Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the heart is the center for the primordial feeling element (chittwa) in consciousness. Furthermore, we perceive and respond to the world primarily through our feeling nature rather than the intellect, which follows feeling. One of Patanjali’s most important sutras says that “when we can neutralize the whirlpools of feeling (chittwa), we automatically attain union (yoga) with God.” The neutralization of the energies in the heart center is the key because the heart is the central “switching station” for the control and direction of our consciousness.

The two movements of the heart
It helps to understand that there are two movements of the heart’s energy we must learn to control before we can attain Self-Realization. The first is the outward movement of energy away from unity with God and into the delusion of matter-attachment. The second is the heart’s movement upward and downward — upward toward the higher chakras and expansive, happy feelings or downward into darkness, negativity, and contraction. Let’s discuss first the outward and inward movement of the heart’s energy.

Whenever Paramhansa Yogananda talked to his close disciples, one of his main themes was non-attachment. Attachments reinforce the delusion that material things — money, fame or circumstances — can make us happy. They can’t. The most they can do is fulfill a self-created condition on our happiness. Ultimately the power to be happy is completely in our mind, but when we look for fulfillment in material objects and circumstances, we give away our control.  The root cause of all pain and confusion is the forgetfulness of our unity with Spirit.

Today the world is in a state of great anxiety and fear due to widespread economic and political instability. Around the globe many people have assumed: “The more money, fame, or power I have, the happier I’ll be.” That delusion is now being shown to be false and as a result many people are confused and unhappy.

Harmonizing the heart’s energy
The first step to gaining control of the heart’s energy is releasing the attachments and bringing the outward flow of energy into a state of harmony with Spirit. Here are two stories that illustrate how dramatically things change when we expand and harmonize our heart’s energy.

One of the best movies we’ve ever seen is Schindler’s List. This movie, which is based on a true story, presents a deeply moving portrayal of how one man’s heart shifted from selfishness and greed to a loving and selfless concern for others — from separateness and contraction to unity and expansion.

One man’s inner journey
Schindler was a German and a Nazi. As a businessman, he saw that large profits could be made by producing materials needed for the Second World War, so he moved to Poland in order to start factory. He chose Poland because he knew that the Polish Jews were in terrible circumstances and couldn’t find work. He realized that he could hire them for a pittance. His factory was very productive and he was very well paid by the German hierarchy.

But then Schindler had a turn of heart. He began to see the atrocities being committed by the Nazis. First he tried to ignore them but soon realized he needed to protect his workers. When the Germans began rounding up Jews who lived in the ghettos to send them to concentration camps, Schindler created a housing area near his factory for his workers.

Toward the end of the war, the Nazi’s wanted to destroy all evidence of their atrocities and began to exterminate all remaining Jews. The only way Schindler could protect his workers was to convince the German hierarchy that he was going to move them en masse in order to start another factory elsewhere and continue helping the war effort. The Nazi’s agreed but insisted that Schindler pay for each worker he moved — over a thousand people. Schindler eventually gave away his entire fortune in order to save them.

Initially, all Schindler wanted was money. Dehumanizing and taking advantage of the Jews was just a means to his end. But as his heart’s energy expanded from a sense of separation to unity, he began to see these very same people as reflections of himself. Spiritual advancement requires that we, too, expand our heart’s energy from separation to unity, that we see all creatures as extensions of our own true self. And that we learn to love.

A different kind of bus ride
There’s another beautiful story that shows how one of our Ananda members shifted her heart’s energy in a similar way. In the 1980s, Ananda had a bookstore and restaurant in San Francisco. We also had an ashram San Francisco but on the other side of town from the bookstore. The woman who was the manager of the bookstore couldn’t leave the store until 11:30 or 12:00 at night.

Since she didn’t drive, she had to take the bus through a very downtrodden area of town. Many people, including drunks and drug addicts, would ride the bus late at night, and she found the situation very difficult. She sought Swami Kriyananda’s advice. Since she couldn’t drive, he suggested that she take a taxi or have someone from the ashram pick her up. It soon became clear that none of those options would work, and that the only way she could get home was by bus. Kriyananda said, “All right, then, I suggest that you to do this: When you get on the bus, pick out one person who appears to need help and pray for that person the whole way home. If that person gets off the bus, pick out a second person and pray for that person, and so on. But concentrate your whole bus ride on praying for others.”

About two weeks later, this woman told Swami Kriyananda that the bus ride had become her favorite part of the day. By praying for people, she shifted her heart’s energy from a state of separateness and fear to one of unity and joy.

Take back your power
These two stories dramatically illustrate how shifting the heart’s energy from separation to expansion is the most important step we can take spiritually. Techniques are obviously important but techniques alone will not give us Self-realization. We need to gain control over the direction of the heart’s potential to expand until we experience everything as a part of our own Self.

Ultimately, our happiness is under our control. If something is making us unhappy, it’s because we’ve given it the power to do so. Take that power back.

Working with negative emotions
Once we’ve decided to take our power back into ourselves, there are still the emotions of the heart’s upward and downward flow to deal with. An important key to working with emotions is remembering that in this world of duality every emotion has a dual nature. If we’re feeling a negative emotion, there will always be a polar opposite, and we can turn our negative emotions positive by focusing on that opposite.

For feelings of anger, the polar opposite is love. If we’re angry with someone but then decide to give that person love and understanding, we’ve taken control of the heart’s energy. We’ve turned on the heart’s positive “switch” which lifts us up to the higher chakras and ultimately into union with God.

We perceive and respond to the world primarily through our feeling nature. The mind actually plays a secondary role because the mind follows the heart. When we like or dislike something, the mind will automatically rationalize reasons to support our feelings.

Two very important attitudes
To bring the heart’s energy into a state of harmony with the Divine, it’s very important that we learn to feel certain attitudes resonating in our heart center. Love obviously is the most important feeling of all, but almost as important as love is gratitude.

Gratitude is important because it directs the energy flow upwards. By being grateful for the circumstances and people in our lives, we open up a positive flow of energy from the heart up to the spiritual eye. It’s simply impossible to be negatively directed while we feel gratitude. You don’t have express it outwardly — just silently allow that feeling of thankfulness to resonate in your heart. Start by being habitually grateful for things that are easy to accept. Then train yourself also to feel appreciation for things that are difficult.

Forgiveness is another very important attitude. Paramhansa Yogananda said that the highest expression of Christ’s love was his statement on the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” In the most difficult of circumstances, and fully aware that his persecutors were acting wrongly, Jesus’ attitude was one of love and acceptance. In fact, he was blessing his persecutors by asking God not to allow them to suffer the karma of their wrong actions. If we can do that even a little bit, it will begin to transform us spiritually.

From talks during Spiritual Renewal Week, August 15, 2011 and Inner Renewal Week, Feb 9, 2011.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide. Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

For it was obvious to me even then that, if I trampled on others in my efforts to “get to the top,” I would also be trampling on myself. The attitudes that I projected onto others would become imbedded in my own consciousness. If I was indifferent to the feelings of others, I would lose my own sensitivity to feeling itself as a fundamentally important part of human nature. And if I lost my sensitivity, I would cease to be a human being, and would become a mere automaton of flesh and blood.

What I must do, I decided, was exactly the opposite: I must deepen my own ability to feel, my sensitivity to life and to everything and everybody around me. Some of those theater friends paid me a visit after my conversion to the spiritual path, and departed afterward with the same cynical smiles of inner emptiness.

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A fundamental reality we all share is our egos. Reality, as far as each of us is concerned, is centered in ourselves. Yet we know that there is a vast reality out there to be explored, and if possible, to be understood. Some of us reach out to embrace it. We want to know how this little ego of ours relates to the vastness around us, how our realities fit in with those of other people. Others, however, seek protection from what they perceive as a threat in all that vastness: not just the vastness of the universe, but the vast diversity of human customs, attitudes, desires, and ideas; in short, other people’s realities.

Although born with egos, all of us are part of, and belong to, a universal reality. We are self-fulfilled to the degree that we partake of that reality. And we offend against our own deepest nature when we divorce ourselves from that reality.

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The following suggestions will help you to recognize and affirm your broader reality, which dwells within everyone. As you adopt them in your daily interactions with others, your understanding of yourself and others will deepen. As you begin to understand others more deeply as extensions of your own self, harmony follows automatically. These suggestions are therefore helpful also as a checklist for how well you are succeeding in your efforts to live in harmony with others.

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A checklist for living in harmony with others

1. Never judge anyone. Accept all as they are.

2. Realize that each person has a duty to change and improve himself. Whether or not he does so is not your responsibility.

3. Develop a sense of humor, first as regards your own foibles, and second as regards the foibles of others.

4. Don’t accept error when you see it, but accept simply that people do make mistakes. (Haven’t you yourself made a fair share of them?) Thus, love people not for their faults, but in spite of them, and because everyone is trying, each in his own way, to find his way out of his own pits of error.

5. Look upon other people as friends and acquaintances of yours whom you may have known in past incarnations, and some of them perhaps closely and dearly. It is, indeed, probable that you have known many of them before, for we live a vast number of lives on earth.

6. Whether or not they are your friends from before, God in His infinity is omnipresent. He therefore resides in everyone—as everyone! See all whom you meet as expressions of our one common Father/Mother God.

7. Be strict in practicing the moral principle of ahimsa, or harmlessness. Never wish harm to anyone or to any creature—nor even (if you are deep in this practice) to any thing. Automatically, as you continue this practice, you will find yourself wishing everybody well.

8. Never covet another’s property. Wish everybody happiness in their possessions, and in their ideas and inspirations.

9. Dismiss from your mind the thought of personal attachment to anything. Thus, when dealing with others, you will find you have no ulterior motives to warp your understanding of them.

10. Never view anyone with the thought of needing or desiring anything from him. Give him perfect freedom, mentally, simply to be himself, and to be complete in himself.

11. Be ever truthful and sincere—first of all with yourself, and then with everyone you meet.

12. Never tell yourself, regarding anyone else’s shortcomings, “I could never be like that!” The sad fact is, you could be. We all have the potential to be like anyone on earth, from the most debased to the most saintly. Be compassionate, therefore. Pray inwardly to God never to let you fall into that error again. For who knows what mistakes you may have committed yourself—perhaps in the far distant past.

13. Smile at others when it seems right to do so. Smile with them, not only at them. Let your smile be not only with your lips, but from your heart. Let it rise from there to shine out through your eyes.

14. Laugh with others, never at them.

15. When others grieve, never withhold your sympathy from them, but, instead of grieving with them, try to give them your heartfelt joy.

16. When others tell you of their troubles, try gently to steer them in the direction of finding possible solutions to them.

17. Try to love people as extensions of your own self. We may think of each person as specializing, on behalf of the whole human race, in being, simply, himself!

18. Live in the thought of God’s loving, blissful presence within you. Next, try, when in the company of others, to share with them His inner bliss.

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As you follow the above principles, your own inner understanding may suggest to you countless other ways of recognizing and affirming your own broader reality, which dwells within other people also. Seek ways, then, to befriend and help them. All creatures, indeed, each in his, her, or its own way, are parts of your own one, greater Being.

From the essay, “Understanding People,” in Religion and the New Age, and Material Success through Yoga Principles, Lesson Nine, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

The beginning of a tailspin
To illustrate, let me tell you of my experience. In 1997 my 90-year-old mother died. My husband and I were then serving as ministers in the Ananda Church in Palo Alto. During the last three years of my mother’s life, she lived in a nearby nursing home, surrounded by people in their 80s and 90s. I spent a lot of time with my mother during those years, visiting two or three times a week. Paramhansa Yogananda writes that “environment is stronger than willpower.” Being in that nursing home environment so much, I began to feel about 80 years old myself.

Shortly after my mother’s passing, my husband and I moved to Seattle to serve at the Seattle Ananda Center. Six months after our move, I turned 65. Coming on top of the move, and at a time when I was already feeling older than my years, this birthday sent me into a tailspin. The thought of being old enough for Social Security payments and Medicare — things I had been dealing with for my mother for many years — meant I had grown old and hadn’t even noticed.  It was a shock!

Soon my body started falling apart. I developed arthritic pains in my hands and feet, as my mother had. My knees and my back started aching. A wisdom tooth extraction resulted in a gland infection in my jaw and I developed “dry mouth” syndrome. Suddenly I understood why my mother always had a piece of hard candy in her pocket. According to doctors, “dry mouth” is often a symptom of aging.

I finally get the message
But these ailments were merely the little indications that time had taken its toll. The big learning experience came as a result of my teaching yoga postures at the Seattle Center. Somehow I managed to aggravate an old injury in my left shoulder and I developed what’s known as a “frozen shoulder.” I could barely move my shoulder without pain. Amidst many prayers and affirmations, I searched for several months before I finally found a physical therapist who could actually help me, an “older” lady who worked me very hard. It took many months of therapy but I overcame the “frozen shoulder” completely, and I learned that if you are willing to put out the effort, you can heal almost anything.

My successful experience with physical therapy was a turning point in changing my outlook on getting “old.”  Several years and a few more physical symptoms later, I finally got the message:  I don’t have to consider myself OLD.

I was in the final stages of learning this lesson when, in 2001, my husband and I moved to the Ananda Sacramento Center. Later, when in need of a boost, I decided to go to India with Gyandevi Fuller to trek in the Himalayas. That trip not only launched me on a track of deeper meditations and longer seclusions, it also showed me that the human body is capable of doing almost anything it sets out to do.

I had a similar experience a few years later when my husband and I went to Peru with students from the Ananda College. As an “aging” lady, I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up with a group of young people climbing mountains. But I discovered I could keep up very well and also fully enjoy the experience.

“It was so good for my mind”
Even so, there were still a few lingering misconceptions I needed to get rid of. Several years before, I had noticed I was becoming more forgetful. It was becoming harder and harder to remember what I’d done even a few moments before. Here again was perhaps another sign that I was “getting old.”

Then my husband and I went on a diet and we started counting calories. Counting calories throughout the day was a lot of work, with or without a calculator, but it was so good for my mind! My mind became much sharper and much less forgetful. My calorie-counting experience suggests that it doesn’t matter very much how we exercise the mind so long as we do so.  Paramhansa Yogananda recommends two other ways to keep the mind exercised: 1) reading good books with full attention and 2) making the mental effort to assimilate what we’ve read.

Don’t lose “half the battle”
Now that I am 79, healthy and well, I’m amazed at the resiliency of my body. Looking back, I can see where the downhill slide started – in the mind!  I had embraced the thought-form so prevalent during the years I was growing up: that the retirement phase of life is the beginning of the end, and that it was “all downhill” from there.

Paramhansa Yogananda poses the question: “why do some elderly people remain youthful while others do not?” He explains: “Aging starts primarily in the mind. When the thought enters your mind that you are getting old and you permit it to take hold, you have lost half the battle.”

According to Yogananda, the second half of life is a time when we should be “in fuller possession of our faculties and talents, zestful for new worlds to conquer, and eager to pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned.” The 19th century poet, Robert Browning, said it well:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which
The first was made.

The wonderful potential of aging
As we move into the last decades of life, it is crucial that we look at the wonderful potential they hold for us. A positive attitude and a willingness to do our very best in all circumstances can transform our lives, regardless of calendar years. This is one of the main lessons I learned from my treks through the mountains of India and Peru.

People in their 50s and 60s may sometimes complain “I must be getting old!” but the growing number of people who are intensely active in their later years shows that we can be mentally and physically “in shape” at any age. Swami Kriyananda and many others at Ananda are living examples of this philosophy.

Now in his eighties, Kriyananda maintains the same busy schedule of travel, speaking, writing, and counseling that he did forty years ago. By his example, Kriyananda has shown that age and physical limitations are irrelevant; no matter what our age or circumstancesm we can still live serviceful lives that benefit others. I can also think of at least two dozen people in the various Ananda communities who, in their 70s and 80s, are still playing vital, active roles.

“What is going on here?”
In 1700, when the world moved into Dwapara Yuga, we entered an age of ascending consciousness. Swami Kriyananda writes that one of the indications of an ascending Yuga is a general increase in longevity. The average life expectancy in 1900 was 50. During the 2400 years of Dwapara Yuga, the average life expectancy will increase to 200.

This general increase in longevity is already becoming evident, worldwide. We see evidence of it in news articles on people getting their college degree at 85 or 90; when we hear of people continuing their careers into their 80s; or when we read about a retired lithographer who, at 87, has taken up the art of trapeze flying. Even people who are unaware of the Yuga concept start to think: “What is going on here?”

Slowing the aging process
Great yogis in India have lived to advanced ages, irrespective of the Yuga. Swami Kriyananda speaks of having met yogis in India more than 140 years old, including one Dariababa, a 144-year-old yogi with black hair and a strong body, who knew Lahiri Mahasaya. Kriyananda says, “Many, many yogis have lived in their bodies for a long time because they are in tune with the divine energy and have absolute control over their minds and bodies.”

The example of these yogis underscores the importance of devotion and spiritual practices in slowing the aging process and increasing longevity. A very important benefit of the retirement years is that many of us have more time to be alone with God and to deepen our commitment to the spiritual search. I have found Yogananda’s Energization Exercises and meditation techniques to be powerful aids in this process.

The mind: a powerful ally
Looking back, I realize that my life has never been so rich and full as it is today. When I changed how I viewed the aging process and learned to forget myself by focusing on serving others more joyfully, all the aches and pains disappeared. Eating more healthfully and “listening” more carefully to my body’s needs also proved important. I am now able to take regular seclusions and devote myself more fully to my spiritual life. Through it all, my mind has become an ally and an invaluable tool for unearthing the “gold” in the “golden years.”

Nayaswami Janakidevi, now in her eightieth year, has become newly inspired by life and wishes to share this inspiration with others through workshops and inspirational writing.  As a teacher and minister, she has been pursuing God through Ananda for over thirty years, side by side with her husband, Nayaswami Byasa. She lives at Ananda Village.

By and by this rumor about A and the crows reached the ears of D. To verify the strange rumor, and in great excitement, D went to several village officers and asked about it. They all vehemently declared that they were positive that four crows flew out of A’s mouth during his ailment.

Curious, but disbelieving and dissatisfied, D went to his friend C and said, “Friend, rumor has it that A disgorged four crows out of his mouth. Is that true?” C laughed and laughed, and after the echo of his laughter subsided,  replied, “My, how people exaggerate. Our friend A only sent forth three crows out of his mouth.”

Hearing this, D thought to himself, “Well, I have boiled down the rumor to three crows. Now, let me inquire of B, who lives near A’s home.” When D found B and questioned him about the three crows that A was said to have expelled from his mouth, B nearly became hysterical with laughter and said, “My how people can froth and swell up things. Why, A only expelled two crows during his sick spell.”

More skeptical than ever, D thought to himself, “I have reduced the number of crows from four to two — now let me go to A himself and get from him the facts regarding the “two-crow” story. D met A in his home, and as soon as A heard about the four or three or two crows he was rumored to have expelled, he was beside himself with laughter. He fell from his chair and rolled on the floor with merriment.

After A had his fill of laughter, he sat on the chair again and said to D, “Friend D, I never dreamed that anyone could develop such an exaggerated yarn, so strange and unrelated to everyday facts.

“Well, my friend, here are the facts. I was walking near an open drain when I became ill with indigestion and expelled two black things at the edge of the drain, which rebounded and disappeared in the drain. B was passing by with a few people at that time and, hearing me violently coughing said, ‘What is the matter with you?’

“I replied, ‘Something strange just happened. I was severely ill with indigestion and expelled the contents of my stomach, and two dark things flew out of my mouth and disappeared from my sight.’ Later, I remembered that I had eaten too many dark mushrooms, which had caused my sick spell.

“I can see that B, in his excitement, heard that two dark things flew out of my mouth, and his imagination transformed the two mushrooms into two gloomy crows, winging their way into invisibility. When C heard this story from B, in his excitement and to convince unbelieving ears, he increased the number of crows from two to three. The gullible, gossip-loving villagers were not satisfied with the story of three crows but emphatically asserted that I, during my ailment, expelled four crows, which vanished into thin air.”

******

This story fittingly illustrates how people love to exaggerate. People love to believe the impossible and to exaggerate upon it, for it satisfies their hunger for weird, mysterious happenings. Man becomes tired of this prosaic world, so he enjoys living in the domain of fancy. Some men and women live so completely in the domain of fancy that they are not aware that their love of exaggeration gives birth to abject lies. Such people cease to behold the demarcation line between truth and falsehood.

There may be some facts in a rumor or a piece of gossip. If you want to know the truth about anything, find out what started the rumor. Someone has said: “Give a lie a twenty-five minute start and it will become immortal.”

It is best to combat lies by loud or silent protest, as the case demands. Although exaggeration and false accusations may be based on something factual, those accused may be entirely different from what people have been told. People lose faith in someone who has exaggerated, as soon as the complete truth is uncovered.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1938.

Dear ________:

Partly it is a question of re-training one’s subconscious habits.  Partly, too, one must learn to live more superconsciously. To learn to live superconsciously, God’s presence must be experienced, not merely affirmed.  The more actually aware one becomes, in meditation, of God’s presence within, the more this inner awareness spills over effortlessly into his outward activities.

Inward awareness of the Divine Presence awakens also the understanding that there exists a Divine Law, and that all things are in fact ruled by this Law, and not really by our own little human efforts except to the extent that we serve as its willing instruments.  One knows then that the most important thing in life is to serve and please God alone, not man.

Again, when tests come, if one can hold onto the inner peace born of meditation one will find the inner strength to overcome them. But without this peace it is difficult to handle even minor nuisances without fairly disintegrating emotionally. Next to meditation, the most important thing is sat-sanga, good company. Among devotees a subtle magnetism is exchanged that gives to the strong as well as the weak added strength to maintain their calmness in the midst of daily activities.

Finally, to re-train your subconsciousness, always sing inwardly to God.  Japa this practice is called in India. And remember, when your love for God becomes a constant, silent yearning of your heart, all other things will melt away like morning mist before the rising sun. The greatest way to cling to God is to cling first to love.

May God and our Gurus bless you.

From Letters to Truthseekers, Crystal Clarity Publishers (Currently out of print). Related reading: In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection by Swami Kriyananda. To order click here

In Living Wisely, Living Well, perhaps more so than in any other of his books, we the readers feel our spirits lifting up on the waves of blessing flowing through Swami Kriyananda’s words of guidance for each day of the year.

An inspiring life lesson
The story behind the book is in itself an inspiring life lesson. Kriyananda set out to complete the first edition, titled Do It Now!, in one day, ending his labors at about three o’clock in the morning. But before he could begin editing it, he had to undergo heart surgery, and was ordered by his doctors to take the entire next year off to recuperate.

Instead, preparing this book (and others) for publication made his “year of rest” the most intensely active year of his life. Even the day of the surgery itself Kriyananda worked. The day after the surgery he, incredibly, “blew away the post-operative mists” and continued his work, staying with it until the book was ready for publication. So enthusiastic was he about the result and wanting as many people as possible, and as soon as possible, to read the book, Kriyananda gave away the first 5,000 copies without charge.

Now fourteen years later, Do It Now! has metamorphosed into Living Wisely, Living Well  — a much revised and greatly expanded new edition, the fruit of Kriyananda’s “continued growth in the insights it expresses.”

In his introduction, Kriyananda explains that the “sayings in this book consist of lessons I myself have learned in life, whether by experience or through trial and error; sometimes by deep pain or disappointment; many times through an inner joy almost unbearable.” He concludes with this exhortation: “I ask you, as a favor to yourself: Buy, beg, or borrow this collection of thoughts…..keep it on your nightstand or in your meditation room. Read from it every morning, and ponder, throughout the day, the thoughts expressed. If even one saying should spare you some of the pains I have experienced in my own life, I shall feel amply rewarded. For whatever tests you face or have faced, they will likely resemble some that I, too, have known.”

A focusing practice
My own approach has been to read the day’s selection when I first wake up in the morning – a time of great receptivity. I try to carry the thought and vibration of the reading into the ten-minute walk through a forested area of Ananda Village to Hansa Temple and our community morning meditation there. The meditation leader reads the passage at the conclusion of our time together – another very receptive time.

During the ten-minute walk home, I try to bring Kriyananda’s guidance into focus for the activity of the day. And during the day – at rest points, such as midday meditation and lunch, quiet times at work – I revisit the reading, check in on how I’m doing, and try to reconnect if activity has pulled me away from centered awareness. This focusing practice becomes the more heart-opening when I can feel, behind the words of guidance themselves, the loving presence of Swami Kriyananda, in Nayaswami Devi’s phrase, “a wise impartial friend”—one who wishes only our own joyful freedom from all darkness and delusion.

Freedom from all darkness
To a recovering English major like myself, the book’s title – Living Wisely, Living Well – recalls the tragic speech of Othello, driven by jealousy to murder his chaste and innocent wife Desdemona:

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Now set down aught in malice: Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well.

The serious seeker reads such a tale and learns the price of emotional excess, of attachment and despair. He feels the tragedy of waste—human potential brought low through flawed perception.

The wonder of Kriyananda’s book is that, without denying or ignoring the reality of suffering and tragedy in human life, his real thrust is entirely practical and positive—how to find freedom from all darkness. He takes the lessons learned from a life spent in careful observation of himself and others, and extracts from them guidelines that can transform the life of anyone who will practice them faithfully and with an open heart.

A favorite spiritual memoir of mine is The Way of the Pilgrim, the personal account of an anonymous nineteenth-century Russian pilgrim, who, hearing in a Russian Orthodox church service, the text from St. Paul—“pray without ceasing”— devotes his life to understanding and practicing this simple instruction. We the readers follow his journey deeper and deeper into joy and freedom.

May it be the same for each one of us with Living Wisely, Living Well. Read and practice the daily lessons. If one strikes you deeply, as St. Paul’s words did the Russian pilgrim, stay with it, make it your spiritual practice, and follow it to the divine reward that comes with its perfection.

Lessons for the New Year
Since we are entering the season of Christmas and New Year, I wanted to share those particular readings, to whet your soul appetite for the wonderful journey that lies ahead.

For Christmas Day: “The teachings of Jesus Christ, and of every great spiritual master are as fresh, true, and alive today as when they were first declared. Truth never changes with time. Its expression may vary with fluctuations in human understanding, but love, wisdom, and joy are eternal realities. There is no need to ‘pound your pulpit,’ emotionally. All that anyone needs is the awareness that truth, as taught in all true scriptures, is forever one. Our souls come from God, and our divine assignment is to merge back at last into Him.”

And for New Year’s Day, capturing the very essence of the practice of “living wisely, living well”: “Resolve difficulties by raising your level of consciousness. Keep your mind focused at the point midway between the eyebrows: the seat of superconsciousness.”

Nayaswami Prakash is a long-time member of Ananda. He currently serves at Ananda Village doing forestry and landscaping work.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Serve, not people, but God through people.

God is happiest not in our efficiency, but in our increasingly humble attitude.

Get yourself out of the way—don’t think of yourself, but of Him.

Serve joyfully, even in obscurity. Don’t look to others for endorsement. Be content to seek the Lord’s smile in your heart.

Be centered in the inner self. Don’t let circumstances or people pull you down. Let Christ’s light fill you when you work with others.

Be an open window through which the Lord’s sunlight can flow to all.

God will support you the more you live in Him.

Let God radiate in your heart, and live by His inner inspiration. Work more listening to God inwardly.

Ask only, “Lord are you pleased? How can I please you more?” And again, “Dear God, tell me what you want. Help me to do what you want.”

You are God’s child. There is nothing that is not yours.

Be a radiant spirit—large, not small.

Greater dignity and greater strength add nicely to your childlikeness. Be joyfully courageous, majestically confident.

Be filled with the confidence that the Holy Spirit will use you. The power of the Infinite is in you.

Live more and more in that center where God dwells. Radiate this to others, and their lives, and your own, will be changed.

From a January 4, 1989 talk at Ananda Village.

My father spent the early morning hours, before going to work, in prayer and inner communion with God. As a family we observed the tradition of Holy Saturday and from Friday dusk to Saturday dusk refrained from all worldly activity. We read the Bible, took walks in nature, and went to the synagogue. I believed in a good God and would pray to Him in time of need.

A growing sense of emptiness
Though raised in this devout, joyful tradition, in my teenage years I found myself questioning the existence of God and the purpose of life — who I was, and why I was here. Later, in my early twenties, I began to explore Eastern spiritual traditions, including Buddhism and yoga.

By my late twenties I had had my share of disappointments in relationships and career. I was then studying art in Kyoto, Japan. Outwardly things were going well enough, but inwardly there was a growing sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction. While lying in bed one evening and gazing at the ceiling, I prayed desperately from the depths of my soul: “God, show me the way.” This simple prayer shocked me. I was admitting that I had no clue as to who I was, or the purpose of life. Yet this deeply heartfelt prayer proved a turning point.

I wasn’t ready for THIS answer!
Shortly after offering this prayer, I knew I had to move to America and live in California. Trusting that everything would somehow work out, after living in Japan for almost three years, I moved to California. Two weeks later I discovered Ananda.

I was living with a Jewish girl friend in Palo Alto when I found a magazine that listed spiritual groups and retreats in California. But after looking through the magazine, I closed it in despair. There were so many listings! How was I to know which path was mine? I prayed deeply to God to show me my path.

A few days later, while walking in downtown Palo Alto and again praying to God to show me the way, I saw a sign in front of a building that said: “Yoga Center.” It was the Ananda Center in its old location, an office building. However, immediately upon entering, when I saw the altar with the photo of Jesus, I felt a pinch in my heart. I said to myself: “This is not for me! I AM JEWISH.” I walked out, thinking I would never return. God had answered my prayer, but I didn’t realize it. And I wasn’t ready for THIS answer!

I decide to borrow tapes
When my car battery died a few days later, a neighbor offered me the use of her car to go buy a new battery. Driving to the auto shop, I pressed the cassette button and heard a woman talking about healthy relationships. Her words touched a deep responsive chord in my heart. My neighbor later told me that the tape was of a talk by Asha Praver from the Ananda Center’s free lending library, and that anyone could borrow tapes.

With effort, I overcame enough of my resentment about the photo of Jesus to borrow tapes of talks by Asha Praver, co-director of the Palo Alto Ananda Center. Part of me was very drawn to these new teachings, yet another part of me was very much holding back. Nonetheless, as I listened to her talks over the next few months, and also meditated, the truth of these teachings began to resonate in every fiber of my being. I decided to explore further by going to a kirtan, an evening of group chanting.

Going to a kirtan felt safe: no one would see me or even know me. I found the kirtan very inspiring – it lifted me to a level of consciousness higher than I’d ever experienced. I decided I would visit the center again.

I felt like a betrayer
This time I mustered the courage to attend Sunday Service, arriving in time to attend the purification ceremony. If you, the reader, are not Jewish, you probably don’t know how it feels to a deeply religious Jew to walk into a church. I felt like a betrayer. I flashed back to my childhood and the primary school history classes in which I heard about the Jews who converted to Christianity. They betrayed God! I never wanted to be one of those weak-hearted Jews who betrayed their own God.

Yet here I was, at the age of 31, going to A CHURCH. My body was trembling slightly as I sat in the back. The light was dim. No one could see me — ONLY GOD.

After hearing an explanation of the purification ceremony, I decided I could take part in it. I took the piece of paper, wrote down a prayer, and went up to the altar and knelt before the minister, David Praver. But when I opened my mouth to say: “I seek purification by the grace of God,” I burst into tears. I was shocked and humiliated by my reaction, but David was very kind and compassionate.

I went back to my seat, calmed myself, and somehow found the courage to stay for the entire service. When it was time to leave, I stood in the line where the ministers were greeting people. When my turn came, the first words I blurted were, “I’m sorry but I’m Jewish, and I don’t really know why I’m here.”

Asha said very kindly, “We’re Jewish too.” I certainly didn’t expect to hear this. I thought I might faint. Luckily, I remained standing.

A firm resolution to follow my heart
Later, having returned for another Ananda event, I learned that Asha gave private counseling to people. Asha agreed to meet with me privately and we set a day and time to meet. For the next days, I was in much emotional turmoil. Although most of my adult life I had been a self-directed person, I now felt powerless to resolve the inner battle raging within me.

When Asha and I met, I told her that my heart was aching to know the truth, and that I was drawn to the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Intuitively, I felt the truth in them, but my mind rebelled. I asked her how was it possible for someone like me, who was Jewish, to be attracted to these teachings?

She said, “When you are desperate, God will pick you up and show you the way.” She also said, “If you can’t relate to Jesus, put that on the shelf. Just take what feels right and leave the rest.” She recommended that I read Swami Kriyananda’s book, The Path.

Asha’s advice proved very helpful. I started taking classes at the center and doing the meditation practices each day. More and more my heart was drawn to Ananda, but my inner battle continued. It was then that I made a firm resolution to follow the guidance of my heart, since my rebellious mind didn’t get me very far.

The hardest step of all
Nonetheless, it took two and a half more years to break through the fear and anxiety and embrace Yogananda’s path. I came to realize that the God I believed in was a Jewish God, and that my entire self-identity was wrapped around that concept. Each step of the way was like shedding a layer of myself. And there were still layers of old self-definitions to remove.

The final step, the actual taking of the discipleship vow, which meant accepting Paramhansa Yogananda as my guru, was the hardest of all. By then I had moved to Ananda Village.

While preparing to take the vow, the inner battle took on a new intensity. In Judaism, your spiritual life is between you and God. There is no “intermediary.” Yet here I was about to take a vow to a line of gurus, including Jesus Christ, allowing them to guide me to God. I felt I was cutting the umbilical cord that connected me to my religion, my family, and Israel. It was the most dramatic and important time of my life. I felt I had gone through a “death and rebirth.”

Released into a greater, more expansive world
Though still afraid, I took discipleship. After the ceremony I felt great inner blessings and protection. I felt uplifted and light, as if the burden of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. It took much prayer, meditation, attunement with Yogananda, and the grace of God to break through the resistance, but once I became Yogananda’s disciple, I experienced a great sense of expansion and freedom. My consciousness had been released from the prison of my old ways of thinking into a greater world.

Through attunement with Yogananda I have learned to see Jesus for the great master he truly was. I also learned something Judaism never taught me: that the goal of life is to achieve the same level of enlightenment that Jesus, Moses, and all the great masters, including Yogananda, have attained. I was thrilled to learn that I too have that same potential.

*******

Greeting Jesus as a friend
Some years ago, a Jewish woman attended the Thanksgiving Retreat at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village. At the end of the retreat, she told the group about a profound experience she’d had during the retreat.

In the past, she had attended Sunday services at Ananda Village and enjoyed them very much. But it bothered her to see the picture of Jesus on the altar. If there hadn’t been a picture of Jesus, her joy would have been complete. After coming to many services and continuing to be upset, she decided to make peace with Jesus. She made a commitment that for one year every time she saw a picture of Jesus, she would greet him as a friend.

“Welcome home daughter”
At the end of the year she came to the Thanksgiving Retreat. On Saturday evening of the retreat, she went to meditate in the Lahiri Mandir. No one else was there. She stood up at the end of her meditation and bowed before each photo of the Ananda line of gurus. Last of all, she bowed before the picture of Jesus.

Turning to leave, she heard Jesus say to her: “Welcome home, daughter.” She felt waves of peace and love flooding her being. It was a transforming experience.

******

After 21 years on this path, I am so grateful to God and to my Guru for leading me to my path and giving me the strength to break through the many layers of past habits and perceptions. I have realized, as Yogananda tells us, that the saints and masters are the true custodians of religion.

Nayaswami Diksha teaches at The Expanding Light guest retreat at Ananda Village. She was initiated into the Nayaswami Order in 2009. She is a Lightbearer and is married to Nayaswami Gyandev.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

The prayer is quite simple: If you are having challenges with another person, visualize that person in light and for one minute pray: “Lord, fill him or her with peace and harmony, peace and harmony.” Then visualize yourself in light and pray for 15 seconds: “Lord, fill me with peace and harmony, peace and harmony.”

The prayer also came with these additional words: “Do this 5 times a day — 3 or 4 times might work, but 5 times practically never fails.”

I know of at least a dozen positive responses to the use of the prayer since I began sharing it with others over the past year. Here are several of these “miracles.”

Suspicions of dishonesty

I first met “Sarah” during a meditation program I was teaching at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village. Sarah is a woman of high energy and great determination. She came to the United States from a foreign country and created a wonderful medical practice for herself here. Determined to make meditation a daily part of her life, she succeeded in doing so with ever-increasing focus. We spoke about her meditation practice the next few times I saw her.

Recently I saw Sarah again, but this time she was very troubled. She had just moved her medical practice into a new office. She had negotiated all aspects of the rental with a real estate broker, who had told her she didn’t need to pay rent for the month she was painting and redecorating her office. Sarah later learned that the landlord knew nothing about this “deal.”

As a result, the landlord thought she was cheating him. Refusing to accept her story about the “deal” with the broker, he was very rude to her and demanded that she send him a check immediately.

The next time I saw Sarah was during a retreat at The Expanding Light. She had just sent the check to the landlord. She was still very upset about his attitude and behavior toward her, and also by recent reports from other tenants that the landlord “hated” her. Sarah usually gets along well with people and is accustomed to harmony in her life.

At my suggestion, Sarah started using the peace and harmony prayer with great energy during her retreat and continued using it every day on her return home. Here’s what she said in an email to me two weeks later:

“As you advised, I used the “peace and harmony prayer” every day for two weeks during my meditation practice at least twice a day. I received a letter from my landlord this morning and everything seems fine now. He figured out that all the problems we had were based on the real estate agent’s miscommunication. He even offered to refund some of the money I’d sent him…. I was shocked to discover that the real estate agent had forged my initials on the lease.”

*******

A job retained and a relationship healed

Another woman, “Sue,” had two fascinating experiences with the prayer. Sue is in charge of a small staff in a larger company. She first started using the peace and harmony prayer to defuse tension with certain work associates, including one of the managers. Later it became known that there would be big changes in the company, but no one knew what they were.

Shortly afterwards, the manager for whom Sue was praying announced that the company was laying off a large group of employees. Sue and her small staff were the only ones in the division not included in this directive. From Sue’s understanding of how the company functions, the only reason she can imagine for the exception in her case was the “peace and harmony prayer.”

*******

Sue also has three adult sons. Her youngest son had become engaged to a lovely woman. Sue liked the young woman and felt that she and her son would do well together in marriage, but a controversy developed between the two which threatened to destroy the relationship.

Sue decided to use the “peace and harmony prayer” in a slightly different way – to help her son and his fiancée resolve their differences. She used the prayer as Yogananda recommended, praying five times a day that the couple be filled with peace and harmony and that she herself be filled with peace and harmony. She did this over a period of four months.

Sue noticed two things. Each time she spoke to her son, he reported that things were going a little better between him and his fiancée. He seemed more willing to admit his own part in the friction between them. After four months of prayers, the problems weren’t completely resolved but the relationship was definitely on the road to healing as Sue continued to use the prayer.

But the other result is also lovely. Sue noticed that she was also changing. She was beginning to feel a growing sense of healthy detachment from her son. As she continued with the prayer, it became clearer and clearer that her son’s life was in God’s hands; she was merely God’s instrument, helping as she was able. Sue feels blessed by this growing sense of inner freedom.

*******

Boiling anger vanished

About six months ago “Mary,” a friend from the Midwest, called for counseling. I had met Mary during a meditation program also, and she is an exceptionally upbeat, energetic, likeable person. When we spoke she was deeply upset by something happening at her school. Mary works with “at risk” children and had discovered some innovative computer technology that inspired their creativity and interest in learning.

Betty, the school media specialist, seeing Mary’s success with this new equipment, convinced the principal to buy the same equipment for the school’s new media center, to be used by all students. Since Mary had a full teaching load, she assumed Betty would take responsibility for getting the new media center started once she learned how to use the equipment. But each of the many times Mary offered to train her, Betty was too busy.

As the new school equipment sat idle, Mary began to overhear Betty telling others that Mary was the only person who could get the media center started, but that she was refusing to help. Mary began to feel frustrated and annoyed. From then on the situation deteriorated. Betty remained critical of Mary even after Mary had trained certain students in how to use the equipment. Compounding the problem, Mary was now being frequently interrupted in her work with her “at risk” students to fix media center problems.

Now quite angry, Mary began obsessing about Betty. Her face became frozen with tension. Angry thoughts about Betty began to keep her awake at night. Each time she saw Betty her body tightened, and she refused to speak to her. Mary found her anger toward Betty bleeding into her interactions with others.

All of this was uncharacteristic of Mary as I know her, but her devotion to her own students, combined with her desire for fairness, was pushing her over the edge.

By the time Mary and I talked, I had heard quite a few success stories about the “peace and harmony prayer,” so Mary willingly embraced the prayer and began practicing it with intensity.

The first thing Mary noticed was that after only a few days of saying the prayer, her body and face began to relax and her angry thoughts decreased. A few days later, she began smiling again and was able to speak pleasantries to Betty when she passed her at work. She noticed that Betty too was smiling more and being kinder to the students.

The school where Mary works has a spiritual focus. After a week or two of saying the peace and harmony prayer, Mary and Betty attended the before-school prayer group. Mary was able to pray for Betty’s family, and Betty prayed for Mary’s family. All animosity between them had vanished. The “peace and harmony” prayer had healed them both. Mary was so inspired by this process that she has made the peace and harmony prayer a regular part of her life.

When the prayer didn’t work

I have had lovely success using this prayer in my own life. Sometimes even a few repetitions of the prayer takes me out of a little mental whirlpool of inharmony. But I’d also like to share a time it didn’t work for me and why.

A good friend of mine, whom I’ll call “Kelly,” once hurled an insult at me with great energy and anger, accusing me of having a fault that I consider negative. My first thought was, “Wow, Kelly really doesn’t like me!” My next thought was, “And suddenly, I don’t like Kelly so well either!” But the anger was uncharacteristic of my friend, so it wasn’t something I could just ignore.

I began to use the peace and harmony prayer, but I somehow knew the prayer wasn’t going to work in this situation. The next morning, still “energized” from the previous day’s insult, I approached my morning meditation with special energy, determined to connect with the superconscious mind, the source of transformation and solutions. As I focused deeply on Yogananda’s meditation techniques, out of “nowhere” the clear thought came to me, “Kelly is right! I do need to work on that quality.” The moment I realized Kelly was right, every shred of negative feeling toward my friend vanished!

So, sometimes if the prayer isn’t working, there may be something within ourselves that needs work. In this situation God had something else for me to learn. Rather than remove the unpleasant disharmony, He wanted me to get to work on a quality that would help my personal transformation.

*******

I deeply encourage you to use the peace and harmony prayer in any area of your life where there is disharmony. If the situation is long-standing, you may find that a greater investment of energy is needed, and that your commitment to lifting your consciousness out of negative thought patterns needs to be regular and ongoing.

But the “peace and harmony” prayer is extremely potent. Its simplicity and clear focus direct the mind toward attunement with God and give us a practical way to draw God’s grace in important aspects of our life.

I also believe there’s a special blessing in the prayer. Try it! If you have any notable results I’d love to hear about them.

Nayaswami Anandi teaches at The Expanding Light guest retreat at Ananda Village. She is a founding member of Ananda, a Kriyacharya, and was initiated into the Nayaswami Order in 2009. She also works as an editor for Crystal Clarity, Publishers. She is married to Nayaswami Bharat.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Beginners on a ski slope make a good study in worry-consciousness: chins jutting forward, rear ends jutting backward, knees bent as if they thought the slope was planning to attack them, arms stiff and flailing as though they expected, after the fall, to be reincarnated as windmills. But most people have to be extra attentive to the details of a thing while they’re still learning it. The worrier goes them one better. He remains at his post far beyond the call of duty. He goes on acting the novice — tense, apprehensive — long after he should have learned to “stand up and flow with the slope.”

I remember a friend of mine in college (in fact it was Julius Katchen, whose remarkable talent as a pianist later brought him fame) passing my window one day, shaking his fists in the air and crying, “Problems! Problems!” That image has always lingered in my mind as epitomizing the attitude so typical of the worrier. Julius couldn’t have had all that much to emote over, except maybe finding another tenor for the glee club. But he looked as though the problems of the universe were nesting in his hair.

The basic problem of the beginning skier is too much concern for his own body. The basic problem of the chronic worrier is too much concern for himself. This concern may express itself in various ways — as excessive self-consciousness, or an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the success of every undertaking, or a tendency to hover protectively over others like a mother hen, or even (strange to say) as absent-mindedness and inattention to the outward details of living — a result of being absorbed in too many inward-drawing, mental vortices. The first lesson, then, for every worrier is to learn to relax, to offer himself more and more freely into life’s flow.

Unfortunately, the worrier even more than most people finds it difficult to see life as a flow. As his exaggerated sense of ego (please understand, I don’t mean egotism, or pride) separates him mentally from the rest of the world, so he tends to fragment things objectively, too, to see them in terms of separations. Details of one kind and another, usually minor, absorb him. Again, over-attentiveness to his little self creates in him a bias toward minutiae, such that even if an enemy army invaded his country his chief concern might be over what the invaders were doing to the condition of the roads. In other words, he loses the sense of objective proportion.

But the world is not divided into two classes of people — the worriers and the non-worriers. Most of us worry sometimes, and most worriers are at times full of confidence. I’m writing here of a general line of human development, not of rigid categories of people and behavior. In fact, the tendency to break things up mentally into categories is both a symptom of worry-consciousness and, to a greater or lesser degree, a weakness of most of the human race.

Even moderately good skiers, who can afford to forget their bodies and think more about the problems of the slope, betray their lack of expertise in the exaggerated attention they give to every bump and turn. The mark of an expert is not only the fact that he knows how to execute the necessary movements, but that he sees the slope as a continuity; he absorbs the obstacles as they come, into a sense of graceful, flowing movement.

Remember, faith is a dynamic practice, not a passive acceptance of whatever you believe to be true. Try exercising more of this sort of faith — in life, and especially in God. Even if life doesn’t always seem like much of a flow to you, depend more on God’s power to work things out always for the best. The more you dynamically, lovingly offer your life and ego to Him, and the more you think of Him as the real Doer even when it is you who seem to be acting, the more amazed you will be to see how very capable He is of running things quite competently Himself!

Our job as human beings is to try to do His will, but at the same time to understand that we can never be more than willing soldiers in the eternal war of light against darkness. We must do our best, but it is not for us to decide the outcome even of minor skirmishes. That is why the Bhagavad Gita says that one should act willingly, but leave the results of his actions to God. (Nishkam karma the Gita calls it: desireless action.)

Always remember, worry-consciousness, and the tendency to fragment reality into separate, static, mental images, not only creates problems where none really exist, but actually interferes with one’s efforts to resolve problems where they do exist. The worrier tends to think that he alone is realistic in a world of daft dreamers, but in fact he would be much more realistic if he saw himself as he really is: a humble soldier in the struggle of life, not a general; and if he saw life as it really is: a divine flow.

From Letters to Truthseekers, Crystal Clarity Publishers (currently out of print). Related reading: In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection by Swami Kriyananda. To order click here

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Swami Kriyananda came into this lifetime with the desire to serve people, a desire that unfolded into a compassionate commitment to help people grow toward God. His understanding of leadership grew out of this desire, and rested on two essential, and interconnected, principles—that people are more important than things, and that, in any undertaking, worldly or spiritual, only right action (dharma) can lead to victory.

The first sentences of his book, The Art of Supportive Leadership, succinctly capture Kriyananda’s approach to leadership:

Genuine leadership is only of one type: supportive. It leads people: It doesn’t drive them. It involves them: It doesn’t coerce them. It never loses sight of the most important principle governing any project involving human beings: namely that people are more important than things.

Praise from the business community
Lecturing in Australia around 1980, Kriyananda was frequently questioned about communities, and questioned with particular skepticism about the role of leadership in communities. His answers came entirely from his own experience, and met with gratifying success, notably so in light of the initial skepticism of his audience. Out of this beneficial exchange came The Art of Supportive Leadership, first published in 1983.

Kriyananda wrote The Art of Supportive Leadership, as he did Money Magnetism, to bring Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings into such eminently pragmatic realms as business and finance. The book’s subtitle puts the point well: “A Practical Guide for People in Positions of Responsibility.”

Not surprisingly, Kriyananda’s book has had a profound effect on the business community. In March 1995, after Kriyananda had given a lecture at a breakfast club for businessmen in Anaheim, California, but before the master of ceremonies could thank him, a member of the audience took possession of the microphone: “I’ve just realized who this speaker is,” he cried. “My work is reviving failing businesses. For several years now, I’ve been giving out this book, The Art of Supportive Leadership to everyone I work with. It’s a great book.’”

Leadership principles based on experience
What impresses me most about The Art of Supportive Leadership is that everything Kriyananda writes comes from leadership roles he himself has played—as a young monk in Yogananda’s organization, and in founding and leading Ananda from its humble beginnings to its present status as the most successful intentional community of this age, with branch communities, centers and meditation groups worldwide. Not only have I seen Kriyananda unfailingly adhere to the spiritual principles that underlie the book, but perhaps even more tellingly, I have seen generations of new members successfully practicing these same principles in their own leadership roles.

Paramhansa Yogananda placed Kriyananda, still in his early twenties, in charge of the monks, many of whom were older and resistant to his authority. Motivated by the desire to carry out his Guru’s wishes and to serve his fellow monks by organizing a strong and regular meditation routine, Kriyananda never asked obedience of the monks, but rather cooperation and a spirit of mutual surrender to Yogananda’s will. In return, Kriyananda pledged to the monks his own cooperation and willingness to support them in any undertaking that did not conflict with their shared rules. Always uppermost was the spirit of service.

Expanding Yogananda’s mission
Having begun his life of discipleship in Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), his guru’s organization, Kriyananda’s innate longing to serve people found its natural expression in service to Yogananda’s mission. Yogananda himself frequently pointed Kriyananda in the direction of expanding his mission to reach more people, to help them on the journey homeward to God.

Kriyananda’s adherence to that vision after Yogananda’s passing would ultimately bring him into conflict with the new SRF leadership and result in his separation from the organization. Throughout that long and difficult period of his life, Kriyananda dedicated himself even more determinedly to the principle, “Where there is right action, there is victory,” and transmuted his own personal suffering into a deeper understanding of the two principles that have since formed the foundation of his approach to leadership.

Reflecting on the origin of the principles that have guided his leadership of Ananda, Kriyananda writes:

I built Ananda on principles I’d learned through meditating on the life of Paramhansa Yogananda after years of working with people as head of the monks at Self-Realization Fellowship, and as director of SRF center activities throughout the world, [and] as the target of misguided attempts to suppress my expansive understanding of Yogananda’s mission to the world….

A workbook for dedicated students
The chapters of the book are each organized around a specific principle with explanations and illustrative stories in the text. (The conclusion at the end of each chapter is a review of essential points, which for the dedicated student can serve as a workbook for his own practice):

• Leadership as an art.

• Taking responsibility as a leader.

• Setting aside personal desires.

• Leadership as service.

• “People are more important than things.”

• Making decisions based on intuition guided by common sense.

• Flexibility.

• When to stop talking and start acting.

• Giving support.

• Working with people’s strengths.

• Guidelines for gauging true success in any undertaking.

Broadly applicable principles
As I read and studied the individual chapters of The Art of Supportive Leadership, memory produced, from my own thirty-seven years at Ananda, stories and images illuminating each principle. Those who have understood and practiced these principles have blossomed as devotees and have blessed those around them with their service. Those who have done less well, who have struggled and perhaps even fallen down as leaders, have also served—as models of why certain attitudes don’t work, and as mirrors to others of their need to improve in those same areas.

Those who undertake the spiritual life with serious intent, whether living in a spiritual community or fulfilling a different dharma in the world, come face to face with the principles of supportive leadership—in their own work, in their relations with friends and family, and ultimately in their own inner life. The principles apply equally well to all areas of life: to organizational settings such as the military and business, to the relation of parents and children, and to the ongoing dynamic between soul and ego.

Nayaswami Prakash is a long-time member of Ananda. He currently serves at Ananda Village doing forestry and landscaping work.

To order The Art of Supportive Leadership by Swami Kriyananda click here

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There are miracles, yes, but magnetism is what draws those miracles. Magnetism is the most important thing in life. I believe we’re on the eve of difficult times but if you have the right kind of magnetism, even if there’s a depression, it won’t be a predicament for you. Success in every aspect of life depends on the power of your magnetism to attract it. By developing “success magnetism,” you will find victory in all situations even in the midst of widespread difficulties.

Step One: Will Power and Concentration
How does magnetism work?  Magnetism is generated by the strength and quality of your energy flow. When you pass electricity through a wire, it generates a magnetic field. The more electricity passes through the wire, the stronger the magnetic field.

Human magnetism works on the same principle. Whenever you will something to happen, a ray of energy goes out, projected by the power of your thought. That energy generates a magnetic force-field which can attract to you the objects of your expectations. The strength of that magnetism depends on your level of energy. People of low energy generate very little magnetism. Those with high energy can perform miracles.

“The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy” was one of Paramhansa Yogananda’s oft-stated maxims. The more you focus your energy one-pointedly, the stronger your magnetism to attract what you need. Concentration is thus the first necessity in developing that kind of will power. If your energy goes out in many different directions, you have very little magnetism. When you can focus your mind one-pointedly, you are already far on the way to developing a powerful will and the magnetism to attract success.

Step Two: Enthusiasm
For your magnetism to gain power, it is vitally important to summon up strong feeling for what you want to accomplish. Whatever you are doing, do it with all your heart. Magnetism is the result not only of focused energy but also of enthusiasm.

It has been said that nothing great has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm. Thomas Edison, for example, went through 43,000 experiments before he found the right filament for the light bulb—such was his deep feeling for the work he was doing. If you look at the lives of great scientists, you will find that they were passionate men and women and absolutely dedicated to the search for scientific truth. They could never have accomplished what they did without enthusiasm.

Always be careful to keep your enthusiasm from spilling over into excitement. For the will to become will power, it must be directed calmly, with control. As that happens, even when others have failed, somehow you will succeed.

Step Three: Positive Thinking
To develop magnetism, always be positive in your thinking. You will attract success if your mind is positive, and you will attract failure if it isn’t. A positive attitude will bring a positive response.

I had a very interesting experience of this principle at the airport in 1955, when I was leaving for France. When checking in at the airline counter, I stood behind a man whose baggage was obviously overweight. This man, when told he had to pay more, became very upset and made threats about not using that airline in the future. He even asked to see the manager. The angrier he got, the firmer the airline official became in his refusal to back down.

My baggage was much heavier than this man’s, but as I went up to the counter I thought, “This man is a friend. God is in this form,” and with that positive thought, I smiled at him. He looked at my baggage and said, “Well, what have we got here?” And without another word he allowed my baggage to go through. When your thoughts are positive, when they’re kind and helpful, you will find that others will want to help you.

I passed my music composition exam in college using this same principle. I didn’t go to any classes, but right before going in to take the exam, I read the bold print rules in the textbook. Two rules stuck in my mind, one of which was that a bass line should go in the opposite direction to the melody. Armed with this information, and with a very positive, cheerful outlook, I went in to take the exam.

We were asked to write a melody for a bass line. Suddenly, into my mind came a beautiful oriental melody. Later, the professor told me that it was on the strength of that melody that he gave me a good grade in the course.

The inspiration for that melody came because I was positive in my expectations and free of doubt. If you have doubt, if you think, “Well, gee, I don’t know if I can do this,” inspiration won’t come. But if all your energy is strongly focused in a positive direction, you will develop the kind of magnetism that will attract inspiration, answers to questions—all sorts of things. Even the right, pertinent knowledge can be attracted by the right, magnetic expectation.

Step Four: Solution Consciousness
“Solution consciousness” is another important aspect of magnetism.  Many people have “problem consciousness.” You ask them to do something and their response is always: “Yes, but!”  People like that never succeed. Whenever you have a problem, don’t think of it as a problem. See it as an opportunity. You will be amazed how much you can accomplish when you eliminate the word “can’t.”

Yogananda was very strong on solution consciousness. During World War II, he wanted to build a church in Hollywood, but new buildings were not allowed in Los Angeles.  Everybody told him, “It’s not possible.” He said, “Oh, yes it is.” Since there was no law against renovation, he found an old building that was barely standing and moved it on to property he had bought. The neighbors complained bitterly but he developed the building into a beautiful church.

Don’t dwell on difficulties longer than it takes to define them clearly. With solution-consciousness you can have success. Solution-consciousness actually attracts right answers to itself, whereas problem-consciousness prevents answers from even arising in the mind.

Step Five: Kindness
An attitude of kindness is also important for magnetism. Kindness is very magnetic. When people are kind, they draw other people’s help in return. In true kindness, there is much more giving than receiving. True kindness is an all-giving energy.

Paramhansa Yogananda was all-giving in just this way. Once he went to a cane shop, and being a representative of an organization, he wanted to spend the organization’s money wisely, so he bargained. After bargaining and getting the best price he could, he thought, “This man has such a poor shop. I want to help him.” And he gave him back more money than he had saved!

The shopkeeper said, “You are a gentleman, sir.” He gave Yogananda the best cane he had. When Yogananda came home, he said, “What a poor floor that man had. I think I’ll get him a new floor.” That kind of kindness is what you need to develop.

The more you give generously of yourself—to God, to life, to other people, the more the karmic law supports you in return. Your ability to succeed in business, or in any other endeavor, increases to the extent of your awareness of your kinship with the great web of life.

Step Six: Non-attachment
One of the basic teachings in the Bhagavad Gita is nishkam karma: action without desire for the fruits of action. Many self-help books say you should desire intensely whatever you want, for that very intensity will draw to you the object of your desire. When desire and attachment exist, however, what you attract may not be what you need or it may be much less than you could have had. When putting out energy to achieve a goal, it is much better to focus on the energy flow itself, not the specific objective, even when your need is for a specific sum of money.

Years ago members of Ananda Village were invited to pledge different amounts of money to help with the enhancement of “downtown Ananda.” We needed $3000 to pave the entrance driveway. I knew that no one else could come up with that kind of money so I decided (secretly) to pledge the whole amount myself, even though I didn’t have nearly that amount. The money was needed in two weeks.

Although I made a request for a specific sum of money, in praying to Divine Mother I concentrated on the energy of the prayer, rather than the specific request. With great will power, I projected the energy of the prayer upward from my heart and then out through the spiritual eye. I didn’t visualize a specific sum of money or how the money might come. Instead I focused on the purpose this money was meant to serve with the thought, “Divine Mother knows more than I, and will take care of that end of things.”

One morning nearly two weeks later I saw an envelope lying on the floor inside my front door. In it was a letter and check for $3000 from a friend who had once lived at Ananda and had recently received an inheritance.

When you act with non-attachment, you can be sure of one thing: when success comes, it will be in the best possible way. Whatever you need, send energy outward as a “loving demand.”  Energy flows much more forcefully when you think of it as a flow, without fixed and definite goals.

Step Seven: Attune to a Greater Reality
The power to attract success of every kind increases in direct proportion to your ability to recognize, and attune yourself to, a reality greater than your own. The more you unite your awareness to the Infinite Consciousness, the more effective your power will be. What you can on your own do is limited but what God can accomplish through you is limitless.

It’s absolutely thrilling to live life this way and to experience how much can be accomplished. I want to assure you of this because in hard times, there will be a lot of suffering. But you don’t have to suffer if you put out the right kind of energy.

From an April 2011 talk in Los Angeles, California.

Related link: click here to learn about our online course, Success and Happiness Through Yoga Principles

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Karma in the spiritual realm is the equivalent to Newton’s law of action and reaction in physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we put out positive, loving energy, we receive positive, loving energy in return. If we put out negative energy in the form of judgmental attitudes or dishonesty, that same type of energy comes back to us.

What makes karma “bad” or “good?”
Swami Kriyananda describes good karma as anything that brings us closer to God and bad karma as anything that takes us farther away from Him. Is winning the lottery good karma? Not if we spend that money on ourselves and increase our sense of ego. Is having everything we’ve worked for crumble before our eyes bad karma? Not necessarily. Many people have become saints by responding to adversity with great will power and courage.

The power of a particular karma is determined by the energy and will power that went into creating it. These same two factors can also change our karma. For instance, if in the past you tried to hurt people by unkind acts, you can neutralize that karma by devoting equal energy to helping and uplifting others. The more energy and will power you put into changing that karma, the sooner it will dissipate, and the sooner the good karma you’re now creating will start to bear fruit. If you don’t know what you might have done to create a difficult karma, use your imagination as to what likely caused it.

A step by step approach to changing your karma
A dear friend at Ananda Village, who passed away early this year, exemplified perfectly how we should respond to karma. Three weeks before her passing she learned that she had inoperable brain cancer and little time left to live. Within five days of the onset of the first major symptoms, her body stopped obeying her brain. Her husband had to wheel her in a wheelchair into the hospital for brain scans.

She could feel how upset he was over what she was going through, and she said something to comfort him which we should emblazon in our minds: “Detach yourself, control the reactive process, and live the teachings.” Her succinct statement sums up exactly how we should meet karmic tests if we want to undo karmic patterns. Many of us now have this advice posted on our desks at work.

“It’s not my fault”
When we’re facing a difficult karma, the first thing we need to do is to detach ourselves. One of the most important ways of detaching ourselves is to accept karmic tests as coming from God. How do we know that our karmic tests come from God? Everything comes from God. If we don’t accept that, then we are pushing away the lesson we need to learn.

Secondly, we need to control the tendency to blame others. When something bad happens, how often our first reaction is to blame other people. We have layers of protective devices around the ego, but one of the biggest is: “It’s not my fault.” Suppose you were obeying the traffic laws, and someone ran a red light and collided with your car. If you blame that person, you’ve done absolutely nothing to change your karma. But if you detach yourself and think: “There’s something for me to learn from this experience,” you bring a positive reaction to it.  Your positive reaction will help expiate the karma.

So the first step in detaching ourselves is: Don’t blame people or circumstances. Nor does it particularly help to blame yourself. Just accept what’s happening as coming from God for your own spiritual freedom.

“What comes of itself let it come”
Detachment also means accepting whatever comes and being grateful for it. It means not wishing that certain things happen or not happen; not wishing you could have this thing or that. Yogananda beautifully described acceptance when he said, “What comes of itself, let it come.” Accept not only what comes, but also what doesn’t come.

Though often difficult, expressing gratitude for our karma is an important aspect of changing it.  Paramhansa Yogananda explained that Jesus Christ was referring to how we can change our karma when he said, “And to him that smites you on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that takes away your cloak forbid not to take your coat also.” (Luke 6:39.) When seemingly bad karma comes, accept it with gratitude and say: “Thank you — I welcome it!” Welcoming bad karma is not easy, but as we learn to control the reactive process we begin to understand that all karmic tests are truly for our benefit.

Controlling the reactive process means catching yourself when you first start to have a negative reaction. If you can catch yourself at that moment it is easier to neutralize the karma.

Becoming free of karmic patterns
When we respond to karma in the right way, we pass the test and don’t have to repeat it. Otherwise we get to retake the test, sometimes over a period of lifetimes. It’s important to become aware of your karmic patterns, the things that happen repeatedly. Karmic patterns are very complex. We don’t always know why a certain karma comes but if the karma is repeating in your life, that’s a sign you should spend time working on that particular karma.

A wonderful artist friend of ours told us a story about how she changed a negative karmic pattern. One day she called her financial advisor, who was also a friend, and asked a question. He reacted angrily, saying: “Why are you calling me at work? Can’t you understand I’ve got business to do?  I don’t have time for this now.” And he slammed the phone down.

Our friend was very fiery and tended to be reactive. She immediately picked up the phone and called him back, but the line was busy. After calling back several times and getting a busy signal, she became engrossed in her work. Several hours later she remembered the call.  However, by this time she had calmed down and had begun to think, “I wonder why he reacted like that? That’s not like him.” She called him and asked, “Is something wrong? That was such a strange reaction from you this morning.” He started crying and said, “I’m having a very difficult time at home and at work,” and they went on to have a deep and loving conversation.

For our friend, the way out of a repeating negative pattern was to respond, not with anger or aggression, but with patience, understanding, and kindness. In so doing, she neutralized the reactive process and also created good karma.

So: “Detach yourself, control the reactive process, and live the teachings.” The teachings point us to the attitudes and practices that get us out of these karmic patterns. Bringing that simple formula to mind when we have a spiritual test will help free us from much suffering.

A subtler form of bad karma
Generally speaking, if we respond to adversity with the right attitude, then what initially looked like bad karma becomes something positive spiritually. But there’s a subtler form of bad karma that comes from identifying with the body and the material world. This type of karma can make us restless, impede our efforts to meditate, or prevent us from going deeper into the spiritual life. Often it limits our faith in our own spiritual potential.

To overcome karma of this type we need to work on removing the subconscious blocks and inner conflicts concerning what we really want in life, and who we really are in our deepest nature. Remember always that overcoming any kind of karma depends on how much will power and positive energy we direct toward the process of self-transformation. We can eliminate all subconscious blocks by focusing our energy strongly in positive new directions.

Kriya Yoga and the grace of God and Guru
The most powerful antidote for our past bad karma is the practice of Kriya Yoga, which works directly on the vrittis in the spine, where our karma resides. Paramhansa Yogananda said, “Seeds of past karma cannot germinate when roasted in the fire of wisdom.” Through the deep practice of Kriya, we burn up, or “roast,” the seeds of our past karma.

The teachings of India say that the law of karma rules supreme, but higher than the law of karma is the grace of God and Guru. There are many stories in the Autobiography of a Yogi and the Indian scriptures that tell of how the guru “takes on” the karma of his disciples. The guru’s purpose is not only to give us his consciousness, but also to protect us. If it’s our karma to lose an arm, we may only get a little scratch. If it’s our karma to receive a fatal blow, it will be deflected.

The grace of God and Guru is our ultimate karmic protection. The more we attune ourselves to their will, the more that grace surrounds us. Our job is to respond to karma with the right attitude and effort, but it is the grace of God and Guru that ultimately frees us from all karma.

From February 2011 talks at Ananda Village.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are the Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

One day, while stopping at that beach in the middle of a run, I felt the inspiration that I should go to medical school. In that moment I also found my guru, though it would take time for me to actually know that.

Praying and listening with the heart
Medical school is an experience in learning how to memorize a huge amount of data. I always appreciated having that fund of knowledge, but I also understood that I could not truly help my patients simply by relying only on that information. During my internship and residency, I somehow knew to keep a note on my clipboard reminding me to always pray and ask for guidance before I saw a patient. Guru’s grace descending again!

Now, in my medical practice, I ask for guidance all the time – over and over. I’ve had miraculous experiences because I’ve been willing to be quiet and listen with my heart. Before walking into a patient’s room, or while sitting with a patient, I’ll pray to Yogananda: “Master, I need to know what to say to this person, and how to say it.”

Then the words come, the diagnoses come, and miracles happen. The stories that have evolved through my work are precious.  Here are a few tales of these divine gifts.

Something was terribly wrong
One day, after I had seen close to 30 patients, I stopped at the door of the treatment room before going in to see my last patient. Inwardly I said, “Divine Mother, You have to guide me because I’m exhausted. I’m going to miss something important if You’re not with me.”

Waiting in the room was a 92-year-old man, the father of one of the nuns who ran the hospital. She and her sister were with him. He was a gruff old man and announced to me right away, “I haven’t been to see a doctor in ten years at least. I never go to the doctor. I have a little back pain – just give me some medicine!”

When I asked him to tell me about his back pain, he replied with annoyance, “There’s nothing to tell you! I’ve just got back pain.” After pressing him for more details, he said that a very severe back pain had come on suddenly the night before. His daughter added, “It was so severe that it made him sick to his stomach.”

As I listened to this story, right away I got the feeling that something was terribly wrong. I said to him, “I’m going to leave the room. You’re going to get undressed, and I’m going to come back and examine you.” Muttering a few expletives, he refused to be examined, but fortunately his daughters were on my side.

I left the room. On the way back, before going in, I prayed, “Divine Mother, You diagnose this man. Something’s going on here.”

During the exam, I found nothing except a little of what we call “mottling” of his skin on his right side, which I assumed was due to the room being cold. But I still had this troubling feeling. So I said to him, “You are going to the emergency room. Would you like your daughters to drive you, or shall I call 911?”

After quite an argument, he let his daughters drive him to the emergency room. I called ahead to the emergency room doctor and said, “Something serious is going on with this man. It’s important that you see him the instant he arrives.”

The doctor in the emergency room knew exactly what that “mottling” meant, and quickly got him up to the operating room. The instant the surgeon opened his abdomen, his entire abdominal aorta burst open. Had this man stopped to go home, had we fought for another three minutes, he would have died.

The next day, my phone kept ringing. My doctor friends at the hospital called to ask, “How did you remember this sign?” I said, “I didn’t remember anything.”

I thought to myself, “How could I ever share this story?” From years of taking care of patients I knew that knowing all the facts and “signs” is important (I don’t want to miss a pneumonia, or an appendicitis), but most of the healing that’s happened in my practice has come through me. Everything important that I know about medicine, everything I have to give, comes from my having opened my heart to God.

“See this man!”
Another day, when I had a completely overbooked schedule,  a new patient called saying he had a cold and needed to see me right away. To placate him I told my front desk staff to tell him I was not currently accepting new patients but as a favor would see him in my “next available” spot. He refused to accept the “favor” and called three more times, saying that the cough was “killing him.”  Then I had that feeling: “See this man!”

He was a generally healthy 32-year old man. I examined his throat, lymph nodes, and lungs. All were fine. Then something said to me, “listen to his heart.” But I fought back: “No! I’m busy.” Then again: “Listen!”

I listened and there was a murmur. He said no one had ever mentioned it before. I prayed, “Is this important?” I listened to his heart again and didn’t like what I heard. Most murmurs are what we call “benign,” but this one wasn’t. He needed to have an ultrasound of the heart the next day. The woman at my front desk said, “Impossible.” I said, “Make it happen.”

He had the ultrasound the following morning. It showed an aneurysm at the junction of his aorta and his aortic valve. The very next morning the man had open-heart surgery. The surgeons said he would have died very soon had it not been discovered and that it was congenital — it had been there since birth. Later, several of the surgeons called asking me “how I knew?” I decided not to try to explain, but in my heart I was pronaming to Divine Mother.

A special assignment based on inspiration
Several years ago a woman who had been having abdominal pain and other symptoms for about one year came to my office. She hadn’t seen a physician in years because she didn’t “trust” them. The previous day, however, she had seen a gynecologist who told her it was likely she had an inoperable tumor and, if so, her only alternative was palliative care.

This woman was filled with rage.  As we discussed her situation, she mentioned at least ten times that she hated her husband—that  she was just ready to leave him, but now with this tumor she might never get away from him. She and her husband had been disconnected for years, even as they raised their two children.

I asked her to give me a minute. I closed my eyes and asked Yogananda to tell me what to say to this woman and how to say it in a way she could hear it. When I opened my eyes she asked what I was doing. I said, “I was praying.”

After discussing the medical possibilities, I gave her referral slips for X-rays and lab work and scheduled a follow-up visit in two weeks. Then I told her I had a special assignment for her based on the inspiration that came when I prayed. I wrote out a prescription that told her to say three nice things every day to her husband.

Obviously upset, she said, “That won’t be easy.” She asked what those three things might be. I suggested that she tell her husband whenever he was home how glad she was that he was there, and to say it like she meant it—and then to think of two more things to say. She was quite disgruntled when she left.

As it turned out, this woman she did have an inoperable tumor. When I saw her again and told her what the tests showed, she was quite stoic. After a bit I asked her how things were at home. She looked startled.

She said, “Oh Dr. Rubenstone, when I left here I was so mad at you I thought I would never return. Later I felt compelled to try what you suggested, but I did it grudgingly. You told me it could just be an act so I acted, and I acted well. Within three days my husband was a different man. He took a leave of absence from work and he hasn’t left my side since. He has been loving, attentive, and generous. I have never seen this side of him before. Our home is filled with love.”

My patient died about three months later. She died at home, never having gone into a hospital. I was at her home many times and I always felt blessed to be there. Her passing was perhaps the most love-filled experience I have ever witnessed. I felt Yogananda’s blessing.

My Guru guided me into medicine and he has been with me ever since. In my practice I ask for guidance all the time. As long as I remember to ask for help, it comes, and miracles happen.

Tyagi Shanti, a Lightbearer and longtime Ananda member, lives in the Ananda Palo Alto community. She has a full-time medical practice specializing in “transformational medicine,” working with people as they move through major life transitions. She also teaches meditation, energy and healing, and “living wellness” at the Ananda Palo Alto Sangha.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Maitreyi found inspiration and guidance in two other sources: Practicing the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence (1634-1691), and Letters by a Modern Mystic, by Frank Laubach (1884-1970). Laubach’s “Game with Minutes,”* [see sidebar below] in which one tries to think of God for at least one second every minute, gave Maitreyi a way to assess her daily progress.

After several weeks of her dedicated efforts, God, whom Maitreyi refers to as “The Presence,” and whom she considers her higher Self, began to speak to her; she in turn recorded His words. God instilled in Maitreyi an overwhelming desire to share His messages, which were not only for her but for all who aspire to know Him in this lifetime. Presented here are selected, edited excerpts from a longer, more complete journal.

*****

Sunday, 17th October, 2010

Today I have come to a decision.  If I am serious in my quest to practice the presence of God in every minute, as did my spiritual forebears, then I, too, should chronicle my journey of this practice of child-like simplicity, but so difficult a one to master. Yet I am spurred on by the anticipation of great rewards for the good of all.

I began an attempt some weeks ago, by keeping my attention at the brow (the point between the eyebrows) as long as I could, going back to it as soon as I realized I had drifted.  Trying to do this for one second of every minute is a lot more difficult than it sounds.  I do find, however, that the practice of japa helps me here a little.

It is easy to hold this awareness when I can maintain silence, but when outward speech is necessary, this is when I lose Him. At my place of work I struggle: a busy Intensive Care Unit.  I know this to be a great test.

*****

Creating a habit of continually being aware of God has been sporadically successful to date. Being one of the hardest things I have ever set out to do, I know that the secret of success lies in the fact that I must not become upset when I forget my quest. On realizing I have let God slip my mind I am wretched, knowing that I have lost precious moments never to be returned.  But as soon as I realize I have erred, God is still there, waiting patiently for me as the loving parent He is.

It is becoming more commonplace, during my periods of lapse, that Guru – unprompted by me in my state of oblivion — sends a strong rapturous wave to waken me from my delusional slumbers. That is unconditional love!

*****

The reason I begin my chronicle today is that today, for the first time ever, I have  been sensible of my conscious awareness at the brow for the whole day, unceasingly, and without effort. It can only be that Grace is giving me a taste of what can be attained. The bliss that has accompanied this Presence, too, has continued without break – undulating in intensity, but consistently present!

The chronicling of my efforts has sprung to mind before; however today the idea has been a constant and almost carping companion in my mind. I am taking it thus: that it is Guru’s will that I begin to record my experience of God’s Presence.

I trust, Guruji, I am interpreting Your will as You would have it.

Saturday, 23rd October, 2010

What is this physical pain in my heart centre?  In my meditations, in my practice of Kriya, and when my daily thoughts are in God, therein comes a sharp physical pain.  Saint Teresa of Avila describes her own experience of a vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a javelin three times, which brought her to the highest state of ecstasy.  Frank Laubach writes, “…I wish I could keep this lovely ache in my heart forever…”

This “pain” seems to open wide to God; a pain of yearning, that if I concentrate upon it grows into a force that joins with the already stupendous force of my upper chakras. I do not know quite how to handle this yet.

Guruji, I pray that you grace me with courage, endurance, and readiness to allow myself to surrender utterly to this awesome Power.

*****

Today, reading the life of St. John of the Cross makes me realize how pathetic my attempts at my devotions have been in comparison to those of this holiest of men. It inspires me to continue my own experiment of Frank Laubach’s “Game with Minutes” with a determination thus far unseen in my efforts.  It is true that each week I do see growth and an increase in my devotions; however, reading the lives of these great exemplars humbles me. Any effort I think is enough is not nearly enough. Although it is not an effort, in truth. It is a privilege and a joy.

Thursday, 28th October, 2010

I have just finished two night shifts at the hospital.  Night duty is certainly not conducive to keeping my energy level raised.  As the night wears on, my energy is significantly lower; hence it is increasingly difficult to hold my awareness in God’s Presence. Rather than living with Him in each moment, I begin to wish the hours away and my focus hones more and more to the thought of bed and the sleep my mind craves.

The “Game with Minutes” didn’t go too badly at the beginning of these two shifts, however.  I am finding that at the start of any shift, whether day or night, the bliss of The Presence is quite overwhelming. This must be due to the fact that I have usually just meditated before going to work and I am holding on to that raised vibration.

On waking this morning, reassured that my concentration was firmly ensconced in the forehead before I put a foot out of bed – I took Frank Laubach’s direction in this — there It was again: The Presence.

Beloved, I felt Your communication this morning:

The Presence:
Why, child, do you write of me in the third person?  When you read a book you have begun the practice of reading it to me.  If you are truly practicing my presence why, then, not write to me also?  To whom are you writing anyway, but to me?

From this moment on, and by Your own instruction as I interpret it, I am inspired to change the format of this writing and will record Your wisdom as I receive it. In my conversation with You I will address you as “Beloved.”

The more into the chronicling of my experience of You, Beloved, the more I am of the awareness that this is somehow an important undertaking. The reason, known only to You, to me has yet to unfold.

AUM, Amen.

Monday, 1st November, 2010

The last couple of days I have experienced just a hint of melancholy.  I put it down to the recent night shifts that still take their toll on my physical body.  I attempted to trace the melancholic feeling back to its source – never being one disposed to moods particularly, it was unusual for me not to feel joyful.  I came to the conclusion that I was homesick for You, Beloved! I think this is in no way a bad thing.  It is serving to keep my heart yearning for an ever more perfect union in You.

Kriya is taking on a new dimension.  The further into the astral spine I am taken, the more I realize I know nothing of yoga at all, as You grace me with the merest glimpse of the infinitude of Your realm.

The Presence:
I have given you the key, dear child, into my kingdom.  Behold, as it unfurls before you the magnitude of my blessing.  One day, you will be sent forth into the world to divest your brethren of their cloak of illusion.  You will show these people your way to me by example of my pleasure in one who loves me, my own.

You are thinking these thoughts are your imaginings.  But what are you feeling in your heart as I give these thoughts to you?  There! You have dispelled that notion instantly for you know my presence within you.  Do I need convince you any more than this? You think yourself unworthy of a conversation with me.  That is the illusion of ego. Rejoice in the power of my glory that can do great works through my devoted servants. You are such a one, yet you attempt to block me with false notions. Trust, little one, and come unto me, for I will give you my kingdom in Heaven.

*****

This “Game with Minutes” is extremely effective.  On a very good day, my awareness can be in You for about sixty percent of the day; on not so good a day, possibly thirty percent at best.  Never mind.  I strive ever toward perfection.

O hold my desire in Thee, Beloved…

AUM

Wednesday, 3rd November, 2010

You gave me two valuable pieces of wisdom in my meditation this morning. The first of this wisdom came as three words.  Less is more! These words are already familiar to me as great wisdom.  I must needs look to myself and sift out any unnecessaries from my life.

The second, You gave me in the form of the briefest of visions and an instantaneous knowing of the lesson it held.  I saw a little black dog with adorable spaniel ears. It was sitting with its back to me in the middle of a dusty dirt track road that I knew led away from a rural homestead. It had been left alone and was looking down the track in anticipation of the return of its beloved master.  Utterly devoted, this little dog would not be moved and sat there every day for the rest of its life, patiently waiting on its beloved master’s return.  The little dog died, still waiting for its master.

My interpretation of this vision, is this: You are telling me that we, humanity, should be like this little dog, who desires nothing other than to wait patiently and devotedly for its beloved master.

Unerring in our faith that one day You will come for each of us, we must be as focused and faithful as this little dog.  If we imitate the devotion of this little dog in all our meditations and worldly activity, keeping our minds in You, and giving You everything in the knowing that You do everything through us, only then will we keep You in continuous vigil in our hearts. We must keep the candle burning for You in the inner sanctum of our devotions, even if it means our bodies die waiting.

Isn’t this the message of just about every saint that walked this earth? This is just how Brother Lawrence lived his life. Frank Laubach achieved this constant vigil through his “Game with Minutes.”  It is no coincidence to read these words of Master’s just now as I leave my writing to take some breakfast.  They fit perfectly with all that has just been relayed:

“Make your life more simple and put your whole mind in the Lord.”

AUM, Amen

Thursday, 4th November

Do You suppose that all these plants have any idea of the travail that lies before them?  Do they have any inkling of the millions of lives they have yet to experience before they even reach human level, and only then does the trouble begin?  No, of course they cannot…. I wonder how many immature souls there are within the blades of grass that carpet the grounds of that building over there.

This, I put to You, Beloved, as I looked out of my kitchen window yesterday.  You answered me in meditation last night, which I record as well as my memory serves me:

The Presence
Save your pity child, not for the plants, but for humanity.   Immature souls they may be, but they are as close to me as any.  In their dimly lit innocence they display an attunement to Nature that man does rarely.  Not yet introduced to the Lords of Discontent, they are free of the ruinations of false desires and temptations that delude  my human children into bondage and away from the harmonies of creation.  Man could learn much by contemplating the life of the humble plant.

Accepting of its lot, the plant instinctively acknowledges its source of nurturing power by growing upward to face the Sun. Vigilant to the last, its leaves and flowers scarce leave the Sun’s beaming rays for all the daylight hours, content in following the daily ritual of birth and death in its traverse across the heavens.  The plant raises its head with glee at the site of its Benefactor each morning and bows its head in silent reverence as it sets, each night. Never does it turn its back on the Source. It does not bite the hand that feeds it.

Natural evolution slowly, but inevitably, matures these souls to the human level. Many of the divine attributes they have stoically borne for aeons, such as purity, patience, serenity, acceptance, and endurance, are cloaked from view and replaced with lesser qualities.  For the human, it takes great pains to reclaim this guileless innocence. Pity, then, your fellow man for choosing unwisely, for unless all choose me, no rest can be had!

Wednesday, 10th November, 2010

In meditation the other day my mind was wandering – as is its unfortunate wont – when a tune came to me, as clear as crystal. It would not cease until spent.  I recognized it instantly as the famous Tudor folk song, Greensleeves.

A song of lightness of love? Did You really mean to convey something to me through this tune?  You prompt me to take a closer look at the words and the meaning now jumps out at me.  The first verse is all I needed to see:

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

You have given me a reprimand, Beloved, for my errant ways in meditation and in my daily life.  Of course I do You wrong when I forget You.

You demonstrate such patience with me. I am grateful, truly. I am reminded of another message You gave me in meditation a couple of years ago. Again, my mind was not where it should have been.  I am ashamed that I did not apply myself better then. Your message at that time was clearly placed in my mind:

There is One Who is better deserving of your attention!

AUM, Amen

Friday, 12th November

In my daily activity I am establishing my practice of Your Presence through the “Game with Minutes.” For me, this constitutes thinking of You as my nearest and dearest beloved friend as often as I can, with the aim of joining up all those times into continuous communion. I am beginning to talk to You in a way I have never talked to anyone, and I feel Your Presence very strongly at my brow and in my heart.

*****

Over the last few days I have been taken deeper into AUM than ever before.  Bit by bit the “sense telephones” – as Master used to call the external sense receptors – are starting to shut down: destination, “the Silence.” Although I know I have a way to go, I am losing the fear of letting go of the body which has hampered my efforts in meditation for years.  Slowly the realization is dawning that the sphere I am fast approaching is a far more natural place to be than is body consciousness.  Having once been graced with a breathless experience in “the Silence,” I know I am moving closer to this state in meditation.  I now understand that for me, perceiving You as a personal figure just does not work. You are very “fluid,” Beloved, yet paradoxically immutable in Your fluidness.  I am aware of your Presence strongly since yesterday evening.

The Presence:
Child, I must needs be fluid.  I have created you all with imagination.  In whatever aspect I am perceived I must, by my own law, oblige all my children.  The Infinite is inconceivable to most as a focal point of devotion. It matters not upon which aspect of creation you may choose to fix your gaze as long as it is in remembrance of me. There is no hidden benefit in praying to me as any particular aspect over another. I am equal in all, but it must be remembered that I am not contained by form. Do not fall into this delusion.  When you are comfortable with me in a particular form look beyond all you perceive.  I am form yet I am not form. I am real as I am unreal. That I am and am not.

Wednesday, 17th November, 2010

Your way of communicating to me lately, through song and verse, is extremely effective.  Praying to You for deeper attunement You hit me with, You Can’t Hurry Love, by Phil Collins. At least, Beloved, You are beginning to get a little bit more modern in Your choice of verse.  The melody came to me so clearly and, as experienced before, would not cease until spent.  I looked up the words.  The chorus says all, and it was the chorus that You sent me:

My mama said
You can’t hurry love
No, you’ll just have to wait
She said love don’t come easy
But it’s a game of give and take
You can’t hurry love
No, you’ll just have to wait
Just trust in a good time
No matter how long it takes

The Presence:
All comes in good time to those who diligently wait.  I am not deaf to your pleas, child.  Think on me, every moment, and every second in that moment.  This is the level you must attain to reach me.  I will step down to meet you, but you must also rise to me.  I give you my hand and I will soon give you my heart.  You please me, child, but you must be more astute as to where you place your attention.  Clear your mind of the dross that plagues it.  I have given you the tools to achieve this.  One mind in me!  It is so simple, yet a child is better equipped to realize me, than the most intelligent of men.  A child is absorbed in the moment.  That is where I am to be found.   A child is not concerned with time outside of that moment. When you realize there is naught else but me upon which to fix your gaze, then shall you be mine.

Sat, Tat, Aum

Saturday, 20th November, 2010

If there was one sure way for You to help us realize the impermanence of physical life, Beloved, it is to take our loved ones from us.  Only twelve weeks ago You called time on my dear earthly sister, with a brain tumor.  Now I hear of a dear friend and spiritual sister whom You are calling with the same disease.

I learned a hard, but valuable lesson through the trial of my earthly sister’s suffering insofar as realizing that it is all right to weep for the pain of those suffering, as if it were my own.  Yet I am now of the consciousness that I would not weep for my own pain.  I would gladly bear any trial You saw fit to send me; noble words, I know, but I would give it all to You, as indeed I did the suffering over my sister. It is the ones left behind in this world that need the pity. The departed ones have attained freedom from the infirmities of the flesh. I would rather follow the example my spiritual sister.  As an advanced yogi, she is fully accepting and joyous in her final days on the physical plane, and is much comfort to her husband and friends around her.  That is the way forward.

Witnessing the death process of loved ones enables those left behind to choose to move closer to You or further away.

The Presence:

Life is not real, no matter which way one looks at it. All is my dream; my imagination if you like.  It is unfortunate that the best method to awaken my children to truth is through the experience of sorrow.  The greater the sorrow, the greater the lesson that can be learned, if only one has eyes to see.

Man must learn that all worldly goods will be taken from him.  Nothing can be held by a departing soul, save what he has become over the accumulation of many lives.  I am the only reality.  Realize this truth and you have found me.

AUM

That I will soon realize this truth is my fervent prayer.  Help me, Beloved, in my meditation which, of late, is not faring so well as practicing Your Presence in my daily activity.

AUM. Amen

Monday, 22nd November, 2010

The change in my meditation over the last couple of days is notable; and not only meditation, but Kriya also. I am seeing marked improvement since I began this conversation with You and, moreover, since my prayer to You.

I notice at work, even during the busiest and most critical times, there is peace infused throughout the ICU and the staff.  Maybe this is just my perception, but I am receiving comments from colleagues which support this. When I remember to bless all those around me I am reminded of You.

Monday, 29th November, 2010

I feel I must report my shortcomings over this past week.  My attempts at keeping You in mind for one second of each minute have fallen far short of the mark.  Why, I am not sure, but maybe night duties at the hospital have taken their toll once again.  But then I do not need to lay blame elsewhere.  I was not very attentive.  Simple as that!

Determined to make up for my slackness, I vowed to make my work day a living meditation in Your Sweet Presence.  I think my desire to please – rather than the stingy offerings I actually managed – stirred Your compassion for a pathetic soul this day.  Late last night, Your Presence beheld a strength of power thus far unknown, and was again felt in meditation this morning.

The Presence
Child, you are right.  I see one of my own with good intentions.  As long as I see you striving harder each day for my company, no matter how successful or nay, then do I extend my hand.

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Walking to work this morning, the street dimly lit by the feeble light of the new moon, my feet crunched on the crispness of new-laid snow.  In pondering mood, I analysed why, this year, I am full of the Christmas spirit; far more than usual, and far earlier than ever I can remember.  But then of course; I am full with Your Presence!  Christ lives in me all the while I am aware of You.  When I feel You in me I cannot think a wrong thought, say a wrong word, or do a deed that You would not deem worthy.

Everything I seem to read, or hear just lately seems to talk to me of practicing Your Presence.  Everywhere I look, You remind me You are here, behind the cloud, in the tree, in the melody of the tuneful song thrush, in the face I see before me, the barking of a dog.  Reminders all, how is it possible to ever forget You?  But forget You we do!

AUM

Monday, 13th December, 2010

Another tune in my head, the first line of the famous song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, came to mind as I was chattering away, on my way to work the other morning:

I’m coming Home, I’ve done my time….

This is exactly how it is.  I am coming Home. I am through with delusion and have certainly  “done my time” in it.  I am Your child, made in Your image.  You have given me the keys to Heaven, and it is up to me to use them to open my door to Infinity.  I know, beyond question, that You are with me always; that it is I who moves away from You, not You from me.

When I focus my attention upward, there and without fail, manifest in the Presence of Bliss, are You.  It is such a wonderfully satisfying and secure feeling.  Why is it, then, that You are so hard to hold?  Can the temptations of this world ever compare to the delight of Your Holy Self?  Not a chance, yet here I wander, away from you; a regular truant from the Sacred University of the Sacrament. The human mind is truly insane, before it becomes enlightened.

The Presence
Vague fancies come and go, but my attention ever holds you near.  There is naught else could take my awareness from my own, my charges.  I am in all. I work through all, so how could my attention possibly be anywhere but focused upon myself?  Once my children realize they, too, are truly made in my image, then will the illusion of separateness be dispelled. They will understand I am in them, as in all things: that everywhere am I present; that there is nothing to gaze upon that is not I.  One mind, one heart in all.

Saturday, 22nd January 2011

I have not recorded anything of late as I have nothing to report of significance but dismal failure.  I cannot believe how weak-willed I have been these last weeks.  When I say weak-willed, the determination and desire for You are as fervent as ever, but remembering to hold my attention in You, Beloved, at the forefront of my mind is so difficult.

You have been so kind and loving, showing me visible and tangible signs of Your Presence, that I love You and despair of my predicament all the more for it, feeling I am constantly letting you down.  My temporary setback only fuels my desire to succeed, as the ache for You intensifies daily, so it would seem my failure foreshadows a victory.

If I could only hold You as I have You now.  Now, in this moment, I know You are walking with me; breathing, eating, laughing, crying, thinking, acting out Your play through my every movement and perception of consciousness.  I cannot think a wrong thought or act out a wrong deed as I am now, Beloved.  Hold me in this state and make this moment eternal.  By Your grace alone will I attain the most coveted end.

AUM, Amen.

Tyagini Maitreyi has been an Ananda member for three years.  She currently serves as a nurse and leads a small Ananda meditation group from her home on the Isle of Man, UK.  Soon to leave that home for the new Kriya community in Pune, India, she devotes much of her time to inspirational writing.

*The Game with Minutes
At first, practice for no more than an hour. Begin the experiment by recording each time you think of God.  Aim for one second in each minute.  It is amazing how difficult this is.  Mark on a piece of paper each time you think of Him and see your score at the end of the hour.  This experiment may be practiced anywhere, but until you begin to form a habit, a quiet environment is best.  After forming the habit of thinking of God, let go of the paper exercise and gradually increase the time you think of Him each day, taking the practice into all aspects of daily living.

For two related articles see: Frank Laubach’s Inner Journey by Nakin Lenti and The 5-Minute Experiment by Jyotish Novak.

To learn more about Frank Laubach’s “Game with Minutes” click here

How to raise the money?
When I moved to Ananda Village in February 1976, the community’s photographer had recently left. A big event, a “Village Fun Faire,” was being planned. It promised to be photogenic, with colorfully costumed performers and an elephant. I wanted to take good pictures, but my camera wasn’t up to the job.

In the early years at Ananda Village, many of the single people lived a very simple life, earning just $50 a month plus room and board. Wondering how I could raise the money for a camera, I reached in my pocket and found 34 cents – my entire net worth at the time. But I sensed that if a camera was truly needed, the money would come. I told God that I would do my part, if He would show me how to make the money.

The next day, a friend called to say that he had written a book for bicyclists, and he needed photos. Could I do them? The amount he offered was just enough for a camera that would serve Ananda.

“Go see the podiatrist!”
Fifteen years later, I was training for my first ultramarathon, when an injury threatened to end my running career altogether. I tried all manner of remedies, from anti-inflammatory drugs, to massage, icing, cheap shoe inserts, and special exercises, but nothing worked. I even stuffed leaves in my shoes!

Finally, feeling desperate, I prayed for help. And then I heard an intuitive voice that I recognized as Swami Kriyananda’s. It said, “Go see the podiatrist.”

I said, “But I have no money, and the podiatrist will prescribe shoe inserts that cost $400, plus he’ll charge $40 for the office visit.”

The inner guidance was unrelenting. Again, it said, “Go see the podiatrist.” Seizing my faith in my hands, I made an appointment, and sure enough, the doctor wanted $40 for the visit and $400 for inserts. I asked him to bill me, and the next day I received a phone call from the same friend who had “come through” 15 years earlier. “I’ve written another book,” he said. “Can you do the photos? I need them quickly, and I’ll pay $500.”

This story has repeated itself endlessly in my life as a devotee – not always as spectacularly, but often enough that I’ve come to understand that certain principles are at play. I’ve seen, for example, that when the need is real and we humbly ask for God’s help, He willingly provides.

A job in response to a prayer
But I evidently still had much to learn about money and grace, and in due time God taught me a difficult lesson.

In the late 1990s, I was able to make a living as a writer and editor in Silicon Valley. But when the high-tech industry experienced a down-turn in 2001, the company I was working for struggled and my work fell by the wayside. Following 9/11, my other clients reduced their spending, and I found myself essentially unemployed.

I prayed for help, and the next day a friend told me of an opening in the department where she worked at Stanford University. I happily took a part-time job helping the department manager.

My boss was a wonderful person. Before work each morning, I would pray to be able to make her day easier by being supportive and cheerful, and offering her God’s friendship. I loved that job, and I stayed for two years. But then the department trimmed its budget and my job was eliminated.

Both a wonderful and confusing time
For the next six years, I had a terrible time making a living. Why? I can think of at least six reasons, all related to mistakes I had made in the past. But I don’t think it helps to dwell on our mistakes, since what ultimately matters is the lessons we learn from them.

After I left Stanford, I applied for hundreds of jobs for which I was highly qualified. I went to dozens of job interviews that seemed to go well – yet nothing resulted. I had countless responses to my ads on Craigslist, but I was never hired. I began to run up debts.

I had a reading with a Vedic astrologer whose predictions had proved accurate over the years. He told me that I was in an inward period of my spiritual life – “on pilgrimage” – and that I was “invisible” to employers.

It was a wonderful, yet a deeply confusing time. I was writing a book on fitness, based on Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings, and my work on that project brought me joy. But the satisfactions were balanced by a growing sense of frustration over my inability to make a living. Over the years, I had developed an excellent resume, with testimonials from respected companies, and two degrees from Stanford. I had a handful of regular clients who gave me just enough work to keep food on the table, but little more.

I reach the end of my rope
The time of testing stretched to six years. After five years, I had another astrology reading and learned that I had entered a period when it would be possible to make a living. Yet months passed after I entered the “money period,” with no change. I realized that my Guru was capable of holding up my astrology chart, and with a gentle smile, ripping it to pieces, if it would help me learn a needed lesson.

Just when I felt that I had reached the end of my rope, I had a vision in meditation. I saw a young man with brown skin and long black hair standing in front of a gray stone hut, high in the Himalayas. He wore a simple wool robe, and it was obvious that he had nothing, only a crude rock shelter and food. But the smile on his face was radiant. I realized from this vision that it was possible to be sublimely happy while having almost nothing materially.

The vision reminded me of how I had lived 30 years earlier, in the early days of Ananda Village. At the time, I owned just two pairs of pants and two shirts. When one set of clothes was dirty, I washed them in the shower and set them on a fence to dry. At Christmas one year, Swami Kriyananda drew my name in our Divine Mother gift exchange. Someone told him that I only had two shirts, and he gave me a pale-blue long-sleeved cotton turtleneck. I loved that shirt – it felt wonderful to wear it, and I was sad when it finally wore out.

Two important realizations
Whatever the lesson of this test was, I wanted to learn it completely, so that I wouldn’t have to return to it again. I wrote to Swami Kriyananda, “I am glad that my Guru is uncompromising.” His secretary replied that Swami had read my email, and had said he understood.

Some weeks later, I had a further realization. I wrote to Swami Kriyananda, “I have come to understand that I am in this world for only three reasons: to love God, to serve His work, and to live simply.” I sent the email and forgot about it. I would have been content to receive no reply. Even if I became homeless, I felt that I had learned an enduring lesson.

A week later, nothing had changed. Then I received an email from Kriyananda’s secretary. He said that Swamiji had read my latest email, and that he had said, simply, “Very good.”

I can’t tell you how much those words meant to me. It was the most precious message of my life.

A regular flow of work
The sequel is that, bright and early the next morning, the phone began to ring off the hook. The same Craigslist ad that had failed to elicit a job for six years was unleashing a torrent of offers. It was scary how many people were calling and asking me to work for them.

From then on, I’ve had a steady flow of work. But the lesson, of course, didn’t end there. It wasn’t as if Divine Mother said, “You’ve learned your lesson – now you’ll be able to find work easily.” I found that the flow of work continued to the extent that I affirmed, over and over, the purpose of my life: to love God, to serve His work, and to live simply.

Reflecting on the loving help that Swami Kriyananda and Ananda had given me over the years, I felt a strong desire to give back. I began participating more in Ananda’s work, by singing in the choir and two small groups, by writing, by volunteering in the Ananda community garden, by helping the community manager, and by tithing. And to the extent that I offered my service cheerfully, from my heart, I found that I was blessed.

The most difficult, yet rewarding lesson
At age 69, I see that one of the most rewarding lessons we can learn on the spiritual path is to go along with God’s way of doing things. We naturally would like to think that we can plan our lives logically. “I will invest so much energy, and I’ll receive this much in return.”  We hope to find security by gaining control over the material circumstances of our lives.

My six-year test showed me that all the money in creation is contained entirely within Divine Mother’s purse. When I serve God’s work, the sense of abundance increases. But when I forget the threefold purpose of my life, I find the flow of opportunities reduced to a trickle. Abundance, I realize, comes by opening ourselves to its only source, in God, through our love and service to Him.

Related reading:  Money Magnetism – How to Attract What You Need When You Need It by Swami Kriyananda. To order click here

30 Day Essentials for Career by Jyotish Novak. To order click here

Nayaswami Rambhakta lives in the Mountain View Ananda Community. He is the author of a book on fitness and sports training by yoga principles as taught by Paramhansa Yogananda. To go to his website click here

When people are facing a challenge the most common reaction is to try to protect the status quo. What do people usually ask for in prayer? — health, money, security, a job, protection for those close to them. If you step back and analyze it, these are just ways of telling God, “Don’t change anything in my life.” Or, perhaps, “Make me more secure and less vulnerable to change.”

Everyone has to deal with major tests — disappointment, illness, loss, approaching death. As devotees, we should try to use change as a means of growth. Props such as drugs and alcohol, commonly used to dull the mind and hide from problems, are no longer an option for the seeker. The goal of the yogi is not to avoid change but to use every event to become free from attachments and, ultimately, from all ego-identification.

Most of the stress and pain associated with change is the result of wishing that things be other than they are. Learn to accept life and much of the anxiety brought on by change will disappear. (See visualization at end)

Positive reactions bring positive results!
One of the worst traps is to let change throw you into a mood. Moods take away your objectivity and ability to act and to master the lessons that this school of life gives you. It’s very important to find ways to keep your mind positive and free of negativity — exercise, service, prayer, affirmation, and curbing the tendency to allow moods to develop are great aids. Dump your negative mood as soon as you’re aware of it, before it grows big and destructive.

Paramhansa Yogananda gave us a powerful prescription for moving quickly through life’s trials and knowing how to deal constructively with change: he recommended that we learn to stay “even-minded and cheerful.” Even-mindedness helps us to be happy, but it does much more than that. It gives us the clarity and strength to learn our lessons and to become freed from maya and the endless cycle of reincarnation, which repeatedly plunges us into alternating waves of happiness and misery.

How do you achieve this state of mind? First, commit yourself to being happy under all circumstances. Then watch your reactions to events. As soon as you catch yourself being pulled down, reaffirm your decision to be happy. You may not be able to change the events, but you can control your reactions, which alone will transform your life. Positive reactions bring positive results!

Learn to accept that whatever comes to you is for your ultimate good. The truth is that you attract the situations that will help you learn needed lessons. The law of karma states that, good or bad, you will get exactly what is coming to you. Learn also to accept yourself with all your abilities and weaknesses, and you will discover a great source of strength.

For real power, however, go one step further – learn to be grateful for everything that comes. One of the secrets of the universe is to be grateful for everything. Through gratitude, you begin to live with faith, not fear. Then, don’t dwell on yourself, but think more of others and their needs. And don’t dwell on past events or future plans. By staying in the here and now, you will realize that you can be happy just as you are.

What are “legitimate” prayers?
Prayer is an especially powerful tool for dealing with change as long as the prayer is for something “legitimate.” What are legitimate prayers? It depends on whether the purpose is to remove an obstacle, such as hunger or homelessness, which prevents you from thinking about God, or simply the desire to add one more distraction or possession to your life. When you pray for things of this material world, make sure that those requests are stepping-stones to forming a deeper relationship with God. You can pray for necessities but it’s important to learn to discriminate between “necessary necessities” and “unnecessary necessities.”

If your prayer is for something legitimate, then it will be answered. If it’s not a helpful prayer, then quite likely it won’t be answered. Why should God become a partner to delusion and provide something that’s not helpful? Understand that to pray properly, you must align your will with God’s will. That takes a lot of discrimination. Swami Kriyananda often says that people are quite willing to accept blessings from the Divine, but are much less willing to offer their lives to God’s will. And yet self-offering is the main condition for receiving blessings in the first place.

The ultimate purpose of prayer is to disengage the soul from the ego and the hypnotic power of maya. Always make the essence of your prayer the wish to release yourself or someone else from the net of delusion. If you do that, even if you pray for something on this material plane, the power of God will be behind your prayers.

Every test: can our will be broken?
We can’t really understand the subject of change without understanding its relationship to will power. One might say that the science of religion that Paramhansa Yogananda brought to the West is the science of the proper use of will. The philosophy and various techniques that Yogananda brought are like pearls. The string that binds them into a single necklace, the element that goes through all of Yogananda’s teachings, is the proper use of will.

Yogananda said that every test is a challenge to see if our will can be broken. We quit when we get to a point where we’re no longer willing or able to put forth the energy required. We need to develop our will power until it is strong, deep, and continuous—then the whole of creation will turn itself around in order to fulfill our prayers.

How do we do that? Yogananda gave us a universal law: “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” This law is absolutely central to his teachings. There is an infinite reservoir of energy and grace ready to flow through us. Will is the switch that unleashes this unstoppable flow. In fact, the secret of success in all life is the positive and continuous use of will.

Every day, simply by saying “yes” to life’s smaller challenges, we have numerous opportunities to develop and strengthen our willpower. Say “yes” when faced with that nefarious little voice that says, “I’d rather not get up to meditate today;” or “I’m too tired to exercise;” or “I’d rather not make the effort to understand that person; he’s so confused.” Accepting such opportunities develops will power and expansiveness. So make it a point to always say “yes.”

An irresistible force of attraction
Most people come onto the spiritual path not because they’ve developed great love for God, but because something in their life has become intolerable. Others turn to God out of fear. But, even that has its purpose. By turning toward God, they form a connection with a higher power, and a relationship that is like the warmth of the sun melting a block of ice. Through meditation and devotion, the ego slowly dissolves and love for God becomes the dominant force in our lives.

Deepening your meditation and your devotion are the most important things you can do to prepare for and respond constructively to change. Tune into the joy and peace that lie deep within you. When the mind is still, you can gain new perspectives on your life. It is from these profound inner insights that true understanding comes.

Daily meditation is the way to find these deeper states. Especially important is the practice of meditating every morning and evening. In the morning, meditation prepares you to face the day with inner calmness and joy. At night, it helps you to release everything and offer all your attachments back into the divine light.

We’re like iron filings moving closer to a magnet. At first we’re pushed from behind by winds of trials, but as we get closer to God, we fall under the magnet’s influence and are pulled more and more strongly by His love, until the force of that attraction becomes irresistible. Then, as we reclaim our own higher reality as children of God, we begin to see Him reflected back in everyone and everything around us. Then change — even the most anxiety-producing change—becomes merely another expression of His omnipresent love.

Visualization for Accepting Change

The following visualization will help you accept change with calmness and enjoyment. Visualize yourself floating near the shore in a beautiful blue sea. The sea is calm, the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing gently over the water. Gradually, the waves begin to increase in strength. Now, they are tossing you about. At first you find this annoying and wish they would stop. But now you realize that you can’t control the sea. As you relax, you begin to accept the waves and enjoy the ride they are giving you. You see that they are playing with you. Stay in this state of enjoyment for a while.

Now feel that your vision is floating up above the sea and looking down on your little body. As you look down from this height, you see that the waves aren’t really big at all. From this higher viewpoint, the sea actually looks quite calm and filled with beautiful blues and greens, and little whitecaps. All is incredibly beautiful. You see that the ocean of life is your friend and your supporter.

Now turn your gaze toward the horizon endless miles away. The line where the sea meets the sky never changes. Concentrate on this line and try to feel that underneath the waves of events, you never change. You are always peaceful, always calm, always joyful. Release all attachments, all desires, all regrets. Float now in this vast ocean of contentment and bliss. When you are ready, let your mind come back to a point of concentration at the spiritual eye, between the eyebrows.

From the video, Meditation Therapy for Stress and Change, Crystal Clarity Publishers, and Clarity Magazine articles: 1998, 1992.

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Worldwide. Nayaswami Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order Worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

Growth: “The factor of will is paramount in life. Will is the chief condition of growth.” Yogoda Introduction Booklet: Its Fundamentals, by Paramhansa Yogananda (1923).

Adolescence: wrong choices and wrong company
My own journey to the right understanding about happiness, though in some ways atypical, presented many of the same challenges young people experience today. The main difference was that when I was growing up, my father was in the military and our family moved around – I lived in Europe and Asia as well as in the United States.

When I was very young, my family was my main environment and, even if we moved, I felt safe surrounded by their love and support. Adolescence is rarely easy, and for me it brought the usual confusion, uncertainty and concern about self-image. There were some wrong choices and wrong company, but I had the good karma to avoid the really harmful delusions of looking for answers in drugs, sex, and alcohol. (I remember arguing with friends about drugs – telling them that I didn’t want to be less conscious, I wanted to be more conscious.) Mostly, I remember it as a time of intense discomfort with myself. I couldn’t make the self I felt inwardly match the self that I saw in the mirror.

At some point in my youth I became convinced that moving to a new environment was an opportunity to present a new, improved version of me, and that I could leave behind the things I didn’t like about myself. It was an optimistic attitude, but every time I tried to change I discovered that inwardly I was the same. Wearing different clothes or trying to be something other than what felt natural to me just made me feel silly and self-conscious. It became clear that my inner challenges would always be with me. That was the beginning of understanding that true happiness had to do with consciousness, not outward circumstances.

Anyone can wash dishes or move chairs
Like most adolescents, I looked to the people around me to understand how to be happy. I could feel that there was more to life than the short-lived thrills of outward experiences; I could feel goodness in people and expansiveness in nature. Within myself I experienced a love and awareness that was much bigger than anything I could see in the people and circumstances around me. I didn’t have strong religious or spiritual role models, so it is understandable that I didn’t look for answers in that direction. But I was surrounded by very strong examples of selfless service.

Because I was shy, offering to serve was a way for me to feel secure in new or challenging situations. Anyone can wash dishes or move chairs. Being useful in simple ways doesn’t require great talent, just willingness. Many of my happiest memories involve experiences that put me in a place of self-forgetfulness. Anything that caused me to lapse into self-involvement felt superficial and small compared to the expansiveness I felt in service.

From a young age I planned to be a nurse—it was the only life that made sense to me—and I read all the books at the library about nurses who dedicated their lives to caring for others. There were many experiences of serving in Girl Scouts, as a hospital volunteer, and in YMCA and Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camps.

I was learning that happiness comes in self-forgetfulness and in being true to my inner, expansive self. Finding a true teacher in my guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, brought the pieces together and enabled me to go beyond my budding personal philosophy into a deeper understanding of a universal truth: happiness comes from within.

We choose to be miserable or happy
Today, as a teacher in the Ananda Living Wisdom School in Portland, Oregon it is my joy to be part of a school that offers the understanding and skills young people need to find true fulfillment. The Portland school is part of Ananda’s Education for Life system, which is based on principles taught by Paramhansa Yogananda and set forth in Swami Kriyananda’s book, Education for Life (EFL).

Swami Kriyananda explains that most modern education was developed with material success as the goal. The EFL system, on the other hand, is founded on the principle that what people really want from life is not the mere symbols of happiness, but happiness itself, a state of inner fulfillment not dependent on outward circumstances. According to Yogananda, we all have the power to choose happiness. “Events are neutral,” he tells us. “Whether they appear happy or sad is due entirely to the attitude of the mind.”

In the EFL elementary grades, we try to help children become aware that happiness is a choice, and that they can make choices that move their energy towards expansion and happiness rather than towards pain and suffering.

“You can knock it down, if you want”
A typical example involved a young girl, age 6 or 7, in our Portland school who frequently found life and school challenging, and usually blamed the difficulties on others. Gradually we helped her to understand that no matter what happened, it was her own choice to be miserable or happy.

A revealing moment came when her mother overheard her “instructing” her four-year-old brother that he had the choice to be happy or sad. She used as an example an incident her brother had actually witnessed—the time she had gone to her room in a huff after being disciplined by her father, but then later decided she’d rather choose to be happy.

Another instance involved a child, age 7 or 8, with an overblown sense of drama; he became very loud and expressive when things didn’t go his way. Any little thing could turn into a crisis.

One day, after he had focused a great deal of energy building a tower out of blocks, a younger child came and knocked it down. He was so stunned that he didn’t cry. The teacher immediately came over and helped the younger child express how much fun it is to knock things down, but she also encouraged him to ask permission before he knocked down someone else’s creation. The older boy (to everyone’s amazement) still didn’t yell or cry – he simply started building the tower again.

When he finished, he cheerfully announced to the younger student: “You can knock it down if you want!” This was a real victory for him, and an important step toward learning to choose happiness.

Years of hard financial stress
When my husband and I decided to homeschool our three children, there was no EFL school in Portland. But I was then a Yogananda disciple and a student of his teachings. Intuitively, I used many EFL principles within the home and in teaching our children.

I recently asked my two younger children (ages 13 and 17) whether they ever thought their happiness came from outside themselves. They readily agreed that happiness depends on inner consciousness, not on material possessions or other worldly achievements. Surprisingly, however, my son (age 17) recalled some years of very hard financial stress (which, of course, my husband and I had tried to keep from the children) and remembered thinking, during that time, that everything would be okay if we just had a lot of money.

I also remember feeling the same way. That period of financial stress extended over a long period of time and eventually brought important karmic lessons. But at the time I struggled, not always successfully, to stay calm. I was still fairly new on the path, with young children, and meditation was sporadic. However, by clinging to the Guru, I always knew that the crisis we were facing, though extremely challenging, would eventually pass.

My son’s memory of the financial concerns, and my obvious tension about it, opened the door to a wonderful discussion. I discussed with my two younger children how hard it is to maintain your inner happiness during times of crisis, if you haven’t already made a deep commitment to living that way all the time. The challenges I faced in trying to hang onto inner happiness and peace of mind when conditions were difficult show that mere belief in the principle is not enough. We need to make a serious commitment to living consciously in that reality, day by day, so that it becomes our natural way of being.

The worldly message is flawed
One point my children agree on is that their father and I have given them strong examples of selfless service. Today they all serve happily wherever they can. Just as I did when growing up, they too have experienced the joy of serving others and forgetting the little self. In the EFL curriculum, service is an integral part of the curriculum for all ages, but is particularly emphasized for teens.

By experiencing inner joy in service to others, young people begin to understand that the worldly message of outward fulfillment is flawed. They become aware  that the pursuit of happiness begins and ends in the same place: within their own self. To discover at a young age the infinite source of happiness is a deep blessing that can save them from years of suffering.

Lorna Knox is a founding member of the Ananda Portland colony and serves as a minister there, as well as a teacher at the Portland Living Wisdom School. She is the author of two books published by Crystal Clarity Publishers. Her latest project is writing a curriculum guide for Education For Life teachers. She and her husband have three children, ages 21, 17, and 13.

Growth: “Many times what seems like disaster may be a golden opportunity for your growth as a human being.” Talk by Swami Kriyananda, San Francisco, 1994.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

A delusion, then, is a widespread misperception of the actual state of things. All delusions suggest distorted images of reality. Worst of all, they cause us to seek fulfillment in means that always prove to be, in the end, mere shadows.

The “great delusions” are classically three in number: wine, money, and sex. To that grouping I have added another two: the desire for power, and for fame.

Wine (Intoxicants)

Wine includes any intoxicant whose effect on human awareness is depressing or deadening, and addictive. Intoxicants are (as the word implies) toxic, and reduce one’s ability ever to relate realistically to objective circumstances. For even when people recover from their alcoholic hangovers, they find themselves less able than before to cope with their difficulties.

“Wine” doesn’t include medication — anesthesia, for example, — nor the medicines people take to reduce severe physical pain. But even pain medication can become addictive by prolonged use. Addiction is the most particular danger of drinking any form of alcohol. And although some people claim that marijuana and various “hallucinogenic” drugs are non-addictive, they present at least the danger of psychological addiction.

Escaping reality by numbing one’s awareness
Those who aspire to superconscious awareness and inner soul freedom should shun, if possible, anything that dulls one’s awareness. What makes such things delusions is that they promise escape from reality by numbing one’s awareness of it. For this reason people will often seek refuge in sleep or over-eating. However, such a “way out” is no better than that of the legendary ostrich, which hides its head in the sand at any approach of danger.

The spiritual path, on the other hand, far from being an escape from reality, offers the only way out of delusion itself, and to the only abiding reality there is.

Paramhansa Yogananda: abstain from alcohol
Many people, of course, take alcoholic drinks not to deaden their awareness, but simply to be sociable, or for the stimulation they say it gives them. Any stimulant, however, brings one under the sway of duality. Raising one’s spirits by artificial means leads inevitably to a corresponding lowering, later on.

It is a mistake, therefore, to take alcoholic drinks even socially. And although the negative effects of light drinking may not be immediately noticeable, they will become so, in time.

A student of Paramhansa Yogananda heeded for a time the Guru’s counsel that she give up drinking alcoholic beverages. After a few weeks, however, finding it socially inconvenient to abstain from alcohol altogether, she began drinking a little beer or wine at parties. When she saw the Master again a few weeks later, he looked at her sternly and said, “I meant all alcoholic beverages!”

Desire for Money

The next of the “great delusions” is money. Money is not, as tradition tells us, “the root of all evil,” for we obviously need it in countless situations. In this sense, money is a “necessary necessity,” to use an expression of Yogananda’s. We should try, therefore, to make good use of it. Money itself isn’t the problem. The problem is people’s desire for money, which can indeed be called “the root of all evil.”

False hope of finding happiness
Money never, in itself, gives happiness, nor can we derive happiness from anything we buy with money. The desire for money is a principal delusion for the simple reason that it offers endless opportunities for satisfying the desire for everything we hope (falsely) will bring us happiness.

Rich people, unless they are free from attachment to wealth and use their money primarily to help others, are seldom happy—statistically, they have been found to be less happy than poor people. Possessing wealth opens up the possibility of “satisfying” an almost limitless number of desires. The rich person is likely to devote himself to looking around for “what more” possessions and exciting experiences he can accumulate in his attempt to find happiness. Yet happiness eludes him completely, for as my Guru succinctly put it, stating the law that governs desires: “Desires, ever gratified, are never satisfied.”

An affirmation of lack
Indeed, the very desire for things is itself an affirmation of lack, which in turn is a kind of poverty. We must understand that the source of all happiness lies in oneself, never in outside things. To nourish it, we must develop an inner life.

Sexual Desire

What about the third of the “great delusions,” sexual desire? Sex is, indeed, the greatest delusion of all.

“I want something from you”
What is delusive about sexual attraction, above all, is its reaffirmation of ego-consciousness. Men and women, feeling a natural attraction to one another, hold particularly to the thought, “I — you.” That thought “I” predominates, of course: “I want something from you.”

For the devotee who wants to know God, ego is the supreme delusion to overcome. Ego is the post to which every other delusion is tied. As long as we engage in any activity (including thought) with ego-commitment, it will be difficult to escape from ego-consciousness, and the inevitable suffering it brings.

Constant thoughts of lower fulfillment
Indulgence in sex is physically and mentally debilitating — especially so for men, but also, in time and particularly with over-indulgence, for women. It keeps one’s energy firmly locked at the base of the spine, whereas the higher one’s consciousness is centered in the spine, the greater one’s inner contentment, freedom, and happiness. Sex, moreover, binds people’s consciousness, in a way that no other delusion does, to constant thoughts of lower fulfillment.

Sexual indulgence prematurely ages people. It prevents them from exercising fine discrimination, and from enjoying finer esthetic pleasures. But worst of all, as I said, it binds people firmly to the post of ego-consciousness.

Benefits of overcoming sex-consciousness
The difficulty involved in overcoming sex-consciousness is more than compensated for by the freedom that comes with inner conquest. The resulting benefits are:

a) greater energy
b) greatly increased inner happiness
c) great inner freedom
d) better health
e) much greater mental clarity
f) an ability to give love equally to all
g) joy

How can one overcome this natural urge? Not by shame, nor by disgust or any other negative attitude. One must learn to see it as a perfectly natural function, placed there by Nature to ensure the continuance of the species. The way out of it is first to think of it as a holy act — one, however, which can be transcended by even greater holiness in the thought of God.

The next thing is to be more impersonal in one’s behavior toward others, especially those of the opposite sex. To be impersonal does not mean to be cold. One can be very kind in one’s treatment of others. The important thing is not to want anything from them for oneself.

A natural magnetism exists
The next most important thing is to recognize and accept that a natural magnetism exists between men and women. It can affect them, in one another’s company, even if they are physically blind. The principal conduits for this magnetism are the eyes, and the sense of touch. It would be unrealistic to tell men and women to stop mixing with one another, though this is ideal for monks and nuns. However, to rise above this instinct, or to keep it under control, one should avoid gazing too closely into the eyes of the other sex.

Many scoff at the existence of sexual attraction simply because he (or she) meets so many of the other sex who exercise for him no attraction at all. Nevertheless, it’s always possible that an affectionate relationship may exist between certain people from past lives. That sense of special bond may awaken within him (or her) at any time.

Is there an age when the attraction is lessened? My Guru said, “No age. It is always present, until with God’s grace one has truly overcome it.” My sister-in-law once mentioned that her little daughter, aged about three, had a special giggle reserved just for little boys. And old people, even when the instinct is physically dormant, often show a special affection for young people of the other sex.

Limit the field by marriage
Avoid especially, therefore, the common practice of hugging others or touching them unnecessarily. A hug may be only a sign of friendship, but why express feeling for anyone through such a volatile sense as touch?

The best way, for most people, is to limit the field for themselves by monogamous marriage. Only when a person can mix with relative freedom from any thought that sexual differences exist does he find it easy not to be drawn downward by this “greatest delusion,” as my Guru called it. Complete immunity comes only with spiritual advancement, and even then one must be careful until the state of nirbikalpa samadhi is attained.

Desire for Power

Beyond these three “great delusions,” there are two other major ones. Supreme among them is the craving for power. What makes this craving a delusion is, again, the accompanying affirmation of ego-consciousness. All delusions, indeed, endanger one’s peace of mind, strengthen the ego, and deepen one’s sense of isolation from others and from any sense of support from the universe.

The desire for power may be less obvious than the first three “great delusions,” but with many people this desire, too, is obsessive. Indeed, in our present technological age, the desire for power is, if anything, growing in strength as the opportunities for achieving it increase.

The thought of controlling others
Power might be compared to the manipulation of chessmen on a chess board, with this important difference: a chess player may preen himself on winning a game, but the manipulation of people awakens in the manipulator the thought of controlling them. This thought causes one to reaffirm constantly his own egoic consciousness.

A true leader views his position as an opportunity to serve others. He therefore identifies himself with those whom he leads, which lessens any sense of separation he may feel owing to ego-consciousness. If, however, a person exults in exerting power over others, he will necessarily think in terms of forcing them to obey him. Power, therefore, necessarily increases a person’s ego-consciousness, making it more difficult for him to broaden his spiritual identity.

Dependence on the Good Opinion of Others

Last, I’ll mention a delusion that is actually three delusions in one. They come under the general heading of “dependence on the good opinion of others.” This little bundle of delusions combines the craving for recognition, for fame, and for worldly prominence. Anyone who harbors any of these cravings will seek support from others for his ego, rather than developing confidence in his own inner Self.

To be centered in the inner Self is the spiritual ideal. To base self-recognition on the opinions of others is to build a house on shifting sand. The greatest error in courting their good opinion lies in the fact that such dependence strips away any solid basis one might have for self-understanding. Even when others may be right — and especially where their opinions of you are concerned — you should depend on your own self-perception before God.

From Religion and the New Age and Other Essays.

Growth: “Self-control in all things is the direction of true growth.” The Art and Science of Raja Yoga by Swami Kriyananda.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

The size of your garden doesn’t matter — whether it’s grand in scale or a tiny plot of land. Maybe all you have is a balcony. The spirit you instill in your garden is what counts. That spirit is what will be reflected back to you and others.

What is the spirit of gardening?
What is the spirit of gardening? When we give our love, care, and energy to a garden we experience a greater awareness of life. A garden can be a channel for our kindness, creativity, nurturing energy, and attunement to nature and the Divine behind all creation. Gardening can thus bring us to an ever-deepening respect and reverence for all life.

The long-cherished story, The Secret Garden, beautifully illustrates the spirit of gardening. In that story, a walled garden has been locked for many years, but a little girl, Mary, finds the buried key and explores the garden. After a time, Mary brings two new-found friends into the secret garden (along with the gruff old gardener). Through loving care, toil, and a spirit of discovery, they restore the garden to a state of beauty and inspiration.

Each child has a unique approach to the garden and a unique way of uncovering its beauty. Through the experience of gardening, they each learn, grow, and are deeply rejuvenated physically and emotionally. Gardening changes who they are and how they relate to all of life. Finally, as the story ends, the children’s life-changing perceptions, gained through their experiences in the garden, help them bring greater happiness to others.

Where do you begin?
How does one create a garden, and experience the spirit of gardening in real life? There is no set formula where you must begin. Simply start with WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU. Then your heart will be in what you do.

Make a list that includes all that you want in your garden. For example:

• Do you want to be surrounded by greenery, or greeted by colorful flowers?
• Are you longing for a vegetable garden, an herb bed, or an orchard?
• Is it your desire to have a garden that attracts birds or butterflies; or that has a pond for frogs, fish, or water lilies?
• Would you like trees for children or cats to climb, or to provide shade on hot summer days?
• Would you prefer a secure place for dogs to run and play, or a tree house where children can gather?
• Do you need a place to entertain friends or have family gatherings?
• Are you longing for a personal refuge, a quiet place for contemplation or meditation?

Now prioritize your list, so the most meaningful items can become your initial focus.You usually can’t bring in one item without including some of the others, but at least you will have a place to start and more clarity about the process.

The four aspects of our being
We all have four aspects to our being: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. These four aspects can be represented in the garden. I’ll give a few examples:

The physical person
A person who is very physical — plays a lot of sports, loves exercise, and always wants to be on the move — may want the garden or yard to have features that allow for physical activities or sports. What would you like to do at home? Is there room to play volleyball, croquet, basketball, or to swim? How about a workshop? The physical act of working in the garden — pruning, planting, weeding, raking, and composting — may also be very fulfilling to the physical person.

The mental or intellectual person
A mental, logical, or intellectual person may enjoy the visual lines of a garden, or features that spark curiosity or observation, more than he or she enjoys flowers. For such a person, the garden will need to appeal to the mind, to have an orderly or methodical layout, practical items, or elements that make sense.

What garden features fit in with the practical elements of your lifestyle? What interests you? Are you interested in a vegetable or herb garden, statuary or art, stonework, or organic gardening and composting? If your real thrill is in propagating plants, the perfect “garden” for you may be a greenhouse, a place where you can spend time in a controlled environment with your projects. Also, you may appreciate such practical items as an automatic watering system.

The emotional or feeling person
A feeling, emotional, or intuitive person will want to enjoy the feeling imparted by the garden: peaceful, happy, abundant, exotic, relaxing, playful —or maybe a variety of feelings.

If you have such a nature, what flowers, shrubs, or trees make you feel good, or evoke fond memories? Did your mother, father, sibling, grandparent, or friend have a favorite flower or garden feature that you would like to include around your own home? Also important, are there plants or elements with unpleasant memories that you want to avoid?

The spiritually oriented person
The spiritually oriented person will value a garden with qualities that uplift the spirit, expand the awareness, and are reminders of a higher consciousness or of the Divine—qualities such as inner peace, expansiveness, harmony, divine love, or joy.

The design of this garden could reflect simplicity and tranquil beauty, incorporate statues as reminders of the divine reality, or include an area for meditation or contemplation. Such a garden may have fluid lines, graceful trees or arches, sweeps of color in varying shapes and hues, and a soaring, expansive view.

Every person, of course, is more than a single quality — physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. The combination and strength of the qualities is what makes each person, and each garden, unique. Keep in mind, also, that if two people are creating a garden together, what is very important to one person may have little significance to another. Try to select features that will make the garden fulfilling for both of you.

Excerpted from The Spirit of Gardening,* Crystal Clarity Publishers. *The book from which this article is excerpted provides more details than could be included in the article and beautiful color illustrations of different types of gardens.

Nancy (Netri) Mair is a professional landscape designer and the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award in landscape design by the California Landscape Contractors Association. A longtime member of Ananda and the author of several books, she lives at Ananda Village.

To order The Spirit of Gardening from Crystal Clarity Publishers click here

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Sorrow has no objective existence. If you constantly affirm it, it exists. Deny it in your mind, and it will exist no longer. The “hero” in man is his divine or essential nature. To acquire freedom from sorrow, man must assert his heroic self. When the heroic element is lacking in a person’s mental make-up, his mind becomes amenable to all passing sorrows, but as long as the conqueror in man is awake, no sorrow can shadow the threshold of his heart.

Tears and sighs on the battlefield of life are the liquid cowardice of a weak mind. Life is nothing if not a continuous overcoming of problems. Every problem that awaits your solution is a religious duty imposed by life itself. There is no life that is not full of problems. Essentially, conditions are neither good nor bad; they are neutral, seeming to be either depressing or encouraging according to the bright or sad attitude of the mind.

When an individual rises above circumstances by the power of courage, all conditions of life, however dark and threatening, become like the blanket of mist that disappears with the warm glance of the sun. The sorrows of the normal man are not inherent in the conditions of life. They are born out of the weaknesses of the human mind. Awaken the sleeping hero in yourself, and no sorrow will ever darken your door.

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The sincere seeker, in contrast to the armchair “seeker” who wastes his life spinning intellectual theories, takes heart at the thought of the hard work before him. A true warrior, though afraid, plunges courageously into battle when the strength of his arm is needed. A true alpinist, though apprehensive of the sheer cliff he faces, sets out resolutely to conquer it. And the sincere truth-seeker tells himself, “I know what an arduous task it must be to achieve perfection, but I will give it all I have. With God’s help, success, surely, must be mine!”

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Secret fear creates tension and anxiety, and brings ultimate collapse. We must have faith in our ability. If we lack this quality, we can acquire it through determined and long-continued practice. First, we must identify our defects. If we are lacking in will power, through meditation and conscious effort, we can develop strong will power. If we want to overcome fear, we should meditate upon courage and, in due time, we shall be freed from the bondage of fear.

Through concentration and the practice of meditation, we develop the power to focus our attention. Continual practice will enable us to concentrate our energy upon any problem without effort—it will be second nature to us. This new quality will bring success in all undertakings, both spiritual and material.

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Instead of being overcome and discouraged when confronted with challenges, thank the Father for offering you the opportunity to see what you need to learn, and to develop the strength and wisdom to meet the challenge. Every day is a fresh opportunity to gather more exploits of heroism. Retire to your center of poise within, and commune with your Father there. He will show you the way.

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Affirmations for Courage
There is a right solution to every problem. I have within me the wisdom and intelligence to see this solution, and the courage and energy to carry it through.

God is within me and around me, protecting me, so I banish the gloom of fear that shuts out His guiding light and makes me stumble into ditches of error.

Calmness: the Source of Power

Calmness is more dynamic and more powerful than peace. Calmness gives the devotee power to overcome all obstacles in life. Even in human affairs, the person who can remain calm under all circumstances is invincible.

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The soul, made in the image of the Spirit, is ever calm and eternal. By worldly desires, an individual becomes identified with the weakness of the body and fears death and bodily limitations. No matter how long you have been meditating, if you still fear bodily diseases or death, you have advanced very little. You must meditate more and more deeply until you achieve ecstatic communion with God and realize that you are formless, omnipresent, omniscient—far above all bodily changes.

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Remember that God is always beside you, guiding and encouraging you. Learn to listen inwardly to His guiding voice all through the day. No matter what your work, if it seems exhausting, confusing, or impossible, just say to Him inwardly, “Father, this is your work. Willingly I give myself to serve You.” This will immediately release all tension, and the task will seem easy.

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A businessman seeking success must always keep his mind calm. Like a tractor, he must be able to move easily over ups and downs in the field of life. A businessman who is not over-elated by success finds that his concentration is not deflected from the path of even greater success. On the other hand, the businessman who becomes depressed by business failure loses the focusing power of his concentration, and thus is unable to make renewed efforts for material success.

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The moral aspirant should not be overjoyed when victorious over a mighty temptation, nor discouraged if he finds himself suddenly a prisoner of temptation. The resolute, even-minded moral individual moves steadily forward until he reaches his goal of complete self-mastery. He does not allow temporary success or failure to obstruct his way to moral progress.

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A devotee who, after a few years of deep meditation, acquires a divine joy, should not be over-confident in the lasting nature of that experience. Similarly, a devotee who meditates regularly but experiences a sudden explosion of restlessness should not become discouraged. The aspiring yogi must keep his mind steadily fixed on the inner perceptions acquired by meditation, and not allow his mind to be ruffled by temporary outbursts of joy or restlessness. Until a devotee is firmly anchored in the Infinite, he must steer his ship of concentration over both calm and rough seas. An unruffled calmness comes only through deeper and deeper meditation.

A devotee whose mind becomes like a rippleless lake, free from the waves of mental elation, sadness, and emotional disturbances—finds within himself the unruffled clear reflection of Spirit. His altar of calmness becomes the resting place of the ever-new joyous Spirit.

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Many people know the way to peace and permanent happiness but are slow to follow it. Make use of your spiritual training. If you want to live in peace and harmony, affirm divine calmness and peace, and send out only thoughts of love and goodwill. Live a godly life and the mere contact with you will help everyone who crosses your path.

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Affirmations for Calmness:
The moment my mind is agitated, restless, or disturbed, I will retire to silence, discrimination, and concentration until calmness is restored.

The light of Christ shines through me, and therefore my mind is clear. Order and harmony reign in all my affairs.

Confidence: You Are a Child of the Infinite

Man, having been created in the image of God, is the master of his own destiny, if he will but accept and use his God-given power. The only limitation on man is self-imposed, through his thoughts. It is well-known that “thoughts are things.” The statement in Proverbs, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” is a truth which has transformed the lives of thousands.

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If you have an inferiority complex, remember that success, health, and wisdom are your rightful heritage. Your difficulty can be overcome by determination, courage, common sense, and faith in God and in yourself. If you believe you are a failure, change your mental attitude at once. Be unshakable in your conviction that you have all the potential needed for great success.

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Cultivate the consciousness that the Divine Spirit, the owner of the whole universe and all of its abundance, is your own Father. You, as His beloved child, have the absolute right to possess everything He does. Never beg or pray for anything, but hold the thought that you have everything already, and that all you have to do is to seize it with the natural confidence of a child of God.

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No matter what your trials have been, or how discouraged you are, if you will make a continued effort to be better, you will find that, being made in the image of God, you are endowed with an unlimited power that is much stronger than your worst trials. Make up your mind that you will win, focusing all your concentration on ceaseless efforts to succeed, and you will surely be victorious.

Remember that your difficulties did not come to crush you, but to strengthen your determination to use your limitless divine powers to succeed. God wants you to conquer the difficult tests of life and to come back to His home of wisdom.

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There are many avenues through which outer influences percolate into the mind and form the inner environment. Watch the quality of the books you read. Watch the kind of people with whom you associate. Watch the influence upon you of family, country, and daily associates. Many people are unsuccessful because their families have infected their subconscious minds with paralyzing, discouraging thoughts, such as: “Oh John, no matter what you try, you make a mess of it.”

Disabuse yourself. Wake up! Affirm: “Whatever conditions confront me, I know that they represent the next step in my unfoldment. I welcome all tests, no matter how trying, because I know that within me is the intelligence to understand, and the power to overcome. I am willing to learn the lesson each experience can teach, and I am thankful for the strength and understanding developed by overcoming each trial.”

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Affirmations for Confidence:
As a perfect pattern for an oak tree is encased in the acorn, so a perfect pattern for my life was placed in me in the beginning. I shall endeavor to let this perfect plan emerge into manifestation without hindrance.

I know that each seeming difficulty is but a call to release the power which I already possess. As I express this power, I grow stronger and wiser.

* From the new book, How to Have Courage, Calmness and Confidence, Crystal Clarity Publishers. (See ad on homepage).

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Life is a school and we draw to ourselves the events, circumstances, and relationships we need to help us grow. Every problem presents us with two choices—do we expand or contract our consciousness? Do we become defensive, self-protective, and blame others, or do we use obstacles as opportunities to become stronger, to learn, and to expand? If we contract our hearts, we experience pain, not because others have made us unhappy, but because pain is the inevitable result of excessive self-focus. On the other hand, when we expand, we automatically experience happiness and fulfillment.

The promise of deep fulfillment
Meditation is a process of expanding our awareness. Through meditation, we discover deep within ourselves the soul qualities of peace, calmness, and love—and an underlying joy that doesn’t change under any circumstances. In fact, it is really our longing for these expanded states that we hope to fulfill through our relationships.

This expansion of consciousness is the essence of spiritual growth, and our relationships can be an excellent catalyst in that process. When we nurture these expanded states in ourselves and in others, profound changes can happen in our relationships. Instead of demanding, even subconsciously, that others fulfill our “needs,” we can rest in the inner fulfillment and contentment we experience in a meditative state.

Thus cooperation replaces competition, and the joy of mutual giving replaces the tension of reciprocating demands. A great sense of relaxation comes as we realize that relationships are given to us primarily to help us learn and grow, especially in our ability to accept and to love. Relationships lived in this manner hold the promise of deep fulfillment.

Friendship: the purest form of relationship
Friendship is the purest form of relationship. We choose friends for the sheer pleasure of spending time with them. Most other relationships have some sense of compulsion—the sex drive of lovers, or the predetermined roles of a family.

You will strengthen all of your relationships if you make friendship the foundation. We automatically want the best for our friends; we take delight in their strengths, and overlook their weaknesses. We can laugh together with a friend, and, at times, cry together, and we understand that our friendship is more important than getting our own way. In Indian music there is a “king” note to which the musician returns again and again throughout the raga. Make friendship the “king” note for all of your relationships.

Close and enduring relationships like marriage need to be grounded in a strong foundation of friendship. Usually the first sign of the breakdown of a marriage is that the partners are no longer friends. Even with friends, and very important for all long-lasting relationships is an attitude of respect. It doesn’t have to be formal, but there needs to be a sense of honoring the integrity and validity of the other person. Respect and love grow from the same root.

Elements that build strong, healthy relationships:
Communication: Learn to really listen to your partner and friends. The more you listen to the thoughts and feelings behind the words, the more you will begin to commune in your communication. Be attentive not just to the words, but also to the eyes, the expressions, the tone in the voice, and the unspoken thoughts of the other person. For partners, deep communication is strengthened if you can share times of silence together, and even more if you meditate together.

Love and appreciation: It is important to demonstrate your love and affection. Relationships are like plants, which flourish when given enough light and water, and wither when denied these essentials. Love and appreciation are like sunlight and water for a relationship. Men, especially, need to be more aware of verbalizing approval and affection. Connections grow stronger when people feel appreciated.

Try to bring out the best: Unrealistic expectations are poison for relationships. Remember, it is only you, not others, who can make you happy or sad. Problems arise when someone can see no further than their own needs and desires. That’s why meditation, and the expanded understanding it gives us, can be so helpful.

The fewer demands you make, the better. Always respect another person’s right to be himself, and to think and feel a certain way. There is a subtle law of magnetism between people. If you want a person to change, don’t criticize what is wrong. Instead try to create a “magnetic opening” by modeling the right behavior.

In fact, don’t try so much to change another as to bring out the best in him or her. Think first of how you can help strengthen a person and only then, of how you can improve a situation. True intimacy develops only in an atmosphere of trust. It is only when people feel secure that they are able to change.

Share uplifting experiences: Your bonds with others will be greatly strengthened if you share experiences that are uplifting and expansive—things like walking in nature, helping others in need, or attending events where the mind is uplifted. When we are inspired, our auras begin to merge with those of our loved ones.

Overcoming problems:
We shouldn’t avoid dealing with problems in our relationships, but dealing with them only by confrontation will be counterproductive. Here are some important guidelines for approaching issues:

Don’t speak or act from negative emotions: Train yourself to calm down before you discuss a problem. Negative emotions, like some diseases, are contagious and they block communication. If you are emotionally agitated, take a few deep breaths and then consciously relax the area of the heart. This doesn’t mean that you can’t express your feelings, especially where truth is involved. But your communication will be much clearer if you calm yourself first. Clear expression, offered lovingly, can be very healing.

Emphasize points of agreement: Don’t use the words “always” and “never,” as in “You always do that,” or “You never do this.” This is one of the best ways to insure that a person will become defensive. Remember, other people tend to mirror back to you the emotions you project to them. It is best to start off a discussion by emphasizing points of agreement.

Look for true solutions: Don’t try to figure out a solution to a problem on your own and then present it to the other person as a fait accompli. One-sided declarations rarely solve anything. A true solution has to elicit the commitment of everyone. The essence of overcoming problems is very simple: Look for solutions in which each person treats the other as he or she would like to be treated. In the words of Jesus, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

As a first step, always ask yourself, “Why did I draw this problem? What should I learn from it? What do I need to change in myself?” If you’re not clear on these questions, you will keep repeating the same situation until you discover what life is trying to teach you. Once you’re clear about what the real issue is, then resolve to make whatever changes in yourself are needed. When you work on yourself first, you help open the space for others to make their changes.

Karmic patterns: Sometimes we face the same issues over and over again, often with different people. In the language of yoga, these are “karmic patterns.” Be thankful, not resentful, when these recurring patterns surface. Now, at last, you can begin to work on them. Our greatest enemies are those wrong attitudes that stay hidden and unrecognized in the shadows of our mind.

Once you’ve identified what needs changing, don’t dwell on the problem. Put your energy, instead, into working on the solution. Try to find the polar opposite of the problem and work on implementing that. If the problem is laziness, put out constructive energy. If it is selfishness, look for practical ways to give to others. And if it is continual conflict, find ways to create peace and love. Deep-seated karmic patterns are usually slow to change. Be patient with yourself and with others. Prayer is a great aid—ask God to help you.

A bonding practice
Relationships, like life, must have a center to which they return in order to gather strength. One of the most bonding practices for a couple is to meditate together. By returning daily to your own center, you will gather the strength you need to face all of life’s demands.

If you meditate with a partner or loved one, you might try this visualization in order to increase the love and harmony between you. Toward the end of your meditation, visualize a blue light at the point between the eyebrows. When you perceive the light clearly, let it expand, first filling the whole of your brain, and then gradually infusing every cell of your body.

As the light begins to expand beyond your body, see it surrounding and infusing your partner. Hold him or her in this light until it fills every cell, every emotion, and every thought. Let the light join your auras together. If there is any difficulty or tension between you, let the light dissolve it until there are no more shadows. This same technique can be done at a distance connecting you and others with a harmonizing energy.

From the following books and video: How to Meditate, 30-Day Essentials for Marriage, and Meditation Therapy for Relationships, Crystal Clarity Publishers. To order these inspiring products click here

Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Worldwide. Nayaswami Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi are listed under “Jyotish and Devi Novak.”

One of the great blessings of meditation is that I am less reactive emotionally and can now view situations more objectively. Gradually I am learning that it’s possible to remain centered and act with kindness even in harsh or chaotic circumstances, whether in my personal life or in my work as a Family Court attorney.

Do we reap what we sow?
A recent experience with a tenant in a rental house I own brought greater clarity around these issues. This tenant—a woman—was living in the house when I bought it. I was counting on the rent payments to help offset the monthly mortgage payments and was pleased I didn’t have to find a tenant on my own.

At first, this woman, who owned a small business, seemed reasonable and paid her rent on time. After a few months, however, she started paying the rent later and later in the month. Over the course of two years, she often experienced financial difficulties in her business and would fall behind in her payments.

My task, which I did not enjoy, was to call her whenever the rent was overdue. Whenever I called, I made a special effort to treat her with kindness and respect. I also prayed for her well-being. From the spiritual teachings, I assumed that if I planted “seeds” of love, kindness, and respect in my dealings with this woman, eventually I would “harvest” the same from her.

As the months passed, however, she responded more and more rudely. Often she accused me of being a “ruthless attorney” for asking for payment, in light of her financial troubles. I disliked her treatment of me but I assumed her anger reflected disappointment and pain about her business difficulties. I continued to pray for her and to treat her with kindness and respect, hoping that the seeds I was planting would eventually soften her attitude.

Toward the end of the two years, things worsened. Without my permission, she rented out one of the bedrooms in the house. By then, she owed three months back rent and refused to discuss any plan for paying the past due amount. There were no signs of improvement in her behavior toward me. In fact, she berated me each time I called and let me know she was paying other debts but choosing not to pay me.

After calling one last time, I served her with a notice to vacate and filed an eviction action. She moved out of the house, leaving it in a condition requiring major repairs.

Disappointed and hurt
I was hurt and disappointed in how things had turned out. I found myself questioning whether the spiritual teachings were even true. If they were true, why, then, didn’t she treat me with the same courtesy and respect I had shown her?  Why didn’t my kindness bring kindness in return? It upset me to think that she had perceived my kindness as weakness and looked upon me as someone she could manipulate.

Worst of all, I found myself wishing the same kind of negative treatment for her! I was ashamed of such thoughts and prayed and did japa whenever they arose. Nonetheless, my negative reactions persisted. When I meditated, thoughts of her behavior distracted my mind and prevented me from meditating deeply.

Gradually, over the next two months, through prayer and meditation, my feelings became more neutral. I felt more empathy for her, less focused on my hurt feelings.

Acting with non-attachment
Calming my negative emotions helped me understand that the spiritual teachings on “cause and effect” were true—the sages weren’t wrong!

But my understanding had been too simplistic. I now understand that when and how I reap the benefits of my positive energy depend on many things, including the strength of my magnetism, my tenant’s receptivity, and whatever karma I need to balance.

I may have behaved well in the situation with my tenant, but I certainly haven’t behaved well in all my relationships. Perhaps I had behaved badly toward my tenant in a former life. Or perhaps she was a “stand-in” for someone to whom I owed a karmic debt.

I had also lost sight of one of the most important teachings of the Bhagavad Gita—to relinquish attachment to the fruits of my actions. Meditation was helping me calm my emotions, but I was nonetheless very attached to my tenant’s responding a certain way.

Today I feel only compassion for my tenant for the suffering she experienced and gratitude for the important spiritual lessons I learned. As often happens, those who upset us the most turn out to be our most important teachers.

Emotional distress and physical pain
Not long ago I reached a point where the emotional challenges of my work as a Family Court attorney were pulling me down. Most of my adult clients are charged with child neglect or abuse. Some are incarcerated and many are emotionally unstable. I also represent abused and neglected children who are in foster care or with a family member pending the outcome of their cases. The eyes of every child I represent express deep sadness even when the child smiles.

Often I carried my clients’ pain and suffering in my own body, as either emotional distress or physical pain. Doing japa throughout the day was helpful, especially in dealing with my emotionally disturbed clients, but I needed something more.

Inner guidance: say healing prayers
At a certain point I felt the inner guidance in meditation to recite healing prayers whenever in the presence of others, and especially during my workday. The next day there were plenty of opportunities to pray for people. Whenever not completely alone, I would say the healing prayers I’d learned from Ananda:

Divine Mother, Thou art omnipresent. Thou are in all Thy children. Thou art in this person. Manifest Thy healing presence in his/her/their body, mind and soul.

Sometimes I used a shorter prayer: “Receive Lord in Thy light this child.”

Praying for others
In the courthouse hallway while waiting for my hearing to be called, I said healing prayers for my client and everyone who passed by. At the hearing, I prayed for the judge, his assistant, the court reporter, the opposing party—and everyone else in the courtroom. Anytime I didn’t have to speak I prayed. I found that I could listen attentively to others and pray at the same time.

While driving home, I prayed for all the drivers on the road, for my loved ones, my clients, my dog, and anyone I could think of who needed a prayer. Time flew as I drove 70 miles from the courthouse to my home.

When I arrived home I felt uplifted and deeply grateful in my heart. Surprisingly, my body and mind felt refreshed, even though I had worked long hours.

Amazing changes in everyone
Each day, whenever I could remember, I continued to say healing prayers, asking Divine Mother to bless all, to heal all. One day, I had twenty hearings that involved extensive contact with clients with major mental health problems. I prayed while listening to my clients and while waiting to speak at the hearings—and I was amazed by the changes I saw.

One teenage client arrived for his hearing looking very distraught. While sitting next to me, his body shook and his face twitched. He moved his hands constantly—either snapping his fingers or hitting his thighs. Within a few minutes of praying for him he was much less distraught and his twitching and hand movements had slowed considerably.

Another time, while waiting for a hearing to start, I was confronted by the mother of an adult client in prison. She had previously phoned and asked for copies of all documents in her son’s case and had not been pleased that I could not provide them without her son’s consent.

Now, when we met for the first time outside the courtroom, her eyes were angry and she breathed heavily. I immediately started saying healing prayers for her. Soon her breathing calmed down and she began to relax. During the hearing, I sent healing prayers to everyone in the courtroom. Afterwards, my client’s mother thanked me and has not called since.

Effects of healing prayers
I find that healing prayers help both my clients and me. Healing prayers take the burden of my clients’ pain and suffering from my shoulders and place it on God, where it truly belongs. Now, whenever my heart starts to ache over a client’s situation, I am reminded to pray and the pain dissolves.

As I feel less burdened by my clients’ suffering, I am freer to help them in ways that I can—primarily with my advocacy skills. As the instrument I too am blessed. I feel more compassionate toward my clients; sometimes a sweet positive energy suffuses our encounters. Where previously I often saw them as a burden, they are now reminders of God’s wisdom and love.

My clients are helped in other ways. Previously my adult clients were very angry and blamed “the system” for removing their children from their homes. However, with time and many healing prayers, they now pull their lives together and are either reunited with their children, or consent to the children’s being adopted or placed in foster homes. Most of my cases are now settled without a trial.

A divine experience
Recently I was driving home after a long day of visiting clients, both children and adults. I was tired, the traffic was noisy, and my business clothes were uncomfortable. Suddenly, my heart was soaring. Tears of joy filled my eyes and I heard myself say, “I love God.”  Never before had I felt such bliss.

Healing prayers have opened my heart to the flow of God’s love through me to my clients. In the process, my heart has become more open to God’s love—and to loving God. That is the greatest blessing of all.

A spiritual seeker since 1991, Daniella Nitya Ferrari is currently the leader of the Ananda Meditation and Book Study Group in Sedona, AZ.  In her work as a family law attorney, she represents indigent clients and abused and neglected children.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

I choose to be thankful
So, it may not be surprising that, as a yoga teacher, I specialize in yoga therapy for musculoskeletal issues and bring to my work an expertise and compassion borne of experience. Rather than be resentful of what appears to be more than my fair share of injuries and illnesses, I choose to be thankful for what I have learned and for the blessing of being able to help others reach for optimal health—physically, mentally and spiritually.

I would like to add that I have never thought of myself as someone prone to illness and injury–I have always seen myself as healthy and hardy. You might even say that I had to work really hard to get some of my injuries. As an athlete, ballet dancer, horse rider and trainer, I often pushed myself to limits most people would have avoided.

Injuries led me to my dharma
Looking back, I can see the hand of God and Guru clearly helping me, through my many injuries, to fulfill my dharma as a yoga teacher. The injuries cut off some of the other avenues I might have taken—professional dancing, modeling, acting—pursuits that easily could have prevented me from having a spiritual life.

It was a back injury in the early 1980s that led me to Ananda. After a completely unhelpful visit to an orthopedic surgeon, I was feeling very low regarding my situation. Unexpectedly, I received a flyer from the Ananda San Francisco House announcing  a three-month intensive yoga teacher-training program. I had no desire to teach yoga, but while staring at the flyer I had an unexplainable “knowing” that taking this course would be a lifeline out of my downward spiral.

And it was! I had no idea the course would cover not only yoga postures but also yogic philosophy, spirituality, and the concept of a guru. I learned that everyone had a guru and I looked forward to finding mine.

It took several years for me to realize that I had already found my guru:Paramhansa Yogananda. By then, I had opened my own yoga studio in San Francisco and was teaching yoga.

A blessing not to feel pain
A source of deep fulfillment in my work as a therapeutic yoga teacher is the smile on peoples’ faces—the “light bulb” moments when pain has disappeared or is suddenly no longer acute. Often it’s a blessing  not to feel pain for any period of time. Many students have found pain relief, healing, and have avoided surgery through the therapeutic yoga sessions.

In a therapeutic yoga session, the problem presented by the student is usually physical, but the healing is both physical and spiritual, and often unexpected. This scenario is especially true with students new to yoga who would never seek spiritual counseling.

One example was a student who complained of a chronic shoulder problem. After I led him through a series of restorative poses, he began to open up and mentioned a disagreement with his daughter. Apparently feeling more comfortable, he then launched into a discussion of the issue underlying his shoulder problem: his Catholic background, his deepening feelings for Yogananda and the yogic spiritual path, and the conflicts these feelings caused him.

I spent most of the rest of the class quoting the Bible and pointing out the deeper meanings, and showing how they parallel the yoga teachings. The student found the parallels very reassuring, and by the end of the session his shoulder felt fine. He is now exploring Yogananda’s teachings more deeply with the goal of becoming a disciple.

A way to accelerate spiritual progress
I try to meet people where they are and to help them accordingly. However, when working with devotees, I can talk openly about meditation, the subtle energies, prayer, and spiritual growth as part of the healing process, which can lead to faster results. Devotees already understand the benefits of yoga postures, how they can help us sit for long periods of meditation and redirect our energy upward to the spiritual eye.

One student needed help with his spiritual practices and guidance on a hip problem. After observing him, it became clear that one practice would resolve both concerns. I instructed him to keep his attention at the spiritual eye at all times to the degree possible.

On a physical level, this upward focus lifted his torso enough to take the load off  his hips, and helped correct his hip and postural problems. As for his spiritual concerns—focusing more frequently at the spiritual eye throughout the day energized his entire spiritual life. This is a practice Yogananda strongly recommends for all devotees as a means of accelerating spiritual progress.

I put my trust in Yogananda
In my work as a therapeutic yoga teacher, I always pray to Yogananda  and ask him to guide me in how to work with students so that each one receives what he or she needs. I say, “Master, this is your student, you tell me what to do.”

By this process I have spiritualized my work and it has become a form of sadhana. Sometimes the guidance I receive makes no sense to me but it always turns out to be the right thing.

Once, for example, one of my “student-teachers” was guiding an older woman with a history of lower back pain. Following the teacher’s guidance, the woman was doing leg movements and stretches that had the potential to strain the lower back. My first impulse was to rush over and “correct” the situation. Wanting to be respectful to my students (especially when they are guiding others), I paused and asked Yogananda what to do.

The answer was to “do nothing.”  I asked again to be sure and the answer was clear: “Do nothing.” So, I put my trust in Yogananda and let the situation unfold. Later in the class, when the students gave feedback, the older woman expressed her gratitude and enjoyment for the helpful leg exercises her teacher had given her—the ones that “common sense” told me would not be good for her. I smiled and inwardly thanked my guru.

A different perspective on pain
As I’ve learned to rely more on God and Guru, and to understand that I am not the “doer,” I have become a more effective therapeutic yoga teacher. I receive the inspiration I need and teaching is much easier, with better results for my students. Also, by attempting always to practice the presence of God, I naturally begin to spiritualize everything I do, including my work.

As for my own healing journey, in the years since I first found Ananda, meditation and the practice of Kriya Yoga have given me an entirely different perspective on pain, which allows for a different experience of pain. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, “even a little practice of this inward religion will save you from dire fears and colossal suffering.”

Nicole DeAvilla Whiting lives in Marin County with her husband and two children. She teaches Ananda Yoga at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village and in Marin County, where she also leads an Ananda meditation group.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Dear ——:

It is a mistake to think that you will ever find the perfect mate. Life, outwardly, cannot be other than a compromise between the ideal and reality. This is true in every walk of life, even in the ashrams of saints, for the world is limited, relative, and otherwise conditioned in countless ways.

Seek perfection, therefore, within yourself. The more you depend on outer circumstances to give you perfection, the more you will find disappointment. Remember, too, that your path to perfection depends not only on inner growth, but on the application of that inner growth to outer circumstances.

In other words, a relationship that seems lacking in personal fulfillment may be a great spiritual blessing for the opportunity it gives one to be a channel for divine love and service to help the other person. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Service and sacrifice, not outward fulfillment, are the essence of spiritual development.

In divine friendship,

Swami Kriyananda

Excerpted from, In Divine Friendship, Letters of Counsel and Reflection.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Courtesy
Courtesy is
a healing balm;
it can soothe troubled hearts,
and win cooperation
even from the hostile.

The secret of right understanding
Understanding comes by sympathy,
and still more by empathy.
As undampened notes on a piano
will resonate with the notes
played on other instruments,
so kindness and generosity
remove the “damper” of egotism,
helping one to
“resonate” with others
in their pains and difficulties.

First, be true to yourself
Inner peace is like oil:
It lubricates the machinery of life, and enables
everything to function smoothly.

Reflections everywhere!
People mirror back to you
the feelings you hold toward them.
If you want to be liked, first of all,
show others that you like them.

The loving heart
The heart is like
the door of a building:
The air and light of truth can enter only
when the door is kept open wide.

Face life’s trials
Trials are like dogs:
They lose heart
when we confront them, but give eager chase
the moment we turn and flee.

Spiritual progress
Spiritual progress should
be relaxed and natural,
not forced. Think of it as a growing tree
reaching out gradually to touch
a greater reality. One reason for not
judging others is that one learns thereby
not to judge himself. Remember:
Nature never makes sudden leaps.

Loyalty
Make loyalty the
rudder of your barque of life.
If you stand firmly by high principles, not even
the strongest gales of wrong opinion will be able to
blow you off course. Be loyal above all to
truth as you most deeply understand it. You will
then keep growing in strength and understanding.

True security
The wise have ever said that
one should place his full
trust only in God.
To rely too much on outer circumstances
is like expecting stability of a ship at sea.

You are part of the vastness of life
Accept reality as it is,
and try to harmonize yourself with it.
Truth, like Mohammed’s mountain,
won’t come to you: You must go to it.
In another sense, of course, there is
neither coming nor going:
the pilgrimage you must make is
to plumb your own inner depths.

True understanding
Dogmatism is like still photography.
True understanding is like cinematography:
It helps one to perceive constant change,
and then to observe that change
as proceeding from a single beam of eternal light

Our bridge of ascension
Divine grace, like a ray of light, is needed
to illuminate the darkness of this world.
Only on rays of grace can we rise,
and only by so ascending can we escape
the dense fog of cosmic delusion.

* From the forthcoming book, Images of Wisdom, Seeing God in Everyone, Crystal Clarity, Publishers.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Q. Peter, you started a medical clinic two years after moving to Ananda Village. Since then, you’ve had the responsibility of running a busy rural clinic while also providing medical services to clinic patients. In addition, you’ve often had to respond to medical emergencies in the evening after work and on week-ends.

Under these circumstances, how has it been possible for you to put God first in your life?

A. Since becoming a devotee, I’ve always tried to see my life as belonging to God. Interestingly, I started doing that much more consciously during a period when I was facing more challenges than I thought I could handle.

Q. What was happening at that time?

A. It was during  the late 1980s. The clinic had been open for about five years, but we were still just barely hanging on financially. I was working all the time, doing everything from seeing patients, managing the finances, and being on call most nights.

In the midst of all this, local doctors were criticizing me for starting a clinic with so little medical experience, claiming that we didn’t provide good health care. Then county officials began pressuring us to move to an approved structure, which we simply couldn’t afford to do.

That was the last straw. I began asking myself, “Is it really my karma to be a doctor? Are all these problems a ‘sign’ I should be doing something else?” I started thinking seriously about closing the clinic and wrote Swami Kriyananda for advice.

After consulting with him, I understood more deeply that it was God’s will for me to be a doctor, and on some level I relaxed. I realized that it didn’t matter if the challenges felt crushing, or if my ego was bruised by the criticism from other doctors. What was happening was God’s will for me–His way of making me stronger.

The problems still existed, but I became more resilient in dealing with them because I no longer struggled against them. I relied more on God’s strength and guidance for solutions. It was an important turning point in surrendering to God’s will.

Q. Another important aspect of putting God first involves consciously acting as His instrument and channeling His love to people. Is this something you do in your work at the clinic?

A. Yes, but I’ve had to learn to do it. My inner relationship with God has always been very devotional, and it’s been easy for me to feel love for God. One of my main lessons in this life has been learning to give that same love outwardly to people.

At the clinic we see about 15,000 patients a year, most of whom are society’s dropouts—indigent, homeless, and often mentally ill with difficult personalities. They’re people you have to work at loving—and I’ve had to work at it.

Q. How did you “work at it?”

A. When seeing patients, I would consciously try to feel God’s love in my heart– and then project that love out to them. At the same time, I would also pray for them. Gradually, my heart opened to them, especially as I began to see how deeply healing it was for patients when I worked with them in a loving way.

Q. Specifically, how was it healing for your patients?

A. It had a calming effect on  those who were agitated or disturbed emotionally. In general, their physical and mental health improved, and they had a greatly improved ability to make constructive decisions about diet, smoking, exercise, intoxicants and other things that affected their physical and mental health.

Q. In your many years of practicing medicine, there must have been times when you did your absolute best but something nevertheless went “wrong.” How does that affect you? Have you been able to develop non-attachment to the “fruits” of your efforts?

A. For someone like me who really takes what he does seriously, non-attachment has been very difficult. Many times something has gone very badly for a patient and I thought maybe I was at fault. Usually it turned out that I wasn’t.

But I’ve realized that if I let my concentration lapse for 30 seconds, I could miss a key piece of information and the patient could end up being harmed, or even dying, from my mistake.

Q. Was there a turning point when you became stronger in non-attachment?

A. Yes, about six or seven years ago. I was injecting cortisone into a patient’s back to relieve pain and accidentally punched through the muscle into the lung. The patient ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung. It’s the kind of thing we routinely warn patients about, but it was horrifying to actually have it happen.

The patient made a perfect recovery, but it felt terrible to have hurt someone who trusted me. Still, I’m grateful for the experience.

Q. What did you learn?

A. I realized more deeply the message of The Bhagavad Gita—that in this world we have no choice but to act. Things like this are going to happen even though we try our best. We have to understand that the results of our actions are completely in God’s hands, and always give what we do to Him.

If your work involves a lot of exposure and a high level of responsibility, as mine does, you’re going to make “big” mistakes, not little mistakes. I have to be willing to accept that and surrender it to God. He’s the Doer. The results of my actions belong to Him.

Q. When did you first understand that God was the Doer and that He was working through you in all health care situations, even when the outcome wasn’t what you want?

A. This is perhaps the most important lesson on the spiritual path, and it’s been a gradual process. It started when I was an intern and had no choice but to depend on God because often I didn’t know what to do. After praying, I would know what to do. Even today, when with a patient, if I don’t know the solution, I always pray.

But there’s a deeper level of seeing God as the Doer, when you begin to feel God flowing through you, silently guiding your thoughts and actions. Only for the last five or six years have I begun to feel that more continuously.

Back in the first days of the clinic, I tried to think that way, but it was mostly affirmation. More recently it’s been the reality.

Q. Have there been any dramatic instances of this?

A. Yes. Sometimes I’ll be talking with a patient, trying to figure out what’s wrong, and suddenly find myself talking about something I know absolutely nothing about. I’ll look it up afterwards and find that what I’ve told the patient is correct.

It’s very humbling and always reminds me who’s in charge. But I don’t think I’m unique. If we see what we’re doing as a service and an offering to God, the superconscious will sometimes infiltrate our thoughts and behavior.

Q. Paramhansa Yogananda said that willingness is one of the most important spiritual attitudes. Has willingness been a challenge for you?

A. Willingness has been my hardest challenge because I like things to be organized and predictable. It’s sometimes difficult to stay willing when it’s 6:00 p.m., I’ve already seen 25 patients and would really like to go home—and suddenly there’s one more patient who really needs to be seen. My battle is to not do the easy thing by sending the patient to the hospital emergency room or telling him or her to come back the next day.

As devotees, the pitfall is to decide that we have only so much energy—and no more. Just when I think I’ve done everything I can do, Divine Mother often says, “But there’s so much more you can do,” and then shows me that’s true.

Q. If being willing leaves you with less time for meditation, wouldn’t that adversely affect your spiritual progress?

A. Not necessarily. Recently the clinic went through a very challenging 3-year period when it looked like we might close. We’d been doing very well for a long time. Then gradually we lost most of our top medical staff and couldn’t replace them because finances had become very tight.

For a while I was the only one seeing patients and working 16 hours a day just to keep the clinic afloat. I couldn’t meditate much. Yet it was a period of real growth for me spiritually.

It helped me understand that God will work with us in the ways we need for our spiritual development, and we shouldn’t think that the only way we grow spiritually is by meditating eight hours a day. We just have to be willing to do what God asks of us.

Q. How did the experience change you?

A. I had to confront a number of my fears very directly. The clinic was something I’d worked on for almost 30 years and it looked like it was going to fail. I could have ended up financially ruined. There were so many ways this could have happened.

More than once I felt like I was going a little crazy with the whole thing. I got stretched far beyond what I thought my limits were, and yet, looking back, I can see that God and Guru protected me the whole time.

Q. I imagine you gained a much deeper level of trust and faith in God?

A. The experience definitely took concepts like “faith” and “trust” and made them much more real because I’d lived it. Repeatedly I had to say, “God, you’re going to have to protect me because I’m going far beyond what I think I can do.”

And God came through and produced a miracle. From any standpoint, the clinic should not be standing today.

Q. Didn’t you need a certain level of faith and centeredness to successfully go through a test like that?

A. For sure. Being a devotee for many years gives you the momentum to get through things that would have been insurmountable earlier on the path. You’ve already gotten through many challenges, and you’re more confident that God will carry you through this one too. You learn that God will always protect you, provided you do your best and keep moving forward, no matter how hard it gets.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

If we had the blessing of being suddenly drawn up into that superconscious state and seeing our lives from that perspective, we would realize how utterly trivial it is whether we sign that big contract or get a raise, whether somebody insults or praises us, whether people understand us or not. We would realize that these things just don’t matter.

In the superconscious state, we understand that this world is a delusion, a cosmic dream. We are no longer attached to the body, to the opinions of other people, or to any outward realities.

Live centered in the Self
The whole spiritual life is a process of learning to live superconsciously. To do that, we must become completely centered in our higher Self because that’s where our power and growth begin.

In human terms, you can accomplish a great deal if your will power is strong and you direct your energy with enough positive expectation. But beyond a certain point, the ego can’t accomplish very much unless it is attuned to the superconscious, and it takes a lot to tune in.

You must recognize that there is a higher aspect of consciousness, even of your own consciousness, over which you have no control. You are offering yourself up into something you can’t command, but the consciousness that comes, which is your own higher Self, doesn’t impose itself on you.

You must first be receptive. But when you have the courage, determination, and faith to accept whatever it gives, you find that life’s greatest tragedies can become doorways to the greatest joy.

Right attitude: the main requirement
Years ago there was a movie, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which depicted St. Francis as a sort of glorified hippy, loping dreamily through fields of flowers—nothing at all like the life he actually led, which included many tests and trials.

Many people were inspired by the movie, but if their understanding of the spiritual path remained on that level, they wouldn’t last very long. The spiritual path is very challenging and you’ve got to approach it with the right “weapons.” Those “weapons” are the attitudes we take on when we come onto the spiritual path.

Many people think that the spiritual path is seeing visions and having all sorts of wonderful phenomena, but basically the spiritual path is right attitude.

You can’t run away from difficulties
How do you react when a test comes?  I once said to a brother disciple who was going through a big test: “Well, after all, you’re young. You have at least 40 more years on the path, and you’ve got to get through this sooner or later.” That practically threw him into a pit of despair. That’s because he didn’t have much courage.

You won’t be worthy of God if you try to run away from your difficulties, if you aren’t willing to do whatever work is necessary to achieve freedom. To succeed on the spiritual path you need that level of courage that allows you to think, “No matter how long this test lasts, it will pass in time so why worry about it?”

When a nail is buried in a board, you don’t know the size of the nail, but if you keep pulling on the nail, eventually it will come out. Similarly, you may have very little bad karma left to pay off, or you may have a lot more.

What does it matter? Work at it, and sooner or later it will pass. Remember, God will never let you down if you love Him and keep seeking Him.

Love: the divine wavelength
Love is the most important quality of all. Love is what pulls us out of delusion.

In fact, we can’t put one foot in front of the other on the spiritual path until we begin to develop that devotional quality, that self-giving love—the sweetness, tenderness, and softness of feeling that come when you’re no longer protecting the ego. Ultimately, we must learn to approach God with the total trust and faith of a child.

The first duty of every devotee is to keep alive the lamp of devotion. Without love, you won’t grow spiritually because love is the wavelength on which the Divine functions.

“Maybe I can do better”
An attitude of learning is also fundamental. Always be ready to listen to what seem like silly points of view; they may have something to teach you. We need to feel there’s a great deal of truth we don’t yet know, and to be open to that truth, regardless of the source.

In fact, I’ve seen that the moment I write somebody off as too stupid to teach me anything, God uses that very person to teach me something. We need an attitude that says, “Maybe I can do better; maybe I can learn from this situation.”

Willingness is pleasing to God
Willingness is one of the most important attitudes and something Paramhansa Yogananda always emphasized. When you’re willing to give up your own desires to serve God, when you’re willing to put yourself out that extra bit, when you’re willing to say “yes” instead of “no” —that’s what pleases God.

Remember the principle: “The greater the will, or willingness, the greater the flow of energy.”  The more willing you are, the more energy you have.

When you have an attitude of openness, of saying “yes,” you find that things start to go well for you spiritually because willingness gets your energy moving in a positive direction. The goal of the spiritual path is to get all of your energy moving in that direction.

Calm, cheerful acceptance
Right attitude means being able to accept everything impartially. Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, “What comes of itself, let it come.” That doesn’t mean only the good things; it means anything.  And it doesn’t mean whipping yourself up into a false sense of well-being.

The basic attitude is to be “even-minded and cheerful”—an attitude of neutrality, of calmly and cheerfully accepting whatever God gives.

In the spiritual life, attitude is more important than anything else and it’s something we can keep growing in until we reach the perfection of union with God.

Seek higher guidance in daily life
How do we bring more of the superconscious into our lives?  We must understand that there are two levels here: daily life and meditation. In our waking state we can lift our consciousness up and be guided by the superconscious level.

Always try, if a problem comes up in your life, to put your mind at the point between the eyebrows, the center of superconsciousness. Then withdraw a little into yourself and try to feel in your heart what the right solution is.

Let that calm, inner feeling be your guide. Otherwise all the reasoning in the world can lead you astray, no matter how right it looks. The heart and intellect need to work together. You will be surprised at how easily you can do this once you have the practice, and how much better everything flows.

Open yourself inwardly in meditation
But the other side of this is meditation. We must go deeper and deeper in meditation, because it is there, really, that we come into contact with the superconscious. The more you open yourself inwardly in meditation, the stronger that ray will be on all levels of life.

Years ago, when I was busy building Ananda, I was going through a time of great trial, giving classes in city after city, and putting out as much energy as possible just to stay afloat. The only person helping me was my secretary who answered letters, sent out book orders, and helped set up talks and advertising. One day she decided it was just too much, found another job, and quit without notice.

I felt so hurt that a friend of mine would betray me like this. I had all the tools to reason my way out of it, but my feelings kept getting in the way. I would tell myself, “Well, it’s all a dream,” but it just didn’t work. My mind was going more and more into a tailspin. So I said, “O.K, my rational mind isn’t capable of getting out of it. Let me meditate.”

I meditated and when I became very calm, I asked God to come to me. Suddenly I felt this great peace and love come over me. When I felt that presence very strongly, I said, “God, I have this problem, but I don’t want to think about it anymore. You just show me how I should feel.”

You think in a different way
All of a sudden, a wave of understanding came upon me, and I saw the situation in a completely different light. Suddenly I was concerned for her because she was a friend who had made a mistake.

I was so concerned for her that I no longer thought about myself. I even went and visited her. I discovered that she was ill in bed, and I did what I could to make her feel better.

That may seem like a preposterous way to behave when she was the one who left without notice, but God can give us these superconscious attitudes that make everything look different.

When you’re in tune with the Divine, you think in a completely different way. You look for the hardest jobs, not the easiest; you look for what you can give away, not what you can get; you look for how you can help people, not how they can help you. You don’t think in terms of, “What am I receiving?”  but, “What can I do to please you more, God?”

A deep memory
You will only be happy if you live, day by day, the realities of the superconscious level of your own existence. We carry within us the deep memory of where we came from in God. It’s a quiet voice in the background, hardly to be noticed. By living in tune with it, we become that.

Excerpted from Intuition for Starters and The Light of Superconsciousness, Crystal Clarity Publishers, and from the following recordings: “Right Attitude, The Basis of the Spiritual Life”; “Tools of Superconscious Living”; and “Good Friday.”  To order a CD or MP3 of these talks, click here or call Treasures Along the Path (530) 478 7656

Resources:
To view Swami Kriyananda’s recent talk on meditation, click here
One meditation expert called it “the best short talk on meditation” she’s ever heard.

For information on Swami Kriyananda’s book, Awaken to Superconsciousness, click here

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

You don’t have to be a slave to your bad karma. It was energy you put out in the past that created that karma, and if you put out the necessary energy now, you can get rid of it. Every hardship you meet with the right attitude and energy makes you stronger and helps to rid you of some of that karmic burden.

Accepting what is
There are two things we can do to get through life’s difficult periods. We must learn to accept the difficulties and also to overcome them—and we must learn to do both.

When I say that we must learn to accept the difficulties I’m not saying that if the world treats you badly, you should get a hangdog expression and wait to be kicked again. You don’t have to do that, but you don’t have to fight back either.

Success depends to a great extent on one’s willingness to accept reality as it is: as something to be faced if you don’t have the ability to control it. When you accept reality as it is, your energy becomes positive and that positive mental attitude, if directed wisely, will help you transform failure into success.

The real source of success
When I speak of success, I mean the kind of success you attain by sheer hard work. There’s success that comes to you on a platter due to past good karma, but if you just passively ride that wave, you’re not making progress. The energy you put out is the real source of your success.

I knew a group of people who were starting a company and kept talking about all the millions they would make. But I could see that they weren’t putting out the energy necessary to get those millions, and the business never did get off the ground.

Often the most successful people are those who have had the most to overcome because they’ve had to put out a great deal of energy to transcend their challenges. So don’t worry about the obstacles you’re facing. See them simply as things to overcome. If you put out the necessary energy, the results will take care of themselves.

Focused, solution-conscious energy
Success at anything depends upon concentrated energy. One-pointed concentration, if directed with will power and energy, generates a magnetic field that can attract success.

So, do everything with keen interest. People who work with only half their mind focused on their task never really succeed.

Equally important is solution consciousness. Don’t mix with people who only see the obstacles, but with those who find solutions and succeed in their efforts. At Ananda, when I see people with problem consciousness, I keep them at a distance. I don’t mean to be unfriendly to anyone, but low energy people can pull you down with their failure consciousness.

The solutions to our challenges are in the ether. When you’re solution conscious, you put out the kind of magnetism that attracts success, and a higher force begins working in your life. You’ll be amazed how often answers come to you, sometimes out of the blue.

Similarly, when you become deeply concentrated, as in meditation, you reach a superconscious level of awareness, and at that level, God can work through you. By becoming open to His inspiration, you can accomplish things well beyond your self-perceived abilities.

People are really seeking happiness
What we’re really looking for when we think of success is happiness. Many people think, “When I have money, I’ll be happy.” The truth is that people with a great deal of money are often among the most miserable.

Nor does human love bring you happiness. That, perhaps, is the greatest delusion of all. Everybody wants a mate and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing in itself, but it’s such a compromise with what the heart really wants. We’re looking for perfection of love, and we won’t find it in another person. In fact, you won’t find fulfillment in anything unless you have it in yourself.

The success you’re looking for doesn’t depend on anything external; it depends on your attitudes and inner self. The more you can share whatever life gives you with others, the more you will find the kind of success you’re really looking for—which is happiness.

Seek the best for everyone
I was in Sicily a few years ago, and I went into a shop to buy a hat to protect me from the sun. I don’t usually wear hats so I asked the woman there, “Which hat do your customers like best?” She said, “They pay me and they leave. I have no more interest in them.”

I said, “Here you are, wasting eight hours a day just thinking of how much money you’re going to get, and not seeing these people as an opportunity to make friends? You’re not finding happiness in your work because you’re not thinking of how to make other people happy. What is the use of living like that?” I left, and I didn’t buy a hat.

The next year I was again in that town. I happened to be walking past this woman’s shop, and she was outside. She came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, “Thank you. You taught me a very good lesson.” She was weeping because it was so important to her to have understood that simple principle.

When a person seeks the best for everyone, actively and generously, his chances of finding happiness are great. This is why Jesus Christ said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” When you give, you feel more bliss because you’re expanding beyond the little ego.

Leveling out the duality
The world has a million ways of involving you. The more you get caught up in the outward expression of life, the more you will have to deal with the duality of it. Every success will be balanced by a failure, every victory by a defeat.

But the more you can remain even-minded and cheerful at all times, the more you can level out the duality and achieve the kind of success that is worthwhile. It depends entirely upon your courage and equanimity, especially your refusal to be upset when things don’t go well.

When William the Conqueror landed in England, the first thing he did was fall in the sand, and a gasp of horror went through his entire army. They were thinking, “Oh, what a bad omen. We’ve come to conquer a country and the first thing our leader does is fall down flat on his hands and knees.”

But William was a man of extraordinary courage. He said, “I am so determined to grasp this country that I have taken it in both my hands!” And everybody cheered.

If you take everything that comes to you with that kind of attitude, the worst failure can bring success. I’ve had many failures in my life. I’m grateful for them because they’ve helped me to develop the power to find the success I truly want.

Seek success in the Self
How do you develop that power? The more you can live centered in the spine, the less anything will affect you. This is why Kriya Yoga is such an important science. Kriya helps you to get control over the energy in your spine and to raise your energy and consciousness completely toward God, who is beyond the states of duality.

When your mind is settled within, you find that you are always happy because you experience the joy of the soul, to which there is no opposite joy. You are joy. It’s not something you achieve by getting anything.

Hold your consciousness up
Always remember that God is not up in the heavens. He’s part of your own consciousness. The more you open yourself to Him, the more whatever you need— opportunities, inspiration, understanding—will come to you. But if you turn away from Him, even a little, you begin to lose that grace.

You have to hold your consciousness constantly up to Him. If you can do this, you’ll find success in whatever you do, and also the highest kind of success — realizing God’s bliss within.

From a July 26, 2008 talk in Los Angeles and Material Success through Yoga Principles.

Resources:
How to Be a Success by Paramhansa Yogananda

Our fathers were U.S. Army officers stationed in Germany, and we were on a day outing with a babysitter and our little sisters. When it was time to go home, we thought it was quite cute and funny to hide, and we hid so well they couldn’t find us.

By the time we realized that the babysitter had left, believing we were ahead of her on the path, the tourists were gone, it was dark, and we were lost. I knew we would be in trouble at home, but wandering alone in a gloomy, empty graveyard was more frightening than any punishment I could imagine.

Fear-consciousness: a common habit
I got out of that mess through the kindness of strangers, and as I grew up my fears grew too. I had a pretty normal, middle-class American life and rarely did any of my fears actually materialize. But fear consciousness is a common human habit, so I kept my fears close to my heart and carried them with me.

The Bhagavad Gita promises that even a little practice of meditation frees one from dire fears and colossal sufferings. When I came onto the spiritual path and my life became consciously God-centered, much of my fear consciousness left. There was a feeling of restfulness and calm as I let go of anxiety about myself. But some habits take a lot of energy to shake loose.

The second big fear challenge occurred after I became a wife and mother. Our neighbor’s beautiful 16-year-old daughter died suddenly. It was a shock to everyone who knew her, of course, but particularly difficult for parents. This is the nightmare all parents share. I watched my own children with gratitude mixed with terrible fear. My husband and I also had to deal with their fear – as they faced death for the first time in their young lives.

My sensitivity to the emotions of the neighborhood was acute during this period. It was not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There was another young neighbor girl fighting cancer and an adult neighbor who had died recently. I could sense the entire block vibrating with confusion, fear and doubt.

Acting with love
The downward pull of the emotions around me needed to be reversed, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I knew, however, how Swami Kriyananda responded to challenges: with great energy and will power. So I walked around the block at night and prayed for every household with deep concentration. I visualized every home bathed in light. And I prayed for a way to act.

It came to me that our grieving neighbor loved roses and a few hours of research revealed that there was a species of rose that shared her daughter’s name. My husband and I thought it would be a small, but meaningful gesture to buy the roses for the family. After more research I found that the roses were only available in Canada and could not be shipped across the border.

I was crushed to have the momentum for the lovely idea stopped so soon. But my husband was more solution conscious – he thought we should go to Canada.

As this idea took hold, I could feel my consciousness shifting into a lighter, more positive direction. It was not a small undertaking, packing up three young children and making the arrangements. We contacted friends and neighbors and received enthusiastic support as well as financial donations for the roses. The trip was fun and successful.

We returned with two rose bushes in the car and lighter hearts. The gathering at which we presented the roses was emotional, but full of love. I tried to put our sympathy into words and invited everyone to add their energy by signing the accompanying letter.

Fear loses its grip
The willpower and energy we poured into acting with love helped to shift the consciousness of an entire community. Others responded with gratitude and relief, as they saw a way to express their sympathy in an expansive way. We were not able to lessen the grief suffered by that family, but we were able to show them that love and friendship were still a part of their lives. And fear lost its grip on our hearts.

Now I act quickly in response to fear. As soon as those thoughts creep in, I move the energy upward and out, away from my little self and into loving concern for others. I’ll write a sincere note of gratitude to a friend, or pour energy into a task that is helpful. I don’t want fear thoughts to settle in and get comfortable.

Keeping company with high-minded souls also helps to change fearful thinking. A friend, the director of a charter school in California, told me of meeting with community leaders and educators to discuss the drastically reduced availability of funding.

Fear and pessimism were strong, but she explained how exciting it was to feel the shift in consciousness as they all began to add up the “intellectual capital” they had access to, and the “creative capital” they shared. The atmosphere of fear and loss changed to one of abundance and infinite possibilities.

New hidden layers of fear
I haven’t totally shaken the fear habit, but now I recognize it and act to change it. Recently, I found new hidden layers to my fears when my husband was facing serious health issues. For weeks we had appointments and tests with four different specialists. Every doctor thought the likelihood of cancer was high, and it took awhile to work through the lists of possibilities and find the answer that ruled out cancer.

One day, during all the doctor visits and tests, I realized my breathing had become shallow, my posture was rounded and my arms were frequently folded across my chest. I was trying to protect myself from outcomes I didn’t want.

“It’s not myself I’m fearful for,” my little inner voice said, “it’s just that I’m afraid for him.” But it’s a trick – all of our fears are rooted in fear for ourselves.

I certainly didn’t want to see my husband suffer, but my thoughts were also crowded with concern for myself: “How could I support the family, care for a sick spouse and see to the needs of three children? What if I couldn’t do what was needed? What if I wasn’t strong enough? What if I failed – as a wife, as a mother, as a disciple? If he dies, how will I face life alone? “

So I began to check myself. I would roll my shoulders back, breathe deeply and affirm, “I welcome everything that comes to me as an opportunity for further growth.” * This simple change in posture was enough to open the energy flow and allow more expansive thinking. I focused on my heart and upper body, because that was where I felt the impulse to cave in. I visualized my heart open and strong and felt calmness replacing fear.

The power of prayer and surrender
As I felt calmness return, I was also able to see God’s hand in every place I had previously felt fearful. Solutions and reassurance seemed to flow through every situation.

The teachers I work with stepped in without hesitation whenever I had to be gone. I unexpectedly had the use of my mother’s car to get to appointments. Anonymous gifts appeared that helped make Christmas possible for my family. The doctors were kind and generous about discounting our bills when they found out we were self-employed.

I could feel the prayers of friends and family all around us. Even the weather seemed to be a blessing as winter storms closed down the city and offered my stressed and worried family the opportunity to be home together and feel comforted, just when we needed it the most.

We now know that my husband does not have a life-threatening cancer, but a chronic arthritic condition that is serious, but manageable. We also know the power of prayer and surrender to God’s grace in all things. I was ready to accept whatever the diagnosis brought because it was so clear I wasn’t alone, and I learned that everything we need comes to us when we can welcome whatever God is giving.

Speculation about the future is natural at the turn of a new year, and as world events unfold, the future, ever uncertain, holds frightening possibilities. Above all, I try to offer my life into God’s hands and to live in the realization that there is no place or circumstance outside of God’s love. Every effort I make to know God more completely brings greater joy and freedom from all fear.

*Affirmations for Self-Healing by Swami Kriyananda

Lorna Knox is a founding member of Ananda Portland and teaches at the Ananda Living Wisdom School in Beaverton, OR. She is the author of Scary News and I Came From Joy!, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

Clarity Magazine articles can be printed in “text only” format, using your own computer.

Q.

A. I had been a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and doing Kriya Yoga for three years. When I heard about Ananda Village, I decided to visit because I very much wanted to start a spiritual community based on Yogananda’s teachings.

I immediately recognized, however, upon meeting Swami Kriyananda, the kind of magnetism needed to found a successful community. I felt I could help build Ananda, but leadership required much more attunement and experience on the spiritual path, and in life, than I had at age twenty-three.

Q. When you moved to Ananda Village in 1975, you worked in the Ananda garden.  Did you have an interest in gardening?

A. Yes. My supervisor in the garden was Haanel Cassidy, a Kriyaban and an expert in biodynamic gardening — Swami Kriyananda had invited him to move to Ananda in 1970 to start the garden.

Working under a master gardener like Haanel Cassidy was for me the answer to a prayer. I had always wanted to learn gardening and when I came to Ananda and realized that Haanel was the foremost expert on biodynamic gardening in the world, and also a Kriyaban, I knew Master had answered my prayer.

Q. What challenges did you face in the garden?

A. In 1975, the garden was still very small and underfunded. It was a huge challenge to undertake a garden at such a high elevation, with poor soil, and no money to build the infrastructure. Then, in 1976, the fire came and destroyed everything.

Those of us who could leave were urged to get outside jobs to help earn the money to rebuild. As gardeners, we wanted the garden to be much more than it was before the fire, and for that we needed water for irrigation (dams, pipes, sprinklers); the proper equipment (tractors, implements, backhoe); fencing to keep out the deer; and money for seeds.

So I worked in construction in San Francisco; others left to do tree planting or rice harvesting. As a garden staff we also did odd jobs for a fee. But we were still short of the money needed for big infrastructure items like a dam, which cost $20,000.

I prayed to Yogananda on how to raise the money for the dam and step by step followed his guidance. Using $5000 I had saved working as a contractor before moving to Ananda, I opened a futures trading account in precious metals by phone. I had no investment training but I would meditate on when to buy or sell, promising Master if he gave us the money, it would all go to the dam.

At one point there was a spike in the price of silver and I made $20,000. We built Nandi Dam that fall. Though the garden continued to have financial challenges, Master never guided me to do this again.

Q. Haanel Cassidy has been described as a “hard taskmaster with a heart of gold.” Was that your experience?

A. At Haanel’s passing in 1980, Swami Kriyananda said that the principal lesson Haanel shared with Ananda was “discipline.” He taught us that to be great you had to learn discipline. Most of us were not mature enough to understand the need for discipline. He sometimes called me “his wild Irishman,” but he knew that what I lacked in maturity I would make up for in effort and sincerity.

He required us to be prompt, to work hard, and to speak English correctly, and if we did these, he gave us absolute loyalty and friendship. We met each morning at 7:30 for our garden meetings; 7:31 was late. Often we would work for weeks on end without a day off, sometimes fourteen hours a day, but the wisdom and training he gave us has lasted a lifetime.

Q. In addition to self-discipline and intensity of effort, what else did you learn working in the garden?

A. The garden was a great environment to learn about humility and non-attachment. You could work a whole season and the deer, or a frost, could wipe out the entire crop in one night. It was a training in selfless service, in learning that God is the Doer and that He wants you to serve joyfully regardless of results.

Young apprentices usually found working in the garden very difficult. Only a small percentage would last a season, but the ones who did are still members of Ananda thirty years later.

Q. Did the challenges ever shake your faith?

A. When Haanel passed away, Swami Kriyananda asked me to be in charge of the garden. I asked myself: “Was I really ready to take over the garden?”  “Whom do I ask for advice?”  “Will I let Swamiji and the community down?”

Day by day, I realized that God was the Doer and that he could do things through me, if I let him. The miracles of the Ananda garden helped me understand that Yogananda was guiding this work and that all we had to do was cooperate with His “ray.” Because God always came through, my faith became stronger.

Q. How did God always “come through?” 

A. God and Guru would give us what we needed for God’s work, but not for personal desires. It became clear we needed to attune to His will, not our desires, to activate the law of success. If we kept open to what He was trying to teach us, we found miracles at every turn.

Once, for example, we really needed a cultivating tool that was extremely rare in Northern California. We had only a quarter of the price of a new one, but through an ad in a Yuba City newspaper, we found a used one in almost new condition for exactly the $2,300 we had.

Another time an early storm soaked the garden and didn’t clear until sunset. It seemed certain the entire tomato crop would freeze — there was no way we could protect so many plants. We prayed deeply, giving it all into Guru’s hands, and went to sleep. That night a fog formed and kept the air temperature above freezing. No plants died.

Q. It sounds like working in the garden enhanced your sensitivity to nature and the unity of all life? 

A. This was the greatest blessing of gardening, to see Divine Mother in everything, from the plants and flowers down to the insects and bacteria, and to realize how little our human efforts determine what happens in proportion to the wind, rain, sky and earth.

Through Kriya Yoga and Yogananda’s teachings we learn that we are connected to the Divine and a part of all that exists. So we always tried to see ourselves as channels for God’s blessings to work through these powerful natural forces so they could yield food for people. It was constantly uplifting to work in this consciousness. It gave us a dynamic awareness that God is the Doer.

Q. In 1986, you and your wife, Maria, who also worked in the garden, were asked to lead the Ananda Sacramento center.  Did your garden experience prepare you for your new challenges? 

A. Embracing the impossible challenge of the garden and having the experience of Yogananda’s grace bringing success was an invaluable spiritual lesson. The reality that God is the Doer became more and more ingrained. We left the garden ready for anything the Guru wanted of us.

Q. Some say that establishing the apartment complex community in Sacramento was another “impossible challenge.”  Was Yogananda’s grace involved here?

A. At every turn. As we set out to find the “perfect” apartment complex for our Guru’s world brotherhood colony in Sacramento, we had a brainstorming session with future residents of the community. We listed everything we needed for the perfect community, ending up with thirty-seven items: close to the American River; places for outside Sunday services; community temple and dining room; trees for shade and color; and so on.

Each day we prayed, said affirmations, and meditated, and then surrendered the project to Yogananda, asking him to guide us. We looked at 140 apartment complexes and when we found what is now Ananda Lane, it had 35 of the 37 things we told Master we wanted.

Q. You and Maria will be moving to Ananda Village in early 2009 to be leaders of a new “community within a community” consisting only of “young people.” Ananda Village has never had this kind of “separation” before. Why is it happening now?

A. Starting a community is a wonderful spiritual opportunity. The young disciples need the experience of starting something “from the ground up,” so they can learn what’s involved in building a community, and then pass it on to the next generation.

All of them now serve Ananda. But they need the chance to tune into the Guru’s plan for them, to feel his guidance, and to know they are just as capable as the young people at Ananda Village in the 60s and 70s.

Q. Will gardening be the focus of this community?

A. The direction the new community takes will come from the attunement and intuition of the young leaders. This will apply to every aspect of the community.

Q. What will you and Maria do?

A. We hope we can facilitate the process of starting the community and foster the Ananda vibration. What we will do day-to-day is entirely unknown. It is a new chapter in the history of Ananda, and Maria and I are very eager to see how it plays out.

Ananta McSweeney and his wife, Maria, are Acharyas (Spiritual Directors) of Ananda Sacramento.

If I had any regrets in raising my children, it was that I was not as firmly established on the spiritual path as I am now. In becoming a preschool teacher at Ananda Village, God and Guru have given me a wonderful gift — the opportunity to put into practice everything I have learned as a devotee and a mother, and to serve other people’s children as though they were my own.

A frustrating  month
In the fall of 2004, I felt inspired to take the early childhood education classes that would give me the teaching credential needed to teach preschool. Although I was told there were no openings at the Ananda preschool, I knew this was something I needed to do. Three months later, the preschool teacher left unexpectedly and I was called upon to take over her class midyear.

Every day that first month was challenging mainly because I couldn’t get the class calm enough to participate in any activities. There were a few “wild” ones in the group—high-energy, strong willed children whose reluctance to settle down influenced the others.

During “circle time,” for example, the children and I would sit in a circle on the floor for the start of various activities. But as soon as we sat down, one or two of them might get up and walk away; or a few of them might start talking and soon everyone would be talking; or someone might poke the child next to him and then chaos would reign. It went on like this day after day.

One day during circle time I became desperate. I knew I was going to lose control of the class if I didn’t find a way to calm their energy. Silently I called on my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and asked, “What can I do to make this work?” In that moment I received the inspiration for “Quiet Bodies.”

Getting the children to say “yes’
Quiet Bodies is simply sitting cross-legged, with eyes closed, and not moving for a few minutes. It’s unusual, however, to think that three and four-year-olds can sit quietly that long. Learning and growth in the preschool years occurs primarily through the body; that’s why young children are so constantly active. The key challenge of those years is learning to control and discipline the body.

In order to get the children to do Quiet Bodies, I needed to create an aura of specialness around the experience; making an activity “magical” and fun gets them to saying “yes.” With the children sitting in a circle, I held up “Mr. Blue Jay,” a small hand puppet that sits on two fingers. “Mr. Blue Jay” was very special to them because we used it only for circle time.

So while holding up “Mr. Blue Jay,” I told them what “Mr. Blue Jay” wanted them to do (not what I wanted them to do), and that when it was time to open their eyes, “Mr. Blue Jay” would tap each of them on the forehead. From that moment on Quiet Bodies became a regular part of our daily school activities. Quiet Bodies continued to evolve over the course of the school year, but “Mr. Blue Jay” remained a constant.

True teaching is vibrational
I realized soon after, however, that to maintain an atmosphere of calmness during the four hours the children and I were together, I needed to be calmer and more centered myself. Often I became so outwardly engaged with the children that it was difficult to remain in the presence of God.

When I’m not deeply calm, I can’t convey to the children how wonderful it is to sit quietly with their eyes closed. If I can’t still my thoughts and feelings, how can I expect the children to still their bodies?  “True teaching is vibrational,” Swami Kriyananda writes. He says that our vibrations change people much more than our words, and that the best way to influence someone else’s behavior is to be strong in those qualities oneself.

He gives the example of a mother who took her young son to Mahatma Gandhi and asked Gandhi to tell the little boy not to eat so many sweets. Gandhi told her to come back in a week. When the mother returned a week later, and Gandhi told the boy not to eat too many sweets, she asked why he couldn’t have said that a week ago. Gandhi replied, “A week ago I was eating sweets myself.”

Staying in the flow
Strengthening my meditation practice and learning how to work effectively with the preschool children have gone hand in hand. During my child-raising years I often had to put my meditation practice on “hold.”  For twenty years I said an affirmation suggested by an Ananda minister: “I will meditate. I can’t right now but I will meditate,” and it has finally paid off.

My meditation practice is much stronger now and I can share with the children one of the deepest aspects of the spiritual path—the upliftment and centeredness that come with daily meditation and God-contact.

When I’m calm and centered, there’s a “flow” that comes; I know when I’m in it and when I’ve stepped out of it. Whenever the children’s energy is “off,” I first check to see if I’m still in the flow. If not, I raise my energy and call on God. The more “out of the flow” I become, the more energy I put into calling on God and surrendering to His guidance in that moment.

When I’m back in the flow and a child misbehaves, I put my aura around the child and use my energy to quiet him or her. Swami Kriyananda says that when he places people in positions of leadership, he expands his consciousness to include them, supporting and strengthening them. I do something similar with the children.

“I need to do Quiet Bodies now”
Quiet Bodies, however, has been the most important factor in creating an atmosphere of calmness with the preschoolers. Now, when the children sense the need to bring their energy back to center, they either ask to do Quiet Bodies or start reminding each other that it’s “circle time.”

This even happens outside of school. One child was at the river with his mother and suddenly said, “I need to do Quiet Bodies now.” He sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, and became very still for some time.

The children are so pleased when they have brought the physical body under control because their souls know this is what they’re supposed to learn at this time. That’s why they enjoy showing that they can do Quiet Bodies. When visiting her grandmother, one child said, “Grandma, watch me do Quiet Bodies.” She sat down and showed her grandmother how long she could sit still.

The children do Quiet Bodies for two minutes at the start of the school year. Toward the end of the year they usually can do it four to five minutes. By that time I am also encouraging them to listen to the sound of their breathing. I never question them about their inner experiences, nor do I encourage them to talk about them. Doing so might make the experience competitive, which would undermine its value.

A time to plant seeds
These preschool years are the time to plant seeds of good habits. Swami Kriyananda writes that children are especially receptive at this age because, “they’re a little closer to where we’ve all come from. They haven’t yet fully taken on a new personality or a new body with its habits.”

Quiet Bodies is a tool that enables children to tap into their soul nature. It gives them the chance to see and feel the effects of their own energy, and to begin to understand the difference between restless, scattered energy and quiet, peaceful energy. It is the first step on the long journey to becoming calm, centered adults.

Hassi Bazan, a Light Bearer and longtime member of Ananda, teaches at the Ananda Village Living Wisdom Preschool. She also works part-time in the Village Reception Center.

In each instance, the people were quite ill and could have died if we made the wrong decision. Their situations were critical, very complicated, and the right type of treatment wasn’t immediately obvious. To top it off, the staff needed my advice on many other things. Whenever I emerged from a treatment room, I was immediately met with a barrage of questions.

“Well, die then!”
I was reflecting on how it had been such an unusually stressful afternoon that I could have easily keeled over with a heart attack. In that instant the thought came to me, “Well, die then!” That was a “wake-up call.” Suddenly I realized I had been feeling sorry for myself, and thinking that my life would be much easier if I practiced medicine in a less demanding setting.

Yet I knew my current job was exactly what God wanted of me, and that it didn’t matter if that day had been especially stressful. I had hung in there and seen to it that each patient received the proper treatment. As much as possible, I had acted with the sense that God was the Doer. That was a victory.

What is “right action?”
So often in our culture we are told that whatever we do, and especially our work, should be something we want to do, something that makes us happy. For devotees, this is a false premise.

The guideline of right action for devotees is not loving what you are doing, but doing it out of love for God. We should perform whatever work we are given as a loving self-offering to God, and with the attitude that He is the Doer, and we are simply His instruments. Then it doesn’t really matter what we do because when we act in that way, we are inwardly fulfilled and very happy.

“Okay Peter, it’s time to go back”
All the challenges we experience in life, even the most horrendous trials, come from God. Before we incarnate, we basically know what our life is going to look like and the difficult times we’re going to have.

I sometimes imagine myself sitting with my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, before incarnating. He is saying, “Okay Peter, it’s time to go back. “You will have a certain number of years and here are the experiences you’ll have to go through. There’s one particular situation that is going to be especially challenging, and here’s another one that will be even worse!”

Would I say, “Please give me something easier?” No! I imagine myself saying, “OK, perfect. These experiences are for my spiritual growth. Just keep supporting me so that I can get through them with the right attitude, and without being crushed.”

Whenever I have that thought, in my heart I always feel Yogananda saying, “Don’t worry, I will be with you the entire time. Your job is to remember that I am always with you, helping you, and that God is on your side.”

Expanding beyond likes and dislikes
Knowing what God wants of us in a given situation is usually simpler than we think. Often we’ll be given a choice between a quick and easy approach and something much more difficult.

It’s very tempting to choose the easy approach because we know we can do it and, on the surface at least, it seems to solve the problem. The alternative is to put up with challenging situations that don’t resolve quickly and perhaps may never resolve in this lifetime. Our spiritual growth, however, often lies in choosing the more difficult route, and the need to make that choice is often a test given to us by God.

A friend of mine once had to make a very hard decision about a relationship and was unable to decide what to do. She finally spoke to Swami Kriyananda about it and, in tears, said, “It is so hard to know what to do.” His answer was, “No it’s not.”

In relating this story she said, “At first that sounded kind of harsh to me, but when I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t. The only reason I found it hard to decide was because I was attached to one of the outcomes.”

When faced with conflicting options, I’ve found it very helpful to ask myself, “What would I decide if I didn’t have any likes or dislikes, if I didn’t have an ego? What would my answer be?” This process is very helpful in stripping away the feeling that favors one outcome over another. Once you strip that away, suddenly you’re left with a much more straight-forward problem. The question then becomes, “Can I live with this answer? Can I expand enough spiritually to overcome my ego attachments and do the right thing?”

This doesn’t mean that we bludgeon ourselves into submission when faced with strong inner resistance. Swami Kriyananda suggests that we think of the ego as a donkey—sometimes you just need to pull it along. But if it’s really digging in its heels, you may need to wait before you start pulling it again.

I’ve found this advice very helpful for working with myself compassionately as I try to overcome my ego attachments—while never losing sight of the necessity to overcome them.

God’s transforming power
Many people in our culture worry about losing their jobs or their incomes going down. They say, “I don’t want my life to change; I want things to stay just as they are.”

But as devotees focused on spiritual growth, we understand that it’s mainly by going through challenging experiences that we grow spiritually. I guarantee that if you are a serious devotee of any path, you will go through challenging experiences because that’s how we get rid of the encrustations of ego: our likes and dislikes, our hurts, and all the things that upset us and make us feel bad about ourselves.

Fortunately, God lets us do it in small increments. It’s a bit like getting into very cold water. It’s easier to do it slowly than jumping in all at once. In the end, however, we will be in up to our necks if we want to grow spiritually.

The good news is that if we keep moving forward, calling on God and Guru, and relying on their power to transform us, at the end of our life we will be grateful for everything. We will have grown spiritually and become a very different person. We will have become more Christ-like, more like Yogananda, which is the divine destiny of each and every one of us.

Excerpted from a May 11, 2008 Sunday Service at Ananda Village.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

In this 40th anniversary commemorative issue, we invite you to see how “high thinking and simple living,” as Paramhansa Yogananda phrased it, is not only a possible way to live but, in his words, destined to “spread like wildfire.”

There have been specific events and developments in Ananda’s forty-year history that have set an overall direction for Ananda’s work—events such as the start of a householder monastic order; the 1976 Ananda fire; the start of centers and urban communities; the publication of certain books, to mention only a few.

In this 40th anniversary commemorative issue, we review these events and developments, often following them up to the present day. Whenever future directions are apparent, we also take a look ahead.

One of the themes emerging from this account is the over-arching importance of the type of leadership provided by Swami Kriyananda: strong, supportive, visionary, intuitive. Without his leadership, Ananda would never have survived.

This issue also provides glimpses of the spiritual challenges, inner awakenings, and divine blessings that form the heart and soul of Ananda’s forty-year adventure in spiritual living. Through the perspectives of Swami Kriyananda and others, we offer a composite portrait of the many individuals whose selfless dedication and divine attunement have produced the miracle of Ananda.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
Why Has Ananda Succeeded?

Ananda was not so much founded by me as by Paramhansa Yogananda. It was founded by his inspiration, and with his blessings. He declared on the occasion of his garden party speech exhorting people to start communities, “I am sowing these words in the ether, in the spirit of God.”

For this reason I consider him the patron saint of intentional communities, of “world brotherhood colonies,” as he called them. In creating Ananda, I did my best to carry out his teachings and ideals.

The most important factor in Ananda’s success, certainly, has been the fact that every day since our beginning, I have given this whole project to him and asked him to do with it as he would, albeit it through our own physical struggles.

A principle I established—one with which everyone came in time to agree—was: People are more important than things. In practice, this means that people’s spiritual well-being is more important than anything else. If a job needed to be done, but the best person for it would not benefit from it spiritually, someone else was sought for the job. If no one was found, an entire project was sometimes abandoned.

Closely related to this is the second principle: Where there is dharma [adherence to truth and right action], there is victory. This means that any hardship imposed by life will prove, in time, to be a blessing when embraced with courage, gratitude, non-attachment, and deep faith in God.

A spirit of harmony and cooperation has been fundamental to Ananda’s success. We have found that the inner peace that comes through meditation acts like a lubricating oil on the machinery of human relationships. Through meditation we learn also to see God in one another, and in all people, which dissolves all sense of differences between us.

People who are harmonious and do things together, instead of each one battling alone, can move mountains. An Ananda saying puts it well: “Many hands make a miracle.”

Finally, and most important, as a spiritual community, we always try to tune in to the will of God. The essence of life at Ananda is attunement to God and to the universal consciousness that Yogananda expressed. Ultimately, we want only to project God’s will for this time in history, in response to humanity’s needs to which God Himself is responding.

1
The Vision

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Brotherhood is an ideal better understood by example than precept! A small harmonious group may inspire other ideal communities over the earth.

“Far into the night my dear friend–the first Kriya Yogi in America–discussed with me the need for world colonies founded on a spiritual basis. Man is a soul, not an institution; his inner reforms alone can lend permanence to outer ones. By stress on spiritual values, Self-realization, a colony exemplifying world brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond its locale.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“I remember how stirred I was by a talk Paramhansa Yogananda gave at a garden party in Beverly Hills on July 31, 1949.

“ ‘This day,’ he thundered, punctuating every word, ‘marks the birth of a new era. My spoken words are registered in the ether, in the spirit of God, and they shall move the West. We must go on—not only those who are here, but thousands of youths must go North, South, East and West to cover the earth with little colonies, demonstrating that simplicity of living plus high thinking lead to the greatest happiness!’”

1967:  Land purchased for a meditation retreat
1968: Ananda officially starts
1969:  Land purchased for a community

Ananda officially starts
The dedication of the Ananda Meditation Retreat in August 1968 marked the official start of Ananda. The first Retreat buildings had been built, and a few hardy souls were able to stay there during the winter of 1968-69.

The first Retreat season began the summer of 1969, with Swami Kriyananda leading meditations, giving classes, conducting Sunday morning worship services, and leading evening programs. At the end of the 1969 season, Ananda held its first annual Spiritual Renewal Week—seven days of classes, kirtans, satsangs, and concerts, culminating with the first Kriya Yoga Initiation.

On July 4, 1969, Kriyananda purchased land six miles down the road from the Retreat for a community. Soon after, a number of people at the Retreat moved to the new land.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
Spiritual or Not?

Early on, the new community faced a crisis of self-definition as new people came more out of a desire to live in a commune in the woods than for spiritual reasons. Would Ananda be a community of Yogananda disciples and based on his teachings? The issue was resolved when Swami Kriyananda called a meeting and asked that people make a choice, adding that he was willing to leave if people did not want a spiritual community.

He didn’t impose his will, but simply made it clear that people needed to make a choice. I’ve always appreciated his non-attachment, his being ready to leave everything behind if that was what people wanted. Fortunately, most of us wanted a spiritual community. Those who didn’t soon decided to leave.

2
Sustainability—Housing and Jobs

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“To earn money abundantly, unselfishly, honestly for God and God’s work, and for making others happy, is to develop many sterling qualities of character that will aid one on the spiritual as well as the material path.” East West Magazine, 1928

Swami Kriyananda: Regarding the challenge of having to raise large sums of money to launch Ananda: “My gain was far more than the money I earned. Most of all, it was spiritual. I’d grown in inner strength by doing what I’d had to do despite every obstacle, even that of intense personal reluctance. And I’d done it for God.” A Place Called Ananda

1969: The first dwellings
1969-70: Community businesses started

Finding a way to survive
The most difficult challenge the first year was establishing a community that could actually survive. Since there were no suitable living spaces on the new land, most people put up teepees, simple but adequate dwellings. The bigger challenge, however, was to find ways to earn an income.

To earn money and create jobs, a few enterprising people started businesses to make products that could be sold: incense, essential oils, jewelry, granola. By the end of 1970, there were nearly ten businesses, including the Meditation Retreat and the publishing business started by Swami Kriyananda to sell his books and new yoga correspondence course.

The next few years saw the start of a farm, a community market, a dairy, new cottage industries, and a contract with the U.S. Forest Service for seasonal tree-planting work. New people came who started private businesses, including, in 1974, a construction company.

Looking ahead: Earning income
Today it is possible for individuals and groups of people to sustain themselves far away from the big cities without depending on the usual rural means of self-sustenance, like farming. With telephones, computers, e-mail, and fax machines, even isolated areas can be in active contact with the world. There are individuals living in the Ananda communities who support themselves and their families through computer-based work, often from their homes.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
A Strong Spiritual Focus

Amidst the flurry of building homes and starting businesses, we managed to keep a very strong spiritual focus. Swami Kriyananda gave Sunday services and spiritual classes weekly and, in the beginning, his magnetism was the primary force keeping our consciousness focused on God.

Gradually, as we matured spiritually, there developed a large group of people who were unshakably committed to the yogic path. But it took some years to establish a strong spiritual magnetism.

Devi Novak:
Exploring New Frontiers of Consciousness

The life and growth of Ananda, and its story, have become for me my life and growth, my story. From the beginning there was an exciting feeling that we were pioneers, both in the sense of creating a new way of life, and of exploring new frontiers of consciousness. These two concepts went hand in hand.

Through the practice of meditation, we deepened our awareness of being part of a greater reality than we could experience through our individual egos. This, in turn, developed our understanding of how to create these communities.

This openness to the guidance from higher wisdom was one of the keynotes of how Ananda developed. The experience of trying to find the truth in a situation, rather than just responding to our own opinions or desires, began to change all of us who lived here.

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Sustainability: Farming and Food

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Let every man gather from five to ten thousand dollars and, in groups of thirty, build self-sustaining, self-governing colonies, starting with California. Buy farms and settle down with harmonious friends and have time to meditate and constructively exchange divine experiences.” Praecepta Lessons, 1934

Swami Kriyananda:
“There were several things Master wanted to do that he could not accomplish during his lifetime: a school in America (he tried to start one at Mt. Washington in 1925); “world brotherhood” communities; and another one we might do well to consider now: self-sustaining farms.” January 2005 letter to Ananda

1970: Community farm started
1972: Community market started

A biodynamic farm
In 1970, Swami Kriyananda invited Haanel Cassidy to move to Ananda Village to help develop a self-sufficient organic farm at the new community. Then in his sixties, Haanel was a long-time disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda with considerable experience in biodynamic gardening.

The soil at the community was poor, however, and the climate far from ideal. With hard work and composting, the farm began to produce vegetables, berries, herbs and flowers, and eventually produced nearly six tons of food a year, including, in the summer months, food for the Meditation Retreat and the community market. Ultimately, however, the farm proved uneconomical and the effort was abandoned in the mid-1980s.

Looking ahead: Cooperative farming at Ananda Village
In 2008, Ananda Village entered into a cooperative farming arrangement with a nearby farmer by leasing him two acres of land at Ananda Village for an organic farm. Community members participate in the farming venture on a subscription basis by paying in advance for a percentage of the harvest.

The Ananda Village sustainability effort also includes a new central composting system, the hiring of a gardener to assist community residents to grow food in the housing clusters, the building of green houses, and the planting of more fruit, nut and olive trees.

The tradition of gardening is well established in Ananda’s urban communities. There are flourishing community-wide vegetable gardens and fruit orchards at the Ananda communities in Palo Alto and Sacramento, California, and in Seattle, Washington.

Perspectives: Parvati Hansen
The Start of Master’s Market

By the fall of 1972, the need for a place where people could buy food was becoming very apparent. Swami Kriyananda had been saying to us in almost every satsang: “If you see something that needs to be done here, then do it!”

He was letting us know, right from the beginning, that we were the ones who were going to make this community a reality. He was also teaching us by his own dynamic example of energy and magnetism, how to use the spiritual principles taught by Paramhansa Yogananda.

So starting with a few boxes of fruit, which was all I could afford, the market began in a vacant room in the old farmhouse — the only adequate building on the land at that time. My understanding of how to begin a business was limited, but Divine Mother helped me each step of the way. A few months later, a young man interested in helping the market grow moved to the community and donated five hundred dollars—a huge amount in those years. After that, the market grew rapidly.

Jyotish Novak: “Management by Willingness”

From the start of the community, Swami Kriyananda was the type of leader who let others take responsibility and make their own decisions. By empowering people, he was much more subject to the vagaries of human nature, but it allowed everyone to develop their own strength. As soon as people were willing to take responsibility, he gave them not only responsibility, but also authority—the right to make decisions and to experience the successes or failures of those decisions.

I would call the management style that permeates Ananda, “management by willingness.” As soon as someone begins to show the willingness to take responsibility, he’s given the opportunity.

Devi Novak: A “Dharmocracy”

Over the years Swami Kriyananda had to work out a new style of leadership. In the beginning he made only two rules: no hallucinogenic drugs, and no alcohol. He wanted the community to be guided not by rules, but by the creative exercise of common sense.

He also wanted people to have the freedom to grow in their own understanding and ability, and not to be forced to accept decisions mindlessly, simply because the decision had been made. As much as possible, he allowed decision-making to take place at a “grass roots” level.

Thus, Kriyananda’s leadership style emerged slowly as one based on wisdom, compassion, and enduring patience. In community decisions, he guided people to ask, “What is right?” and, “What does God want?” rather than, “What do I want?” Swamiji has described Ananda’s government as a dharmocracy, “a community dedicated to actions leading to soul-freedom, and not to furthering one’s ego-involvement.”

4
Education for Life

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Paramhansa Yogananda laid much of the groundwork for Ananda’s Education for Life system in the school he established in Ranchi, India.

“Inspired by his efforts, we committed ourselves to the premise that a growing child needs to learn how to live in this world, and not merely how to find and hold a job. He or she needs to know how to live wisely, happily, and successfully according to his own deep inner needs, and not to meet life with the expectation that money and a nice home will give him all that he really wants in life.

“The goal of Ananda’s Education for Life system is to teach children the art of living, while giving them, in addition, the knowledge imparted by a conventional education.” Education for Life

1972: The first Ananda school
1986: Publication of Education for Life

The philosophy
The Education for Life system emphasizes the balanced development of body, feeling, will, and intellect. By developing this foundation, or “tools of maturity,” students are optimally prepared for the life-long adventure of finding ever-deeper levels of purpose, meaning, and lasting happiness.

The first school
Ananda’s Education for Life system got underway in 1972 when Nitai Deranja, a newly arrived teacher, was asked to start a school for seven community children, ages four to seven. Starting out in a ten by twelve shed and a budget of fifty dollars a month, the school moved into one of the first new buildings at the community six months later. Both the elementary school, and the junior high school that came later, soon attracted day and boarding students from outside the community.

To more clearly distinguish them from the Education for Life system, Ananda’s schools have been renamed “Living Wisdom Schools.” Today there are Living Wisdom Schools in Palo Alto, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and Assisi, Italy.

Looking ahead
As a non-sectarian system based on universal spiritual principles, the Education for Life system can be implemented wherever there is receptivity and interest. Hundreds of like-minded teachers in public and private schools have taken the teacher training programs offered yearly at the Ananda Institute for Alternative Living at the Ananda Meditation Retreat.

Beginning Fall 2008, the newly formed Seattle Institute for Living Yoga will offer a week-end teacher training program in both Seattle and Portland led by Usha Dermond, an  experienced Ananda Education for Life teacher and founder of the Portland Living Wisdom School.

Education for Life teacher training is envisioned as one of the main thrusts for The Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom, recently started by Ananda India.

Perspectives: Helen Purcell
Changing the Educational Landscape

In 1986, right after Education for Life had been published, Swami Kriyananda called a meeting at Crystal Hermitage with a number of people to discuss how to disseminate the ideas in his book.

I was surprised when Swami began the meeting by asking us to share our thoughts on the subject of education. However, over the years, I came to realize that this was Swami’s way: to plant the seeds and then let us use own creativity and inspiration to nurture them.

The ideas Swami had articulated in the book thrilled us, both as parents and as educators. We saw Education for Life as a breath of fresh air in a system that has become stagnant. We shared from our own experience how it could be adapted for any classroom, by any teacher who was not afraid to re-evaluate the fundamentals of traditional education.

Swami was emphatic that the Education for Life philosophy is much more expansive than any single spiritual path. He wanted us to share it with anyone who would listen. When the meeting broke up, the energy was high even though the task was daunting—a small group of six or eight people sent out to change the whole educational landscape!

Today, as principal of the Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, I receive emails from teachers all over the country who want guidance to create their own Education for Life schools. Recently I received an email from a teacher with nineteen years of experience in public elementary school. She dreams of opening a school like our Living Wisdom Schools. “Just knowing that your schools exist brings healing to my heart,” she writes.

5
Renunciation

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity. To fulfill one’s earthly responsibilities is indeed the higher path, provided the yogi, maintaining a mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires, plays his part as a willing instrument of God.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Renunciation of egoic desires forms the basis of the spiritual life, regardless of a person’s outer calling. At Ananda we’ve based our lives on renunciation, but generally it’s householder renunciation. It was Lahiri Mahasaya who first established this pattern of life. Paramhansa Yogananda approved of it, and, indeed, recommended it for most people.” Sadhu Beware

1971: Start of “The Friends of God”
1987: Start of a householder monastic order

The evolution of new model of renunciation
In 1971, Swami Kriyananda started a renunciate order for men and women, “The Friends of God.” It was not possible, however, at that stage in the community’s development to segregate the men and women as in a traditional monastery and, over time, many of the monks and nuns decided to marry. The monastery was dissolved in the early 1980s.

Building on that foundation, in 1987 Swami Kriyananda started a new kind of monastic order that includes householders, based on the ideals of non-attachment, simplicity, service, and self-control. To live a monastic life as a householder, the primary requirement is not celibacy but a dedication to doing God’s will, even though it may be personally difficult.

Looking ahead: A new monastery
As a spiritually mature work, Ananda is now able to accommodate a renunciate order with a degree of separation from the main communities. In 2005, Swami Kriyananda started a traditional monastic order for men and women, focused initially on a monastery for men in India.  He gives these reasons for the new direction:

I feel that spiritual communities need a monastery to set the example of selfless service, which is harder keep in mind when you have children to support. When you have people who truly feel that they don’t want anything except God, and that all they own belongs to Him, their example will make it easier for everyone else to tune into that attitude.

It would be good if new Ananda residents could get grounded in the monastic attitude before they thought about marriage. In the Buddhist tradition at least the young men live in a monastery for one year.

Let’s first be devotees seeking God. Then, as we bring that level into marriage, we can begin to set an example for people everywhere of a kind of marriage that our culture doesn’t prepare us for. We need to have a different concept of human love than what Hollywood films give us. It’s got to be on a soul level. Future of Ananda, 1999.

Perspectives: Jaya Helin
A Lifelong Commitment

In 1971, Swami Kriyananda invited a number of people to a meeting at his dome at the Meditation Retreat to discuss the idea of possibly starting a monastic order. At the meeting, Swamiji spoke very personally. He spoke about his life with Master, his life as a monk at SRF, the six months he had spent at a Catholic monastery near Big Sur, and the lessons he had learned.

He discussed his vision for Ananda, and whether a monastery would be possible. When he talked about renunciation, it was not in terms of what one is giving up, but as a life lived wholly dedicated to God.

I was enraptured listening to this. At the end of his talk, he looked at me and said, “Would you like to embrace such a life?”

After I said, “Yes, “ I knelt before him and he blessed me and gave me a piece of a rose petal from an initiation by Paramhansa Yogananda. He then asked the same question of everyone else and blessed each of them in turn.

I walked out of there deeply inspired and from that moment forward, my life totally changed. I became a different person. I began to understand what it meant to be a devotee on the spiritual path. I realized that renunciation is not about what we give up. The heart of renunciation is what we embrace, and what we embrace is God. We give our life to God. That’s the spirit of renunciation that Swamiji asked us to embrace that evening.

I eventually left the monastery to marry as did others. But when I left, I didn’t feel I was leaving. I simply moved to another room of the house, you might say. I was still in my heart, and to this day, a renunciate.

6
The Ananda Fire

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“An even-minded individual is like a mirror of discretion reflecting the true nature of seemingly favorable and unfavorable events. He thus holds himself in readiness to act wisely and properly without being misled by emotional disturbances.” Inner Culture Magazine, 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“When you meditate and feel God’s presence, then these things are all just a dream. I don’t mean that the fire was nothing. But in truth conditions are neutral. It’s the way we take them that determines whether they’re positive or negative, whether they’re bad experiences or happy experiences.” From a talk after the fire

1976: Forest fire sweeps through Ananda

A time of testing
A June 1976 forest fire that destroyed 450 acres and twenty-one of the twenty-two homes at Ananda might easily have sounded the death-knell for the community. Ananda had no insurance and no financial reserves from which to rebuild. Many decided to leave the community at that time, and most departing members asked Ananda to pay them for houses they had lost.

It was later discovered that faulty county road equipment had caused the fire. Ananda had sustained the largest loss and could have sued the county, but Swami Kriyananda wrote to the Nevada County Board of Supervisors,  “We don’t want to take our bad luck out on our fellow citizens by increasing the county’s insurance rates. Anything that harms the county will, in the long run, harm Ananda also.”

Ananda eventually repaid all departing members, and with hard work, joyful faith, and God’s grace, rebuilt the community. The fire had tested the community’s commitment to one of its guiding principles, “Where there is dharma there is victory,” and Ananda’s commitment to that principle had held firm.

Perspectives: Jyotish Novak
“This House Is Yours, God”

The fire started several miles from the community, and we could see smoke for quite a long time before we realized our property was being threatened. At one point, the fire jumped the road and began to move through dense brush towards one of our housing clusters.

My wife, Devi, and I had a geodesic dome about three hundred yards from where the fire was burning, so I hurried back down to our house. I tried to save the house by cutting a trench around it and hosing it down with water.

A teenager, Dwayne Smallen, came down the hill in a truck very excited. He shouted, “You’ve got to get out of here. The flames are really high and will be here in five minutes.” I looked up the hill and saw this enormous wall of fire and it was obvious my little trench wasn’t going to save anything.

At that point I went into a state of complete detachment, saying to myself, “I’m not attached to anything. This house is yours, God. If you want to take it, go ahead. Take everything.”

Dwayne had the presence of mind to yell, “Grab what you can and throw it in the truck.” Devi had recently boxed up everything in our meditation room to clean it, so I grabbed the box, took an armful of clothes from the closet, and that was it. We threw it in the truck and drove downhill through the brush and out of danger.

Only days after the fire, Ananda began to rebuild itself. Because of our strong foundation in meditation, there was no sense of devastation, which was so prevalent among our neighbors. We knew we would have to put out a lot of energy, but the challenge of rebuilding was exciting rather than distressing.

7
Community Planning

Swami Kriyananda:
“Ananda Village has grown from Spartan beginnings to become a place of man-made as well as natural beauty. Simple but charming homes, school buildings, offices, and places of business express in architecture the twin principles Yogananda recommended: ‘plain living and God-thinking’” The Path (1996): Afterword

1974-1978: Ananda develops Master Plan

A community-wide upgrade
The initial “plan” of the Ananda community reflected two main concerns: the desire for privacy and the need to get a road and water to one’s home. The result was scattered, uncoordinated clusters of houses.

The purchase of three hundred and twenty-six acres next to Ananda Village in 1974 was the first impetus for the community to think more seriously about planning, but only after the 1976 forest fire did in depth planning actually begin. By then, county building regulations and Ananda’s desire for a more “conscious” community gave birth to a “Master Plan” for Ananda.

The Master Plan, which went through three drafts in four years before being finally approved by the county, provided for cluster housing and large areas of open land. The plan also allowed Ananda to move its public retreat to the newly constructed Expanding Light Guest Retreat in the early 1980s.

Perspectives: Jaya
Helin Starting Over

Once the new Master Plan was completed, it was as if we were building the community all over again, but this time in a more socially “responsible” way. We couldn’t continue living in teepees, trailers and tiny cabins; everything needed to be brought up to code.

This meant we had to have better houses, better roads, and better water systems. Many people in the community were starting to have families and needed more adequate housing and suitable places to send their children to school.

Devi Novak: Opening to the Light

In time, with hard work and better planning learned from experience, Ananda became more beautiful than ever. Even more importantly, the community had come of age. As one member put it, “We’re not here to build buildings. We’re here to build character, by living for God.”

The challenges we faced in creating Ananda on the physical plane were the exact same challenges we each faced in our quest for spiritual expansion—the ability to focus and commit to the deepest spiritual goal we could perceive.

As each individual at Ananda opened more to God’s light, then that same power was expressed in the community. For the individual, there was a gain of inner freedom; for the community, there was the creation of a physical, social and spiritual manifestation that reflected the inner growth of individuals.

8
A New Phase of Outreach

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Strive to become an apostle of Christ-Consciousness. Try to be one of the world’s ‘Fishers of Souls’ with your inspirational words and writings, and with your voice saturated with the Holy Ghost vibration of Aum.” East-West Magazine, 1932

Swami Kriyananda:
“Emphasize principles. Win people on the strength of their needs. We need to talk in terms of solutions to those needs, not just of the needs themselves. In short, we need to stress positive values: inner happiness, peace of mind, love of high ideals, cooperation, and kindness—in fact, all the good things we’ve learned from Master. We are part of a great tide of loving, joyful energy that wants to give and give as long as people are happy to receive it.” From a 1999 talk

1977: Publication of The Path
1977: Circle of Joy started
1978-79: The Joy Tours
1983: World Brotherhood Retreat opens

Expanding the light
Outreach has been central to Ananda’s vision from the beginning, but the publication of Swami Kriyananda’s autobiography, The Path, his first major book with broad appeal, launched a new, more dynamic phase of outreach.

Swami Kriyananda traveled twice across America in 1978 and 1979 with ten to twelve Ananda members on what he called “The Joy Tours,” addressing large crowds in dozens of cities. The tours drew many new members to Ananda, including some of Ananda’s current leaders.

A spiritual family forms
As Ananda began to view itself as a spiritual movement that embraced like-minded people everywhere, it established the “Circle of Joy” as a way for people to belong to Ananda wherever they lived. The name was later changed to the “Ananda Spiritual Family,” and more recently to “Ananda Sangha.”

Since 2002, Ananda has supported Spanish-speaking members of its spiritual family through its Spanish Ministry, which has focused initially on devotees in Central and South America, Spain, and Portugal.

A new guest retreat
Ananda’s need to expand its guest facilities led to the construction of a new guest retreat on a newly acquired parcel of land adjacent to the community. Initially called “Ananda World Brotherhood Retreat,” Swami Kriyananda was later inspired to rename it “The Expanding Light.”

Since officially opening in 1983, The Expanding Light has attracted thousands of guests from around the world.

Looking ahead: Electronic outreach
The Internet has opened an important new avenue of outreach with the potential of making Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings available to anyone in the world free of charge through website offerings from Ananda Worldwide.

Recent live, interactive videoconferencing with Swami Kriyananda portends another important new direction for Ananda. Swami Kriyananda and others can now address groups from a distance, with questions, answers, and other interactions.

Perspectives: Mary Kretzmann
“A Wave of Peace”

It was 1978 and I had recently read Autobiography of a Yogi.  I was desperate to know if Paramhansa Yogananda was my one true Guru.  I then heard that one of his direct disciples, Swami Kriyananda, was on a national tour, and speaking in Chicago!  My husband, Tim, and I drove the 750 miles from our home in Arkansas to meet him.

At Swamiji’s talk, I was inwardly praying to Master, ”Please give me a sign if you are my Guru.” At the end of the lecture, Swamiji played his piano sonata, The Divine Romance, and I felt a wave of blessings and love fill my heart. I knew without a doubt that Yogananda was my Guru.

One of the Ananda devotees traveling with Swamiji encouraged us to start a meditation group and we agreed. When Swamiji met us and heard of our deep interest, he invited us to come see him again in Houston, several months from then. So this time, my husband and I drove 1000 miles roundtrip to see Swamiji and ended up staying with him in the new Ananda ashram in Houston.

It was powerful staying in the same house as Swamiji. While there, in meditation, I saw Master’s face at the spiritual eye and felt his deep blessing—and I knew that Ananda was my spiritual path. We told Swamiji that we were interested in Ananda and wanted to go check it out but that our jobs made it difficult to get away: Tim had a landscaping business and I was a preschool teacher. Swamiji said, “Why not move to Ananda?”

Riding back to Arkansas in the pickup truck, Tim and I felt a wave a peace surrounding us and we knew, then and there, that we should sell our house and move to Ananda Village sight unseen. We moved two months later.

9
Start of Centers and Colonies

Swami Kriyananda:
“Ananda Village is the model community, and it is taking my energy and presence to get it started. But once the model is established, it will be easier to reproduce it, and others will be able to do so.” Reflections on Living

1977: Start of Sacramento Center
1979: Start of Ananda San Francisco
1984: Start of Ananda Europa
1989-1995: Start of urban colonies

• 1989: Palo Alto acquires apartment complex
• 1991: Sacramento acquires apartment complex
• 1992: Seattle acquires apartment complex
• 1995: Portland acquires apartment complex

2003: Start of Ananda India
2007: Start of Ananda Los Angeles

A common pattern
Beginning with the Sacramento Center in 1977, Ananda’s urban colonies all began either as meditation groups or small ashram-based centers. With the support of local devotees, these small beginnings evolved into apartment complex communities in Sacramento, Palo Alto, Portland, and Seattle, each with beautiful park-like settings and separate temples or mandirs for worship services and classes.

In 1980, Ananda purchased East-West Bookshop, a large metaphysical bookstore in Menlo Park, California. Today the Menlo Park bookstore (now in Mountain View), and  two East-West bookstores in Seattle, Washington not only serve the larger spiritual community, they also attract new members to Ananda and provide jobs for local devotees.

An international work
The interest of European friends drew four people from Ananda to Como, Italy in 1984 to launch Ananda’s first work in Europe. Now based near Assisi, Italy, Ananda Europa includes residents from throughout Europe. Its Temple of Light is dedicated to all religions.

Since 2003, Swami Kriyananda and a small group of Ananda members from different countries have been building a new Ananda colony in Gurgaon, India near New Delhi. They recently purchased land in south India to start a residential community and teaching center.

Looking ahead: New centers and meditation groups
Ananda’s newest center in Los Angeles, California officially opened July 22, 2007 with a dedication ceremony led by Swami Kriyananda. By November 2007, the center was offering ongoing classes and worship services.

As meditation teachers receive training in programs offered throughout Ananda worldwide, many are starting meditation groups and actively spreading Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings in their own areas.

A likely new pattern
The start of Ananda Michigan in 1999 heralds what may be the pattern for other new Ananda centers and communities. Unlike Ananda’s main colonies, which were sponsored by Ananda Village, Ananda Michigan owes its start to the inspiration of a single Ananda individual, Lorne Dekun. (See below, “Perspectives”) Ananda Michigan serves devotees in Lansing, Michigan and the Detroit Area.

Perspectives: Asha Praver
“Babaji Is Very Pleased”

“Babaji is very pleased with this community.” When Swami Kriyananda said those words to the few hundred people gathered for the dedication of our community in Palo Alto in 1989, it caught me and everyone else by surprise.

We tend to think of Babaji as being off somewhere in the Himalayas, overseeing the unfolding of major cosmic dramas but too lofty, too exalted, to be concerned with the establishment of Ananda’s first apartment complex community. Continuing, Swamiji said, “Ananda’s purpose is to show people that because we’re now in an ascending age, Dwapara Yuga, they can integrate spirituality into their every day lives.”

The masters have come at this time to help us, and others like us. Babaji said, “The vibrations of many spiritually seeking souls come floodlike to me. I perceive potential saints in America and Europe, waiting to be awakened.”

Throughout Ananda we are planting seeds for the coming Dwapara Yuga. Will we see the fruit of what we are planting? I don’t think we’ll see a huge amount. We’ll see little bits of growth, little bits of change.

But our masters are avatars. They come with power, and the power they plant is never obliterated. Paramhansa Yogananda said that he had planted the thought of thousands of world brotherhood colonies one day covering the earth “in the ether, in the spirit of God.”  He predicted that his words would “move the West.”

Though we may not live to see it, we can be certain that the divine effort we put forth to establish this everlasting work in the name of God and Guru will go on and on.

Lorne Dekun: A Message in a Dream

Ananda Michigan officially began on May 1, 1999 when I returned to Lansing, Michigan  after spending twenty years in California,  twelve of  them at Ananda Village, Ananda Palo Alto, and Ananda Sacramento combined. However, one could say Ananda Michigan began ten years prior to 1999. It began with a dream.

In 1989, another Ananda Village resident and I went on a book-selling tour in the Mid-West as representatives of Crystal Clarity Publishers. After we finished in Chicago, we drove to Grand Rapids, Michigan and stayed overnight at the home of a good friend of mine.

That night I had a dream of a short conversation with my first spiritual teacher, Yogacharya Oliver Black, Paramhansa Yogananda’s direct disciple. At the time, Mr. Black was ninety-six years old and living at his summer home in Northern Michigan. At least I thought he was living there. I was to soon learn that he had left his body just a few hours earlier.

In the dream, Yogacharya was sitting across from me at a table. He gave me one of his radiant smiles and said, “I want you to help with the work in Michigan.”

After I returned to Ananda Village, I sought out Seva Wiberg who had guided me to come live at Ananda Village. I told her of the dream and the circumstances under which it had happened. Seva smiled at me in friendship and love and said, “I think you need to start making plans to move back to Michigan.”

It wasn’t until ten years later that I made the move. By then, I had been acting in a ministerial capacity at Ananda Palo Alto by teaching classes at the Palo Alto teaching center and giving Sunday Service at two nearby Ananda centers. I felt I now had something to offer Ananda Michigan.

10
Rajarsi Day

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Rather than be always striving for personal happiness, try to make others happy. In being of spiritual, mental, and material service to others, you will find your own needs fulfilled. As you forget self in service to others, you will find that, without seeking it, your own cup of happiness will be full.” Praecepta Lessons, 1935

Swami Kriyananda:
“Service is ennobling. It is a way of offering up our human littleness into the great Reality that is God.” Affirmations for Self-Healing

“It isn’t really important what we do, so long as we see everything we do as an opportunity for service, for working for the welfare of all, for expanding our sympathies and awareness, and for attuning our consciousness to the Infinite Intelligence. Money Magnetism

1981: First Rajarsi Day

A tradition of volunteering
Regular workdays, times when people at Ananda come together as volunteers on community projects, are an integral part of Ananda’s commitment to selfless service. Workdays started with the building of the Meditation Retreat in 1969.

Since1981, Ananda Village has also held an annual “Rajarsi Day,” named after Paramhansa Yogananda’s spiritual successor, Rajarsi Janakananda. Community members spend an entire day working together on community projects such as remodeling buildings, landscaping, creating new walkways, and removing debris.

Most of Ananda’s urban communities now also hold annual Rajarsi Days. In addition, teams of volunteers from throughout Ananda periodically travel to the Palo Alto, Portland, Seattle, Sacramento, Assisi, and Gurgaon colonies to assist with construction projects.

Perspectives: Jaya Helin
Learning Teamwork

Workdays received an important boost the winter of 1971-72 when a group of about fifteen of us from Ananda Village embarked on three weeks of tree-planting in northern California, under contract with the U. S. Forest Service.

We approached everything cooperatively, sharing all risks, responsibilities, losses and rewards equally. Although physically stretched to our core, in the midst of everything, we meditated, chanted, sang, joked, and shared our adventure together as a community.

Out of this experience came teamwork and habits of mutual trust, friendship and cooperation—all things that were used to build Ananda in subsequent years.

Savitri Simpson: “Service is Joy!”

Most people think of a job as a nine-to-five experience; after work you go home and have your own life. Not so at Ananda! When something important needs to be done in the community, we’ve learned to put aside our own desires and concentrate on the project at hand.

I recall the time in the 1970s when I was still fairly new at Ananda. I worked as office manager of the Meditation Retreat and got called upon to wash dishes in the Retreat kitchen on a Sunday afternoon at the end of major guest weekend.

There was no dishwasher and everyone else had gone. I was there by myself washing mountains of dishes and, briefly, the thought came to me: “What am I doing washing dishes? I have a college degree!” In that same moment, however, I realized that this was exactly what was needed at the time.

“Service is joy” is one of the themes of Ananda workdays and Rajarsi Day, especially, epitomizes this spirit of service. The magnetism and joy become very strong when people work selflessly together toward common goals.

A few years ago, my husband and I had guests during the Rajarsi Day weekend. This couple was fairly new to Ananda and had never participated in an intense workday of this sort. We had explained to them that we would be busy all day Saturday and that they could join us or not, as they chose.

Not only did they choose to work along with us, they worked hard. At the end of the day, they were both pretty exhausted but all smiles. And to this day, these friends often comment on how this was one of the most important days in their lives—a day during which they got to see and feel firsthand the spirit of selfless service which is the essence of Ananda.

11
A Music Ministry

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Because man himself is an expression of the Creative Word, sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him, offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Music is the most important of the arts because it affects feelings, consciousness. It’s not just entertainment; it’s not just a nice melody. Listening to certain music and absorbing it, changes your consciousness. That’s why we should listen to music that is born of Spirit.” Music and The Art of Living

1981: The Joy Singers
1983: Christ Lives: An Oratorio

A turning point
Two events in the early 1980s launched Ananda’s music ministry as we know it today: the formation of The Joy Singers in 1981, and Swami Kriyananda’s composing of Christ Lives: An Oratorio in 1985.

In the early 1980s, the newly formed Joy Singers toured California and western states, presenting Swami Kriyananda’s “Songs of Divine Joy”—songs that express in words and music the consciousness of humility, devotion, and joy.

A deeply inspiring pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1985 led Swami Kriyananda to compose an Oratorio of the life of Jesus Christ, Christ Lives. Discussing the Oratorio, he said,  “I couldn’t have expressed myself more sincerely, musically, than I did in that Oratorio.”

In the mid to late 1980s, Ananda singers and musicians presented the Oratorio to Christian churches in northern California and the San Francisco Bay area. Since then, it has become an integral part of musical programs throughout Ananda.

In 2001, a fifty-five-member choir from various Ananda communities toured Italy with the Oratorio, giving concerts in six cities. A French man said after hearing a performance: “I couldn’t understand a word of what was sung. Yet I understood everything! The inspiration of this Oratorio was extraordinary!”

Instrumental music: a new dimension
In the early 1990s, Swami Kriyananda began a fifteen-year period of composing primarily instrumental music, which brought an important new dimension to the music ministry. With the writing of instrumentals, the music alone, without words, could transmit the underlying consciousness.

Today there are choirs and instrumentalist at all Ananda colonies, and the beginnings of an orchestra at Ananda Village.

Perspectives: Bhagavati Nani:
“Something Profound Was Happening”

When I first came to Ananda Palo Alto in 1998, I had been working as a professional freelance flutist and private teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for over fifteen years. I’d never met Swamiji and, although I was well on my way to accepting Paramhansa Yogananda as my Guru, I had a harder time understanding how Swami Kriyananda fit into the picture.

I had picked up a free tape one Sunday after service, entitled “The Spirit of Ananda in Music,” which consisted of a variety of Swamiji’s music—including several selections of him singing solo. So one night I decided to play it while I worked on an art project.  On the one hand, I was enjoying the vibration of the music, but on the other hand, my trained musician’s ears were critically assessing every note and intonation.

When “Love Is a Magician” began and Swamiji started to sing the words, I felt something pierce my heart, bypassing my mind and intellect altogether, and I began to cry. Actually, sob is a more accurate word, and that’s what I did for the entire song. Thankfully, I had some experience of how God works, so I immediately “got it” that something very important and profound was happening to me.

From that moment I simply accepted that Swami Kriyananda was someone I could trust—as my spiritual teacher and friend, and as a musician—and I opened my heart to him.

12
Crystal Hermitage

Swami Kriyananda:
“I remembered how often Paramhansa Yogananda quoted the suggestion made to him by an architect: ‘Immortalize your teachings in architecture.’ The Master agreed with him. A spiritual teaching ought to be clothed in a form that expresses the consciousness it seeks to inspire.” A Place Called Ananda

“I built Crystal Hermitage not as the perfect ‘headquarters’ for myself, but to make it possible for me to share better with others. Crystal Hermitage is a personal statement, but vital to that statement is the wish to offer the energy of this house in non-attachment into a larger flow of energy: into the streams of others’ lives; into the river of humanity everywhere.” Space, Light, & Harmony

1984: Crystal Hermitage created

A beautiful spiritual center
In 1984, Swami Kriyananda expanded the buildings and grounds around his dome to create a beautiful spiritual center for Ananda residents and visitors, and for his own enjoyment, which he named, “Crystal Hermitage.”

Crystal Hermitage includes a large main building used for meetings, banquets, and social gatherings; Swami Kriyananda’s apartment on the lower level, beautifully landscaped upper and lower gardens; a chapel; a museum containing relics of Yogananda, Sri Yukteswar and other masters of this path; a boutique; and a nearby guest house.

The chapel and upper gardens are open to the public for weddings and receptions. The expansive lower garden adjoining Kriyananda’s apartment is used for outdoor concerts and other programs.

Six thousand tulips!
Nearly four hundred people from the local area visited the Crystal Hermitage gardens in April 2008 after a front-page article in the local press announced a Crystal Hermitage Open House featuring six thousand tulips in bloom. Both upper and lower gardens and were open to the public.

One first-time visitor to the community commented, “When I first saw the gardens at Crystal Hermitage, I felt God’s presence in my heart and I understood what Ananda was all about.”

Perspectives: Patrick Lynch
“An Old Dear Friend”

I was participating in a Kriya Prep Week at Ananda Village when I first visited the Crystal Hermitage. Walking into the museum felt like going to visit my Guru.

I was filled with such joy to see relics from each of the masters in Paramhansa Yogananda’s lineage: Yogananda’s meditation mat, instruments he played, his mother’s wedding bangles, Lahiri Mahasaya’s water pot, Sri Yukteswar cane, and much more.

Afterwards, we walked through the gardens to Swami Kriyananda’s home. I went out onto the back deck and gazed across the beautiful canyon. I then went inside for the group meditation. Though I had been having difficulty meditating during this first visit to Ananda Village, the minute I shut my eyes I was powerfully pulled into a deep meditation.

Over the next few years, whenever I visited Ananda Village, I would spend time at the Crystal Hermitage and meditate in the museum or chapel. I had never met Swami Kriyananda or even seen him, and thought I might never have the opportunity. Nonetheless, I discovered I could have a relationship with him as a friend.

Knowing of his receptivity, I would inwardly share with him my thoughts, concerns, and questions, as well as always give him my gratitude. And I always got a response. I would mainly do this in meditation. At other times I would just think about him.

By developing an inward friendship with Swamiji, I learned that I could do this with anyone who is receptive.

In 2007, I learned that Swamiji was going to be at Ananda Village for his birthday celebration, and I wasn’t going to miss it!  I met him in person at his home at the Crystal Hermitage and expressed my gratitude. When I first looked into his eyes it was like seeing an old dear friend.

13
New Ceremonies

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Religious ceremonies are symbols of wisdom.” East West Magazine, 1929

Swami Kriyananda:
“Nothing, perhaps, could so clearly convey our sense of inspiration in the life we lead as the Festival of Light.” Cities of Light

1987: Festival of Light and other ceremonies introduced

In 1987 Swami Kriyananda introduced a number of new ceremonies designed to make Yogananda’s teachings a more dynamic part of spiritual life at Ananda. He also created new levels of ministers, including Lightbearers.

In one of the most important ceremonies, the Festival of Light, God’s light is invoked to flow down to earth, and into the hearts of worshipers both present and afar, through the channels of Ananda’s line of masters and the great saints of all religions.

There are also ceremonies for inner purification, for higher attunement, and for when people leave this world.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
Why a Festival of Light?

For years I felt the need to condense our central message into ceremonial form that would make it possible to repeat it at every service without the repetition becoming tiresome. But whenever the thought arose in my mind, the answering thought came, “The moment isn’t right.”

Then when I felt the inspiration for the first of them, the Festival of Light, it came in a flash. I was in Assisi in seclusion, and the inspiration just flowed. The other ceremonies came almost as smoothly.

The ceremonies we have serve to remind us of the need for inner awakening, for an inner upliftment of consciousness. When, for example, we offer “the little light that is in us” in the arati during the Festival of Light, and again when we receive that light into ourselves, we are reminded repeatedly of the changes we need to effect in our own consciousness.

If you don’t know what to do when you go inward, these things can be helpful. If on the other hand, you are deeply dedicated to the inward path, these outward reminders can still help to make that path more dynamic to your awareness, particularly in your worship with others.

These ceremonies are not a combination of Eastern and Western religious practices. The similarities, such as they are, are more a matter of “feeling.” Otherwise, they express, simply and clearly, the way God’s light has been expressed in this age, through our line of Masters.

We have a message in each of our ceremonies that is universal, inasmuch as it is focused not on single events in human history, but on the cosmic “event” of creation itself. This is the eternal aspect of the ceremonies.

There is also another benefit in having these ceremonies. Not every minister is a born speaker. The Festival of Light enables every minister to give the congregation something living and uplifting.  It even helps the minister to attune himself more deeply to the truths he has to offer.

Master believed in ceremonies, though he, too, stressed the need for simplicity. These new ceremonies came through meditation on him, and I think that it is in keeping with his teachings that we perform them.  Interview, Clarity Magazine, 1988

14
Kriya Yoga

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“‘Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization,’ Babaji finally said with solemnity, ‘will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man’s personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.’ After a vibrant pause, Babaji addressed me again, ‘You are the one I have chosen to spread the message of Kriya Yoga in the West.’” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Kriya Yoga is the most central of all techniques because it helps to magnetize the inner spiritual spine, and thus bring everything into alignment with a higher reality.” The Light of Superconsciousness.

1990: Start of Kriya Ministry

Kriya Yoga at Ananda
Although Kriya Yoga initiations have been given annually at Ananda since 1969, the establishment of a formal Kriya Ministry in 1990 marked the beginning of an especially dynamic phase in Ananda’s dissemination of the ancient science. Since then, Ananda Village has offered monthly initiations and ongoing support to Kriya initiates worldwide via phone, email, newsletters, recordings, booklets and a special website.

Today, there are thirteen Ananda Kriya ministers serving devotees in the United States, Europe, India, and Central and South America, where they offer programs and ministries tailored to the specific needs of the devotees in those locales. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, “The time for knowing God has come!”

Perspectives: Peter Kretzmann
“What Is It They Are Doing?”

Having grown up around hundreds of Kriyabans* at Ananda Village, I always thought that becoming an adult meant that you were an honest, respectable, trustworthy and generally joyful person. After attending the local public high school and meeting my friends’ parents, I realized that this was not necessarily the case!

While some of the adults that I met were good happy people, many were unhappy, jaded, disillusioned, and angry at the world. After seeing this again and again, I had to step back and ask myself, “What is the difference between Ananda adults and the parents of my friends at school?”

Swami Kriyananda has mentioned that when you find such a high quality collection of people in one place, you have to assume that it is not so much the people that are amazing, but more what the people are doing. Naturally, the next question I had to ask myself was, “What is it that these Ananda adults are doing that sets them apart?”

As I had learned growing up, Ananda practices the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, at the core of which is Kriya Yoga. In my heart I knew that Kriya Yoga was what I wanted.

While the world so often offers bitterness and frustration, here right in front of my nose, I had the tools to fill my heart with love, peace, happiness and joy! What a divine blessing simply to be given that choice. With these tools, I knew I could grow to become the person I want to be.

As my Kriya practice deepens, I know in my heart I am on my way to becoming who I want to become and achieving the ultimate goal of Self-realization.

* One who practices Kriya Yoga.

15
Unity of Religions

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“When the blindness of ignorance and denominational prejudice is healed by the Self-realization of God, then the whole elephant of Truth will be perceived as the essence of all religions. Then inter-denominational wars and religious and racial prejudice will cease, and there will be one church, one brotherhood, one scientific highway of religions, and one Temple of Truth everywhere.” Praecepta Lessons, 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“Paramhansa Yogananda told us clearly and repeatedly the kind of religion that will predominate in the new age. He said it would be free from dogmatism, free from rigid institutionalism, and strong in its emphasis on Self-realization.” Religion and the New Age

1987: Publication of Rays of the Same Light
1998: Publication of The Hindu Way of Awakening
2001: Publication of Promise of Immortality
2006: Publication of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
2007: Publication of Revelations of Christ

An inner approach
One of the main goals of Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission to the West was to show the unity of religions through his commentaries on the original teachings of Jesus Christ and Krishna in The Bible and Bhagavad Gita.

Yogananda’s basic message was that the unity of religions is achieved not through outward religious similarities but through the inner experience of divine communion. For as Swami Kriyananda writes: “In silent communion with God there no longer remains Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism, as such.”

It is this inner aspect of the unity of religions that Kriyananda clarifies in some of his most important books, including Rays of the Same Light, The Promise of Immortality, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, and Revelations of Christ, showing it to be the essence of all true religions.

In The Hindu Way of Awakening, Kriyananda explores the subject of unity through the deeper teachings of Hinduism, which he describes as the only religion in the world whose adherents “present Self-realization as the goal of life.”

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
“You’re Doing the Right Thing!”

Master stated that he had been sent to teach the original teachings of Jesus Christ. It is clear also that Master was sent from Hindu India, rather than born into the Church as a reforming Christian saint, because such reform from within would have been impossible, given the realities of the present Church with its rigid institutionalism.

Padre Pio, a modern Christian saint, gave confession many years ago to an SRF member in Italy, a friend of mine. This friend related the story to me.

“During my confession, I told Padre Pio that I practiced Kriya Yoga.

“‘Oh, hush!’ Padre Pio replied. ‘You shouldn’t talk about such things. But,’ he added with a conspiratorial smile, ‘you’re doing the right thing!’”

Saints themselves, you see, are powerless to change the teachings of their own church, heavily institutionalized as it is.

For contrast, look at religion in India. There, religion is not really organized at all. Yet the original teachings of the Vedas—thousands of years older than the New Testament, and indeterminately older than the Old Testament—are still offered in a relatively pristine form.

It is true that Master came also, as he told us, to bring back the original yoga teachings of Krishna. The basic truths expounded in the Vedanta, however, are widely known in India, and are as purely and sublimely expressed today as they ever were.

The difference is that, in India, the purity of the teachings has been preserved from age to age not by some smoothly run institution, but by living saints.

16
“Yogananda for the World”: A Twelve-Year Battle for Freedom

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“We must have fellowship for the good of all, one “Church of God” to shed its light to all mankind, and not sects and “isms” which cause separativeness. The time will come when only souls of realization will give instruction and draw souls and crowds.” Praecepta Lessons 1938

Swami Kriyananda:
“God was using Yogananda as the avatar of a new age, to change an entire civilization. Don’t let anyone tell you that one organization, one person, one statement can ever, even remotely, define what he brought to the world. The present legal tiffs are not between two organizations, but between two different ‘takes’ on his cosmic mission.” In Divine Friendship

1990: Ananda changes its name
1990:  Publication of Essence of Self-Realization
1990: Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) sues Ananda

A challenge to universality
In 1990, SRF initiated a major lawsuit in federal court to prevent Ananda from using “Self-realization” in its name. SRF also demanded that Ananda not use Paramhansa Yogananda’s “name or likeness” in any advertising or publicity, and that it not use quotes from any of Yogananda’s writings without its permission.

Ananda had changed its name to “Ananda Church of Self-Realization” to convey more clearly the nature of its “religion” and the universality of its work and mission. “Self-realization” was the name used by Paramhansa Yogananda to describe his “religion.”

The universality of Yogananda’s teachings was the focus of The Essence of Self-Realization, a compilation of Yogananda’s statements, recorded by Swami Kriyananda, published shortly before the lawsuit.

After twelve years of litigation, Ananda won on nearly every count—essentially ninety-five percent of the lawsuit.

The court invalidated SRF’s trademarks in the names “Self-realization” and “Paramhansa Yogananda.” Numerous photos of Yogananda, many of his articles and lessons, and all books published by him before 1952, including Autobiography of a Yogi, were declared to be in the public domain.

The court also found that since SRF did not own Yogananda’s publicity rights, it could not control Ananda’s use of his name, likeness, voice, or signature.

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
“The Power To Rise”

God has given us countless marks of His love for us. He has given us tests also, and for these we should be just as grateful. For only when we are challenged to our foundations can we know inner peace and love for Him as truly our own. By remaining unshaken during trials, it is ourselves we convince that God is truly our only Beloved, and the wellspring of our existence.

Whatever happens to us in this life, it is God’s dream. If we live steadfastly for Him alone, whatever trials we are put through will generate in us the power to rise ever higher in divine consciousness, until we achieve our hearts’ only lasting desire: oneness with Him.

17
Ananda Yoga

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Through yoga postures we can remove or relieve the congestion in the nerves or vertebrae and permit the free flow of life energy.” Scientific Healing Affirmations, 1924

Swami Kriyananda:
“Hatha Yoga [yoga postures and breathing techniques] is the physical branch of Raja Yoga and its real purpose is spiritual—to still the body so you can meditate deeply. I consider Ananda Yoga to be Paramhansa Yogananda’s system, and that he taught it through me.”  Interview with Gyandev McCord

1967: Publication of Yoga Postures for Self Awareness
1995: Publication of Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness

A new system
Ananda Yoga dates back to the 1960s when Swami Kriyananda gave yoga postures classes in various northern California cities. In keeping with Hatha Yoga’s original spiritual purpose, he introduced a new dimension through affirmations that enable one to attune to the consciousness underlying each posture.

Kriyananda presented this new system in Yoga Postures for Self Awareness, published in 1967. More recent editions of the book have been renamed, Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness.

Ananda Yoga is now taught in most Ananda colonies and centers. In extended programs such at the Yoga Teacher Training program offered at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village, students are introduced also to meditation and Yogananda’s Energization Exercises.

The spread of Ananda Yoga:
Since 1978, thousands of teachers have been trained in the Ananda Yoga system. They remain connected with Ananda through the Ananda Yoga Teachers Association  (AYTA) and its newsletter, “Awake and Ready!”

Similar yoga teacher training programs are now offered at the Ananda colonies in Palo Alto, Seattle, Portland, and Assisi.

Perspectives: Gyandev McCord:
“I Am So Much More Than I Ever Thought”

In January 2008, The Expanding Light began a study of the therapeutic effects of Ananda Yoga, the Energization Exercises, and meditation on 28 people with multiple sclerosis. The experience was tremendously inspiring, starting when participants braved a severe winter storm to come to the initial five-day program. I thought, “These people are doers”—which is, of course, exactly who we wanted.

We taught them a specialized program of the Energization Exercises, yoga postures, meditation, affirmation and visualization. Ananda Yoga, for example, has an entry point for everyone, and we adapted the practice to what each individual could do. We also gave them DVDs to guide their home practice during the four-month study.

These warriors for wellness gave it their all, and we saw gains after just five days. At the tear-filled farewell, one participant said, “I think you guys are onto something here.”

Fast-forward to the joyous reunion and final assessments in May. We knew just from seeing participants move and hearing their stories that they had made great strides. (Analyzing the data will take longer.) Every component of the program made its own contribution. Energization was a valued tool, and meditation proved more popular than we had dared hope.

I had expected the gains to be more physical and psychological than spiritual because we had emphasized the first two more than the latter. Yet many others echoed one woman who said, “I don’t know what lies ahead for me, but I do know this: No difficulty could outweigh what I’ve gained spiritually from this. I am so much more than I ever thought, and nothing can take that away from me.”

Participants departed amid great optimism, love, gratitude, and plans for an October reunion. We too were deeply touched and grateful—to God and Guru as well as to those great souls.

18
Joyful Arts Festival

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“In India, music as well as painting and drama is considered a divine art.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“If art is to fulfill a divine mission—and everything on earth is a divine mission if understood properly—it should help you to uplift your consciousness through color, form, melody, harmony, or rhythm.” Joyful Arts Festival 2007

2005: First Joyful Arts Festival at Ananda Village

Why an arts festival?
Swami Kriyananda introduced The Festival of the Joyful Arts at Ananda Village to increase awareness of the importance of art in producing positive, uplifting changes in individuals and also in society as a whole.
The first Joyful Arts Festival, and those that followed, offered exhibitions of paintings, sculptures and photographs by Ananda artists and others; musical concerts; a performance of The Peace Treaty; and classes and workshops exploring all aspects of artistic expression.

Perspectives: Devi Novak
“I’ll Try To Do Better”

What Ananda brings to the arts is the ability to live from your own center and the divine power and inspiration that come when you do that. The Festival of the Joyful Arts is almost an allegory—a symbol of people channeling a higher power.

While in India in 2004, my husband, Jyotish, and I had the blessing of experiencing how powerfully that can happen. We went to a recording session with Swami Kriyananda where he recorded an album of songs, I Lived My Life as a Stranger. He was accompanied by guitar, tamboura, and piano.

The pianist, a devotee and a very accomplished pianist, had been asked to accompany Swami on the song, “In the Spirit,” but he had never played it before and had only been given the music that morning. When it came time to record that song, Swami had been in the studio three or four hours and he was tired. There were no windows and it about 110 degrees inside.

The pianist started playing, but he couldn’t get the mood of the music, or the melody— he couldn’t get any of it right. Finally, Swami stopped singing and asked,  “What are you doing?”

The pianist said, “I’ll try to do better tomorrow, Swami.”

He spent all night practicing, returned to the studio the next morning, and again played the song while Swami sang. At one point Swami paused. He said, “No one has ever captured that piece like that. You played it the way I heard it, and no one’s ever done that before.”

The pianist later told us, “I played it and I played it and I played it—until I felt it within myself and it was a part of me.” He had gone into his center and attuned to the inspiration Swami felt when he wrote the piece.

19
New Models of Living

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“If God is not conceived in such a way that we cannot do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, when earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is plain that we have not felt any connection between God and life.” Praecepta Lessons 1934

Swami Kriyananda:
“I saw Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings as the hub of a great wheel from which central truths radiate out in all directions like spokes on a bicycle wheel. The hub that formed the center of his teachings had the potential to energize humanity’s entire existence.” The Story Behind the Story

The spokes of a wheel
Some of Swami Kriyananda’s creative applications of Yogananda’s teachings are discussed above. Others include the following training system, books, and lessons:

1979: Superconscious Living (SCL): A system of training that explains the importance of living from the highest level of consciousness, the superconscious, and offers practical techniques and exercises that help people develop that level of awareness.

1987: The Art of Supportive Leadership—A Practical Guide for People in Positions of Responsibility: A view of leadership based on service to others and concern for their highest good, not on personal power or position.

1994: Money Magnetism: A discussion of the universal principles and techniques that enable one to attract true abundance, both material and spiritual.

1995: Expansive Marriage—A Way to Self-Realization: An approach to marriage based on the understanding that the purpose of human love is to expand one’s consciousness to embrace a universal love.

1999: Art As a Hidden Message: A discussion of art as a vehicle for bringing a deeper purpose and vision to life.

2004: Material Success through Yoga Principles: A 26-lesson course explaining why living by spiritual principles brings both inner and outer success, and offering techniques and practices to guide one’s efforts.

Perspectives: A New Approach to Friendship

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“In pure friendship you will find God. If you would be a true friend, you must recognize the soul. When you consider yourself as a soul, then you can be a perfect friend.” Inner Culture Magazine, 1940

Swami Kriyananda:
“Remember, God is the soul’s one, true Beloved. Only when He is loved first can there be true harmony in human life. Seek the Lord first. Be impersonal, even somewhat distant from others. That is the road to freedom. Remember, all that you are seeking can only be found in your own Self.” The Art and Science of Raja Yoga

Nirmala Schuppe: “A Gift from God”

People often think that in the early days Ananda was a cozy little family, because we were so many fewer people. It is a mistake to view Ananda in this personal way. It misses the point. Ananda is not about getting cozy, creating a utopian suburb: having barbecues, singing songs around the campfire, and creating the “good old boy” network!

Ananda is about spiritual support. This is the support Swamiji has given every person, relating to every individual soul to soul. Following his example, and seeing what joy it can bring to life, Ananda people try to relate to the God in each other, not to the personality. This has created many very deep friendships.

These true friendships have a foundation in Spirit; they aren’t a product of “ego vs. ego.” This is why Ananda friends can be apart for years, but when they come together again, it is as though no time at all has passed: the joy and love are ever fresh.

Because Ananda people consciously bring God into their relationships with others, God uses these friendships to help us in countless ways. They are truly a gift from God. That spirit of divine friendship is the same now as it was forty years ago, and available to everyone.

Savitri Simpson: “I See the Divine within You”

I see Swami Kriyananda very seldom these days, but when I do he always greets me and looks into my eyes with a look that says to me, “I see you, Savitri, but not the ‘little you’ with all your struggles and faults. I see the Divine within you.” In that look there is a blessing that far surpasses any human love or friendship I have ever known.

Nakin Lenti: “Invited to a Banquet”

Kriyananda’s influence on my life had been both personal and impersonal at the same time. Personal in the sense that I have a relationship with another human being, yet, it is a sacred trust that doesn’t lend itself to an easy-going familiarity, but demands the highest in me. This impersonal quality is what has made his spiritual leadership at Ananda unique, and very different from other teachers I have known, because grounded in the higher qualities of the soul.

Swami tries to help us in what we are already trying to do, which is to find God. I have found that to the extent that I am inwardly receptive to his help, to that extent is he able to work with me. It’s a reciprocal thing, like being invited to a fine banquet. If you’re not hungry, no one is going to force you to eat.

Dhyana Lynn: “Tune into Master”

Swami Kriyananda describes his role as that of our divine friend—someone who helps and guides us along the path and offers us loving friendship in God. I came to understand in time what it meant to have Swami as our divine friend.

In 1984, when four of us from Ananda USA were helping to get Ananda’s work started in Italy, I was still fairly new to Ananda and had no experience in starting a center. In the beginning, Swami was in Italy with us and gave many talks that attracted large crowds.

When Swami was about to return to Ananda Village, I asked him if he had any advice on developing our work. I was looking for concrete answers and a step-by-step plan. Instead Swami said, “Tune into Master and Divine Mother, and you will know what to do.”At first I didn’t understand what this meant, but as I tried to follow his advice and “tune in,” I began to feel the flow of ideas, inspiration, and inner guidance. I could also feel Swami’s prayers and silent support. Even though he called us frequently and offered advice, it was clear that he wanted us to gain our own strength, and to make decisions from inner attunement to Master.

More than anything else I feel the greatest gift of Swamiji’s friendship has been his attunement to Master and his guidance on how we can develop our own inner attunement to find Master’s guidance within ourselves.

Anandi Cornell: “Meditate on This”

One of the things I appreciated about Ananda from my first days at Ananda Village was the respect with which people treat each other. Everyone is given the space to develop naturally from the inside out — to make their own decisions and to let their own integrity guide them. People rarely give you unsolicited advice.

Swami Kriyananda has been a great model in this. He’s not afraid of people making mistakes because he knows it’s the way people learn, and he trusts that our good intentions, sincerity, and intelligence will bring us to the truth eventually.

In the early years, when I asked Swamiji for guidance about new directions in my life, he gave the questions back to me with the guidance, “Meditate on this. Ask God what He wants you to do.” He wanted me (and all of us) to develop our own intuition, to learn to get our answers from within.

20
Yoga Institute

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Dr. Lewis and I halted above the lotus pool near the hermitage. Below us lay the illimitable Pacific.

“We shall arrange here for many conferences and Congresses of Religion, inviting delegates from all lands…. As soon as possible,” I went on, “I plan to open a Yoga Institute here.” Autobiography of a Yogi

Swami Kriyananda:
“Yoga means union. As a yoga institute we will offer teachings that unite the various branches of learning in a higher vision of spiritual purpose. Basic to this approach will be the universal insights and world mission of India’s great modern yoga master, Paramhansa Yogananda.” Prospectus, Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom

2003: Ananda Institute of Alternative Living (Meditation Retreat)
2006: Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom (India)
2007: Ananda Institute of Living Yoga (Seattle)

A new approach to higher education
Inspired by Yogananda’s vision of a yoga institute, the three Ananda yoga institutes now in existence offer an approach to higher education grounded in Yogananda’s teachings.

The Ananda Institute of Alternative Living that began in 2003 at the Ananda Meditation Retreat, offers a full curriculum of standard academic subjects together with a wide variety of spiritually based courses, including Education for Life, holistic health and healing, dharmic business, and others.

The Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom in India, which got underway in 2006, will eventually address “every essential aspect of modern knowledge.” Already there are programs in inspirational art, leadership, dharmic business, and yoga philosophy, among others.

The Ananda Institute of Living Yoga in Seattle now offers teacher training and certification in Ananda Yoga, meditation, and Education for Life, as well as programs in Raja Yoga and other yogic disciplines.

Perspectives: Gaurja Prasher “The Best of Both Cultures”

I came to America to study at the Ananda Institute of Alternative Living because I believed that whatever I was to do in my life would start here.

I had always been fascinated with America. Growing up in India, I would often be around the American and British people who did business with my parents. Those interactions were very positive and I saw how each side gained from them.

Then, when my mother became involved with the Ananda work in Gurgaon, India, I was introduced to the spiritual side of America. How surprising it was to meet an American swami!

More and more, I’m discovering that all people seeking God are similar. Many of the institute students are from different countries, and it’s been interesting to learn how each of them was drawn to a spiritually oriented education, and especially to Ananda. Six of us are Kriyabans and the rest are very open to Yogananda. Many of the classes are based on his teachings.

As I try to make the most of my time here at the Institute, I am realizing more and more that Master is not just giving me good experiences, but he is also teaching me how to share these experiences and blessings with all. Right now, I am learning the best of both cultures, East and West, and my goal in future is to share that with others in every way I can.

I would like to be actively involved in spreading Master’s vision of world brotherhood colonies, perhaps by helping different groups start communities or perhaps by becoming involved in Education for Life.

But whether I work with children or adults, ultimately I see my life being dedicated to helping others find happiness within themselves through Master’s teachings.

21
The Future of Ananda

Paramhansa Yogananda:
“Wars are bound to go on in the world until the United States of Europe and the United States of Asia are evolved, to prepare the way for the United States of the World, with God guiding all nations through their realization of human brotherhood.” Inner Culture, 1942

Swami Kriyananda:
“At Ananda, brotherhood is a living reality, one which readily expands into a kinship with all life. Cooperation, rightly understood, ought not by any means to be limited to the community. It should reach out to embrace the larger ‘community’ of mankind. Hence, of course, Yogananda’s term, ‘world brotherhood colony.’” Intentional Communities

Perspectives: Swami Kriyananda
The World Is Our Community

People ask me what I see for the future of Ananda. The divine blueprint for Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission is not something that’s fixed.  It’s an energy, a direction. For the future I see more of the same spirit as there is now; how it expresses itself is secondary. If we have the right spirit, then everything will go right.

At Ananda we are not trying to create a beautiful New Age village. We’re here to serve God and to create an environment supportive to our devotion, one that will enable us to grow toward the universal goal of all life: Self-realization in God.

The ideal of communities is something that devotees everywhere should seek. Apart from that, people everywhere would do well to seek another kind of community. Human beings live together in planetary community. The good of each must be sought for the good of all.

Much thought has been devoted in modern times to finding solutions that depend entirely on human effort, without God—and without even such high ideals as love, happiness, and voluntary (as opposed to enforced) cooperation. Is there any hope that a community without such a foundation can succeed?

No, frankly, I see no such hope. If people live selfishly, what hope have they of clambering out of their habit-worn mental ruts? Attempts have been made, and the results always have been disappointing.

No mere economic system can possibly create a successful community. No mere decision to live and work together, without a high purpose in life, can possibly bond people in unity during stressful times. No merely social experiment will ever work.

It’s people who make communities, and more than that, it’s people in tune with a state of divine consciousness. This state of consciousness is something given to us by God, and it’s this consciousness that makes Ananda what it is.

In today’s world where people are adrift in a sea without direction or spiritual values, God wants to use Ananda to show others a positive way to guide their lives. It’s not you or me doing it, but God through us, because He has something to say to the world at this time about the need for communities.

We are living in an age when coming together in spiritual communities will bring new understanding, new perspectives. The world needs a focus for this movement, and Ananda provides this focus.

In our Ananda communities we have shown that people can live by high ideals, love all, and have communal harmony. Through our example, we can be of practical service to those who feel in harmony with what we’ve done.

Paramhansa Yogananda predicted that, “The day will come when this colony idea will spread through the world like wildfire.” Ultimately, Ananda’s isn’t the story of a community. It’s the story of great waves of consciousness that are needed in our times.

Perspectives: Shivani Lucki
“It’s People I Care About”

A conversation I had with Swami Kriyananda that especially stands out in my memory occurred in the mid 1970s while we were at a spiritual conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Swamiji had been invited and introduced as “the father of spiritual communities,” an honorific he gently rejected with this interesting comment: “I don’t care all that much about cooperative communities; it’s people I care about, and their spiritual growth. That is the only reason I’ve created Ananda. And if ever in the future it is not helping people in this way, then it should not continue to exist.”

Vidura Smallen:
“Ananda Exists for You”

From a political standpoint, the core values of Ananda very much represent the early values that America was founded on—in God we trust. Hard work and God’s blessings have made Ananda what it is.

Swami Kriyananda laid down the principle that the primary job of the Spiritual Director of Ananda is to guard the rights of the individual. He once said, “You do not exist for Ananda, Ananda exists for you.”

At Ananda, you have many people living this principle and, as a result, people look out for one another. For instance, the primary qualification of an Ananda minister is the willingness to put the needs of others before his own.

Contributors

Swami Kriyananda is the founder of Ananda Worldwide. Now retired and living in India, he serves as Dharmacharya (upholder of the spiritual vision) of Ananda  Sangha Worldwide.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are the Spiritual Directors (Acharyas) of Ananda Sangha Worldwide. They are both Kriya Ministers. Jyotish is also Spiritual Director (Acharya) of the Ananda Sevaka Order, Worldwide.

Parvati Hansen is the Executive Director of The Janaka Foundation based at Ananda Village.

Helen Purcell is Principal of the Ananda Palo Alto Living Wisdom School.

Jaya Helin is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda India.

Mary Kretzmann is Director of The Healing Prayer Ministry at Ananda Village.

Asha Praver, together with her husband David, is Spiritual Director (Acharya) of Ananda Palo Alto.

Lorne Dekun is Center Leader for Ananda Michigan.

Savitri Simpson is a teacher at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village and also serves in the Sangha Office.

Bhagavati Nani is a flutist and part of the Music Ministry at Ananda Village.

Patrick Lynch, together with his wife, Amber, is Center Leader for Ananda Ashland (OR).

Peter Kretzmann works as a computer specialist for Ananda Village.

Gyandev McCord teaches Ananda Yoga at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village.

Nirmala Schuppe, together with her husband Dharmadas, is Spiritual Director (Acharya) of Ananda India.

Nakin Lenti serves in the Sangha Office at Ananda Village.

Dhyana Lynn is a Kriya Minister and Director of the Kriya Ministry at Ananda India.

Anandi Cornell teaches at The Expanding Light Guest Retreat at Ananda Village.

Gaurja Prasher is a student at the Ananda Institute of Alternative Living at the Ananda Meditation Retreat.

Shivani Lucki is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda Assisi.

Vidura Smallen is a teacher and Kriya Minister at Ananda India.

Parents and children should understand that their relationship is not fortuitous, but is due to a divine plan. Family life is the laboratory in which human love can be transformed into God’s perfect love.

Parents should look upon their child as the honored temple where their conjugal love can be purified and expanded into filial love. They should feel that they are serving God in that little temple.

Children, in turn, should look upon their parents as visible representatives of God on earth. Obedience and respect should activate their behavior.

For parents, kindness and loving guidance should prevail, never harsh treatment.  If parents are harsh or unkind to their children, owing to a lack of self-control, they will surely prevent God from expanding His love from the parental heart to the heart of the child.

Parents should take care never to scold their children before others, or to bring an erring child to rebellion by continuous harshness. Strong, loving suggestions, alongside their good example, will do more to change a child than anger or harsh words.

The reforming power of love
Some time ago, I accepted a boy into my school in India who was much older than most of our students. He had been causing difficulties because his parents did not know how to discipline him properly.

Before accepting him, he and I had a heart-to-heart talk.  I said, “You have made up your mind to smoke, but your parents do not want you to smoke. You have succeeded in defeating your parents, but you have not succeeded in defeating your misery—think of what you have done to yourself.” My “arrow” struck him and he began to weep. He said, “They are always beating me.”

I told him, “I will take you on one condition. I will be your friend but I will not be a detective.  As long as you are willing to correct your mistakes, I will help you, but if you tell lies, I will do nothing for you because lying destroys friendship. You may decide not to tell me everything but do not lie.” Then I said, “Anytime you want to smoke, I will get you the cigarettes.”

One day he came to me and said, “I feel a terrible desire to smoke.” When I offered him money to buy cigarettes, he could scarcely believe his eyes. He said, “Take back the money.”  I kept pressing him to take it, but he did not want it. At last, after a tug-of-war, he said, “You will not believe me, but I don’t want to smoke any longer.”

The result of this discipline was that he finally became a saint. Spiritual growth lies in making a strong inner effort to resist bad tendencies and to go upstream toward real lasting happiness.

Give children necessities only
All children need to develop the inner discipline that enables them to resist bad tendencies and wrong choices. For this reason, wealthy parents should not leave too much money to their children. More often than not, it chokes the development of initiative and self-earned success and happiness.

Give children necessities only, not luxuries. Take care not to enslave them to material things or selfish greed by too many possessions or too much money.

A child’s exercise of will power
Parents often impose their wills on their children. Don’t break your child’s will by always denying his inconvenient requests. It’s important that your child develop his will power.

As a child, when I made up my mind that I wanted something that could do me no harm, the members of my family had to consent. I always listened to reason; if ever I was wrong I was willing to be corrected. When I was right, however, I remained firm even if the whole family united against me.

I will tell you of an experience I had as a baby. A baby usually cries because it feels a physical need. This first expression of will, arising from that need, is called “physiological will.” As the baby grows, and the mother directs its will, it expresses “mechanical” or “unthinking will.”

I remember being in that state of mechanical will, always doing just as mother told me. Everyone called me an angel. One day when with my nurse, I saw some little orange-colored candies at a drug store, and I asked my nurse to buy some for me. He refused and took me home.

At home, after having my dinner, I told my mother I wanted some candy. She said, “No, go to bed.” A little later I said, “Mother, I want those little, orange-colored candies.” “Go to bed,” Mother said. Thereupon I cried all the more loudly: “I want those orange-colored candies!”

I continued in my determination to have my way, unheeding of her appeal. Mother finally had to go and wake up the drug store owner to obtain those candies for me.

I was happy. Why? Because I had exercised my own will power. I found it the most wonderful feeling. The next morning I was called a “naughty baby,” but only because I had exercised my will power.

Give your child freedom
Remember, when you’re young children are self-willed about something that isn’t wrong, don’t call them naughty. Listen to their little desires and offer suggestions based on love and understanding. Reason with them, but don’t curtail their freedom.

If they insist, don’t say anything. Let them have their own little hard knocks, if necessary. In that way, they’ll learn much sooner what is right. Try not to ask anything of your child that you can’t back with a good reason.

Quicken your child’s evolution
Children should be taught to concentrate and meditate. By practicing the scientific techniques of meditation, they will, from early life, reveal intuitive faculties that will enable them to grasp knowledge with extraordinary quickness.

Education does not consist of pumping ideas and facts into the brain. It consists of developing one’s intuitive faculties and bringing the hidden soul-memory of all knowledge onto the plane of human consciousness. All new truths are simply the hidden truths of the soul; they give us joy upon rediscovery.

The development of  intuition quickens human evolution. Teach children to quicken their own evolution through meditation. Have a little family altar where parents and children gather to offer deep devotion to God, and to unite their souls in meditation.

Excerpted from: Spiritual Relationships, Crystal Clarity Publishers and the Praecepta Lessons, 1934-38.

As devotees, our tendency is to compartmentalize our lives by seeing our meditation times as our “real life,” and the family, work, or health challenges as intrusions. But our goal as devotees is to feel exactly the same when dealing with difficult co-workers, or talking to an angry taxicab driver, as during our deepest moments in meditation.

I recall a time when it felt like I was being crushed by a certain experience, and it suddenly occurred to me, “Well, what did you expect? As a devotee, you’ve ‘signed on’ to go through this process, and others like it, to become more spiritual and of course it’s going to be challenging.”

God takes us very seriously when we come onto the spiritual path; He makes sure that our karma comes to us in ways that will help us to develop spiritually. Our challenging times help us to transcend our likes and dislikes and to realize that behind all the challenges, there’s only one reality: God.

“I am determined to be saintly”
Some years ago, I had an experience that really highlighted how different life is if we approach it with the thought that “I am determined to be saintly.”

When I was an intern in 1980, I had been a devotee for several years. I was working on a ward in a creaky old county hospital taking care of 25 or so highly addicted drug addicts with a wide variety of health problems.

We were stabilizing their health enough for them to be able to stagger out of the front door of the hospital, where the drug dealers would be waiting for them in the parking lot to try to get them re-addicted. It was a revolving door, but they all had health issues that needed attention, and working with them was never easy.

“Don’t go in there!”
I remember the day when I was walking down the hallway to admit a certain woman. This woman had spent most of her life either in jail or in the hospital, and she had been in the hospital as much as she had been in jail. As I reached the door of her room, one of the nurses rushed out just in time to miss being hit by an (empty) bedpan this woman had thrown at her. The nurse grabbed me by the arm and said, “Don’t go in there!”

In that moment, the thought came to me to approach this situation very differently from how I normally functioned as a doctor. I thought, “I know this patient is very difficult, very demanding, and tends to terrorize the staff. Nobody likes her. But I’m going to go in there and pretend I’m Saint Francis. I’m going to go in there and see God in her and try to channel God to her.”

A balm for her pain
I went in and the woman was mean and nasty and swore at me the whole time. She even tried to bite my arm as I conducted the initial exam. But I decided I wouldn’t react to anything. I would just see God in her and keep treating her as my friend, and as a person in a great deal of psychic pain.

I had no medication that would make her psychic pain go away, and there wasn’t much I could do for her physically except give her antibiotics for her infection, which was chronic. But if I loved her, that would at least be a balm for her psychic pain, and a balm for her soul.

This woman was in the hospital for about ten days. Each day I saw her, I would treat her like she had always been my best friend. I would greet her cheerfully and ask her how she was feeling, and tried to make sure that she had everything we could possibly offer as a hospital staff to make her more comfortable.

Her demeanor changed
It was very interesting to see how her demeanor changed. After four days of this, she would know what time I would make my rounds, which was usually around 5:30 in the morning, and she would be expecting me.

She was always awake. Her makeup was on, her pillows were plumped up, and she wore a little housecoat. She had been very disheveled when she arrived at the hospital, but she now looked like someone at home waiting to receive friends. As I entered the room, she would pat the bed where I could come and sit down and talk to her.

By the end of her stay the nurses began asking me, “What did you do?” “Did you give her a tranquilizer?” “Did you put her on an antidepressant?” “She’s actually being nice to everybody.” “She actually said ‘please’ to me the other day when she asked for something.” “What is going on?”

I didn’t say very much, only, “Well, she’s finally feeling better and let’s take advantage that. I think that if we don’t expect her to be bad, we’ll find that she’ll do a lot better.”

“What’s the catch?”
The very last day, when she was in the discharge room and I was preparing to leave, she said, “I want to ask you something and I wonder if you will answer truthfully?” I said, “Sure; fire away!”

She said: “I’m a terrible person and no one likes me. My family hates me; all my ex-husbands hate me; my boyfriend hates me; my drug dealer hates me; everyone hates me. I am awful to people. I am always angry; I am always mean; I am selfish; I steal. Why are you so nice to me?” She was asking: “What’s the catch?”

In that moment, I could feel God in my mind saying, “Well, I couldn’t be any other way.” For a moment she looked perplexed. Then she shrugged and said, “Okay.”

A glimpse of the saintly life
As I walked out of the room, I thought, “Well, of course, I could be another way!” I had quite a temper and could be very unkind to people when I didn’t feel like being nice.

But I realized in that instant how transforming it was, not only for that woman but also for me, to hold the thought that it was God serving God. It gave me a glimpse of what it was like to be saintly, and to always serve others as though you were serving God as your own beloved.

In fact, for all of us, the idea that our lives can be compartmentalized, or that they are separated in any way, is unreal. Whether we are meditating, feeling stressed at work, or having trouble with our finances—every one of these is an opportunity to deepen our relationship with God.

Remember: each one of us has the destiny is to become as great a saint as Yogananda, the Buddha, or Saint Francis, with all the incredible love and interior spiritual power that is our birthright.

Excerpted from a November 11, 2007 Sunday Service at Ananda Village.

Peter Van Houten, a Lightbearer, lives at Ananda Village and is the founder and Medical Director of Sierra Family Medical Clinic.

The next day at work, my supervisor walked up and pressed a book in my hands, saying, “You’ve got to read this! I’ve been on this program for six months, and it’s done wonders for me.” It was Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s first book, Aerobics.

Fleeting moments of happiness
Running delivered rich rewards. As the weeks passed, I found a new world opening within, the world of the fit and healthy body. On my best runs, my mind would become still, my heart would open, and I would feel bliss. Those fleeting moments of happiness seemed like openings to a greater Self. But it would be years before I could understand how to establish that connection with any regularity.

In 1976 I moved to Ananda Village, and illness eventually forced me to stop running. During the “layoff,” I focused on opening my heart. Swami Kriyananda had advised me to chant, and for five years I chanted every day for at least an hour and a half. When I came back to running in 1988, I was more in touch with my feelings.

The five tools of happiness
Having read Swami Kriyananda’s book, Education for Life, I also knew that we have five “tools” through which we can experience happiness: body, feeling, will, mind, and soul. Kriyananda describes how children pass through six-year stages as they grow up, during which each “tool” in succession becomes the primary developmental focus.

Why did nature choose this particular sequence? Kriyananda explains how each tool prepares the child for the one that follows. Thus, feeling comes before will power, because feeling is the faculty that enables us to tell right from wrong. Before we can use our will power appropriately, with sensitive consideration for others, we need to develop our ability to feel their realities. Happiness increases as we learn to use the five “tools” expansively.

A happy feeling in the heart
The center of feeling is the heart and in sports training, the heart is basic. It’s the instrument through which the body “talks” to us, telling us how much training it can handle on a given day. And it’s also the instrument through which God gives us His loving guidance.

Over time I learned that there was a running pace at which my heart’s intuitive messages were easier to hear. I thought of it as the “harmony zone,” and it was accompanied by an actual “happy feeling” in the heart. As I explored the harmony zone, I discovered that I could deepen the experience by deliberately cultivating positive attitudes.

One “heart method” that worked well was to send good thoughts silently to the people I encountered on the trail. Or I might take a phrase that held heartfelt associations for me and repeat it silently. If I couldn’t find anything to “wrap my heart around,” I discovered that I could absorb myself in the movement, sounds, and rhythmic footfall of the run, which would, in time, soothe and cheer my heart and make it easier to commune with God.

The protective power of love
One day, I was running in the hills at a relaxed pace when a young woman passed me. I turned toward her and smiled, but she ran silently by, her head down and her face set in a grim mask of triumph. Fifteen minutes later, I felt her negative energy again when she passed by going the other way.

A famous athlete whose book I had read stated that you shouldn’t let your competitors “steal your energy.” So I began generating an impermeable wall of indifference. But it was so dry! I realized that the only way to rise above her energy was to pour positive feelings through my heart.

I began to pray for her. At first, I was grinding out the words mechanically, but with fierce energy: “Bless her! Bless her! Give her health, love, strength, wisdom, and joy!” Before long, the meaning of the words took hold and a flow of love began to fill my heart. There was such power in that love that I no longer felt any need to defend myself.

The body’s most powerful organ
Scientists at the HeartMath Research Center in Boulder Creek, California have found that the heart generates the most powerful vibrations in the body: it sends out electrical signals roughly 60 times as strong those emitted by the brain. The heart’s powerful messages — positive or negative — are carried continually and instantly to the brain.

In studying the effects of positive feelings such as love, compassion, and kindness on the body and brain, HeartMath researchers have confirmed how important it is to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.” They have made some amazing discoveries:

• Positive feelings synchronize the entire body by bringing brain waves, heart rhythms, breathing, and blood-pressure oscillations into a unified, harmonious rhythm.

• Positive, expansive feelings such as love, appreciation, and compassion promote relaxation and synchronization of the nervous system. They quiet the “arousal” (sympathetic) branch of the nervous system and activate the “relaxation” (parasympathetic) side.

• Positive feelings quiet the mind, generate a sense of “self-security, peace and love,” and increase the frequency of feelings of “connectedness to God.”

• Deliberately focusing attention in the heart while cultivating feelings of love, compassion, etc., leads to clearer thinking, calmer emotions, improved physical performance and health, and more frequent spiritual experiences.

• Negative emotions such as anger, fear, and hatred result in an erratic heartbeat – the heart speeds up and slows down chaotically, like the random, jerky motion of a car that’s running out of gas.

• Positive emotions such as love, compassion, and appreciation, on the other hand, make the heart beat with a steady, consistent, harmonious rhythm.

• During positive emotions, the heart’s power output jumps by over 500 percent above the levels attained during negative emotions, or simple relaxation.

Feeling and reason work together
At one point, I conducted a little experiment. For several months, I tried relying entirely on intuitive feeling to guide my training. But in the end, I had to concede that the experiment was a failure.

At first, I wondered if my intuition simply wasn’t developed enough to serve as a reliable guide. But I eventually understood that intuition needs to be balanced by common sense.

There’s now solid evidence that feeling and reason work together, and that one without the other isn’t trustworthy. Contrary to a longstanding prejudice of our western culture, which assumes that reason is the superior faculty, researchers are now finding that reason is compromised unless it’s balanced with the feelings of the heart.

It’s been found, for example, that when people’s brains are damaged in the areas where feeling is localized, they lose their ability to make sound decisions. Conversely, our everyday experience confirms that we make terrible decisions when we let our emotions run out of control.

My experiences as a runner confirmed these findings. During the experiment where I relied on the heart alone, my decisions were too often prejudiced by emotion; my feelings weren’t sufficiently detached to be trusted.

My feelings were more reliable when I weighed them against my common sense and experience – when I asked: “Is this feeling truly calm and dispassionate? Or am I only telling myself what I want to hear? Am I actually listening to a higher guidance, or am I tuned to some lower, personal frequency?” Cool, objective reason helped me decide.

Centered in an axis of energy
My sense of the right training was more often correct when I held myself in a state of “reasonable feeling.” This came from focusing at the spiritual eye while I ran (a main technique of Yogananda’s path), which had a harmonizing effect on my emotions, and in calming and focusing my mind.

During my deepest experiences as a runner, there was a sense of the centers of reason and feeling being activated simultaneously. It helped to imagine that I was centered in an axis of energy between the spiritual eye and the heart, my attention strongly focused the spiritual eye and my heart energized with expansive feelings.

The interplay of these two centers was deeply enjoyable. It was as if heart and mind were released into a higher place where God and I could run together.

“You should run with joy!”
I once overheard Swami Kriyananda comment about joggers who slog along in a dispirited fashion: “When people run, they should run with joy!” Thirty years of training have taught me that there’s little joy in attitudes that shrink awareness onto the “little dot” of the ego-self, and that the heart is happiest when it is free to expand.

Rambhakta, an Ananda minister, lives in the Ananda Palo Alto community. From 1972-76, he served as an assistant editor and staff photographer of Runner’s World magazine. He is the author of Fitness Intuition: The Wisdom of the Heart in Exercise and Sports Training. (To read sample chapters, visit www.fitnessintuition.com).

Flowers are given to us for a purpose. They talk to us more about God than anything else. They tell us every day that God is right here. The flower that is talking of God all the time loves to serve all with its beauty.

Flowers have been in use in the temples of all countries. They are not just for demonstration but are for declaring the fragrance and beauty of God that you may behold through them the presence of God. Each flower is a divine temple through which the Divine One comes to us.

From the Praecepta Lessons, 1938.

The emotional and spiritual challenges of an illness are perhaps even harder than the physical. There’s the temptation to fall into self-pity or to be hurt by other people’s impatience or lack of understanding. We live in a fast-paced, youth-oriented culture where “perfect, graceful bodies” are held up as the ideal.

For now, when I struggle with negative emotions, I pray for the grace to have a broader perspective:  to understand my karma more deeply and to learn its lessons. I pray especially for the right attitude and the ability to stay positive.

Quietly turning pages
As if in answer to my prayers, I recently had the good fortune to be involved with the Ananda Village audio recording of Swami Kriyananda reading The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita. While Kriyananda was reading aloud the entire book, I was by his side in the recording booth, quietly turning the pages.

The task was surprisingly demanding. I had to be awake and alert at every moment so I would be sure to remove each page at exactly the right time. I also had to listen for any unintended changes or mistakes, so that I could bring them to Swami Kriyananda’s attention.

Also, due to space and noise considerations, I was on my knees for the entire six days of recording. For me, perhaps more than for most people, it was a sacrifice—but one that strangely added to the overall joy of the experience.

All great works are accompanied by tapasya or austerity. Swami Kriyananda’s entire life has been one of self-sacrifice, especially in the creation of Ananda. It seemed fitting, then, that the recording of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita should require some mild discomfort on my part.

Since my involvement in the recording of the book was the result of an unusual series of circumstances, I have asked myself, why did this experience come to me? I think there are two reasons, one personal, the other related to the book.

A microcosm of lessons
My days with Swami Kriyananda in the recording studio were a microcosm of lessons in how to live as a disciple, and how to meet the challenges of the body. Kriyananda had just celebrated his 80th birthday, yet his energy and focus remained consistently strong both during and after the recording process. Though he may have been physically unwell, he rarely mentioned it.

A friend who went to India this year for the celebration of Yogananda’s mahasamadhi (his final conscious exit from the body), told me of a day when Kriyananda’s body was so ill, he practically went straight from his sick bed to the teaching platform, and was brought into the hall in a wheel chair. Deeply moved by his example, she said, “Swami is showing us that we can always find a way to serve our Guru—even up to the moment of death!”

“I am not the body”
During the recording of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, Kriyananda served as a powerful role model of self-transcendence. Over the 35 years of my association with him, I have often observed his non-identification with the body.  He knows he is not the body, while most of us are still trying to realize this truth.

While with him in the studio, I experienced a taste of that transcendence. Any physical discomfort was just a faint buzz in the background. In the foreground of my mind was the joy of the experience, including helping to manifest a recording that will inspire so many people. Etched in my soul was the lesson: self-transcendence is a matter of what you focus on.

Gradually, the liberating idea that  “I am not the body” has started to ring true in unexpected ways, bringing a new sense of freedom. The radiant memory of those days in the recording studio helps me open up to the bigger picture. I try constantly to remind myself of the joyful devotion and detachment I felt while in Kriyananda’s presence.

An ocean of inspiration and grace
The other reason this experience came to me, I believe, relates to the book itself. From the reports of those who were with him, Kriyananda was immersed in an ocean of inspiration and grace during the writing of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita. He often says that Yogananda wrote the book through him.

The inspiration Kriyananda felt permeates the book in an almost tangible way. I had already experienced the power of that inspiration in reading the book. During the recording session, I was immersed in it for six entire days.

Being careful not to squander a precious opportunity, after each day of recording, I remained quiet and inward while handling my other duties for Radio Ananda, (Ananda’s internet radio station). Meditating and reading The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita were the highest priority; I yearned to stay in that sacred vibration as long as possible.

I can now appreciate more fully the Bhagavad Gita’s promise to any one who listens with devotion to its timeless wisdom:

Even that person who, full of devotion and without skepticism, merely listens to this holy discourse, and heeds its teachings, shall become free from earthly karma and shall be blessed to dwell in the high realm of the virtuous.

The Gita as a friend
A few months after the recording session, I sat one day in front of a picture of Sister Gyanamata, Yogananda’s greatest woman disciple who, at death, became a liberated soul. Among Yogananda’s disciples, she is known for the depth of her inward attunement to him.

Silently I prayed to her, asking for guidance on becoming more in tune with the Guru.  I felt her answer: “Read the Bhagavad Gita.” This was another confirmation that the Gita had become an important vehicle for attuning myself to the ray of divine grace that flows through Yogananda and Kriyananda.

However, the Gita is a valuable resource for any spiritual aspirant. For many of us there are times when meditation is difficult, when reading The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita may be all we can do. The book can help us on many levels, including the powerful level of vibration. What’s essential is that we approach it, as we would any good friend, with respect and an open heart.

“Wisdom is the greatest cleanser,” said Sri Yukteswar. The Gita is a flowing stream of wisdom and light, which we can tap into at any point. If we bathe in that stream, it will cleanse and purify us.

Each moment is precious
Recently I felt a welling up of gratitude for all the blessings in my life: for my Guru and for Swami Kriyananda, for the practice of yoga and meditation, for the spiritual community of Ananda.

Increasingly, I see my life in terms of quality more than quantity. Each moment is precious. Each day provides opportunities for giving my life to God—for loving and serving the Divine Friend.

* A line from Life Is a Dream, a song by Swami Kriyananda.

Nalini Graeber, Lightbearer and long-time Ananda member, works for Ananda Radio, Ananda’s new internet radio station. She is also working on a book.

Our “guest” spent his daylight hours sitting serenely in our meditation garden by a statue of Lahiri Mahasaya. Impressed by our visitor’s dedication, we often looked out our bedroom window to see him keeping his vigil by the saint’s statue. Not knowing our friend’s name, we decided to call him Gurupod, which means, “at the feet of the guru.”

Gurupod, you see, was a male deer, who for some inexplicable reason, came one day into our partially enclosed meditation garden to sit near the saint’s statue. Gurupod had a wonderful presence, a calm disposition, and he exuded a quiet strength. He was three years old and carried an impressive set of antlers.

Resting in the garden, with the statue and fence right behind him, Gurupod was a little skittish on his first day when we went out to our outdoor meditation hut. To get there, we had to pass directly in front of him, so we walked slowly, hoping not to frighten him. But Gurupod’s only reaction was to stand up and leisurely walk thirty feet away and wait until we went inside the hut, then he returned to sit near the statue of Lahiri Mahasaya.

Wild animals usually don’t feel comfortable in an enclosed area when people are present, but Gurupod apparently was no ordinary animal. During the following days, as we walked within a few feet of Gurupod on our way to meditate, he would stand up as before, but now he only walked five to ten feet away before returning. As far as we could tell, Gurupod spent every moment of every day resting quietly by the statue of Lahiri Mahasaya.

Later in the week, I thought it would be inspiring to sit with Gurupod as I studied for a meditation class I was giving. Gurupod, as usual, sat by the saint’s statue, and I, on a small patio ten feet away.

After spending several quiet hours together in the warm September sun, I turned to Gurupod, looked deeply into his eyes, and silently asked him, “Who are you? Have you come to teach me something? Have you come for Lahiri Mahasaya’s blessings?”

For a long time we held each other’s gaze: Gurupod’s eyes, calm and serene; my own, inquisitive and grateful. I did not receive a definite answer to my questions, but I do know that Gurupod’s poise and one-pointed focus have inspired me even to this day.

After our silent “conversation,” it was time for me to meditate. On this occasion, Gurupod, after getting up as I walked by, did not return again to Lahiri’s statue. Instead, he left the meditation garden and came around to the outer wall of the hut, on the side that our altar faces. Gurupod was now sitting below the pictures of all of our Masters.

As I began my meditation, Gurupod continued sitting quietly in front of me, just three feet away. My heart felt so close to Gurupod that I wanted to do something for him. Swami Kriyananda has told us that if we want to relate to others spiritually, we should commune with them from our center to theirs. Kriya Yoga, because it centers your energy in the spine, is a marvelous way to pray for and bless others.

The moment I started thinking of Gurupod during my practice of Kriya Yoga, he stood up and came directly to the screened window where I was sitting, and looked at me from a foot away. Gurupod gazed intently at me the whole time I was dedicating my Kriya Yoga practice to his soul evolution. At one point I heard a few faint sniffs come from him. The moment I finished doing my Kriya practice for him, he again sat down by the meditation hut.

After my meditation with Gurupod, Anandi and I never saw him again. His first day with us was September 19th and he stayed until the 26th. Curiously, Lahiri Mahasaya’s Mahasamadhi—a saint’s consciousness exit from his body—is on September 26th, the last day Gurupod spent resting near the saint’s statue.

Who was Gurupod? I don’t know. However, I feel I can truthfully say that on some level, Gurupod was magnetically drawn to the presence of Lahiri Mahasaya. Every action of his demonstrated this.

Almost three years have passed since Gurupod’s visit to our meditation garden, and we still feel inspired by his example whenever we go to our outdoor temple to meditate. In the garden, below the statue of Lahiri Mahasaya rests a black stone placed to memorialize Gurupod’s visit, and his dedication to stay close to the form of this great Master.

God, who has manifested Himself in countless ways, can come to the devotee in any form He chooses. For us, Gurupod’s visit was a thrilling message from God. We may be wrong, but our error will be our gain if we emulate in our hearts Gurupod’s beautiful manner of resting with the Master.

Joseph Bharat Cornell, a Lightbearer and long-time Ananda member, works in the Sangha Office as the Meditation Support Coordinator. He is also the author of the award-winning Sharing Nature Book Series

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.”

And Jesus answered and said unto her, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:8–42.

There are certain stories, like this one of Mary and Martha, that reveal deep truths. Martha made a number of mistakes, some very human mistakes.

The attitude with which we do things
Martha was unaware that the attitude with which we do anything is much more important than the outer aspect of the activity. Or, if she was aware, in her agitated state,
she had forgotten .

Martha was not joyful and happy while preparing the meal. She was upset—so upset that she went and asked Jesus, “Why haven’t you sent Mary in here?”

Our vibrations infuse everything we do. It isn’t only food we serve when we cook and offer it to others; it’s food plus the vibrations of the consciousness that go into preparing that food. This is true especially with food preparation, for what we eat is not something merely felt with the hands or appreciated with the eyes—it permeates the body.

“There’s something wrong in this food.”
A friend told us a story of a saint in India whose cook had prepared meals for him for many years. He chose her because she was very sattwic and had an uplifted consciousness.

But one day the saint could tell there was something wrong with the food. In questioning his cook, he learned that the only change was that she had hung new curtains in the house, given to her by her sister-in-law. The saint instructed her to “find out about those curtains.” She learned that they had previously been in the house of a man who was a butcher.

The saint was sensitive enough to feel that his food had the vibration of someone who killed animals as an occupation. Of course, the woman got rid of the curtains and after that, the food tasted fine again.

As an avatar, Jesus’ consciousness was much more refined than that of a normal saint, yet Martha was preparing a meal for him while in a negative mood. Jesus could feel those vibrations. Others weren’t necessarily sensitive enough to feel them, but they would nonetheless take them in.

What causes us to get upset?
Martha’s main mistake relates to those attitudes that caused her to get upset. Through attachment to “getting things done,” Martha was thinking that preparing the food was the most important thing going on.

We don’t get upset when we keep our consciousness aligned with the Divine. The divine energy flows through us and automatically uplifts our consciousness. As we work, everything goes right.

But when the direction of our energy is turned away from God and moves toward ego and attachments, our emotions get involved. We begin to think that others aren’t behaving right. And instead of getting the needle of our consciousness pointed in the right direction, we try to correct the situation by correcting the world around us.

Total immersion to the exclusion of God
In reprimanding Martha, Jesus was not putting down activity; he was putting down Martha’s total immersion in work to the exclusion of keeping her consciousness uplifted, and her mind on God, in the midst of work.

The highest service is to work in a divine flow, with an awareness of God’s presence within. If that’s not always possible, then at least try to keep your attention focused on God through the practice of japa. Inwardly chant to God as you work: “I am Thine; Be Thou mine.”

As you do that, when faced with challenges that threaten to pull your energy down, you will more easily remember what’s truly important.

A downward spiral
Now there was a third, and for us as devotees, the most important mistake, that Martha made. Here was Jesus, an avatar, speaking to his disciples with Mary sitting at his feet.

Martha didn’t quietly wink at Mary and whisper, “Come here. I need your help.” She went to Jesus and said, “Why don’t you rebuke Mary?” She was correcting Jesus.

Now imagine the same scene, except that the avatar is Paramhansa Yogananda, not Jesus. Imagine that you’re in the kitchen, that Yogananda is visiting, and your sister is supposed to be helping you in the kitchen, and she’s not.

Would you in your wildest dreams go in and start chewing out Yogananda for not sending her in? But Martha did that. She rebuked Jesus for not being aware that she needed help.

That’s what happens when we start to get deeply out of attunement. First of all, we get a little upset. Then we get angry. And then we get to thinking that we know more than God.

And that’s why this story is so important, and why it stays in our mind. It shows what happens to our consciousness as we get farther and farther out of tune.

The story on a symbolic level
To understand scripture rightly, we have to understand that it’s symbolic as well as factual. The events in this story took place in Bethany some two thousand years ago. Jesus, with some of his disciples, visited Martha and Mary.

But Jesus, Martha and Mary also represent aspects of our consciousness. Jesus represents the Christ Consciousness. Our true job is to be in attunement with the Christ Consciousness within, which was what Mary was doing.

But as we try to do that, the Martha part of our consciousness says, “That’s not important. What’s important are my projects. What’s important is what I’m trying to get done.”

The Martha part says, “ Sitting here and listening to Jesus is not getting on with the task, and the Christ Consciousness isn’t even aware that I need help.” And soon we get tied in an emotional knot.

Through attunement, everything flows right
What the Christ Consciousness was saying was, “Martha, Martha, just calm down. Get back in tune with me. Through that attunement everything will begin to flow right. We’ll get the meal out. We’ll get to those projects.”

So tonight or tomorrow morning, when, in meditation, the Martha consciousness in you starts pulling away from the Christ Consciousness in meditation, just say, “Martha, Martha, settle down. Don’t rebuke this process of attunement through meditation.

There will be time to get those projects done. Calm yourself, and most especially, don’t get negative.”

Because if you get in tune, when you go back into the kitchen and begin doing those tasks, the food you produce will have the right vibration. It will taste wonderful, and everyone will enjoy it.

From a May 8, 2005 Sunday Service.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order, worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Jyotish and Devi Novak are listed under “Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi.”

A loud piercing sound
One morning, as I was preparing my class for deep relaxation and guided meditation, we were suddenly jarred by the loud piercing sound of a smoke detector announcing that its battery was low. The offending object was attached to the wall near the two story high ceiling and there was no way I could disarm it.

Hoping for the best, I assured my students that “it was just a battery problem” and nothing to be concerned about. But after a few minutes it went off again, and thereafter continued to beep intermittently.

Tensed for flight of fight!
Imagine lying comfortably in deep relaxation, a pillow under your head or a bolster under your knees for maximum comfort, mind and body prepared to relax and renew after an invigorating morning class of Ananda Yoga.  You hear the words “Bones, muscles, movement, I surrender now; anxiety, elation, depression, churning thoughts, all these I give into the hands of Peace.”*

You are drifting into a state of deep relaxation and then WHAM! a loud, piercing, grating sound, designed to awaken people out of their deepest slumber, jolts you back into your body, now tensed for flight or fight!

This gives some idea of what I was up against. If the class was to continue, I needed to find a solution—quickly.

My prayer is answered
Swami Kriyananda suggests that mentally placing a blue cross of light over a phone, door, or person can deflect negative energy, so I tried it. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. There was nothing negative about the noise; it was a neutral event. I was the one who was becoming negative.

I also prayed feebly for the beeping to stop—“feebly” because I was annoyed and distracted, not at all focused and concentrated. Still, feeble as it was, I think my prayer was answered.

Suddenly I had the thought not to reject the sound but to incorporate it into the deep relaxation and guided meditation. In the spirit of embracing the situation, I asked the class to actively listen for the sound of the alarm, and to count each beep, giving each a number: one, two, three, etc. This brought smiles to their faces.

No longer tensing against it
They began to count silently and I practiced with them. The beeping continued intermittently but we were no longer tensing against it while also trying to relax. We were now receptive, ready to name it, and to organize it with numbers.

While counting the beeps, we were also counting our breaths—inhale 4, hold 7, exhale 8. We were experimenting with a new type of measured breathing that required more concentration than the usual even count breathing (inhale 8, hold 8, exhale 8).

More focused on the present
For all of us, the extra effort of counting the beeps and our breaths had the effect of keeping our thoughts focused and in the present moment.  Calmly centered, we continued counting the beeps as we sat for the guided meditation.

Later I recalled Swami Kriyananda’s description of being at the dentist’s and choosing to go through the procedure without pain medication. He tolerated the pain by remaining centered in the spine and breath. When the pain became too intense to ignore, he would focus on the pain and go to the center of it. At the center, the pain disappeared.

We were not able to go deeply enough into the sounds to banish them from our consciousness, but we entered into them deeply enough to completely transcend our frustration. What we had been dreading and bracing against was no longer a concern—it simply was.

A life lesson in calm acceptance
At the end of the guided meditation, the students had peaceful and happy expressions. We all agreed that bringing the sound of the smoke detector into our meditation had brought a deeper than usual experience. It was a life lesson in calmly accepting the things over which we have no control, and not letting them rob us of our peace.

Out in the waiting room we could still hear the beeping of the alarm, but the sound no longer bothered us. Before leaving, however, one student said, “You will ask the management to fix it won’t you?”

After all, keeping your peace means accepting what you can’t change and also acting to change what you can!

*Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness, by Swami Kriyananda.

Nicole DeAvilla Whiting teaches Ananda Yoga in Marin County and at the Expanding Light. She lives in Marin County where she leads an Ananda healing prayer group.

This book clarifies the subject of renunciation and sets a direction for Ananda’s future. Its few short chapters provide one of the clearest, most practical road maps for the spiritual path that we have ever read.

Renunciation—the first duty of every soul
Kriyananda makes it crystal clear that renunciation should be practiced no matter what your circumstances might be.

He writes:

The first duty of every soul is to release the hold that ego consciousness has on it. All spiritual practices are subservient to this one supreme obligation…I address ego-transcendence as the first, and indeed the only, challenge on the spiritual path, whether one be a renunciate, a householder, or living for God in some other way.

Ego transcendence means to transfer the sense of “I” from the body/personality to the soul, and to realize that in our larger self, we are a part of everything in existence. Over many, many lifetimes, we reach the point where the soul is no longer interested in enclosing itself in the ego—and we merge, finally, into our Infinite Self.

Humility is self-forgetfulness
Kriyananda begins with the topic he considers the most important—humility. True humility, he says, is not self-abasement; it is self-forgetfulness.

The traditional paths of yoga give us different approaches to self-forgetfulness. A bhakti yogi, one who follows the path of devotion, can become so focused on God or guru that he ceases to think about himself. Similarly, a karma yogi can become so focused on serving, without any thought of receiving anything in return, that he becomes more or less oblivious to the little self.

Kriyananda, however, takes the subject deeper. He shows that the essence of humility is to give up, even subconsciously, the desire to refer things back to oneself. Ultimately, humility is to have no desire for an identity separate from God.

Ways to diminish self-focus
Sadhu Beware! gives thirty-two extremely helpful techniques to diminish self-focus and develop self-forgetfulness. Paraphrasing a bit, here are a few examples:

1) When people fail to give you credit for something you did, say nothing. In your heart give the credit to God.

2) When people praise you, give the credit to God.

3) If someone has a good idea that you’ve already had, let it go.

4) If someone scolds you for something you didn’t do, say nothing.

5) Never place yourself, mentally, in competition with others.

6) Never belittle anyone.

7) Don’t feel badly when you make a mistake—God is the Doer.

The last of the thirty-two techniques deserves to be read in full:

Don’t let your mind play with the thought of where and how you fit into any picture. Don’t toy with flattery by entertaining it even lightly in your mind. Reject sternly any thought of self-importance, self-praise, self-justification, or blame. This subject is as important for you as your own salvation, for your spiritual liberation depends on release from ego-consciousness.

These simple but profound thoughts will help us enjoy our own unimportance.

Sexuality: one of nature’s strongest forces
Kriyananda also discusses sexuality and how to work with the creative force. You might wonder, “What does this have to do with ego-transcendence?” He explains:

To the extent that men and women find their unity on a lower level rather than in God, what they receive from each other, in varying degrees, is egoic in nature.

Paramhansa Yogananda defined ego as the soul identified with the body and personality. To overcome ego-consciousness, we must resist those pulls, such as sexuality, which increase body-identification.

Sexuality is one of nature’s strongest forces. Many biologists view the attractive force between male and female as the primary motivation for all behavior. Whether we are married or single, we need to learn to work with this powerful energy.

Suppression doesn’t work
In Sadhu Beware! Kriyananda emphasizes that suppressing the sexual force does not work, even in traditional monasteries with strict rules about behavior. He writes that with suppression, “the ego is held temporarily in abeyance but will break out anew, like a disease, when circumstances permit.”

Suppression is like putting a lid on a pressure cooker. Even though the heat of sexual desires may wax and wane, unless we remove the repressive lid from the pot there cannot be permanent relief. Rather than simply capping a boiling pot, we need to reduce the heat (of sexual desire) and re-channel the pent-up energy toward soul freedom.

Transmutation—a conscious effort of will
In other words, what is needed is not repression, but a conscious effort of will to transmute energy from lower to higher forms of expression. All of the techniques given in Sadhu Beware! for transmuting the sexual force involve using the will to counterbalance and re-direct its intensity. Here are a few examples:

1) Be ever mindful of your thoughts—sexual attraction starts in the mind.

2) Watch the flow of your attention. If you are beginning to focus on a person, picture, or scene, look away impersonally.

3) When you feel your energy going out to anything, internalize it. Realize that the source of joy is within yourself. Try never to get excited about anything—not even a meal that you expect to enjoy.

4) Try to be controlled in your physical contact with the opposite sex. “Touch,” he writes, “is the principle channel of sexual magnetism.”

He suggests that devotees, assuming they are intent on diminishing the ego, try to avoid the practice of embracing, which has become a common form of greeting in our society today. Try, instead, to greet others in a more dignified manner such as the namaskar used in India. As people begin to understand the deeper meaning behind the namaskar (my soul bows to your soul), they not only accept it, but even come to prefer it.

Practice with joy and freedom
Techniques to channel the sexual force should be practiced with a sense of joy and freedom. For married couples, what may be a comfortable level of self-control for some might seem repressive for others. The best standard is to feel that you are making a sustainable effort to direct your energy toward freedom from ego.

“Those who tithe, thrive!”
Money is another powerful attraction we need to channel properly. Kriyananda writes that, “money strengthens ego-identification by increasing one’s sense of power and importance.” The attraction to accumulating money and possessions draws the energy down into the lower chakras, where the ego-consciousness grows stronger.

The techniques he gives to counterbalance this downward flow help increase the feeling of non-attachment. For example, if you are attracted to having possessions, then buy what you want, but give it away. If you are attracted to wealth, then make money but give it away.

Giving it back—to God, or to help other people—keeps that energy moving upward and expanding. Over the years, we have seen that those who tithe, thrive!

Don’t run around in rags
At Ananda Village we have evolved certain practices that help counteract attraction to money. Members receive modest wages and are responsible for their own housing, food, and other living expenses.

We try to live on a simple level, but also accept that people have different definitions of simplicity. Individuals also have varying karma regarding money—some have a considerable flow of resources, others not—so we’ve left financial choices up to each individual.

Certain practices have been very, very important in helping develop expansive attitudes. One example is that wages are determined according to need rather than position. In many cases a supervisor earns less than the people under him or her. At Ananda we are free of the delusion of judging a person’s importance by how much money they have.

Kriyananda is very clear, however, that simple living does not mean that everybody should run around in rags or pretend to a kind of false poverty. It means to fulfill your needs but be disciplined about having excessive desires.

A person once asked Kriyananda, “What is Ananda’s mission?” He said, “Ananda’s mission is to equalize the world on the spiritual plane.” In other words, we’re trying to create an alternative to the material consciousness and egoic awareness of this world. Our approach to money and finances is one example of this.

Worthy of study over and over
Sadhu Beware! is a book worthy of repeated study. It would be very helpful for all of us to regularly review the techniques, and try to figure out how to best apply them to our own behavior patterns.

If we work diligently on true renunciation, the renunciation of ego, and get more into a flow of self-forgetfulness, we will feel a great increase of contentment and joy.

Jyotish and Devi Novak are Acharyas (spiritual directors) for Ananda Sangha Worldwide. Jyotish is also Acharya for the Ananda Sevaka Order  Worldwide.

Other Clarity articles by Jyotish and Devi Novak are listed under “Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi.”

Resources: Sadhu, Beware!
A New Approach to Renunciation

THE STAGES OF SUCCESS

The stages of success are the following: (1) Choosing a vocation that suits you. (2) Performing your work with attention, interest, and love. (3) Developing unfailing patience and ongoing interest.

1. Choose a vocation that suits you
Select your vocation according to your inner inclination and intuitive meditative guidance. Don’t seek success in a business you hate. Someone who is a vegetarian out of spiritual conviction, for example, should never go into a business of butchering animals or selling meat.

In my own case, it would have been folly to become a railroad man as was planned for me.  I loved philosophy and religion from boyhood, and I made up my mind to establish my own schools and institutions and never hold a job under anyone.

By developing your concentration and creativity, you can learn to love any kind of work and succeed in any field. But it is better to use your creative ability in work to which you are instinctively attracted.

2. Perform your work with attention, interest and love
Developing your usefulness is the surest way of succeeding in any job. Take as much interest in the business as the owner. By “business” I mean any systematic plan to achieve a goal through self-help or the help of others. To lecture, run a religious organization, earn money, or sell something requires the application of business principles.

It’s important each day to add to your knowledge of your job. One of the most effective ways to do this is through creative thinking. By this I mean meditating and putting your entire concentration on how you can improve your performance, and how the business overall can be enhanced.

If you do this every day for at least a half-hour, your understanding of what will make for success will increase a hundred-fold. For me, understanding and success came mainly through trust in God, meditation and creative thinking.

For example, in 1925 when I was beginning a lecture series in San Francisco, I had only $200 in the bank and no other funds. When I mentioned this to my secretary, he nearly collapsed. I said: “What is the matter with you? God is with us. He won’t leave us now. In seven days He will give us all the money we need.”

Sure enough, a few days later a man walked up to me and said: “I would like to help you.” I argued: “But you do not even know me.” He replied: “I know you from your eyes.” Then and there he wrote me a check for $27,000.

Remember that your real employer is God. Anyone who works for God and respects those for whom he works can never fail. No matter how your small your duty, do it with the cheerful, careful consciousness of pleasing God.

Many people think that unless they are “at it” in their jobs day and night they will not succeed. That is not true. Success comes from living in a balanced way and never sacrificing your daily engagement of meditation. Don’t let your business engagements always come first.

3. Develop unfailing patience and ongoing interest
Learn to tolerate a cranky employer by increasing your kindness and courtesy and inwardly ignoring his behavior. During meditation, concentrate at the point between the eyebrows and broadcast the following: “Father, calm my employer.”

Avoid the pitfalls of mechanical habit by always thinking of how to improve what you are doing. You must express the limitless power of the soul in everything you do. Be in love with your present work but strive always to advance.

In striving to get ahead, take advantage of every opportunity for advancement but never infringe upon the rights of others. In Boston, I once had an experience that illustrates my point. The sidewalks were jammed with people coming home from work.

I said to myself: “Thousands are walking ahead of me, but I must be at the head of this crowd. If there is a little opening anywhere, I shall go through it.” And so, wherever there was a space I went through it until I got to the head of the crowd.

This was fine because all I did was take advantage of my opportunity. I only went through where I saw a space. I never tried to push anyone out of his place.

Use your creative ability to develop your employer’s business so as you can continue to learn or advance to a higher position. If your work becomes mechanical and there is no opportunity to advance, secure a position in a business where you can continue to grow creatively.

Material versus spiritual work
Destroy the false division between material and spiritual work. Only work done with a purely selfish motive is material. All work is spiritual if done with the goal of serving others. Businesses that concentrate on serving their customers with the best items at the lowest cost will always succeed.

Choosing the Right Business Associates
by Paramhansa Yogananda

Most businesses concerns fail because due to hiring the wrong people. In selecting business associates, look for people who are creative, intelligent, efficient and, above all, trustworthy.

1. Test the character and ability of applicants
Find out confidentially from the previous employer all you can about the character and ability of the person you are thinking of employing. Don’t take the integrity of a prospective business associate for granted.

If possible, test him directly or indirectly through friends or detectives. Place temptation before him and see how he reacts. Have your friends try to make him talk against you.

2. Read character through the eyes
Remember, an individual’s mind, character, and habits are reflected in the eyes. Look penetratingly into the eyes of the business applicant the first time you meet him. Your first impression will be correct if you remain calm, receptive and open-minded. If you feel an automatic shrinking, beware of that person. Always beware of people with shifting, crafty, sarcastic, or revengeful eyes.

After meditating deeply, visualize the eyes of your prospective employee at the point between the eyebrows and study the feeling in your heart. If you experience fear, don’t employ that person.

3. Pitfalls to avoid
Don’t employ anyone who is mentally and physically lazy or slow-to-understand. Mentally lazy people consider it an imposition to plan creatively or to think about the success of your business.

Business must be conducted strictly on business principles. Never take into business a friend who is apt to be too familiar and not take orders or follow your advice. It is good, however, to employ young people and train them in the business if they agree to cooperate with you fully.

4. Keep control in your own hands
As a business owner, no matter who your associates are, always keep control of the business in your own hands. After all, the biggest responsibility lies with the owner of the business.

5. When to discharge a person
If a business associate dissipates or drinks too much, excuse him several times and give him a chance to reform. If he fails to show signs of remorse and improvement, discharge him.

Forgive every minor fault two or three times but never overlook treachery. A treacherous business associate will cause irreparable damage when you least expect it. Similarly, don’t keep a dishonest person in your employ. You can never tell what such a person might do.

Praecepta Lessons, 1935, 1938.

O Adorable Boss of the Blue
by Paramhansa Yogananda

Adorable One, you are the most colossal businessman, running the factory of the cosmos, yet you never speak about your great work. You have caparisoned this cosmos with the paintings of ever-changing scenery, yet you have made yourself very unimporta