Swami Kamalananda
Speaks on "The Eternal Path"
Sunday, September 6, 2015 at 11:00am
Our return to congregational worship is a reminder of our soul’s return to the Source on a Path that is Eternal. The Eternal Path to God has always been open to all, making it equally inviting and eternally valuable to all. When we create borders to it or divide it into distinctive traits or collective identities its meaning diminishes to us.
All names and forms are temporary. Remembering the Path as eternally vast and open expands our sense of freedom for all, love for all, and knowledge of all. True spirituality is the practice of identifying the soul’s One Source, One Presence and One Goal at every step of the way. But, “Which path is best for me?” Mark that the question comes to your mind individually.
The path, though open eternally to all, awaits our personal and individual choice and election, and every life is free and also spiritually responsible to make it. Spiritual experience is cultivated and “custom made” through each heart and mind, eternally and at each moment.
We are not chosen by God as a people or as a collective faith. “Our daily bread” is each soul taking nourishment every day through its own self effort on the inner path of God-realization.
From the Gurus and Swamis: AUM
"The whole universe is bound together by an underlying reality. This reality permeates all. All creation is united in it. Why is it that you and I understand one another? Why does a bird sing in response to our loving call? Why does even a plant respond to human kindness and love? This mutual understanding and response, found throughout the whole creation, is possible only because there exists a common bond between all created things.
"Some call it love. It is love that unites us all. Some speak of it as life. It is life that binds us together. Others explain it as consciousness. The whole universe is tied together in consciousness. We combine these three aspects and call it Self. We term this underlying reality the Self, Soul, Atman, Brahman, God, Spirit."
—from GOD, THE UNIVERSAL REALITY by Brahmachari Jotin/Swami Premananda
"The essence of religion is the realization of the perfection of God with one’s own soul.
"The light of God illumines our consciousness with divine revelation. That is the secret of religion.
"Spiritual life comprises the following: study, meditation, service, charity, contentment and, above all, love."
—from SAYINGS OF SHYAMACHARAN LAHIRI, translated by Swami Premananda
"O Mother Divine, teach me to love others and to serve others.
Teach me to be true to my word,
even as I want others to be true to me.
Teach me to love others as I wish them to love me.
Teach me, O Father,
to make others happy — to make others smile.
Teach me, O Mother, to find my happiness
in the joy of others.
"Father, teach me to understand that which I hear.
Help me to practice in my daily life
all the good which I learn.
Teach me to watch The working in Nature.
Teach me to feel Thee as Silence,
when I close my eyes.
I bow to Thee —Aum."
Amen.
—from WHISPERS FROM ETERNITY, by Swami Yogananda Paramhansa
Noble Thoughts
("Let Noble Thoughts come to us from all sides." —Rigveda)
"Our individual minds are the strings which catch the rhythmic vibrations of this universal mind and respond in music of space and time. The quality and number and pitch of our mind strings differ and their tuning has not yet come to its perfection, but their law is the law of the universal mind which is the instrument of finitude upon which the Eternal Player plays his dance music of creation.
"Because of the mind instruments which we possess we also have found our place as creators. We create not only art and social organizations, but our inner nature and outer surroundings, the truth of which depends upon their harmony with the law of the universal mind. Of course, our creations are mere variations on God’s great theme of the universe. When we produce discords, they either have to end in a harmony or in silence. Our freedom as a creator finds its highest joy in contributing its own voice in the concert of the world-music."
—from PERSONALITY, by Rabindrinath Tagore