Sunday Service Reading #23

From Rays of the One Light
Why Do Devotees Fall?
(to long readings) (link to longest reading)

An endlessly fascinating question is, Why did Judas fall after receiving the extraordinary blessing of being accepted into the inner circle of Jesus Christ's disciples? For Judas was one of the twelve apostles. Yet he betrayed Jesus, and earned for himself the opprobrium of Christendom for all futurity for his sin.

We find Judas reprimanding Jesus just days before that betrayal. Jesus, aware that his disciples would soon be facing, with his death, the supreme tragedy of their lives, allowed Mary to express her devotion by anointing his feet with costly ointment. This act of “wanton waste,” as Judas saw it, awakened indignation in that disciple.

“Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?”

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and kept the purse, and bare what was put therein.

Then said Jesus, “Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you: but me ye have not always.”

Doubt not the power of delusion. Respect it—indeed, fear it, though not in the sense of cowering before it. For, as Yogananda said, “One is not safe until he attains nirbikalpa samadhi—the state of final union with God.”

Judas, through attachment to money, opened his consciousness to subtle influences, which may be called satanic, that drew his thoughts toward other related attitudes: the importance of worldly power, for instance, and of worldly influence.

The Bhagavad Gita gives a graphic explanation of how easily the mind can be drawn downward, once it begins to feed on wrong attitudes. In the second Chapter, Sri Krishna states:

If one ponders on sense objects, there springs up attraction to them. From attraction grows desire. Desire, impatient for fulfillment, flames to anger. From anger there arises infatuation (the delusion that one object alone is worth clinging to, to the exclusion of all others). From infatuation ensues forgetfulness of the higher Self. From forgetfulness of the Self follows degeneration of the discriminative faculty. And when discrimination is lost, there follows the annihilation of one's spiritual life.

“At the first thought of delusion,” Paramhansa Yogananda said, “that is the time to stop it.”

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

All THIS media is for the wrong reading - VIDEO of Asha's Service on this Subject from 4-26-09 (no movement for the first five minutes)

Sunday Service on 4/26/2009 from Ananda Palo Alto on Vimeo.

MP3 for Download (or online listening) Asha's Service on this Subject from 4-26-09

VIDEO of Anandi's Service on this Subject from 4-26-09

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Anandi's Service on this Subject from 4-26-09

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Joe and Gary's Service on this Subject from 4-29-07

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Anandi's Service on this Subject from 4-27-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Doctor Peter's Service on this Subject from 4-29-07

Long Readings from the 3 Volume Set:
Rays of the Same Light

#18 The Need for Inner Experience
(#17 in the original book)

This passage is from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 43-48:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the tax collectors the same?

“And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the pagans so?

“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Commentary

Jesus is telling us to live as children of God, and no longer as children of limitation. He says we should love everyone with God’s perfect, unqualified, unconditional love. These Verses are so inspiring in their message of universal kindness and love that one might easily overlook their other, deeper implications.

Let us contemplate the commandment: “Be ye therefore perfect.” For that is quite clearly what Jesus’ words are: a commandment. They are more than advice, and far more than a promise. Jesus was trying to stir his listeners to fervent action. He was not merely counseling them to wait in relative passivity for God to fulfill His perfection in them.

Those believers who imagine that God’s grace is given to us human beings without any effort of will on our own part are answered here forcefully. Jesus is telling us to strive mightily for perfection, that we might become worthy of God’s grace.

His words are a commandment also not to define ourselves in terms of our human limitations, of our human weakness and sinfulness. “Don’t accept human bondage as your reality!” he seems to be urging us. The common excuse for sinning: “To err is human,” is answered here by Jesus: “Then be more than human! Recognize yourselves as children of God.” We must, he insists, become “perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

A third, and fundamental, message in these words is this: Jesus was telling us that we can achieve perfection only by God’s power, never by our own. For if it were possible for man to become as perfect as God while yet remaining separate from Him, would it not imply the further possibility of an infinite number of supreme godheads? Egoic perfection is a contradiction in terms. The ego is a very definition of imperfection! – and not in its fragility and littleness, merely.

But Jesus made his meaning clear in his earlier commandment: “Live like the children of your Father in heaven.” It is from God that we have received the gift of life. Only the power of His divine love can bestow on us the Perfection of Love. For He alone is Love.

Jesus is telling us in this vitally important passage that we should transcend the selfish dictates of human emotions: the natural attraction we feel toward certain people – our friends, for instance – and the equally natural aversion we have toward others. We must expand our sympathies beyond the narrow confines of ego-motivated human feelings, and seek ever more perfectly to live in God’s love. This we can do only if we offer ourselves up into the flow of Infinite Love itself.

Moreover, we cannot attain perfection in divine love until we have passed beyond the stage of merely affirming it, and have learned to live in God’s actual, loving presence.

Mental belief, in other words, is not enough: We must experience God’s love. We must channel it consciously to others. We must call it to us with deep faith and devotion. Not only must we pray: We must also, in an uplifted state of soul, receive the grace of divine love in our hearts. As St. John wrote: “To all those who received him gave he power to become the sons of God.”

In inner communion, God enters into the heart, and makes us His own.

Jesus, finally, is speaking of the outward expression of perfect love. His words concern not only the inner, ecstatic state of love, but also the manifestation of that selfless, divine love toward others.

We find, then, in these few simple words the very essence of his teaching. What he was saying was, “Seek perfection in God, and give outward expression to what you receive from Him, by universal love for all.” To seek God inwardly, and to serve Him outwardly in all: What higher message could God have given to humanity?

In teaching us these truths, God, through the Holy Bible, has spoken to mankind.

This passage is from the seventh Chapter, the 3rd Stanza:

“Out of thousands, one strives for spiritual attainment; and out of many blessed true seekers, who strive assiduously to reach Me, one, perhaps, perceives Me as I am.”

Commentary

Lest anyone lose courage over the odds that are presented here, it might be well to explain that in God’s creation there are many planes of existence, through which the soul must pass on its way to oneness with God. As Jesus put it, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” (John 14:2) Few indeed on this earth are spiritually determined enough to surrender everything to God. Ours is a relatively unenlightened planet, darkened by materialism, and kept in constant turmoil by mankind’s consuming hunger for ego-glorification.

The Bhagavad Gita, however, counts as blessed in God’s eyes all those who earnestly strive to live for Him alone. Nor does the Gita state that one cannot find God while living in a human body. It merely poses the challenge: “If you want to find God, don’t delude yourself that the path to Him is easy. The spiritual heights cannot be attained with anything less than total dedication to the Lord.”

There is another point to be considered here, one which modern man would do well to heed. For, raised as we are on Twentieth Century democratic principles, we may imagine that anything which the majority of religious believers accept as a true teaching must therefore indeed be true.

How many religions, and how many bodies of believers, imagine themselves justified by the sheer numbers of their adherents! How many, besides, think of themselves as true spokesmen for their own religions merely because there are thousands, or even millions, who agree with them!

The Bhagavad Gita here demolishes any such delusion. So also did Jesus, repeatedly, when he offered high spiritual teachings in the form of parables because most of his listeners were not yet spiritually mature enough to “hear” all that he had to impart.

In any field of endeavor, it is normal for the person who has knowledge to impart not to teach those who are too far below him in their ability or understanding. It would be a waste, for example, for a great pianist to teach simple scales to five-year-olds. A master of the piano normally teaches those who have some hope of becoming professional pianists themselves.

In the spiritual world, also, a great master may indeed speak to the multitudes as well – in the compassionate hope that some of them will receive a certain impetus from him, and that, out of this number, some few will decide to live more fully for God. For such a master to live only to inspire lukewarm conversions would, however, be a waste of the supreme gifts that he has to bestow.

Every great master seeks worthy disciples: those on whom he can confer his supreme spiritual treasures. The highest teachings in every true religion are not for everyone – not for the reason that they exclude anyone, but simply because so few people really want to receive them.

Most seekers want ego-gratification, even when they go to church. They want a teaching that says, “Don’t try too hard. After all, you’re only human. Be honest, be truthful, and occasionally remember the Lord.”

We don’t often hear religious teachers telling their congregations to forsake everything in their search for God. Were they to do so, how many of them would even keep their jobs?

The influence of mass attitudes is difficult to resist. Many, even among earnest seekers, lose heart after a few tests and turn back, preferring acceptance by the majority over the voice of their own conscience.

Sri Krishna in this passage of the Bhagavad Gita is trying to help people to break the hypnosis of mass opinion. One who would live truly in God must be willing to stand alone, to be mocked by uncomprehending family members, to be persecuted by those who are, in fact, still children in their own spiritual understanding. As Jesus said when he was crucified: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

One who would know God must realize that, just as in physical death we leave behind us everything of this earth and go off alone into the great Beyond, so in the death of the ego, when the soul offers itself wholly into God, one must be willing to enter the divine realms alone, with approval from no one, save only from God Himself.

Thus, through the Bhagavad Gita, God has spoken to mankind. Back to Top of Page

Longest Reading from the Book
The Promise of Immortality

#18 Be Ye Therefore Perfect

Inner communion with God is the way to know Him. Paramhansa Yogananda and Jesus Christ emphasized it; so have many other masters. Indeed, Yogananda pointed out that inner communion should be a habitual attitude of mind, and not only a daily practice. “Seclusion,” he told his students, “is the price of greatness.” At the same time, every choice in life has its advantages and disadvantages. To be with God inwardly ought not to remove one’s sympathies from other people. Even a hermit should keep his aura expanded, so to speak, to embrace humanity. This understanding comes naturally to one who seeks solitude as Jesus put it, “in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24)

To love God truly means also to love everyone in the recognition that He is equally in all. As Yogananda said, “Don’t imagine you can win God’s love without love for your fellowman. You cannot win Him if you are unkind to others.”

The following passage offers powerful support for the exhortation to universal love. It forms part of the Sermon on the Mount, in Chapter 5 of the Gospel of St. Matthew, Verses 43 — 48:

“Ye have heard it said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for He makes His sun to rise on the evil as well as on the good, and sends rain on both the just and the unjust. For if ye love them who love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the tax collectors the same?

“And if ye salute only your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?”

Jesus defines virtue as that which deepens our attunement with God. What is the reason we should love friend and enemy alike? Because God dwells equally in all. And how can we “bless them that curse” us? By giving love to all impersonally – not from egoic predilection, but with God’s love. Jesus said we should see everyone, ourselves included, as children of our Father “who is in heaven.”*(37)ctx_sk_Promise_foot_37 Our hearts’ love should aspire toward union with God. Therefore the next words:

“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

These verses are so inspiring for their message of universal kindness and love that one might easily overlook their deeper emphasis on divine attunement, as if he were telling us only to be virtuous in a human sense. What Jesus was saying was that perfection can be achieved, and expressed outwardly, only by God’s grace. Personal effort can invite grace, but it cannot replace the need for it. Were it possible to become as perfect as God from our state of egoic confinement, it would imply the possibility of an infinite number of supreme godheads! Egoic “perfection” is a contradiction in terms. The ego is imperfect by the very fact that it makes us conscious of being separate from God.

Jesus made this meaning clear by admonishing us to live as “children” of God. It is only from God that the ability comes to love others purely. Attunement with Him brings realization of the oneness of all life. Everything in creation manifests the infinite Self.

In these few simple words, then, we find the essence of Christ’s teaching: that we must seek perfection in God, live consciously by His love, visualize His presence in all, and share with them the love we receive inwardly from Him. Thus alone, with His grace, can we achieve all that we have ever sought in life.

The beauty of this teaching is that it encourages us to view divine consciousness as our fundamental reality and ultimate destiny. It does also emphasize, however, the magnitude of the task before us. Sri Krishna offered divine encouragement also, but added the same warning. In Chapter Seven of the Bhagavad Gita, he stated:

“Out of thousands, one strives for spiritual attainment. And out of those many blessed true seekers who strive assiduously to attain Me, one, perhaps, perceives Me as I am.”

The spiritual challenge that every great master delivers to humanity is no mere exhortation to be moral: It is to become as perfect as God is! We are asked literally to expand our sense of selfhood to infinity. Although the task is more than Herculean, it is one that showers treasures untold on all who sincerely attempt it: the sweetness of pure love; expanding happiness; deep inner peace; ever-growing wisdom; a soaring sense of freedom; and the awareness of divine support through every trial in life. Do other ways of life offer anything comparable?

In an earlier chapter we proposed an experiment based on the results to oneself of two different kinds of behavior: materialistic, and spiritual. Here let us propose another experiment, based on the results not to oneself, but to others. For although the scriptures tell us to judge no one, they also tell us to view reality as it is. Only with clear vision can we express true kindness.

To view with “kindly” approval, for example, deeds that cannot but harm their perpetrators would, in the long run, be unkind. To smile at drunkenness, for example, would be to encourage indulgence in it. We should be aware of the consequences of people’s actions, not only that we may be of help to others, but for a more personal reason also. For awareness can spare us, too, great suffering by giving us clear understanding of how to behave.

Judgment implies condemnation. There is, however, no condemnation in being simply aware of people’s faults and virtues, and of the effect these have on the people themselves.

Study the eyes, then, and the emotional states of people who are devoted to material pursuits. Then look at people who live by spiritual principles. Even the facial expressions, bodily gestures, and tone of voice say it all.

Worldly people betray inner restlessness in their every movement. Their awareness is centered more in the arms and shoulders than in the spine. Their fidgety glances reveal their restlessness; so also does the incessant movement of their hands and feet. A clouded mind is evident in a vacant expression and a habitual tendency to look downward. Disappointment is revealed in a harsh tone of voice, in jerky breathing, and in a forward stoop of the shoulders. Bitterness is evident when people defiantly square their shoulders.

Karmic complexities may allow an evildoer prosperity for a time, owing to good deeds he committed in the past. Prosperity, on the other hand, may be denied a virtuous person for a time, owing to misdeeds he committed in the past. “The mills of God grind slowly,” as the poet Longfellow wrote. Karmic law may be delayed in its effects by “the thwarting cross-currents of ego,” as Paramhansa Yogananda called them in Autobiography of a Yogictx_py_Autobiography_contents. A person’s thoughts, however, usually show their outer effects much sooner.

Whatever the fortunes or setbacks in life for people who live by high principles, they radiate a constant inner serenity and contentment of spirit. Their gestures are peaceful, conveying a sense of inner harmony. Their voices are melodious. Their smiles, which begin at the eyes, include others. Their hand movements suggest an attitude of self-giving, not of self-protectiveness. Their walk is firm. Their spines are straight.

A clever actor may be able to mimic these characteristics outwardly, but he will never be able to conceal the actual vibrations he emanates. Spiritual people emanate vibrations of harmony. Materialistic people emanate vibrations of lust, greed, and disharmony. To a person of spiritual sensitivity, these vibrations are tangible; they can be felt in the heart, if one keeps his feelings open and calm.

To the worldly person, happiness reveals itself in outward excitement: in wild gestures, for example, and in dancing excitedly about the room. He may visualize monks and nuns, by contrast, as shrivel-faced, austere, and dour simply because he knows that meditation and prayer must have made them calm. In both cases, as it happens, the very opposite is true: It is monks and nuns who are happy, and worldly people who, because of their restlessness, find happiness elusive. As the Bhagavad Gita says, to the person without inner peace, happiness is not possible. Man’s obsession with outer fulfillment brings him nothing but grief in the end. A spiritual life, on the other hand, sends the heart fairly dancing with inner joy.

To choose impersonally between these two ways of living should be very easy, for their consequences are so self-evident: happiness, on the one hand; unhappiness, on the other. Unfortunately, ego-involvement makes it difficult to be impersonal. Powerful urges, as Sigmund Freud (well known as the father of modern psychology) discovered, seethe in the subconscious and affect many, if not most, of our conscious processes.

Freud recommended that the conflict between conscious intention and subconscious urges be resolved by accepting that the urges define us as we really are. According to him, our intentions show us merely as we would like to be, or have been told we ought to be. Suppression therefore is harmful, he insisted, for it produces “complexes” that, in their extreme form, result in mental disease. In fact, the diseased mind, which abnormal psychology describes, was his point of departure in developing his ideas. To him, aberrations were the norm. They may be minimized, he said, but they can never be eliminated. The only solution Freud offered to the search for personal fulfillment was to accept one’s lower nature frankly and honestly as one’s reality, and to place on a shelf, so to speak, whatever idealized image one has formed of himself as a pleasant fiction.

The Bhagavad Gita warns also against suppression. Its warning, however, has a very different emphasis, for it teaches one to work with those subconscious urges and to refine and redirect them toward spiritual fulfillment.

To accept Freud’s point of view is to conclude that evolution has deceived us woefully. For because of it we have inherited thin skins, which force us to keep warm by wearing clothes. Clad, consequently, we’ve “gotten above ourselves” to the extent of developing artificial mental attitudes as well: the notion, for instance, that we must go about “properly” dressed in public to protect an entirely false sense of modesty. This “hypocritical” attitude encourages us also to develop what it pleases us to consider “high ideals” – which in fact are nothing but mental “clothing” to hide our basic animality.

This was the bias of Western thinking long before Darwin and Freud were born. The Church proclaimed it in declaring the dogma that mankind is inherently sinful and can be redeemed only by Jesus Christ’s atonement on the cross. According to Darwin’s theory, man is little more than a precocious monkey. St. Thomas Aquinas, however, the foremost of Catholic theologians, anticipated Darwin by centuries with his famous definition, “Man is a rational animal.” And man, because of his animal nature, is more likely to be irrational than rational. This aspect of human nature was long ago accepted by Christians, and attributed by them to the Devil and to “original sin.”

Science, since Galileo’s time, also prepared the way for the general acceptance of Darwin and Freud by side-stepping the whole issue of God, whose existence, it admitted, could not be proved.*(38)ctx_sk_Promise_foot_38 From this confessed inability it proceeded to show proudly the many things it had proved, and concluded that God is “unnecessary” to the general scheme of things, and may safely be dismissed as non-existent.

The consequence of this cultural conditioning has been a deep-seated bias toward materialism and atheism.

Thus, modern thinking has turned the ancient Vedic declaration, “Tat twam asi (Thou art that),” on its head. In the Vedic view, as also in that of other great religions, man’s inner conflicts will never be resolved except spiritually. Modern psychology, however, and especially Freudian psychology, takes quite the opposite stand: Not by spiritual aspiration, it insists, but only by liberating mankind from this “error” of aspiration, will fulfillment ever be achieved.

One has, however, only to look at the lives of people who accept this philosophy – in fact, to look at the cows and sheep, who, presumably, are more “grounded and self-honest” than we are, since they have none, or few, of the psychological “complexes” with which mankind is plagued – one has only, then, to look at such lives to see that the “solution” offered is fatally flawed. Many modern psychologists seek “answers” in what they, since Carl Jung, call the “unconscious,” rather than in superconsciousness, which many mystics describe from their own experience. One waits in vain, however, for modern psychology to produce even one example of a radiant, mentally healthy human being. All that has been accomplished so far is that formerly disturbed people have developed a slightly less pronounced psychological limp.

It is a simple fact that the subconscious obstructs one’s efforts to grow spiritually. It is not a fact that rejection of spiritual aspirations removes even a single obstruction to happiness. In the modern view, outer circumstances pushed us up the evolutional ladder without our conscious consent. A number of psychologists actually scoff at the notion that the direction of evolution is necessarily even upward.*(39)ctx_sk_Promise_foot_39 To Christian theology, the soul’s longing for God is a mark of divine grace. Theology rejects any claim, however, that this deep longing is innate in us.

Jesus Christ on the other hand, as we have seen already, said that high spiritual aspiration is part of our nature. “Know ye not ye are gods?” was the challenge he flung at his critics. We are the children of God, not the mere spawn of Satan. The accusations he leveled against the Pharisees – on one occasion he actually called them sons of Satan, and not, as they’d claimed, sons of Abraham – were in reference to their deluded understanding, and not to their spiritual potential.

It is our delusions that are the offspring of Satan. These delusions – the “devil” within us – are, as the word itself implies, false. Granted, man’s subconscious urges rise to a conscious level in the form of physical desires, likes and dislikes, and of seemingly causeless emotions. They impede human progress not only spiritually, but in any direction one elects to take. The longing for God is in fact what the theologians have called it: a mark of grace.

Grace, however, is the soul’s recognition of eternal realities – smriti (memory), as the Indian scriptures call it – even as the strings of a harp vibrate in sympathy with notes played on another instrument. We are not so much pushed upward from below by evolution as pulled up by the dim memory of who we are, in eternity.

Nevertheless, because our present awareness is of the body, our more present memories are physical also. Even the earnest spiritual seeker finds himself pitted in a life-and-death struggle against what mystics have called “the flesh.”

The Bhagavad Gita says that even the wise can be tempted, until they are firmly anchored in God. Few people are even interested in seeking God. And of these few, rare indeed is the one who attains perfection.

Lest the seeker lose heart at the odds against him, it should be explained that most souls pass through successively spiritual planes on their way to final liberation. “In my Father’s house,” Jesus Christ said, “are many mansions.” (John 14:2) Few devotees even, on this plane of existence, rouse themselves enough to devote all their energies to seeking God. The earth is a grade school, so to speak, in God’s vast universe. God’s light on earth is dimmed by human ignorance, and is kept in constant turmoil by people’s eagerness for self-glorification.

The Bhagavad Gita gives us more immediate consolation also, however. It tells us that God is pleased with any sincere effort to know Him. “To one who offers even a flower or a leaf in My name,” Krishna says, “I Myself receive that offering.” Nor does the scripture remove from mankind the hope of attaining divine union while still one lives in a physical body. It merely poses the challenge: “If you want to know Me, don’t delude yourself with thinking that the task is easy! The spiritual heights can be reached only by heroic dedication!” Not, be it noted, by mere belief, but by utter self-dedication.

There is another point to be considered here. For, raised as we’ve all been on democratic principles, we may imagine that anything accepted as truth by the majority must indeed, therefore, be true. Many religious organizations seek justification in the sheer numbers of their adherents. And people commonly think that priests and ministers speak for the founders of their religions simply because thousands, or millions, agree with them!

The Gita demolishes these false notions. Jesus Christ did so also, repeatedly. Consider how frequently Jesus offered spiritual teachings in the form of parables. He refrained from declaring them openly “to the multitudes” because, as he himself explained, his message was intended for those who had “ears to hear.”

In every field of endeavor, it is necessary that certain knowledge be withheld from people who are not yet grounded in their understanding. It would be a waste of talent, for example, for a great pianist to devote himself to teaching scales to five-year-olds. It is far better that he keep his special knowledge for students who demonstrate a certain aptitude.

In the spiritual world also, great masters commonly reserve their deeper teachings for disciples who are competent to receive them. Were a master to give such teachings to lukewarm aspirants, he might only confuse their understanding. His more serious students, meanwhile, would not receive the attention they deserve.

Jesus told his disciples, “Cast not your pearls before swine.” It wasn’t that he wanted to exclude anyone from God’s truth, but only that he knew that many people are ill prepared for it. Everyone determines, in this sense, what he himself will receive. What most people, including many religious people, want is ego-gratification. They want comforting advice like, “Don’t try too hard; after all, you’re only human! Don’t be fanatical. God asks only that you be kind to others, truthful, and fair in your dealings with them, and that you remember Him occasionally.” How many ministers of the Gospel are there who exhort their congregations, “Forsake everything for God!”?

Most people find the influence of mass consciousness difficult to resist. Even those who set out on their spiritual journey in a spirit of deep earnestness may lose heart when the tests become difficult, and may return to the life they once scorned as “worldly.” Ignoring the sorrowful voice of their own conscience, and succumbing to spiritual cowardice, they conclude that worldly acceptance is preferable to worldly mockery and persecution. Proudly, now, they display to their erstwhile friends on the path the shiny new cars they’ve purchased, the beautiful clothing, the new homes. They preen themselves on their good standing in the world. Meanwhile, does the world care for them? Not at all! People’s all-consuming interest is themselves.

Sri Krishna, in referring to the scarcity of deeply earnest seekers, wanted to help people to break the hypnosis of mass opinion. To live truly in God, he implied, one must be willing to stand alone, to be ridiculed by uncomprehending friends and family members, and persecuted by worldly people (who, after all, are only spiritual children). As Jesus cried out from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

To know God, we must realize that, even as in physical death we leave everything behind, so with the death of the ego we leave creation itself behind. Nothing remains – not even nothingness! (This is to suggest how utterly beyond human comprehension is that Ultimate State!)

Ah! but in that “tangible nothingness” is attained oneness with all that Is!

What God asks of us is the willingness to enter the divine “kingdom” all alone – approved of by none but Him. Wonder of wonders, then: Approval suddenly rings out from every “particle” of divine light in creation!

*(37) In the last chapter we saw that Jesus often used the term, “heaven,” in reference to the state of God-consciousness. Popular fancy has always depicted heaven as an actual place, rather, where the Lord is seated majestically on a golden throne.

*(38) The Sankhya teachings in Hinduism made this statement also: “Ishwar ashiddha (God is not proved).” The purpose of this statement, however, is not to deny God, but to point out that divine realization lies outside the limiting syllogisms of logic.

*(39) A footnote in the author’s book, Out of the Labyrinth (formerly titled, Crises in Modern Thought – Solutions to the Problem of Meaninglessness) reads: “James F. Crow [published] an article in Scientific American (the September 1959 issue). Rhetorically, Crow asked, ‘Has man changed more in developing his brain than the elephant has by growing a trunk?’” Of course, if the sole criterion be survival, the answer to the question has to be, “No” – or, in the words of the popular song: “It ain’t necessarily so.”

Back to Top of Page