Picture: Master; 1924-age 31
Today, we celebrate the birth of Paramhansa Yogananda, one of the great spiritual personalities to inhabit this world, and a personal blessing to those of us who follow this Kriya path. Master, Yoganandaji, wrote 70 years ago:
The characteristic features of Indian culture have long been a search for ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple-guru relationship. My own path led me to a Christlike sage whose beautiful life was chiseled for the ages. He was one of the great masters who are India’s sole remaining wealth. Emerging in every generation, they have bulwarked their land against the fate of Babylon and Egypt.
I find my earliest memories covering the anachronistic features of a previous incarnation. Clear recollections came to me of a distant life, a yogi amidst the Himalayan snows. These glimpses of the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse of the future.
The helpless humiliations of infancy are not banished from my mind. I was resentfully conscious of not being able to walk or express myself freely. Prayerful surges arose within me as I realized my bodily impotence. My strong emotional life took silent form as words in many languages. Among the inward confusion of tongues, my ear gradually accustomed itself to the circumambient Bengali syllables of my people. The beguiling scope of an infant’s mind! adultly considered limited to toys and toes.
Psychological ferment and my unresponsive body brought me to many obstinate crying-spells. I recall the general family bewilderment at my distress. Happier memories, too, crowd in on me: my mother’s caresses, and my first attempts at lisping phrase and toddling step. These early triumphs, usually forgotten quickly, are yet a natural basis of self-confidence.
Thus begins the spiritual classic: Autobiography of a Yogi. Master continues his narrative at the age of 8 after his healing of deadly Asiatic cholera by Lahiri Mahasaya:
Shortly after my healing through the potency of the guru’s picture, I had an influential spiritual vision. Sitting on my bed one morning, I fell into a deep reverie.
“What is behind the darkness of closed eyes?” This probing thought came powerfully into my mind. An immense flash of light at once manifested to my inward gaze. Divine shapes of saints, sitting in meditation posture in mountain caves, formed like miniature cinema pictures on the large screen of radiance within my forehead.
“Who are you?” I spoke aloud.
“We are the Himalayan yogis.” The celestial response is difficult to describe; my heart was thrilled.
“Ah, I long to go to the Himalayas and become like you!” The vision vanished, but the silvery beams expanded in ever-widening circles to infinity.
“What is this wondrous glow?”
“I am Iswara. I am Light.” The voice was as murmuring clouds.
“I want to be one with Thee!”
Out of the slow dwindling of my divine ecstasy, I salvaged a permanent legacy of inspiration to seek God. “He is eternal, ever-new Joy!” This memory persisted long after the day of rapture.
Master’s intense search for God, which took him to the feet of his great guru, Sri Yukteswarji, is now immortalized in his autobiography and has become a living testament in the changed lives of those who took Master as their guru. We are indeed blessed to have this seamless connection come to us through his most beloved disciple, Mother Hamilton. The traditional guru-disciple relationship has been kept intact by Master’s and Mother’s total dedication to realizing God, and their compassion in passing that on to spiritually thirsty souls longing for that same realization. May Master’s light shine ever brighter, leading all sincere aspirants to the harbor of God-experience—eternal, ever-new Joy! Jai Guru and happy birthday Master!