We write this from Frankfurt, Germany, after a week-long stint at the annual international book trade show. For twenty years Padma has been travelling to Frankfurt to offer books by Swami Kriyananda to publishers in other countries from around the world. One or more of Swami Kriyananda’s nearly 100 books are now in 30 languages!
Attendance at the Book Show numbered upwards 300,000 publishers, literary agents, sales agents, and the European reading public. It felt like we ran into each of them at one point or another! The show is the largest of its kind in the world, just as the Frankfurt Messe (Fair) is one of the largest exhibition grounds in the world.

Here we see the faces of every nation, and, most importantly, the faces of a wide range of human attitudes, lifestyles, and values. As Padma carries the responsibility of the show, I, acting as baggage handler and secretary, am more able to observe. Impacted by the intensity of so many at close quarters, my silent prayerful response to this jostling, bargaining, preening, and competing mass of humanity was to chant “God alone.”

But I asked myself, “What do I mean by “God alone?” Was my chant a rejection of others, a judgment? No, because I also felt compassion, reflecting that we are all imprisoned to varying degrees in the ego. When, as is natural enough, I experienced being attracted to some and repulsed by others, I further reflected that only love which is free of self-interest can be true. All else is, as King Solomon wrote, “is vanity (meaning based in ego, in the reactive process of likes and dislikes).”

In spiritual teachings we encounter short-hand phrases such as “love God,” or “seek God alone.” Without some inner awakening to God’s presence as a tangible reality, these can seem empty, merely pious, or simply “spiritually correct.” Swami Kriyananda has commented on the words of a chant he wrote (“I want only Thee, Lord”) saying, that I know perfectly well that we have many other desires. But all lesser desires are, though detours, expressions of our soul’s longing for perfect love, perfect joy. This chant therefore is a reminder of what our souls already know.

In a sea of faces, one sees etched the consequences of greed, arrogance, pride, skepticism, sensuality, contempt, and worry, and only occasionally the serene glow of a life of inner and outer harmony. Whether a passing mood or a lifetime persona, ego affirmation eclipses the soul’s natural effulgence and Self-possession. Either way, the soul’s starting point is self-acceptance, and, by extension, acceptance of the people and the world around us.

But that sea of international faces symbolized for me the pluralism of the United States as well, for within our borders is represented every country in the world. We have at this moment in our history a choice of directions: the one re-affirming our pluralism (acceptance of all) which is the bedrock ideal of freedom on which America was founded, and the other an affirmation of our separateness, a kind of American tribalism: “We’re No. 1.” Collin Powell’s recent public position on the presidential race articulated this choice persuasively. To paraphrase him: Why can’t an American citizen who happens to be black, female, or of the Muslim faith be President of the United States? As none of us are those passing emotions or those narrow self-limiting attitudes that I saw all too much of in that sea of faces, so too no superficial aspect of our birth and physical form defines our character or consciousness. On the level of ideals or spiritual consciousness that we aspire to on the yogic path, the choice before Americans is less important for the more usual political issues of personality, or more, or less, government, or more, or less, taxes.

The world watches with interest, in hopes that the ideals of freedom and fairness on which this country was founded and which has inspired people around the globe for over two hundred years, will once again lead this nation and thus the world. Lest we think too simplistically, we should also say that regardless of the political outcome of this choice, a resurgence of idealism and pluralism has been stimulated even as, financially speaking, the world is coming apart all around us. It will be from the ruins of our culture of greed and wasteful consumerism that will come a new dawn. Make no mistake, the worst is yet to come, but its true purpose is positive. Paramhansa Yogananda, decades ago, predicting this period of purification, commented that America would end up half as wealthy but twice as spiritual!

The time to make tough choices is before us. Those who face squarely the present reality will cope with the rapid changes and challenges that are unfolding. Those who restructure their lives to be more in balance, more sustainable (financially, ecologically, mentally, and spiritually) regardless of what may happen, who extend themselves to include the good of others, and who offer their lives in service and devotion to God and practical ideals, we find this phase of history to be a time of inspiration and strength. As Paramhansa Yogananda once thundered, “The time for knowing God has come!”