Yogananda on Visions, Dreams, and Illusions
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Paramahansa Yogananda on Visions, Dreams, and Illusions
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| "I want to see a sea of gold: What drives are at the back of it?" |
Yogananda's Visions
In his book Man's Eternal Quest Paramahansa Yogananda writes of some of his visions of Krishna and Jesus. On one occasion in Boston he views both of them hand in hand on a sea of gold [also in his book Whispers from Eternity]. He also writes that this memorable vision came on his request at a time when he wanted to quit the work in the United States. A voice asked him, "What do you want to see?" and he said, "I want to see Christ and Krishna hand in hand on a sea of gold."Then Yogananda saw them like that; he had that vision. However, doubts came and he thought he might be hallucinating. Then the friend he was meditating with suddenly cried out that he saw "Krishna and Christ, on a sea of gold!" Next Yogananda was told in his vision that the hotel room he lived in would smell well for some time afterwards. Visitors would notice it too. "The voice of God said: "When I leave, the room will become filled with the fragrance of the lotus, and whoever comes shall notice it.""
Each person who later visited Yogananda in that room would ask, "What is this strange fragrance of flowers that I smell?" It so happened, he asserts. He considered the lovely smell as a fine back-up to his vision. [Ak 233]
Like the famous guru we are naturally interested in sorting out several possibilites when inner images and scenes appear. If someone else tells he had a vision, how valuable a vision was it? And to whom? And is there a chance it was not a vision, but something else, after all?
Sorting Some Error Possibilites
Someone tells he had a vision. You strum a "chord of alternatives" to feel well and assured, or to try to rule out chances of error just to be a bit more on the safe side. You consider such as:- A real vision took place. It could take
place. That a genuine vision took place is a great hypothesis to evaluate in the light of
likeable counter-hypotheses. Some are below:
- The teller faked. Acting as a ventriloquist should not be taken as the
very best proof of having a vision.
- The teller had trained himself for inward sights, he commanded the
vision; so it was no grant. In an ancient yoga primer Patanjali tells how we may train
ourselves to see in vision just what we want to see. This is one of the extraordinary
powers that yoga may bring some, according to hoary yoga literature. There is a good
chance Yogananda had many such powers. He taught how to produce visions, at any rate. The twelfth Yogoda Lesson of his early ministry includes "The science of producing dreams and visions". His lessons from that time was further described as "simple, easy to grasp and to apply in one’s daily life . . . practical and unforgettable". What if his vision came about because he had learnt
and trained himself to see what he decided to see? Krishna and Jesus walking on a sea of
[hot] gold, for example?
Some visions can be understood tentatively in this way as we try to find better
and better understanding and explanations. This general approach should be all right in
general: We look for common sense explanations first, and if they don't serve to clarify
the phenomena in question fair enough, if they are not overly limited and limiting, and if
they do not rule out doing relevant justice to subtler realms of existence. By that
general, wide approach we may better maintain integrity and calm, and perhaps widen our
cogent, rational world view as an ongoing project. 
Another possibility: "Things are not as
they appear": If the vision is a mask or show only, is there anything real inside it?
This
suggests that in some cases a mental sight (vision) of Krishna could be a vision of
someone else in disguise or someone who had changed his appearance to look like Krishna.
It is one of the powers of yoga, as revealed in old yoga literature. Interestingly, in
Hinduism there are lots of stories on how gods and persons change their appearance and
look like anyone they want. Hence, there is a chance (teoretically, at least) that some
trickster or monster (whatever) played God and Krishna for Yogananda (above) to keep
Yogananda going, maybe confused enough to win a large following instead of leaving the
country.- Sleep deprivation: Loss of sleep may erase the borderline between
dreaming and waking, so that images interrrupt waking consciousness unduly. Severe loss of
sleep may also bring on mental disturbances and diseases, or accelerate some of them.
- The teller hallucinated. Daydreaming can become violent and fulfil
strong inner drives in borderline cases. Some people see what their inner drives or urges
manifest. Some recurrent nightly dreams illustrate that point. Or what is seen during
intoxication. Often there are potent inner tendencies that pave their way out like
that.
- Freaks and drug users or mentally deranged persons: Drugs may evoke hallucinations, and psychopaths can have a solid, even laming influence, great will power and hold sway over naive guys, as some of their characteristics - visions or no visions.
More Yogananda Visions
Yogananda tells more, for example that when he went back to India in 1935, he visited his old home in Ichapur, where he had used to play and watch the birds. But things had changed and only a tree was left:Somewhere else he writes:I would have given anything then to have seen our home as it was in my childhood. Nevertheless I did see it later, materialized in a vision: we swam in the pond, and I went upstairs in the house and lay on the bed and ate mangoes, as I had done so many years before. - Yogananda, Man's Eternal Quest [Ak 130]
Literature
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: SRF, 1975.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
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