
I said, “Well, Swami, that’s the only reason you came this time, isn’t it?” And he said, “Well, yes.”
When a free soul comes back to help us, if he wants to be relevant to our reality, he has to embrace the full experience of living in this world.
Yogananda said that he was William the Conqueror in a former life. And even though he was liberated many lifetimes before that one, he really and truly did have to become a warrior in that life. And when he came as Yogananda, he really and truly had to struggle to advance the ideas that God had asked him to bring to the West, and that were so foreign to most people’s way of thinking.
I’ve read some of the letters he wrote to Rajarsi Janakananda, his most advanced disciple. He could confide in Rajarsi more intimately than he could with the other disciples, because they shared a very high level of consciousness. And he would often tell Rajarsi what a struggle it was to live in this country, and how the financial side alone was such a never-ending burden.
He said that in India the saint sits under a tree and everyone takes care of him. “They build a temple around you,” is how he put it, and nothing is required of you. But he said that in this country, he not only had to support himself and pay the mortgage, but he had to support everybody. In the West, the tradition is that you come to the monastery and someone takes care of you. And that someone was Master, and it was a never-ending struggle.
Master had to struggle with the realities of the life in which God had placed him. And when Swamiji was born, he had to live his life and overcome many difficult tests. And, over time, I realized that he was not wholly above his life’s struggles in the way I had once imagined.
So much of our hopes for becoming Self-realized is about wanting to be rescued. “This life is so difficult – I don’t want to have to face the shortcomings in myself. I don’t want to have to deal with life’s disappointments, and I don’t want to let go of my desires.”
We like to imagine that the saints have found a way to be free without putting out the effort to deal with the challenges of this life. And even as they’re standing before us in a very real human form, we wistfully imagine that they’re somehow free of the need to struggle.
This is something I really had to learn with Swamiji, because I kept pretending that he was somehow different, in a way that I would like to be different. If I could be rescued, as I imagined he had been, then I would be spared all the things I would otherwise have to struggle to overcome.
A friend and I were talking about Louise Hay, a well-known new age healer and speaker who published a number of popular books in the 1980s. She was very impressed with Swamiji, and for a time they shared a platform at a series of programs.
She described Swami as “the kindest man I’ve ever known.” And my friend and I were discussing the word “kindness.” Because Swami wasn’t always nice, in the sense that it was always comfortable to be around him.
Swamiji said, “A leader has to change the consciousness of the people around him.”
A friend can love and support you, but the teacher has to be able to see where you’re going and pull you toward your goal. And a friend doesn’t have to do that. A friend can just be nice, and sometimes that’s all you want from them. You go over to your friend’s house because you know it will be nice to be with them. And it’s not as if they aren’t loyal to your soul. But they don’t have the responsibility to transform you.
It’s entirely different when someone has that responsibility, because even if you’ve given them permission, and even if you’ve begged them to transform you, it doesn’t mean that when you see it coming toward you, you’ll be able to welcome it with open arms.
Swamiji corrected me once, and I actually couldn’t breathe. It was a simple correction, just a few words, but he had waited a very long time to say it, and when it was said, it was like all the oxygen was sucked out of me. I couldn’t breathe, and I was threatened on such a fundamental level of my self-definition that it was as if my heart had stopped.
These are not easy things. We want what’s on the other side of it, but we don’t want to live through it. And we don’t always understand that a master actually lives through his life’s experiences, just as we do, but with the tremendous difference that he perceives the hand of God in everything that happens.
So when Swamiji told us that he needed our help, it put him in our world, at a level where I didn’t want him to be. And it was many years before I could understand and accept what was really happening.
Swamiji would often talk about impersonal love. And I was such an idiot, I remember I actually tried to correct him on it, because I couldn’t comprehend it.
He would talk about impersonal love in contexts that just seemed insane to me, and I suggested to him that it wasn’t a very effective way to communicate with people. But Swami wouldn’t contradict you. He had this marvelous way of listening, and then he would ignore you. And if you were paying attention, you got the point. But he wouldn’t descend to argue, if he saw that you wouldn’t get it. And that was what he did with me, when I was itching to argue about the concept of impersonal love.
I was thinking that “impersonal” meant that you’re indifferent to others, and I just couldn’t get it. But a central goal of yoga is to become very impersonal about yourself, and it doesn’t mean that you’re cold with others. Rather, quite the opposite. Because if you’re able to set yourself aside, you can be much more aware of other people’s realities, and available to give them your love and compassion and help.
This is the state of the avatar. It’s not that he isn’t having the experiences of his life, it’s that he’s completely impersonal about himself, so he doesn’t define himself by what’s going on.
I came across a useful phrase that helped me understand this. I realized that Swami never “clutched to his heart” any of the things that happened to him. They happened, but there was no desire to be rescued.
I’ve shared with you how I was in seclusion years ago, and I realized that there was a barrier between myself and the Divine Mother. And I realized that the barrier was the consciousness of all my disappointments and sorrows, and the thought that people should treat me better.
I wasn’t feeling only the pain of this lifetime, because the suffering of many lives was involved. But I realized that I had clutched all these sufferings to my heart. And it was those countless vortices of emotion in my heart that were separating me from the consciousness of the Divine Mother – all of the likes and dislikes and desires of other lives.
There’s a crazy thing that happens to me at the YMCA, which is where my weird karma often shows up. I have no idea why, maybe it’s because I’m in the water. But I swim for fitness, and there’s this thing that happens, and it drives me crazy.
A lot of the people who swim in the pool are, let’s just say, less vital than I am, and the lanes in the pool aren’t clearly marked. So you’ll start swimming, and then someone will jump in and block your lane. And I’m very careful to stay in my lane, and I swim in an absolutely straight line. And then someone will place themselves in the middle of the lane where I’m swimming, and start dog-paddling along or just bobbing about obliviously, and I’ll whack into them. They’re completely unconscious, and somehow this makes me livid. It’s become a real karmic edge for me, because it displays in glorious Technicolor everything that’s absolutely silly about getting so upset over these tiny irritations that are forever happening in our lives. And I realize that the thought that’s at the center of it all is: “What about me?”
Isn’t this the thought that’s at the heart of every one of our petty resentments? I deserve better. I deserve to be respected. I have my position. What about me? And it makes me want to cry just to think about it.
Of course, it’s not about who’s swimming in my lane. It’s about who I am, and how tightly I’m clutching in my heart what I think I am. And it’s challenging me to see if I can let it all go.
I came across a phrase that works for me – I found it in Michael Singer’s book, The Surrender Experiment. He talks about Amrit Desai, a great teacher of yoga and spirituality in this country who went through a tremendous karmic explosion, when his whole ashram essentially went to pieces and they kicked him out. It was quite a story. But Michael Singer took Amritji into his community. And Michael said that it was amazing to watch this great soul go through such a difficult time, because it wasn’t that Amrit went through a dark period, it was rather, as Michael put it, that a dark period passed through Amrit.
When I read that phrase, I thought, that’s exactly what I observed in Swamiji for all those years. Everything that he went through, he actually went through it, but the state of a jivanmukta, or “one who is free while living,” which I believe he was, and the state that we always saw in him, is that there was no egoic identification that anchored him to anything.
Whereas, for me, there’s a very strong egoic identification, and everything that happens to me, happens to me personally. It doesn’t merely happen; it happens to me. And not only does it happen to me, but afterwards I clutch it tightly in my heart. And I don’t really want to, and it’s not as if I think it’s the smartest thing to do. But it’s just the normal everyday human habit of identifying ourselves with our experiences.
Every saint of divine vision tells us that we have no idea what’s really going on in this life. People who’ve had near-death experiences tell us we have no idea what’s going on, and that the reason we can’t imagine what’s going on is because we’ve become so tightly identified with this limited reality, and we don’t understand that all of our experiences are merely passing through us.
We think the experiences we’re having are happening to us. And when we see a Yogananda or a Swami, we have to realize that the experiences they’re having are very real, but they aren’t the slightest bit self-identified with those experiences.
When Swamiji said to us, “I need your help,” it’s not as if he was a kind of divine gas cloud that was wholly detached from this physical world and floating above it. But in the divinely appointed role that he was playing in this world, he was having a very real experience.
Now then, how should we deal with the experiences that are passing through us? We can look to the example of those who’ve mastered this life. And that’s why the saints and masters come to us. When evil begins to get the upper hand and virtue declines, as the Gita says, these liberated souls make themselves known. And a Yogananda or a Kriyananda or an Amrit Desai comes to help us wake up to what’s actually going on.
Going back to Louise Hay’s remark that Swami was the kindest man she’d ever known, the reason Swami was able to be kind to everybody was that he was completely impersonal. And another aspect of being impersonal is that when we become so tied up with our own experiences, we become absolutely blind to the experiences of others. We’re so intent on clutching our experiences and holding them close to our heart that we’re unable to hold their experiences in an equal light. And when you become impersonal about yourself, and you’re no longer feeling that you’re any more or less important, then everybody becomes equally important in your sight.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda tells the story of how Lahiri Mahasaya came out of meditation one day and exclaimed, “I’m drowning in the bodies of hundreds of people off the coast of Japan!”
The next day, there was a story in the newspaper about a ship that had gone down with hundreds of lives lost. Lahiri was meditating in India at the time, and because he wasn’t clutching his own experiences to his heart, his consciousness was free to be everywhere. And this is how these souls are able to help us, because they’re literally as much in our awareness as they are in their own, and there’s no personal clinging to prevent their consciousness from living in that oneness.
Swami’s kindness wasn’t always expressed as being “nice” to us. But he was always conscious of what we needed to learn so that we could keep moving toward our freedom. And that kind of friendship is far more ultimately gratifying to the heart than a friendship that just furthers our delusions.
We may wish for an easier way, but that wish, too, is the decline of virtue. And the rising of the light within is the one and only path to freedom.
“I will take you there,” says the avatar whom God empowers to lift us. How eagerly we will go, that’s the whole challenge of the spiritual life. It really isn’t about what you’ll have to go through, but it’s how willing we are, even in the midst of tears, to say, “All right, if this is the way to freedom, this is the path I will travel.”
God bless you.
(From Asha’s talk during Sunday service at Ananda Sangha in Palo Alto, California on January 31, 2016.)