Sayings of Yogananda
 4  1  11 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
From Swami Yogananda: "How to Keep the Church Steadfast"
All rooted in Swami Yogananda: "How to Keep the Church Steadfast". East West, Vol 5-11, September, 1933.The guru wrote the messages below in 1933, a few years before he had a temple of his own in Encinitas. He grew extremely fond of it. Then one day it slid into the sea. More temples and more property came afterwards. Yogananda's fellowship still wants to have many temples and premises. In fact, Yogananda and SRF appear to have moved toward the opposite pole of what he endorses in 1933. In so doing, they give rise to garbled messages to followers. It is helpful to see what the fellowship does and consider their teachings in the light of that.
Yogananda is at the root of the problem. After he came to the United States, he made changes to the kriya yoga and other parts of his teachings too. Instead of gilding selected, opportune parts of them, try and observe the whole picture; note the glide from being a free-flowing movement for Self-realization into becoming a registered church in California in 1935: In guru messages from 1933 he goes against the "threats of religious teachers", later he tells that those who leave their God-appointed one guru (him), must suffer for life-times.
It is no new observation that SRF mixes old and new messages or guidelines from Yogananda in their SRF Lessons, and that the result of it may look godly by selections with omissions of really embarrassing stuff, like Yogananda's hailing of Mussolini and dictatorship - in writing. Here and there some of the SRF mixture's varnish cracks. The forty years old Yogananda, that once had come to deliver a message of help to many men and women and went for dictatorship and thought mightily of socialism, but not of individualism, turned to godly talk - and instituted what has turned into a cult or sect today. The forty-year old guru talked for psychology in churches, and against entertaining the congregation by lectures - but see what happened in due time: In Sayings of Yogananda [Say] the guru gives instructions in how to lecture well to the church members.
While the earlier Yogananda advocated noice-proof rooms for those who would contemplate in good company, the latter-days Yogananda had threats and religion. And his California-based church - it is a cult - lost one third of its monastics in 2001–2002 - about one third of its monastics.
The earlier guru talked against thriving on crowd psychology, the later said things that scare some members and maybe confuses them through insistent but incoherent, religious strains. The earlier Yogananda wanted people to do their own thinking instead of being told (off), the latter-days Yogananda told folks a lot that is not easy to verify or document in a nice and solid way, and followers found it good to let him serve as a dogmatic-giver. Two such stands are found in a letter by a monastic writing on behalf of the SRF Headquarters: they do not find fault with Yogananda's guidelines, and that his wisdom is flawless. That is too much to swallow. Disciples today are bred on SRF-sanitized selections of Yogananda. As is commonly found, the church selects passages that strengthen itself, its hold on "devoted followers", and does not shrink for changing the guru's statement either. There are many pieces of evidence of such monky business on the Internet. Hence, non-stout guru, non-stout followers, and massive cover-up of the most unpalatable elements.
Now for the titbits from the article. Its references are given above.
Science and Religion
Religions are stationary. [Yogananda]Religions are stagnant because they are based on untested beliefs. [Yogananda]
How ridiculously futile it would be for scientists to try to receive inventions and knowledge of Nature's new secrets just by shutting themselves in a church and praying for this knowledge . . . [Yogananda]
Religious groups and individual ministers should become more scientifically minded. They
should turn to experimental psychology and test[s] . . . in the laboratory of their
churches. [Yogananda]
How Church Members Are Held Together
The usual method of most churches has been to hold their people by virtue of inbred church-going religious habits, or by holy threats, or by lecture, and musical, or festive entertainments. [Yogananda]Dogmatic church members succumb to the influence of parental religious habits, or to a sense of religious fear, or festive religious entertainments, or to a repetition of the same grand theoretical sermons over and over again. [Yogananda]
Huge sums of money are tied up in church edifices just to impress people with the grandeur of architecture, but that is all - scarcely anything more is accomplished. [Yogananda]
Architectural appeal of comfortable church pews, or sermons of spiritual victrolas, or big advertising campaigns for drawing large crowds to church festivities, are not producing permanent results . . . [Yogananda]
What is the use of making the church members believe in untested dogmas which the minister does not know to be true? [Yogananda]
People naturally are attracted to good movies because they are interesting. [Yogananda]
The church cannot compete with professional entertainment and cannot long hold its members
by the parroting of the same untested statements in sermons . . .[Yogananda]
Churches Should Cooperate To Find the Universal Art of Living
The churches, instead of . . . spending money in decorating the temples, should . . . find the real meaning of life. [Yogananda]
The churches . . . should try to . . . discover the universal standard of the art of
living, which can really daily uplift and help their people. [Yogananda]
Churches Should Become Universities Of Experimental Psychology
Instead of . . . urging people to believe, the church should convert its premises into universities of experimental psychology. [Yogananda]Real spiritual teachers, who live the life, are experimenting with the worth-while effect of spiritual laws on the lives of true seekers . . . [Yogananda]
Get together and concentrate upon the universal practical religious principles and urge their application in the reorganized universities of [various] faiths. [Yogananda]
Religious leaders should nourish young minds with introspective, stimulating truths of universal wisdom. [Yogananda]
The church members should be reorganized to do their own thinking and meditating.
[Yogananda]
The Practical Program Of Universal Church Reformation
All churches should have a universal name: "Temple of Truth," "Church of Wisdom," "Church of New Awakening," "Church of Scientific Religion," or "Church of God." Different names, no matter how universal they are, have done the greatest mischief in keeping people divided, superstitious, and narrow-minded. [Yogananda]All churches should be turned into spiritual universities, with a daily routine of study, and with regular hours. They should have daily evening services for business people. [Yogananda]
Each church . . . should advocate the study of experimental psychology and theology of all religions. [Yogananda]
The church university should discuss critically and teach all the views of different religions. [Yogananda]
The efficacy of prayer, the technique of concentration and meditation, and breathing exercises as discovered by the Master Minds of India and other religious teachers, should be experimented upon paying students who attend regularly, and in secluded, sound-proof rooms. [Yogananda]
Weekly, monthly, and yearly examinations of the students as to their powers of concentration should be given regularly. [Yogananda]
In this way the churches . . . would be places of universal utility, attracting real truth-seeking people to them. [Yogananda]
Only saints who live the life . . . should be elected from all races to be professors of
such organized church universities.
Churches Should be Truth Universities
If churches were made into Truth Universities, they would be attended everywhere by Christians, Hindus, Jews, and other religious followers alike. All churches would then stand for all beliefs. [Yogananda - how unrealistic!]
[One should train oneself to] reverse the searchlight of consciousness from without to
within. [Yogananda]
How to Hold Church Students Together
Churches, . . . in order to be of real service they must be universities of spiritual discipline and must offer a real practical spiritual training to all people. [Yogananda]
It is the paramount duty of all real ministers to improve themselves by daily, deep,
scientific meditation and to reform their churches by using [Yogananda's] practical program.
[Yogananda]
Why Group Meditation Should be Started
I prefer a real God-loving Soul to a crowd of shallow, emotional Souls, but I love crowds of real Souls. [Yogananda]I like to organize mass meetings, not to gather big crowds of soulless Beings, but in order to pick out from the crowds the patient, Truth-seeking Souls. [Yogananda]
Crowd or no crowd, we must learn to love Souls and not empty-minded masses. [Yogananda]
All new spiritual organizations must profit by the mistakes of most of the big hives of churches, which are without the honey of God. [Yogananda]
Most churches thrive upon the crowd psychology, and hold people by advertisements, music, and entertaining lectures. This should be changed. [Yogananda]
Instead of lectures [in] costly [SRF?] temples, small groups should be organized in noise-proof rooms in private homes. Such groups should not spend their time in listening to each other give their ideas and imaginations about Truth, but they should get together to meditate according to a system of constantly progressive technique, and should contact God and listen to His sermons of peace and wisdom within. [Yogananda]
Where many, not only get together in the name of God, but also try to invoke His Presence in the Temple of Meditation, they are truly blessed by the Presence of God. [Yogananda]
Never mind who comes or goes in a group as long as they are sincere. [Yogananda]
Meditation groups should be organized . . . with the express and only purpose of knowing God by the power of united concentration and meditation. [Yogananda]
One should contemplate in good company to get proof against the influence of the wrong or material environment. [Abstract]
Religious teachers should cease to be sect-makers, money seekers, and dogma builders. [Yogananda]
Religious teachers . . . should be . . . Self Realization developers, and universal Truth
builders. [Yogananda]
Literature
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
 |
 |
 |
 |
USER'S GUIDE to abbreviations, the site's large bibliography, letter codes, dictionaries, site design and navigation, tips for searching the site and page referrals. [LINK]
DISCLAIMER: To help us out: [LINK]
© 2005–2007, Tormod Kinnes. All rights reserved. [E-MAIL]