Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952; Yogis -- India -- Biography
The cosmic vision left many permanent lessons. By daily stilling
my thoughts, I could win release from the delusive conviction that
my body was a mass of flesh and bones, traversing the hard soil of
matter. The breath and the restless mind, I saw, were like storms
which lashed the ocean of light into waves of material forms-earth,
sky, human beings, animals, birds, trees. No perception of the
Infinite as One Light could be had except by calming those storms.
As often as I silenced the two natural tumults, I beheld the
multitudinous waves of creation melt into one lucent sea, even as
the waves of the ocean, their tempests subsiding, serenely dissolve
into unity.
A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when
his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree
where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. The experience
can never be given through one’s mere intellectual willingness or
open-mindedness. Only adequate enlargement by yoga practice and
devotional BHAKTI can prepare the mind to absorb the liberating
shock of omnipresence. It comes with a natural inevitability to
the sincere devotee. His intense craving begins to pull at God with
an irresistible force. The Lord, as the Cosmic Vision, is drawn by
the seeker’s magnetic ardor into his range of consciousness.
I wrote, in my later years, the following poem, “Samadhi,” endeavoring
to convey the glory of its cosmic state:
Vanished the veils of light and shade,
Lifted every vapor of sorrow,
Sailed away all dawns of fleeting joy,
Gone the dim sensory mirage.
Love, hate, health, disease, life, death,
Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, melancholic whirlpools,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
The storm of MAYA stilled
By magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, forgotten dream, subconsciously lurks,
Ready to invade my newly-wakened memory divine.
I live without the cosmic shadow,
But it is not, bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, wakings, states of deep TURIA sleep,
Present, past, future, no more for me,
But ever-present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth,
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creation’s molding furnace,
Glaciers of silent x-rays, burning electron floods,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, to come,
Every blade of grass, myself, mankind,
Each particle of universal dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed, transmuted all
Into a vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by meditation
Blinding my tearful eyes,
Burst into immortal flames of bliss,
Consumed my tears, my frame, my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!
Tranquilled, unbroken thrill, eternally living, ever-new peace!
Enjoyable beyond imagination of expectancy, SAMADHI bliss!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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