Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952; Yogis -- India -- Biography
Though the human race and its works disappear tracelessly by time
or bomb, the sun does not falter in its course; the stars keep their
invariable vigil. Cosmic law cannot be stayed or changed, and man
would do well to put himself in harmony with it. If the cosmos is
against might, if the sun wars not with the planets but retires at
dueful time to give the stars their little sway, what avails our
mailed fist? Shall any peace indeed come out of it? Not cruelty
but good will arms the universal sinews; a humanity at peace will
know the endless fruits of victory, sweeter to the taste than any
nurtured on the soil of blood.
The effective League of Nations will be a natural, nameless league
of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed
for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual
consideration of man’s diversities, but from knowledge of man’s
sole unity-his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world’s
highest ideal-peace through brotherhood-may yoga, the science of
personal contact with the Divine, spread in time to all men in all
lands.
Though India’s civilization is ancient above any other, few historians
have noted that her feat of national survival is by no means an
accident, but a logical incident in the devotion to eternal verities
which India has offered through her best men in every generation.
By sheer continuity of being, by intransitivity before the ages-can
dusty scholars truly tell us how many?-India has given the worthiest
answer of any people to the challenge of time.
The Biblical story {FN32-5} of Abraham’s plea to the Lord that the
city of Sodom be spared if ten righteous men could be found therein,
and the divine reply: “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake,”
gains new meaning in the light of India’s escape from the oblivion
of Babylon, Egypt and other mighty nations who were once her
contemporaries. The Lord’s answer clearly shows that a land lives,
not by its material achievements, but in its masterpieces of man.
Let the divine words be heard again, in this twentieth century,
twice dyed in blood ere half over: No nation that can produce ten
men, great in the eyes of the Unbribable Judge, shall know extinction.
Heeding such persuasions, India has proved herself not witless
against the thousand cunnings of time. Self-realized masters in
every century have hallowed her soil; modern Christlike sages, like
Lahiri Mahasaya and his disciple Sri Yukteswar, rise up to proclaim
that the science of yoga is more vital than any material advances
to man’s happiness and to a nation’s longevity.
Very scanty information about the life of Lahiri Mahasaya and his
universal doctrine has ever appeared in print. For three decades
in India, America, and Europe, I have found a deep and sincere
interest in his message of liberating yoga; a written account of
the master’s life, even as he foretold, is now needed in the West,
where lives of the great modern yogis are little known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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