8th June 2025 was a public holiday in France celebrated by some Christians for the descent of the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit) upon Jesus Christ’s disciples — Pentecost. These extracts from Paramahansa Yogananda’s teachings may help us understand what this energy is.
The Importance of the Comforter or Holy Ghost
“If you love me keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless…
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your rememberance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”(Bible – John 14:15 – 18, 26, 27).
Today, the same admonition applies that Jesus gave to his immediate disciples. If a devotee loves him (that is, loves contact with the Christ Consciousness in him) then he or she must faithfully follow the commandments – the laws of bodily and mental discipline and meditation – which are required to manifest the Christ Consciousness in the individual’s own consciousness.
The promise to send the Holy Ghost after he was gone, few in the Christian world would have understood. “Holy Ghost” is the sacred, invisible vibratory power of God that actively sustains the universe: the Word, or Aum, Cosmic Vibration, the Great Comforter, the Saviour from all sorrows.
The Word: God’s Intelligent Cosmic Vibration
The scientific evolution of cosmic creation from the Creator-Lord is outlined in arcane terminology, in the Old Testament book of Genesis. In the New Testament, The opening verses of Saint John’s Gospel may rightly be called Genesis According to Saint John. Both these profound Biblical accounts, when clearly grasped by intuitive perception, correspond exactly to the spiritual cosmology set forth in the scriptures of India handed down by her Golden Age God-knowing rishis.
Saint John was perhaps the greatest of the disciples of Jesus. […] The records left by Saint John, among the various books of the New Testament, evince the highest degree of divine realization, making known the deep esoteric truths experienced by Jesus and transferred to John. Not only in his gospel, but also in his epistles and especially in the profound metaphysical experiences symbolically described in the Book of Revelation, John presents the truths taught by Jesus from the point of view inward intuitive realization. In John’s word we find precision; that is why his gospel, though last among the four in the New Testament, should be considered the first when the true meaning of the life and teachings of Jesus is sought.
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“In the beginning….” With these words commence the cosmogonies of the Old and New Testament alike. “Beginning” refers to the birth of finite creation, for in the Eternal Absolute—Spirit —there is neither beginning nor end….
Spirit, being the only existing Substance, had naught but itself with which to create. Spirit and Its universal creation could not be essentially different, for two ever-existing Infinite Forces would consequently be absolute, which is by definition an impossibility. An orderly creation requires the duality of the Creator and the created. Thus, Spirit first gave rise to a Magic Delusion, Maya, the cosmic Magical Measurer,1 which produces the illusion of dividing a portion of the Indivisible Infinite into separate finite objects, even as a calm ocean becomes distorted into individual waves on its surface by the action of a storm.
All creation is nothing but Spirit, seemingly and temporarily diversified by Spirit’s creative vibratory activity.
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1 The Sanskrit word Maya (cosmic delusion) means “the measurer”; it is the magical power in creation by which limitations and divisions are apparently present in the Immeasurable and Inseparable.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men (John 1:1 – 4).
“Word” means intelligent vibration, intelligent energy, going forth from God. Any utterance of a word, such as “flower,” expressed by an intelligent being, consists of sound energy or vibration, plus thought, which imbues that vibration with intelligent meaning. Likewise, the Word that is the beginning and source of all created substances is Cosmic Vibration [Holy Ghost] imbued with Cosmic Intelligence [Christ Consciousness].
Thought of matter, energy of which matter is composed, matter itself — all things — are but the differently vibrating thoughts of the Spirit.
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Before creation, there is only undifferentiated Spirit. In manifesting creation, Spirit becomes God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost…. The Unmanifested Spirit became God the Father, the Creator of all creative vibration. God the Father, in the Hindu scriptures, is called Ishvara (the Cosmic Ruler) or Sat (the supreme pure essence of Cosmic Consciousness) — the Transcendental Intelligence. That is, God the Father exists transcendentally untouched by any tremor of vibratory creation — a conscious, separate Cosmic Consciousness.
The vibratory force emanating from Spirit, endowed with the illusory creative power of maya, is the Holy Ghost: Cosmic Vibration, the Word, Aum (Om) or Amen.
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The Word, the creative energy and sound of Cosmic Vibration, like the sound waves of an unimaginably powerful earthquake, went out of the Creator to manifest the universe. That Cosmic Vibration, permeated with Cosmic Intelligence, was condensed into subtle elements — thermal, electric, magnetic, and all manner of rays; thence into atoms of vapour (gases), liquids, and solids.
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A cosmic vibration omnipresently active in space could not of itself create or sustain the wondrously complex cosmos….[Thus] the transcendent consciousness of God the Father became manifest within the Holy Ghost vibration as the Son — the Christ Consciousness, God’s intelligence in all vibratory creation. This pure reflection of God in the Holy Ghost indirectly guides it to create, re-create, preserve, and mould creation according to God’s divine purpose.
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The Holy Ghost: The Vibratory Sound AUM, AMEN
The Biblical writers, not versed in the terminologies that express the knowledge of the modern age, quite aptly used “Holy Ghost” and “the Word” to designate the character of the Intelligent Cosmic Vibration. “Word” implies a vibratory sound, carrying materializing power. “Ghost” implies an intelligent, invisible, conscious force. “Holy” describes this Vibration because it is the manifestation of Spirit; and because it is trying to create the universe according to the perfect pattern of God.
The designation in the Hindu scriptures of this “Holy Ghost” as Aum signifies its role in God’s creative plan: A stands for akara, or creative vibration; u for ukara, preservative vibration; and m for makara, the vibratory power of dissolution. A storm roaring across the sea creates waves, large and small, preserves them for some time, and then by withdrawing dissolves them. So the Aum or Holy Ghost creates all things, preserves them in myriad forms, and ultimately dissolves them in the sea-bosom of God to be again re-created — a continuing process of renewal of life and form in the ongoing cosmic dreaming of God.
Thus is the Word or Cosmic Vibration the origin of “all things”: “without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word existed from the very beginning of creation — God’s first manifestation in bringing forth the universe. “The Word was with God” — imbued with God’s reflected intelligence, Christ Consciousness — “and the Word was God” — vibrations of His own one Being.
Saint John’s declaration echoes an eternal truth resonating in various passages of the hoary Vedas: that the cosmic vibratory Word (Vak) was with God the Father-Creator (Prajapati) in the beginning of creation, when naught else existed; and that by Vak were made all things; and that Vak is itself Brahman (God).
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“These things saith the Amen [the Word, Aum], the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”2 The holy Cosmic Sound of Aum or Amen is the witness of the manifested Divine Presence in all creation.
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2 Revelation 3:14. AUM of the Vedas became the sacred word HUM of the Tibetans, AMIN of the Moslems, and AMEN of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians. The meaning of Amen in Hebrew is “sure, faithful.”
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Extracts from The Yoga of Jesus – Understanding the Hidden Teachings of the Gospels, Selections from the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, published by Self-Realization Fellowship.
