Date Posted:11:40 Author: Anonymous - 27 Sep 2001 Subject: Re: The chain has been broken In reply to:
Kriyaban - 27 Sep 2001
's message, "Re: The chain has been broken" on 11:38
Dear Friend:
One thing I can tell you is that Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Premananda did remain loyal to one another until the end. Premananda used to visit his Guru every summer in California until his Guru's Mahasamadhi. (If you have an opportunity to watch the SRF movie on the Lake Shrine dedication you will see him standing behind Master as he talks to Saint Lynn.) In the first editions of the Autobiography of a Yogi, Master dedicates some lines to his beloved disciple, and praises him and HIS church in Washington DC! This loving tribute has been removed from the book in the later editions.
It was Premananda who did the Vedic rites at his funeral in 1952 at Los Angeles with all SRF officials present. (SRF airbrushed that from the history, mentioning just Rajarsi and Dr. Lewis, and even from the picture! -- see SRF picture at the funeral in the book “Paramahansa Yogananda’s In Memoriam”, and a space is there where Premananda was! The real photo was published here some months ago; maybe you can find it in the “Paramahansa Yogananda Gallery” above). At that time he was still part of the SRF. He was the last to touch Paramahansaji's body! There is a dedication article that Premananda wrote in the 1980's, published by his magazine “The Mystic Cross”. This tells the whole story of Yogananda's mahasamadhi, and Premananda shares things never told before about his Guru's death.
There was no formal separation of the two churches until after Paramahansaji's mahasamadhi. This separation took place after St. Lynn's death (in 1955). Premananda was very fond of St. Lynn. However, Premananda's temple in D.C. was run very differently (i.e., only "one on one initiations" into Kriya by Premananda, no written lessons from his ashram; he taught in more of the old traditional sense.) Yoganandaji ordained Premananda as a Swami in 1941, and probably gave him some independence, which would be perfectly natural. In India when a student is ready he will always go forth with his own ashram. For example, in the lifetime of Sri Yukteswar many disciples of his were actively teaching -- the ashram of Motilal Babu stood just a few blocks from Sri Yukteswar's ashram. Those places were all encouraged and blessed by Sri Yukteswar. But here many do not understand this concept – of a mature disciple being sent forth to teach in his own "ministry" and so they view it as "disloyal". Some cannot understand this and they want a "centralized church", which did not exist in Kriya tradition before SRF. I think both ways are good -- the "centralized church" of SRF and the traditional way.
Premananda withdrew from the public entirely in 1976 and gave all of his work to a woman disciple, Swami Kamalananda. He spent his last years in reclusion, as a retired minister, and passed on (Mahasamadhi) at age 93 in 1995 in Maryland. Swami Premananda lived in America (Washington and Maryland) from 1928 until his Mahasamadhi in 1995. He never went back to India. (However, he was involved in certain activities in India – i.e., he helped his brother Kriyabans to found Sevayatan – an in India in about 1941, but did all of that from afar.) His center in Bethesda, Maryland, was originally part of SRF but later separated from SRF a few years after Yogananda's death. I think afterwards, after the passing of Paramahansaji, the new board did not understand Premananda and began to view him as a disloyal. Maybe it is only a cultural difference. To the western disciples any idea other than that of a centralized church was totally unheard of (to the point that after Paramahansa's passing they began to say that ONLY SRF was qualified to teach Kriya! – imagine the surpirise of the authorized disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar when they heard that!) That is how a lot of the resentment started which is expressed in the books of Satyeswarananda and others.
In the Self-Revelation Church website we find the following history:
HISTORY
“The Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism in the United States of America had its beginning in 1920. In that year Swami Yogananda Paramhansa came to Boston, Massachusetts, to represent India at the Congress of Religions. While in this country he formed numerous groups of followers. At Swami Yogananda's suggestion, some of his followers in Washington, D.C., later invited one of the students at his school in Ranchi, India, to be their leader.
“The young man, known then as Brahmachari Jotin, came in 1928 to organize the church. He was in complete charge of its spiritual and administrative activities for fifty years.
“As the membership grew, rented quarters became inadequate. On October 23, 1938 the group met for the first time in the chapel that Brahmachari Jotin had built for them at 4748 Western Avenue, N.W., in Washington. The chapel had been built without any appeal for funds from the members. When the Golden Lotus Temple was completed in 1952, the chapel became the Church of the Children.
“As Brahmachari Jotin became better known, he received an increasing number of invitations to speak in synagogues, seminaries, and Christian churches of practically all denominations. He was also in great demand as a speaker for business and civic organizations such as the Lions and Rotary Clubs. In 1941, Brahmachari Jotin was consecrated as a Swami by his Guru, Swami Yogananda Paramhansa, the Guru-Preceptor of the Church. He took the name of Swami Premananda, which means Love of Supreme Wisdom.
“On November 23, 1952, the Golden Lotus Temple, which was designed and built by Swami Premananda, was consecrated. The cornerstone of the temple had been laid on May 17, 1952, by Renah Camalier, Grand Master of Masons of the District of Columbia, assisted by the officers of the Grand Lodge and witnessed by many members of the Masonic Fraternity and members of the congregation. It was the first time that a Grand Master of Masons had officiated at such a rite for a church of which a Swami of India was the minister.
“Swami Premananda was a Thirty-Third Degree Mason; Knight Commander of the Court of Honor; Shriner of the Almas Temple, Wise Master of the Evangelist Chapter of Knights Rose-Croix, (1948-49) and a proficient ritualist in higher Masonic degrees, a Knight Templar, member of the Royal Order of Scotland, and Chaplain of the Benjamin B. French Lodge No. 15 of Washington, D.C. He is the only Swami ever to receive such distinction from any Masonic body.”
MISSION IN INDIA
“During India's most devastating famines in the 1940s, Swami Premananda started to send contributions from his personal funds to assist one of the hardest-hit areas. When the congregation learned of this, many of them asked permission to help. At this point, the Swami asked a group of former classmates in India to take charge of this work. With funds donated solely by the Washington church, a 40-acre piece of land, with a lake was purchased at Jhargram, District of Midnapur, West Bengal. There a medical mission and a school for three destitute orphans were started. In a short time a capacity enrollment of 300 boys was reached. Volunteer teachers and pupils worked together to build roads and cultivate the land to raise food. This project became so successful that it attracted the attention of the government of India, which asked permission to build a technical and industrial school and a teacher's college in conjunction with the church-sponsored Sevayatan Mission. The school and Satsanga Mission now look to the Self-Revelation Church for spiritual guidance only, because financial support comes from the Indian government. Prior to the action of the Indian government, the school had been supported entirely by the congregation of the Washington church.”
