Awake: The Life of Yogananda Page #2

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away to America.

SRI DAYA MATA:

He never wanted

to come to America.

That was not part

of his dream at all.

"Let me just go

to the Himalayas

and just live in a cave there.

"I can do good there.

I can pray for people."

But his teacher said, "No.

"You must go to the West.

Go to America."

NARRATOR:
Tears stood in

my eyes as I cast a last look

at the little boys,

and the sunny acres of Ranchi.

I knew, henceforth,

I would dwell in far lands.

How alone I was here.

Not a soul I knew.

I had heard many stories

about the materialistic West,

a land very different

from India.

It was somewhat of

a daunting experience,

to go out on the streets.

My strange dress prompted

boyish mockery and catcalls.

BOY:
What's that?

VIDAL:
There were kids that

were throwing stones at him,

calling him names.

VISHWANANDA:
I think

he was called a magician

at one point, a snake charmer.

BROTHER CHIDANANDA: In 1920,

many Americans were still

not used to having Jews here.

And now comes

a darker skinned swami

in orange robes and a turban.

NARRATOR:
I noticed

some hot dog signs.

In imagination I saw

all kinds of dogs

going through

the meat chopper.

And I thought, "My Lord.

"Why did you bring me to the

land where people eat dogs?"

BRAHMACHARI MARTIN:

When Yogananda came

to the United States,

it was after World War I.

The world was

a very different place.

It was a very powerful time.

There was this upsurge

of freedom.

Freedom of sexuality,

freedom of expression.

Boundaries of known reality

were being shattered

and penetrated.

You had

the Einsteinian

revolution,

sort of flowering

into quantum physics.

And it became clear

that the world was not

what it appeared to be.

SONI:
Western philosophers

are talking about

the death of God.

And Yogananda says,

it's not about

the death of God,

it's about

the reconceptualization

of the divine.

CHIDANANDA:
It's significant

that Yogananda's

first lecture in America

was called

"The Science of Religion."

Not Hinduism, because using

religious terminology,

in Western peoples' minds,

would place his offerings

in a box.

But self-realization?

Oh. Yoga?

Oh, those are universal.

(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)

Spine and the brain

are the altars of God.

That's where the electricity

of God flows down

into the nervous system

into the world.

and the searchlights

of your senses

are turned outwards.

But when you will

reverse the searchlights,

through Kriya Yoga,

and be concentrated

in the spine,

you will behold the Maker.

That's what

Self-Realization teaches.

The technique of meditation,

recharging the body battery

with cosmic energy.

For it is not a creed

or dogma,

but a science...

...of the soul and spirit.

How the soul descended from

the cosmic consciousness...

into the earth and

the body and the senses...

...is the purpose

of this work.

VIDAL:
Imagine hearing that

God is in your spine.

In 1920.

It was radical.

It was a bold explanation

of where to go

to experience God.

MAISHA MOSES:
For me,

God is still

a bit unfathomable.

She's in everything.

She's in everyone.

If you call Him energy,

that's fine.

SONI:
Yogananda thought

of self-realization

as a science.

He thought of Kriya

Yoga as a science.

Religion has a lot of baggage,

but a science

means that it's part

of a scientific process.

It's empirical,

you can test certain things.

And your own

spiritual practice

and self-realization

is that scientific process.

An individual is sort of

an organized packet

of consciousness

that is part of a bigger ocean

of consciousness

in that when

you are meditating

and going deep within,

such as in yoga,

your inner consciousness

is combining with

that higher consciousness.

CHIDANANDA:

You couldn't have

described to a Westerner

what Yogananda

was teaching prior

to the twentieth century.

There simply wasn't

a vocabulary for it.

The apparently solid body

is made up of

these whirling atoms,

and protons, and electrons.

And those are composed

of energy.

The basic substance

of creation.

NARRATOR:
The body

is potentially vast

and omnipresent.

(YOGANANDA SPEAKING)

This earth is nothing

but movies to me.

Just like the beam

of a motion picture.

So is everything made

of shadows and light.

That's what we are.

Light and shadows of the Lord.

Nothing else than that.

There's one purpose.

To get to the beam.

VIDAL:
But the doors

of perception don't often

open with the intellect.

Something very powerful

has to happen

to shake us out of

our comfort zone.

NARRATOR:
It was in

Bareilly on a midnight...

As I slept beside Father,

I was awakened by

a peculiar flutter.

CHIDANANDA:
When he was

about 11 years old,

he and his father

were in northern India.

The family was

temporarily separated,

and his mother

had gone to Calcutta

to prepare for the wedding

of the eldest brother.

And unknown to them,

she had contracted

Asiatic cholera.

SYMAN:
He had a dream

that night, that his mother

came to him.

NARRATOR:
The flimsy curtains

parted and I saw the beloved

form of my mother.

"Rush to Calcutta,

if you would see me."

The wraith-like

figure vanished.

(NARRATOR GASPS)

Mother is dying.

I collapsed into

an almost lifeless state.

CHIDANANDA:

A telegram arrived.

She had died in

a matter of hours.

NARRATOR:
What was

the purpose of this?

Her solacing black eyes

had been my refuge

in the trifling tragedies

of childhood.

WOMAN'S VOICE:

Farewell my child.

The cosmic mother

will protect you.

(ECHOING) It is I who have

watched over thee,

life after life,

in the tenderness

of many mothers.

See in my gaze

the two black eyes.

The lost,

beautiful eyes

thou seek'st.

NARRATOR:
I used to dream

in my childhood,

a tiger used to break

my leg at night.

(GROWLING)

Mother used to come running

with a candle and say,

"You are dreaming.

"Where is it broken?"

(CHUCKLES) And then

I used to laugh.

From that time on,

I was watchful,

even in dreams,

to separate the unreal

from the real.

VIDAL:
Once he had

cracked open the door,

his world would

never be the same.

But it would take time,

and many tests,

before he would fully awaken

into this new reality.

NARRATOR:
Mercifully mother

of the universe,

teach me thyself

through visions,

or through a guru

sent by thee.

I hoped to find them

in the Himalayan snows.

The master whose face

often appeared to me

in visions.

I gazed searchingly

about me, on any

excursion from home

for the face

of my destined guru.

One day, I wiped

my tear-swollen face,

and set out for

a distant marketplace

in Banaras.

(VENDORS SHOUTING)

Something told me

to look behind.

I had seen him in dreams.

The face was

the one I had seen

in a thousand visions.

Holding a promise

that I had not

fully understood.

I came to know him long before

I met him in this life.

It was him.

It was my master.

He said,

"I have been waiting."

MEHROTRA:
A true guru

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