In this Sunday service talk, Nayaswami Jaya reflects on Christmas as both a social and spiritual experience, emphasizing that the heart must awaken before higher spiritual truths can be understood. Drawing on the Gospel of John, Christmas traditions, and stories like A Christmas Carol, he explains that Christ’s core teaching is not intellectual belief but active love and compassion for one another. By expressing kindness and service, our hearts expand, joy naturally arises, and we gradually come to experience Christ-Consciousness and God’s presence in all creation. Christmas, then, becomes a universal reminder that love in action is the true path to God and the foundation for spiritual growth in the new year.

Recorded at Ananda Village on December 28th, 2025.

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

The Divine Ascension

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. John, Chapter 14, we read:

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

What is this “I,” when spoken by a master who has conquered every vestige of ego-consciousness? Therein lies the mystery of true Scriptural teaching. That “I” that is no “I”: Does it even exist? In what way is it different from the consciousness that animates other human beings?

Jesus was not saying, “Look at me. Don’t look at other masters.” He was saying, rather, “Look at the divine Self that is the essence of who you are, your very Self. You are that ‘I.’ No man cometh unto the divine consciousness except by first recognizing his own intrinsic divinity, hidden behind his delusive ego.”

The Bhagavad Gita, in the fourth Chapter, states:

O Son of Pritha [Arjuna], in whatever way people accept Me, in that same way do I appear to them. For all men, in some way, pursue The Path to Me.

Meditate on the divine incarnations. Their lives, and the consciousness animating them, will be your stairway to the Infinite.

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