Donald Walters, now known as Swami Kriyananda -- who heads Ananda Sangha – shares some of the yogi’s thoughts. Man was given ego-consciousness to inspire him to seek God. That is the only reason for his existence, job, friends, personal interests: these things, by themselves, mean nothing.

A professor from Columbia University came to lunch with the Master in his third-floor interview room at Mount Washington. I served them, and after lunch sat it in the room and took notes while they conversed. At a certain point in their discussion, the professor asked, “Do your teachings help people to be at peace with themselves?” “They do indeed,” the Master answered, “but that is the least they do. We teach people all how to be at peace with their Creator.”

The Columbia professor had a probing mind.

Among many questions, he asked, “How do you distinguish between yourself and your followers?” “All are waves on the same, one ocean,” the Master replied, “composed, as the ocean water is, of the same substance: Spirit. Some of the waves are higher than others. Some waves don’t even want to distance themselves from the ocean. All waves, no matter how high, are in essence one and the same.

The difference between the guru and the disciples, then, lies only in their respective closeness to the ocean: in how conscious each one is of his essential reality. The greater the sense of ego, the taller the wave, and the greater, in consequence, the ignorance. The greater one’s awareness of the ocean as one’s sole reality, the smaller the wave, and also the less his sense of having a separate individuality.”

Professor: “Is there a difference, then, of evolution?”

The Master: “That much is true if we understand evolution to mean a progressive refinement of awareness. The tall waves participate more exuberantly in the play of delusion. The little waves, which are more enlightened, are no longer excited by the play. Enlightened beings enjoy everything, not for itself, but as a ‘play’ of God’s.”

The professor asked: “Is there any end to evolution?”

The Master replied, “No end. You go on until you achieve endlessness.”

“Is man important in the scheme of things?” the professor wants to know.“Man is important in one sense only,” the Master tells him. “He was made in the image of God: That is his importance. He is not important for his body, ego, or personality. His constant affirmation of ego-consciousness is the source of all his problems.”

At another point in the conversation, the Master tells us, “Man was given ego-consciousness to inspire him to seek God. That is the only reason for his existence, job, friends, personal interests: these things, by themselves, mean nothing.”

“What is the difference,” asks the professor, “between science and religion in the search for truth?”

“True religion,” the Master replies, “is not theology. It is born of deep, inner communion with God. True religion teaches us, for example, how to become the atom, whereas theology, at most, only discusses the atom. Science studies the nature of the atom outwardly, proving its existence by experimentation. Inner religion, however, goes beyond experimentation to actual experience. It helps one to cognize, by direct experience, his oneness with the atom at its vital center.”

The professor, poses another question: “Which came first: the tree or the seed?”

“The tree came first,” the Master answers without hesitation, “as the idea of a deed precedes the deed itself. The tree was, in this way, a special creation. God, when He set the process in motion, gave the tree seeds that it might produce other trees like itself. “Everything, at first,” he added, “is an idea, a special creation.”

He adds: “People spend too much time fussing over their persons and possessions. What a waste it is, to devote so much energy to polishing, polishing, polishing this little body, home, and belongings – all of which, so very soon, must be abandoned forever!”

On the importance of a guru, the Master says: “If you go to a doctor and get a prescription from him, but after your return home, you tear it up and toss it away, how do you expect to get well? The guru is a spiritual ‘doctor’. It isn’t sufficient merely to have a guru: You must do what he tells you. 

If you follow his prescription even a little bit, your life will be transformed. Everyone who practices what he learns here will pass through the portals of death into the radiant kingdom of light. Don’t expect to get there, however, if you merely depend passively on the guru – like a suppositious patient whom one may imagine framing his prescription and hanging it on a wall—as if expecting the writing itself to make him well! And don’t think to get there by merely ‘hanging on’ grimly to the end! Go on with steadfast faith, devotion, and joy. Long before you reach your divine goal, you will have realized how sweet life can be when it is lived rightly. You will be glowing with inner radiance, vitality, and happiness!”

The Master categorically states: “If you practice even a hundredth part of what I teach you, you will reach God.”