The Final Challenge To Enlightenment

What will we do, when we stand on the threshold of enlightenment? In that final moment of separation from the Divine, the soul must stand firm in its determination to merge with Divinity. Where there is ego, there is separation. To realise our oneness with the Infinite, we must surrender the ego itself. By our own free choice we must say , “I want the infinite Self, not the little self."

It is not easy . That highest and final test is the most challenging of all. At that moment the ego recoils and says, “No, no ­ wait!" Paramhansa Yogananda's chief disciple, Rajarsi Janakananda, was just at the point of attaining the highest state, when suddenly his meditations became filled with darkness. For years his meditations had been filled with the light and bliss of God, but suddenly it was gone. He felt tempted to give in to doubts and disbelief, but he nonetheless kept trying and continued to meditate.

After days of darkness, Rajarsi saw a little point of light. Gradually that point came closer until it became his line of gurus first Paramhansa Yogananda, then Sri Yukteswar, then Lahiri Mahasaya, then Babaji. And then finally Rajarsi merged with the Infinite. Paramhansa Yogananda once said to Rajarsi, “Never forget where your power comes from.“ With a sweet smile, Rajarsi answered, “I won't, Master.It comes from you.“

Yogananda once said to me, “Remember, you will not be safe until you have attained nirbikalpa samadhi.“ He told me about various saints who had fallen after they had attained the lower samadhi.

The real work on the spiritual path is to prepare the mind for the ultimate transformation.

If cosmic consciousness were to come without preparation, the mind would be unable to contain it. It would be comparable to high-voltage electricity burning the wiring of a house.

Human consciousness, conditioned as it is by ordinary, worldly experience, is unable to accept what Yogananda called “the liberating shock of omnipresence“. It isn't that omnipresence is devastating. The ego, rather, must be conditioned by long and deep meditation to surrender itself to a greater Self-awareness. Too sudden an expansion from its customary perspective might only bewilder it with its sweeping panorama of things as they really are. Finding God is the simplest, most obvious, most supremely natural thing in the world! At the end, one doesn't find oneself straining with desperate zeal.

Rather, one relaxes, supremely, into perfect Bliss. Strain, tension, ardour, zeal: all these end forever. What is left is satchidananda: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss. You reach a point where you've gotten rid of all self-definitions. There's nothing to cling to anymore. You're not a woman or a man. You're not Indian or French or American. You're not rich or poor. You're not young or old. You're not beautiful or ugly. You're none of these things.

So, in the beginning, the process of finding God is a matter of continuous struggle until, as Yogananda put it, “efforts end in ease“.

However, only by mental attunement with the consciousness of an already liberated guru can we make that leap. The guru works from within, on our thoughts and feelings. Gradually, his ego-less consciousness seeps into our ego-centered consciousness and transforms us with a new understanding of our own reality.

Om Namah Shivay