Cult Adherents between the Old and New

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SRF's Editorial Strives for Decades

SRF's Editorial Strives for Decades

Educational Old Yogananda Quotations?

"Americans . . . the majority are drowned in theological ignorance, extreme love of money, speculation, fast living, living beyond their means, and inflated prosperity." - Yogananda
"The American people . . . because a perfect standard of national government has not been achieved, political graft, gangster and bootleg rule, divorces, juvenile crimes, and immorality are stalking wildly in this land in spite of her being a nation ruled to death." - Yogananda.
"It is said that some of the Presidents of Mexico, in spite of a comparatively small salary, have displayed the use of many millions. In Mexico, a bad President fortunately is not allowed to be bad long, for his career is ended by a bullet of some well-intentioned bad man . . . there are many Spiritual people in Mexico." - Yogananda, :)
"The Czars forgot that they could not be rulers without the consent of the people, the people woke up after allowing themselves to be tyrannized over by a few kings, and cut off their heads." - Yogananda.
SOURCE: Swami Yogananda. "What is the Best Polity?" East-West 1935, (Continued from November Issue)

The truth is that all Yogananda sayings are not whims, and that hogwash does not help full well in ominous cases. What is it that he is saying about the United States were "ruled to death"? The country is still there.
More alarming to some, perhaps, is:

The average man cannot think clearly . . . He needs the master mind of a Dictator in order to think right and do right." - Yogananda. "Interview". East-West, Vol. 6. [MORE]

We never found that "infallible guideline" junk - notable, at any rate - in SRF's assembled lessons after Yogananda's passing. Certain quotations are dropped there, and also Yogananda speaking for ideal communities in his autobiography.
We are confronted with this: SRF refrains from presenting all of Yogananda's announcements in public, for reasons that seem understandable when it is exposed that he hailed Mussolini and dictatorship in 1933. Also, what is selected as fit for Americans today, is filtered and quite edited. That poses other problems. We go into some of them below.

SRF Editing Yogananda

To make some salient points stand out clearer, think of an amoebe.

Ill. 1 - Amoebe - a shot at SRF teachings and methods

In the illustration the large circle of yellow and blue parts consists of Yogananda's messages. The blue parts are SRF sanitised or changed. This has been an editorial policy. The evidence: SRF comments to a Hindu review of The Wine of the Mystic, where the baffling evidence called for requests to clear up matters. In two different books, published at about the same time, "Yogananda's words" were different. The reason was explained - many of his words had been sanitised, moderated, changed.

Sri Daya Mata, president of SRF, took the original dictation from her guru. . . . Sri Mrinalini Mata, the Vice President of SRF, had the specific job of editing Yogananda's work. . . . There is a second version of Yogananda's Rubaiyat translation, edited by J. Donald Walters. . . . . Walter's edition is called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained. . . . In both the original writing of Yogananda has been substantially edited. Both editors say they were commissioned to do this work by Yogananda himself. It is a bit difficult to grasp just how extensively both Walters and SRF have edited Yogananda's words. . . . It was startling to this reader to learn that in neither edition is one even offered the original writing of Yogananda. SRF explained that all of Yogananda's writings had been so edited . . . Walters says he was specifically assigned by Yogananda to edit his Rubaiyat and explains the changes as required for clarity. [FA]

Kriyananda explains it better:

Yogananda . . . His preferred way of expressing himself was to touch lightly on a point, inviting others to meet him on his own level. It was to us, his disciples, usually, that he left the task of expanding on, or explaining, the truths he presented in condensed form in his writings. - [James Donald Walters, aka Kriyananda. [FB]

This does not seem even remotely like SRF Headquarters'

we, as his disciples, cannot change his words or the injunctions he gave in order to adjust them to your personal viewpoints [NOTARISED TOPICS]

Hhh! The SRF management just adjusts Yoganandas' autograph, guru pictures, and teachings to their own, most favoured viewpoints, it seems safe to say. They refused even rudimentary fairness to kriya initiates by those "stock devotee" phrases, by the way. The SRF management has run roughshod over better thinking and has proven to be dangerous in what they implement: They violate Human Rights laws through the SRF kriya pledge, and that is no small matter. [LINK]
In the illustration, the violet parts outside the big circle are Yogananda words, guidelines, and wisdom that SRF has left out by and by. Even parts of the kriya teachings or methods that once were handed over, are left out today.
Those who want to play it "safe", perhaps like the ostrich, are cautioned to stay within the rim of the large circle, to fit into the built up, edited and guru-sanitised SRF universe - which favours monastics taking over (by "remote dictates"), guru monastics that work their ways into the intimacies of family living of members by telling couples how to live, as if authorised from heaven.

The Power of Yogananda at a Banquet Talk

THE SECRETARY of the Pittsburgh Yogoda Center once sent in the following report:
"On Saturday, April 14th, the Pittsburgh Yogoda Sat-Sanga Center had the great pleasure of having Swami Yogananda as honor guest . . .
"Swami Yogananda gave a short talk on a higher Journalism. He asked all those present to make a practice of writing to the daily newspapers at intervals, asking them not to print scandal and murder headlines, but instead something of a spiritual and educational nature.
"On Sunday night, the Swami . . . concluded by bringing out that the power of truth is greater than the power of untruth . . . the power of truth . . . may come slowly, but when it comes, darkness goes before the flood of light." ["Yogoda Center News", East-West, May-June 1928, Vol. 3-4]

Literature
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: SRF, 1975.
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main ed.), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
Ha: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 12th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), 1981.
Pa: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), 1971.
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
Yv: Venkatesananda, swami, tr. The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Albany: State University of New York, 1984.

[FA:] Himalayan Academy. "SRF Uncorks a Winner!". Hinduism Today. October 1994. [www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1994/10/1994-10-04.shtml] Accessed 14 October 2005.
[FB:] Ananda Answers. "Preface from Rubaiyat". (Excerpted] Updated 26 November 2001. [www.anandaanswers.com/pages/LDCeditF.html] Accessed 14 October 2005.

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