EAST - WEST, March—April, 1928 VOL. 3—3
SPIRITUALIZING THE NEWSPAPERS
—By
Swami Yogananda
"Blessed are those who do not indulge in sensational
news."
Millions start the day with the gruesome sight of murder
headlines in the morning newspapers. The sleep-refreshed young mentality starts
the day's race for success with the dark cloud of wrong thoughts hanging over
his mind. The law of "All's well that starts well" is trampled upon.
Newspapers have more or less become the tin gods worshipped
by the mass mind. They can make or unmake a man, at least in the public eye.
Human opinion, however, and God's opinion are different. One forsaken by all
humanity may not be forsaken by the God of Truth. One worshipped by all the
world may not be true to himself. He may not be acceptable in the eyes of Truth.
It is the duty of truth-loving people to reform the newspapers since they almost
completely control unthinking, child-like mentalities.
Modern journalism originated in the desire of man to know
all about his fellow man and about his environment. The busy man looks at a
paper and at a glance knows in what relation his business and social affairs
stand with the community. Newspapers are the gods of information. They are the
soul of modern business. They are the epitome of the city news. The modern world
cannot get along without them. They can act as the breath of life to noble human
activities or they can react like chlorine gas to asphyxiate people's independent
thinking. Through the sluice-gates of newspapers the reservoir of human mentalities
is constantly fed. That is why a truth-loving country should keep a strict eye
on the operation of these gates through which the river of information flows
into the public mind. Muddy and defiled water must not be allowed in when clean
and sparkling streams are available.
Freedom of the press must respect the law by which true
freedom can alone exist. Intoxicated with the wine of freedom, some newspapers
often abuse their powers. They often do not know how to operate the gates of
information. They have not learned how to exercise self-control and thus prevent
the wild river of muddled information from overrunning and clogging the tank
of human mentalities. Moreover, newspapers ought not to introduce poisonous
news into the tank of human minds, for the thirsty, undiscriminative masses
drink poisonous, unwholesome news wherever they find it and hence suffer with
nervousness, worry, fear, and subconscious criminal suggestions.
In a few minutes a newspaper prints the headline: "Four
hold-up men cleaned up a million. No trace of the robbers found." The weak and
poverty-stricken, or criminally-bent mentality reads it and induces a few friends
to join him to try to get rich quick by this unholy method. Unwholesome news
whets the appetite for crime. Hold-ups at the point of the gun with the aid
of automobiles were unknown in many parts of the world until the idea was unwittingly
introduced into the minds of weak mentalities through the channels of western
newspapers and movies. That is why sensational movies and newspapers should
be gradually crowded out by educating the tastes of children and adults to a
higher standard.
Some newspapers and some film producers, in order to be
the best sellers of the day, vie with one another in breaking all gates of propriety,
morality, purity, and truth in order to overflood and devastate human mentalities
with their sensationalism. In order to reform sensational movies and newspapers
we must first reform ourselves and our children. "Catering-ism" is the watchword
in everything in America. Business, religion, lectures, all must be made to
suit what is called "public demand." That is wrong, unless the demand is wholesome.
If people want to eat cocaine, opium, cobra poison, or to indulge in a flattering
religion which is afraid to even constructively criticize, or to hear only those
lectures which gloss over and explain away their faults, should the business
men, religious leaders and lecturers reason, let us give the people what they
want, let us sell them poison, flattery and untruth, let us thus kill their
souls and choke their mentalities of progress, it doesn't matter since we are
getting rich? No right-thinking man would want society to be run along such
lines. The law of honesty should be the policy of newspapers, movie concerns,
business men, religious leaders and reformers. They should only cater to the
wholesome taste of people. That will bring out the latent good taste even in
apparently lost souls who have artificially developed a bad taste for good things.
Who is responsible if the described-in-detail crime news,
murder headlines and indirect divorce suggestions begin to influence and mould
the clay mentalities of children, burning and hardening them into fixed habit-thoughts
of evil? Is not sensationalism responsible for taking a large part in suggesting
crime to children and to weak mentalities? Let us save the masses from the drug
of sensationalism. Let us have more newspapers with aims and platforms like
the Christian Science Monitor and a few other American papers who are trying
to be fair and constructive. The New York World has a "Department of Accuracy
and Fair Play" which investigates and gives publicity to cases of false and
unjust publicity. This is a step in the right direction.
Some newspapers have grown bold and despotic in order to
be the best sellers. They don't stop at anything. They libel a man, writing
half-truths or evading the true facts about him, just for the sake of sensationalism.
They give head-lines to scandalize him, and syndicate their news, for most papers
take it and swallow it wholesale. They murder a man's life-long-earned reputation
in a few minutes and go scot free, laughing. If the person is exonerated and
the time for retraction comes, no more headlines. Most of the papers hide behind
indifference, do not print the retraction, saying it has no news interest. If
they do print it, they give it an insignificant place. If the man sues in court
for libel, the process is endless and expensive, and some newspapers even encourage
this as a publicity stunt. They employ the best attorneys to fight the libel
case. If they lost some money they make up their losses by printing more sensational
head-lines like the following: "Reverend John Denies He Was a Bandit and Criminal."
The unthoughtful people are led to buy the papers out of curiosity and thus
unknowingly patronize injustice. Some religionists will then raise a hue and
cry and say, "Oh, don't sue the papers; that's against Christ's principles."
That's a fine view, but why not root out the evil instead of allowing it to
grow to be later endured by Christ principles?
Many people will remember the case in London a few years
ago of "Mr. A.," Hari Singh of Kashmir, who was blackmailed by a woman and her
accomplices. Under threat of blackmail and of newspaper headlines of scandal,
the woman and her accomplices extracted seven hundred thousand dollars form
the Prince. Later on we hear that the Prince told of this unfortunate experience
to one of the English judges. The judge felt a righteous indignation and began
to move heaven and earth to break the net of blackmailers who prey upon wealthy
or noted people, public men and great ministers by falsely scandalizing them
and extracting money from them on threat of newspaper head-lines. Thus we hear
a law was passed in England by which all cases of blackmail involving noted
persons are heard behind closed doors without the presence of newspaper men.
When a case of this kind is settled, only a short correct report is given to
the newspapers. No mention is ever made of the nature of the charge if the blackmailed
man is found guiltless. Should not America enact such laws and safeguard the
lives of public men and women which consist in their reputation? Besides, the
English newspapers are very conservative and make thorough investigation before
passing any remarks about a public man. The English libel laws are very strict
and rigidly enforced, which is far from being the case in America.
From a thorough study of the situation of public life in
America, I am of the opinion that the reputation of no public man is safe from
being wrongly newspaper-handled. Many newspapers try to create prejudice against
individuals and nations to suit their nefarious ends of narrow, bigoted, short-sighted
political views. Bad-motived newspapers, lecturers, books, movies and magazines
can let loose all the messengers of evil—racial hatred, seeds of war, prejudice,
too strict immigration laws based on pure injustice or political inequality
or racial and color prejudice, gossip, scandal, love of criminal news, and thrills
by the suffering of others. Such newspapers, instead of teaching Christ-love
which promises forgiveness and spiritual help even to Mary Magdalenes, just
try to foster intolerance and revengefulness, self-deception, and persecution
of others for a fault which the persecutors themselves do not try to get rid
of or sometimes for no fault at all.
Some syndicating news agencies at times make wholesale productions
of lies and baseless scandals. I have studied and examined so many cases of
untruthful exaggerations, whipped and bluffed untruths, that I wonder how the
Sunday sheets of some papers containing sensational news can continue to exist.
However, one hardly ever sees any contradictions made by
the persons persecuted. Why is this? I hear there is an unwritten law among
some newspapers that when they are sued for libel they keep silent about it
and that news is not syndicated. Since they control public opinion they don't
want to turn the wrathful spot-lights of public opinion on themselves, whereas
they rejoice when they turn those furious burning lights on some innocent person.
Most papers gloat at the prospect of scandalizing someone. They are too ready
and willing to use the materials cunningly supplied by blackmailers, but often
quite unwilling to print retractions and save the reputation of innocent people
from being murdered at the hands of evil publicity. Do Christian newspapermen
consider this is right?
Seeing this condition of evil present amongst some conscienceless
sensation-loving newspapers, I have a suggestion to make. Let the leading business
men, ministers, and worthy public men of each city come together to form a board
for educating the newspapers. Any public man or society scandalized by any unscrupulous
newspaper or syndicate of newspapers should be invited to state its case and
give positive proofs of newspaper untruth or false insinuations, to the above-mentioned
board. Let the board members investigate and, when the person or society is
found to have been attacked without adequate grounds, let them write or visit
the mischief-making newspaper publishers and editors and exercise their powerful
influence to make the newspapers give the same amount of space, kinds of type,
position and page to the retraction as they gave to the attack. The city fathers
should also write to the syndicating news agencies requesting them to print
retractions for maligned persons. The syndicates and local newspapers should
be made to consult the members of the above-mentioned board before printing
any scandal about a prominent man or society. Last of all the newspapers must
be taught by the board to respect others' freedom as they love their own.
Freedom of the press to print anything it chooses about
anybody by writing in a clever insinuating way and distorting the truth should
be accompanied by the freedom of giving the persons criticized a chance to reply
in the same way. It is cowardly to attack a defenseless, forcibly-made-voiceless
person. The same page, position, kind of types and forcible language used to
criticize a person should be used in printing the reply of the person criticized
if he so desires. There should be no putting off of the retraction or explanation
by saying the news is old and uninteresting.
I once heard an account of a conversation between a reporter
and an editor about a Peace Conference. The editor listened with disgust and
obvious lack of interest in his eyes as the reporter related how smoothly the
Peace Conference went along. At last the editor said, "Go put that news in ten
lines of small type on the last inside page of the paper." The reporter realizing
that he had not brought news of interest suddenly remembered a little incident
which took place in the Peace Conference and exclaimed, "Sir, the President
of the Peace Conference lost his temper in suppressing a crazy man who was saying
irrelevant things and trying to disturb the Conference." The editor quickly
turned to the reporter, his face beaming with the joy of evil smiles, and said,
"Get busy, put headlines on the front page, ‘The President of the Peace Conference
Loses Peace'."
If some newspapers want to make half truths or exaggerated
truths sensational they should make the real truth prominent and interesting
too.
A sincere friend of mine, Mr. Telford Groesbeck, a prominent
citizen of Cincinnati, once said to me, "Please tell the newspapers in your
lectures that we do not want the murder and scandal headlines at all. If they
still think that some of the public need it or are interested in it, let them
print about murders, arsons, divorces and gossip on a loose page and let them
make the letters on that page as big and blood-red in color as they want, calling
it ‘Red Scandal Page.' When these newspapers are sent into good homes like ours
let them be sent without that ‘Red Scandal Page,' thus saving our children and
homes from being infected with such destructive thoughts."
Half truths and distorted truths are worst than the blackest
of lies. They are very hard to fight. Yet I believe that though evil travels
with the wind, nevertheless truth has the power to travel against the wind.
Catering to evil tastes will precipitate more evil, disorder, inharmony and
suffering into society, and since newspapers are universally read by people,
they should act like wholesome, reforming parents and not like murderers who
secretly stab those who seek their protection. Of all social crimes, the crime
of press distortion and giving prominence to scandals is of the most unfathomable
harm to the rising world generation. Let us all by moral persuasion, love, determination
and practical measures reform the newspapers and rid them of their epidemic
of sensationalism.
Jesus and all world-teachers taught us to sympathize with
and help people in error, whereas sensationalism creates the desire to rejoice
in others' shortcomings. Christian newspapers that have sinned and indulged
in sensationalism should repent and cease from further blunders. Let us spiritualize
the newspapers. Let the morning and evening papers carry headlines on the front
page containing the brave sayings of Jesus or the great prophets. Let men, women
and children wake up beholding words of truth. Let them sleep, dreaming thoughts
of restful, peace-giving truth and lasting joy celestial that dwells within
them.
Tranquil as a placid lake; constant as the most majestic
mountain; deep as the soulful eye, which when gazed into, gives the thought
of endless depth; stronger than the tide that sways mighty oceans to and from
their shores; steady as the gaze of the Sphinx; tender as the soft, warm caress
of the gentle breeze upon rose-hued baby cheeks; sweet as the air perfumed by
delicate wild-flowers; pure as the tender thought of a mother for the babe at
her breast; silent as the planets in their endless whirl through space; warm
as the hearth that beckons to friend and stranger alike to come near and be
comforted; swifter than sound, that speeds on the waves of the ether; dauntless
as the sun in its golden pathway; illusive as fleecy clouds buoyed up by frolicsome
breezes; tireless as the march of time; priceless, yet won with a smile, a warm
handclasp, a work of encouragement or cheer; scarce to those who seek; abundant
to those who give; near as breath to the nostrils; distant as the breadth of
the earth; it does not grow, nor does it decrease; it is never more, nor is
it less; merited, it is a bequest to all; accepted, it is selfish, unless it
be returned; it can be enjoyed only when expressed. LOVE—the joy giver, the
peace giver, the bliss giver; the blood of the heart of the cosmos; seeking
to find human hearts to open their portals to it; shunned and shamed, yet always
near, eager to sooth our hurts and wounds; expelled from hearts, yet always
happy to return and glow anew; betrayed and scorned, yet always seeking in hearts
to bloom and shine and cast its warm rays of light over the land. LOVE —endless
as the eternal God in heaven.
"The only road," said George Clemenceau of France recently,
"that leads to self-realization and complete peace is the road of work."
Clemenceau is a disciple of action. "Words!" he said, "words
that kill the idea, words that suppress experimentation, words that make for
us a false life in which we wander, passing among them as men without knowledge.
Where you find the most words you find the least action. Words are, to a considerable
degree, enemies to action, because they are made so often to substitute for
action and masquerade as such. Action, not words, enlarges the soul and makes
for harmony and contentment."
How true his thoughts are, especially when applied to the
spiritual life! For example, reading the Scriptures of the whole world will
not give a man the realization of spiritual truth that ten minutes' daily practice
of meditation will give. "Words that suppress experimentation." Many deluded
souls there are who imagine they understand the truth of their own religion
thru the intellectual pastime of reading, and who never use "experimentation"
to discover whether there is any divine and immortal life principle within them.
The practice of meditation alone can prove the existence of eternal verities.
Reading should be an incentive to action, not a substitute for it.
Let every one do something, according to the measure
of his capacities. To have no regular work, no sphere of activity—what a miserable
thing it is! How often long travels undertaken for pleasure make a man downright
unhappy; because the absence of anything than can be called occupation forced
him, as it were, out of his right element. Effort, struggle with difficulties—that
is as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole.—A. Schopenhauer.
By Mrs. John B. Henderson
Nothing so inconceivably and inexpressibly great as is the
Divine Creation, and man divine is a part of it. None but the Deity could give
the spark of life.
For mankind, the marvels of it all are so common, so cheap
and so easy that they are unappreciated.
Again nothing can function apart from law, and the perfection
of nature's laws, equally applied to great and small, need to be better understood.
The great misfortune is that man in his ignorance considers himself alone above
the laws of nature.
In Burbank's studies, applying nature's laws of heredity
to plants and lower animals, "he preached a lifelong sermon that all life is
subject to the same simple, clear, changeless laws of nature; that nature's
laws are incredibly exact, marvelously correlated and infallibly just; that
they afford a working basis for sound health, usefulness and happiness." In
harmony with glad nature, Burbank supplied only the most perfect of seeds through
several generations of plants for which might be called his thoroughbreds.
In a way, man in perfection of health, man divine, represents
the Deity. Along with nature's laws of inheritance, his ancestors gave him his
health and he himself is biologically worthy of a like future posterity. In
the exuberance of his natural life forces he feels his divinity, his royalty,
his aristocracy, his efficiency. The joy of life to him is the natural thrill
of life itself. He feels no need for poison stimulants and narcotics, this very
desire meaning degeneracy. The world is his, the air, the sky, the flowers;
his greatest natural joy is in accomplishment of anything worthy of his Divine
Master. He is honest, kind and efficient, and what he touches is a success.
His body represents the most complicated and wonderful piece
of machinery that God Himself ever designed. In tune with nature man is unconscious
of its workings. It is only at the impairment or loss of an eye or two, or any
part of the living mechanism, that man rushes for "the keys of the heavenly
harmonies."
Of course many things contribute to perfect health:—pure
air, pure water, pure dietary, etc.; but the chief curse of mankind, the, chief
pervision of nature's law is an almost universal habit of introducing into the
complex living machinery anything that is a poison,—a poison being anything
that tends to degenerate and destroy it,—such as alcohol, tobacco, opium, heroin,
tea, coffee, et cetera.
Being equipped with greater powers than all other living
creatures, man takes advantage of such privileges to defy or cheat the laws
of nature,—this for coveted sensations beyond the natural and normal.
When anything that is a poison enters his living machinery,
the Great Creator Himself quickly comes to the rescue to expel it. The Divine
telegraphic system of nerves gives the quick alarm to all. The heart, the hard-working
pumping apparatus, beats faster than normal, and every vital organ quickly responds.
The army germs of defense rush to fight the army germs of death, and the man
enjoys the excitement. He is getting a forced quiver of life for which he pays
in his reserve bank of life, the bookkeeping of Nature being exact.
Man may force another sensation—a soothing feeling—by the
introduction of a poison potent enough to partly paralyze the nerve, a still
further application of which would produce death.
The world becomes more or less a hospital at greater national
cost than that of the national government. The worst of it is that man sees
the world through the viewpoint of blurred and cracked lenses, leading to abnormalities,—steel
trap agonies and demonology in general.
Dr. John Harvy Kellogg (Superintendent of the Battle Creek
Sanitarium) says editorially in "Good Health": "Serious thinkers are raising
grave questions about the trend of modern life. At the second international
Eugenics Congress the eminent Prof. Darwin (son of the late Charles Darwin),
said with bowed head and a sad voice: ‘If our present civilization survives,
and I fear that it will not, it will have to because the United States saves
it.' He saw no hope in any other part of the world; and Prof. C. P. Davenport
said: ‘Of course we all know that the human race will ultimately perish.'" Dr.
Kellogg further states that although race decay is a black cloud hovering over
the world, race hygiene, applied with intelligence, can save us from the destruction
that degeneracy threatens. Dr. Kellogg also feels that with national colors
proudly flying America is going to save it . . .
Dr. Fiske (medical director of the N.Y. Life Extension Institute)
stated some time ago that in the course of twelve years service some 140,000
persons had been examined physically without finding a single specimen of perfect
health. Whether or not Dr. Fiske was over particular, the fact still remains
that the present state of human health compares woefully with that of flocks
of birds and herds of deer, all of such of their kind being equally beautiful
and efficient.
There is still hope if mankind abandons the cultivation
of death by disregard of nature's laws and takes to cultivating life, when the
glad Deity again comes to the rescue.
It is pleasant to personify the Great Creator and regard
Him as loving Father full of kindness as well as justice. This redemption is
occasionally illustrated by the weakling of the family who has naturally taken
to life culture, who will not only probably outlive all the family, but will
become a noted citizen of great public importance. Many such cases of great
men come forcibly to mind; so let us take courage and do our best.
Let us in the interest of biologic living (science of life)
also abandon worry which wears out nerves and disqualifies for setting things
aright.
Let it be taken into account that churches and schools are
not the only great educational moral forces of America. The Church is the one
great organized moral police force for human betterment; but the cinema has
the enormous advantage of giving lessons in the right and wrong by way of popular
entertainment. They need censoring by the Church when their public influence
is pernicious.
The heart and soul of America is respectable, and what respectability
most enjoys is what is clean and uplifting. For the cinema what a wealth of
delightful uplifting subjects are available for the keenest of popular enjoyment;
no play on the stage was ever more popular than "The Old Homestead" given at
a time when King Alcohol was most rampant.
The Church should not abandon the "Movie" as an unclean
institution, but join, protect and control it. Abroad, business turns to high
titles for patronage. The American cinema should advertize: "Under the Patronage
of the Church."
On the subject of religion I am reminded of Lamartine's
conversation with Lady Stanhope at Saide in Lectures Pour Tout Lamartine. Lady
Stanhope had isolated herself, Buddha fashion, to work out in solitary state
a new religion. During Lamartine's travels in Persia he sought an interview
with this interesting woman. Said she, "but do you find the social, political
and religious world well ordered? Do you not feel the need of a redeemer—a Messiah?"
Larmartine replied that no one more than he suffered and groaned with the universal
groaning of men and societies; that no one more than he desired a redeemer for
the intolerable evils of humanity, and no one more than he was more convinced
that the redeemer could only be divine.
It is such a pity that these hard worked philosophers could
not have studied relationships between man and his physiological sins. Could
they not see that not only the basis of life, but its viewpoints, relationships
and accountabilities are physical, and that the Deity has done His part magnificently,
if only the copartnership of mankind were well carried out; and that to develop
God within us, we must respect the living mechanism by which God is known.
I sought those two black eyes everywhere.
When my teacher or my brother rebuked me
Or were unkind,
I sought help every day
In the sweetness of those two black eyes.
In the harbor of those two black eyes,
I sought refuge.
She died. I cried, and I sought in the stars,
In the darkness of the night
For those two black eyes,
But I found them not.
Many other black eyes shone upon my childhood
But they were not those two black eyes
Which I had loved.
In the stillness of the forest
And the darkness of the night
I used to watch under the stars,
Watching in the darkness,
Looking for those two angelic,
Unapproachable black eyes,
But I found them not.
Now that my mind is awakened, I see
Those two black eyes everywhere.
In the eyes of the Divine Mother
I have found my own mother.
In the love of the Divine Mother
I have found my mother's love.
—By S. L. Das Varma
It is a commonplace of ordinary social intercourse that
you imbibe the attitudes and appreciations of the "set" to which you belong,
and pari passu get out of tune with the viewpoint and ideals of other
"sets" and social groups. No doubt it is the highest task of education and far-seeing
statesmanship to keep human minds and activities free from the insidious bondage
of prejudices and restrictions of every kind, to promote friendly relations
and mutual understanding between various groups and peoples. But there is a
definite limit to the receptivity of our nature to outside influences of any
profound and permanent value: we cannot but orientate ourselves fundamentally
in only one particular way. To have a perfectly open mind—open unto all the
winds of doubts and opinions, disavowals and convictions that may blow from
any possible or impossible quarter—is to transcend the inherent limitations
of the normal human intellect, possible perhaps only to a few rare persons in
a generation. For the generality of mankind the next best thing is the only
feasible objective to follow—viz., to cultivate a tolerant mind.
What does tolerance of mind mean? It means that though we
cannot appreciate or even understand the outlooks of other persons and groups
upon certain matters, we do not irrevocably make up our minds that there is
nothing to those outlooks and that we are the sole possessors of all light and
virtue that there is in the world. It means that though we may not like such
modes of thought and life as are very different from our own, we try to feel
and show as much respect for them as possible. It means the practical recognition
of the principle of individuality in the world of human standards and values.
It is the ethical interpretation of the democratic ideal on the plane of personality
and spiritual evolution.
We have looked at the question so far from the angle of
psychology and our moral duty in regard to the direction of our views of others
along the right lines in a world where diversity lives side by side with uniformity.
But objectively speaking, we find that different tastes and tendencies, divergent
aims and methods produce correspondingly different results in individuals as
well as in societies—results that embody what you have worked for and, "here
lies the rub," exclude what was not within the purview of your aims. There appears
to be a law of "conformity and compensation" that prevents the leavening of
the outcomes of your efforts in any other way than by the purposes which inspired
them. It may as well be conceived as a law of "selection" which makes you choose
one out of a competing variety of goals and stick to it, to the exclusion of
the other goals, if you want to achieve anything at all.
In an inventory of the causes that have led to the formulation
and adoption of divergent schemes of values among different peoples we must
assign an important place to the conditions and factors set by physical nature.
The physiographical features of a locality or country in a very real fashion
leave their impress upon the standards and achievements to be found in it. One
can almost say that the genius of a civilization is unavoidably the genius of
the soil in which it is born. It is not so much the richness or poverty of the
land for agricultural purposes, nor even the presence or absence of mineral
and other resources within the area that makes a difference; it is the climate
of the place in its effect upon the human constitution that surpasses in importance
every other geographic factor.
As is the case with individuals, so is it with nations.
An individual is born with certain capacities and incapacities; he inherits
from his ancestors powers and resources that will help him forward, but he inherits
from them definite handicaps also, such as will always pull him backward. Within
the broad or narrow limits set by his inherited endowment he faces life's situations
and makes choices. His free will is in some measure circumscribed by the accident
of his birth in a particular family, race, country; yet he goes through life
with a certain measure of freedom to mould his destiny as he might desire. When
in a certain situation he takes a certain decision, he selects one of a competing
number of decisions; else, he is bound, not free. But after he has made the
selection, he is debarred from the rewards that are attached to the other decision
than those he has made. He has made his own rule, and he must abide by it. The
same principles of freedom within limits and of reaping as you sow apply in
the life of nations and condition their development and their decay. Their ideals
and aspirations, their merits and shortcomings, their loves and repulsions cannot
be expected to overstep the barriers placed by nature. Within those barriers
a certain goal of life, a certain philosophy of conduct, out of many such goals
and philosophies, is chosen. The consequences of that choice will follow, other
results will be shut out except in a meager and incidental way.
With these preliminary concepts and conclusions let us study
the outstanding traits of the present-day civilizations of America and India.
The background of the preliminary concepts is necessary, since we are studying
human facts and moral and social phenomena, not physical data that can be a-morally
observed and need to be merely classified and described. The study of the civilization
of a country means its ethical appraisal, it evaluation according to a definite
set of norms, the passing of judgments as to right or wrong, if not quite consciously,
at any rate unconsciously. We have already said that the human mind is normally
incapable of regarding a multiplicity of things, if they are very different
from one another, with the same eye of approval or disapproval. The only psychologically
feasible frame of mind for one is that of tolerance, even though one may not
like the other ideals or pictures.
The American, with his materialistic "mind-set" and his
ideals of sanitation and science and democracy, should not, therefore, in my
judgment, have his peace of mind disturbed, if he cannot help disliking and
even condemning the appalling state of public health and the mediaeval methods
of production of wealth and of human organization and government that prevail
in India, because he must weigh everything different from his habitual surroundings
by the measures of his traditional norms or conceptions of human values. Furthermore,
here he is in the realm of certain universal standards accepted by all nations,
including the Indians themselves. But I would go further and say that even when
he cannot feel happy in contemplating that the people of India go about dressed
in "draped sheets" or eat with their fingers, his unhappiness is quite natural
and is to be expected. This kind of normal unhappiness assails his mind again
and again and again as he goes on with his study of the Indian civilization.
What he should do in this regard is not to let this feeling of dissatisfaction
and spontaneous disapproval turn into contempt or hatred of the people who practise
the customs or even of the customs themselves. Let us take an illustration from
our every-day domestic relationships. My old mother may be accustomed to do
many old-fashioned things which I do not like. I have grown up in an environment
different from hers. But in spite of the difference in our outlooks we are mutually
tolerant of each other's tastes and systems of values: we respect each other's
likes and dislikes, though they may not be the same nor similar. Why cannot
such a respectful agreement to differ characterize international estimates and
understandings?
Let us now generalize as to the attitude which Americans
should hold toward such traits of Indian civilization as present striking differences
from the corresponding traits of American civilization, owing wholly or chiefly
to dissimilar standards or norms of values and not to any omissions or shortages
of performance according to the same standards. The attitude should be one of
intelligent toleration, of suspended judgment, unless universal norms are applicable.
The same may be said of the Indian estimate of American ways of living and American
achievements. We from the East fail to understand, much less to appreciate,
many curious and seemingly futile customs and movements that we observe in America;
we may have an unconscious revulsion against some of them, because of our different
standards, but we must not on that account fall into an attitude of contemptuous
intolerance or hatred born of our incapacity to understand.
In the sphere of their respective achievements as nations,
the American and the Indian have chosen different goals and therefore achieved
differently—that is, in different lines. The American has set himself to harness
the forces of physical nature to the furtherance of material ends. By the multiplication
of mechanical appliances devised with the aid of science, he has increased and
cheapened the comforts of the body and made their enjoyment by vast numbers
possible. He has assiduously applied himself to the improvement of the techniques
of production and organization of material as well as human resources. He has
created stupendous worldly wealth and obtained everything that such wealth can
buy. But wealth cannot procure certain essential things which belong and flourish
in the world of spirit. Wealth cannot bring patience, tenderness, the impulse
of self-sacrifice, the calm contemplation of goodness and beauty, the joy of
a spiritual outlook upon life, the serenity of desirelessness. These latter
have through the ages constituted the ideals which have beckoned the culture
Indian away from the strain and strife for earthly advancement. And though practical
realization has fallen far short of the staggering demands of the ideals, it
cannot be denied that, more than other peoples, the people of India have stuck
to their spiritual quest, lifted life on to a plane where material pleasures
are of little moment, and stand today, albeit materially ragged and robbed,
as the heir to the spiritual heritage of the ages.
But the law of "selection and compensation" catches both
the Indian and the American in the cruel sweep of its operation. The nation
that chooses the path of material advancement as its primary pursuit and seeks
wealth and all that wealth can secure with all its energy and soul, reaches
its goal substantially, but loses the finer things of the spirit in the meanwhile.
When it awakens to its loss, wealth no longer pleases and it sighs for the things
that belong and flourish in a different world. And its material prosperity and
power are its compensation for its decline and fall from that world.
The Indian must also take the consequences of his choice.
The peace and blessedness of an absorbing interest in the divine are his compensation
for his lagging far behind the vanguard of the world in the march of material
progress. Hundreds of thousands die in India of preventable diseases, funds
are lacking for every worthwhile enterprise, cowardice and callousness of a
sort have come in the wake of disease and starvation. But the great spiritual
outlook upon life remains; the deep and inward understanding of the supreme
spiritual truths of the ages abides still with the people of India.
Let us now look for a brief while at the stupendous effect
which the physiographic environment has had and will continue to have over the
shaping of the destiny of India and of America, aside from the free choice of
the peoples inhabiting these countries, and sometimes in spite of great efforts
made by one of these peoples to overcome the handicaps of its emasculating environment.
The colonists and immigrants found America a virgin country with enormous natural
resources, with a generally vigorous and temperate climate, and with an exceedingly
light burden of population upon the soil. Except for a few aboriginal residents
who were no match for the newcomers, no enemies had to be faced by the settlers;
except for a few skirmishes no long and calamitous wars had to be fought. The
possibility of external invasion was remote, and time, money and energy were
hardly needed to be spent upon preparedness for it. There was a vast and magnificent
coastline and scope for expansion and still further expansion across a whole
continent. These favorable environmental situations and influences were there
for the people of America to utilize or to waste; they chose to utilize them
and to make of their country a miracle of material prosperity and the power-house
of political democracy. But who can say that the absence of any crushing difficulties
of a geographical character had not a great deal to do with their ability to
make such good use of their resources and surroundings? Who can say that a damp,
warm, enervating climate or a sandy, unproductive soil would not have made their
material achievement comparatively poor and insignificant?
And what about the Indian people and their physiographic
environment in its effect upon their achievement? A hot and moist land of plains
and forests, teeming with hundreds of millions who exert a disproportionately
heavy pressure upon the soil, an enervating climate which saps your vitality
even without disease and makes you naturally shun physical labor, natural barriers
dividing the country into somewhat disparate regional units, great bands of
invaders periodically coming from the colder north and sweeping the less sturdy
and more pacific people of the warm peninsula with their adventurous and irresistible
arms, frequent natural calamities like drought, inundation and earthquake, the
vision of death lurking in the murderous tiger and the snake of the thick jungles—these
factors, all of them definitely unfavorable, played their part in the creation
of Indian history and the making of what India is today. Who can overlook the
effect of these handicaps upon India's meagre achievement in the realm of material
progress and collective pursuit of opportunities for worldly prosperity? Who
can deny that even such handicaps as a warm climate and periodical natural calamities
did not tend to produce qualities and institutions that led man naturally to
search and find the satisfactions of a spiritual life?
(To be continued in the next issue)
*Mr. S. L. Das Varma, M.A., (Calcutta and London), deputed
by the government of India to study the American educational system, has been
in this country since last September. He has traveled widely in India and Europe,
and plans to discuss in this and subsequent articles the outstanding traits
of present-day American and Indian civilizations.
Will Durant, writing recently of child education in the
Cosmopolitan, said, "He learns by imitation, though his parents think he learns
by sermons. They teach him gentleness, and beat him; they teach him mildness
of speech and shout at him; they teach him a Stoic apathy to finance, and quarrel
before him about the division of their income; they teach him honesty, and answer
his most profound questions with lies."
God, we are cheap!
Satan has no coin so small
In value, but will tempt
Us to his thrall.
Esau in his hunger snatched
In his hairy hand,
A savory mess, paying
For it in kine and land.
Yet are we wiser? At least
He bartered kind for kind.
What of men who weigh
Lust against mind?
Men trade for a tinsel laugh
The golden power to weep,
And give their soul's daybreak
For an hour's sleep!
What is the difference between a "Swami" and a "Yogi"? A
Yogi means "one who has achieved union with the Divine through Yoga practices."
A Swami means "master" or "spiritual teacher."
A married or unmarried man, a woman, a child—all may be
Yogis, regardless of their circumstances, position or responsibilities of life,
if they follow Yoga methods under the competent guidance of a Guru (spiritual
Perceptor).
A Swami, however, is one who has pledged his life, not to
one family, but to the great human family. He does not marry nor carry on personal
activities. He receives his Yoga training, and his title of "Swami," from another
Swami, his Guru and superior. He belongs to some branch of the Order of Swamis
reorganized in the 7th century, A. D., by Lord Shankaracharya, and is usually
engaged in active humanitarian and educational work in India or occasionally
in foreign countries. In certain respects, the Order of Swamis resembles the
Christian monk orders.
(Sometimes students call themselves "Swamis" or "Yogi" without
any real authority to do so, just as some people call themselves "doctor" or
"professor" without having earned those titles).
It is foolishness to ask, which is greater, a Swami or a
Yogi? It is not the taking on of a name which makes one a Swami or a Yogi—it
is the living of the life. There are some great Yogis and Swamis living in American
and European and other non-Hindu bodies today who, though they may never have
heard the word Yogi or Swami, yet are true exemplars of those terms thru their
disinterested service to mankind or thru their great powers of concentration
and genius, or thru their control over their passions and thoughts. (Of course,
such men would be even greater if they were taught the definite technique and
scientific methods for conscious control over their minds and bodies, which
they could easily master due to their superior present development.)
"Yogoda" teaches a combination of the Yogi and the Swami,
taking the best of each without any formal limitations. It teaches the renunciation,
like the Swami, of a solely personal life, and the method of scientific contact
of Soul and Spirit as practiced by true Yogis.
—By Nicolai Husted
By matter ....science means substance of chemical elements,
subject to gravitation. Speaking of life, intelligence, and consciousness, science
has reference to inherent qualities of matter in certain degrees of unfoldment.
Therefore, no force or quality manifesting on the physical plane is regarded
by materialistic science as having originated outside of this plane or as having
its existence independent of matter, hence its conclusion that all phenomena
of life proceed from inherent qualities of matter. Scientists of this school
find, therefore, no evidence in nature testifying to the existence of an invisible
God and spiritual entities. Thus they hold that there is no support in facts
for a belief in something that one cannot see, hear, feel, smell or touch; that
for these reasons there is no purpose for creation or back of anything in life
and nature; that man is merely a cosmic accident, and all religious beliefs
are sheer nonsense.
However, all this reasoning can be shown to be faulty in
its entirety and to constitute a most dangerous philosophy whose ultimate effect
is corruption of soul and body and of the social life, besides being an obstruction
to true scientific progress.
It can now be shown by conclusive scientific evidence
that the ether of space consists of electric essence and is the origin and primal
state of all cosmic matter; that the celestial bodies, the earth included, are
formed by gyratory motion of electric force, which generates electro-magnetic
energy out of the ether of space and converts this into chemical gases whose
elements are the outcome of differentiated electric vibrations; that in each
particular case the gaseous body assumes nebular form and condenses gradually
by augmentation of mass, by heat and electric action.
Being thus able to trace matter to its imponderable state,
we are forced by unshakable evidence to believe in the existence of invisible
matter and to admit that things invisible and imponderable may yet be as real
as anything visible and ponderable. Hence, it follows that invisibility is no
evidence against the existence of spiritual forces and eternal consciousness.
It thus appears at a glance that the philosophic despair
of much higher education is an effect of false and illogical reasoning.
Observing that matter itself has come from the invisible
realm of nature, it follows that all qualities and potentialities of matter
have likewise come from the same source. This realization brings us face to
face with the fact that there is a soul-world back of the physical world, and
that everything manifested in matter has its root in subtle and occult forces.
Inasmuch then, that evolution evolves only that which already
exists in one state or another, man's intellect and other mental and psychic
qualities, attained by evolution, must have been present as potentialities at
the incipience of the evolving form or being, and were therefore transmitted
from an intelligent and self-conscious Power, pre-existing physical matter.
That Power must therefore possess all mental and spiritual faculties of man
in unlimited measure, since It could not otherwise have imparted Itself with
these qualities to the world-matter and to human nature.
The fact that the differentiated mental powers of man are
traceable to potentialities derived through forms and agencies of matter from
the invisible arcanum of the universe, proves conclusively the existence of
an unexplored source of self-conscious intelligence and infinite power as the
fountain-head, not only of the intellectual faculties of the human being, but
as the originator of all which displays intelligence in forms, organisms, systems,
and the laws of nature. It is the fountain-head of life we call God, whose existence
is testified to by the whole creation as being a living intelligent Power which
fills immensity.
As for the immortality of the human soul, let us observe,
inasmuch as the self-conscious and intelligent life-principle of the universe
proves to be independent of ponderable matter, that the individualized self-conscious
and intelligent life-principle and soul of man, evolved from the universal life-principle
as an offspring from its parent, must likewise be independent of matter and
survive matter! Having thus inherited eternal life, the human soul will naturally
continue its existence and the development of its inborn forces as an intelligent
entity of divine origin, even after the earth itself shall have passed away
and gone back to the imponderable state of matter. Thus man himself is that
incontrovertible proof he has sought as demonstrative evidence of a self-conscious,
intelligent and creative God of the universe.
In view of this cardinal fact that our individualized
soul had its incipience in potentialities of divine nature, and is the product
of evolution, it follows that we must have passed through numerous antecedent
stages of human and sub-human consciousness before attaining our present state
of brain-cell development.
This reveals the truth of reincarnation or re-birth of the
human soul into new physical bodies, such as taught by the early Christian church
Fathers until the revolution of the church doctrine by order of Emperor Justinian
II, 553 A. D.
Be it so that we are now on the way from lower stages of
mental and spiritual unfoldment, it is obvious that we are in need of training
and experiences that might best be acquired in physical bodies. If this is not
a sacred law of evolution, how can every one be made to reap what he has sown,
or be made to meet the consequences of his deeds, be they good or bad? Or how
can divine justice be done otherwise to all men? May not reincarnation be the
gateway for readjustment of all wrongs, and for new chances for development
and happiness for all victims of circumstances and injustice in this life?
May it not also be a fact that the master minds of every
age are advanced souls that have returned to help to promote knowledge, justice
and happiness on earth? This fact may be gleaned from the narrative in the New
Testament that an angel came to announce the coming of both John the Baptist
and Jesus of Nazareth as entities well-known to him, although they had not yet
appeared on the physical plane.
Looking about in the world with this thought in mind, we
behold in the various inferior races and types of man, now scattered over the
earth, representatives of our past stages of physical incarnations along the
highway of evolution, whence we all have come.
"Religion! 'Tis another name
For truth and charity;
Religious rite and sacrifice
Is kindness, purity."—King Asoka.
When roses bloom
And the dawn breaks the spell of darkness.
When fortune laughs
And praise weaves garlands
And glory makes the crown,
When little pleasures all dance around thee
When fickle festivity sings
The birth of a new born babe
In future sure to die,
When everyone shouts thy praises
And thousands follow,
You see His hands of showering blessings.
Yet there is a silent budding joy in every twig,
In the leafless limbs of the rosebush
O'er the snow;
There is a joy in waiting
For the streak of dawn in the darkness.
Through vapours of sorrow dim
Joy is seen with welcome.
Persecution sweetens long-tasted praise;
A bare head expectant of the crown
Has joy denied the head long-crowned.
The dance of darkness
Around each little flame of joy
Makes it burn brighter.
In monotony's mine lies buried
The caged air of bursting festivity;
Old age thrills with the thought of youth;
Behind the veil of death
Hides the promise of new life.
Behind the shifting scenes of life
The real life hides;
Behind the screen
Of unreal changing pictures of things seen
Lies the real drama of stable, unseen, cosmic
life.
Shadows are lined with light
Sorrows bulge with joy
Failures are filled with determination of success;
All cruelties urge us to be kind.
Passing mirth, fame, wealth,
Proud possessions given
Only to be taken away again,
And the straw fire of passions, joys
And intoxicating friendship
Oft do hide Thee.
But when all are gone we look for Thee—
In solitude by friends and foes avoided
There's One unseen Who ne'er forsakes;
He may fly
When everyone shakes hand with thee—
When there's none
He may come to take thy hand.
—By Brahmacharee Nerode
"Master, carest thou not that we perish?" sighed the disciples
of Jesus, awakening him from sleep. An angry storm was howling around and proud
waves were beating into the ship. He in his divine way rebuked the wind and
commanded the sea to be still and lo! there followed a calm. He swung toward
them and inquired, "How is that ye have no faith?" How could a ship, carrying
a divine cargo, ever be drowned?
The anecdote is pregnant with a psycho-spiritual significance.
The journey of a seeking soul across the glittering waters of Matter is often
beset with high winds of emotions and lashed by bold waves of temptations and
disappointment. Minds that are feeble and unpossessed of the single idea of
Christ-consciousness, shiver with an unmerited fear of collapse, blindly doubting
the unseen care. Behold the ardent seekers who have abundantly tasted of the
cup of Realization! Unflinchingly sanguine about the ultimate goodness of all
things and all events that may come to pass, they firmly stand rooted in their
faith and tide over the boisterous seas of life. Flesh and Matter stop their
bickerings, no sooner the Christ-within cries out, "Peace, be still"; a silent
calmness gradually creeps into the mind-world of the seer. The faithful never
perish; seeming destruction descends only on the faithless.
What is faith? Faith is knowledge, I mean the knowledge
of Divine Laws that are behind causation of things and events. Scores of apparent
and superficial reasons and causes may conspire for the occurrence of a certain
event, but an intelligent enquiry thru the searching eye of the inner soul will
make the astounding disclosure that everything is reducible to One Divine Will.
One student remarked to me, "Ah, dear teacher, you are preaching the philosophy
of fatalism." "Pardon me, dear student," I said unhesitatingly, "we are not
preaching the philosophy of fatalism; rather fatalism of your philosophy, if
you please."
Materialistic philosophy is very nervous about such teachings.
It falsely accuses such a doctrine of taking the dominance of Free Will out
of man's activities that has spurred human progress, and claims that it hopelessly
relegates everything to a blind-folded Cosmic Will.
What is the Divine Cosmic Will and what is your Free Will?
What I so loudly proclaim as my individual Free Will is nothing but a ray radiating
from the Cosmic Will. It is, of course, endowed with all possible freedom to
pick up its own course in Space and Time,—because it is a part of the divine
will which is ever-free—yet it is not without interference from other independent
free-wills that also parade in the universe. For this account Jesus said, "Love
thy neighbors as thyself;" that is to say, you must have respect for the rights
of your neighboring free-wills. There you are. In this interaction of free-wills,
what happens? The one that functions in conformity with its divine nature or
in other words in co-operation with the Parent Will, ultimately wins. My loving
mother used to say, "Good men live in God and the bad ones by themselves. Good
men live the life while they live. Even when they die, in hearts of man they
live. Bad men live and mark what life they live. And when they die, to the world
a complete death they die." Free-willers, know first this Mother Will, then
your free-will will be free.
A friend of mine once narrated a very interesting story
to me: Somewhere in the other side of this world, while strolling seemingly
all care-free, the spirit of Napoleon happened to meet the spirit of Caesar.
Unceremoniously said Napoleon's spirit to Caesar's, "Friend! both of us were
made of the same indomitable will-force while we trod on earth. I still feel
proud to think that once we wanted a thing, we had it." Caesar's ghost scratched
his head in doubt and pointedly replied, "Well, I am not quite sure. But about
one thing I am positive. You never wanted St. Helena." The free will of man
conquers unceasingly countries after countries, but there comes a time when
the Mother Will commands a halt. The human will is free, because it is a limb
of the divine will, which is free. Human will is on the other hand unfree and
bound, because it belongs to the divine will. It is free in its expression and
movement. But the moment it takes a tangential flight away from the center,
the divine will brings it back, holding it by its neck! Let free-will freely
do mischief to the world and see how long it is free to deter its own annihilation.
Such free-will kills its own freedom.
However, there is no waste in the scheme of God's nature,
may it be physical or moral. Even during the catastrophic march of Napoleonic
free-will, blessings of human liberty were scattered all around, altho the wings
of his free will were broken by the Parent Will for his betrayal of the divine
task of man. The divine law takes its own care. It works out its own way. How
strangely, even in the worst mishaps of man, there lies the seed of final good.
Who knows that out of the fallen glory and torments of his powerful soul, in
his solitary confinement, a new radiant soul of a different type was not born
in the great son of Corsica, for a still more wondrous victory in a future life?
God spreads His mercy thru the lava-storm of a volcanic crater as much as He
does thru the sweet breath of a saintly soul, provided we have the eyes to see
the viewpoint of His cosmic necessity.
What is faith then? Faith is Knowledge in the two Laws.
The one acknowledges the infinite possibility of each unit, whereas the other
establishes the truth of the ultimate victory and goodness of the whole. The
whole contains all units. the whole is good, true and beautiful. So is the nature
of each unit, the whole is contained of. The surface complexion or external
behaviour of each unit or each individual may sometimes appear incongruent,
tho at bottom each is fitting and beautiful in its own place. It is just a visual
deception on account of the relative vastness of the whole. It is this way.
Holding out a snatched petal of a rose, a child shrieked, "O gardener, you say
the rose is so beautiful; where is its beauty?" The gardener looked up to the
child and smilingly said, "Give me that, darling, I will show you." He went
into the garden, plucked a full-bloomed rose and fingered that solitary petal
into the crowd of happy petals. "Would you like to have this flower?" queried
the old man. "Oh! how beautiful!" ejaculated the child. Take off a petal of
one's life or a petal of an event out of the conglomeration of cosmic events,
at random, and you will assuredly miss the beauty, goodness and truth of the
whole. Link it with the scheme of the whole and see what grandeur there is in
the cosmic rose.
According to the Hindu conception which has been so ably
clarified by our teacher, Swami Yogananda, in his Science of Religion, the Whole,
the All, the Divine, or God, is ever-conscious, ever-existent, and ever-blissful.
So is the human unit. This profound faith in the unit and the whole, self and
all-self, unit event and great cause, a free will and cosmic will, or in other
words man and God, brings what the sage says is "nectar of immortality." Once
a neophyte pointed out, "You are free to act; but your free acts are also free
to follow their course and reap fruits accordingly." A learned ascetic explained
to me once in a terse way: "Move on, motion is life. But move around the point
in a circle, then you will never slip and suffer." "What is that point," demanded
I in my ignorance. "that point is God," came the answer. "Then am I a mere automaton,
moving in the same path around the same God?" "No, my boy. Extend your radius
and make the circle bigger and bigger every time until it disappears into the
Infinite," explained the master. So if we have faith enough to know that we
have the power to extend the radius of our life to move in a bigger and greater
circle of responsibility and duty, around the center of our God, such powers
are possible to us that may move mountains and bid to the ocean "Be still."
A very interesting article about India as the origin of
Masonry appeared in The New Age, an official Masonic magazine, for March, 1928.
The writer, Denman S. Wagstaff, in outlining what he learned form an Indian
Mason in Lahore, says:
"In symbolic fashion and in accord with the science of numbers,
the body of a man is figuratively supposed to be a temple with seven stars or
openings in the head; and the various other orifices are the Sun and the Moon
of the Verat, or the Macrocosm of ancient Philosophers, or man as a part of
the Grand Lodge above. The Unity of Brotherhood with the Fatherhood of God has
been fully recognized among Hindoo Masons."
Mr. Wagstaff quotes his Indian correspondent as claiming
that while Masonry was revived after the Middle Ages in the British Isles, yet
it must be conceded that all Masonry came from the East. "Ex Oriente Lux." "While
it is admitted that Masonry deteriorated in the East," says the article, "in
comparison with the high standard it attained in the West, yet the purity of
the original, traced in Sanscrit documents and books, shows how the various
ancient charges were taught by the high priests of old in the Upanishads and
Puranas . . . ."
It is well-known that in certain parts of the South, the
life and reputation of negroes or other non-whites are not held in very high
regard. However, the day of reckoning comes in its own good time. Recently H.
Leslie Quigg, Chief of Police for Miami, Florida, brought himself into prominence
in the press throughout America thru his race and color prejudice against non-whites
and his high-handed methods of dealing with them. At the time, it seemed that
this mistaken soul was going to continue unrebuked in his crimes against his
darker-skinned brothers. However, as a result of the findings of a Grand Jury
investigation into the Miami Police Department, the public career of Chief of
Police Quigg has been brought to a halt. On March 23rd, Quigg was arrested on
an indictment charging him with first degree murder of H. Kier, negro prisoner,
alleged to have been killed two and a half years ago by members of the police
department.
The Grand Jury recommended complete reorganization of the
police department, declaring it had found an alliance between the department
and the underworld and had learned details of "numerous crimes" committed by
members of the department with the full cooperation and in some cases, the direction
and leadership of high departmental officers. The report further states that
"all sorts of indignities and insults and brutalities" had been suffered by
citizens who had been arrested, sometimes without any reason, by the Miami police
under Chief Quigg. The Grand Jury investigation report further revealed the
existence in the Police Department of an "amazing growth of unlawful practices",
"so unreasonable, so brutal, so inhuman and astounding" as to constitute an
"unbelievable state of affairs." The report charged that the Miami police were
guilty of employing "terrifying and damnable methods" and of inflicting "torture,
indignities and inhumanities" on those in their charge. This reign of terror
under chief Quigg has been brought to a halt by his long-deferred arrest, and
the non-whites in southern Florida may now reasonably expect to receive justice
for their many wrongs.
"The Light of Asia," a picture produced in India
and filmed around Jaipur in Rajputana amid the actual scenes of the life of
the Guatama Buddha, has recently reached America and will doubtless be shown
in the large cities of this country. The various parts have been acted by members
of the Hindu nobility in view of the sacred significance of the film. The picture
was recently shown in Washington, D.C., and was enthusiastically received.
An Associated Press dispatch states that on April 5th, the
King and Queen of Spain washed the feet of twenty-six beggars, in an annual
religious ceremony betokening Christian humility. Similar services occurred
in the palaces of every Archbishop and Bishop in Spain.
Senator Woodbridgbe N. Ferris of Michigan, a dear friend
of Swami Yogananda and a member of his Washington Yogoda class, died recently
in Washington. The Senator, who was 75 years old, was the founder of the Ferris
Industrial School in Michigan and was well-known as an educator. He was know
as the "good gray governor" of Michigan, the man who rode thru the state's normal
Republican majority of 500,000 votes to be elected to the Senate as a Democrat
in 1922, an achievement that had no duplication in Michigan's political records
for the past 70 years.
A Universal Service dispatch from Chicago, dated March 11th,
recounted the following experience of an English explorer:
"With the discovery of the long-sought tribe of Hindu Yogis
to her credit, Jill Crossley-Batt, famous English woman explorer, was in Chicago
today, bound for her home in England.
"The tribe lives in the strongholds of the Himalaya mountains,
a two months' journey from the farthest outposts of civilization," she said.
"These people, primitive in their ways of living, but versed in the age-old
lore of occultism and Yogiism, are different from many of the known Indian tribes.
They are a stalwart race and live to an incredible age.
"I talked with men who were at least 150 years old, yet
they were straight as an arrow, active, with not a gray hair in their heads.
The women live to correspondingly advanced ages and I saw some over 70 who were
bearing children, married to men well over 100.
"Inculcated with the wisdom of the East from birth, they
told me many things that were happening in my home and to my friends in far-off
England at the very moment I was talking to them, which I later verified."
New York, April 4, 1928.—Jules-Bois, French lecturer and
member of L'Ecole de Psychologie, or psychological department of the Sorbonne,
arrived yesterday on the French liner Il de France. He told of the recognition
on the part of French scientists of the so-called "superconscious" mind which
is the exact opposite of Dr. Sigmund Freud's subconscious mind and which he
said was the quality "which makes man really man and not just a super-animal."
M. Jules-Bois said that the existence of a superconscious
mind had long been recognized philosophically, being in reality the "over-soul"
spoken of by Emerson, but that it was only recently that it had been recognized
scientifically. He described it as the mental attribute which afforded inspiration
to genius. He said that belief in this was not mysticism though it recognized
and valued the qualities which mystics preached.
The new psychological quality had been investigated in French
laboratories associated with the Sorbonne, he said. M. Jules-Bois added that
it had practical applications and described how French psychologists had cured
an habitual drunkard by arousing his sense of moral values through the awakening
of this superconscious mind.
He said that the awakening of the moral consciousness was
not to be confused with Coueism or hypnotism. These, though effective in some
cases, he said, were relatively superficial. M. Jules-Bois, who has already
spoken in this country under the auspices of the Alliance Francaise, will lecture
on this subject in America.—New York Times.
Congressman Celler of Brooklyn, New York, has recently
introduced into Congress a bill intended to amend the naturalization law "to
permit Hindus legally admitted to the United States to become naturalized".
Last year, Senator Copeland of New York sponsored a bill in Congress intended
to give a legal definition to the words "white persons" in order to include
Hindus within the scope of that definition, since they are Aryans and Caucasians.
These two congressmen have earned the gratitude of the Hindus in America for
their efforts on behalf of the Hindus.
Swami Yogananda visited his Boston Center in March.
He will spend the month of April in visiting his various other Eastern Centers.
On April 12th he will address his Buffalo students on "The Power of Truth versus
Untruth." On April 14th he will address his Pittsburgh Center, and on April
15th will attend the 2nd Annual Banquet of that Center in the Soldiers Memorial
Hall. On April 22nd, the Swami will be the guest of the Cincinnati Center. He
will also visit his Cleveland, Detroit and Washington Centers during April.
In May, Swami Yogananda will start his lecture series and
class work again. Further details will be given in the next issue of this magazine.
The "New York Times" reports the following substance of
a lecture given before the International Missionary Council now in session in
Jerusalem, by Professor William Hocking, professor of philosophy at Harvard
University:
"He drew an analogy between the technique of the psych-analyst
and the religious practices. He concluded by declaring that in the future missionaries
must add to the proclamation of the truth by the spoken word, the revelation
of truth through action. Professor Hocking further suggested that there be established
in various parts of the world centers where representatives of different faiths
could live together, with chapel and library facilities, as well as places where
those interested could talk together and share spiritual experiences and values,
so establishing a spiritual community. Such institutions throughout the world,
he said, would be an accomplishment of the missionary aim: that is, establishment
of the spiritual community of the world. Thus, he asserted, might be realized
the meaning of the ancient cry; "I am the vine; ye are the branches."
"Men travel to gaze upon mountain-heights and the waves
of the sea, broad-flowing rivers and the expanse of the ocean and the courses
of the stars, and pass by themselves, the crowning wonder."—St. Augustine's
"Confessions."
Reviewed by Swami Yogananda
I wish to recommend to all my students and to the public
in general this book by E. Charles. It is extremely interesting, bringing out
the most profound truths in a simple, readable and entertaining manner. It uniquely
weaves deep mysticism with an absorbing love-story. I enjoyed it immensely,
for it held my attention and interest on every page. It is a beautiful story
of Ideal Love and Truth. Everyone should read it. The deep underlying meaning
of many mysterious passages in the Bible is explained in a fascinating way.
The author says in the Foreword: "The human brain operates
on much the same principle as the radio. If the electrical energies (the life
forces) of the individual are largely lifted into the brain for regeneration,
the potential range, or area, of the brain easily embraces the Fourth Dimension—the
Super-planes, Powers and Bliss of the Higher Consciousness. (Those who know
the highest type of Marriage have little grossness to overcome.) If the electrical
energies of the individual are largely dissipated in selfish, worldly pursuits,
speaking in radio parlance, the brain only picks up ‘local happenings'."
This remarkable and engrossing story will be a wonderful
inspiration to those seeking spiritual enlightenment as well as to those wishing
to while away a happy hour in reading an interesting novel.
by James Warnack.
(Order form J. Warnack. The Times, Editorial Room, Los Angeles, Cal.) $1.00.
Reviewed by Countess Ilya Tolstoy
The poet loves to listen to the songs within the
shrine of his soul. When he is saturated and completely one with his heart's
melodies, then the precious drops fall from the superabundance of his soul as
rose petals fall when the flower reaches the splendor of its bloom.
When one is reading the poetry of Mr. Warnack, one feels
the touch of eternal beauty coming from deeply hidden springs of the human soul;
feels the direct communion with the beautiful longings of the ideal Self, with
that Something in us which we fully realize when we are silently within our
Self. We feel that we commune with the mysteries of our depths, which are longing
for the beautiful, for the satisfaction of Self-expression and, finally, with
the rays and wings of inspiration, are reaching to the realm of universality
and all-inclusive comprehension.
The poet consciously leads, guides his thoughts; his words
are mastered by wisdom, by universal understanding. His horizon is broadened
by the heights of the soul's summits, which are reversed depths that reflect
themselves in the crystalline lakes of his poetry. He sees the stars and skies
but he also knows the flowers of the valleys, all in one big, universal perspective.
The joys of an impersonal ideal have reconciled the poet with the unsolvable
conflicts of human life. Up and down, without and within, he finds the same
essence of life—which is enchanting spirituality, which is love, tremendous
stupendity of the Absolute, the Spirit—God.
This poetry is a poetical synthesis of the subjective beauties
of the soul and the depths of philosophical thought. These "symphonies of the
Soul" are dear to the hearts of those who have chosen the path of roses and
thorns of the mystic.
by
Ananda Coomaraswamy.
(Order from Holliday Bookshop, 49 E. 49th St., New York)
In the fourteen essays comprising this book, the author
has given a cross-section of Indian life and has analysed the influences that
have shaped it from most ancient times. He writes on art, sociology, the status
of Indian women, binding these subjects together with the strong, long thread
of Hindu thought, which in all its phases of development has as its converging
point the search for God and union with Him. It was this aim, he says, that
gave purpose and meaning to Indian life. The religious basis of society seemed
the only practical one to a Hindu, and on it developed the caste system, the
vital nucleus of Indian civilization and the secret of her stability during
the changing centuries. This system of society is based on the twin theories
of rebirth and karma, i.e., that each individual is born into those conditions
of heredity and environment wherein he can reap the rewards and pay the debts
of action performed in previous lives and where he will meet the new experiences
which will open his eyes to the guideposts on the Way to God.
The most tangible evidence of this all-pervading, mystical
impulse is seen in Indian art. Coomaraswamy gives a scholarly and detailed discussion
of the philosophy of aesthetics and shows how the idea of Absolute Beauty is
the apprehension of a profound religious truth. This is realized in the concept
of Art as Yoga, the outward expression of the inner union with God. The ideal
was the identification of the artist with the object of his devotion, the Deity
revealing Himself as model to his love. Thus to see God was in itself the glorious
reward of work. There was no desire for personal fame (for it is rare indeed
that the name of any individual Indian artist has come down to posterity). One
can thus understand the grand impetus that led men to serve their God by picturing
in song or stone His glorious incarnations. This is ideally represented in the
perfect frescoes of Ajanta, although Buddhism had to develop from a philosophy
to a religion before this mellow and lyrical art was possible. In the early
Himayana days of Buddhism, the figure of Gotama was never represented except
symbolically, either by his footprints or the Wisdom Tree or some event in his
life. But the great concourse of monks in various caves throughout India gradually
gave rise to different schools and different interpretations of the Buddha's
doctrine until, conceived a deity, his image gave fresh inspiration to Indian
art. As the Buddha-yogi, seated cross-legged in profound meditation, his figure
has influenced Eastern art and thought to this day. This conception, writes
Coomaraswamy, is the greatest ideal which Indian sculpture has ever attempted
to express.
Throughout the book, there are finely chosen plates representative
of sculpture and painting, ideally picturing the author's themes. Of significant
interest are those illustrating various stages in Buddhist art and its connection
with Indian art per se. The chapter on "Buddhist Primitives" is an inspiration
to further knowledge of this intricate and fascinating field. But art is so
woven into the fabric of Indian thought and feeling that one must understand
the latter in order to fully appreciate the former. These, to Westerners, bizarre
figures with many arms have an amazing rhythmic unity to the eye that sees art
in terms of the universal. This is most deeply felt in the figures of Siva who
is so often conceived of as Nataraja, the god who dances in the heart of man
and in whose infinite rhythm the order of the cosmos is expressed. Time is but
the shadow cast by the eternal Mahadeva and in the circle of His ceaseless and
beautiful activity there is room for all conceptions and expressions of the
universe, since it is His dancing that motivates them all. It is this unity
in diversity that illumines the pages of Coomaraswamy's book whether he discussed
music (and this is indeed a brilliant chapter) or politics, his whole book showing
India's contribution to the world. He explains her view of life and describes
her heritage of art. He does not hark back to the past as the building stone
for the future but from that post, captures the beauty in thought and art. The
secret of this beauty is unity. This is the goal of East and West. One cannot
live without the other and India's faith in her religious philosophy as a key
to the solving of social problems is a challenge to Europe. That Western achievement
may be tempered by Eastern philosophy and vice versa is the hope of the future
and Coomeraswamy's book is one of a series of causes that should bring about
the great result.
by M. K.
Gandhi
This book is a compilation of Mahatma Gandhi's editorials
in his weekly, "Young India". It is intensely interesting as a guide to the
author's moral, intellectual and spiritual growth. His amazing honesty, humility
and spiritual strength transfigure each page with the glow of beauty and inspiration.
The text of his articles concern themselves mainly with
the theme of salvation for India thru Hindu-Moslem unity, the relief of the
"untouchable" class, and the re-establishment in every Indian home of the daily
use of the spinning-wheel for economic independence and the restoration of India's
ancient village glory.
Beautiful thoughts like the following bejewel the book throughout:
"Non-violent resistance is the resistance of one will against
another. That resistance is possible only when it is freed from reliance on
brute force. Reliance on brute force as a rule presupposes surrender when that
force is exhausted . . . I admit that the strong will rob the weak and that
it is sin to be weak. But this is said to the soul in man, not of the body.
If it be said of the body, we could never be free from the sin of weakness.
But the strength of soul can defy a whole world in arms against it. This strength
is open to the weakest in body . . . Nor need love be reciprocal. It is its
own reward. Many a mother has tamed by her love her erring defiant children.
Let us all prepare to get rid of the weakness of love. There is chance of success
there. For rivalry in loving is conducive to health. The world has been trying
all these ages to become strong in the wielding of brute force and it has miserably
failed. Rivalry in generating brute force is race suicide . . . Frightfulness,
exploitation of the weak, immoral gains, insatiable pursuit after enjoyments
of the flesh are utterly inconsistent with soul-force."
"The law of love—call it attraction, affinity, cohesion,
if you like—governs the world. Life persists in the face of death. The universe
continues in spite of destruction incessantly going on. Truth triumphs over
untruth. Love conquers hate."
A correspondent of Gandhi writes him as follows:
"Mahatmaji, you admit that the people of India have not
followed your creed. You do not seem to realize the cause of it. The truth is
that the average person is not a Mahatma. History proves this fact beyond doubt.
There have been a few Mahatmas in India and elsewhere. These are exceptions.
And the exceptions only prove the rule. You must not base your actions on the
exceptions."
To this Gandhi replies:
"It is curious how we delude ourselves. We fancy that one
can make the perishable body impregnable and we think it impossible to evoke
the hidden powers of the soul. Well, I am engaged in trying to show, if I have
any of these powers, that I am as frail a mortal as any of us and that I never
had any thing extraordinary about me nor have any now. I claim to be a simple
individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that
I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. I
own that I have an immovable faith in God and His goodness and unconsumable
passion for truth and love. But is that not what every person has latent in
him? If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history.
We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors. If we may make new discoveries
and inventions in the phenomenal world, must we declare our bankruptcy in the
spiritual domain? Is it impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make
them the rule? Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all?"
Dr. Glenn Frank, President of the University of Wisconsin, is reported to have delivered at the opening session of the Wisconsin Senate the following prayer:
"Almighty God, Lord of all governments, help us, in the
opening hours of this legislative session, to realise the sanctity of politics.
"Save us from the sins to which we shall be subtly tempted
as the calls of parties and the cries of interests beat upon this seat of government.
"Save us from thinking about the next election when we should
be thinking about the next generation.
"Save us from dealing in personalities when we should be
dealing in principles.
"Save us from thinking too much about the vote of majorities
when we should be thinking about the virtue of measures.
"Save us, in crucial hours of debate, from saying the things
that will take when we should be saying the things that are true.
"Save us from indulging in catch words when we should be
searching for facts.
"Save us from making party an end in itself when we should
be making it a means to an end.
"We do not ask mere protection from these temptations that
will surround us in these legislative halls; we ask also for an even finer insight
into the meaning of government that we may be better servants of the men and
women who have committed the government of this commonwealth into our hands.
"Help us to realise that the unborn are part of our constituency,
although they have no vote at the polls.
‘May we have greater reverence for the truth than for the
past. Help us to make party our servant rather than our master.
"May we know that it profits us nothing to win elections
if we lose our courage.
"Help us to be independent alike of tyrannical majorities
and tirading minorities when the truth abides in neither.
"May sincerity inspire our motives and science inform our
methods.
"Help us to serve the crowd without flattering it, and believe
in it without bowing to its idolatries."
___________
"Seek for beauty—she only
Fights with man against Death."
—Sara Teasdale.
By A. S. Wadia
(In the following article, which appeared recently
in "The Indian Review", the author has pointed out the prevalence, in gifted
persons, of the "malady of the Ideal" but he has failed to realize the true
significance of this "malady", which in reality is the human yearning for perfection,
the hunger after forgotten spiritual verities. This submerged but forever existent
and inescapable urge within each human soul is alone, of all man's forces, powerful
enough to drive him on and on to perfection, never satisfied, never content,
never at rest until the lost divinity is regained.)
"O mine is still the lone trail,
The hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars,
And the Hunger of the Quest."
—I. R. McLeod.
Modern Psychotherapy has brought to our knowledge new and
mysterious maladies of the mind. There is, however, one that no psychopathist
has ever cared to classify nor any psycho-analyst has yet attempted to analyze.
And that malady is the Malady of the Ideal. And well it is that they have left
it severely alone for in nothing would their labors, so fruitful in many directions,
prove so futile as in tackling a mental ailment that has prevailed in the world
from the beginning of time, counts among its victims the greatest minds that
have ever lived and, in consequence, remains one of the most obstinate and incurable
of mental diseases known to us. And yet it is not exactly a mental disease;
it is rather a mental distemper or distress. For the malady lies in a certain
morbid condition of a really healthy and powerful mind, often of the most exceptional
vigor and depth.
The Malady consists essentially in carrying things to extremes,
in working out an idea to death. Herein lies its ingrained and unmistakable
morbidity or, as some would say, its distinguishing and irrepressible intrepidity.
For it all depends on the way we look at the malady. The fact is that a certain
grand idea finds entrance into the mind of these superior spirits and there
it ferments and matures into an ideal and takes complete possession of the mind
to the exclusion of all other ideas. Once the idea, now converted into an ideal,
has acquired a mastery over these singular people, it gives them no peace nor
rest, but lashes and drive them on till they submissively carry out what its
tyrant-will urges them to do.
Napoleon is a fine instance of this Malady. He was throughout
his long and dazzling career lashed on but by one ideal—namely, of evolving
out of the waste and confusion of his times a common general idea, a common
general purpose among the nations of the West, by bringing about a grand synthesis
of its moral and intellectual forces, having first reduced the whole of Europe
under one system of law and Government with France as its sovereign authority
and all powerful arbiter and Paris serving at once as the repository of its
past art and culture and the radiating centre of all its future civilizing influences
in the world. This was the ideal which, as he himself said to the faithful companions
of his exile, lured him on all through his life, and in fact, it was the intense
and unscrupulous pursuit of it that inevitably ended his meteoric career and
entombed him alive in St. Helena. Coming to our own times, the finest living
instance is, as the reader will have guessed, Gandhi. The dominant ideal in
his case has been Non-Violence. Not to defend one's self, not to show anger,
not to hold anyone responsible; on the contrary, to pray for, to suffer with,
and even to love those who use us ill—that is Gandhi's mode and ideal of life.
This modern prophet of non-violence has lived as he has preached and in fact
it was the reckless pursuit of this noble ideal that made him find his lodging
for two years behind the bars of an English jail.
The above is one phase of the Malady, when the ideal cherished
is more or less definite and aims at a goal which however distant is more or
less fixed. There is another phase in which it becomes quite vague and intangible,
when the ideal aimed at is a kind of pure fantasy and the goal set is a kind
of will-o'-the-wisp which recedes the further, the further one goes in pursuit
of it. Amiel well expresses the nature of this phase of the malady, when he
says:—
"I have not given away my heart, hence this restlessness
of spirit. I will not let it be taken captive by that which cannot fill and
satisfy it: hence this instinct of pitiless detachment from all that charms
me without permanently binding me; so that it seems as if my love of movement,
which looks so like inconstancy, was at bottom only a perpetual search, a hope,
a desire, a care, the Malady of the Ideal."
___________
"The smallest dew-drop on the meadow
at night has a star sleeping in its bosom."
One good effect which Miss Mayo little expected when she
wrote her false and vicious book against India, was that the friends of India
would rally to her banner to defend her. Everywhere hosts of real lovers of
India have rushed to expose the falsehoods of Miss Mayo's book—teachers, missionaries
and foreign residents of India who have lived many years or in many cases all
their lives in India have not hesitated to state that the conclusions of Miss
Mayo are entirely wrong, based on false, untrustworthy or insufficient data
due to the fact that Miss Mayo spent only a few months in India, devoting herself
exclusively to hospital and other morbid records instead of observing India
as a whole.
Atlantic Monthly. The February, 1928 issue of The
Atlantic Monthly contains an excellent article exposing the worthlessness of
Miss Mayo's book "Mother India." It is written by Rev. Alden H. Clark, who for
seventeen years has worked as an educational and evangelical missionary in India.
He has served on the Executive Committee of the National Church Council of India
and is now chairman of the oldest mission of the American Board. He says in
his article, "‘Mother India' has struck a blow both against truth and against
interracial understanding and good-will . . . The influence of this book is,
indeed, calculated to lower the tone of civilization by stimulating people in
both East and West to interpret each other by whatever is indecent and beastly
. . . Omissions, misstatements, and misunderstandings that everyone who has
lived in India must recognize, bob up so frequently that if one were to hit
them all he would have to be a ten-armed Irishman with a shillalah in every
hand . . . Miss Mayo has ignored and minimized the great mass of favorable evidence
that lay ready to a writer's hand . . . The book's main contention is definitely
disproved by statistics."
Mrs. Cousins, who has lived in intimate friendship
with the women of India for twelve years, says: "I aver that the total impression
she (Miss Mayo) conveys to any reader, either inside or outside India, is cruelly
and wickedly untrue." Miss M. M. Underhill, a well-known missionary in India,
writes in the International Review of Missions for October, 1927: "the book
shows throughout a lack of any background knowledge of India; and, what is more
serious, it shows a lack of appreciation—one might almost say of power to appreciate—in
face of a civilization foreign to previous experience . . . One cannot help
asking, ‘Does Miss Mayo know even now much more of India than she did before
going?' We doubt it."
Mahatma Gandhi writes: "the book is without doubt
untruthful . . . The book is brimful of descriptions of incidents of which an
average Indian, at any rate, has no knowledge . . .it is the report of a drain
inspector." Mahatma Gandhi gives the following quotation from an Indian poem
to illustrate Miss Mayo's unworthy attitude:
"On the lips of the good, vice becomes virtue.
And even virtue appears as vice
In the mouth of the evil-minded;
This need not surprise us.
For, do not the mighty clouds
Drink the salt waters of the ocean
And return it as sweet refreshing rain,
And does not the cobra, drinking sweet milk,
Belch it forth as the deadliest poison?
Rivers drink not of their own waters,
The trees do not themselves eat the fruit
Which they bear,
Nor do the clouds
Partake of the grains they grow;
Even so the good
Devote their powers to the good of others."
By C. S. Ranga Iyer.
(Selwyn and Blount, Ltd., 6 Duke Street, Adelphia W. C. 2, London—$2.00).
This book by a member of the Indian Legislative Assembly is a reply in detail
to Miss Mayo's book, and exposes all the falsehoods of her cleverly but viciously
written book. Mr. Iyer's book gives a mass of very interesting and instructive
information on India and present-day conditions.
A Son of Mother India Answers: This book by Dhan
Gopal Mukerji published by E. P. Dutton, New York ($1.50) is a small book but
effectively and very calmly and tolerantly answers Miss Mayo's charges against
India. It exposes the false structure on which the whole of "Mother India" is
based, showing that Miss Mayo has failed to give the names of those whom she
quotes, has put her words into the mouths of anonymous critics, and has used
quotations from a critic who has been dead a hundred years as though he were
yet living and speaking of present-day conditions. Mr. Mukerji's book is beautifully
and sanely written and will be enjoyed by its readers. Mr. Mukerji concludes
his book with these words from an Indian sage:
"India needs love. The West has given her criticism these
many years. I am quite clear in what I am saying: love her and she will fulfill
her destiny . . . The world is suffering from judgment. Men talk philosophy
to their brother writhing and bleeding on the ground, a spear planted in his
heart. What the poor wounded man needs, they, the instructors of mankind, do
not see; it is not the salt of judgment on his wound, but the strong hands of
affection. East and West are words that stab with criticism—drop thy words,
like daggers by the roadside, and rush to thy Brother's rescue . . . Bring out
the Face of Compassion from within thy heart!
Bathe the wounded body of man in the cleansing currents of thine
inward peace."
Premier Mussolini, who has brought the dark whole wheat
bread back into favor in Italy, has other sensible and health-giving ideas on
diet. He himself drinks milk daily with his meals, and avoids meat, tea, coffee
and wine.
The proclamation in Italy of National Bread Days in April
has called forth from Il Duce the following poetic lines:
"Italians! Love bread, heart of the home,
Savor of the repast, joy of health;
"Respect bread, sweat of the brow,
Pride of labor, poem of sacrifice;
"Honor bread, glory of the fields,
Fragrance of the earth, feast of life;
"Do not waste bread, richness of the fatherland,
Sweetest gift of God, most holy reward of human
toil."
By Charles H. Hubbard
O ecstatic one, why do you thrill with bliss?
The summer is past
And yet to you there are flowers.
The winds have ceased
To be laden with nature's soft sweetness,
Your garments are thin,
While others shiver full-robed.
Your voice is strong and your step is firm
Yet you are ecstatic, drinking sweet nectars
That come to you in the form of sweet words
From the Lord.
O devotee, why is thy passion so great?
What is He, thy God,
That you should seek for Him always,
Overcoming all obstacles
That stand in your way to Bliss Union with Him?
___________
"Be not slothful in business; fervent in spirit;
Serving the Lord."—Romans 12:11.
(Suggested by "Om" by Swami Yogananda)
Father, we thank Thee for this soundless roar,
Of the booming Om breaking on bliss' shore.
We thank Thee
These vibrations loosen all our wealth,
And the heart and breath
No more disturb our health.
Our house is lulled in darkness
But for Thine Infinite Light;
Thy flute, Thy harp, Thy bell,
Do wond'rously resound this night;
And upward soar our thoughts
Through Thine ethereal sea.
To join with Thee, our God,
In one grand symphony.
___________
By Swami Yogananda
Heavenly Spirit, receive this food—
Make it holy.
Let not the impurities of my thought
In any way defile it.
It is for Thy temple.
Spirit to Spirit goes.
___________
Frederick Myers
So even I athirst for His inspiring,
I who have talk'd with Him, forget again;
Yes, many days with sobs and with desiring,
Offer to God a patience and a pain.
Then through
The mid complaint of my confession,
Then through the pang and passion of my prayer,
Leaps with a start the shock of His possession,
Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there.
Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny;
Yea, with one voice, O world,
Though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.
___________
"To me the meanest flower that blows
Brings thoughts that often lie too deep for tears."
—Wordsworth.
"I have been deaf in my left ear for about 15 years. After
attending your lectures a few times, I tested my hearing. I can now hear the
faint tick of a watch."—Julius Edwin Snyder, 3069 S. W. 7th Street, Miami, Fla.
"The teachings of Swami Yogananda have been a revelation
to me in the art of practical concentration, and also in the art of living.
The lesson on the spiritual contact of Cosmic Vibration is alone of inestimable
value, and I am truly grateful for this great message from India."—Mrs. L. M.
Raine, 153 N. W. 2nd Street, Miami, Fla.
"Since your healing meeting, I can now leave off my glasses
on the street, for the first time since I was a child. I sincerely hope all
will receive the vibrations from heaven as I have at the Swami's Yogoda classes."—E.
L. Thalmer, 133 N. E. 3rd Avenue, Miami, Fla.
"Your lectures and lessons have been a revelation to me;
they have been most inspiring."—Mrs. J. Rutherland, 130 N. W. 35th Street, Miami,
Fla.
"I had severe pain in my side. After attending your lectures,
I was healed. I also had trouble with both my arches, but after taking the Yogoda
class, and practising regularly, I am now cured and can send the energy there
without pain. I thank God for the wonderful teaching He has sent."—H. King,
30 Smith Cottage, Miami Beach, Fla.
"Yogoda came to me, as sent from Heaven, after a lifetime
of longing, praying and dissatisfied study. Truth is everywhere, but Yogoda
is the essence."—H. S. Nelson, 812 N. W. 31st Street, Miami, Fla.
"His teachings of Yogoda, so conscientious and painstaking,
have restored the health of two members of my family. My brother, a World War
veteran, was wounded overseas and has never been well since. It was only after
he became an enthusiastic student of Yogoda that he began to show marked improvement.
"My father suffered from stomach trouble for many years,
and although he interviewed the most prominent men of the medical world, he
could find no relief until he followed the directions of diet and exercises
of Yogoda. I have been a superintendent of one of the northern hospitals, coming
in close contact with suffering humanity. With the great inspiration of inestimable
value that I have received from the Yogoda class, I feel I will return to my
beloved work and give more than ever the helping hand that humanity needs.
"The teachings of Yogoda help one to check the minor strain,
and sould the note of physical, mental and spiritual culture and beauty. It
also gives one full power to transform all fruitless wastes into gardens of
promise and gladness."—Marion Greenberg, R. N., 722 Palm Avenue, Hialeah, Fla.
"Yogoda rejuvenates ideals, and spiritual, body and health
activities. It is a vital, authentic method of adding zest to the joy of living,
coupleD with sane methods of simplified instruction for blending spiritual,
mental and physical forces in daily life. Yogoda proves to be a revelation of
joy and peace, as testified to by hundreds of pupils of Yogoda in Minneapolis
and St. Paul."—E. F. Hall, 2720 W. 44th Street, Minneapolis, Minn.
"Must express my appreciation of all the benefits received
from Yogoda—both mentally and physically, each day overcoming wrong habits.
I have practically laid off my glasses which I have worn over ten years."—H.
Treat, New Brighton, Minn.
"I have received great spiritual benefit under the tutorship
of Swami Yogananda and hope for great development through practice of the lessons."—Boel
Refsum, 1312 15th Ave., N., Minneapolis.
"I have had eczema on my hands for twenty years. Since attending
Swami Yogananda's class, I find that I am cured, for which I thank God."—L.
DuBay, 3820 Cedar Ave., S., Minneapolis.
"Words cannot express my feelings and the results of your
wonderful teachings. I have been healed of a very bad case of sinus infection,
from which I had suffered for six years."—E. Unterfenger, 948 Kensington Ave.,
Buffalo, N. Y.
"I received such wonderful results from Yogoda, that I want
you to know about them. Before Yogoda came, I suffered pain and numbness in
my thigh—this has now all left me. I also had my hearing restored, for which
I am so grateful."—M. L. Haas, 204 Bidwell Parkway, Buffalo, N. Y.
Every morning at seven o'clock Swami Yogananda sends
a Divine Healing Prayer Vibration to his students and all who ask his help in
healing and liberating themselves from physical or mental disease or the spiritual
suffering of ignorance. Anyone who wishes to avail himself of this help, which
the Swami is happy to extend to all, may write to the Los Angeles headquarters,
briefly stating the nature of his or her trouble. This service is supported
by love-offerings.
The Mount Washington Educational Center, headquarters of
Yogoda Sat-Sanga, is supported by donations and pledges and by Swami Yogananda,
who has already given more that $32,000 of his own earnings from class-receipts
to support the Institution, which is established and maintained for the good
of all, being a non-sectarian spiritual Center for Yogoda (harmonious development
of all of Man's faculties and Sat-Sanga (fellowship with Truth). Those who will
help to support this work and Institution are helping God's work. Donations
and pledges are needed and will be greatly appreciated.
Judge no one save thyself. Clean thy own mental house. Seeing
thee, many others will be inspired to clean their own houses.
Look not for thy spiritual flower every day. Sow thy seed,
water it with prayer and right endeavor, and when the sprout will come, busy
thyself with the health of thy plant, picking out the weeds of doubt, indecision
and laziness. Some morning you will suddenly behold thy long-looked-for spiritual
flower of realization!
The Satan of the spiritual path has claws of bad habits,
in which he tightly holds his victims to the rut of sense pleasures, away from
the joys of eternal life. Do not be tempted by this Satan to forget God and
your daily meditation. On the altar of prayer and meditation, lay your offering
daily to God, and soon the Satan of bad habits will have no power over you.
Before your strength, his hold will weakly relax. There is hidden strength within
you to overcome all obstacles and temptations. Bring forth that indomitable
power and energy!
Grate a fresh coconut fine. Mix it with one cup of cream whipped
with the yolk of an egg. This is an excellent substitute for meat in strength-giving
qualities.
Sliced egg-plants slowly baked in the oven, covered with
a little tomato sauce, make a delicious and healthful dish.
Whole wheat grains, mixed with a little honey, and topped
with whipped cream, is a meal in itself.
******
Eat less, chew well. Think not of your taste alone, but
of your health. Summer is coming; eat fruits plentifully. Walk or run daily.
Bathe daily. Avoid starches. Life can be much simplified by a simple diet. The
time saved can be used on better things than catering to the body.
In an interview which was published recently in the "Miami
Herald," Edgar Hay says of the famous banker, Otto H. Kahn;: "You suspect that
the world to him is a rose, to be studied and enjoyed, in all its color and
fragrance, rather than an oyster to be opened. His undoubted energy is a quiet,
dynamic energy, not the restless kind that wastes itself in undirected action.
He impresses you as a man who has found the center of his being. You suspect
him of a profound continual happiness. He has found beauty. This is Otto Kahn,
the patron of the fine arts, who has done more for cultural America than perhaps
any other man living. This is the man who is president and chairman of the Metropolitan
Opera Company, vice-president of the Philharmonic Orchestra Society and director
of the American Federation of Arts."
"The interviewer quotes Mr. Kahn as having made the following
remarks on service, beauty and spirituality:
"The man to whom money is everything has no heart. When
a man achieves material success and piles up possessions, he owes something
to the community that provided his opportunities. The community invests in a
man by allowing him opportunities for success. It has a right to expect dividends
in service from that man when he attains his goal. The whole method by which
rewards are given and the basic idea of opportunities for all are based on that
principle of the community's benefiting by the individual's success. It means
just a fair deal to the community. It is not an altruistic, nor a quixotic idea.
It is a self-evident principle of society. It is just the same as when I invest
in bonds or stocks. I expect them to pay dividends The man who wins success
and does not pay dividends to his community in some sort of service is a dead
one—a worthless investment.
"This service to the community may be manifested in constructive
business activity, in helping community interests, or in furthering cultural
and artistic growth. With me, it has happened that I am particularly interested
in the latter. Culture is gaining ground in America. It is steadily becoming
of greater importance to America, and there is as much artistic talent to the
square inch in America as in any other country of the world.
"The Americans are yearning more and more for the fine things
of the spirit. They want to give their souls an airing. They are seeking nourishment
for their inner selves. They are finding an outlet for their emotional longings
in producing art. They realize that you must add something spiritual to a man
beside his material needs and possessions. In art, culture and all spiritual
affairs America now is going forward rapidly in the great upward movement."
Professor Charles Henry of the Sorbonne, famous French mathematician,
recently declared to the world of science that after a lifetime of scientific
research he believed that reincarnation was mathematically justified and that
the human soul could definitely be measured by higher calculus.
"Water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen," said the professor.
"Combine these two gases and you have water. It is possible to resolve water
back into its ingredients . . . you have destroyed the water, done away with
it. But you have not destroyed or done away with the oxygen and hydrogen. They
exist; they are free of each other; they can make new combinations. That is
what happens to the soul . . . None of us ever dies. That electrical radiation—call
it personality, individual characteristics, soul if you like, or ‘biological
vibration,' goes on and on. Set free by death, it seeks another envelope, because
only so can it establish equilibrium. All our souls have been used before. They
will all be used again."
"Charles Crocker does not paint directly from nature. He
uses form only as a means to an end, that is, to embody his thought emotions.
His paintings are individual expressions of mood vibration. He consciously combines
colors to produce whatever vibration corresponds to the feeling he wills to
express, for he understands the relation between the vibration of color and
the vibration of moods.
"This artist uses form only as a means to an end, that is,
to embody his thought emotions, and one unconsciously forgets the forms and
becomes one with the mood, to again lose himself in the silence that pervades
it. His paintings have rightly been called ‘spiritual dynamics'. As the violet-ray
tube in the world of science has made visible the healing violet-rays to serve
mankind, so Mr. Crocker in the world of art makes himself a vehicle, by his
skillful use of color in rhythm, to bring from the universal reservoir of thought-supply
certain thought-concepts otherwise intangible."—Kamala Devi.
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.
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.
10.—Establishing a spiritual unity among all nations.
11.—Overcoming evil by good, overcoming sorrow by joy; overcoming
cruelty by kindness.
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.
15.—Uniting science and religion through study and practical
realization of the unity of their underlying principles.
But ah! I've lost the little sight;
The scene's remov'd, and all I see
Is one confus'd dark mass of night;
What nothing was, now nothing seems to be.
How calm this region, how serene, how clear;
Sure, I some strains of heavenly music hear.
On, on! The task is easy now and light;
No steams of earth can here retard thy flight.
Thou needst not now thy strokes renew;
"This but to spread thy pinions wide
And thou with ease thy seat wilt view,
Drawn buy the bent of the ethereal tide.
‘This so, I find; how sweetly on I move,
Not led by things below,
And help'd by those above!
But see! To what new region am I come?
I know it well; it is my native home
Here led I once a life divine,
Which did all good, no evil know.
Ah! Who would such sweet bliss resign
For those vain shows which fools admire below?
'Tis true; but don't of folly past complain,
But joy to see these blest abodes again.
A good retrieve—but lo! while thus I speak,
With piercing rays the eternal day doth break;
The beauties of the Face divine
Strike strongly on my feeble sight.
With what bright glories doth it shine!
'Tis one immense and ever-flowing Light.
Stop here, my soul;
Thou canst not bear more bliss;
Nor can thy now rais'd palate ever relish less.
____________
Sometimes I see myself in dreams, a tiny isle
Awash with tidal waves of all eternity,
Alone and drear—I wonder if, upon God's map
A dot reminds him of the island I call me?
And then—a laden ship appears,
Bearing a course that leads it straight and true
Across the mighty sea,
To anchor snugly in my harbor
And I know God has my name upon his map—And thinks
of me!
_________________________
A famous formula—centuries old— from India, upon analysis and
from use meets the most modern scientific requirements.
The flashing, white teeth and healthy gums seen in the Orient
are kept free from decay and disease by the daily massaging of the gums with
a Powder. Soroda Tooth Powder has distinct astringent qualities which increase
blood circulation of the gums, combating the dreaded pyorrhea.
Soroda Tooth Powder is safe. Start using Soroda, morning and
night—everyday. You will be amazed at results.
Send for Soroda Tooth Powder today.
In 3 Oz. Cans—65c can
AFZALL, Inc.
24 STONE ST., NEW YORK
Secrets of the Orient—TONIQUE d'ORIENT "For The Hair"—$1.75.
_________________________
NRITANJALI
(Dance Offering)
An introduction to Hindu Dancing
by SRI RAGINI
NRITANJALI is a treatise on the classic Hindu Dance—an
ancient and divine art which has drawn expression from vast spiritual resources.
Illustrated with dancing postures and gestures posed by Sri
Ragini.
Order from R. B. BAJPAI,
209 Sullivan Place Brooklyn, N. Y.
_________________________
FOR SALE:
AN UNIQUE TANTRIC CHAKRA
From the Collection of A Prince of Nepal. Exquisitely set
with mystic stones, opals, beryls, amethyst, etc. An apparatus for Yogic and
other spiritual exercises. A Veritable work of Art, Scarce and Unique. for Photographs
and other particulars, write to
MANAGER: R U P A M :
6 Old Post Office Street,
Calcutta, India
_________________________
NATURE'S PATH
Edited & Published by Dr. Benedict Lust
A monthly journal of approved methods for gaining, renewing,
and maintaining superb health and power of body and mind. A frank, but clean,
exponent of the attainment of what human beings want most, through better ways
of living, healing, thinking, planning, working, saving, hoping, loving, conquering,
and achieving.
This magazine is devoted to the proper care, use, knowledge,
development, and enjoyment of life. It covers, in particular, all rational,
safe, and effective methods of healing, and it opposes all irrational, unsafe,
and ineffective methods. It offers a means of proper health education and acquisition
for everybody, and is the only authorized Naturopathic Journal of a popular
character in the United States.
With NATURE'S PATH is consolidated the former NATUROPATH
and HERALD OF HEALTH, the original Naturopathic magazine, published since 1896
by Dr. Benedict Lust.
NATURE'S PATH is the official Journal of the American Naturopathic
Association, the American School of Naturopathy and Chiropractic, and several
other societies devoted to the Natural Life, Nature Cure, and Medical Freedom.
Subscription $3.00 per year. 25c copy.
NATURE'S PATH 124 East 41st Street, New York, N. Y.
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