By Science and Yogananda

• A Brilliant Scientist Could Reform Yogananda - Maybe Not
• Highlights

A Brilliant Scientist Could Reform Yogananda - Maybe Not

Study and understand so as to master life too.

Yogananda published the article "Reforming Religion by Science" in 1927, in his East-West Magazine of 2-6 October that year. "When man is able to dematerialize. . . his human body . . . and then materialize it again . . . then he will be free."

The outcome of dematerializing and then materializing your body looks like being back where you started. And there are many things to do to increase one's freedom degrees apart from disappearing. Being truly scientific, as a researcher and otherwise, requires much freedom, as Albert Einstein observed that the development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit requires inward freedom. [1] Now, the scientific community at present (September 2008) cannot tell how photons and particles and human bodies get mass, how they get weight. It is one unresolved, big question today. And how to get rid of overweight - not disappear altogether - in another topic which affects hundreds of millions in the West.

Further, Einstein also warns in Ideas and Opinions: "Schools may interfere with the development of inward freedom through authoritarian influences". He stresses that "the development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit" requires inward freedom, "the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices".

Einstein also thought in 1945 that "Only a free individual can make a discovery." [1]

Judged by his views, it helps an individual to preserve his freedom too. Now let us look into what Paramahansa Yogananda says.

Highlights from "Reforming Religion by Science"

By Paramahansa Yogananda

By testing and more one may eventually find a good technique for balanced development of body, mind and soul. - Wisdom of Paramahansa Yogananda, rendered.

A great war on ignorance must be launched [against] superstition. Alas, there has seldom been, except sometimes in India, any real research on pragmatic, life-moulding universal religion, in a true scientific way.

[Advocates] life-long research and scientific study in such a practical way as would show the origin, end and purpose of human life on earth.

Religion mostly has been handled by dogmatists . . .

"Mine is the only one, the best," is the declaration of most cults. But there should be a standard for judging what is best, just as the standard of quality of goods determines which store is the best in town.

All the cult shops selling religion declare their goods are the best.

Unscientific religion has been the cause of the tyranny of the caste system.

Why don't the orthodox Brahmins of India eat with the pariah (outcast) when his Scriptures say, "He is a man of realization who looks upon an elephant, a dog, a pariah, a Brahmin in the same way"?

Why don't the Bishop of Canterbury and the Pope of Rome exchange pulpits - are they not followers of the same Christ?

Why has the minister to look for rich people, and cater to their whims, in order to support his church?

Why do most people more eagerly go to the "movies" and pack places of amusement, instead of the churches?

How can the churches, with their third-class performances, compete with first-class pleasure-haunts, dance-halls and movie palaces?

Why (delude) the unsatisfied Self?

All religious organizations must give more. They must be united in their efforts to find their goal.

Above all, church funds, instead of being completely tied up in heavy mortgages and ornamental edifices, could be better employed in inducing the greatest scientists . . . to make real investigations for a practical technique of making the body, mind and soul of man . . . perfect, harmonious, ever-strong, quickly developing, better and happier.

Such is the ideal of Yogoda, for it means, technique for balanced development of body, mind and soul.

Scientists should test, in the lives of growing children, the methods offered . . . and should thus discover by practical application . . .

The truth should be tested by the government of each people, standardized, and introduced into school, societies and universities, in order to bring the maximum results.

Real spiritual experience . . . will be discovered, in the course of realizing God or truth, to be one and the same. There is only one Truth . . .

In India, where much scientific truth has been discovered by Yogis and Swamis in religious experimentations, the word "Dharma" means "those immutable principles which protect man permanently from the three-fold suffering of disease, unhappiness and ignorance."

With all the modern inventions and comforts of present-day civilization, man's life is still uncertain, unsafe.

When man is able to dematerialize or convert his human body into its constituent electrons and basic consciousness, and then materialize it again into organized living physical flesh . . . as Hindu Yogis do, then he will be free . . .

Effort must be applied to the conversion of the human body into life energy. "Man shall not live by bread (solids, liquids) alone, but by every word (vibratory energy) which falleth from the mouth of God (medulla oblongata)." Energy in the human body which converts food into energy, is the direct real source of life, and not food.

When practical religion teaches us to be energy, we will then attain immortality and will reclaim the lost God's image in us.

God made us angels of energy, encased in solids - currents of life . . .

Even protoplasm is immortal. So is thought. . . . Why this illusion of mortality and death?

Let us cast aside . . . prejudices and formalities, let us . . . fight Ignorance . . . Let science . . . be engaged in making man himself invulnerable to the destruction arising out of his inventions-death by airplanes, electricity and automobiles-and conscious of his own powers . . . Let science discover and teach the method to consciously leave our bodies.

Let us . . . Scientific Investigation and Realization, and . . . practical application to life.

Literature  

[1] Haselhurst, Geoff, and Karene Howie. Albert Einstein Quotes, 1997-2008.
[www.spaceandmotion.com/Albert-Einstein-Quotes.htm]



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