Yogananda, Neville or Shakespeare?

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Shakespeare Did not Teach Kriya

Shakespeare Did not Teach Kriya

There is only one guru uniquely the devotee's own. But if you turn away from the emissary of God, He silently asks: 'What is wrong with you, that you foolishly leave the one I have sent to help you learn the divine science of the soul? Now you shall have to wait long, and prove yourself, before I shall respond again.' He who cannot learn through the wisdom and love of his God-ordained guru will not find God in this life. Several incarnations at least must pass before he will have another such opportunity."- P. Yogananda. Spring 1974 Self-Realization Magazine, Spring 1974:6. From a talk at Mother Centre, 17 Oct 1939

Several incarnations filled with colossal sufferings is the fuller prospect. "great fear (the colossal sufferings inherent in the repeated cycles of birth and death)" [Bhagavad Gita 2:40, Yogananda's translation]. The guru vistas may shake one. And they do not seem to match something vital that Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad Gita:

Arjuna, neither in this world, nor in the next world is there destruction for him; none, verily, who does good, my son, ever comes to grief! [6:40]
Having attained to the worlds of the righteous and, having dwelt there for [many] years, he who fell from Yoga is reborn in the house of the pure and wealthy [a good and prosperous home]. [6:41]
Or he is born in a family of even the wise yogis; verily a birth like this is very difficult to obtain in this world. [6:42]
There he [he revives the divine consciousness] comes in touch with the knowledge acquired in his former body and strives more than before [to achieve complete success] for perfection, Arjuna! [6:43]
The power of former yoga practice is sufficient to force, as it were, the yogi on his onward path. An eager student of even theoretical yoga is farther advanced than is a follower of the outward scriptural rites. [6:44]
But, the yogi who strives diligently, purified of sins and perfected gradually through many births, reaches the highest goal. [6:45]

In contrast to this, Yogananda does not stand up as a Well-Wisher or one who prays, "teach me to think rightly, and to behave rightly [Wf 181]." The proverb, "The cow forgets she was a calf," applies to the guru who once "hid and sulked, not seeking Thee till Someone whispered, "Hello, playmate!" [Wf 254, extracted].

Solutions

Krishna's solution to any possible Yogananda-caused dilemma is simple: Meditate throughout to improve your lot, no matter what fits the guru. Learn and train yourself in good yoga and meditation techniques in freedom, and the fruits of your efforts will be yours and follow you into the future, as Krishna suggests above. Even if you have learnt Yogananda's kriya, you are free to learn the no longer secret core practice of kriya yoga - ujjayi - here on this site. A little practice may clear your head and "save you from guru-caused fears". But that is not all. Freely given methods may help you on through many lives, as Krishna teaches. And if you want to practice the fuller kriya system, which I can recommend, you can take up Satyananda's system, which is freely given [Cy; Kta]. In that way Yogananda's curse on your future appears to lose out. You can get birth in a prosperous, good home anyhow, says Krishna, and you will not come to grief, says he too.
The value of positive thinking is seen here. You can practice kriya freely, and derive benefits. By contrast, there seems to be suspected foul play behind Yogananda's "Several incarnations at least must pass before he will have another such opportunity." The dictum is unworthy. And why? He says - with one of his mouths - that he came to reveal Krishna's yoga. So he should have stuck to it and not imposed worse conditions on men and women that were taller than him.

Non-kriya guru lives

There are significant elements that need to match. Factors to take into account in such a scenario:

If or when the disciple is ready to commit again, the reincarnated guru may not be, if he has incarnated as someone who does not teach kriya, like Shakespeare or William the Conqueror, a lawyer, or a desert mauraider - whatever.
If the guru is ready, the former disciple may have become unfit for it as a reborn titmouse or whatever.

Yogananda spoke to disciples of many past lives. He told he had been William Shakespeare, William the Conqueror, a laywer, a Spanish fighter - and a vicious desert mauraider, according to his biography [Psy 112]. He also said he was there when Jesus was born. He also said he had been the Hindu bowman Arjuna who had to share his wife with his four brothers, but who is not known to have been the guru of anyone either. There is all the more reason to take to freely given kriya (ujjayi) in this life already and stick to practice in freedom, just to be on the safer, happier side of things.
This adds up to the point: Out of seven Yogananda-claimed past lives, he initiated others in none. Naturally, a kriya-teaching incarnation of that entity is not easy to happen upon, no matter how ready you have been for millenniums. And SRF teaches as a mouthpiece of Yogananda that you shall have to get back to you guru, that birth and death involve colossal sufferings, and the lives in between can hardly be all pleasant too. That is what SRF teaches. [MORE].
Yes, what if the disciple was ready when Yogananda was William who fought and bullied, a desert mauraider who killed but did not initiate, and so on?
There are some conclusions to be drawn about the guru's teachings. One is that something is wrong with Yogananda's teachings. Especially when there is something wrong with the guru and his teachings, a disciple in traditional Hinduism is allowed to look for a more compatible or better one.

Poem

A poem derived from a post on a kriya related discussion board:

"After I started practicing SRF's Kriya yoga
I started experiencing awful burning and itching sensations
all over my body.
I was going crazy.

I started going to doctors,
got all the medical tests, they could not find anything physically wrong. They asked if I was doing drugs!
The doctors said it must be mental, but . . .
I asked several SRF counselors but they dismissed me saying "Everybody who practices kriya benefits and gets good feelings".

Well, I am doing it correctly, a monk even checked my practice, and said I was doing it correctly -
and it is driving me crazy,
I feel like I am going to lose my mind!

Sometimes I feel that if this continues I will end up taking my own life."

Poem comment

Meditation should not be taught indiscriminately. For most, it may be very innocent, but for some, it is not.
Mantra meditation does make you more clear, gives calmness and so on.
The teaching of Kriya yoga - you could make them a dangerous form of pranayama, by faulty practice. Sane moderation is one of the keys to successful practice.

No Dragons Have Been Made Real

A flying dragon is largely thought up.

Yogananda stated that when you advance in the spiritual path, what was once real becomes unreal. But does it really help to teach that way? We have seen no evidence that monsters and fire-emitting dragons of fairy tales come to life and get real just because someone starts meditating. Things that improve life need to be taught, not twaddle.
Hope: The more interiorization by reclusive lifestyle and recluse practices, the more effective and constructive. Good moral is needed too. As it is said:

Happiness is the outcome of good. [Buddha]
One is to clarify the mind to arrive at its source [Zen counsel]

Diagnosis

Honest with Yourself

Great honesty includes honesty with oneself. Big bluffs may breed feigning, which soon may "freeze" into hypcricy. And hypocrites were the only people Jesus condemned in his days.
Here is a self-help test. [Self-help test]
Are you considering seeking therapy, but are unsure whether it is the right choice for you? Therapy may help. Almost anyone with a dysfunction can benefit from professional help from a therapist. Fill out the questionnaire as truthfully and sincerely as you can. Results depend on that.
Instead of working long and hard to insult and damage unmet others because it gives you a kind of relief, go and get a diagnosis. For "honesty should favour yourself". In psychoanalysis much comes down to that.

Listening to spiritual teachings can help you only to a small extent. . . . [The] elation you experience is just a temporary phenomenon. When you undertake to put the teachings into practice many real problems and difficulties arise. . . . [However,] [t]he teachings will do you little good unless you put them into practice [and] make [them] your own. - Sai Baba, Sai Baba Gita, Ch. 15. (It is on-line).

Jungian Thinking

The full scene is a process too -

Differentiation is a process by which an individual becomes conscious of buried thoughts and feelings. (1)
People should be working for solid restitutions to combat alarming denials of a sect and cult.
One important discovery will be "What is it about me that allowed myself to give away my power and put myself in a vulnerable position in relationship to these people for so long?" - when the full scene is reconstructed. (5)
We can undermine betrayals or betrayers. We need to shine a bright light into our closeted emotions. But one is on some wrong path if where this is all heading is more sophisticated realms of denial.
Followers in narrow-minded groups cannot be engaged in a discussion of the issues that matter most without angered (defensive) or parrot-like responses. ◊
When solid differentiation is attained, integration sets in, hopefully. (7)

Against Cults: UN Human Rights

The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples . . .

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration . . . [Article 2]
Everyone has the right to life . . . [Article 3]
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude . . . [Article 4]
No one shall be subjected to . . . cruel, . . . degrading treatment or punishment. [Article 5]
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family . . . or correspondence . . . Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. [Article 12]
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family . . . The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. [Article 16]
Everyone has the right to own property . . . No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. [Article 17]
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. [Article 18]
No one may be compelled to belong to an association. [Article 20]
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration . . . Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. [Article 23]
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure . . . [Article 24]
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. [Article 25]
Everyone has the right to education . . . Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality . . . Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. [Article 26]

Sampled from the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Are they yours too? The gist is "Preserve your old rights and freedoms. Do not trade any of them away to join a sect's or guru's "farm" or circles."
In recent years many countries, such as Norway, have legalised the Human Rights by Human Rights Laws.

Anxiety of Churchism and the Like

Three instances of the personality are often drawn to the fore, The first term is from psychoanalisis, the second is the corresponding term in Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, TA:

Superego, the Parent
Ego, the Adult
Id, libido, the Child

You also have a witnessing instance, the ability to watch yourself and others too. Berne includes it in the Child, but that seems misplaced.
Violation of the superego's standards, or even the impulse to do so, may produce anxiety. If parental standards are overly rigid, the individual may be guilt-ridden and inhibit all aggressive or sexual impulses. But then, on the other hand, a self-indulgent person can be considered to have a weak superego.
At times the three components of personality are in opposition, at times the superego battles with both the id and the ego because behaviour often falls short of the moral code it adheres to at bottom. In the normal person, the three instances can work together to produce integrated behaviour.
In SRF, a church, a monastery, or community, there may be rigorous demands on the person due to what is allowed and not allowed, endorsed and not endorsed, etc. If there are stiff conformising demands, the superego becomes a battleground, and feigning takes place too easily.

It Is Possible to Get Help

The grumbler could be on the path of becoming neurotic. The man who "never experienced anything from [his SRF kriya] other than the discomfort of carrying the practice out", may get biased, generalise too faulitly, and get rationalising or wilful on top of that.
For example, to lift one's tongue in a certain way towards the soft palate is called kechari mudra in yoga. It used to be a fixed part of higher kriya techniques. Kechari is used by yogis for stilling the mind. Some yogis use it, others do not.
Someone who has got it wrong, or taken a wrong stand: "I've heard of Kechari Mudra, where I come from it's called 'swallowing your tongue', it's great if you like the idea of choking to death." Now, there are alternatives to that sort of infamities, and "A clean conscience is a good pillow [Ap 464]."

It should help better to seek counsel or therapy for getting disgruntled with Self-Realization Fellowship or any other group you entered with high hopes and great expectations that went unfulfilled. First check out the therapist's credentials and orientation. Much also depends on how congenial our environment is, and our sense of belonging, and our firm expectations, for such factors work together, and therapy is not a one-way street. And the urge to show off by mean means ought to be put aside.
The therapist helps you as a means to a living. People generally do take advantage of one another, and so long as it is carefully resiprocal (well balanced), it can be OK.

It is a lot to sustain a clean mind and body-system as we get along through life. Buddha says that one should avoid alcohol (intoxicants include non-prescribed drugs). Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Buddhism, Islam, and numerous Christian denominations and sects [have had success] in confirming their followers as total abstainers." [Ebu "alcohol consumption"]

Literature
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main ed.), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Cy: Satyananda Saraswati, Swami. A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya. Munger: Yoga Publications Trust, 1981.
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2008.
Kta: Satyananda Saraswati, Swami. Kundalini Tantra. 8th ed. Munger: Yoga Publications Trust, 2001.
Pesd: Clark, Sandra, ed. The Penguin Shakespeare Dictionary. Rev. updated ed. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
Psy: Dasgupta, Sailendra. Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences. Portland: Yoga Niketan. 2006. Online pdf. www.yoganiketan.net
Wf: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Whispers from Eternity. 8th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1959.

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