Shaped by Saints

Devi Mukherjee

Description

Shaped by Saints

Author, Devi Mukherjee takes the reader on a profoundly inspiring pilgrimage to meet saints and realized masters of modern India in forest ashrams, mountain caves, holy places, and shrines. He shares many insights and lessons from the great ones and tells many previously unpublished stories of Yogananda’s early life and return visit to India in 1935-36.

While a young man, he worked with Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian resistance movement and was imprisoned for five months. After release, Devi began a spiritual quest throughout India, traveling some 45 years at various times.

This beautifully written book takes you on a deeply inspiring pilgrimage to visit saints and God-realized masters of modern-day India. Devi Mukherjee—a disciple of the great yoga master, Paramhansa Yogananda (1893–1952)—invites you to walk in his footsteps and experience India’s spiritual richness, preserved in forest ashrams, mountain caves, and in holy places and shrines.

Throughout his many years of travel, Devi meditated with some of India’s great souls and felt their transforming spiritual power. From all, he received the same soul guidance—to love God with every fiber of one’s being. One of Yogananda’s closest boyhood friends, Tulsi Bose, is the father of Devi’s wife, Hassi. From Bose and others, Devi obtained previously unpublished stories of Yogananda’s early life and 1935 visit to India that give the reader inspiring new glimpses of Yogananda’s generosity, courage, loyalty to friends, and spiritual power. 

Contents

Forewordix

Foreword to the 2022 Reissue xiii

Introduction3

1. Find My Guru 5


2. Trek in the Himalayas 17


3. Visit from Mt. Washington 24


4. An Official Visit from SRF 34


5. Tulsi Bose, Yogananda’s Boyhood Friend 41


6. Ranchi — Then a Trek to Badrinath! 50


7. Pilgrimage to South India 63


8. Yogi Encounters Modern Science 69


9. Fright from a Cobra! 75


10. God in Organizations: God in Our Souls 89


11. New Flowering? 101


12. No Tibet This Time 108


13. The Travelers Return 116


14. Glossary of People 119

Index 121

About Paramhansa Yogananda 125

Further Explorations 127

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Swami Sri Yukteswar
• Hindú
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Yukteswar Giri
• General officer
• Spirituality
• Hindu
• Eastern
• Lahiri Mahasaya
• Sri Yukteswar Giri
• Religion
• General
• Paramahansa Yogananda

Informations

• Publié par: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Date de parution: 06 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781565895218
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

SHAPED BY Saints
Paramhansa Yogananda in 1926, taken in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania .
SHAPED BY Saints

Devi Mukherjee
With Nayaswami Durga (Durga Smallen) and Swami Kriyananda
2000 by Devi Mukherjee
All rights reserved. Published 2000
Printed in the United States of America
4 6 8 10 12 11 9 7 5 3

Crystal Clarity Publishers
1123 Goodrich Blvd. Commerce, California
crystalclarity.com 800.424.1055
[e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-56589-149-4 (print)
ISBN 978-1-56589-521-8 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-56589-818-9 (audioboook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication 2008042805
With index and a new foreword .
2022 reissue by Michele Madhavi Molloy
Original book design by C. A. Starner Schuppe and Patty Terry
Photographs by Devi Mukherjee, Durga Smallen, and Swami Kriyananda

The Joy Is Within You symbol is registered by Ananda Church of Self-Realization of Nevada County, California.
Dedication
I bow at the lotus feet of my Beloved Divine Mother, Master Krishna, Jesus Christ, Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar Giri, beloved Paramhansa Yogananda, and the saints of all religions. Also to Anandamoyee Ma, Narayan Swami, Kailash Pati, Rani Mata, and many Himalayan masters and swamis; and lastly to Swami Atmananda, Daya Mata, Swami Kriyananda, and Tulsi Bose.
Contents
Foreword
Foreword to the 2022 Reissue
Introduction
1. I Find My Guru
2. A Trek in the Himalayas
3. A Visit from Mt. Washington
4. An Official Visit from SRF
5. Tulsi Bose, Yogananda s Boyhood Friend
6. Ranchi-Then a Trek to Badrinath!
7. Pilgrimage to South India
8. A Yogi Encounters Modern Science
9. Fright from a Cobra!
10. God in Organizations: God in Our Souls
11. A New Flowering?
12. No Tibet This Time
13. The Travelers Return
Glossary of People
Index
About Paramhansa Yogananda
Further Explorations
Foreword
I met Devi Mukherjee for the first time in the fall of 1986. My husband and I were leading a pilgrimage to India with our longtime friends and gurubhais , 1 David and Asha Praver. Our spiritual teacher, Swami Kriyananda, had told us stories about Devi. They had been brother monks together in Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS), the Indian branch of Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF). The two organizations were founded by our guru, Paramhansa Yogananda. Devi had joined YSS in India, and Swamiji had joined SRF at Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, the international headquarters. They met in Calcutta in October, 1958, and both lived in the YSS ashrams until Kriyananda left SRF in 1962.
Devi, his wife Hassi (pronounced Hashi), and their son Manash now live in Calcutta and serve as the meditation group leaders of Ananda, the organization founded by Swami Kriyananda in 1968. Devi and his family are deep and sincere devotees of Paramhansa Yogananda, and dear friends of us at Ananda who know them. Their dedication to God and Guru, and also their divine friendship for Kriyananda, is deeply inspiring.
Devi and Hassi live in the home of Yogananda s close boyhood friend, Tulsi Bose, Hassi s father, and keep their home open twenty-four hours a day to anyone who wishes to meditate in the rooms where Yogananda meditated, and also Anandamoyee Ma, Sri Yukteswarji, Balaram Bose (a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa), Swami Vivekananda, and other great saints.
This is Devi s story of the great men and women he has met during forty-five years of spiritual seeking. As we interviewed him about details in his book, tears continually came into his eyes as he relived those thrilling scenes.
In the Mahabharata (one of the great spiritual epics of India), Lord Krishna tells his disciple, Uddhava, to go to the Himalayas and meditate on Him. For thousands of years, pilgrims have done likewise, braving the dangers of snow, narrow mountain paths, and wild animals to reach the great temples there, dedicated to the worship of God. Devi, possessed of a keen desire to make these pilgrimages, met saintly people and had extraordinary experiences in their presence, experiences that bestowed on him deep soul peace and a sense of inner fulfillment.
When I asked Devi why he had wanted to make these long treks, he replied, I wanted to meditate in holy places, and I wanted my life to be shaped by saints.
He met God-realized beings in, and outside, the small villages that are the heart of that amazing land of sages and saints whose lives are far removed from what most people consider the normal -the hubbub and bustle of daily commerce.
As he states in his book, however, Even though I had met a few highly advanced yogis in my travels, up to January, 1955, I never felt an inclination to accept a guru. In that month it was that he met his own destined guru, once-living in form but now in formlessness, Paramhansa Yogananda.
I hope you enjoy Devi s book as much as I have. You will come to know this man as much through his vibrations as through the story he relates. I hope that you, too, will be impressed and grateful for the example of his moment-to-moment focus on the Divine, which turns many a prospective disaster into a divine blessing.
Durga Smallen
July 2000

1 Brothers and sisters in the family of the same guru, or spiritual teacher.
Foreword to the 2022 Reissue
S ince the first printing of Shaped by Saints over twenty years ago, Devi and Hassi Mukherjee have passed from this world. One of their last wishes was to see their ancestral home and its many holy relics under the protection and love of Ananda Church of Self-Realization, to keep what is a shrine open to those who wish to meditate there and feel Yoganandaji s vibrations.
Hassi, at least, lived to see their wish fulfilled. Ananda s monks, and other Ananda devotees, began conducting satsangs there on a regular basis, and raised money for extensive repairs and ongoing maintenance. People have been coming in growing numbers to meditate in these sacred rooms and for seclusions, their needs attended to by a devotee in residence.
Large programs requiring more space are held elsewhere nearby, but smaller ones are held there in the home on a regular basis. Our goal has been to preserve this place as a shrine and pilgrimage space. We want it to be usable by many, but to preserve its vibrations and charm.
In Hassi s spirit of serving all who come as part of our greater spiritual family, the home-now known as the Tulsi Bose Shrine-is open to all for visits. The Shrine is easily reachable in just a half hour s drive from either the airport or the train station. For more information, or to arrange a visit-whether for an hour or for some days-please e-mail us in advance at [e-mail] , or give us a call at [phone].
Blessings on your meditations and your life.
Nayaswami Durga (Durga Smallen)
March 2002
SHAPED BY Saints
Introduction
I was born in North Calcutta on 20th March, 1927, at my family s home. When I was six months old my father died, and my mother was obliged to leave our home owing to certain problems with our property. Mother and I went to live in the home of my mother s brother in South Calcutta.
At seventeen, a close friend and I joined the army. In the end we joined the resistance movement against British rule, and were eventually jailed for five months. After my release in 1945, I was accepted into Ashutosh College, where, in 1947 (the year India won its independence from Great Britain), I received my B.A. degree. From 1949 to 1954, I was employed as a refrigeration engineer, and in that capacity was sent throughout India. Thus, perhaps, began my career as a traveler!
During that period of my life I had very few friends. My mind could not accept wine, dancing, smoking, and other so-called pleasures of youth, so I kept to myself much of the time. My mother arranged for me to marry when I was twenty-eight, but, having no desire for marriage, I declined.
In 1966, during a visit to the great woman saint Anandamoyee Ma, I received an answer from her to my burning question: Should I live the rest of my life in Himalayan solitude?
You cannot do so, she said. You will have to return and enter family life. Your wife, however, will belong to Yogananda s spiritual family, and will herself be a devotee. Another great saint, Kailash Pati, with whom I stayed in Ranikhet, a Himalayan town, told me the same thing later on.
I had already met Hassi, my wife to be, on 4th May in 1955 at the Yogoda Satsanga Society ashram outside Calcutta, but had had no interest in marrying at that time. In 1969, however, on 3rd February, we were finally married. Our son Manash was born 4th January, 1970. I am my mother s only son, and Manash also is my and Hassi s only son.
Manash, Hassi, and me .
Chapter One
I Find My Guru
O n 1st January, 1955, I was getting ready to leave the house to play soccer with a few friends. I picked up the local newspaper to see if the day s outdoor activities were listed. I was very interested at that time in all kinds of sports, soccer being my favorite.
As I started to open the paper, I beheld a very attractive photo on the first page. Beneath it were the words, On 5th January, Paramhansa Yogananda s birthday will be held at Yogoda Math, Dakshineswar. My mind was suddenly attracted to this photo. Instead of going to the soccer game, I left at once for Dakshineswar.
On my way to the address given in the paper, I stopped first at the Kali Temple in Dakshineswar, which had been made famous by Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, one of the great masters of the nineteenth century, and, among all saints up to then, my first love. I used often to go there and meditate, tuning in to the power and blessings of the great master, Sri Ramakrishna, which still permeate that holy place. God s presence was, to me, more palpable there than anywhere else.
After some time, I quietly left and made my way to nearby Yogoda Math. On entering the prayer room in the main building, I was struck by four large, beautiful pictures of masters I