The great yogi/poet, founder of Self-Realization Fellowship, dramatizes the spiritual journey in his poems. They uplift the mind and direct it toward God.
Where God Is
In Paramahansa Yogananda’s poem, “Where I Am,” the Speaker of the poem is God. And in this poem, God tells His listener exactly where He is. The poem opens with the following lines: “Not the lordly domes on high / With tall heads daring clouds and sky, / Nor shining alabaster floors, / Nor the rich organ’s awesome roar.”
Then after listing a catalogue of other items that make clear He is describing a majestic church, the Speaker says, “Nor well-planned sermon, / Nor loud-tongued prayer / Can call Me There.” Despite the ornate beauty and grandeur of this cathedral, the Speaker says He will not come there drawn by this material beauty alone.
In the next verse paragraph, the celestial Speaker shows a preference for the simplicity of nature: “On grassy altar small— / There I have My nook.” Even ruined temples and a “little place unseen” are preferable if “A humble magnet call” of the devotee’s soul attracts Him.
The final verse paragraph reveals the place where God wants to “rest and lean”: in the heart of the true seeker who is “A sacred heart / Tear-washed and true.” Such a heart draws “Me with its rue.” The Speaker tells us that He takes no bribes—strength, wealth, beautiful, expensive cathedrals, and well-rehearsed ceremonies cannot lure God, unless they are accompanied with the deep desire for truth.
Examining One's Life
The great ancient Greek philosopher/teacher Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. The nineteenth century American poet/essayist/thinker Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond so he could live deliberately. Both men of deep thought are telling us that this life has meaning and purpose. They believed that living a proper life means more than going through the motions of a daily grind without stopping to muse about the meaning that grind has for each of us.
The result of this idea—of examining our lives with deliberation—leads one to a path of spirituality. Spirituality motivates the human being to seek not only physical needs but also the needs of the mind and of the soul. Our spirituality compels us to commit to a life that allows us to flourish as we seek to understand all the mysteries that life places before us.
The mystery of where God is looms large in our lack of understanding, but the great yogi/poet Paramahansa Yogananda takes us even further than all the great thinkers such as Socrates and Thoreau, because this great guru/spiritual leader for the 21st century is able to dramatize the answers to complex questions, making them simple and direct.
In Paramahansa Yogananda’s poem “Where I Am,” God tells us where He is: in the “sacred heart / Tear-washed and true,” and “the distant broken heart / Doth draw Me, e’en to heathen lands: / And My help in silence I impart.”
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The poem "Where I Am" is from Paramahansa Yogananda's Songs of the Soul.
