Excerpted from The Seeker King. © 2013, G G Tillery LLC
From Chapter 9—Mission
Elvis was impressed by Yogananda's tales and also by the universalism of his approach. One day, on a break during the filming of Harum Scarum, he looked up from reading the book and informed Larry Geller that he thought he was ready for initiation into Kriya Yoga.
To the stunned Geller, this was much like saying he thought now would be a good time for the Pope to name him a cardinal. Geller knew how demanding the training was because he had been through the two-year program himself. The first step was a yearlong regimen of daily physical exercises, health consciousness, and a stipulated schedule of meditation.
Nevertheless, Geller called the SRF headquarters in Los Angeles and made arrangements for Elvis to speak with its head, Sri Daya Mata. As Faye Wright, of Salt Lake City, she had become a disciple of Yogananda in 1931 and had worked closely with him until his death in 1952. She quickly agreed to meet with the King of Rock and Roll, and the next evening, after the day's filming, Elvis and Geller went to the SRF ashram on Mount Washington.
Elvis loved the sylvan setting, and he had an immediate rapport with Daya Mata. In her features and demeanor she reminded him of his mother. The more she described the aims of the Fellowship, the more excited he became. He said he was ready to turn his back on his career and join a monastery, or start a commune. She advised him to go slow—that his development must be evolutionary.
They discussed the process of training and meditation, and she gave him her personal lesson books to study. He accepted them gladly, but he had the unbridled enthusiasm of the novice. "This higher level of spirituality is what I've been seeking my whole life," he told her. "Now that I know where it is and how to achieve it, I want to teach it. I want to teach it to all my fans—to the whole world."
Over the coming months he returned to the site often for solace. He read and meditated, but like most seekers he hoped for a short path to his goal, and it did not come. The cosmos did not care that he was Elvis Presley. He kept coming back nevertheless, and he also liked to visit the Fellowship's fourteen-acre retreat by the ocean in Pacific Palisades, where Yogananda had written most of his autobiography. (George Harrison, another admirer of Yogananda, also liked to visit the retreat when in Los Angeles.)Daya Mata stressed that the goal of Yogananda's teachings was to establish harmony between a person's spirit, mind, and body. Elvis made a sincere effort to meditate and transform himself according to her suggestions. He kept looking for signs that he was developing special powers, and as time went on there was evidence that he was succeeding.