I was so happy to be reminded by Nayaswami Ananta, during today’s Sunday service talk, about the gas burner analogy. Both Yogananda and Swamiji spoke about how what seem like individual jets of flame on the surface of the stove top are simply individual expressions of the one gas source that is flowing under the surface.
The reason I was so glad for this reminder is that it’s all too easy to focus on our feelings of separateness in the divisive, polarized, stressful times that we’re living right now.
The Truth is that we are all individualized expressions of the light of God (and, yes, this includes each and every person on the planet; no exceptions!). And every person is doing as best they can according to their level of consciousness and unique karmic pressures.
Of course it’s really hard to stay out of judgement and fear, because it all looks so bad and so hopeless at times. But you know, maybe I can’t see the source of the gas underneath the burners on my stove, but I know it’s there and it’s real and that without it there would be no individual jets of flame.
In the exact same way, I can focus on strengthening my “knowing” that God is here and God is real, even when I can’t see Him as the underlying source connecting us all. And that helps me a lot.
Here’s what Ananta read today, followed by the same idea in Swamiji’s words…
#77 Demand for Seeing the One Fire beneath all Soul-Flames.
O Eternal Fire, Thou art shooting little flames of souls through the pores of each human consciousness drilled in the plate of the great burner of Thine universal consciousness. Thou dost appear many, limited, small, divided, when Thou dost shoot through the pores of living organisms as souls. But Thou art the one eternal flame, under the pores of all human minds.
— from Whispers from Eternity by Paramhansa Yogananda
Paramhansa Yogananda defined ego as ‘the soul identified with a body.’ All egos, as we saw earlier, are like little jets of flame on a gas burner, each one with the appearance of individuality, but each one being, in fact, only a manifestation of the unifying gas underneath.
–from Revelations of Christ by Swami Kriyananda
Nice, thanks!