Date Posted:08:05 Author: Hendrik - 25 Aug 2002 Subject: Re: Swami Satyananda Giri In reply to:
Rishikesh - 25 Aug 2002
's message, "Swami Satyananda Giri" on 08:04
See also Kriyananda's article of last year, archived here:
I quote a passage from this lengthy article where Kriyananda mentions Satyananda:
Dhirananda seems to have claimed to be the author of several of
Yogananda’s books. I myself had occasion to interview Swami Satyananda, a
man who had no reason to love Yogananda (against whom he did considerable
mischief during his lifetime—motivated, one assumes, by envy). I wanted to
get from Satyananda stories he could remember about his boyhood years with
Yogananda, and, speaking to me as the Master’s disciple, Satyananda told me
stories that were supportive of Yogananda’s mission. He said, in
substantially the following words, "When Yogananda returned from his trip to
Japan, he did so with the inspiration for what he knew would be his central
message to the world: the universal desire of all human beings to escape
pain and find happiness—a happiness they could find only in God. He didn’t
know English well, so he asked Dhirananda, who was fluent in it, to write
this thesis for him, using the ideas he’d proposed." Dhirananda did so, in
the widely accepted capacity of ghost writer. Thus was written a short,
early work of Yogananda’s, The Science of Religion.
Laurie Pratt once told me—this was during the fifties—that she wanted to
omit that book from SRF’s publications, because it had too much of
Dhirananda’s "vibrations" in it. "He was such a pedant," she declared. "His
style was professorial, pompous, and dry." The thoughts, however, were
Yogananda’s, as even his enemy Satyananda had said.
Mischief? Enemy?? - What may this be about, or is Kriyananda merely overreacting?
