Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Claimed SRF Gurus

Having Sex Once a Year or No More, Does It Suit You Yet?

Plants who get what they need and want, are thriving. But with humans it is more complex. For example, if a clown seduced your wife and she flees into the arms of an invisible Führer of some religion's cult or fellowship which goes against carnal pleasure, but not against acquiring donations and lands, lots of lands, what will you do? What would be an adequate response to your wife undermining the fellowship you two were supposed to have? How far could her changes go? Unless minors are into it, it could be best for you to do absolutely nothing in the matter, considering her human rights, and say, "Good riddance" to yourself, or something similar.

Thus, modern man needs to learn to accept that there are other seductions than sexual ones: To seduce somebody's mind and make her a sectarian, indoctrinated willy-nilly for the rest of her life, is not that just as bad or worse? And if her guru holds that nearly no sex is best, on a regular basis, and the two of you lose the little connection you once had thereby, the marriage welfare may slowly dwindle. If you find you quickly or slowly lose out, there is a need to guard against many new dangers that could be ahead: Her associates may have kindled desires that undermine an adequate and balanced life and bearing good fruit. Despite all your proficiency, it may or may not be easy to get rid of her and her disruptive goings and marry another in the hope that similar grave problems will not erupt again.

Much depends on circumstances and how wicked the Führer of your mate may be, how sinning against commandments like "Thou shalt not bear false witness" and such things. And some people are not classy anyway.

Searching for the opportunities available

A heaven-bent gaze in a mate can be a sign of future adaptation problems. How can a newly "transformed" partner give rise to future benefits to you too? She may say she has been filled up by much better things and transformed. In your quiet mind you see her "transformations" are for worse. And that is a great problem and challenge to many: to turn a relationship with a belief-hungry and compensating mate into good opportunities or assets somehow.

How? Where do you stand? How can you compete with a "gang-wow" for another? How will you use your power, conceding you are not getting probably mistaken acclaim as some almighty "hero" of a sort? What should be continued and what needs to change? Maybe you can revive one of the old connections? Try and sort out and be up to what you yourself stand for, at any rate

Humans often have to spend lots of thoughts on how to proceed and make the best of opportunities.

The art of "acquiring a good time" and have decent fun counts among the assets of living too

On a previous page is general information about cults. In this collection are titbits from Self-Realization Fellowship, SRF. Its founder said up front that he meant it to be a church for all religions, but when he established his own church, the SRF Church, in California in 1935, for the purpose of acquiring property and real estate [Article 2a], it was to preach one religion - which is described as Hinduism with a Christian veneer by some. At any rate this yoga church is in the hands of Hindu swami nuns and monks.

The deed states that the purpose of the SRF Church is to teach or preach "a religion [sic] known as "Self-Realization Fellowship"(Yogoda Sat-Sanga) [2d];" to "make lasting youth and arrest old age [2d];" to establish "the absolute basic harmony and oneness of Christianity and Hindu Yoga teachings and all true Religions, [2d.6]" fighting man's common enemy;" and to teach that human life is not given for physical pleasure [2d.15], and more. Here is the deed: [Download] If you don't like the meal, don't eat it, is general advice.

Around 2002 about one third of the cult's monastics left the SRF premises, and decades earlier many of the first kriya initiators left also, after the Hindu leader and founder, Yogananda, had died in 1952.

The idea behind parts of this collection is to have fun, just as the SRF founder teaches. It is just not good enough just to weep and whine and stab oneself to death for entering.

❖ In the deed of the SRF Church, getting property comes first, before preaching a religion of Christianity-and-Hindu-Yoga, and being against physical pleasure.

Q: What is Self-Realization Fellowship?

A: Most people who get in touch with Self-Realization Fellowship, SRF, do it through Yogananda propaganda that SRF publishes. SRF is said to be a New Age yoga cult by some. The Fellowship was founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) when he lived in Boston. It was registered formally as a church in 1935. It is headquartered in Los Angeles, with centres and meditation groups in over 50 countries (2005). Those who are initiated in kriya yoga in it, are the members. Those who are not, are called students of the SRF Lessons, which is a lengthy correspondence course. Parts of it are from lectures and poems that are published separately as books.

How many members are there in SRF?

It is hard to say. SRF has claimed to have a million members, but the most recent estimates I have come across are:

SRF has consistently - indeed, outrageously - bloated its membership figures.

In the late 1990s, the largest number of items mailed out [from SRF] . . . was fewer than 40,000. Those mailings had included such announcements as Christmas greetings, which would certainly have gone out to a considerable number of non-members.

My own suspicion is that their active membership number (those still living on this earth) stands somewhere below 10,000 - far below the one million ("or more") they have claimed. [Ry, chap. 14.]

The writer, Kriyananda, was SRF vice president many years ago. He also writes: "In my opinion, SRF is dying on the vine [Ry, chap 6]."

So estimates vary between "below 10,000" and one million or more, depending on who we ask. Also worth noting is that there is no evidence given for the perhaps outré one million members claim.

What does SRF stand for?

At bottom SRF stands for "Self-Realization Fellowship", loyalty to its gurus, and spreading kriya yoga, a pranayama method. Its "Christianity" is not traditional Christianity, and is arrived at by offending bottom constructs of Christianity, which include the perishable soul, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ. He also puts reincarnation into the Bible "by hook or crook," that is, by interpreting some passages as it suits him, while disregarding such as biblical contexts and the opinions of most scholars. I suspect the guru and his fellowship are bearing false witness about Hinduised Christianity in that it was not taught by Jesus Christ. You can see for yourself.

Basic kriya yoga is taught for free here. It is gentle breathing with something added. You may also learn kriya yoga without oaths in Satyananda Yoga. To learn kriya yoga in SRF, on the other hand, you have to swear an oath of loyalty and devotion for your whole life and more - it is rather alarming, for it waives several human rights unofficially. [SRF Oath, in part in the name of Jesus who said, "Don't swear".]

As a means to get better accepted in the USA, a formerly overwhelmingly Christian country, the kriya yoga marketing by the founding Hindu swami gradually changed to look all right among Christians. Marshall Govindam explains that after five years in America, Yogananda began to modify and adapt his teachings to the West in order to overcome the resistance of Christians.

After five years of effort in America, beginning in 1925 . . . Yogananda began to modify and adapt his teachings to the West . . . to overcome the . . . resistance of Christians who were suspicious of the foreign teachings of a Hindu swami. As a result, Yogananda began to enjoy remarkable popularity. . . . However, in his attempts to attract Westerners to the path of Yoga, he tended to focus on the miraculous, and most readers of his "Autobiography" come away with many romantic notions of the path. They are left with many unrealistic expectations. - Marshall Govindam.
[www.babajiskriyayoga.net/english/babaji_2.html]

Today the hybrid SRF theology contains many sham claims, that seemingly suit a brand of Hinduism. The fellowship and church claims in its Aims and Ideals to unite yoga teachings of Hinduism with teachings of Jesus. In reality, its Christianity is not according to central gospel teachings and do not square with Catholicism either, for that matter. [More]

In 1920 a . . . Hindu missionary effort was launched in America when . . . Paramahansa Yogananda, was invited to speak at the International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston, sponsored by the Unitarian Church. After the Congress, Yogananda lectured across the country, spellbinding audiences with his immense charm and powerful presence. In 1925 he established the headquarters for his Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in Los Angeles on the site of a former hotel atop Mount Washington. He was the first Eastern guru to take up permanent residence in the United States after creating a following here. - ◦Elliot Miller (Recommended)

COMMENT. Yes, and they sail under the false colours of being one hundred percent in harmony with the teachings of Jesus, whom they claim to be one of the fellowship's gurus, along with Krishna. The truth is that just that alignment cannot be, so many get misled. I hold religious indecency against the fellowship and its initiator, the guru Yogananda.

If SRF isn't evangelical Christianity, what is it?

SRF and Yogananda claims in their Aims and Ideals and elsewhere to stand for "original Christianity as taught by Jesus". This may look good, but see if it isn't a trap.

1. Jesus spoke for Jews only, gospels tell.
2. SRF is headed by nuns and monks of a Hindu Swami Order. There was ◦no monasticism in early Christianity, no monks and nuns in trappings, surrounding and serving several christs as they say they do in SRF: Those who are heading SRF are members of a Hindu swami order.
3. Christianity rose according to what all the apostles and the Holy Spirit agreed on in the Apostolic Decree from somewhere around 50 CE (Acts 15; 21:25). Insistent no's to blood food and adultery became part of Christianity then.

4. SRF has none of the traditional dispensations of Christianity. Its salvation is not God "falling on you", but related to painstaking kriya breathing, maybe for many lives. Christian sacraments are not included either. But there are outré claims, Mother God-wailing, guru worship and many regulations worth questioning.

This is from the early Church:

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission . . . If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. [1 Corinthians 14:33-35]

Do not think SRF is headed by silent women with husbands at home just because they claim to stand for "original Christianity"; Swami nuns are not like that. They disregard things Paul told if it does not suit "their trade", or what was "taught by Christ" as their guru said it was to be understood. There are quite edited SRF-edited books about that subject, but not "organic Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ", believe it or not . . .

Since there is a marked interest in books of Yogananda that SRF did not change on his behalf post mortem, older and presumably not so edited books by Yogananda have surfaced from outside the ranks of Self-Realization Fellowship. Among them is a three-volumed The Second Coming of Christ (from the original unchanged writings of Paramhansa Yogananda's interpretations of the sayings of Jesus Christ, the subtitle says). Its 400 pages can be compared to SRF's later version of 1643 pages. There is also The Master Said (Much later SRF-edited into Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda). Book references are at bottom. [Note 1]

Also, the Hinduism-fit Christsianity of SRF of several "Yoga Christs" is shown in collected talks of Yogananda [Ak; Jse; Dr]. A fuller survey of annotated Yogananda/SRF literature is here: [More]

Many top-down SRF attitudes do not seem right. SRF is headed by "nuns of original Christianity" such beings did not exist then, much like flying horses. So let us accept there were no nuns at all around Jesus. Nuns bolstering up nun superiority by dubious means, that could be an ugly piece of what you get in SRF. Kriyananda, a former vice president there, has pointed out:

In the first edition of Autobiography of a Yogi . . . the text states, "To fulfill one's earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God."

In editions published [by SRF] since his passing . . . the above-quoted lines were changed to: "Fulfilling one's earthly responsibilities need not separate man from God, provided he maintains mental uninvolvement . . ." The point in making this change was to place those renunciates who were "running the show" in a position of higher spiritual authority than that of "worldly" people. The change was made, as I happen to know, because certain SRF center leaders were challenging SRF's right to make many of the changes they were introducing. [Ry, chap. 10]

In chapter 4 he writes:

SRF demands loyalty of everyone, but gives it to no one.

[The cult's former editor-in-chief] Tara Mata's conviction was that "In an organization, no one has a right even to think except the members of the Board of Directors [currently made up only of nuns]!" This belief, certainly, has become generally accepted.

Also worth noting:

The men in SRF are treated like second-class citizens. It is noteworthy that the nuns can rise to the status of Mata or "Mother," but the men can never rise higher than that of "Brother." [Ry, chap. 1]

It should be good to be warned of a dogmatic, very authoritarian culture before succumbing to it after being initially fooled by great-looking words and much else.

Q: Who was Paramahansa Yogananda?

A: The guru who founded SRF (Self-Realization fellowship, was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh, before he became a Hindu swami (monk) Yogananda. His title was later changed into Paramhansa or Paramahansa. You may find both ways of spelling it. The spelling of the first one is correct enough, and how Yogananda himself wrote it. The spelling of the other, with an added a after 'param', is in part an unnecessary and unwelcome SRF change that includes signature forgery too. [MORE]

Yogananda writes in his autobiography that he was born in Gorakhpur in India on January 5, 1893. To fill in: it was on a Thursday at 8:38 p.m. according to extraneous information.

At the behest of a Babaji, Yogananda went to the United States in 1920, where he taught and initiated people in secret yoga teachings (kriya yoga) for 30 years. The teachings include the gentle Hong Saw (Hamsa) contemplation method, which is not secret any more. And kriya yoga is not secret any longer either. It is made public by the Satyananda line of kriya yoga. [Cy; Kta] In 1925, aided by disciples with enough money, he succeeded in buying a hotel in Los Angeles. It was made into his headquarters. The guru remained in the USA till his mahasamadhi (death) in 1952, except for the times he was travelling outside of the States.

Q: Who are the other claimed gurus of the SRF cult?

A: These five are claimed to be SRF gurus besides Yogananda - many titles aside:

• Yukteswar, guru of Yogananda.
• Lahiri Mahasaya, guru of Yukteswar.
• Mahavatar Babaji - few say they have seen him.
• Sri Krishna.
• Jesus of the gospels.

Q: Who have been at the head of Self-Realization Fellowship after Yogananda died?

A: After the founder, Yogananda, passed away in 1952, a millionaire was the president of the fellowship for a few years. The next president, Daya Mata took over in 1955. After she passed away in November 2010, the Self-Realization Fellowship Board of Directors - there are eight members there - elected 79 years old Mrinalini Mata (born in 1931) the new SRF president on 7 January, 2011. The two nuns and the other members of the Board of Directors are of the SRF monastic order, a Swami Order, a Hindu order.

The current president "is assisted by a Board of Directors, which includes other direct disciples . . . In recent years additional monastics who have been trained by the direct disciples have been added to the Board." And "Monks and nuns of the Self-Realization Fellowship Order who take their final renunciant vows are also members of the Swami Order," writes SRF. [2]

Many of the SRF leaders had a Mormon upbringing: Daya Mata, her sister Ananda Mata, a former chief editor and Board member, Tara Mata, and Mrinalini Mata, the president today.

Q: What is kriya yoga?

A: Kriya yoga is essentially a breathing method. The basic kriya is practically the same as the publicly known ujjayi pranayama as taught on this site.

Kriya (from 'do') is the name given a set of contemplation (meditation) methods. The basic kriya method is a pranayama ("vitality-control" method). The kriya system was made known to many from 1861 by Lahiri Mahasaya (Shyama Charan Lahiri), a householder yogi living in Banaras (Varanasi).

The kriya yoga set that SRF teaches, derives from Lahiri Mahasaya's system, but is in part simplified, in part changed. SRF teaches a selection of kriya methods. The kriya system uses a mixture of Hatha yoga, Bhakti (dispensable), Karma (in part doubtful), Mantra (indispensable), and Jnana Yoga (so-called).

Kriya yoga is a set of advanced techniques that are said to be popularized in the West by Paramahansa Yogananda. Slow and gentle breathing (of some ujjayi kind) goes into the "soul" (core methods) of it. The teachings are that some who practice it, are made more spiritually advanced. The focus is ambivalent, though. One the one hand you may read Yogananda saying that kriya is scientific, it works like mathematics. On the other hand he says devotion is needed, when that "song" suits him. An old devotee once came up to him and said, "I have done kriya a million times, and am not enlightened anyhow." Yogananda, "But your attitude wasn't right!" As if attitudes are into mathematics -

After all, doing kriya rounds properly is an art. Skilled performance counts more than the number of kriya breathing rounds, says for example Lahiri Mahasaya.

'Scientific' and of 'mathematics' are good-looking word (catch-words), but they should have a proper content and not be misused, after all. Yogananda also said "Kriya and devotion" are needed. But in the genuine kriya teachings one object is to drop extraneousness and expectations. Devotion is not needed for progress in yoga. After all, the God Yogananda speaks of, is your Self. That is his pristine teaching. Hence, Yogananda could bring conflicting kriya teachings to others.

Third, initiation is needed. But there are different sorts of initiations. A deep problem with the SRF current practices is that they bind those who would learn kriya there, hand and foot by a severe pledge that Yogananda says may last into very many future lives:

There is only one guru uniquely the devotee's own. But if you turn away from the emissary of God, He silently asks: 'What is wrong with you, that you foolishly leave the one I have sent to help you learn the divine science of the soul? Now you shall have to wait long, and prove yourself, before I shall respond again.' He who cannot learn through the wisdom and love of his God-ordained guru will not find God in this life. Several incarnations at least must pass before he will have another such opportunity." - Paramahansa Yogananda, Spring 1974. SRF Magazine, p 6. From a talk at Mother Centre, 8/17/39.

As a help, here are two tips: Don't leave foolishly, but bring to the fore that Yogananda and his SRF teach that the material universe is illusory, and therefore the SRF kriya yoga pledge is as unreal as their universe. That is his teaching and one of its necessary deductions. There are other things you could harp on too, for example the guru teachings that "the Lord is the Sole Doer," which places the responsibility for leaving where it belongs - according to SRF gurus - their words against the guru-given bonds, as quoted here and other places on-site: [Mermaids are part of the SRF canon]

At Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship and other places they continue to initiate into kriya yoga people who seem to want to become more spiritual. The carrot is self-knowledge in bliss, the stick is the alarming message of many lives "down the drain" at worst, and also that you are made to pledge things outside your reach or what you have control of (a too severe pledge). Forth, as mentioned, there are inconsistencies in Yogananda's (and SRF's teachings), and they may complicate living considerably unless you learn to "win the trick": "When in doubt, win the trick (Edmund Hoyle)." Here is a question to the wise: "Guess who hailed dictatorship in his own magazine in 1934?

Thus, when we speak of kriya, if you submit to a top-dog hierarchy to get it, you may not profit as much as if you did not do that, and your initial honour may be robbed unless you matter. Consider well to make your choice, as there are many other kriya teachers around today.


Q: What was the SRF Walrus Board?

A: "The Walrus" was a bulky discussion board that contained information and expressions by anonymous persons for most part. Some on the board said they were former SRF monastics. The board was for Yogananda devotees who had become disgruntled, disappointed and dismayed with the state of affairs in SRF right after the turn of the century. That Walrus succeeded in alarming guru-devoted members by and large. I have used or drawn of some of the Walrus information here, but with some care, since most postings were anonymous, and some tendentious, and others definitely contained wrong information.

The fundamental attitude of many former monastics was not "I'm OK, you're OK" when it came to relating to SRF. There was in fact considerable fear of SRF, and strange paranoia-like feelings on the board. An anonymous discussion board can hardly expect to accomplish much else than throwing light on dismal things and happenings, including suicides of SRF members.

It appears the board closed down in 2010. There are still some remnants from it on-line.


Q: Who are Alf and his QUAG in the mire of the world?

A: I trust you will find out if you read on four and five pages. You can also find answers on this page: [Link]