Date Posted:14:10 Author: Mike Drake 1 Jun 2001 Subject: Response to Ketch In reply to:
ketch - 1 Jun 2001
's message, "Re: Yogananda's" on 14:06
Right: Yogananda actually blessed the marriage in 1931. Then, eight years later, he invoked the marriage as the reason for ousting the member. This scarcely helps Yogananda’s case. If anything, it just makes his explanation for the ouster appear disingenuous.
The “our laws” may refer to the California ban on interracial marriage*, but in any case that doesn’t help either: at best, it suggests that Yogananda and SRF aided and abetted an unjust law.
The point of the “dirty chiseler” quotation isn’t that such language is “objectionable”. Rather, it is that one would expect greater equanimity from an “enlightened” being.
What I am “implying” (was it really all that implicit?) by my post is that Yogananda was probably a lot further away from enlightenment than many adherents believe. Just how far is an open question.
And no, I’m not a Christian fundie. I looked into Yogananda’s background only as the result of a debate with a friend (who himself is a Yogananda adherent). Which is why I suggested that Yogananda’s detractors and competitors shouldn’t take succor in my post: it is only by chance that I “investigated” Yogananda, and it might just as well have been any other guru.
I do not intend to offend, and readers may at their pleasure ignore the unfriendly facts I allege. But I am pleased to respond to those who thoughtfully disagree.
Best.
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NOTES
* This interpretation of Yogananda’s remark seems doubtful. While there was a ban on interracial marriage in California, it was probably sparsely enforced by the 1930s. In any case, Yogananda explained that Chowdhury was expelled from SRF because what he did was against “our” law (plural) – not “California” law or “the” law (singular). Maybe someone has more information on this. In all events, if California wanted keep its unjust, unconstitutional, unenlightened law on the books, it was California’s own duty to enforce it – not Yogananda’s or SRF’s.
