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Letters to the Zoning Administrator Concerning SRF's Request to Create a Private Mausoleum on Mt. Washington Note: Opinions expressed in letters are those of individuals, and not of any organization Dear Mr. Brown: I came to the path of
Self-Realization fairly recently, having only become a disciple of
Paramhansa Yogananda in November 1998. I have not yet had the
opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Los Angeles to visit the places
where he lived and spoke, and especially where his body is now
interred. I fully intend to
make that pilgrimage (hopefully many times!) and it is with great
dismay that I read about Self-Realization Fellowship’s plans to
move Yogananda’s body to Mt. Washington. Although Yogananda is my
guru I am not a member of SRF, and I am extremely concerned about the very
real possibility that they would try to restrict access to his body
so that non-SRF devotees such as myself would be deprived of the
spiritual blessings to be gained from that experience. Although I feel great
concern, I assure you that I would do everything in my power to make
the pilgrimage, regardless of restrictions. But it really doesn’t
seem fair to allow one organization to monopolize a great spiritual
teacher in such a way. Imagine if the Shroud of Turin or the places
where Jesus walked in Jerusalem were controlled by, say, the
Methodist Church, which restricted access to those holy sites so
that Presbyterians, Catholics or Baptists couldn’t visit them? It
would be preposterous! And yet, that is what is being proposed here.
Although SRF is an older and more established organization, it
cannot “own” the spiritual, universal
truths that Yogananda came to the West to share. Access to the body of
my guru is my first and foremost concern. However, I also sympathize
with the neighborhood surrounding Mt. Washington, for I feel quite
certain that these people’s lives would be negatively impacted in
a very real way by having a shrine containing the body of an
acknowledged avatar in
residence at the top of their mountain. Having lived in San
Francisco for over twenty years of my life, I know what it’s like
to have tourists and sight-seeing buses making their way up and down
little winding residential roads—bringing traffic, congestion,
litter, and noise. Sincerely, |
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