Making Space for God

Watch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Erin Vinacco, recorded at Ananda Village on July 6th 2025. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is Abiding in God Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Yogananda often emphasized – more often to his disciples than to the general public, but also to everyone generally, for it was a universal teaching – the importance of attunement. For divine understanding cannot be created: It must be perceived. To the disciples, Yogananda spoke of the importance of attunement with the guru. To others, he urged the importance at least of attuning oneself to higher consciousness. Can an eagle rise without support from the sustaining air? Jesus Christ said in the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 15: I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. How can we “abide in him”? Jesus says, “If my words abide in you.” By words he meant not only his spoken words, but his vibrations, his consciousness, of which the words are only an expression. We must abide by the teachings, but we must also absorb those teachings into ourselves, that they become our own experience. For disciples of this path, the more, in their hearts, they live consciously in the presence of the masters, the more they will find the divine presence living within them. And for all truth seekers, whether disciples or not, the more they live sustained inwardly by the awareness of God’s presence, the higher they will find themselves soaring in wisdom and joy. For the Bhagavad Gita says, in the tenth Chapter: I am the Source of everything; from Me all creation emerges. Blessed with this realization, the wise, awe-stricken, adore Me. Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.