I first read ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ not long after I took up Yoga. It was pretty mindblowing stuff at the time for me and I was a bit skeptical about some of the content. Passage of time is a great way to gain better perspective on many things including a books message and what it has to offer you. Just after Darren did his training in 2005 we decided to make what we felt was an essential pilgrimage to the headquarters of the ‘Self Realisation Fellowship’ in LA. We were in LaLa land anyway – it would be wrong not to!
The SRF is a worldwide spiritual organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. We arrived on a Monday. The SRF was CLOSED. We stood staring at the gates in utter disbelief. All that preparation and anticipation. Then, as we were about to walk away, the gates OPENED! We looked, there stood before us an SRF monk. A German accent said “Hello” and then “That’s strange. Those gates don’t usually open on their own!” and then “Come on in.” His name was Brahmacharya Wolfgang (he was from Germany). It seemed the spontaneous opening of the gate was highly unusual and it really was our lucky day! Monday was their ‘closed’ day but he couldn’t have been more open and welcoming. He walked and talked us around for an hour; a private tour of a place that was probably usually overflowing with spiritual tourists. The only other person there that we were introduced to was ‘Larry from the Tree Men Company.’ 🙂
I could cry just thinking about it. It was so special. We felt overwhelmed by Bramacharya Wolfgang’s generosity of spirit. At the end BW presented us with FREE copies of ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and ‘The Holy Science’!! The SRF is a non profit religious organization but you know they too have their overheads and need to pay people like ‘Larry’. The generous gift of BW’s time AND of something that has a clear commercial value to them really restores your faith that not all big organisations are about the ‘almighty dollar’.
Now we want to share this wonderful book with our long term regular practitioner Yogi friends. We have a copy for you at the studio; we wish we had a copy for everyone who walks through the door but we did have to draw a line for reasons of practicality. We do hope you gain inspiration from this gift. Maybe one day some of you might visit the SRF and say “Hello” to BW.
LOVE Trisha & Darren
Om Om Om Pray for World Peace and Harmony
July 2016