Yoga Work 14

• Yogananda
• The Fat Sea-Lion

Yogananda

Knowe thy selfe . . . knowe what thou arte able, fitte and apt vnto, and folowe that. [R. Ascham, 1545]

In some places he drew a little bit on material from the earlier S-R Magazines.

Q: - Yogananda learnt English and didn't spontaneously speak in good English as if a miracle had occurred (as he likes to make out in AY)

Kriyananda goes into a facet of that somewhere - here it is: [Link]

Q: - he mentions usage of yogic powers and miracles a bit too often when it has been stressed time and again that the true Yogi sees these things as obstacles to realization . . . and tried in many ways to gain power over others in devious ways. . . . he knew hypnosis techniques and used . . . his whole life on others to gain power and control.

That's a rather drastic claim . . . You know how ardent devotees can be - (dubious sentence structure - I know)

Q: . . . and so on. I think your submission that he was a 'fisher of men' is quite accurate.

Thank you for agreeing on that one. . . . But in my experience it is fit to allow some (mental) space for mystery and unsettled issues, not unlike:

Who knows these things,
Who can here decide?

(Who verily knows and who can here declare it?) [Rikveda 10:129;6]

I had very little interest in telling . . . but somebody got to do something, and I might have certain privileges in that respect.
      Yogananda and SRF is behind me . . . Tomorrow is before me.

Q: Yogananda must have been either deluded or a liar - but I cannot understand this. It makes absolutely no sense. Why would they lie?

Good questions. Now:

1. One goal may be to bait and hook (fish) followers.
2. They seem to be normal. But they hail Narada and suggestive devotionalism!: [LINK]

Some of them hope they do not have to either. They think they rise above good and bad and that - that is even in Yogananda's public teaching, for example his poem "Samadhi":

. . . good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed, transmuted all
Into a vast ocean of blood . . . [LINK].

Apart from "blood-thirst"? I think man-fishing is a valid answer. "I will make you fishers of men," said Jesus to his (later) apostles. And Yogananda says Babaji is in communion with that, and he himself too.

Q: I understand what you are saying but I do not understand the bigger picture. It is confusing to me.

Yogananda says one place - in the book Sayings of Yogananda - that man is confused and cannot reason out things like those.

Man would go crazy if he tried to understand [this life] by reason alone. That is why I tell you to meditate more. - Yogananda, Say 66-67]

The Fat Sea-Lion

Han har hoppat i galen tunna. (Lit. "He has jumped into a wrong barrel." - ie guessed wrong, expressed something unsuitable, etc)

The Fat Sea-Lion consists of a conformly Yogananda-loyal bunch.

Q: I wish I could get back there to check out the latest gossip.

Often in life one should be given a second chance -
      If you write the editor, the walrus, and explain, maybe he could extend that facility so that non-registered readers can benefit from knowing the latest posts too? . . .
      Or you can start a discussion forum yourself and perhaps find persons with similar experiences to write to on the same place.

There is far more on the Fat Sea-Lion here: [LINK]