Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume

A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday

Excerpts from a Sadhaka's Notebook

by Don and Moo Briddel

During our journey through India in 1970-1971, we were inspired by many new ideas and ideals relating to spiritual living according to the philosophy of Yoga and Vedanta. As our minds absorbed these wonderful lofty ideas and we began to put them to practise through our daily Sadhana, certain sayings of the Great Ones, the saints and sages of India, became highly significant to us as they seemed to point directly to our lives and guide us on this "razor's edge"—this path to God-realisation.

At the same time, as souls inhabiting Western bodies and minds, we had a slightly different perception. This is because the Eastern culture, in many ways, is vastly different from that of the West. Everything seemed totally fresh and new to us in the East.

It slowly dawned on us that we had almost stumbled, as it were, upon the greatest good fortune, which allowed us to spend one full year in the Sivananda Ashram, on the banks of the Holy Ganga. We were often amazed that we had been granted this great privilege of spending our time in the company of saints who reside at the Ashram—the embodiments of Bhakti, Jnana and Karma Yoga. In short, the scriptures and the essence of all religions had taken human form in our beloved and revered Swamis Chidananda, Krishnananda and many others who either live permanently in or visit the Ashram from other parts of India and abroad.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that of all the places we could have been in the world, we had somehow landed in the "cream" of India; that is to say, where the highest form of knowledge—Vedanta—is being taught and lived. It is a place where India's cultural heritage, the living of a God-oriented life, with the great of Self-realisation and renunciation is being preserved and maintained. Not only is it India's cultural heritage, but as the Swamijis often say, it is the right of each human individual who takes birth on the Planet Earth.

These great beings are themselves the epitome of that which the rest of us are struggling towards. They are the shining lights to which we look when the darkness of worldliness seems to swamp our beings. They are, in Jesus' words, "the Salt of the Earth".

Through the spiritual stimulation resulting from the time we spent living in to these Yogis, our travels, and the years that followed, certain ideas came forth which we recorded in our sketch books.

These ideas we would like to share with you.

Life is like a cloud,
but people live it like a mountain.

If you realise that God is in your eye,
you can paint a miracle.

Yoga is the antidote for growing up.

The sun does not know what darkness means.

If intellectualisation does not produce deeply felt realisations, its full potential is not utilised.

Everyone wants the best! A rare soul accepts everything he gets.

The Earth can miss the rain, the plants dry up and blow away. But the rain can never miss the earth. Such is the relation between God and man.

Beware that your sphere of consciousness is not actually a circle of containment.

It is no help to be moving when you are trying to cover the entire universe.

If truth makes you angry,
ignorance hides in the heart.

Success for the ego is failure for the soul.

In some ways a knife is like the ego—
it can cut through everything but itself.

What is the hardest thing to look at?
The sun without and the Self within.

Jnana Yoga says: "Know" and do your duty.

Karma Yoga says: Do your "duty" and know!

It's more important to do what you have to do than to do what you want to do. But when one is operating from ones true centre, what one has to do is always what one wants to do.