My spiritual awareness and successful use of and confidence in a meditation practice was enhanced tremendously by the examples set forth by the lineage of Indian saints, Parahamansa Yoganada, Sri Yukteswar, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Babaji. Through Parahamahansa Yogananda's book, Autobiography of a Yogi, and, later, through study with the Self-Realization Foundation that Yogananda founded, I was able to connect very deeply to the Universal Consciousness. Nurturing relationships with Yogananda and his three predecessors has had profound effects on my life, on my spiritual progress. Yogananda's teacher, Sri Yukteswar, was a figure that inspires respect due to his amazing discipline, his laser focus. For me he has been a teacher of focus and commitment.
I feel particularly strongly connected to Sri Yukteswar's teacher, Lahiri Mahasaya. Lahiri Mahasaya led a relatively "normal" life in which he was somehow able to maintain healthy, committed relationships to his parents, wife and children as well as to a white collar desk job while at the same time dedicating adequate time and energy to a very advanced spiritual meditation and teaching practice. As a husband and father of young children of my own, I needed this kind of example. I needed to see that not every human who masters his spirituality, who dedicates himself to serious spiritual practice, is required to assume patterns of self-denial, anchoritic isolation or seclusion, and/or asceticism. I needed to see that a serious and successful spiritual practice can, in fact, be achieved within the 'civilized' world--that Self-realization can happen even to those who choose to remain actively engaged within the fabric of human society.
Then there is Lahiri Mahasaya's teacher: the 800 year-old, sometimes physically present saint, Babaji. Babaji is another Christ-like example of what is possible for humans while still traveling in or using the four-dimensions of the Earth plane. Babaji uses a body--a youthful, ageless human body--to the degree necessary to deliver his message or to inspire others. However, he spends most of his time without encumbrance of the 'physical' vehicle that he once used with greater commitment.
I have found Babaji's presence in meditation and prayer to be quite powerful. In fact, it is quite similar to the effect I used to feel upon receiving the Eucharist (the 'body of Christ') in Catholic Mass. Calling Babaji into my meditation enables me a rapid and direct connection to himself, his very image burning in my field of consciousness, but it also promotes an expanded fields of consciousness with a receded or fading connection to Drew fisher or even Journeyman Paul Self-hood. It is as if Babaji's presence, his loving, welcoming embrace, helps me to become part of something much greater, much more pure and forceful, I become much more imbued with Light, Love, Beauty, Joy and Truth and much less connected with any "I-ness" or ego.
I would like to also point out that two of my personal teachers, Irmgard Kurtz and Barbara Briner, were long-time disciples of Yogacharya Oliver Black who was one of Paramahansa Yogananda's original American students. Irmgard and Barb lived and worshipped off and on at Song of the Morning Ranch, Yogacharya Oliver Black's Self-Realization Fellowship retreat center in the pristine woods of Northern Michigan. I have been fortunate enough to have spent some time there as well. A magical place for one to experience Beauty, both inside and out.
The book that allowed me to open my awareness to these wonder-filled spiritual teachers, Parahamahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, is another one of the synchronous gifts that came out of my association with Dr. Barbara Briner and her Institute for Bioenergy Studies' bookstores. Autobiography of a Yogi arrived in my life at a time in which I was looking for more real life "heroes" for inspiration and example. The way Yogananda's book is structured, it's almost as if each and every chapter introduces the reader to someone worthy of worship and inspiration, a figure or event that teaches very valuable lessons to the reader, as it did to Parahamahansa Yogananda. The Chapter on Giri Bala, "The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats" has proved particularly motivational to me--and has remained close to my consciousness for years and years. I know that being in a body of a being that lives under the illusion that our bodies exist and that our bodies need things is difficult to overcome, but Giri Bala lived on nothing but sunshine and water, thanks to a special Kriya yoga technique she practiced every day. This is not, to me, mythology or quackery. Giri Bala is but one example representative of the true potential of all beings of Creation. Our human bodies--and all matter--is made up of 99.99999% space and 0.00001% probabilities of energy which our scientists have convinced us to call "subatomic particles."
With the material world being made up of this much space and so little actual "matter," it is, to me, mystifying that we can't walk through walls, float into the sky, or think ourselves into any state or scenario that we want. That we require nourishment at all stymies me. We do not, in fact, "need" or "require" anything! It's all illusory! Our world is, for all intents and purposes, empty space! (Though I believe that the 'fluid' or 'ether' filling this space--that is, the substance that subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organs, living organisms, planets, galaxies, and universes move about in--is in fact The Unified Field of Consciousness--the God-ness! Us!) Such options as "need," "requirement," "individuality," and belief are all just illusions that We have created for Our own means to experience the infinity of experiential possibilities. And isn't it wonderful? Isn't the dearth of experiences, real or imagined, lived or storied, amazing to behold--to feel a part of?
Another reason that examples from Parahamahansa Yogananda's book like that of The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats are so important to me is because they help me affirm my belief that there is no such thing as "can't." The inability or the ability to limit one's potential, to eliminate specific possibilities from one's life, from one's palette of experiences, is, to my mind, illusory, a fabrication, a self-limiting excuse. "Can't" is an option. The "can't" belief is one that is learned. It is conditioned. It is programmed into us. Those who learn to unlearn--to remove--the self-imposed "can't" restriction are then free to do . . . anything! Without "can't" anything and everything is possible! Since reading Autobiography of a Yogi, since being inspired by The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats (Giri Bala), I have been on a quest to achieve the release from the shackles of "can't" and to achieve the freedom to move . . . like Babiji: that is, using my body, my presence, only as and when I wish. My self-imposed restriction from achieving this lies in my addictions: my perceived needs and my conditioned desires. A dedicated spiritual focus and a unilateral practice of detachment will be necessary to achieve this. So far, I am stuck in a pattern of resisting this; I am lacking the motivation to try.
While I am here, I would like also to give recognition to the overall contribution that India and all things Indian have provided for my enrichment and growth. India has been a source of many inspiring and/or thought-provoking teachers. I would like to give thanks for the inputs of Sri Aurobindo, "the hugging saint" Ammaji (Mātā Amṛtānandamayī), Satya Sai Baba, The Maharishi (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), Mohandas Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Guatama Siddhartha, Krishnamurti, Tara Singh, Randolph Stone, Deepak Chopra, Kumare, and many others--of course to include the hundreds of gods and mythological entities from the Hindu tradition as well as the amazing musicians from the incredibly rich and devout traditions of Indian music. Plus, I will also mention the 5000 year old sciences of Ayruveda and Hatha Yoga which have served so many so amazingly well over the millennia. I, too, have benefitted tremendously from all of these esteemed persons and traditions--in this, the Drew Fisher lifetime, as well as during several other Earth incarnations.
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