The Yoga of Jesus

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The Yoga of Jesus

By Paramahansa Yogananda

 

Divine Love: Highest Goal of Religion and of Life

 

 

Outward attempts to apply Jesus' teaching usually yield only minimal external satisfaction, not God-realization. But there is an inner meaning to the exhortation to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Jesus used these simple scriptural terms, but projected his understanding that in them is the whole science of yoga, the transcendental way of divine union through meditation. In India, where spiritual understanding had developed for thousands of years before the time of Jesus, God-knowing sages elaborated these concepts as a comprehensive spiritual philosophy to guide devotees systematically on the path to liberation.

 

When a person makes the effort in meditation to know God, using the sincerity of his heart and deepest feelings, and the intuition of his soul, and all the powers of concentration of his mind, and all his interiorized life energy, or strength, he will surely succeed.

 

That system of spiritual culture whereby one learns to "love God with all your heart" is known in India as Bhakti Yoga—union with God through unconditional love and devotion. The bhakta realizes that whatever is in a person's heart, that is where his concentration is—on the thing he loves. As the lover's heart is on the beloved and the drunkard's is on his drink, so the devotee's heart is continuously absorbed in love for his Divine Beloved.

 

To "love God with all your mind" means with focused concentration. India has specialized in the science of concentrating the mind one-pointedly through definite techniques, so that during the time of worship the devotee is able to keep his whole attention on God. If while offering prayerful devotions the mind is constantly flitting to thoughts of work or food or bodily sensations or other diversions, that is not loving God with all the mind. The Bible teaches: "Pray without ceasing"; India's yoga science gives the actual methodology to worship God with that fully concentrated mind.

 

To "love God with all your soul" means to enter the state of superconscious ecstasy, direct perception of the soul and its oneness with God. When no thoughts cross the mind, but there is a conscious all-knowingness, when one knows through intuitive realization that he can do anything just by so ordering it, then one is in the expanded state of superconsciousness. It is the realization of the soul as the reflection of God, the soul's connection with the consciousness of God. It is a state of exceeding joy: the soul's crystalline perception of the omnipresent Spirit reflected as the joy of meditation.

 

To love God with all the soul requires the complete stillness of transcendent interiorization. This cannot be achieved while praying aloud, moving the hands this way and that, singing or chanting, or doing anything else that activates the sensory-muscular apparatus of the body. Just as in deep sleep the body and senses become inert, that inner withdrawal is characteristic also of superconscious ecstasy—only ecstasy is much deeper than sleep. Ten million sleeps do not describe the joy of it. That is the state in which one can know the soul, and with that true Self wholly adore Him who is Love itself.

 

The fulfillment of the divine command to love God with all one's heart, mind, and soul is made possible by the science that enables the devotee to "love God with all thy strength." Yoga teaches that science. When one sleeps, the conscious mind is inactive; the strength is withdrawn from the sensory-motor apparatus of the brain and from the muscles and nerves and is concentrated in the faculties of the subconscious mind. One cannot go into the sleep state of subconsciousness unless, usually passively, the life force has been switched off from the conscious sensory and motor nervous system; and one cannot go into the superconscious state, transcending the subconsciousness, without consciously switching off the life energy from the senses and muscles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpted from The Yoga of Jesus: Understanding the Hidden Teachings of the Gospels by Paramahansa Yogananda, copyright © 2007, Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, California.

 

Widely regarded today as one of the preeminent spiritual figures of our time, Paramahansa Yogananda is author of the best-selling classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Born on January 5, 1893, in Gorakhpur, India, Sri Yogananda came to the United States as a young man in 1920, when he was invited to serve as a delegate to the International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. That same year he founded Self-Realization Fellowship to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient philosophy of Yoga and its time-honored science of meditation. -- ! Jai Gurudev !