Opening

Self-Realization Fellowship, SRF, is a California-based international church. The former editor of Yogananda's autobiography, Tara Mata (Laurie Pratt), reportedly told a former vice-president of SRF: "We are a sect." [Kriyananda. ◦A Place Called Ananda, ch. 14.].

Don't take my word for anything. - Yogananda. (Overriding proposition)

There is much bias and untrue partiality in sectarian outlooks - it can be quite scaring. It can pay to inspect what SRF has tucked away, for example Yogananda writing for dictatorship in his own magazine in 1934, when the worst was yet to come.

Yogananda Quotations with Comments

You can skip reading Yogananda for your own good

Don't take my word for anything . . . please remember. - Yogananda (Dietz 1998, "Master's Teachings")

We don't really know what is right or real ... we are often incorrect in our judgements. - Yogananda (1982, 414].

COMMENT: It can save years of precious time not to read Yogananda, which should be far better than reading him for long and then find this quotation of him - and even find yourself captured in a transgressing cult.

It could perhas seem crass just to step on an introductory SRF leaflet, as a young German in Berlin did outside a place where SRF emissaries were about, lecturing, aber . . . it may well have solved a lot for the young German and saved him from ruining his future lives, if any. He might even have had intuitive perception - What is recommendable, is to learn the very best meditation methods, apply them well and go beyond many wrong ideas. The Tibetan Dhammapada:

From fully completed fine meditation,
gradually an emergence occurs:
like the unclouded sun and moon
It illuminates the entire world.

- The Tibetan Dhammapada 15.1, reworked. (Sparham 1986)

How to read Yogananda literature, according to himself

Criticize books with intuitive perception. Keep your mind busy . . . [6]

COMMENT: During his last years the guru said he assimilated the content of books by sensing a their vibrations by reading just a few pages (Yogananda 1993:19). He also said he detected the vibrations of lots of future civilisations, but that is not reflected in his Bible commentary. Yogananda wrote in Whispers from Eternity (1949) that he could feel the glistening future thoughts of mankind, and yet did not take into account the advancing textual criticism of the Bible. He could indeed have profited from it, just as some who say they see the future, could bet on horses and win steadily, or tell that Mussolini was not much of a guy to hail - if the foresight was all right. All the same, Yogananda wrote that he

stood in the land unveiled, and found streams of rushing, glistening thoughts, felt rippling thoughts of millenniums – of born and unborn civilizations . . . All futurity danced in me." (1949, No. 212).

That is what he writes. If you are good at critisising books by laying hands on them or get the future civilizations into your awareness without overload and great depressions, go ahead. But it might do good to test your developed skills carefully before you publish anything, so as not to embarrass yourself or your followers. For example, Yogananda foretold a third and fourth World War, Europe devastated, Russia annihilated, and England finished - all before the year 2000 CE. (Kriyananda 2011:125-26; 1973, ch 6). [Yogananda's failed foretellings]

Reality-checking ought not to be overrun. [More]

The art of good criticism is a quite demanding art.

As for laying your hands on books and absorb them in an alternative way, I suggest you test what is best for you, to read a book, lay your hands on it a while, or sleep on it at a desk or under your pillow. Tests may show the assimilation got, if the assimilation is discernible to you or testers. It is very easily done and can rout out misconceptions before illusions or false, ensnaring ideas take hold.

Sound study often may be handled by such means as the British psychologist Tony Buzan advocates. [Acronyms for learning]

Be that as it may, here is Yogananda's way:

I read very little, because it is not necessary. By the time I get through a few pages of a book, I know from its vibrations whatever truth it contains. [Dr 18-19]

He might have thought he did not need to read a book to comment it, but take a look at what he thought Omar Khayyam had meant when he allegedly commented on him by using Edward Fitzgerald's work. Yogananda's fruits show his flowers - his vibration assertions - are too bad. You fail and flunk at high school exams, for example, if you go ahead like a veritable Yogananda. [Yogananda's Rubaiyat hocus-pocus]

The vibrations "in the ether are the concepts for every invention man has created," Yogananda goes on to tell. The discoverers of these ideas may say that they have invented this or that, but they haven't really done so, but uncovered past, future or present vibration-ideas, he goes on to tell. [Dr 19]

The aether (ether) is not much in vogue as a construct today. In early physics it was considered a "medium", and in other circles a "fifth element" too. In early modern physics, the concept was used to explain that electromagnetic or gravitational influences were propagated. These aether theories are considered to be scientifically obsolete. But, interestingly, there are caveats to those ideas too. For example, Einstein noted that his own model, which replaced the ether theories of his time, could itself be though of as an aether, as it implied that the empty space between objects had its own physical properties. [Wikipedia, s.v. "Aether (classical element)"]

There are many things between heaven and earth, said Shakespeare. Perhaps the aether is one of them - depending on what we understand by it, and its defined variables.

To offer understanding criticism is risky because of bigots

Unkind and unjust criticism causes inharmony and factions of partiality, bias, and rebellion . . . But though gossip, lies, and slander hurt the criticized, they ultimately hurt the criticizer even more. . . [T]he wicked accusers are condemned by the unfailing karmic law of cause and effect.

To offer criticism – even constructive criticism – is risky; but to be able thyself to stand criticism is of great benefit. It tests and reinforces thine armor of truth.

Those who flatter thy faults are thy worst enemies. To receive impartial criticism is to tune in with the law of progress. But to succumb to flattery is to poison both material and spiritual advancement.

Conquer vice by virtuous example, . . . ignorance by wisdom, . . . narrow-mindedness by understanding, bigotry by liberality. Let these virtues begin with thyself."

[7]

Yogananda on flattery and criticism

"Flattery may be good when it encourages a person to right action . . . Besides the sweet words of flattery from others, our own inner thoughts often excuse our harmful faults and hide big psychological tumors . . . Many people willingly lose money, time, health, and even character for the sweet deceptive words of parasitic so-called friends.

Many souls have perished by not listening to behests of stern words and by yielding to the sweet poison of words from wicked associates. . . . Poisonous so-called friends would make Hades of Heaven and justly-speaking wise friends would make Heaven of Hades.

It is always good to speak the truth . . .

A saint used to have a friend who constantly criticized him to the great displeasure of his disciples. One day a disciple came exultingly crying: "Master, your enemy, the constant fault finder, is dead." The master began to weep and said: "Oh, I feel helpless. My best spiritual critic is dead. My heart is broken."

Most people choose flattery instead of intelligent criticism and would readily dash themselves on the rocks in spite to disprove the candid forecasts of frank spiritual teachers. Therefore, ask yourself each time somebody mildly or harshly criticizes you: "Have I been lured by sweet words . . . in the hands of flattery?""

[8]

A dead teacher

"Once there was a Master who had a disciple who criticised everything the Master did. He died, and his disciples came running joyously to their Master and said: "Master, that man who is all the time troubling you, he is dead." Then the Master began to weep. The disciples said: "Why do you weep; you should be glad you are rid of this terrible man?" The Master replied: "No, I am sorry, my teacher is dead." His criticism acted like a warning."

[9]

Compare a "best critic":

"A saint used to have a friend who constantly criticized him to the great displeasure of his disciples. One day a disciple came exultingly crying: "Master, your enemy, the constant fault finder, is dead." The master began to weep and said: "Oh, I feel helpless. My best spiritual critic is dead. My heart is broken.""

[10]

Ingested cocaine, flattery and untruth harm the soul, says Yogananda

"If people want to eat cocaine, opium, cobra poison, or to indulge in a flattering religion which is afraid to even constructively criticize, or to hear only those lectures which gloss over and explain away their faults, should the business men, religious leaders and lecturers reason, let us give the people what they want, let us sell them poison, flattery and untruth, let us thus kill their souls and choke their mentalities of progress, it doesn't matter since we are getting rich? . . . The law of honesty should be the policy."

[11]

Yogananda on Americans

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.

SOURCE: Swami Yogananda. "What is the Best Polity?" East-West 1935, (Continued from November Issue)

"Ruled to death" may take time.

TM, an Alternative to Freaking Out, Yogananda and Drugs

In TM, Transcendental Meditation, one repeats a mantra (sound) mentally, but not aligned to the breath, and the mantra is given from among several more or less congenital ones. There is much research on TM. [◦Link]

There are more than 650 scientific studies of the various benefits of Transcendental Meditation, independently conducted at 200 universities and institutions in over 30 countries. These studies, published in over 100 scientific magazines, report of improvements, such as increases in memory and concentration, stabilization of the autonomic nervous system, reduction of drug abuse, and a decrease in prison violence and health problems.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spread TM throughout the world and thereby:

• offered many who experimented with drugs an alternative. A US Congress report shows a dramatic decline of drug abuse for TM practitioners, and not only that: the use of stimulants decrease too. And the current status: TM works about twice as well as convential therapies. There is hope in those findings. [More]
• helping masses to get involved in healthy spiritual exercise.
• became indirectly and directly responsible for the enormous amount of data that now gives scientific support to claims of yoga's many healthy benefits.

Learn to make use of the best methods. They take the mind inwards with minimal effort.