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username
Registered User
(12/4/03 9:29 pm)
Reply 		Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo
I remember reading in the SRF literature that Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo were students of Yogananda.

WELL, much to my surprise, I came across a reference to these two in my reading tonight. In Swami Paramananda and His Work Volume Two by Sister Devamata on page 41:
(to those who do not know Swami Paramananda was a Ramakrishna monk who started an ashram in Altadena area of Los Angeles County, which is not part of So. Calif Vedanta at the present time - if anyone knows why, let me know)
This excerpt is from one of Swami Paramananda's letters -

"I am expecting Mr. Leopold Stokowski to come tonight for Service and dinner, but it is not certain until we have a telephone call from him. ...P.S. We had a lovely visit from Mr. Stokowski this afternoon and the friend he brought with him was none other than Greta Garbo! They stayed here about two hours and enjoyed everything. We had tea on the front terrace and Ranu danced for them. I have asked them to come again to the Ashrama even in my absence. I think Miss Garbo means to come and spend some time at the Guest House."

nagchampa2
Registered User
(12/5/03 9:26 am)
Reply 		Re: Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo
username,

that is a bit confusing. do you think they were devotees of yogananda or of paramananda? if they are coming to service it sounds like they were from paramananda's group. because i remember somewhere else where you wrote tht paramananda didn't think much of yogananda because he advertised for disciples in newspapers, etc. and if so, then what would yogananda think of his disciples going there?

username
Registered User
(12/5/03 10:19 am)
Reply 		Re: Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo
My guess is that they were not Yogananda's disciples. And that this along with everything else (like Yogananda being the guru of Gandhi) was just made up by SRF! Most probably they were people interested in eastern religion and visited ALL the teachers who were around at the time.

nagchampa2
Registered User
(12/5/03 11:03 am)
Reply 		Re: Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo
i agree with you. i wrote to several gandhi historians, and they all said that he didn't have time to do kriya. he had a very busy work load. i did this research after you gave a list somewhere of his daily activities. in the first auto book, i think it says that he showed kriya to a group of people who just happened to want to see it. i was also told by the historians that gandhi was of a different hindu religious order altogether, so he was not into kriya at all.

Lobo
Registered User
(12/12/03 4:20 pm)
Reply 		Re: Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo
I don't think Garbo was a devotee of Yogananda's. Not sure about Stokowski, although there was an article in the SRF Magazine from, I think, the anniversary year, 1993, that explains in substance the latter's relationship with PY.

As for Garbo she was also a friend of Krishnamurti. She, Aldous Huxley, his wife, and Anita Loos and other's used to have picnics regularly with Krishnamurti during the war years. Huxley was at that time a follower of the Vedanta Society as well as good friend's with Isherwood who of course was a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of So. Cal.

There was an expatriate "society" of European artists which included the above named individuals who had emigrated from there before the war and settled in Los Angeles. Many of these individuals worked in the film industry (Garbo of course!), including Isherwood, Huxley, Thomas Mann and others who were employed as writers by the studios.'

Some of these people were drawn to "Eastern" teachings, including Garbo and Huxley, and as a result used to spend time together. The picnics with Krishnamurti are an example of that.

All of this can be read in the biography of Aldous Huxley, although I don't have the exact title, which came out in the late 80's or early 90's. It's a good read and fills in the background of that time in L.A. with a perspective on these people's interest in Indian spirituality.

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