Divine Will Healing: How to Channel the Divine Light
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
To understand healing, we really must understand the principle of energy. Paramhansa Yogananda, my guru, who described his life experience in the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi(1), based his teachings of Self-realization on the relationship between energy and will power. Yogananda would say, “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” The application of this universal principle is the key for healing yourself and others.
To illustrate this principle more clearly, there is a story about how Yogananda used the power of his will to heal himself. He was making his first voyage to America from India in 1920. While aboard ship, he became quite seasick. Tired of being subjected to the affects of this illness, with great strength and energy, he affirmed, “I command my subconsciousness to accept the new habit of not being seasick!” From that moment on, he had no more trouble.
I had a similar experience myself. Years ago I was busy trying to raise money to build the Ananda World Brotherhood Village(2). I was giving yoga classes every night of the week in a different city. With many students attending the courses, class fees enabled me to purchase the land and build the retreat for the start of Ananda. It was a difficult period with a lot of pressures. One day I was driving in San Francisco to give a class when suddenly I felt this cold come upon me. I thought, “I just can’t afford to be sick now. Too much depends on this income.” So, I said to the cold, “GET OUT!” And it got out. Between that breath and the next, it was gone and it didn’t come back. What I did at that moment was to put a lot of energy into the thought of overcoming the cold.
I had directed enough energy, over years of practicing Yogananda’s Energization Exercises(3) and learned how to channel the healing energy by use of the will power.
We all use this principle in one way or another. I’ve read that often mothers who are having to take care of a sick family, don’t get ill, because they don’t have time for it. It shows the extent to which will power is the determining factor. Doctors and nurses have all seen how people who have no physical reason to die will do so, if they have lost the will to live. Likewise, people having everything against them will live and thrive if they have the desire to become well.
When you put out will power, you find that you draw to yourself much more energy. When you don’t have the willingness to do something, when your heart isn’t in it, suddenly you find you don’t have the strength to do it.
We’re coming into an age when the medical profession is realizing that energy is the real healer. The old approach is to kill the disease by attacking it; using allopathic medicines, radiation therapy or cutting it out.
The other approach is more preventive and seeks to strengthen the organism, so it won’t be subject to disease; using homeopathic medicines, massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbs, etc. In strengthening the organism, to make ourselves immune to the disease, we must ultimately learn to open the blockages of energy and strengthen its flow somehow.
To use a simple illustration, when you introduce an electric current into a wire, it generates a magnetic field. That magnetic field is what you’re generating when you send out a strong thought. You’re sending energy with that thought. “The greater the will the greater the flow of energy.” That will is creating a flow of energy. It creates an energy field and magnetically draws to you whatever you need.
Yogananda described the body as a battery. When a battery runs down, you can’t recharge it merely by refilling it with water. Water is needed to keep it going , but recharging it with a generator is necessary. Conversely, our body is a physical electromagnetic motor that we live in and we need to learn how to recharge it by drawing on the divine source of healing energy.
By consciously attuning yourself with the healing forces of the universe, you will feel the whole dynamo of power flowing through your body. That flow is everywhere. Realize that the power that you’re drawing on is the same power that is all over the universe. To get in tune with healing, think of the generative power that produced the universe. Be a person that says yes to life. You must have a cosmic view of everything you do if you want to make it really powerful. Most people think only of the little tip of the iceberg, and they don’t think in terms of the great vastness underneath it.
When you seek to heal people, it must be with that kind of faith. If you really want to heal somebody, then all your energy has to go that way. You’ve got to tune into the divine and ask the divine to use you as It will.
Use prayer and meditation as a part of your healing work. It’s a very important thing. Become centered in yourself. Ask God, Christ, or one of the great Masters, “Guide me. Give me a solution.” Listen for the inspiration and the guidance from the reaches of your superconscious mind. You’ll be amazed to see what particular answer will come.
When you try to heal people, you must understand that the real healing is of the soul. Sometimes, physical problems are a very important part of their growth.
And, sometimes a person should die, and it’s none of your business to try to prevent that process. It is your business to try helping in their transition, giving them the faith and encouragement of being in the Light of God.
So yours is not the place to say that I will that this person be healed. It’s ultimately God’s will and what you need to do is always ask, “Is it Your will?” Always attune yourself to the inner flow and feel what it is that you should do. And in attuning yourself to that inner flow, try to attune yourself to that other person’s center; try to feel where they are coming from and see whether it’s what their deeper nature wants. Is it really the right thing for them? Stimulate that person to be their own healer. That’s the highest kind of healing of all.
(1) The entire text of the original 1946 edition of Autobiography of a Yogi can be found at www.CrystalClarity.com/yogananda.
(2) Founded in 1968, Ananda Village follows the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, but is not affiliated with the Self-Realization Fellowship, the organization Yogananda founded in 1920. One of the most well-known intentional communities in America, Ananda has some 400 residents and has five branch communities in the Western United States, as well as one near Assisi, Italy. The practice of yoga is a way of life at Ananda.
(3) Energization is a series of thirty-nine isometric-type exercises developed by Paramhansa Yogananda in 1917. By tensing and relaxing individual body parts, using one’s will power, there is a subtle current of cosmic energy that enters into the body through the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. While doing the exercises with the eyes closed, one should try visualize the energy flowing into the body and to the area being tensed and relaxed. As a form of preventive medicine, these exercises tone the muscles, strengthen the nervous system, increase blood circulation, and stimulates the digestion process.
Paramhansa Yogananda taught the following technique for healing yourself and others: one on one, or at a distance.
Sit -up straight in chair and concentrate at the spiritual eye. Focus with eyes closed at the point between the two eyebrows and then think of the spiritual eye of the person you want to send healing energy to. (If they are not present, you may have a picture of the person in front of you to visualize them better.) Don’t think of the disease. Think of the healing process, trying to strengthen the healing power in that person. Visualize the healing light going through your medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. Then draw that healing light through the point between the two eyebrows which is the seat of will power in the body. Finally, send the light into the spiritual eye of the person you want to heal or to your own body. For a period of time, fill your/their whole body with that healing light.
Close by affirming aloud, “O Infinite Spirit, Thou art omnipresent, Thou art in all Thy children. Thou art in (name of person). Manifest Thy healing presence in my/his/her body, mind and soul.” Then rub the hands together briskly until you feel a magnetic charge. Place your hands on the body part that needs the energy. Or hold them up, palms out, to send the energy to a person at a distance. Chant Aum three times as you continue to hold up the hands, moving them up and down in space. Visualize sending the energy as long as you feel the inspiration. See that part of the body as being well.
