A Living Flame--Shape is Gone, Spirit Continues to Shine: Pt. 1

By Swami Yogatmananda

Living Flame- This was part of his email name - Father (then Bishop) Paul livingflame03@yahoo.com. 

If I remember right, it was sometime in 2005 (if not even before) that I got to meet him at the Boston center of Vedanta, introduced by a close devotee from Boston, Srinivas Gandhi. He knew Father Paul since 1999 and admired his sincere approach to religious practice that did not shy away from going beyond the cultish limitations.

The most important point that struck a common chord between myself and Father Paul was the conviction that God can actually be seen/experienced, and various religions are the paths enabling human beings to do that. Father Paul had a tumultuous relationship with the Catholic Church, in which he was initially ordained. I did not ask much about his breakup from it or from another order. We were both interested in moving forward on the path to realize the goal - to see the God.

He had tremendous admiration of Sri Ramakrishna born out of the fact that Sri Ramakrishna actually saw God; nay was ever merged in God. ‘I am convinced that who was born as Jesus was also born as Sri Ramakrishna’ – he declared to me several times and also spoke in lectures/discourses he gave at the Vedanta Society. Soon he became a regular guest speaker here. He had also studied the lives of many Indian and European saints and gave very inspiring speeches on them.

Thoughts on Discipline and the Sound-Brahman

By Brahmachari Aadi

While working on our mind's discipline, the progress seems slow at times, but just look at the heights covered by that ideal of discipline! Ah, it's hard to see all the way up there. The mountain breaches the cloud's mist and extends onwards and upwards. An electrifying silence touches the onlooker.

That Mount Meru (the mythical high mountain mentioned in Puranas) is difficult to measure. How to know if one will summit it in this life? We cannot know, but we can surely determine what the next steps are and proceed methodically. Then we will not lose our footing. Swami Brahmananda says, "Follow your routine." Before climbing El Capitan without a harness, the renowned climber Alex Honnold visualized himself climbing the entire route, which extends 3,000 feet up through dozens of subsections that the body must be meticulously maneuvered through. Honnold completed this mental working out of his path and exact movements over the course of about a year, and in the month before the climb, he removed all social media from his phone and stopped responding to emails so that nothing would vie for his attention. By the time he was to begin the ascent, every movement had been memorized through his disciplined visualization.