Religion in the New Age

Swami Kriyananda

Description

That we live in a "New Age" seems an incontestable fact. Just 100 years ago the world had no paved highways, no speeding cars, airplanes, cell phones, washing machines, computers or satellite dishes, to name only a few things that today we take for granted. But the greatest change that has occurred has been our perception of reality, which began with the discovery that matter is actually composed only of vibrations of energy, and that energy is the reality behind everything around us. Today we perceive everything in terms of energy—we have become an energy-conscious as well as an energy-dependent society.
In this collection of fascinating essays on a variety of topics, Swami Kriyananda, a renowned and prolific writer, presents an approach to modern life that may seem radically new. The book's title essay, Religion in the New Age, shares the ancient teaching, common to many cultures, that time is cyclical, and that we are now in an upward cycle, coming into an age of energy-awareness from a darker age of matter. The author shows society, political and social events, and religion and religious institutions from the viewpoint of different cycles of time.

Informations

• Publié par: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781565896239
• Langue: English

Extrait

RELIGION in the NEW AGE
And Other Essays for the Spiritual Seeker
Swami Kriyananda
(J. Donald Walters)



Crystal Clarity Publishers
Nevada City, California
Crystal Clarity Publishers , Nevada City, CA 95959
Copyright © 2009 by Hansa Trust
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-56589-236-1
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Cover illustration: Dana Lynne Andersen
Title of illustration: Gaia
www.awakeningarts.com
Cover design: Renee Glenn Designs
Interior design and layout: Crystal Clarity Publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kriyananda, Swami.
Religion in the New Age and Other Essays / Swami Kriyananda. - 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56589-236-1 (trade paper, indexed)
1. New Age movement. I. Title.

BP605.N48K75 2008
294.5092-dc22

2008040415

800.424.1055 or 530.478.7600
f: 530.478.7610
[e-mail]
www.crystalclarity.com
Table of Contents
How I Met My Guru

Religion in the New Age
Introduction
Are We Living in a New Age?
The Ages of Civilization
What Is Happening to Our Planet?
Glimpses into the Future
Religion in the New Age
Religious Institutions in the New Age
Dwapara Yuga Guidance
Ananda - A First Step

A Miscellany of Essays
The Final Exam
Understanding People
The Great Delusions
Truthfulness
Only Love
Three Benefits from Using Incense
Why I Left College
God’s Weaning Ways
How to Develop Self-Confidence
Can Love Be Universalized?
Tomorrow’s Supermen?
Learn to See, Feel, and Think Differently
Laughter as an Expression of Spirit

Thoughts of a Disciple
“Is Yogananda My Guru? Is Krishna? Is Jesus Christ?”
Why I Love My Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda
Inspiration vs. Instruction (Going to Saints)
Editing
Bliss-Avatar?

Spiritual Leadership in the New Age
The Importance of Hierarchy
Hierarchy During Dwapara Yuga
Creative Leadership
Of Space and Time
Personal Experience
Passing the Baton

About the Author
Further Explorations
Crystal Clarity Publishers
Ananda Sangha Worldwide
The Expanding Light
Praise for Religion in the New Age
Preface
How I Met My Guru
I was desperate. I had been born into a well-to-do home, and was accustomed to Western conveniences, the American way of life, Western social and moral values. I had no reason to doubt that I could have a successful life by those standards. All my friends expected to achieve material success, to have good marriages, happy homes, a comfortable lifestyle in a well-to-do suburb. I lived in Scarsdale, New York, one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. I was miserable!
"What is it all for?" I kept asking myself. What is money but a burden, forcing one to earn more and more simply to keep afloat? What is marriage but bondage to ego-fulfillment? What is a nice home but a glorified chicken coop where people wait for the butcher, death, to chop off their heads, pluck them clean, and put them in the oven? What can this world give me of happiness itself?
I looked about me and saw no one really happy. Worse still, I saw no one willing to face that all-important question: What is life's purpose? What is it all about?
I was desperate. I had to know God . The churches, unbelievably, spoke of Him almost not at all. Everyone seemed to think it unrealistic for anyone to seek Him, and impossible to know Him. "Don't be a fanatic!" I was solemnly advised whenever I spoke of my longing to know God. No one I met seemed able to give me the answers I was seeking so desperately. No one I met seemed particularly interested in attaining wisdom.
And then one afternoon, in a New York City bookstore, I found Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. In him, I knew after reading only a few pages of this great, living scripture, I had found what I'd been seeking: a true guide.
This was in September 1948. I knew nothing then about the teachings of India. Words like yoga , karma , guru , and all the Indian terms that today are so widely known in the West were totally new to me. Yet I knew that this man, Paramhansa Yogananda, had what I sought.
I took the next bus across America, non-stop from New York to Los Angeles. The journey lasted four days and four nights. When I met him, the first words I addressed to him I had never imagined myself addressing to anyone. I said, "I want to be your disciple!"
And so, truly, my life began. He accepted me at that meeting, and said to me, "I give you my unconditional love." I was overwhelmed. He asked me if I would make the same commitment to him. How could I not do so? He asked me to give him my unconditional obedience. Despite my desperate sense of need, I had to be sincere. "What," I asked, "if I ever think you are wrong?"
"I will never ask anything of you," he replied, "except what God tells me to ask." Gladly, then, I gave him that promise. Never thereafter did he disappoint me. Far from making me an automaton in my obedience, obedience to him greatly strengthened my own will. In his guidance what I found above all was an ever-increasing sense of inner freedom.
I'd had no idea what it meant to be a spiritual master. I'd had no idea such persons existed. For I knew nothing of saints and gurus; I was a complete greenhorn. My ignorance may have helped me to this extent, at least: I had nothing to un learn. In Yogananda, however, I found a greatness I'd never dreamed existed. It was like living in the very presence of God.
I don't mean to say his every utterance was like some grave pronouncement from a mountaintop. He was delightfully human. Not that he displayed any human flaws. What he showed me were the highest potentials of human nature. He was humorous, always natural, yet also inwardly somewhat remote, as though living in perpetual awareness of God's living presence within him. Gazing into his eyes was like catching a glimpse into infinity. I never saw in those eyes the slightest hint of ego-awareness, likes or dislikes, desires or aversions: only constant bliss and loving compassion.
He wore his wisdom (as I wrote in my autobiography, The Path ) like a comfortable old jacket: with perfect ease. In his presence, however, I felt constantly his emanations of divine joy and love. He lived ever in an inner, higher world.
He also demonstrated to me again and again an intimate knowledge of my own nature. One day he amazed me by saying, "I know every thought you think." If ever, in meditation, I held a thought that needed to be corrected or "fine tuned," he would say something about it to me the next time I saw him. Often (if others were present) he would give only a subtle hint, which I alone would be able to understand.
And he guided not only by words, but by inspiring me from within with ever-deeper insight into myself. How can I describe what it was like to live with him? The short confines of a mere preface incapacitate me.
I have been his devoted disciple ever since that day, September 12, 1948-at the present date, nearly sixty years ago. It has been the greatest blessing of my life. I live only to serve him and his mission. For that reason alone have I done all the work some people marvel at: the teaching, the books, the music, the number of communities I've founded. For that reason alone I moved to India, in my late seventies. It has been my honor and my joy to be able to serve him wherever he has sent me-including now, finally (perhaps), in India, the land of his birth. As my Guru was Indian by birth, so do I feel at least partly Indian myself! As my Guru-whom I consider my spiritual father-was Bengali, so do I myself feel, at least in that sense, Bengali.
I pray that this book reflects at least a small portion of the wisdom I have gained from him.
Part One
Religion in the New Age
Introduction
In these pages I aim to show how a spiritual mission, regardless of its name and tenets, can be made to relate to the needs of all humanity.
Paramhansa Yogananda prophesied that some day the purpose of all religions would be accepted as being one and the same: Self-realization. Included in that understanding would be a sense of the non-sectarian fellowship of all truth seekers. His own mission, as he stated it, was above all to teach "the original teachings of Jesus Christ, and the original yoga teachings of Krishna." He stated, further, that he had come to unite all religions in an understanding of their sublime and high purpose. His mission, to show the underlying oneness of two great religions particularly, may therefore be seen as symbolic also, being meant to demonstrate the underlying oneness of all religions, for humanity everywhere seeks the same eventual fulfillment: bliss in God. Self-realization-the realization of God as the indwelling, blissful Self of all beings-is then, in the broadest sense, the true goal of all religions, and is also the deepest desire in every human heart.
The great master in his teachings also drew to a focus countless truths that have been expressed diversely through the ages. He showed that the highest wisdom has always contained the same essential truths, the first of which is that all men are rays of the one Divine Light, and the second, that man's ultimat