The Temple that Fell into the Sea

4 3 4

"Let us cast aside . . . formalities." - Paramahansa Yogananda, in "Reforming Religion by Science". East West 2-6 October 1927 - November 1927.

Facets of the old art of getting stately
Watch your heart's agenda
Candid archangel talks one day

The Old Art of . . .

Not in need of learning the art of dying any longer.

Don't you know that birds of a feather nest together, and that arrogance has its hidden or vicarious outlets?"

Facets of the old art of getting stately (kingly)

"We could look deeper into the classical, self-undermining movement Tamed Forever, so as to come better to grips with looming and soaring "forces" and deceit of a sort. Here's a former insider's groans on "The lost art of handling swindling wolverines in sheep's clothing".

To cope better, also bulwark better. And next you have to grow up - at least you have that option if things run well on an even keel. Fit nicely in to any strained tick tack toe epigram (study) to live out here. Look on each of them as a parable fit for a bridegroom and all can go well. Even Cain had his chance.
The tick tack toe parable is a kind of masked thriller - maybe rooted in times, places and persons long ago, but with over-riding influence. Do as well as you can and harvest as much as you can from the many sorts of tales while remembering the British scholar and explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-90) to your heart's content.

Hm

SHORTLY AFTER the sensational reception accorded the publication of his marvellous translation of the Arabian Nights in 1885, Sir Richard Burton made this interesting statement:
"For thirty years I served Her Majesty at home and abroad without acknowledgment or reward. I publish a pornographic book, and at once earn 10,000 pounds and fame. I begin at last to understand the public and what it wants."

There can be Sufi instructions inside

After Sir Richard Burton's death his wife burned all his journals and diaries. She was afraid that he would be remembered for his scandalous works.
Arabian Nights contain many fit tales on how to deal with bad guys and influences, be it fakers, fakirs, djinns or others. Djinns may be looked on as bad angels and have to get trapped; so the story goes.
Let natural and frisk development come first. If your innate libido system gets soundly developed, it hardly turns kinky. It should not then look for succour in the clouds, not in wailing for a Giant Mamma as told.
Though you suffer father-loss or mother-loss or serious setbacks as a cub, don't invent goddesses from it - or form idols on top of unfulfilled natural urges.
In some circles they seem to love to institutionalise severe, misfit-giving god-love neuroses coupled to unsound rigmarole. Stay away from the instituted "cry like a puma cub for the Divine Mom because I say so, and she is sure to come after you are ten". It happens that whims grow unshapely on top of losses. It is to be feared that those who get endorsed such regression plots get hurt. It has shown up - in time it may show up. However, if the hurt runs deep, it is hard to find out.
There is no neeed to be freakish and look cute as a grown-up in the wild. It may even feel offensive to animal and experienced meditator. It could be like giving up the sound practice for inferior ballyhoo, or even dross.
Further, a misfit-making scoundrel's cry-baby plots run contrary to sound contemplation and concomitant character development as we know it, in that they are "other-focused" and over-focused at that in addition. Sound contemplation is more of a glide deep inside, by letting mental ideas and categories dwindle for a spell. One lets lots of notions lie for the time being. That is how simple it is. Every mountain lion should have a place to contemplate like that or bask in the sun.
Note that the over-riding essentials in the art of contemplation have to let holy guru thinking and guru concepts go for the time being, nothing less is to be had and mastered. Be proud for it. You can hardly be stern enough for it.

Daya Mata on Temptation

In her book "Only Love" [On] Daya Mata once communicated the same as the following, in essence,

If thoughts come and disturb your meditation, it is temptation.

She advocates deep contemplation, hence. But how broad is her counsel's applicable range? That could depend a lot. By way of example, 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 ocean. 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 a few minutes later. He saved their lives, so that they could sit down and contemplate for hours and decades afterwards, but in disturbing the congregations's contemplation, was the guru allied to the subtle tempter, as Daya Mata seems to tell us? I don't think so! He did the best he could on the nick of time.
Let us admit that in this special thought experiment he disturbed, but the purpose was good: To save the men and women attending, from gliding into the bottom of the sea with the temple.
The story about the temple that slid into the sea is not wholly invented, by the way.

Farewell to Golden Lotus Temple

The lovely temple, built at the bluff's edge in Encinitas (twenty-five miles north of San Diego) in 1937, 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, fell, fell down the bluff overlooking the ocean, Yogananda was tempted to hold a last Sunday Service there, but refrained, realizing that the weight of all the congregation might cause a major disaster. 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, Paramhansaji 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. It had been the first for-all-religions temple. [Source]

Lessons

We normally do well to stay away from non-significant thinking, no matter who the originator is, and his or her status. Yet, that is too hard for some. Here are a few sayings to entertain you:

The healthful man can give counsel to the sick. (British) (1)
Adamant hopers who ridicule realism, could want a mess all along.
Warned folks may live. (3)
A woman's advice is no great thing, but hard to gain and come by. [Cf.On].

At the end of some fables and folk tales we find crowning proverbs or standards for handling or dealing with things. Such sweet discourse hardly offends so badly as strong and harsh counter-evidence to cherished hopes and overall concerns can do.
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. We might halfway suppose that in some ways - mainly psychological ones - their wants deep inside were carried into the Fellowship, perhaps to flourish later, long after his death and the UN's charter on Human Rights from December 10, 1948.
How to deal with many monastics: it hardly pays to intrude. They may want to shut themselves out, too.
British proverbs and likeable fables could counter-act unhealthy abandonment of a fulfilling, rewarding personal life.

Watch Your Heart's Agenda

It pays to be intrigant or irreverent on some occasions. That is a moral in the Grimm tale The goat and her kids.

NICE FABLES can be fit for all that are to grow up. They are a bit freakish, irreverent and relevant stories with suggestions for coping a bit better - each in his own way - each one up to his own heart's strength, and not very much further, because over-taxing is that.
A good tale manages to speak on top of significant things in order to depict a particular milieu - Where it's kingly (nice) there's no hidden agenda or ruthless submission story to be guessed later on; no mystery or trick - and thus no life to stare at and fear as hell - not as we know it. (#3.2)

Candid archangel

Adamant or fair - much suffering is wont to come your way unless you bite!

How and when will sweet life come?

If you haven't understood
the group around you can be adamant
run roughshod over your gentle face.

Let a candid soul express a lot
the fair man loves to give.

Handling brambles

Some customs are good, and some have to be dispensed with to assist pregnant worship; it glides inside, and not always in step with the letter of the ancient Jewish law (that God saw fit to fade) -

Pregnant worship glides inside - on a climb into heaven

"MANY around you suffer and never know why. After this a watery cloud of bewilderment can be sent to pour down along with pestering storms, so that when the stormy rain is over, they hardly understand anything better, but feel relieved all the same. It may be as should be, o human. For the god-man inside has weighed the world in the balance," a voice deep inside mused. ¤
Then I recalled and answered as best I could: "Hello back, Eye inside the depth. Let me have good enough understanding to love and play frivolously once again."
Uriel himself let it sound, "Climb up into heaven. There, from the beginning, look; what you wish for shall come your way. These things matter."
Then I answered, "Good Lord, how and when will such things come to pass? Wait a second."

On the upward climb, some customs are good, and some have to be dispensed with at times

I GATHERED myself and added: "Our lives are not only astonishment and fear. Still, most men are not fit to find mercy, not much worth either." But inside me the floods of life from a sea above had understood. Life catches its counsel by deep-going means at times. Now my own funnel of life decreed,
"Didn't the souls of the quite righteous ask questions of these things in their chambers? Wasn't a fairlooking angel-stranger sent to Mary contrary to Jewish law and customs, all for the purpose of making her pregnant? Was it inherited grains of evil seed that were sown in the heart of Adam and Cain?"
Then I cryptically added, "Sometimes I think it were better that we should climb upwards not to pass. All the same, you who bear all rule, we can be full of impiety, and hardly know it all."

The righteous may kill lovingly -

NOW URIEL the candid archangel answered rapidly and fairly: "Verily it's a foolish thing that gross guru worshippers have thought up as they drag along, ignoring portents, signs and wonder-surveys in their way. The thoughts and ruses they have devised will kill them. But mean ones can't understand what is given the righteous. I have see [!] it come to pass over and over again."
Boyishly Uriel also said, " Hot things are hardly good for anyone. Do tell these things just as I say. I see it was hardly in your mind at all to be curious of Aywir. Now, as for possible tokens you ask me, I can impart a bit: maybe lovingly. For that is how it's going to be, in all likelihood." ¤ - Cf. 2 Esdras 4. [T+. #1.1]

Summary

Serenity is much, but more is a heart's piousness, and a glide inside, which is likened to Jacob's climb to heaven.
On the upward climb, some customs are good, and some have to be dispensed with at times.
The righteous may kill lovingly. God's chosen killed a lot of enemies in the Old Testament, and is it different today?

Serenity goes for a climb, but heart-piousness has arrived there a lot. The pious may tell which customs need to be discarded. A whole lot of modern customs have to be done away with for the sake of righteous living.

Many a climb up to the shining, bright light

"I don't understand it," the doctor said to the patient who was still complaining. "Have you carried out all my instructions."
"All but one, doctor. I am not able to take that two mile walk every morning that you suggested. I get too dizzy."
"Dizzy?" asked the doctor. "What do you mean?"
"You see," said his patient, "I forgot to tell you. I'm a lighthouse keeper."

Comment

[1] Uha - firm Danish expression of dismay, yet quite humorous.

Adjoined

Ak: Yogananda, Pa.: Man's Eternal Quest. SRF. Los Angeles, 1975.
On: Mata, Daya: "Only Love". Self-Realization Fellowship. Los Angeles, 1976.
Pa: Yogananda, Pa.: Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF). Los Angeles, 1971. – ONLINE 1st edition

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