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Punk Yogi
Registered User
(1/28/04 8:46 am)
Reply 		AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Flying Gurus ....
Multiplying Saints....
Materializations....
A deathless, youthful avatar none but a few have seen.....


When I was 17, I took to the Autobiography of a Yogi as a fish takes to water. Many of the accounts were far-fetched and certainly remote to my understanding of the world. But after seeing the spiritual eye in meditation and tasting inner nectar regularly, who was I to call these miraculous tales improbable?

Cancer spreads from few cells to many; a water well is poisoned by arsenic, drop by drop. And the day I met eyes with the pudgy- faced Swami, on the cover of what Brother Dharmananda once called the best science fiction book he'd ever read, was the first day in a systematic double-decade undoing of my ability to see and think clearly for myself.

I went from starry-eyed kid to stifled adult. That's a pretty darn good magic act for the AY. The stuff in the book pales in comparison.

How did it happen? Obviously, I let my idealism get the better of me. If my life were an unrelated incident, I wouldn't have posted here. But I have a close friend who was claiming, many years earlier than I, that SRF filled his head with unreasonable standards and that it prevented him from having a normal life. He rebelled, but I see he still carries the original conflict within. He was also seduced by the Presence. That darn Presence. It keeps interfering like a protective Buddha who thrusts his body between the sharp meat cleaver and the cow.

Remember this quote?:

"It would only add to this fellow's confusion, if I were to tell him that divine meditation among the cadavers is a short cut to a high school diploma!"

--- AY chapter 10


First year of college, and I'm thinking how to walk in my guru's footsteps. So I start ditching some classes and appearing at the Mother Center and Lake Shrine to help out the monks and meditate often. Fifteen weeks later, I fail a class and get low grades in another. I must've been a bad yogi!

I was always ready to take the plunge. Leaving college classes to meditate and serve my guru's great work. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve the work in its infancy stages. Plus we were hanging around all the direct disciples like in the days of Jesus. This was our "red letter" life they said. And they also said that anyone serving the work at this time would make -- and I quote verbatim -- "Double the good karma." So I took the plunge. I abandoned my dreams, hopes, and youthful predilections and surrendered to the Great Yogic Fantasy.


'Jump then,' Babaji said unemotionally. 'I cannot accept you in your present state of development.'

"The man immediately hurled himself over the cliff.


-- AY chapter 33


I didn't just leave a few college classes for God, I left a promising life behind. The other end of the SRF tunnel wasn't a light but a train wreck.

I suspect you too have stories to tell. We have collectively been the victims of a set of underlying anomalous beliefs or what psychologists call "magical thinking." And SRF, my friends, has been the complicit and irresponsible promoter of them.

Before you post your responses, play a game with me. Below is a quote from Chapter 10 of the Autobiography of a Yogi. I've removed one word (*) so that you can insert your own dilemma. After reading the new version, see if you can detect the insidious pull toward irrational thinking.....



My ________ dilemma was plainly a matter for the Infinite Ingenuity. This was my reasoning, though to many it seems illogic. The devotee's irrationality springs from a thousand inexplicable demonstrations of God's instancy in trouble.





* educational

Edited by: Punk Yogi at: 1/28/04 8:54 am
ugizralrite
Registered User
(1/28/04 2:00 pm)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
My position still is until convinced otherwise, that I got dope-slapped by God, and the instrument of this was Yogananda. My cohorts nearly all went on to "normal" lives of civic participation, status, family, and the dark side: divorce, addiction, corruption, and usually just plain old getting along by going along. All the while I was off in yogi never-never land which nobody understood and everybody overlooked, and I stumbled along with the carefree life that bachelorhood allows. All the while my self-esteem was wrapped up in the idea of being a mystic, and fortunately wasn't wrapped up in being a cookie-cutter copy of PY. Not that I didn't try that route, but I think SRF "smelled" that odd streak in me, the same one that women smell when sizing me up. Happy-free skunk that I am.

Point is that loser that I was/am, didn't seem to bother God. Did God set up a chump religion for clueless chumps like myself? Whatever, because the outcome is that I enjoy my existence and my yogihood. I ain't pissed off. I don't feel cheated. It's really funny how things work out, funny-ha-ha.

The blossoming of the true history of SRF is a source of delight, a survivor's rush, a literary man's treasure. "You went through that too?" They will ask in astonishment. Maybe it is because as a Vietnam Veteran I stood alone with my pain and survived many a cold, frightening, sleepless night, and came through that. I know that people can survive and live gladly again. Life is actually better as a survivor. You appreciate the little things so much more. I hope that is what is in store for all my walrus ezboard buddies after the storm passes.

chela2020
Slow Down
(1/29/04 6:20 am)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Ugi wrote:

"as a Vietnam Veteran I stood alone with my pain and survived many a cold, frightening, sleepless night, and came through that. I know that people can survive and live gladly again. Life is actually better as a survivor. You appreciate the little things so much more. I hope that is what is in store for all my walrus ezboard buddies after the storm passes".

What you said is very true. While my husband to be (20 years later) was off fighting the war in Vietnam, I was living in Berkeley fighting my war with the Jehovah's Witnesses, my battle was within. They said, after they kicked me out, "Why did you destroy your life?" And I thought, maybe I had. I had given my all to them, they were my family, their God was my God. We were not to have friends outside of them. When I was kicked out, I was left alone in a different type of cold, and I was frightened, not just of the world, but of dying in Armeggedon in 1975. I felt like I had a death warrant on me. I recall my anthropology professor telling me, when I talked to him alone about this, "After 1975 comes and goes, they will just say that God has given us more time." I hoped so. After a year of being kicked out, I had to go sit at the back of the congregation, and no one could speak to me. This was done to prove that you were rependent, which I had been when they kicked me out, but which they did not believe. I recall going there once, and it felt as if my head were going to explode. I was that tense. I left in tears. In fact, whenever I saw a JW, I would be upset and in tears. (I cried often in those days.) They either looked at me as if I were a ghost or they would give me a look of contempt. I made friends on the outside, as soon I realized that there were good people out there, but I always missed the JWs. After a year I went back, told them that I was sorry, but of course, by then I wasn't. They let me back in, and then I found out that my best friend had broken down in tears when it was announced that I had been kicked out. I was overwhelmed with guilt for hurting her. But now she and I were friends again, only it was not the same, and it didn't last. I had to hurt her again. I had been in college for a year, I had read books on brainwashing, and I was now an atheist. After three months I left. They didn't like that I was studying philosophy at college. They found a reason to kick me out again so that others could not speak to me. Again, I lost my friends, but I wanted out. I had asked them to take me off their membership, and they said, "Once a JW always a JW." I called back and said that I did something wrong that I hadn't done, and they wanted me to come before their elders, 3 men, and confess my sins again. I remembered how it was a year ago when I had done that, how they called me all kinds of names and how I had to tell them in detail what I had done. I refused to go. Then one of my other JW friends was saddened by my leaving and told me to tell them that I had lied. I did. They said, "You know you can be disfellowshipped for lying." On Thanksgiving Day one of the elders called and said, "You have been disfellowshipped." I said, "Thank you for that Thankgiving gift." It took me years to get over them. I used to try other churches, but whenever I went, I would start to cry and have to leave. After 15 years, I got into Buddhism because my husband to be had brought me a Buddhism book on our first date, and it seemed interesting. Then I wanted to know if there were a God, so I found The Auto book.

While it was hard to learn these things about SRF, and while I was shunned some after leaving, shunning means nothing to me anymore. I had lived through it before. Yogananda's Hong Sau gave me one experience of God. I am grateful to him for that, but now I think that it was more "God Power", but it allowed me to not go back to being an atheist. I knew when I left SRF, I could only go forward. I found another guru, and I swore it was now just between God, my guru, and myself. I would not join another organization, but in my heart I have, but I want nothing more to do with politics. I learned that lesson. Then came learning about Yogananda, and it hurt because I loved him more than I loved God, or so I thought. But when I learned things about him, I found that I still wanted only God. I love my new guru, but it is not the same type of love as I once had for Yogananda. I don't know why it isn't, but it isn't, and I don't want it ever to be. More than anything, I trust and admire my new guru. It is just that I never want to love another human being more than I do God, never again.

And I like how my guru told me to continue to love Yogananda, but now I don't, and while he knows this, he remains silent on the matter. He will not judge Yogananda, nor me, nor will he tell me how he feels about what I have learned, and that is how it should be. Someday, I will quit judging Yogananda too, and I will love the good that is in him. I will realize that he and I are the same.

So to make this very long story short, if you recovered, if I recovered, others will. But how hard it is to know that some are hurting now, because I know what it feels like to hurt. I just wish some had not read the thread that I warned them not to read. I have learned that all my experiences are my karma, and that it led me to where I am today. It is probably part of our purification process. I recall talking to a swami about the subject of hell, if there was one, and he said, "Yes, I have been through many heavens and hells." I had to agree. Here he is a Self-realized man, and he has gone through many hells to get there. The first time I saw him, he smiled at me, and God's eyes shown through his. (He is not my guru, now just a friend.) It was hard to imagine that he had gone through many hells. I have often said that I have gone through a lot of hell in the name of religion, and that I must want God something fierce to even think of finding another guru after I left SRF. For me, there is no turning back. I now accept the hells, since that is often what it takes.






Edited by: chela2020 at: 1/29/04 6:42 am
bsjones
Registered User
(1/29/04 10:27 am)
Reply
ezSupporter
 Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Punk Yogi, I almost always get a lot out of your posts, but here is a question: If what PY said in the AY is true, what is "irrational" about it?

Punk Yogi
Registered User
(2/3/04 3:00 am)
Reply 		The Great Yogic Fantasy ... just add Discretion
Your question is slightly off track from where I was headed. But I'll give it a whirl....


For every devotee who gets lucky and has God as a janitor, there are far more devotees who have to do their own toilet scrubbing.

So, even if what PY says in the AY is true, it would be irrational to expect most of these extraordinary situations to be of practical utility for the average end user. What the AY is really good at is showing off the extraordinary feats of the all-time, presumed great heroes of yoga. It reads like a hall-of-fame of yogi athleticism.

Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Shaquille O'Neal are all virtuosos on the basketball court. The Levitating Saint and the Saint With Two Bodies are virtuosos of yogic powers.

But the analogy stops here: Basketball is widely known to be entertainment. Yoga, on the other hand, is a way of life. And Paramahansa Yogananda in his AY is essentially promoting that way of life as colored by his own unique predilections. It's kind of an adolescent comic book by and for avatars. TEST: Is he describing any life YOU know?

My point is this: a long indulgence in sweet, confectionery magical thinking can dull our capacity for discretion.

In this case, the medium of presentation can affect the message.

That is why so many devotees, based solely on PY's testimony, can insist that Babaji is real though they've never personally seen him.

Have you ever severely reduced your work hours to meditate more? What happened to your finances? If debt was your dilemma, was the Infinite Ingenuity there to bail you out and reward you for your illogic? In other words, have you ever gone penniless in Brindaban?

SsSsSnake
Registered User
(2/3/04 4:28 am)
Reply 		Re: The Great Yogic Fantasy ... just add Discretion
lol:rollin

bsjones
Registered User
(2/3/04 12:07 pm)
Reply
ezSupporter
 Re: The Great Yogic Fantasy ... just add Discretion
Punk Yogi,who are you calling dull?!!?? ;)

have you ever gone penniless in Brindaban?

As a matter of fact, I have. The universe eventually did provide, though not in the manner I first envisioned (I had to go back to work). I guess I'd agree with you. This world with all its limits is REAL in the sense of a real cosmic video, so it behooves us to accept that and to respond accordingly. But it is not ultimate reality - perhaps the AY gives us a glimpse of that. We have to hold the tension of these two opposites.

Along these lines, I've been thinking the role-model of PY's father is much more appropriate for me.

SayItIsntSo
Registered User
(2/7/04 4:36 pm)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Hi Punk,

Love your posts. Can't agree more. The SRF way of life is no life. It's not living--and living is life. Life is experiences--getting out there, not sitting under a tree pondering. A little pondering is okay...but how many of us sacrificed time away from our families, i.e., children, to meditate? I wish I had those hours back that I spent meditating while my child was in the other room watching TV. Can't get it back. No way, and no how.

A side note:

I wish I could take back the humiliation my child suffered because her family were "devil worshipers," --according to her friend's, and their families. Some kids were not allowed to come to our house because of the PY's pictures.

Now she's a college graduate and pretty well-rounded, but having grown up in SRF she wants nothing to do with it or with religion.

P.S. I was told by SRF that most kids "pull away" as teens but come back. That's a cop out for their lack of programs that can resonate with kids. When my daughter was a teen, SRF's idea of a "teen night" was popcorn and a 1940's movie about a saint. Hello? Meantime, my daughter was hanging out with all the Christian kids because they had "dances" and "fun" things to do. My daughter said by the time she was about 10 she figured out SRF was "weird."



SAY

Edited by: SayItIsntSo at: 2/7/04 4:39 pm
bsjones
Registered User
(2/8/04 10:21 am)
Reply
ezSupporter
 Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Good points, Say.

Punk Yogi
Registered User
(2/8/04 7:25 pm)
Reply 		Fun is not for serious Yogis
Reminded of a Soulcircle post from 12/1/02 on the What Can We Do To Help SRF thread:

Quote:
so like hundreds and thousands we heard at the encinitas retreats, the tape where daya mata recounted being told you didn't come to have popcorn in each others room in rare spare moments...you came for god.....daya mata, "I never went to a monastics room for popcorn again."



In the beginning, so-called "householders" felt a prick of guilt even for indulging in events with popcorn and flicks about saints. They were considered a bit worldly for SRF standards. Tea and cookie socials were it. Coffee, a no-no.

The irony of ironies is that, while the followers bit their nails in guilt-ridden contemplation of how worldly a movie and popcorn might be, the Board of Directors acquired properties, licked the boot soles of wealthy patrons, and passionately waged lawsuits and political stratagems on the hill -- all of which are, in my opinion, far more worldlier than a dorky night of entertainment at Encinitas Temple.

Edited by: Punk Yogi at: 2/8/04 7:30 pm
chela2020
Slow Down
(2/9/04 4:56 am)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
Punk Yogi,

Your post is great and so true. It is hard to imagine (but I have been there) that eating popcorn in your room is worldly, whereas court cases are not, even if there were not court cases, what is so worldly about popcorn. Oh, I think it is because it implies having fun. "Flicks about saints" is too worldly?" Did I hear you correctly?

Not only is coffee a no-no at Encinitas Temple, but when I was there, sweets made with sugar was also a no-no. Turning up the heat for Temple Sitters was a no-no. Closing one of the main doors in the winter (which are not too cold here but can feel cold as the ocean's dampness and the cool breeze blows around the corner and into the temple, with its many windows open) was a no-no. Not many ever came to meditate in the cold environment during the week when the temple was open. And don't have any fun while volunteering by talking to anyone, because that also is a no-no.

If God is everything and everywhere, God is the popcorn, God is the saint in the flick, God is the devotee that you can't talk with, and on and on.

apsarasRLD
Registered User
(3/19/04 3:20 pm)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
As SRFwalrus is no longer a public board and therefore useless I am deleting this message.

Edited by: apsarasRLD at: 6/14/05 12:33 pm
seekerseeking
Registered User
(3/20/04 7:40 am)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
I wonder how many people have suffered untold miseries thanks to following the irrational-thinking inducing stories in the AY. The penniless in Brindaban story, Babaji asking the disciple to jump and the disciple jumping without giving it a thought, passing tests without studying, indeed graduating college without studying, all these wonderful stories that make the devotee think that Divine Mother is going to look after him/her the way She did after Yogananda.

In my young and foolish days when I was on fire for God and Guru and SRF I did so many foolish things on the basis that God would always perform a miracle and make everything right. I should have seen the writing on the wall when He didn't. I threw away family, career, money, status in my profession, the chance at a relatively comfortable and rewarding life, all because of these stories.

After I finished college, when I was supposed to sit for a professional exam which would have been the ticket to success in my chosen career, I instead headed out west to LA because "guru was waiting for me with open arms". I had been slacking off the last few semesters, falling for these teachings that nothing matters because it's all a dream anyway. So since nothing mattered, my grades went to hell, I didn't sit for the professional exam, I could barely motivate myself to find a job after graduation, and stumbled for a few years until the day I finally got in my car to drive out west. I put the small wallet-sized photo of PY on my dashboard, not realizing that it covered some very important gauge warning lights. I drove cross-country happily listening to SRF tapes and thinking there would be someone at the gates in LA waiting for me to arrive and utter those precious words "Welcome, we've been waiting for you for many incarnations!" when suddenly my car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Had it not been for PY's picture obstructing the warning lights, I would have been able to see that they were on and my car needed immediate attention and I would have been able to pull into a service station in a city and not break down in the middle of nowhere, which ended up being a terrifying experience. Until you've broken down in the middle of the country with nothing around you for hundreds of miles you don't really know what it's like to feel abandoned. :(

Why didn't God or PY alert me that my car was going to break down? Since it was PY's photo which obstructed the warning lights, why didn't he make the photo jump off so I could see that the lights were on and I needed to pull into a service station asap? Why didn't PY or God send a sign, any sign? After all, I was driving out west to be with them, not to find fame and fortune in Hollywood or to gamble in the casinos in Las Vegas, I was going for them!!

Well, that was just the beginning of what turned out to be a decade wasted searching for God in "The Banaras of America" when all along I could have been enjoying a wonderful life back home.

Of course, it's now years later, I'm penniless but not in Brindaban, at the bottom of my career, having damaged family relationships and professional relationships beyond repair, and facing a future which is not only uphill, but uphill in middle age, which is a whole 'nother ballgame. Poverty, debts, unemployment, no health insurance, etc. just don't seem so exciting once you start to get on in years and realize you will have to work the rest of your life and will never be able to retire like your friends and family who are already halfway there and making plans and looking forward to it.

Often I've wondered if I should write my own autobiography of a yogi. I'd call it "Autobiography of a Failed Yogi".

Edited by: seekerseeking at: 3/20/04 7:50 am
apsarasRLD
Registered User
(3/20/04 10:57 am)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
As SRFwalrus is no longer a public board and therefore useless I am deleting this message.

Edited by: apsarasRLD at: 6/14/05 12:34 pm
seekerseeking
Registered User
(3/21/04 7:58 pm)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
LOL ... they now require college degrees to sell cars? :rolleyes

With all white-collar American jobs now being sent to India I wonder if there will even be anyone left who can afford to buy cars or anything else for that matter in the U.S.

They sent us their gurus, we sent them our jobs... :(

Edited by: seekerseeking at: 3/21/04 8:01 pm
didgeridootoo
(3/21/04 10:09 pm)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
Well, I think serious yogis have fun, but I can see from these recent posts that SRF has not been fun for anyone. I never told my story. I came to the U.S's good ole Texas and joined SRF out of Austin. Went to Helotes Temple. I had read the Autobiography of a Yogi and The Divine Romance, and I was ready for some serious meditation, along with fellowship. I knocked on the door of the temple because it was a small house, and I was not sure about it. I heard them chanting Om, and how much I loved that sound. I came inside and sat down to a boring service reading. (They had no brothers there who could give talks.) After service I tried to introduce myself, and people ignored me. I went to several more meetings, and never made any acquaintances. Then I moved to Corpus Christi, and there was only one devotee there, and he and I used to meditate together. My heart was set on going to Mother Center, and I thought of how I wanted to volunteer, help get out the lessons, something. I moved to California and meet the most unfriendliest people. I lasted a year or so before I became disenchanted and left. I didn't leave a job; and at least I joined at a time when I had no college choices to make.

I think about Yogananda being on your dashboard, Seeker, and how that should have been your warning to not go to SRF. I think of how the unfriendliness at the first temple should have been my warning too. When I talked to an SRF counselor about the lack of unfriendliness I was told that it was my problem, that I just didn't know how to make friends. I knew that was wrong since I had made friends in Texas and basically no matter where I lived. I had friends all the way back from my college years to high school. So this statement from the counselor made me angry.

Your feeling abandoned in the middle of the wilderness is the same feeling I had when I was in SRF. If it were not for the friends I had made outside of so-called temple life, I may have been very lonely.

I am real sorry to hear it when people have given up their career for a religion, especially if they have become monks and have not gone to college beforehand and/or have no job skills.

Funny you mentioned that you need a degree for being a car salesman. One of my friends recently said that he went back to college to get a B.A. because he needs a job that doesn't even require a college education.

I am sorry that you feel that Yogananda failed you, and maybe he has. Maybe it was just SRF. By the way, I don't recall ever reading why you left SRF?

apsarasRLD
Registered User
(3/22/04 1:00 pm)
Reply 		Re: Fun is not for serious Yogis
As SRFwalrus is no longer a public board and therefore useless I am deleting this message.

Edited by: apsarasRLD at: 6/14/05 12:34 pm
seekerseeking
Registered User
(3/28/04 9:52 am)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Didgeridootoo, interesting story. I too was kind of surprised by how SRF members acted. Before moving to California I thought members of SRF must be the nicest, friendliest, saintliest people on earth! I thought for sure I would make many friends at SRF. I was kind of shocked when I moved to CA and met them. Oh, they certainly had a nice friendly veneer, but that was about it.

As to why I left, well I guess I had seen all I needed to see and it was time to move on. My approach to the spiritual has to be universal, it's the only way that works for me. And what doesn't work for me is having to accept only one religion, one guru (or group of gurus), only read our books, only talk about approved subjects with the members, etc. I am attracted to Sanatana Dharma because it is the eternal religion, meaning can be applied and practiced anywhere under any circumstances, and it's not limited to one particular church or group or cult.

ApsarasRLD, I suspected you were joking, but I've also seen the car salesmen wanted ads in the papers and a surprising number of them mention college degrees! By the way, I came perilously close to becoming a car salesman in a moment of desperation, but having earlier in life sworn off sales, I'm glad I stuck to my vow.

I do think the outsourcing and offshoring of our professional jobs to India is a critical issue, and it is gaining more and more momentum every day. Just as we now manufacture about 0% of our clothes in the US, we're also moving toward a situation where every office job that can be outsourced and offshored eventually will. Companies are doing it to survive because all the others are, and they must too if they wish to remain competitive. It's the price to pay for "Always the lowest price. Always."

I guess that includes car salesmen, I wonder if in the future when one walks into a showroom your salesman will be in Bangalore and you'll talk to him on a plasma monitor on the wall and that's how he'll sell you your car. I'm only half joking here.

Edited by: seekerseeking at: 3/28/04 11:13 am
WindChimes44
New User
(4/1/04 7:47 pm)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
Hello! I am very glad to have found this forum, and have read many of the posts with fascination and enjoyment. I read AoY first many years ago and decided PY was what he said he was, unlike any other book of the sort I had encountered.

I think I must have interpreted your quotes that begin this thread differently from you, Punk Yogi. I thought they made perfect sense as occurences on the skinny end of the bell curve of life- rare but as natural as anything else. I did not expect to jump off cliffs with impunity, but I believed that in extreme cases a being might. What I got from that tale was that sometimes it is hard to discern what is kind from what is cruel if one looks at too short a span of time. I did not expect God to do my homework. It was clear to me that no wandering saddhus had left amulets for me... I just was not in a category that focused on extreme development, and a clear previously planned mission in this life that needed no impediments in this life. I did not come in longing for Himalyan caves. I came in with a strong joyous sense of God. I like who I am. But I just did not think I was PY.

Thus I got a wonderful and quite down to earth view of the life of a Holy Man, but no sense that my life was going to be very much like his.

I think my lack of scars is mostly because SRF repelled me. I was not sure exactly why. (This board has explained so much!) I took the lessons and got a lot of good out of them, but that kriya initiation pledge seemed dead wrong and not in keeping with PY's words to me. So I never joined SRF.

I have experienced many small miracles mostly associated with PY and LM, which always surprise me. What surprises me most of all is how merry they are! Not a bit stiff like SRF.

Punk.. I hope the real gurus are not ruined forever for you by SRF. But whatever your path, best wishes on it.

Edited by: WindChimes44 at: 4/1/04 7:48 pm
redpurusha
Registered User
(4/2/04 8:32 am)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
I too must admit to irrational thinking upon reading the autobiography, but don't blame srf or Yogananda for it. In time everything falls into place and a realistic perspective and approach to life unfolds. Like Punk said, "it reads like a hall-of-fame of yogi athleticism." But this doesn't take away from it's truth and power. I've noticed that the more I've applied myself (yogic teachings) the more I've gotten out of it, and the more I've slacked-off the less I've gotten out if. Everything works by cause and effect. While my head is no longer in the clouds, I know from experience the right meditation, the right food, and the right attitude, when applied diligently, brings about its own magical results.

moyma
Registered User
(4/3/04 4:51 pm)
Reply 		Re: AY Promotes Irrational Thinking
seems funny to me that out of 10 posts 9 of you don't think Yogananda is your guru...the other ....I'm not sure about.....If you don't like SRF and you are sure PY is not your guru.....How could the AY be anything but Irrational ?.....
I disagree that any of you wasted anything...if you are a better person for what you have gone thru.....thats all that counts.....The AY inspired me as no other book....still does..... for me it made my irrational life rational....faith in what you know to be true, not what you are told to believe in.
isn't that what everyone of you is saying ? You all got that one way or another from reading the AY....sounds good to me !










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