I’ve told you this story. It’s worth repeating. An Italian artist, his name was Benvenuto Cellini. And he wrote an autobiography. It’s well worth reading. You can find it in the stores, at least in English or Italian. And the Pope was not paying him. Our Popes are really just human beings and this Pope was just as too many merchants are, getting what he could out of this guy but not willing to give him back his due. And Benvenuto Cellini was a stubborn fellow, rightly so, but the Pope unfortunately had the power so he threw him in prison. And there he was in this dungeon with a damp mattress, rats running on the floor, no decent light except one hour a day he was able to read the Bible. He had for food the classic diet of prisoners in those days, bread and water. And he still would not give in. I admire that, that stubbornness. Finally the Pope gave in. He said, “All right, all right, I’ll pay you, I want the work that you’re doing.” So he let him out. But the beautiful thing about that story is not the fact that he had to suffer, that’s nothing. It’s the fact that he found joy in that suffering. You see, he had nothing else to do except read the Bible maybe one hour a day. What did he do with the rest of the time? He prayed. He thought of God. And bit by bit, just in that thought, people think, “Well, how do you find joy?” You don’t create joy, but you open yourself to it by remembering your own higher self. And then that joy began to dawn within him and he felt more and more joy.
Finally, when he’d been let out he said, “If you want to know what joy is, then arrange to be thrown in a dungeon.” And he described all these conditions and he said, “And then pray to God, think of God, share your life and your thoughts with him. Don’t waste your time in bitterness. Just do something with your life to give yourself to him.” And he found that joy. Well, it’s a wonderful example of what is the truth of all our beings, that one God is in you. Don’t forget it. You may say, “Oh but how can he love me if I’ve suffered so much?” No, he doesn’t want you to suffer, but yes he did create a law. And you can say, as my great Guru Paramhansa Yogananda said, that if you put your hand on a hot stove, what? The hand will get burned. Now the fact that stoves and heat burn your hand is not meant maliciously. It is to protect your hand. If you were able to leave your hand on the stove or more still put it in the flame, you would lose your hand. If you didn’t feel pain, it would be unfortunate for you because you’d destroy your body. So pain and suffering were given to us for a good reason. Don’t think God doesn’t love you because of it. He gave a law and when you go against that law, yes, you suffer.
And he sometimes, like a beautiful story of a Christian saint who had many tests in her life. And when she was an old woman, she was trying to find another monastery and she was going on horseback and her nuns were around her and they were crossing a river, fording a river, but the river was swollen by winter rains and the horse lost its footing and got swept away. And the nuns all thought, “Oh, she’s drowned.” Well, what actually happened was that she suddenly saw Jesus on the other bank of the river and before she knew it, she was standing there, completely dry. And he smiled at her. He said, “Teresa, don’t feel so bad. This is how I treat all my friends.”
She had a good sense of humor. She said, “My Lord, no wonder you have so few.” But you know, God does test us. If you read the lives of saints you’ll see that none of them went waltzing into heaven. They all had a hard time. But the purpose of it is to kill your ego and to get rid of your thought that you are anything except that child of God, in love with God.
Yes, there’s a certain side of the path that seems difficult. There was one sister disciple of mine, she was the most advanced woman disciple of my Gurudev. She went through much physical suffering. She wrote once that, “I understand now, the Guru doesn’t care about whether you suffer or not. He wants to free you from all delusion and therefore all suffering.” And like a good doctor, I remember when I was a boy in Romania, I was supposed to be on a diet of no dairy products for some time. It ruined my teeth, no calcium. And as a result, I had many cavities and the dentist in Bucharest out of compassion, when I was yelling too loudly, decided, “All right, that was enough,” and he would just fill my tooth. Well of course what he did was not clear away all the decay, so later on I had even worse teeth. Now was that real compassion? A true doctor would have said, “Well, I’m sorry but this is for your good,” and he couldn’t bring himself to do it because of my childish cries. Well, the true Guru doesn’t mind giving you a certain amount of pain or any amount of pain if he knows that you will be freed. And you know at the end, he kept her in her body. He made a contract with God that she would remain until he himself released her. He kept her to finish her karma. She was supposed to go a long, long before but he kept her there so she could work out her karma. And that’s when she said, “I have come to realize that the Guru doesn’t care about whether you suffer or not. What he cares about is freeing you from all the karmas that can lead to suffering.” And the last words in her life were, “Oh such joy, too much joy!” That’s what it’s all about. Dwell on that, that joy. Don’t dwell on your hardships because God gives them to you.
About Author:
Swami Kriyananda
Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and the founder of Ananda Sangha, began his deep spiritual quest for truth at a young age. In 1948, at just 22, he read Yogananda’s spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Instantly recognizing the author as his Guru, Kriyananda resolved to dedicate the next 65 years of his life to practicing and sharing his Guru’s teachings.
