Picture: Master-1950-Encinitas
Last Speech Given by Yoganandaji
Delivered at Hotel Biltmore on March, 1952
Your excellency, our Ambassador, illustrious and understanding Ambassador of free India. . .I bow to God in you.
I am not here in an advisory capacity. So I will relate a few snatches of my experiences. I remember my meeting with Mahatma Gandhi. That great prophet brought a practical method for peace to the warring modern world. Gandhi, who for the first time applied Christ principles to politics and won freedom for India, gave an example that should be followed by all nations to solve their troubles.
You, your Excellency, represent the great spiritual India. I wish that you bring the very best of my India to my America, and take the very best of my America to my India. But that is a very difficult task, not doubt, for in this world nations and men are all a little bit crazy, and they don’t know it—because people with the same kind of craziness mix together. But, when differently crazy people get together and compare notes, they find out their particular craziness.
Indeed your Excellency can discover the goodness of different nations. I think if we would gather together the great men of all lands—we could build such a model civilization that all nations would eventually form a United States of the World, with God guiding them through their conscience. (Applause)
India has great things to give to you, as you Americans can very greatly help India. But we often concentrate on our faults and not on our good qualities. I remember that when I first came to America in 1920, I was warned never to go in dark alleys, lest my scalp be removed by Red Indians! And whenever I saw a bald-headed man I thought some Indians had been at work! (laughter)
I remember, too, that when I first came here, I was riding one day to the seashore when I noticed some “Hot Dog” signs. In imagination I saw all kinds of dogs going through the meat chopper! And I thought, “My Lord, why did You bring me to the land where people eat dogs?” I asked a man what was inside those mysterious bags and he said, “Pork and beef.” I gasped in relief to find that Americans don’t eat dogs. (laughter)
One morning I was passing by an empty field next to a store. That evening as I passed that same way again, I saw a house standing in the field. I inquired of a man if the house had been there in the morning. “No,” he replied, “They just put it up.”
When I think of such energy, I like to be an American. But when I hear of so many American millionaires who die prematurely after making a business success, then I like to be a Hindu—to sit on the banks of the Ganges and concentrate on the factory of Mind from which spiritual skyscrapers can come and to think of the great masters of India who are her glory. Somewhere between the two great civilizations of efficient America and spiritual India lies the answer for a model world civilization.
It seems there is plenty of money for war, which brings in its wake great sufferings. We don’t seem to learn from these. If we have plenty of money for wholesale killings, couldn’t we picture the possibility that if all big leaders and all peoples got together, they could collect a vast fund that would banish poverty and ignorance from the face of the globe?
I do hope and pray, your Excellency, that you will always emphasize the airplanes of mercy from one country to another instead of airplanes that carry bombs to destroy. Let us work for peace on earth as never before. We want a congress of scientists, of ambassadors, of religious men who will constantly think how to make this world a better home, a spiritual home with God as our Guide. (Applause)
I am proud that I was born in India. I am so proud that we have a great Ambassador representing my spiritual India. I am proud today. I often say:
If mortal fires raze all her homes and golden paddy fields,
Yet to sleep on her ashes and dream immortality,
O India, I will be there!
God made the earth, and man made his confining countries
And their fancy-frozen boundaries.
Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God—
I am hallowed; my body touched that sod.
(With these last words, from his poem, “My India,” Paramhansaji slid to the floor, a beatific smile on his face. He had often said: “I do not wish to die in bed, but with my boots on, speaking of God and India.”)