Yogi Stories and Others

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Master Squirrel
"We thank you for a dead son, God!"
Eyebrow Teachings
The Little Man at the Angel's Pillar

Master Squirrel

Once an old hermit lived on a brink by the sea at a place where a mother squirrel fostered her young. The hermit was so fond of this company that he was reborn as a female squirrel to look after youngs, he too (this has gone too far already).
[Yes, that's what the holy man did, and an avatar squirrel he was, decrees Yogananda, and vouches for a fairy tale against nearly all odds in so doing.]
Great waves took the holy squirrel's nests and cubs one day she was away looking for eggs and other food for them. She saw that the big sea had taken them, and started to threaten the sea. "Bring me back my children, or I will dry you up with my bushy tail," she said.
The sea gave no particular reply. So the squirrel mother started to dry the ocean by soaking her tail in the sea and letting the water drip off on dry land - again and again. Little did she consider that the water would seep and run down into the sea again. But the sea got so alarmed by the squrrel's determination that it swelled up a huge wave where the cubs were floating, and put them all beside her on the brink - and lo, they were all alive and well again, after being drowned and gone for many days. (#1.1)

To This:

Here comes some monstrous anti-realism - a being with a bushy tail triumped over sea and waves and nature and death.
Don't give up, be a plain fool yourself: put your trust in this guru teaching of closing your eyes to the facts of marriage or death: In ordinary cases the one who is bereaved has to learn to face the facts. Several stages of recovery has to be passed through, step by step. The squirrel had reached the denial stage - it could not come to terms with what had happened - when all was aborted by an unseemly happening.
The story about the squirrel is retold by Yogananda. He claims that the squirrel was holy, holy, nay an incarnation of a liberated sage. This sage was so very fond of caring for squirrels that he did not mind becoming a squirrel either, in a more drastic drama than the Borgia sentence: "Become a dog in shape". Further down than a dow; the guru still vouches for it all.
Do not stoop below what you are already. Don't wish to become a Borgia dog either. There is so little a squirrel and monkey and dog can do. And further, the hunting for food and mating often leaves little spare time. Even an elephant cannot do much against the ocean, although it is not easy to rob by pick-pockets.
This is to say:

Do not be taken in by romantic stuff that does not hold water. Instead take heart from another guru story:

"We thank you for a dead son, God!"

A wise man was sitting calmly on a rock with the presence of God. His wife came running to and sobbed, "Our son just fell from the roof and died."
Her husband said quietly, "Lord, we thank you . . . for a noble son, and not a wicked one, given in our care for twenty years. We shall miss him because of our selfish attachment."
His wife exclaimed, "What is wrong? Tears for a dead son are required!"
"Such a wise man is a yogi." - Paramahansa Yogananda. [Self-Realization Magazine, Winter 1970, p. 19-20. Abridged.]

Eyebrow Teachings

To recognise the illness is often the beginning of a cure.

"The werewolf can be recognised by its eyebrows. They meet". (From the text)

ONCE there was a man that had been a werewolf from his childhood. He was filled with deep aggressions that were covered up during daytime.
One night he drove with his wife from a party. All of a sudden he felt the hate about to descend on him from inside. He stopped the wagon and gave the reins to his wife, telling,
"If anyone wants to harm you, just hit and strike with your apron."
And then he was gone into the darkness.
A little later his wife was attacked by a wolf. She slashed at it with the apron. The wolf bit it and wanted to tear it from her. It tore off a piece and ran off with it.
Then her husband popped up. When his wife saw him coming, she could not help noticing he had the torn off shred of apron in his mouth. She yelled:
"Christ, husband, aren't you a werewolf?"
"Thanks a lot," he replied, "for now I am free."
Since then the bad thing never returned.

Luckily, that werewolf knew his own cure.
It may help to be not easily scared at times.

Eyebrow Teachings

Jack Werewolf did not do it.

A WEREWOLF is believed to be bewitched to be in animal shape at night, so that everyone that meet it, experiences great fear. Many persons in Europe were killed for being werewolves - that was the fear that had them executed in public or otherwise. Some were taken to be seductive. And in some of the old versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf is a werewolf: someone who looks all right and polished, but . . .
A folkloric belief is that the werewolf can be recognised by its eyebrows. They meet. How true is it as a token of brutality in excess?
A werewolf can get freed from its werewolf lifestyle if another human talks lovingly to it and calls it something like "religious werewolf" - but here we have "lifted" or transported the term into another level, just as Sigmund Freud did with the Oedipus character of an old Greek tale.
We may gather that the werewolf is neat to look at to all appearances (at day and most often otherwise) until the mask falls down (now and then, particulary when there are tensions in the air, as illustrated by howling at the full moon). Something like that could very well fit others than Jack Nicholson's role character in one of the many werewolf films.
Incidentally, within many a Cattle Farm there are those who strive in regulated ways to mobilise the "eyebrow" part of the brain so as to make prana currents confluent at that point. But that's another matter, a very different matter; a confluence, and not wicked at all in itself (per se). Understand it and remain strong. Brilliant humour often helps it, but not always. [Dao 165-6]

Seductive versions of werewolves may seek their brides like Bluebeard in a French tale.
A werewolf is not to be thought of as a role model.

The Little Man at the Angel's Pillar

Close to the famous clock in the Cathedral of Strassburg there is a little man in stone gazing up at the angel's pillar which supports the south wing of the cathedral. Long ago the little man who is now sculptured in stone, stood there in flesh and blood. He used to stare up at the pillar with a keen eye from top to bottom and again from bottom to top. Then he would shake his head doubtfully each time.
It happened once that a sculptor passed the cathedral and saw the little man looking up, evidently comparing the proportions of the pillar.
"It seems to me you are finding fault with the pillar, my good fellow," the stone-cutter remarked, and the little man nodded.
"Well, what do you think of it? Speak out my man," said the master, tapping the fellow's shoulder encouragingly.
"The pillar is splendid," began the latter slowly, "the apostles, the angels, and the Lord are beautiful too. But there is one thing troubling me. The slender pillar cannot support that heavy vault much longer; it will soon totter and fall down, and all will go to pieces."
The sculptor looked alternately at the work of art and at its fault-finder. A contemptuous smile passed over his features. "You are quite convinced you are right, are not you?" he asked.
The man repeated his doubts.
"Well," cried the stone-cutter, "then you will remain there always, gazing at the pillar till it sinks down, crushed by the vault."
He went straight off into his workshop, seized hammer and chisel, and formed the little man into stone just as he was, looking upwards with a knowing face.

This little figure is still there with both hands leaning on the balustrade of St. Nicholas' chapel. Perhaps he will remain there for many a century more too.

"Like a thinker": The yoga method

If you read the story in the light of yoga, looking up and being met with contempt for it, stand out as crucial. Just try to sit calmly and gaze upwards by "staring" at an imagined spot 110 cm ahead of you and sixty degrees upwards. Relax all facial muscles while you fix your gaze like that. If you start to get blissful through such regular practice, good for you! Your eyes may be halfclosed or closed. However, closed eyes are recommended for such practice at public places, for staring for long like this - with nothing in particular to look at - can appear crazy. There's where scorn may set it, but do your part to avoid it. Behind your closed eyes - provided you are safe and sound - you can adhere to the position and focus of the eyes "like a thinker".
You did not know this an excellent yoga method? The well-known guru Yogananda calls such fixed staring a sure and swift way to Existence - to Better Life, that is. It happens that people who look for a way out of trouble, lift their eyes heavenward quite as in the outlined method, where you "lift your eyes to the hills of God" by metaphor. The gist of it is to keep one's attention at the subtle center (ajna chakra) between the eyebrows [Say 59], perhaps not as steadily as a dying person, but, well, steadily.
Yet, in Yogananda's Scientific Healing Affirmations he also teaches "Concentrate your will sirnultaneously on the medulla oblongata and on the spot between the eyebrows" [Sca 53]. So you can do it both ways, but it seems to be an error to be taken in by the "sure and swift" of Yogananda. It can be awfully difficult to put faith in his self-contradictive statements, statements that differ greatly from those of his guru: they imply that eye-lifting alone is an utterly slow way and may take much more than just one life-time. Would that be fast enough for you? Too slow, you may say if you read another page and consider the implication of the kriya yoga teachings, where keeping the gaze lifted is for beginners too, and the most advanced methods of the kriya arsenal are secretive and even they - of graceful highway speed and jet plane speed as compared to ox chart speed - may take decades and more future lives to bear fruit. The documentation gathered on these issues, is on another page on-site: ]LINK].
The Medulla is the lowest portion of the brain stem and is located at the base of the skull. In the yoga teachings of Yogananda's guru Yukteswar, the ajna centre and medulla are secretly connected as vortexes of a nadi (vessel of secret energy). Brain neurology teaches brain connections by other concepts, and on material levels, by comparison.

"There is a nadi (medulla) located between the eyebrows formed like the shape of the back of a tortoise. When one has total absorption - samyama - in that tortoise-nadi, then immediately . . . Light prevails . . . the Ajna Chakra. Through this, the mind enters the sushumna. [Yukteswar, Bhg 1:15-18]

Literature
Bhg: Sriyukteshvar, Swami. Srimad Bhagavad Gita: Spiritual Commentary. Portland, Mn: Yoganiketan, 2002. On-line at www.yoganiketan.net
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006.
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
Scf: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Scientific Healing Affirmations. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.

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