My Parents and Early Life
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Yogananda, Paramahansa
“It was just an extraordinary accident, and not an answer to your prayer. If the other kite comes to you, then I shall believe.” Sister’s dark eyes conveyed more amazement than her words.
I continued my prayers with a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary loop by which I could grasp it. I presented my second trophy to Uma.
“Indeed, Divine Mother listens to you! This is all too uncanny for me!” Sister bolted away like a frightened fawn.
1-2: Spiritual teacher; from Sanskrit root gur, to raise, to uplift.
1-3: A practitioner of yoga, “union,” ancient Indian science of meditation on God.
1-4: My name was changed to Yogananda when I entered the ancient monastic Swami Order in 1914. My guru bestowed the religious title of Paramhansa on me in 1935 (see chapters 24 and 42).
1-5: Traditionally, the second caste of warriors and rulers.
1-6: These ancient epics are the hoard of India’s history, mythology, and philosophy. An “Everyman’s Library” volume, Ramayana and Mahabharata, is a condensation in English verse by Romesh Dutt (New York: E. P. Dutton).
1-7: This noble Sanskrit poem, which occurs as part of the Mahabharata epic, is the Hindu Bible. The most poetical English translation is Edwin Arnold’s The Song Celestial (Philadelphia: David McKay, 75 cents). One of the best translations with detailed commentary is Sri Aurobindo’s Message Of The Gita (Jupiter Press, 16 Semudoss St., Madras, India, $3.50).
1-8:Babu (Mister) is placed in Bengali names at the end.
1-9: The phenomenal powers possessed by great masters are explained in chapter 30, “The Law of Miracles.”
1-10: A yogic technique whereby the sensory tumult is stilled, permitting man to achieve an ever-increasing identity with cosmic consciousness. (See chapter 26.)
1-11: A Sanskrit name for God as Ruler of the universe; from the root Is , to rule. There are 108 names for God in the Hindu scriptures, each one carrying a different shade of philosophical meaning.
1-12: The infinite potencies of sound derive from the Creative Word, Aum , the cosmic vibratory power behind all atomic energies. Any word spoken with clear realization and deep concentration has a materializing value. Loud or silent repetition of inspiring words has been found effective in Coueism and similar systems of psychotherapy; the secret lies in the stepping-up of the mind’s vibratory rate. The poet Tennyson has left us, in his Memoirs , an account of his repetitious device for passing beyond the conscious mind into superconsciousness:
“A kind of waking trance-this for lack of a better word-I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone,” Tennyson wrote. “This has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words-where death was an almost laughable impossibility-the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.” He wrote further: “It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind.”
1-13: Kali is a symbol of God in the aspect of eternal Mother Nature.