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Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952

"Autobiography of a Yogi"

The horror of the
struggle, filled with the dead and dying, far surpassed in ferocity
any representation of the newsreel.
"Look intently!" A gentle voice spoke to my inner consciousness. "You
will see that these scenes now being enacted in France are nothing
but a play of chiaroscuro. They are the cosmic motion picture, as
real and as unreal as the theater newsreel you have just seen-a
play within a play."
My heart was still not comforted. The divine voice went on: "Creation
is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good
and evil of MAYA must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were
ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another? Without
suffering he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his
eternal home. Pain is a prod to remembrance. The way of escape is
through wisdom! The tragedy of death is unreal; those who shudder
at it are like an ignorant actor who dies of fright on the stage
when nothing more is fired at him than a blank cartridge. My sons
are the children of light; they will not sleep forever in delusion."
Although I had read scriptural accounts of MAYA, they had not given
me the deep insight that came with the personal visions and their
accompanying words of consolation. One's values are profoundly
changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast
motion picture, and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own
reality.
As I finished writing this chapter, I sat on my bed in the lotus
posture.


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