For those looking for a “living Guru”, the first thing to understand is that a teacher in a live body may seldom be a “spiritually living” Guru, and cannot lead you to the Reality.

This is why that perennial axiom, “when the pupil is ready the Master appears.”
Who can best tell when who is ready, the pupil or the omnipresent Guru/Savior?
If you believe there doesn’t need to be an intermediary between yourself and God, be aware that the true Guru is not an intermediary. He is God, one and omnipresent!
Until you have grown and learned a great deal more, He is the one who is silently guiding you in your search. When you are ready He will clearly reveal Himself in this world you still imagine to be real.

So, before you go looking in all the wrong places, it may be better just to seek the best way you can. When you are ready for a truly special Spiritual Master, the One with whom your consciousness is best connected for your future accelerated spiritual growth, will surely reveal Himself to you. It can happen in your youth or in the later years of your sincere seeking for God. It will be made absolutely clear to you that your true teacher and savior knows exactly where you are in the progress of your journey.
[See chapter 10 of Autobiography of a Yogi] SRF publishers orange cover only!
He may be a living Master in a body of out of a body, it matters not!

A charismatic spiritually dead teacher cannot take you to the divine no matter how impressed you are about him/her. The first problem is – few persons can really tell the difference, can actually identify a living Guru/savior/Prophet.  
However, once a great soul achieves true Self- Realization /salvation/ full awareness of the Reality/Brahman, in this superconscious omniscience, there is no more dying then, and no more necessity of reincarnating in form. 

Having a physical body to work through is no longer a necessity. This is how the “great ones”, true living Masters work with us even after their demise. Then one is the true teacher, Guru, a Living Prophet in or out of a body. History is plentiful with the evidence of this fact! This is why, even with such mastery over life and death they usually do not hang around with the physical body.  

For the Guru stay in the Relative, unreal, material world of Maya would be counter productive & misleading to others about where salvation truly lies. About what is really important.
Since He is everliving and omnipresent, what need it there for a limiting mortal form?

Reality is simply beyond the physical world of relativity, the surface world is severely limited by the narrow range of sensory experiences.
So, Devotee – what do you really want, a true Guru or a position? What do you want – someone to lead you or baby sit you?

The overwhelming evidence is, is that Paramahansa Yogananda is still a “living Guru” now, just as He was when wandering around in the body.
He introduced himself to me posthumously on three separate occasions over a period of 6 years, during which I had been seriously working on myself and not consciously seeking a Guru. I was my own teacher! as soon as I took a rest from seeking He introduced Himself to me through a book – “The Sayings of Yogananda.”

I was not effected by the first few pages of what I read, it was His living presence that took hold of my soul by which I knew without a doubt that it was He who was behind all of my recent previous life experiences. I sent for the SRF lessons a few days later.
  I, and many, many others see his hand working in our lives,  helping us on the path to freedom via the Self-realization Fellowship/YSS wisdom teachings.

One of the clearest declarations made by Paramahansa Yogananda was that in this tradition of Kriya Yoga there would never be another successor guru to shape this holy Kriya yoga path of SRF/YSS.
There may be other teachers of Yoga & few are truly spiritually advanced, but we already have six “living Gurus” to choose from. What more do you need?
 If you insist on finding a guru in a body [as many do] you may end up reacting emotionally for the wrong reasons. Many wolves await you in the world of spiritual teachers!

Paramahansa Yogananda’s promise to all SRF/YSS
Devotees who are in tune with Him through this great SRF work.

“God has sent you to me, and I shall never fail you… “Even when I am gone my help will always be given to devotees all over the world, if they keep in tune. Never think for a moment that when I am physically absent from you all, I am not otherwise with you. I shall be just as deeply concerned for your spiritual welfare when I am no longer in the body as I am now. I shall always be watching over each one of you, and whenever a true devotee thinks of me in the silent depths of his soul, he will know that I am near.” 

Paramahansa Yogananda, quoted in the SRF calendar, August, 1993. 


Yogananda once said to the Monastics;
“The spiritual path is like a razor’s edge,” our guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, used to tell us. If we want to know God, we have to endeavor to the best of our ability every day, every moment even, to focus on the straight and narrow path before us, avoiding those mistakes caused by our mortal consciousness.
We have to transform that consciousness which makes us behave like petty human beings, and remember that we are made in God’s image. It takes deliberate effort not to be diverted from that razor-edged path, because in this world it is considered perfectly normal to be quarrelsome and argumentative, to be critical of others, to gossip — to indulge in all kinds of wrong behavior that springs from human nature, not from our divine nature.
 But one who misbehaves will never, never know peace of mind, let alone achieve God-consciousness. ” –
–said Sri Daya Mata, Self-Realization Magazine, Summer 2008

Because Kriya Yoga [ and other Yogas] have become such a hot item in the world of spirituality since Yogananda came to the West over a hundred years ago, so many want to get in on the act  and start their own Kriya schools. This of course is a natural occurrence is not unusual as human egos are always trying to prove themselves.  Or it may also be an expression of our human individuality. Many are the motives and private agendas behind the desires of  those who start new religious movements. Seeker beware!
Why is the teaching of Kriya Yoga so sought after by serious devotees of Reality? Because is has proven itself so powerfully effective in transforming human lives for the better.
For showing us how to contact God before death of the body and enrich our lives in the process with growing devotion and grace.
For its self-transformative blessings and life enrichments.
Paramahansa Yogananda was followed by many later teachers and promoters of the Mystical Kriya Yoga spiritual techniques used to enhance human evolution and spiritual awareness.
I am posting these notes for the benefit of those who wish to
follow the teachings and wisdom inspiration of Paramahansa
Yogananda in particular. It is a core part of Yogananda’s
teaching for devotees to loyally work through and support Babaji’s spiritual path of Self-Realization Fellowship/YSS.
Yogananda created only one organization to further and represent his spiritual legacy in this world. That society is the Self-Realization Fellowship/YSS alone. The leaders of SRF/YSS has so far been impeccable inspirations.
I am not judging what the purposes of others are. Other claims to the contrary can be false and misleading and promoted to suit the agendas and false rationalizations of others. The master said that He emphatically did not allow any successor “Gurus” in his lineage to take His place after his demise. Because this leaves new and green devotees at the risk of deception by the many lesser teachers we find in the field of religion. Ambitious persons who want power over others and are impressive talkers/writers – but have little or no God-Realization. Beware of them!
Most world class prophets have made similar declarations of “lineage closure” to protect devotees from being misled by false spiritual teachers who inevitably pop up and would love to steal the show after the great work has been launched by an Avatar.
 In this copy-cat world there are so many half baked wannabees, so many who want to copy PY’s acclaimed successes.
No organization is perfect, but I feel that SRF/YSS has avoided many of the flaws of orgs in the past that only sought power and control over others. Those other teachers lacked the spiritual understanding that was intended by their illustrious founders. SRF has continued to grow the masters spiritual community with integrity and love.
His great spiritual ideals are very much alive thanks to the 
selfless works of so many loyal monastics and devotees.