Ananda Sunday Services, 2010

Meditate on the divine incarnations. Their lives, and the consciousness animating them, will be your stairway to the Infinite.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The scriptures strive to demonstrate how the divine consciousness, when openly active among men in the lives of great masters, must never be viewed as an expression of ordinary human consciousness.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

If you would see God, watch for Him everywhere.

If you would hear His voice, listen for it in all sounds and also in their supporting silences.

If you would know God, seek His wisdom behind merely human knowledge.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Grieve not, friends, if you feel that you have been foolish. No error is forever. Someday, if you keep your lamp [of devotion] lit now, your opportunity will come.

Spiritual failure, though a deep disappointment, is always temporary. “Eternal hellfire” is but a projection of vindictiveness in the human mind.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Not by reason alone, but by Self-realization, are the ins and outs of destiny fully understood. Their web, though tied forever to the post of ego-motivation, is too intricate to be perceived as a single thread.

Only great masters can see it with clarity. It is visible to them in all its workings — not from within the tangle, but from above, in superconsciousness.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Biblical references to previous lifetimes on earth are overlooked in the deductive process, and we find them therefore excluded from the body of official dogma.

Nevertheless, such references exist. The Bible itself presents them — as does Jesus in this passage — not as abstract teaching, but as direct, personal perception of truth.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

In God’s eyes, when human beings go astray, there is nothing to forgive. All of us are aspects, only, of His own Self.

He who made us resides in us. He is not far away from us in some far-off heaven. His call to us, always, is to return to our own home, within.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

When our thoughts and feelings are strongly focused and then united in growing awareness to the Divine Presence within, they can bring even seemingly unrealistic wishes to fulfillment.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The answer is that we should offer ourselves up in acceptance of His abundance. Don’t pester God, as though pulling constantly on His sleeve to get His attention. Approach Him with the confidence of a child in its parent.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The Bhagavad Gita explains that man, living as he does in a human body, finds it difficult to worship Infinity as though the ego and body didn’t even exist.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

If a person is true to his highest priorities, he will generally find that his other needs are fulfilled naturally as well.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The struggle Jesus describes... is with our own attachment to all that is nearest and dearest to us, humanly speaking.

Ultimately, it is a war against the ego itself, and against anything with which we surround ourselves to bolster the ego’s fragile sense of security.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

What are the signs of true strength? We find in all cases that these are the fruit of a life wholly surrendered to God.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Let no one tell you what your path to God ought to be. Many are the paths. Select your own according to the dictates of your own nature, no matter how out of step that puts you with other people.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The intellect separates; it analyzes, then puts things together again piece by piece. Intellect lacks intuition’s flow, which descends smoothly, like a river, from the superconscious.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Free will is a basic principle of life. God never coerces: He invites us to live in such a way that we find fulfillment in ourselves.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

That which the ego relinquishes, offering it up to soul-consciousness, is reclaimed forever in cosmic consciousness. Nothing is ever lost.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Nowhere do we find Jesus condemning, or even gently criticizing, other spiritual masters.

His criticisms were reserved for worldly attitudes, and for those hypocritical Pharisees who had allowed religion to become, for them, a pretense.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Jesus during his temptations in the wilderness overcame them, and thereby set an example for all time, by clinging the more determinedly to God.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

God’s hidden reality cannot be understood by the reasoning faculty. A willingness to seek the underlying reality behind appearances is essential for those who would know God.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Behind even God’s most open expressions there lies impenetrable mystery.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The scriptures advise, not secrecy, but discretion in the sharing of truth.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

All the saints, aware as they are of the hazards of the adventure, agree on the importance of having a guide, or guru.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Passive dependence on grace hasn’t the magnetism to attract grace.

Boastful self-confidence, however, which closes itself off from the higher, divine power is shallow, brittle, and — given life’s many uncertainties — susceptible to ultimate failure.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Our strength must come from within, but must be coupled with recognition of our inner link with broader and higher realities.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

To the disciples, Yogananda spoke of the importance of attunement with the guru. To others, he urged the importance at least of attuning oneself to higher consciousness.

Can an eagle rise without support from the sustaining air?

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The divine light — pure, calm, liberating — is the only final cure for every kind of delusion: ill health, emotional grief, and spiritual ignorance.

Seek it daily in the silence, in deep meditation.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

God is as much with us now as He will ever be.

It is not He who needs to come to us: We need to come to Him! And that process of coming is a matter of transforming our self-perception.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Divine blessings are not common in this world. They are extraordinary.

When they come, we should give them priority above every other consideration.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Doubt not the power of delusion. Respect it — indeed, fear it, though not in the sense of cowering before it.

For, as Yogananda said, “One is not safe until he attains nirbikalpa samadhi — the state of final union with God.”

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The legend of Adam and Eve is allegorical.

It describes how the first human beings dissipated their spiritual energy, centered in the spine. The spine is the channel through which flows the river of baptism and of spiritual life.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The overarching concern is to include in one’s worship daily, inner communion with the Lord.

God is Silence: He must be sought, therefore, in inner silence. God is Absolute Love: He must be sought, therefore, in the silence of love.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Do your duty in life, counsels the Bhagavad Gita, but never lose sight of Him to whom all action should be dedicated.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Jesus didn’t tell Martha: “Martha, you are doing too much.” He told her, rather, “You are letting your work affect your inner peace.”

That was the contrast: not work vs. contemplation, but restless preoccupation vs. peaceful absorption under all circumstances.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

See whatever comes to you unasked for as a manifestation of God's will. Be grateful for the pains you experience, for they are healing strokes of His love.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The highest virtue is to transcend the very thought of personal virtue in the realization of God alone as the Doer.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Our faith is the attractive power of our underlying state of conciousness. Goodness attracts goodness. Evil attracts evil. Whatever there is in you of lightness or dark, offer it up to the heights.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Jesus Christ emphasized repeatedly the spirit, not the letter, of the law.

In Chapter 5 of the Gospel of St. Matthew he speaks of the sin of killing, and of the legal punishment attendant on that sin, but says that more important than the act is the desire to kill, or to do harm.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The resurrection of Jesus, doubted by many but affirmed by those who were close to him, was a miraculous event, though one not unique in history.

Resurrection, Yogananda explained, means transformation, ultimately, from any lower state of being to a higher one.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Was Jesus a human being, merely? Those who, on Palm Sunday, called him king little realized the actual nature of his kingdom. He was far more than what they imagined. His consciousness, however, was centered in infinity.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The great masters, including Jesus Christ, have always emphasized the divine potential of mankind. To encourage us, they address us as children of light, not of darkness.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Jesus, when addressing his critics, appealed to reason and common sense.

In his training of the disciples, however, he, like all great masters, encouraged in them the development of a higher faculty: soul-intuition. For it is only by intuition that spiritual perceptions are achieved.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Common sense goes beyond abstract reason, for it is rooted in actual experience.

Even common sense, however, is deficient when the judgment called for goes beyond sensory experience. Ultimately, what Jesus emphasized always, was intuitive perception.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Jesus taught that the intellect alone can never lead one to truth. Without love, indeed, there is no ultimate verity.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Many great saints claim to have seen God. If we ask, then, “Can God be seen?” rather than, “Can man see God?” the answer is, “Yes! Else those saints lied, and the scriptures themselves lied.”

For Jesus also said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Justice to all is a human law, though divinely inspired. Truth goes deeper than mere justice.

While following the law, we should strive always to trace it back to its origins in the vision of God.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

This was the Bible passage Paramhansa Yogananda often quoted to his disciples.

“Be in tune,” he would tell them. “Delusion can’t touch you, if you will keep in tune.”

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Great avatars, such as Krishna and Jesus Christ, are born as babies even as we all are. They take human form, and go through normal human experiences as they grow from childhood to adulthood.

The important thing to understand is that, even as they are like us, so are we also like them. Their realization can be ours, too. They come on earth to show us our own divine potential.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Disciples saw the master clothed in human form, and therefore judged him in terms of his greatness relative to the greatness of other teachers.

Wisdom, however, sees the master’s very greatness in terms of a cosmic unity.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

The universe is not separate from God the Creator, but a part of Him even as our own dream-creations, during sleep, are figments of our consciousness. God’s is the life; God’s, the reality.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light

Divine vision beholds the oneness of cosmic vibration, of which all things, no matter how diverse, are manifestations. Cosmic Sound—the “Word” of God—and Cosmic Light: These are eternal. The world, as revealed to us by our senses, is illusory.

—Swami Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light