“It takes One to know One”
One of the cornerstones of the teachings of metaphysics is that all creation, and each one of us, is an integral part of the Whole, of the One Spirit of God. It is taught, further, that God manifested this creation out of Himself.
In the reading for a recent Sunday Service at Ananda, in a quote from the New Testament, Jesus put it this way: no man hath ascended to heaven but he who has come down from heaven. He was not talking boastfully of himself. Rather, Jesus is asking, “How can anyone grow spiritually, ascend to through God contact into union with the Infinite but one who has but come from God?”
Thus the spiritual path is essentially a journey home, like that of prodigal son, who upon acknowledging his error, courageously, joyfully and also humbly embarks upon the return journey to his father’s home. In that same quotation Jesus added “even so the Son of Man who is in heaven.” By this obscure line he is saying that, in his case, his contact with subtler divine realms remained unbroken even as a reincarnated and lived in a human body.
We are indeed, as are all Beings and all objects of creation, children of the Infinite One. The great drama of creation has for its lesson the fact that it is but a drama. But this great teaching doesn’t exist that we might behave irresponsibly. It is there to spur our awakening that we learn to act as instruments of love, harmony, creativity, and healing in this world. Acting thusly in daily life purifies our own consciousness. We cannot pretend to act selfishly and be above it all, more spiritual than others.
Paramhansa Yogananda stated emphatically that it is a sin to call ourselves sinners! Yet for all the insistence of some Christians that Jesus died for our sins, no one can say that, as a consequence, sinning has decreased in the last two thousand years! Yes, essentially in our souls we are children of light, but, to varying degrees, we allow ourselves to act as instruments of darkness, confusion, delusion, and error. We should no more pretend we are perfect when we still have much work to do than we should excuse our errors by affirming our sinfulness.
The difference between the old way of thinking (“I am a sinner”) and the new dispensation for this higher age (“I am a child of the Light”) is therefore not absolute, but a matter of useful emphasis. The latter also happens to be philosophically more correct in the pure or absolute sense. This truth must however be self-honestly viewed through the eyes of duality to the extent we see through the filter of time, space, and separateness.
The history of men and women who commit themselves to this journey is the story of courage and taking action. This is one of the great precepts taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: one cannot achieve our soul’s destiny of Self-realization by refusing to act. Thus it is that so often Swami Kriyananda (founder of Ananda and direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda) tells his story of getting on the first bus from New York City to Los Angeles when he first read Yogananda’s (now famous) life story, Autobiography of a Yogi.
Thus it is, too, that as we recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Seattle’s East West Bookshop we tell the story of how it began when local member Nivritti Steenstra left her successful career in education and invested her own funds to help it begin. This story of “Come, follow me” is the story of each member of the staff of East West and of the Sangha staff here and around the world at other Ananda Communities.
Of course what form each and every person’s story of transformation and dedication takes will be unique because it’s not the outward form that our dedication takes, it is the inner and permanent transformation that we are describing.
But one way or the other there is a change and that change takes visible form. To the woman caught in adultery Jesus said simply, I do not condemn thee, but go and sin no more. Like the prodigal son, we too must walk the distance back to our home in God. That home is no mere place in time and space, at some great distance, beyond the grave. Rather the kingdom of heaven is within you! Our journey is no longer than the three and a half feet of our own spine. Raising our energy and consciousness from the lower centers of material attachment and self-identity to the throne of the soul in the cranium is the spiritual path: this takes will power, and grace. Grace, from above; will power from below. As we ascend our memory of our divine birthright returns.
It is through meditation, right attitude, selfless service, and association with others of like-minded that we gradually begin to acclimate to the finer realms of Spirit and ascend step by step back to our home in Bliss.