All, Those who claim this and that about past lives should provide genuine documentation too. Otherwise it must be dealt with as speculation, and faith-ridden as such. Sect members and ex sect members who try to discuss the Leader and invent how good he was "because he is my chosen Leader" contrary to a lot, don't seem to be wholly well. Talk of "Satan did it" looks
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Second thought It seems to me that Self-Realization Fellowship has overwhelmed the Google searh engine with a lot of addresses of the churchy kind, to the effect that is is hard to find fair and fit and relevant critique of it. If SRF critical sites should link up to one another, it could help. Maybe not a long way, but then, who can tell? Tenacity is a factor that may help too - it depends
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Magnocrat "Tolerate everyone" comes with a risk. To tolerate dangerous animals or men who come to killl your or your next of kin, makes sleep at night difficult. There are laws around to ensure too much "tolerance". Hence, I find there are certain limits to tolerance too. Tolerance within bounds, with sound measure - that could work many a time. Let us speak of SRF�
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Someone asked me to put some thoughts online, so I do it. I have added pretty little to the private conversation that went before it, but some changes there are anyway. QuoteGroan: This is worth posting on the SRF thread. Geoff Falk self published Stripping the Gurus. People tend to forget how unstable a medium cyberspace is. Too many trust Wikipedia content, not knowing that it mutates dep
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

And thank you! Ten years have gone since about one third of the monastics at Self-Realization Fellowship ashrams and centres had had enough and quit such premises. As we know, some of them had a lot on their minds after the "exodus", as they called it, and they contributed about 30,000 posts on a discussion board called the SRF Walrus. It is now defunct, and most of its revealing conten
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Since I mentioned Fair Use - and since it is important for many who need to assess information from various quarters: Fair Use is a copyright principle that allows you to freely use small portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism - and in addition various organizations and scholars have established guidelines for educational uses, guidelines that are not part o
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Yes. Here you are; a link to a page that contains the whole work is at the end of this page: The book comes without pagination in its new format here, though. The cook story is in the section "First use of mental power" (Search for "cook"). And since the book is in the public domain and therefore quotable - contrary to restrictions that Yoganiketan would impose on its on
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi, grainne ualie, Well done. And the full story about the paralysing Mukunda is in Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences by Sri Sailendra Bejoy Dasgupta, page 21 and 22. It is online.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Grainne and others, You find that SRF has kept Yogananda's not-perfectly-whitewashed decrees for dictatorship, socialism, and praise for early dictators like Mussolini to be not quite in step with current SRF policy and what it adheres to for the sake of glorifying someone or someones. I do agree. YOGANANDA'S FORMER LIVES IF HE HAD ANY Suppose another than Yogananda tells he wa
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Merry members, Grainne, it looks like you've gone a long way. Some books are treasuries, many are hardly so. It seems to me that it is good to find one's Deep Self - above groups and books - or seen within them too. It seems also good to use a method that functions for it, as Buddha says in one Mahayana Sutra. Unless one is using a fit method, one may not gain Nirvana – the awak
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dear grainne uaile, You write, "I think SRF should be investigated further before joining it." I almost agree. The words "against joining it" sums up my experiences of many worse-than-just-waisted years with it better. After about seven years I threw the SRF Lessons and Service Readings into a bonfire with the main thought; "Good!" I was not too pleased, in other
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi targetet and others, From time to time there are some who say Yogananda has appeared to them and talked to them. Years ago a Danish woman with several followers said Yogananda had talked to her, too. What could be wrong with that? Well, before he passed, Yogananda told he would not appear to anybody. We have to take that into account too. So, is Yogananda totally unreliable? Are there
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Merry Members, Corboy, I think you do very well in exposing unsound talk on a Yogananda board, where embarrassing guru utterances get largely ignored. If they do come to the fore, members and devotees adhere to some "basic trust" hovering over the fellowship and do what they can to "boil it away" by talk. If they are unable to do it, something might "snap" in mudd
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Merry Members There is meditation without gurus, and meditation with gurus. The latter is good if the guru matters. In India it is said that most who pose as gurus are charlatans, by the way. The Bhagavad Gita says, "No one verily becomes a yogi who has not renounced thoughts!" (6:2). Yogananda said many things; had he renounced thoughts in a proper way anyway? Such states of min
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

There is meditation without gurus, and meditation with gurus. The latter is good if the guru matters. In India it is said that most who pose as gurus are charlatans, by the way. The Bhagavad Gita says, "No one verily becomes a yogi who has not renounced thoughts!" (6:2). Yogananda said many things; had he renounced thoughts in a proper way anyway? Such states of mind are what good m
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

In Self-Realization Fellowship, two of its gurus say that mermaids exist, at least in heaven. And since this is said in the guru Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and claimed to be from a freshly resurrected wisdom-avatar that is revered as Sri Yukteswar, I suppose few or none in SRF will gainsaiy it. Then, according to Yogananda, his departed guru communicated one day: "The
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Facts first, at any rate: SRF got a notarized letter from a mortuary director, and excerpted the parts of it they found it fit to present. I don't think there was anything wrong with that. They also presented "the whole truth" - the whole report - in Self-Realization Fellowship's "Paramahansa Yogananda in Memoriam" (Los Angeles: SRF, 1958, p. 121-24. In other boo
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Merry members, There is a PDF copy around of that part of the old SRF Magazine where the guru Yogananda says "the average man needs the master mind of a Dictator in order to think right and do right," and that "A master brain like that of Mussolini does more good than millions of social organizations of group intelligence." "Interview", East-West, February 1934, p
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"