The Power of Ritual ~ A Journey Into A Festival of Light #2
When Paramhansa Yogananda came to America, he kept the tradition of Sunday mornings, and the same model remained at Ananda—chanting, meditation, reading, discourse—but was very informal and free. There was no liturgical garb, no institutionalism or traditionalism. Yet, Swami Kriyananda felt for many years that Ananda needed a unifying ritual, to meld everyone’s energies together. Thus, A Festival of Light—all the music, the allegorical story of a little bird—divinely came to Swamiji. It is written with a clear and poetic rhythm, and therefore the subconscious mind begins to accept this rhythm and the vibratory power of what the words represent. The power of ritual is in how it can feed the subconscious in a spiritually uplifting way, and allows us to then orient this way naturally over time.
