Ghost Writer in the sky, Sunrise Jim

This is something I don't personally know anything about and so the information came as something new to me. If anyone has information to add to this (to verify or disprove) I would be interested in hearing from you. 

I received a tip from someone who had some ancient information concerning someone who was in SRF in the 1930's and 40's. I know, it sounds very cryptic but this is all anonymous and confidential and so forth, so I can only say I got the scuttlebutt. The names were known and recognizable and so I looked into the tip. (I Know, I Know, it sounds like something from a Nancy Drew novel,

 but bear with me). 

You can file this under rumors, as I cannot give any first hand information, it is just a tip from an undercover informant. I do not have the authority to release the source who wants to remain anonymous. I can say that the source was someone close to the information. (Yikes! this sounds like a spy novel!)

"Bond, James Bond..."

Anyway..

The tip I received (which appears to be pretty authentic) said that Yogananda had a ghost writer writing for him named Warnack. Warnack was a professional writer who worshipped Yogananda (Literally). There is a claim of an eye witness report that this ghost writer wrote the Autobiography (which was later edited and embellished on by Laurie Pratt) and other materials. 

There were actually teams of people involved in editing and writing, but the notes were organized and the text written by this man Warnack (according to the informant who contacted me using the Bat-signal).

The name Warnack, didn't ring any bells for me but I did find that there was a religion writer for the Los Angeles times until 1938 named James Warnack. In a google search, his name came up on an Ananda site.

http://www.yoganandarediscovered.org/jaitruth/CWreviews.html 

Using this information I looked in the EAST WEST magazine and I found many poems and articles by him. This of course doesn't prove anything, but it is an interesting coincidence to be sure.

Articles in Los Angeles Times 1938

His Own Book :

SOUL SYMPHONIES by James Warnack

 published in 1928 by James Warnack

The introduction is by Swami Dhirananda

Book of Spiritual poems

EAST WEST:

Excerpts from articles written for East West:

GOD’S GRANDEST POEM

—By James Warnack

... Peak piled on peak, tier after tier, stretching out and away forever, a cosmic theater in which the gods may sit to watch the human drama; baby foothills smiling in their sleep; tiny stars flung by the glacier gods from a towering precipice; lofty redwoods everlastingly young, and barren trees on brown hills dreaming of the days when they were green; footprints of giants in the boulders; sweet azaleas whispering fragrant secrets to the streams; mariposa lilies, embraced by ardent love-vines, peeping from crevices in the rocks, and breathing, singing bits of blue sky flitting among the trees at dawn—that is Yosemite.

East West

Reflection

—By James Warnack

I SAW a wild rose bending over to kiss the stream that sang its love to her, and I asked: "Why do you charm me, sweet rose?"
And the rose replied: "You love me because I am the symbol of the beauty and fragrance of your soul."
I saw a lily leaning over to admire the reflection of her face in a limpid lake, and I said: "Why do I love you, fair flower?"
And the lily said: "I represent the purity of your inner self."
I heard a lark caroling in the meadow, and I said: "Why do you thrill me, beautiful bird?"...
EAST WEST 

A DREAM OF THE EVERLASTING

—BY JAMES M. WARNACK

In majesty, walking the fields of Forever, in darkness and silence and space never-ending, the Infinite One grew weary and lonely, and paused for a moment to rest and to dream. For the Spirit of Life, including all things, comprehends even dreams and illusions.
And the dream flew straight from the Dreamer’s heart, like a bird from its home in the heart of the hills. And strange was the dream of the Infinite One, for He thought that He, Who had ever been lonely, was espoused to a Goddess, divine as Himself—and He called her the Holy One. Trembling with joy, the Spirit drew near Her, till His breath was on Her lips, and She nestled close to His mighty heart. And in the silence She conceived and gave Her Lord a Son. Gentle and fair and innocent was he, and yet he had a wisdom above worlds. His thoughts were like the lilies of the valley, and his face was radiant as a new-born dawn....
EAST WEST 

And his review of Whispers..

REVIEW OF SWAMI YOGANANDA’S BOOK OF GLORIOUS PRAYERS

—BY JAMES W. WARNACK

....
..The Western mind, which considers such ways of approaching the Supreme Being to be not in keeping with the spirit of reverence, should strive to remember that, to the Hindu, "Brahma" is everywhere, at all times, imminent and pre-eminent,—and that He is called "Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Friend," all in a breath, and—to the Hindu—not inconsistently.
When the Hindu sings, "I am the bubble, make me the Sea" (one of Yogananda’s favorite original songs), he is praying not for absorption in the sense of self-destruction (as is erroneously imagined by many critics of Hindu thought), but rather, he is seeking the expansion of the personal self into the greater Self, his own true Selfhood., "Nirvana," instead of meaning a state of nothingness, means, instead, a consciousness of the All-ness of life—a difference so vast as to be incalculable by finite mind.
One soul, out of many thousands, reaches in this phase of existence what the Hindus call the state of "Samadhi." When that height of development is at last the reward of many centuries of God-craving, the man becomes a "Master." Swami Yogananda is a Master of Masters, a Swami of Swamis. He cannot be compared with lesser teachers. Every line in "Whispers From Eternity" tells a story of greatness. One has only to read these prayer-demands, in order to feel a definite spiritual growth within himself. The book cannot be recommended too highly.
EAST WEST 

Peace and Best wishes,
Katie

UPDATE:


This information came from a reader. I do not have personal knowledge of it's validity. I am adding it for anyone who may want to do their own research into the matter. 
According to this reader:


James Warnack died in 1974 at age 95 in Escondito California. Escondito is near Encinitas where The Autobiography of a Yogi was completed. 

Update:


I received an email saying that the Autobiography notes were sent off to a Ghostwriting firm in the midwest. The person writing the E-mail referred to it as a rumor and did not know the name of the company. We may never know what happened here, but I suspect that Warnack wrote the notes (This has an eye witness report) and the notes may have been sent off for rewrite and editing by someone else.  

Books: Here Comes the Yogiman

Here is an interesting review of the Autobiography of a Yogi from the TIME magazine archives 1947:

Here Comes the Yogiman

...One trouble is that there are. no bar associations or synods to set standards among swamis (holy men, monks)—almost anyone in the U.S. can set up shop as a swami if he can find any followers. As a result there are devout swamis who lead the good life and there are swamis who simply enjoy a good life. Few of either kind write their autobiographies, so this life story by California's Paramhansa Yogananda (a Bengali pseudonym meaning approximately Swami-Bliss-through-Divine-Union) is something of a document. It is not likely to give the uninitiated much insight into India's ancient teachings. It does show exceedingly well how an alien culture may change when transplanted by a businesslike nurseryman from the tough soil of religious asceticism into hothouses of financial wealth and spiritual despair.

Swami Yogananda belongs outside the most publicized U.S. Indian movement—the Vedanta—which includes Huxley, Isherwood, et al. He is also scorned by them. Yogananda, born plain Mukunda Lai Ghosh 46 years ago, is the son of the vice president of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway. Father Ghosh scorned money, food and sex, spent his free hours meditating, with his legs crossed. Both father & mother Ghosh were devout practitioners of the basic tenet of yoga: absolute discipline of the body and senses through concentration on the idea of union with God. "Your father and myself," said Mrs. Ghosh, "live together as man and wife only once a year, for the purpose of having children" (they had eight)...

Time Article 

Wheres Waldo,Luther, Gandhiji, Adolph and Babaji

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A  'HEAVY SET'  50 YEAR OLD VIRGIN  (at least he doesn’t live in his parents basement)

Guru the one and only preceptor sent by God

Yoganandas autobiography has a lot of magic and mysticism. It also has a lot of real historical figures making up a pretty impressive resume.  We do not know if they approve of Yoganandas version of events or not. I thought I would explore some of these characters as well as one that Yogananda does not mention in the autobiography.

 LUTHER BURBANK (1849-1927)

This segment starts with Luther Burbank. The “saint amid the roses”. I have visited his gardens in Santa Rosa. They are quite remarkable.

What sent me down this path of inquiry was the letter in the Autobiography of a Yogi. In it Mr. Burbank endorses Yoganandas views because, and I quote “they are free of all mysticism”. 

http://www.ananda.org/autobiography/#chap38

I found it difficult to believe that Luther Burbank, a man who considered himself an Infidel, a man of scientific reason would have thought disappearing magic amulets, 800-year-old avatars,  levitating saints and magic golden castles were not “mysticism”. I decided to explore the issue a bit.

In 1924 Burbank wrote his letter to Yogananda that was later published in the Autobiography in 1945. In 1926 he gave his famous infidel interview. Mr. Burbank died in 1927.  He was a life long member of the Freethinks society (atheists and agnostics).  He was also a member of American Breeders association. Burbank was a Darwinist and he was heavily influenced by Francis Galton who was a social Darwinist (also known as eugenics). He shared these beliefs with many of the great minds of his day, Margaret Sanger, Henry Ford, H.G. Wells and Adolph Hitler (Think holocaust).

Burbank’s work was based on the theories of Darwin. Burbank forced evolution by purposely bringing species together and creating hybrids. Without his potatoes your happy meal wouldn’t be the same. An act of genius for sure.


 He also is responsible for the invasive species of blackberries that invade the Pacific Northwest. He got the seeds from Germany, reportedly from the early Nazis and they traveled by way of bird droppings to my backyard. I have to fight them off my property every spring. They are VERY tenacious! Sometimes I think the Nazis are winning.

 In the Autobiography Yogananda says that the spineless cactus was a miracle but the actual words of Burbank tell another story. Burbank used basic genetic principles over many years  (about 20) to produce his spineless cactus. His idea was to use it for cattle food in the desert. Sadly the plan failed because the new spineless cactus could not thrive in the desert, having been genetically engineered in Santa Rosa. This was a problem of many of Burbank’s hybrids. They could not grow outside of California or the seed would not stay true without continuous human intervention.

bigger

 http://www.archive.org/stream/lutherburbankssp00luthrich#page/2/mode/2up 

On the question at hand:

Burbank was a rationalist. He didn’t endorse mysticism (it says so in the letter). On the other hand we do have this report from TIME magazine archives when he was 76 years old.  So apparently at 76 he was letting stage magicians hypnotism him.


Besides experimenting with plants, Mr. Burbank has been investigating "will transference." He has a "strong psychic personality," according to Konradi Leitner, Swiss psychologist, who conducted some psychic experiments in Santa Rosa last week with the naturalist, his wife and his eight-year-old niece, Betty Jane Waters. Mr. Burbank believes that, through his sheer will power and at least in one case by laying on of hands, he has forced three dying persons to live. "I don't attempt to explain it," he declared.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,721613,00.html 

Here is Konradi Leitners book on how to be a stage hypnotist

HYPNOTISM FOR PROFESSIONALS

Look here

http://www.archive.org/stream/hypnotismforprof00leitrich#page/82/mode/2up

So my question is this: If Burbank DID practice Kriya yoga (and I have no idea if he did or didn’t) It is unlikely he was bowing at the feet of the Saints or believing in fairies, ageless Avatars and such, so what does this tell us?

IF Burbank was a saint then the path to God is NOT bowing before Gurus but puttering in your garden. Sounds good to me!

Since The Autobiography was written 20 years after Mr. Burbank’s death we do not know what his reaction to its mystical references and SRF would be, but his “ Why I am an infidel” gives us clues. (See Excerpts below*)

*The theory of reincarnation comes, like all other religious theories, from the best qualities in human nature, even if in this as in the others its adherents sometimes fail to carry out the tenets in their lives.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted from Edgar Waite, "Luther Burbank, Infidel"

 As a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted from Edgar Waite, "Luther Burbank, Infidel"


(so if he believed Yogananda was a prophet then what the heck is Luther talking about here? Not perfect? Not common sense?)

The universe is not big enough to contain perpetually all the human souls and the other living beings that have been here for their short spans. A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through. This is as feasible and credible as Henry Ford's own practice of discarding the old models of his automobile. When obsolete, an automobile is thrown in the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served Its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There is no need for another.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted from Edgar Waite, "Luther Burbank, Infidel"

(If he didn't believe in resurrection and reincarnation then what about Yukteswar resurrecting or Yoganandas teachings of reincarnation?)

Religion grows with the intelligence of man, but all religions of the past and probably all of the future will sooner or later become petrified forms instead of living helps to mankind. Until that time comes, however, if religion of any name or nature makes man more happy, comfortable, and able to live peaceably with his brothers, it is good.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted from Edgar Waite, "Luther Burbank, Infidel"

I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. However, when it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted from Edgar Waite, "Luther Burbank, Infidel"

Most people's religion is what they would like to believe, not what they do believe. And very few of them stop to examine its foundations.
-- Luther Burbank, quoted by Edgar Waite in "Luther Burbank, Infidel"

Gandhiji (1869- 1948)

So then I wondered about Gandhi. When I was in SRF I was told that Yogananda was Gandhi’s Guru because he had taught him Kriya. I thought this odd at the time since Gandhi had his own Ashram and followers. I couldn’t picture him thinking of Yoganandas “lotus feet” or doing energization exercises. 


http://www.gandhiserve.org/ 

When I went to the Gandhi archives I only found one visit (among literally hundreds of thousands of visitors) and 2 letters concerning Yogananda out of tens of thousands of letter. (*They were not personal in nature).

One thing that intrigued me was why his ashes were at Lake Shrine in a fancy sarcophagus. I couldn’t understand why a man who lived a life of poverty would want that and also it was against his religion to have his ashes preserved in a box. It didn’t make sense. How did Yogananda come to possess the ashes?

All of Gandhi's possessions at the time of his death

--- ASHES

According to SRF, an old friend, Dr. V.M. Nawle, a publisher and journalist from India with the following letter, had sent the ashes to Yogananda:

"Regarding Gandhi ashes, I may say that they are scattered and thrown in almost all the important rivers and seas, and nothing is given outside India except the remains which I have sent to you after a great ordeal.... You are the only one in the whole world who received Gandhi ashes outside India." 


 I wondered what the “great ordeal” might be. 

Well, it turns out that people Stole Gandhi’s ashes. His family spokesperson Tushar Gandhi, asked everyone including SRF to return them in 2008, as it was a sacrilege to keep them. To my knowledge they have not responded and the ashes are still there. At the time in 2008, the son of the ex-governor of Gujarat, who had gotten the ashes in 1948, had returned an Urn of Gandhi’s ashes to the family. At the time the Mahatma was cremated some unscrupulous admirers desecrated his remains and took his ashes. By Hindu Religious law they are supposed to be immersed in water. 

“In Hinduism, ashes from the funeral pyre must be immersed in water. It is sacrilege to keep them,” Arun Gandhi

http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/xpress/hindu-press-international/2008/01/31/us-organization-hesitant-to-part-with-gandhis-ashes/ 

In 2008 the Gandhi family immersed the last of India’s stolen Gandhi ashes in the Ganges. Video of this event is available on youtube. My question is this, why doesn’t SRF return the ashes to the family? I also wonder if the whole thing was just a hoax. That the ashes Yogananda put in the Big Lake Shrine show were not real. That this was put forward in order to ride the shirt tails of Gandhi’s legacy. Being a Hindu himself he must have known it was a sacrilege. I don’t know the answer but the whole thing definitely is NOT cool. Why keep the ashes of a dead man against his families Religious wishes?


Meeting:
http://www.gandhiserve.org/information/chronology_1935/chronology_1935.html 

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL067.PDF 

*Click on page to make larger. These are from page 392 of VOL067. Letters exchanged with Yogananda on Gandhi day of silence.

Also this letter from Nawle: It is page 209 #304 Volume066 (there are 2 other letters concerning Nawle in the Gandhi archive but they do not mention Yogananda.


http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL066.PDF 

The other two read like this:
Editor of Marathi Journal "Dinbandhoo" solicits message for the special issue of his journal advocating co-operative societes among agricultural classes. 11/10/1928
http://www.gandhiserve.org/correspondence/1928.html 

Let me know in as few words as possible what the new and unique path to temple entry is.
http://www.gandhiserve.org/correspondence/1933.html 

Adolph Hitler( 1889-1945)

Yogananda was supposed to be an all-knowing “Yogi- Christ” yet he praised Hitler  as“ Uplifting”.  I think that is about all I need to say on that point.
Hitler is to be admired for leaving the League of Nations because peace can never be attained by the victor and vanquished attitude, but on a basis of equality and brotherhood. Instead of preventing Hitler from having equal armament with other nations, the other nations should reduce the armaments to the level of Germany, and then the millions of dollars that are thrown away on idle battleships could be used for national or international prosperity. America, France, and Great Britain should reduce their armaments first, and thereby destroy the desire of Japan, Russia, and Germany to become equally armed.
"An insulted, snubbed Germany, if it gets away from the uplifting guidance of Hitler, may join Russia and make her a more powerful enemy of France and so on.
"The Allies must reduce their own armaments first, and then they will find out that the example speaks louder than words.

 Yogananda. "Christmas message". East-West Magazine, 1933


Also:
"The Swami will soon start on his tour of India. On his way back to this country (some time next year) he plans to lecture and hold classes in London, and to visit both Mussolini and Hitler."
Inner Culture NewsInner Culture, December 1935
In 1935 Hitler had been the Fuhrer for just one year.

SRF does not let Service readers read from the old East West magazines. We were not allowed to read anything published prior to a certain date.  (I seem to recall the date was sometime in the seventies about 20 to 25 years AFTER the Guru died). We were not allowed to read aloud any magazines published while the Guru was actually alive. After reading this I now understand the "spin".
Interestingly, Yogananda is still writing books even though he has been dead for half a century. I am left wondering, who is actually writing the books?

http://mysticalportal.net/EastWestVol4to8.htm 

BABAJI ( some unknown , unrecorded time to the present day)

An ageless 800?-year-old guy who looks like he is 20. He wanders around the Himalayas  and lives in a cave with his sister. He is a Mahavatar which means he is an avatar's avatar (top brass). He wears a loincloth. He is in league with Jesus and Krishna (kind of like the league of superheroes).
.

JESUS

  

KRISHNA 

He appeared to and initiated Lahiri Mahasaya in Kriya so he could go forth and spread Kriya to the world. At this time Babaji created a Golden castle for Lahiri so he could see what one looked like. After that the castle disappeared (like Joseph Smiths golden tablets. What is it with these magic gold things anyway?).
His picture (drawing) is on the SRF alter. "He veils himself from gross public gaze and can become invisible at will" (kind of like Predator when he is fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger).  He sometimes goes by the handle "Supreme Ecstatic Master". SRF worships him. 

Supreme Ecstatic Master being very ecstatic

Well, that’s about all I have to say on that subject. I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.


Peace and Best Wishes,
KD