Sauce and Game

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The Temple That Slid into the Sea

In her book "Only Love" [On] Daya Mata once communicated, in essence, that if thoughts come and disturb your meditation, it is temptation.
Figure you were among the people who had the strange experience of attending a Yogananda service at the Golden Lotus Temple in Encinitas right before the temple slid into the sea. Let us imagine you were sitting in contemplation there and then, and suddenly the guru who led the Easter Morning Service called out:
"Hey, all of you, get out of here at this very moment!"
Let us say they all ran out, and that the temple slid into the sea some time later. He disturbed the congregations's contemplation, his thoughts of imminent disaster came to them in their meditation. He did the best he could. But it was temptation, alas, according to Daya Mata.
This tiny thought experiment about the temple that slid into the sea is not wholly invented:

The temple, built at the bluff's edge in Encinitas (twenty-five miles north of San Diego) in 1937, was "just like seeing paradise without dying," said one, over-emotionally. Plants make paradise, buildings hardly ever.
The temple was lost by landslide in 1942, when it slipped away from its foundations and fell. By then, water draining had softened underlying clay and resulted in shifting earth, which plunged the temple down the cliff.
Before the temple fell down the bluff overlooking the ocean, Yogananda was tempted to hold a last Sunday Service there, but refrained. He realized he and his congregation might all to go down with the temple. So he announced, even though the Golden Lotus Temple was still standing, "No meeting for a month."
Then, commending the temple to God, he left Encinitas. Building movers [and God] were to take care of it. He told them that if they were late they could do nothing. They came late and saw the temple fall in front of them.
"All is finished," said Yogananda afterwards on the phone. He also wrote some tommyrot about it:

O thou Golden Lotus Temple . . .,
Thou wert too perfect and beautiful
To stay in an imperfect earth for long.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
And many temples like thee
Will arise
Through thy crucifixion by Satan's hand,
And test of God in evil's land.

Have you ever heard of a crucified temple? And evil's land, that would be the United States and California, where SRF has most of its members. The problem was not that the temple was too good to last, but that it was built on a risk spot, out on a bluff.
♦ The healthful man can give counsel to the sick. (British) [Link]

Further gist

Yogananda became the head of many nuns, and some of them were of Mormon upbringing. At least three of them became members of the Board of Directors in Self-Realization Fellowship. How to deal with many monastics: it hardly pays to intrude.
Sound proverbs and neat fables might counteract unhealthy abandonment of a fulfilling, rewarding personal life. Sweet fables may be fit for all who are to grow up, and Arabian Nights contain many tales on how to deal with bad guys and influences.
Let natural and frisk development come first. If your innate libido system gets soundly developed, it hardly turns kinky. So: "Hello, Eye in the depth. Let me have good enough understanding to love and play frivolously as is fit."
Life catches its counsel by deep-going means at times. But whims may grow unshapely on top of losses.
A whole lot of freakish customs have to be done away with for the sake of all right living. Hot things are hardly good for anyone. Serenity goes for a climb toward the bright light within, but heart-piousness has arrived there already and may yet be unaware of it.
Pregnant worship glides inside - a climb into heaven.

Literature
On: Mata, Daya: "Only Love". Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1976.

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