A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiography of a YOGI

P >> Paramhansa Yogananda >> Autobiography of a YOGI




"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."

[Illustration: Luther Burbank, beloved friend, poses with me in
his Santa Rosa garden.--see burbank.jpg]

[Illustration: Luther Burbank--see burbank2.jpg]

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. {FN38-1} "Here is my book on THE TRAINING
OF THE HUMAN PLANT," {FN38-2} 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.

"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.

{FN38-1} 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.

[Illustration: Luther Burbank's signature--see bsignature.jpg]

{FN38-2} New York: Century Co., 1922.



CHAPTER: 39

THERESE NEUMANN, THE CATHOLIC STIGMATIST

"Return to india. I have waited for you patiently for fifteen
years. Soon I shall swim out of the body and on to the Shining
Abode. Yogananda, come!"

Sri Yukteswar's voice sounded startlingly in my inner ear as I sat
in meditation at my Mt. Washington headquarters. Traversing ten
thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye, his message penetrated
my being like a flash of lightning.

Fifteen years! Yes, I realized, now it is 1935; I have spent fifteen
years in spreading my guru's teachings in America. Now he recalls
me.

That afternoon I recounted my experience to a visiting disciple.
His spiritual development under KRIYA YOGA was so remarkable that
I often called him "saint," remembering Babaji's prophecy that America
too would produce men and women of divine realization through the
ancient yogic path.

This disciple and a number of others generously insisted on making a
donation for my travels. The financial problem thus solved, I made
arrangements to sail, via Europe, for India. Busy weeks of preparations
at Mount Washington! In March, 1935 I had the Self-Realization
Fellowship chartered under the laws of the State of California as
a non-profit corporation. To this educational institution go all
public donations as well as the revenue from the sale of my books,
magazine, written courses, class tuition, and every other source
of income.

"I shall be back," I told my students. "Never shall I forget
America."

At a farewell banquet given to me in Los Angeles by loving friends,
I looked long at their faces and thought gratefully, "Lord, he who
remembers Thee as the Sole Giver will never lack the sweetness of
friendship among mortals."

I sailed from New York on June 9, 1935 {FN39-1} in the EUROPA. Two
students accompanied me: my secretary, Mr. C. Richard Wright, and
an elderly lady from Cincinnati, Miss Ettie Bletch. We enjoyed the
days of ocean peace, a welcome contrast to the past hurried weeks.
Our period of leisure was short-lived; the speed of modern boats
has some regrettable features!

Like any other group of inquisitive tourists, we walked around the
huge and ancient city of London. The following day I was invited to
address a large meeting in Caxton Hall, at which I was introduced
to the London audience by Sir Francis Younghusband. Our party
spent a pleasant day as guests of Sir Harry Lauder at his estate
in Scotland. We soon crossed the English Channel to the continent,
for I wanted to make a special pilgrimage to Bavaria. This would
be my only chance, I felt, to visit the great Catholic mystic,
Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth.

Years earlier I had read an amazing account of Therese. Information
given in the article was as follows:

(1) Therese, born in 1898, had been injured in an accident at the
age of twenty; she became blind and paralyzed.

(2) She miraculously regained her sight in 1923 through prayers
to St. Teresa, "The Little Flower." Later Therese Neumann's limbs
were instantaneously healed.

(3) From 1923 onward, Therese has abstained completely from food
and drink, except for the daily swallowing of one small consecrated
wafer.

(4) The stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ, appeared in 1926 on
Therese's head, breast, hands, and feet. On Friday of every week
thereafter, she has passed through the Passion of Christ, suffering
in her own body all his historic agonies.

(5) Knowing ordinarily only the simple German of her village,
during her Friday trances Therese utters phrases which scholars
have identified as ancient Aramaic. At appropriate times in her
vision, she speaks Hebrew or Greek.

(6) By ecclesiastical permission, Therese has several times been
under close scientific observation. Dr. Fritz Gerlick, editor of
a Protestant German newspaper, went to Konnersreuth to "expose the
Catholic fraud," but ended up by reverently writing her biography.
{FN39-2}

As always, whether in East or West, I was eager to meet a saint.
I rejoiced as our little party entered, on July 16th, the quaint
village of Konnersreuth. The Bavarian peasants exhibited lively
interest in our Ford automobile (brought with us from America) and
its assorted group-an American young man, an elderly lady, and an
olive-hued Oriental with long hair tucked under his coat collar.

Therese's little cottage, clean and neat, with geraniums blooming
by a primitive well, was alas! silently closed. The neighbors, and
even the village postman who passed by, could give us no information.
Rain began to fall; my companions suggested that we leave.

"No," I said stubbornly, "I will stay here until I find some clue
leading to Therese."

Two hours later we were still sitting in our car amidst the dismal
rain. "Lord," I sighed complainingly, "why didst Thou lead me here
if she has disappeared?"

An English-speaking man halted beside us, politely offering his
aid.

"I don't know for certain where Therese is," he said, "but she
often visits at the home of Professor Wurz, a seminary master of
Eichstatt, eighty miles from here."

The following morning our party motored to the quiet village
of Eichstatt, narrowly lined with cobblestoned streets. Dr. Wurz
greeted us cordially at his home; "Yes, Therese is here." He sent
her word of the visitors. A messenger soon appeared with her reply.

"Though the bishop has asked me to see no one without his permission,
I will receive the man of God from India."

Deeply touched at these words, I followed Dr. Wurz upstairs to the
sitting room. Therese entered immediately, radiating an aura of
peace and joy. She wore a black gown and spotless white head dress.
Although her age was thirty-seven at this time, she seemed much
younger, possessing indeed a childlike freshness and charm. Healthy,
well-formed, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful, this is the saint that
does not eat!

Therese greeted me with a very gentle handshaking. We both beamed
in silent communion, each knowing the other to be a lover of God.

Dr. Wurz kindly offered to serve as interpreter. As we seated
ourselves, I noticed that Therese was glancing at me with naive
curiosity; evidently Hindus had been rare in Bavaria.

"Don't you eat anything?" I wanted to hear the answer from her own
lips.

"No, except a consecrated rice-flour wafer, once every morning at
six o'clock."

"How large is the wafer?"

"It is paper-thin, the size of a small coin." She added, "I take
it for sacramental reasons; if it is unconsecrated, I am unable to
swallow it."

"Certainly you could not have lived on that, for twelve whole
years?"

"I live by God's light." How simple her reply, how Einsteinian!

"I see you realize that energy flows to your body from the ether,
sun, and air."

A swift smile broke over her face. "I am so happy to know you
understand how I live."

"Your sacred life is a daily demonstration of the truth uttered by
Christ: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'" {FN39-3}

Again she showed joy at my explanation. "It is indeed so. One of
the reasons I am here on earth today is to prove that man can live
by God's invisible light, and not by food only."

"Can you teach others how to live without food?"

She appeared a trifle shocked. "I cannot do that; God does not wish
it."

As my gaze fell on her strong, graceful hands, Therese showed me
a little, square, freshly healed wound on each of her palms. On
the back of each hand, she pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped
wound, freshly healed. Each wound went straight through the hand.
The sight brought to my mind distinct recollection of the large
square iron nails with crescent-tipped ends, still used in the
Orient, but which I do not recall having seen in the West.

The saint told me something of her weekly trances. "As a helpless
onlooker, I observe the whole Passion of Christ." Each week, from
Thursday midnight until Friday afternoon at one o'clock, her wounds
open and bleed; she loses ten pounds of her ordinary 121-pound
weight. Suffering intensely in her sympathetic love, Therese yet
looks forward joyously to these weekly visions of her Lord.

I realized at once that her strange life is intended by God to reassure
all Christians of the historical authenticity of Jesus' life and
crucifixion as recorded in the New Testament, and to dramatically
display the ever-living bond between the Galilean Master and his
devotees.

Professor Wurz related some of his experiences with the saint.

"Several of us, including Therese, often travel for days on
sight-seeing trips throughout Germany," he told me. "It is a striking
contrast-while we have three meals a day, Therese eats nothing.
She remains as fresh as a rose, untouched by the fatigue which the
trips cause us. As we grow hungry and hunt for wayside inns, she
laughs merrily."

The professor added some interesting physiological details: "Because
Therese takes no food, her stomach has shrunk. She has no excretions,
but her perspiration glands function; her skin is always soft and
firm."

At the time of parting, I expressed to Therese my desire to be
present at her trance.

"Yes, please come to Konnersreuth next Friday," she said graciously.
"The bishop will give you a permit. I am very happy you sought me
out in Eichstatt."

Therese shook hands gently, many times, and walked with our party
to the gate. Mr. Wright turned on the automobile radio; the saint
examined it with little enthusiastic chuckles. Such a large crowd
of youngsters gathered that Therese retreated into the house. We
saw her at a window, where she peered at us, childlike, waving her
hand.

From a conversation the next day with two of Therese's brothers,
very kind and amiable, we learned that the saint sleeps only one
or two hours at night. In spite of the many wounds in her body,
she is active and full of energy. She loves birds, looks after an
aquarium of fish, and works often in her garden. Her correspondence
is large; Catholic devotees write her for prayers and healing
blessings. Many seekers have been cured through her of serious
diseases.

Her brother Ferdinand, about twenty-three, explained that Therese
has the power, through prayer, of working out on her own body the
ailments of others. The saint's abstinence from food dates from a
time when she prayed that the throat disease of a young man of her
parish, then preparing to enter holy orders, be transferred to her
own throat.

On Thursday afternoon our party drove to the home of the bishop,
who looked at my flowing locks with some surprise. He readily
wrote out the necessary permit. There was no fee; the rule made by
the Church is simply to protect Therese from the onrush of casual
tourists, who in previous years had flocked on Fridays by the
thousands.

We arrived Friday morning about nine-thirty in Konnersreuth. I
noticed that Therese's little cottage possesses a special glass-roofed
section to afford her plenty of light. We were glad to see the
doors no longer closed, but wide-open in hospitable cheer. There
was a line of about twenty visitors, armed with their permits. Many
had come from great distances to view the mystic trance.

Therese had passed my first test at the professor's house by her
intuitive knowledge that I wanted to see her for spiritual reasons,
and not just to satisfy a passing curiosity.

My second test was connected with the fact that, just before I
went upstairs to her room, I put myself into a yogic trance state
in order to be one with her in telepathic and televisic rapport. I
entered her chamber, filled with visitors; she was lying in a white
robe on the bed. With Mr. Wright following closely behind me, I
halted just inside the threshold, awestruck at a strange and most
frightful spectacle.

[Illustration: THERESE NEUMANN, Famous Catholic Stigmatist who
inspired my 1935 pilgrimage to Konnersreuth, Bavaria--see neumann.jpg]

Blood flowed thinly and continuously in an inch-wide stream from
Therese's lower eyelids. Her gaze was focused upward on the spiritual
eye within the central forehead. The cloth wrapped around her head
was drenched in blood from the stigmata wounds of the crown of
thorns. The white garment was redly splotched over her heart from
the wound in her side at the spot where Christ's body, long ages
ago, had suffered the final indignity of the soldier's spear-thrust.

Therese's hands were extended in a gesture maternal, pleading;
her face wore an expression both tortured and divine. She appeared
thinner, changed in many subtle as well as outward ways. Murmuring
words in a foreign tongue, she spoke with slightly quivering lips
to persons visible before her inner sight.

As I was in attunement with her, I began to see the scenes of
her vision. She was watching Jesus as he carried the cross amidst
the jeering multitude. {FN39-4} Suddenly she lifted her head
in consternation: the Lord had fallen under the cruel weight. The
vision disappeared. In the exhaustion of fervid pity, Therese sank
heavily against her pillow.

At this moment I heard a loud thud behind me. Turning my head for
a second, I saw two men carrying out a prostrate body. But because
I was coming out of the deep superconscious state, I did not
immediately recognize the fallen person. Again I fixed my eyes on
Therese's face, deathly pale under the rivulets of blood, but now
calm, radiating purity and holiness. I glanced behind me later
and saw Mr. Wright standing with his hand against his cheek, from
which blood was trickling.

"Dick," I inquired anxiously, "were you the one who fell?"

"Yes, I fainted at the terrifying spectacle."

"Well," I said consolingly, "you are brave to return and look upon
the sight again."

Remembering the patiently waiting line of pilgrims, Mr. Wright and
I silently bade farewell to Therese and left her sacred presence.
{FN39-5}

The following day our little group motored south, thankful that we
were not dependent on trains, but could stop the Ford wherever we
chose throughout the countryside. We enjoyed every minute of a tour
through Germany, Holland, France, and the Swiss Alps. In Italy we
made a special trip to Assisi to honor the apostle of humility, St.
Francis. The European tour ended in Greece, where we viewed the
Athenian temples, and saw the prison in which the gentle Socrates
{FN39-6} had drunk his death potion. One is filled with admiration
for the artistry with which the Greeks have everywhere wrought
their very fancies in alabaster.

We took ship over the sunny Mediterranean, disembarking at
Palestine. Wandering day after day over the Holy Land, I was more
than ever convinced of the value of pilgrimage. The spirit of Christ
is all-pervasive in Palestine; I walked reverently by his side at
Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the holy Mount of Olives, and by
the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee.

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