This World Of Illusion

This World of Illusion is a talk about the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda by Barry Ebert that explores the spiritual nature of the world and the role God plays in everyday life.

Transcript

So tonight what I wanted to talk about is the world of illusion. One of the things that really struck me when I first started studying Yogananda's thing is just that this world is kind of in a dream state. This is like God's dream that is unfolding all around us. The Hindu word for it is maya, Which is just a word for the world of illusion that God is spinning for us and we play different characters in this world. But it's a dream world. It's God's dream and we find ourselves in it. It's the thing that kind of separates things into different ways because God has given us this place to play and this place to create and this place to learn and to grow. It's a place that our souls come and take on many different roles. The way that he put it in the book was maya is the magical power in creation by which limitations and divisions are apparently present in the immeasurable and the inseparable. That's a lot to think about, Isn't it? So we get all these divisions to look at and where he's starting with is that in the beginning God formed all the things that we see here out of nothingness and it was his creativity and the mind of the God, The infinite creator that brought all these things in the beginning. I think that's what points once again to the sacredness of baseball because the Bible starts with in the big inning and that kind of ties the whole thing together. Thank you. Thank you very much. Come on here. Thank you. Thank you. So the way that it goes is that God just created all this stuff and gave us the opportunity to be here and to play these different roles in it. The thing that Yogananda talks about all the time is to not be hypnotized by it but to enjoy this play that we're a part of, To enjoy it, To be part of it and do our parts full out but to not be hypnotized by the duality, To look through it and to see the true life, The one life, The cosmic life that is unfolding, That is God. And that's where the truth is. The way that he really got this to me, I remember reading about it and also hearing his voice on one of the CDs I have of him talking about going to the motion pictures. When he was around, The motion pictures were just starting in the 30s and the 40s and the talkies were around. So he would go to the motion picture show and he would sit in there and he would be entertained by these movies, These incredible movies and the action that's going on and he would see the people cheering for the heroes and booing the villains and everybody just so involved in it. And then he said, I would look up into the projection booth and I would see that it was just a beam of light shining through a film and that's what was throwing these images up onto the screen and that everybody in there was so involved in what was going on and all that was really happening was this beam of light was passing through the film. And he said, That's what's happening for us in this world of illusion, That that's what God is doing is throwing these images into our world so that we get to play here. But our job is to keep going back into the beam, To find ourselves in the beam, To find God in the beam and to realize that these parts that we play, That life is a dream and it's a tough thing to wrap your head around and it doesn't mean that we're just, Well, It's just a dream, We're just letting it go. It's more that we see through this world here to a deeper reality that's going on that we are a part of. One of the things that he said was, It's only when we wake up that we know that we're dreaming. So we all have these dreams at night and what happens is all the energy that we put into keeping our limbs going and everything during the day and all the thinking that we're doing, We can let go of that at night when we go to sleep and that energy goes into our subconscious and starts illuminating all those scenes that we have in our subconscious and we have dreams and they seem absolutely real while we're in the midst of them. They're absolutely real. We've all had those dreams that are real. And it seems like something horrible, Horrible is happening and then we wake up and it's like, Whoa, That was just a dream, It was so good that that was just a dream. And what he's saying is that our lives are like that, That we will, When we end this particular dream that we're in now, We will wake up and see it as a dream and we will be involved in other dreams and we'll have other parts to play and other characters to play. So to not take this dream world too seriously and the comings of goings of this world too seriously. And I think it's really important in the time that we're in now because it seems that people are taking this dream that we're in really seriously. Have you noticed that? Right? And there's kind of this one aspect of the dream just seems to be on every screen that you look at. And I think it's important in this time, I mean I'm just talking to a lot of people and counseling like this are just bummed and so sad and so filled with anxiety because of what's going on on our screens now. And we have to look through that, We have to look through that to the very heart of things and see that this is a dream. That's why our practice is so important. I know I'm going to come back to that but that's why our practice is so important because we need to look past the dream of our time. I was thinking this week, Last week I showed a picture of Gandhi with Yogananda. Yogananda went to visit Gandhi at his ashram and the work that Gandhi had to do to separate India from Britain and all this political stuff that he was in and these marches and then he's going to these meetings and cabinet meetings and all this stuff and all these serious guys in suits and there you got this little guy in a loincloth. And I remember hearing him say once that he meditated every day, He meditated every day for an hour and he just kept getting busier and busier with all this politics. And then one day he said, I have so much to do today, I'll meditate for two hours. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? So I recommend that to us. No matter what's going on on our screens, We need to find the time to meditate, To go into the beam, To go into the beam and to see the truth that lives there, The truth of who we are, That we are always held in the hands of God, Always, Always, Always. And that this dream world that we're a part of, We play our parts, But we're going to be alright. We're going to be alright. He said, You have played many roles through many incarnations, But they were given to entertain you, Not to frighten you. Your immortal soul cannot be touched in the motion picture of life. Your immortal soul cannot be touched in the motion picture of life. And I love that thing of playing different parts. You know, One of our sons is an actor and he gets to play a lot of different roles. And I remember last time I was with him, I was talking about one of the roles he played. Could he play this really, Really nasty dude in this television thing, The Blacklist? It was almost it was just hard to watch that episode, You know, And he just played this kind of creepy guy. And I said, What's it like doing that? Is it weird playing somebody like that? And he goes, I never judge my characters. Isn't that good? I never judge my characters. Like, Wow. Think of the way that we judge our character. The role that we're playing in this life, How we judge ourselves and judge our character. We need to let go of that to do the best that we can with the character that we're playing in the scene that we're in. To play our part full out. And to realize that we're all right, That we're all right, That we are held, We are held in those hands and that regardless of how the scene unfolds, We're going to be all right. This is a great thing for me to to realize when I started studying Yogananda. One of the concepts that I got from him was about the the drop in the ocean. And I wrote a song about this and we're going to do that song next week. And it was the beginning for me of understanding this, The concept of oneness. We talk about the concept of oneness here a lot. But the way he talked about it was you could you could pull a drop out of the ocean and put it under a microscope and it would contain all the elements of the ocean. They're all contained within that drop. And that's the way we are a spirit. We are those drops in the mighty ocean of spirit. We were created there. We'll go back there. And he said, It's like we've blocked up our little our little drop inside a bottle and don't want to release ourselves into that ocean. But that ocean is the very nature of who we are. And we begin to understand it when we allow ourselves to move into it. We're like fish trying to understand the water. How does this work? How does this work? Relax. We're a part of it. We've always been a part of it and we always will be a part of it. Nothing he said about incarnations was killed many times. I yet live born many times. I'm yet changeless. So what his idea was about is that we will go through many incarnations. We will go through many changes. We will play many characters. And it's our job to show up and fully fully play our parts, But not be hypnotized by the particular scene that we're in. Important message for our time. Important message. You know, Yogananda was so, So much a scientist and so much a student of science and about atomic theory and about atoms and about the way that our lives are constructed and just the magic of atomic theory. He was writing the autobiography when the atomic bomb was dropped. Think of what that was like for him to see the incredible potential and the topic energy used in this way. And he talked about that in his book, That this is the power that we have. This is the power of illusion that we have. We can use this incredible power that God has given us in different ways. It's not the devil doing this to us. It's us making choices. It's us making choices. And that's why our balance in spiritual practice is so important for us. The things that we create. So the power of thought. That's the next thing I want to talk about a little bit. The power of thought. And that's where it really lines up with the science of mind. We're talking this in our teaching here about the power of our thoughts. Thoughts are things. We have the power to create. And Yogananda spun that in his own way with that in the same way that God creates in God's dream, We get to create in our dream. Through our visualizations. Through our commitment to what we think is important. To our thoughts. That all things are first created in thought. All things. We have been given this incredible mechanism to create in the world. And it's up to us to decide how to use it. This gift that we've been given of creativity. Is a fragile thing. But the more that we practice, The more that we move into the beam, The more that we get to not only enjoy it, But we get to manifest the kind of life that's important to us. You know, There's a great thing in the movie with the show, An actor in the movie that he was talking about meeting Yogananda and going up to the ashram and saying, You know, I don't think I could hang out with you people because you're so devout. And, You know, I have a different kind of life. I don't think I could do that. And Yogananda said, What do you mean? He goes, Well, Can I? Yogananda says, Well, Do you like to do you like to drink alcohol? And the guy said, Yeah, I do like to drink alcohol. He said, Well, You can still do those things. He said, Well, Do you like do you like to smoke cigarettes? And the guy said, Yeah, I like to smoke cigarettes. And he said, Well, You can still do that. So do you like the opposite sex? Do you like chasing around the opposite sex? The guy said, Yeah, I like doing that. He said, Well, You can continue doing that. He said, I can continue doing all those things and hang out with you people. He said, Sure, But I can't guarantee that you won't lose your love for those things. So what he was talking about was turning our thoughts in the direction that we want to go, That our thought is creative. And we've been given this opportunity in the scene that we've dropped into. We've been given this opportunity to create something amazing and to really get focused on what is important to us. If it is all a dream. How do we want this dream to go? How do we want this particular dream to go? How can I show up in this dream? How can I show up in this scene? In a way that really empowers me, In a way that really honors the spirit that I am. If I really am that changeless aspect of God life, Man, What a thing to bring into the world, What a thing to bring into my relationships. What a thing to bring into my work, To bring that consciousness to it. That's really the essence of Science and Mind. It's going at it in a different way. Ernest Holmes is up there with a suit on, Talking to a bunch of people with suits on, But he's talking about the same stuff. The power that lies in our thought to create. What a gift that is. And to let go of the idea that God in some way is out to punish us for something that we've done. That there is this punishing God who seeks revenge on us for some reason. To let go of that idea entirely. To fall into the idea that we're loved. Fall into that idea. That's why I love looking through those eyes when we start in here. That's a serious love that we're looking. We're looking through into the absolute heart of God right there. And he talked about the power of, The power of spiritual practice. Last week I talked about the mangoes, Right? Did you guys get some mangoes last week? You were hungry for mangoes this week, Weren't you? Because they taught you to meditate. Well, He was talking about that in a thing I was reading. He said, No one else can convey to you the taste of sugar. You have to taste it yourself. We talked about the intellectual pursuit of things and the spiritual pursuit of things. And why is it so hard for us to understand that? You know, Why are we so hard-headed about that? And so that's why tonight I was thinking about the coconut, Right? And thinking of our heads kind of like a coconut, Like, Dang, I should have meditated today. You know what I mean? So I've provided for you down in the other room down there some coconut. And it's already flaked, All right? So you'll be able to get that. But that'll remind you not only of the sweetness of sugar, But dang, Come on, Come on. Let's do our spiritual work. The power of thought is such an amazing gift. And we can see in what Ernest Holmes called the race mind, Everything that's going on around us, The race thought, The things that are on the news, The things that people are worried about, This anxiety that we're all carrying with us. All the great teachers have taught us that that stuff we can cut through. That's the maya. That's the world of illusion. It doesn't mean that we're not concerned about it, That we don't do our work. It's not who we really are, And we need to know that. And when we sit down to meditate, When we sit down to pray, We know it, Don't we? Isn't there a part of us that knows it? And so that's what I encourage us all to keep doing, Is to keep using our thought to create the world that we want to create. We can do that. That's what's up for us right now. That's what's up for us in modern times right now, To create the world that we want to create. And we look at these masters like they're different people. But as Emerson said to us, We're breathing the same air as Jesus and Plato. We're breathing that air. Emerson talked a lot about maya, Too, About the world of illusion, About cutting through it. He was very much influenced by this kind of thinking from the East, That there is something that holds us all in His hands. He called it the over-soul. Ernest Holmes called it the thing itself. Jesus called it the Father within. You can call it Bob. You can call it whatever you want. But there is something that holds us, And we're going to be all right. We're going to be all right. So into the beam. That scene of Yogananda sitting in that movie theater, Looking at those movies, And you just love to go to the movies, Right? It has always stuck with me. It's always stuck with me, Of thinking of the world in this way, Because I know that there are dreams that I've woken up from that were so real. I was just sweating. It was so real, And I thought, Man, I will remember that dream forever. And five seconds later, It was gone. You know what I mean? You just feel it kind of go like that. Man, I wish I would have written that down. But it's just gone. And our lives are like that, Too. They're going by in a hurry. But this dream life that we're a part of, There's joy in it. There's a tremendous joy in it. There's a way to heal ourselves when we surrender to the truth of who we are, That we are as immortal right now as we're ever going to be. Think of that. Think of that when you're looking at the news. That there is a fleeting scene that we're a part of here, But that our souls are on an immortal journey, And they are gathering force. We're becoming wiser. We're becoming more connected with that light that shines through the beam. The only experience that is real, The only experience that brings happiness, Is awareness of the presence of God. The only thing that brings true happiness is the awareness of the presence of God. That's a statement I want you to think about this week. To expand that. Expand that awareness. We have this balance going on within us of the world of illusion, Maya. We see it. We see it in duality. We see it in things that are breaking down. We see it in things that don't seem to be working. And yet we can look through that. We can look through that and realize that God is always watching us and expecting the best from us and loving us no matter what we do. So I'm going to invite the band back up here, And we're going to give an opportunity here for us to fall into our hearts. I'm going to read you a meditation, And then we'll move into prayer together. So I invite you to take this opportunity to just relax, To let go of anything that you brought with you here tonight. Just let go of it. Let go of your connection to not only your circumstances, But to your body. Realize yourself as an immortal soul right now. I am not the body. Beloved God, I know that I am not the body, Not the blood, Not the energy, Not the thoughts, Not the mind, Not the ego, Not the astral self. I am the immortal soul that illumines them all, Remaining unchangeable in spite of their changes. The eternal youth of body and mind abide in me forever, Forever, Forever. More and more I will depend for energy upon the limitless supply of the inner source of cosmic consciousness, And less and less upon other sources of body energy. Father thine unlimited and all healing powers in me manifest thy light through the darkness of my ignorance. O Spirit, Teach me to heal the body by recharging it with thy cosmic energy, To heal the mind by concentration and smiles.

Reviews

Great talk. Always love your voice.

Thank Goodness, it’s all just an illusion
😊🙏🏻🤍