The Longing to Be Free

Tips for Getting Closer to God from Swami Kriyananda

To desire salvation sincerely, even once, is to enter upon the path to eventual freedom. For all desires must be fulfilled. Even so, this one desire, once entrenched in the heart, cannot but lead eventually to liberation.   –The Essence of Bhagavad Gita

How to enter meditation

Try to center your consciousness at the point between the eyebrows. Do not strain. Channel your awareness calmly, and with a feeling of joyous aspiration, to that point.

The greater this concentration of energy at that point, the more powerfully that portion of the brain will be stimulated and awakened, and the more profound will be your spiritual awareness.

Direct all the feelings of your heart upward in aspiration to the point between the eyebrows. Gradually, as you come to feel God’s blissful presence within you, you will recognize this as the doorway through which the soul communes with God.

Divine awakening depends upon channeling all of your energy upward and focusing it at the point between the eyebrows.

Meditation is not a process of mental passivity or blankness. It is a process, rather, that involves seeking positively to attune oneself with the subtle vibrations of the Infinite.

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Give yourself fully to God

Do not think, in meditation, “‘How can the Divine serve my desires?’ think, rather, ‘How can I give myself more perfectly to Thee?”‘

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Deepen your attunement with your guru

In my relationship with Master, I have found that I’m the most in tune with him when I don’t have the thought of what I’m getting from him, but dwell rather in the thought of what I’m giving to him. When with my whole energy I give him joy, appreciation, openness, service—in short, my very self—I receive from him the greatest energy and blessings.

The open feeling in myself puts me onto that wavelength on which he himself functions because his own energy is always directed toward giving, not taking. If I can lift myself at least somewhat up to that giving level, rather than thinking only of gaining for myself, I am able to receive much more.

Our self-effort must be directed primarily toward deepening our attunement with the guru—not as a person, but as a channel for the Infinite Lord.

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Absorb yourself in one of the aspects of God

Peace, Calmness, Love, Joy,
Light, Sound, Power, and Wisdom

To commune deeply with an aspect of the Self is to enter into true meditation. It is freeing, revitalizing, transformative, blissful. The fullness of inner experience is, as Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “beyond imagination of expectancy.”‘

Through deep meditation, we can discover firsthand which concepts, beliefs, and teachings are true, and which ones were born of ignorance, dogmatism, or false preconceptions. It can free us from all delusions of limitation and separateness, that we may know the ultimate Truth of life—and of our own Higher Self. As Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'”

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Paramhansa Yogananda’s reassuring words

The soul cannot be lost eternally. All of us are part of God; we belong to Him, and He, to us. Eventually, we must all go back to Him.

No matter that you have grown self-enclosed in your delusion. If you resolve firmly to “try and try again,” God Himself and His angels will come to your aid. Given sufficient time, and given renewed courage on your part, you cannot fail to recover what was lost.

When Paramhansa Yogananda entered the Swami Order in 1915, he sang some verses from the Sanskrit chant of Lord Shankara:

Mind, nor intellect, nor ego, feeling;
Sky nor earth nor metals am I.
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!

No birth, no death, no caste have I;
Father, mother, have I none.
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!

Beyond the flights of fancy, formless am I,
Permeating the limbs of all life;
Bondage I do not fear; I am free, ever free,
I am He, I am He, Blessed Spirit, I am He!

Listen to Shankara’s chant sung by Swami Kriyananda: