Paramahansa Yogananda
is one of the greatest spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and
also was one of the first Spiritual Masters to bring the Yoga of the
East to the aspiring West.
Yogananda was born
in Gorakhpur, Bengal in 1893. Originally his name was Mukunda Lal Ghosh.
He was given the name of Yogananda after his initiation as an Indian
Swami (monk).
Yogananda means
“Bliss” through yoga (divine union with God) The title “Paramahansa” was
given by his Guru Sri Yukteswar . Paramahansa means literally “Supreme
Swan”. It is given to Swami’s who have established constant communion
with God.
From an early age
Yogananda was fascinated with meeting spiritual Saints and seekers. His
autobiography recounts many riveting occasions of meetings with
different Saints, (including Master Mahasaya, who was the author of “The
Gospel of Ramakrishna.” ) Even as a young child Yogananda spent many
hours in meditation, aspiring to attain God – Consciousness.
At the age of 17
Yogananda became a disciple of Swami Sri Yukteswar who expertly guided
him along the spiritual path. Sri Yukteswar was a direct disciple of
Lahiri Mahasaya Lahiri Mahasaya is credited with reintroducing the
ancient art of Kriya yoga into modern society. After several years of
strict spiritual training in his Masters hermitage, Yogananda was
inspired to travel to America. With the blessings of his Guru Sri
Yukteswar, Yogananda travelled to the West, in order to share the
spiritual traditions of India and his own inner realisations.
In America,
Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship, which served as the
organisation committed to his teachings. Yogananda also gave many
lectures on spiritual themes throughout the country. Yogananda taught
that although outer customs of religion may be different, the
underlying principles are the same. He also taught that the essence of
any religion and spiritual practice was the Love of God and to realize
the true nature of your own divine Self. Yogananda also did much to show
the underlying unity between Hinduism and Christianity, in doing so he
helped bridge the gap between East and West. Less well know perhaps is
the poetry of Yogananda. However books such as ‘Songs of the Soul’ and
‘Whispers from Eternity’ reflect the poetic vision of this great
Spiritual Master.
During his life
Yogananda was able to meet with many prominent spiritual, cultural and
political figures. For example, during his period of running a school in
India, he was able to meet the Bengali Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath
Tagore. In the mid 1930s he was able to meet Mahatma Gandhi at his
ashram in Wardha. His autobiography also tells of fascinating meetings
with spiritual luminaries such as Sri Anandaymoyi Ma and Sri Ramana
Maharshi. Yogananda was also the first Indian Swami to meet with a US
President (C.Coolidge in 1927)
On March 7, 1952,
Paramahansa Yogananda entered mahasamadhi, leaving behind a profound
spiritual legacy. His writings and life continue to give countless
inspiration to many Truth – Seekers and God – Lovers.
biography by Tejvan R. Pettinger
WHAT IS LOVE ?
Love is the scent with the lotus born.
It is the silent choirs of petals
Singing the winter’s harmony of uniform beauty.
Love is the song of the soul, singing to God.
It is the balanced rhythmic dance of planets –
sun and moon lit
In the skyey hall festooned with fleecy clouds –
Around the sovereign Silent Will.
It is the thirst of the rose to drink the sunrays
And blush red with life.
‘Tis the promptings of the mother earth
To feed her milk to the tender, thirsty roots,
And to nurse all life.
It is the urge of the sun
To keep all things alive.
Love is the unseen craving of the Mother Divine
That took the protecting father – form,
And that feeds helpless mouths
With milk of mother’s tenderness.
It is the babies’ sweetness,
Coaxing the rain of parental sympathy
To shower upon them.
It is the lover’s unenslaved surrender to the beloved
To serve and solace.
It is the elixir of friendship,
Reviving broken and bruised souls.
It is the martyr’s zeal to shed his blood
For the well-beloved fatherland.
It is the ineffable, silent call of the heart to another
heart.
It is the God-drunk poet’s heartaches
For every creature’s groans.
Love is to enjoy the family rose of petal-beings,
And thence to move to spacious fields –
Passing by portals of social, national, international
sympathy,
On to the limitless Cosmic Home –
To gaze with looks of wonderment,
And to serve all that lives, still or moving.
This is to know what love is.
He knows who lives it.
Love is evolution’s ameliorative call
To the far-strayed sons
To return to Perfection’s home.
It is the call of the beauty – robed ones
To worship the great Beauty.
It is the call of God
Through silent intelligences
And starburst of feelings.
Love is the Heaven
Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms,
creatures – you and I
Are rushing by the straight path of action right,
Or winding laboriously on error’s path,
All to reach haven there at last.
GOD GOD GOD
From the depth of slumber,
As I ascend the spiral stairway of wakefulness,
I whisper
God, God, God !
Thou art the food and when I break my fast
Of nightly separation from Thee
I taste thee and mentally say
God, God, God !
No matter where I go, the spotlight of my mind
Ever keeps turning on Thee;
And in the battle dim of activity my silent war cry
Is ever;
God, God, God!
When boisterous storms of trials shriek
And worries howl at me,
I drown their noises, loudly chanting
God, God, God !
When my mind weaves dreams
With treads of memories,
Then on that magic cloth I do emboss;
God, God, God !
Ever night, in time of deepest sleep,
My peace dreams and calls; Joy ! Joy ! Joy !
And my Joy comes singing evermore;
God, God, God !
In waking, eating, working, dreaming, sleeping,
Serving, meditating, chanting, divinely loving,
My soul constantly hums, unheard by any;
God, God, God!
ETERNITY
Eternity
Oh, will that day arrive
When I shall ceaselessly ask – yea, drive
Eternal questions into Thine ear,
O Eternity ! and have solution
How weak weeds grow and stand unbent,
Unshaken ‘neath the trampling current.
How the storm wrecks titanic things;
Uproots the trees,
And quick disturbs the mighty seas.
How the first spark blinked; how the first tree,
The first goldfish, the first bluebird so free,
And the first crooning baby,
Into this wonder-house to visit,
Made their grand entry.
They come, I see;
Their growth alone I watch.
Thy cosmic moulding Hand,
That secret works on land and sea,
I wish to seize,
O Eternity.
MY SOUL IS MARCHING ON !
The shining stars are sunk in darkness deep,
The weary sun is dead at night,
The moon’s soft smile doth fade anon;
But still my soul is marching on!
The grinding wheel of time hath crushed
Full many a life of moon and star,
And many a brightly smiling morn;
But still my soul is marching on!
The flowers bloomed, then hid in gloom,
The bounty of the trees did cease;
Colossal men have come and gone,
But still my soul is marching on!
The aeons one by one are flying,
My arrows one by one are gone;
Dimly, slowly, life is fading,
But still my soul is marching on!
Darkness, death, and failures vied;
To block my path they fiercely tried.
My fight with jealous Nature’s strong,
But still my soul is marching on!
ONE FRIEND
Many clouds do race to hide Thee
Of friends and wealth and fame –
And yet through mist of tears I see
Appear Thy Golden Name.
Each time my father, mother, friends
Do loudly claim they did me tend,
I wake from sleep to sweetly hear
That Thou alone didst help me here.
SAMADHI
Vanished are the veils of light and shade,
Lifted the vapors of sorrow,
Sailed away the dawn of fleeting joy,
Gone the mirage of the senses.
Love, hate, health, disease, life and death –
Departed, these false shadows on the screen
of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, whirlpools
of melancholy,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
Bestilled is the storm of maya
By the magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, a forgotten dream, lurks
subconsciously,
Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.
I exist without the cosmic shadow,
But it could not live bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep,
Present, past, future, no more for me,
But the ever-present, all-flowing, I, I everywhere.
Consciously enjoyable,
Beyond the imagination of all expectancy,
Is this, my samadhi state.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth,
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creation’s moulding furnace,
Glaciers of silent X-rays,
Burning floods of electrons,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, future,
Every blade of grass, myself and all,
Each particle of creation’s dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed up – transmuted them
Into one vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by unceasing meditation,
Which blinded my tearful eyes,
Burst into eternal flames of bliss,
And consumed my tears, my peace, my frame,
my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!
One tranquilled, unbroken thrill of eternal, living, ever-new peace!
Not an unconscious state
Or mental chloroform without wilful return,
Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness
Beyond the limits of my mortal frame
To the boundaries of eternity,
Where I, the Cosmic Sea,
Watch the little ego floating in Me.
Not a sparrow, nor a grain of sand, falls
without my sight
All space floats like an iceberg in my mental sea.
I am the Colossal Container of all things made!
By deeper, longer, continuous, thirsty,
guru – given meditation,
This celestial samadhi is attained.
All the mobile murmurs of atoms are heard;
The dark earth, mountains, seas are molten liquid!
This flowing sea changes into vapors of nebulae!
Aum blows o’er the vapors; they open their veils,
Revealing a sea of shining electrons,
Till, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,
Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays
Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy.
From Joy we come,
For Joy we live,
In the sacred Joy we melt.
I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves.
The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,
Lift aright.
Myself, in everything,
Enters the Great Myself.
Gone forever,
The fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory.
Spotless is my mental sky,
Below, ahead, and high above.
Eternity and I, one united ray.
I, a tiny bubble of laughter,
Have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.
NATURE'S NATURE
Away, ye muses, all away!
Away with songs of finch and fay.
Away the jaundiced sight
That magnifies the firefly’s light
To bonfire bright;
That sets ablaze at once
My musing’s dimly burning lamps;
That ornaments with rhymes
The penury-stricken looks betimes;
That over-clothes the logic – lord
With fancy – swollen words.
Away, the partial love
That ‘boldens Nature to sit above
Her Maker!
This day I fasten eyelid doors,
With absence wax my ears,
With languorous peace congeal
My tongue, my touch, my tears *
That I within may pore
Upon the things behind, ahead,
In the darkness round me spread.
I lock Dame Nature out
With all her fickle rout.
Somewhere here,
In the darkness drear,
I myself with cheer
My course will steer
In the path
E’er sought by all:
Its magnet call
I hear.
Not hear, not here,
Apollo would his burning chariot steer;
Nor Diana dare to peep
Into the sacred silence deep.
Not here, not here,
Not far or near
Can mounts or rebel waves
E’er make me full of fear;
Nor evermore
Their dreadful grandeur to adore.
Not here, not here
The soft capricious wiles of flowers;
Nor swarming storm clouds’ sweeping terror,
Dishevelling the trees
And light-haired skies;
Nor doomsday’s thunderous roar,
Dismantling earth and stars-
The cosmic beauties all to mar –
Not Nature’s murderous mutiny,
Nor man’s exploding destiny
Can touch me here.
Not here, not here:
Through mind’s strong iron bars,
Not gods or goblins, men or nature,
Without my pass dare enter.
I look behind, ahead –
On naught but darkness tread.
In wrath I strike, and set the dark ablaze
With the immortal spark of thought,
By friction-process brought
Of concentration
And distraction.
The darkness burns
With a million tongues;
And now I spy
All past, all distant things, as nigh.
I smile serene
As I expose to gaze.
In wisdom’s brilliant blaze,
All charms of the Hidden Home Unseen:
The Home of Nature’s birth,
The planets’ moulding hearth,
The factory whence all forms or fairies start,
The bards, colossal minds, and hearts,
The gods and all,
And all, and all!
Away, away
With all the lightsome lays!
Oh, now will I portray
In humble way,
And try to lisp, if only in half truths,
Of wordless charms of Thee Unseen,
To whom Dame Nature owes her nature
and her sheen.
