[FairfieldLife] Re: In Fairfield, Awake: The Life Of Yogananda

[dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]]

Like Yogananda in his time, Swami Vivekananda in 1893 initiated a fusion of 
science and religion at the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago and 
in Vivekananda's subsequent lecture tourings of American cities. Vivekananda 
criss-crossed America by train in that era.  
 Awake! Playing in Fairfield, Iowa the Yogananda movie as a historical picture 
is enjoying quite a popular run in Fairfield. The movie is playing to full 
houses with a lot of old meditators here coming out of the woodwork to see the 
documentary. It is great to see who all is still alive and well living here in 
the Fairfield meditating community. 
 The movie well places Yogananda within a 20th Century progression in the 
spirituality of transcendentalism in the West.   As he would call it, aka, his 
“The Science of Religion”.    While the narrative did not bridge the gap in 
time over to connect with a Western transcendentalism in practice that preceded 
Vedanta in the West the movie at a point in its narrative yielded a progression 
of  a preceding transcendentalist spiritual lineage to Vivekananda barely 
saying, Vivekananda in the West 'did not stay long'.   Actually Vivekananda 
also traveled lecturing extensively with a disciplined nation-wide impact like 
Yogananda's but Vivekananda had a 'short life' passing away in his 30's whilst 
leaving behind the Vedanta Society.  Evidently the ground was quite well 
prepared in the West by a line of preceding transcendentalists by the time that 
Yogananda and then Maharishi respectively arrived in the 1920's and late 
1950's. 
  With the perspective of time both a 19th Century Vivekananda and a 20th 
Century Yogananda each seemed to have passed through and left with their 
integrity in the tacking of history. Maharishi's 21st Century legacy evidently 
is still working out. Awake is a good movie for the perspective of a 
progression in things spiritual. 
 
 -Buck