14/09/2026
I arrived in Los Angeles on the morning of Saturday, September 11, 1948
I then continued south by bus, one hundred miles to Encinitas, the little coastal town where, as I’d read, Yogananda had his hermitage.
The next morning I set out for the Self-Realization Fellowship hermitage…
At the end of the driveway stood a lovely white stucco building with a red tile roof.
I rang the front doorbell. Minutes later a gentle-looking, elderly lady appeared. “May I help you?” she inquired politely. “Is Paramhansa Yogananda in?” My pronunciation of this unfamiliar name must have left something to be desired.
My unusual appearance, together with my obvious unfamiliarity with Yogananda’s name, must have given the impression that I was a utility man of some sort. “Oh, you’ve come to check the water?” “No!” Gulping, I repeated, “Is Paramhansa Yogananda in?” “Who? Oh, yes, oh, I see. No, I’m afraid he’s away for the weekend. Is there something I can do for you?” “Well, yes. No. I mean, I wanted to see him.” “He’s lecturing today at the Hollywood church.” “You have a church there?” I let my astonishment show. I’d always imagined Hollywood as containing only movie studios.
“I want to join his work,” I explained. “I want to live here.” “Have you studied his printed lessons?” she inquired, a trifle coolly, I thought. “Lessons?” I echoed blankly. “I didn’t know he had lessons to be studied.” My position was getting murkier by the minute. “There’s a full course of them. I’m afraid you couldn’t join,” she continued firmly, “until you’d completed the lot.” “How long does that take?” My heart was sinking. “About four years.” Four years! Why, this was out of the question!
Only later did I learn that this first person to greet me had been Sister Gyanamata, Paramhansa Yogananda’s most advanced woman disciple.
Well, I reflected rebelliously, this was not Yogananda’s verdict. Swallowing my disappointment, I inquired how I might get to the Hollywood church. She gave me the address, and a telephone number. Soon I was on my way back to Los Angeles.
—
Arrived in Los Angeles, I checked my bag at the bus depot and proceeded at once to 4860 Sunset Boulevard, the address of the church I was seeking. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. A lady greeted me from behind a long table at the back of the room. “May I help you?” I explained my mission. “Oh, I’m afraid you couldn’t possibly see him today. His time is completely filled.” I was growing more desperate by the minute. “When can I see him?” She consulted a small book on the table before her. “His appointments are fully booked for the next two and a half months,” she informed me. Two and a half months!
At any rate, the moment I accepted the thought of my possibly not being ready spiritually, the situation changed dramatically. I had reached the door when the secretary — Mary Hammond, I later learned her name was — came up behind me. “Since you’ve come such a long way,” she said, “I’ll just ask Master if he’d be willing to see you today.” She returned a few minutes later. “Master will see you next.”
“What may I do for you?” For the third time that day these same, gentle words. But this time, how fraught with meaning! “I want to be your disciple!” The reply welled up from my heart irresistibly. Never had I expected to utter such words to another human being.
Early in the conversation he told me, “I agreed to see you only because Divine Mother told me to. I want you to know that. It isn’t because you’ve come such a distance. Two weeks ago a lady flew here all the way from Sweden after reading my book, but I wouldn’t see her. I do only what God tells me to do.”
At one point in our discussion he asked me how I had liked his book. “Oh, it was wonderful!” “That,” he replied simply, “is because it has my vibrations in it.” Vibrations? I’d never before thought of books as having “vibrations.” Clearly, however, I had found his book almost alive in its power to convey not merely ideas, but a new state of awareness…
More silence. More prayers. “All right,” he said at last. “You have good karma. You may join us.” “Oh, but I can wait!” I blurted out, hoping he wasn’t taking me only because I hadn’t yet found any other place to live. “No,” he smiled. “You have good karma, otherwise I wouldn’t accept you.” Gazing at me now with deep love, he said, “I give you my unconditional love.” Immortal promise! I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of meaning in those words. “Will you give me your unconditional love?” “Yes!” “And will you also give me your unconditional obedience?” Desperately though I desired acceptance, I had to be utterly honest. “Suppose, sometime,” I asked, “I think you’re wrong?” “I will never ask anything of you,” he solemnly replied, “that God does not tell me to ask.”
“To act only on the inspiration of whims and fancies is not freedom, but bo***ge. Only by doing God’s will can you find what you are seeking.” “I see,” I replied thoughtfully. Then from my heart I said, “I give you my unconditional obedience!”
“Now, then, come kneel before me.” I did so. He made me repeat, in the name of God, Jesus Christ, and the rest of our line of gurus the vows of discipleship and of renunciation. Next he placed the forefinger of his right hand on my chest over the heart. For at least two minutes his arm vibrated almost violently. Incredibly, from that moment on, my consciousness in some all-penetrating manner was transformed. I left his interview room in a daze…It was unusual, to say the least, for anyone to be accepted so quickly. A few moments later, Master came out from behind the open curtain on the lecture platform. Smiling at us quietly, he said: “We have a new brother.”
https://www.ananda.org/free-inspiration/books/the-new-path/chapter-16/
