Yogananda

[Sebbi]

Has anyone here read the autobiography of Yogananda.


Blessings

Sebbi

[ChiefCowpie]

several times

[NightOwl1331]

I'm just starting to read it.

[MushroomDreams]

I read it years ago. I found it to be completely inspiring. If you ever get to LA- check out Lake Shrine. It’s on Sunset Blvd. The same Sunset that goes by Wiskey A-Go-Go. It just miles from the famous strip.

There is a shrine to Mahatma Gandhi on the property. Yogananda actually was in India for Gandhi’s funeral and brought back some ashes that are a part of the World Peace Memorial.

http://www.yogananda-srf.org/temples/lakeshrine/

Peace

[Bhaskar]

I read in the Self Realisation Fellowship magazine that they are releasing a new book by paramahamsa Yoganandji this fall, theyd put in a small excerpt from the book, titled the Second Coming of Christ, which is a beautiful vedantic interpretation of the words of Christ and his teachings. Really looking forward to it!

[gdkumar]

"Autobiography of A Yogi"-By Swami Yogananda. (From Self-Realization Fellowship, 3880 San Rafael Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90065,USA).

A very very useful book for all believers and disbelievers, it is an eye-opener for the atheists and agnostics, it is a direct carrier to the transcendental world.
It is a never-should-miss-to-read book.

All glory to His Divine Grace, Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda and His lineage of Mahaguru Sri Sri Mahabatar Babaji - Yogiraj Sri Sri Shyamacharan Lahiri - Sri Sri Yukteswar Giri Maharaj(His Guruji).

This book establishes best the oneness of the yogis with the all pervading field of energy(Brahman or God). Please pay particular attention to the facts of E.E.Dickinson's life(An American who himself became a great Yogi) connecting both Swami Vivekananda and Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.
(Chapter - 47).

Unless the book is read, I feel it is a foolish thing to even try to comprehend the unfathomable grace and compassion of Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda on the whole mankind.

With love..........Kumar.

[SvgGrdnBeauty]

I would like to read it...I've heard many good things about it...

But I have many other books I need to read first...seriously you have no idea...

[ChiefCowpie]

A Soul Talks to God

Review of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul

In August of 1920 Paramahansa Yogananda traveled to the United States of America on The City of Sparta, the first passenger boat sailing from India to America after the end of World War I. He had been invited to speak about yoga at the International Congress of Religious Liberals that was meeting in Boston that year. He gave his talk about yoga and was so well received that he remained in America, speaking to standing-room-only crowds across the country. His following continued to grow, and in 1925 he founded Self-Realization Fellowship, an organization that would disseminate his teachings. In 1946 he published his Autobiography of a Yogi, a book that has become a modern spiritual classic and is studied in over three hundred universities.

In addition to his autobiography, SRF has published many of his lectures in a series: Man’s Eternal Quest, The Divine Romance, and Journey to Self-Realization. Further publications include How to Talk With God and The Law of Success, which give advice to the spiritual aspirant. However, one need not be a devoted follower of his teachings to appreciate his works, especially his poetic works, Metaphysical Meditations, Whispers from Eternity, or the book being considered here, Songs from the Soul. Not only was Paramahansa Yogananda an influential spiritual leader, but he was also an accomplished poet, as Songs of the Soul will testify.

These poems allow their readers a glimpse into the relationship between a self-realized soul, one who has mastered the art and science of yoga, and the Divine Beloved. The first poem, “Consecration,” begins the yogi's conversation with the Divine Beloved:

At Thy feet I come to shower

All my full heart’s rhyming flower:

Of Thy breath born,

By Thy love grown,

Through my lonely seeking found,

By hands Thou gavest plucked and bound.



For Thee, the sheaves

Within these leaves:

The choicest flowers

Of my life’s season,

With petals soulful spread,

Their humble perfume shed.



Hands folded, I come now to give

What’s Thine. Receive!

This poem reveals the basic form Paramahansa Yogananda follows in all of his poems and prayers. He addresses God with the pronouns “Thou,” “Thee,” and “Thy,” the familiar forms of address that are employed in the King James Version of the Holy Bible. Yogananda considered the King James Version the most poetic version, representing to the Western culture the most poetic style. Despite trends and additional translations of the Holy Bible, that language style continues to be held in high regard by Western culture.

Notice that this opening poem is an innovative sonnet, a combination of the Italian and the English forms. It employs the required fourteen lines, but instead of the exact octave and sestet of the Italian, it offers two sestets, and then the final two lines are a couplet resembling the English form, all with a unique rhyme scheme of aabbcc ddefgg hh. Of course, “born” / “grown” and “to give” / “receive” are slant rhymes.

The content or subject of “Consecration” is the speaker’s offering his words to God. He employs the metaphor of laying flowers on an altar to God, flowers symbolizing the devotee’s love and devotion. This poem represents the style we can expect from further samples, basically traditional, although each poem varies in form and subject; each poem is a meditation and prayer devoted to God--the yogi's Divine Beloved, also referred to as the Heavenly Father, Divine Mother, or Holy Friend.

The poet/devotee observes the Divine in nature. In “One That’s Everywhere” the speakers says, “The wind plays, / The tree sighs, / The sun smiles, / The river moves. / Feigning dread, the sky is blushing red / At the sun-god’s gentle tread. / Earth changes robes / Of black and starlight night / For dazzling golden light.” From the pantheistic perspective, on which the yoga philosophy is based, everything is God; God is immanent in all creation, so the sun may be called a “sun-god,” without giving connotations of sun worship, but rather recognition that the sun is a spark of God. The speaker continues,

[ChiefCowpie]

Dame Nature loves herself t’array

In changing seasons’ colors gay.

The murmuring brook e’er tries to tell

In lisping sounds so well

Of the hidden thought

By inner spirit brought.

The “inner spirit” is always the motivator of “Dame Nature”; thus the inner spirit is the reason for changing seasons that provide us with the beauty of color and sound. And about sound, “The birds aspire to sing / Of things unknown that swell within.” And although the birds are driven by this inner spirit, yet it is the human being who is capable of fully rendering the cosmic consciousness of God:

But man first speaks in language true—

Both loud and clear, with meaning new—

Of That all else before

Had failed to full declare,

Of One that’s everywhere.



While all of nature speaks of its Creator, the human being is the first to understand clearly that he/she is made in the image of God and has the capability of knowing that God is present in all of nature.

Not only do these poems consistently speak to God in the more general terms of nature, but they also take as subject matter such natural phenomena as Pikes Peak, Paupack’s Peak, The Grand Canyon, and the Aurora Borealis. From Pikes Peak, we hear the speaker declaring,



Ne’er did I expect to roam

On wheels four

Where thousand clouds do soar—

The dangerous, darksome path

With trick winding “W” curves that climbed

And glided secretly

Full fourteen thousand feet above the sea—

The home of dark-hued clouds, so gamesome free,

That watched with heavy binding vapor-shroud

To cast ’round stranger’s steps

That dared to tread in stealth

Their realm of scenic wealth.



The yogi/poet here captures the experience of traveling up Pikes Peak in an automobile, and the poem continues with this sublime description for two more pages, triumphantly finishing with, “And in joy I cried aloud, ‘See Him hide / Beneath the beauty tide!’” Again after much joy from the splendor of the sights beheld on the mountain, the speaker declares that the beauty is God’s.

Another poem that focuses on the physical, phenomenal world is “Luther Burbank”:



Beatific Burbank!

The great reformer Luther, thou art,

Of living plant and flowers of every mood—

The tender ones, the stubborn-growing ones,

Of cactus rude.



Thy peaceful way

The cruel cactus took:

Its armor of thorns forsook,

And learned to sacrifice it meat

For all to eat.



Luther Burbank was, of course, the successful horticulturist who propagated a number of improved strains of vegetables, including the potato and an edible cactus. In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda quotes the accomplished scientist: “The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. While I was conducting experiments to make ‘spineless’ cacti, I often talked to the plants to create a vibration of love.” Luther Burbank was a scientist who was in touch with the reality of God’s presence in all things, including plants, and Yogananda celebrates the scientist's accomplishments, even dedicating his now classic Autobiography of a Yogi to Burbank: “Dedicated to the Memory of LUTHER BURBANK ‘An American Saint’.”

The final poem/song, “When I Take My Vow of Silence,” is a meditation devoted to the followers of the renowned Guru:



When I take the vow of silence

To remain enlocked with my Beloved

In the arms of His everywhereness,

I shall be busy listening to His symphony

Of creations’ bliss songs, and beholding hidden wondrous visions.



The spiritual master is, of course, predicting that he will enjoy God’s “symphony” and His “wondrous vision” after the yogi has passed beyond the physical realm into the spiritual realm or entered mahasamadi, the passing of a God-realized soul, but reading his poems, these songs of his soul, we can glimpse those “wondrous visions” and hear, even if vaguely because of our untrained ears, that “symphony.”

Songs of the Soul includes over one hundred poems. The publisher’s note offers samples of Yogananda’s handwriting. Also included in the preface material are the “Aims and Ideals of Self-Realization Fellowship” as set forth by the yogi himself. The book contains nine photographs associated with the yogi’s life, including a photo of Luther Burbank and Yogananda taken at Santa Rosa, California, in 1924. The last photo taken March 7, 1952 and titled “The Last Smile” was snapped only an hour before the yogi entered mahasamadi.

[gdkumar]

Dear ChiefCowPie,


Thank you for your beautiful and highly informative posts.

I feel indebted to you.

Look forward to having more lights from you.

With love.........Kumar.

[ChiefCowpie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/a/ad/Yogananda_AofY_burbank.jpg


Luther Burbank and Paramahansa Yogananda

[ChiefCowpie]

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
Luther Burbank (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/lutherburb104999.html)

[ChiefCowpie]

http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/ayimages/aychapter.jpgAutobiography of a Yogi
(Original 1946 Edition)

by Paramhansa Yogananda

CHAPTER 8

India's Great Scientist,
J.C. Bose

http://www.crystalclarity.com/IMAGES/Spacer.gif
"Jagadis Chandra Bose's wireless inventions antedated those of Marconi."

Overhearing this provocative remark, I walked closer to a sidewalk group of professors engaged in scientific discussion. If my motive in joining them was racial pride, I regret it. I cannot deny my keen interest in evidence that India can play a leading part in physics, and not metaphysics alone.

"What do you mean, sir?"

The professor obligingly explained. "Bose was the first one to invent a wireless coherer and an instrument for indicating the refraction of electric waves. But the Indian scientist did not exploit his inventions commercially. He soon turned his attention from the inorganic to the organic world. His revolutionary discoveries as a plant physiologist are outpacing even his radical achievements as a physicist."

I politely thanked my mentor. He added, "The great scientist is one of my brother professors at Presidency College."

I paid a visit the next day to the sage at his home, which was close to mine on Gurpar Road. I had long admired him from a respectful distance. The grave and retiring botanist greeted me graciously. He was a handsome, robust man in his fifties, with thick hair, broad forehead, and the abstracted eyes of a dreamer. The precision in his tones revealed the lifelong scientific habit.

"I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity of all life.1 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f1) The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The crescograph opens incalculable vistas."

"You have done much, sir, to hasten the embrace of East and West in the impersonal arms of science."

"I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph2 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f2) are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals."

"The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would never pluck flowers. 'Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?' His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!"

"The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph."

Gratefully I accepted the invitation, and took my departure. I heard later that the botanist had left Presidency College, and was planning a research center in Calcutta.

When the Bose Institute was opened, I attended the dedicatory services. Enthusiastic hundreds strolled over the premises. I was charmed with the artistry and spiritual symbolism of the new home of science. Its front gate, I noted, was a centuried relic from a distant shrine. Behind the lotus3 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f3) fountain, a sculptured female figure with a torch conveyed the Indian respect for woman as the immortal light-bearer. The garden held a small temple consecrated to the Noumenon beyond phenomena. Thought of the divine incorporeity was suggested by absence of any altar-image.

Bose's speech on this great occasion might have issued from the lips of one of the inspired ancient rishis.

"I dedicate today this Institute as not merely a laboratory but a temple." His reverent solemnity stole like an unseen cloak over the crowded auditorium. "In the pursuit of my investigations I was unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology. To my amazement, I found boundary lines vanishing, and points of contact emerging, between the realms of the living and the non-living. Inorganic matter was perceived as anything but inert; it was athrill under the action of multitudinous forces.

"A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant and animal under a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, as well as the permanent irresponsiveness associated with death. Filled with awe at this stupendous generalization, it was with great hope that I announced my results before the Royal Society—results demonstrated by experiments. But the physiologists present advised me to confine myself to physical investigations, in which my success had been assured, rather than encroach on their preserves. I had unwittingly strayed into the domain of an unfamiliar caste system and so offended its etiquette.

[ChiefCowpie]

"An unconscious theological bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question and understand. Through many years of miscomprehension, I came to know that the life of a devotee of science is inevitably filled with unending struggle. It is for him to cast his life as an ardent offering—regarding gain and loss, success and failure, as one.

"In time the leading scientific societies of the world accepted my theories and results, and recognized the importance of the Indian contribution to science.4 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f4) Can anything small or circumscribed ever satisfy the mind of India? By a continuous living tradition, and a vital power of rejuvenescence, this land has readjusted itself through unnumbered transformations. Indians have always arisen who, discarding the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, have sought for the realization of the highest ideals in life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, acquiring nothing, has had nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won can enrich the world by bestowing the fruits of his victorious experience.

"The work already carried out in the Bose laboratory on the response of matter, and the unexpected revelations in plant life, have opened out very extended regions of inquiry in physics, in physiology, in medicine, in agriculture, and even in psychology. Problems hitherto regarded as insoluble have now been brought within the sphere of experimental investigation.

"But high success is not to be obtained without rigid exactitude. Hence the long battery of super-sensitive instruments and apparatus of my design, which stand before you today in their cases in the entrance hall. They tell you of the protracted efforts to get behind the deceptive seeming into the reality that remains unseen, of the continuous toil and persistence and resourcefulness called forth to overcome human limitations. All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth.

"The lectures given here will not be mere repetitions of second-hand knowledge. They will announce new discoveries, demonstrated for the first time in these halls. Through regular publication of the work of the Institute, these Indian contributions will reach the whole world. They will become public property. No patents will ever be taken. The spirit of our national culture demands that we should forever be free from the desecration of utilizing knowledge only for personal gain.

"It is my further wish that the facilities of this Institute be available, so far as possible, to workers from all countries. In this I am attempting to carry on the traditions of my country. So far back as twenty-five centuries, India welcomed to its ancient universities, at Nalanda and Taxila, scholars from all parts of the world.

"Although science is neither of the East nor of the West but rather international in its universality, yet India is specially fitted to make great contributions.5 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f5) The burning Indian imagination, which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth with an infinite patience."

Tears stood in my eyes at the scientist's concluding words. Is "patience" not indeed a synonym of India, confounding Time and the historians alike?

I visited the research center again, soon after the day of opening. The great botanist, mindful of his promise, took me to his quiet laboratory.

"I will attach the crescograph to this fern; the magnification is tremendous. If a snail's crawl were enlarged in the same proportion, the creature would appear to be traveling like an express train!"

My gaze was fixed eagerly on the screen which reflected the magnified fern-shadow. Minute life-movements were now clearly perceptible; the plant was growing very slowly before my fascinated eyes. The scientist touched the tip of the fern with a small metal bar. The developing pantomime came to an abrupt halt, resuming the eloquent rhythms as soon as the rod was withdrawn.

"You saw how any slight outside interference is detrimental to the sensitive tissues," Bose remarked. "Watch; I will now administer chloroform, and then give an antidote."

The effect of the chloroform discontinued all growth; the antidote was revivifying. The evolutionary gestures on the screen held me more raptly than a "movie" plot. My companion (here in the role of villain) thrust a sharp instrument through a part of the fern; pain was indicated by spasmodic flutters. When he passed a razor partially through the stem, the shadow was violently agitated, then stilled itself with the final punctuation of death.

"By first chloroforming a huge tree, I achieved a successful transplantation. Usually, such monarchs of the forest die very quickly after being moved." Jagadis smiled happily as he recounted the life-saving maneuver. "Graphs of my delicate apparatus have proved that trees possess a circulatory system; their sap movements correspond to the blood pressure of animal bodies. The ascent of sap is not explicable on the mechanical grounds ordinarily advanced, such as capillary attraction. The phenomenon has been solved through the crescograph as the activity of living cells. Peristaltic waves issue from a cylindrical tube which extends down a tree and serves as an actual heart! The more deeply we perceive, the more striking becomes the evidence that a uniform plan links every form in manifold nature."

[ChiefCowpie]

The great scientist pointed to another Bose instrument.

"I will show you experiments on a piece of tin. The life-force in metals responds adversely or beneficially to stimuli. Ink markings will register the various reactions."

Deeply engrossed, I watched the graph which recorded the characteristic waves of atomic structure. When the professor applied chloroform to the tin, the vibratory writings stopped. They recommenced as the metal slowly regained its normal state. My companion dispensed a poisonous chemical. Simultaneous with the quivering end of the tin, the needle dramatically wrote on the chart a death-notice.

"Bose instruments have demonstrated that metals, such as the steel used in scissors and machinery, are subject to fatigue, and regain efficiency by periodic rest. The life-pulse in metals is seriously harmed or even extinguished through the application of electric currents or heavy pressure."

I looked around the room at the numerous inventions, eloquent testimony of a tireless ingenuity.

"Sir, it is lamentable that mass agricultural development is not speeded by fuller use of your marvelous mechanisms. Would it not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers on plant growth?"

"You are right. Countless uses of Bose instruments will be made by future generations. The scientist seldom knows contemporaneous reward; it is enough to possess the joy of creative service."

With expressions of unreserved gratitude to the indefatigable sage, I took my leave. "Can the astonishing fertility of his genius ever be exhausted?" I thought.

No diminution came with the years. Inventing an intricate instrument, the "Resonant Cardiograph," Bose then pursued extensive researches on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with an unerring accuracy by which a one-hundredth part of a second is indicated on a graph. Resonant records measure infinitesimal pulsations in plant, animal and human structure. The great botanist predicted that use of his cardiograph will lead to vivisection on plants instead of animals.

"Side by side recordings of the effects of a medicine given simultaneously to a plant and an animal have shown astounding unanimity in result," he pointed out. "Everything in man has been foreshadowed in the plant. Experimentation on vegetation will contribute to lessening of human suffering."

Years later Bose's pioneer plant findings were substantiated by other scientists. Work done in 1938 at Columbia University was reported by The New York Times as follows:

It has been determined within the past few years that when the nerves transmit messages between the brain and other parts of the body, tiny electrical impulses are being generated. These impulses have been measured by delicate galvanometers and magnified millions of times by modern amplifying apparatus. Until now no satisfactory method had been found to study the passages of the impulses along the nerve fibers in living animals or man because of the great speed with which these impulses travel.

Drs. K. S. Cole and H. J. Curtis reported having discovered that the long single cells of the fresh-water plant nitella, used frequently in goldfish bowls, are virtually identical with those of single nerve fibers. Furthermore, they found that nitella fibers, on being excited, propagate electrical waves that are similar in every way, except velocity, to those of the nerve fibers in animals and man. The electrical nerve impulses in the plant were found to be much slower than those in animals. This discovery was therefore seized upon by the Columbia workers as a means for taking slow motion pictures of the passage of the electrical impulses in nerves.

The nitella plant thus may become a sort of Rosetta stone for deciphering the closely guarded secrets close to the very borderland of mind and matter.

[ChiefCowpie]

The poet Rabindranath Tagore was a stalwart friend of India's idealistic scientist. To him, the sweet Bengali singer addressed the following lines:6 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#f6)

O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words
Of that old hymn called Sama; "Rise! Awake!"
Call to the man who boasts his shastric lore
From vain pedantic wranglings profitless,
Call to that foolish braggart to come forth
Out on the face of nature, this broad earth,
Send forth this call unto thy scholar band;
Together round thy sacrifice of fire
Let them all gather. So may our India,
Our ancient land unto herself return
O once again return to steadfast work,
To duty and devotion, to her trance
Of earnest meditation; let her sit
Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure,
O once again upon her lofty seat
And platform, teacher of all lands.





1 "All science is transcendental or else passes away. Botany is now acquiring the right theory-the avatars of Brahma will presently be the textbooks of natural history."-Emerson
From the Latin root, crescere, to increase. For his crescograph and other inventions, Bose was knighted in 1917.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#1)

2 The lotus flower is an ancient divine symbol in India; its unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul; the growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual promise.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#2)

3 "At present, only the sheerest accident brings India into the purview of the American college student. Eight universities (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Chicago, and California) have chairs of Indology or Sanskrit, but India is virtually unrepresented in departments of history, philosophy, fine arts, political science, sociology, or any of the other departments of intellectual experience in which, as we have seen, India has made great contributions. . . . We believe, consequently, that no department of study, particularly in the humanities, in any major university can be fully equipped without a properly trained specialist in the Indic phases of its discipline. We believe, too, that every college which aims to prepare its graduates for intelligent work in the world which is to be theirs to live in, must have on its staff a scholar competent in the civilization of India."-Extracts from an article by Professor W. Norman Brown of the University of Pennsylvania which appeared in the May, 1939, issue of the Bulletin of the American Council of Learned Societies, 907 15th St., Washington, D. C., 25ø copy. This issue (#28) contains over 100 pages of a "Basic Bibliography for Indic Studies."
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#3)

4 The atomic structure of matter was well-known to the ancient Hindus. One of the six systems of Indian philosophy is Vaisesika, from the Sanskrit root visesas, "atomic individuality." One of the foremost Vaisesika expounders was Aulukya, also called Kanada, "the atom-eater," born about 2800 years ago.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#4)

5 In an article in East-West, April, 1934, a summary of Vaisesika scientific knowledge was given as follows: "Though the modern 'atomic theory' is generally considered a new advance of science, it was brilliantly expounded long ago by Kanada, 'the atom-eater.' The Sanskrit anus can be properly translated as 'atom' in the latter's literal Greek sense of 'uncut' or indivisible. Other scientific expositions of Vaisesika treatises of the B.C. era include (1) the movement of needles toward magnets, (2) the circulation of water in plants, (3) akash or ether, inert and structureless, as a basis for transmitting subtle forces, (4) the solar fire as the cause of all other forms of heat, (5) heat as the cause of molecular change, (6) the law of gravitation as caused by the quality that inheres in earth-atoms to give them their attractive power or downward pull, (7) the kinetic nature of all energy; causation as always rooted in an expenditure of energy or a redistribution of motion, (8) universal dissolution through the disintegration of atoms, (9) the radiation of heat and light rays, infinitely small particles, darting forth in all directions with inconceivable speed (the modern 'cosmic rays' theory), (10) the relativity of time and space.

"Vaisesika assigned the origin of the world to atoms, eternal in their nature, i.e., their ultimate peculiarities. These atoms were regarded as possessing an incessant vibratory motion. . . . The recent discovery that an atom is a miniature solar system would be no news to the old Vaisesika philosophers, who also reduced time to its furthest mathematical concept by describing the smallest unit of time (kala) as the period taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of space."
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#5)

6 Translated from the Bengali of Rabindranath Tagore, by Manmohan Ghosh, in Viswa-Bharati.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/8.asp#6) Chapter 9 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/9.asp)

[ChiefCowpie]

http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/ayimages/aychapter.jpgAutobiography of a Yogi
(Original 1946 Edition)

by Paramhansa Yogananda

CHAPTER 38

Luther Burbank -- A Saint Amidst the Roses

http://www.crystalclarity.com/IMAGES/Spacer.gif
"The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love." Luther Burbank uttered this wisdom as I walked beside him in his Santa Rosa garden. We halted near a bed of edible cacti.

"While I was conducting experiments to make 'spineless' cacti," he continued, "I often talked to the plants to create a vibration of love. 'You have nothing to fear,' I would tell them. 'You don't need your defensive thorns. I will protect you.' Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety."

I was charmed at this miracle. "Please, dear Luther, give me a few cacti leaves to plant in my garden at Mount Washington."

A workman standing near-by started to strip off some leaves; Burbank prevented him.

"I myself will pluck them for the swami." He handed me three leaves, which later I planted, rejoicing as they grew to huge estate.

The great horticulturist told me that his first notable triumph was the large potato, now known by his name. With the indefatigability of genius, he went on to present the world with hundreds of crossed improvements on nature—his new Burbank varieties of tomato, corn, squash, cherries, plums, nectarines, berries, poppies, lilies, roses.

I focused my camera as Luther led me before the famous walnut tree by which he had proved that natural evolution can be telescopically hastened.

"In only sixteen years," he said, "this walnut tree reached a state of abundant nut production to which an unaided nature would have brought the tree in twice that time."

Burbank's little adopted daughter came romping with her dog into the garden.

"She is my human plant." Luther waved to her affectionately. "I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillments only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection. In the span of my own lifetime I have observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living. We must return to nature and nature's God."

"Luther, you would delight in my Ranchi school, with its outdoor classes, and atmosphere of joy and simplicity."

My words touched the chord closest to Burbank's heart—child education. He plied me with questions, interest gleaming from his deep, serene eyes.

"Swamiji," he said finally, "schools like yours are the only hope of a future millennium. I am in revolt against the educational systems of our time, severed from nature and stifling of all individuality. I am with you heart and soul in your practical ideals of education."

As I was taking leave of the gentle sage, he autographed a small volume and presented it to me.1 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/38.asp#f1)

"Here is my book on The Training of the Human Plant,"2 (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/38.asp#f2) he said. "New types of training are needed—fearless experiments. At times the most daring trials have succeeded in bringing out the best in fruits and flowers. Educational innovations for children should likewise become more numerous, more courageous."

I read his little book that night with intense interest. His eye envisioning a glorious future for the race, he wrote: "The most stubborn living thing in this world, the most difficult to swerve, is a plant once fixed in certain habits. . . . Remember that this plant has preserved its individuality all through the ages; perhaps it is one which can be traced backward through eons of time in the very rocks themselves, never having varied to any great extent in all these vast periods. Do you suppose, after all these ages of repetition, the plant does not become possessed of a will, if you so choose to call it, of unparalleled tenacity? Indeed, there are plants, like certain of the palms, so persistent that no human power has yet been able to change them. The human will is a weak thing beside the will of a plant. But see how this whole plant's lifelong stubbornness is broken simply by blending a new life with it, making, by crossing, a complete and powerful change in its life. Then when the break comes, fix it by these generations of patient supervision and selection, and the new plant sets out upon its new way never again to return to the old, its tenacious will broken and changed at last.

"When it comes to so sensitive and pliable a thing as the nature of a child, the problem becomes vastly easier."

Magnetically drawn to this great American, I visited him again and again. One morning I arrived at the same time as the postman, who deposited in Burbank's study about a thousand letters. Horticulturists wrote him from all parts of the world.

"Swamiji, your presence is just the excuse I need to get out into the garden," Luther said gaily. He opened a large desk-drawer containing hundreds of travel folders.

"See," he said, "this is how I do my traveling. Tied down by my plants and correspondence, I satisfy my desire for foreign lands by a glance now and then at these pictures."

My car was standing before his gate; Luther and I drove along the streets of the little town, its gardens bright with his own varieties of Santa Rosa, Peachblow, and Burbank roses.

[ChiefCowpie]

"My friend Henry Ford and I both believe in the ancient theory of reincarnation," Luther told me. "It sheds light on aspects of life otherwise inexplicable. Memory is not a test of truth; just because man fails to remember his past lives does not prove he never had them. Memory is blank concerning his womb-life and infancy, too; but he probably passed through them!" He chuckled.

The great scientist had received Kriya initiation during one of my earlier visits. "I practice the technique devoutly, Swamiji," he said. After many thoughtful questions to me about various aspects of yoga, Luther remarked slowly:

"The East indeed possesses immense hoards of knowledge which the West has scarcely begun to explore."

Intimate communion with nature, who unlocked to him many of her jealously guarded secrets, had given Burbank a boundless spiritual reverence.

"Sometimes I feel very close to the Infinite Power," he confided shyly. His sensitive, beautifully modeled face lit with his memories. "Then I have been able to heal sick persons around me, as well as many ailing plants."

He told me of his mother, a sincere Christian. "Many times after her death," Luther said, "I have been blessed by her appearance in visions; she has spoken to me."

We drove back reluctantly toward his home and those waiting thousand letters.

"Luther," I remarked, "next month I am starting a magazine to present the truth-offerings of East and West. Please help me decide on a good name for the journal."

We discussed titles for awhile, and finally agreed on East-West. After we had reentered his study, Burbank gave me an article he had written on "Science and Civilization."

"This will go in the first issue of East-West," I said gratefully.

As our friendship grew deeper, I called Burbank my "American saint." "Behold a man," I quoted, "in whom there is no guile!" His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amidst the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.

I was in New York when, in 1926, my dear friend passed away. In tears I thought, "Oh, I would gladly walk all the way from here to Santa Rosa for one more glimpse of him!" Locking myself away from secretaries and visitors, I spent the next twenty-four hours in seclusion.

The following day I conducted a Vedic memorial rite around a large picture of Luther. A group of my American students, garbed in Hindu ceremonial clothes, chanted the ancient hymns as an offering was made of flowers, water, and fire—symbols of the bodily elements and their release in the Infinite Source.

Though the form of Burbank lies in Santa Rosa under a Lebanon cedar that he planted years ago in his garden, his soul is enshrined for me in every wide-eyed flower that blooms by the wayside. Withdrawn for a time into the spacious spirit of nature, is that not Luther whispering in her winds, walking her dawns?

His name has now passed into the heritage of common speech. Listing "burbank" as a transitive verb, Webster's New International Dictionary defines it: "To cross or graft (a plant). Hence, figuratively, to improve (anything, as a process or institution) by selecting good features and rejecting bad, or by adding good features."

"Beloved Burbank," I cried after reading the definition, "your very name is now a synonym for goodness!"



LUTHER BURBANK

SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA

U.S.A.

December 22, 1924

I have examined the Yogoda system of Swami Yogananda and in my opinion it is ideal for training and harmonizing man's physical, mental, and spiritual natures. Swami's aim is to establish "How-to-Live" schools throughout the world, wherein education will not confine itself to intellectual development alone, but also training of the body, will, and feelings.

Through the Yogoda system of physical, mental, and spiritual unfoldment by simple and scientific methods of concentration and meditation, most of the complex problems of life may be solved, and peace and good-will come upon earth. The Swami's idea of right education is plain commonsense, free from all mysticism and non-praciticality; otherwise it would not have my approval.

I am glad to have this opportunity of heartily joining with the Swami in his appeal for international schools on the art of living which, if established, will come as near to bringing the millennium as anything with which I am acquainted.

http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/ayimages/bsignature1.jpg







1 Burbank also gave me an autographed picture of himself. I treasure it even as a Hindu merchant once treasured a picture of Lincoln. The Hindu, who was in America during the Civil War years, conceived such an admiration for Lincoln that he was unwilling to return to India until he had obtained a portrait of the Great Emancipator. Planting himself adamantly on Lincoln's doorstep, the merchant refused to leave until the astonished President permitted him to engage the services of Daniel Huntington, the famous New York artist. When the portrait was finished, the Hindu carried it in triumph to Calcutta.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/38.asp#1-2) 2 New York: Century Co., 1922.
Back to text (http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/38.asp#1-2)

[SvgGrdnBeauty]

I just started reading this book (I finished all my school books! Yay!) and I absolutely love it. I love the way that Sri Sri Yogananda tells his story its inspirational, yet humourous and very much makes me want to read Ralph Waldo Emerson works (lol...must be all the Emerson allusions)....

So far, though, the book is absolutely amazing...I just finished the chapter about the Levitating Saint (Ch. 7) and started Ch 8 (which ChiefCowPie posted above) ^.... :) :) :)

[sylvanlightning]

I just started reading this book (I finished all my school books! Yay!) and I absolutely love it. I love the way that Sri Sri Yogananda tells his story its inspirational, yet humourous and very much makes me want to read Ralph Waldo Emerson works (lol...must be all the Emerson allusions)....


I love Emerson. Perhaps "The Voice of Babaji: A Trilogy on Kriya Yoga" will find its way to you as well... by: V.T. Neelakantan, S.A.A. Ramaiah &

Om Satguru Kriya Babaji Nagaraj Nama Aum :)

[SvgGrdnBeauty]

I love Emerson. Perhaps "The Voice of Babaji: A Trilogy on Kriya Yoga" will find its way to you as well... by: V.T. Neelakantan, S.A.A. Ramaiah &

Om Satguru Kriya Babaji Nagaraj Nama Aum :)
Oh...thanks for telling me about that...I'll have to look into it. I finished Autobiography of a Yogi awhile ago and I would very much like to read about Babaji...thanks for mentioning it :) I'll keep an eye out...