• OCEAN (The Big Five)
  
• Do Not Ignore Evidence
  

OCEAN (The Big Five)

Research and self-understanding should walk hand in hand.

The "Big Five" (each trait exists on a high/low scale) is the most used current psychometric measurement perspective in personality psychology. The five dimensions are:

• Openness – also: Culture, Originality, or Intellect
• Conscientiousness – or Consolidation, or Will to Achieve
• Extroversion – or Surgency
• Agreeableness – or Accommodation
• Neuroticism – including: Need for Stability, Negative Emotionality

The recently developed OCEAN's five factors (an acronym for the Big Five) have emerged and are considered the most reliable personality factors today. They are rooted in statistical findinds (and also go back to Gordon Allport thinking from the 1930s).

OCEAN has five dimensions, and they were crystallised from "cluster statistics". OCEAN is currently the most reliable and well-validated system of trait description – fit for times of peace, more unfit for war", because openness and agreeableness that are desirable in times of peace, may hinder combating, and extroversion too may not fit secrecy making and desorientation (lying) that often goes along with warfare. Compare the traits above. [More]

You can test yourself – find out a bit about your personality – by using the Big Five Personality Test. You can get a free personality test thereby:
www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

Do Not Ignore Evidence

Self is a worthy experience. Alas for some other experiences.

Kriya Ideology

Yogananda changed his catchwords about kriya as a means of speeding up human evolution some way or other . . . In the early days his parole was that about half a minute's kriya (a round) equalled a month's natural evolution. Later he taught his by then simplified, aborted kriya yoga equalled a whole year's natural, diseaseless evolution. By this he greatly changed the doctrine of his own guru, Yukteswar, who taught that "one kriya equals one month's development". Could Yogananda have made the handed-over kriya twelve times more effective by leaving out Thokar Kriya and yogic tongue-lifing, which both are considered indispensable by many traditionalist kriya yogis? Traditionalist kriya yogis in India think no. [More]

Swami Satyeswarananda tells, for example, how Yogananda made kriya easier on the public kriya yoga by making big changes and modifications -and not knowing all the kriya techniques, like Navi Kriya either.

Removing the practice of Talabya Kriya or Khecharimudra - which is a precondition for practicing the Thokar, Omkar Kriyas and Brahmayonimudra - completely changed the Kriya practice . . . an unproven, new approach with uncertain ... results.

A greater number of [his followers] certainly would not qualify for Kriya. [1]

The swami further tells how Yogananda stopped the guru-disciple way of direct, personal transmission of the methods, added 37 "energisation exercises" of his own, the mantra method of Hamsa, and a method called the Om technique for listening "inwards" - and taught that sitting in the cross-legged lotus postures was not needed for kriya practice (thank God). Yogananda also made changes to the very first kriya, ujjayi. Concerning that basic kriya method, Yogananda's guru's guru wrote to a devotee,

All can be attained by the first Kriya; only sincerity is needed. The After-effect-poise of Kriya and blissful addiction are there at the very first Kriya. Go on practicing Kriya. Satyeswarananda. Lahiri Mahasay's Personal Letters to Kriya Disciples, p. 22 [2]

As time went by, Yogananda changed the sincerity part (above) too. First he said kriya worked like mathematics, then he added devotion as a needed part for success, for gaining Cosmic Consciousness, as he called it,. And when the kriya he taught, failed to fulfil instilled expectations, what could he say? Once someone told him, "I have practiced kriya yoga a million times, but have not reached Cosmic Consciousness anyhow."

The guru answered: "But your attitude was not right."

A former disciple of Yogananda exposes another side to Yogananda's furtive gambits of promoting the handed-over, time-consuming kriya yoga among Americans:

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]

When his popularity was rising among Christians back then, Yogananda established a headquarters in a former hotel atop a hill in Los Angeles in 1925.

Former SRF Monastics and Control Issues

"Far from court, far from care." Some disgruntled SRF members and several former SRF monastics have quite recently stopped being affiliated with SRF. One third of all SRF monastics left the premises and tried to "move on" in 2001-2002. Others who once were heavily involved with SRF and served as lay persons there, have got second thoughts, and a few of them have come to think blackly about the guru's meditation techniques and guidelines:

We ought not to fear to practice conscious death, i.e., give rest to the internal organs. Death will then be under our control. [Yogananda, in Scp 78]

Find more gist from Yogananda's book, The Science of Religion on-site [Link], or see or chapter 26 in the guru's Autobiography of a Yogi.

In SRF – which is not really a do-it-and-die-fast cult – they also teach an old meditation method called Hamsa (variously spelled). It is used to calm down. I have not seen any reliable evidence that the guru's methods are maddening or dangerous, but a "fool with a tool" can manage to damage himself and others in surprising ways at times. As they say, "Children and fools shouldn't play with sharp tools. [Ap 606]" "A bad workman always blames his tools. [Dp 207]" Neat meditation methods should not be declared harmful until it is proven.

I have not seen any scientific evidence that a million well done kriya rounds bring about cosmic consciousness either. It is fit to treat that Yogananda claim as another marketing blunder in the light of the teachings of Yogananda's own guru, who thought the goal was reached at least 144 times slower. "At least" because Yogananda also left out parts of the kriya system that are taught to be essential for the practice, and simplified other parts – in addition to bringing a 144 times more speedy scenario than his guru, whom he called a jnanavatar (glorious wisdom incarnated). Honour him thus? [Link]

Learn to inspect and it may pay. An alternative to it is to be taken in and having to pay dearly for it throughout the remaining life. That could be the fruits of being taken in.

Yogananda renders a hoax book by a Notovitch, he "buys" it wholesale. Experts have debunked the book. [More]

Yogananda stands up with a "spiritual commentary" to the medieval Persian poem Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam. Yogananda's approach revolves around "key symbols" that Yogananda "finds" and uses, but most of them seem to be missing in any original. "Spiritualizing" non-existing keys denotes a masquerade. [More]

The ultimate "trick teaching": Babaji teaches the universe is unreal. and Yogananda: "The world is nothing more than a cosmic dream — this life is a dream," said Paramahansa Yogananda [Ak 237, 240]. Hence, that teaching is unreal too. But he did not stop to consider that.

Punk Yogi: "Sometime after I was born, I joined a cult — one of the nicest cults you could ever hope to be damaged by. . . . Lacking a purpose, I've found a new one in criticizing my cult."

That is very insignificant compared to the Bhagavad Gita's statements - a teaching poem that both Yogananda and Babaji go for – that those who teach the world is unreal, are demoniacs (16:7-9, ff). Better be warned than failing for the lack of it.