How Devotees Rise

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 staircase.

It’s not necessary that we are always moving forward, we might also go backwards and that indeed is the truth. Every time we make a step forward towards progress, it is consciously contested by the power of Maya, which Yogananda ji called Satan, that pushes us backward.

That push backward towards Darkness will come as unwillingness, confusion, lack of clarity or even a lack of devotion or support towards the goal that we had professed that we want to give our energy to.

In the Autobiography of a Yogi, there is a story of Kumar, who was in Yukteshwarji’s hermitage with Master and Shri Yukteshwarji had a special fondness for Kumar. But, Kumar began to get into bad ways, bad behaviour, bad attitudes and one day against his Guru’s advice he decides to go back to his village and when he comes back from the village, he was a changed man.

Shri Yukteshwarji was very disappointed because he realized that worldly ways had claimed him completely and now, he was completely oblivious of the Guru’s blessings. So much so that Shri Yukteshwarji had to tell Master to ask him to leave the ashram.

He had an Avatar with him right there, but he was not able to open his heart to receive the Guru’s blessings. No fall is permanent, Swamiji writes, a fall is temporary, but it can be a hard one on the spiritual path.

There are many stories that Swamiji shares about his time with Yoganandaji, when many times people would come and leave the Master’s ashram. Sometimes he would tell them, ‘Don’t leave, if you leave now, you would be lost for 200 incarnations. It will take 200 incarnations not to find freedom but to come back to the same point in time.

Yogananda ji said to even receive the blessing of Kriya yoga, you would have had to come a long way on the spiritual paths to claim this blessing. But how often, unmindful of our own past, we forget that we have suffered to be given this elixir of life, this pranayama and we begin to become disrespectful, irreverent.

I don’t have time to practice, I will do it tomorrow or maybe I’ll come back next year, I need to take a break. Endless are the distractions of Maya.

Swamiji reminds us that when we fall, God is always there. It’s an interesting law of Maya, when virtue descends and vice is climbing, I send my Awakened Sons as light. When we walk in darkness the light is shining to help us, it’s just that because we are so caught up in darkness, we don’t see the light, but Swamiji says, ‘choose the light’. This light does not come naturally shining in front of us. Light is hidden; it’s one of the principles of light that God comes as a babe in the manger, as a babe in a prison cell. He does not declare himself with the effulgence and radiance and the royalty that he truly is.

He comes hiding because we need to purify our sights to be able to see him, otherwise we are not worthy of it. But the principles to the teachings of yoga are given to us, it’s now up to us to apply the teachings and to then see what is hidden behind the sun beams…

As Lahiri Mahasaya tells Yukteshwarji, who was unhappy with Babaji because Babaji vanished in the brief moment that Yukteshwarji went to get sweet meats from his home. So when he came to Lahiri Mahasaya’s house, he says, ‘Didn’t you see Mahavatar Babaji hiding behind the sun beams?’ and he says, ‘No’ and Mahavatar Babaji tells him, ‘You need to meditate more.’

It’s not the fault of the Master’s that we cannot see them. It is our fault if we cannot see them or feel their presence or their Blessings.

So how do Devotees rise?

It takes willpower, energy and attunement. There is this wonderful story of a woman who was a cook in Mount Washington. She was a big person and had the strength of carrying the load that two three people would be needed to carry. She was a very strong woman, but few knew the truth that in her childhood she suffered from polio, and she was bedridden, crippled.

With deep willpower, when nobody was looking at her, she would tell herself very strongly, ‘I am not going to be a cripple for the rest of my life’. So when nobody was around, she would crawl out of bed, crawl to the wall, force herself to stand up against the wall and hold herself there with energy and strength.

She would repeat this day after day, month after month until one day miraculously after years, she was able to stand up on her own and she grew to be a very strong woman.

That’s how we want to rise above our difficulties. She could have chosen that as fate and destiny and said, ‘Well, I will do what I can’. That’s not what a devotee will want to affirm.

Master would say, ‘Do what you ought to do, not what you can.’ Because what you can is limited by your ego but when you choose to do what you ought to do, which is the right thing to do, God’s grace and power starts to flow into you. This is also a law. You don’t have to go looking saying ‘God, are you there behind me, I’m going to jump off this cliff.’

You have to have the faith that when you’re doing the right thing, God’s power is right there with you – but pray. Christ would tell his disciples, it is very quickly you begin to launch into your plans and use the power of your own intelligence and it is after you have exhausted all your resources, that you come praying to me. It should be the other way round. You should start with prayer and then draw my presence into your plans, into your activities.

I often bring in class Yoganandaji’s principle on energization exercises, tense with will, relax and feel. In this world of ceaseless activity, we are rarely taking a pause. A pause is that moment where you enter your inner centre into the divine presence and you’re communing with God to know, ‘Am I really an open channel for you?’

Because if we are not opening ourselves as a channel for the Masters, we think we are going forward but we are actually going backward and an interesting point Swamiji shares – whenever when we are not being tested we are actually going backwards. There is no stagnation in this world of Duality. Either you’re moving forward or you’re moving backward. So, he said, when you’re not being tested and if you are not consciously keeping your attention on the Divine, he said you’re moving backward, you’re sliding backward. I want to share another story and here I want to bring out willpower, energy, enthusiasm, our self-effort and simply the awareness of these teachings is sufficient to put it into action. We must know that not putting into action will not get us an event. You will be comfortable where you are, but you will not get where you want to be and that’s a choice we have to make.

Every one of us has the light, but situations, circumstances often in the power of Duality, we can be sabotaged by the darkness, that is also within us. As we make the journey towards the light, we sometimes will be caught unawares by this insidious appearance of Darkness in our life and then each one of us can support one another in lifting the other up. That is the only purpose we are here.

Swamiji said, ‘I want to find God and I want to share him with others.’ We are here to be a channel for God and by being a channel also to uplift ourselves and to uplift others.

Master says, ‘Jobs, friends, possessions in of themselves they mean nothing, except that you use them to find God’. So, accept the reality of this plane of duality, that we take our steps with awareness, with caution, calling in prayer the grace of God.

And when we step back in darkness, be like the woman who overcame polio with willpower and determination and don’t stay down.

Master said, ‘It is when you stay down, that you fail,’ he said, ‘It’s okay to fall, it’s okay to make mistakes,’ he said, ‘God does not mind our faults, but he minds our indifference’.

Our indifference is, that knowing the light that is within us, we do not seek to serve that light. That indifference draws very naturally, suffering to the devotee. It’s not like God wants to punish all of us.

No, we naturally draw suffering in intentionally turning away from the light but remember friends, in the darkest of moments light shines. It is seen in every one of the lives of the Masters.

Swamiji’s life in his Darkest Hour, what was his attitude? He felt that Master had abandoned him, but he said, ‘Master even if you abandon me, I will not abandon you.’ And that is the attitude.

Right attitude is what will help us rise. Practices aid us in withdrawing energy into a certain space in our consciousness where the Guru can come in and help. What really helps us is our attunement with the Guru, his Consciousness, calling in prayer to the power of the Master’s and they lift us out of it.

We cannot do it on our own and we don’t need to feel weak. In fact, as Saint Paul said, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong, because then I know you can come in and make possible the Impossible.’ That is the power of the Guru’s consciousness in our life.

With that, let’s inwardly express gratitude for all the blessings in our life and above all the blessing of the Guru and of the teachings of yoga. May we find the strength to rise in the Guru’s consciousness, always. 

Aum Shanti, Shanti, Shant