Sunday Service Reading #5

O Bharata, whenever virtue declines and vice predominates, I incarnate on earth. Taking visible form, I come to destroy evil and re-establish virtue.

What is the mystery of this divine manifestation? Great avatars, such as Krishna and Jesus Christ, are born as babies even as we all are. They take human form, and go through normal human experiences as they grow from childhood to adulthood. They eat. They play. They may seem to suffer sickness and disappointment like the rest of us. In what way are they different from other human beings?

The important thing to understand is that, even as they are like us, so are we also like them. Their realization can be ours, too. They come on earth to show us our own divine potential.

The difference lies not in the manner of their manifestation on earth, but in the consciousness with which they are born. All things are condensations, so to speak, of the Cosmic Vibration—AUM, described by St. John's Gospel as the Word. Most human beings, however, are unconscious of their divine origin. The avatars, on the other hand, come consciously as manifestations of that divine reality.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

VIDEO of Asha's Service on the Subject from 1-31-10

MP3 for Download or online listening of Asha's Service on the Subject from 1-31-10

VIDEO of Helen Purcell's Service on the Subject from 2-1-09

MP3 for Download or online listening of Helen Purcell's Service on the Subject from 2-1-09

VIDEO of Bharat's Service on the Subject from 1-31-10

MP3 for Download or online listening of Bharat's Service on the Subject from 1-31-10

VIDEO of Devi's Service on the Subject from 2-1-09

MP3 for Download or online listening of Devi's Service on the Subject from 2-1-09

MP3 for Download or online listening of Asha's Service on this subject from 2-3-08

MP3 for Download or online listening of Pranaba's Service on this subject from 2-3-08

MP3 for Download or online listening of Asha's Service on this subject from 2-4-07

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

#5: Mystery of the Avatara
("The Son: Only Begotten, Because Omnipresent" in the original book)

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

This expression, "the only begotten of the Father," has a vast metaphysical significance. It refers not to the man, Jesus, but to his divine nature: to the infinite Christ consciousness of which Jesus was a human manifestation.

It is natural for human beings, seeing reality as we do with human eyes, to identify those statements in the Bible which refer to Jesus as divine with what we know of him as a man. This whole first part of St. John's Gospel, however, is so impersonal that it doesn't even name Jesus, although naming John the Baptist. St. John identifies Jesus as the infinite Light of God, the Word — "that which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

Jesus, too, tried constantly to get people to see him not in his human, but in his divine aspect. As he put it in Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Had he identified himself with his human body, he could not have promised to be simultaneously present in all of the thousands of churches where people gathered together "in his name."

We often forget that Christ was not Jesus' name, but a title. It meant the anointed, and was used to refer to the Messiah, or Savior, of the Jews. Jesus referred to himself, similarly, as "him, whom the Father hath sanctified." (John 10:36)

This expression, then, "The only begotten of the Father," has a deep mystical significance, and is not intended to mean that Jesus, because born of the Holy Spirit and not by the agency of a human father, was literally the only offspring of God.

It should be kept in mind that other Saviors also — Buddha, for example — are believed by their followers to have been divinely born, without human paternal agency.

On the other hand, given the known immensity of God's creation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a unique divine manifestation. Modern astronomy has revealed a universe incredibly vast. In our galaxy alone there are estimated to be hundreds of billions of stars; in the whole universe, hundreds of billions of galaxies!

Science has found that the universe is also unimaginably ancient, extending backwards in time billions of years.

On our little planet Earth, the ruins of many ancient civilizations have been found. The history of this planet cannot in any way be limited to a steady progression of events over the brief space of a few centuries, at that tiny speck on our globe where the events of the Bible are known to have taken place.

It is difficult nowadays, if not impossible, to believe in the miraculous birth of just one "only begotten son," out of all the vast universe, on this one tiny planet, our earth.

Jesus himself tried constantly to get people to see in him their own highest potential. In John 14:12 he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." And when the Jews, accusing him of blasphemy, said, "Thou, being a man, makest thyself God," he answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" (John 10:33,34)

This expression, "the only begotten of the Father," refers to the infinite Christ consciousness with which Jesus, "anointed" by God, was identified. The Christ consciousness is the "only begotten" because it is omnipresent. It is the divine reality which dwells at the heart of every atom of creation.

God the Father, the Creator, is beyond His creation. The Word, mentioned in the first sentence of St. John's Gospel, is that manifestation — that infinite vibration — proceeding out of the Father by which, as the Bible tells us, "all things were made." The Christ consciousness is the reflected presence of God in all creation.

Jesus was one with that infinite reality. This, then, is what the Bible means when it speaks of him as the "only begotten."

"O Bharata, whenever virtue declines and vice predominates, I incarnate on earth. Taking visible form, I come to destroy evil and re-establish virtue."

God may be said to incarnate, in a sense, through any great soul who, while living on earth, abides solely in His consciousness. The degree of His manifestation would depend on the depth of that saint's spiritual realization. Certainly, there would have to be some measure of direct inner perception, as opposed to living merely in the constant thought of God: some revelation on God's part of His ecstatic presence within.

In India, the concept of divine incarnation is traditionally applied not so much to those who in this life succeed in realizing God as to those masters who have been born with that realization. Many in India, therefore, believe that an incarnation of God must be a special creation of the Lord's, manifested uniquely by Him to dwell among men for a time in order to grant salvation to all who believe in Him.

Paramhansa Yogananda, however, explained the nature of a divine incarnation, rather, not as a special creation of God's, but as the return to earth of a soul that previously strove to find God, and became emancipated in Him. We find a hint of this same explanation in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is quoted as saying, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Revelation 3:21). Jesus' reference is clearly to his own overcoming, with the hope extended to all men that they, too, may overcome, and find freedom in God.

That is why Jesus said also (Matthew 5:46), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." To be as perfect as God can only mean to attain oneness with Him, as Jesus himself had attained.

A special creation of God's would be less in a position to give people faith in their own spiritual capabilities. People need an example with which they can identify personally. That is the whole point of a divine incarnation. Much of the benefit of such an incarnation would be lost if God had to create a perfect human being simply because no actual human being could ever be found to fit the role. The obvious way, surely, to guide and inspire humanity would be to work through some qualified member of the human race: one who could inspire others with faith in their own potential for achievement.

For a person to grow in virtue, it is necessary for him to feel inspired from within. If he depends too heavily for his salvation on some outward channel, no matter how divine that channel, he will never develop the inner strength of character required for progress in the spiritual life. Rather, he may find, instead, just the excuse that human nature always seeks to persist in its human weaknesses. He may even condemn as presumptuous any effort on the part of others to grow in sanctity.

Spiritual progress is not for cowards and weaklings. It requires great inner strength. That is why the Bible, in John 1:12, says, "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." The good news is that power is given to those who tune in humbly to the infinite, divine source. But it is given from within, and is always commensurate to man's own receptivity.

Paramhansa Yogananda explained the stages of spiritual development thus: A master who has so merged his consciousness in God as to be always awake in Him, having shed all vestiges of personal ego, is known as a jivan mukta: one "freed while living." Such a saint lives outwardly as a normal human being, but he is no longer limited, spiritually. Forever freed from earthly desires, his only reality is the infinite Lord.

Such a soul, however, at first still carries the vestigial memories of his past deeds, committed when he was still wedded to ego-consciousness. These memories, too, must be spiritualized gradually, their karmic threads unraveled, the mental image of each of them transformed into divine awareness.

God's presence must be realized in even the most worldly memories. For although the ego sees itself as separate from God, God is in truth everywhere. The most criminal behavior merely casts a veil — albeit a thick one! — over the indwelling divine reality. The enlightened master, freed from the bondage of delusion, must align also his old self with that present realization.

Once freedom is attained from past actions as well — a state rarely achieved on this material level of existence — the soul becomes a param mukta, or fully liberated soul.

When such a soul is reborn on earth, he comes as a full divine incarnation, or purna avatar. God's power radiates through him in a way that it cannot through any lesser being, however enlightened. Even a fully liberated master, a param mukta, can uplift into the divine light only a limited number of disciples. But a divine incarnation can draw to God as many as come to him for help.

Longest Reading from the Book
The Promise of Immortality

#5 The Mystery of the Avatara
("The Only Begotten, Why"?" in the original book)

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Much of Christian theology is based on this statement that Christ is “the only begotten” Son of the Father. How ought the teaching to be accepted? Certainly, if interpreted too literally, it is unpalatable to non-Christians; everyone believes his own religion is at least the equal of any other.

Belief in the unique divinity of Jesus, the man, was conceived during a time when people could imagine God Himself as an old man with a long, white beard, seated somewhere in the sky on a throne of gold, and wholly preoccupied with the affairs of mankind. People in those days thought they lived in a cozy universe, with a flat earth situated at its center. Creation, they believed, took a mere six days to complete. The time span between the creation and the birth of Jesus Christ was actually calculated in the Nineteenth Century at 4004 years. An anthropomorphic concept of God was far more acceptable before the astronomical discoveries of Galileo than it is today, when we know the universe to be inconceivably vast. All the stars the naked eye can see belong, we are told, to only one out of countless billions of galaxies. As recently as 1918 it wasn’t even known that other galaxies exist. In that year, the astronomer Hubble discovered the supposed “nebula” in Andromeda to be a complete star system—an “island universe,” it was called. The horizons of human knowledge have continued to expand with the aid of increasingly powerful telescopes. The earth, far from holding a central position in the universe, spins its relatively insignificant way near the outer fringe of our “Milky Way” galaxy. Its age, moreover, is no longer computed in the thousands but in the billions of years.

It is not possible any longer for thinking people to assign to the Creator of this immensity the shape and mentality of a human being. Nor is it reasonable to believe in Jesus, the man, as the only offspring of such a Creator.

Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the expression, “the only begotten of the Father,” refers not to the man, Jesus, but to the infinite Christ consciousness with which Jesus was identified in spirit. Jesus himself tried repeatedly to get people to see him not only in his human form, but in his subtle, divine reality. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” he said, “there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) Had he been identified with his human body, he could not have promised to be simultaneously present in the midst of the thousands of congregations that would someday be gathered “in his name.”

Jesus tried to get people to see in him not only his divine reality, but their own highest potential. In John 14:12 he declared, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” And when the Jews, accusing him of blasphemy, said, “Thou, being a man, makest thyself God,” he answered, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” (John 10:33,34)

The Christ consciousness is called “the only begotten” because its presence permeates the whole of cosmic creation. Christ is the unmoving stillness at the heart of every spinning atom.

God, the “Father” beyond creation, may be likened to a sun upon which all things depend for their existence. The Word, or Cosmic Vibration, may be compared, then, to the light emanating from that sun. And the Christ consciousness is the still “reflection” of that light on whatever is touched by it.

The sun, the light emanating from it, and the light’s reflective power are aspects of one and the same thing. In this sense, although triune, they are one.

Our analogy is not perfect, of course. Analogies never are. For what we must suppose here is a sun that is conscious, and light that is conscious also. This vibration of conscious light has the power to condense itself into thoughts, which in turn manifest the illusion that is cosmic creation. The divine light is invisible to scientific instruments, but is beheld in the calmness of deep meditation.

The mind cannot but ask: How can vibrations produce anything as solid as a rock? The answer is that rapid vibrations often give the illusion of having substance. The band of movement created by the tines of a tuning fork may appear solid, if their vibration is broad enough. The blades of a propeller or of an electric fan, similarly, though distinct and separate when they are at rest, appear as a solid wheel when they rotate rapidly.

In similar fashion is the universe manifested. An infinite number of rapid vibrations give the illusion of being substantial. It is all an illusion. There are, in this case, no actual objects at all—no tines, no blades to be set in motion: There are only vibrations of thought, and of the thoughts that respond to those vibrations.

In the motionless Spirit, and in the primordial vibration of light and sound, and again in the motionless reflection of Spirit at the center of that vibration, are defined the Trinity: Father, Holy Ghost, and Son: AUM, TAT, SAT they are called in Sanskrit. Christian theology describes the Holy Trinity as “One in Three, and Three in One.”

The Sanskrit writings, like the Christian, personalize these three aspects of God with a view to making them more comprehensible. They describe the Supreme Spirit as the masculine principle: the Father, in Christian tradition. AUM, or Cosmic Vibration, is the feminine principle, which “begets” the universe. AUM, therefore, in Hindu tradition, is the Divine Mother, who receives power from the Father to manifest cosmic creation. The union of these two principles produces the Son, “only begotten” because His reflection of the Spirit is omnipresent in creation.

This third aspect, the Christ consciousness, is not separate from the other two, but is an aspect of the same Truth. Cosmic Vibration would be incomplete without the stillness of Spirit subtly reflected at the center of all movement.[1] In order for cosmic creation to be truly vibratory, and not helter-skelter movement in all directions, it needs to be centered, not at some point in outer space, but at the heart of every vibration. From that center, movement begins. AUM is an emanation of Spirit, and reflects at its own center Spirit’s motionless consciousness. Thus the Bible says, “And the word was God.” For that vibration manifests, in its very motion, the motionless Divinity at its center.

At the heart of vibration there is stillness. The soul, on its journey to enlightenment, communes first with AUM, the Cosmic Mother, as sound or as light. With deeper meditation, it perceives AUM not only in the body, but throughout the universe. Next, it communes with the unmoving Christ consciousness in the body, then in omnipresence. When the soul realizes its oneness with the Christ consciousness, it perceives its deeper reality as the state of oneness with the “Father” beyond creation.

The author once asked Paramhansa Yogananda at what stage of realization one becomes a master. The guru replied, “To be a master, one must have attained Christ consciousness.” A master can withdraw his consciousness into the Supreme Spirit at will. As long as he is active in the world, however, he manifests the Christ consciousness rather than the remote-seeming and watchful state of the Father.

People tend to react to any new truth with emotional resistance. Inertia prevents them from weighing the evidence impartially. They prefer their cocoon of habit-woven opinions. Protestant Christians oppose worship of the Mother aspect of God, condemning it as “Roman Catholic idolatry.” They point out, not unreasonably, that the scriptures don’t describe Mary as being one with the Father. In condemning this “popish” dogma, however, they close themselves to God in His motherly aspect: Her sweet concern for humanity, Her kindness, Her compassion. The Jews similarly, in rejecting the idea that Jesus—to them a mere human being—could have achieved soul-union with God, reject that potential also within themselves. Thus, they deprive themselves of having a self-expansive relationship with Him.

It would help everyone to understand that the Mother aspect of God is not limited to a specific form, any more than God the Father has the form of an old man with a beard. Mary was the mother of Jesus, but she also symbolizes, and may be thought of as expressing, the Divine Mother of the universe, whose Son is the Infinite Christ. A Bengali saint of the Eighteenth Century, Ram Proshad, worshiped God in the aspect of Mother. He wrote, however, in a song that is still known to every peasant, “Oh, it’s true, and thousands of scriptures declare it: She whom I worship as my Divine Mother is beyond all the limits of form!” (Nirakara, “without form.”)

Jesus in his divine nature was one with the omnipresent Christ consciousness. Thus, meditation on the relationship of Jesus and Mary to each other can help Christians to attune themselves to a deep truth, but one that is otherwise difficult to conceptualize. Whatever be a person’s belief regarding the spiritual stature of Mary, to worship her as the Infinite Mother is expansive, and cannot but touch the heart of the Divine Mother Herself. Those, also, who worship her human form, and don’t think of her as formless and infinite, are not mistaken in doing so. The Madonna has appeared in countless visions to humble devotees whose hearts were pure. And whereas no scriptural teaching actually equates Mary with the Divine Mother of the universe, the mere fact that she was selected for the role of mother to Jesus Christ suggests that she must indeed have been a very exalted soul. Dogmas aside, then, it is perfectly acceptable, even for devout Hindus, to consider Mary a conscious instrument of the Motherhood of God.

Yogananda once referred, in the author’s hearing, to a vision he had received of the Divine Mother. He had been inspired by that vision to write one of his most beautiful poems, “The Lost Two Black Eyes.”[2] On that occasion he quoted the Divine Mother as saying to him, “I have suckled thee through the breasts of many mothers. This time, She who suckled thee was I, Myself.” He repeated with emphasis, “This time, it was She, Herself.”

Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, “In whatsoever form people worship Me, I Myself accept their offering.” Such worship is not idolatry. Idolatry means worship with selfish motive instead of offering one’s self to God with expansive aspiration. To worship even a stone is not idolatrous if, through that symbol, one invokes God, and views the stone as a reminder of the Infinite Lord. To reject images outright in the name of worshiping only God is to be left with an arid heart, and a mind drifting on a dark sea, directionless, through fogs of abstraction.

Guru Nanak, the first of the Sikh gurus, pointed out to Muslims that, despite their belief in rejecting form altogether, they bow four times daily to Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed. “Don’t you see?” he remonstrated with them, “as human beings you cannot even conceptualize formlessness!” We are surrounded constantly by forms. Abstract concepts do not come naturally to the human mind. The soul goes beyond form when it enters the higher ecstatic states, but until then, to deny form in favor of abstraction is like stepping off a cliff into nothingness.

Idolatry is of the mind; it is not images placed on an altar. Idolatry is of the heart especially, for there it is that our desires are churned, like milk, to produce the butter of outward fulfillment. In this sense, clearly, few human beings—which is to say also, few Muslims—are not idolaters!

Physical forms, on the other hand, can help to inspire devotion to God. God doesn’t much care that our theology be exact, any more than the parents of a little girl care much that the love she displays for her dolls is not logical. The important thing is that she develop her ability to love. And the important thing for one who would know God rather than merely theorize about Him is to develop devotion. Attempts to define God exactly are doomed to failure in any case! It is devotion that supplies the wings the soul needs, to rise above egoic limitations.

In Christianity today there is a noteworthy movement that emphasizes the need for developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The adherents of this movement do not reject church affiliation, nor Bible study, but they claim that if one doesn’t also seek a personal relationship with Jesus he is missing the true meaning of Christianity. This movement represents an important step toward emerging from the stone-enclosure of Churchianity into the experience of Christianity as a living religion. Jesus constantly urged his disciples to attune themselves to his spirit. He also discouraged mere doctrinal squabbling. Only by direct experience can one attain wisdom. Indeed, lacking inner experience, one can twist scripture itself to conform with any bizarre notion one fancies. “Even the devil,” as the saying goes, “quotes the scriptures.”

Attunement with Christ must be sought more and more deeply in the silence of meditation. It is not enough to seek personal blessings for oneself and one’s loved ones. The fulfillment of divine love comes from the utter gift of one’s self. Jesus, like all true masters, represents a bridge to Christ consciousness. If, in our prayers, we clutch him to ourselves,[3] what this means is that we want him to cross over to our side of the ravine: to relate to us as human beings, rather than to our souls. The mission of every master, however, is not to make our human lives more comfortable. As Jesus put it, “Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth; I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) Using the sword of discrimination, we must sever the Gordian knot of delusion itself!

Consider, again: If your baby is playing in a mud puddle, won’t you at once lift him out of it? It would be a strange parent indeed who decided to clean up the puddle instead, so as to make it more comfortable!

If we want truly to know God, we must raise our hands to Him and allow Him to lift us out of our mud puddle of worldly attachment. We must cross over to His side of the ravine, and leave behind us forever the land of egoic limitations.

Self-transformation is, of course, far more difficult than crossing a bridge! Indeed, our spiritual tests begin in earnest only when we decide to give our lives entirely to God! Satan tries to hold us, Prodigal Sons that we’ve been, on this side of the chasm. Tests are also God’s way of asking us, “Are you ready to forsake everything for Me alone?”

The first chapter of the Gospel of St. John states that those who receive Christ are also given power “to become the sons of God.” The noun here is plural: “sons.” Divine Sonship is the potential of all souls.

We saw in the last chapter the Bhagavad Gita’s description of the Supreme Spirit as unborn, changeless, and cosmic—“dressed in the garment” of universal appearances. Krishna states in Chapter Seven that the manifested universe is the Spirit’s “lower” aspect. In Its “higher” aspect, he says, the Spirit is the true Self of all beings. “O Arjuna, my higher nature is . . . the self-conscious life principle that sustains the [entire] cosmos.” This is the “Krishna,” or Christ consciousness: the motionless reflection of God, immanent in all creation.

Krishna, like Christ, is not a name, but a title. Many words in other languages have their origins in Sanskrit. The author recalls a Roman Catholic priest once challenging him in India with the question, “What do you mean, when you call these Indian gurus, ‘saints’?”

“My reference,” the author replied, “is to the Sanskrit word, sant, from which our word ‘saint’ is derived.” (Thus was nipped in the bud an invitation to an argument!) The same etymological connection exists between Krishna and Christ—or, in the original Greek word, Christos. Indian teachers often emphasize this connection by transliterating Krishna as Christna. The two words are pronounced almost identically.

Krishna is the Kutastha Chaitanya, the unmoving divine consciousness present throughout the universe. It is this consciousness which is born on earth in great Saviors such as Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha (the “Enlightened One”), and Krishna.

Paramhansa Yogananda gave the following explanation of the stages of spiritual awakening: A master, having shed every vestige of ego, merges his consciousness in God. At this point he becomes what the Indian scriptures term a jivan mukta: one who is free in spirit even though living in a physical body. Such a great soul, no longer trapped in delusion, has won release from the bondage of desire. His reality, now, is God alone.

A jivan mukta still carries in his subconscious, however, the memories of his past, ego-motivated deeds. These memories must be expunged also, released into cosmic consciousness. The jivan mukta must realize that the Infinite Dreamer has ever resided at the heart of his human actions. He was their central reality, merely obscured by egoic ignorance.

That divine presence must be realized in even the most mundane memory. Even criminal actions are but veils the ego casts over its inherent divinity. An enlightened master, having released into soul-freedom the last of his karmic memories, becomes a param mukta, or fully liberated soul. Such freedom is rarely achieved on this material plane of existence, but it does occur.

When a fully liberated master is reborn on earth, he comes in response to humanity’s spiritual needs. In this case, he is an avatar, or divine incarnation. Through him, God radiates a power greater than even that of a param mukta. One who is fully liberated in this life can save his direct disciples, but a divine incarnation can bring to God as many as come to him with devotion.

At this point it may be asked, “Why even go to lesser saints, if one can tune in to an avatar?” The answer is that every channel of truth deserves our reverence, in God’s name. Be grateful to God for whatever He sends you. At the same time, seek direct contact with Him above all, through any human channel He sends. He will give to you according to your spiritual needs. It is His decision what help He will send you, and when. In the normal course of events, God subtly leads the beginner to books, then to someone who can set him on a spiritual course in life. Avatars are very few. Even to approach them in spirit usually requires personal contact with a living channel. Any saint, moreover, who has attained the state of jivan mukta is eminently fit to be a true, or sat, guru; his limitation lies only in the number of souls he can bring to God.

An ancient saying puts it perfectly: “When the disciple is ready, the guru appears.”

An avatar’s blessings are not limited by his physical presence. Any devotee of Jesus Christ, for instance, can as surely commune with him today as he could have two thousand years ago, while Jesus still lived on earth. One who wants to “have his life” in Jesus Christ will probably be guided for training, in time, to a living and relatively advanced disciple of Jesus Christ. It is always important in any case to have at least one contact with a living channel.

Finally, it will be helpful for abstract teachings like these to be given the immediacy of daily practice. Whatever you do, try in every thought and action to express inner, divine inspiration. Visualize grace as flowing through you from AUM, the Holy Ghost or Divine Mother.

The best way to express this inspiration is to listen inwardly to AUM, first, or to listen for it if you cannot yet hear it. Listen in the right ear, which is the positive side of the body. When you hear that sound, thrilling to the soul, expand your consciousness with it until it fills your brain, then your entire body. Your creative efforts will become attuned to the highest source of inspiration, and will no longer merely express your own personal tastes and feelings.

A further practice is to feel at the center of every movement, whether physical or mental, the stillness of Christ consciousness. By dwelling on this thought of stillness, you will find yourself becoming more aware of the inspiration that flows from AUM. Expand your consciousness with AUM, in the stillness of Christ, until the divine consciousness permeates your whole being.

A technique for attaining this inner stillness is mentally to watch your breath. Concentrate on the stillness at the center of the breathing process. Don’t control your breathing, but particularly enjoy the pauses between the breaths. Be aware of the eternal stillness, of the Christ consciousness at the center of this gentle movement, until the pauses, like a pendulum slowly coming to rest, are united in breathlessness. In this way, you will deepen your attunement with the Only Begotten, in which, you will discover, you live and have your eternal being!

[1]A verse from a song of the author’s reads, “Without silence, what is song?”

[2]The author wrote a song inspired in turn by that poem, and by his guru’s deep love for the Divine Mother. The song is called, “Dark Eyes.” Its melody was later recorded by the famed Irish harpist Derek Bell.

[3]This is a natural devotional sentiment. In a much-loved Bengali song to Krishna, “Gokula Chandra,” Radha, his greatest woman devotee, sings, “Although I know my Beloved’s consciousness is as infinite as the ocean, still, if I find him, I will bind him with my sari and drag him home with me!” To hold him to oneself is good, but only if in so doing we do as Radha did: merge our consciousness entirely in him.