Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (self help books to read txt) 📕

formulas of Vedic worship have been proved by the master to be full of scientific significance… .

“We know that man is usually helpless against the insurgent sway of evil passions, but these are rendered powerless and man finds no motive in their indulgence when there dawns on him a consciousness of superior and lasting bliss through KRIYA. Here the give-up, the negation of the lower passions, synchronizes with a take-up, the assertion of a beatitude. Without such a course, hundreds of moral maxims which run in mere negatives are useless to us.

“Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe. We cannot comprehend the Great Life behind all names and forms, just because science brings home to us how we can use the powers of nature; this familiarity has bred a contempt for her ultimate secrets. Our relation with nature is one of practical business. We tease her, so to speak, to know how she can be used to serve our purposes; we make use of her energies, whose Source yet remains unknown. In science our relation with nature is one that exists between a man and his servant, or in a philosophical sense she is like a captive in the witness box. We cross-examine her, challenge her, and minutely weigh her evidence in human scales which cannot measure her hidden values. On the other hand, when the self is in communion with a higher power, nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man. This effortless command over nature is called ‘miraculous’ by the uncomprehending materialist.

“The life of Lahiri Mahasaya set an example which changed the erroneous notion that yoga is a mysterious practice. Every man may find a way through KRIYA to understand his proper relation with nature, and to feel spiritual reverence for all phenomena, whether mystical or of everyday occurrence, in spite of the matter-of-factness of physical science. {FN35-21} We must bear in mind that what was mystical a thousand years ago is no longer so, and what is mysterious now may become lawfully intelligible a hundred years hence. It is the Infinite, the Ocean of Power, that is at the back of all manifestations.

“The law of KRIYA YOGA is eternal. It is true like mathematics; like the simple rules of addition and subtraction, the law of KRIYA can never be destroyed. Burn to ashes all the books on mathematics, the logically-minded will always rediscover such truths; destroy all the sacred books on yoga, its fundamental laws will come out whenever there appears a true yogi who comprises within himself pure devotion and consequently pure knowledge.”

Just as Babaji is among the greatest of avatars, a MAHAVATAR, and Sri Yukteswar a JNANAVATAR or Incarnation of Wisdom, so Lahiri Mahasaya may justly be called YOGAVATAR, or Incarnation of Yoga. By the standards of both qualitative and quantitative good, he elevated the spiritual level of society. In his power to raise his close disciples to Christlike stature and in his wide dissemination of truth among the masses, Lahiri Mahasaya ranks among the saviors of mankind.

His uniqueness as a prophet lies in his practical stress on a definite method, KRIYA, opening for the first time the doors of yoga freedom to all men. Apart from the miracles of his own life, surely the YOGAVATAR reached the zenith of all wonders in reducing the ancient complexities of yoga to an effective simplicity not beyond the ordinary grasp.

In reference to miracles, Lahiri Mahasaya often said, “The operation of subtle laws which are unknown to people in general should not be publicly discussed or published without due discrimination.” If in these pages I have appeared to flout his cautionary words, it is because he has given me an inward reassurance. Also, in recording the lives of Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar, I have thought it advisable to omit many true miraculous stories, which could hardly have been included without writing, also, an explanatory volume of abstruse philosophy.

New hope for new men! “Divine union,” the YOGAVATAR proclaimed, “is possible through self-effort, and is not dependent on theological beliefs or on the arbitrary will of a Cosmic Dictator.”

Through use of the KRIYA key, persons who cannot bring themselves to believe in the divinity of any man will behold at last the full divinity of their own selves.

{FN35-1} MATTHEW 3:15.

{FN35-2} Many Biblical passages reveal that the law of reincarnation was understood and accepted. Reincarnational cycles are a more reasonable explanation for the different states of evolution in which mankind is found, than the common Western theory which assumes that something (consciousness of egoity) came out of nothing, existed with varying degrees of lustihood for thirty or ninety years, and then returned to the original void. The inconceivable nature of such a void is a problem to delight the heart of a medieval Schoolman.

{FN35-3} MALACHI 4:5.

{FN35-4} “Before him,” i.e., “before the Lord.”

{FN35-5} LUKE 1:13-17.

{FN35-6} MATTHEW 17:12-13.

{FN35-7} MATTHEW 11:13-14.

{FN35-8} JOHN 1:21.

{FN35-9} II KINGS 2:9-14.

{FN35-10} MATTHEW 17:3.

{FN35-11} MATTHEW 27:46-49.

{FN35-12} “How many sorts of death are in our bodies! Nothing is therein but death.”-MARTIN LUTHER, IN “TABLE-TALK.”

{FN35-13} The chief prayer of the Mohammedans, usually repeated four or five times daily.

{FN35-14} “Seek truth in meditation, not in moldy books. Look in the sky to find the moon, not in the pond.”-PERSIAN PROVERB.

{FN35-15} As KRIYA YOGA is capable of many subdivisions, Lahiri Mahasaya wisely sifted out four steps which he discerned to be those which contained the essential marrow, and which were of the highest value in actual practice.

{FN35-16} Other titles bestowed on Lahiri Mahasaya by his disciples were YOGIBAR (greatest of yogis), YOGIRAJ (king of yogis), and MUNIBAR (greatest of saints), to which I have added YOGAVATAR (incarnation of yoga).

{FN35-17} He had given, altogether, thirty-five years of service in one department of the government.

{FN35-18} Vast herbal knowledge is found in ancient Sanskrit treatises. Himalayan herbs were employed in a rejuvenation treatment which aroused the attention of the world in 1938 when the method was used on Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya, 77-year-old Vice-Chancellor of Benares Hindu University. To a remarkable extent, the noted scholar regained in 45 days his health, strength, memory, normal eyesight; indications of a third set of teeth appeared, while all wrinkles vanished. The herbal treatment, known as KAYA KALPA, is one of 80 rejuvenation methods outlined in Hindu AYURVEDA or medical science. Pundit Malaviya underwent the treatment at the hands of Sri Kalpacharya Swami Beshundasji, who claims 1766 as his birth year. He possesses documents proving him to be more than 100 years old; ASSOCIATED PRESS reporters remarked that he looked about 40.

Ancient Hindu treatises divided medical science into 8 branches: SALYA (surgery); SALAKYA (diseases above the neck); KAYACHIKITSA (medicine proper); BHUTAVIDYA (mental diseases); KAUMARA (care of infancy); AGADA (toxicology); RASAYANA (longevity); VAGIKARANA (tonics). Vedic physicians used delicate surgical instruments, employed plastic surgery, understood medical methods to counteract the effects of poison gas, performed Caesarean sections and brain operations, were skilled in dynamization of drugs. Hippocrates, famous physician of the 5th century B.C., borrowed much of his materia medica from Hindu sources.

{FN35-19} The East Indian margosa tree. Its medicinal values have now become recognized in the West, where the bitter NEEM bark is used as a tonic, and the oil from seeds and fruit has been found of utmost worth in the treatment of leprosy and other diseases.

{FN35-20} “A number of seals recently excavated from archaeological sites of the Indus valley, datable in the third millennium B.C., show figures seated in meditative postures now used in the system of Yoga, and warrant the inference that even at that time some of the rudiments of Yoga were already known. We may not unreasonably draw the conclusion that systematic introspection with the aid of studied methods has been practiced in India for five thousand years… . India has developed certain valuable religious attitudes of mind and ethical notions which are unique, at least in the wideness of their application to life. One of these has been a tolerance in questions of intellectual belief-doctrine-that is amazing to the West, where for many centuries heresy-hunting was common, and bloody wars between nations over sectarian rivalries were frequent.”-Extracts from an article by Professor W. Norman Brown in the May, 1939 issue of the BULLETIN of the American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, D.C.

{FN35-21} One thinks here of Carlyle’s observation in SARTOR RESARTUS: “The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable Royal Societies and carried … the epitome of all laboratories and observatories, with their results, in his single head,-is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.”

 

CHAPTER: 36

BABAJI’S INTEREST IN THE WEST

“Master, did you ever meet Babaji?”

It was a calm summer night in Serampore; the large stars of the tropics gleamed over our heads as I sat by Sri Yukteswar’s side on the second-story balcony of the hermitage.

“Yes.” Master smiled at my direct question; his eyes lit with reverence. “Three times I have been blessed by the sight of the deathless guru. Our first meeting was in Allahabad at a KUMBHA MELA.”

The religious fairs held in India since time immemorial are known as KUMBHA MELAS; they have kept spiritual goals in constant sight of the multitude. Devout Hindus gather by the millions every six years to meet thousands of sadhus, yogis, swamis, and ascetics of all kinds. Many are hermits who never leave their secluded haunts except to attend the MELAS and bestow their blessings on worldly men and women.

“I was not a swami at the time I met Babaji,” Sri Yukteswar went on. “But I had already received KRIYA initiation from Lahiri Mahasaya. He encouraged me to attend the MELA which was convening in January, 1894 at Allahabad. It was my first experience of a KUMBHA; I felt slightly dazed by the clamor and surge of the crowd. In my searching gazes around I saw no illumined face of a master. Passing a bridge on the bank of the Ganges, I noticed an acquaintance standing near-by, his begging bowl extended.

“‘Oh, this fair is nothing but a chaos of noise and beggars,’ I thought in disillusionment. ‘I wonder if Western scientists, patiently enlarging the realms of knowledge for the practical good of mankind, are not more pleasing to God than these idlers who profess religion but concentrate on alms.’

“My smouldering reflections on social reform were interrupted by the voice of a tall sannyasi who halted before me.

“‘Sir,’ he said, ‘a saint is calling you.’

“‘Who is he?’

“‘Come and see for yourself.’

“Hesitantly following this laconic advice, I soon found myself near a tree whose branches were sheltering a guru with an attractive group of disciples. The master, a bright unusual figure, with sparkling dark eyes, rose at my approach and embraced me.

“‘Welcome, Swamiji,’ he said affectionately.

“‘Sir,’ I replied emphatically, ‘I am NOT a swami.’

“‘Those on whom I am divinely directed to bestow the title of “swami” never cast it off.’ The saint addressed me simply, but deep conviction of truth rang in his words; I was engulfed in an instant wave of spiritual blessing. Smiling at my sudden elevation into the ancient monastic order, {FN36-1} I bowed at the feet of the obviously great and angelic being in human form who had thus honored me.

“Babaji-for it was indeed he-motioned me to a seat near him under the tree. He was strong and young, and looked like Lahiri Mahasaya; yet the resemblance did not strike me, even though I had often heard of the extraordinary similarities in the appearance of the two masters. Babaji possesses a power by which he can prevent any specific thought from arising in a person’s mind. Evidently the great guru wished me to be perfectly natural in his presence, not overawed by knowledge