Self-Realization

The most fascinating thing about reading Daya Mata or listings to her speak is that there are no brush marks. There is nothing to identity her. She paraphrases Yogananda and mimics what she has seen and heard. Daya Mata is good at telling you of some experience she had with Yogananda but there are no personal insights to what she has learned or is learning now. Daya Mata is good at repeating Yogananda's words, but she does not add to them.  She really doesn’t say anything. Daya Mata never breaks from the image.  She plays it safe.

"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself." - Albert Einstein

"Finally, it is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality, that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions." - The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

"The highest forms of love are inevitably totally free choices and not acts of conformity"- The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Daya Mata has great form.  Form is the container.  It is the pattern or structure which embraces, defines, or supports whatever the form may contain.  The form she takes implies content, but when I've looked for content I've only come up empty.  The content always ends up as the form. If Daya Mata's identity was other than the container, you would think it would be a joy to step away from the presidency and go into mediation when one can no longer, physically or mentally, do the job.  This is not the case.  Daya Mata for many years now has been functioning only as a figure head for SRF.  Others have been running SRF. The others who are running SRF should be giving the title and acknowledgment for what they do. They can then be held accountable and responsible for their actions.  Silly me, this is too unattached and practical.

Daya Mata lives in the past. According to what she says, all her learning experience happened when Yogananda was here. Daya Mata does not say she is perfect, but implies this with the fact that she has nothing to learn now.  I have not read or heard of Daya Mata speaking in the now. She is a person who has stopped growing. (This also validates the image of perfection, all knowing) Would you be surprised that the writing of SRF also try to depict Yogananda as all knowing, never learning after he leaves his Guru.

If the Guru is making fresh victories he’s not perfect. He’s still growing. If something is ever new, then you must always be growing. He was striving and struggling too, just like you and me, but he never gives up. Yogananda understood that enlightening is a verb, its always in process.  The struggle becomes not a struggle at all, but a process of Self-definition, of Growth and of Being. The Daya Dynasty is under the illusion the enlightened is a noun, with and "ed".  Once there, you have arrived, ended, done, finished. Nouns are thing which we possess. One can never posses a verb or process.

Yogananda is a realizing sole. He owned and shared his uniqueness with the world, what a gift. Daya Mata has not owned her uniqueness, and I have never seen her share that with us. What a tragedy, this is the one gift she alone could really give to the world (not the paraphrasing of Yogananda he did that better than she). It’s like she has taken the concept of no ego and use that to erase her own uniqueness. That uniqueness isn’t ego; it’s what we were created for. What a loss for Daya Mata, what a loss for us all.

Unfortunately there are many who think what they should be about is God-Realization, Guru-Realization or Organization-Realization. Yogananda knew, it is Self-Realization, and guess what, that’s what he called his Church.