A special message from our revered President for Guru Purnima falling this year on July 27th
Dear Ones,
On this sacred day of Guru Purnima, we join devotees in India and throughout the world in the ancient tradition of honouring the guru — the divine friend and guide that God sends to deeply yearning seekers to serve as a pure channel of His love and wisdom for their soul’s awakening. As you lay at the feet of our own beloved Gurudeva Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda the offering of your love and gratitude, may you open your heart fully to his spiritual bounty. There is no greater gift we can receive on the spiritual path than to be drawn to such a God-united soul, who can lead us from our maya-bound human nature to the limitless freedom of God’s bliss-consciousness.
With the coming of the guru into your life, your path to soul freedom is open, for through the guru and his teachings, God Himself takes your hand to guide you in that journey. In the science of Kriya Yoga, our Guru has given us sacred techniques to still the restless mind. In his divinely inspired writings and the scripture of his life, he has shown us how to live in harmony with God’s laws of love and truth. And he has given his unconditional love to accompany us always. Remember Guruji’s words, “God has sent you to me, and I shall never fail you.” Keep that promise in your heart at every step along the way. The guru has faith in you, for he sees, beneath the cloak of fallible human nature, the real “you” — your soul, replete with potential for expressing God’s divine qualities. No obstacles of habits or karma can stand in the way of your progress if instead of dwelling on human imperfections and past errors, you focus on the guru’s limitless power to help you. Guruji assured us, “An even more potent influence than one’s karma is the help and blessing of a God-knowing guru. Through reverent observance of the guidance of a master, one can free himself from all embedded compulsions of past karma.”
The guru is truly the best of givers, for his blessings are with us always, but our own sincere efforts to live in the aura of his presence are also needed to open our consciousness fully to his spiritual abundance. When you deeply study his teachings, and practise with will and enthusiasm the techniques and principles he has given, you are absorbing the vibration of his divine consciousness and its transforming power. And as you infuse your efforts with devotion, and your trust in his love grows, you will find the ego’s barriers of impatience and self-will falling away, allowing him to guide your progress.
The strongest attunement with the guru will come through your ever-deepening meditations, for that is where his presence is most clearly felt. My prayer for all of you is that your gift of gratitude to our beloved Guru be to make use of the spiritual treasures he has given us, especially his methods of God-communion. As you daily enter the silent temple of your soul, may you increasingly feel his boundless love surrounding you and drawing you ever closer to the divine goal — realization of your eternal Self, one with God.
May God and Gurudeva pour out to you unceasingly Their transforming blessings,
Swami Chidananda Giri
