Nayaswami Jamuna:

Good morning! I was very pleased to discover that this was the topic I was given for this Sunday because it mentions the saints, who we should look toward in understanding what’s being said here. I have a great love for the saints, and we’ve all studied many of them together.

So, I want to start off with a story that comes from the life of Trace Newman. Now, Trace Neuman was one of the chapters in the “Autobiography of a Yogi,” and Master had a chance to visit her. She was stigmatized in Bavaria during World War II, and many people came and were blessed by her in that way. She had a great sense of humor.

Here’s a story of a visit made by a professor who was going to psych her out and figure out what was really going on. A well-known professor at a university who had examined Therese went into an unusual explanation for Therese’s enlightenment. First of all, he said the Friday bleedings are caused by autosuggestion. She did not know what the word meant, so he explained it as follows: Year in and year out, you imagine that you have the wound marks of Christ on your body, and that the wounds bleed. Thereupon, the wounds do actually appear and bleed.

Therese listened very attentively without saying a word. After the professor had finished what he evidently regarded as a profound analysis, he settled back to await Therese’s reaction. It was as follows, “You must be a brilliant man, otherwise you would not be a university professor. Now, I will ask you to begin to imagine day in and day out that you are an ox, that you also imagine you have received horns. All of a sudden, you find, to your amazement, that that is actually what you are.” The professor departed without saying a word. Therese was right there in the moment.

We don’t necessarily understand stigmatized individuals, but she was asked why she thought this happened to her. She said it was to give testimony to the fact that Christ was real. This is very interesting that this topic comes right after Raman’s wonderful talk last week on how little historical facts we have to say Christ really was real and really had these experiences. I personally never thought to question it, but many people do, of course.

Now, the fact that in this reading, we’re pointing to the saints when we’re trying to understand the saying “I am the vine,” which has been taken by the Catholic Church to be a statement of their exclusive relationship with Christ. Yet, that’s a misinterpretation of the scripture. The interpretation is that we are all being asked to raise our consciousness, to raise our understanding, to lift ourselves up into the reality of which we know very little at first, but gain great understanding through our inner practices.

I had an interesting experience about two weeks ago. It was very brief and very odd as far as I was concerned. I had a moment, just in ordinary daily routines, of suddenly experiencing not knowing that the world was anything but what I could see, hear, touch, and feel. You know what I mean? It was like, ‘I have lived in this world for many, many years with the understanding that there is much more to my being, to my life, to my experience than just the physical presence, than just nature and the joys of this world. That there is a whole other reality of which I am a part.’ That’s what we’re talking about here.

But those few moments in that day, a couple of weeks ago, I woke up, and I was given this experience of not knowing that, of just having this as the reality. It was very interesting for me. I found it odd. I found it very instructive, and it informed my prayer life for the whole world. That we all achieve this understanding that this is just one small part of the experience that we’re here to have and that there’s much about it that is unseen.

When we raise our consciousness through prayer, through meditation, through serving others, and through loving others, we become aware of that aspect of ourselves and integrate it into our lives. Isn’t that what the spiritual path is all about?

The saints are so fun to interact with because what I understand through this passage is that they, as individuals in a particular lifetime, have made God contact. They know God, and God is a deep part of their being, but they have a lot of karma to work out. So, they come back, and as we all know, a lot of the saints get into lots of trouble in their lives. They think they’re going in one direction, and then suddenly it all comes back, and they realize their true path.

For example, St. Francis’s life, which we know well, is about him thinking he was going to be a great warrior. He wasn’t a great warrior; he was thrown into prison by the opposite side. But then he realized he was a warrior for God, and that realization came quickly because, in his path toward ascension, he had already made that commitment to God.

Anandamayi Ma, who is very dear to Ananda Swamiji, had a lot of contact with her. She was a saint in India who attracted a great following. She was full of love and wisdom, and she traveled from place to place to serve her devotees. She had a very loyal following of Orthodox Hindus, as she put it, and then she gained an international reputation and drew people from all over the world. Her advice was often very striking and unexpected.

There is an interesting story about her counseling an American devotee who was being badly treated by the Orthodox Hindus in the ashram. She went to Anandamayi Ma for help, and Anandamayi Ma’s response was, “You can take it!” just like that. “You can take it. They can’t.” She added, “You can cry and shout and get some satisfaction that way, but you should listen to me and just take it.” She had such a piercing understanding of how we grow spiritually and this showed her no-nonsense approach.

As Swami has said, the saints are unabashedly, gloriously eccentric. Many of us can relate to that because we understand eccentricity. The saints embody God living within our humanity, and we can have access to them. We talk about this because we’ve had experiences, inner awareness, and inner awakenings.

Padre Pio is another lovely saint who was very contemporary; he died in 1968. For the Catholic Church, the saints, when they were alive, were often seen as troublemakers. They made things difficult because their power of God-love was so strong that it attracted people away from their parishes to where the saints were. The general status quo would be for them to stay within their own respective parishes and appreciate their priests, but when there is a being who really recognizes the God within, then people are drawn to that; they want to be in that presence. Padre Pio was put in a monastery far away, but it didn’t help—people came by the thousands. He was also persecuted by the church because saints often cause trouble. They make people behave badly because they’re so afraid of them. But they’re just way showers, loving way showers. Finally, you know, Padre Pio took the punishment, questioning his experiences, putting him in solitary for a while, not allowing him to do confession, which was really heartbreaking for him. He so much wanted to serve people. But in the end, he said, “If you didn’t persecute me, I would never have been saved.” Of course, that means he would never have been able to ascend. We’ve heard this from other saints. It’s kind of their story. Century by century, women and men as saints are persecuted out of fear, and they just persevere. They just are who they are.

I found a list that Swami suggested. Here it is- the qualities of a saint: boundless energy, constant conversation with God, flawless discrimination. I think that’s what Anandamayi Ma was demonstrating when she said to that lady, “You can take it. They can’t. They’d fall apart, but you can take it. You can take all of that stuff. Just be strong in yourself.”

Love and power balance—that’s the saints. A love and power balance. They’re not sweet and meek and mild. That’s not what they are. They’re not angels. Angels are something altogether different. Saints are here to get the story across and inspire us. They’re sincere, they’re attuned, and theirs is a perfection of humanity, not a rejection. In other words, they show us how to live in this world and engage. Those are the qualities that we love and respond to again and again.

There is a little book written by Devi Mukherjee, a fellow and a friend of Swamiji. He was in India, traveled a great deal, and wrote a little book called “Shaped by the Saints.” It was interesting how that book came to be. We do have it in the boutique if you want to be introduced to some new and interesting beings. He wasn’t exactly a writer, so our friend Durga Smolan did some of the writing for him, and then it was worked out by Swamiji. He says in the book, this is very worthwhile to read.

There was a saint he visited called Narayan Swami. Every saint has a particular mission, a particular way of waking us up, a particular way of playing out the story that says, “I am human and divine.” For this Swami Saint, it was spending time with tigers. Davy Mukherjee was very interested in this. He really wanted to see this, Tiger Swami. He wasn’t the same Tiger Swami as in the autobiography. So, he went and found him and stayed in a tent.

Narayan Swami said, “Don’t you dare come out. You’ll be in great danger, but there is a little window in the tent, and you can look out and see.” Davy had a particular interest in tigers. He felt he loved them. He looked out and saw Narayan Swami petting the tigers, petting them, and they were rolling over like pussycats. Davy Ritchi could barely go to sleep that night. He was so excited and really wanted to take part in that.

But Narayan Swami said to him, “Yes, you have, you’ve got to love, you’ve got to have love for them.” Davy replied, “I love my cats. I have love for my pets, and I love these cats too.” Narayan Swami said, “Yes, you have love, but only 60%. You must increase your love by another 40%. Then you can pet the tigers.” That’s interesting to think about. Davy said, “Why, I can’t do that. But I’ll take your advice.”

As you look at each saint, you see that they are in the company of God. And that’s where we want to be. First of all, in our journey, in our divine ascension, we want to be in the company of God. That’s our goal. Think of Jesus and his disciples—how readily they came to him. That wasn’t without preamble. They were not just ordinary fishermen; they had a spiritual life. And now the spark was Jesus in the flesh, coming and calling those whom he knew would respond.

And now that question was asked of them: could they, in fact, make that leap? So, the saints also grow. That’s why they are the ones to look at because they are us. Swami urged us to think of ourselves as saints in the making. I love what happened at Ananda Village in the early years when there was a monastery. The monks decided they would call themselves “Future Saints of America.” I thought that was wonderful—a wonderful way of thinking about it.

What was the realization that Christ was asking his disciples? It was a big leap for them. He was asking them if they could perceive that he was the avatar, that he was Christ, and he was God in the flesh. This is who our masters are. They also had many, many lives of learning the way of the life of joy, the life of ascension. They bless our lives because they have compassion for us. They see us and see the ways in which we’re making mistakes. It’s a big journey, a big learning curve to live life. And he wants them to understand that love is the magnet. Love is the magnet in every case. Love is what his mission was about. Love and joy and wisdom are what master’s vision was about. And he asked that love be given to all.

Thank you.