is a good shop keeper

Regarding your question about Yogananda, you write to say that you "received the impression from his autobiography that he was a genuine saint who dedicated his life to serving God.'' But the thing is that you do not actually know what is a genuine saint, and what can you understand about saintly life from reading his autobiography. I may inform you that just recently I visited his so-called asrama retreat, and it was simply a hodgepodge of all nonsense. There was a Buddha statue, a Christ statue, a Gandhi's memorium labeled as "World Peace Memorium''-and what world peace he has brought? None. And what does Gandhi have to do with spiritual realization anyway? Gandhi was simply interested to get the Britishers out of India-what has this to do with self-realization, the prime goal of life? And here and there, there were signs of all sorts, like "Be still and realize I am God''-what is this, by becoming silent and still one becomes God?! The stone is silent for millions of years, does that mean it has become God? This is all conglomeration of nonsense ideas. Practically, this Yogananda has no philosophy or authority, he simply drags in Buddha, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, and whoever else he can think to put, so that whatever you like it is in his shop. He is just a good shop keeper.    (More...)