To [those] who meditate on Me as their Very Own, ever united to Me by incessant worship, I supply their deficiencies and make permanent their gains.
—God Talks With Arjuna:The Bhagavad Gita (IX:22)
Dear Ones,
Loving greetings on the sacred occasion of Janmashtami, the birth anniversary of the beloved Lord Krishna! As we celebrate this kingly avatar of divine love with our devotion and with joyous festivity, may our hearts thrill with intoxicating awareness of his omniscient blissful presence.
Our revered guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, shared a deeply personal relationship with Sri Krishna, whose life and timeless guidance for soul liberation are living scriptures for the ages. In Gurudeva’s God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita, he leads us to cherish Sri Krishna both as the sublime Lord of Yoga — restorer of dharma and the eternal science of Kriya Yoga — and as our own soul’s divine Friend. The profound truths in the Gita, Guruji shows us, are vast enough to encapsulate the entire knowledge of the cosmos; and yet Krishna’s teachings are a personal guide for millions of devotees who have realized through them the intimate nearness and loving protection of the Lord.
Our daily lives present endless choices between the dharmic principles of the higher Self — goodness, kindness, righteousness, attunement with the Divine — and the way of the ego with its material desires, unwillingness to meditate, and short-sighted selfishness. Listening to Sri Krishna’s “Song Celestial” in our hearts, we can live in a higher reality than that of today’s fast-paced world, which incites hasty, self-serving decisions. God counts generously our daily inner strivings, reinforcing each courageous, selfless effort we make with His magnanimous blessings.
Great is the liberating, cumulative power of discriminative spiritual action when partnered with the Divine. Before the battle of Kurukshetra, Krishna offered his disciple Arjuna the choice of his entire army, or himself alone as his charioteer. May you realize, as did Arjuna, that to choose God — and an enlightened guru as His pure channel — is to choose victory.
At Janmashtami and throughout the year, the real way to honour Lord Krishna is to joyously embrace his royal yoga of wisdom, devotion, right action, and God-uniting meditation. As you do so, you will victoriously uplift your own consciousness, and also radiate to the world the harmonizing influence of divine love, beauty, and joy. That is my prayer for each of you.
Jai Sri Krishna! Jai Guru!
Swami Chidananda Giri
