Four years later, in 1940, Yogananda told he had finally managed to lose much weight - about forty pounds in less than four months, and also said: "If you have a tendency to become fat, don't blame your eating habits alone. . . . It is good to be flexible.

"There was a time when I was trying to lose weight . . . and still I saw that days went by and there was no change in my weight. Then I thought: "So, . . . Some people have a tendency toward thinness, and some have a tendency toward fatness. . . . Why should I have to think all the time about diet, diet, diet?"

"'You are losing weight.' I held tenaciously to that thought. . . . I even ate fattening foods, and still I found I was losing steadily.

"After reaching a hundred and eighty pounds, I stabilized myself."

(Yogananda 2002, 175-78, excerpts).

COMMENT. He was just above five feet tall. Yogananda's fellowship today seems to withhold or retouch photos of Yogananda from the years when he had just returned from India, but their Golden Fellowship Booklet (1970) contains some.

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48 - At Encinitas in California

- Harnessing buildings, scenery and good events -

ᴥ Bluffs can be dangerous. The guru's temple on a bluff in Encinitas slid into the sea at Swami's Beach in Encinitas, San Diego county. In an old Self-Realization Magazine he writes he was told by his Mother to seek her in some valley in California. However, when he got a temple and so on on a bluff in Encinitas, he did not follow up his guidance about finding a place in a valley. The temple slid into the sea, and half his swimming-pool on the bluff too. [More about it] Suppression may become a problem and may do havoc to tender hearts. Suppression is a speculation among Freudians and other psychoanalytics about unwelcome content by and large. Threatening content may be barred from awareness by "defence mechanisms" of the ego. The price: They slowly make you unsound of mind, and later unsound in body too, by psychosomatic mechanism. Hard tenseness is a first sign, it seems. Thus, psychoanalys is based on making the client relax - a lot, for long. That is a bit theory and basic practice - but there are many variants, and outcomes of treatment are not certain. (Wikipedia, "Psychoanalysis") Self-Realization Fellowship has not worked a lot for "world brotherhood colonies" after Yogananda. And did not the guru establish himself in a wrong place since large parts of it slid into the sea? Foresight is something to thank for. So: Bluffs and suppressions leave their marks on land and in minds of men. ⚴

Main parts of the site that Yogananda was given at Encinitas when he returned from India slid into the sea. Before it came that far, he was happy there. He travelled some too.

One day in Boston the dentist Minott Lewis said to him, smiling, "During your early years in America you stayed in this city in a single room, without bath. I wanted you to know . . .!"

The Second World came. Which side was Yogananda on? A direct Yogananda disciple writes that Yogananda said it was he who influenced Hitler to attack the Soviet Union during World War II. If he bluffed, it is bad. If he did not bluff, it is also bad. "Yogananda . . . During World War II he said it was he who placed the thought in Hitler's mind to invade Russia." (Kriyananda 2011:131).

Yogananda does not write of it in the Autobiography. The US government and the Nuremberg tribunal did not get to "rebuke him a million times" or start any witchhunt before Yogananda's passing in 1952. His fellowship anyway says he is Embodied Love.

One day, strolling in the Encinitas sunshine, he told his dentist disciple who came visiting, that "a project I have long considered is beginning to take definite form. In these beautiful surroundings I have started a miniature world colony" that might eventually "inspire other ideal communities over the earth."

"A splendid idea, sir!"

ᴥ A Yogananda theme the Fellowship ousted out "Thousands of youths must go North, South, East and West to cover the earth with little colonies, demonstrating that simplicity of living plus high thinking lead to the greatest happiness!" - Paramahansa Yogananda at a garden party in Beverly Hills on July 31, 1949. The first edition of the Autobiography ends with enthusiasm for colonies [read: communities]. Yogananda wanted to start a model world-brotherhood colony [community] in Encinitas in northern San Diego county. For all that, "Encinitas is gone!" he lamented toward the end of his life, but it is still there. Encinitas is a city of almost 60,000 people in our times (2010). This raises an interesting sidelight as well: Yogananda claimed he could manifest anything by his will. Despite that, he lamented a lot over his Golden Lotus temple there after it had slid into the sea. And whatever he meant by "Encinitas is gone," his laments indicate he was not really good at bringing perfectly well together his oratory and some life happenings. For all that, the idea of world-brotherhood communities as in Encinitas remained important to him. However, from the eighth edition of the Autobiography, edited by Yogananda disciples in his Fellowship, and in all later SRF editions of it, the brotherhood colony "aim and ideal" was changed to read: "To encourage "plain living and high thinking"; and to spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples by teaching the eternal basis of their unity: kinship with God." That is certainly different from what Yogananda wanted. [◦More] Dropping some of his guidelines while claiming his guidelines are infallible - SRF does - may be called a cause of embarrassment and shame.

Yogananda: "Far into the night my dear friend — the first kriya yogi in America — discussed with me the need for world colonies.

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Added material

Yogananda and his Fellowship after 1945

Towards the end of the 1940s Yogananda remained mostly in a desert cottage in Twenty-Nine Palms, California. In his will the leadership of the organization was to be laid on Janakananda (born James Jesse Lynn, 1892–1955) after Yogananda was gone.

Often Yogananda was not fully in touch with the world when he came away from the cottage. A disciple recounts, "He could not walk on his own from the intoxication. We had to hold him up as we walked." Yogananda was saying, "Where am I? . . . Where am I going?" This happened regularly during his last days.

It was at or near Twenty-Nine Palms he took a female disciple, known as Mrinalini Mata (1931–2017), with him to watch an UFO, some have been told: At an SRF convocation at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in 1971 the SRF minister Bhaktananda (1914–2005) recounted the happening to a group of listeners, me included.

In March 1952 there was another gathering at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. After his speech there, Yogananda - who had been suffering from high blood pressure - breathed his last. As the final speaker, when he went to take his seat, suddenly his body collapsed. He died of heart attack, said the doctor who examined him.

Yogananda's enbalmed dead body remained without much decay for twenty-one days. In 1957 Dasgupta asked Sister Daya [later: Daya Mata (1914-2010)] about this matter, and she said, "On the twenty-first day, a white spot was seen on the tip of the nose -- the first sign of flesh beginning to decompose. Then we buried his body without any further delay." (Dasgupta 2006, 104) However, the Mortuary Director, Harry Rowe, writes it was a brown spot on the tip of the nose, and it appeared after 20 days. The spot was about one-fourth inch in diameter, and indicated that drying up might be starting. The whole report is here; SRF most often brings some flattering parts of it only: [Yogananda's Official Mortuary Report]

Janakananda died of pneumonia in 1955. From then Sister Daya took over along with her mother and sister, all of Mormon origin, like Mrinalini Mata (1931–2017), later SRF's editor-in-chief and the SRF president after Daya from 2010. Since 2017 Swami Chidananda has been the SRF president.

SRF invests much in publishing books of Yogananda. [Post mortem Autobiography editing] - [Substantial editing of other books too]

After 1955, many kriya initiators left the organisation for some reasons.

The SRF management soon took to forgery in "small" matters, such as what how Paramhansa was to be written. The attorney Jon Parsons writes in A Fight for Religious Freedom, chap. 7:

In the summer of 1958, after Sister Daya's trip to India, SRF suddenly changed the spelling of Yogananda's title from "Paramhansa" to "Paramahansa." Without announcement or explanation, an extraneous "a" mysteriously appeared in Yogananda's title beginning with the July-August 1958 issue of Self-Realization [the SRF magazine]. . . The change was unnecessary . . . If Yogananda could not get his own name right, how could he be trusted . . . ? If it was a minor thing, why bother at all? . . . Maybe SRF figured . . . it was their job to clean up after him. . . .

[So SRF changed] his signature as well as his name . . . using scissors and paste. If you look closely at the "Paramahansa" used by SRF since 1958, you can see how someone carefully cut out the first "a" from Yogananda, and inserted it after the letters "Param." Goodness. Why . . . such subterfuge?

Charlatanry has many forms and outlets. [Autobiography] - [Editing] - [Other works]

Lola Williamson says, "Disagreements about how the organization should be run and how Yogananda's words should be interpreted have existed throughout SRF's history, occasionally erupting into organizational crises." (Williamson 2010:75)

The Yogananda-biographer Sailendra Dasgupta informs that under the Daya leadership [1955–2010] SRF and its Indian twin organisation, YSS (of 1917)

Many of the men and women who where older disciples of the order either removed themselves from the central organization or were forced out - not only in America, but in India as well. (Dasgupta 2006:106)

Williamson highlights further:

SRF is hierarchical in its approach with the Board [of management] essentially controlling the decision-making process. Former disgruntled members of SRF credit this top-down mentality with creating an unhealthy organization. (Williamson 2010:75)

More specifically,

A labyrinth of difficulties beset the organization. Some people could not even sit in the same room with others because there was so much bad feeling. . . . SRF hire[d] outside communication and organizational consultants to offer advice on how to handle the situation. They also suggested that SRF hire counselors and psychologists to deal with the festering psychological problems that some of the monastics seemed to be experiencing. Two new committees . . . were formed to execute the suggestions made by the consultants. This was the beginning of a split among the monks and nuns who resided at the Mother Center. Some viewed the promise of change with exhilaration and hope; and some viewed it with fear. The end result was that a large number of monastics left SRF from about 2000 to 2001. Due to the entrenched resistance to change, the communication consultants were let go, the existing committee members replaced by others content with the status quo, and the psychologists relieved of their duties. It may be that so many people needed to talk to the counselors that the leadership became fearful of losing control. They reverted to the old style of dealing with problems, which, as the SRF catchphrase goes, is to "take it to your altar:' (Williamson 2010:76)

In five years after 2000, one third of the fellowship's monastics left the premises. But many years before that again, Daya Mata had left the building (Mt. Washington headquarters) too. Nearly none in her society knew about it. For about thirty years she lived in a villa with a view to the mountains, while monks and nuns of the SRF order thought she lived at the headquarters. After a Los Angeles newspaper published the story, about fifty monks, nuns and novices were reported to have left the premises. (Russel 2000; cf. Parsons 2012, 170)

For the faults of the many - run away!

As for the SRF kriya yoga methods, some are different from the traditional ones, as Swami Satyeswarananda has laid bare. [Deviations]

Dasgupta (2006) confirms some changes that Yogananda and SRF made.

Lola Williamson goes a bit deeper into this topic:

According to SRF tradition, these techniques, other than the energization exercises, were known in ancient India but were forgotten. In actuality, the techniques have been used continually in many yoga and tantra traditions throughout India. . . . (Williamson 2010:58, emphasis added)

Such information could become intensely embarrassing to SRF, because it disproves one of the SRF tenets - an SRF cornerstone, really. Thus, kriya is no great secret after all.

A former SRF vice president, Kriyananda, sums up SRF strivings over decades. You can read more on them yourself, although it is hard for an outsider to penetrate these strivings from years ago. [More]

Not all kriya practitioners and initiators of "Lahiri's kriya yoga" belong to the SRF organization. Some initiators have fled, and from India several forms of kriya yoga are free and explained in books and in other ways Satyananda Yoga. (Satyananda, 1981; 19)

Contrary to such "kriya for you" approaches, SRF puts an oath of unconditional loyalty to six gurus in the way of those who are crazy enough to commit themselves to swearing in the name of Jesus, who said no to swearing and yes to slavery, for example. "We are all a little bit crazy," Yogananda and Daya Mata are known to say. SRF calls for oath-binding. (Cf. Dasgupta 2006, 109)

❋ Otherwise consider: "How a little love and good company improves a woman!" [George Farquhar] Mere aims and ideals hardly ever do.

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Former Aims and Ideals of Yogananda

The first publication of Yogananda's aims and ideals that we have come across, was not thoughtful enough if you consider widespread food allergies. About half of the school children in Scandinavia contract allergy and asthma, for example.

The second version of the Aims and Ideals follows the first.

First Aims and Tenets of the Yogoda Sat-Sanga Movement (i.e., Self-Realization Fellowship)

1. Universal all-round education, and establishment of educational institutions for the development of man's physical, mental and spiritual natures.
2. Contacting Cosmic Consciousness - the ever-new, ever-existing, ever-conscious Bliss-God through the scientific technique of concentration and meditation taught by the Masters of all ages.
3. Attaining bodily health through the "Yogoda" technique of recharging the body-battery from inner life-energy.
4. Intelligently maintaining the physical body on unadulterated foods, including a large percentage of raw fruits, vegetables and nuts [Someone: "I am allergetic to nuts! - which should make the need for permanant healing (next issue) all the more needed. Uha."].
5. Physical, mental and spiritual healing.
6. Establishing, by a scientific system of realization, the absolute basic harmony and oneness of Christianity, Hindu Yoga teachings, and all true religions.
7. Serving all mankind as one's larger Self.
8. Demonstrating the superiority of mind over body, and of soul over mind.
9. Fighting the Satan of Ignorance - man's common enemy. [The thoughtful one: "If Satan of Ignorance orders me to eat nuts, he could kill me by that directive, if my allergetic reactions are severe. Uha again."]
10. Establishing a spiritual unity among all nations.
11. Overcoming evil by good, overcoming sorrow by joy; overcoming cruelty by kindness. [The allergetic one: "The drive to ask someone like me to eat plenty of nuts can and should be overcome by kindness or healing, and preferably both of them."]
12. Realization of the purpose of life as being the evolution from human consciousness into divine consciousness, through individual struggle.
13. Realization of the truth that human life is given to man to afford him opportunity to manifest his inner divine qualities, and not for physical pleasure nor selfish gratifications.
14. Furthering the cultural and spiritual understanding between East and West, and the constructive exchange of the distinctive features of their civilizations. [Someone: (1) "I think I have done something by pointing out that individual needs and difficulties are problems that need good, individually adapted solutions as seems fit. (2) I see that North and South are often missing in the guru's line of thinking, and concern for persons on northern altitudes seldom surfaces with the same force as east-west thinking, which is much depending on the eye of the beholder or speaker too."]
15. Uniting science and religion through study and practical realization of the unity of their underlying principles. [Someone: "It may not work well, as the one depends on some deviation which opens up to durable findings and so on, and the other moves stealthily or tip-toes in great conformity basically, and finds pleasures in punishing transgressions too."]

Source: East West 1928, Vol 3, No 3. [The text of that issue]

Current Aims and ideals of Self-Realization Fellowship

Set forth by Paramahansa Yogananda, founder

Here come the SRF-reworked SRF ideals and aims. In other words, the first set was not good enough. But the second set has its great flaws too; there should be no question about that. For example, take a look at the concept "original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ". It is a bluff. Besides, the original kriya works by special breathing for a long time. To see a kriya yoga explained, there is Satyananda Yoga. Its kriya system is freely dispensed, and is described in very good repository books (compendiums) on kriya (Satyananda 1981; 2001).

The SRF array of aims and ideal is also in the 13th edition of Autobiography of a Yogi (1998, 432), in many SRF published books, and on this SRF address: [◦Link]

• To disseminate among the nations a knowledge of definite scientific techniques for attaining direct personal experience of God. — The techniques are not exactly scientific, at least it has not been fairly documented. Rather the art of meditation rests on deep principles of life, and mastery of the methods that employ the most helpful of them. TM - worth a try?
• To teach that the purpose of life is the evolution, through self-effort of man's limited mortal consciousness into God Consciousness; — Strangely, SRF also goes for "get rid of the ego", and these two Yogananda notions - of evolving the ego (I) and killing the ego (0) - do not go well along together . . . — and to this end to establish Self-Realization Fellowship temples for God-communion throughout the world, and to encourage the establishment of individual temples of God in the homes and in the hearts of men.
• To reveal the complete harmony and basic oneness of original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ and original Yoga as taught by Bhagavan Krishna; — That "complete harmony" is is missing: Yogananda, however, teaches the soul (atman) is immortal [Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda 1980:25]; Jesus says it can be destroyed in hell. — and to show that these principles of truth are the common scientific foundation of all true religions — Conflicting words and faiths in fine-looking garbs that hide and obscure instead of clarify, are wrongly mated.
• To point out the one divine highway to which all paths of true religious beliefs eventually lead: the highway of daily, scientific, devotional meditation on God. — "Scientific devotional", alas again. You do not need devotion to meditate, unless you define it as Shankara does, in his Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, v. 16-34, or being intent on your own Self. That is good. It is also fine to cultivate skilfulness. Buddhism talks for that. Also, good methods can help both the inward-going and more fit living - Much research shows how Transcendental Meditation helps best among the tested methods by and large.
• To liberate man from his threefold suffering: physical disease, mental inharmonies, and spiritual ignorance. — To liberate man from garbled and misleading SRF verbiage, is not bad, accordingly.
• To encourage "plain living and high thinking"; and to spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples by teaching the eternal basis of their unity: kinship with God. "Plain living" means something more than living on a plain.
• To demonstrate the superiority of mind over body, of soul over mind.
• To overcome evil by good, sorrow by joy, cruelty by kindness, ignorance by wisdom.
• To unite science and religion through realization of the unity of their underlying principles..
• To advocate cultural and spiritual understanding between East and West, and the exchange of their finest distinctive features. — North and South is left out of this - Tsk, tsk..
• To serve mankind as one's larger Self. — If mankind is not your larger Self, then what?

Words and actions differ at times.
What they do and carry through
Is what really matters.

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Demotic

Demotic: of, relating to, or written in a simplified form of the ancient Egyptian hieratic writing. (Merriam-Webster).

A time in misfortune does not make the man of god give up. (Papyrus Insinger)

Do not abandon a woman of your house when she does not become pregnant or give birth.

Do not do a thing that you have not first examined. (Ankhsheshonq)

Do not make many words. (Ankhsheshonq)

Do not send a wise man in a small matter when a big matter is waiting.

Do not start a fire if you cannot put it out. [Probably] (Ankhsheshonq)

Enjoy yourself with whom you wish as long as no fool joins you. (Papyrus Insinger)

If a crocodile loves a donkey it puts on a wig. (Ankhsheshonq)

Let your heart not sink!

[More Egyptian Wisdom]

Finally, "The daily life of city dwellers today is technically a form of mild but persistent torture . . . And all call it 'progress'." (West 1993, 26)