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 15th 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
