Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Devi, recorded at Ananda Village on July 26th, 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Do You Need a Guru?

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.

Many people scoff at the idea of having a guru. True to human nature generally, they make a virtue of their scoffing. “I am responsible for what I do,” they announce, “responsible for my mistakes as well as for my victories. What would I ever learn if I handed over my development to someone else? To depend on another for guidance would be an act of spiritual cowardice.”

It would be understandable for someone gifted with some trivial ability, for instance with words, to insist on doing his crossword puzzle himself without letting anyone else help him. But supposing, even in such trivial matters, he had no such gift? What virtue would there be in refusing to learn? For that matter, where would the gift itself come from? That which is a gift is not a native ability. Still, crossword puzzles are hardly an important challenge. What if a person wanted to do something daring: to climb a cliff, for instance, but refused to study the art of mountain climbing? He would climb at the risk of his life.

And how much more is risked than physical life in the great adventure of the divine search, where the risk is to salvation itself! Where is the sacrifice in seeking guidance? Even a mountain guide wouldn’t presume to do one’s climbing for one; his purpose would be only to help the neophyte to climb safely. To have a wise guru is not a sign of weakness, but of plain common sense.

All the saints, aware as they are of the hazards of the adventure, agree on the importance of having a guide, or guru. And these are the heroes speaking, not cowards or spiritual weaklings.

Jesus emphasized the importance of having a teacher by asking John to baptize him. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 3, we read of his coming to John. “Thus,” Jesus said to John, “it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, the fourth Chapter, Sri Krishna says:

How is the devotee to recognize one who has attained wisdom? The Bhagavad Gita gives us this inspiring description of the sage:

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Ananta, recorded at Ananda Village on July 19th, 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Self-Effort, Too, Is Needed

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.

These past weeks we discussed the need for balancing self-effort with receptivity to divine grace. Both are important in the spiritual life. Passive dependence on grace hasn’t the magnetism to attract grace. Boastful self-confidence, however, which closes itself off from the higher, divine power is shallow, brittle, and – given life’s many uncertainties – susceptible to ultimate failure.

There is a story in the Bible that illustrates the need to put forth personal effort so as to draw magnetically on the divine power. The story occurs in the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 8:

Self-confidence and self-effort are necessary, as the ignition of a car is necessary to the motor. Of what use the ignition, however, if the motor itself will not work? Wise is he who recognizes the real power in the universe, and guides his life by that supreme power. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, the ninth Chapter:

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Erin Vinacco, recorded at Ananda Village on July 12th, 2026.

Erin explores the difference between relying on the ego ("little self") and relying on the soul through God's guidance ("true Self"). Using stories from Paramhansa Yogananda's life, the Festival of Light, and the teachings of Jesus and the Bhagavad Gita, she explains that spiritual growth comes through attunement, surrender, and discipleship rather than self-will. By inviting God into every aspect of daily life—from work and conversations to ordinary tasks—we discover greater wisdom, strength, joy, and the realization that we are never alone.

The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Self-Reliance vs. Self-Reliance

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.

Last week we considered the need for attunement – with God, with the gurus, with the wisdom of others – until we make that wisdom our own. There is a strong, and in fact valid, belief nowadays in the need for standing on one’s own feet rather than depending weakly on others to carry us by their strength.

Swami Kriyananda was once asked, “What is the best yoga posture?” “That one,” he replied, “which sets you squarely on your own two feet.”

Our strength must come from within. If that strength comes from the ego, however, instead of from soul-consciousness, it is like a guitar string without its sounding board: the notes it emits will be thin and feeble. Our strength must come from within, but must be coupled with recognition of our inner link with broader and higher realities.

The Bhagavad Gita says in the tenth Chapter:

Jesus in talking to his disciples emphasized also the power of attunement with his own consciousness as a ray of the Divine. For this ray had descended already, through him, in response to their devotion; it was a sign that God was already “listening” to them with receptive attention, and did not require to be wooed in that way any longer. In the passage preceding the one that we read last week, Jesus said:

This was the meaning of Paramhansa Yogananda’s counsel also, when speaking more intimately to the disciples of the need for attunement with him.

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Narayan, recorded at Ananda Village on July 5th, 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Abiding in God

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.

Yogananda often emphasized – more often to his disciples than to the general public, but also to everyone generally, for it was a universal teaching – the importance of attunement. For divine understanding cannot be created: It must be perceived. To the disciples, Yogananda spoke of the importance of attunement with the guru. To others, he urged the importance at least of attuning oneself to higher consciousness. Can an eagle rise without support from the sustaining air?

Jesus Christ said in the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 15:

How can we “abide in him”? Jesus says, “If my words abide in you.” By words he meant not only his spoken words, but his vibrations, his consciousness, of which the words are only an expression. We must abide by the teachings, but we must also absorb those teachings into ourselves, that they become our own experience. For disciples of this path, the more, in their hearts, they live consciously in the presence of the masters, the more they will find the divine presence living within them.

And for all truth seekers, whether disciples or not, the more they live sustained inwardly by the awareness of God’s presence, the higher they will find themselves soaring in wisdom and joy.

For the Bhagavad Gita says, in the tenth Chapter:

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi, recorded at Ananda Village on June 28, 2026 at the end of the Centennial Celebration week of Swami Kriyananda's birth. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Redeeming Light

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.

The Book of Isaiah in the Bible, Chapter 9, tells us:

What is this light of which so many Scriptures speak? In Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda, we read of an early experience the Master had with that light:

I was blessed about the age of eight with a wonderful healing through the photograph of Lahiri Mahasaya. This experience gave intensification to my [divine] love. While at our family estate in Ichapur, Bengal, I was stricken with Asiatic cholera. My life was despaired of; the doctors could do nothing. At my bedside, Mother frantically motioned me to look at Lahiri Mahasaya’s picture on the wall above my head.

“Bow to him mentally!” She knew I was too feeble even to lift my hands in salutation. “If you really show your devotion and inwardly kneel before him, your life will be spared!”

I gazed at his photograph and saw there a blinding light, enveloping my body and the entire room. My nausea and other uncontrollable symptoms disappeared; I was well. At once I felt strong enough to bend over and touch Mother’s feet in appreciation of her immeasurable faith in her guru. Mother pressed her head repeatedly against the little picture.

“O Omnipresent Master, I thank thee that thy light hath healed my son!”

I realized that she too had witnessed the luminous blaze through which I had instantly recovered from a usually fatal disease.

“Where My light is,” God once told a saint whom the divine light had healed, “no darkness can dwell.” The divine light – pure, calm, liberating – is the only final cure for every kind of delusion: ill health, emotional grief, and spiritual ignorance. Seek it daily in the silence, in deep meditation.

As the Bhagavad Gita says in the fifth Chapter:

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Pranaba recorded at Ananda Village on June 21, 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Eternal Now

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.

“When will I find God?” Many devotees have asked this question. Because worldly goals require time, usually, for their fulfillment, we imagine time to be a factor on the spiritual path. And so it is, but only because we think it is! God is as much with us now as He will ever be. It is not He who needs to come to us: We need to come to Him! And that process of coming is a matter of transforming our self-perception.

In the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 4, Jesus Christ says:

There is a practical teaching in these words, apart from their statement that we have God already, and have only to realize that truth. Jesus is saying, “Lift up your eyes and look. . . .” To hold the eyes uplifted is the best position for meditation. For the seat of superconsciousness lies at a point midway between the eyebrows – in the frontal lobe of the brain just behind that point. This point is known also as the Christ center. By lifting up your eyes and concentrating there, you will find it easier to enter the state of ecstasy. That is why saints in every religion have often been observed, during states of deep inner communion, with their eyes uplifted, focused on the inner light – ”white,” as Jesus said, “already to harvest.”

The Bhagavad Gita goes further into this meditative teaching. In the sixth Chapter it states:

In meditation, tell yourself: “I have Him already! I am alive forever in the Divine Light.”

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Sagar recorded at Ananda Village on June 14th, 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

How Devotees Rise

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.

Last week we asked the question, Why do devotees fall? and we considered the downfall of Judas in this context. Jesus, in answer to Judas’s criticism for allowing Mary to rub his feet with spikenard, a very costly ointment, said, “The poor always ye have with you: but me ye have not always.”

Jesus is saying here that there is one supreme “injustice” that needs eradication: poverty, yes, but not of a material kind: poverty in a spiritual sense.

Divine blessings are not common in this world. They are extraordinary. When they come, we should give them priority above every other consideration.

Never allow a moment of inner joy, for instance, to be set aside for lesser “duties.” Divine attunement is our highest priority. As Lahiri Mahasaya, the guru of Yogananda’s guru, said, “To listen to the heart’s inner sound (AUM, which issues from the very center of our being) is man’s highest duty.”

Mary was not, at that moment, communing with the Master inwardly. She was serving him outwardly – but in a spirit very different from the restless fussing for which Jesus had reprimanded her sister, Martha. Those who see a radical difference between the paths of action and meditation should understand this distinction. To serve in the right spirit is necessary, for only thereby can we overcome our karmic tendencies toward restless activity. The important thing is that that spirit be always inwardly focused: that in everything we do we act in loving service to the Lord.

Therefore the Bhagavad Gita says in the third Chapter:

Whenever the spirit of God descends upon you, however, remember the words of Jesus, “Me ye have not always with you.”

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Jitendra Guindon recorded at Ananda Village on June 7th 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

Why Do Devotees Fall?

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.

An endlessly fascinating question is, Why did Judas fall after receiving the extraordinary blessing of being accepted into the inner circle of Jesus Christ’s disciples? For Judas was one of the twelve apostles. Yet he be-trayed Jesus, and earned for himself the opprobrium of Christendom for all futurity for his sin.

We find Judas reprimanding Jesus just days before that betrayal. Jesus, aware that his disciples would soon be facing, with his death, the supreme tragedy of their lives, allowed Mary to express her devotion by anointing his feet with costly ointment. This act of “wanton waste,” as Judas saw it, awakened indignation in that disciple.

Then said Jesus, “Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you: but me ye have not always.”

Doubt not the power of delusion. Respect it – indeed, fear it, though not in the sense of cowering before it. For, as Yogananda said, “One is not safe until he attains nirbikalpa samadhi – the state of final union with God.”

Judas, through attachment to money, opened his consciousness to subtle influences, which may be called satanic, that drew his thoughts toward other related attitudes: the importance of worldly power, for instance, and of worldly influence.

The Bhagavad Gita gives a graphic explanation of how easily the mind can be drawn downward, once it begins to feed on wrong attitudes. In the second Chapter, Sri Krishna states:

“At the first thought of delusion,” Paramhansa Yogananda said, “that is the time to stop it.”

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Nayaswami Ananta recorded at Ananda Village on May 31st 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Inner Kingdom

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.

Most people imagine that the “inner kingdom,” as Jesus described it, lacks the fascination they attribute to sense life: the bright lights, the diverse attractions, the joys and the laughter. Little do they realize what a vast universe exists in their own selves!

There are many passages in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible that describe aspects of this inner kingdom. In the Book of Genesis we read: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden…. And the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:8, 9). This garden was in no earthly place. It exists even now, in the very Self of every human being! The legend of Adam and Eve is allegorical. It describes how the first human beings dissipated their spiritual energy, centered in the spine. The spine is the channel through which flows the river of baptism and of spiritual life.

The Bhagavad Gita tells us, “The wise speak of an eternal ashvatta tree, with its roots above and its branches below” (15:1) The “tree of life,” spoken of also in Genesis, is the spine. Its roots are above, in the brain’s energy. Its branches are the outward spreading nervous system. When the “sap,” which is to say, the energy, flows downward the consciousness is drawn into delusion. On the other hand, when the energy is drawn upward in deep meditation, the consciousness is drawn toward its eternal source, God, and is at last united with Him.

Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita therefore urges his chief disciple Arjuna to embrace the yoga science, the path of meditation. “The yogi,” he says, “is greater than the ascetic, greater even than the followers of the paths of wisdom [Gyana Yoga] or of action [Karma Yoga]. Be thou, O Arjuna, a yogi!”

For those who would find the divine truth, Krishna gives this description of the yogi:

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

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service with Sundara Traymar recorded at Ananda Village on May 24th 2026. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is

The Best Way to Worship

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 Chapter 4 of the Gospel of St. John, the woman of Samaria asks Jesus, Where is the best place to worship? This question might be expanded to include: What is the best church? What is the best religion? Is it important to go on pilgrimage to holy shrines? What is the best ritual? What is the best mantra or prayer?

Jesus cut across all such questioning with his reply:

It was not that outer considerations of place, church, ritual, etc., are irrelevant. Each person should find those practices and observances which are compatible with his own nature – one might say, with his own vibrations. Not everyone’s natural path is the same. God sent different religions into the world to satisfy different human needs.

The overarching concern, however, considering that the goal is to find God, is to include in one’s worship daily, inner communion with the Lord. God is Silence: He must be sought, therefore, in inner silence. God is Absolute Love: He must be sought, therefore, in the silence of love. God is Spirit, and thus immaterial: He must be sought, above all, in the expanding peace of deep meditation.

Thus, the Bhagavad Gita states in the sixth Chapter:

Wherever you are, whatever your outward beliefs and observances, seek God in the silence of your own soul.

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