When I was thinking of how to appreciate Swami Kriyananda, I came up with sixty-eight points. But then I thought I should narrow it down to nine or maybe three. What follows are just three: gratitude, training, and love of God. First Meeting: The Gift of Gratitude When I first met Swami Kriyananda, it was in 1999. I had come ... Read More
I was really pondering on this topic. whenever we use the word ‘versus’, – it means that in our spiritual path as we ascend, they are two different things, which ideally it should not be. As Jesus emphasized repeatedly the Spirit, not the letter of the law. Even Swami Sri Yukteswarji in the Autobiography of a Yogi says, not the ... Read More
In this world of duality, if we identify ourselves with waves on the ocean we will rise and we will fall. And that is the rhythm of duality. The spiritual path is not a linear way forward. Yogananda ji said, it is a spiral staircase, and we can find ourselves on higher octaves or on lower octaves of the spiral ... Read More
Some time ago, I read a quote by Ram Das, a disciple of Neem Karoli Baba. He said in a very poetic way, “Just the way when we go in a forest and we appreciate different trees and different shrubs and different bushes, and we don’t go and discriminate between each one of them, deciding which one is better or ... Read More
There was a time when Yogananda had an extraordinary experience here in India. When he came back for that brief period of time in the mid thirties, and he met Yogi Ramaiya. Yogi Ramaiya was also a self-realized soul, free of all karma, like Yogananda himself and the other avatars. Yogananda said that when he met Yogi Ramaiya and they ... Read More