In the early years of Ananda, when we were just a small community in the hills outside of Nevada City, we were cast much more in the mold of a rural ashram, and we were much more Indian in our style.
Swami Kriyananda had spent time in India, and in the early days he wore his hair long, and instead of the more formal ministers’ robes we use now, he wore Indian-style clothes.
In the winter, he would wear a long kurta shirt and a dhoti, and in the summer he would often wear just the dhoti, a single piece of cloth wrapped around the waist like a skirt. He would go bare-chested in summer except for a rudraksha mala around his neck, and with his long hair he looked like the traditional image of an Indian swami.
We had created our own reality in our little country ashram, and it all seemed perfectly natural to us. It was only later, when we decided that we needed to relate to the people of this culture, that we became more western in our dress and ways.
Swamiji said, “If you’re trying to win over the ‘heathen,’ you need to look more like the heathen.” Of course, he meant it humorously. But that was the point when he cut his hair and started wearing western clothes.
In the beginning, we thought the teachings were closely related to the spiritual traditions of India, specifically Hinduism in its modern expression. But when we went to India, we realized that Yogananda’s teachings bore about as much relationship to Hinduism as they do to Catholicism.
There was an amusing clash of cultures when we first moved into our Palo Alto church. It had been St. Aloysius Catholic Church for forty-five years, and when we began holding services you could see the image of the crucifix that had hung on the wall. And for weeks I had a hard time speaking, because I realized that there was a specter of black-clad priests standing in the back of the church, glaring at this woman dressed in white who was facing the congregation and talking about these truths in “their” church.
Once I realized what was happening, I managed to exorcize them, or at least eject them from my mind. But the feeling of a different spiritual teaching was impressed in the building, along with an older, more institutional way of thinking.
When the early residents of Ananda went to India for the first time, we realized that the way the teachings were practiced there reflected an older way of thinking, too. An Indian friend told us, “Hinduism is one of the few religions you can’t practice without a paid professional. You have to hire a priest to do everything for you, because it’s not something you can do for yourself.”
And, of course, that’s not an expression of the path of Self-realization. It’s a distorted remnant of the ancient truths, which became degraded during the long centuries when materialistic consciousness prevailed and turned it into a system of dogmatic, ritualized practices.
It was these older, form-bound practices, both in India and America, that Yogananda was sent into the world to cut through and restore the original essence of Sanaatan Dharma – the “eternal truth” that underlies all religions.
In The Hindu way of Awakening, Swamiji says, “It’s [Hinduism] a fine old tree, but it needs to be pruned. A lot of branches have grown out of control, and we need to prune it back to its beautiful essence.”
Yogananda made a distinction between Christianity and what he called “Churchianity.” He said that he was restoring the original teachings of Jesus Christ, in contradistinction to the distortions introduced by church authorities during the dark ages.
I had a conversation with a local minister in Palo Alto, when we were inquiring about renting his church to hold our services. This was before we acquired our own church.
The minister was quizzing me about whether it was appropriate for us to be there. I told him that our teachings traced their origins to the Bible and Bhagavad Gita, and that Yogananda placed great emphasis on the teachings of the Bible. And the minister had the audacity to draw himself up and say, “He didn’t consider himself a Christian, did he?”
I drew myself up every bit as tall and said, “Yes, he did.” I thought, “We don’t want to rent your church. How dare you speak to us like that? How dare you think you own the teachings of the Master!”
People sometimes make the mistake of saying, in casual conversation, “These teachings are a blend of East and West.” And they are not. They aren’t a blend of anything. They are the quintessential teachings of Christ and Krishna. When you blend things, you take the parts and mix them together. But Yogananda went to the essence of each path, to show that they are the same, and that the essence of all religions is one true teaching.
A very interesting aspect of Christianity that Yogananda addressed is the question of sin and damnation, and hell and the devil.
Yogananda taught that true religious teachings are scientific in essence, because they are based on direct perception and experience. And this is also true of the question of good and evil, and of Satan.
If we look honestly and clearly at our own experience, we can see clearly that there’s something in our nature that wants to impel us forward, and there’s something else that tries to hold us back.
The “something” that holds us back is not a mere passive abstraction that we can read about in a book, and that is quaintly called “the devil.” Yogananda stated that it’s an actual force. It’s in bed with you in the morning, and it tries to keep you from getting up and meditating. And then it sits in your meditation room and tries to distract you. And it’s there when somebody says something unkind, and you want to hit back.
You get up in the morning and resolve to be good, and by the time the sun goes down you find yourself deeply regretting all the wrong things you’ve done. Some days are better, of course, but we all have days when we wonder what got into us, and how we could have acted so badly.
In my years of counseling people, I’ve realized that they always know what they need to do, but they aren’t always willing or able to do it.
You don’t have to tell people what’s right, because they know. We know, and the only thing we can do is help each other overcome the negative force that obscures our vision and tries to prevent us from doing the right thing.
Call it anger, passion, desire, Satan, or the devil – desire is a simple, all-encompassing word for it. In its essence, it’s the force that tries to convince us that we don’t want to be good.
There was a woman in our community who had a very difficult relationship with a very difficult man. Finally, she wrote an extremely perceptive letter to Swamiji, in which she described how impossible he was. She understated the facts by quite a bit, because she was a kind person at heart.
Swami wrote back, “He just wants to be your friend.”
She answered, “Well I don’t want to be his friend.”
As if to say, “I don’t care what’s right, because I just don’t want to do it.”
A father was trying to help his little boy deal with a bully in his classroom. The boy listened to his father, and then he said, “Daaad, I don’t want to be that good!”
It was an honest statement. Maybe it’s what I should do, but I’m not going to do it. I want to experience the pleasure of being bad, along with the pain and suffering that comes with it, because I’m not finished with this lesson, and I need to keep learning.
I need to go on believing that following my desires, and being who I feel like being, and taking the lesser path, will please me.
It takes a great deal of effort to discipline our consciousness, and to train ourselves to honor what’s actually going on in our lives, and on this earth.
I had a conversation with an elderly man, and the discussion grew heated. I said, “Don’t you want to understand this and grow?”
With honesty, he replied, “No. I just want to make it through to the end.”
At that point I shut up, because what else could I say?
It’s a thought that we all have at one time or another – that if I can just cling to life until I die, something good will come along and I’ll be released from this suffering.
Alas, no such luck. We die and enter the astral world – which is, you might say, the backstage to this earthly world. It’s where we write the script for our next incarnation. And then we get to come out on the stage of this material world again and play our little part. And what makes us so very confused is that we believe the play is the point.
Yes, it’s important to play our part properly. But the deeper question is, “What does it mean to play our part well?”
Playing our life’s role with skill requires, above all, that we remember why we’re here.
This life is about consciousness, nothing else. And it makes no difference how much praise the world gives us. Because when you return to your home in heaven, the angels won’t gush, “Wow! He has a PhD from MIT!” The only thing God will ask is, “How much did you love?”
The delusion that’s woven into the fabric of this world sucks us in and makes us forget why we’re here. And what is the force that sucks us in? Whether you picture a devil with little red horns and a tail, or if you call it by its Sanskrit name, Maya, it’s the extremely subtle force that reaches out and grabs us by the ankle and makes us trip and fall in confusion.
I love the phrase, “The devil made me do it.” It’s quite true, and it can actually help us to understand what’s happening.
“This isn’t my true nature. This isn’t who I’m trying to be. It isn’t what I was meant to be. It’s not what I was born to be. I am one with the Infinite. I am in my innermost essence a perfect child of God. I want to renounce all passions and pleasures, desires and fears, and all the conflicts that make me so small in my consciousness. These are the satanic forces that make me get up in the morning with hope in my heart and go to bed at night full of regrets.”
Our true nature is light. Swami gives us a simple technique for facing confusion and error. Don’t resist life, he tells us. Say yes to life. Whatever comes, accept it gratefully as part of the divine script, and understand that it isn’t sent to us to make us suffer.
Who knows why we were born? Who knows when we’ll die? What presumption! Who knows why we’re even here?
Let the great ones come and tell us what reality is, and the purpose for which we were made. Ever and again, the enlightened ones come and tell us the answer: we are here for Self-awareness, for understanding the grand pattern of life.
We are here in the great gymnasium of life. This life is one gigantic experiment. It’s a laboratory where you can discover wonderful things and see what works, until you can face God in all humility and honestly answer the question, “How much did you love?”
Swamiji said to a dear friend of ours who lay close to death, “This world is so ephemeral. The astral world has so much more reality to it by comparison.”
We are projected from that world. God has sent out on a great errand for a short time. And then we come back, closer to the light, and remember who we are. We come out again and the material world tries to persuade us that it is real, that we are limited beings, small, egoic, and in pain, all the while God is saying, “No, my child. You are the infinite Spirit. You are love itself. Be an instrument for that great love.”
That’s the only reason we are born. And God is with us throughout the long journey of incarnations. God is amused by our foolishness, and He weeps when we weep. It isn’t God who punishes us when we act in defiance of our nature. We punish ourselves, by driving nails into our hearts. We put ourselves into tiny boxes and then suffer because we feel so desperately confined. And God asks us to be infinite and free.
Say yes to life. Be “that good,” even if it’s just for a while.
Swamiji said so sweetly, “You’re going to get it right sooner or later. Why waste a few million years?”
Say yes now to whatever God is asking of you, and you’ll find all the fulfillment you thought was impossible. There’s nothing that is impossible, if we will unite our consciousness to the great bliss-consciousness of God.
(From Asha’s talk at Sunday service on August 18, 2002.)