From Swami Kriyananda - Continued...
(J. Donald Walters)
November 1992
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What did Master mean by, "We Are Not a Sect"?
A sect is a group of religious worshipers with a system of beliefs that sets them apart from other groups. Usually, this group is a separate body within a larger body of worshipers. Often it is considered heretical by the larger body, or by others to whose beliefs it does not conform.
When Master said, "We are not a sect," obviously what he meant, first and foremost, was that our faith rests not on any system of beliefs, but on the direct experience of God. Secondly, what he meant was that he didn't set his teachings apart from other religious teachings. When I asked him once, "Is this a new religion?" his reply was, "It is a new expression." The true religion of mankind, in other words, is one and eternal (sanatana). All religions are but variant expressions of that one, eternal religion (sanatan dharma).
He called SRF a "Church of All Religions." In so doing, as you of course know, he didn't at all mean that his teachings were eclectic. In other words, they didn't draw from other religions to create a sort of macédoine of ideas in the name of some new, supposedly universal teaching, much as certain modern artists have done in sticking bits and pieces of paper together in a meaningless jumble and calling them "art."
John Ball, the noted novelist, wrote an interesting book titled The Fourteenth Point. In it he imagined a congress of the heads of the major religions of the world. Their purpose was to see whether points of agreement could be found in their teachings that they might present to the world in the form of a universal statement on the meaning and purpose of religion. The idea was to show religion as possessing that degree of universality which is encountered today in the physical sciences.
Unfortunately for the plan, the different representatives couldn't agree on a single issue, not even on basic ones such as the existence of the soul, of life after death, or of God. The tenets of every religion were, in some way, exclusive and unique.
Finally, the Dalai Lama broke the deadlock by proposing a teaching to which all of them agreed. It was the universal teaching, variously phrased in every religion: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
I remarked to the author after reading his book, a copy of which he'd graciously presented to me, "It's a fascinating study, John. But you've touched too lightly on the real point of unanimity between the different religions. What this 'universal teaching' demonstrates is that when a religious tenet rests on universal human experience, its truth is instantaneously recognized. When it rests on abstract beliefs, however, even if those beliefs derive from the spiritual experiences of a great master, the interpretations that are given to those experiences by spiritually unenlightened minds will be numerous, mutually exclusive, and untrustworthy. Beyond this single 'universal teaching' of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, but well exemplified by it, what we find in all religions is their dedication to uplifting the consciousness of humanity.
"One way of uplifting it," I continued, "is by broadening people's sympathies, as this 'universal teaching' aspires to do. Systems of abstract belief don't really define a religion. The very goal of religion is to take people, wherever each of them may be in his spiritual evolution, and help them to grow toward the experience of Ultimate Truth. It is this fact which places religion on a par with, and even far above, the modern physical sciences."
Master's teachings made this explanation self-evident. He showed us that, even as the people in medieval times believed the world to be flat although their mere believing didn't make it so, in the same way, mere belief in God is not proof in itself of His existence. We must, Master taught, realize the truth for ourselves, even as the old explorers proved that the world was round by circumnavigating it. That faith which St. Paul described as "the proof of things unseen" is the intuitive conviction which comes as a result of actual, divine perception.
Yogananda emphasized individual self-realization
This need for realizing the truth personally in one's Self was reiterated by Master so frequently that it might seem foolish of me to emphasize it to you, of all people, were it not with the intention of making a further point. And yet, I must admit that this point is one I wouldn't have thought needed making, either. Certainly, you speak often enough of man's need to realize God. Why, then, have you treated Master's work as though it were a sect? It was not founded on any system of unilateral dogmas and beliefs. Why, then, this hostility to any expression of his teachings other than your own? Why must any such expression, according to you, by very definition represent a "distortion," even a "betrayal"?
The further point is that Paramhansa Yogananda gave his very religion the name, "Self-realization." This can only mean that its primary emphasis is, as he consistently said that it was, on the spiritual development of the individual, and not on the outer form of the organization. "Fellowship," he said, in the name, "Self-Realization Fellowship," means "fellowship with God and with other truth-seeking souls." "Fellowship," in this sense, is an English rendering of the Sanskrit word, satsanga, "good company," the importance of which the Indian Scriptures stress again and again—not as an organizational structure, but as a practice for the spiritual development of the individual devotee.
Master's emphasis, as was Lahiri Mahasaya's, as was Sri Yukteswar's, as has ever been that of every saint and master in India, was on what the individual seeker must do to find God. The devotee must endeavor to realize the Self in deep meditation. He should also keep company with other devotees—preferably with wise devotees, and most preferably of all with a wise guru; and he must carefully avoid association with worldly people.
When Master said that Self-realization will become the new religion of the world, did he mean that the organization, Self-Realization Fellowship Church, Inc., would in future become the official religion of mankind? that this religion would have a single Board of Directors as its supreme authority, guided by a universal pope in the person of the SRF President, and a single voice, the President's, authorized to speak for the line of SRF Gurus to the whole world?
Is this what you really believe? It certainly is what you seem to imply.
Such a world church could not possibly avoid the pitfalls attendant upon worldly power, with which the Christian religion has been afflicted throughout its nearly two thousand years of history.
Only those with "status" in the organization may "see" Master
A woman in Germany some years ago received, or at least believed that she'd received, a vision of Yogananda. She told me how deeply offended she was with Mt. Washington when it sought in letters to disabuse her of what it labeled her "delusion." (Surely SRF didn't mean to imply that only members of the Board of Directors may expect to be granted true visions of Master!)
As she spoke, I was reminded of an article that appeared many years ago in a Catholic journal. The article commented on Yogananda's description, in Autobiography of a Yogi, of his visit to Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth, in 1936. "As if a Hindu yogi," scoffed the author of that article, "could have a true Catholic vision!"
Perhaps what your letter intended was only that visions granted to people with no official status in the work cannot be accepted as bearing the weight of revelation, to which you might then be obligated to listen. (There's a whole system of dogma to be woven around that single thought! But why bother, if Master didn't want dogmas anyway? Why insist on creating permanent precedents?) I don't know whether that woman's vision was genuine. She seemed humble enough about it, and had shared it, she informed me, with only one other person, an SRF devotee and confidante of hers. But the question of its genuineness isn't the issue here. What is the issue is your apparent presumption that it could not have been genuine.
You advised her to seek psychiatric help. It is not for me to judge the wisdom of your advice, though I must say she seemed normal enough to me, and has continued to seem normal in our subsequent years of association with her. It worries me, however, that her lack of standing in the organization may have been the real reason you rejected her vision as delusional.
Master made it clear in his teachings that it is the saints who are the true custodians of religion. Not popes. Not cardinals. Not hierarchies of clergy of any description. And certainly not institutions, which, once they assume the mantle of custodianship, make it serve institutional ends far more than spiritual ones.
All roads now lead to SRF, since Yogananda's passing
I've noticed even in the numerous editorial changes you've made in Autobiography of a Yogi since Master's passing that, by and large, they serve the end of boosting SRF as Master's official mouthpiece on earth.
When I first read his autobiography in 1948, I didn't even get the clear impression that there was an organization, except a peaceful hermitage in Encinitas where devotees lived serenely for God, sent out weekly lessons to fellow seekers, and enjoyed a life of God-remembrance and divine love. Nothing big. Nothing important. Nothing—God forbid!—that would take to suing others in the name of institutional monopoly.
If saints are the true custodians of religion, they should be encouraged to flourish within the bounds of SRF. They should not be allowed to find themselves pushed out in the name of sectarian exclusiveness.
Too many rules kill the spirit
I remember a story of Ramana Maharshi, whose brother was, I gather, rather a martinet. This story was told me by Sri Rama Yogi, whom I'll be mentioning again later on. The disciples often complained to their guru that they felt suffocated by the rules and regulations imposed on them by his brother. Paul Brunton, a highly advanced disciple, finally couldn't take it any longer, and actually left the ashram. (Master's comment to me: "He couldn't forget that he was English!")
One day this brother made a new rule: Ashram residents were no longer to pass through the office at lunchtime on their way to the dining room; they must walk around the building. This particular rule might not be considered to have been unnaturally oppressive. Perhaps office work was being disrupted by the daily invasion. Still, it was during lunchtime that people passed through there. And the shortcut did save them a fair amount of walking. Anyway, they complained to Ramana Maharshi. The master replied, "This place no longer feels like ours. Let us leave here." (Needless to add, the brother hastily rescinded his regulation!)
What saint would want to put up with the petty restrictions of institutionalism? Oh, he might follow along in the name of humility. The chances are, however, that he would withdraw from outer involvement. Catholic saints haven't felt they had the option of withdrawing from the Church. Self-confessedly, however, they've found its rigid institutionalism a heavy burden. In most cases, the very persecution they've endured has been instigated by the Church itself. Hindu saints, who have not been raised under such limitations, would simply bless the institution and leave it—as, indeed, a number whom I've known personally have actually done.
Our own tradition as Paramhansa Yogananda's disciples is more Hindu than Christian in the sense that all our Gurus were Indian (except Jesus, who, so Master said, spent his legendary "missing years" in India). In addition, all our role models were either Hindu or else were held up to us for their spiritual kinship to the Indian saints in their emphasis on personal devotion to God. The Catholic Church praises its saints for the devotion they demonstrated to the Church. Master, on the contrary, as you'll recall, drew many a scathing contrast between Christianity and what he termed "Churchianity."
If Master's work should become so institutionalized that true saints, and true seekers bent courageously on finding the divine Self within, became an institutional embarrassment, or came to be considered mere anomalies, even heretics, what would happen to the "purity of the teachings" that you are so bent on preserving through a process of rigid institutionalization?
Yogananda's advice for SRF will save it—if followed
The only possible way for this work to grow in attunement with the message he consistently taught throughout his lifetime is for it to become more all-embracing, more tolerant, less rigidly organized. Obviously, there is a need in SRF for centralized authority of a kind. The main emphasis, however, should be on inspiring others, not on controlling them. In this respect, centralization must be offset by a corresponding process of decentralization. That is to say, a certain latitude should be given to individual members in the expression of their own inner inspiration.
For this reason, Daya Mata, I countered your emphasis on centralization, in India in the fall of 1961, by remarking, "But I feel we need a balance to our efforts at centralization by giving space also to decentralization." Your reply to me on that occasion was, "The Board feels differently: Don't you think you ought to go along with the Board?" (Of course, I was on the Board myself at the time. I was, in addition, the First Vice President of SRF/YSS. Are not even Board members, what to speak of Vice Presidents, permitted to think for themselves?)
Master's way of controlling us should be our role model. He disciplined us not with anger or intolerance, but with the simple admonishment, "What I tell you is for your own good. Follow me, if you want what I have to give you, but if not, go your own way with my blessings." Can you imagine him ever taking a disciple to court?
You've cited in justification for your lawsuit the example of Sri Yukteswar, who initiated one or two suits against his own relatives in order to protect his properties. In the same spirit, I heartily approved your suing Swami Hariharananda when he seized Sri Yukteswar's ashram property in Puri. And I was delighted when we learned last year from you, Daya Mata, that SRF had won that case.
But what has taking the name of the religion in which we both believe, and to which we both adhere, got to do with stealing? Despite all your claims to the contrary, the only people who have been "confused" by the alleged similarities between SRF and Ananda have been those loyal SRF members whom you've persuaded to write declarations stating that they find the "similarities" between us confusing. Confusing to whom, I ask you: to them? They already know the differences! In our legal briefs we've offered abundant proof of the impossibility of confusion for anyone interested in informing himself even superficially about our two organizations.
I cannot take the space in this letter to consider all the ramifications of an organization that is so set up as to encourage individual freedom in people's search for God. Essentially, however, what this must imply is adherence to the example Master himself established for us. It must imply offering people the truth, forever freely and lovingly, and not bludgeoning them into accepting your version of it with an entire armory of stern rules, restrictions, and admonitions in the name of loyalty and humility, and into doing nothing beyond what the SRF Board of Directors specifically permits them to do.
Here is a true story: An SRF center wanted to place a candle on the altar for the birthday celebration of one of our Gurus. Someone suggested, as a simple formality, that Mt. Washington be consulted. A telephone call was made. In due course a reply was received informing them that, no, a candle was outside the official regulations and would not be appropriate. This is an example, merely, of what I mean by a plethora of unnecessary restrictions.
Here is another example. An Ananda member used formerly to work in the retreat dining room at Encinitas. During her time there, the door leading from the kitchen to the dining room got broken. Six months later, at which time she finally left Encinitas to come to Ananda, that door had not yet been repaired. The reason? Permission to do the work had not yet been received "from the Board of Directors at Mt. Washington."
If we believe that SRF is destined to become the super-church of the world, well, I guess we might as well hitch up our trousers or skirts even now, and wrestle everything to a standstill in the name of total crystallization. But if we want the living, breathing, serviceful, inspiring organization Master always talked about, it is vitally necessary that we provide room for a little movement, for a reasonable amount of creativity, for initiative, for individual inspiration. I'm not talking about egoic self-expression. I'm talking about emphasizing Self-realization over institutional conformity.
The SRF president as representative of the Masters
SRF's present dogma is that there is only one representative of the Masters living on earth: the President of Self-Realization Fellowship. Are you really saying that Master himself made that statement? I don't question that he said certain things that we didn't all get to hear. But this? Well, for starters, I myself never heard him say anything remotely similar. Nor is this statement in keeping with anything I ever heard him say. What I believe you've done is, again, impose the role model of the Catholic Church on some of the things he said, giving them thereby a meaning altogether different from anything he ever intended.
For the idea of one, sole representative defies the very principle of Self-realization. It also contradicts everything he ever taught about churches in general, and everything I ever heard him say about SRF in particular.
The notion of one, sole representative implies, first, that no one else has a right to trust his own inner, soul-guidance. What happens, then, to the principle of Self-realization?
The dogma that there is one special representative of Master on earth implies that every President will be not only Self-realized, but more highly realized than any other SRF member.
To boost this requirement for a spiritual shortfall among the ruck of Master's disciples, one of the SRF monks (so I learned recently) told a group of members during a retreat in Indiana, "None of us will be liberated in this lifetime." He cited you as his authority.
A member who was present inquired, "What about us?"
"Well, obviously," the monk replied, "if none of the renunciants will find liberation, no one else will find it, either." (For the renunciants to insist on their own spiritual superiority, incidentally, is a discouraging commentary on the arrogance that seems, alas, to be creeping into the organization.)
Contrast that monk's extraordinary statement, so denigrating to Master and to his teachings, to some of the things Master himself told us.
I myself heard him declare, during the Kriya Initiation at Mt. Washington in December of 1948, "Of those present, there will be a few siddhas, and quite a few jivan muktas." Rajarsi Janakananda and Sister Gyanamata, his two closest disciples, were absent on that occasion.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Master defines a siddha as a fully liberated being, and a jivan mukta (meaning, literally, "freed while living") as one already liberated, but still having past karma to work out.
On another occasion, he said, "You should all strive at least to become jivan muktas in this life."
He constantly encouraged all of us to hope for liberation in this life. A young man once came to Mt. Washington to see if he could live there. Master asked me to convey this message to him: "Tell him that he can find salvation in this life, provided he remains faithful to this path to the end."
I've already pointed out earlier that rank in a spiritual organization is no guarantee of spiritual advancement. I don't mean to imply that SRF Presidents in future may be worldly, as some of the Catholic popes in history have been. Tara stated at a Christmas banquet not long after Yogananda's passing, "Master prophesied that no SRF president would ever prove unworthy of his position." I see no reason to challenge this statement. Tara's announcement has, however, been embellished over the years to become a prophecy that every future SRF President would be Self-realized. Somehow, I would find that statement difficult to believe even if it had a separate source, which it doesn't. It is already cause for rejoicing that Master promised that every President would be a true devotee. This is, I think, all that needs to be read into his prediction that no President would ever prove "unworthy of his position."
Position in the organization has nothing to do with a person's depth of Self-realization. Rather, it has everything to do with the particular karmic patterns he needs to work out. This point was expounded to me by no less a master than Sri Rama Yogi, the most advanced disciple of Ramana Maharshi, and the only saint, so Master told me, that he'd ever met outside our own line of gurus (and two of Lahiri Mahasaya's most advanced disciples, Swami Pranabananda and Ram Gopal Muzumdar) who had attained final liberation.
Sri Rama Yogi (Yogi Ramiah, as he is named in Paul Brunton's Search in Secret India) had asked me, "What are Daya Mata's responsibilities?" I briefly described them to him. "What a burden!" he exclaimed. But he then went on to explain that it was actually her blessing to be in a position where she could work out her past karmas more quickly, because so intensely. "That doesn't mean," he added, "that another person would be similarly blessed were he placed in that position. It depends on the specific karmas that the individual has to work out."
There is absolutely no need for SRF to have an "infallible pope" as its president. Even in the Catholic Church, the doctrine of papal "infallibility" is limited to those very rare occasions when the pope proclaims a new dogma. (The last such event occurred more than a century ago.) To attribute total infallibility to any SRF President poses the further danger that it cannot but suppress all thought, all questioning, and encourage mindless obedience on the part of everyone, including even the other SRF Directors. Frankly, I think this is a dangerous doctrine, particularly so in an organization the very name of which proclaims its dedication to the principle of Self-realization.
Did Master really want only one organization?
I don't think there is really any question but that Master wanted his teachings to be promulgated by his own organization. It also seems clear to me that he wanted the spirit of his organization to remain so broad, and so charitable, in keeping with the example he himself established during his life, that it would allow for a variety of expressions of his teachings.
Who wouldn't want the organization he founded to remain faithful to his principles? Still, he did say, "How you all will change this work! I just wonder, were I to come back in a hundred years, if I'd even recognize it." And it was to you that he uttered those words—not, I might add, with approval, a fact which you have many times made clear to us.
It is because of Master's desire to preserve unity in his work that I have pleaded repeatedly through the years for unity between SRF and Ananda. I cannot believe, however, that he wanted unity at the cost of the high truths he had brought into the world.
Unity, moreover, must be predicated on certain essential conditions.
I don't for a moment believe, for example, that he wanted limitations to be imposed forcibly on others. There are currents in the affairs of men that can no more be controlled than the ocean tides. A teaching cannot achieve widespread popularity without its concepts becoming, in consequence, widely quoted. A teacher cannot achieve widespread acceptance without at the same time being claimed everywhere by everyone who loves him. The Buddha belongs as much to the whole human race as he does to Buddhists. Jesus belongs as much to Hindus, Moslems, Jews, and all others who love him as he does to devout Christians, and much more so than to so-called Christians who lack the essentials of faith and devotion.
I once said something to Anandamoyi Ma, the great woman saint about whom Master writes in Autobiography of a Yogi, concerning "my" Kriya Yoga. (This was my attempt, limited as my command was of the Bengali language, to emphasize that I was talking about Lahiri Mahasaya's kriya, as distinct from other practices that also bear the name, Kriya Yoga.) Anandamoyi Ma, in order to emphasize the inappropriateness of anyone's claiming proprietorship of the timeless yoga techniques, interjected smiling, "My [Amar] Kriya Yoga!"
Inevitably, others will claim Master as their own. And why shouldn't they? What a waste of time to combat the inevitable! The most that SRF will ever be able to do is exercise a certain moral authority. Preferably it will do so by offering people a measure of clarity and inspiration that they won't be able to find anywhere else. Master came for the whole world, not for a small band of close disciples. What can we do but let the world have him? To give him freely to all mankind ought, indeed, to be our pride and joy.
This brings us to the question of my own position in Master's work. Since I myself consider it desirable that there be one organization to promulgate Master's work, and that that organization be the one Master himself founded, why don't I simply defer to you and let you get on with the job?
Well, the first and most obvious answer is that you aren't getting on with it, except in the sense of marching with majestic deliberation down a dead-end street.
The second answer is that I, too, belong in the game. I'm just as much a disciple as you are. To ask me not to serve our Guru is contrary to the very dictates of dharma (right spiritual action).
There is, moreover, a valid place for Ananda in Master's work. You aren't committed to building world-brotherhood colonies: We are. You aren't interested in reaching out to people where they are, but only in giving them official pronouncements on SRF teachings and policy, purported to be coming through you in their pure form from Paramhansa Yogananda. We try to make his teachings intelligible to people on their own levels of understanding, however multifarious those levels. In many ways Ananda addresses a void in Master's work and in the lives of truth seekers, and is bringing people to Master in droves, filling that void.
The greatest need Ananda addresses is that of giving people the kind of spiritual support they all crave.
You wrote a devoted member years ago, telling him to remove Master's photograph from the wall of his office. Why in the name of common sense would you do that? If you make such unreasonable demands of people, why should they even obey you?
You drove me out of my Guru's ashram with the stern warning never to set foot on any SRF property again, never to contact any SRF member, and never so much as to let anyone know that I am his disciple. So what did you want me to do, commit suicide? Death was virtually my only alternative to continuing my service to him, to whom I'd dedicated my whole life.
You might simply have allowed that devoted member to keep Master's photo on his wall. You might have accepted that I simply had no other choice than to continue serving my Guru. You might have sought ways of accommodating these and countless other realities, albeit different from your own, into an expanding understanding of how Master's work would spread. Instead, you excluded every reality but your own from your scheme of things—like King Canute, who futilely forbade the ocean tide to advance. The fault is yours. You cannot hope to get the world to adapt itself to your wishes, any more than you can realistically expect the courts of law to re-write the Constitution to accommodate you.
Master once said to me, "Someday those who leave here will have groups of their own—Jan, David, et cetera, et cetera." I don't know whether Jan (Savage) and David (Smith) ever started their own groups. I think Master was making it clear to me, however, that I would someday have a group of my own, and that it would have his approval.
There is a further aspect of this matter. It is perhaps understandable why I would start my own group when faced with no alternative. Master hinted to me that such a group would have his blessing. But would it have his support as an alternative work to that of SRF?
Here—if not much sooner!—is where your thinking on this subject and mine definitely come to a parting of the ways. Frankly, I think he is not pleased with SRF's contractive energy. I think he took me out of SRF because the expansive outlook I championed was being choked by a spirit of contractiveness that will, in time, destroy SRF unless it is corrected. I think he saw me, in this connection, as his safeguard against such a disaster.
You don't accept that he told me, repeatedly in fact, "You have a great work to do, Walter." In other words, you must think I'm either lying, or else so obtuse as not to realize that he might have been referring to the work we all have to do. Well, that is your lookout. If he said it to me personally, the truth must become manifest in time. I'd say it had become pretty well manifest already.
The test of Master's approval is whether any enterprise on which he is supposed to have bestowed his blessings actually flourishes. If you don't believe Ananda has flourished on all levels, spiritually above all—well, all I can say is, stick around. In any case, you don't have to persecute us. If we aren't acting with Master's blessings, we'll simply fade away in time. But if we are acting with his blessings, we'll continue to inspire thousands and bring them to Master's path, and nothing you nor anyone else can do will be able to stop us.
Each disciple serves his Guru, in his own way
There is a well-established and ancient tradition in India that endorses the disciple's serving his guru in his own way, rather than as his fellow disciples are doing. As a direct disciple, I have a definite edge over anyone who, after merely reading Yogananda's books, is inspired to spread his teachings on his own.
The acid test of my sincerity, however, is my willingness to renounce this work in the name of unity. Many times I have offered Ananda to you. It is you who have kept me, and Ananda, at arm's length.
I didn't want to leave SRF. I have always known that you had no good reason for dismissing me. You yourself told me, Daya Mata, after Tara's death in 1970, "I never agreed with the things Tara said against you." I expected you, after that, to bring me back into SRF in some capacity. Why didn't you?
Misleading others about our differences
Recently a letter was composed at Mt. Washington in answer to certain inquiries about the court case. The letter states, in part: "Through the many years since Donald Walters's resignation [the emphasis is mine], we have remained silent as to the specific reasons for his having left the SRF Order. Yet he has freely spoken of and written about his view of the circumstances. To protect him and to follow Guruji's ideals, we have continued to refrain from entering into discussion about this matter. Suffice it to say that it was not merely 'a misunderstanding of motives and circumstances,' but that there were sufficient grounds for his dismissal. Also, he has since said he really needed to have his own organization."
It is difficult to feel charitable in the face of such a guileful statement. You reiterate—as always, without support—your old refrain that I resigned, although you prepare the ground three sentences later for admitting that I was dismissed. You talk about the "freedom" with which I have spoken. The fact is, I've done my best all these years to protect my Guru's organization. Even now, on finding myself forced to oppose, not you or SRF, but the lawsuit that you initiated, the ideals for which I am pleading are for the protection of my Guru's work. Much of what I've written recently I kept for many years from my closest friends. It is news to them, as it is news to all those others who have been reading these papers.
You pretend to be "protecting" me—yet you launch a damaging lawsuit against me! You hint at "sufficient grounds" for my dismissal, but again, as always for the past thirty years, all you offer is innuendoes—like the standard line you've taken with inquirers over the years, "Oh, if you only knew!" I say to you, if you have something to say, say it! Enough of these hints, which have no higher motive than to make a molehill look like a mountain without actually stooping to telling blatant lies.
As for my needing an organization of my own, I've never said I wanted one. Nor did I ever want one. All I've ever said is that Master must have wanted me to have an organization of my own, since he so arranged circumstances that I had no choice but to found one.
What would please Master more?
There are right ways of doing things. You've concentrated on my "flaws." Why not consider other possibilities—such as expressing appreciation for the little bit of good that I may possibly have done in my life? or treating me with a measure of good will as a fellow disciple: well-meaning, perhaps, if bumbling and ignorant?
Daya Mata, you told us in Fresno two years ago, "I can't face Master [after death] until this legal issue has been resolved." Well, there are two ways of resolving it. One is to beat us into the ground, as you've been trying to do, losing at every step of the way. The other is to make friends.
Which solution, do you think, would please Master more?
In his love,
Swami Kriyananda
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