PART ONE:

Before an SRF member can receive “Kriya Yoga” and get aboard that big ol’ Concorde astral plane to the divine. They need to go through a number of lessons and levels.

The quest begins at the first level: Step 1

The student has to agree not to share the super secret contents of the SRF lessons with anyone before he can get the secret Guru decoder ring (I am making up the part about the ring). Then, within a few weeks the lessons start coming in the mail.

The newbie devotee learns basic meditation techniques, asana and is given some fundamental pep talks to get started. Most of this stuff is fairly universal in the world of Yoga. On the second page of lesson one the newbie is told that he should look to the Gurus as perfect examples to follow (The Guru worship indoctrination comes out with a one-two punch in the first round). It also says that the student is a “Potential child of God” Good to know I have potential but I thought I was born a “Child of God” oh, well….on to the next lesson…

We are told to pick the “Best” path and stick with it and of course the “Best“ path is the one they are selling. To put this whole thing in historical perspective I came of age at a time that every pop culture Icon had a Guru. Every airport had a band of tambourine thumping, crazy dancing Hare Krishnas. Every city park had a screaming, Itinerant, drug addled preacher standing on a soapbox.
It was a strange time. The "Best" path was highly subjective.

Then comes the art of energization

I have a few things to say on this subject so get comfy.

First of all, I am a fairly fit and athletic person but I didn’t really like doing these exercises. I thought they were boring and tedious, but I did them.

Many people skipped the exercises before meditation. In fact this may be a good place to point out that in the quarter century I was in SRF, I never met one person who did the entire SRF routine of exercises, Hong sau, Aum, Kriya and the mudra every morning and evening and actually liked doing it. No one I knew ever ran home from work everyday excited to do their 2 hour meditation routine. People would SAY how great it all was, but their actions told a different story. Typically what I saw were people who would rather be doing almost anything else. I remember one lady who did the whole routine and spent her Saturdays in 6 hour meditations. She told me “those exercises are the biggest test”. It was like the Catholic priests who wear scratchy horsehair undies as an act of penance. Kind of an Opus Dei thing.

If you were serious about making progress though, you had to do the exercises to whip your astral body into shape. Lots (and I mean LOTS) of SRF people cut their meditations down to the minimum. This is why talking about how great the Gurus are is so important to the faithful. Just keeping the Guru in your thoughts at all times means you are loyal. This is thought to make up for your shortcomings in the meditation arena. Members put their time into activities like music, walking, reading, movies, art, computers and service. Then they tell themselves they are doing the activities for God so they justify not doing the meditation routines.
I am totally 100% in sync with that thinking but alas it isn’t what the Guru teaches is it?

Now you might be thinking “Sure KD, but Master said ACTIVITY plus Meditation”. Well, I say review the lessons. He wasn’t talking about replacing his program with recreation.

Anyway, in 1916 Yogananda discovered these exercises. The way SRF makes it sound you would think God delivered them to him express mail but in reality there is more to the story.

This is something that really made me angry when I first learned about it. Remember, I had been doing these tedious exercises for 25 years.

By ‘discovered’ they mean ‘ripped off’.

Turns out Yogananda and Dhirananda had some books by Ironmen such as JP Muller, Sandow (who visited India in 1904) and Tom Inch.

J.P. Muller

1904

Ironically after I discovered (in the actual sense of the word) this information, I found out from my mom that my grandfather had been a mail order student of one of these Sandow ironmen exercise series. The revelation had been available to me all along if I had just shared the super secret exercises with my mom.

The most telling of the Ironman books were the Tom Inch series. Tom Inch was a physical culturist from the UK. His series was available in England and by association India. Apparently, Yoganadas brothers Bishnu Ghosh (teacher of Bikram Choudhury) and S. Ghosh studied the lessons of Tom Inch and other Ironmen under the direction of their Guru. There were special books available only to Tom Inch students including Nerve Force in Relation to Physical culture and the book Pyscho-Physical culture which was available only to people signed up for the Inch lessons. Reasoning (correctly) that Americans would not be knowledgeable about these exercises Yogananda lifted the material for his lessons and ‘ How to Live’ booklets.

Weightlifters

S. Ghosh and B. Ghosh

(Photos taken in 1930)

Their Guru

Guha Thakurta

Now, I am not saying that the works of Tom Inch and Sandow were not good material. I am not saying that a person couldn't benefit from their practice.

I am saying that Yogananda was deceptive about the origins of the material. I did these exercises in good faith thinking they were some special lessons from God sent by a God realized Avatar. Turns out, you could get the same stuff from an Ironman book and Tom Inch didn’t expect you to grovel at his feet with fruit and flowers. Plus Yogananda selected the easiest, most boring and least effective exercises.

Just get yourself a gym membership like his brothers did.

This is actually the thing that sealed the deal with me. When I saw these books, I knew I had been hoodwinked by Yogananda and SRF.

Here Are Some Pages from just one of Tom Inch's Books (Turn of Century).

Deja vu.