It’s my belief that artists are looking for a state of absolute, undiluted joy, oneness, and inner freedom. I believe that state is what we are all seeking, whether through art or by other means.
I believe there are two classes of artists: those who seek their inspiration consciously and directly from a higher source within, and those who are still trying to bust through the ceiling of the world, trying to paint, sculpt, sing, compose, and hack and hew the world into giving them joy. Everybody goes through this phase, and it should not be lightly discounted, because the lessons and rewards can be genuine, valuable, and enduring. There are countless stories, often quite moving, of artists who have found joy by expanding their consciousness while trying to mine the world creatively for its rewards. Only after the longing for joy of a higher kind grows strong in us do we give up on the world and turn within, whereupon our art becomes rewarding in inexhaustibly new and original creative ways. (Swami Kriyananda, photo by the author)
I hope you will find inspiration in these stories of my encounters with one who lived continuously in that unbroken and unbreakable joy.
I’ve mentioned that when we were in Swami Kriyananda’s presence, God would often use him to help us loosen our grip on the ego – a surgical operation that was seldom without discomfort.
At times, in his presence, it felt as if the world had disintegrated beneath me and all my familiar supports were torn away. Suddenly unfamiliar to myself, my habitual identity shattered, my ego unable to find a firm and familiar perch, it felt like being lifted off the planet and floating free in space, without air for my ego-identifications to breathe. I was forced, gasping and writhing, to let go of the ego and find my true identity, my true place in the whole, as a very simple person, humble and happy.
How could I cope at such times? What was the right response? What could I do to lessen the sense of utter disorientation?
I could never tell, with my rational mind, how I should respond. There was no smug plan or fixed routine that I could follow – “Do these steps, say these words, think these thoughts, and the pain will go away.” My identity was blown to bits – I was as helpless as a baby, unable to help myself. No thought, no feeling, no action was adequate; all my familiar instruments of thought and action were blasted away.
And, well, that was the point. I’m struck by two phrases that I heard Swamiji utter in his last years. On one occasion he spoke of the need on the spiritual path for “humble service.” On another, he used the phrase, “childlike devotion.”
Childlike devotion and humble service.
When I arrived at Ananda, I had a completely blank picture of who Swami Kriyananda was. Watching how others related to him, I saw that there were extroverts in the community who seemed to have a close personal relationship with him. They were at ease with him, cracking jokes, laughing, and generally being the life of the party.
Because they stood out, playing their roles at center stage, they seemed to be the models for how the rest of us should relate to him. My ego wanted desperately to be part of the scene, but whenever I tried to behave in a jolly, good-humored, hail-fellow way in his presence, I failed miserably.
I remember a gathering at Swamiji’s where I walked in the door and immediately felt completely out of sorts, my ego suddenly torn from its moorings. I think of a song by Paul Simon.
There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I’m falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means.
– Paul Simon, “Graceland”
I was desperate to be accepted, to be acknowledged, to be found worthy and praised and encouraged and have my poor little trembling ego stroked and comforted. And instead, in Swamiji’s ego-less presence, I found the rivets of my psychic framework being ripped out, my cloak of self-identity torn to shreds as I fell tumbling in turmoil with no firm support to land on.
After the gathering, I staggered out into the night. Trudging over the hill to the Village I reeled in confusion. Who was I? Where were my feet? Where was the earth? I went to the small temple above the market and stayed up all night meditating and praying for answers.
Finally, as the dawn began to lighten the sky, I saw myself in a kind of waking vision. There was Rambhakta, walking self-importantly into Swamiji’s house, expecting everyone to like him, craving Swami’s approval. He looked like a complete clown, swaggering under the weight of his bloated ego!
I suddenly saw the hilariousness of it all, and I laughed aloud from the depths of my being. It was so funny!
The “answer,” I realized, lay in childlike devotion and humble service.
Of course, the tests didn’t end there. My ego didn’t suddenly melt away in clouds of cosmic laughter. Time after time, my self-focus returned, holding me in its sere and unhappy claws.
I continued to find it extremely hard to be in Swami’s presence. Around him, there was something in the air that was wholly incompatible with self-regard. It was an atmospheric mixture that offered no sustenance to our ego-identifications.
After yet another ego-flattening event at Swamiji’s, I walked home in the evening gloom, feeling the excruciating pain of having my identity reduced to ashes and blown away by cosmic winds. I could only pray with childlike simplicity, “But I only want to serve! That’s all I want to do. I just want to serve!”
Instantly my confusion vanished. I had found the answer.
Around that time, I had a private conversation with Swamiji.
He said, “You don’t have to be the life of the party. You can sit a little apart and just observe what’s going on.”
I discovered that I could be very happy in Swamiji’s presence if I could truly be myself – an introvert to the Nth degree. I found that I could feel great joy by sitting quietly, somewhat apart, while the Leos and Capricorns and Taureans laughed and chattered around the spiritual teacher.
From then on, whenever I arrived at Swami’s, I would straightway look for a place to sit. I would then plant myself firmly in that spot and make a solemn vow not to move until I had changed my consciousness.
I would pick one person out of the crowd and silently begin to pray for them. I would start with a generic “plain vanilla” prayer.
Yoga tells us that God has given us five instruments by which we can find happiness and inner freedom in this world.
The instruments of self-transformation are body, feeling, will, mind, and soul. They correspond to the five branches of yoga: hatha, bhakti, karma, gyana, raja.
I realized that they correspond also to the five essential blessings that everyone in this world is seeking. We all want to achieve happiness and freedom from suffering – gifts that can come to us through the five instruments of our nature, in the form of greater health and energy for the body, greater love for the heart, greater inner strength of will, and greater wisdom, calmness, and good cheer for the mind. And finally, the unbounded cosmic love and joy of the soul.
I would begin my prayers by asking God to bless the person I had chosen with these five “generic” gifts.
I would then spend a long time expanding on each separate gift, asking God to give the “target” person health and high energy for their body, accompanied by freedom from pain and disease; the love of true friends for their hearts, and the ability to give love to others in return – but especially the ability to love God with deep devotion, which draws all other blessings in its wake.
After working hard on these prayers, a strange thing would happen. First, I would gradually begin to feel the inward truth of the prayer – I would slowly, gradually, truly and actually begin to feel a deep, pressing desire that the person receive the blessing. And as I began to identify with their happiness, I would find the tight little focus of my self-concern begin to loosen, and a wonderful inner freedom opening in its place. I would often feel that God Himself was joining my prayers and blessing the person. Feeling His blessings pass through me was wonderfully liberating, healing, and inwardly expansive – it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience!
And then another strange thing would happen. After I had prayed intensely for a long time, someone – though never the person for whom I had prayed – would come and sit beside me, and we would have an enjoyable conversation.
I knew that it had happened by God’s grace, working through Swami as its perfect instrument.
Swamiji worked with my nature. He never tried to get me to be other than I was: to be more like the “social lions,” those who could relate to him in an easygoing outward way. Swamiji encouraged me to grow into the highest expression of my own nature.
I remember two occasions when I said words to Swamiji in praise of Asha. I admired her greatly, in large part because she was such a wonderful example of the right way to relate to Swamiji and Master, with complete, fearless openness, ready and eager for any lessons they might be willing to impart.
On one occasion, I said to Swamiji, “Asha is wonderful!”
Swamiji replied, “Yes, she is – and so is Seva. And so are you.”
I realized that Seva was a role model that I could relate to. She was wonderful – a quiet, inward soul who was deeply devoted and whose presence was always a delight. As for myself – well, Swamiji loved everyone in exactly the same way, for he saw God in us.
A meeting was scheduled of the Ananda Publications staff. Several of us were early and chatted while we waited for Seva to arrive. As soon as Seva entered, a wave of joy swept through us, lifting us onto a plane of happiness and good cheer.
The second time I praised Asha to Swamij, his response was stern and matter-of-fact: “It’s going to take you a long time to gain that kind of freedom!” Swamiji paused, then added, “She has had the training.”
I’ve often meditated on his words. I live in the Ananda community in Mountain View, California, where Asha is the spiritual director. I’ve known no one who was able to relate to Swamiji more naturally, or who was as open to his guidance and discipline. Only Jyotish and Devi, among those of my acquaintance, come to mind, though there may be others.
Late one night I went to the little temple in our Ananda community to meditate. I found Shurjo and Narayani there, sitting in meditation. An overwhelming bliss permeated every atom of the space inside the temple. It had the unique and unmistakable flavor of Swamiji. I knew with absolute certainty that he was present in the room. I didn’t try to absorb it into my being, knowing that it was the gift of their own communion with him, and that if I were to achieve a similar depth of self-offering, the fragrance of my communion would be uniquely my own. But, how was it possible? Swamiji said of Narayani that, of all the people who had helped him, she was completely focused on giving.
Swamiji had invited the community members to a gathering at his home at Ananda Village. Before he began his talk, he shouted in the direction of an upstairs room, “Asha! How are you feeling?”
From the loft came Asha’s voice, “I’m feeling kind of lousy.”
Swamiji’s cheerful response: “Well, carry on!”
I realized that Swamiji was demonstrating the right way to relate to him and to God and Guru: to be completely natural, never trying to put on a guise or assume a reality that wasn’t ours.
Few of us could be as real and open with him as Asha was. I realized that it took great, courageous love, great trust, and long experience as a disciple to be able to let go of the masks that most of us wear, and that we try to hide behind in an effort to hold onto our trembling self-definitions.
I remember a talk that Brother Anandamoy gave during a weekend retreat for men at the SRF Encinitas Hermitage. At the time, I was feeling unworthy and self-critical. Anandamoy talked about James Coller, a direct disciple of Yogananda who had a marked disinclination to conform to the monastery rules. Yogananda said of James that he would be liberated in this lifetime. “I don’t know how,” he joked, “but Divine Mother says so.”
I felt that through Anandamoy, Master was addressing my need for greater self-acceptance. He talked about how the monks would ask James to do some task, and hours later they would find that he had forgotten. Master described James as “like hot molasses – too hot to swallow and too sweet to spit out.”
Swami expressed another necessary quality for self-forgetfulness when he said in a talk, “Before there can be an expansion, there must be a certain grounding first.” Before we can embrace a reality beyond our own, we must make room for it in our hearts by restraining the impulse to be busily engaged with our own thoughts and feelings.
After I moved to the Mountain View community, I was driving down Alma Street one day in my truck, singing Paramhansa Yogananda’s chant, “Will That Day Come to Me, Mother?”
As I sang, I pondered what it must be like to really sing to the Cosmic Mother as Her little child.
I remembered how, when I was seven or eight years old, I would spend happy hours in the kitchen with my mother while she told me stories, often very funny ones, about her life growing up in Chile, and the strange and eccentric members of our family.
As I sang, I identified with that little child, and I found that I was able to sing to the Mother of the Universe in that simple way, as Her little boy.
Suddenly I felt the inner skies parting and the Divine Mother Herself smiling from a great distance in blessing. For hours afterward, I was in a state of blissful intoxication where the boundaries between myself and others were dissolved and there was no separation or difference. I knew that we were all part of the same fabric. I felt my oneness with the single entity that exists and that sustains us all.
I stopped by the East West Bookstore. A Tibetan teacher happened to be visiting, a respected rinpoche. Seeing that I had received a special blessing, he was sweet and kind.
Years ago, in the late 1960s, I met a wonderful direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda. Gene Benvau served as the principal minister at the little SRF church in Redondo Beach. As an infant, Gene had lived with his mother at Mt. Washington. When Master made the rounds of the offices, Gene would follow and wait patiently at the door until Master emerged, then follow him to the next office. When I knew him, Gene was a big, burly man who ran a trucking company. Master had told him that his life would not be that of a monastic – he chose a wife for him, and seeing them together, it was clear that they were happy. Swamiji told us that he sensed that Gene was a disciple of Sister Gyanamata, Paramhansa Yogananda’s most advanced woman disciple.
In his talks, Gene would often say, “The spiritual path is veeeeeery simple.” Then he would pause and add with a chuckle, “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy!”
It isn’t easy to be a simple person, full of childlike devotion and always eager to serve. But, speaking for myself, I’m never happier than when, by Divine Mother’s grace, I know that I am Her little boy.
(From my book, Swami Kriyananda Stories: Encounters with a Direct Disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda)
— Rambhakta