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Living in the Flow of Guru's Grace
This is an excerpt from a talk by Swami Kriyananda on September 12, 1998 at Ananda Italy. It is translated from the Italian.
Attunement
In celebrating my fiftieth anniversary of discipleship toYogananda, it seems to me that fifty years is not really a very significant amount of time. It’s just a second in the life of a soul. When you look at a mountaintop from below, it can seem awfully high. But when you’re flying in an airplane at 10,000 meters, the mountain is hardly noticeable as more than a little bump. We have our human view of what we’ve done in our lives, but from the divine view in eternity, we still have a long way to go.
Many years ago when I was in SRF and first began lecturing, I thought, “What good does it do? You stand up there and spout forth, but people go home and forget what you’ve said.”
I used to think that it was my bad karma to have to speak to the public, while the disciples with good karma could stay home and meditate. Every now and then, however, I realized that someone’s life had been changed by something I’d said, and I began to understand that lecturing was something I must take seriously because it did good after all. After about six years I was put in charge of Hollywood Church, and I thought, “Now I’ve really got to work at this!” But one time I didn’t have time to prepare for a Sunday service. I arrived pretty unprepared and was forced to speak from inner inspiration. Afterwards I was amazed that more people than usual said how much they’d enjoyed the service.
After a few months the same thing happened – I didn’t have time to prepare, and more people than usual said how much they’d liked the talk. I thought, “Good heavens! If people are going to like it better if I don’t prepare, why do all that work unnecessarily?” From then on, I began not preparing my talks in the usual way, but spoke just from inspiration and attunement with Master. I began to see that Master has a capacity that I don’t have. When I gave my talk over to him, wonderful insights would come. I would mentally sit back and think, “I wish I’d thought of that,” because I hadn’t thought of it – it just was given to me. This example demonstrates an important truth I’ve drawn from my years on the path – in fact, it’s how I’ve come to define discipleship.
Master encouraged me in this direction in 1950 when he told me, “Your work is writing and lecturing.” Referring to his books, I said, “But Sir, hasn’t everything already been written that is needed?” He looked a little shocked and said, “Don’t say that. Much more is needed!”
The Role of the Disciple
In all these fifty years, I’ve spent a great deal of my time meditating on Master and trying to understand more and more deeply what he did and said. It’s been the focal point of my entire life. Everything I’ve done has been an outgrowth of what Master gave us. I haven’t created anything new.
However, the role of a disciple is not just to talk about the guru, nor to be a record player repeating the words of the guru without really understanding their meaning. We must try to understand them more deeply, to enlarge on that understanding, and to show their relevance in our lives.
The more deeply I’ve gone into Master’s work, the more I’ve been amazed at how extensive his mission is. Its potential for uplifting human consciousness is far greater than any other teacher I’m aware of, although I haven’t meditated on other teachings to the extent that I have on his. Still, I haven’t encountered anywhere, even in history, another teaching that is so broad in its scope and potential for changing an entire era.
The direction Master encouraged in me was creative expression through writing and lecturing. I remember a fellow disciple was envious of my creativity, but I was envious of his lack of creativity. I yearned to be a humble devotee who just loved God and never thought in terms of broad vistas of meaning. I was forced by my own nature to be this way, and I couldn’t have been otherwise.
But the point I’m stressing has nothing to do with me or my so-called “talents and abilities.” I’ve found that by tuning into Master, suddenly I’m able to do things that I couldn’t ever have done on my own. This is true for just about everything I’ve accomplished. When I give a talk I often have no idea afterwards what I’ve said, because I’ve given it back to God. It’s not my talent, it’s just that I’ve put myself in tune with Master and asked his spirit to do it.
In doing this I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the extraordinary scope of that spirit, and of his understanding of the needs of this particular age. What he talked about during his lifetime wouldn’t have been quite so applicable two hundred years ago, or in the distant past in the time of Shankaracharya, but it was absolutely right for now. That’s why I say he is the avatar for Dwapara Yuga, at least for this beginning part of Dwapara Yuga as we all enter into it.
This same process of tuning into Master’s consciousness is how Ananda was started. I really don’t know how I’ve done it, because to my mind I’m about the last person I would have chosen to start a community. I’m not a committee kind of person. I need to dig down inside myself and come up with solutions without talking about them in a group.
I have to say also, however, that in working as part of a group we can also get to the heart of an issue. I’ve seen this happen in groups where we had to reach a decision together. In that process, too, you can get in tune with the central reality, and feel Master’s guidance working through the group. In the decisions at Ananda it’s not that we always agree, but we can find an objective reality that transcends our individual perspectives.
The Spirit of Discipleship
I don’t always agree with others, or even with myself! I’m constantly challenging things that I’ve thought or written. In fact, my books and music have to stand and deliver for me – they have to prove themselves. In the creative process, I’m always asking myself, “Wait a minute. Does that really work?”
There may be questions, debate, and differing points of view, but it’s always in the spirit of unity and in the consciousness that we’re doing this together. There’s the thought, “Let’s contribute to the whole, and not just scatter everything to the winds. Let’s not sit here grumbling and say it won’t work, but let’s find answers.”
There are two basic reasons for this spirit of unity. The first is we start by asking, “What is needed? What is good for everybody?” and not, “What do I want?”
The second reason is that we ask, “What does God want?” In other words, in everything you do, try to be a channel for God’s energy. You can’t sit there and wait for a voice to speak out of the clouds – it doesn’t happen that way. First you must sense an attunement with God. Try to feel His presence – His love or joy. Then hold what you’re thinking up to the Divine Will. If it doesn’t feel right, then you know it’s not right. If it adds to the inspiration that you feel from your superconsciousness, from your attunement, and if it resonates with that, then you know it’s right.
So ultimately, when I look at all the things I’ve done in these fifty years of discipleship, I know that there’s only one thing that matters – and that is our love for God. The amazing thing about life is that it repeatedly gives us all kinds of hardships, tragedies, and difficulties, and yet looking back after many years we see that it was all a good thing. Unless that tragedy had occurred, we would have gotten stuck in a cul-de-sac and would never have come out of it.
We need to develop faith in God, so that whatever He gives us, pleasant or unpleasant, we accept it gratefully, and it doesn’t matter. So many times we rebel and think, “Oh, why does He want this? Anything but this!” But if we can have the faith to understand that He is guiding our lives, and go along with it, like a surfboard rider who goes with the wave, then we can launch ourselves into whatever it is that God has given us.
Give your life unconditionally to Him, and let Him do it. Don’t think you’ve got to control that wave yourself, because you can’t. Work from your own center, or if it’s a group working, work from the center of the group. Don’t work abrasively or separately from the others, because that’s when ego gets into the picture.
Always refer any doubt or question back to your own center, back to the center in the group, and especially back to the God within. Then you’ll begin to see that somehow it all flows smoothly, though you may not understand exactly why or how. Indeed, you don’t have to understand how it works, because the Divine working in our lives is always right. The mechanics of it are taken care of on another level. The more we think with worried and furrowed brow about how it’s going to work, the more we interfere with that flow.
So what have I learned in my fifty years of discipleship? I’ve learned one thing above all – that my only goal is to be an ever-better disciple. I hope by the time I leave this body Master will say, “Good job, Walter.”
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Ananda is located in the tranquil hills of Umbria, Italy on “Strada Statale 444” between Assisi and Gualdo Tadino. It is the largest retreat center in Europe for Yogananda’s teachings.
Ananda Associazione • Via Montecchio, 61 • I-06025 Nocera Umbra (PG) • ITALY