:: July/August 2005 Volume 4/Number 5

Sitting Down With: Brother Brahmananda

By Julie Deife

In 1925, five years after Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in the United States, he took up residence in Los Angeles where he established an international headquarters for his society, Self-Realization Fellowship at the crest of Mount Washington. Self-Realization Fellowship includes a Monastic Order of monks and nuns. On June 1, 2005, Brother Brahmananda, a senior monastic who serves at the society’s international headquarters, generously shared time and thoughts about Paramahansa Yogananda, SRF, God, yoga and human nature.

Julie: Did you ever meet Paramahansa Yogananda?

Brother Brahmananda: No, he left his body in 1952 and I was still in Philadelphia. I didn’t come to these teachings until 1963, when I read the Autobiography of a Yogi while I was in law school.

Julie: And that did it.

Brother Brahmananda: Yes, it did. At that time I was an atheist. About halfway through the book, I kind of turned my eyes up and said, “Excuse me.”

Julie: Paramahansa Yogananda said he was coming to the west to spread yoga. What version of yoga was he referring to?

Brother Brahmananda: He was referring to Kriya Yoga, which is both a technique and a path. It’s a form of Raja yoga, which follows the eightfold path of Patanjali. Particularly, Kriya Yoga is a pranayama technique, and that technique is described to some extent, without giving the details, in the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansaji.

Julie: Can the energization exercises that are taught at SRF be considered the equivalent of asana in a hatha yoga practice?

Brother Brahmananda: No, I don’t believe so. They have a particular value for preparing the body for meditation by equalizing the prana in the body, and a number of other things. But, Paramahansaji encouraged the practice of asanas as well as the energization exercises.

Of course, hatha yoga is a practice of the third step of Patanjali’s eightfold method of yoga asana, and traditionally it’s meant to prepare the body and mind for the next step, which is pranayama, conscious control of life energy. The energization exercises are literally a pranayama technique in which we are controlling prana and sending it to the various body parts and energizing them.

Julie: What is meditation?

Brother Brahmananda: Paramahansaji defines meditation as concentration on God. The whole idea, in meditation and particularly with Kriya, is to withdraw the life and consciousness into the spine and brain, so that the body and the mind become very, very still. And in that stillness, we begin to feel what we really are, the soul, atma.

Mount Washington Headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship.

Julie: Is there a simple way for westerners to understand Jesus Christ and Paramahansa Yogananda in the same lineage?

Brother Brahmananda: Paramahansa Yogananda said that Christ and Babaji, who is a great master still alive in the Himalayas, were in communion, and that Christ felt badly about the churches in the west, that there wasn’t sufficient God communion there, people weren’t really getting inside and being in God’s presence. Of course you have many saints who did that, but overall not enough.

Babaji felt this tremendous cry from the west for some way to contact God. So, it was in response to that need in the west that they sent what Paramahansaji called a divine dispensation, that of Kriya Yoga, to the west.

Julie: He was certainly warmly welcomed.

Brother Brahmananda: Well, he was welcomed in some circles and not in others. It wasn’t as though he had instant acceptance in the United States and was immediately addressing hundreds of thousands of people. People gradually came to understand that God lives in all, that true teachings could come from anywhere, and that yoga can help us very much.

Julie: Is there something about the west being ready for him, at the time of his arrival?

Brother Brahmananda: Paramahansa talks about civilization operating within certain cycles of spiritual growth and decay and that the present age is one of growth, of spiritual advancement. We’re basically in an upward cycle and there’s more and more understanding coming to the general population.

Julie: We are now in an upward cycle? As of when?

Brother Brahmananda: It started moving up around 600 AD, which was kind of a low point. They are 24,000-year cycles. The idea is that people generally are becoming more receptive to spiritual truth and not just to old dogma.

Julie: To what do you attribute the continuing growth of SRF membership?

Brother Brahmananda: There’s a need all over the world, that people experience at a certain point in their spiritual evolution, to be in God’s presence, have that connection. That connection is here in these teachings, and as you start to read Yogananda’s writings, it becomes obvious when you’re of a certain frame of mind and have a certain degree of receptivity.
I was astonished when I would have my friends read the Autobiography and it didn’t mean anything to them, because they weren’t receptive, they weren’t ready for it; but there are a lot of people who are, and for those who deeply feel the need
for God communion, this often comes as a revelation.

Julie: If I am a practicing Catholic, for example, could I also follow the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda?

Brother Brahmananda: Yes. The important thing here is meditation and God-communion, and so we have people of all faiths that come to SRF. And devotion is central on our path: Yogananda said the practice of yoga can take you to the door of God, but only love can take you through the door.

Julie: In making our choices about religion, in the end do you think we return to a core set of principles with which we were raised? Many of us have changed from one kind of religious belief system to another over the years.

Brother Brahmananda: I’m not a Jungian scholar, but I’ve read a little bit about Carl Jung, and one thing that struck me was that he was deeply aware of the truth in India and Hinduism. He had one occasion to leave his body during a medical operation and he saw himself in orbit about to enter a Hindu temple, and then was called back by his doctor into his body, but he avoided the east. He avoided the east, because he had a very close friend who went to China, I believe, and immersed himself in I Ching and the culture there and later became unbalanced. Jung attributed it to the severing of the cultural ties that he’d grown up with, and so Jung felt compelled, pretty much, to stay in his own cultural orbit.
Now, what Paramahansaji has done is to take the deepest truths of Hinduism, shown that they exist also in Christianity, and created a path where both are present, in such a way that it’s far more assimilable to westerners than other paths might be. A Christian doesn’t give up his deep reverence and feeling for Christ, as you’ll see in Paramahansaji’s book The Second Coming of Christ where God speaks through Jesus
to the modern world, to those who are receptive; but he also speaks through others.

Julie: Why do you think it is, that so many people want to attach a belief in God realization with only one person or one guru, one prophet, etc.?

Brother Brahmananda: When I raised my eyes and said, “Excuse me,” I came back to my belief in the same God that I had known before; it’s the same.

I would speculate that those who were very close to Jesus as his disciples saw him as their way to God, which he was; somehow in the translation it became that he was the only way to God. Now, he was the only way to God for them, but it doesn’t follow that he’s the only way to God for all of humanity
— Jesus, the man, we’re talking about — whereas the real meaning for those, as Paramahansaji says in his books, the real meaning of the Christ being the only way to God, is that Jesus was totally one with the Christ consciousness of God and only through becoming one with that Christ Consciousness can we ascend to the father, only by becoming one with that vast cosmic intelligence of God throughout the universe can we become one with spirit within and beyond creation.
So to me, that’s the metaphysical meaning of “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the father but by me.” And so Paramahansaji explains it, and, as you see in the Second Coming, he was in a unique position to do because of his own conversations and experiences with Jesus.

Brother Brahmananda: Let me go back to your question, which was why do people feel constrained to say there’s one way only? You know, that’s true in this sense: Paramahansaji gave an example of two different farmers on their land, each looking for water. One started digging for water, he looked around and thought, perhaps this is the best place and he started digging and went down and down and down and there was no water. So he gave up and chose another place and started digging and in this way he went from well to well and he never did find water.

The second farmer got in an expert, a hydrologist, did a study, and the hydrologist said that the study shows this is where water is most likely to be, and so he dug and he dug 15, 20 feet and no water, but he kept digging, and digging, until finally he did strike water. The spiritual realm is like that, there are many paths to God, but in order to find God, you have to choose the path that you feel is most attuned to you, and go very, very deep in that path, and so in that sense, there is one way which is true or best for you.

Julie: Look at wars today, still frequently based on religious differences. Have we not learned?

Brother Brahmananda: Some have learned and some have not learned, but look at it this way. This entire universe is one of spiritual growth; you have people in various stages of human evolution. This world is a school, and you’ll have people that are extremely dogmatic as far as religion is concerned and through that dogmatism they’re going to learn something, they may have to be reborn quite a number of times, until the truth of God’s reality begins to seep in, but that’s the way with everyone. Everyone is seeking happiness, because our very nature is the soul and the essence of the soul is joy.

Julie: How do we find an answer?

Brother Brahmananda: Yogananda says when that desperate cry for help comes to God, God sends a guru, somebody who knows God and who can introduce that individual to God. That’s the nature of the guru-disciple relationship.

Julie: I see that there are six gurus on your altars.

Brother Brahmananda: Yes: Jesus Christ, Bhagavan Krishna, Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda. Yogananda said: “I’m the last of the gurus.” He was an avatar, one who has found God, totally become one with the infinite, and then has come back. One of the monks once asked him if he was an avatar. And he said, yes, because it required someone of that stature to bring this particular dispensation to the world. Christ and Krishna and the other gurus of this path are avatars. Yogananda said: when I’ve left the body, I’ll be able to help you even more, and of course we’ve found that to be true.

Julie: Why?

Brother Brahmananda: Because his presence is still available to us on the spiritual plane. He said, as far as what to do when I’m gone, the teachings will be the guru; but his spiritual presence is the main thing to attune to.

A true guru like Yogananda is a manifestation of God. When one becomes one with God and then comes back, then that person really is a manifestation of God.

Julie: What would you like to say in closing?

Brother Brahmananda: Today is my 40th anniversary of coming through those doors — the morning of June 1st, 1965. I certainly wouldn’t have that any different. The monastic path is not an easy one, it’s certainly not for everybody either, but it offers the opportunity to live and work for God and to love God alone and to be in the company of those who are doing likewise. It’s a tremendous blessing.

 

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