by Paramahansa Yogananda

All the knowledge there is to be known in every branch of science and art, including the mystery of the atoms and the history of the universe and of human beings, is already existing in the ether as vibrations of truth. These vibrations are all around us, and there is a way to contact them directly. That way is through the all-knowing intuitive power of the soul. To discover any truth, we have only to turn our consciousness inward to the soul, whose omniscience is one with God. When those who are receptive hear someone speak truth, it seems so familiar. Their first reaction is “I thought so!” The mind has simply recognized a truth already known intuitively by the soul.

From that source come all the lectures I give. If I had to read in order to gather facts and ideas for my talks to you, I don’t know what I would do! I read very little, because it is not necessary. By the time I get through a few pages of a book, I know from its vibrations whatever truth it contains.

Great souls who reveal to mankind deep spiritual truths receive their knowledge through direct attunement with the vibrations of those truths. Also vibrating in the ether are the concepts for every invention man has created, or will create in the future. When an inventor’s concentration is right, he is attuned to receive intuitively the idea vibration for the creation of his invention. The discoverers of these ideas may say that they have invented this or that, but they haven’t really invented anything. They have only uncovered what was already there: the vibratory blueprint hidden in the ether.

Reincarnation Is a Series of Dreams Within a Dream

When you reflect that this world is filled with death, and that your body, too, has to be relinquished, God’s plan seems very cruel. You can’t imagine that He is merciful. But when you look at the process of death with the eye of wisdom, you see that after all it is merely a thought of God passing through a nightmare of change into blissful freedom in Him again. Saint and sinner alike are given freedom at death, to a greater or lesser degree according to merit. In the Lord’s dream astral world—the land to which souls go at death—they enjoy a freedom such as they never knew during their earthly life. So don’t pity the person who is passing through the delusion of death, for in a little while he will be free. Once he gets out of that delusion, he sees that death was not so bad after all. He realizes his mortality was only a dream and rejoices that now no fire can burn him, no water can drown him,- he is free and safe.

But such is the delusion of desire for material things that earth, after a time of freedom from the body, he wants to come back to earth. Even though the soul knows that the body is subject to disease and troubles, these delusive desires for earthly experience veil that knowledge and deceive his consciousness. So after a karmically predetermined time in the astral world, he is reborn on earth. When death comes, he goes forth once more from the gross dream of this earth experience to the finer dream of the astral plane, only to be drawn back to this world. And again and again he returns, until he is no longer desirous of an earthly life.

Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another. All you are doing is going back and forth between this gross dream world and the finer astral dream world; between these two chambers of dream nightmares and dream pleasures.

Thus reincarnation is a series of dreams within a dream: man’s individual dreams within the greater dream of God. Someone is born on earth in France as a powerful king, rules for a time, then dies. He may be reborn in India, and travel in a bullock cart into the forest to meditate. He may next find rebirth in America as a successful businessman; and when he dreams death again, reincarnate perhaps in Tibet as a devotee of Buddha and spend his life in a lamasery. Therefore hate none and be attached to no nationality, for sometimes you are a Hindu, sometimes a Frenchman, sometimes an Englishman, or an American, or a Tibetan. What is the difference? Each existence is a dream within a dream, is it not? Will you continue helplessly to go through all these delusions and the difficulties they create? Each nation thinks its ways are justified, its customs the best. Are you going to go on with this delusion? I am not. For unless wisdom is supreme, reincarnation is a very troublesome experience. One should avoid forced reincarnation because it is a painful continuation of this dream delusion. For how long will you pass through these changes called life and death? Until you realize fully the dream nature of creation, and awaken in God from its nightmares.

Life Is a Dream Unworthy of Our Tears

The more I see of life, the more I realize it is a dream. I have found the greatest assurance in this philosophy I am giving to you now. Realize that you live solely by the grace of God. If He were to withdraw His thought, the physical manifestation would cease to exist. This world is a dream place, and we are all dreaming here. This life is not real; you are laughing and crying in the greatest delusion, and it is not worth shedding tears over. To give reality to our earth experiences is to invite untold misery. By identification of our consciousness with this world we see it as a place of suffering. What is going to free us from suffering? Will money do so? Nothing material can. Knowledge of God, and realization that we are forever one with Him, is the only way to freedom. Remember this always. God would be very cruel indeed if this world were real. But He knows that when we have gone through the furnace of suffering and death enough times, we shall awaken and overcome delusion: we shall realize this earth as His dream, and reincarnate no more.

Suppose a man is struck by a bomb and killed instantly. On the battlefield he was filled with fear,- but after death he joyously realizes he is free from fear and from the tomb of the body. One need not go through some ordeal to attain this knowledge. It is better to acquire wisdom through conscious spiritual effort. And if we have to endure trials it should be with the right attitude. Think what Jesus went through as an example to us: He was nailed to the cross and had to pass through that dream of suffering. Yet before his crucifixion he had said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He knew that the body, and the nails with which it was to be held to the cross, and even the process of death were but dreams. Because he realized this, he knew he could re-create life in his dream body again. Isn’t that a wonderful way to view the delusion of life and death? It is the only way. Krishna also began his revelatory discourse to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita with an exhortation to remember the transitory nature of matter and the eternal nature of That which dwells within it.

We Dream Our Own Limitations

Life teaches you to believe that it is real. You feel you must have your food and sleep every day, that you will die without them. Your habits compel you to eat all kinds of foods that are harmful to you, such as meat, and to smoke and drink, and to think you can’t do without these things. We are all crazily dreaming different limitations on our consciousness, and when we slip into the rut of a bad dream of wrong behavior, we have a hard time to pull ourselves out of it. Think how much time and effort you spend catering to the body. And what does it get you? Do you know that the more solicitous you are of your body, the more suffering you will have? If you are too much identified with this dream form, you become hopelessly immersed in delusion.

As soon as you ascribe reality to the dream thoughts out of which God created all things, that dream reality begins to punish you with dream suffering. But when you realize that God is everything in this universe, nothing hurts you anymore. If you realize that both water and the body are dreams of God, you can walk on the water as did Jesus—one dream form can walk on another dream form. There is no longer a barrier of difference between solids and liquids, or any other form of matter. But you have to realize this; such power does not come to you by mere imagining.

There are cases in India where people have walked on fire without a single blister. Some of the foremost scientists of England observed one young boy as he walked through twenty-seven feet of fire. A newspaperman who was present thought the fire a fake; he tried the same experiment and was badly burned. The young boy, by certain processes of thought, had convinced his mind of the truth that the fire was nothing but consciousness, and therefore could not harm the body, which was also consciousness.

When you believe that cold weather won’t hurt you, you won’t be affected by it. But if you feel you are going to catch a cold from the chill, you will. This is why the saints require their disciples to discipline the body and not give it too much attention. The purpose is not to torture the body, but to save the disciple from all the troubles that will beset him if he believes that comfort comes from material things. Comfort comes from the mind. Change your mental attitude and you will not feel discomfort.

Also, it is best to simplify life. I have seen saints in India who eat hardly anything and live under the most rigorous conditions; yet they have wonderfully strong bodies, far better than those of the average well-fed, well-cared-for American. They have trained their minds not to be dependent on externals for health and contentment.

The world trains our minds in a different way. It gets us accustomed to too many things, and then we think we can’t be happy without them. Make your life more simple. And simplify the lives of your children as well. If you don’t do it, life’s experiences will teach them through bitter disillusionment.

Self-Realization is a philosophy of living: right meditation, right thinking, and right living. Bring up your children in this philosophy. Don’t pamper them, or teach them by wrong example to cater to their bodies and harmful desires,- give them good training. Why enslave them in delusion? Give them true freedom by keeping their lives simple and cultivating in them inner peace and happiness. Do the same with your own life. Don’t be bound by anything. That philosophy will save you. If I am sitting in a chair and it breaks, I am not going to be distressed about the broken chair. I will sit in another chair. It makes no difference.

Whenever you are attached to something, that possessiveness deepens your delusion. You will be rudely awakened one day to find that nothing belongs to you. Isn’t it silly, therefore, to be attached to things that were never yours in the first place? Your attitude should be that you are looking after these things only for the time being, like a housekeeper who lives in her employer’s home and devotedly, loyally, faithfully looks after it, but knows that her own home is elsewhere.

Don’t Take Life So Seriously

This world is a terrible place; there is no safety here. But what are we to do? We must stop taking life so seriously. Delusion can be overcome by holding steadfast to one philosophy: Everything here is nothing more than God’s motion picture. We are the players. We must play our parts well, but we must not identify ourselves too intensely with the drama. Self-Realization shows us the way to this inner freedom. It is the way by which we can realize that this world is a dream, that the Lord has created the entire cosmos out of His thought. So, though He created this dream earth, He has also shown the way to get out of it.

Nothing terrible could happen in this world that we could not duplicate in a nightmare. You have had such experiences. If in a dream you feel your leg crushed under a car, your suffering seems just as real as if your limb were actually injured. But when you wake up, you laugh and say, “Oh, how silly. It was only a nightmare.” This is exactly what will happen when you wake up in God. He will shake you out of this nightmare, saying: “What is the matter? You were only dreaming suffering and death.” And He will show you reality. That experience He gives ultimately to all mankind. It is wonderful!

Excerpt from The Divine Romance