The Atma Jyoti Blog

Part 2 of an article by Paramhansa Yogananda from the August 1932 East-West Magazine

God made man immortal. He was to remain on earth as an immortal. He was to behold the drama of change with a changeless immortal mind, and after seeing change dancing on the stage of changelessness, he was to return to the bosom of eternal blessedness, then evil crept in, causing man to concentrate on the changes of life and on outward appearances rather than on the underlying immortality in all things, and thus made him conceive the false idea of death or complete annihilation.

Destroying the Idea of Death

The motion picture of a man’s life, his birth, life on earth, and death, seen on the screen, produces the joyous consciousness of his birth and the sad concept of his death, or end, but Satanic ignorance hides from view the motion pictures of man’s pre-natal life as he joyously began the descent from God, and the joyous return to God as he hurried back after death. Satan has made us forget our pre-natal and post-natal experiences, and by showing us for a time this drama of life and then lowering the curtain, it has produced in us the erroneous conception called death.

I am not denying the experience of the change called death, but I consider it only as an outwardly moving link in the chain of immortality, all of which is hidden from our view. To say that death or change does not exist, in unmetaphysical and erroneous. To forget this dismal, delusive death, man should behold all change as dancing on the bosom of changelessness. Man should behold the changeless ocean of Infinity as wavelets of change appearing and disappearing.

Supernatural Death Versus Painful Death

If Adam and Eve had not transgressed the wishes of God, and their descendants had not allowed themselves to be influenced by hereditary ignorance, then modern man would not have to witness the heartrending painful deaths through accident and disease.

Man appeared on earth, being materialized by God, and was to live on earth, beholding the birth, sustenance, growth, and the painless, sorrowless, return of the body in complete perfection. Than, as it is possible to watch the slow process of a flower budding, growing, and disappearing on the movie screen, so man should behold his life pictured on the screen of his consciousness through the stages from childhood to a full-grown individual, and then his disappearance unto God of his own accord by his own power of dematerialization.

Man, being out of tune with God, has lost his power of dematerialization, so he is frightened by the screen picture of life prematurely cut off even before he has finished seeing the whole perfect picture of his changeful life. This premature withdrawal of the motion picture of life produces pain due to attachment to those screen pictures of flesh and consciousness and is known in the world as terrible death by pain.

We mortals have so many misconceptions about death that it has grown into importance and has fixed in us an idea of annihilation and pain instead of being seen as a phenomena necessary in the successive steps which the soul must follow in order to return from the state of change to the changeless state. It is necessary for death or change to come, so that the soul may finish beholding this motion picture of life and be released in order to go back to the home of Immortality.

How Reincarnation Was Created by Satan

Satan saw that it would all be very simple if the immortal children of God, after beholding a perfect earthly existence with a changeless attitude, would go back to immortality again, so Satan made imperfect patterns or tampered with the showing of a perfect picture of life before it was completed, and caused mental and bodily pain through delusion. This dissatisfaction, arising from an imperfect, prematurely destroyed picture of life, created in man the desire to see perfect pictures of life in order to behold them until completion.

Ever since, the immortal images of God forgot their already perfect immortality and began to introduce delusive imperfections in the perfect dramas of life staged on the screen of time. Ever since, immortals have been coming and going from earth by the law of cause and effect, which governs desires. Ever since, this law of cause and effect has affected free souls as the law of Karma (action), which keeps them earthbound.

This law of cause and effect, which imprisons souls on earth in Satan’s Kingdom of finitude, has been called “reincarnation.”

How to Destroy Reincarnation

Immortal souls can only expect to be free by utterly destroying all seeds of earthly desires by Divine contact with God through meditation. This reminds the soul of the unending fulfillment in the immortal inheritances of Bliss which makes desires for earthly ways unnecessary and ridiculous.

Knowledge of Wholeness

Emancipation from reincarnation is also possible by playing the living drama of a perfect life of health, abundance, and wisdom on the screen of consciousness; that is, if one can remove the consciousness of sickness and not fear sickness if it does come, and not desire health while suffering from ill health, then one can remember one’s soul, which was always well and was neither sick nor healthy. If we can feel and know that we are the children of God, and as such possess everything, even as our father, God does, although we may be poor or rich, we can be free. If we can feel that we have Divine knowledge, because we are made in the image of God, although humanly speaking we know little–then we can be free from reincarnation.

Fear of sickness and a desire for mortal health, fear of poverty and a desire for opulence, a feeling of lack of knowledge as well as a desire to know everything, belong to the domain of ignorance. Of course, if we are stricken with ill health, failure, or ignorance, we need not continue to remain so. We should strive for health, prosperity, and wisdom without being afraid of failure.

Know That Imperfections Are Dream-Born Delusions

While struggling, man must know that his struggle for health, prosperity, and wisdom is born of delusion, for he already has all he needs within his inner powerful self. It is only because he erroneously imagined, when in spiritually ignorant mortal company, that he did not have these–that is why he lacked them. All he has to do is to think right and not strive to acquire things. He needs only to know that he already has everything.

Once a healthy, wealthy, and wise prince dreamed that he was poor, and in the dream he shouted: “Oh, I am suffering from cancer and I have lost all my wisdom and riches.” His wife, the queen woke up and aroused him, saying: “Look, prince, laugh and rejoice, for you are neither suffering from sickness nor have lost riches and wisdom, but you are comfortably lying at my side in health and wisdom, in your rich kingdom. You were only dreaming about these catastrophes.”

So it is with ignorant man. He is dreaming about lack and failure, when he might claim his birthright of joy, health, and plenty as a son of the ruler of the universe. He is now living in his perfect kingdom, but is dreaming evil.

Know God First

The constant desire for health and prosperity, which is so much harped upon in modern spiritual organizations, is the way to slavery. We must seek God first and then find health and prosperity through Him. Beggars get only a beggar’s share, whereas, a son of God gets his son’s share. That is why Jesus spoke of seeking and knowing the kingdom of God first. When that is actually accomplished, then health and prosperity will be added. The acquirement of wisdom and everything else that the soul of man needs will be received as a matter of his Divine birthright.

It is best to feel by visualization and by Divine contact in meditation that you are already perfect in health and wisdom and have abundance, rather than try to succeed by begging for health, prosperity, and wisdom. In fact, man’s mortal efforts are bound by the laws of cause and effect. Man cannot get more than he deserves. By the method of begging, no human being can ever fulfill all his endless desires, but by first realizing his oneness with God, man can own everything he needs.

Man cannot have immortality by begging for it or by feeling a desire for it. He should know that he is already immortal and that so-called death is only a dream.

According to the plan of God, man should have experienced growth from childhood, and through youth to manhood, but should never have experienced death by old age or disease. Even if man becomes old, he should never die of disease or suffer painful death. In the drama of life and death, when beheld with Divine understanding, there can be no pain in death, but only the showing or stopping of the motion picture of life at will without physical or mental pain.

Origin of Pain

The outward flowing force which struggles to keep all things in manifestation saw that without pain people would not create earthly desires to hold them here, so the illusion of pain was created, which is purely a mental phenomena. The pain of ill health and death creates the desire for health and life, and to have health and life the immortal image of God must again and again return on earth to complete its slow growth from ignorance to enlightenment.

Satan is defeating his own purpose, for it is physical pain and sorrow which cause matter-imprisoned souls to seek freedom in God. A child’s pure soul feels very little pain. A doctor friend in an orthopedic hospital told me that children vie with each other to get their deformed limbs operated upon, whereas, adults have to be coaxed for weeks, and at the time of their operation they are usually overcome with emotion and fear.

Man has fortunately discovered anesthetics to neutralize pain. Originally man had great self-control and a mind which was unattached and impersonal, and so did not feel pain when the body was injured. He could behold his own body without pain even as one can witness an operation on another’s body without becoming mentally excited or suffering physical pain.

Although a mother feels terrible agony when her own son dies, she does not feel the same when hearing of the death of a stranger’s son. So it is that man feels the agony of accident and disease in his own body but not the suffering of others. This is only due to the proximity of continued attachment. The farmer’s water-proof, fire-proof, less sensitive child feels much less physical suffering than the sensitively brought up son of the rich. If you have no fear or nervous imagination, you will feel less pain.

Jesus was tempted in the wilderness with the wild beasts of passion and the fierce mortal desires of pain and hunger for material kingdoms, sent by Cosmic Satan.

Read Part 1 of this article: Yogananda’s Thoughts on Evil and Satan

More by and about Yogananda:

• Yogananda’s Last Days, by Dr. M. W. Lewis
• Finding Happiness in Difficult Times
• Important Conditions for Happiness
• Happiness Is in the Mind