EAST-WEST

November-December, 1927 VOL. 3-1

THE HIGHEST TECHNIQUE OF

CONCENTRATION, MEDITATION and

SPIRITUALIZATION of the BODY

How to RECHARGE Your Body, Mind and Soul Batteries from COSMIC ENERGY

YOGODA is a scientific system for conscious control of involuntary life forces, perfected by the eminent Hindu master of metaphysics and psychology,

SWAMI YOGANANDA, A.B.

YOGODA can be practiced anywhere, anytime, in public or private, sitting or reclining, walking or standing, unobserved by others, and without apparatus or expense of any kind. Ten minutes by this system exceeds in benefit hours of ordinary exercise.

This marvelous science of applied life vibration, technically known as YOGODA, endorsed by foremost scientists and educators, draws thru concentrated absorption from cosmic energy a recharge of life-giving elements into the physical and spiritual system. This principle can be put into CONSTANT operation within your being, proceeding without interruption in its constructive processes even while your physical body is in repose.

EVERY MUSCLE, ORGAN

AND FUNCTION OF BODY

STRENGTHENED

Parts unaffected by any other system of development are brought to their maximum powers by this miracle-working science.

WHAT "Y O G O D A" DOES

Teaches how to literally RECHARGE body-batteries with fresh life-current by increasing dynamic power of will, thus producing a FATIGUELESS state.

Improves (a) Beauty of Form; (b) Grace of expression; (c) Center of Consciousness; (d) Power of mental receptivity; (e) Contact with the Infinite Reservoir of Power.

YOGODA enables you to see the VITAL FORCE, to hear the COSMIC VIBRATION, and thru a definite simple technique, to reach the Omnipresent Source of Infinite Power.

YOGODA prevents hardening of arteries and insures lasting youth by stimulating even circulation and helping to eject foreign matter from the system. Drives away headaches instantly. Harmonizes all muscle actions. Makes colds impossible. Prevents constipation and all stomach troubles.

It exercises those parts which you think you cannot exercise.

PUTS ON or TAKES OFF FAT, as desired, without trouble or delay.

Teaches you to control your material and spiritual destiny.

This YOGODA system has accomplished wonderful results in several residential schools for boys in India, established by Swami Yogananda, and has brought lasting health, happiness and success to 20,000 American Yogoda students.

FAMOUS STUDENTS OF YOGODA

Amelita Galli-Curci—Luther Burbank—Luigi von Kunits, Conductor of the New Symphony Orchestra of Toronto, Canada—Huston Ray, brilliant pianist—Countess Ilya Tolstoy—Homer Samuels, distinguished pianist—Judge T. J. Hewitt of Oregon—Vladimir Rosing, eminent tenor and director of the Rochester American Opera Co.—Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch—Maria Carreras, famous pianist—George Liebling, pianist-composer—R. J. Cromie, owner-publisher "Vancouver Sun"—Louis van Norman, Commercial Attache, U. S. Dept. of Commerce—Douglas Grant Duff Ainslie, English poet and author.

A descriptive pamphlet, "Yogoda," simple, illuminating and intensely interesting. It will prepare you for priceless benefits in health, success and radiant happiness.

REALIZATION

versus BOOK LEARNING

—By Swami Yogananda

Western philosophers have always assumed that Truth can be known by dialectics and reason. Immanuel Kant was the first one to question if man had the faculties required to know Truth adequately. The great Sage Patanjali, who lived long before Kant, gave conclusive proof that settled the dispute about the nature of the instruments of man’s faculties required in knowing Truth.

A thirsty man once went to a lake and craved at the sight of it to swallow all its waters. He found, however, that he could not drink more than the capacity of his little stomach. So sits there by the vast lake of Truth many a thirsty philosopher and seeker who aspire to drink all of its waters and hold all its mysteries within themselves. But alas, they know not that this can not possibly be done. To swallow all the waters of the lake of Truth, one must have a stomach as big as the lake.

Ordinarily a phenomenon is known by the senses, perceived by the mind, and cognized by the inner ego. All human experiences depend for their data on the testimony of the senses. The power of inference comes after and draws conclusions from the material supplied by the senses. If smoke is seen to emerge from a distant hill, John concludes the hill is on fire. Why? Because he had seen fire and smoke together before. But in this case, it was not smoke but a cloud of dust on the hill. John was mistaken in inferring the hill was on fire. Whenever the data furnished by the senses are wrong the conclusion is wrong. Hence though the power of inferential reason has its uses, still it is incapable of proving the ultimate nature of Reality.

Limitations of the Senses

Our sense radios can only intercept certain rates of vibratory message of qualities, appearances—not the substance, the thing-in-itself. Our senses give report of phenomena, not of noumena. Look at an orange—you perceive the color, touch, smell, taste; one perception at a time. A combination of these perceptions is called an orange; none knows what the thing, the orange, is in itself. The orange is not the color, nor the taste, nor the softness—but is the force which combines these qualities harmoniously to produce the effect of an orange. A manufactured orange may be produced with a sponge, orange juice, orange scent, and orange skin, to look, taste, and feel like an orange. As our senses only perceive qualities separately, an artificial combination of the color, taste, smell and touch may easily lead the senses and the power of inference to believe a manufactured orange to be a real orange.

None knows what the real orange is. Perhaps it is the intelligent combination of differently vibrating atoms representing color, taste, solidity and smell, around one nucleus. Our senses do not tell us that, but our wisdom does. The vast universe is nothing but an ocean of energy lying about us; high overhead as rivers of the milky way, twinkling stars, solar systems; beneath our feet as solid earth. The physical body with its ethereal thoughts, the sparkling lakes, heaving oceans, sky, air and fire—all are but the vibrations of the same cosmic energy. Yet the senses differentiate and tell us the delusive story that the solid hurts us, the liquid drowns us, the fire burns us, the sky does not hold us, the gas chokes us. As ice appears from water, steam, hydrogen-oxygen gas—so appears the universe as the solid earth, oceans and vapors. All are the manifestations of one and the same substance. All the ninety elements of which the whole universe is comprised is made of one electronic energy which in turn is composed of conscious cosmic energy. Our senses tell us only of the most superficial aspect of matter, deceiving us into thinking that ice is cold, heavy and solid and that the steam is hot and fluid, and that the atoms in it are composed of burning luminous electricity.

Our senses do not tell us the truth—that the electrons laden in a small pencil could explode a skyscraper, and that the energy released from the electrons constituting a human body could explode a part of Mount Everest. If our senses spoke the truth we would see the earth not as solid, liquid and gaseous, but as rivers and glaciers of electrons. Each speck of dust would appear a rolling mass of light.

It might be reasoned that though our senses deceive us, our powers of reason can give us new truths. That is true. We must, however, remember that all the knowledge derived from experiments carried on by the help of the microscope, mathematics, and fine instruments, has to come through the senses. The senses, and the reason working on their testimony, have only told a millionth part of the truth about the nature of matter and all things. But yesterday atoms were considered ultimate—now they are further analyzed to contain the finer materials of electrons. Thus neither the senses nor the power of inference, which builds knowledge on sense testimony, can be trusted to tell us the truth about the earth, the universe, the human body, or the mind.

Authority is not Proof

Every religion claims its Bible to be of divine origin. Some hypocrites have even buried books, written on old papyrus, underground, grown grass on them, and then led mobs there under supposed inspiration to dig out and recover the "God-given book." How are you going to find out which book represents truths? The number of believers cannot be the proof. Galileo, one single man, believed the earth round and suffered prosecution on that account, while all the people of the world believed that it was flat. Hence the belief of the millions of followers of the Christian Bible or the Hindu Vedas cannot establish the immutable universal nature of the principles inculcated in them. Of course by reading and hearing sermons from the Bible and Vedas we can find certain moral advice and suggestions of right human conduct which can benefit all races for all times. But that does not prove the deeper Truths mentioned in them. The Vedas and the Bible both declare God as a living, kind, responding Ruler of the Universe. But reading those words does not prove it. Has anyone consciously seen Him? Our senses see the color in flowers and our mind perceives the beauty, but who can tell that One Intelligence pervades the Universe? Who can tell that the Vedas and the Bible are infallible? Isn’t there some husk, some crust of superstition in both books? We have to separate the husk from the kernel. We must find the Truth as separated from the language and limitation of expression used by its propounder.

Therefore the sage Patanjali, the founder of the Yoga system in India, who flourished several centuries before Jesus Christ, says that the authority of the scriptures is not proof of its Truth, because the scriptures, no matter who propounds them, have to be received through the sight, hearing, limited imagination, and the reasoning powers of the reader. All seekers, all denominations, whether Unitarians, Universalists, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Christian Scientists, Swedenborgians, Catholic or Hindu Christians, all interpret the Bible according to their own degree of development and power of reasoning. That is why there are so many cults formed out of the one universal teachings of Jesus Christ.

What Is the Proof?

The proof of applying the laws of Patanjali in finding out the Real Truth about the pure universal teachings and Scriptures, undiluted by the limitations of our opinions, is to live it in life. I asked a knave if he read the Christian Bible. He replied, "I have read it a hundred times, Sir; I know all about it." "Alas," I said, "You know nothing about it because you are still a knave." That is why in ancient India the Vedas and the Hindu Bible of Bhagavad Gita were not printed for centuries. They were handed down through the memories of devout disciples and only some knew all the truth. Others were told not more than they could realize at one time. Nowadays, any Yoga book or scripture or the Christian Bible can be bought for a few cents and intellectually swallowed. Swallowing one’s own ideas about the scriptures without digestion ...only creates a greed for more books and more new ideas, but chronic indigestion and spiritual non-assimilation will result.

Everywhere we see Pundits, living, moving dictionaries crammed to the brim with intellectual knowledge. But have they the ability to put all that wisdom they have memorized into practical achievement and manifestation in their life and character? If not, then their knowledge is vain and is really ignorance.

This is happening in the West and in the East. Each phase of intellectual study of scriptures must be substantiated by corresponding realization and then a little more should be read and realized and so on. Every theory and belief must be practiced and its truth found out. Belief is no safety, for it produces the ignorance of false satisfaction born of dogma. It crumbles at the storm of reason. Skepticism is refusal to investigate further. It is self-inflicted punishment.

The Power of Realization

Sophistry and intellectual belief may produce temporary satisfaction but they are short lasting, vanishing like soap bubbles before the blast of deep scrutiny. Followers of the Hindu and Christian teachings should build their faith on the unshakable rock of realization. According to Patanjali, any real inner Christ teachings cannot be understood through the testimony of others, or listening to their interpretations, but can be grasped only by testing them directly by the power of intuition. I know I exist. I am not the body—it is my body. I think. I am not the thought. Therefore this consciousness of the I-ness in every man cannot be perceived through the senses. What cannot be perceived through the senses, cannot be inferred about through the reason. Then how do I know I exist? From direct perception of my intuition and not through the intermediary faculties of sensory perceptions and reason.

Through the ages the red pages of history tell of many religious Inquisitions, burning of martyrs and so-called witches, wars of the crusades, and so forth—brought on by not only the limited interpretation but misinterpretation of Christ’s teachings. Jesus Christ was crucified once but his teachings suffer crucifixion every day at the hands of men and cults of limited vision. Jesus Christ’s teachings cannot be understood by reading the Bible a thousand times or thru all life and several generations, but can be known only by living and trying out the book in every-day life. What you listen to, what you read in books—try to mediate on that long enough to be one with the thought underlying it. Then try to manifest that realization in practice. Realization comes from constant wide-awake meditation, with ever-busy, ever-searching mentality to convert theory into solid knowledge thru practice.

Scriptural Realization

All beliefs must be thoroughly scrutinized. Overstudy must be avoided. Indis-criminative study, especially of religious books written by novices or untried enthusiasts mostly results in indigestible hashes of imagination, emotional outbursts, and diluted realization. Patanjali Yoga Philosophy, the Christian Bible, the Hindu Bible—Bhagavad Gita, and a few other books written only by men of real realization, must be studied, a little at a time, and meditated upon for hours or for days together. The best time to read scriptures is after practicing meditation when the intuitive feeling is awake.

My Master, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giriji, once told me one of his experiences in the real studies of the scriptures, in a hermitage. His great Savant Guru (teacher of Gita) was sitting surrounded by his disciples. The sacred book was open before them all. They were looking steadfastly at one passage. A half hour passed, then they closed their eyes. A half hour passed again, the Master explained for a few moments the same passage upon which they were concentrating. They all meditated motionless for an hour—then the Master asked a question, "Have you understood?" One of them answered "Yes, sir." The Master replied, "No you didn’t—let us meditate again." They meditated for another half-hour. Then the Master asked his disciples again, "Do you all now understand what you read?" No one spoke. Then the Master said, "Our study today is over." He then turned to my Master and asked, "Have you read the Bhagavad Gita?" My Master replied, "No sir, although my eyes and mind have run through its pages." His Guru smiled and with great joy said, "You are the only one of thousands I have met who said that. But indeed you have read it. When one is engrossed in knowing, he does not have the time to think whether he knows or to say he knows. He is too busy knowing—others are too busy saying they know, that’s why they have no time to make the effort to know."

Sacred and inspiring books are helpful in stimulating the desire for realization, if a little at a time is assimilated. Otherwise overstudy of books produces vanity, false satisfaction, that one knows when he does not know at all. Ramakrishna said, "I pity the ignorant, I love the unread man of realization, but I consider a bit of straw the man of book learning without realization. I can blow him away by a puff of questioning about realization. I admire, love, and respect a man who has realization as well as the intellectual knowledge of different scriptures." Let not love of book reading or ceremonial diversions be the delusion to divert you from realization. God realization first, books and everything else is of secondary importance. Have Him and you have everything. Seek ye the kingdom of God first, and all things will be added unto it—all wisdom, prosperity and beauty. Get the tree of life, and you shall have each of its fruits too.

___________

Man is created for God;

And is called to strip off all selfhood

And unlikeness to Him.

—St. John of the Cross.


ACTIVITY—By Nicholas Roerich

Nickolas Roerich

It is said that once the great Akbar drew a line and demanded of his wise man, Birbal, that he shorten the line without cutting or erasing from either side. The latter drew a longer line parallel to it and Akbar’s line was thereby shortened. Wisdom lies in drawing the longer line.

When one sees in our day the apotheosis of rush, sometimes we feel helpless to shorten this turmoil, this useless prodigality of forces and possibilities. And only in imagining a longer line of real activity can we decrease the effervescence of nowadays—the standard of Hurry.

Certainly one must remember: Silence acts; speech gives the impulse to action. Silence compels, speech persuades. The immense and inscrutable processes of the world ...all perfect themselves within, in a deep and august silence, masked in a noisy and misleading surface of sound. The greatest exertions are made with the breath inheld, the faster the breathing the greater the dissipation of energy. He who in action can cease from breathing—naturally, spontaneously—is the master of the world energy—the energy that acts and creates throughout the universe.

But there are two kinds of stillness—the helpless stillness of inertia which manifests dissolution and the stillness of assured sovereignty which commands the harmony of life. It is the sovereign stillness which is the calm of the ruler. The more complete the calm the mightier the power, the greater the force in action.

In this calm, true knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a mesh of truth and falsehood. True perception is marred by false perception; true imagination distorted by false imagination; true memory clouded by false memory. The superficial activity of the mind must cease and a silence succeed the restlessness—then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness, illumination comes upon the mind. And a right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action.

This true activity, invisible for the eyes of rushing crowds, is manifesting itself only in results. And through results one sees with the physical eyes how much longer is the line of activity compared with that of rush.

And the day of rush is the night of Activity., For nothing is created in rush; perhaps money. But in all history only Croesus was mentioned for his wealth, and even he ended his life pitifully.

To be capable during the rush to manifest real activity, to be capable of silence, stillness, illuminated passivity, is to be fit for "Immortality." The "inaction" of power creates, preserves, and destroys. This action is dynamic with the direct, stupendous driving power of a great natural force.

Even the moving wheels at their greatest speed seem unmoving. The harmony of the highest action is not to be distinguished by physical eye, but only the results are apparent.

The real stillness sometimes is covered by ripple of talk and some activity without—the ocean with its lively surface of waves. But it has nothing in common with rush. Rush has some special attribute—for it is always accompanied by vulgarity. You are sure to find during the rush, all aspects of this hideous disease of modern humanity. For what do the best elements of humanity search? For what are spreading revolutions of blood and researches of achievement? The human spirit is fighting in all those diverse battles against vulgarity.

When the crowd becomes a mob, what happens? There spreads the black kingdom of vulgarity. To the doors of vulgarity are rushing the mob. The same miraculous transformation of the crowd into the mob is seen in the trains rush, the meeting rush, in shopping and in the rush of selling, or the rush of disaster. The same rush, we sometimes discern in music, in colors, in line of design, in rhythm of sculpture.

Shall you now ask what is the psychological moment? Everyone now knows the psychological moment when this paroxysm is growing. One aspect of rush is inevitable. The expression of each eye changes. During the sad performances of rush you never perceive a happy face. Rush is proclaiming feverishly, "go, go," and everything obeying this command will hasten away; but the shield of activity is "come, come," and everything following this call is approaching, multiplying the possibilities. People are too busy. They do not wait for a union of souls and in a brief moment something can occur; the best mannered crowd can be converted into a mob losing all discrimination, full of the wildest instincts. We have many explanations of this moment, but the most definite one is that vulgarity is becoming predominant.

The realm of this mysterious power of vulgarity is immense. The same vulgarity is bewildering the crowds; the same is gilding the frames; the same is curving hymns into "Jazz"; the same is transfiguring athletics into cruelties; the same is manifesting the standard of superficial life. Even the lips are colored alike.

It is as though the human skin were cast off and animals leapt before the astonished eyes. But, nevertheless, take human beings in nature. Only take them away from the rush, and real human aspects shall arise again. Like a chemical solution! In the same scientific way, humanity must distinguish rush from activity.

"All forms of tyranny have their beginning in kindness," is a saying all too true. "All forms of vulgarity have their beginning in compromise." One day a small compromise, and then at once a high priest of vulgarity.

This is not a commonplace, not a truism. We must repeat it now, for much of real activity, much of discrimination, shall be needed in the near future. And in each movement peoples must distinguish where is the vulgar rush and where eternal activity.

But the first possibility exists of shortening the line of rush with results of the longer one of activity. Only results!

You can never conquer vulgarity through the power of ugliness. In the power of Beauty lies your victory. Verily only Beauty can overcome vulgarity and stop the wild rush before the gates of that false-gilded realm. And the victory is not far! Everything that we sometimes call "fallen" has it not also "risen"?

MEDITATION—By "A.E."

There is no personal virtue in me other than this, that I followed a path all may travel but on which few do journey. It is a path within ourselves where the feet first falter in shadow and darkness but which is later made gay by heavenly light. As one who has traveled a little on that way and who has had some far-off vision of the Many-Colored Land, if I tell what I know, and how I came to see most clearly, I may give hope to those who would fain believe in that world the seers spake of, but who cannot understand the language written by those who have seen that beauty of old, or who may have thought the ancient scriptures but a record of extravagant desires. None need special gift or genius. Gifts! There are no gifts. For all that is ours we have paid the price. There is nothing we aspire to for which we cannot barter some spiritual merchandise of our own. Genius! There is no stinting of this by the Keeper of the Treasure House. It is not bestowed but is won. Yon man of heavy soul might, if he willed, play on the lyre of Apollo, that drunkard be god-intoxicated. Powers are not bestowed by caprice on any. The formulae the chemist illustrates, making exposition before his students, are not more certainly verifiable than the formulae of that alchemy by which what is gross in us may be transmuted into ethereal fires.

Our religions make promises to be fulfilled beyond the grave because they have no knowledge now to be put to the test, but the ancients' spake of a divine vision to be attained while we are yet in the body. The religion which does not cry out: "I am today verifiable as that water wets or that fire burns; test me that ye can become as gods"—mistrust it. Its messengers are prophets of the darkness. As we sink deeper into the Iron Age we are met by the mighty devils of state and empire lurking in the abyss, claiming the soul for their own, molding it to their image, to be verily their own creature and not heaven’s. We need a power in ourselves that can confront these mighty powers. Though I am blind I have had moments of sight. Though I have sinned I have been on the path. Though I am feeble I have seen the way to power. I sought out ways to make more securely my own those magical lights that dawned and faded within me. I wished to evoke them at will and be master of my vision, and I was taught to do this, which is as old as human life.

The Method

Day after day, at times where none might interfere, and where none through love or another cause was allowed to interfere, I set myself to attain mastery over the will. I would choose some mental object, an abstraction of form, and strive to hold my mind fixed on it in unwavering concentration, so that not for a moment, not for an instant, would the concentration slacken. It is an exercise this, a training for higher adventures of the soul. It is no light labor. The ploughman’s cleaving the furrows, is easier by far. Five minutes of this effort will at first leave us trembling as at the close of a laborious day. It is then we realize how little of life has been our own, and how much a response to sensation, a drifting on the tide of desire. The rumor of revolt, the Spirit would escape its thralldom! Runs through the body. Empires do not send legions so swiftly to frustrate revolt as all that is mortal in us hurries along nerve, artery, and every highway of the body to beset the Soul. The beautiful face of one we love, more alluring than life, glows before us to enchant us from our task. Old sins, enmities, vanities and desires beleaguer and beseech us. If we do not heed them then they change, they seem to be with us, they open up vistas of all we and they will do, when this new power we strive for is attained. If we are tempted down that vista we find with shame after an hour of vain musing that we were lured away, and deserted our task and forgotten that stern fixity of the will we set out to achieve.

Let us persevere in our daily ritual and the turmoil increases; our whole being becomes vitalized, the bad as well as the good. The heat of this fervent concentration acts like fire under a pot, and everything in our being boils up madly. We learn our own hitherto unknown character. We did not know we could feel such fierce desires, never imagined such passionate enmities as now awaken. We have created in ourselves a center of power and grow real to ourselves. It is dangerous, too, for we have flung ourselves into the eternal conflict between Spirit and Matter, and find ourselves where the battle is hottest, where the foemen are locked in a death struggle. We are in grips with mightier powers than we had before conceived of.

What man is there who thinks he has self-control? He stands in the shallow waters, nor has gone into the great deep, nor been tossed at the mercy of the waves. Let him rouse the arcane powers in himself, and he will feel like one who has let loose the avalanche. None would live through that turmoil if the will were the only power in ourselves we could invoke, for the will is neither good nor bad but is power only, and it vitalizes good or bad indifferently. If that were all, our labor would bring us, not closer to divine being, but only to a dilation of the personality. But the ancients who taught us to gain this intensity taught it but as preliminary to a meditation which would not waver and would be full of power. The meditation they urged on us has been explained as "the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to go out into the infinite." But that Infinite we would enter is living. It is the ultimate being of us. Meditation is a fiery brooding on that majestical Self. We imagine ourselves into Its vastness. We conceive ourselves as mirroring Its infinitudes, as moving in all things, as living in all beings, in earth, water, air, fire, ether. We try to know as It knows, to live as It lives, to be compassionate as It is compassionate. We equal ourselves to It that we may understand It and become It. We do not kneel to It as slaves, but as Children of the King we lift ourselves up to that Glory, and affirm to ourselves that we are what we imagine. "What a man thinks, that he is: that is the old secret," said the wise. We have imagined ourselves into this pitiful dream of life. By imagination and will, we re-enter true being, becoming that we conceive of.

The Path of Inner Conquest

On that path of fiery brooding I entered. At first all was stupor. I felt as one who steps out of day into the colorless night of a cavern, and that was because I had suddenly reversed the habitual motions of life. We live normally seeing through the eyes, hearing through the ears, stirred by the senses, moved by bodily powers, and receiving only such spiritual knowledge as may pass through a momentary purity of our being. On the mystic path we create our own light, and at first we struggle blind and baffled, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, unable to think, unable to imagine. We seem deserted by dream, vision or inspiration, and our meditation barren altogether. But let us persist through weeks or months, and sooner or later that stupor disappears. Our faculties readjust themselves, and do the work we will them to do. Never did they do their work so well. The dark caverns of the brain begin to grow luminous. We are creating our own light. By heat of will and aspiration we are transmuting what is gross in the subtle ethers through which the mind works. As the dark bar of metal begins to glow, at first redly, and then at white heat, or as ice melts and is alternately fluid, vapour, gas, and at last a radiant energy, so do these ethers become purified and alchemically changed into luminous essences, and they make a new vesture for the soul, and link us to mid-world or heavenward where they too have their true home. How quick the mind is now! How vivid is the imagination! We are lifted above the tumult of the body. The heat of the blood disappears below us. We draw higher to ourselves. The heart longs for the hour of meditation and hurries to it; and, when it comes, we rise within ourselves as a diver, too long under sea, rises to breathe the air, to see the light. We have invoked God and we are answered according to old promise. As our aspiration so is our inspiration. We imagine It as Love and what a love enfolds us! We conceive of It as Might and we take power from that Majesty. We dream of It as Beauty and the Magician of the Beautiful appears everywhere as Its miraculous art, and the multitudinous lovely creatures of Its thought are busy molding nature and life in their image, and all are hurrying, hurrying to the Golden World. This vision brings its own proof to the spirit, but words cannot declare or explain it.

"Tis mean ambition to desire

A single world:

To many I aspire,

Though one upon another hurl’d

Nor will they all, if they be all confin’d,

Delight my mind.

—Thomas Traherne.

_______

"The wise man knows no distinctions.

He beholds all men as things made for holy uses."

—Laotze.


SIR JAGADISH CHUNDER BOSE

—By Dale Stuart

India’s Eminent Scientist Announces

Future Vivisection

Will be on Plants Instead of Animals

The world-famous scientist, inventor and botanist of India, Sir Jagadish Chunder Bose, founder of the Bose Institute at Calcutta, has recently returned from his eighth visit to Europe, where he was, in the words of the Sphere, "once more the center of admiration of the scientific world, which he has repeatedly astonished by his successive discoveries in various departments of knowledge."

Sir Jagadish is best-known to the outside world as the inventor of extraordinarily delicate instruments with which he proved to the scientific world that plant life is closely allied in every important respect to animal life, and that plants have a sensitive nervous system thru which they experience pain, joy, fear, love, intoxication, stupor and other feelings usually considered to belong to the animal and human realms exclusively.

The latest European tour of India’s foremost scientist was devoted mainly to a series of demonstrations of his new invention, the "Resonant Cardiograph," before the leading scientific societies and assemblies in Europe and London. This fine and delicate instrument inscribes the different phases of the heart-beat with wonderful minuteness, the successive dots measuring time as short as a hundredth part of a second.

The specific action of any new drug is discoverable form the resonant records which show the characteristic changes in the different phases of pulsation. With this apparatus, Sir Jagadish has carried on investigations on thousands of Indian plants and as a result, has been able to discover the extraordinary efficacy of their extracts in alleviating human suffering, such as soothing down the ever-excitable heart, and even reviving a dying heart. The inventor claims that an entirely new arsenal of drugs may be available as the result of his investigations.

Vivisection on Plants

The London Daily Chronicle, reporting the "remarkable discoveries which may revolutionize modern medicine," wrote as follows of the eminent Indian inventor’s lecture in London:

"Sir Jagadish said that his recent finding that plant life and animal life are identical had led him to the discovery in plants of an enormous number of medicines which had never been suspected.

"A new apparatus, which he had invented, recorded side by side the action of the drugs on the tissues of plants and animals, and showed that they both acted in the same manner.

"Thus Sir Jagadish prophesied that the vivisection of the future would be performed on plants and not on animals. ‘The time will come’, he said, amidst applause, ‘when most experiments will be carried out on plants’

"There was nothing in man that had not been foreshadowed in the plant; thus by experimenting on the plant, it is possible to alleviate the sufferings of man. Plants, explained Sir Jagadish, were a truer witness of the effect of drugs on human beings themselves, for plants were devoid of imagination and therefore immune to the power of auto-suggestion."

The European press and scientific journals were lavish in their praise and appreciation of India’s great botanist. The Sphere wrote: "Sir J. C. Bose has discovered a new class of drugs which will be the means of building a new pharmacopoeia whose value to humanity it will be difficult to exaggerate." The London Morning Post said: "Discoveries such as Sir J. C. Bose’s not only add to our pride in the intellectual life of India (which is constantly producing great scientists, among them creative mathematicians), but also lead the imaginative spirit of man to spread its silver wings and fly through new vistas of thought."

Science is International

At the World Conference on New Education at Locarno, in Switzerland, Sir Jagadish spoke in August on "The Dedication of Life to the Quest of Truth." "Science," he said at that

time, "is neither of the East nor of the West, but is international in its universality. India, by her habit of mind and inherited gifts, could detect unity amidst apparent diversity. The burning imagination of the Indian mind which could bring forth new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, could also be held in check by its innate habit of concentration. Thus India is specially fitted to make important contributions to human knowledge."

Sir Jagadish spoke at the Nagpur University in India on September 26th, stressing the point that the highest function of a University was the advancement of the frontiers of knowledge for the common benefit of humanity. The gist of his address, reported by Associated Press dispatches, is as follows:

Imagination and Verification

There were two elements essential to the discovery of truth, the faculty of imagination and the subsequent verification by objective methods. For discovering the hidden mechanism in the life of the tree one had to become the tree and feel the pulse-beat of its throbbing life. This method of introspection had to be afterwards followed by rigid scientific demonstration, for unrestrained imagination led to the wildest speculation subversive of all intellectual sanity.

For detecting the hidden activity within the dark profundities of the tree, we had to get access to the smallest life atom and record its throbbing pulsations. It was, therefore, necessary to invent and construct an instrument (the Bose "Crescograph") of surpassing sensitiveness which produced the stupendous magnification of fifty million times. The invention of the microscope magnifying only a few thousand times initiated a new era in the advance of biological science. The super-magnifying instruments devised at the Bose Institute were now revealing the wonders of a New World. It was by the combination of the introspective and experimental methods that it was possible to establish on a firm basis the important generalization of the unity of all life. the barriers that divided kindred phenomena thus vanished, the plant and animal appeared as a multiple unity in a single ocean of being.

The establishment of this generalization was not only of great theoretical but also of the highest practical importance. It opened out the possibility of great advance in physiology, in agriculture, in medicine and even in psychology.

New Invention Awaited

Sir J. C. Bose is the inventor of many scientific instruments, which have been constructed with the help of specially trained Indian mechanicians educated at his Bose Institute in Calcutta. He has recently completed another new invention of great importance which he will announce at the next anniversary of his Institute.

"Plant Autographs"

His latest book, "Plant Autographs, and Their Revelations" (Macmillan Company), recently published, has been accorded an even more enthusiastic reception in the Western scientific world than his previous works, and will shortly be translated into French, German and other tongues. The book tells us "how the plant is made to register its own emotions and to tell its own life story." It gives a clue to the search for the "heart" of a tree, and one sees it discovered "in a cylindrical tube which stretches throughout the entire length of its trunk and draws the sap upward by a succession of ‘peristaltic waves’ similar to those produced by the beating of the animal heart. This appears at last to solve the mystery of the ascent of the sap, which has hitherto defied the ordinary mechanical explanations, capillary attraction, ‘osmotic forces,’ and so forth. If we can attribute it to the activity of living cells the problem is cleared up."

___________

O God of man, my heart would worship

All my fellow-men, the flashes from Thy fire;

Them ...in good sooth —my lofty kindred call,

Born of the same One heart, the perfect Sire;

Love of my kind ...alone can set me free.

—George MacDonald.

WHY BE NERVOUS?

A Review of

Clara Clemens’ New Book

Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch

WHY BE NERVOUS? by Clara Clemens, Harper & Bros., New York.

Occasionally one finds a book that not only sets forth the beauties of spiritual understanding but actually outlines the practical methods of translating metaphysical principles into everyday living habits. This rare combination is found in Clara Clemens’ new book "Why Be Nervous?" While the author chooses different subjects to write about than engaged the pen of her famous father, Mark Twain, yet she is as well able as he to hold the interest of her readers.

There is a healing light of sanity, sympathetic understanding and sensible encouragement shining thru the pages of Miss Clemens’ book. She has studied deeply the various metaphysical aspects of Christianity and of Oriental religions, in an effort to overcome her own ill health and nervousness, which she tells us she recognized as expressions of inharmonious thought and defects within herself, capable of correction. Armed with the "spear and breastplate" of these philosophic ideas culled from her studies, she marched into the conflict and turmoil of life, and has come out the victor.

The rules that she follows, and the use she makes of abstractions in order to convert them into practical realizations in the physical and material worlds, are here simply and sincerely set forth.

The book is bejeweled throughout with gems of spiritual thought in striking and original settings. A spirit of profound fundamental comprehension of the essence of all religions permeates the book and lends to its utterances a convincing strength that is often lacking in books of this type.

In the Introduction, Miss Clemens makes a suggestion for the cure of nervousness before the public, that strikes one as being not only poetically beautiful but practical and effective as well. Similar helpful suggestions are found throughout the entire book.

A few of the many inspiring thoughts that illuminate the book are quoted below:

* * *

It is difficult to concentrate lightning from the universe into wires that brighten one small dwelling on the great earth, yet it has been done. It is difficult to summon the great spiritual force of the universe into a system that can protect one small soul against all evil, yet it has been done.

* * *

We all possess the spark of divine force, which at our bidding creates health and joy. How can one find this spark? The Yogi method is profound and practical. He goes "into the silence," a he expresses it. And in that silence he discovers the source of spirit. At night in the dark without diverting sounds or interruptions, he settles into a deep revery filled by thoughts detached from his own ego. He muses on the distance or size of the stars, the mystery of the wind, the delicacy of a rose. Little by little a marked sense of serenity possesses him and he begins to listen to the rhythm of the silence. This is the rhythm of the universe, the rhythm of spirit, the rhythmic essence of god, who creates. The deeper he sinks into this gigantic pulse-beat that animates skies, lands, and seas, the more he seems to become a part of a vast and visible force of which he has never been conscious before.

At first it is terrifying, like the mystery of death, but soon comes the sensation of serenity and with it a joy so strong that it can truly be called ecstasy. The familiar ego vanishes and for the first time one finds the inner I. This the Yogi calls "I am." It is the central point in one’s soul, which blends with eternity and God. Having at last come into contact with the Great One, it is impossible ever to doubt Him again. What one has lived one does not doubt. In the moment that one touches eternity one lives God and possesses Him.

* * *

The Yogi draws upon the Life current, or prana, as he terms it, to strengthen his mental state or serenity and physical force. He teaches one to find that centripetal spot that fixes the spiritual mind and throws off the superficial ego. Without powerful concentration of mind it is impossible to find the contact with spirit. Self-mastery is the beginning of a happy fate, for one’s fate is closely interwoven with one’s actions and one’s thoughts.

* * *

Keep an idea of serenity before your mind and hold tight to it. The wall of sensitive nerves separating your from happiness will finally crumble away. It will be an easier task to alter your nervous system than to make over all the people and things that irritate you.

By constantly repeating "I no longer feel anything unpleasant," you force the nerve centers carrying sensations to the brain to become paralyzed in the presence of disturbing elements, which they finally refuse to receive. In this way harassing sensations, even pain, can be forced to vanish.

* * *

The Yogis and Sufis forbid the kind of prayer which begs for the desired thing. They say you must claim what is yours by right. Decree that health, happiness, even material success, shall be yours. Demand your desires in the sense that you expect without fail what belongs to you.

* * *

The Yogi says: "Concentration will bring repose to mind and body every time it is practiced." From this repose you build your new character.

The Yogi says: "Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits can reform character." One strong habit leads to another. The most important one is concentration of the mind. There is a verse in the Koran which says: "Arise in the midst of the night and commune with thy God. Thy ego will be crushed and things will be revealed to thee thou didst not know before and thy path in life will be made smooth."

* * *

There are many hard-working business men who are not in a position to demand a vacation. If only these men could realize that if they absented themselves from themselves and from the world for fifteen to twenty minutes every night before falling asleep (and if possible again before rising in the morning) they would not need any vacation! Frequently have I heard men say: "If I could have two days in every week all to myself far off in the country without a single engagement to meet or a human face to look at, with nothing but the mute sky above, I could work the other four days without the doctor’s help." These men can find this longed-for rest in concentrated form within their own bedrooms.

* * *

Do not look for the attainment of constant contact with Spirit unless you are willing to put the same effort into this attainment that you would put into a great artistic or business achievement. The treasures of spiritual development only unfold themselves after a generous expenditure of time and will. It is the growth of a tiny seed to a noble tree. The seed planted is desire, which must be watered by patience and warmed by the flame of determination.

___________

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE on "What We Need"

"We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen."

____________

The greatest principle of the Aryan culture is freedom of thought. In Hinduism you have people having different conceptions of God and yet they are all Hindus because they know that all men are not in the same stage of evolution. Every one believes according to his state of evolution. Hinduism, is, therefore, a democratic religion.—Swami Satyadev.

"THE HINDU

VIEW OF LIFE"

by S. Radhakrishnan.

Macmillan Company.

"It is no more necessary to dissect Hinduism," writes Professor Radhakrishnan, "than to open a tree to see whether the sap still runs." In this immensely valuable and informative little work, The Hindu View of Life, the author presents the reasons why the underlying religion of India, despite her political, social and economic upheavals, still flowers as it flowered when the world was young.

A tolerance born of the conception that even as men differ, so must their views of the Divine, is the basic secret of the eternal vitality of Hindu thought. "God hideth Himself. It is a sound religious agnosticism which bids us hold our peace regarding the nature of the supreme spirit." The machinery of man’s mind cannot grasp the essence of God; hence why quarrel with anyone over an idea that is the outcome of those mental processes? "The Divine reveals itself to men within the frame-work of their intimate prejudices."

Because the Hindus were not satisfied to pursue God only with their intellects, they brought every aspect of their being into the search. "Intellect is subordinated to intuition, dogma to experience, outer expression to inner realization."

Within the covers of this small volume, Professor Radhakrishnan brings the vast body of Hindu thought into harmonious order, presenting his facts clearly and without once relinquishing the thread of interest that binds his readers’ attention.

Those who would understand the oldest religion in the world, one that yet claims the closest kinship with all that is permanently valuable in the most modern thought, would do well to study this book. "Study" is hardly the word, for the gifted author has made his presentation of sublime and profound truths in a simple assimilable form.

The four lectures which compose the book were given last year at Oxford, and have not failed to convey to the printed page the eloquence and clarity of their original delivery.

Professor Radhakrishnan has written two other books, Indian Philosophy, and The Philosophy of the Upanishads (Macmillan Company) which have called forth expressions of genuine admiration from the leading philosophic minds of the East and West. These books deal with the most abstruse problems and profundities of Indian philosophy so lucidly that the author’s unassuming scholarship carries his readers irresistibly to the lofty heights of cosmical perception.

 


Creation by Padmaja

And the days danced somberly into the arms of dead night. The body of the dark broke in multiple small particles and its shattered life was strewn on the infinite shore, fertilizing the immensity to dazzling electricities of rebirth. And the magic wheel made a new figuration of life, in its gyrations constantly throwing off little stars of azure and white gold—so that the spirits who inhabit the days of time saw these small coruscations out of the blackness and yearned for the annihilation of space that they might ascend in the night. But the souls who thought in eternity went on shafts of light to the little stars and saw the empty void beyond the finite sparklings where the days and nights swarmed in colorless deliriums and beyond the empty void a single bright star, burning with the steady glow of the infinite souls united in the cosmic fire. And the universal sun encircled the star and the rhythm of the great light vibrated in eternal chantings, the song of the integration of being in non-being.—Padmaja.

____________

"Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things."—St. Paul.

___________

"It is not because of His gifts that I bow before Him, but because I regard Him as life itself, as the veritable breath of life, without which it is impossible to move or walk, that I bend my knees before Him; it is not the bond of hope that draws me toward Him—it is the bond of love; it is not the desire of enjoyment that makes me moan,—it is for Him, the source of all enjoyment, that I lament."—From The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek, a poet and monk of ancient Armenia.

____________

"He who sees the One Spirit in all and all in the One Spirit, henceforth can look with contempt on no creature."—Upanishad.

____________

"Good works done endure forever,

And in higher life will meet,

E’en as gentle loving kinsmen

Home-returning kinsmen greet."

—Dhammapada.


CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

—By Swami Yogananda

Dear students and friends! The spiritual Christmas season will soon by here. What shall I give you? A bouquet of my highest hopes and blessings that your consciousness may be newly awakened in blissful Christ-consciousness! May the bird of your love escape from the cage of personal limitations and fly singing the song of Christ-truth through all hearts and minds!

Remembering the original sacred significance of the Christmas holidays (holy-days) celebrate them by presenting your friends with inspiring ideas, noble books and above all, with the example of your exalted nature and loving actions.


NICHOLAS ROERICH

—By Swami Yogananda

The article on "Activity" by Nicholas Roerich, and his painting, that appear in this issue of EAST-WEST, will give joy to those of our readers who are discovering Roerich for the first time. This great Russian painter is international in his message—he understands the soul of India no less than the soul of America because he is one with all humanity.

To list the manifold activities and gifts of Professor Roerich is to reveal a man to whom all departments of knowledge are open. He is painter, architect, writer, poet, jurist, musician, publicist, explorer, professor or archaeology, educator, sage and prophet. His paintings have won the highest expressions of praise from the leading artists of every country, and the Roerich Museum in New York is perhaps the only Museum in the world which is dedicated to the works of a single living master.

At present, this indefatigable seeker after knowledge is heading the Roerich Art Expedition, now in the heart of Mongolia for archaeological excavations. He recently presented the Mongolian Government with his painting, "The Great Rider." Officials of that government have asked Professor Roerich to design a temple of jasper and porphyry which the painting, along with other objects held sacred by the Mongolians, can be suitably housed.

 


HOW LONG DO ANIMALS LIVE?

Carl W. Neumann, writing in the Illustrierte Zeitung (Leipzig) remarks that few wild animals are able to live out their full allotted span of life on this earth. Weather and food conditions are too often unfavorable, and attacks of other animals and the hunter’s gun take a large toll. Mr. Neumann gives the following list indicating the natural length of life of various animals, and shows that certain forms of lower life live for astonishingly long periods of time.

"The reasons why many species reach a comparatively high age, while others fail to do so, can be explained neither by size, by rate of growth, by sluggishness or activity of habit, by a limited progeny or by an excessive fertility.

"But according to accredited data the following figures may be regarded as reliable: The elephant, 150-200 years; the falcon, 162; vulture, 118; golden eagle, 104; swan, 102; goose eider duck, raven, parrot, tortoise (especially the giant tortoise) 200-300.

"The carp and pike may reach 150 years; the horse, ass, dromedary and bear 40-50. Among birds, the crane has a life expectation of 40-50 years; the heron, 60; the owl 68; the dove, ostrich and woodpecker, 60-70.

"The probably life of the hippopotamus is 40 years; the rhinoceros, 40-50; the gull, 44; the cuckoo, crocodile and toad, each 40; the sheep, 10-25; goat 12-15; stag, 30; roebuck, 15; reindeer, 16; elk, 20; wild pig, 20-30; dog and wolf, 10-15; fox, 10; lion, 20-25; tiger, 20; cat, 9-10; beaver, 20-25; squirrel, 10-12; hare, 7-8; guinea pig, 5-7; rat, 3; mouse, 3-4; domestic fowls, 15-20; magpie, 25; blackbird, 18; canary up to 24; salamander, 10-12; tree frog, 10; fresh-water eel, 10-12; fresh-water pearl-mussel, 60-70; fresh-water crabs and leeches, 20; angleworm, 10; certain ants, 10-15; queen bees, 4-5."


"Feel that Presence infinite

Who stands with sanctifying grace

In midmost of life’s market place

And turns our world of sea and land

A murmuring prayer-wheel in His hand."

—J. H. Cousins.


THE CARAVAN

—By I. Mansfield Spasoff

Across the burning desert

The creeping caravan Matter

Winds its sinuous course

Among the wind-swept dunes.

Silent, rhythmic, slow,

The burden-bearing beasts Physical body

Can hear their driver’s cry

As but intenser heat. Subconscious mind

Perchance, in closely curtained howdah,

The master of the train Ego

Reclines on silken cushions,

Self-satisfied,

Content only to know

That if he now escape

Heat, and marauding bands,

The sudden death of beasts, Chance

Or driver’s treachery,

He will obtain great profit from his wares.

Material success

But if a wiser one Soul

Be master of the train,

Who many a time before

Has traveled this same way,

And knows where lurks the treacherous mirage

Illusion

That leads the wayfarer to certain death,

This one will with unerring hand

Make a true course to each secure retreat

Knowledge

Where rest abides beneath the spreading palms,

Peace

And sweet refreshment in the bubbling spring;

Bliss

Thus shall his caravan fare safely forth,

Realization:—

And reach whatever destined place it seek

Material and/or Spiritual

Beyond the desert waste,

Bring him safely home to those he loves.


SPIRITUAL ARDOUR—John Norris

"Men may wrangle forever about abstruse theories and sooner dispute themselves out of charity than into truth; but our wills have at present a larger capacity than our understandings, and our love to God may be very flaming and seraphic when after the greatest elevation and soar of thought, our conceptions of Him are but faint and shadowy. . . . Other gifts and graces, whether intellectual or moral, come indeed from Heaven; but they often leave us upon earth. Love only elevates us up thither, and is able to unite us to God. ’Tis this indeed that gives us the strictest union with Him in this life; by faith we live upon God, by obedience we live to Him, but ’tis by love alone that we live in Him. . . .

" ’Tis not the sophistry of cold logicians that shall work me out of the belief of what I feel and know, and rob me of the sweetest entertainment of life, the passionate love of God. Whatever some men may pretend who are strangers to all the affectionate heats of religion, and therefore make philosophy a plea for their indevotion, and extinguish all holy ardours with a syllogism, yet I am firmly persuaded that our love of God may be not only passionate, but even wonderfully so, and passing the love of women."

___________

"The one absolute certainty is, that man

Is ever in the presence of Infinite Energy,

From which all things proceed."

—Herbert Spencer.


INTERESTING NEWS ITEMS

Governor and Mayor Greet Swami Yogananda

Among the first to extend their cordial greetings to Swami Yogananda and to wish the Yogoda message success in Minnesota, were the Governor of Minnesota, Theodore Christianson, Lieutenant Governor Nolan, and Mayor Hodgson of St. Paul.

Governor Christianson received Swami Yogananda in his private executive offices in the magnificent State Capitol building of which Minnesota is so justly proud. At the interview, which lasted an hour, the Governor showed great interest in the message of Yogoda.

Swami was also received very cordially by Lieutenant Governor Nolan, and by Mayor Hodgson. At the long interviews with both of these officials, the Swami described the aims and principles of Yogoda and its educational accomplishments.

Four Billion Dollar Health Bill

In the course of a recent speech before the Cooperative Club of Minneapolis, Dr. John A. Hornsby, member of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, told his audience that Americans spend four billion dollars yearly on hospital, sanitarium and health resort treatment, and for drugs, patent and quack medicines. This sum does not include the money spent on athletics and health-seeking forms of recreation. Dr. Hornsby pointed out that this huge sum spent in seeking for departed health is more that the total cost of administering the United States government.

Hindu Temple in London

London, which already possesses a Moslem mosque, a Buddhist vihara and other temples of Oriental religions, will soon display a Hindu Temple, a gift of Ghanash Yamdas Birla, Calcutta merchant. The Temple will be built in the Hampstead section, and will also provide a vegetarian restaurant. Mr. Birla is a Calcutta merchant known for his generous gifts in the interest of his religion.

Million-Year Old Skull

A dispatch from London states that Guy Pilgrim, superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, discovered a skull of a fossil ape which anthropological associates claim is one million years old. The skull was excavated at Bilaspur, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas.

Three-Eyed Fish

The N. Y. Herald-Tribune recently published the following story from Boston. The "third eye" in man and animals, ordinarily invisible, is here manifested.

"Doubting Thomases were taken to the fish pile to see for themselves proof of the greatest fish story of the year, a haddock with three eyes. A fisherman on the Marjorie Parker, Captain George Perry, was staggered when he pulled in his trawl line as the schooner was proceeding up the south channel in Boston harbor and found his prize. When the fishermen have looked their fill, the mounted fish is to be presented to a museum. The third eye is midway between the normal ones."

The Progress of Tolerance

At a recent international religious meeting in London, the representatives of various world faiths gave the following statements of their creeds:

Dr. A. de Silva, Buddhist:

Love, self-sacrifice and elimination of selfish desire.

Dr. Sherwood Eddy, Christian:

Reconciliation to thy brother; the resistance of evil, not with evil but with good.

Dr. Wei-Chang Chen, Confucian:

A fulfillment of obligations to one’s fellows.

Maharajadhiraja Bahadur, Hinduism:

The catholicity of brotherhood.

Dr. Moses Gaster, Jew:

No difference between faith and faith, or race and race.

Annie Besant, Theosophy:

The wisdom and beauty of toleration.

Abdul Majid, Mohammedanism:

Doing good to others who have not done good to you.

Magazine Article on Yogoda

The "Official Statement of the Yogoda Sat-Sanga Movement in America" is one of the articles appearing in the January 1928 number of The Occult Digest of Chicago.

Mr. Rashid Returns from India

We are glad to welcome back to America Mr. M. Rashid, who has just returned from a tour of India and Europe.

While in India, Mr. Rashid visited Swami Yogananda’s Residential School for Boys at Ranchi, under the patronage of the Maharajah of Kasimbazar, and the Sat-Sanga Center of Calcutta. He expressed his great joy to see the progress which the Indian Yogoda Sat-Sanga schools are making, and the tremendous loyalty which the ex-students of those schools display toward the furtherance of Swami Yogananda’s ideals. In a future issue of EAST-WEST, Mr. Rashid promises to give a longer description of his visit to these Indian schools.

"Lunfoi"

A society called "Lunfoi" which takes its name from the initial letters of the famous motto, "Liberty and Union. Now and Forever, One and Inseparable" has been founded recently in Michigan and is composed of Jews, Catholics and Protestants.

The members of the organization must adhere to certain principles of tolerance, one of which is formulated by "Lunfoi" as follows: "I will never desecrate by profanity any of the sacred names of these religions, nor use titles of disrespect in speaking of other races or religious groups, nor persecute by unjust discrimination any follower of these religions or any other religion on account of his faith."

Scientists Study Metaphysics

At the scientific Congress held in Paris, and attended by leading French, British, German and Italian professors and scientists, a serious attempt was made for the first time to put the study of metaphysical phenomena on a scientific footing.

Dr. Hans Driesek of Leipzig University read a scholarly paper in which he pointed out that the only difference between a live soul and a dead soul was that of condition and modality.

Professor Charles Richet, eminent scientist and member of the Institute of France, wrote his opinions about the results of the Congress, in Le Journal, as follows:

"Metaphysics is not yet officially a science, recognized as such. But it is going to be.

"It is in that period of infancy which all sciences have known. Alchemy preceded chemistry. Before Copernicus, people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Physiology, before Harvey, and especially before Lavoisier, was only a mass of extravagant opinion, which we now consider with pity. As for medicine, what was it before Pasteur? Nothing at all. What absurd doctrines were professed even by the best physicians as to the causes and development of diseases!

"Metaphysics is in the period of its early infancy. And since it claims to be the truth and is sometimes more arrogant than it ought to be, it receives horrible thumps. It is the butt of sarcasm and insults. People shrug their shoulders and smile, refusing to discuss it. It is an easy method of dialect.

"But they are wrong, and they will soon find that out. This year will see the definitive constitution of a new science.

A Sixth Sense

"At Edinburgh, at the international congress of physiology, I was able some time ago to affirm before 100 physiologists that our five senses are not our only means of knowledge and that a fragment of reality sometimes reaches the intelligence in other ways. What ways? Alas! we do not know. The whole thing is still mysterious. But the facts are there. There is a sixth sense. That is mental metaphysics, in a single phase. . . .

"Because a fact is rare is no reason that it does not exist. Because a study is difficult, is that a reason for not understanding it? Metaphysics is something not habitual. But what is not habitual also has the right to exist. We would have to be disloyal to the experimental method to refuse to recognize that under special conditions, exceptional and rare as a fall of meteorites, a particle of truth may reach the consciousness by other means than our normal senses, without any occasion for invoking mere chance or fraud.

"In Germany for a long time, almost up to 1910, nobody but Schrenk-Notzvirg would give metaphysics any hearing. There were only seven English and French savants who believed in it. Now, in 1927, the Germans have come around to that view.

The Ignorance of Yesterday

"Those who have railed at metaphysics as an occult science will be as ashamed of themselves as those who railed at chemistry on the ground that pursuit of the philosopher’s stone was illusory, as Thomas Diafarus, who wrote a thesis against the theory of circulation.

"The sciences evolve and evolve quickly. The embryonic metaphysics is no longer embryonic. Those who disdain it tomorrow will be just as old-fashioned as Voltaire, who believed that the fossils in the mountains were shells dropped by pilgrims returning from the Holy Land.

"In the matter of principles they are only those of Lavoisier, Claude Bernard and Pasteur—the experimental everywhere and always.

"Greetings, then, to the new science which is going to change the orientation of human thought."

THE PLAN AND THE PLANNER

Dr. Michael I. Pupin, first-rate scientist, answering a question as to how electrons came into being, says: "I do not know, but I believe they were created by God. And if you ask me why He created them I would say that He created them for the purpose of supplying Him with building stones for the construction of the physical universe, including the earth and all organic life upon it."

Dr. Pupin has said what is in many men’s minds. They ask, "How could a universe made up of a few elements combined and controlled by natural laws in so many wonderful ways have come into being except as the product of a perfect intelligence?"

The more science looks into the universe the more magnificent does the plan appear. Reducing the universe to the simplicity of the electron makes it still more marvelous. How such a Plan without a Planner?

Science cannot capture the Planner in its test tubes. No lens that it possesses can find the habitation of that Intelligence. But it daily reveals more and more of the glories of the handiwork. Science cannot prove the God Dr. Pupin acknowledges. But its honest admission that it cannot prove God is not to be mistaken as an assertion that there is no God. In that admission science only acknowledges its limitations; it does not present either an argument or a conclusion.

How slight an understanding of what science has revealed must lie in the mind of him who thinks science must tend to lead men away from the idea of God. Science alone has shown men the perfection of the Plan and so opens their minds to the idea of the Planner.—S. F. Bulletin.

____________

NEWTON AS A MYSTIC

The great mathematician Newton was something of a mystic. He did not believe that the Cartesian mechanics was sufficient to explain the geometrical order and harmony existing throughout nature. Morgan Worthy, reviewing A. J. Snow’s book on Newton recently in the New York Herald Tribune, says: "Though Newton always held firmly to the belief that all terrestrial bodies attract each other and that this law is not only valid for the world, but for the entire universe, he could not imagine how two bodies at a distance possibly could attract one another without an intervening medium. In order to account for this perplexing phenomenon he formulated a religion-philosophical system by which he thought to explain the origin of motion operating between all solar and earthly bodies. Mr. Snow’s study is concerned primarily with this metaphysical aspect of Newton’s law of gravitation. ‘Force is not a primary attribute of matter, Newton thought, but on the contrary, matter is inert but mobile.’ From whence, then, comes the motion that is ever present in matter? ‘It is God as an agent acting through a medium of space upon matter, space being the Sensorium of God.’"

____________

BRUCE BARTON on MEDITATION

Bruce Barton, author of "The Man Nobody Knows" and "The Book Nobody Knows," two wonderful volumes on Christ and on the Bible, recently made a plea for a national holiday which Americans should celebrate by silent thought and inward meditation.

"The Hindoos may not have progressed mechanically as fast as we," said Mr. Barton, "but they have some perspective on life, some inner sense of what it is all about. In that

respect, our men of vision have resembled them."

____________

EINSTEIN AND MUSIC

In a biography of Einstein, the author, A. Moszkowski, an intimate friend of the great scientist, points out that in his opinion there is a definite connection between Einstein’s love of music and his scientific genius. Einstein is depicted as regarding music not as sensation only but also as reason, of such profound intellectual stimuli that it was thru his ears as well as his brain that he was capable of conceiving his awe-inspiring cosmical Theory of Relativity.

____________

Be of good cheer, brave spirit. Steadfastly serve

That low whisper thou has served. For know,

God hath a select family of sons

Now scattered wide through earth,

And each alone, who are thy spiritual kindred

And each one by constant service

To that inward law, is weaving

The sublime proportions

Of a true monarch’s soul,—beauty and strength,

The eloquence of truth,

The riches of a spotless memory, the wisdom got

By searching of a clear and loving eye

That seeth as God seeth,—these are their gifts,

And time, who keeps God’s law,

Brings on the time to deal the marriage

Of these minds with thine everlasting lovers.

Ye shall be the salt of all the elements.

—World of the world.—Emerson.


TO THE AURORA BOREALIS

—By Swami Yogananda

(Over Forest Lake in Minneapolis)

From the heart of the northern horizon

A dim palpitating fountain of flame

Spread flickeringly

Thru the dark stray clouds and the milky way,

And across the space overhead;

Softly glowing liquid fleecy lights

Rose, quivered and flooded the southern land.

Aurora lit the sky,

Played with shadows within the deeps of the limpid lake

Fluttered scintillating transparent lights

Flowing o’er the stars

And the sky o’erhead,

And shining on rippleless lake beneath,

Then floated like dream waves of light

In my mental sea.

Still thoughts like stars would flutter

Thru the dim mental clouds;

My wisdom’s aurora light

Would rise from medulla’s horizon

And spread, tremblingly lighting

The dark vapors of mind.

Thou lone matchless imitator of all these—

O Aurora! spreader of light and joy

O’er cloudy hearts—

Thou reminder of bursting glowing light in my forehead!

Some invisible lamps on the left or extreme right

Would throw sudden iridescent red

Or blue sky-kissing search-lights

Then the ends of those lights

Would send out etherial mystic flames

Which joyfully bounded and vanished in the eternal ray.

Ever burning radium, thou aurora

—My fountain of strange colors—

Flooded my mental sky

Illumining the opaque darkness

Behind which the Light of all lights hides.

It was a vision of ever-changing rolling molten light—

Trying to coax the stars, trees, water, earth and all matter

To melt their grossness

And become the cosmic light;

Aurora, there is hope,

For I shall liquify in my Samadhi’s fire

All grossness of my mortal being and all creation’s dust.

Matter shall change to light,

The darkness will burst into atoms of leaping fire,

The little soul will breathe with the eternal breath—

And with each birth of my breath

New solar systems will be born

And with the escape of each eternity’s breath of mine

Many a universe shall cease to breathe;

The feeling of the body will fly

To feel the universe;

No more shall I clasp but a little clot

But in my bosom I shall bear the burden

Of the twinkling atomic vapours of nebulae,

All shining stars, planets and all living things.

For I am the life

And my big body is the universe;

I am smaller than all little things made,

I can hide behind a speck of electron;

And I am bigger than the biggest thing that breathes;

I am the life which shattered its littleness

Into the bigness of all big things;

I am most subtle, the subtlest of forces

Is thick enough to hide me;

Yet everything speaks of me.

I wake with the dawn.

I exercise my vital muscular rays in the sun,

I sleep in the night—

Oft peeping thru the twinkling lights,

I smile in the moon,

I heave in the ocean,

I paint, and wipe away,

The pictures on the canvas of the sky,

I make the dew-drop and conjure the flowers

With my invisible wand,

I whistle in the canaries and sing in the nightingales,

I melt and sigh in human breasts,

I whisper thru conscience and roar in the thunder,

I work in the noisy wheels of factories,

And I play hide and seek

With the sky, stars, clouds and water

As the light of the Aurora.


____________

"Personality is enriched through communion

With an opulent environment. Hence self-reliance Is not isolation, nor rejection.

Life refuses to be rejected."—T. L. Vaswani.


NEW YOGODA TESTIMONIALS

(The following are a few of the thousands of Yogoda testimonial letters that we have on file.

These are from students in Swami Yogananda’s recent Yogoda classes in Minneapolis.

Many students have been healed of all kinds of physical, mental and spiritual ailments and inharmonies.

The healings are due to the power of God, manifesting thru the Yogoda teachings and technique.)

"I am most thankful for a healing of my eyes. I have worn glasses for eighteen years. A prominent Minneapolis eye specialist said I would have to wear them all my life. Imagine my great joy when I removed my glasses at Swami Yogananda’s healing meeting, at which my eyesight was completely restored. . . Only those who have tasted can know the richness of Yogoda."—Mrs. A. E. S. Exton, 1906 3rd Avenue, S., Minneapolis, Minn.

"The physical exercises are without precedent in saneness and effectiveness. To one who has endured much both physically and mentally, the spiritual unfoldment involved in the course has brought tremendous consolation and peace."—Bessie Wilcox, (Catholic), 11S. 12th Street, Minneapolis.

"Permit me to say that I have benefitted very greatly by your lectures and lessons, and will carry forever the sweetest remembrance of what you taught me of the real power of the Yogoda System. It gives me more power as a physician, and opens wider and more extended vistas of usefulness."—Joe Shelby Riley, M.D., 1537 Monroe Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

"My body has been energised, my mind made peaceful. My outlook on life is clearer and I have acquired an understanding of spiritual truths and how to make them practical in my everyday life."—Baroness Thelma Goldeska, 623 9th St. S., Minneapolis.

"I have been cured of cancer in the stomach and growth on side. Heart trouble, and pain in the eyes and head have been relieved."—M. C. Sherrard, Hotel St. Regis, Minneapolis.

"A dry, hacking, nervous cough which I have had for forty years has almost disappeared. The former strain and pressure of my eyes has diminished quite noticeably. For over thirty years I have read occult and Oriental literature, but I did not come into consciousness of the real inner meanings until coming under your three-fold illuminating teachings."—Ernest Wykes, Wayzata, Minn.

"My right hand was quite numb. I had no power to close it. Now I am able to do so. My spine was injured at the age of three years; it has improved wonderfully during the Yogoda healings."—F. Severson, 3910 S. 3rd Avenue, Minneapolis.

"It is indeed difficult to word a testimonial expressing the enlightenment and inspiration of your teachings without making it sound incredible to the uninitiated. Not only have I received definite instruction which has already proved beneficial, but also all the promises of the Yogoda leaflet have been fulfilled. Swami Yogananda not only understands, but he can teach an abstruse subject step by step so that no one could fail to grasp it. I feel that no valuation is too high for the revelation of Yogoda."—Helen Hart, 3321 Dupont Ave., S., Minneapolis.

"Through Yogoda I have recovered almost entirely from nervousness; my eyesight is better, and I am now able to have the use of my right ear for the first time in three years."—Mrs. R. L. Race, 3743 Quail Ave., Robbinsdale, Minn.

"Ever since I was six years old I have had to wear glasses. After having heard Swami’s lecture, I felt a new power, a new strength within me. Never shall I wear glasses again."—Marie Moody, 1408 Park Ave., So., Minneapolis.

"I have suffered for twenty years with stomach trouble, and had become almost a nervous wreck. Now my stomach is cured, and my nerves much better. Yogoda did it all."—Mrs. A. Andresen, 513 20 Avenue, S, Minneapolis.

"It has been my privilege to listen to many inspiring addresses by men of renown and consecration, but never has the appeal so reached me as yours. One must be of adamant not to be touched, and richly so, by a presentation so full of the Universal Father and Christ Spirit, as you gave us."—Stanley S. Staring, The Staring Co., Realtors, Minneapolis.

"I suffered with headaches for more than two years without permanent relief. Since I have taken Yogoda, they have been relieved, and pains in my back have also disappeared."—Mrs. M. M. Neuman, 720 18 Avenue, N., Minneapolis.

"During one of your healing meetings, the lameness of my knee was cured."—J. H. Clark, 2260 Commonwealth Avenue, St. Paul, Minneapolis.

"At the healing meeting, to my great joy and surprise, I was cured of my tobacco habit completely and without any effort on my part. I have always been a very heavy user of tobacco and cigars."—John P. Weiss, 2817 Fremont Avenue S., Minneapolis.

"I can say that "Yogoda" is all one needs in Truth. The Swami’s lesson on spiritualizing sex force should be taught in every school in our country."—Mrs. Frances E. Kapler, 2628 W. 44, Minneapolis.

"Every evening has been a spiritual feast, my soul has been filled and thrilled as never before. The ease and simplicity of the exercises as compared with the more strenuous methods which I have heretofore been using, were a revelation to me and the results obtained therefrom, in the short time practiced, is beyond what could be hoped for."—V. A. Boker, 324 Erie Street S.E., Minneapolis.


Henry Ford on "Reincarnation"

"I am in exact accord with the belief of Thomas Edison that spirit is immortal, that there is a continuing center of character in each personality.

"But I don’t know what spirit is, nor matter either. I suspect they are forms of the same thing. I never could see anything in this reputed antagonism between spirit and matter.

"To me this is the most beautiful, the most satisfactory from a scientific standpoint, the most logical theory of life.

"For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things. No, I have no desire to know what, or who I was once; or what, or who, I shall be in the ages to come.

"This belief in immortality makes present living the more attractive. It gives you all the

time there is. You will always be able to finish what you start. There is no fever or strain in such an outlook. We are here in life for one purpose—to get experience. We are all getting it, and we shall all use it somewhere."—New York American.

___________

The reward of one duty

Is the power to fulfill another.—George Eliot.


"Spiritual Life a Science"

The Rev. Charles Townsend, recently addressing the third annual Catholic Congress of the Episcopal Church, pointed out the same truth which "Yogoda" is stressing to the peoples of the world—that spiritual perfection involves the following of certain laws, and is the outcome of scientific training as much as mechanical perfection is the result of the following of particular set rules. Father Townsend said:

"I believe it is helpful to point out that the characteristic note of American religion would appear to be sentimentality, which means a proneness to indulge in the luxury of emotional states as ends in themselves, with a failure to harness them up to the will in moral effort.

"Our daily lives are for the most part prosaic and matter-of-fact, affording little outlet for emotions that surge within. We must discover a vent somewhere, so we find it, along with the movies, in our Sunday religion. We forget that the spiritual life is a science, and, like every science, has its laws. We forget also that it is an art, and, like every art, has its methods, its technique. Obey the laws of the spiritual life, be faithful to its method, its technique, and without any question or uncertainty whatsoever we will arrive."


Sir Thomas Munro on "India"

"If a good system of agriculture; unrivalled manufacturing skill; capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury; schools established in every village for teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic; the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst one another, and, above all, a treatment of the female sex, full of confidence, respect and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people—then the hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe and if civilization is to become an article of trade between the two countries, I am convinced that this country (England) will gain by the import cargo."—Sir Thomas Munro, English Governor of Madras in 1827.


REPROACH—T. E. Brown

But thou art all replete with very thou;

And hast such shrewd activity,

That when He comes, He says: "This is now

Unto itself—’Twere better let it be;

It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.’


ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

The Mount Washington Educational Center in Los Angeles, headquarters of the Yogoda Sat-Sanga Movement in America, celebrated on October 23rd the beginning of its third year of service along the lines laid down by Swami Yogananda when he founded it in 1924. The Los Angeles Times reported the festive occasion as follows:

"Mount Washington Educational Center was the scene of the second annual birthday anniversary that was celebrated with a brilliant dinner party held in the attractive dining room of the beautiful home of the Center on top of Mount Washington last night.

"Swami Dhirananda, head of the center, was the official host, ably assisted by the charming Countess Ilya Tolstoy of Hollywood.

"Rich colors in fall flowers made the tables, with tall golden tapers tied with tulle, and cut glass vases of tea roses, unusually attractive. The center piece for the honor guest table in the center of the room was a large bowl of chrysanthemums and dahlias in yellow and gold tones. Streamers of yellow and white crepe adorned the room.

"Short talks were made by Mrs. Lilian Bell, well known writer of Hollywood, Countess Tolstoy, Dr. J. L. Woodruff, Siguard Russell of the Community theater; Dr. Karl L. Waugh, Dean of the college of Liberal Arts of the University of Southern California, and others.

"Leslie Brigham, popular basso of the los Angeles Grand Opera Association, delighted with his impromptu voice numbers.

Dean of University Speaks

"As a part of the anniversary celebration a program was given in the afternoon in the auditorium when Dean Waugh was the principal speaker, his subject being "The Value of Indian Philosophy to the American People." Born in India, Doctor Waugh spent his boyhood there and later went back for study and is thoroughly familiar with the religions and customs of the people. Swami Dhirananda was heard in an excellent talk on "The Progressive Idea." Mr. Brigham was heard in a bass solo, taken from the ninety-first Psalm.

Among more than two hundred who attended the dinner were Princess A. Galizin of Russia, and Mr. and Mrs. Hamid Bey of Egypt.

On October 23rd, Swami Dhirananda spoke from the Los Angeles Times radio station KHJ on "True Religion" in which he said that "Christianity and Hinduism, two of the dominant contributions to the body of religious thought, may not be alike in expression but both aim at the establishment of true religion by turning the attention of man within."

Swami Dhirananda’s Sunday services in October included addresses on "Soul Force," "The Church of Christ," "The Universal Mother" and "The Spirit of Plato’s Dialogues."

Gifted members of the Los Angeles Center have been busy designing and painting beautiful Christmas cards with spiritual designs and verses.

The Mount Washington Helpers’ Association of the Los Angeles Yogoda Sat-Sanga Center will give a Thanksgiving dinner, at which time they will open their Christmas Bazaar. Many beautiful gifts have been made and will be on display.

Local Centers News

Detroit

Brahmacharee Nerode of the Detroit Yogoda Sat-Sanga Center started a new Yogoda Class on October 11th. He gives a review class of the Higher Initiation every month.

The Detroit Center held a Social on October 8th and an enjoyable Halloween Party on October 29th. A Christmas Bazaar will be held on November 29th and 30th.

The Washington, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh Yogoda Sat-Sanga Centers continue their regular weekly meetings and activities, and report good progress.

___________

MINNEAPOLIS

On September 18th, Swami Yogananda opened his lecture series at the Lyceum Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with enthusiastic audiences of several thousand people each night for several weeks. His Minneapolis Patron’s Committee consisted of Mr. T. H. Colwell, Mrs. William A. Bessesen, Mrs. F. W. Cappelen, Mrs. W. M. Chowning, Mrs. K. R. Egilsrud, Dr. W. V. Sheperdson, Dr. Ida J. Sheperdson, Miss Florence Futcher, Mrs. Jane Squyer Perry, Mrs. John Rieder, Mr. F. O. Storlie, Mrs. William O. Storlie, Mrs. Lauru Rollins Tinsley and Mrs. W. C. Tubbs. There was an excellent musical program each night under the direction of Florence E. Reinmuth, Mme. Bessesen and Mrs. James Bliss.

The various classes that Swami gave in Minneapolis were attended by over a thousand students. One of the classes is pictured in this issue.

Swami is Guest at Clubs, Colleges and Receptions

Swami Yogananda addressed a number of clubs and organizations in Minneapolis. He spoke before the Optimists Club on "How Oriental Methods can help Occidental Business."

His first appearance in Minneapolis before a civic club was at a meeting of the Lyons Club where he spoke on "India."

Kappa Tau Alpha Tau chapter of the Delphians entertained the Swami at a meeting at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts when he spoke to them on "Art in India."

"Recharging your Business Battery out of the Cosmos" was the subject of a talk that Swami Yogananda made at a meeting of over two hundred members of the Minneapolis Kiwanis Club.

"Literary Life in India" was discussed by the Swami at a meeting of the Cassiopeia Club at the home of Mrs. Josephine Lucker. The Cassiopeia Club is a study club belonging to the Fifth District of Minnesota Federation of Women’s Clubs.

The Swami addressed the students at Chapel meeting at Macalester College.

The Swami gave a talk along educational lines before the members of the Northwestern College of Speech Arts.

The Swami addressed a meeting of the Grafil Club at the Y.M.C.A. About fifty business men were present.

Dr. and Mrs. K. R. Egilsrud entertained about fifty guests at a reception at their home, 220 Sheridan Avenue South, in honor of Swami Yogananda.

Mrs. Simon Kruse, owner of the Radisson Hotel in Minneapolis, entertained about fifty guests at a tea at her apartment in honor of the Swami.

A group of people from St. Paul who are interested in metaphysics were invited to meet the Swami at the home of Mrs. F. W. Cappelen, 2129 Girard Avenue South.

Walker Art Galleries

During his stay in Minneapolis, Swami Yogananda was entertained by the Hon. Thomas Barlow Walker at his internationally famous art galleries. Mr. Walker, financier and lumber magnate of the Northwest, has spend sixty years in collecting the famous works of art with which his galleries are replete. Mr. Walker conducted the Swami through the galleries and explained the various works of art telling interesting anecdotes connected with the production of the pictures and their acquisition. In speaking of the collection, the Swami said: "Indeed it was a marvelous experience. As a Hindu coming from a land of jewels and precious stones, I was quite struck by my first experience of the green jade of transparent splendor. Indeed the spiritual and artistic nature of the Oriental mind is reflected by the fine workmanship, patience, skill, love and religious ideals worked out in those precious and brittle stones of jade. In Mr. Walker’s gallery both occidental and Oriental art are represented, thereby fulfilling the demands of truth."

Tribute from Yogoda Class

At a Social Gathering on October 30th at the hotel Nicollet Ballroom, Miss Ida M. Larsen, Instructor in English at the Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, made a beautiful speech of appreciation and gratitude for the coming to Minneapolis of the Yogoda message "which is teaching us," she said, "to unfold our inner spiritual faculties, as well as aiding our development of physical and mental powers."

On this occasion, Swami’s Minneapolis students presented him with a beautiful pin in the design of a Yogoda emblem, with a diamond setting within a platinum star, and also with a check to be spent as he wishes.

Yogoda and Christianity

At the end of Swami Yogananda’s first Yogoda class in Minneapolis, his students wrote him a letter of appreciation, signed by Joe Shelby Riley, M.D., for the whole class, part of which read as follows:

"This course of instruction has brought to our minds a world of knowledge not hitherto known to us, making our lives longer and more useful, our minds clearer to receive wisdom, our health more radiant, giving us brighter glimpses of eternity and the things of God. . . .

"There is no conflict between the Swami’s teachings and the Christian religion, as shown by his reverence, faith and eloquent utterances concerning the majesty and glory of the Christian Bible and Jesus Christ. The beautiful spirit here manifested endears him still more to us who have heard his lessons. . . ."

Addresses St. Paul Clubs

On November 6th, Swami Yogananda opened a lecture series at the Peoples Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

During his first week in St. Paul, he was the principal speaker for the Lions Club, Transportation Club, Conopus club, Kiwanis’ Club and the Cosmopolitan Club.

Florida in January

Swami will visit his Washington, D. C. Centers in December and will address Washington clubs.

In January, Swami Yogananda is planning to lecture in Miami, Florida. Students are kindly requested to write their Florida friends, and to send letters of introduction to Swami’s secretary, Mrs. M. Briggs, c/o EAST-WEST, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York.

___________

 


THREE RECIPES

—By Swami Yogananda

Food Recipe

Rice

After washing rice always cook it in a double boiler. To one cup of rice, add two cups of hot water. Then put the double boiler on a medium gas flame for half an hour. It is not good to eat rice all mushy or with the water drained from it after boiling. The best rice in this country is Florida wild rice. Each grain is an inch and sometimes an inch and a half long. Put one cup of cooked Florida wild rice with six mushrooms chopped up with a teaspoonful of curry powder and four tablespoons of butter.

Natural, brown, unpolished rice gives physical stamina and mental strength and concentration. White polished rice is practically worthless, most of its precious nutritive elements having been removed.

Rice has been called the Father of all Cereals. It was the original cereal food of the American Indians. To this day it is the chief cereal food of most Oriental countries. It was interesting to read recent press dispatches stating that Premier Mussolini has been discussing with visiting tradesmen his project of introducing rice as the daily food for Italians, in an effort to do away with the necessity of importing wheat. One of the first and most important changes that the Duce made on his rise to power was to banish the worthless white bread that the Italians, in common with most other peoples of the world, had been using, and to restore the dark whole grain wheat bread to favor. It can therefore be assumed that if Mussolini decrees that rice instead of wheat will henceforth be the daily food of the nation, that he will introduce the brown unpolished rice and not its pale emaciated shadow, polished white rice.

Avocado

Half an alligator pear chopped up in small squares mixed well with two or three tablespoonsful of Thousand Island dressing is delicious and a meal in itself. Alligator pears contain more nutrition that a steak and do not contain the impurities of the latter. A pear costs about fifty cents. After all, it is cheaper than meat. It is the best meat substitute. All abstainers from meat should always eat natural meat substitutes and thus avoid growing weak and going back to meat eating.

* * *

There is a Syrian proverb: "the enemy of man is his stomach." Remember that this bodily machinery has been given to you to enable you to accomplish certain works on this material plane, and that you should guard it and take care of it as your most precious possession. The chief abuse of the body lies in overloading it with unnecessary food. Eat sparingly and notice the great change in your health for the better. The proper combinations and quality of food should also not be overlooked. A supply of raw fruits, vegetables and nuts should be included in the regular diet.

Prosperity Recipe

It is the greatest shame for a person not to be able to support himself or his family. People without backbone acknowledge defeat and beg. The torture of poverty is a better incentive than the drug of satisfaction born of receiving things through begging which slowly poisons the health of the incessant fighting spirit within us.

Fight to the finish. Never turn back. Never say, "I could not find the way so I give up." Ask the way if you have made mistakes but never give up. Many give up when the difficult turns in the path come. Failures should consult and associate with the successful persons and not with failures. Make up your mind you will succeed.

Spiritual Recipe

To all those who receive Him, to them He gave the power to be the Sons of God.

It is best to take on single passage of Scripture, each day, and meditate on that one thought and meaning alone. Great illumination can come that way. Scriptures that are too hurriedly read do not reveal their inner regenerative significance and power.

___________

"A diamond is a chunk of coal

That has stuck to its job."—Kaufman.


INDIA’S EDUCATIONAL IDEAL

—By A. Baqui Khan

The problem of world reconstruction is fundamentally the problem of education. We hear today of the problem of industry. What is it in the last analysis? Is it higher wages, larger output, business organization or machinery? It is all, we admit. But behind all these is the one great problem, how to humanize industry, how to draw capital and labor closer together by a bond stronger than what Carlyle rightly condemned as "the cash nexus." And we cannot humanize industry by mere external rules; we must educate the social sense of the capitalist, we must effect some inner improvement of the employer and the employee.

One thing is needed. Money is not needed; cleverness is not required; power is not needed; liberty is not the need, fame is not needed; even health is not the thing needed; but mind and character alone—a thoroughly cultivated will—will be the basis of the new order we all are striving after with such a passionate longing to-day. Our character will be what we ourselves choose to make it. We cannot all be poets or musicians, great artists or men of science, there are many other things of which we cannot say, "We are formed for them by nature." We ought to show those qualities then which are altogether in our powers; sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to luxury, for these will undoubtedly crown us with success.

Power was the key-note of German education; Napoleon inspired his men with the idea of glory; Rome dreamt the dream of dominion and Spartan boys were asked to help Sparta to become a great military organization. But to India a new ideal has been interpreted, "Knowledge is Sacrifice." Knowledge which is aggressive, science which slays and culture which comes to kill, are dangerous forces which break down civilization and set up Babel instead. It is a humanizing education of the masses for which we plead. It is knowledge poured as a sacrifice on the altar of men which will help India and all nations in the coming days.—The Patna Times.

___________

Then from something seen or heard,

Whether forest softly stirred,

Or the speaking of a word,

Or the singing of a bird,

Cares and sorrows cease;

For a moment on the soul

Falls the rest that maketh whole,

Falls the endless peace.

—Frederick Myers.

EAST-WEST STARTS THIRD YEAR

With this issue, EAST-WEST begins its third year of existence. The magazine has tried its best to fulfill its original purpose of bringing a non-sectarian spiritual message to its readers, and of developing a better understanding between East and West. Judging from the many hundreds of letters received from its American subscribers and from scores of enthusiastic editorial comments in the press of India and other Oriental countries, EAST-WEST has supplied a real need and may look forward to a promising future and increased usefulness.

Beginning with the first issue of 1928, the yearly subscription price to EAST-WEST will be increased to $1.50 ($1.75 Canada, $2.00 foreign). A single copy will continue to sell at 25c.

New subscribers, or subscriptions sent in for christmas presents before 1928, may take advantage of the old yearly subscription price of $1.25 ($1.35 Canada, $1.50 foreign.)

___________

Swami Vivekananda never tired of urging his students to recognize the necessity of a strong and healthy body. "You may have a Gita in your left hand," he said, "but have a football in your right."

___________

STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912, of EAST-WEST, published bi-monthly at New York, for October 1, 1927. State of New York, County of New York. Before me, a notary public in and for the State and county aforesaid, personally appeared Swami Yogananda, who having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that he is the owner of East-West, and that the following is, to the best of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management, etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 411, Postal

Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit: 1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business manager are: Publisher, Yogoda and Sat-Sanga Society, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Editor, Swami Yogananda, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Managing Editor, Swami Yogananda, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Business Manager, None. 2. That the owner is: Swami Yogananda, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owing or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities are: none. 4. that the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company a trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bone fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association or corporation has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him. (Signed) Swami Yogananda, Owner. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 26th day of September, 1927. Rina Salmon, Notary Public.

____________________________________________________________________________________

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HOUSE OF INDIA

281 FIFTH AVENUE

(Southeast Cor. 30th Street.)

New York City

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ORIENTAL BOOKS

INDIAN AND PERSIAN ART,

MINIATURE PAINTINGS, MSS.,

BRONZES, ETC.

We specialize in all Books for the Study

of Oriental Languages and other Branches

of Oriental Literature, of which we

keep a Large Stock. Catalogues issued

Periodically, and sent gratis on application.

RECENTLY ISSUED

Letters on Religion and Folklore by the late F. W. Hasluck, M.A., annotated by Margaret M. Hasluck, B.A., (Cantab.) M.A., (Abdn.) with many illustrations. Rov 8vo cloth, pp. vii 256. Price $3.25.

Karma and Reincarnation in Hindu Religion and Philosophy. By Paul Yevtic, B.Litt., Ph.D., 8vo sewn, pp. 112. Price $1.35.

Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), with Chinese notes and 10 illustrations. By D. T. Suzuki. Roy 8vo cloth, pp. x 423. Price $4.50.

LUZAC & CO.

Oriental and Foreign Booksellers

Agents to the Royal Asiatic Society; School of Oriental Studies, London; Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta; Bihar and Orissa Research Society, India; Society of Oriental Research, Chicago; Siam Society, Bangkok, et., etc.

46 GREAT RUSSELL STREET,

LONDON, W.C. 1, ENGLAND.

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Beautiful Hand Painted

Christmas Cards

With

INSPIRING MYSTIC DESIGNS

SYMBOLS, SENTIMENTS

AND VERSES

Hand Painted in Colors

Suitable for Yogoda Students and

for the General Public.

5 Types of Original Design Cards. "Christmas Star" 15c; "Lotus" 20c; "Christmas Dawn" 25c; "Sacred Fire" 30c; "Devotee" 35c.

Place Your Order Early

Handsome envelopes included.

12 cards minimum order.

On display at all Yogoda Centers

You will not be able to buy Christmas cards of such beauty and spiritual significance at the stores.

* * *

FRAMED HAND-ILLUMINED MOTTOES

One by Swami Yogananda

One by Swami Dhirananda

$2.00 each postpaid.

YOGODA

3880 San Rafael Avenue

Los Angeles, Calif.

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MASTERPIECES OF RAJPUT PAINTING

Selected annotated and described in relation to original Hindi texts from religious literature, with an Introduction by O. C. Gangoly, Editor "Rupam."

ILLUSTRATED WITH 28 COLOUR PLATES AND 24 HAND-MADE PHOTOGRAVURES

Superbly reproduced and mounted on art boards, text printed on hand-made paper. Strictly limited edition of 200 copies. Nearly all subscribed for. Few copies left.

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A Christmas Gift That Lasts A Whole Year

EAST-WEST

Why not remember your friends at Christmastide with a Year’s Subscription to EAST-WEST in token of your interest in their spiritual welfare?

That would be a gift in keeping with the true spiritual significance of the Christmas holy-days.

We will send an attractive Gift Card to your Friends to announce your Christmas subscription gift.

After Jan. 1 1928, subscription rates will be increased. Take advantage now of the 1927 rate—$1.25 yearly in U.S.A.

Your Yogoda Friends would appreciate an

EAST-WEST BINDER

Attractive—Sturdy—Mechanically Perfect—Stamped in Gold

Holds 12 copies—$2.00 each postpaid

or a

YOGODA EMBLEM PIN

Gold-Plated, in orange and blue enamel.

In Pin or Lapel Button Form.

$1.00 each, postpaid

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Send Your Order to the Nearest Office

YOGODA—EAST-WEST

3880 San Rafael Avenue Los Angeles, Calif.

509 Fifth Avenue New York, N. Y.

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YOGODA means "harmonious development of all human faculties."

SAT-SANGA means "fellowship with truth."

YOGODA Headquarters is a beautiful structure containing about forty rooms and two large halls each seating about a thousand people. The grounds are seven and a half acres in extent, and are planted with camphor, date, palm, pepper and other beautiful trees, as well as plants, shrubs and wonderful flower-beds, making it one of the most beautiful spots in Southern California. there are two tennis courts with a stadium. The property has one thousand feet frontage on Mount Washington Boulevard Drive, and a twenty-five minutes’ drive from the heart of busy Los Angeles will bring you to the quiet hill-top location of this ideally-situated Center.

The Center commands an unsurpassed vieW of the city below, as well as of other nearby cities, including Pasadena, the "City of Roses." The Pacific Ocean sparkles in the distance, and at night the million twinkling lights of Los Angeles and distant cities may be seen below, a veritable fairyland.

Week-day and Sunday classes and lectures are given, including a non-sectarian Sunday School for children. The Center also carries on the work of the YOGODA CORRESPONDENCE COURSE, and numerous healing, social and welfare activities.

Those who are in sympathy with Swami Yogananda’s plan of starting here a YOGODA-HOW-TO-LIVE School, for children and adults, for training them in ideal all-round physical, mental and especially spiritual development, please communicate with the Swami at the address given below.

SWAMI YOGANANDA

3880 San Rafael Avenue Los Angeles, California

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