Divine Will Healing: From the Original Teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda

By Mary Kretzmann

Discover Your Ability to Both Send and Receive Healing Energy

Paramhansa Yogananda taught that “Healing depends on the power of the healer and the receptivity of the patient.”

A treasure trove of the Divine Will Healing techniques of Paramhansa Yogananda: the Yogic System For Supreme Health of Body, Mind, and Spirit from his original teachings.

This book was created as a resource to accompany the Ananda 5-day seminar on Yogananda's healing techniques, and is now a useful resource for anyone who would apply these teachings with sincerity and devotion both for their own healing, and for the healing benefit of others.Each chapter of this book is full of dynamic power and practical techniques by which anyone can begin to heal body, mind, and soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Release date: Jul 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781565895263

Mary Kretzmann

Mary Kretzmann has practiced and taught the healing methods of Paramhansa Yogananda for many years. She is currently writing another book sharing many inspiring stories of healing and transformation that have occurred over the years. This new book, combined with Divine Will Healing, is used in a training course for aspiring healing practitioners.   Mary moved to Ananda Village at age twenty-three with her husband, Timothy Kretzmann. They embraced the spiritual life, and raised their three children with these spiritual ideals. You can read about how to apply these ideals in your own family life, in her free online book, Finding God in Your Family.    Mary teaches online, and at the Expanding Light Retreat, and “on the road.” These classes feature Paramhansa Yogananda’s techniques for physical, mental, and spiritual healing.

Book preview

Divine Will Healing

by Paramhansa Yogananda, 1926

The projected energy of God which brought forth creation is termed Divine Will.

Human will is microcosmic Divine Will.

Divine Will is omnipresent, residing in every unit of Cosmic Energy or Universal Prana.

Divine Will has creative power as well as sustaining power.

Disintegration of Cosmic Energy atoms is constantly taking place in the universe, due to the constant flux and influx motion of maya (repulsion force).

Yet a great force of divine gravitation is constantly pulling all units of energy toward God as the center of everything (attraction force).

The maya-force born of the divine-will-force-to-create constantly tries to keep creation in existence by the law of repulsion. The collision between the creative force of maya and the divine gravitation force towards God causes inharmony in the universe, called disease in human beings.

Due to this soul and mind and body disease or inharmony, we are isolated from God. Hence, disease is anything that keeps us from God-realization.

To harmonize the maya (repulsive force) projecting outwards, and the divine gravitating force drawing inwards, is termed healing.

Hence disease of body, mind, and soul ought to be divinely treated.

TO HEAL OTHERS BY DIVINE WILL

Human will, being limited to the circumference of the body, has to be released and projected in order to use it as a medium for sending cosmic energy to other human organisms.

Method

Practice Hong-Sau meditation, then be calm.

Rub the middle of the forehead in between the eyebrows.

Hold your skin at that place pinchingly.

Concentrate all attention on the touch sensation caused by the pinch.

Then, strongly project will, and try to see the light at the spiritual eye.

Concentrate with utmost faith, and bridge your will with Divine Will.

Go on willing your patient to be cured by thinking your will is running down through his forehead, down his spine and body, to the center of the affected area in his body.

Doubt not, just refuse to investigate if your patient is cured. Just believe, cure, and forget. Don’t talk about your cure to skeptics.

Never say, I cured. Always think that the Divine Will, as your human will, cured the disease. Give the whole credit to the divine healing power and energy. Say, God is the Healer.

EXERCISE IN WILL TO BE A SPIRITUAL HEALER

(a) Practice in the above way, by pinching the forehead, to cure your own physical ills. (E.g., a cold should be cured immediately, just by the power of will.)

(b) Will deeply; believe and forget; do not waver in your mind.

The Law of Divine Healing

Part I: How to Pray Dynamically

Excerpt from Praecepta Lessons, by Swami Yogananda, 1938

PRAECEPTUM PRAYER

Heavenly Father, Thou art present in every atom, every cell, every corpuscle, in every particle of nerve, brain, and tissue. I am well, for Thou art in all my body parts. I shall recognize all disease as the result of my transgressions against health laws, and I shall try to undo the evil by right eating, less eating, fasting, more exercise, and right thinking.

Perfect health is given by God. Disease is man made. The baby who is born blind, or with mental challenges, brings such a condition from a past form of existence. Diseases acquired from the past or created through transgressions of the laws in this life are the results of human error. God wants His children to enjoy health and happiness, but they create disease and sorrow by breaking His laws.

If you enjoy good health for fifty years, and then you are sick for three years, unable to get healed by any method, you will probably forget about the length of time that you enjoyed good health and laughed at the idea of sickness. Now it is exactly the opposite. Just because you have been sick for three years, you probably think that you will never get well again.

There are diseases that result from breaking hygienic laws and the consequent bacterial invasion. There are maladies that result from disobeying the mental laws of being, and the consequent attack of the mental bacteria of fear, anger, worry, greed, temptation, and lack of self-control; and there are diseases that arise from the soul’s ignorance. Do not forget that ignorance is the mother of all physical, mental, and spiritual diseases. Abolish ignorance by contacting God, and forthwith body, mind, and soul will be healed of all maladies.

All diseases are the result of collisions of the brittle inharmonious life with the stone wall of God’s harmony within. Peaceful actions tune in with God’s peace as felt in silence, and the result is happiness. Wrong actions collide with God’s peace and produce unhappiness. A stone wall does not want to hurt the knuckles of the man who strikes it. He hurts himself through his foolishness in not understanding the effect of the wall on his knuckles. Likewise, God is harmony, and when man, who is made in His image, tries to lead an inharmonious life, he hurts himself. God never punishes man. Man punishes himself by reaping the results of his self-created wrong actions.

HUMAN METHODS NOT PERMANENT

The necessity of seeking a sure method of permanently curing physical, mental, and spiritual ills becomes apparent. Permanent cure of all human troubles means the complete absence of any recurrence of physical diseases born of bacteria or accidents, or from any mental or spiritual causes. As repeated visualization of a table laden with good food does not bring food or satisfy hunger, if the table is empty, so also visualization of health may encourage the mind or offer temporary relief, but can never bring permanent health, which is only possible by beholding God in the perfect body-temple. Instead of simply feeling that God is in the body, the soul, mind, and body will be perceived as the perfect manifestation of God Himself. It is after such realization by the deep practice of these lessons that the body can remain permanently healed.

Medicine and doctors cannot guarantee against recurrence of all diseases and cannot guarantee complete healing of mental diseases, and the soul disease of ignorance. The obvious human methods of cure through reading books or by following the advice of friends cannot insure permanent healing of mental and soul troubles. Drinking all the medicines, undergoing countless operations, or reading all the holy books of the world give only temporary relief, but can never destroy the possibility of the recurrence of these threefold physical, mental, and spiritual sufferings. What is the universal panacea that will destroy pain, accidents, and ignorance forever so that the body, mind, and soul may be the perfect image of spirit?

No doubt some medicines have healing power, since God gave herbs and minerals power to affect the body of man. Only a man who can drink a bottle of potassium-cyanide without any ill effects can speak with authority of the delusive power of medicine or matter. We know from experience that medicine has power to heal, as demonstrated by the wonderful healings effected by good drugs and good doctors, but it must be remembered that medicine and doctors have limited power and often reveal their helplessness when confronted with chronic diseases. Therefore, to put your entire trust in medicine and not in God’s unlimited healing power is sure to bring disillusionment.

HEALING THROUGH PRAYER

Just as the thought of swallowing drugs does not heal a bodily disease, so also just the imaginary contact of God through blind prayers cannot produce the desired healing. As darkness cannot remain where there is light, so also, the light of God’s perfect presence felt in the body must drive away the darkness of disease. Few people realize this. Most people make wishes when they are overpowered with a desire for healing. Most people pray with disbelief in their hearts, or with a sense of hopelessness, thinking that God will not listen to prayers. Or they pray and do not wait to find out if their prayer has reached God.

Convince the mind first that all human methods of cure are limited in their healing power, and that only God’s all-permeating, all-healing power is unlimited. While you sit in silence in the morning and evening, and whenever you have time during the day, mentally affirm: Father, Thy unlimited and all-healing Power is in me. Manifest Thy Light through the darkness of my ignorance.

Continuous personal zeal must be put forth. Whether God seems to respond or not, one must never cease loving. The beginner in devotion must not be discouraged if God does not respond to his intense demands immediately. God never fails to listen to all soul-calls, but He does not always respond in the way we want Him to. He has His own mysterious ways. Besides, He consciously responds only when He is sure that the devotee wants Him and Him alone. That is why some saints have been tested with disease, or extreme poverty, or temptation; and when they were found to prefer God to health, life, abundance, or temptation, then God came. If one persists long enough in seeking, one will surely find God at the end of the trail.

You must pray intelligently, with a bursting soul, seldom loudly, mostly mentally, without displaying to anyone what is happening within. Pray intelligently, with the utmost devotion, as if God were listening to everything you were internally and mentally affirming. Pray until He replies to you through the intelligible voice of the utmost bursting joy tingling through every body cell and every thought, or through visible visions depicting what you should do. Pray unceasingly until you are absolutely sure of the divine contact, and then claim your physical, mental, or spiritual needs from the Most High as your divine birthright.

Never mind if you cannot see God or hear His knock at the gate of your heart. For a long time you have been hiding from Him and running away in the marshes of the senses. It is the noise of your own rowdy passions and the flight of your heavy footsteps in the material world that has made you unable to hear His call within. Stop, be calm, pray steadfastly, and out of the silence will loom forth the Divine Presence.

Before going to bed, and upon awakening, mentally and deeply try to broadcast your message: I and my Father are one, or Father, receive me as Thy son again, until your mind microphone, broken by hammers of restlessness, becomes divinely repaired and is able to transmit your demand to God. As a broken microphone cannot broadcast a message, so a restless mind cannot transmit prayers to God. Your prayers are not answered because instead of demanding as a Son of God, Owner of the Universe, you pray after converting yourself into a beggar and prodigal son, roaming in the land of material limitation.

You may say: I know my prayers are answered, for I hear God talking to me. I have demonstrated His response to my prayers. Well, I ask, are you sure that your prayers reached God, and if they did reach Him at all, did He consciously respond to them? What is the proof? You prayed for healing and you became well. Do you know whether your cure was due to natural causes, or medicine, or to your own or another’s prayers bringing help from God? Sometimes there may be no causal relation between your prayer and your cure. You might have been healed even if you had not prayed. This is why we should find out whether the law of cause and effect can be scientifically applied to prayer. It has been said that God responds to law. Some people have experienced this response and have said that all people who conform to the law can test and experience it for themselves. Physical laws have to be interpreted by the physical senses and judged by understanding. Divine laws have to be comprehended by concentration, meditation, and intuition.

HOW TO GAIN PERFECT HEALTH

Health and strength are not synonymous terms. A person may have cultivated great strength in his limbs or in certain muscles by the use of mechanical appliances, but he still may not have good health. The healthy action of the lungs and stomach, for example, is far more important than abnormal strength in the arms, legs, or back. Yogoda Lessons* faithfully practiced will be found to be a sure and effective combatant for bodily diseases and inharmonious conditions of the mind, acting as a healing balm for nervous afflictions and abnormalities. By the aid of these lessons the general vitality can be definitely raised, resulting in a wonderful development of tissue strength and unusual nerve vigor, thereby insuring a longer life. Memory and brainpower can also be increased through greater blood supply. These lessons teach how to consciously send the curative life energy to any diseased body part.

AFFIRMATION

O Heavenly Father, Thou art in my affected bodily part. It is well, for Thou art there. O Heavenly Father, Thou art perfect. I am made in Thy Image. I am perfect.

Part II: The Causes of Disease and How to Prevent Illness

Excerpt from Praecepta Lessons, by Swami Yogananda, 1938

PRAECEPTUM PRAYER

Dear Father, when I am thirsty and drink the cool water, it is Thou who dost give its life to me. When I bathe and am refreshed, I feel Thy cleansing, refreshing power in the water made by Thee. When the sunshine falls upon my face, I feel Thy loving, warm touch. I bow to Thee in the sunshine, in the breeze, in the dawn, in the noon, in the evening light, and in the hearts of loving friends.

If you keep your mental initiative, your willing-to-work attitude, all the time, you will find that your blood will be charged with life current, making it immune against the invasion of bacteria. Keeping yourself smiling from within, pulsating with joy, and ever ready to act, spiritually ambitious in helping others — all these are not only good exercises for the mind, but they keep the body constantly supplied with fresh cosmic energy, descending into the body through the door of the Medulla oblongata. Strong willpower pulls energy from the conscious cosmic rays surrounding the body, through the door of the Medulla oblongata.

Man shall not live by bread (or food chemicals) alone, but by every word (vibratory life energy) which flows (into the body of man) through the ‘mouth of God’ (that is, the opening of the Medulla, through which the conscious cosmic life principle enters the body of man). Hence, you must strengthen your willpower and determination in everything. Your body will then be internally vibrating with life current. A man with strong willpower, by his highly vibrating mind, can shake out disease, failure, and ignorance. But the will vibration must be stronger than the vibration of physical or inner disease. The more chronic the disease, the stronger, steadier, and more unflinching should be the determination, faith, and effort of will to get well.

KEEP YOUR WINDOWS OF LIFE OPEN

Human life can be compared to a house fitted with three windows of the body, mind, and soul. Through these openings come pouring forth the three kinds of divergent, perfect light of God, known as health rays, faculty rays, and wisdom rays. These triad rays are responsible