To Each According to His Faith (With Brahmachari Sagar)
Sunday Service with Brahmachari Sagar, Nayaswami Parvati and Nayaswami Pranaba at Ananda Village, recorded April 3rd 2022.
This week's reading from Swami Kriyananda's book "Rays of the One Light" is:
To Each According to His Faith
Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.
The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
In the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 3, we read:
Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
It is a common experience, shared by most people, that when a person errs he experiences a desire to hide that error from his conscience instead of holding it up for purification. Error clutches its misdeeds to itself, and resists correction, though it is only in the state of purity that we can achieve perfect freedom. It requires an act of will to offer that awareness up to the light, and to hold it there until one’s inner darkness is completely dissipated.
For every state of consciousness has its own attractive power. And the more we allow that attraction to act upon us, the more we attract to ourselves the objective circumstances and experiences natural to it. Our faith is the attractive power of our underlying state of consciousness. Goodness attracts goodness; it takes goodness even to see goodness. Evil attracts evil, and it takes evil even to see evil – that is, to take special note of its existence.
Whatever there is in you of darkness or light, offer it up to the heights. In the Supreme Light alone will we find salvation. Accept nothing less in yourself as your lasting reality. As the Bhagavad Gita says, in the twelfth Chapter:
Cling thou to me!
Clasp Me with heart and mind! So shalt thou dwell
Surely with Me on high. But if thy thought
Droops from such height; if thou be’st weak to set
Body and soul upon Me constantly,
Despair not! give Me lower service! seek
To reach Me, worshiping with steadfast will;
And, if thou canst not worship steadfastly,
Work for Me, toil in works pleasing to Me!
For he that laboureth right for love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!
Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
