[rumbling]
[humming]
>> I was conscious in my mother's womb,
feeling the movements in her body,
aware of my own helpless state.
[heartbeat]
[rumbling]
This body, bundle of bones, is not I. Occasionally,
the darkness of the womb would be disappeared,
and light would visit me.
On one side, I wanted to express myself as a human being.
Yet, on the other side, I didn't,
because I felt I was spirit.
[rumbling]
[chatter]
I see behind the scenes.
The visible man is a shadow.
As soon as I change my consciousness,
I see everything just as if it were a motion picture.
>> I distinctly remember the excitement of meeting Swami
Yogananda.
He was straight from the heart.
He looked strange, like a woman with long hair.
But I remember his powerful eyes.
He created such a stir.
>> I remember the first time I heard Yogananda's voice.
I got a record, I think, from SRF, and I put it on.
I didn't know what to expect, you know?
And then this booming, powerful (LOUDLY) I, Paramahansa
Yogananda, am singing.
Sing with me.
I went, aaaagh.
>> I, Paramahansa Yogananda, am praying.
Pray with me.
Bless me, that with the awakening dawn
I may awaken all souls with my own and bring them to thee.
[music - paramahansa yogananda]
He wasn't trying to sing prettily.
He wasn't trying to entertain people.
He was singing, you know, to God.
It was so powerful.
>> While I was in India, I was with Ravi Shankar.
He gave me "Autobiography of a Yogi."
I just looked at the cover, and he just
zapped me with his eyes.
I mean, I can't imagine-- if I hadn't read that, I probably
wouldn't have a life, really.
I probably would have kicked the bucket,
or I'd just be, you know, some horrible person,
have a pointless life.
It just gave meaning to life.
>> Steve Jobs apparently had only one book on his iPad.
Lo and behold, that book turns out
to be "The Autobiography of a Yogi."
>> Yoga, for many, has become something that you do with
your body.
But the yogis never taught that.
The way that Yogananda taught yoga was use the body.
You have a body.
But it's really about the mind, expanding your consciousness.
>> Who am I?
Who you are?
Why we came to this Earth as a human?
>> It's really very easy to get lost in the complexity of life.
>> We are conflicted beings as humans.
One of the deepest things about us
is that our lives don't make sense except in the mystery.
>> Yogananda provided us a vocabulary to talk about
the human spirit that got away from dogma, and doctrine,
and ritual.
And whether it be a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish--
whatever tradition you're part of--
Yogananda charted a path inward that connected you
with your own divinity.
>> Buried during the Dark Ages, Kriya Yoga was revived
for modern man by the deathless yogi Mahavatar Babaji.
Babaji instructed Lahiri Mahasaya
to teach Kriya Yoga to others, the transmission
of the ancient science from guru to disciple.
Unknown to society in general, a great spiritual Renaissance
started in a remote corner of Banaras.
[chatter]
[chimes]
As the fragrance of flowers cannot be suppressed,
so devotees from every part of India began to seek the divine
nectar of this liberated master.
Day after day, the guru initiated one or two devotees
into Kriya Yoga, the science of meditation.
Early in their married life, my parents became disciples.
Lahiri Mahasaya predicted my birth and that
through this body many shall receive
the spiritual enlightenment of India.
The message of yoga will encircle the globe, he said.
It will aid in establishing the brotherhood of man.
But when I heard the word guru, it frightened me.
For I knew what that responsibility meant.
>> His great burden is to be the representative of this
5,000-year-old tradition.
>> This is a man with intuitive knowledge,
extraordinary yogic powers, and he could perceive events that
were decades in front of him.
But his teachings caused controversy.
>> He would be called into question,
and everything he worked for would unravel.
[whispering voices]
[locomotive]
>> Every soul is on a journey.
People are at different levels in that journey.
I think we all believe that there's more to life than what
we experience every day.
>> Yogananda happens to be what I would call a spiritual
prodigy, a spiritual genius, which means he had access
to a domain of awareness that most people don't have access
to.
Like mathematical geniuses, he explored
a much larger territory in the spiritual domain.
>> Sometimes, I used to lapse into the consciousness
of my true spirit.
Clear recollections came to me of a distant life
in which I had been a yogi amid the Himalayan snows.
>> He also had visions of seeing his guru.
Throughout the ages, there have been
mystics who come with special knowledge, that
helps us understand our place in the Universe.
Yogananda was born at the dawn of the Atomic Age, when
modern physics would shatter our most
basic beliefs about the nature of reality,
and paved the way for an ancient and hidden teaching
to be received by many.
>> Yogananda had been told since infancy by saints and seers
that he'd be taking these teachings to the West.
But he thought, how is this possible?
You know, it was absurd, because he barely spoke any English.
>> One day, my mind went away from Ranchi.
I went to the storeroom to meditate,
and I fell into an ecstasy.
[rumbling]
America.
Surely, these people are Americans.
>> It's scary to the mind.
I think the first thing was, [exhales] oh my god.
>> Imagine in your own life having a message so strong that
it totally changes your life in a moment.
And at that time, he'd been here about three years.
He probably thought this was his life work.
>> I had founded a school, following the educational
ideals of the rishis, whose forest ashrams had been
the ancient seat of learning.
Overcoming restlessness of the body and mind
by concentration techniques, achieved astonishing results.
>> He established a "How to Live" school.
I wish we had "How to Live" schools.
You have to learn your grammar.
You have to learn your math and your science.
But you also have to learn how to live.
>> --and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 [non-english speech] 1, 2, 3,
4, 5 [non-english speech]
>> Ma'am, love conquers all.
>> Love conquers all.
Very good.
>> He's in love with his country.
He is being respected by his community.
He's seeing his vision manifest where children are learning
the art and science of yoga.
And then he's sitting there, and all of a sudden
he becomes aware that he has to leave all of it.
>> God is taking me away to America.
>> He never wanted to come to America.
That was not part of his dream at all.
Let me just go to the Himalayas and just live in a cave there.
I can do good there.
I can pray for people.
But his teacher said no, you must go to the West.
Go to America.
>> Tears stood in my eyes as I cast a last look at the little
boys and the sunny acres of Ranchi.
I knew henceforth I would dwell in foreign lands.
[gunshots]
[MUSIC - SPIKE JONES AND HIS CITY SLICKERS,
"THE CHARLESTON"]
(SINGING) Charleston, Charleston, made in Carolina.
Some dance, some prance.
I'll say there's nothing finer than--
[clarinet solo]
>> How alone I was here.
Not a soul I knew.
I had heard many stories about the materialistic West,
a land very different from India.
It was somewhat of a daunting experience
to go out on the streets.
My strange dress prompted boyish mockery and--
and catcalls.
>> Who's that?
>> There were kids that were throwing stones at him,
calling him names.
>> I think he was called a magician at one point,
a snake charmer.
>> In 1920, many Americans were still not used to having Jews
here.
And now comes a darker-skinned swami
in orange robes and a turban.
>> I noticed some hot dog signs.
In imagination, I saw all kinds of dogs going through the meat
chopper, and I thought, my Lord, why
did you bring me to the land where people eat dogs?
>> When Yogananda came to United States,
it was after World War I. The world was a very different
place.
It was a very powerful time.
>> There was this upsurge of freedom--
freedom of sexuality, freedom of expression.
Boundaries of known reality were being shattered and penetrated.
You had the Einsteinian revolution sort
of flowering into quantum physics,
and it became clear that the world
was not what it appeared to be.
>> Western philosophers are talking about the death of God
and Yogananda says, it's not about the death of God.
It's about the reconceptualization
of the Divine.
>> It's significant that Yogananda's first lecture
in America was called the Science of Religion--
not Hinduism, because using religious terminology,
in Western people's minds, would place his offerings in a box.
But Self-Realization?
Oh.
Yoga?
Oh.
Those are universal.
>> The spine and the brain are the altars of God.
That's where the electricity of God
flows down into the nervous system, into the world,
and the searchlights of your senses are turned outwards.
But when you will reverse the searchlights, through Kriya
Yoga, and be concentrated in the spine,
you will behold the Maker.
That's what Self-Realization teaches--
the technique of meditation, recharging the body battery
with cosmic energy.
For it is not a creed or dogma, but a science
of the soul and spirit.
How the soul descended from the cosmic consciousness
into the earth, and the body and the senses
is the purpose of this work.
>> Imagine hearing that God is in your spine.
In 1920, it was radical.
It was a bold explanation of where to go to experience God.
>> For me, God is still a bit unfathomable.
>> She-- she's in everything.
She's in everyone.
>> If you call him energy, that's fine.
>> Yogananda thought of Self-Realization as a science.
He thought of Kriya Yoga as a science.
Religion has a lot of baggage, but a science
means that it's part of a scientific process.
It's empirical.
You can test certain things.
And your own spiritual practice and Self-Realization
is that scientific process.
>> An individual is sort of an organized packet
of consciousness that is part of a bigger ocean
of consciousness, in that when you are meditating and going
deep within, such as in yoga, your inner consciousness is
combining with that higher consciousness.
>> You couldn't have described to a Westerner what Yogananda
was teaching prior to the 20th century.
There simply wasn't a vocabulary for it.
The apparently solid body is made up of these whirling
atoms, and protons, and electrons,
and those are composed of energy--
the basic substance of creation.
>> The body is potentially vast and omnipresent.
This earth is nothing but movies to me.
Just like the beam of a motion picture,
so is everything made of shadows and light.
That's what we are-- light and shadows of the Lord,
nothing else than that.
There's one purpose-- to get to the beam.
>> But the doors of perception don't often open with
the intellect.
Something very powerful has to happen to shake us out
of our comfort zone.
>> It was in Bareilly on a midnight.
As I slept beside father, I was awakened by a peculiar flutter.
>> When he was about 11 years old,
he and his father were in northern India.
The family was temporarily separated,
and his mother had gone to Calcutta
to prepare for the wedding of the eldest brother.
And unknown to them, she had contracted Asiatic cholera.
>> He had a dream that night that his mother came to him.
>> The flimsy curtains parted, and I saw the beloved form
of my mother.
(WHISPERING) Rush to Calcutta if you would see me.
The wraith-like figure vanished.
Mother is dying.
I collapsed into an almost lifeless state.
>> A telegram arrived.
She had died in a matter of hours.
>> What was the purpose of this?
Her solacing black eyes had been my refuge in the trifling
tragedies of childhood.
>> Farewell, my child.
The cosmic mother will protect you.
>> (ECHOING) It is I who have watched over thee,
life after life, in the tenderness of many mothers.
See in my gaze the two black eyes, the lost, beautiful eyes
thou seekest.
>> I used to dream in my childhood,
a tiger used to break my leg at night.
Mother used to come running with a candle and say,
you are dreaming!
Where is it broken?
And then I used to laugh.
From that time on, I was watchful, even in dreams,
to separate the unreal from the real.
>> Once he had cracked open the door,
his world would never be the same.
But it would take time and many tests
before he would fully awaken into this new reality.
>> Merciful mother of the universe,
teach me thyself through visions,
or through a guru sent by thee.
I hoped to find him at the Himalayan snows,
the Master whose face often appeared to me in visions.
I gazed searchingly about me on any excursion from home
for the face of my destined guru.
One day, I wiped my tear-swollen face
and set out for the distant marketplace in Banaras.
Something told me to look behind.
I had seen him in dreams.
The face was the one I'd seen in 1,000 visions,
holding a promise that I had not fully understood.
[music playing]
I came to know him long before I met him in this life.
It was him.
It was my Master.
He said, I have been waiting.
>> A true guru is there to lead you to yourself,
not to himself, to what we are truly capable of, not just
the limited aspect of us.
>> The spiritual path is farthest from easy.
It requires undoing aspects of ourselves.
>> My guru could not be bribed, even by love.
The hard core of egotism is difficult to dislodge,
except rudely.
This flattening to the ego treatment was hard to endure.
I sometimes felt that metaphorically he
was discovering and uprooting every diseased tooth in my jaw.
Many teachers will tell you to believe and then put out
your eyes of reason.
My guru said, I want you to keep your eyes of reason open.
In addition, I will open in you the eye of wisdom.
[sitar music]
>> Yoga for me is freedom.
>> The state of needing nothing is yoga.
>> We become one with peace.
We become one with joy.
We become one with love.
And we realize that that is our true nature.
>> How tirelessly my Master labored,
that the boy Mukunda be transformed into the monk
Yogananda.
[streetcar bells]
Three happy years were spent in humble circumstances in Boston.
I gave public lectures, taught classes, and addressed
clubs, colleges, churches, and groups of every denomination.
>> But it took Yogananda a few years to realize that he
wasn't in the right place for this message to really take
off.
[music - "hooray for hollywood"]
[car horns]
>> In 1925, Yogananda arrives in Los Angeles.
And on the first night, according to the "L.A. Times,"
over 6,000 people attend his talk.
That's double the capacity of the auditorium.
Los Angeles is this new frontier.
It's a place of possibility of a new beginning.
Ideas of Asian spirituality have permeated
the West Coast in a way that they haven't on the East Coast.
>> People come to Los Angeles often looking for something.
So there's this already mind of a seeker.
>> Yogananda does a seven-night speaker series at the L.A.
Philharmonic Auditorium.
>> People go just to see the show and because he's exotic
and entertaining and a great speaker.
And then others really stick around and end up
finding that he has really powerful teachings,
and he's a very good vehicle for the message.
>> He knew the power of initiative.
He didn't wait for anybody to get this wisdom out.
He sent out lessons via mail.
Mail order at the time was completely brand new.
It was like sending out an e-blast today.
>> What Yogananda did that was profound for Americans was talk
about how you can have a personal relationship with
the Divine.
>> I was a totally frustrated man.
I had thought money could give me happiness,
but nothing seemed to satisfy me.
I was skeptical, like everyone was.
>> Sit straight, shoulder blades together,
chin parallel to the ground.
Concentrate on the point between the eyebrows--
center of thought and will and concentration.
And again and again, say, "Reveal Thyself"
as joy and wisdom and spiritual perception.
Again and again say, "Reveal Thyself."
>> James Lynn was a wealthy industrialist,
and he went on to become a very close devotee and an important
benefactor of Yogananda's work around the country.
>> Many who joined his classes stepped forward and wrote
checks, trying to keep Yogananda in L.A.
>> And he saw such enthusiasm.
He thought, this is the place to establish a center.
>> When I saw the large building on the crest of Mount
Washington, I recognized it at once.
>> As he saw, this is the place.
>> This became the headquarters of his work.
Yogananda called it the "spiritual White House,"
and it was a place where he gave classes.
He even had rooms available to rent with the idea of starting
a spiritual community.
And the first event he held there,
before the property was even purchased,
was an Easter Sunrise service.
>> True Christianity has been lost and forgotten.
And what the Ancients taught in India
has been lost and forgotten.
Those ought to be revived as one highway to the infinite.
>> One of the keys to Yogananda's popularity
in America was his love and affection for Jesus.
He placed Jesus on the altar with his lineage
and with Krishna.
>> He said that Jesus really was representing to us this is who
you are.
This is your ability to open yourself
to the Divine Mystery in ways that you never
thought were possible.
>> Jesus is revered in India.
People don't realize that.
But he is held to be either an incarnation of God
or, at the very least, a supreme yogi.
>> The value of Yogananda's teaching was that he picked up
on this angle, that there is this universal opportunity
to understand who we are.
What is true of Jesus is also true of all of us.
>> It's not about religion at all.
It's about what's behind religion--
meditation.
Meditate.
That's what he said.
Meditation is the catchword.
>> Yoga really is a philosophical system.
A lot of people go to yoga to look hot.
It's not set up to give you flat abs,
even though that's a nice byproduct.
It's really set up to understand God.
>> Kriya Yoga is the science of God-Realization through
meditation.
>> Yogananda did teach Hatha Yoga as one way to prepare
for meditation.
>> He also developed this system of energization exercises.
>> The tension exercises--
charge the body with the life current from the universe.
Energy distributed evenly in the body
is what the diseases from settling.
You don't have to be afraid of germs.
If your body is electrified, they will be electrocuted.
>> Everything you do affects your brain.
By tensing the muscles, you're activating your frontal lobes.
If you lower the stress hormones in the brain,
it lowers your blood pressure and your heart rate,
and it gets your mind prepared for doing whatever
it is that you're about to do.
>> Kriya Yoga teaches in the spine are these instruments
of higher perception that are normally dormant in most
people.
Through withdrawing that energy and directing it
by concentration into the spine and brain,
Yogananda said those instruments of divine perceptions awaken.
The physical world is not the highest reality.
>> When we have a dream at night,
it feels incredibly real while we're in the dream.
And then we wake up, and we look at the reality
that we're now in, and we say, oh OK, that was just a dream.
Well, when people have mystical experiences they say,
well, this is the ultimate reality.
This feels more real.
And all this other stuff, that's not really the real reality.
>> Feel the life currents ascending and descending
in the spine.
By mastery of the intelligent life currents
in the central nervous system, the body and brain
can be purified.
Go up and down the spine, feeling the centers,
and mentally chanting "ohm."
[typewriter keys clacking]
>> Dear Guruji, I have absorbed so much.
I will try to keep it all within me and profit by it.
Self-Realization has helped my career.
It has helped me to think very little of me
and let the Great Spirit pass through me.
[MUSIC - AMELITA GALLI CURCI, "AIDA, O TERRA, ADDIO"]
>> Dear Swami Dhirananda, our existence here depends
on the success of Los Angeles.
You are needed.
>> Mount Washington needed someone to be at the helm while
Guruji travelled throughout the United States, lecturing,
giving classes.
He brought one of his most beloved friends
who was a very capable teacher.
He was very well liked.
>> I'm powerless to tell how greatly he has helped me
in carrying on my educational work in India and Boston.
He successfully carried on the work at the Ranchi school
during my absence from India.
>> This was his childhood friend from Calcutta.
And I think as boys both of them felt
that their families didn't understand
their spiritual longings.
In fact, Dhirananda said that it was impossible for him
to even meditate at his family home.
So Yogananda allowed him to hide out in his attic room,
and he would sneak food up to him after the meals.
[music - "sunday"]
>> The 1920s was a period of almost ceaseless travel
for him.
He was visiting all of the largest cities
in the United States, where people
were getting their first glimpse of this yoga philosophy.
[car horns]
>> There is no precursor for Yogananda.
He has to do something completely new
that no one has done before.
There is no path.
>> There were other gurus who came.
Swami Vivekananda, whom Yogananda respected greatly,
had been here and started the Vedanta Society in the 1890s.
But he only stayed a few years.
Yogananda was the first major guru
to have a nationwide impact and really make America his home.
>> In America everybody is busy.
And if you keep on running after too many hobbies,
you won't have any time left for bliss.
>> Everything was covered in the lessons,
from how to achieve success in our life,
magnetizing or attracting your soul mate, creating abundance,
how to create harmony with others, how to find happiness.
>> You people do not sleep correctly.
You subconsciously worry about unpaid bills
and allow your sleep to be disturbed
by the mental movies of dreams.
By closing the eyes and enough relaxation,
I can remain asleep several nights.
And by opening the eyes and recharging the body,
I can keep awake several days.
>> Willpower is really one of the absolute necessities
for spiritual progress.
Yogananda defined willpower in this way.
He said, will is that which changes thought into energy.
>> He asked the six men to line up with their hands on each
other's back, making a line across the platform.
Swamiji said to the first one, put your hands on my stomach.
With just a tiny straightening of his body
and a quick flick of his stomach,
Swamiji sent the six men catapulting across the stage.
[laughter]
>> What's the key of success?
Concentration power.
You meditate too achieve the concentration powers.
>> He would control his heart and stop the pulse,
and the doctors would rush, check his pulse-- he's dying,
he doesn't have a pulse.
And then he would bring himself back to life.
>> Every human being in the world has a supernatural power.
But having doesn't mean anything if you don't know
how to use it.
>> Yoga combines the physical, mental, and spiritual forces.
Bikram must be in complete control,
or he's in danger of being impaled.
Here he goes!
He did it!
And Yogi Bikram is all right.
>> But before you use it, you have to realize it.
That's why Yogananda called Self-Realization.
You have to realize that power--
supernatural, cosmic, physical, mental, spiritual power.
>> Don't take my word for anything.
Apply these techniques and find out for yourselves.
>> Here is a small, brown mystic from a nation that very few
Americans had ever been to, much less read about.
And he is here delivering his message with such force
through personal transmission to people who came to see him.
>> Most important is to create a church within yourself where
you are the minister in the temple of your own soul.
>> When somebody is in a deep meditation,
there are changes in the brain.
We've seen changes in the brain scans
of the different parts of the brain that become more active.
What you're seeing during a meditation practice
is a very substantial decrease of activity
in the part of the brain which normally helps
to create a sense of our self and a sense of our orientation
in space and time.
As you progressively block the activity in that area,
then you block your ability to establish your sense of self
as distinguished from the rest of the world.
And you begin to feel that sense of deep connectedness,
or oneness, with everything in the world.
>> I'm a physicist and a physician.
I spent years between the Harvard physics department
and the Harvard Medical School, going back and forth
across the Charles River, but they don't talk to each other.
As a child, having been exposed to things
like Vedic philosophy, growing up in rural Mississippi,
I became inspired by this deep belief
that there is an underlying unity in nature.
I wish these different fields could come together.
And so that led me to want to combine these two worlds
of physics and biomedicine.
Physics-- our physics of the last century--
has not come to terms with life, living systems, and things
like consciousness.
The writings of Yogananda are very
appealing to a scientific appetite.
He was committed to bringing together
the technology and the material efficiency
of the scientific understanding of the West
with the ancient spiritual wisdom of the East
and creating a unified framework and an integrated approach
to living life on this planet.
>> In Washington, something remarkable happened.
Yogananda drew the largest audience as a public speaker
had drawn in the city--
congressmen, senators, judges-- and he
was even invited to the White House by President Coolidge.
But Yogananda came in for a rude awakening
when he was in Washington, which is really
part of the American South.
>> In the national capital, I was told that white people only
would be permitted to attend the classes.
This surprised me very much.
I defied this and founded an Afro-American yoga center
to teach my Negro brethren.
Cosmic delusion is always snaring us
through our ignorance.
>> The Civil Rights Movement was still decades away,
and it was inspired, in fact, by a revolution that was fomenting
in India.
>> Many people don't realize that Gandhi was a yogi,
and he was putting yoga principles such as nonviolence
into action on a mass scale.
>> Yogananda himself was a very open and vocal supporter
of Gandhi and lectured at Harvard about him and his
movement.
>> And for this, he was put on a government watch list and kept
under surveillance.
>> Anyone affiliated with India and someone specifically
affiliated with Mahatma Gandhi would be a person of interest
for the American government.
>> Why are these people drawn to this heathen teacher?
What is he doing behind closed doors?
Are they trying to overthrow our government too?
>> There was literally a war against yoga being waged
in the media.
>> A huge scandal erupted when Swami Dhirananda,
Yogananda's right-hand man, was discovered giving private
lessons to a married woman, and her husband found out about it,
stormed Mount Washington, and a brawl erupted.
There were crazy tracts being written--
rumors, all kinds of allegations,
not just about Yogananda, but some of the other swamis
and yoga teachers, that this was a love cult
and they were corrupting the women of America.
>> Yogananda, as a yogi, would often talk about mastery over
one's sexuality, over one's own urges, self-discipline.
But oftentimes that was misinterpreted
to mean something scandalous.
>> You had a kind of paranoia on the part of the husbands
and law enforcement officials that, you know,
we couldn't trust our women with these dark-skinned foreigners.
>> You can read between the lines here what the problem
really is.
I mean, this was a period where miscegenation laws--
you know, you were forbidden in America
if you were white to marry a brown-skinned man or woman.
So I mean, it was illegal to mix the races at that point.
>> This marriage is symbolical of breaking down the barriers
of the brown Caucasian of India and the white Caucasian
of America.
>> Ohm.
Amen.
Ohm.
>> On the one hand, open-minded Americans revered him,
but his unorthodox views really raised the ire of more
conservative Americans.
By the time he went into the Deep South,
it really reached a fevered pitch.
>> Swami was ordered to leave Miami for his own safety.
The husbands of more than 200 Miami women
were preparing to quote, "get the Hindu."
[chatter]
>> His supporters swarmed City Hall.
And during the hearing, Police Chief Quigg
claims that Yogananda tried to hypnotize him.
>> Yogananda is no longer being invited to receive the keys
to different cities.
He's no longer being invited to speak
to different religious congregations.
>> I am going through the severest trial of my life.
Judge for yourself the lying capacity of the newspapers.
>> Back in Los Angeles, the District Attorney eventually
cleared Yogananda and Mount Washington of all wrongdoing,
but the damage had already been done.
>> The fruits of a lifetime of service to mankind reduced
to ashes by the soulless efforts of yellow journalism.
>> All these incidents culminated in a falling out
between Yogananda and Dhirananda.
>> Dhirananda left and he started another organization
not far from Mount Washington.
>> And many of the students went with Dhirananda
because Yogananda had been busy touring the country
for the last year.
[music playing]
>> The final heartbreak came a couple of years later,
when Dhirananda left the swami order altogether and married
one of his Los Angeles students.
Then he sued Yogananda for his share of the work
they had done together.
>> With a heavy heart, I'm starting for Mexico,
cutting loose from everything that I may consecrate myself
to God entirely.
Divine Mother, free me.
Let me go back to India to serve you there-- not here,
where there is bitterness and heartache and frustration
and no one to listen to your message.
>> In Yogananda's darkest hours, there's only one place that he
went.
He always went within.
We call it God, place of stillness.
>> Many times I have tried to walk away from these
organizational responsibilities, but every time Divine Mother
comes and takes me by the ear and says, come back.
>> And he said, when I received that answer, I wept.
And I knew I had to go back.
I knew this is what God wanted from me.
>> Walking only under the guise of denunciation
or non-attachment is the easy part.
It shows more spiritual fiber to live a godly life
in the jungle of civilization.
I love all, even those who avow themselves my enemies.
For I see thee in every being.
I will rebuild this organization from scratch,
just as I did when I arrived from India in 1920.
>> With that renewed faith and the determination that he would
not give up, even though he was sorely tried and wanted
to leave, he began to draw disciples.
One of them was me.
I came in 1931, and many other young people came.
There were older people here.
That was all ages living here.
>> Yogananda had consistently drawn his devotees from all
walks of life--
prominent businessmen judges, lawyers,
even hardened journalists.
>> But by the early 1930s, something very different was
beginning.
A small core group of devotees came to Yogananda
and asked to be accepted into this monastic path
of complete renunciation, to completely devote
their whole lives to following his teachings,
and seeking God through this path of Kriya Yoga meditation.
James Lynn, the wealthy businessman, was one of them.
And he'd go on to become a highly advanced yogi
and take monastic vows like the others.
And so, through Yogananda, this ancient monastic swami order
from India took root in America.
>> Now began the training.
I knew nothing about renunciation.
>> The new monastics took strict vows, like Yogananda himself,
of simplicity, celibacy, obedience, and loyalty.
Yogananda's lay students faced other challenges.
>> I'd been there about six or seven weeks.
And I said, Guruji, all my life I heard thou canst not,
thou shalt not, thou must not.
These are the rules of the religious teachings that I've
heard around my relatives.
What I want to know from you is, what canst thou?
He said, (MIMICKING YOGANDA) well, do you smoke?
I said, yes.
He said, you may continue.
Do you drink alcohol?
I said, yes.
He said you may continue.
Do you enjoy the opposite sex promiscuously?
Yes.
Well, you may continue.
I said, wait a minute.
You mean that I can come up on this hill
here, in this good place with all
of these wonderful people, your disciples and the devotees
and the brothers up here, and study these teachings,
and I go back down there and do all these things.
(MIMICKING YOGANANDA) Absolutely.
But I will not promise you that as you continue
to study these teachings that the desire to do these things
will not fall away from you.
>> Repeated performance of inaction creates a mental
blueprint, causing the formation of subtle electrical pathways
in the brain, somewhat like the grooves in a phonograph record.
Your life follows the grooves that you yourself
have created in the brain.
>> It appears that Yogananda was talking about neuroplasticity
almost 50 years before Western doctors took an interest in it.
He said that regular Kriya practice
could rewire your brain and help eliminate unwanted habits.
>> So "The Autobiography of a Yogi"
is the book that I keep stacks of them around the house,
and I give it out constantly, you know, to people.
You know like when people need re-grooving, I say, read this.
>> We are not talking about suppression.
We are talking about transmutation.
Re-channeling-- that's the whole science of yoga--
re-channeling your energy, creating
new patterns of thinking, new patterns of the emotional life.
>> When he looked at you penetratingly, he was changing.
He said when he looked at you, he
was changing your brain cells.
And he did.
>> He started going in to my inner thoughts and feelings,
maybe things where you've slipped a little.
He dissected me on the deepest level I'd ever been.
I felt like I was being carved down
until a little tiny person, down to almost like an ant.
And I remember I just literally couldn't take any more.
I humanly, emotionally couldn't take it.
You know, I was hurting.
I mean, I was crying.
He reached over, and he gave me a big hug.
I've given you my unconditional love, he says.
Do not fail to take advantage of it.
It's a friendship and a love that he took you as you were,
and he gave it all to you, as much as you could take.
[thunder]
>> There is just a thin screen of ether between the world
and my guru.
He's haunting me day and night.
(LOUDLY) Return to India.
You must come make the supreme effort.
Traversing 10,000 miles in the twinkling of an eye,
his message penetrated my being like a flash of lightning.
I have spent 15 years in spreading my guru's teachings
in America.
Now he recalls me.
Our arrival found such an immense crowd assembled
to greet us, I was unprepared for the magnitude
of our welcome.
We broke our journey halfway across the continent
to see Mahatma Gandhi.
After great discussions, he took lessons, Kriya, and recharging
exercises.
I was touched by his spirit of inquiry.
When we prayed together, the whole place
seemed filled with God.
>> Master could hardly wait till he got to meet his master.
[chatter]
It was indescribable, the meeting between the two.
Master dropped to his knees, touched
his feet of Sri Yukteswar Giri.
Sri Yukteswar Giri was welcoming back his triumphant son.
>> A healing calm descended at the mere sight of my guru.
Quietly sitting beside him, I would feel his bounty
pouring peacefully over my being.
Such spiritual atmosphere, I so long missed.
Day and night passes with God mad, God hungry clouds.
It's wonderful to work amongst people who don't need coaxing
to be spiritual.
The Himalayan kids are calling me,
and the people's heart kids are welcoming me.
But for a few beloved disciples at Mount Washington,
I have no attraction to go back to America.
I would roam by the Yumana, where Krishna played
his flute of eternity and never visit
the shores of material life.
[locomotive, clanging]
The lion of Bengal is gone.
[music playing]
The body which had reflected omnipresent wisdom
lay lifeless before me mocking.
Master mine, why did you leave me?
The Lord is showing me wherever I am, that's my home.
My home is on the train.
Then it shall be in the hotel and then on the ship.
How can I leave my home?
It's everywhere.
[gunfire]
>> When Sri Yukteswar first sent Yogananda on his mission
to America, it was right after World War I,
which was supposed to be the war to end all wars.
Now, tensions were heating up in Europe and Asia,
and Yogananda saw that we could be entering a period of even
greater horror.
The need for the teachings was more urgent than ever.
[MUSIC - PHILIP GLASS, "WHY DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO DIE"]
>> After his guru died, something shifted in him.
He was just experiencing these profound states
of consciousness.
>> His eyes just turned glassy.
He just [whistles] withdrew, and he was gone, you know?
>> And oft times, it gave concern to us younger ones.
His heart seemed to cease beating.
He had instructed us that whenever
he went into samadhi that we could bring him out
of it by chanting "ohm" in his right ear.
>> And I thought, wow, this is something different.
This was a little scary.
>> Is my guru always now going to be in this state?
I would be in awe to ever approach him in the same way.
>> And my body became just like stone,
and still I was fully conscious, and everything was light.
>> And it was out of that consciousness that he was
pulling these writings, these profound truths
and experiences.
>> He constantly stressed to me, get my thoughts,
understand what I mean--
I can do much more now to reach others with my pen.
>> "The Autobiography of a Yogi" was the first memoir
of a genuine Indian holy man.
>> It was his personal feeling about his devotion to his gurus
and what he's really received from them.
>> But it's not all that Yogananda wrote.
Yogananda produced an incredible literary corpus.
>> Every morning he would have us bring a typewriter
and a table and bring it into his study.
>> He will be up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning writing.
>> Night and day he wrote, or he dictated,
and we would type all day long.
>> And he would be totally, totally absorbed.
Hours would go by.
His whole consciousness became absorbed
in finishing his writings.
And it was that sense of urgency--
it was like an acceleration--
an acceleration of our discipline, of our training.
>> And not only was he writing, he was building temples,
founding brotherhood colonies, and encouraging people to live
together in spiritual communities.
And then in 1945, while he was writing "The Autobiography,"
we set off the first atomic bomb.
[explosion]
>> A few people cried.
Most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture,
the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds."
>> About 100 years ago, Einstein gave us a framework that
radically changed modern physics.
It put energy and matter on some sort of equivalent footing.
We're going to have to expand the language of physics
to come to terms, not only with matter and energy,
but matter, energy, and maybe even consciousness.
>> The human mind can and must liberate within itself energies
greater than those within stones and metals,
lest the atomic giant, newly unleashed,
done on the world in mindless destruction.
>> Modern times as it is now is based on what is called
the subject-object split.
I am the subject, and there is the universe.
Whereas spirituality says that there
is a consciousness that includes the subject and the object.
Consciousness gives rise to everything,
including the brain.
>> We have been brought up to think that the mind is this
thing that sits up here somewhere in the brain.
But really the mind is everywhere.
>> Some people have argued that consciousness resides in every
cell of our body.
The only way for us to really understand
the nature of consciousness and what it is,
is to explore it both from sort of the outside
in and from the inside out.
>> Delusion is the belief that there is something outside
of you.
But your happiness is not based on anything outside of you--
in the inside, wherein the watcher
is watching all of the craziness, kind of just
laughing.
So look inside for the watcher and be
connected to the watcher, and then be awake.
>> The Indian teachings that Yogananda represented were not
escapes.
They were methods of adapting to these upheavals
and these changes, because they remind people
that we are more than the personality and the roles
that we play and the body we inhabit.
>> When I am the soul, I know that nothing is important
on the earth-- nothing, nothing at all.
Only love is important.
>> If we're going to change those kind of circumstances
so there's hope for our survival,
the change has to come from inside out.
>> A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands.
>> Yogananda saw that if there wasn't some way to reach
the masses with this message of yoga--
this message of experiencing the spirit within every human
being--
the world would not survive the transition into the Atomic Age.
>> They were leading this foundation at that time
to bring the teachings current, so they can really create
a transformation on a collective level in the world,
not just in the forest.
The forest is here now.
This is bigger and is ever increasing.
If you don't practice the teachings here,
there will be no forest left at all.
>> "The Autobiography" was a doorway in.
It was a table-setter for millions of people.
Whether they ended up being practitioners
of Kriya Yoga or not, Yogananda was a doorway into whatever
pathway they found.
[chatter, music playing]
>> On the way out of the memorial service for Steve,
they handed us a copy of Yogananda's book.
Steve's last message to us was actualize yourself.
That was Yogananda's message.
>> He was constantly encouraging you to simultaneously be able
to think of yourself as this little blip on the planet.
But on the other hand, you also had infinite potentialities.
You had the eternal soul in you.
So can you simultaneously operate
with that awareness of recognizing,
in a humble way, the limited bounds of your human life
and at the same time the infinite potentialities of you
as a soul?
>> We have a far too limited sense of our capacity as human
beings to overcome disease, to overcome poverty,
and therefore, to allow that power to begin to transform
the world.
>> When the ambassador of India visited Los Angeles
for the first time, how happy Yogananda was that this
representative of free India, liberated from the colonial
rule, had come to Los Angeles, and he was able to honor him.
A banquet was organized to welcome the ambassador,
and Yogananda, being one of the most well known Indians
in the community, was invited to give one of the key speeches
that night.
>> The night before, when walking down the hall,
he turned to me and said, do you know it is just a matter
of hours, and I will be gone?
>> When Master got up to speak, I was there.
He had always said, when I die, I
want to die speaking of my America and my India.
>> Free me then, oh Lord, from the bondage of the body that I
may show others how they can free themselves.
>> --lotus, scenic beauty, and sages, thy wide doors are open,
welcoming God's true sons through all the ages,
where Ganges woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God.
I am hallowed.
My body touched that sod.
>> He finished saying, "I am hallowed.
My body touched that sod," and then collapsed to the floor.
>> As I knelt over his body, a tremendous force entered this
body with the message to my soul,
this time you cannot call him back.
>> In the yoga tradition, there is a sacred practice of knowing
when you will leave your body, and soul consciousness moves
to a grander space.
The doctor said that he had a heart attack.
>> Watch the show of the universe,
but do not become absorbed in it.
I behold life and death like the rise and fall of waves
on the sea.
I am the ocean of consciousness.
>> The guru can't be a little old man in a blanket or a guy
in robes.
It could look like that, because guru-ness
might be living in that body for a while,
and it interacts with you because you have
a karmic tie with that being.
But that being, if he's really a guru,
he's not at all identified with being in that body.
[bell]
Once I ask the saint in India, after Maharani died, and I
said, how can I get closer to my guru?
He looked at me like I was crazy.
He said, your guru is what's looking out of your eyes
right now.
So get with that for a while.
[MUSIC - ALANIS MORISSETTE, "STILL"]
(SINGING) I am the harm that you inflict.
I am your brilliance and frustration.
I'm the nuclear bombs if they're to hit.
I am your immaturity and your indignance.
I am your misfits and your praised.
I am your doubt and your conviction.
I am your charity and your rape.
I am your grasping and expectation.
I see you averting your glances.
I see you cheering on the war.
I see you ignoring your children.
And I love you still.
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
[vocalizing]
>> Everything is Brahma.
Everything is spirit.
Everything is light.
[MUSIC - GEORGE HARRISON, "GIVE ME LOVE"]
(SINGING) Give me love.
Give me love.
Give me peace on earth.
Give me light.
Give me life.
Keep me free from birth.
Give me hope.
Help me cope with this heavy load, trying to touch and reach
you with heart and soul.
Oh my Lord, please take hold of my hand,
that I might understand you.
Won't you please, oh, won't you?
Give me love.
Give me peace on earth.
Give me light.
Give me life.
Keep me free from birth.
Give me hope.
Help me cope with this heavy load, trying to touch and reach
you with heart and soul.
Oh my Lord.
Won't you please, oh, won't you?
Give me love.
Give me peace on earth.
Give me light.
Give me life.
Keep me free from birth.
Give me hope.
Help me cope with this heavy load, trying to touch and reach
you with heart and soul.
Oh, give me love.
Give me love.
Give me peace on earth.
Give me light.
Give me life.
Keep me-- keep me from birth.
Now, give me hope.
But help me cope with this heavy load, trying to touch and reach
you with heart and soul.
Oh my Lord.
[music playing]