By Swami Kriyananda

One evening, at Carnegie Hall in New York, Yogananda inspired a full house to chant Guru Nanak’s song, “He Hari Sundara” (O God beautiful). For one hour and a half they chanted that song, uplifted by Yogananda’s magnetism to a state that verged on ecstasy. Later, streaming out into the streets, their faces were wreathed in blissful smiles, a rare sight in that city.

The master was in his interview room afterward when a tough-looking gangster-type burst in and flung down a revolver on the desk. Emotionally he cried: “I could kill you for what you’ve done to me this evening! I can’t go back to that way of life anymore.”

Yogananda looked at him kindly, then said, “No, you can’t go back, because now you know why you committed yourself to that way in the first place: You thought the money you’d earn from crime would make you happy. Now you know it never will.”

The man began sobbing. “Oh, let me feel that bliss you talked about. My heart has been a desert. Now, all I want is bliss!”

“Dear child of God,” Yogananda spoke compassionately. “Even if you turn your back on Him, He loves you always. Try now to see Him in all. When death comes, you will soar upward in His light.”

The man hunched over the desk, still sobbing. His whole life-direction had been changed.

Yogananda met other gunmen. In Philadelphia once, he was standing on a street corner when three men came before him brandishing pistols.

“Give us all your money!” they growled.

Yogananda reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills. “I’m happy to give you this,” he said to them. “But I have another treasure inside me that you’ll never be able to take from me.”

The men glanced at one another sideways. “What’s the matter with this guy? Is he crazy?”

“You’ll never be able to rob me of my inner peace.” He then looked at them penetratingly.

Suddenly they began to tremble. “Hey, we don’t want your money. We don’t want nothing!” With those words they handed his money back to him and ran off as if for their very lives.

The master’s spiritual power was something many could feel, emanating from him. It was something that few ever really understood.

One day he entered a hotel in Minneapolis, dressed in his orange robe. A man weaved his way up to him, drunk, as they say, “to the gills.”

“Hello there, Jeshush Christ!” he said, then embraced the master.

“Hello there,” replied the master affectionately. He was no sternly reproachful moralist. But then he gave the other man a little “shot” of bliss.

“Shay!” the man cried. “What’re you drinkin’?”

“I can tell you this much,” the master answered. “It has a lot of kick in it.”

Excerpted from Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography with Personal Reminiscences and Reflections, by Swami Kriyananda (Crystal Clarity Publishers).

Learn more about Kriyananda.

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