Dear John,

It is Christmas today. Paramhansa Yogananda suggested that his students celebrate the birth of Jesus with a “Spiritual Christmas” as well as the more common “Social Christmas.” Spiritual Christmas is a day of deep meditation during which we try to draw the presence and blessings of Jesus and achieve the birth of Christ consciousness within. This year, for the first time in decades due to the pandemic, we didn’t meditate in any of our temples. Rather, Devi and I led our eight-hour meditation from Swami Kriyananda’s apartment at Ananda Village, and streamed it around the world through the magic of the internet. For me, it was a touching return to my spiritual roots.

My first all-day meditation was in Swami Kriyananda’s apartment in 1967. The location was different, San Francisco in that case, but the vibrations were amazingly similar. The evening before, I had received my first Kriya initiation there, which was Ananda’s only “temple” in those early days. It was a special initiation, held so that the dozen or so students could practice Kriya the next day as a means of contacting the inner Christ.

The life of Jesus should be seen as both historically true and spiritually symbolic. The real star followed by the Wise Men shone not in the heavens, but in the forehead at the spiritual eye. Each of us needs to become a fourth Wise Man by following the light of the inner star until it leads us to the Christ consciousness.