“When I am gone, only love can take my place.” — Paramhansa Yogananda to Daya Mata
Many loyal members of Self-Realization Fellowship, including relatives of Yogananda, have received unusually harsh treatment from SRF in the years since Yogananda’s passing. Individuals have been silent for years.
Though we hesitated for many years to publish these stories, we feel a moral obligation to Yogananda which can no longer be suppressed out of concern for SRF. It must regretfully be said: the SRF of today no longer reflects Yogananda’s all-encompassing love and kindness toward others.
Perhaps if SRF members know, they will be able to influence the organization to return to its guiding principles.
Swami Kriyananda writes in The Path:
In some ways it was, I think, his utter respect for others that impressed me about Master the most deeply. It always amazed me that one whose wisdom and power inspired so much awe in others could be at the same time so humbly respectful to every one. I had always considered respect to be something one gave only where it was due. And in a sense, of course, Master gave it in that spirit, too, but in his case it meant showing the deepest respect to all, because he saw them all as God’s children. As Master said once to Dr. Lewis, his first disciple in America, “Remember, God loves you just as much as He loves me. He is our common Father.”
“If you treat others unkindly, you will receive unkindness in return, both from others and from life. Your own heart, moreover, will grow shriveled and dry. Thus does Nature warn people that by unkindness they do violence to their attunement with the inner Self.”
—Paramhansa Yogananda, The Essence of Self-Realization
