(The following stories have been excerpted from Sri Daya Mata’s talks, published in her anthologies, Only Love and Finding the Joy Within You, as well as in Self-Realization Magazine.)
Tomorrow the classes* begin, and I am remembering the time in Salt Lake City, many years ago, when I first took such classes from our revered guru, Paramahansa Yogananda. What a tremendous impact he had on my life!
From my earliest years, I had an unceasing desire to find God in this lifetime. It was in my seventeenth year that I met Paramahansaji. My body was very ill at that time. I was suffering from blood poisoning throughout my system, and the doctors could find no cure for it. One eye was swollen closed, and I had three bandages on my face. Those bandages were actually a blessing, because I stood out rather like a sore thumb even in that large audience! |
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Daya Mata with Paramahansa Yogananda, SRF Hermitage, Encinitas, California, 1939 |
In those days Master would give several lectures, introducing his teachings, before the classes in which he dealt with the deeper aspects and methods of yoga. After the last of the public lectures, he would invite the congregation to come forward, and would greet them individually. I approached him with legs shaking; I was so very, very shy. When I stood before him, he looked at my disfigured face and asked, “What is the matter with you?” After my mother, with whom I had come to the lectures, explained my health problem, he said, “Come back tomorrow to the classes,” (of course I was coming anyway!) “but remain afterward.”
I spent the next day in eager anticipation of personally talking with the Guru again. That night he spoke on faith and will power. He so inspired me that as I sat and listened to him I felt it was definitely possible to move mountains with faith in God.
After the meeting, I waited to be the very last to greet him. During our conversation, out of the blue, he suddenly said to me, “Do you believe that God can heal you?” As he said that, his eyes were alight with divine power.
I replied, “I know God can heal me.”
He touched me in blessing between the eyebrows, at what we call the Christ or Kutastha center (the seat of the all-perceiving spiritual eye). Then he said, “From this day forward, you are healed. Inside one week the bandages will no longer be necessary; your scars will be gone.” And that is exactly what happened. Within one week the condition cleared, and has never returned.
*A reference to the Self-Realization Fellowship Convocation classes.
Paramahansa Yogananda seated between two disciples who would later become his spiritual successors: Rajarsi Janakananda and Sri Daya Mata; SRF Encinitas Hermitage, 1939
When I was a young devotee on the path I went to Guruji for counsel: “Master, I don’t like the imperfections I see in myself. Help me; show me the way to freedom from my shortcomings.” In those days, a painful problem was that I felt I didn’t have enough faith. So I asked Paramahansaji, “How can I develop stronger faith?”
His answer: “You must just work for it.” So simple! I had expected he would bless me with some novel technique or divine grace by which I would suddenly have faith. No. “You must practice it,” he said. Only by practice can we acquire any desired quality – faith, self-control, kindness, compassion, love.
So I began. And the more I practiced cultivating faith, so help me, the more it seemed that things conspired to shake my faith! I did not seem to be getting anywhere. Finally I began to realize that there was something wrong with my attitude. After thinking about it, I understood: “Well, I know what it is. I am not taking this problem to God.”
From then on, when I sat before the little altar in my room, I prayed: “Divine Mother, if You are my Mother, if You are my God, You must help me. I didn’t ask to be filled with so much doubt. Why should this weakness cause me such struggle? I know that my soul is permeated with faith, and with love, strength, wisdom, all those qualities that flow from Your divine nature, for I am made in Your image. Why can’t I feel faith? I am helpless without You.” Gradually I began to see how close the Divine Beloved is to the devotee, how willing to respond.
When I first met our Guru in Salt Lake City, and he told us about his ashram in Los Angeles, my heart and mind were on fire to come here: “I shall be able to devote myself entirely to meditation, and be drunk with the love of God; and someday I too will see God face to face as Jesus and all the great saints have done.” But when I arrived at Mt. Washington and found that everyone was assigned many duties – scrubbing the kitchen, preparing the meals, washing dishes, sweeping the sidewalks, working in the office or garden, and so on – I thought to myself, “But this isn’t what I envisioned!”
My attitude soon changed completely. The yearning to love God since those early days has never diminished; and I know that I could never have been satisfied to feel God only in seclusion, withdrawn from activity that serves Him and His work. I would not be a well-rounded being – able to feel the love of Divine Mother within when I close my eyes in meditation, and able to feel Her presence to an equal degree when I am busy serving, performing my duties. That is the state of a true yogi. No matter what he does, no matter where he is, his mind is absorbed in God. That is what God wants us to learn in this world. And we can learn it!
I remember once when a group of us disciples were sitting around Guruji, talking about spiritual matters; suddenly he looked at each of us and began to smile. We said, “What is it, Master?” He shook his head and replied: “I didn’t draw around me any weak-minded individuals. You are all very strong-willed.” Then he added: “Whenever you have difficulty, get together and talk it out.” Master also used to say, “Fools argue; wise men discuss.” Nobody here likes to be thought a fool, so we all sit and discuss, like wise men.
Many years ago I was sitting in this very chapel, and Gurudeva was speaking to a few of us devotees along these same lines – that you must know that God is with you, that He is just behind your closed eyes as you pray. I was listening to Guruji with such deep enthusiasm, such complete belief in his words. Suddenly, as he was speaking, I beheld the whole chapel melt into nothing but pure Divine Light, Divine Vibration. I remember thinking, “This is what is meant by the realization that everything in this universe has come into manifestation from one thought, one intelligence, one vibration, one power: God.”
In the last week of February 1952 Guruji received word at the desert that he had been invited to speak in Los Angeles at a reception for the Ambassador of India, Sri Binay Ranjan Sen. Gurudeva returned to our headquarters in Los Angeles on March 1. On March 3, under Guruji’s direction, we spent many hours preparing special sweetmeats and curries for the Ambassador, who was to be a guest at Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters the following day.
Late that night, when the preparations neared completion, the blessed Master asked me to walk with him down the hall. He stopped and sat by the picture of his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswarji, and spoke so lovingly of that great soul who had guided his steps to God.
Then Gurudeva said to me, “Do you realize that it is just a matter of hours before I leave this body?” A great pain of sadness went through my heart. Not long before, when Gurudeva had spoken of leaving his body soon, I had said to him, “Master, what will we do without you? You are the diamond in the ring of our hearts and of your society. Of what value is the setting without the beauty of the diamond?” Then came the answer from the great bhakta (lover of God): “Remember this: When I am gone, only love can take my place. Be absorbed night and day in the love of God, and give that love to all.”
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In meditation in front of portrait of Paramahansa Yogananda at SRF International Headquarters, March 7, 1980, during observance of Sri Daya Mata's twenty-fifth anniversary as SRF/YSS president |
