From "THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES" - 1928 (Copied from another board) -- Kriya Yoga Discussion Board Archive 2

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Excerpts pertaining to Paramahansa Yogananda (then known as Swami
Yogananda) from:

Copyright, 1928 by Doubleday, Doran & Company,
Inc.
Published, 1936, for Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Mich. by
Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

It should be obvious to any man who is not one himself that the land is
overrun with messiahs. I refer not to those political quacks who promise in one
election to rid the land of evil, but rather to those inspired fakirs who
promise to reduce the diaphragm or orient the soul through the machinery of
occult religion. Each of these has seriously made himself the centre of a new
theophany, has surrounded himself with a band of zealous apostles, has hired a
hall for a shrine, and has set about busily to rescue Truth from the scaffold
and put it on the throne.

The average man knows nothing of these new messiahs, unless perchance he
reads that Swami Yogananda has been ridden out of Florida or hears of the plans
of Aimee Semple McPherson of the Foursquare Gospel Mission, or unless his wife
is a Theosophist, his emancipated daughter a member of the Liberal Catholic
Church, his aunt a devotee of the School of Silent Unity, and his son a
Buchmanite, or unless he receives gratis the literature of the Rosicrucian
Fellowship.
. . .

What he did chiefly was to prepare the way for a horde of lesser figures who
carried his mission far beyond the point which he must have had in mind as the
ultimate. He was the apostle of Hinduism to the Gentiles, the evangel of
Oriental mysteries. It was his avowed purpose to unify and synthesize the East
and the West. Yet I do not believe he would tolerate the concessions which
Yogananda and others make to us today. Only rarely did he play to the
grandstand; only on infrequent occasions did he condescend or attempt to make
the mysteries practical.
. .
.

It remained, however, for the ineffable Swami Yogananda to sell Hindu
philosophy to Americans by American methods and upon the basis of Yankee desire
and ambition. The names I have already cited need not frighten the reader. They
are commonly assumed by man and woman to give a touch of authority to their
esoteric teachings. Swami simply means teacher,¹² and if we shake
down the Hindu names, we commonly find that the men who took on these names were
once called Smith, Heath, Falkner. The name of Oom Omnipotent was Peter A.
Bernard, and he was a professional baseball player before he was an adept. In
the early days when Swami Vivekananda was here, Madame Marie Louise, a noted New
York atheist and freethinker, embraced the Hindu doctrine and called herself
after that Swami Abhayandanda. Leo Landsberg, who, before he took his vows of
poverty and chastity of the order to which Vivekananda belonged, was a New York
newspaper man; later he became Swami Kripananda. And William Walker Atkinson,
who has turned out some of the most insufferable blah on the subject of the
Hatha Yoga philosophy, has signed the same with the name of Yogi Ramacharaka.

Swami Yogananda made his appearance in America first in 1920, when he came to
Boston to attend the International Congress of Religions. The first Yogoda
Sat-Sanga Centre in America was of course organized in Boston. Now Yogananda's
headquarters is in lower California where stands the Mount Washington Centre of
Yogoda and Sat-Sanga. Yogoda means in plain Ameri-

¹² A more elaborate explanation
is offered by the Swamis, who interpret the term to mean "Master" and assert
that it can be bestowed only on a qualified disciple by one who is himself a
Swami, tracing his title through a line of successive Swamis back to the 7th
Century, A.D, when the ancient order of Swamis in India was
reorganized.

can a system which "teaches one to harmonize all the faculties and forces
that operate for the perfection of mind, body, and soul." Sat-Sanga simply means
"fellowship with Truth." He now claims twenty thousand devoted students of the
system, with centres in eight leading American cities, and an active bi-monthly
magazine.

Not least among the celebrities who have seen in Yogoda an earnest of the
millennium is to be numbered the late Luther Burbank. It is the plan of the
Swami Yogananda to establish "How To Live Schools" throughout the world, and
these agencies, in the opinion of Mr. Burbank, "will come as near bringing in
the millennium as anything with which I am acquainted." Other indorsements,
however, are infinitely more personal. Luigi von Kunits, conductor of the New
Symphony Orchestra of Toronto, speaks of Yogoda's effect upon him in such terms
that one is led to wonder why he still wastes the fragrance of his talent on
Canadian air or blushes unseen in the obscure city of Toronto: "Youthful energy
that spurns fatigue, an almost complete immunity from sickness and disease,
intellectual alertness, steady firmness and decision in willing and acting,
truly remarkable quickening of the receptive and retentive powers of memory, and
a constantly progressing calmness and mental tranquillity" are among the
benefits which von Kunits assigns to the use of the Swami Yogananda's system of
harmonizing the faculties of body, mind, and soul. To Vladimir Rosing, director
of the Rochester American Opera Company, Yogoda has "opened the great temple of
knowledge and truth": and this after years of searching and when he was
beginning to despair of ever finding "the real truth of life." He testifies: "It
has taught me the spiritual contact of Cosmic Vibration, and it has given me new
hope, new strength, new inspiration in my artistic work." Mme. Galli-Curci says:
"Yogoda gives Health, Strength, Power to Accomplish, Peace and Poise." To this
galaxy should be added the name of Louis Van Norman, formerly editor of
Nation's Business.

What then is Yogoda? The number of leading Americans who have endorsed Yogoda
would lead one to think

it a favourite brand of cigarettes. It is enlightening to note, too, the
manner in which it is offered to the American public. It is advertised as a
system of bodily perfection for "the busy but aspiring Western peoples." It has
the peculiar versatility of being able to reduce the obese or fatten the skinny,
and its mystical power is such that it will even work while one is asleep. It is
what might be called the religion of the body, the creed of self-beautification,
for it proposes to remove the lines of weariness from the face and vitalize the
whole being with radiant energy and health. It employs no devices or mechanical
instruments but "uses the WILL TO RECHARGE THE BODY-BATTERY FROM THE COSMIC
LIFE-CURRENT and thus produces a FATIGUELESS STATE." It can be practised
"ANYWHERE, ANY TIME sitting, standing, or lying down, by everyone, whether old
or young, sick or well, weak or strong. IT PUTS ON OR REMOVES FAT, just as
desired. . . . It teaches the SPIRITUALIZATION OF THE BODY." And now let the
sound and convincing American advertisement continue this chronicle of feats.

It also includes the Highest Technique of Meditation and
Concentration by the psychophysiological methods taught by the great Saints and
Sages of India. How to see the Vital Force and hear the Cosmic Vibration. How to
attain perfect Fulfillment of all Desires thru CONTACTING COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS.
The Spiritual Laws of Yogoda must be known and followed before God-contact is
possible. YOGODA QUICKENS MAN'S EVOLUTION THROUGH AN INTELLIGENT CO-OPERATION
WITH COSMIC LAW. It restores his Eternal Heritage and gives him Realization of
himself as the IMMORTAL LIFE ENERGY.

For terms and further information, please send 15 cents in
stamps or coin for Yogoda pamphlet. . . .

The following practical and obvious benefits may be listed as following hard
upon a course in Yogoda. The figure will be immeasurably improved, the grace of
expression will be increased by several leagues, one's Centre of Consciousness
and Power of Mental Receptivity will never forget that they have had the course,
and one will be brought into contact with an Infinite Reservoir of Power. "It
teaches you to control your material and spirit-

ual destiny." It prevents "hardening of the arteries and insures lasting
youth. ..." It drives away headaches instantly. Harmonizes all muscle actions.
Makes colds impossible. Prevents constipation and all stomach troubles.

To promulgate the doctrine the Swami Yogananda is now on the move to "recruit
a Spiritual Army." This Army will spread the tidings of Cosmic Life-Force to
every town and hamlet in this materialistic republic. He announces that "Yogoda
needs real workers, robust in body and mind, of calm disposition, mental
shock-absorbers who will allow nothing to upset or anger them, who will join
Yogoda for life, or who can receive at least one year's training to be teachers,
according to the rules of the institution." After the manner of the orthodox
Sunday Schools, Yogoda is out to train teachers, to indoctrinate them properly,
and when all is ready, we are to be treated to such an attack of
cosmic-consciousness as we shall not in safety be able to withstand. For the
distinguishing thing about the Swami is that he knows us as well as he knows his
Oriental philosophy. During one of his recent jaunts through the countryside, he
spoke to the Optimist Club of Minneapolis � after having been welcomed to the
state by the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor, and to the city by the Mayor
� on the subject "How Oriental Methods Can Help Occidental Business." To the two
hundred Kiwanians at luncheon assembled in the same thriving city he discoursed
on the still more irresistible subject, "Recharging Your Business Battery Out of
the Cosmos." We modern Americans will have none of religion if it does not offer
us something practical for the wear and tear of the life we live. Swami
Yogananda knows that; even the ancient mysteries of the East are of no interest
to us if they do not help us in our business. Swami Yogananda knows that. Jesus
unfortunately did not foresee it. It is a melancholy and irreverent thought that
if He returned today He might address us in our own terminology.