Living with a master and learning to understand

Jan 25, 2010, 04.12pm IST
SWAMI KRIYANANDA.

Whenever fellow disciples spoke to me – as they sometimes did – of trying to “understand” our Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, I could only marvel at the scale and depth of such an endeavour.


It struck me as being rather like trying to understand the universe! The task that infinity places squarely on the shoulders of every human being is just this: “Understand thyself – know thyself.”


Yogananda was, to each of us, like a flawless mirror. What came back to us from him was not his opinions of us, but our own higher Self’s reaction to any lower attitude we projected. His was a perfect self-transcendence. In another person’s company he actually, in a sense, became that person. I don’t mean that he assumed our weaknesses, our pettiness, or moods of anger or despondency. What he showed us, rather, was the silent watcher at the centre of our own selves.

He tried to pay individual attention when he was training people. It was not that he altered his basic teachings to suit our personal needs. Rather, it was his emphasis that varied. To some he stressed attitudes of service; to others, deep inwardness. To one he emphasised the need for greater joy; to another, for less levity. What he said to one person he might never say to anyone else. In a very real sense he was, to each of us, our very own personal, divine friend.

His concern, always, was for our spiritual needs. Sometimes he would actually take us away from an important assignment – one, perhaps, for which no one else could be found – simply to meet a spiritual need of our own. Sometimes, too, he placed people in positions for which they weren’t qualified. This he did with a view to prompting them, in their struggle to meet his expectations, to develop the needed spiritual qualities. At other times he gave us work we disliked – not particularly because we would be good for that work, but because the work would be good for us. Perhaps we needed to learn some spiritual quality – for example, to overcome a natural unwillingness.


Yogananda’s help was available to anyone who called to him mentally in meditation. Here he was the guide, ever subtly inspiring us, according to the measure of our receptivity, to make the right kind of spiritual effort. Sometimes, too, when we met him during the day, he would admonish us on some point concerning our meditations. Indeed, he watched over us in all ways. Despite so many disciples to look after, he could be so perfectly aware of the needs of each one. “I go through your souls every day,” he told us. “If i see something in you that needs correcting, I tell you about it. Otherwise, i say nothing.”


The key to our relationship with our guru was friendship in God. We had to give our utmost to strengthen this friendship so that we could rise to higher levels, closer to divinity.
If a disciple flattered him, Master would gaze at him quietly as if to say, “I will not desecrate the love i bear you by accepting this level of communication.” Always he held out to us the highest ideal to which each of us might aspire. Such perfect love imposes the most demanding of all disciplines, for ultimately it asks nothing less of the disciple than the total gift to God of himself.