Paramahansa Yogananda's Teachings
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"Thank you for your efforts." - RS
"Thanks for the entertainment." - C |
Baffling Paramahansa Yogananda Matters
"I was never born, I never died." - Paramahansa Yogananda affirmation, 1945
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| Yogananda taught the world is illusory, but was eager to publish his autobiography! |
During the guru's thirty-odd years in the United States, he became one of the most prominent advocates of yoga in its history. Yogananda's influential autobiography is on-line here: [LINK]
The guru founded Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in Boston in 1920. The fellowship was headquartered in Los Angeles in 1925, and became an American church in 1935, and later drifted sectward. Around 2002 about one third of the monastics of Yogananda's Fellowship Church left the premises. Many were disappointed with the conditions "on board" and their supervisors and leaders. "He knows where the shoe pinches who wears it", is a saying.
- Kriya yoga is freely taught outside of Yogananda's SRF, and without abuse. Another page takes you into gist and comparisons in the matter.
- Annoying changes in the guru's teachings have been detected and spelled out.
- Some persons publish Yogananda material outside of SRF, because large parts of it are in the public domain. [www.yogananda-dif.org/WritOldMag.htm]
The fellowship seems to be a cult now, at least according to former members, an also to some Christian organisations in the United States. But not all guru teachings are a big mess.
Here is . . . a cordial invitation for you all . . . Why suffer when you can enjoy? . . . let the days of misery and peacelessness be over. [Maharishi] [MORE]
Yogananda's Erroneous, Old Teachings
"Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, "I am the Christ, " and will deceive many." - Matthew 24;4, 5
And many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." - Matthew 24;11
I am the gate. - The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. - I am the good shepherd. [John 10:9,10,11]
"You have only one Master. [Matt 23:8]
In the light this and his "Make a right judgement [John 7:24]", let us consider something Yogananda said:
Constructive doubt is intelligent questioning, and fair, impartial examination. Those who cultivate this attitude never prejudge an idea. Nor do they accept as valid the unsubstantiated opinions of others. They keep an open mind, and base their conclusions on objective tests. They seek above all to verify those conclusions by their own experience.
This is the proper approach to truth. [Paramahansa Yogananda]
Going for Clarity of Thoughts
When negative forces predominate, a well-timed retreat is necessary in order to stay on the path to success . . . the best tactic often is to keep still, lay low, and hope that the moment passes . . . Be extremely careful . . . the withdrawal can be effected quickly and smoothly . . . The key is [in part] taking advantage of the element of surprise." [From the Book of Changes (I Ching), hexagram 33]
In the light of this and life happenings too, clumsy ballyhoo on top of swindling won't solve all things full well, as "Timing is critical, as is positioning after realignment. Considerations of personal security are critical."
If this terribly fine counsel is followed well, it could lead into the essential conditions that are hinted at through "Clinging Like Fire" (hexagram 30), such as, "The great man continues the work of nature in the human world. Through the clarity of his nature he causes the light to spread farther and farther and to penetrate the nature of man ever more deeply."
Fit Passages
Yogananda's yoga teachings are said to actualise the Christianity of Jesus. However, the guru found it fit to interpret many Bible passages to make them suit his sort of Hinduism, though. You find astounding evidence here: [LINK]
Big titles on joking legs?
How many Christs?
Yogananda mentions many male christs - relatives and many acquaintances. Here are some of them:
"Prophets like Christ and Lahiri Mahasaya". [Pa 283n] (2)
About Babaji and Christ: " . . . these two fully illumined masters . . . one without a body". [Pa 307]
"Yukteswar, a modern Yogi-Christ". [Pa 194] (4)
"Lahiri Mahasaya . . . and many other Yogi-Christs had blessed the soil." [Pa 95]"Babaji . . . deathless guru". [Pa 346]
Jesus did not say, "If anyone tells you, "There he is, emerging from a deep mine" - believe it," but we won't go into that here. We won't develop an all-round gloomy outlook either. However, in searching for reliable knowledge, it is often good to ask things like:
- What are the biblical characteristics of a christ (messiah)? Find out.
- How many of the necessary characteristics are observed in guru christs?
- How right does it appear to be to try to reconcile the contrastive and opposed claims of Jesus and gurus, trying for a unity that seems absent in the first place (impossible too)?
- Is a man gone bad because someone else and hardly himself wants him to be known as a Christ, firmly linked to "original Christianity as taught by Jesus?
Bluntly, idolising titlephrenia can be hard to sell outside the customary, old traditions. A strong urge to show off by great titles may go against the American wisdom proverb: "Big names often stand on small legs." [Ap] Part of luxurious or exotic-looking flaunting customs may smack untidy to persons who think that "empty barrels could make a lot of noise and havoc as they are kept rolling", or that "balloons don't go deep". We don't think Yogananda should have come on so hard in Christian terms, because "fair play is a jewel."
Words such as these too (see near top) should mean a lot if you decree to be in unison with original Christianity as taught by Jesus, while much of what you actually form or live out, speaks a lot to the contrary.
We should be able to play fair. And that should be thought fit by gurus too. Here is a hard one: In the Bible, Jesus doesn't talk of having more than one master, himself. What is more, he never ever goes for guru christs or yogi christs like Mahavatar Babaji. Jesus refers to one Christ, one Master, and mentions false Christs and false prophets are like hungry wolves. Because Paramahansa Yogananda taught Jesus is one of many Christs and gurus of SRF, and also claimed to teach "original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ" it appears he talked mud in the name of the Lord, and it helped him to gain a formidable following . . .
How do you deal with teachings by gurus who are called Christs by Yogananda and thus equal to Jesus many times? That is a problem.
Guru Teachings
One's searching must not be all dogmatised
In science and otherwise, pay attention to methods, that is, to how ideas are had
and tentatively verified in the first place (it corresponds to basic research too). How
they are applied or made use of may be interesting after that (applied and mastered
principles).
Also, neither lore nor individual searches must be strictly ritualised and
dogmatised, the guru tells us.
I had steadfastly refused to join any society because I didn't find in them demonstrable truth. But when I found my guru and this path, and saw through my own experience that it worked . . . (Cf. Paramahansa Yogananda, in Man's Eternal Quest) [Ak]
No more blind believing. - Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 456]
This signifies that "You can see for yourself." In the light this, learning to "halfway suspect" in a scientific and polite way and inspect should be nothing to be afraid of, nothing vicious. If you don't have to believe blindly, you are free to inspect. Learn to inspect well. Good yoga is essentially of methods - doing things of yoga and contemplation (meditation) rather like an athlete who trains himself or herself year in and year out, perfectioning many details, and not really putting much value in faith alone. I can recommend a sane method -
Enjoy God, is a Yogananda teaching
Jesus said "I am the life", etc. And Solomon said: "I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work" (Ecclesiastes 8;15). That is savoury wisdom. Compare with Yogananda's:
A state of joy. That state is God. . . . Without being happy you will not even be able to find Him. . . . The happier you are, the greater will be your attunement with Him. Those who know Him are always happy, because God is joy itself. - Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 110]
Strictly speaking, it was not "India" who mastered such things, but God - according to the guru dictum that "God is the Sole Doer." [See Ak] Many of the gurus of SRF teach that.
The guru equals God with deep inside knowledge (gnosis); ample, fine gladness; the essential deep, inner life; a certain love (prem); and a subtle light is at times into it.
"I don't take life seriously at all." - Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 219]
"Don't be like those who, day in and day out, take life so seriously they are afraid even to smile. . . . enjoy life." - Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 353]
"In . . . eternal joy . . . nothing else matters". - Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 439]
Thus, at least in public, the SRF gurus could stand for "have fun far and wide if you're up to it", and without sinning, we may add. Rise to poke fun if you are in the right place at the right time, to make your best qualities recognised and appreciated in tune with rationality and major ancestors too - It could improve one's lot and lead into handy deals too, in time, maybe lovable encounters as well -
But marring teachings that slice off handed-over Christian teachings, may look too simple to some, much like "Without fun there is no fun to life (our saying)".
Backwards Teachings - Don't Believe Them
Breathe in while you say such as "Won lanrete", and then reverse it too - The guru decrees that God can play the world backwards. We don't believe it is true, for we have seen no sign of it to this minute (backwards: etunim) . . . Yogananda actually insists that "It ain't over when it's over"! Or perhaps it should be "revo s'ti nehw revo t'nia ti".
Stay with the guru's idiotic reversal idea a bit further. Think of how eating would be, and a toilet visit. The food would come out of your mouth, and your evacuations into your rear end, straight from the WC water! You start in life by being senile, perhaps, and end as a newborn baby. The end is sure: into a vagina that closes after us - and for some: into a belly incision that likewise closes!
But in between the start and end of life you walk backwards without seeing where you go to, roughly, not wholly unlike the blindfolded. Major life aims will be reversed, and you no longer have to strive to become like a little child to stay in tune with Yogananda and Jesus, for sooner or later childhood and its ready laughter (with the inward breath) will come to you too. Those who learnt how to laugh awkwardly on the inward breath might now laugh differently one more time. But there is more: Those that were rewarded in this life, would have their rewards and status withdrawn in the reversed clowning plot that Yogananda speaks of. Oi-oi-oi.
Still, be warned: In this country you are hardly free to teach thoughtlessly like that, loud-mouthed and long and rather alone. If you're not expected to be an immigrant, you might be fetched for some funny farm. That's how conform Norwegians are these days. [KINKY LINK]
But let us put such inferior concerns aside, so that we can link up to basic ideas that Rudolf Steiner promoted. He said:
This beholding of our experiences in backward direction has a special value for spiritual training: it helps us disengage our thinking from its accustomed habit of holding on to the outer, material and sense-perceptible events . . . The pupil needs this liberation if he is to make his way into the supersensible world. He will find too that by this freedom his thinking and ideation are strengthened, and in a thoroughly healthy manner. It is accordingly good also to review other things in backward order — a play, for example, a story, a melody, and so on [Rudolf Steiner, in Occult Science - An Outline, its chapter 5: "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds"]
Yoganandic Stability
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| Baby |
"You must stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds," said Paramahansa Yogananda, the world-renouncer (monk) from his balcony once [Mas].
Another time Yogananda was asked by a mother to hold her new-born baby just a little. He did, but suddenly he couldn't hold it any more, he just couldn't do it. He almost dropped it and had to hand it back at once.
"This child was a cruel murderer in a previous life," he explained. And so was he! he had said on other occasions [Ak 222; Psy 111-12].
A mother could manage what he could not one day. So-oo?
❖ Yogananda did not say he had to stand unshaken, only that others had to.
❖ Soap-operatic canon may disappoint, and it has its twists and turns.
Weaklings quotes
This life is not for weaklings. - Yogananda.You may have come across this guru saying and wondered what he meant by it, considering how weak he felt about holding a baby for a little.
Yogananda said more about weaklings too, statements that have been recorded by his fellowship, dated, and placed in a wider context. But first consider that what someone actually does, may speak far louder than the words that come out of his mouth. So consider how a guru behaves, while trying to track down what he could have meant by this or that saying.
One problem is that isolated sayings - fragments - typically lend themself to a wide variety of interpretations. That holds true for Yogananda's weakling quotation above too, unless we find more "meat" around such a bone, or better: other bones to connect with the one found, which in this case is the Yogananda saying about weaklings above.
Such off-hand detective work reminds quite a lot of guessing how an animal could have looked like when you have a good bone from it only. If you have more bones than one, you may feel safer that you are not completely in the dark, and not dangerously amiss either.
In his autobiography, Yogananda paints a glorified picture of his guru Yukteswar - calls him a very advanced kriya yoga christ disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya. So we may study Yukteswar's doings and sayings there, through what could be biased and neurotic Yogananda eyes. And Yogananda has his angle, which is to inspire awe by big words far and wide, after all. He surely made much of what common Americans thought highly of, and the guru changed some of his traditional Hindu attitudes to reach them, and adjusted to the guru's Christianity by so many words, and faultily too. You will find some simple word analyses helpful to detect such patterns of communication on his part.
A Yogananda quotation about Yukteswar: "I often reflected that my majestic master could easily have been an emperor or world-shaking warrior had his mind been centred on fame or worldly achievement." [ch. 12, last paragraph]
Another quotation deals with how Yukteswar treated a young villager who came to him for yogic training. First, Yukteswar was very lenient to him and showed an attitude of unwonted indulgence to his favourite. Later Kumar deteriorated, Yogananda tells, and:
Master summoned me and brokenheartedly discussed the fact that the boy was now unsuited to the monastic hermitage life."Mukunda [Yogananda], I will leave it to you to instruct Kumar to leave the ashram tomorrow; I cannot do it!" Tears stood in Sri Yukteswar's eyes. [ch 12.]
That is not standing unshaken among the crash of breaking worlds either. Furthermore, it does not have to be true that Yukteswar behaved as a weakling toward the villager Kumar - Much of significance might not have been adequately revealed or presented by Yogananda in the matter. And if the portrait that Yogananda paints of his guru seems ambivalent, inconsistent, and even tut-tut, so be it. There is also a biography on Yogananda - by a fellow Yukteswar disciple to compare with. It contains other revealing incidents. A few of them are here [Link] [Psy]
So take heart. Two of the SRF gurus reveal standards . . .
Yogananda reveals more of how little composed he and his guru behaved earlier too, even long after they had been given kriya yoga - Yogananda describes how he begged and moaned on the floor in front of a distressed Mahendranath Gupta: "I fell moaning to the floor . . . Abandoned in some oceanic desolation, I clutched his feet . . . Shamelessly gripping his feet, deaf to his gentle remonstrances, I besought him again and again." [Autobiography, ch 9]
And Yogananda's guru, Yukteswar, could not compose himself when a friend of his died. He trudged back to his own guru, half-dazed, and when he arrived there, he blurted out something before he broke down and moaned openly. He was advised, "'Yukteswar, control yourself. Sit calmly . . ." [Autobiography, ch 32]
Certainly Yogananda and Yukteswar did not tackle these incidents well. A question remains: What is a weakling? The dictionaries tell that a weakling may be one of weak character or weak mind. It may be a softy who is insipid and foolishly, weakly excessively sentimental. An antonym among several is "stalwart".
Now for Yogananda pep talks - but there may be still others that have escaped me so far, if it matters:
If you cannot renounce at least some of your bad habits, moods, and materiality for Him, you are a weakling; and God cannot be attained by weaklings. Mental strength is absolutely necessary in order to find God. [Dr 235]Only weaklings give in to environment. [Dr 316]
It is wrong to say we are mortals, whereas we are essentially made of immortal stuff. It is the Truth that we are Gods and it is wrong to call ourselves weaklings. [Yogananda, East-West, March—April, 1929, Vol. 4—2, "Spiritual Recipes".
This spirit cannot be had by weaklings. It is possessed only by the valiant. So be powerful. Before disease and poverty strike you down, make the most of the opportunity you have now . . . God doesn't expect you to do spectacular things, but He does want you not to be a lazybones. . . . Whatever your present circumstance, make the best of it. [Dr 100]
COMMENT. Yogananda says God cannot be attained by weaklings, although Gods are what you are, and weaklings give in the environment.
Make the best of Yogananda's teachings too, as part of your environment. There is a thin line between adjusting sensibly to the environment and giving in to it.
And if you think yourself a weakling, remember the examples of Yogananda and his guru. One could not hold a baby, and the other could not dismiss a boy from training even though it should be done, and so on. After you take such standards into account, there seems to be no need to call yourself a weakling - that would be wrong at any rate, says Yogananda above.
Was Yogananda William the Conqueror?
First, we have no evidence that he was. Second, we have cultish claims he was, based on what the guru had "dreamt up", so to speak. You need to rise above such trivia for the sake of founding your life better than those who drop the mature fare.
The ability to stand alone is not to be undervalued. In order to produce thoughts of your own, first trust yourself somewhat. Scientists need to be much independent in order to maintain unbiased thinking and so on. The need to be firm and much self-assured is there. A certain deep trust is like a riverbed that ideas may gradually come to course through in time. The better part of those ideas might suit you and help you.
The baby killer story should be sipped along with others. For example, Yogananda claimed he had been William the Conqueror in a past life, that is, a despot of grievous sins, stained from rivers of blood and inflicting many injuries on others, according to old sources and historians - But it would be a wrong idea that William killed his beautiful wife just for the fun of it in AD 1066 . . .
The day that he rode out of the castle to his ships, and had mounted his horse, his wife came to him, and wanted to speak with him. But when he saw her he struck at her with his heel, and set his spurs so deep into her breast that she fell down dead; and the earl rode on to his ships, and went with his ships over to England.
His brother, Archbishop Otto, was with him.When the earl came to England he began to plunder . . . [Norse saga link, see § 99]
The story of the killing is not corroborated by other historical documents. The death year of William's wife is said to be many years later, in the early 1080s. We don't know if that is a comfort.
- The Former William became Me, said the Yogi
- William the Conqueror: Medley
- Medieval Snorre on William the Conqueror
- What Cult Members and Others Say
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Literature
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: SRF, 1975.
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main ed.), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
Dr: Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Divine Romance. New ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1993.
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
Ha: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 12th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), 1981.
Mas: SRF: Self- Realization Fellowship: Golden Anniversary. SRF. Los Angeles, 1970.
Pa: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), 1971.
Psy: Dasgupta, Sailendra. Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences. Portland: Yoga Niketan. 2006. Online pdf. www.yoganiketan.net
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
Tq: Cohen, M.J.: The Penguin Thesaurus of Quotations. Penguin Books. London, 1999.
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