Sunday Service at Ananda Village

Watch this beautiful Sunday Service talk withNayaswami Maria, recorded at Ananda Village on November 17th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Promise of the Scriptures

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

In the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 15, we read the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus tells of the man who took the wealth bestowed on him by his father, and squandered it in foreign lands, where he fell into evil ways. At last, repentant, he returned to his father’s home. When his father saw him, he was (Jesus tells us)

moved with compassion, and ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy son.” But the father said to his servants, “Fetch quickly the best robe and put it on him, and give him a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet; and bring out the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; because this my son was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to make merry.

Small-hearted human beings, identified as they are with their little egos, give exaggerated importance to any slight they receive from others. Thus, they imagine God, like them, to be petty, unpardoning, and vindictive. In God’s eyes, however, when human beings go astray there is nothing to forgive. All of us are aspects, only, of His own Self. He who made us resides in us. He is not far away from us in some far-off heaven. His call to us, always, is to return to our own home, within.

The way of return is described in the Bhagavad Gita, in the sixth Chapter:

Supreme blessedness is that yogi’s who has completely calmed his mind, controlled his ego-active tendencies (rajas), and purged himself of desire, thereby attaining oneness with Brahma, the Infinite Spirit.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this uplifting Sunday Service talk with Tyagi Dhyan, recorded at Ananda Village on November 10th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Promise of the Scriptures

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

In the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 15, we read the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus tells of the man who took the wealth bestowed on him by his father, and squandered it in foreign lands, where he fell into evil ways. At last, repentant, he returned to his father’s home. When his father saw him, he was (Jesus tells us)

moved with compassion, and ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy son.” But the father said to his servants, “Fetch quickly the best robe and put it on him, and give him a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet; and bring out the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; because this my son was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to make merry.

Small-hearted human beings, identified as they are with their little egos, give exaggerated importance to any slight they receive from others. Thus, they imagine God, like them, to be petty, unpardoning, and vindictive. In God’s eyes, however, when human beings go astray there is nothing to forgive. All of us are aspects, only, of His own Self. He who made us resides in us. He is not far away from us in some far-off heaven. His call to us, always, is to return to our own home, within.

The way of return is described in the Bhagavad Gita, in the sixth Chapter:

Supreme blessedness is that yogi’s who has completely calmed his mind, controlled his ego-active tendencies (rajas), and purged himself of desire, thereby attaining oneness with Brahma, the Infinite Spirit.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this uplifting Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Parvati, recorded at Ananda Village on November 3rd, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Why Tell God Anything When He Knows Everything? Why Offer God Anything, When He Has Everything?

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

Jesus Christ teaches as the ideal prayer one that addresses very human demands to God: “Give us this day our daily bread,” “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” and, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Jesus himself says, just before suggesting this prayer, “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” Why, then, his recommendation that we pray for anything? The answer is that we should offer ourselves up in acceptance of His abundance. Don’t pester God, as though pulling constantly on His sleeve to get His attention. Approach Him with the confidence of a child in its parent. And in that spirit, then, ask Him lovingly, but with complete trust, as though demanding your birthright, and without the slightest doubt in your mind that He wants only your best. For you don’t have to persuade Him, the way a beggar or a stranger might. You are His own child.

God knows everything already. He knows what is in your heart. It is you who need to clarify your feelings, that you attune yourself to Him in turn more clearly. For only by such clarity will you be able to receive perfectly what He gives you.

For the same reason, we need to offer ourselves to Him not because He needs anything from us (except, as Yogananda said, our love, to complete His love for us), but because by self-giving we expand our awareness from its confinement in the little ego, outward to infinity.

“Those who partake of the nectar remaining after a sacrifice,” says the Bhagavad Gita in the fourth Chapter, “attain to the Infinite Spirit. That person, however, who makes no sacrifices never truly succeeds in enjoying even the blessings of this material world; how, then, could he attain happiness in subtler realms?”

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Sundara Traymar, recorded at Ananda Village on October 27th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

What Is the Best Way to Pray?

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

Jesus Christ and Sri Krishna, both, advised praying to God as personal. Yet both emphasized also that God is above form, and that He must be sought, ultimately, in Infinity. As Jesus put it, “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

Yet he spoke of God constantly as our Heavenly Father. In what is known as the Lord’s Prayer, he proposed a very human prayer to the Heavenly Father, asking fulfillment for all our spiritual needs.

The Bhagavad Gita explains that man, living as he does in a human body, finds it difficult to worship Infinity as though the ego and body didn’t even exist. Far better for human beings, Krishna says, to work with reality as we know it than to affirm a reality of which the human mind is incapable of forming any clear notion. Encouraging the devotee in this direction, he says, “O Arjuna, be thou a yogi!” – that is to say, be one who works with, not in rejection of, the energies of the body and the natural tendencies of the mind.

In the twelfth Chapter of the Gita, Arjuna asks:

“Those who, ever steadfast, worship Thee as devotees [that is to say, in an “I” and “Thou” relationship], and those who contemplate Thee as the immortal, unmanifested Spirit – which group is the better versed in yoga?”

The blessed Lord replied: “Those who, fixing their minds on Me, adore Me, ever united to Me through supreme devotion, are in My eyes the perfect knowers of yoga. . . .

“Those whose strict aim is union with the Unmanifested choose a more difficult way; arduous for embodied beings is The Path of dedication to the Absolute” – the followers, that is to say, of The Path of Gyana Yoga.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Sagar, recorded at Ananda Village on October 20th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

First Things First

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

That expression, “First things first,” is a piece of counsel often given to students of business techniques. It is the advice of practicality to those who aspire to worldly success. But according to the Hermetic doctrine, “As above, so below,” that which works best in one level of life is often the best guide to what will work best on every other level. If a person is true to his highest priorities, he will generally find that his other needs are fulfilled naturally as well.

This is true, certainly, of the search for God. One of the greatest sayings of Jesus Christ was this simple sentence, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 6:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Paramhansa Yogananda gave his elder brother Ananta a wonderful lesson in this truth. It was Ananta who had captured him and brought him back from his flight to the Himalayas, described by Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi. In Yogananda’s book we read how Ananta later challenged him, in the city of Agra, to pit his divine faith against such “practical” worldly considerations as the need for earning a living. Fearless before that challenge, the young aspirant agreed to go by train, without any money, to the nearby town of Brindaban; not to miss a single meal in Brindaban; and to find his way back to Agra without begging and without in any other way asking for help. In one of the most thrilling chapters in the book, Yogananda fulfilled all the conditions of the test. Yogananda continued the account:

As the tale was unfolded, my brother turned sober, then solemn.

“The law of demand and supply reaches into subtler realms than I had supposed.” Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before noticeable. “I understand for the first time your indifference to the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world.”

Late as it was, my brother insisted that he receive diksha (initiation) into Kriya Yoga.

As the Bhagavad Gita puts it in the ninth Chapter:

Those who worship lesser gods go to their gods…but those who worship Me come to Me.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Ananta, recorded at Ananda Village on October 13th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Victory Demands the Courage of Conviction

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

Jesus Christ said in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 10:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

He that findeth [that is to say, that clingeth to] his life shall lose it: and he that loseth [in other words, that giveth up] his life for my sake shall find it.

God tests the firmness of our faith. The “sword” described here is the sword of discrimination. The struggle Jesus describes is not a war against unknown enemies, but the struggle with our own attachment to all that is nearest and dearest to us, humanly speaking. Ultimately, it is a war against the ego itself, and against anything with which we surround ourselves to bolster the ego’s fragile sense of security.

When Yogananda, as a boy, fled to the Himalayas to embrace a life of solitary meditation, he was apprehended by his older brother Ananta, and brought home again. At a certain point, before he would accept defeat, he whispered to his friend Amar, his companion on the flight, “Let us slip away when opportunity offers. We can go on foot to Rishikesh.”

But Amar, whose brother had accompanied Ananta, had turned pessimist, disclaiming any intention of continuing their adventure. Yogananda’s memorable comment on Amar’s refusal was, “He was enjoying the familial warmth.”

The spiritual warrior rejects that “familial warmth.” Rather, he claims the whole universe as his home.

As the Bhagavad Gita puts it in the fourteenth Chapter:

Unaffected by outward joys and sorrows, or by praise and blame; secure in his divine nature; regarding with equal gaze a clod of mud, a stone, and a bar of gold; impartial toward all experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant; firm-minded; untouched by either praise or blame; treating everyone alike whether friend or foe; free from the delusion that, in anything he does, he is the doer: Such an one has transcended Nature’s triune qualities.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Pranaba, recorded at Ananda Village on October 6th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

In Surrender Lies Victory!

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

A case might be made for surrender as a path to victory in worldly conflicts – the way of passive resistance, for example, in preference to armed resistance. But our point here concerns a higher kind of surrender: the surrender of our deluded, egoic will to the wise and almighty will of God.

Human will is, as Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, guided by whims and limited understanding. The divine will is in harmony with every level of reality. Though the divine will sometimes appears to us, at first, to be wrong, it proves always, eventually, to be for our highest good.

Human will is inconsistent; it leads us one day to success, another, to disaster. The divine will, when we surrender to it completely (though it is not always easy to do so!), always brings us deep inner peace and joy in the end.

Jesus Christ demonstrated this perfect surrender to God’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before he was captured and imprisoned, preparatory to his crucifixion. He went apart from the others to pray, and asked them to pray also. But when he returned to them he found them asleep.

Out of his love for them he excused them, saying, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He then urged them again, saying, “Watch and pray.” Their weakness, in those circumstances, was particularly sad, and the disciples themselves must have regretted it bitterly, later on.

We all know the symptoms of human weakness, though we may excuse them in ourselves, saying, “Well, after all, I’m only human.” But what are the signs of true strength? We find in all cases that these are the fruit of a life wholly surrendered to God. The Bhagavad Gita lists these signs in the thirteenth Chapter:

Humbleness, truthfulness, and harmlessness,

Patience and honor, reverence for the wise,

Purity, constancy, control of self,

Contempt for sense-delights, self-sacrifice,

Perception of the certainty of ill

In birth, old age, and frail mortality,

Disease, the ego’s suffering, and sin;

Detachment, lightly holding thoughts of home,

Children, and wife – those ties which bind most men;

An ever-tranquil heart, heedless of good

Or adverse fortune, with the will upraised

To worship Me alone, unceasingly;

Loving deep solitude, and shunning noise

Of foolish crowds; calm focus on the Self

Perceived within and in Infinity:

These qualities reveal true Wisdom, Prince.

All that is otherwise is ignorance!

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Erin Vinacco, recorded at Ananda Village on September 29th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Many Are the Pathways to Truth

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

On the dedication page of Swami Kriyananda’s book The Path appears the following account:

A group of Paramhansa Yogananda’s disciples had gone with him to see a movie about the life of Gyandev, a great saint of medieval India. Afterwards they gathered and listened to the Master explain certain, subtler, aspects of that inspiring story. A young man in the group mentioned another film he had seen years earlier, in India, about the life of Mirabai, a famous woman saint.

“If you’d seen that movie,” he exclaimed, “you wouldn’t even have liked this one!”

The Guru rebuked him. “Why make such comparisons? The lives of great saints manifest in various ways the same, one God.”

The Bible contains a similar account in the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 9:

And John…said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.

And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.

The more central a truth, the greater the number of contexts in which it can be applied. Truth is like a pure white light, containing within itself the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Let no one tell you what your path to God ought to be. Many are The Paths. Select your own according to the dictates of your own nature, no matter how out of step that puts you with other people.

Sri Krishna in the third Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, states:

Trying even unsuccessfully to fulfill one’s own spiritual duty (dharma) is better than pursuing successfully the duties of others. Better death itself in the pursuance of one’s own duties. The pursuance of another’s duties is fraught with (spiritual) danger.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

 

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Tyagi Atman, recorded at Ananda Village on September 22nd, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Intuition Is Simple: The Intellect Is Complex

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.

The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

In the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter 10, we read a passage that Yogananda often quoted:

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

It has often been noted that a critical attitude tends to paralyze creativity. Good critics, for example, seldom produce works of creative genius, though their creations may be intellectually clever. The intellect separates; it analyzes, then puts things together again piece by piece. Intellect lacks intuition’s flow, which descends smoothly, like a river, from the superconscious.

Paramhansa Yogananda described intuition as “the soul’s power of knowing God.” To receive the kingdom of God, Jesus was saying, one must do so with the openness and trust of a little child. Intellectuals may object to this statement, saying, “But there must also be discrimination. You wouldn’t want a person to be so open-minded that his brain falls out!” The truth is, however, that the intellect can be fooled, even when it does its best to discriminate wisely. Only intuition is capable of penetrating to the heart of a matter and knowing truth from falsehood. It was the clear understanding of a child, not the elaborately persuaded intellects of his elders, that enabled the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story to cry out in surprise, “Why isn’t the Emperor wearing any clothes?”

Therefore it was that Sri Krishna said, in the ninth Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:

To you, who are free from the carping spirit, I shall now reveal wisdom sublime. Grasping it with your mind, and perceiving it by intuitive realization, you shall escape the evils of delusion.

Thus, through Holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Jitendra Guindon, recorded at Ananda Village on September 15th, 2024. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Intuition Is Simple: The Intellect Is Complex

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

In the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter 10, we read a passage that Yogananda often quoted:

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

It has often been noted that a critical attitude tends to paralyze creativity. Good critics, for example, seldom produce works of creative genius, though their creations may be intellectually clever. The intellect separates; it analyzes, then puts things together again piece by piece. Intellect lacks intuition’s flow, which descends smoothly, like a river, from the superconscious.

Paramhansa Yogananda described intuition as “the soul’s power of knowing God.” To receive the kingdom of God, Jesus was saying, one must do so with the openness and trust of a little child. Intellectuals may object to this statement, saying, “But there must also be discrimination. You wouldn’t want a person to be so open-minded that his brain falls out!” The truth is, however, that the intellect can be fooled, even when it does its best to discriminate wisely. Only intuition is capable of penetrating to the heart of a matter and knowing truth from falsehood. It was the clear understanding of a child, not the elaborately persuaded intellects of his elders, that enabled the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story to cry out in surprise, “Why isn’t the Emperor wearing any clothes?”

Therefore it was that Sri Krishna said, in the ninth Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:

To you, who are free from the carping spirit, I shall now reveal wisdom sublime. Grasping it with your mind, and perceiving it by intuitive realization, you shall escape the evils of delusion.

Thus, through Holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.