Blessed Lanfranc: The Past Life of Swami Sri Yukteswar, Guru of Paramhansa Yogananda

To Lanfranc

with gratitude

Swami Sri Yukteswar,

who was Lanfranc in a past life

My Guru

(Lovingly written by Paramhansa Yogananda,

in honor of Swami Sri Yukteswar.)

Thou light of my life—thou camest to spread wisdom’s glow over the path of my soul. Centuries of darkness dissolved before the shafts of thy luminous help. As a naughty baby I cried for my Mother Divine, and She came to me as my Guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar. At that meeting, O my Guru, a spark flew from thee, and the faggots of my God-craving, gathered through incarnations, smouldered and blazed into bliss. All my questions have been answered with thy flaming, golden touch. Eternal, ever-present satisfaction has come to me through thy glory.

My Guru, thou voice of God, I found thee in response to my soul-cries. Slumbers of sorrow are gone, and I am awake in bliss.

If all the gods are displeased, yet thou art pleased, I am safe in the fortress of thy pleasure. And if all the gods protect me behind the parapets of their blessings, yet I receive not thy benedictions, I am an orphan left to pine spiritually in the ruins of thy displeasure. O Guru—thou didst bring me out of the bottomless pit of darkness into the paradise of peace.

Our souls met after years of waiting. They trembled with an omnipresent thrill. We met here, because we had met before.

Together we will fly to His shores, where we will smash our planes of finitude forever and vanish into infinite life.

I bow to thee as the spoken voice of silent God. I bow to thee as the divine door which leads to the temple of salvation. I bow to thee—to thy Master, Lahiri Mahasaya, harbinger of Yoga in Benares; and I lay the flowers of my devotion at the feet of Babaji, our Supreme Master!

Contents

Introduction

Part One: The Holy Sage

1. His Early Life

2. The Conversion

3. A Monk of Bec

4. A School for Boys

5. Man of Wisdom

6. Spiritual Master and Avatar

A Lack of Ego

The Prophet

Lanfranc and the Popes

Miracles and Spiritual Powers

The Guru

7. Lanfranc and William

A Sacred Relationship

Their Mutual Mission

Church Councils and Popes

Acting on William’s Behalf

8. Lanfranc and William’s Sons

9. Peerless Interpreter of the Scriptures

Bible Interpretations and Other Christian Teachings

Defending the Church

A Pair of Controversial Booklets

10. What Did Lanfranc Look Like?

11. Abbot of St. Stephen’s

In the Background

12. Archbishop of Canterbury

The Acts of an Archbishop

That Primacy Issue

A Light in the Midst of Darkness:

Doing Dharma in Kali Yuga

Monastic Constitutions

Legal Battles

13. Lanfranc and Contemporary Saints

St. Anselm

St. Maurilius of Rouen

St. Margaret of Scotland

St. Wulfstan

St. Osmund

14. A Lanfranc Miscellany

15. When Wisdom Died

Part Two: Where to Find Lanfranc

16. He Is Risen

17. Where to Find Lanfranc

Another View of Sri Yukteswar

18. Canterbury and Harbledown, Kent, England

19. St. Stephen’s Church

and the Monastery for Men, Caen, Normandy

20. Bec Abbey, Normandy

Illustrations

Alma Magna, University of Pavia

The apse of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, Pavia

Map of Lanfranc’s travels

Sri Yukteswar, seated in lotus posture

Bec Abbey

Sri Yukteswar’s Puri hermitage

Herluin’s tomb, Bec Abbey

Sri Yukteswar

Sri Yukteswar, avatar of wisdom

Depiction of medieval Rome

Sri Yukteswar and Paramhansa Yogananda

Paramhansa Yogananda

Montebourg Abbey

Sri Yukteswar and Lanfranc (medieval image)

Sri Yukteswar and Lanfranc statue

The towers of St. Stephen’s, Caen

William the Conqueror’s tomb, St. Stephen’s, Caen

St. George’s Church, Caen Castle

Sri Yukteswar and archbishop’s throne, Canterbury Cathedral

Rajarshi Janakananda and Paramhansa Yogananda

Procession in Calcutta, India, 1935

Solstice celebration, Serampore, India, 1935

Battle of Hastings image, Bayeux Tapestry

Canterbury Cathedral

Swami Kriyananda, Canterbury Cathedral

Floor plan, Canterbury Cathedral

St. Stephen’s Church, Caen

Nave of St. Stephen’s

Ruins of Lanfranc’s church, Bec Abbey

Peaceful stream, Bec Abbey

Acknowledgements

A number of people helped bring this book to fruition. To all, I extend my heartfelt thanks.

I would particularly like to express my appreciation toward:

David Miller and Biraj Palmer, who generously donated books related to Lanfranc and William the Conqueror. Their gifts added greatly to this study.

Catherine Kairavi, for insightful discussions and feedback, based on her own profound grasp of the subject—and also for the loan of a number of helpful books.

Tom Cerussi, my early collaborator in researching and sharing the stories of Lanfranc, William, and Henry I with interested souls.

Rebecca Davis, who opened academic doors to hard-to-access articles.

Suzanne Kripamayi Caughlan, for helpful feedback and the use of her exquisite Normandy photos, taken on pilgrimage in 2012.

Gurudas Barrett and Crystal Clarity Publishers, for deeply appreciated support and encouragement, and for myriad quotations that help bring to life the similarities between Lanfranc and Swami Sri Yukteswar.

Lahari Palmer and Bruce Davis, for encouragement and enthusiasm toward the publication of this book.

And special thanks to my beloved friend and spiritual guide, Swami Kriyananda, for untold support, help, and wise counsel via emails and otherwise.

Mon Cher Beauclerc Swami, I am so happy that you are free now in Spirit. And yet I feel a twinge in my heart, that you were not able to enjoy this book while on this earth. I know you were looking forward to seeing it in print. This book would never have been written without the kingly gift of your insights, encouragement, and inspiration.

Introduction

In The New Path: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Kriyananda, Yogananda’s direct disciple, published this revelation vouchsafed by his great guru: He told us more than once that in a former life he had been William the Conqueror.

Later, in Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography, Swami Kriyananda recorded another past-life insight, also shared by Yogananda: Sri Yukteswar in that life was Lanfranc, William’s close friend, priest, and advisor.

This volume was written to explore the significance of this latter statement, and to search for connections between Archbishop Lanfranc and Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, as may be found in their histories.

As his exalted disciple, Paramhansa Yogananda, declared, Sri Yukteswar was a gyanavatar, or avatar of wisdom—an incarnation of God, manifesting on earth the divine qualities of keen discrimination, perfect sagacity, and luminescent mental clarity.

A spiritual master has submerged the wave of his ego in the ocean of God’s infinitude. It takes an ego (the soul identified with the physical body) to create karma which may return to haunt that ego in future lifetimes. However, a spiritual master creates no new karma—or, at least, no karma connected to him. All of his actions are like writing on water: no personal karmic trace remains. No egoic desire compels a master’s actions; they are solely a manifestation of the will of God.

However, a spiritual master who is not fully liberated may still have to pass through the karmic repercussions of many thousands of past lives in which he acted from ego. His experiences are, by and large, a sweeping up of karmic tailings, without creating any new karma in response to the old.

An avatar like Sri Yukteswar has passed beyond all such concerns. His karmic slate is spotless. Nothing remains from the past to involve him. Yet, it may be that others have karma in relation to him. Although this dynamic cannot compel a liberated soul to return to earth (people’s karma with avatars might also be expiated through the agency of others, through visions, or through transcendence in deep meditation), this interplay of being an egoless instrument of the finishing of other’s karma, and acting as a pure instrument of God’s will, while working to fulfill a particular divine mission, may be said to comprise, to a large extent, the events and experiences of an avatar’s life.

When considering the will of God manifesting through an avatar’s actions, it may be surprising to learn that the Lord at times has taken a hand in directing the course of history through various instruments—and especially through His avatars. Many historians have pointed out how William the Great’s conquest of England profoundly changed the course of world history; and how a single day-long conflict—the Battle of Hastings, in which William defeated Harold—had large and long-lasting repercussions.*

* This tiny-battle/great-historical-turning-point dynamic is especially intriguing, as most everyone would say that no one in 1066, including William, Lanfranc, and their followers, could have dreamed that what they were doing would have such a centuries-long and world-transforming impact. Yet, if Yogananda’s words were true, it would be surprising if William and Lanfranc had not had a very good idea of the long-term importance of all they were doing.

In William the Great’s future life as Paramhansa Yogananda, he was an avatar—God manifesting on earth His quality of Divine Joy. Considering the world-altering results of William’s actions, we may assume that this great soul had been an avatar in that lifetime as well, for avatars incarnate, with their spiritual attainments acknowledged or hidden, to make some great change in the world. To finalize this question, I have recently learned that Yogananda’s direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, said that William definitely had been an avatar.*

* For an inspired and in-depth exploration of Yogananda’s connections with William the Great, and those between Swami Kriyananda and William’s son, King Henry I of England, I highly recommend Catherine Kairavi’s book, Two Souls: Four Lives: the Lives and Former Lives of Paramhansa Yogananda and his disciple Swami Kriyananda, published by Crystal Clarity Publishers, Nevada City, California.

William was profoundly helped in his labors by his great counselor, Archbishop Lanfranc, who reincarnated as Sri Yukteswar—also an avatar. Therefore, it would not be a stretch to conjecture that this soul, too, was an avatar in the lifetime we are exploring in this book, and not merely a spiritual master, still clearing out old karma.

From this perspective, it is amusing that Lanfranc was given no high spiritual status* by the Catholic Church, while his student—a lesser light, though still a great soul and fully deserving of the honor—was canonized as Saint Anselm. (I once, tongue in cheek, wrote to Swami Kriyananda about this appalling inequity, Poor man!—as if the egoless Lanfranc/Sri Yukteswar would have cared how others had labeled him!) But it is clear—when considering the meaning and significance of Yogananda’s past-life revelations regarding himself and his guru, Sri Yukteswar (among others)—that historians and churchmen are often considerably off-track in their assessments of the characters and motivations of certain great persons in history. (In this light I am reminded of one patriotic British historian who compared William the Great with Hitler! In that historian’s eyes, both men were among the supreme villains of history; and both had harbored, at least in his view, evil designs on England.)

* The designation blessed, used in the title of this book, typically a precursor to sainthood, is more or less an honorary one, conferred by various individuals throughout the centuries as a spontaneous expression of appreciation for the wisdom and spiritual depth of the great Lanfranc, as conveyed by his history, his writings, and (for those who have senses to feel) his tangible spiritual presence.

In my earlier book, The Reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln, I explored in-depth a statement of Yogananda’s that Lincoln had been an advanced Himalayan yogi in a past life, and that he was reborn as Charles Lindbergh. Searching through the histories of those two men, I sought similarities between them in personality, character, behavior, and life circumstances. I was surprised at how many such similarities there were: I uncovered hundreds between the two men.

However, that multi-lifetime comparison was fundamentally different from this one—in that it was of a soul still ego-driven. One might ask whether, once a soul has transcended the ego, there would necessarily be any similarities from lifetime to lifetime. Might not a spiritually liberated soul manifest consistently any divine quality required, at random, in any lifetime, rather than be bound by familiar and specific personality traits?

The fact is, the farther we go on the spiritual path, the more deeply in tune we become with our own highest nature. Each one of us—every soul—is a unique manifestation of God’s spirit and consciousness. There will never be another you in all eternity; and the more you develop spiritually, the more you will cast off the ideas and attitudes of your contemporaries, era, and nation—traits that most people absorb and imitate subconsciously, without thinking—and the more you will express the deepest qualities of your being.

We can see examples of the manifestation of this deeper and higher Self by comparing the personalities of two avatars: Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Sri Yukteswar. As Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi,* tuning into Sri Yukteswar didn’t turn him into a carbon copy of his guru’s wisdom-oriented personality. Rather, it helped him tune more deeply into, and manifest more purely, his own devotional nature. (This is not to say that Yogananda did not also manifest profound wisdom during his life. But we are discussing here the salient quality of each soul: for Yogananda, it was devotional joy; for Sri Yukteswar, sublime wisdom.)

* "My own temperament is principally devotional. It was disconcerting at first to find that my guru, saturated with jnana but seemingly dry of bhakti, expressed himself only in terms of cold spiritual mathematics. But as I tuned myself to his nature, I discovered no diminution but rather increase in my devotional approach to God. A self-realized master is fully able to guide his various disciples along natural lines of their essential bias."

Speaking again of an avatar’s life being different from that of your average karma-bound person, one might say that there is a subtle structure to his life, comprised of the I-beams of Divine Will welded with the rivets of inner freedom.

I am reminded of an occasion back in the 1980s when I was amusing myself by experimenting with an astrological computer program. Out of curiosity, I input Paramhansa Yogananda’s birthplace and date to see what the program would say about him.

I don’t remember everything that was on the printout, but I recall its prediction that someone born at that time and place would have a strong tendency to become a drunkard, and that he would also be dominated by women.

I laughed when I read those words, because I realized that my great Guru had indeed been a divine drunkard: intoxicated throughout his life with the heavenly bliss of his samadhi meditations.

In addition, the great master had also been dominated by a woman. In this case, the woman was God in the form of the Divine Mother. Yogananda was blessed with repeated visions of his Divine Mother, and often stated that his entire life was dedicated to serving Her and following Her will. As he said in one of his talks, I came with You; I remain with You; I go with You.

And so we see from this little example how an avatar, from his state of perfect inner freedom, can make use of even the astrology of his birth, manifesting the highest octave of each human quality or seeming outward destiny.

Thus, each avatar’s life offers inspiration and insights into that which we can aspire to.

As a chronicler of the life of Lanfranc, from the perspective that this was the past life of the avatar, Swami Sri Yukteswar, one finds a similar (but lesser) difficulty as one would encounter in connecting the life of William the Conqueror to Sri Yukteswar’s outstanding disciple, and avatar in his own right, the great Paramhansa Yogananda.

As mentioned earlier, some see William the Conqueror as one of history’s villains. Similarly, in recent decades, Lanfranc’s stature and influence have come under attack. The basic idea is: Maybe the great Lanfranc wasn’t so great after all. Much of the praise of Lanfranc’s contemporaries (and others) for the prior, abbot, and archbishop, has been deemed too lavish; and much that he accomplished has been recently viewed as if through a telescope backwards, in order to shrink Lanfranc’s deeds to more manageable size.

Every so often, historians feel the need to rewrite history and the lives of historical figures, not only according to their own lights, but also to reflect present-day mores and attitudes. And Lanfranc, whose personal wish (which dictated many of his decisions) to give his life’s blood to support and further William’s great work while at the same time remaining as far as possible from the limelight, made him a handy candidate for a historian’s role-reduction revision.

Actually, the same might hold true for Swami Sri Yukteswar himself, who never sought widespread recognition, but quietly trained his few disciples in his Indian ashrams. If it weren’t for Yogananda’s beautiful and profound depiction of the teachings, activities, and consciousness of his guru as recorded in Autobiography of a Yogi, Sri Yukteswar might remain, even to devotees of Yogananda’s path, an intriguing but stern-faced cipher of a master whose picture adorns their altars. Spiritually great, no doubt, but in precisely what way would be anyone’s guess.

Sri Yukteswar, like Lanfranc, stayed in the background, spending his energies honing and polishing the shining spiritual greatness of his eminent disciple, Yogananda; then remaining quietly in India while his student took the Western world by storm—before mentally summoning Yogananda from that distant land, beckoning him to return and see Yukteswar again before the great guru’s bodily exit. (And then afterwards—Sri Yukteswar quietly raised himself