Autobiography of a Yogi Review

Yogananda Propaganda

"When in doubt, win the trick." - Edmund Hoyle.

• "Truth will out"
• Say no to kriya crawling to your loss
• Syringes
• Compare with a Yogananda biography
• Later SRF-editing of the book
• A cult's teachings
• SRF's alarming kriya yoga pledge
• Great confusion into the bargain
• Hinduisation of key Christian concepts
• At least dislike dictator mentalities
• No cultist review
• Yogananda changed kriya
• Great dissatisfaction in the SRF kriya yogi ranks
• Summary

"TRUTH WILL OUT". Most who learn about the guru Yogananda, do so through his Autobiography, which is now published and heavily edited by SRF, Yogananda's fellowship. It is a sect, says a former editor there (below). Others say "cult", and they include former members, such as monastics that left the SRF premises around 2001. As much as one third of the SRF monastics left the SRF premises at that time.

Many tough experiences I had after reading the book were the effects of "hard clowning" on the side of SRF. For example, the book talks for certain ideals - but some of the ideals the fellowship has dropped later. Such disharmonies have disappointed many, and also myself.

Now, in reading a book from far away, a book embedding different values and beliefs, there are good reasons to be on one's guard. The forerunner of this book review appeared for some months (2007-2008) on Amazon.com as the "best critical review". What follows is enlarged from it. To me, some of the most telling sides to Yogananda's autobiography are:

• Impressive and motivational stories.
• Yogananda speculation, that is, assertions without proof;
• Abuse of scriptures to "legitimise" Babaji's kriya yoga, which Yogananda changed.
• Results: a following, especially in California. Recently, Yogananda's fellowship SRF - which is also the publishers of later edition of the book, has been classified as a cult. They have edited Yogananda's autobiography heavily. I would say the book opens up for guru submission, and later SRF submission too, and leader submission is a mark of a cult. It should be worthwhile heading that.

The yogi author of the book, a Hindu monk, also presents hinduised abuse of the standard Christian faith and its scripture to legitimise reincarnation (the idea of previous lives), in part by twisting the concepts, in part by misinterpreting, in part by making his own spin on the faith. His infiltration work has led a Catholic professor, Father Matheo, to charge the guru with heresy.

SAY NO TO KRIYA CRAWLING TO YOUR LOSS . . . As you can see, there are things to be aware of, also about a quite innocent-looking book that deals with the fantastic and exaggerates. Let the handy acronym AIR-BOC help you to have a handle on some of those issues as you please as you seek fair, unbiased information about strange issues in a yogi's book. It was written to impress the readers and alert to a breathing method called kriya yoga. Core kriya yoga, ujjayi, is explained here: [LINK].

If your interest in learning kriya is awakened, relax. Much of what Yogananda writes about it goes unverified, parts looks hugely exaggerated, parts differ from the kriya system his own gurus taught. It pays to look through the guru's hype and avoid submitting to him to learn kriya too. There reasons are many. One of them is that he publicly hailed dictatorship in 1933, another is the wrong demands on unconditional submission to him and five more said gurus. Anyone who learns kriya through SRF has to make a kriya oath to that end, against gospel sayings that say no to swearing and having other masters than Jesus, and so on. [MORE]

You don't have to crawl on your belly to learn kriya yoga, the hong-so method of watching the breath, and even the method of listening to subtle sounds, the Om technique. They are publicly known methods, and have been so for centuries, some of them. And you should know that other organisations teach kriya yoga freely. Thus, several of the meditation methods taught by the church and fellowship that Yogananda set up, can be learnt in freedom elsewhere. Satyananda Yoga is one such line. It teaches kriya yoga and other methods freely, without severe strings attached, if any such strings at all. I am awfully thankful for that. [A COMPARISON]

SYRINGES. When I first read the Autobiography of a Yogi in Danish translation it made me enter Self-Realization Fellowship and ignore the syringes in the book. They may inject "sand in your system" - things like:

• Romantic idealisations of things Indian, through many occult stories written in a greatly devotional frame of mind.
• Swollen Yogananda ideas that are not really backed up, but wrapped in by "the scriptures aver", the ancient rishis (seers) found" etc. Yogananda has not specified which scriptures says man needs a million years to reach cosmic consciousness. He does not tell just which rishis found that gold, silver, other metals and gems can protect against planetary influences either. He says much else, including that man can become immortal here on earth by the kriya yoga he teaches. But it does not happen to everyone who learns kriya yoga in his tradition or a good one.
• Unsubstantiated notions of kriya efficacy and the like: Yogananda's autobiography does not tell that he made changes to the kriya methods. He left out parts that are claimed to be essential by others in his kriya yoga tradition, and simplified the kriyas too. Nor does Yogananda tell that he left out the kriya prospects of his own guru and made his own and far more optimistic ones instead. It shows up from the works of Yogananda and his guru Yukteswar that Yogananda claimed his methods worked twelve times faster than the kriyas he was taught himself, and that the evolution they speed up, normally would take a million years. His guru, however, wrote 12 million years. Here is one of the "hidden syringes" that may numb higher mental faculties. [MORE]

COMPARE WITH A YOGANANDA BIOGRAPHY. A Yogananda biography called Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences (iUniverse, 2006), by a kriya yogi who knew Yogananda personally and well, throws added light on Yogananda's writings. The Yogananda biography shows Yogananda hid many rather vital unpleasantries from his readers, including tense quarrels with his guru (p. 85). The biographer even questions that Yogananda's guru bestowed on him the title Paramhansa - it is a Hindu monk title. Swami is another Hindu monk title:

[One] day, Ananda-da -- Ananda Mohan Lahiri -- was with us. It was almost nightfall. Maharaj ji [Yogananda's guru Yukteswar] was standing on the upstairs veranda and someone was standing next to him. Ananda-da and the writer [Dasgupta] were downstairs. Before going upstairs, Yoganandaji went to a drainage spot, a bit apart from the area, and began to urinate into the drainage passage. This caught Gurudev's [Yukteswar's] attention and he cryptically joked, "Yogananda has become a 'paramhansa' [great swan, or great soul]!" After urinating, Yoganandaji saw Ananda-da standing at the front door and quietly said, "Ananda-da! Did you hear? Swamiji [Sriyukteshvarji] called me a 'paramhansa!'" Later, Ananda-da laughed and said to the writer, "You'll see. Yogananda will one day use this title!" (p. 84)

The Autobiography is filled with stories of the miraculous. However, the Yogananda biographer questions some of the tales. "When examined with an investigative eye, many of the accounts could have been caused by ordinary means, nevertheless, in Swamiji's perception, all happened supernaturally. (p. 101)"

And with reference to an alleged meeting of Yogananda and a secretive yogi called Babaji, the biographer writes:

Yoganandaji was a man who lived in the world of imagination and spiritual feelings. He saw some things directly and some things with the eyes of his feelings. Toward the end, he often did not perceive a difference between the two (p. 99).

It could be well to keep these points in mind throughout Yogananda's book. "Towards the end" was when he wrote and edited his autobiography.

LATER SRF-EDITING OF YOGANANDA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Another problem with the SRF editions of the Autobiography after Yogananda's passing - not this one - is heavy editing. The SRF publishers has made a thousand changes. Some of them are minor and non-essential, whereas others reflect the drift of Yogananda's fellowship sectward during four decades.

SRF has never stopped editing this book. They have made changes to the text, as well as adding, deleting, and editing photographs, captions, end pages, footnotes, and publisher's notes. These include . . . changes altering the history of events in Yogananda's life as he told them, changes to direct quotations as he gave them, and insertions of statements of institutional authority which directly contradict Yogananda's own statement of his vision for the spread of his teachings . . . and his name was given a new spelling seven years after his death." [Ananda Sangha India, "Why Read the First Edition . . ."]

The SRF publishers, who bought back the copyright to the book in late 1953, took to an "editing spree" which includes signature forgery. Well-well, at least you escape 'Paramahansa' in this first edition. [More] Yogananda Rediscovered writes:

SRF has made a vast number of changes to Autobiogr[ap]hy of a Yogi since Paramhansa Yogananda died that change such essential elements of his teachings as Kriya Yoga, the monastic vs. the householder life, communities as an ideal lifestyle for householder devotees. A great many of the changes make it seem as if Yogananda himself gave more emphasis to SRF as an institution than he actually did. [Link]

Wikipedia's article, "Autobiography of a Yogi", contains some more detail:

Some of the changes made over the years include: significant edits to Yogananda's poem Samadhi, the removal of two poems ("God, God, God," and "The Soundless Roar"), the addition of numerous footnotes, and the editing of countless passages, including direct quotes. Yogananda wrote a note announcing his editing changes for the 1951 edition, the last published during his lifetime. There was no note from Yogananda in later editions to confirm that he wanted changes made to his autobiography after his death . . .

During his lifetime, Yogananda always signed his name with the spelling 'Paramhansa' . . . In the 1959 edition of the Autobiography of a Yogi, seven years after Yogananda died, the publishers altered the signature by copying and pasting an extra 'a' from a different part of the signature.

Such SRF doings are tough to deal with for guys who have succumbed to SRF versions throughout.

A CULT'S TEACHINGS. The publisher of later editions of the book, Self-Realization Fellowship, is recognised as a cult by Watchman Fellowship Expositor and SermonIndex.net, and not a few former SRF monastics (see the SRF Walrus). Further, the former editor of Yogananda's autobiography, Tara Mata (Laurie Pratt), once said: "We are a sect." [Kriyananda. A Place Called Ananda, ch. 14.]

"What they basically are is sort of an offshoot of Eastern Mysticism . . . it is a religion . . . a form of Eastern Mysticism." - John MacArthur Jr..

Unknown to many, Hinduism consists of cults and their hailed scriptures.

With Ralph W. Emerson, SRF has said that an organisation is the lenghtening shadow of a man. To the degree that lengthening shadow is a cult, the organisation and its fellowship is authoritarian. Yogananda's enormous stress on devotion, submission and veneration by words and customs in the book, are factors that coincide with authoritarianism and also the rise of cults in Hinduism, historically. [Ebu, sv "Hinduism: The history of Hinduism"]

SRF'S ALARMING KRIYA YOGA PLEDGE. Much of the content of the autobiography promotes kriya yoga, which go greatly unresearched by SRF, despite the hype about it. Some changes in the book from the earliest editions promote the church of SRF by monopolising the transmission of kriya yoga. And to learn the Yogananda's simplified kriya yoga through Self-Realization Fellowship, you have to swear an oath that demands unconditional submission to six unmet gurus on your part, and with no good regret buttons. The drummed up gurus teach differently on vital subjects, as has been shown, but SRF says foolishly they are in complete harmony. A false harmony is not good for you.

Example: The Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita teaches that those who say the world is illusory, are demoniac. [16:7-8]. And Yogananda teaches the world is illusory: "There is no material universe; its warp and woof is . . . illusion." [Autobiography, ch. 30]. That should make him a demoniac, then. It is too hard for me to see the complete harmony of such divergent teachings.

Krishna and Yogananda are "faithfully" presented as SRF gurus - Jesus too, even directly against some of his gospel sayings, such as the one against having more than one master (himself). You do not have to be a believer to point to things like that.

If you want to stick to freedom from authoritarian submission, there are other societies that teach kriya yoga without such strings attached. In Satyananda's Yoga Kriya Yoga may be learnt in courses or from books, for example.

[MORE]

GREAT CONFUSION INTO THE BARGAIN. Also, the publishers, SRF, teaches that the teachings of the six gurus - Krishna and Jesus are among them - are in complete harmony [13th ed. p 432]. Well, they are not. One more example: Jesus teaches the soul can be destroyed [Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:4-6; Matthew 5:29], whereas Yogananda and Krishna teach it is immortal [eg, in Yogananda. Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, p. 25; Bhagavad Gita 2:19]. However, Krishna also says some are fit for gaining immortality [Bhagavad Gita 2:15; 13:13; 14:20], so his teachings are not clear-cut, at least not to me (The Bhagavad Gita is a medley of ancient doctrines, actually. [Wy 8-12]).

However, since Yogananda repeatedly teach the world is illusion, a dream only, his ideas and SRF's teachings can be nothing more than dreams, and his fake harmony is dreamt up too. The sad thing is that some of his notions may entangle cultist minds for a life-time, if not longer, and that the Bhagavad Gita 16:7-8 disclaims those who teach the world is illusory, as demoniacs.

HINDUISATION OF KEY CHRISTIAN CONCEPTS. In the Yogananda universe there is Hinduisation of Christian concepts as well. Yogananda says things about God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that are not substantiated in the gospels. He drops many hallmarks of the triune Christian godhead too in his "off-hand" theology. [LINK] - which has been charged with being heretic by the Catholic Father, Matheo. [LINK]

Elliot Miller writes along this vein:

Although SRF's attempts to promote unity between Hinduism and Christianity appear commendable on the surface, such a goal can be achieved only by subtly glossing over significant, irreconcilable differences between the two. In the end, we find Hinduism unscathed by the transaction, while Christianity becomes stripped of its defining and distinguishing characteristics.. [Elliot Miller. Swami Yogananda and the Self-Realization Fellowship: A Successful Hindu Countermission to the West. [More]

A cavalcade of undermining twists and tricks have to be dealt with too, but hope is hardly fit for it. Demagogy-inspired hopes may affect one's living if seriously, fervently adhered to.

AT LEAST DISLIKE DICTATOR MENTALITIES. I find fervent, bombastic attempts at glorification and hailing of a guru who in his time hailed dictatorship in writing, to be rather annoying.

The average man cannot think clearly . . . He needs the master mind of a Dictator in order to think right and do right." - Yogananda, East-West Magazine, No. 6, 1933]

Adding to some ignored sides to Yogananda, the biographer Dasgupta also reveals that the adult Yogananda, afraid of ghosts for years [Psy 112], bluffed a generous maharaja into giving him the means for having a school at Ranchi. The maharaja wanted to see the school Yogananda had started, but it had only one pupil. "Some others had to be called in to present themselves as brahmacharya-students, at least for that day, in front of the Maharaja . . . these youths were dressed up as little brahmacharis." See behind the mask of words: others did not have to be called in to make a finer impression on the maharaja than the one-pupil school deserved. The were rigged up as a result of greed, but hardly greed on their own part. The maharaja "was enchanted by seeing the brahmachari-garbed youths" and enthusiastically promised to take up the financial responsibility for the establishing and daily running of the school. Trickery and cheating for great gains - that is uncivil and unbecoming. [Psy 40-41].

Such interesting parts of the "CV" are omitted from Yogananda's autobiography too, and that is quite interesting in a sad way too.

Yogananda's biographer Dasgupta is somewhat equivocal: on the one hand he uses the -ji endings and Master, and Gurudeva labeling and all that. On the other hand he was trained in being true . . .

NO CULTIST REVIEW. Guru hailing does not necessarily make guru or bizarre hailer great. Many of the 225 reviews of the Autobiography on Amazon.com are rather biased and reflect guru cult adherence and very emotional attachments, even to obvious guru-fraud.

The proof of a meditation technique lies in research as well as subjective experiences. A few research studies have been done on kriya yoga, but none by Yogananda's fellowship. They did not think they were served by sound research, they wrote me some years ago, when I offered to conduct it.

Some Yogananda followers falsely claim the guru was an example of his simplified kriya yoga. However, in his Autobiography he writes he was enlightened by the kriya that a guru gave Yogananda's guru Yukteswar, and a knock on the chest [chapter 14]. And in chapter 12 he writes of the transmission of kriya yoga methods: "Sri Yukteswar chose the following morning to grant me his Kriya Yoga initiation. The technique I had already received from two disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya - Father and my tutor, Swami Kebalananda."

Yogananda changed the kriyas in 1925. Traditionalist kriya yogis do not feel for his changes. It appears that Yogananda lost enthusiasm for SRF too, considering that starting it was one of his blunders. [Link 1] [Link 2].

There are bad reasons for downplaying such information. [MORE].

YOGANANDA CHANGED KRIYA. Yogananda simplified kriya, and then claimed it was 12 times more effective than the kriya he had been taught, after he had left out what is considered vital parts of the original kriya. He dropped yoga postures, "tongue-lifting", and "thokar-kriya" and "omkar(a)-kriya" as they were to be practiced, according to his guru line. Yogananda mixed methods that Americans were able to practice, and "the possibility of practicing wrongly or being misdirected, has remained." [Psy 109-10].

Also, Yogananda claimed that man evolves twelve times faster than his guru said, and then went on to call his guru "incarnated wisdom" . . . He was inconsistent. And I suggest you rise higher than blind, gullible belief in other matters too. Citations:

[A] half-minute of kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment . . .

One thousand kriya practised in eight hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of one thousand years of natural evolution . . . The kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. [Autobiography, ch 26]

Yet Yogananda's guru, Yukteswar, says in his commentary to the Bhagavad Gita that one round of kriya equals one month's evolution, not "one year's":

Practicing . . . the kriya of pranayam at one sitting, including its dawn and dusk, 12 times, meaning 14 times, accomplishes the work of one solar year. [Sriyukteshvar, Swami. Srimad Bhagavad Gita: Spiritual Commentary. Portland, Mn: Yoganiketan, 2002, 4:8]."

This means that Yogananda in his fifties said his simplified, "shaved" kriya's efficacy was twelve times better than what his teacher-guru Yukteswar said of the kriya he gave Yogananda. Yogananda also said that man would need "just" one million years to get cosmic consciousness "unaided", whereas his guru said 12 million years unaided:

Now, I will explain . . . how to realize the Kaivalya, or Consciousness-alone, state which in the usual course of time takes 12,000,000 years." [Ibid 4:8].

A problem: Man has not lived on earth for twelve million years, according to latest research . . . But anyway, through SRF we are presented with a Yogananda-simplified kriya and hype that goes markedly unproved to this day. Where is the evidence that outré guru claims are right? As for kriya research, a solid meditation technique stands being researched. Yogananda calls kriya scientific, but that is another marketing flop of his. Yogananda and SRF use the phrase "scientific" to "sell" it, with himself and SRF holding the upper hands in such transactions. A lot of fabulous or glorious vistas through Yogananda go largely unverified, and fair and fit investigations must be said to have been refused. SRF has had time and donated millions enough to get research on kriya and its other methods. By contrast, Transcendental Meditation, TM, has been subjected to hundreds of academic studies, and it shows lots of good, proved effects.

GREAT DISSATISFACTION IN THE SRF KRIYA YOGI RANKS. The effects of Yogananda's simplified kriya yoga have been questioned, and the glorious results he proclaim on behalf of it, are missing in many lives. Around 2001 about one third of all the SRF monastics left SRF, many of them in tears, distress, dismay, and great dissatisfaction, as evidenced on the SRF Walrus board. A former Yogananda devotee who should know, writes:

"I studied, mediated and followed a very famous Indian guru during most of my life . . . I knew hundreds of yogis for up to 30 years, but not one of them had ever attained much. I don't mean money, though most of them had little financial success, but happiness. There were drugs, alcohol, affairs, divorces, physical abuses . . . They seemed a bunch of shame driven antisocial beings. I'd never seen anyone enter into the highest state . . . None of these struggling yogi's were better off, if anything, all of them suffered mental and emotional problems." [Link]

The woman's description pertain to Yogananda's close disciples and other kriya yogis in and around the SRF headquarters in California - some of his seemingly closest disciples, that is. Well, as they say, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

SUMMARY. In addition to the above survey of the lay of the land that the book is within, you will also find clarifying notes in the text, for example that dangerous Kali was the worshipped Divine Mother of Yogananda. "Kali's "iconography, cult, and mythology commonly associate her with death, sexuality, violence," says Encyclopaedia Britannica [sv. "Kali"]. To delight in violence, sex, and death, suggests you have nothing good to live up to. Do not let that become your lot.

With this spiritual best-seller, many issues are to be dealt with to get some profit from reading into it, and without being undermined somehow:

• Many scenes and stories in the book go unverified. And in some cases there are alternative tales from other sources and biographies of some of the gurus mentioned in the book. For example, the core tale in chapter thirty-four about materialising a palace in the Himalayas, has less fantastic variants, writes J. C. Bhattacharya [Ysl].
• Less flattering stories of Yogananda and his ways are left out by Yogananda and SRF, but not all are left out in Dasgupta's biography. And Yogananda's old writings show that he advocated dictatorship too, to give an example. Some such writings are on-line, and some are sold as books by other companies.
• That the publishers, SRF, has edited later editions of the book uncommonly, is a fact. And that the book serves to attract people to SRF and Yogananda, is almost common knowledge. That SRF is classified as a cult, is less known, though.
• SRF members differ. Some feel that glowing praises and thanks are fit. However, not all who enter his fellowship and learn its simplified kriya yoga get happy and loving year after year from it. Others who "have been there", have left SRF and some also the guru, even against alarming tellings of repercussions for many lives, and colossal sufferings to come. Thus, for kriya yogas in SRF there is both a carrot and a whip, and a rider (the guru) too.

The doings and statements of SRF, Yogananda, and his glowing adherents and disgruntled former ones, require many clarifications. With the material I have had at hand, I have done a whole lot to such an end. But the narcissists in SRF do not even publish how many members SRF has; statistics that pertain to vital issues, are largely lacking. Till such data should come up, we may do best to gain some middle ground, proper reserve, and not be overly categorical.

You may enjoy many tales without becoming a freaking believer. There are alternatives to most of the SRF methods and teachings, many are for free, and a lot of these alternatives can serve you far better than cultish submission.

Literature  

Apa: Walters, James Donald. A Place called Ananda. Rev. 2nd ed. Nevada City: Hansa Trust: 2001. www.ananda.org/aplacecalledananda/

Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. On-line. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]

Bhg: Yukteswar, Swami. Srimad Bhagavad Gita: Spiritual Commentary. Portland, Mn: Yoganiketan, 2002. On-line.www.yoganiketan.net

Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009.

Psy: Dasgupta, Sailendra. Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2006. Pdf: yoganiketan.net and at Google Books, partial view.

Spa: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda. 4th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980.

Wy: Tuxen, Poul tr: Bhagavadgita. Herrens Ord. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962.

Ysl: Bhattacharya, Jogesh Chandra. Yogiraj Shri Shri Lahiri Mahashaya. Kadamtala, Howrah: Shrigurudham (Ghosh), 1964. On-line read-only text at Yoganiketan, Portland, Mn: www.yoganiketan.net/main.htm. Earlier there: kalama.com/~stebro/Kriya_Library/Yogiraj/title.htm



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