My Story of Transformation
by Jayadev Jaerschky
The stern atheist
Our path of evolution is from being a piece of charcoal to becoming a diamond.
As a youth I was a stout and outspoken atheist, convinced to the core that God is a hoax, and that religion is basically a crooked thing. At school, therefore, I vocally fought for my atheistic beliefs, holding my metaphorical sword high.
Back then those of us from atheistic families didn’t study “Religion” with the other kids, but another subject, called “Ethics”. In those classes I got acquainted with the famous philosophers: Schopenhauer, Kant, and all the rest of them.
“God is dead,” Nietzsche proclaimed, stating that God is simply a product of the human psychology, while in truth there are no absolute values, which means that the human being must craft his own identity. Other philosophers formulated their own highly intelligent thesis, either existential, hedonistic, materialistic, political, social, idealistic, nihilistic, or religious.
The mind is prone to feel proud to grasp such lofty philosophies. In fact, it is a typical Western mindset to equate understanding with rational conclusions: the sharper and more complex the mind, the wiser we are. At least that’s what my charcoal-mind believed.
Swami Kriyananda
Swami Kriyananda, in his youth, was exactly in the same philosophical boat. He narrates in The New Path:
In the end, he hit on the Indian philosophy, on the Bhagavad Gita, and finally on the Autobiography of a Yogi. All of them transmit an empirical teaching, which means that understanding does not come from the intellect, but from personal experience. Swami Kriyananda resonated deeply with these texts. In fact, he changed his life radically, becoming a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, who taught him to get out of his incessant thinking process, and to enter into his heart. Yogananda told him: “Keep on with your devotion. See how dry your life is when you depend on intellect.”
Yogananda continued to transform his intellectual dryness, gradually turning him into a spiritual “diamond”. Listen to Swami Kriyananda who recounts an episode of this training. Try to vividly visualize the scene:
The beginning of transformation
My path was similar. It was philosophy – my rational mind – which brought me to the spiritual path. Reading Hermann Hesse and the like, I felt attracted to yoga and meditation. My first yoga teacher fortunately was a great blessing: it was her who directed me to Yogananda. I learned meditation from a Buddhist teacher: Buddhists don’t talk about God, which suited me well.
Meditation, however, is what changed everything: it changed my life, my personality, my atheism. Somehow an inner antenna developed: luckily, I perceived intuitively that there are higher realities.
Yogananda attracted me, so I read his Autobiography of a Yogi. A great reading, but unfortunately for my charcoal-drenched mind, there was a lot of “God” in that book, which I found difficult to absorb. “Praying, ME?” It was a tough proposition to accept.
Yet I kept on meditating, feeling, intuiting, developing my inner antenna.
Often when people start to meditate, they receive some deep insight, which goes far beyond their actual state of consciousness. It happened to me too: once I felt myself expanding out of my body. At other times some deep realization came over me: for example how time can be flipped inside out… this is hard to explain intellectually. Most of all, I knew there was more in me than what I was living and experiencing right now.
Soon I dedicated my entire life to the spiritual search, which continues to this day. Such a life involves inner transformation. We can’t perceive the Divine with a dark consciousness, with low, bad, or worldly vibrations, or with an ever-tensed and restless personality: they simply block the Divine, just like a piece charcoal blocks the sun, while a diamond reflects it splendidly. Yogananda’s puts it like this in his Praecepta Lessons:
“Although the light shines equally on everything, yet diamond souls, by their own creative quality, appreciate or receive the light that flows through them, whereas the charcoal souls do not allow the rays to pass through them.”
Working on myself
So slowly I started to work on myself, which is always a huge enterprise. Unfortunately, I was far from being a “diamond”, having been a rather angry youth, always fighting with my neighbours, teachers, siblings. And of course, I was highly opinionated, intelligently so (I thought). My energy had been restless from early childhood, so much so that I had to enter school a year later than normal, simply because I was uncontainable.
Slowly, steadily, through meditation, all this gradually changed. It is still changing, by the grace of God. The road is long, but results are definitively visible. In fact, my first yoga teacher later visited me at Ananda and commented: “I see a completely different person now.”
Swami Kriyananda directed me toward marriage and music, to help me enter into my heart. Why? Because it is the open, calm heart which perceives truth in meditation. The spiritual eye takes us to the Divine, but it is the heart which feels God’s joy, His love, calmness, guidance, presence. Even wisdom is intuitively received, in the heart.
Also in the higher stages, it is the heart from where we perceive the cosmic truth, as Yogananda writes in his poem, Samadhi: “I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart.”
True meditation is a calm feeling, a subtle receiving, a deep perception, all of which occur in the heart. Therefore I began to sing, and in time became known for my devotional kirtans. Singing indeed is helpful for becoming a “diamond”!
Meditation requires regularity. Fortunately, I never skipped one of them. “Set yourself a minimum,” Swami Kriyananda taught us. “It can even be just 5 minutes. But never go below it. Never skip it.” I followed his advice. Sometimes my meditations bore good fruit, at other times not at all. However, one thing is certain: practiced regularly, meditation transforms us, steadily, quietly, day by day.
The trouble is: certain parts of our karma brought over from the past are like persistent layers of charcoal: it’s hard to get rid of them. So after some 30 years I am still working on attuning my mind, attitudes, actions and reactions, to the soul I perceive inside. At times it can be discouraging that the progress of transformation into a diamond is so slow. But fortunately there are great Masters who help us, if we open ourselves up to them. And also fortunately there are pilgrimage spots, for me especially Badrinath, which always gives my meditations a major boost.
Divine encouragement
When I told Swami Kriyananda how “bad” I was in the past, he saw beyond it, shaking his head, replying: “You were alright.” It’s such a blessing when people are able to look behind one’s rough surface, seeing what is really happening, inside. In fact, people who continue to see our good side, no matter what, are our very best friends.
This attitude has become my essential guideline as a yoga teacher trainer: trying to see my students’ potential, their soul quality, behind their momentary weaknesses, knowing that such perception can be incredibly precious for their evolution, for their life, and for their meditations.
“You are all angels,” Swami Kriyananda told us. Such words, spoken sincerely, open an inner door leading to a true perception of our beautiful, marvellous soul. He called me “a jewel”, even when I behaved badly. I am so grateful. Meditation is the perception of our soul, of our divine Self, which is so much easier when someone sees it, and expresses it to you.
Nowadays the philosophy I teach has become relatively little. I still enjoy it: Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita, Yogananda, Kriyananda. Yet it’s more fulfilling to make people practice yoga, leading them to a natural state of meditation; to guide them in pranayama, which helps them to achieve at least a little meditative stillness; and to lead them in a natural breath observation, in which they become a “silent observer”, as Yogananda teaches: a state in which they become at bit more detached from the identification with their body, helping them to step into what they truly are: consciousness. The soul is the observer, which is simply consciousness. And that consciousness, in its purity, is blissful: Ananda.
A Little Practice
- To tune into your inner joy, into true Ananda, please sit up and sing along with Swami Kriyananda, expressing the ever-new joy of your diamond-soul.
- Now take your joy a bit more inside, as you listen carefully to Swami Kriyananda, as he reads one of Yogananda’s Whispers From Eternity:
- Finally meditate for a little while. Feel that through this inner joy you are being transformed into a true diamond.
Shine, diamond, shine!