"May Justice Roll Down like Waters" - a new era has begun

As of inauguration day, Friday, January 19, 2017, our nation, in concert with the forces of entropy, including rebellion from established principles of freedom and respect for all, stands poised to enter a new era of conflict and disharmony. While disobedience, whether civil or uncivil, appears on the ascendant, yet, "Autobiography of a Yogi" speaks to us some 70 years later after its original publication in 1946. We share with you to selections from near the end of chapters 31 and 32, respectively, affirming the power of truth and divine law:

“The omnipotence of spiritual law was referred to by Christ on the occasion of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As the disciples and the multitude shouted for joy, and cried, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest,” certain Pharisees complained of the undignified spectacle. “Master,” they protested, “rebuke thy disciples.”

            “I tell you,” Jesus replied, “that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”

            In this reprimand to the Pharisees, Christ was pointing out that divine justice is no figurative abstraction, and that a man of peace, though his tongue be torn from its roots, will yet find his speech and his defense in the bedrock of creation, the universal order itself.

            “Think you,” Jesus was saying, “to silence men of peace? As well may you hope to throttle the voice of God, whose very stones sing His glory and His omnipresence. Will you demand that men not celebrate in honor of the peace in heaven, but should only gather together in multitudes to shout for war on earth? Then make your preparations, O Pharisees, to overtopple the foundations of the world; for it is not gentle men alone, but stones or earth, and water and fire and air that will rise up against you, to bear witness of His ordered harmony.”

Time is coming and is here now when men and women of faith and peace must rise up and cooperate together for the greater good, affirming justice, freedom, and harmony for all God’s children, all races, nations, and faiths at whatever cost.

Paramhansa Yogananda writes in chapter 32:

Fifty years after Lahiri Mahasaya’s passing in 1895 culminated in 1945, the year of completion of this present book. I cannot but be struck by the coincidence that the year 1945 has also ushered in a new age–the era of revolutionary atomic energies. All thoughtful minds turn as never before to the urgent problems of peace and brotherhood, lest the continued use of physical force banish all men along with the problems.

            Though the human race and its works disappear tracelessly by time or bomb, the sun does not falter in its course; the stars keep their invariable vigil. Cosmic law cannot be stayed or changed, and man would do well to put himself in harmony with it. If the cosmos is against might, if the sun wars not with the planets but retires at dueful time to give the stars their little sway, what avails our mailed fist? Shall any peace indeed come out of it? Not cruelty but goodwill arms the universal sinews; a humanity at peace will know the endless fruits of victory, sweeter to the taste than any nurtured on the soil of blood.

            The effective League of Nations will be a natural, nameless league of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual consideration of man’s diversities, but from knowledge of man’s sole unity–his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world’s highest ideal–peace through brotherhood–may yoga, the science of personal contact with the Divine, spread in time to all men in all lands.

            Though India’s civilization is ancient above any other, few historians have noted that her feat of national survival is by no means an accident, but a logical incident in the devotion to eternal verities which India has offered through her best men in every generation. By sheer continuity of being, by intransitivity before the ages–can dusty scholars truly tell us how many?–India has given the worthiest answer of any people to the challenge of time.

            The Biblical story of Abraham’s plea to the Lord that the city of Sodom be spared if ten righteous men could be found therein, and the divine reply: “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake,” gains new meaning in the light of India’s escape from the oblivion of Babylon, Egypt and other mighty nations who were once her contemporaries. The Lord’s answer clearly shows that a land lives, not by its material achievements, but in its masterpieces of man.

            Let the divine words be heard again, in this twentieth century, twice dyed in blood ere half over: No nation that can produce ten men, great in the eyes of the Unbribable Judge, shall know extinction. Heeding such persuasions, India has proved herself not witless against the thousand cunnings of time. Self-realized masters in every century have hallowed her soil; modern Christlike sages, like Lahiri Mahasaya and his disciple Sri Yukteswar, rise up to proclaim that the science of yoga is more vital than any material advances to man’s happiness and to a nation’s longevity.

The years ahead, and for the younger generations, such as my our grandchildren, a mighty task lies ahead. Last night we held a program for the 15^th year that celebrates the lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Such souls of courage, wisdom, unconditional love, and faith are much needed in these times. We cannot wait to produce such leaders: we must strive to rise to these heights and, as Dr. King, quoting the Old Testament, declared surely “justice (and peace) will roll down like waters.” (Amos 5, 6).

Communities, virtual and material, must form to demonstrate that high ideals and sustainable living is the way to happiness, peace, and simple living.

“My peace be with you,”

Swami Hrimananda