“The Master would occasionally take some of us to the movies to get away from all the demands on his time,” a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda once told us. “Then, in the middle of the most exciting parts, he would tap us on the shoulder, point upward to the beam of light coming from the projection booth, and say, ‘It’s all just a play of light and shadows.’”
We had a similar experience once with Swami Kriyananda when we went to see the film Chariots of Fire, a movie based on the lives of British athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics.
The dramatic climax of the film comes when one of the men is running in his last race of the games. He’d been training hard for several years, and had already lost two of the races in which he was competing. Now had come his last chance to win the gold medal.
As the race begins, the film goes into slow motion; every expression of the runner’s face is accentuated; the music reaches a crescendo; and then . . . Swamiji tapped us on the shoulder and cheerfully said, “It’s hard to be detached at a moment like this.”
We were startled as if out of a dream, realizing how totally absorbed we’d been in the drama. Spiritual teachers and guides keep reminding us to see beyond the experiences of our life to perceive the one reality of God behind it all.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yoganandaji tells of an unusual experience he had in which he realized this truth.
During World War I, the Master had gone to a see a newsreel of the European battlefields. As he left the movie house, his heart was troubled, and he prayed, “Lord, why dost Thou permit such suffering?”
“Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible.”
To his surprise, the answer came in the form of an actual vision of the carnage, which was much worse than what had been depicted in the newsreel. Then a divine voice spoke to him: “Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another?”
Yoganandaji goes on to write: “One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture, and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own reality.”
Remember that in the midst of life’s tragedies and comedies, we can always lift our eyes to the one beam of divine light from which all of our dramas are unsubstantial projections.
May we all awaken in the One Light of God.
Nayaswami Devi
23 Comments
Jai ma!thank you swamiji for divine thoughts.
Dear Nayaswami Devi Ji,
Thank you for this lovely article :)
Looking forward to meet you
Jai Guru…
So beautiful, thank you so much for this post.
Respected master,
Namaskar
So use full post to know something about God’s maya
Regards
Nawin sharma
Liked your article. I can not meditate beyond 5 minutes. Have doubt about goal of meditation. Mind does not conceive beyond what I see
and experience. Is good deed and helping others not enough? I have read that knowing self is knowing the supreme. Why should we try to know ourselves? If we should, how should we? I assume that the whole universe including the nature and us is manifestation and definition of God. God is not separate and beyond. If we are not given ability to think and visualize beyond our senses, should we try to aquire such ability? Please help me providing answers specific to my needs. Thanks and regards.
Greetings, Bibekananda;
If you cannot meditate beyond five minutes, then let five minutes be your meditation. you are not your mind, Mishra, you are the conscious power that animates the mind, and therein lies the purpose of meditation, to still the mind that is like a drunk, chattering monkey, and there see the witness you are. If you look into a pool when the surface water is agitated (thinking), you will not be able to see the bottom, but let the waters calm and behold !
Doing good deeds and helping others is a kind of side effect that comes from getting closer to understanding what we really are and how we are connected to everything around us. It is not something that takes us up a notch of the spiritual path. It seems that a good way to realize your self, is to realize who you are not. What is left is…I Am.
This is very beautiful. Thank you. May I add that even the play of light and shadows we look at are not as they seem after we look from the eyes instead of through them. We look through the veils of our mind and it’s preconceived ideas and conditions. Yet, in all of this writing, what most stood out for me, is that a kind and Divine voice spoke to my guide of life. We are not what we conceive ourselves to be. I am not a human, nor is God a form I can perceive, yet such Love flows and such infinite and kind wisdom visits upon us. Unconditional love, such unfathomable beauty.
The “light and shadows” analogy is a good one, but if we see everything as basically unreal then how do we learn. Seeing everything as only light and shadow can all too easily cause life itself to become an abstraction. There is a certain coldness to that it seems to me. Choosing love and spiritual evolution in life’s dark times can often carry us just as far on the path.
Dear Shelly,
You make the good point that the outlook I expressed must not be taken as a counsel of indifference to this world we’re living in. “Those who are too good for this world,” Sri Yukteswar (Yogananda’s guru) once said famously, “are adorning some other. So long as you breathe the free air of earth, you are under obligation to render grateful service.” The key is to live in the world without the consciousness of being of the world. We must, just as you wrote, “choose love and spiritual evolution in life’s dark times.” If we express that love in only a human way, however—trying to better the world, but in forgetfulness of Him who created it and continues to direct/”project” the show—our efforts will come to little. Swami Kriyananda offered a helpful analogy: “If a guitar string is stretched tightly but not attached to the instruments sounding board, the sound it produces will be thin and feeble. The life of man, too, is fruitful to the extent that he recognizes and expresses some aspect of a greater reality than his own.”
Yogananda’s own life is an example of how much more truly loving and warmly compassionate love is when we never get so engrossed in the drama before us that we forget about the “projector.” Then we give our love first to God, offering ourselves as channels for His love into the world.
Wow, right on the money for what I needed to hear this morning, as usual!
Thanks so much, Devi!
Rev . Sir ,
You keep reminding me every time whenever I forget . God ever merciful !
Thank you for reminding me once again .
It’s difficult to be detached at times in this play of light and shadow .
This is just what I needed to hear because of what is happening in my life right now, so I don’t take things so seriously and let them get me down but realize the one true being, creator is teaching, helping, guiding and nudging me to go in the right direction. Thank you for this story.
Yes,thank you for the reminder.But it is troubling,isnt it,that God would allow that,”good & evil must ever alternate in superiority”?The horrible suffering of innocent children,men & women brought about by evil men,especially evident now & getting much worse,is just appalling.In this country & around the world there needs to be a call for deep prayer that these great evils & other major calamities on the way be lessened or stopped altogether by God thru his infinite mercy & grace.So please begin to send out messages that call for people everywhere to humble themselves,to turn away from all sin & begin to pray..every night & every day. Thank you again,& as Swami once said,we must fight for what is right,on the side of the angels of light. I bow to you,to the God in you. greg
Dear Greg,
Please check our website—jyotishanddevi.org—and look at our “Peace and Harmony Letter.” We have put out a call for people to join us in Yoganandaji’s prayer for world peace.
With joy,
Thank you Devi Ji!
Bless you all…
Beautifully put in words by Yoganandaji.
It gives the message that in the midst of life’s tragedies, one can always look above and hope for divine light, guidance, mercy. peace and joy.
Kanwal
Beautiful
This explains beautifully why there is suffering. I wonder who caused the suffering in the first place… it isn’t God, so is it us? And why would God make creation … if He can do anything, shouldn’t there be another way to teach us? That’s probably my mind asking all this, so forgive me.
Suffering is described as a noun, which means according to the definition, that it could be a person, place, or thing. How can this happen?How can it be three distinctive phenomenons? So one time it can be a person, and then change and become a place……? But hold on! A person cannot turn into a place. So what’s going on here? Ahhhh! I get it, it’s the mind that changes the suffering from a person into a place. So it’s not that the person goes through some sort of weird metamorphosis, it that the mind, by way of thinking, that directs suffering for a person, to a place or a thing. But if the person is directing the suffering, then its the person who is in control or even creating the suffering and projecting it on a person, place or thing. Suffering is an illusion created by way of thinking. Our mental “frame of reference,” contains specific expectations, prejudices and desires, that when not satisfied create a resistance and in these mechanics, suffering is manifested. The intensity of the resistance determines the intensity of the illusion of suffering and this is factored by the intensity of the desire, expectation or prejudice. Suffering is an illusion created by thinking beings existing in a dualistic reality.
Dear Shelley,
Yes, it is your mind asking that question, but also your heart. And no need to apologize, because you’ve asked the most natural of questions, and one that thoughtful people have been asking themselves since time immemorial.
Swami Kriyananda, in his biography of Paramhansa Yogananda, gave a most interesting reply to your question:
“In the beginning”—that is to say, before Cosmic Creation—there was in existence only the ever-calm Spirit, vibrationless, fathomless. Its nature is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss, or Satchidananda. (It was Paramhansa Yogananda who added “ever-new” to the translation.) Why would perfect Bliss, complete in Itself, feel any need to create at all? In India it has been suggested that “God wanted to enjoy Himself through many.” [Though it’s been said in reply that He seems mostly to suffer through almost everybody, and truly to enjoy Himself only through the saints.] Swami Sri Yukteswar answered the inevitable question of why God created the universe by saying, “Leave a few mysteries to be solved after you reach the Divine.” Yogananda’s expression, however, “ever-new,” in addition to the concept of Bliss suggests a more fully satisfying explanation (satisfying, that is, to human reason). What it hints at is that the very nature of Bliss is to want to express Itself. The ever-new aspect of Cosmic Bliss causes It periodically to express Itself creatively, expanding Self-awareness into outward manifestation.
To whatever degree this passage satisfies our mind, it is unlikely entirely to assuage our heart’s pain at the suffering we see all around us. Later in that biography (which I recommend to you very highly, incidentally), Swamiji offers us this consoling thought: “No one who has ever found God, and who has (inevitably) in the process remembered all his countless past incarnations, has ever cried in disillusionment, ‘What a scam!’ All who have found Him have cried, rather, ‘It was worth everything I ever went through!’”
In ever-new joy,
very inspiring very inspiring ,gods infinite lila in various names and forms continously going on ,and we instead of witnessing become participants, thank u so much DEVI AND JYOTISH
Dearest Ma Devi,
Thank you! This reminder is never wasted!
Keep tapping “our shoulders” to remind us all – Life is but a dream of shadow and light!
And the best part and place to dwell in – is of course – the LIGHT.
May Master’s Divine Light continue to shine outward and spread across the world
bringing Millions into the LIGHT!
~~~Peace, Josette
Dear Ji’s
Wonderful reminder to stay Focuse , Thank you so much.
With Gratitude
R sundararajan