The Orange Book: A Method of Self-Realisation

Each verse is given in Devanagari along with its translation in English and the Commentary by Swami Chinmayananda. Learn through these aphorism how to control your mind and achieve inner peace and freedom. Although these methods were taught over years ago, they are as alive and effective today as they have ever been. This translation draws on the inspired commentary from both Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood. Elements of Hindu Devotion, by Stephen P. Using stories and photographs, Huyler describes the elements of public worship in a Hindu temple, the rituals accompanying worship in the home, the practices surrounding community festivals, processions that honor specific deities and the coming-of-age ceremonies that mark adolescence and old age.

Photos grace every page: Huyler's riveting prose and lavish photos bring Hinduism and its practices to life in all their richness and diversity. Flood traces the development of Hindu traditions from ancient origins and the major deities to the modern world. Hinduism as both a global religion and a form of nationalism are discussed. Emphasis is given to the tantric traditions, which have been so influential; to Hindu ritual, more fundamental than belief or doctrine; and to Dravidian influences.

It introduces some debates within contemporary scholarship. He devotes individual chapters to the histories of early Vedic religion, Vaisnavism, Saivism, Saktism, Hindu philosophy, and modern Hinduism. This approach has several advantages. Second, because the histories of all these traditions are interrelated, the chapters often overlap in their coverage.

This repetition puts the material in a new light by applying it in different contexts. For example, in describing the four Vedas in each chapter, the author shows how the same texts have been used for different purposes by the various traditions. At the same time, vehement in his desire to know the truth about God, he questioned people of holy reputation, asking them if they had seen God.

He found such a person in Sri Ramakrishna, who became his master, allayed his doubts, gave him God vision, and transformed him into sage and prophet with authority to teach. After Sri Ramakrishna's death, Vivekananda renounced the world and criss-crossed India as a wandering monk. His mounting compassion for India's people drove him to seek their material help from the West.

Accepting an opportunity to represent Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in , Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching His lectures and writings have been gathered into nine volumes. This was especially true in the s and '70s, when Baby Boomer seekers were thirsty for Eastern wisdom and couldn't afford the five bucks to buy the AY, as it has come to be known The AY prompted more Americans to explore Indian spirituality than any other text.

On the way, he gives extensive treatment to some of the famous and not-so-famous Hindu teachers who have graced American shores. Hidden Valley, more conservatively, limited itself to growing herbs, vegetables and hibiscus, processing third-party soil analysis numbers, writing software, and manufacturing meditation armrests and portable altars. Hidden Valley skillfully incorporated the same principle.

That is, they were training accountants who possessed no ability to take creative leaps in thought, to be computer programmers, while they simultaneously had established programmers doing office or garden work. In such a context, probably the best that one can say, with all possible sarcasm, is: That is, if one is willing to neglect his violently ill-tempered behavior toward his wife, which can be given no such absolution. Do the monks not sneak out over the Mother Center walls down to Sunset Boulevard on sultry summer nights, their monthly allowance in hand? But that is par for the course in spirituality.

As a bottom line, then, SRF in its current state can take a former disciple such as myself, who would never have dreamed of being disloyal to the guru or his organization, and turn him into someone who would like for the worst accusations against them to be true. Likewise with his reported attitude when faced with allegations of sexual exploitation against Sogyal Rinpoche, best-selling author of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: Interestingly, contemporary disaffected disciples of Yogananda, in spite of their own disillusion, have yet proposed that no one should be informed about the behind-the-scenes issues with SRF until they have been involved with the organization for at least a decade.

By that point, it is believed, they may have begun to lose some of their initial idealism on their own, being then more willing to listen to the possibility that the guru and his organization are less than perfect. For my own part, however, I disagree completely with that approach. After all, many of the most committed students of any spiritual path will undertake a long-term, residential stay within their first ten years or so. And it is exactly in that context where the real damage is done.

I speak from experience on all of those points. For, all of those have been carefully edited to ensure that nothing uncomplimentary about the organization is ever revealed through them. Compare simply attending Mass as a lay Catholic, versus being imprisoned in the organization as a sodomized altar boy or a monastic.

As Bailey and Bailey put it, when discussing the concerns increasingly surrounding Sai Baba:. Lacking the information on which to base such an informed decision leads to a very predictable end, which another former disciple of Sai Baba suitably noted:. But as we all know by now, the horrific tales there are, too often, indeed sadly true.

... TO A NUNNERY

The real cowardice in those situations rather comes from the remaining loyal members of the organization who attempt, anonymously, to intimidate disaffected followers into remaining silent. For, we all have profound, if merely implicit, emotional involvements in having our professional ideas be correct, in maintaining our own self-images, and in preserving our dearest human relationships.

That is, when I began this writing, in late , I still believed that Yogananda was all that he claimed to be, and that it was just his followers who had subsequently messed up his organization. To state another obvious point: For some reason the topic of AIDS came up. Yet, that attitude is not unique in the spiritual world. Being on the receiving end of the above name-calling does, however, at least bring to mind a comment from the late Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau: These disclosures regarding Hidden Valley are not trivial, idle talk; and they are given first-hand, not via rumor.

If I could do it over again, I would, in all deadly seriousness, rather live on the street. Conversely, that experience has at least rid me of a great deal of fear: A less positive way of stating that, however, is simply: But you need not even believe me in any of this. And Tara Mata was the gay da Vinci, and Dr. Lewis was the equally ass-happy Francis Bacon. Because those problems are simply what happens when the long-documented, inarguable facts, which anyone could have researched, meet head-on with what a bunch of aged fools, closing their eyes to reality, just pleasantly imagine to be true.

Prior to my Hidden Valley sojourn, I had worked for a year for a nonprofit, community-owned, politically correct organic food store. Indeed, some of those former donors expressed their disgust with that repeated waste of paper and postage by sending UNICEF their junk mail, or other irrelevant materials, in the donation envelopes! When I left that temp job, the organization was on the verge of moving into a new headquarters in the most expensive rental area of the most expensive city in the country.

I have it on good authority unrelated to Hidden Valley that the Peace Corps is no better than any of those, in terms of efficiency. The nonprofit Habitat for Humanity? Their founder and president was fired in early amid allegations of sexual harassment.

That dismissal further reportedly occurred against the efforts of Jimmy Carter himself to broker a deal to keep the scandal quiet Cooperman, They are currently being investigated by the FBI for having allegedly inflated their membership numbers, to boost their funding from the United Way Reeves, And the respected United Way itself? After all that, I can honestly say that I have far less ideals intact by now than I used to. Yet amazingly, no matter how bad one allows or expects for things to be in the spiritual and secular world, they invariably turn out, upon proper research, to be much worse.

Be enthroned in the castle of goodness, and your memories will be like beautiful flowers in a garden of noble dreams Yogananda, For all future time, Paramahansa Yogananda Evans-Wentz, in [SRF, ].

The Seven Ways to Self-Realization, by Roberto Assagioli

Earlier versions of the same book, however, within the three editions published while Yogananda was still alive, placed far less restrictions on who may give that initiation: The actual technique [of kriya yoga] must be learned from a Kriyaban or kriya yogi Yogananda, More recently, SRF in Rawlinson, stated their position regarding the importance of their particular line of gurus in effecting the spiritual progress of the disciple: That is hardly surprising, given his exalted spiritual state: I have seen God myself. I have negated name and form, and what remains is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss and nothing else.

I behold God everywhere. There is no veil.

Goal of Life is God-Realisation

There is no duality. I rest in my own self. My bliss is beyond description. The World of dream is gone. I alone exist Sivananda, People consider [Sivananda] to be a Shiva avatar, incarnation Gyan, Swamiji was a phenomenon. Swami Sivananda has said that every woman whom a man lures into his bed must in some lifetime become his lawful wife Radha, Further venting his own instructive anger and anguish solely for the compassionate benefit of others, Bharati offered a comparable opinion of Vivekananda: I am certain that Vivekananda has done more harm than good to the seekers of mystical knowledge Autobiography of a Yogi is regarded as an Upanishad of the new age No book so polarized the West about India and its culture as this one.

For those who liked it, their passion went beyond words. For those who found it an incredible mishmash, the high opinions they had been harboring about Indian thought suddenly seemed to have become wobbly Arya, Quite apart from the charm of the new and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for yoga to have many adherents.

Jung, though, is an interesting study himself: In he became president of the New German Society of Psychotherapy. Soon thereafter, he wrote the following vicious nonsense seldom mentioned by his admirers nowadays: The Jews have this similarity common with women: Yogananda ; italics added expressed his positive feelings toward Luther as follows: The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast. Conflicting with the independence conferred by his self-esteem was his love of approval by others.

Though he would do nothing dishonest to earn such approval for that would have brought self-condemnation , he eagerly accepted it as no more than his due. I was disappointed with his personality I found him too much of an egoist I do not think he can be considered a great man from any angle in Dreyer, We halted near a bed of edible cacti. I will protect you. However, from Dreyer we learn: These characteristics were combined in a single plant by hybridization after an extensive series of crossings, and a spineless cactus Now and then a spine still occurred on the stems Burbank demonstrated the harmlessness of his cactus by softly rubbing his cheek against the pads.

It was a remarkable achievement. But it was no miracle. Although he has retained great affection and respect for Yogananda, he also acknowledges his weaknesses. I would say that Paramhansa [ sic ] Yogananda was a prophet for the New Age. In pursuit of universal upliftment [he] spoke, in private conversation with me, of certain inventions he had inspired, or in one case discovered among practices in India and elsewhere The King of Rock and Roll, too, found inspiration in the kriya yoga path: One scientific investigation carried out by Chas R.

Darling and reported in Nature, Sept. A study of the results Therese showed me a little, square, freshly healed wound on each of her palms. On the back of each hand, she pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped wound, freshly healed. Each wound went straight through the hand.

Others less credulous, however, have given additional, uncomplimentary information: I was a few feet away from Gandha Baba; no one else was near enough to contact my body. I extended my hand, which the yogi did not touch. Yogananda, who did not know how the feat was accomplished, erred in saying the yogi did not touch his hand before the rose fragrance came from it. In this presentation the performer secretly breaks the proper pellet [of the requested perfume enclosed in wax, hidden under a fingernail] as soon as a scent is named; the perfume wets the ball of his thumb.

Instructing the spectator to extend his hand, the performer reaches across to grasp it with his thumb on the palm and his fingers on the back. I will not touch it. The performer moves several feet away. While standing at a distance, he tells the spectator to turn his hand palm upward. A man stood up and Swamiji asked him to come on the stage. Swamiji then told him to take the pulse on the other wrist. Your pulse is pounding at an incredible speed. And yet, as the East Indian rationalist Basava Premanand has noted: Doctors do not in the confusion check the heartbeat but check the pulse and confirm that the pulse is stopped.

Learned professors were convinced that Hans could work out his own solution to mathematical problems and had a better knowledge of world affairs than most fourteen-year-old children Christopher, Earlier in the twentieth century, Clever Hans had fared no better when tested by Oskar Pfungst: When Pfungst shielded the eyes of the animal, the hoof remained still. Further study ruled out signals by touch or sound. Pfungst now centered his observations on the questioner. He discovered that Hans started stamping when the questioner leaned forward ever so slightly to see the hoof in action.

Hans stopped when the man relaxed even a fraction Then Pfungst played horse himself. He rapped with his right hand as friends posed queries. Twenty-three out of twenty-five questioners gave the starting and stopping cue without realizing it. A terrible [economic] depression is coming, far worse than the last one! In the next century Boston will have a tropical climate, and the people there will be brown skinned in Kriyananda, As he himself explained parts of that: He was my favorite brother and I loved him more than anyone else. I was also his Guru then too. Krishna was my guru and Babaji, being Krishna, is still my guru, Sri Yukteswarji was my guru by proxy for Babaji in Mata, I was beside him in this battle, and was of such stature I could look him straight in the eyes while standing beside him as he sat astride his horse.

I carried a gigantic battle axe which in effect allowed no harm to come to his person Paulsen, Quite a few people have heard me mention a previous life in which I lived for many years in England. Experiences of that life come clearly to my mind. There were certain details about the Tower of London [a historic fortress, originally a royal palace built by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings, and today displaying the Crown Jewels] that I remembered very well, and when I went there in I saw that those places were exactly as I had seen them within.

Master had told Daya that she was one of his daughters when he was William the Conqueror. If you will recall, when William the Conqueror fell upon landing in England, one of his men [i. She supposedly proclaimed that she would rather become a nun than the wife of a bastard, which made William so angry that he attacked her in the street as she left church one day. He slapped her, tore her clothes, threw her to the ground, and rode off Royalty, In later years, in search of greater conquests, William gathered together a great army in Normandy, and had many men, and sufficient transport-shipping.

The day that he rode out of the castle to his ships, and had mounted his horse, his wife came to him, and wanted to speak with him; but when he saw her he struck at her with his heel, and set his spurs so deep into her breast that she fell down dead; and the earl rode on to his ships, and went with his ships over to England Sturlson, In fact, so merciless was he that he introduced the act of beheading to England in Silverman, And that, from a man who had a lot to feel guilty about: William loved gold too much And at other times, when on the warpath: The savagery was successful.

William was rarely driven to that point of anger again Walker, Only a single thigh bone survived, which was preserved and reburied under a new monument in But even this was destroyed during the French Revolution Grout, Further, Yogananda explicitly encouraged his followers to study the Bard in particular: Read Shakespeare and other classics, and suitable portions from practical books on such subjects as chemistry, physics, physiology, history of Oriental and Western philosophy, comparative religion, ethics and psychology.

Also, the pimp Pompey plays comically sadistic games with his fellow prisoners. Do you think I meant country matters? I think nothing, my lord. What is, my lord? Having perhaps learned a lesson from previously disruptive post-mortem experiences, the modernized inscription on a sculpture of him there reads: This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one This is as it should be.

Paramahansa, flawlessly perfect soul that he was, could not possibly have chosen for tenement a body that was not in pre-established harmony with the purest conceivable soul. And yet, as Robert Carroll b has noted: Rowe, is accurate, but incomplete. A typical embalmed body will show no notable desiccation for one to five months after burial without the use of refrigeration or creams to mask odors Some bodies are well-preserved for years after burial.

This is not unusual. We can keep a body a month or two without interral Lynn himself was possessed of the following interesting characteristics: Little Jimmy wore dresses and long hair up to the age of six Rajasi did not like ugliness in any form. For instance, if he dropped something on the floor and spilled its contents, he disgustingly [ sic ] walked out of the room as fast as he could so he would not have to see it Mata, Yogananda wrote his title, Paramhansa, without the additional a in the middle.

This is, in fact, how the word is commonly pronounced in India. The addition of that letter was made years later, on the advice of scholars in India, according to whom Paramahansa without the a, though phonetically true, was grammatically incorrect Kriyananda, In that same context, however: The people running [SRF] are supposedly enlightened siddhas, which makes it even more confusing, because how dare lay devotees question, or worse, challenge, what they have done?

Kriya Yoga Discussion Board, Yogananda himself essentially confirmed as much: The actions of true masters, though not easily understood by worldly people, are always wisdom-guided, never whimsical in Kriyananda, To spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples; and to aid in establishing, in many countries, self-sustaining world-brotherhood colonies for plain living and high thinking.

Yogananda voiced the wish for the establishing of those colonies in public lectures as well, encouraging thousands of youths Master spoke to me about the value of SRF Colonies. He referred to the forming of groups within a city or a rural area in the manner of hermitage life, among members who do not desire to become renunciates, or cannot do so because of certain obligations. Such a life would enable each one to be in daily association with those who share the same spiritual goal. He described such Colonies as made up of married couples and their families, as well as single people, who have the will to serve, and to live in harmony with one another.

Master envisioned the idea as one in which all may work together in a self-supporting group wherein each one is dedicated to God. Indeed, expert witness Pamela Cooper White reportedly told a California court in that, in her opinion, Walters clearly fell within the profile of a clergy sex offender. Thus, in a court deposition Walters, ; italics added , in response to the accusations of one of the women whom he reportedly admitted had massaged and masturbated him on eight separate occasions in early , he apparently stated: Let me repeat that it was not a romantic or passionate feeling, but it was a friendly feeling.

I was not using [woman 2]. I did not feel that I was using her. Her statements many years after the fact are not corroborated by my memory of her action then, which was in fact to thrust herself upon me, against my pleas to the contrary I was trying to be in seclusion. She and woman 1 came down repeatedly to my house. And I said, please, leave me be.

I was in a state of emotional shock, confusion and trauma, but I did not in any way notice at the time that she was being upset, hostile, resistant. Rather, quite the contrary, she was thrusting herself on me. I remember one attractive lady emerging into the living room of her home from its inner apartment during my visit there. Completely naked, she chased me about the room until I finally managed to make good my escape!

That was a close one! At one point, Swami [Kriyananda] told me that he was greater than Gandhi and Sai Baba, that no one had the spiritual power he had Woman 2, Norman had a heart almost as big as his body Not at all interested in the theoretical aspects of the path, he understood everything in terms of devotion The Builders finally lost the war to defend the Earth against their fallen brethren, the Dark Angels, twelve thousand years ago.

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However, after their defeat, they vowed to return and take the Earth from the evil darkness of the Fallen Angels who now possess it. That vow is beginning to manifest itself today [via UFO encounters] Paulsen, Of the few who remain, I am his only guru-successor.

A few of his disciples teach the philosophical principles and practices of kriya yoga; I speak for, serve, and represent the tradition. It is my mission, which my guru confirmed. Even as it stands, that boundary is regularly pushed as far as it can go: Donald Walters] wrote in a recent open letter to the Ananda community. Each prospective member should understand that joining Ananda I had summoned him in to assume leadership of the Washington Self-Realization Fellowship center.

As Williamson ; italics added explained: Yogananda indicated that his first meeting with his guru, Sri Yukteswar, was an answer to his own deep desire to know the truth. He continued to walk on, telling himself that it was only his imagination. However, after walking a bit, he found that he could no longer move.

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He then followed his guru to a house overlooking the Ganges. There he vowed to love him eternally. Sri Yukteswar then told Yogananda that he must earn a university degree. This must have been difficult for Yogananda to accept since he was never interested in book learning, but this time he obeyed without question In his biography Yogananda Satsanga, Satyananda relates that when Yogananda left home in to live in an ashram, his parents became upset.

His uncle suggested that they write to Sri Yukteswar, whom they considered a rational man, to convince Mukunda Yogananda to return home to continue his studies. So they wrote a letter to both Yukteswar and to Mukunda arranging a meeting. Nowhere does Yogananda mention that he or his guru received a letter.

Yogiyar who was himself a disciple of the immortal Babaji: If the relationship were to continue, Cher would soon feel forced not only to leave the author, but kriya yoga as well. It was painful for the author because of the expectations he had for a long-term relationship with Cher. But he wanted Cher to be happy. Stories such as the following: Babaji has had many bodies throughout human history.

He can appear to you in any of them, or all of them at the same time. I have friends to whom Babaji appeared in many bodies as a parade. This appearance enlightened them.

Louise Valpied in Churchill, likewise relates: One experience was when my dog friend, Rafike, was seriously ill after being poisoned by a paralysis tick. This is happening more frequently. Regarding the more humanoid appearances of the avatar, Dasgupta reported: As to the picture of Babaji Maharaj, no one currently in circulation is authentic. One was drawn by Sananda Lal on outlines given by his illustrious brother Paramhamsa Yogananda. Yogananda claimed to have seen Babaji in a vision.

But this picture does not conform to the descriptions given by Swami Sri Yukteswar. Bikram brags about his mansion with servants in Beverly Hills and his thirty classic cars, from Rolls-Royces to Bentleys. He also claims to have cured every disease known to humankind and compares himself to Jesus Christ and Buddha. The Puranas state that the duration of each yuga is in direct proportion to the diminishing Truth. Abbot George Burke , however, related a contrasting perspective on Tara: Since she claimed that even before meeting the Master she had fully attained cosmic consciousness, she doubtless believed herself qualified to censor his words.

When the vice president of SRF, Swami Kriyananda who could speak and write Hindi , notified the officials of SRF that her manuscript which had been sent to India for printing was utter gobbledygook, he was verbally rapped on the knuckles and told to go ahead and get it printed. I had made the fatal unconscious assumption that since I was honest and had good motives, then others must be too James J. A pronam in India takes the place of the Western greeting by handshaking Yogananda, More recently, however, the meaning of the substituted word has shifted to something more indicative of the respect due the ochre robe: A pranam salutation is made chiefly before monks and other respected persons Yogananda, Further, the extent to which questioning is discouraged in the ashrams is demonstrated by the following example: As Radha dangerously expressed it: The Eastern mind does not make the clear distinction between intuition and intellect as the Western mind tends to do.

The difficulty comes for the Westerner when there is an over-emphasis upon the intellect at the cost of the intuition. The simple person who is unencumbered by intellectual concepts is more receptive. What can be done to remain receptive and not to have the intellect continually interfering? Stop intellectualizing and just receive. The person buying [ pan ] puts it in his cheek, like a wad of chewing tobacco. But if a choice must be made between doubt and devotion, I think we are better off to prefer doubt.

It is essential to sanity, and therefore to enlightenment; absolutely nothing in the path should be shielded from skeptical scrutiny, especially not devotion Butterfield, Yogananda founded separate uniformed schools for boys and girls in India. It is not surprising that proportionally more gays would be active in the world of the [Catholic] seminary and rectory It is easy to pull rank in an organization where rank is given tremendous importance by practice levels, offices, and colored pins.

When a senior student with a higher rank than your own betrays you emotionally or perpetrates some odious piece of arrogance, at which you express overt resentment and anger, the situation may then go over into the game of one-upmanship. As Yogananda himself put it: