runbei

Binay-da was reluctant to see me leave Calcutta for New Delhi. I postponed that trip, accordingly, and remained near him for several months. Our discussions centered on the work and how to develop it. The alternative to starting afresh, as I wanted to do, was to concentrate on clearing out (as I put it) the … Read more

I returned to America in April, 1960, for a visit. Stopping off in Japan on the way, I visited some of its famous gardens and had “darshan,” as they put it in India, of the huge statue of Buddha at Kamakura. My return to Mt. Washington lingers fondly in my memory: the love of my … Read more

This period lives in my memory as one of the spiritual highlights of my life. The joy and inner freedom I’d experienced during my seclusion in the Himalayas lingered with me still. Nothing, I realized, was important except loving God. If I could bring people onto the path, that was gratifying; it was what I … Read more

Daya Mata and her party left India in about September, 1959. Shortly thereafter I traveled to the Himalayas, where I made a quiet retreat near the village of Lohaghat, in the Almora district. Fern Hill Estate was a large property owned and managed by an English family. I had been invited to stay in a … Read more

That first year I devoted much of my time to helping Daya Mata in her mission in India. She had gone there to familiarize herself with the work in that country, to regularize it if necessary, and to help the Yogoda Satsanga Society members (YSS is the Indian affiliate of SRF) to know their new … Read more

  For three years in a row – 1950, 1951, and 1952 – Master planned to go to India. Each time his plans were canceled, the last time by his physical death. The plan every year was for me to go with him. He wanted me, as I understood it, to travel around the country … Read more

In any confrontation of principle or of opinion, it is natural to ask, Who was right, and who, wrong? Who was the hero? who, the villain? Whom shall we applaud, and whom shall we hiss? Human nature likes to be offered winners and losers. It also wants the winners to be on the side of … Read more

Master enjoyed telling the fable, after so many years now well known in this country, of six blind brothers who received from their father the task of washing an elephant. Each boy was assigned to a different part of the beast: the tusks, the trunk, the ears, the sides, the legs, the tail. Each of … Read more

I have in my possession a Christmas card from Tara Mata in which her greeting contains these words: “To the first vice president of SRF from the second president.” For years I thought those words, “from the second president,” were a misprint, inasmuch as Tara was, nominally at least, the second vice president. It was … Read more

Rajarsi’s untimely death in 1955 came as a sad disappointment to all of us – to me particularly so, for one special reason. I had hoped that the monks, in close association with him, would be able to deepen their spiritual life. Daya Mata was elected president shortly afterward. She was the natural and obvious … Read more