Who is Paramhansa Yogananda?

Mukunda Lal Ghosh was born January 5, 1893 in India. Destined to become one of the first swamis to come to America (he came in 1920), he became a sensation in America, touring in the 1920’s and 1930’s to crowds of thousands of people in cities throughout the USA.

This time of year the Ananda Communities and centers around the world are among the thousands who commemorate Paramhansa Yogananda’s life and teachings. At his initiation as a swami when a young man by his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri in Serampore (near Calcutta), India, he took the monastic name Yogananda: “union with God in bliss through yoga practice.”

Years later his guru conferred upon him the honorific “Paramhansa,” an acknowledgement of his disciple’s high spiritual realization. Yogananda came to America in 1920, returned to India for a last visit to his guru, family, and homeland in 1935-36, but otherwise stayed in America and became a U.S. citizen. He established his headquarters in Los Angeles in the mid-1920’s. He left this earth plane in 1952.

Those are the barest facts of an extraordinary life. We who are his disciples honor his contribution to the world and to our lives especially at this time of year. At Ananda this celebration concludes the holiday season at about the same time as Christians historically commemorate the three wise men coming from the east to honor the Christ child.

Paramhansa Yogananda is most famous for his life story, “Autobiography of a Yogi.” This book, first published in 1946, has been read by millions in many languages around the world. For modern ears, hearts, and minds, Yogananda opened up for westerners insights into the mysteries of Indian culture and especially its timeless precepts, practices, and its modern saints and sages with their extraordinary powers and states of consciousness. As a work of literature his autobiography stands tall in the pantheon of twentieth century writings.

But it is not the details of his life or even his consciousness that I wish to reflect upon here. Swami Kriyananda’s own autobiography, “The New Path,” details life with the “master” with such wisdom, humor, and love that I must refer the reader to this parallel work of art and inspiration.

One hears a common saying that “When the disciple is ready the guru appears.” For the relevant question is not “Who is the greatest guru (or teacher)?” The more important  inquiry is “Who am I” and “What kind of a disciple of life and truth am I?” The law of karma (action and reaction) and the law of attraction and magnetism remind us that the world we inhabit is filtered by our own magnetism such that we attract to ourselves those circumstances (and people) best designed to reflect back to us aspects, high or low, of our own self.

So rather than ask ourselves “Who was Yogananda” we can also ask ourselves “Who am I?”

Some see in him a world teacher and avatar whose life has started a revolution in spreading the practice of kriya yoga into all nations that millions may have a direct personal perception of divinity and hence empower humanity to make the changes needed to sustain life, health, prosperity and God remembrance in all nations.

Others will see him only as another in an endless procession of teachers from India seeking to profit by the prosperity of the west. Perhaps some will see more flamboyant or more recently popular teachers as the real “deal.” No matter.

It depends what we are capable of seeing and seeking. It is enough for me that he has changed my life and the lives of uncountable others worldwide. Who am I to speak of him as an avatar? I wouldn’t know an avatar  if he was a card-carrying member of the Avatar Club. Even if I were to be so unrefined or unaware as to simply find inspiration and practicality in his words and yoga techniques and ignored him altogether (because no longer incarnate), my life would not be the same.

The question is by what influence and magnetism has he, whom I have never met, inspired me to leave everything of a material nature (career and life in the “world”) as a young man, move to a poor and rural intentional community in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and dedicate my life to the daily practice of meditation and service to spreading Yogananda’s ideals and practices? Were I alone, then you’d have to conclude that I am just basically weird. But hundreds and by now thousands have done the same.

And we are not talking the disenfranchised or the “sick, lame, and lazy” (as my old father, God rest him) would have said. The people I associate with are highly educated, high energy, creative, noble-minded, kind, compassionate and dedicated people who are very aware of the world we live in and eager to serve God through humanity and through kriya yoga.

Yogananda’s influence has spawned a network of intentional communities, schools for children, yoga centers, publishing, nature awareness programs, creative architecture, new forms of music and worship, a cooperative style of leadership and decision making, creative parenting and harmonious relationships.

The chief architect of this expansion has been the foremost of Yogananda’s direct disciples in the service of humanity at large: Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda. Kriyananda’s influence reflects not only his dynamic will but his attunement with his guru, Yogananda. The worldwide work of Ananda is largely a transparent expression of Yogananda’s guidance. Though stamped indelibly with Kriyananda’s signature, members and students of Ananda function independently, creatively taking seed inspiration (rather than any detailed blueprint) from Kriyananda’s guru-guided creativity. Kriyananda, as such, functions more as a focal point and funnel for energy rather than a personality. The result is that scant attention is paid him in the way we see so many spiritual teachers being fawned upon or held high upon a pedestal of undying admiration.

Ananda is not a top-down hierarchical organization, though the value and importance of inspired and supportive leadership is emphasized. Cooperation rather than coercion is the guiding principle. The spiritual welfare of people is the measure of success, not the otherwise worthwhile and measurable accomplishments of Ananda as a spiritual work. Thus the Ananda centers and communities function independently but in cooperation with its first and original community in California. Europe has its own central vortex just as India has two parallel centers: one rural, the other urban.

Yogananda created a new system of tension exercises at a time when millions were just beginning to seek forms of exercise. Less than a century ago exercise for its own sake was only for aristocrats and a few privileged athletes. Already we see the incidence of injury from running, weight training, extreme sports and even intensive one-size-fits-all yoga. He created numerous formulae and recipes for the future millions of vegetarians even as our culture flounders fanatically with every extreme dietary fad that comes along each year.  

He spoke of a future when international criminals would cause havoc in every country and how an international “police force” of freedom-loving nations would be required. He predicted that English would become the “lingua franca” of the world. He also warned of future wars, cataclysms, diseases, and economic devastation as a result of unparalleled greed, exploitation and ruthless competition.

Yogananda with words of great spiritual power “sowed into the ether” a call to high-minded souls to go out into rural areas and create small communities, pooling resources, skills, and living close to the land in what we now realize and describe as a sustainable lifestyle. He predicted that a time would come when small communities would “spread like wildfire,” presumably as an antidote the crushing and impersonal forces of globalization.

Each of these concepts, precepts, and trends are taking shape in the lives of people like you and me, around the world. Yes, it’s true these things would be happening with, or without Yogananda. But to come as a divine messenger to bless these efforts is as reassuring as it is an ancient tradition (to seek divine blessings upon one’s journey and new undertakings). Those who are in tune with these trends are, in their own way, drawing upon those blessings whether they have heard of Yogananda or not.

In theological matters, how many like you and me are weary of sectarianism and desirous of harmony between faiths? It is not religion we should fight but selfishness, greed, and delusion. To this end those who love God should help, support, and respect one another. But how can we find our way out of the box of our dogmas and customs?

All theological bypaths meet in the sensorium of inner silence. God as One, God as many, God of many names or no name are all found united in silent, inner communion. The only real idol worship is found in the worship of matter, the senses, and the ego. These are the false idols, not the saints or deities who serve as symbols and aspects of the One beyond all symbols.

Thus it is that our own and personal vision of reality draws to us the life and teachings of such a one as Paramhansa Yogananda. To achieve Self-realization, he said, we must simply improve our “knowing.”

A Happy Birthday to Yogananda and to all of us!

Nayaswami Hrimananda

Occupy the Heart! Christmas Reflections

I cannot help but applaud the “occupiers,” protestors of the greed that is symbolized by “Wall Street.” Yes, changes are long overdue, and yes, we were not wise enough to make them on our own volition; and yes, we’ve asked for it, deserved it, no less; and, finally, yes, most of the people in western nations would not have made any other choices but to live beyond our means, both in money and in the world’s natural resources!

Whether the protestors cause any political change directly is less the point (to me) than the fact that they symbolize a shift in consciousness. For every occupier there must surely be a million, perhaps millions, of people in support of what they are saying. So there may well be some changes in attitude and policy in the years ahead.

There is a story from the life of Paramhansa Yogananda (see the book, “Conversations with Yogananda,” by Swami Kriyananda, www.crystalclarity.com) wherein he was being thwarted by the Los Angeles Planning and Building Department regarding one of his properties there. Discussing his frustration with a group of disciples, someone blurted out, “There ought to be a revolution!” Yogananda chuckled at first with everyone else, then paused, became quiet and more serious, and then added, “There WILL be a revolution!”

Well, none too soon in my book. But I’m not here, today, to complain about our political and economic troubles. One could write a book about those and yet, for one’s effort, nothing would change. It’s the Christmas (or, would you prefer, Solstice?) holiday season and it is one of good cheer and goodwill toward all.

Instead, I say, “Let’s OCCUPY THE HEART!” By that I do not mean something soupy and sentimental. The heart is the receiving station for intuition and deep feelings, not just the boiling cauldron of ever-changing emotions that most people believe and experience the heart to be.

In the stories of the birth of Krishna in India, and Jesus Christ in Israel, the former was born in a prison, and the latter, a manger. Both were pursued by the local king who sought to kill them, as both were perceived by him to be a threat to his worldly power.

To us this symbolizes that our materially-minded, self-involved, self-affirming ego will fight our soul qualities to the death because the ego knows that the awakening of our soul nature threatens to de-throne the ego. But it’s easier to kill the soul when it’s still an infant and relatively helpless. The reason many children were killed in these two parallel stories is that infant soul qualities wherever located and whatever form they take are always a threat to the ego’s rule of the body kingdom.

In the darkened chamber of our heart, even if but imprisoned by the ego, lives the infant of our divine, soul Self. This calmer, wiser, and kinder higher Self occupies the heart and is the source of our heart’s natural loving nature. Whether we occupy Wall Street or Main Street or 228^th Street is less important than the heart that pre-occupies us.  It is “where I am coming from” that counts far more than “where I am going to.”

We all have very different lives and only a few can go out and occupy anything at all. It’s less important what we do, and far more important how we do it. We like to think that what we do is important, and it is to us, or, at least, we may need that attitude in order to summon the will power, energy, and creativity to accomplish our work. But, let’s face it, drop dead today and someone else will take your place. They may even do a better job than you.

It is not my intention to suggest anyone act irresponsibly, just honestly and wisely, as best we can. What I am saying is that the intention and consciousness behind our every word, thought, and emotion, indeed, our essential “vibration,” is the real determinant in the happiness and fulfillment we discover in life.

During the Solstice season , on the shortest day of the year, the sun of God is born and with each passing day thereafter, he will grow in strength and wisdom as he ascends toward the summer Solstice. What a beautiful symbol and what an opportunity for us to be still, resting in the manger of the quiet and humble heart, to witness, pay reverence and adoration, to offer gifts of our intention, goodwill, and devotion to this infant Light.

It is this deeper knowing that brings millions of people out into the cold winter night on Christmas Eve to participate in devotions of all type, even when this may be the only time of the year some people do this.

For as the tiny oak seedling can grow into a mighty tree which gives rest and shelter to all creatures, so too the Light of God, manifested in the spark of divinity which is our own and unique soul, can grow and wrest from the pretender king ego the princely throne of our heart, mind, and body once again!

Christ is not just a human being born two thousand years ago. Christ is the Light reflected in every atom of creation that endows creation with innate intelligence and joy. It is this Christ consciousness that certain souls have fully realized (“Self-realized”) that anoints them as prophets, as messengers down through the ages who come to remind us of our true Self. Christ-mass therefore is the celebration of the second coming of Christ in our own hearts. He comes in the dark night of the soul’s winter, when nothing of this world can satisfy us. It is the Christ, the Kristna, the Buddha that comes to us as a messenger, carrying a Light which shines in our personal darkness and lights our way. That message is the same everywhere: “Know thy Self,” turn within to discover that that light is within us, as well.

Meditation is the priceless gift of India to this age of great change that we might find the inner security and inner peace of our soul. “Give me a light to light my way, truth is the light, so wise men say.” Imagine if this Light were to occupy the hearts of even but a small percentage of humanity, today! It would change the world in a way no legislation, no protest, no funding from a rich foundation, nor any treaty could ever do.

A blessed, bliss-filled celebration of the universal Christ consciousness in you, and in all creation. Occupy your heart of Light.

Nayaswami Hriman

Return to India - Part 1

My daughter Gita and I returned from India last Tuesday, July 12. The 3-week trip went well on every level, though it had its challenges on every level too. Tomorrow, Sunday, July 17, I will offer a slide show presentation of the trip but I thought to use this blog for more personal reflections than a slide show would allow.

Nowadays many people visit India and it becomes increasingly accessible and (relatively) comfortable each year as India continues its explosive entry into the 21st century. Even up and into the Himalayas the development is intense: the mountain-clinging dirt roads (still very dangerous) are being paved, bridges replaced or added, electricity goes practically to Mt. Everest along with the ubiquitous cell phone towers, and hotels and guest lodges multiply like spring wildflowers. I don't know how many pilgrims ascend to these mountain shrines during each season (May-October) but it's many, many thousands. We were never alone. (One is never alone in India, at least physically. Even the path up Mt. Everest is said to resemble a parking lot, at least during the limited climbing season.)

We went by car belonging to our guide Mahavir Singh Rawat and driven by his driver Sitendra (having a driver for one's car is very common in India). The higher one goes and the deeper into the Himalaya the more likely the road regresses to dirt and rock. This is true also when one leaves the main "highways." We saw young men, two astride a small 125cc motorcycle, blasting up the mountains from the hot Indian plains far below to some of the highest shrines, along dirt, rock and rutted roads oblivious to the simple fact that one badly placed stone could send them hurtling down the precipitous cliffs in a nanosecond! (Imagine young men in their twenties in America heading off on pilgrimage together to visit ancient shrines high in mountains, eyes bright with joy and devotion?)

Ours was not a trekking holiday, nor yet sightseeing in the usual way. My daughter Gita had returned a year and a half ago from an Ananda group pilgrimage to India but she did not have the time to accompany the group into the Himalayas. Mahavir, the guide, mentioned to her that he did guided tours for individuals and small groups, not just the larger official Ananda tours. So upon her return she asked me if I'd be interested in returning with her. As I had been to India three times including (35 years ago) an extensive visit (including to other parts of the Himalaya), she could be sure I would say YES! And, of course I did. But it took some planning for we needed to use up whatever airplane miles we could muster to afford the trip. So Padma, my wife and resident booking agent, handled the flights. Gita had or researched the contacts with the families in and around Calcutta who are related to Yogananda and his life there; and Mahavir outlined the traditional "Char Dham" yatra (pilgrimage) to the four very sacred Himalayan shrines.

I admit that some deity or another veiled from our minds the obvious intensity of that itinerary which in retrospect meant some some 15 or 16 very long days of driving on mostly dirt and rock roads on treacherous mountain passes and cliffs. It meant stopping before nightfall at whatever available pilgrim style lodgings were at hand, and and where showers, hot water, (Western) toilets, towels, soap, toilet paper and mattresses were scarce or nonexistent but flies, cockroaches, large flying beetles, and mosquitoes formed local welcoming committees. I've never had chapati and dal three times a day for several weeks. It can wear on you.

But none of these considerations were uppermost. This was an opportunity for Gita and I to spend quality time together in an energetic commitment to the quest for Self-realization. We meditated together each day; chanted together walking or in the car; were enraptured by the stunning and ever changing beauty of both the lower and higher Himalaya, and entered into the pilgrim's way of devotion through "puja" and "arati" (traditional and ancient Hindu rituals) at sites held sacred for millennia by the presence of great rishis down through the ages and the devotion of millions of pilgrims seeking divine consolation for their world-weary hearts.

Lastly, for me this "Return to India" completes a cycle of spiritual seeking that began in India for me in 1975 but which, at that time, could not be completed because I had not yet found my spiritual path and guru (Paramhansa Yogananda). So, in going back now, at age 60, I went seeking to contact the spiritual roots of both India's timeless tradition and the prior incarnations of Paramhansa Yogananda and the line of gurus who sent him to the West.

Mountains have kindled in human hearts a yearning for the heavenly realms (whether as a place or state of consciousness, or both) since time immemorial. In India, the bounty, beauty and grandeur of nature is not seen merely as the product of impersonal random geologic forces but as the obvious result of the interplay of Divine forces personified in the gods and goddesses in interaction with the rishis and avatars. An unusual rock formation, for example, comes quite naturally with its own story. Do we not teach (in metaphysics) that all matter is created, sustained, and dissolved by its most elemental substance: consciousness? Is it not more reasonable to assume that a "cathedral" like Yosemite Valley was formed by conscious Divine beings than to say it "just happened?"

This trip was a pilgrimage and a true pilgrimage is a journey within. Perhaps in the next blog or two, I can share with you at least some aspects of my inner journey and its evolving realizations.

Blessings, Hriman

Thank You Darwin!

I read once in National Geographic how researchers were analyzing human love and attraction and attempting to show that this, too, was but an outgrowth of our genetically programmed impulse for survival and continuation of the species.

I've never understood all the fuss about the law of survival. It seems so obvious (to anyone perhaps but a scientist) it should never have received tha attention it has garnered.

I suppose some of these "Darwinists" also interpret great works of art and acts of personal self-sacrifice in terms of the law of survival, as well. But the attempts reek of the sterile laboratory of dry, myopic reasoning.

Consider that long before Darwin, Adam Smith published the (then) shocking assertion that self-interest was the motivation behind all human action. Ah, yes,yet another fact of human nature revealed to us that is otherwise so obvious as to never having merited particular attention by people with common sense and a higher vision of life.

And then there's the "pursuit of happiness" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Who's to argue with these great "revelations?"

Now all told, none of this is either shocking or blasphemous in its own right. The issue I take with it all is twofold: 1) It's simply and truly inadequate to explain anything meaningful to human existence, and 2) Scientists and nonscientists alike have made bold attempts to make a philosophy of life (and in some cases a religion) out of such pedestrian observations. The modern age seems to have gloried in the most banal realities of human existence.

Returning, then, to Darwin and his army of devotees, we can say that competition and survival have been elevated to the heights of the greatest virtue in social theories, pyschology, politics, and the arts. Both communism and capitalism owe their stark, dark, and banal dogmas to the deification of the mundane realities of self-interest and material needs.

Again, who would argue with obvious fact of competitiveness (and its potential benefits when held in check). It's just that the 19th and 20th centuries which promoted this "philosophy" managed to slaughter hundreds of millions of people, wipe out entire species of animals and plants, and bring this earth rapidly towards potential self-destruction!

In other words, philosophy DOES matter. Social values DO MATTER. The Founding Fathers of America created checks and balances to hold at bay the self-interest that they wisely knew was the engine of human motivation. At the same time, they themselves were guided by and extolled for everyone high ideals of the social good, belief in God and recognition of divine love and virtues.

According to the teaching of duality, however, all things have their opposite. I have noticed that since the Sixties, the science of ecology is reawakening a steadily growing and enlightened self-interest that is the necessary counterweight to competition and materialism. Ecology contains an implicit philosophy of interdependence and places a high value upon mutually supportive diversity. At heart, these are, arguably, spiritual values and, in fact, only to some degree, scientific ones.

Of course, religion ought to offer such insights but science and religion have been at odds for centuries, with religion steadily losing ground and science gaining respect and becoming the religion of modern culture. Religious principles founded on a priori beliefs and sectarian dogmas have earned the disdain of intelligent and high-minded people all over the world.

So, if science is the modern religion then it must needs be science that will save us! And that's where the message of ecology seems to have played a role.

Still, science, whether pedestrian or elevated, cannot satisfy the deeper and eternal questions of humankind, nor can it satisfy the heart. For wisdom, too, Paramhansa Yogananda wrote in his famous life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," we have a hunger (not just for food and shelter).

This is where and why the life-affirming and all-encompassing ancient Vedanta philsophy of India has encircled the globe offering hope for a better world. Vedanta is incomplete with the knowledge, science, and art of how to attains its cosmic vision of the creation and the purpose of creation.

That art and science is the personal and nonsectarian practice of meditation and Self-realization. Science will never be enough to transform civilization. At every great turn of history, it is the saints and men and women of universal vision who guide humanity away from the rocks of self-destruction towards the shores of true survival.

Blessings, Hriman

P.S. If you'd like to learn more about this subject, please obtain a copy of Swami Kriyananda's (J. Donald Walters) insightful landmark book, "Out of the Labyrinth." It's sequel, equally inspiring and forward looking, is "Hope for a Better World."