ANONYMOUS: My religious beliefs started--as a young child, my mother took me to
the Baptist church, and we were always going there, it seems like every Sunday.
And I was really interested in reading the Bible and participating in prayer
groups, and that kinda thing. And as I grew older, I began to have some
questions about some of the things that were being taught to us, and it seemed
that there were some things that I felt just didn’t fit together. And then, as I
grew just a little older, around 13 or 14, my mother and I went to a bookstore,
and I found a book that seemed very interesting to me, called “Autobiography of
a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda. And in it, he describes his life growing up in
India, and the progression throughout his life of becoming a leader, a religious
leader who strove to bring the parallels between the religions of the East and
the West, and to decrease the feeling that people have separation in their
religion, and yet it’s truly one.

And so this really was very interesting to me, just on this one book, and I read
it a number of times, and decided that I would subscribe to the lessons they’d
mail to your home. And it was a series of several hundred lessons, and you would
go through and read them, and then at the end of each chapter, you would submit
your answers to the Mother Center, which was in Los Angeles. And at the end of
that time, you would be able to go and become a kriyaban.

And I was in the middle of these lessons when my mother, who had been going to
classes with a woman who’s a psychic, and they were studying different
things--spiritual aspects--she took me in for a life reading. And she lived just
a little bit north of campus, and every Friday we would go there, and several
people that would study different aspects of spirituality. And one time, my
mother took me--and I was about 15--for a reading, a life reading. And her life
readings were very good. She was--she really touched on a lot of the--I guess
the areas I was working on in my life. She didn’t know me very well at all and
really hadn’t met me but a couple of times, so I was really amazed at the amount
of knowledge that she had. And it’s so amazing to me that one of the people who
spoke with her--spoke through her--gave a poem that she said was by Yogananda.
And I only remember something about the morning. And I thought about, where
would I find that?

And I never realized until some years later, that the poem that she had recited
to me was one of Yogananda’s poems that was his prayer at dawn. And it’s so
deeply meaningful to me because it means that I have that connection, that
communication with my teacher. Even though he’s now passed for many years, I
never met him individually or in the body, but I have felt always very close to
him, in the spirit.

And I did go after I had finished the lessons to one of the local centers in the
East coast, there, and did my kriya initiation. And this signals the bond
between the guru and the disciple. And I think it is a wonderful way, and it
points out that communication is on very many levels--not just through the
writing or the reading, but also through the spirit. And so I think that’s a
thing to keep in mind when we talk about literacy and communication. His words
spoke to me, through his book, the readings, and also through the chants and
prayers, which we practice every day. I just wanted to read one of his chants.
[leafs through book] One that I have found very inspirational. One of the things
I have found most helpful is the light and the love that this has brought into
my life. And I would like to repeat the words from “Polestar of My Life”:

I have made Thee Polestar of my life. Though my sea is dark, and my stars are
gone, Still I see the path through Thy mercy.

And also one of the things that he has said in terms of prayer, was this one
thing that I have read many times: it’s his knowledge of understanding what we
can do to help alleviate the world’s problems. And his thought was that the
spiritual consciousness, the realization of god’s presence in oneself, and in
every other living being, is what can save the world, and that is where we
begin, with ourselves. And so these readings have brought forth a great deal of
emotional and spiritual effects on my life. And i have always tried very hard
not to force any of my family members to believe the way i have, and yet I have
always respected their point of view and their right to worship in their own
way. And so, as my family members grow and become adults, I want them to choose
their own path, and wherever their soul leads them, wherever they read and
become inspired, that’s the path they should take.