stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

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violent temper and was a little bit arrogant” (Rawlinson,
1997).
* * *
It is well known that Yogananda took great delight in the technological
innovations of his day, including the garbage disposal. Less
celebrated are his own alleged contributions to the progress of science
and technology, as per Walters (2002):
I would say that Paramhansa [sic] Yogananda was a prophet
for the New Age. Monasteries? yes, but far more than that....
In pursuit of universal upliftment [he] spoke, in private
conversation with me, of certain inventions he had inspired,
or in one case discovered among practices in India and elsewhere....
He even said he’d introduced the concept of covers
on toilet seats.
It is not easy to know how to react to such a claim. Nor is it
easy to know where to rank it in comparison with the scatological
inspirations of Eileen Caddy, Bhagawan Nityananda or the Dalai
Lama, for example.
Perhaps it is enough to simply say, “Jai, guru. Jai.”
* * *
Of course, no guru could have worked for years in Los Angeles
without accumulating a few “star” disciples. Famous followers and
acquaintances of Yogananda, then, have included Greta Garbo
(who also frequented the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta Center
in Hollywood) and the actor Dennis Weaver (Gunsmoke). The
latter used to give monthly sermons at the SRF Lake Shrine temple,
located where L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard meets the Pacific
Ocean, near Malibu.
A stone sarcophagus in that same park-like setting contains
the only portion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes to exist outside of India.
(Yogananda claims in the Autobiography to have initiated
Gandhi into kriya yoga in 1935. There is much reason, however, to
question whether the Mahatma actually practiced that technique
on any regular basis afterward.) Of course, it is actually against
Hindu religious practice to keep the ashes of a departed soul for
display, as opposed to scattering them into bodies of water: “When
the ashes are kept on the land, the belief is that the soul remains