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My Parents and Early Life

28:42 recording · EN · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

Yogananda's childhood memories trace an unbroken pull toward his guru Lahiri Mahasaya and God.

  1. A guru's presence outlives his bodyLahiri Mahasaya died soon after the narrator's birth, yet guided him through picture, vision and inner direction.
  2. Even-mindedness over gain or lossFather ignored a cheque for Rs 125,000, asking why one should be elated by material profit.
  3. Spoken words carry materializing forceA taunt answered with concentrated will raised boils on both children; mother forbade using words to harm.
Executive Summary AI
  • The narrator, born in the last decade of the 19th century as Mukundalal Ghosh, spent his first eight years at Gorakhpur in the United Provinces, the second son and fourth child among eight children of Bengali Kshatriya parents.
  • His father Bhagavati Charan Ghosh, a vice-president-level officer of the Bengal Nagpur Railway who once left Rs 125,000 (about $41,250) in back compensation unclaimed, was frugal and cautious, while his mother gave freely to the poor and once out-argued him into handing a needy woman ten rupees.
  • Abhinash Babu recounted how Lahiri Mahasaya materialized in a Gorakhpur field to rebuke the father—"Bhagavati, you are too hard on your employee"—after which the parents travelled to Benares and were initiated into Kriya Yoga.
  • At about the age of eight the boy was cured of Asiatic cholera at Ichhapur while gazing at Lahiri Mahasaya's photograph, a picture with its own miraculous origin, since the master's form had refused to register on twelve plates exposed by Gangadhar Babu.
  • Later episodes—the boil he willed onto his own arm and his sister Uma's, and the two cut kites that drifted into his hands in Lahore after prayer to the Divine Mother—convinced him that concentrated word and prayer carry real force.
Key Quote
“Why be elated by material profit?”
— Father (Bhagavati Charan Ghosh)
Key Quote
“Do you want this woman also to remember painfully your refusal of ten rupees, which she needs urgently?”
— Mother
Key Quote
“Bhagavati, you are too hard on your employee.”
— Lahiri Mahasaya

Transcript

0:00 chapter i my parents and early life the characteristic features of indian culture have long been a search for ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple guru relationship
0:13 beginning of footnote number one point two spiritual teacher from sanskrit root gur to raise to uplift foot. My own path led me to a Christ-like sage whose beautiful life was chiseled
0:30 for the ages. He was one of the great masters who are India's sole remaining wealth. Emerging in
0:36 every generation, they have bulwarked their land against the fate of Babylon and Egypt.
0:42 I find my earliest memories covering the anachronistic features of a previous
0:47 incarnation. Clear recollections came to me of a distant life, a yogi, beginning of footnote number
0:54 1.3, a practitioner of yoga, union, ancient Indian science of meditation on God. End of footnote number 1.3 Amidst the Himalayan snows.
1:07 These glimpses of the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse of the future.
1:13 The helpless humiliations of infancy are not banished from my mind.
1:17 I was resentfully conscious of not being able to walk or express myself freely.
1:23 Prayerful surges arose within me as I realized
1:26 my bodily importance. My strong emotional life took silent form as words in many languages.
1:34 Among the inward confusion of tongues, my ear gradually accustomed itself to the circumambient
1:40 Bengali syllables of my people. The beguiling scope of an infant's mind adultly considered limited to toys and toes caresses and my first attempts at lisping phrase and toddling step.
2:09 These early triumphs, usually forgotten quickly, are yet a natural basis of self-confidence.
2:16 My far-reaching memories are not unique.
2:18 Many yogis are known to have retained their self-consciousness without interruption by the dramatic transition to and
2:26 from life and death. If man be solely a body, its loss indeed places the final period to identity.
2:34 But if prophets down the millenniums speak with truth, man is essentially of incorporeal nature.
2:41 The persistent core of human egoity is only temporarily allied with sense perception.
2:47 Although odd, clear memories of infancy are not extremely rare.
2:52 During travels in numerous lands, I have listened to early recollections from the lips of veracious men and women.
3:00 I was born in the last decade of the 19th century and passed my first eight years at Gorakhpur.
3:06 This was my birthplace in the United Provinces of Northeastern India. We were eight children,
3:12 four boys and four girls. I, Mukundalal Ghosh, beginning of footnote number 1.4.
3:20 My name was changed to Yogananda when I entered the ancient monastic Swami order in 1914. My guru
3:27 bestowed the religious title of Paramahansa on me in 1935. See chapters 24 and 42. End of footnote
3:36 number 1.4. Was the second son and the fourth child. Father and mother were Bengalis of the Kshatriya caste. Beginning of footnote number
3:46 1.5. Traditionally the second caste of warriors and rulers. End of footnote number 1.5. Both were
3:55 blessed with saintly nature. Their mutual love, tranquil and dignified, never expressed itself
4:01 frivolously. A perfect parental harmony was the calm centre for the revolving
4:06 tumult of eight young lives. Father Bhagavati Charangosh was kind, grave, at times stern.
4:14 Loving him dearly, with children yet observed a certain reverential distance. An outstanding
4:21 mathematician and logician, he was guided principally by his intellect but mother was a queen of hearts and taught us only through love after her death father displayed more of his inner tenderness
4:34 i noticed then that his gaze often metamorphosed into my mother's in mother's presence we tasted our earliest bitter-sweet acquaintance with the scriptures.
4:48 Tales from the Mahabharata and Ramayana Beginning of Footnote No. 1.6
4:51 These ancient epics are the hoard of India's history, mythology and philosophy.
4:57 An Everyman's Library volume, Ramayana and Mahabharata,
5:02 is a condensation in English verse by Romesh Dutt.
5:07 New York, E. P. Dutton.

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