NARRATOR: I was conscious in my mother's womb.
Feeling the movements in her body.
Aware of my own helpless state.
This body bundle of bones is not I.
Occasionally, the darkness of the womb would be dispelled
and light would visit me.
On one side I wanted to express myself as a human being,
yet, on the other side, I didn't.
Because I felt I was spirit.
(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
I see behind the scenes.
The visible man is a shadow.
As soon as I change my consciousness, I see everything,
just as if it were a motion picture.
RAVI SHANKAR: I distinctly remember
the excitement of meeting Swami Yogananda.
He was straight from the heart.
He looked strange, like a woman with long hair.
But I remember his powerful eyes.
He created such a stir.
KRISHNA DAS: I remember the first time I heard Yogananda's voice.
I got a record, I think, from SRF.
And I put it on, and I didn't know what to expect.
And then, this booming, powerful
"I, Paramahansa Yogananda, am singing.
"Sing with me." I went... (GROANS)
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
I, Paramahansa Yogananda, am praying.
Pray with me.
Bless me that with the awakening dawn...
I may awaken all souls with my own...
...and bring them to Thee.
He wasn't trying to sing prettily,
wasn't trying to entertain people.
He was singing, you know, to God. It was so powerful.
HARRISON: While I was in India, I was with Ravi Shankar.
He gave me Autobiography of a Yogi.
Just looked at the cover,
and he just zapped me with his eyes.
I mean I can't imagine... If I hadn't read that,
I probably wouldn't have a life. Really.
Yeah, I probably would have kicked the bucket.
Or I'd just be, you know, some horrible person
with a pointless life.
It just gave meaning to life.
HITENDRA WADHWA: Steve Jobs apparently had only one book on his iPad.
Lo and behold, that book turns out to be the Autobiography of a Yogi.
(FEMALE INSTRUCTOR SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
MAS VIDAL: Yoga, for many, has become something that you do with your body.
But the yogis never taught that.
The way that Yogananda taught yoga,
was use the body, you have a body,
but it's really about the mind.
Expanding your consciousness.
Who am I? Who you are?
Why we came to this Earth as a human?
LI MIAO TSENG: It's really very easy to get lost
in the complexity of life.
FRANCIS CLOONEY: We're conflicted beings as humans.
One of the deepest things about us
is that our lives don't make sense, except in the mystery.
Yogananda provided us a vocabulary to talk about the human spirit
that got away from dogma, and doctrine, and ritual.
Whether it be a Hindu, Muslim,
Christian, Jewish, whatever tradition you're part of,
Yogananda charted a path inward
that connected you with your own divinity.
NARRATOR: Buried during the Dark Ages...
Kriya Yoga was revived for modern man
by the deathless yogi Mahavatar Babaji.
Babaji instructed Lahiri Mahasaya
to teach Kriya Yoga to others.
The transmission of the ancient science from guru to disciple.
Unknown to society in general,
a great spiritual renaissance started in a remote corner of Banaras.
(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
(BELLS RINGING)
(SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
As the fragrance of flowers cannot be suppressed,
so devotees from every part of India began to seek
the divine nectar of this liberated master.
Day after day, the guru initiated one or two devotees
into Kriya Yoga, the science of meditation.
Early in their married life,
my parents became disciples.
Lahiri Mahasaya predicted my birth,
and that through this body
many shall receive the spiritual enlightenment of India.
"The message of yoga will encircle the globe," he said.
It will aid in establishing the brotherhood of man.
But when I heard the word "guru," it frightened me.
For I knew what that responsibility meant.
VIDAL: His great burden is to be the representative
of this 5,000-year-old tradition.
FELICIA TOMASKO: This is a man with intuitive knowledge.
Extraordinary yogic powers.
And he could perceive events that were decades in front of him.
But his teachings caused controversy.
SONI: He would be called into question,
and everything he worked for would unravel.
(INDISTINCT WHISPERINGS)
(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
BROTHER VISHWANANDA: Every soul is on a journey.
People are at different levels in that journey.
I think we all believe
that there's more to life
than what we experience every day.
DEEPAK CHOPRA: Yogananda happens to be what I would call a spiritual prodigy.
A spiritual genius.
Which means had access to a domain
of awareness that most people don't have access to.
Like mathematical geniuses,
he explored a much larger territory in the spiritual domain.
NARRATOR: Sometimes, I used to lapse into the consciousness of my true spirit.
Clear recollections came to me of a distant life,
in which I had been a yogi amid the Himalayan snows.
STEFANIE SYMAN: He also had visions of seeing his guru.
VISHWANANDA: Throughout the ages, there have been
mystics who come with special knowledge
that helps us understand our place in the universe.
Yogananda was born at the dawn of the atomic age,
when modern physics would shatter our most basic beliefs
about the nature of reality
and pave the way for an ancient and hidden teaching
to be received by many.
MAN: Yogananda had been told since infancy by saints and seers,
that he'd be taking these teachings to the West.
But he thought, "How is this possible?"
You know, it was absurd,
because he barely spoke any English.
NARRATOR: One day, my mind went away from Ranchi.
I went to the storeroom to meditate,
and I fell into an ecstasy.
America.
Surely these people are Americans.
It's scary to the mind. I think the first thing was, "Oh, my God."
VISHWANANDA: Imagine in your own life, having a message so strong
that it totally changes your life, in a moment.
And at that time he'd been here about three years.
Probably thought this was his life work.
NARRATOR: I had founded a school following
the educational ideals of the rishis
whose forest ashrams had been the ancient seat of learning.
Overcoming restlessness of the body and mind,
my concentration techniques achieved astonishing results.
He established a "How to Live" School,
I wish we had "How to Live" Schools.
You have to learn your grammar, you have
to learn your math and your science.
But you also have to learn how to live.
FEMALE TEACHER: One, two, three, four, five.
(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)
Love conquers all.
Very good.
MEHROTRA: He's in love with his country.
He is being respected by his community,
he is seeing his vision manifest
where children are learning the art and science of yoga.
And then he's sitting there and all of a sudden,
he becomes aware that he has to leave all of it.
YOGANANDA: God is taking me away to America.
SRI DAYA MATA: He never wanted to come to America.
That was not part of his dream at all.
"Let me just go to the Himalayas and just live in a cave there.
"I can do good there. I can pray for people."
But his teacher said, "No.
"You must go to the West. Go to America."
NARRATOR: Tears stood in my eyes as I cast a last look
at the little boys, and the sunny acres of Ranchi.
I knew, henceforth, I would dwell in far lands.
How alone I was here.
Not a soul I knew.
I had heard many stories about the materialistic West,
a land very different from India.
It was somewhat of a daunting experience, to go out on the streets.
My strange dress prompted boyish mockery and catcalls.
BOY: What's that?
VIDAL: There were kids that were throwing stones at him,
calling him names.
VISHWANANDA: I think he was called a magician at one point, a snake charmer.
BROTHER CHIDANANDA: In 1920, many Americans were still not used to having Jews here.
And now comes a darker skinned swami
in orange robes and a turban.
NARRATOR: I noticed some hot dog signs.
In imagination I saw all kinds of dogs
going through the meat chopper.
And I thought, "My Lord.
"Why did you bring me to the land where people eat dogs?"
BRAHMACHARI MARTIN: When Yogananda came to the United States,
it was after World War I. The world was a very different place.
It was a very powerful time.
There was this upsurge
of freedom.
Freedom of sexuality, freedom of expression.
Boundaries of known reality were being shattered and penetrated.
You had the Einsteinian revolution,
sort of flowering into quantum physics.
And it became clear
that the world was not what it appeared to be.
SONI: Western philosophers are talking about the death of God.
And Yogananda says, it's not about the death of God,
it's about the reconceptualization of the divine.
CHIDANANDA: It's significant that Yogananda's first lecture in America
was called "The Science of Religion."
Not Hinduism, because using religious terminology,
in Western peoples' minds, would place his offerings in a box.
But self-realization?
Oh. Yoga? Oh, those are universal.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
Spine and the brain are the altars of God.
That's where the electricity of God flows down into the nervous system
into the world.
and the searchlights of your senses are turned outwards.
But when you will reverse the searchlights,
through Kriya Yoga,
and be concentrated in the spine,
you will behold the Maker.
That's what Self-Realization teaches.
The technique of meditation,
recharging the body battery with cosmic energy.
For it is not a creed or dogma,
but a science...
...of the soul and spirit.
How the soul descended from the cosmic consciousness...
into the earth and the body and the senses...
...is the purpose of this work.
VIDAL: Imagine hearing that God is in your spine.
In 1920.
It was radical.
It was a bold explanation
of where to go to experience God.
MAISHA MOSES: For me,
God is still a bit unfathomable.
She's in everything. She's in everyone.
If you call Him energy, that's fine.
SONI: Yogananda thought of self-realization as a science.
He thought of Kriya Yoga as a science.
Religion has a lot of baggage,
but a science means that it's part of a scientific process.
It's empirical, you can test certain things.
And your own spiritual practice and self-realization
is that scientific process.
An individual is sort of an organized packet of consciousness
that is part of a bigger ocean of consciousness
in that when you are meditating and going deep within,
such as in yoga,
your inner consciousness is combining with that higher consciousness.
CHIDANANDA: You couldn't have described to a Westerner
what Yogananda was teaching prior to the twentieth century.
There simply wasn't a vocabulary for it.
The apparently solid body
is made up of these whirling atoms, and protons, and electrons.
And those are composed of energy.
The basic substance of creation.
NARRATOR: The body is potentially vast and omnipresent.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
This earth is nothing but movies to me.
Just like the beam of a motion picture.
So is everything made of shadows and light.
That's what we are. Light and shadows of the Lord.
Nothing else than that.
There's one purpose.
To get to the beam.
VIDAL: But the doors of perception don't often open with the intellect.
Something very powerful has to happen
to shake us out of our comfort zone.
NARRATOR: It was in Bareilly on a midnight...
As I slept beside Father,
I was awakened by a peculiar flutter.
CHIDANANDA: When he was about 11 years old,
he and his father were in northern India.
The family was temporarily separated,
and his mother had gone to Calcutta
to prepare for the wedding of the eldest brother.
And unknown to them,
she had contracted Asiatic cholera.
SYMAN: He had a dream that night, that his mother came to him.
NARRATOR: The flimsy curtains parted and I saw the beloved form of my mother.
"Rush to Calcutta, if you would see me."
The wraith-like figure vanished.
(NARRATOR GASPS)
Mother is dying.
I collapsed into an almost lifeless state.
CHIDANANDA: A telegram arrived.
She had died in a matter of hours.
NARRATOR: What was the purpose of this?
Her solacing black eyes
had been my refuge
in the trifling tragedies of childhood.
WOMAN'S VOICE: Farewell my child.
The cosmic mother will protect you.
(ECHOING) It is I who have watched over thee,
life after life,
in the tenderness of many mothers.
See in my gaze the two black eyes.
The lost, beautiful eyes thou seek'st.
NARRATOR: I used to dream in my childhood,
a tiger used to break my leg at night.
(GROWLING)
Mother used to come running with a candle and say,
"You are dreaming.
"Where is it broken?"
(CHUCKLES) And then I used to laugh.
From that time on, I was watchful,
even in dreams,
to separate the unreal from the real.
VIDAL: Once he had cracked open the door,
his world would never be the same.
But it would take time, and many tests,
before he would fully awaken into this new reality.
NARRATOR: Mercifully mother of the universe,
teach me thyself through visions,
or through a guru sent by thee.
I hoped to find them in the Himalayan snows.
The master whose face often appeared to me in visions.
I gazed searchingly about me, on any excursion from home
for the face of my destined guru.
One day, I wiped my tear-swollen face,
and set out for a distant marketplace in Banaras.
(VENDORS SHOUTING)
Something told me to look behind.
I had seen him in dreams.
The face was the one I had seen in a thousand visions.
Holding a promise that I had not fully understood.
I came to know him long before I met him in this life.
It was him.
It was my master.
He said, "I have been waiting."
MEHROTRA: A true guru is there to lead you to yourself. Not to himself.
To what we are truly capable of,
not just the limited aspect of us.
VIDAL: The spiritual path is farthest from easy.
It requires undoing aspects of ourselves.
NARRATOR: My guru could not be bribed, even by love.
The hard core of egotism is difficult to dislodge, except rudely.
This flattening to the ego treatment, was hard to endure.
I sometimes felt that, metaphorically,
he was discovering and uprooting
every diseased tooth in my jaw.
Many teachers will tell you to believe,
and then put out your eyes of reason.
My guru said, "I want you to keep your eyes of reason open."
In addition, I will open in you, the eye of wisdom.
Yoga for me is freedom.
The state of needing nothing is yoga.
VISHWANANDA: We become one with peace, we become one with joy,
we become one with love.
We realize that that is our true nature.
NARRATOR: How tirelessly my master labored
that the boy Mukunda be transformed into the monk Yogananda.
Three happy years were spent in humble circumstances in Boston.
I gave public lectures, taught classes,
and addressed clubs, colleges, churches
and groups of every denomination.
CHIDANANDA: But it took Yogananda a few years
to realize that he wasn't in the right place
for this message to really take off.
SONI: In 1925, Yogananda arrives in Los Angeles,
and on the first night, according to the LA Times,
over 6,000 people attend his talk.
That's double the capacity of the auditorium.
Los Angeles is this new frontier. It's a place of possibility,
of a new beginning.
Ideas of Asian spirituality have permeated the West Coast
in a way that they haven't on the East Coast.
People come to Los Angeles often looking for something.
So there's this already mind of a seeker.
SONI: Yogananda does a seven-night speaker series
at the LA Philharmonic Auditorium.
People go just to see the show.
And because he's exotic and entertaining and a great speaker.
And then others really stick around
and end up finding that he has really powerful teachings
and he's a very good vehicle for the message.
He knew the power of initiative.
He didn't wait for anybody to get this wisdom out.
He sent out lessons via mail.
Mail order at the time was completely brand new.
It was like sending out an e-blast today.
What Yogananda did that was profound for Americans
was talk about how you can have a personal relationship with the divine.
MAN'S VOICE: I was a totally frustrated man.
I had thought money could give me happiness.
But nothing seemed to satisfy me.
I was skeptical, like everyone was.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
Sit straight, shoulder blades together.
Chin parallel to the ground.
Concentrate on the point between the eyebrows.
The center of thought and will...
...and concentration.
And again and again say, "Reveal thyself"...
...as joy and wisdom and spiritual perception.
Again and again say, "Reveal Thyself".
GOLDBERG: James Lynn was a wealthy industrialist.
And he went on to become a very close devotee
and an important benefactor of Yogananda's work around the country.
CHIDANANDA: Many who joined his classes stepped forward and wrote checks
trying to keep Yogananda in LA.
And he saw such enthusiasm, he thought this is the place to establish a center.
NARRATOR: When I saw the large building on the crest of Mount Washington,
I recognized it at once.
MATA: As he saw, this is the place.
CHIDANANDA: This became the headquarters of his work.
Yogananda called it the spiritual White House.
And it was a place where he gave classes,
he even had rooms available to rent,
with the idea of starting a spiritual community.
And the first event he held there,
before the property was even purchased
was an Easter sunrise service.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
True Christianity has been lost and forgotten.
And what the ancients taught in India has been lost and forgotten.
Those ought to be revived as one highway to the infinite.
GOLDBERG: One of the keys to Yogananda's popularity in America.
Was his love and affection for Jesus.
He placed Jesus on the altar with his lineage. And with Krishna.
CLOONEY: He said that Jesus really was representing to us,
"This is who you are this is your ability
"to open yourself to the divine mystery in ways
"that you never thought were possible."
GOLDBERG: Jesus is revered in India, people don't realize that.
But he is held to be either an incarnation of God,
or, at the very least, a supreme yogi.
CLOONEY: The value of Yogananda's teaching
was that he picked up on this angle
that there is this universal opportunity
to understand who we are.
What is true of Jesus is also true of all of us.
MARTIN: It's not about religion at all,
it's about what's behind religion.
Meditation. Meditate. That's what he said.
Meditation is the catchword.
SONI: Yoga really is a philosophical system.
A lot of people go to yoga to look hot.
It's not set up to give you flat abs,
even though that's an nice byproduct.
It's really set up to understand God.
NARRATOR: Kriya Yoga is the science of God realization through meditation.
VIDAL: Yogananda did teach Hatha Yoga
as one way to prepare for meditation.
CHIDANANDA: He also developed this system of energization exercises.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
The tension exercises...
...charge the body with the life current from the universe.
Energy...
distributed evenly in the body...
...is what keeps the diseases from settling.
You don't have to be afraid of germs.
If your body's electrified...
...they'll be electrocuted.
ANDREW NEWBERG: Everything you do affects your brain.
By tensing the muscles, you're activating your frontal lobes.
You lower the stress hormones in the brain, it lowers your blood pressure
and your heart rate and it gets your mind
prepared for doing whatever it is
that you're about to do.
CHIDANANDA: Kriya Yoga teaches in the spine
are these instruments of higher perception
that are normally dormant in most people.
Through withdrawing that energy and directing it by concentration
into the spine and brain.
Yogananda said those instruments of divine perceptions awaken.
The physical world is not the highest reality.
NEWBERG: When we have a dream at night, it feels
incredibly real while we're in the dream.
And then we wake up and we look at the reality we're now in
and we say, "Oh, okay, that was just a dream."
Well, when people have mystical experiences, they say
"Well this is the ultimate reality, this feels more real."
And all this other stuff, that's not really the real reality.
NARRATOR: Feel the life currents ascending and descending in the spine.
By mastery of the intelligent life
currents in the central nervous system.
The body and brain can be purified.
Go up and down the spine.
Feeling the centers and mentally chanting "om."
WOMAN'S VOICE: Dear Guruji, I have absorbed so much.
I will try to keep it all within me, and profit by it.
Self-realization has helped my career.
It has helped me to think very little of me,
and let the great spirit pass through me.
NARRATOR: Dear Swami Dhirananda...
(READING)
Mount Washington needed someone to be at the helm.
While Guruji traveled throughout the United States,
lecturing, giving classes.
He brought one of his most beloved friends.
He was a very capable teacher.
He was very well-liked.
NARRATOR: I am powerless to tell how greatly he has helped me
in carrying on my educational work in India and Boston.
He successfully carried on the work
at the Ranchi school during my absence from India.
CHIDANANDA: This was his childhood friend from Calcutta.
I think as boys, both of them felt that their families didn't understand
their spiritual longings.
In fact, Dhirananda said that it was
impossible for him to even meditate
at his family home.
So Yogananda allowed him to hide out in his attic room
and he would sneak food up to him after the meals.
CHIDANANDA: The 1920s was a period of almost ceaseless travel for him.
He was visiting all of the largest cities in the Unites States,
where people were getting their first
glimpse of this yoga philosophy.
There is no, um, precursor for Yogananda.
He has to do something completely new that no one has done before.
There is no path.
GOLDBERG: There were other gurus who came.
Swami Vivekananda, whom Yogananda respected greatly,
had been here and started the Vedanta Society in the 1890s.
But he only stayed a few years.
Yogananda was the first major guru
to have a nationwide impact and really make America his home.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
In America, everybody is busy.
If you keep on running after too many hobbies,
you won't have any time left for bliss.
VIDAL: Everything was covered in the lessons,
from how to achieve success in our life.
Magnetizing or attracting your soul mate.
Creating abundance, how to create harmony with others,
how to find happiness.
You people do not sleep correctly.
You subconsciously worry about unpaid bills.
And allow your sleep to be disturbed
by the mental movies of dreams.
By closing the eyes, and inner relaxation
I can remain asleep several nights.
And by opening the eyes and recharging the body,
I can keep awake several days.
CHIDANANDA: Willpower is really one of the absolute necessities
for spiritual progress.
Yogananda defined willpower this way, he said,
"Will is that which changes thought into energy."
"He asks the six men to line up
"with their hand on each other's back
"making a line across the platform.
"Swamiji said, 'The first one, put your hands on my stomach.'
"With just a tiny straightening of his body
"and a quick flick of his stomach,
"Swamiji sent the six men catapulting across the stage."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
What's the key of success? Concentration power.
You meditate to achieve the concentration powers.
VIDAL: He would control his heart and stop the pulse.
And the doctors would rush, check his pulse,
he's dying, he doesn't have a pulse.
And then he would bring himself back to life.
CHOUDHURY: Every human being in the world has a supernatural power.
But having doesn't mean anything
if you don't know how to use it.
MALE ANNOUNCER: Yoga combines the physical, mental and spiritual forces.
Bikram must be in complete control,
or he's in danger of being impaled.
Here he goes.
He did it! And Yogi Bikram is all right.
CHOUDHURY: But before you use it, you have to realize it.
That's why Yogananda called it self-realization.
You have to realize that power.
Supernatural, cosmic, physical, mental, spiritual power.
NARRATOR: Don't take my word for anything.
Apply these techniques, and find out for yourselves.
MARTIN: Here is a small, brown, mystic,
from a nation that very few Americans
had ever been to, much less read about.
And he is here delivering his message with such force
through personal transmission to people who came to see him.
NARRATOR: Most important is to create a church within yourself.
Where you are the minister in the temple of your own soul.
When somebody is in a deep meditation,
there are changes in the brain.
We've seen changes in the brain scans
of the different parts of the brain
that become more active.
What you're seeing during a meditation practice
is a very substantial decrease of activity
in the part of the brain which normally
helps us to create a sense of ourself
and a sense of our orientation in space and time.
As you progressively block the activity in that area,
then you block your ability to establish your sense of self
as distinguished from the rest of the world.
And you begin to feel that sense of deep connectedness or oneness
with everything in the world.
GOEL: I'm a physicist and a physician.
I spent years between the Harvard physics department
and Harvard Medical School.
Going back and forth across the Charles River,
but they don't talk to each other.
As a child, having been exposed to things like Vedic philosophy
growing up in rural Mississippi,
I became inspired by this deep belief
that there's an underlying unity in nature.
By which these different fields could come together.
So that led me to want to combine
these two worlds of physics and biomedicine.
Physics, our physics of the last century
has not come to terms with life,
living systems and things like consciousness.
The writings of Yogananda are very appealing to a scientific appetite.
He was committed to bringing together
the technology and the material efficiency
and the scientific understanding of the West
with the ancient spiritual wisdom of the East.
And creating a unified framework and an integrated approach
to living life on this planet.
ROBERT LOVE: In Washington, something remarkable happened.
Yogananda drew the largest audiences
a public speaker had drawn in the city.
Congressmen, senators, judges,
and he was even invited to the White House by President Coolidge.
But Yogananda came in for a rude awakening when he was in Washington,
which is really part of the American South.
NARRATOR: In the national capital, I was told
that white people only would be permitted
to attend the classes.
This surprised me very much.
I defied this.
And founded a Afro-American Yogoda center to teach my negro brethren.
Cosmic delusion is always snaring us through our ignorance.
LOVE: The civil rights movement was still decades away,
and it was inspired, in fact, by
a revolution that was fomenting in India.
CHIDANANDA: Many people don't realize that Gandhi was a yogi,
and he was putting yoga principles such as non-violence
into action on a mass scale.
SYMAN: Yogananda himself was a very open and vocal supporter of Gandhi
and lectured at Harvard about him and his movement.
LOVE: For this, he was put on a government watch list
and kept under surveillance.
SONI: Anyone affiliated with India, and someone specifically affiliated
with Mahatma Gandhi would be a person of interest,
for the American government.
Why are these people drawn to this heathen teacher?
Oh, what is he doing behind closed doors?
Are they trying to overthrow our government too?
LOVE: There was literally
a war against yoga being waged in the media.
GOLDBERG: A huge scandal erupted when
Swami Dhirananda, Yogananda's right-hand man,
was discovered giving private lessons to a married woman.
And her husband...
...found out about it, stormed Mount Washington, and a brawl erupted.
There were crazy tracts being written,
rumors, all kinds of allegations,
not just about Yogananda,
but some of the other swamis and yoga teachers
that this was a love cult and they were corrupting the women of America.
SONI: Yogananda, as a yogi, would often talk
about mastery over one's sexuality,
over one's urges. Self-discipline.
But oftentimes that was misinterpreted to mean something scandalous.
LOVE: You had a kind of paranoia on the part of
the husbands and law enforcement officials,
that, you know, we couldn't trust our women
with these dark-skinned foreigners.
SYMAN: You can read between the lines here what the problem really is.
I mean this was a period where miscegenation laws, you know,
you were forbidden in America, if you were white,
to marry a brown-skinned man or woman.
So, I mean, it was illegal to mix the races at that point.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
This marriage is symbolical...
of breaking down the barriers...
of the brown Caucasian of India...
...and the white Caucasian of America.
Om.
Amen
Om.
SYMAN: On the one hand, open-minded Americans
revered him, but his unorthodox views
really raised the ire of more conservative Americans.
By the time he went into the Deep South,
it really reached a fever pitch.
LOVE: "Swami was ordered to leave Miami for his own safety.
"The husbands of more than 200 Miami women
"were preparing to, 'get the Hindu.'"
SYMAN: His supporters swarmed City Hall,
and during the hearing, Police Chief Quigg
claims that Yogananda tried to hypnotize him.
SONI: Yogananda's no longer being invited
to receive the keys to different cities.
He's no longer being invited to speak
to different religious congregations.
NARRATOR: I am going through the severest trial of my life.
Judge for yourself the lying capacity of the newspapers.
CHIDANANDA: Back in Los Angeles, the district attorney eventually cleared Yogananda,
and Mount Washington of all wrong-doing.
But the damage had already been done.
NARRATOR: The fruits of a lifetime of service to mankind
reduced to ashes by the soulless efforts of yellow journalism.
CLOONEY: All these incidents culminated in a falling out
between Yogananda and Dhirananda.
Dhirananda left,
and started another organization not far from Mount Washington.
LOVE: Many of the students went with Dhirananda
because Yogananda had been busy
touring the country for the last year.
CHIDANANDA: The final heartbreak came a couple of years later,
when Dhirananda left the Swami Order altogether.
And married one of his Los Angeles students.
Then he sued Yogananda
for his share of the work they had done together.
NARRATOR: With a heavy heart, I'm starting for Mexico.
Cutting loose from everything,
that I may consecrate myself to God entirely.
Divine Mother,
free me, let me go back to India, to serve you there, not here.
There, there is bitterness and heartache and frustration.
And no one to listen to your message.
VISHWANANDA: In Yogananda's darkest hours, there's only one place that he went.
He always went within.
We call it God, place of stillness.
NARRATOR: Many times I have tried to walk away
from these organizational responsibilities.
Every time, Divine Mother comes and takes me by the ear
and says, "Come back."
He said, "When I received that answer, I wept.
"And I knew I had to go back.
"I knew this is what God wanted from me."
NARRATOR: Walking away under the guise of renunciation,
all non-attachment is the easy part.
It shows more spiritual fiber to live
a godly life in the jungle of civilization.
I love all.
Even those who avow themselves my enemies.
For I see thee in every being.
I will rebuild this organization from scratch.
Just as I did when I arrived from India in 1920.
MATA: With that renewed faith,
and the determination
that he would not give up
even though he was sorely
tried and wanted to leave,
he began to draw disciples.
One of them was me.
I came in 1931. Many other young people came.
There were older people here,
there was all ages living here.
LOVE: Yogananda had consistently drawn his devotees
from all walks of life.
Prominent businessmen, judges, lawyers, even hardened journalists.
But by the early 1930s, something very different was beginning.
A small, core group of devotees
came to Yogananda and asked to be accepted into
this monastic path of complete renunciation.
To completely devote their whole lives to following his teachings,
and seeking God through this path of Kriya Yoga meditation.
James Lynn, the wealthy businessman, was one of them.
And he'd go on to become a highly advanced yogi,
and take monastic vows like the others.
And so through Yogananda,
this ancient monastic swami order
from India took root in America.
MATA: Now began the training.
I knew nothing about renunciation.
CHIDANANDA: The new monastics took strict vows, like Yogananda himself,
of simplicity, celibacy, obedience, and loyalty.
Yogananda's lay students faced other challenges.
HERB JEFFRIES: I'd been there about six or seven weeks, and I said
"Guruji, all my life, I heard thou canst not,
"thou shalt not, thou must not.
"These are the rules of the religious teachings that I've heard
"around my relatives."
"What I want to know from you is, what canst thou?"
He said "Well, do you smoke?"
And I said, "Yes." He said, "You may continue."
"Do you drink?"
"Alcohol?" I said, "Yes." He said, "You may continue."
"Do you
"enjoy the opposite sex promiscuously?"
"Yes." "Well, you may continue."
I said, "Wait a minute.
"You mean that I can
"come up on this hill here,
"in this good place with all of these
"wonderful people, your disciples
"and the devotees, and the brothers up here,
"and study these teachings,
"and I can go back down there
"and do all these things?"
"Absolutely."
"But I will not promise you that as you
"continue to study these teachings,
"that the desire to do these things
"will not fall away from you."
NARRATOR: Repeated performance of inaction creates a mental blueprint.
Causing the formation of subtle,
electrical pathways in the brain.
Somewhat like the grooves in a phonograph record.
Your life follows the grooves
that you yourself have created in the brain.
NEWBERG: It appears that Yogananda was talking about neuroplasticity
almost 50 years before Western doctors took an interest in it.
He said that regular Kriya practice
could rewire your brain and help eliminate unwanted habits.
HARRISON: The Autobiography of a Yogi is the book
that I keep stacks of around the house.
And I give it out constantly, you know, to people.
You know, like when people need regrooving.
Read this.
BROTHER ANANDAMOY: We are not talking about suppression,
we are talking about transmutation.
Rechanneling, that's the whole science of yoga,
rechanneling your energy.
Creating new patterns of thinking,
new patterns of the emotional life.
SISTER PARVATI: When he looked at you penetratingly, he was changing you.
He said, when he looked at you
he was changing your brain cells.
And he did.
LEO COCKS: He started going into my inner thoughts and feelings,
maybe things where you've slipped a little.
He dissected me on the deepest level I've ever been.
I felt like I was being carved down
into a little tiny person, down to almost like an ant.
And I remember I just literally couldn't take anymore.
Humanly, emotionally
couldn't take it. You know, I was hurting. I was crying.
He reached over and he gave me a big hug.
"I've given you my unconditional love," he says.
"Do not fail to take advantage of it."
It's a friendship and a love that...
He took you as you were and he gave it all to you as much as you could take.
NARRATOR: There is just a thin screen
of ether between the world and my guru.
He's haunting me day and night.
"Return to India.
"You must come. Make the supreme effort."
Traversing ten thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye.
His message penetrated my being like a flash of lightning.
I have spent 15 years in spreading my guru's teachings in America.
Now he recalls me.
Our arrival found such an immense crowd assembled to greet us.
I was unprepared for the magnitude of our welcome.
We broke our journey halfway across the continent,
to see Mahatma Gandhi.
After great discussions he took lessons,
Kriya, and recharging exercises.
I was touched by his spirit of inquiry.
When we prayed together, the whole place seemed filled with God.
WRIGHT: Master could hardly wait until he got to meet his master.
It was indescribable, the...
...meeting between the two.
Master dropped to his knees, touched his feet, of Sri Yukteswar Giri
Yukteswar Giri was welcoming back his triumphant son.
NARRATOR: A healing calm descended at the mere sight of my guru.
Quietly sitting beside him,
I would feel his bounty pouring peacefully over my being.
Such spiritual atmosphere I so long missed.
Day and night passes with God-mad, God-hungry crowds.
It's wonderful to work amidst people
who don't need coaxing to be spiritual.
The Himalayan caves are calling me.
And the people's heart-caves are welcoming me.
But for a few beloved disciples at Mount Washington,
I have no attraction to go back to America.
I would roam by the Jumna where Krishna played his flute of eternity
and never visit the shores of material life.
The lion of Bengal is gone.
The body which had reflected omnipresent wisdom lay lifeless, before me, mocking.
Master mine,
why did you leave me?
The Lord is showing me, wherever I am,
that's my home.
My home is on the train.
Then it shall be in the hotel.
And then on the ship.
How can I leave my home?
It's everywhere.
CHIDANANDA: When Sri Yukteswar first sent Yogananda on his mission to America,
it was right after World War I,
which was supposed to be the war to end all wars.
Now, tensions were heating up in Europe and Asia,
and Yogananda saw that we could be
entering a period of even greater horror.
CHIDANANDA: The need for the teachings was more urgent than ever.
After his guru died, something shifted in him.
GOLDBERG: He was just experiencing these profound states of consciousness.
His eyes just turned glassy. He just... (WHOOSHES) Withdrew.
And he was gone, you know.
MATA: And ofttimes it gave concern to us younger ones.
His heart seemed to cease beating.
He had instructed us that whenever he went into Samadhi,
that we could bring him out of it
by chanting "om" in his right ear.
And I thought "Wow. This is something different."
This was a little scary.
(GASPS)
Is my guru, always now going to be
in this state?
I would be in awe to ever
approach him in the same way.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
My body became just like stone...
and still I was fully conscious,
...and everything was Light.
CHIDANANDA: And it was out of that consciousness,
that he was pulling these writings,
these profound truths and experiences.
MATA: He constantly stressed to me,
get my thoughts,
understand what I mean.
I can do much more now to reach.
To reach others with my pen.
CHIDANANDA: The Autobiography of a Yogi was the first memoir
of a genuine Indian holy man.
SHANKAR: It was his personal feeling about his devotion to his gurus
and what he really received from them.
But it's not all that Yogananda wrote.
Yogananda produced an incredible literary corpus.
MATA: Every morning, he would have us bring a typewriter and a table,
and bring it into his study.
GOLDBERG: He'd still be up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, writing.
DAYA MATA: Night and day, he wrote or he dictated.
And we would type all day long.
MRINALINI MATA: And he would be totally, totally absorbed.
Hours would go by.
His whole consciousness became absorbed in finishing his writings.
And it was that sense of urgency,
it was like an acceleration,
an acceleration of our discipline, of our training.
CHIDANANDA: And not only was he writing, he was building temples,
founding Brotherhood Colonies,
and encouraging people to live together in spiritual communities.
GOLDBERG: And then in 1945, while he was writing the autobiography,
we set off the first atomic bomb.
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: Few people cried.
Most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture of the Bhagavadgita,
"Now I am become death,
"the destroyer of worlds."
About a hundred years ago, Einstein gave us a framework
that radically changed modern physics,
that put energy and matter on some sort of equivalent footing.
We're going to have to expand the language of physics
to come to terms not only with matter and energy,
but matter, energy, and maybe even consciousness.
NARRATOR: The human mind can and must liberate within itself
energies greater than those within stones and metals.
Lest the atomic giant, newly unleashed,
dawn on the world in mindless destruction.
CHOPRA: Modern science, as it is now,
is based on what is called the subject-object split.
I am the subject and there is the universe.
Whereas spirituality says that
there's a consciousness that includes the subject
and the object.
Consciousness gives rise to everything, including the brain.
HARRISON: We've been brought up to think that
the mind is this thing that sits up here somewhere in your brain.
But really, the mind is everywhere.
NEWBERG: Some people have argued that consciousness
resides in every cell of our body.
The only way for us to really understand
the nature of consciousness and what it is,
is to explore it both from the outside in and from the inside out.
RUSSELL SIMMONS: Delusion is the belief that there's something outside of you.
But your happiness is not based on any thing outside of you.
In the inside, where the watcher
is watching all of the craziness,
kind of just laughing.
So look inside for the watcher,
and be connected to the watcher.
And then be awake.
GOLDBERG: The Indian teachings that Yogananda represented were not escapes.
They were methods of adapting
to these upheavals and these changes
because they remind people that we are more than the personality
and the roles that we play,
and the body we inhabit.
(MAN SPEAKING)
When I am in the soul
I know that...
...nothing is important on the earth.
Nothing, nothing at all.
Only Love is important.
GOLDBERG: If we're going to change those kind of circumstances
so there's hope for our survival,
the change has to come from inside out.
NARRATOR: A man who has reformed himself
will reform thousands.
CHIDANANDA: Yogananda saw that if there wasn't some way to reach the masses,
with this message of experiencing
the spirit within every human being,
the world would not survive the transition into the atomic age.
They were leading this foundation at that time
to bring the teachings current.
So they can really create a transformation on a collective level
in the world, not just in the forest.
That forest is here now. This is bigger, and is ever-increasing.
If we don't practice the teachings here,
there will be no forest left at all.
GOLDBERG: The autobiography was a doorway in,
it was a table setter for millions of people.
Whether they ended up being practitioners of Kriya Yoga or not,
Yogananda was a doorway into whatever pathway they found.
(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)
(OVERLAPPING VOICES)
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)
MARC BENIOFF: On the way out of the memorial service for Steve,
they handed us a copy of Yogananda's book.
Steve's last message to us was, "Actualize yourself."
That was Yogananda's message.
He was constantly encouraging you
to simultaneously be able to think of yourself
as this little blip on the planet
but on the other hand, you also had infinite potentialities.
You had the eternal soul in you.
So, can you simultaneously operate with that awareness
of recognizing, in a humble way,
the limited bounds of your human life,
and at the same time, the infinite potentialities
of you as a soul.
We have a far too limited
sense of our capacity as human beings
to overcome disease, to overcome poverty.
And therefore, to allow that power
to begin to transform the world.
(PEOPLE SHOUTING)
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
CHIDANANDA: When the Ambassador of India
visited Los Angeles for the first time,
how happy Yogananda was that this representative of free India,
liberated from the colonial rule, had come to Los Angeles.
And he was able to honor him.
A banquet was organized to welcome the ambassador.
And Yogananda, being one of
the most well-known Indians in the community,
was invited to give one of the key speeches that night.
MRINALINI MATA: The night before,
we were walking down the hall, he turned to me and said,
"Do you know, it's just a matter of hours,
"and I will be gone."
SWAMI KRIYANANDA: When Master got up to speak, I was there.
He had always said, "When I die, I want to die
"speaking of my America and my India."
DAYA MATA: "Free me then, O Lord, from the bondage of the body
"that I may show others how they can free themselves."
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
...lotus, scenic beauty, and sages, thy wide doors are open,
welcoming God's true sons through all the ages.
Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves,
and men dream God,
I am hallowed, my body touched that sod.
CHIDANANDA: He finished saying, "I am hallowed, my body touched that sod,"
and then, he collapsed to the floor.
MATA: As I kneeled over his body,
tremendous force entered this body.
With the message to my soul,
"This time you cannot call him back."
CHIDANANDA: In the yoga tradition, there is a sacred practice
of knowing when you will leave your body.
And so consciousness moves to a grander space.
The doctor said that he had a heart attack.
NARRATOR: Watch the shore of the universe,
but do not become absorbed in it.
I behold life and death like
the rise and fall of waves on the sea
I am the ocean of consciousness.
A guru can't be a little old man in a blanket.
Or a guy in robes.
It could look like that,
because guru-ness might be living in that body for a while,
and it interacts with you because you have a karmic tie with that being,
but that being, if he's really a guru,
he's not at all identified with being in that body.
Once I asked a saint in India, I said, "Athimara..."
I said, "How can I get closer to my guru?"
He looked at me like I was crazy.
He said, "Your guru is what's looking out of your eyes right now."
So get with that for a while.
(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)
Everything is Brahma
Everything is Spirit
Everything is Light