This revised 1st edition places the 'Appendix' material on the website http://glimpses.us to increase readability.
This book is a result of my efforts researching, editing, and republishing Yogananda's seven steps of "Your Praecepta." Those efforts were happy because I was able to make available to the public what had, throughout my forty years of Self-Realization Fellowship membership, been available only by snippets and quotes. Those efforts however forced me to confront, understand, digest, and re-conceptualize my understanding of the guru-disciple relationship; those efforts led me to leave the organization that Yogananda founded.
What I discovered in my research was that Yogananda would, by today's @METOO standards, be considered a sexual predator: swearing girls to secrecy (in the name of confidentiality or guru-disciple relationship), claiming "a spiritual man can touch a woman and it won't be in the physical plane," locking the door to his room to stop egress and ingress of these girls, locking the Mt. Washington gate so that no one could leave without his permission, extorting written character references, etc. In her memoirs Srimati Nerode, wife of SRF Kriya Minister Sri Nerode, notes that they transported many young women surreptitiously in the dead of night in their car to get them away from Mother Center to safety. In 1966 the mother of one of those girls wrote the Nerodes a note of thanks for getting them "away from the clutches of that swami." An extensive reference section with many original documents, handwritten letters, and eye witness accounts of the abuse that was suffered at the hands of His Holiness Swami Paramahansa Yogananda in included in the Appendix.
These findings do not mean that I have left discipleship with Yogananda nor that I am 'exposing' him. There are many facets to all great lives; this book celebrates not only Yogananda's life, but that of three of his closest assistants, Dr. Basu Kumar Bagchi (formerly Swami Dhiranandaji, and Sri and Srimati Nerode. The result is a reading of the meaning of Krishna's Bhagavad-Gita teaching that God alone is the Doer in this drama of life.
