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SRF Walrus
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wholetruth
Registered User
(7/3/02 6:42 pm)
Reply 		Re: /
Chela, your reply was a pretty good one, and now you've gone and deleted it. The truth could never hurt anyone, least of all PY. And if we're mistaken in our opinions, that's not going to hurt him either. We're groping for the truth, trying to make sense of everything, and we're going against an organization with no seeming interest in the truth and millions of dollars to spend on legal actions to suppress it. All we can accomplish here is to encourage those with minds of their own to still act like the truthseekers they really are at heart.

I was a "loyal member" for over 30 years. It's been extremely difficult and painful to deal with so much negative information about SRF from seemingly reliable sources.

Edited by: wholetruth at: 7/15/02 1:07:43 pm
archana singh
Registered User
(7/3/02 9:33 pm)
Reply 		Re: Looking reality in the face and - coming down again
i am new here so i don't know much of what goes on on this site. however, i've been reading up some of the stuff here.
what i feel is that one should continue following the teachings & making them a part of one's life. however, no institution should be deified, which seems tobe the case with most devotees & srf, and any other institution/organisation for that matter, specially spiritual organisation.
after all it too is made up of humans & no human is infalliable. its good that u guys have created a space ehre to interact & let off steam. also somewhere u can interact with each other & clarify ur doubts.
i've been reading up all i can come across about srf. i feel their problem is closedness. perhaps things might not be so bad in india, or perhaps i've been lucky & found answers to my problems and questions very soon. that i feel is guruji's guiding light. whenever i've had any queries & doubts he's either put a book in my hand or made me interact wih people or hear something on tv or radio or read something on the net, which gives me the answer. some of the books he's placed in my hands are on other saintly souls.

Pig Ma
Registered User
(7/4/02 6:27 am)
Reply 		Whole truth
Wow, whole truth, 30 years!!! I've been with SRF 17 years, and it's been quite a journey.

Yes, organizations are made up of individuals, who are forever untrustworthy until they are anchored in the divine. Now that I've stepped out of SRF, I can see the energy there as being contractive, while my being longs for expansion.

Even so, the blessings I received from the individuals involved with SRF have been worth the journey.

gardendiva
Registered User
(7/4/02 6:27 am)
Reply 		Re: Looking reality in the face and - coming down again
Quote:
SRFWalrus Editors Note: Yogananda was a divine being but then man (i.e. woman) took over the organization and killed it. Yogananda left behind what he wanted to leave behind, the teachings. His REAL message/words will be discovered and survive the organization, which will soon dry up and blow away.


I say we are ALL divine beings. I did not "know" PY and have nothing to go on but the words of others in regards to him as an individual. Everything I always heard from the organization said PY was an avatar, but now I'm hearing other stories that paint him in a different light (more human and prone to frailty). My common sense tells me that perhaps he's somewhere in the middle of these two descriptions. Yes, there are some valuable ideas that I've taken from his teachings, but that's as far as I will go anymore. The time has come for me to rely on my own experience in how I view anyone, living or dead. The words of others tell me more about THEM, than about whomever they are describing.

X Insider
Registered User
(7/4/02 9:33 am)
Reply 		For Chela2020
Well, I cannot resist saying that this disclosure/erasure habit of yours has gotten the best of your credibiltiy. Better bark up another tree for awhile. I perceive you are toying with us and I do not like it.

wholetruth
Registered User
(7/4/02 8:15 pm)
Reply 		Re: Yogananda as Avatar
SRF Walrus Editor:

Please define "divine being" for me, as in, "Yogananda was a divine being."

Thank you.

SRF Walrus edit: I meant that I believe him to be advanced in his realization of his oneness with God. We are all one with God, some of us realize it more than others!

Edited by: srfwalrus at: 7/6/02 11:09:13 am
X Insider
Registered User
(7/5/02 7:38 am)
Reply 		Re: To X-insider and everyone:
There is nothing to forgive. It was I who leapt to a hasty conclusion.

Thank you for the thoughtful post. We will miss you and hope you come back, blanks and all!

All the best to you.

Gitano no divino
Registered User
(7/5/02 12:04 pm)
Reply 		Re: Self-erasure
I regret the self-erasure of chela2020. Someone once said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Well, we're all trying to do something here, and thanks to chela for some good insights. All this brings to mind one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, called "The Return of the Archons." The people on a certain planet are controlled by a central computer (of course), which projects the ghostly, omnipresent apparition of someone called "Landrew" (sp?). Anyway, everyone goes around in a lobotomized, churchly way, saying, "The peace and joy of Landrew be with you." "And with you, brother!" Etc. Kirk and Co. arrive on the planet to slap some sense into these folks (prime directive be damned). In fact, there are some people who are only marginally "of the body" (as Landrew's followers are described), and they form a kind of underground that is trying to loosen Landrew's grip. But at the crucial moment when Kirk/Spock are about to confront the Supreme Authority, even these folks get cold feet and cry out to Landrew for forgiveness. Of course, Kirk outwits the supercomputer, which self-destructs in a cloud of smoke and hail of sparks. (A plot device to be repeated numerous times in later episodes.) You know, if God and Guru really are different from us, really so much better, then what have we got to fear? Is there any limit to their understanding, forgiveness, and compassion? The fear and guilt we feel are like the "collar of obedience" that was put on the Enterprise crew in another episode (anybody remember which one? Clue: qwatloos (sp?)). If such a thing actually existed, you can bet the BOD would put it to liberal use.

Apropos to this Star Trek comparison, I like Vulcan's (name) idea that not only does the emperor have no clothes, there is no emperor! Mirabile dictu.

Now, I revere the Walrus, but the following comes out like some sort of Papal proclamation that is beyond dispute or even discussion:

Yogananda was a divine being but then man (i.e. woman) took over the organization and killed it. Yogananda left behind what he wanted to leave behind, the teachings. His REAL message/words will be discovered and survive the organization, which will soon dry up and blow away.

Is this Walrus orthodoxy? A new Credo? As I read this, I hear in the background of my mind a faint chanting of "Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero..." I mean, I like the part about dry up and blow away, but I sympathize with others who have raised questions about the whole divine-being business. It's not as self-evident as our belovéd Walrus makes it sound. Since we're all divine by nature (supposedly), and since he was pretty fallible for a god-man, how much of a gap is there between us? What does it mean to be a "divine being"? And what were his teachings, really? They have been so distorted by SRF that it's hard to know. And we all seem to agree that they are not sacrosanct, without need of revision.

Well, let us soldier on without chela. Perhaps s/he will reincarnate under a new nom de guerre later on. In the meantime, we must screw our courage to the sticking-place, as Lady Macbeth said (ooops, does that cast us in the role of Macbeth, and PY in that of Duncan?).

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy
walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

wholetruth
Registered User
(7/5/02 6:05 pm)
Reply 		Re: Self-erasure
Gitano,

You sure are "the voice of reason" on this message board. I love your posts.

Thanks.

wholetruth
Registered User
(7/6/02 1:04 pm)
Reply 		Re: Yogananda as Avatar
SRF Walrus Editor:

I agree with you that Yoganada was "advanced in his realization of his oneness with God," which would make him suitable as a guru and a God-inspired teacher but is not the same as "avatar" or "fully realized." My original question was why was it so important to SRF to designate him as the twentieth-century's avatar, instead of just letting his words and teachings speak for themselves and inspire God-seekers on their own.

It seems to be for their own selfish, calculating ends.

Gitano no divino
Registered User
(7/9/02 10:31 am)
Reply 		Appreciation
Thanks, Whole Truth. I like your postings as well. Glad to see chela2020 has resurfaced--sort of.

soulcircle
Registered User
(7/11/02 3:00 pm)
Reply 		Guitano No Divino and Whole Truth and yogananda-dif.org
Yes, yes, yes!

Let's go forward. We have ourselves. The Sufi's book, Coference of the Birds, speaking of thirty birds and their travels through valleys and across ridges seeking the goal....
~~~i.e. we have each other, thirty friends

they end up on a branch and realize what they sought, the word for the goal, something like Self-Realization Fellowship in a mid-eastern language, also meant "30 birds."

So we have each other, and depending on a person's values, Yogananda's teaching and words, or not.

Thank You both,
and in regards to his "words and teachings,"
I love the suggestion at yogananda-dif.org, and some early efforts in that direction, that srf has failed in over 50 years trying to keep "the teachings pure," in even collecting all of his works for the public [both physically and on the web] YES FOR THE PUBLIC...srf MONITOR...for all of us including that ~~one stray last person~~ mentioned in God's Boatman.

So here's to those who bring a library, in both hard copy and on the web to the world, and a tsk tsk to monastics for dreaming that they can do what was exceedingly difficult even for yogananda [with imput from all directions], to do...and that was to lead a small organizination....

tsk tsk to directors and monastics for trying to lead this work without spiritual life committees and vastly more "imput" from us all
to lead in this day and age, saying only that these are "old teachings and won't change.
we are laughing and crying at once
and we are going forward, living, sharing, and in touch with pain, healing and community of openess....and even normal social and psychological process.
I join hands with each of you friends, and am always a hand to hold a heart to listen.
tsk, tsk

Adios, soulcircle
<heypoet@aol.com>

Edited by: soulcircle at: 7/22/02 11:12:33 am
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