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The Lions, Optimists, and Kiwanians were not alone in their enjoyment of the
Swami when he descended upon Minneapolis. The report offered by his own
East-West
p. 316
Magazine has it that each night for several weeks several thousand
persons heard him gladly. There is accompanying this report a picture in which a
large and eager audience is shown, each member with his hands raised before him
in a gesture of supplication and each pair of lips rounded for enunciating the
sacred word "Oom."
Probably a great deal too much store has been set by the fact that of late
the Swami Yogananda was peremptorily ordered to leave the town of Miami. The
Swami refused to obey the order and left later of his own accord, as he
explains. What the nature of the charges against him were is not quite clear,
either from the press accounts or from the circular letter he has broadcast
about the incident. It seems to have derived from racial teachings which were
not palatable to the chief of police; and credence is attached to this
supposition by the fact that the same chief who ordered him to leave was three
weeks later indicted for complicity in a chain of murders – among them the
murder of a Negro bellhop who, in the line of duty, was alleged to have made the
suggestion to a daughter of the old South that she enter a gentleman's room. Ere
these lines find their way to type I have no doubt that the Swami will be
properly vindicated, for none other than John F. Hylan, "for eight years Mayor
of New York," as his own phrase has it, has been engaged to defend him.
The public was of course eager for a scandal, but the worst scandal rising
from the Swami Yogananda is one he has perpetrated upon himself. He is guilty of
concession to American methods and practices in the teaching of the Oriental
mysteries. I do not speak disrespectfully of him; I mean only to suggest that he
is a grotesquery who deserves the admiration of the business man and the
contempt of the liberal, because he has put Hinduism over in the land of Gary
and Ford. He has spoken before practically every vintage of business men's club
in the country and a vast majority of his Centres have, like that at Washington,
been organized under the "auspices of distinguished business men."
Activities carried on by the Swami from his Mount in
p. 317
California are varied. There is a Candy Department which sells Cactus Candy
to the faithful, devoting the proceeds to the extension of the work. There were
beautiful hand-painted Christmas cards which were decked with Yogoda symbols and
eloquent with Yogoda sentiments and mottoes: the proceeds from the sale of these
was turned to the paving of the boulevard above which the castle of the Swami
lifts its towers, its forty rooms, and its halls capable of seating one thousand
admirers. Like Epworth Leaguers, the following of the Swami Yogananda may show
their colours. Yogoda emblems, goldplated, in orange and blue enamel, may be had
for one dollar. The appeal is made: "Yogoda Students everywhere! Proclaim to the
world your adherence to Yogoda principles by wearing one of these beautiful
little pins or lapel buttons." Photographs of the Swami may be had for two
dollars each and the Correspondence School does a thriving business among
thwarted club women and frustrated business men. Announcement is made through
the columns of the East-West that the headquarters will gladly welcome
odd and interesting gifts for the museum in Los Angeles, "also household or
other gifts." The columns of the magazine are filled with stuff clipped from
Liberty and everywhere else, including what G. Bernard Shaw, Henry Ford,
Roger W. Babson, and Bruce Barton have to say about occult religion. One issue I
have had the pleasure of seeing contained an article by Lillian Gish which was
originally printed in Liberty, and an effusive article by Galli-Curci
which apparently she had written deliberately for the East-West.
Every morning at seven o'clock the Swami sends a Divine Healing Prayer
Vibration to his students and "all who ask his help in healing and liberating
themselves from physical or mental disease or the spiritual suffering of
ignorance." Anyone who wishes to profit by this Vibration is cordially invited
to write headquarters and file notice of his or her ailment and state the nature
thereof. The therapeutic miracles of the order compare favourably enough per
head with those of the School
p. 318
of Unity and the work of Angelus Temple. They are of a slightly different
nature, however, for the followers and potential followers of the Swami seem
most anxious to be delivered from fatigue and worry. Each issue of the official
organ, in true Occidental fashion, carries a series of the testimonies offered
by grateful beneficiaries. "I have been greatly strengthened, vitalized and have
gained poise," writes one earnest woman who teaches in the public schools of
Buffalo. And she adds: "From now on fatigue will be merely a word in the
dictionary for me." Another writes with naïve reference to Yogoda: "I have had
four years of every treatment known to medical science and all isms besides. I
have received my first help through Yogoda." Still another restored a misplaced
kneecap through Yogoda after she had tried every other means for sixteen years.
An Ohio lady testifies that: "Yogoda is the greatest educative force in the
world today. I used to feel tired all the time, now I am never fatigued. The
lesson on recharging the body is worth the price of the entire course." A
physician of Cincinnati glows with admiration because the science of Yogoda
enables the body to perform miracles of endurance: "To know how to tap the
source of energy and knowingly do that which can be done momentarily under
excitement, is the key to the problems of life and health, physical, mental,
moral and spiritual." A baroness, now resident in Minneapolis, writes: "My body
has been energized, my mind made peaceful. My outlook on life is clearer and I
have acquired an understanding of spiritual truths and how to make them
practical in my everyday life." Again: "I have recovered almost entirely from
nervousness: my eyesight is better and I am now able to have the use of my right
ear for the first time in three years." Minneapolis enthusiasts are authors of
the next two testimonials: "I can say that Yogoda is all one needs in Truth. The
Swami's lesson on spiritualizing sex force should be taught in every school in
our country." "Every meeting has been a spiritual feast, my soul has been filled
and thrilled as never before. The ease and simplicity of the exercises, compared
with the more strenuous methods
p. 319
which I have heretofore been using, were a revelation to me and the results
obtained therefrom, in the short time practised, is (sic) beyond what
could be hoped for." These testimonials offering evidence of the soothing and
pacifying nature of the Yogoda could be multiplied here, and they certainly will
be multiplied in the magazine as Yogoda continues its triumphant march through
America. The cure of nerves and frustration is not the only feat – there are
others, relating to every physical ill and nasty habit. One man from Minneapolis
writes: "At the healing meeting, to my great joy and surprise, I was cured of my
tobacco habit completely and without any effort on my part. I have always been a
heavy user of tobacco and cigars."13
It is the high purpose of the Swami to make religion scientific. He
recognizes, with perfect soundness, that the ultimate action of all our life is
the attainment of Bliss. "Religion," to him, "necessarily consists in the
permanent removal of pain and the realization of Bliss of God."14
Pain derives from fleshly desire of one sort or another and "desire is the root
of all misery, which arises out of the identification of our 'self' with mind
and body."15 What man wants is Blissful Conscious Existence, and to
achieve this he must abolish the sense of want and transcend the passions of the
body. When we have attained what he calls Bliss, we have this transcendence and
we become "the dispassionate seer of all our actions." Our narrow egoism
vanishes, the All-Ego dawns, and Bliss spreads through our being. We feel that
we are playing our parts on the stage of the world, without being
inwardly affected by the weal or woe, love and hate, that playing the
part involves."16 It is this thoroughly and sublimely impersonal
attitude toward the body and the self which we must achieve. To do this there
are various methods. There is Concentration and there is Meditation, but far and
away the best method is that taught in
13 Testimonials taken from the
East-West Magazine,
published by the Swami Yogananda, Vol. II, No. 6; Vol. III, Nos. 1 and
2.
14 Swami Yogananda,
The Science of Religion, p.
6.
15
size=2>Ibid., p. 31.
size=2>16
size=2>Ibid., p. 54.
p. 320
the Science of Yogoda as set forth by the Swami Yogananda. Here Bliss is
"felt in an intense degree" and moreover: "The practise of it is of itself
intensely Blissful – far more purely Blissful, I venture to say,
then the greatest enjoyment that any of our five senses or the mind can ever
afford us."17 The process roughly speaking, lies in magnetizing
the spinal column and using the electricity that is stored in the body and
lodged in the brain as the chief power house. When first undertaken it "brings a
most attractive state of Body consciousness," but ultimately Bliss settles over
the physique and the pleasures of the flesh are forgotten. In its highest
reaches it brings us into direct contact with God and charges our weary frames
with the elixir of eternal energy.
That, in brief, is what the Swami teaches with such gusto and success. Nature
makes marvellous adjustments. In the early days when we suffered from repression
and loneliness, she sent Mother Ann to us and uncapped great revivals in the
mountains of Kentucky. Men and women rolled in the agony of repentance and
wallowed in the pleasure of the flesh before the very throne of God. We needed
release and we found it in our religion. Progress brought change and decay to
our nation. Wealth accumulated and men extroverted: we grew nervous and fussy
and thwarted. Then Nature sent us the Swamis and the Yogis, and we find now the
solace and narcosis that we need above all else. And we find what we need, as we
found it before in the channels of religion. Certainly it all lends credence to
the contention of some psychologists that we make religion the channel of our
deepest wishes and that we form and shape it to our liking.
17
size=2>Ibid., p. 73.
From the Appendix, page 460:
YOGODA SAT-SANGA SOCIETY. Established in America in 1920 by the Swami
Yogananda, following his visit to Boston as a delegate from India to the
International Congress of Religions. He had previously established schools for
teaching Yogoda – a system of attaining Cosmic Consciousness and superabundant
vitality – in Ranchi, India. He found American soil fertile for his doctrine and
headquarters were inevitably moved to Los Angeles, where he conducts
correspondence courses and long-distance healing services. There are 10,000
students of Yogoda with centres in ten American cities. The Swami numbers a host
of famous persons among his students, including Amelita Galli-Curci, Countess
Ilya Tolstoy, the late Luther Burbank, and others.
From the Selected Bibliography, page 463:
DHIRANANDA, SWAMI: Philosophic Insight (A Message in Essays.) Los
Angeles, Copyright, 1925.
East-West Magazine: Current monthly, New
York.
VIRAJANANDA, SWAMI: The Life of Swami Vivekananda, by his
Eastern and Western Disciples, the Advaita Ashrama, Himalayas.
VIVEKANANDA,
SWAMI: The Vedanta Philosophy: an Address before the Graduate Philosophical
Society of Harvard University, March 25, 1896, Cambridge,
1896.
VIVEKANANDA, SWAMI: Yoga Philosophy. Lectures Delivered in New York,
winter of 1895-1896, by the Swami Vivekananda, on Conquering the Internal
Nature, London, 1897.
YOGANANDA, SWAMI: General Principles and Merits
of Yogoda, or, Tissue-will System of Body and Mind Perfection and the Highest
Technique of Concentration and Meditation, Originated and Taught by Swami
Yogananda, Los Angeles, 1925.
YOGANANDA, SWAMI, and DHIRANANDA, SWAMI,
The Science of Religion, Boston, 1924.
--------
Note:
On page 313, the book has "indorsements" and not
"endorsements".
The "(sic)" on page 319 is original to the book.
Page 320:
The sentence in italics has "then" in the book, not "than."
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