Ananda Sangha of Portland--Realizing World Unity through the Art of Living by Paramhansa Yogananda

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Realizing World Unity through the Art of Living
by Paramhansa Yogananda
from East West Magazine, October 1933

Diversity and Unity

Diversity is the Law of Nature. Unity is the way that leads to the Infinite. By discord and diversity, the world is thrown into the boiling pot of sorrow, wars, and death. Uniting Souls with Truth by ideal living is the way to happiness, peace, and immortality.

Purpose in Nature and Man

The entire process of evolution in Nature and Man seems o suggest the necessity of removing the storm of ignorance in order to effect the union of delusion-projected waves of life with the One Ocean of Spirit.

Contribution of Science and Religion

Scientists, politicians, business men, and social workers by limited, specific methods unconsciously and indirectly try to pave the way to World Unity. The exponents of scientific religions, philosophy, and ethics of human conduct try to consciously garner the picked blossoms of Truth from the gardens of all forms of wisdom, and try to decorate human Souls with a floral costume of super-qualities which may directly qualify them to enter the Paradise of all-freeing ultimate wisdom.

Cause of World Disintegration

Through individual, industrial, and political selfishness, explosives of the feeling of race superiority, and by the excluding commercialism of dogma, entrenched religions have kept races divided and shattered by social, industrial, political, religious, and financial wars, resulting in depressions, ignorance, and mass misery.

All Science Must Cooperate To Make Model Citizens

In order to bring all humanity into the mansion of union and universal happiness, science, politics, social and individual ethics, international industries, and the science of international laws of living, all universally useful moral and religious sciences, should offer ideal standards of the international laws of hygiene, peace, prosperity, education, moral codes, and applied psychological and spiritual laws, which would make each of the fifteen hundred million human inhabitants of this earth an all-round perfect world citizen.

Then each Soul would be able to say, “Down through the window of Memory I looked. I recall the early hours of my childhood, when the sun of my consciousness first began to appear. As it slowly rose out of the darkness of the unconscious mind, it dimly lighted only one part of my little mental horizon that lay encompassing my mother, playthings, and a few multi-colored desires. Later, as my consciousness grew brighter, a great part of my mental horizon was illumined. I saw in it not a few things only, but many things–my friends, relations, neighbors, country–all these were revealed and included. Now, as I look within, on the mental sky, the sun of my consciousness seems to be shining brighter than ever in its supreme power. It no longer lights one direction only, or only one portion of my mental horizon, or only a few friends or relatives, or one nation, but all nations, nay, all creatures and Nature, all planets, all stars, all shining electrons, all Universes, and all Space are included. I did not know that out of the inky darkness of my mind I would discover the Sun of Cosmic Consciousness.”

How to Build World Unity by Bridging Science and Religion

Science is directly helping man with material comforts through her golden inventions. The same science, indirectly, is helping man to be the reformer of dogmatic religions and to explain many miracles found in Nature and spoken of in religion. Science shows how, by changing the vibration of a pound of water into ice, that solidified water, instead of mixing and sinking, can be made to float on top of the water. It suggests through the scientific imagination that perhaps Jesus controlled the psychological relation between matter and mind and thus changed the atomic vibration of His body, enabling Him to walk on water.

It is by understanding that life continues after death that we can unite our consciousness with the Cosmic Consciousness of God and find the cord of one life, one law, one rhythm, and one wisdom uniting us all. To seek world Unity just for utilitarian purposes my give us a temporary peaceful life on earth by preventing wars, but unless we feel that we are children of the One Father, God, and that we are to continue our march beyond the portals of the grave towards the mansion of immortality, we cannot seek real World Unity. It is only when we feel that we are prodigal immortals on earth, and that our gift of discrimination must be used to find a true art of common living, that we make the effort to unite all wisdom in our hearts and to realize that all of us are world-brothers marching hand in hand back to the mansion of God. It is no use seeking World Unity if there is no God, no life after death, and if all men are not brothers, bound by one cord of Divine Life. That is why all persons seeking World Unity must discuss the problems of life and death.

Seeking Unity in Life

Life is no longer the monopoly of organic matter. Inorganic substances, such as minerals, by their attractions and repulsions also show the presence of Life. According to the experiments of the great scientist Prof. J.C. Bose, of India, even a piece of tin is living and its vibrations can be recorded during its life and death struggles. It can also be poisoned and killed.

The old theory that matter is different from Spirit is gone. All matter, including solids, liquids, and gaseous substances can be converted into electronic energy and made to disappear into Spirit. Prof. Einstein speaks of space swallowing up all matter. Out of space comes every form of intelligent Creation, therefore, space looks very suspicious and can be accused of hiding an omnipresent Intelligent Being who is responsible for an extremely systematic Creation. The old theory that matter is like a pot furnace, constantly losing heat and life, has been exploded by Prof. Millikan in California. This eminent physicist found that not only is matter being disintegrated into energy or radiation, but that energy or radiation is again being reintegrated into matter. The Cosmic Rays, or the birth cries of the atoms, are radiations inundating the earth incessantly from limitless space.

“Matter and energy, and time and space, are in a melting pot,” declared Prof. l. Evans before leading British scientists recently. . .The enormously rapid development of physics in recent years strikes an onlooker dumb with almost religious awe. On further study, lines of separation previously held to be rigid will fade away, and there will be found continuity between matter and energy, between the living and the non-living, between the conscious and the unconscious.”

Realizing Continuity of Life after Death

There is no difference between inorganic and organic life except that they are separate manifestations of the one Life. Nothing is dead. The atoms in the flesh of even a corpse are rapidly vibrating and constantly moving with life. Different forms of life are manifestations of the same Life Force. Just as ice, water, steam, and hydrogen oxygen gases contained in a closed jar made out of a block of ice, are of the same essential composition as the jar itself. The thing contained is made of the same material as the container. If it were otherwise, matter and Spirit would be the realm of two co-existing Infinite forces, which is impossible. As the ocean becomes the wave, so does Spirit become matter. Spirit and matter are the same as the ocean and the waves. The waves are disturbed ocean, and matter is distorted, objectified Spirit.

The waves, except in form, contain the essential qualities of the ocean; similarly, matter, organic and inorganic, manifestly or latently, contains all the qualities of the Spirit. Thus we can say that Life sleeps in the crude earth, dreams beauty in the flowers, wakes with power in the animals, and in man has consciousness of Infinite possibilities.