How Sri Yukteswar Healed Yogananda

Nayaswami Devi shares this beautiful inspiration during her Sunday service at Ananda Village, January 2nd 2022. See the complete talk, "At the Heart of Silence: The Eternal Word."

Transcript

Nayaswami Devi:

There's a beautiful little story that Master tells. He said when he was a young man he was plagued with chronic indigestion, and his room was covered with bottles and tonics and remedies and all these things, and he just, he struggled with it. He lived with it. But one day, he was still a young man, this was still going on.

He said, "It was the first time I talked with my guru, Sri Yukteswar, about it." And Sri Yukteswar said... — I love, I appreciate, I should... I appreciate more and more who Sri Yukteswar is, over time. He's not warm and fuzzy, believe me, but if you want to get down to business, you go to Sri Yukteswar.

Sri Yukteswar's Bigger than Life Painting

You know, this is an aside and I'll come back to the story. I realize this, you know how you look back on your life and you realize, oh, that's what was going on, and not realizing it at the time? After the fire at Ananda in 1976 when, well, everybody lost everything they had, they rescued this painting that someone had done, a quite bigger than life size painting of Sri Yukteswar. It was shaped as a triangle, him meditating.

And I don't know how it even worked out. But somehow Jyotish and I found this little trailer that we were living in; it was winter by this time, it was cold, you know, you can go on and on, how hard it was. But somehow somebody said, "Oh, we need a place to store this big painting of Sri Yukteswar," and that dominated that little trailer. And I realized, oh! [laughter] he was saying, "Be tough girl! Don't be concerned with any of this." And I have that image in my mind so strongly.

A God-Attuned Master

So getting back to Sri Yukteswar and Master. Master was having this chronic problem with stomach indigestion and he mentioned it to Sri Yukteswar and Sri Yukteswar said ,"Why not try Divine healing? You don't have to suffer anymore." And Master said his/"My guru's God-attuned consciousness permeated me, and from that moment I was well," from that moment!

But that's what we're lacking! that, you know, someone said, "Will this work?" "Does he have the power to heal me?" The doubt, the doubt, the doubt. And it just, it destroys our ability to do what we want to do.

So, if we can say, "I want to change. I can change, Master, with your God-attuned will. I will infuse the power of my mind with your unlimited ability to change. Then I can do this." And Master said that from that moment on he was well. In a moment.

It wasn't a big deal. And we make the mistake sometimes of, "I am a healer and I'm going to heal you." Sri Yukteswar didn't do that. It was the power of his God-attuned will that enabled Master to say, "I don't need to suffer anymore." Boom, the karma was over.

And that's the important, pivotal thing, too. It was the karma. But the will of the God-attuned Master can release the karma. Not just a faith healer or something like that. You can have an emotional experience, but it's different: the power of a God-attuned Master. And that's what we have. That's what we have access to, if we want to change.