On Feb 22, 2007, at 5:11 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yogananda was one of my high school heroes. A weird story,
when I was reading Autobiography of a Yogi in 8th grade,
my homeroom teacher got sick and was out for months. We
got this new substitute who sees me reading the book and
says (to me half-way back the class, reading this orange-
covered book) "is that Paramahansa Yogananda?"-- and of
course my jaw dropped to the ground. Here she was an old
disciple! The stories she told our circle of friends were
like nectar to our ears.
Neat moment, Vaj. It contains some here-and-now
mythic power.
What was cool about her was that, unlike our previous teacher, who
was real hip, shared banjo riffs with other people who'd bring their
instruments into class and jam, etc.-- our female substitute teacher
had bad teeth, a lazy eye and was overweight. She was the opposite of
what every high school kid would think of as "hip", "in" or "cool".
Kids made fun of her behind her back.
But to us, she was like the coolest grandmother you could ever have.
And it just lit her up to have *someone* to share it with. For us it
was a lesson in the illusion of *appearances*. No one else ever
realized what they were missing, they were stuck in the illusion. And
they missed the wisdom.
