Swami Kriyananda wrote the following letter to a friend whose faith in God and Christ was renewed by her Ananda experience.
Dear _____________________
Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. I am pleased to hear how these experiences have reaffirmed your faith in God and Christ. I try to serve this same Christ and I hope that this work of Ananda is helping others’ faith be deepened also. I pray that I may be ever open to His guidance.
Without in any way detracting from the validity of your teacher’s experience of Christ, I would say it often happens that when one gets a glimpse of the Divine, he assumes it is the glimpse, and that other revelations are wrong. This is a sign of spiritual immaturity, for, as I wrote in a song of mine called What Is Love?, “not a church binds Him as its own, not a creed makes Him fully known; foolish we if we limit him, every atom is His throne.”
It was not your teacher’s destiny to find what he was seeking in his own country. This does not mean that others have not found it. Each one must follow his own path. But the goal is infinity itself.
If Yogananda was influenced by a deceptive spirit, then, applying the test Jesus himself gave us, we would have to say that the results of that deception must have been demonstrated in Yogananda’s life. Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
The fruits of the divine life are selfless love, humility, and all divine qualities. These Yogananda manifested in his life to a greater degree than I have seen in anyone else. I do not want to enter a controversy on this point, but only to help you keep your mind open, for a narrow mind cannot accommodate the vastness of divine love. Yet I am happy for you that you have found a path that satisfies you and inspires you to deeper faith.
In divine friendship
Swami Kriyananda
