The Devotion of a Master

From Clarity Magazine – Summer, 2009

When Paramhansa Yogananda was a mere boy, he cried for the Divine Mother’s love as few men cry even for worldly possessions. Whole days he would spend in thinking only of Her. When he could, he remained by himself, meditating long hours. After meditation, he silently and lovingly offered every action to God.

He was no misanthrope, shunning the society of men because they displeased him. He loved people, and endeared himself to them by his kindness, his wit, his ability to inspire them. But he wanted God, and he knew that to find the Supreme One he would have to be one-pointed in his inner search.

After coming to the hermitage of his guru, Sri Yukteswar, he became if possible more in earnest than ever. Other disciples talked instead of meditating. Yogananda spent many hours in solitary communion.

Other disciples forgot God, whether they worked or loafed. Yogananda kept his mind all day long focused at the Christ center, mentally talking to Divine Mother. Wherever he went, in his heart there was a never-ending song of divine love.

He had been sent to earth charged with a tremendous mission. Lesser teachers would have bowed under the mere thought of the responsibilities involved. Lesser teachers would have destroyed their health and their peace of mind worrying, struggling frantically to get everything done. They would have consumed themselves with a sense of their own importance.

But Yogananda never forgot for an instant that the real Doer was God. He was only an instrument. God’s was the hand that guided that instrument. Inwardly, he was always free and at peace.

When organizational responsibilities threatened to take his mind from the Divine Mother, he never said, “Well, I will do this work first; it is more important. Later I shall think of God.” “No work is possible,” he wrote, “without the power to perform it borrowed from Thee.”

He would put everything aside to chant or meditate until his mind was firmly rooted in God. Only then would he return to his work. That is how he was able to accomplish such tremendous things in his life. He never acted from ego-consciousness.

Man’s power is limited, but God’s is without limitation. And always Yogananda’s prayer was, “Lord, guide and strengthen me, for without Thy help I can do nothing.”

*Excerpted from Letters to Truth Seekers, copyrighted 1973. (Currently out-of-print)