Self Realization Fellowship Encinitas California

Maija, my first mother in law, introduced me to Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda in the early 70’s. .  I later came across the book as the only eastern writing of note in the chapel library of University of Winnipeg which had begun as a United Church seminary education facility.
Contacting Self Realization in Encinitas I began their weekly study.  The 70’s was an exciting time in my life. I’d married the most beautiful dancer in the world and bicycled with her across Europe before studying dance for a year in London. I’d return to study arts and sciences before experiencing a calling to  medicine praying in the University of Winnipeg Chapel.  All the while I was teaching dancing evenings at Arthur Murray’s and Fred Astaires.
I attribute my meditation practice in those early years to my having the focus and discipline to complete my medical studies.  I belonged to a small meditation group that met weekly in the home of one of the members of the  symphony. I forget this name sadly. He taught me the Harmonium so I could lead chants when he wasn’t available. I actually ordered my own harmonium from Bombay and later met the harmonium salesman when I visited Bombay.  He remembered that order well. He said, “We never received an order for an harmonium from Canada.”  I remember well one unforgettable day meditating in Winnipeg with that group from sun up to sun down.
Eastern studies and yoga were not like they are today. True the Beatles had studied with Mahareesh Yogi. George Harrison had put out “My Sweet Lord.”  My friend Kirk had left Baiba and I  at the Strawberry Peace and Love Festival to dance with the Boy Guru followers, later becoming a Prem disciple. Baiba and I had gone on to San Francisco to dance in the streets and  ‘wear flowers in our hair." I believe Kirk’s  family was Anglican. Mine was Baptist though I later taught Sunday school for the Fort Garry United Church. I came under the amazing direction of the saintly genius Dr. Carl Ridd.  A former basketball star he’d become a University of Winnipeg Literature and Religious Studies professor.
I liked that Paramahansa Yogananda had been India’s delagate to the World Congress of Religious Liberals in the United States.   This was an Ecumenical Religious Conference. Vivekananda had been at the first in the late 1900’s meeting and influencing Emerson, the father of American philosophy.  He's lent  his Walden Pond home to Thoreau.  of ‘civil disobedience’ fame.  It’s a small world.
I became a Kriya Yoga initiate in Toronto in the 70’s but only years later made my way to Encinitas California years. It was a moving first visit.
I stopped doing Kriya Yoga when I smoked marijuana remembering that I thought this was a faster way to ‘feeling at peace’.  It was also a ‘tantra yoga’ path in my mind as well.  I had become less spiritual and more an ‘intellectual’ then studying philosophy, politics, psychiatry and medicine.
Indeed studying Freudian psychoanalysis at the University of Manitoba in my psychiatry residency I was told by my professor to stop meditating as it ‘was harmful for the mind’.  Smoking dope was not considered such at the time by my teachers.  So I dutifully stopped meditation but began to study the medical and psychiatric evidence in favour of it before considering that particular professor sadly wrong and rather egotistical as well.
It turned out that Herbert Benson, MD had extensively studied the benefits physically and psychologically at Harvard.  The evidence of benefit was overwhelming. I’d fallen out of the discipline and wouldn’t return to meditation myself extensively until I got into recovery a decade later. I had indeed learned the benefits for psychoanalysis more from ongoing psychiatric psychotherapy and from psychotherapist friends Dr. Miller and Dr. Christiensen.    That didn’t interfere with my becoming a wine connoisseur with my Napa Valley friend and definitely an authority on marijuana.
I was studying prayer in recovery at the time and was again cautioned against meditation. So I began researching meditation in the Christian tradition and began meditating with a Benedictine monk. It turned out that the second oldest Christian prayer, the Dessert Father prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ,son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ was taught as a meditation first by St. Augustine. It turned out that meditation has a rich history in the mystical and spiritual Christian and Catholic traditions that followed from St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Chross. “Nada" is as simple an affirmative mantra meditation as anyone could wish.
Meanwhile I’d been very thankful to learn the value and depth of prayer by focusing on this more than meditation. Dr. James Houston and Dr. Willie Gutowski are great teachers of prayer.  “Transforming Power of Prayer, Deepening Your Friendship with God” by Dr. James Houston is my all time favourite writing on prayer. In 12 step programs, known for their rough simplicity, meditation is called ‘listening to God’ and prayer is called ‘talking to God’.  They really are not separate.
I loved walking into the Self Realization retreat centre this visit. . There were monks and volunteers there cleaning and caring for the facility. I spoke to a couple and they reminded me of the monks I’d now had the priviledge of meeting around the world in my travels. There is something wondrous and peaceful about these soulful people. I still recall fondly the Greek Orthodox monk in Meteora who gave me a cookie and sat with me for a time.  I’ve prayed and meditated in so many churches, temples and shrines.
Its was from Yogananda’s writings I learned the prayers, “Saints of all religions, I bow to you all, may thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion and may I be able to awaken thy love in all hearts. "
I was blessed to recently hear Dr. James Houston bemoan the intellectual difficulties that Christians get into when they start discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a needle.  I’d been asking him about the division between the Orthodox Christian Communion and the Roman Catholic Communion regarding the origin of the Holy Spirit. The Roman Catholic maintains that it comes from the Father and the Son while the Orthodox maintains it comes from the Father directly.  It’s such elements of human pride that cause divisions in churches and keep churches, and nations and continents apart.  The Sunni and Shiite division is about as silly to the outside as divisions in Judaism or among Buddhists ,some of whom are strict vegetarians while others eat meat but do not kill it themselves. Dr. Houston focussed on the love of God in his writings and teachings, seeing love as central to ‘spiritual christianity’.
I suspect that Dr. Houston would agree though that the trouble with too open a mind is that one’s marbles can fall out. He’s so very kind to me that  sometimes I fear he thinks I’ve lost one or two.
I loved that Paramahansa Yoganada also focused on the heart.  His whole relationship with God was as a love song, like the Song of Songs of the Old Testament or the writings of the Sufi, Rumi.  I was introduced to Tagore, who my poet friend Bernice Lever loves,  by my studies in the 70’s.  I loved hearing his songs sung there when I visited Bombay in the mid 80’s.  I had the same joyous feeling hearing Leonard Cohen’s songs in the taxis of  Tel Aviv.  Today I love Hallelujah but nothing lifts me up so much as the music of Third Day who I was truly blessed to hear in concert in Abbotsford. It was like the other special night listening to Stephen Bell in St. John’s Church Chilliwack.  After travelling around the world visiting sacred sitesand talking with world church leaders I so often find that it’s right at home where the heart is that God may speak the loudest and softest if one is listening.
I loved sitting and drinking in the peaceful easy feelings that linger in the SRF Encinitas temple.  I meditated there once again. Then I  joined up with Laura who’d been waiting in the car with Gilbert so we could both go into the remarkable SRF gift shop.  Gift shops are so much fun. We were so pleased to find the perfect pillows, little elephants for gifts, a favourite Yoganada book of writings, and a  pink shirt for Laura from India.
The International Society of Addiction Medicine is meeting in New Delhi in 2019 and I hope to be going so I can take a side tour and visit the Ranchi Ashram of the Yogoda Satanga Society, Indian affiliate of the Self Realization Fellowship.  I’ve been following the journeys of St. Thomas of the Syriac church who made it as far as Kerala and would like to visit a church there as well.
There is a place where  Hinduism and Christianity meet which to my mind is where Buddhism,Judaism, Janism, Paganism ,Islam, Sufiism and all religions touch in the great Venn Diagram of God’s love. It’s not the superstitious fear but that place of awe and wonder and humility.
I once explained it to my two young friends, one Sik and one  Catholic friends when we were out hunting partridge.  "I believe”, I said, " all roads lead to Rome but as an Anglican I believe that I’ll find an even better mansion than my mother’s baptist mansion while you and all the other non Christians will have mansions in heaven, but just not in the best part. Location. Location. Location.”  The truth be told my favourite heaven is found in Mark Twain’s  Captain Stormfield’s visit to heaven’
I was a vegetarianism for years when I practiced Kriya Yoga. My aboriginal friends and I today would say vegetarianism is an old Indian name for ‘poor hunter’. For many historically and culturally meat was reserved for the wealthy while the poor had to make a virtue of necessity. That said when my friend Ganesh’s wife Anita does her classic Indian vegetarian cooking I could see becoming a vegetarian again.
It was uplifting and moving to be once again at the Encinitas Retreat centre.  I am so thankful.  Yognanda’s books still have a special place at Banyan Books in Vancouver.