by Dr. Marcel Hernandez, ND
The great sage, Paramhansa Yogananda, urged all people to learn spiritual techniques of prayer and meditation that can give them the actual experience of God.
He particularly recommended the practice of Kriya Yoga, an ancient technique of meditation that can only be learned after one has practiced certain preliminary techniques for a probationary period of, usually, six months to a year. (To learn about Kriya Yoga, follow this link to Ananda.org.)
Yogananda called Kriya “the airplane route to God,” as compared with older religious traditions that insist on the need for blind belief, and that condemn all attempts to know God as heresy and sacrilege.
Yogananda said that finding God within is the death of suffering, and that it can give us the power to “remain unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds.”
Those fortunate to have known him, or his advanced disciples, have testified to the unshakable inner calm with which they were able to meet and conquer every test that life could throw at them.
Jesus tells us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)
In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna emphasizes a need to control the mind through detachment, duty, and spiritual understanding. “Like an ocean undisturbed by flowing rivers, a sage remains peaceful amidst worldly desires.”
The Chinese sage Lao Tzu said, “Make your heart like a lake, with a calm, still surface, and great depths of kindness.”
The admonition to learn to remain calm and centered in amidst a world teetering on the brink of utter chaos is not confined to enlightened souls.
Author Hermann Hesse wrote: “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”
Author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: “Most of us reflect our surroundings. However, men (and women) with quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened; they carry on in times of fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”
While these writers hint at practical methods by which we can learn to live untouched by a growingly chaotic world that appears to be about to split apart, let us take at the words of Jesus, who was a true descent of God in human form.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
Jesus is offering “my peace” to us individually and personally, as a special dispensation of the divine power, rather than merely as a fleeting peaceful emotion. Jesus taught that this profound inner divine peace is the goal of all existence.
“I do not give to you as the world gives.”
The best the outer world can give us is a shaky, insecure, temporary peace based on the fleeting and false illusion of lasting comfort, financial security, and physical safety. But these are transitory, insecure, and never last – thus the best they can give us is a superficial illusion of true peace. In their stead, Jesus offers us a peace that can remain unshaken in the midst of all outward trials, even bodily death.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Spiritual aspirants are offered a choice: to open their hearts and receive Jesus’ peace, with its protective power against fear and chaos, or to jump into the fray of the world where no real joy or safety is found.
There is a wide gap between merely understanding what we must do to find lasting inner peace and happiness, and the actual experience of living continually in the inner sacred place from which true peace flows.
Bridging the gap from idea to experience is more complicated than simply understanding that the chasm exists.
In a hyperactive world where people no longer have time or taste for the glories of elevated language, and prefer three-letter acronyms and terrible grammar instead, the thought of devoting years to the patient work of finding a slowly growing inner peace is repellent – “Shhhh – I don’t have time for your meaningless spiritual musings – sorry, I gotta take this call.”
Contrary to the title of a popular book, there is no lazy person’s path to enlightenment. There’s only the long, hard work of many lives, with countless humbling, liberating lessons along the way.
Gene Benvau was a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda. He used to say, “The spiritual path is veeeery easy.” Then he would add with a hearty chuckle, “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy!”
Gene didn’t present the physical image of an emaciated ascetic who had renounced the world to wear sackcloth and subsist on a diet of water and nettles. He was a broad-chested, hearty man who had lived as an infant in Yogananda’s ashram with his mother. Yogananda told him that his life would not be that of a monastic; he chose a wife for Gene, and they were very happy. He ran a trucking company in Los Angeles. At work one day, someone said to him, “Gene, how come you’re so happy? You’re the happiest many I’ve every met!”
Gene said, “I told him, ‘It’s because I have such a deep love for God in my heart!’”
The path to peace is plain and simple: Commit without hesitation or reservation to a spiritual path. Paramhansa Yogananda taught methods by which even the beginner soon hears the blissful inner sound of Aum. He said that when we hear that sound, perhaps as a soft, seamless, unbroken sound like wind in trees, that we are in actual contact with God. Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi offers seekers a thrilling introduction to a spiritual path by which they can find the perfect peace of God.
The path may not be easy, but it pays rich dividends to sincere aspirants, right from the start.
Note: Dr. Connie and I are both happy to offer spiritual counseling to seekers who’ve begun to suspect that there may be more to life than the accumulation of things.