For this Christmas eve. and Christmas day I wanted to share with you what I read from Mother Hamilton’s talk on Sunday in which she quotes from a Christmas letter of Paramhansa Yogananda. What a universal Spirit all great spiritual Masters bring with them. For Yoganandaji and Swami Ramdas, both Hindu Swamis, their adoration of Jesus Christ was not just a vague acknowledgement, but it was based on direct experience with the Spirit and the man that has changed this world with his message of love for God and for his fellow man over two thousand years ago. Let that Spirit be born afresh in us this Christmas season, and always.
Yogacharya David
Mother Hamilton: I’d like also to read to you a Christmas letter that was written by my Guru many, many years ago to all of his devotees.
Dear Friends,
Let us decorate the growing Christmas tree of civilization with the flaming flags of all brother nations. Let us drown our differences and behold the branches of our national life spreading out from the tree of one international life. Let us demand that America, India, Germany, Russia, France, China, Japan, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Mexico, Egypt, and all nations learn to decorate their flags on the Christmas tree of brotherhood and celebrate the coming of the United Nations of the World through their awakening in Christ. Let all brother nations contribute their best to make a League of Hearts and a League of Wisdom in preparation for their coming union. Let all nations consider themselves as children of God with different names only. May the love of nations be the twinkling lights with which to decorate the Christmas tree of world union. Let us obliterate the oddities of dogmatism and behold all religions as the branches of the one tree of truth. Let all sects celebrate around this one Christmas tree of universal religion in the coming United States of the World. Let us behold the soft twigs of our temporary joy‑loving senses, not projected away from, but joined to the everlasting Christmas tree of Divine joy. May we all learn to climb up the spinal tree of life and pass by the starry top into the infinite kingdom of Christ.
In this coming Christmas we shall celebrate the coming of one kingdom, one religion, one brotherhood, one human nationality, one wisdom, one ever‑new happiness, one language, one race, one universal law, one freedom, contact of one God, and one understanding for all human brothers. May this Christmas and New Year time fill you with the adamantine determination to improve yourself and others as Christ would wish you to do to usher in paradise on earth.
Mother Hamilton: What a tremendous vision he had of universality. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, that a man from India… I have known two masters from India who taught me more about the Christ during the time I was with them than all the rest of the years of my life. And in the ashram where I went through the mystical crucifixion twenty‑two years ago myself, there, in the most prominent place of all, was the picture of the Christ. And yet we call them heathens, yet they came to teach us the true meaning of Christianity, the true meaning of Christ, if we would only open our eyes and see that.