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Paramahamsa Yogananda
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Sri Yukteswar was reserved and matter-of-fact in demeanor. There was
naught of the vague or daft visionary about him. His feet were firm on
the earth, his head in the haven of heaven. Practical people aroused his
admiration. "Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not
incapacitating!" he would say. "The active expression of virtue gives
rise to the keenest intelligence."

In Master's life I fully discovered the cleavage between spiritual
realism and the obscure mysticism that spuriously passes as a
counterpart. My guru was reluctant to discuss the superphysical realms.
His only "marvelous" aura was one of perfect simplicity. In conversation
he avoided startling references; in action he was freely expressive.
Others talked of miracles but could manifest nothing; Sri Yukteswar
seldom mentioned the subtle laws but secretly operated them at will.
...
Because of my guru's unspectacular guise, only a few of his
contemporaries recognized him as a superman. The popular adage: "He is a
fool that cannot conceal his wisdom," could never be applied to Sri
Yukteswar. Though born a mortal like all others, Master had achieved
identity with the Ruler of time and space. In his life I perceived a
godlike unity. He had not found any insuperable obstacle to mergence of
human with Divine. No such barrier exists, I came to understand, save in
man's spiritual unadventurousness.

I always thrilled at the touch of Sri Yukteswar's holy feet. Yogis teach
that a disciple is spiritually magnetized by reverent contact with a
master; a subtle current is generated. The devotee's undesirable
habit-mechanisms in the brain are often cauterized; the groove of his
worldly tendencies beneficially disturbed. Momentarily at least he may
find the secret veils of maya lifting, and glimpse the reality of bliss.
My whole body responded with a liberating glow whenever I knelt in the
Indian fashion before my guru.

"Even when Lahiri Mahasaya was silent," Master told me, "or when he
conversed on other than strictly religious topics, I discovered that
nonetheless he had transmitted to me ineffable knowledge."

Sri Yukteswar affected me similarly. If I entered the hermitage in a
worried or indifferent frame of mind, my attitude imperceptibly changed.
A healing calm descended at mere sight of my guru. Every day with him
was a new experience in joy, peace, and wisdom. Never did I find him
deluded or intoxicated with greed or emotion or anger or any human
attachment.
...

Discipline had not been unknown to me: at home Father was strict, Ananta
often severe. But Sri Yukteswar's training cannot be described as other
than drastic. A perfectionist, my guru was hypercritical of his
disciples, whether in matters of moment or in the subtle nuances of
behavior.

"Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady," he
remarked on suitable occasion. "Straightforwardness without civility is
like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy
is helpful and admirable."
...

My guru could never be bribed, even by love. He showed no leniency to
anyone who, like myself, willingly offered to be his disciple. Whether
Master and I were surrounded by his students or by strangers, or were
alone together, he always spoke plainly and upbraided sharply. No
trifling lapse into shallowness or inconsistency escaped his rebuke.
This flattening treatment was hard to endure, but my resolve was to
allow Sri Yukteswar to iron out each of my psychological kinks. As he
labored at this titanic transformation, I shook many times under the
weight of his disciplinary hammer.

"If you don't like my words, you are at liberty to leave at any time,"
Master assured me. "I want nothing from you but your own improvement.
Stay only if you feel benefited."

For every humbling blow he dealt my vanity, for every tooth in my
metaphorical jaw he knocked loose with stunning aim, I am grateful
beyond any facility of expression. The hard core of human egotism is
hardly to be dislodged except rudely. With its departure, the Divine
finds at last an unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks to percolate
through flinty hearts of selfishness.

Sri Yukteswar's wisdom was so penetrating that, heedless of remarks, he
often replied to one's unspoken observation. "What a person imagines he
hears, and what the speaker has really implied, may be poles apart," he
said. "Try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men's verbiage."

But divine insight is painful to worldly ears; Master was not popular
with superficial students. The wise, always few in number, deeply
revered him. I daresay Sri Yukteswar would have been the most
sought-after guru in India had his words not been so candid and so
censorious.

"I am hard on those who come for my training," he admitted to me. "That
is my way; take it or leave it. I will never compromise. But you will be
much kinder to your disciples; that is your way. I try to purify only in
the fires of severity, searing beyond the average toleration. The gentle
approach of love is also transfiguring. The inflexible and the yielding
methods are equally effective if applied with wisdom. You will go to
foreign lands, where blunt assaults on the ego are not appreciated. A
teacher could not spread India's message in the West without an ample
fund of accommodative patience and forbearance." I refuse to state the
amount of truth I later came to find in Master's words!

New disciples often joined Sri Yukteswar in exhaustive criticism of
others. Wise like the guru! Models of flawless discrimination! But he
who takes the offensive must not be defenseless. The same carping
students fled precipitantly as soon as Master publicly unloosed in their
direction a few shafts from his analytical quiver.

"Tender inner weaknesses, revolting at mild touches of censure, are like
diseased parts of the body, recoiling before even delicate handling."
This was Sri Yukteswar's amused comment on the flighty ones.

There are disciples who seek a guru made in their own image. Such
students often complained that they did not understand Sri Yukteswar.

"Neither do you comprehend God!" I retorted on one occasion. "When a
saint is clear to you, you will be one." Among the trillion mysteries,
breathing every second the inexplicable air, who may venture to ask that
the fathomless nature of a master be instantly grasped?

Students came, and generally went. Those who craved a path of oily
sympathy and comfortable recognitions did not find it at the hermitage.
Master offered shelter and shepherding for the aeons, but many disciples
miserly demanded ego-balm as well. They departed, preferring life's
countless humiliations before any humility. Master's blazing rays, the
open penetrating sunshine of his wisdom, were too powerful for their
spiritual sickness. They sought some lesser teacher who, shading them
with flattery, permitted the fitful sleep of ignorance.
...

The following morning I sought out Behari Pundit, my Sanskrit professor
at Scottish Church College.

"Sir, you have told me of your friendship with a great disciple of
Lahiri Mahasaya. Please give me his address."

"You mean Ram Gopal Muzumdar. I call him the 'sleepless saint.' He is
always awake in an ecstatic consciousness. His home is at Ranbajpur,
near Tarakeswar."

I thanked the pundit, and entrained immediately for Tarakeswar. I hoped
to silence my misgivings by wringing a sanction from the "sleepless
saint" to engage myself in lonely Himalayan meditation. Behari's friend,
I heard, had received illumination after many years of Kriya Yoga
practice in isolated caves.
...

At midafternoon my world was still an endless paddy field. Heat pouring
from the avoidless sky was bringing me to near-collapse. As a man
approached at leisurely pace, I hardly dared utter my usual question,
lest it summon the monotonous: "Just a krosha."

The stranger halted beside me. Short and slight, he was physically
unimpressive save for an extraordinary pair of piercing dark eyes.

"I was planning to leave Ranbajpur, but your purpose was good, so I
awaited you." He shook his finger in my astounded face. "Aren't you
clever to think that, unannounced, you could pounce on me? That
professor Behari had no right to give you my address."

Considering that introduction of myself would be mere verbosity in the
presence of this master, I stood speechless, somewhat hurt at my
reception. His next remark was abruptly put.

"Tell me; where do you think God is?"

"Why, He is within me and everywhere." I doubtless looked as bewildered
as I felt.

"All-pervading, eh?" The saint chuckled. "Then why, young sir, did you
fail to bow before the Infinite in the stone symbol at the Tarakeswar
temple yesterday? Your pride caused you the punishment of being
misdirected by the passer-by who was not bothered by fine distinctions
of left and right. Today, too, you have had a fairly uncomfortable time
of it!"

I agreed wholeheartedly, wonder-struck that an omniscient eye hid within
the unremarkable body before me. Healing strength emanated from the
yogi; I was instantly refreshed in the scorching field.

"The devotee inclines to think his path to God is the only way," he
said. "Yoga, through which divinity is found within, is doubtless the
highest road: so Lahiri Mahasaya has told us. But discovering the Lord
within, we soon perceive Him without. Holy shrines at Tarakeswar and
elsewhere are rightly venerated as nuclear centers of spiritual power."

The saint's censorious attitude vanished; his eyes became
compassionately soft. He patted my shoulder.

"Young yogi, I see you are running away from your master. He has
everything you need; you must return to him. Mountains cannot be your
guru." Ram Gopal was repeating the same thought which Sri Yukteswar had
expressed at our last meeting.

"Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence." My
companion glanced at me quizzically. "The Himalayas in India and Tibet
have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within
will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon
as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for
spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by."

I silently agreed, recalling my prayer in the Benares hermitage,
followed by the meeting with Sri Yukteswar in a crowded lane.

"Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be
alone?"

"Yes." I reflected that this saint descended from the general to the
particular with disconcerting speed.

"That is your cave." The yogi bestowed on me a gaze of illumination
which I have never forgotten. "That is your sacred mountain. That is
where you will find the kingdom of God."

His simple words instantaneously banished my lifelong obsession for the
Himalayas. In a burning paddy field I awoke from the monticolous dreams
of eternal snows.

"Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you."
Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses
were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances.

The saint seated me on the umbrageous bamboo platform of his small
cottage. After giving me sweetened lime juice and a piece of rock candy,
he entered his patio and assumed the lotus posture. In about four hours
I opened my meditative eyes and saw that the moonlit figure of the yogi
was still motionless. As I was sternly reminding my stomach that man
does not live by bread alone, Ram Gopal approached me.

"I see you are famished; food will be ready soon."

A fire was kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and dhal were
quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my
aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has
commanded devout observance from time immemorial. In my later world
travels, I was charmed to see that a similar respect for visitors is
manifested in rural sections of many countries. The city dweller finds
the keen edge of hospitality blunted by superabundance of strange faces.

The marts of men seemed remotely dim as I squatted by the yogi in the
isolation of the tiny jungle village. The cottage room was mysterious
with a mellow light. Ram Gopal arranged some torn blankets on the floor
for my bed, and seated himself on a straw mat. Overwhelmed by his
spiritual magnetism, I ventured a request.

"Sir, why don't you grant me a samadhi?"

"Dear one, I would be glad to convey the divine contact, but it is not
my place to do so." The saint looked at me with half-closed eyes. "Your
master will bestow that experience shortly. Your body is not tuned just
yet. As a small lamp cannot withstand excessive electrical voltage, so
your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the
infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as if every cell were on fire.
...

Around midnight Ram Gopal fell into silence, and I lay down on my
blankets. Closing my eyes, I saw flashes of lightning; the vast space
within me was a chamber of molten light. I opened my eyes and observed
the same dazzling radiance. The room became a part of that infinite
vault which I beheld with interior vision.

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Sir, how can I sleep in the presence of lightning, blazing whether my
eyes are shut or open?"

"You are blessed to have this experience; the spiritual radiations are
not easily seen." The saint added a few words of affection.

At dawn Ram Gopal gave me rock candies and said I must depart. I felt
such reluctance to bid him farewell that tears coursed down my cheeks.

"I will not let you go empty-handed." The yogi spoke tenderly. "I will
do something for you."

He smiled and looked at me steadfastly. I stood rooted to the ground,
peace rushing like a mighty flood through the gates of my eyes. I was
instantaneously healed of a pain in my back, which had troubled me
intermittently for years. Renewed, bathed in a sea of luminous joy, I
wept no more. After touching the saint's feet, I sauntered into the
jungle, making my way through its tropical tangle until I reached
Tarakeswar.

There I made a second pilgrimage to the famous shrine, and prostrated
myself fully before the altar. The round stone enlarged before my inner
vision until it became the cosmical spheres, ring within ring, zone
after zone, all dowered with divinity.

I entrained happily an hour later for Calcutta. My travels ended, not in
the lofty mountains, but in the Himalayan presence of my Master.
...

"Mukunda!" Sri Yukteswar's voice sounded from a distant inner balcony.

I felt as rebellious as my thoughts. "Master always urges me to
meditate," I muttered to myself. "He should not disturb me when he knows
why I came to his room."

He summoned me again; I remained obstinately silent. The third time his
tone held rebuke.

"Sir, I am meditating," I shouted protestingly.

"I know how you are meditating," my guru called out, "with your mind
distributed like leaves in a storm! Come here to me."

Snubbed and exposed, I made my way sadly to his side.

"Poor boy, the mountains couldn't give what you wanted." Master spoke
caressively, comfortingly. His calm gaze was unfathomable. "Your heart's
desire shall be fulfilled."

Sri Yukteswar seldom indulged in riddles; I was bewildered. He struck
gently on my chest above the heart.

My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if
by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical
bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every
pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew
that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no
longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient
atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own
remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim
transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap.

The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was
now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive.
Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Road,
and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely approaching. When she
reached the space in front of the open ashram gate, I observed her with
my two physical eyes. As she passed by, behind the brick wall, I saw her
clearly still.

All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick
motion pictures. My body, Master's, the pillared courtyard, the
furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became
violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as
sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being
shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the
metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of
God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of
light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents,
the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating
universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at
night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched
global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see
a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the
planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light.

The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing
into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw
the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into
sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds
passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament.

I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception
in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part
of the universal structure. Blissful amrita, the nectar of immortality,
pulsed through me with a quicksilverlike fluidity. The creative voice of
God I heard resounding as Aum,1 the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.

Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost
unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I
was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative
to the Spirit. Like a prodigal child, I had run away from my macrocosmic
home and imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm.

My guru was standing motionless before me; I started to drop at his holy
feet in gratitude for the experience in cosmic consciousness which I had
long passionately sought. He held me upright, and spoke calmly,
unpretentiously.

"You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you
in the world. Come; let us sweep the balcony floor; then we shall walk
by the Ganges."

I fetched a broom; Master, I knew, was teaching me the secret of
balanced living. The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses,
while the body performs its daily duties. When we set out later for a
stroll, I was still entranced in unspeakable rapture. I saw our bodies
as two astral pictures, moving over a road by the river whose essence
was sheer light.

"It is the Spirit of God that actively sustains every form and force in
the universe; yet He is transcendental and aloof in the blissful
uncreated void beyond the worlds of vibratory phenomena," 2 Master
explained. "Saints who realize their divinity even while in the flesh
know a similar twofold existence. Conscientiously engaging in earthly
work, they yet remain immersed in an inward beatitude. The Lord has
created all men from the limitless joy of His being. Though they are
painfully cramped by the body, God nevertheless expects that souls made
in His image shall ultimately rise above all sense identifications and
reunite with Him."

The cosmic vision left many permanent lessons. By daily stilling my
thoughts, I could win release from the delusive conviction that my body
was a mass of flesh and bones, traversing the hard soil of matter. The
breath and the restless mind, I saw, were like storms which lashed the
ocean of light into waves of material formsearth, sky, human beings,
animals, birds, trees. No perception of the Infinite as One Light could
be had except by calming those storms. As often as I silenced the two
natural tumults, I beheld the multitudinous waves of creation melt into
one lucent sea, even as the waves of the ocean, their tempests
subsiding, serenely dissolve into unity.

A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his
disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the
vast vistas would not overwhelm him. The experience can never be given
through one's mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness. Only
adequate enlargement by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare
the mind to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence. It comes with a
natural inevitability to the sincere devotee. His intense craving begins
to pull at God with an irresistible force. The Lord, as the Cosmic
Vision, is drawn by the seeker's magnetic ardor into his range of
consciousness.

("Autobiography of a Yogi",
http://crystalclarity.com/yogananda/contents.html )

Svami Vivekananda i Paramahamsa Ramakrišna
==========================================

Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna, "What proofs are there of God's existence?"

And Ramakrishna said, "I am."

A strange answer. Vivekananda had not expected that answer. You also
would not have expected it, because when somebody is asking for a proof
of God, then there are traditional, philosophical proofs. One expects
those proofs. Vivekananda must have been thinking Ramakrishna would say,
"Everything needs a creator. The world is, therefore there must be a
creator. We may be able to see him or not, but the creator must be there
because the world is."

But no, Ramakrishna didn't say anything like that. He was not a
philosopher: he was a Sufi. He said, "I am! Look at me. feel me! Go into
me! I can take you into that reality that you are calling God. What name
you give to it is irrelevant. I have been to those heights -- I can lead
the way for you too. Are you ready to come with me?"

Vivekananda was not prepared. He had come to argue. But this is not an
argument. This is going to be risky, to follow this madman. One can
never be certain where he will lead you.

Vivekananda hesitated. And Ramakrishna said, "Before you ask a question,
you should be ready to receive the answer! Are you a coward or
something? Why did you ask in the first place?" And Ramakrishna jumped
- -- he was that kind of madman, -- and he hit Vivekananda with his feet
on his chest, and Vivekananda fell into Samadhi.

When after one hour he woke up, he was a transformed man. He bowed down,
touched the feet of Ramakrishna, and said, "Excuse me, I am sorry. It
was so childish of me to ask such a question. It is not a question -- it
is an adventure. And thank you! You have given me a taste of something
of which I was not aware at all."

Yes, he did transmit something. But if you read further into the same
story, Vivekananda could not retain the experience. Ramakrishna just
gave him a little nibble. Then he said, "Don't depend on my touch every
time. Now you know there is something beyond; work it out yourself."
Then it took many years for Vivekananda to get that experience again.

Ramakrishna gave even that little experience to him because Vivekananda
was fit for it. Still, he said, "This is borrowed. I'm giving you a
sample. It's something like if I am chewing some nice candy and you come
along and say, "Hey, what is that? "Candy. "Ah, can I try some? "Okay, a
little piece. "Ah, it's so nice. Where can I get some more? "Go, work,
earn money, go to the shop and buy it. I just give you a taste; then you
have to work for it.

Sri Ramakrishna had several thousand disciples but he didn't give all of
them even that little taste Vivekananda got. So the student should have
the proper qualifications for such an experience.

Otherwise, if it is just that easy Ramakrishna could have just touched
everybody and said, "Come on, everybody is a Ramakrishna now. Finished.
He was not really stingy. He could have done that to a thousand people.
Why should he do it to only one, Vivekananda?

That is the proof that there are certain qualifications necessary in the
disciple even to perceive something like that.
...

The shaktipat, the radiation of psychic energies by the enlightened can
awaken these abilities in all who come to them. This has been known and
recorded in the Sacred literature for thousands of years.

Indeed, some sacred literature states that only by access to the
energies of the Masters, can enlightenment be passed on.

The search for this next step in evolution comes from the enhancement,
the increase, of energy.

As fire is spread from candle to candle. As the sacred word resonates in
both he who gives and he who receives. As Grace dropeth as the gentle
dew from Heaven, twice blessed.. So a preparation of he who receives,
the student, the candle, by the removal of Negative Energy, Energy
Blockages, a lack of Energy Blockages allows more Spiritual Energy to be
absorbed and used to crystalise, complete, finalise, create the
Spiritual Body of another Master, another transmitter of the Truth!

They say that Masters represents infinite power through a complete loss
of the selfish ego - When the robe was touched no credit was claimed by
the wearer, It was your faith which healed you! said the Master - and so
the truism, It takes two to Tango, - the student must be purified and
prepared by evolution and spiritual practice to accept the Force, the
Energy transmitted by the Master.

All energy blockages stopping the flow of energy through the system and
preventing the buildup of psychic power in the system must be removed.

(http://tinyurl.com/y4su8bt)

- --
http://www.danijel.org/
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