Autobiography of a Yogi

• Word Distribution
  • Master is the top card
  • Possible significance
  • Ever Godman-Submissive, is that it?
• Possible Autobiography dangers
  • Word distribution again
  • Market concerns
  • Religiousness can lead to spirituality
  • Yoga Meditation

Word Distributions

The column to the left below shows how often words are encountered (their frequencies) throughout the whole book when footnotes are kept out of it. The column to the right shows words and word parts.
      Word distribution counts as it tends to reveal patterns - There are some comments on the word count below the table.

Master Is the Top Card (Word)

Frequency	Words
463	Master, Masters (3)
419	guru* (including 8 'gurudev'*)
372	yoga* and yogi*
316	God'*
265	sri (holy)
241	divine
213	great*
199	saint*, saintly (15)
189	-ji (suffix)
167	mind, minds
157	swami* (Hindu 'monk')
123	sir
115	Kriya (handy gasping and further)
112	meditat* (can mean contemplate, contemplative, contemplation)
96	Lord
72	consciousness
64	wisdom
61	develop* (30), evolut* (24), evolv* (9)
55	West
43	sacred, sacredness (0)
43	dear
42	holy, holiness (2)
40	Christ
34	universe, universes (3)
32	sage, sages (3)
31	bliss
31	ego* (most often negatively charged)
29	monk
27	East
27	lips
24	modern
23	art, arts (5)
21	Krishna
19	intellect*
17	Christian, Christians (3)
15	divinity
13	monast*
13	wise
11	Christlike
11	fish, fishes (1)
10	silk
9	follower*
7	blossom
6	Blessed, blessedness (1)
5	South
4	clever
4	pond
4	philosopher
4	artist, artists (3)
3	Christs
3	tenaci*
3	gay
2	cramped
2	fool
2	cherry, cherries
2	couch
2	rational
1	humor
1	little children
1	consisten*
1	shepherd
1	Kung Fu (earlier: Confucius)
1	polar bears
1	artist
1	artistic
1	frivol*
1	make love, have sex (with variants in present and past tense), "live together as man and wife only once a year, for the purpose of having children." (1)
0	holy cow
0	disc jockey
0	Tao*
0	fishing
0	North
0	handiness
0	penis (incl. 'linga', 'lingam')
0	Hawaii
0	infamous
0	homosexual*

The asterix (*) marks a group of letters that may be found in various words. Thus, Tao* above is found as Tao itself, in Taoism, Taoist and Taoistic. There are no mentions of any of them in Yogananda's Autobiography.
      ♦ Terms most often found, can reflect deep attitudes of the author -

Possible Significance, or "What all this could mean"

Christs are mentioned 40 times. Hm!

Heuristics has many outlets. Here are tentative considerations:
    &nbhj sp; Master and Christ - the proportion is about 11 : 1. in the book. Yogananda excelled in calling kriya yogis Christs. In the East, what goes along with 'Master' can be 'student' or 'disciple' - in another setting.
      To be spiritual is to be attuned to Spirit. That comes first. And to be authentic ("the one you were to begin with without reading a book") begins it.
      For studying the table, these hints may come in handy: (a) On top of the table are words that could serve personal submissiveness (near to giving up oneself). (b) In some loosely understood median range we find words used 100-200 times. Such words reflect in part things Americans once hoped to get into. (3) Toward the bottom could be words that intimate solutions against bossism (authoritarianism) and servility.
      The words that are used more than, say, thirty times, show marked preferences in presenting things. Interestingly, the author speaks over twenty times more of "gurus" and "masters" than "Christ(s)". For what you listen to or read most often, may rsettle in the memory by the force of amassed repetitions of impressions. In other words, impressions build up.
      In a book that for one thing talks for egohood development into godhood by shortcut method like kriya yoga, we might expect much and sound presentation aligned to that sort of development, god-making. But no. More often we find teachings on attacking he ego. [LINK]
      As for the table above and its discreet uses, we cannot be completely sure of what everything means or signifies from mere raw data. When it comes to interpreting them, we are on the outlook for meanings that might lie hidden - more or less hidden - in the gathered material. I suggest it becomes easier to understand the real meaning or significance of our tabled findings if you consider in this way:

"Well, if the text spans almost 500 pages, footnotes included, then it signals that a blend of some of these terms can be met with on almost every page throughout: Master, guru, yogi/yoga, God, sri (holy), divine, great, saint, swami (Hindu monk), kriya, Lord - and so on. (Look at the table).

That is what you get on the level of words, in addition to such as the twenty most frequent words in English conversation: a/an, after, again, all, almost, also, always, and, because, before, big, but, can, come, either/or, find, first, for, friend, from . . . Frequent wordings apart from the common brief words in a language, suggest a profile of the work, and maybe also predominant themes or topics in it, such as "cosmic consciousness".

Ever Godman-Submissive, is that it?

There are two kinds of seekers: those who are like the baby monkey and those who are like the kitten. - Yogananda [Jse 258]

And then there are the finders. Frankly, what he speaks for is ways of submission, not of seeking. He often speaks of "seeking God, and that goes truly against the higher, finer points of yoga meditation: Do not seek, for your own good. That is how inner progress comes about. Instead of repeating analogies of monkeys and cats to promote a defective view, Yogananda should have presented the teachings and methods pure, without adding personal preferences in large numbers, including his half-ritualised "cry for Mother Divine", and so on. It would have been saner, fairer, and more helpful.
      So if you hunger for words that definitely indicate you are to take a deeply submissive stand in front of the holy monks of India - or one of them - or if you long for development of deeper parts of your mind or for freedom or more liberation in that way - this book goes into such themes pretty well, but not full well, and it does it with a "submitting attitude" by an expert of submit-and-cringe, and user of lots of useless slogans. That is fair to say.
      The problem with that sort of presentation is that the gullible may be wholly or partly led to believe it is spiritual and all right to become great cringers too - devotees is the word - always submissive to be considered fit in the guru's circles. A "submission deal" has its back sides, which manifest slowly with the years. Conclusion so far:

Much talk of God, Masters and sacred fellows doesn't help a man full well, nor does authoritarian training. It tends to demolish personal interests, and maybe your character and further development depends largely on your flourishing own interests.

Now, a rather simple word distribution study helps in suggesting some alarming themes that often escape lots of persons initially. There is more on it below.
      ♦ The total impact of a book consists of value-charged words too, not just quantitative repetitions.

Word Distribution Again

Words can be ranked and grouped and classified in more than one way, for example:

• The words that are often used can reveal much of interest, but we often have to study the phenomenological "charge" of the words, to be able to say something accurate.
• Words that are in 'medium' use and moderate use, may reveal a more or less hidden humdrum (of activities) the writing is on top of, yet it depends. Qualitative study has to go into it.
• Words that are hardly ever made use of, or not at all, may not reflect attitudes in vogue there and then, and they could thus contain liberating and still not outmoded solutions somehow, believe it or not.

Market Concerns

"Brag is a good dog ..." (Proverb) - Offhand mentions may be hard to tackle and deal with later.

Acclaimed books reflect preferences of the acclaimers.. To look worthy or holy and to be so can be two different things.
      Most often terms used in a work reflect ideas and norms that are commonly thought highly of among those it adresses, in this case the public in North America in the 1940s and 50s. The book was written in southern California. One aim of the autobiography was perhaps to inspire acceptance for Indian gurus and yogis by terms like "saints" and "christs" and "holy" and so on. Yogananda goes a long way it the use of such terms.
      Similarly, in the book Sayings of Yogananda a "Great-Master-reverence" glows throughout. I don't say it is unfit, I just express what is easily found from perusal of the book. [Cf. Say]

Religiousness can lead to spirituality

Meditation must be practiced every day. Start now! Yogananda. [Jse 407]

A problem with series of of appeals, exhortations, and importunities is that they are not conductive to personal development at length. It is quite a "top-dog" thing, too. As means to individual development, exhortations have defects. The early Yogananda tried to persuade persons into it, by giving plausible reasons.
      Yogananda also taught, "Let us concentrate on That from which our being emerges: Know thy soul [Jse 200]." That is also a bit from his higher teachings, so often drowned in "seek-God" ideations and the like. According to Jung, a developing human becomes more unlike others, more unique, as a result of the process call individuation. Lots of general exhortatations may go against the unfolding of individuality. A spiritual person may not conform to religious cult-like behaviour. The spiritual individual may have to dispense with and also go against blind-folded common beliefs.
      A truly liberating education had better offers good food for what is essential to nourish, also in the humanistic fields. Liberating self-help education and guru-dictated ways of training oneself and of conforming to a church, for example, may not always go very well together.
      This is not an attack on religiousness in itself, for it is often rooted in basic friendliness, and can be very useful for tiny sprouts that need some fencing, or for twigs that need lenient enough support.
      A puzzle is how the author of the Autobiography advocates development through self-effort and self-surrender. Self-effort with skill in accordance with wise teachings is helpful, whereas self-surrender looks suspicious. Btter try to remain realistic and sensible, for if realism is hurt in an individual, fairness could be the next victim, along with truthfulness.
      Therefore, try to keep your free will if you can handle it. There is no good reason to give away hard-won, attained autonomy and such assets. Try to have good, clean fun instead, to avoid that things turn ugly. As Yogananda is into, "It is indeed a funny world. But the results of our wrong actions don't seem very funny to us! That is why I quarrel with God [Dr 111]." "Evil destroys all the fun. [Dr 327]" "The whole universe is contained in only a fragment of His being! The Lord seems to be having a lot of fun playing with these marbles in the sky [Jse 55]." "Your outer experiences should be only fun [Mae 241]." Accordingly, being really spiritual is not far from being happy and having lots of fun in savoury ways. Lots of people had better attune to that. Appropriate humour is good for the health too, says recent research.
      ♦ Have fun! is a repeated part of Yogananda's message.

Yoga Meditation

Yogananda's disciples do not have any monopoly on kriya yoga. In fact, the methods are described in textbooks of Satyananda. It is not necessary to renounce one's freedom to be taught it, in other words.
      Yoga and meditation has become mainstream in the West since the time of Yogananda Cool, calm practice, and not "guru-fantastic tales" may help. Being sensational is not essential for the yogi. And Transcendental Meditation is the method that helps the most, according to extensive research.




Literature  

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

Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008.

Jse: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Journey to Self-realization: Discovering the Gift of the Soul. New ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997.

Mae: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 2002.

Pe: Allport, Gordon. Personligheten - hvordan formes den? Oslo: Dreyer, 1966.

Say: Yogananda, Pa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.

Via: Nikhilananda, swami. Vivekananda. The Yogas and Other Works. Rev. ed. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953.



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