Ananda & SRF: Part 5 - What the Future May Hold

Since these posts appear in reverse order, scroll down the blog page and at the very bottom is a link that says "Older posts".....click on that to find the first two articles. Sorry for the inconvenience. Next time I'll post last first.


Part 5 - Conclusion: What the Future May Hold

I cannot separate my Ananda life experience from my thoughts here, but I do feel that my visit to the SRF shrines gave me some deeper insight and appreciation for our fellow SRF gurubhais and for the differences between SRF and Ananda.

The SRF shrines need to be stewarded, preserved and protected. Ananda members need, in our communities, to support ourselves as we share the teachings and serve our guru’s nonsectarian work. To do this, we must build meditation and yoga centers, residential communities, retreat centers, publish books, create schools for children, and much more. All of this must, by the necessity of our material circumstances and by the necessity of our own ideals, must come from the efforts and support of our own members. We have never had, nor would it have been good or right for us to have had, an endowment.

So naturally, and without regard to our past differences, we express and share PY's teachings with different styles. Yet, when I think of those monastics who are truly living the life, I see the same twinkle of joy and vibration of wisdom that we were blessed to have in Swami Kriyananda. 

Even in his will and written legacy, Swami Kriyananda enjoins Ananda members to hold in respect and love SRF: its leaders, members, and monastics. He wants us to be open to cooperate with SRF, if ever the opportunity is found, as equals and with mutual love and respect. Each will remain independent and separate; each must be focused on our respective dharma and special manner of expression, forged in and by the crucible of our own history and training.

It is not easy for those of the conflict generation to forget, forgive and reconcile. Like a grease stain on a white shirt, it will never entirely be the same. Time may heal by the anesthesia of forgetfulness or the ignorance of future generations, but for those who experienced the years of conflict, it is difficult to erase the scars of wounds forged and incurred on the battlefield of the past.

And yet, it will happen. It IS happening. We ARE devotees of a great master. "Only love will take my place," PY told us. There is no other way. Ironically, this phase may be the real spiritual test, greater even than the battles of the past (where black and white were crystal clear, each according to his point of view)! But it must and will take place. It takes place, however, person to person. Institutional memories are long and, well, “institutionalized.” The hard shell of past portrayal will only be cracked by softened, attuned individual hearts and souls, warmed by the sunshine of the guru’s grace and wisdom.

This pilgrimage showed me the truth that this forgiveness and reconciliation will come and is taking place. The pace or form of it is certainly not mine to know, but of its progress, even if halting or taking two steps back before progressing again, I have no doubt. This, I feel, is a blessing I have received from our pilgrimage, and it is a grace at least as great as the spiritual vibrations of my guru felt at the SRF, sacred shrines, for, in fact, there is no difference.

Joy to you!

Swami Hrimananda

Ananda & SRF: Part 4 - Swami Kriyananda & Ananda

Part 4 – Swami Kriyananda & Ananda

Not only was Swamiji very young when he came to Master, but the guru was in his final and more withdrawn years of life. Swami himself was inspired by the expansive universality and power of these teachings. But on a personal level he stood, he often told us, in “awe” of his guru. The thought of any form of familiarity was unthinkable. (This did not, apparently, stop the young “Walter” from pestering his guru with many questions.)

Added to this, was the fact that Swamiji’s own dharma and inspiration was to share these teachings. Yogananda had no need, at least from Swamiji, for personal service; others held those roles. Yogananda, in turn, focused his training of the young monk, Walter, who later took the spiritual name, Swami Kriyananda, on the teachings themselves. Within months, the Master appointed Walter in charge of the other, older (and longer term) monks; he soon gave a kriya initiation; began teaching, editing, and writing. He wasn’t even 25 years old!

Thus we find, here also, a difference between SRF and Ananda. The one inclines to view Yogananda more personally with the teachings standing in the (now absent) guru’s stead (in the form of those impersonal, bi-weekly printed lessons); and the other, Ananda, inclined to emphasize the teachings as universal and as having personal and creative application in each person’s daily life. The first generation of SRF leaders seem to have established and accepted the fact that their guru was gone and what remained was for the organization to take on a caretaker role of sharing the teachings of the Master bereft of his magnetic and transforming presence.

The latter, Ananda, by contrast, was conceived and born after the guru was gone and with the mission to experiment and see how to apply those teachings to daily life. This was to be done through the dynamic and very personal vehicle of the “world brotherhood colonies” that Yogananda sowed “into the ether” by his “spoken word” at the garden party in Beverly Hills in 1949. The difference is understandable and not noticeably different in the beginning, but over time, like non-parallel lines, becomes widely divergent. SRF’s removal, after Yogananda’s passing, from the “Aims and Ideals” of SRF of the goal to establish and support world brotherhood colonies follows this distinction just as much as Ananda’s dedication to this ideal supports this divergence.

Yogananda’s many efforts to reach out past the monastic life — establishing a school for children at Mt. Washington, a Yoga University, a world brotherhood colony in Encinitas, a farm, a café, etc. etc. — all were ultimately abandoned. It would be natural for those monastics to consider that he also abandoned the ideals that inspired him to try. (Swami Kriyananda taught us that while it wasn’t the right time in American history for these projects to succeed, Yogananda’s efforts signaled his guidance for future disciples. In part, Kriyananda’s view is based on the simple fact that until his guru’s death in 1952 Yogananda spoke forcefully and frequently about the ideal of communities.)

Returning to my original point, it seems to me that from the very beginning, the SRF monastic experience contained the seeds of "us and them." When many years later SRF became financially endowed, they could at last afford to remain apart from the need to depend upon public acceptance. PY's autobiography has immortalized him in the public mind. This is the Master’s legacy. It also has minimize the need for his SRF children to do more than mostly hold up the “Autobiography” and continue to offer the lessons. (There’s the annual convocation, and travel by the monastics to various centers worldwide, as well. Both of these are primarily offered to its own members.)

The world, like Elvis Presley or the Beatles, would simply have to come to them.

In quite a contrast, Swami Kriyananda founded the first Ananda community in the hectic heyday and backyard of the San Francisco-based hippy movement with its "back-to-the-land" and anti-establishment culture. It was communal in spirit and it was communitarian in form. Though a magnetic spiritual leader, Swami's ("SK") intention was to manifest PY's ideal of intentional communities. It was not simply to create another monastery.

This required a more participatory and involved approach rather than a traditionally hierarchical one. SK never had a financial endowment and from the beginning needed and welcomed the support, commitment and creative contributions of others. I won't go further to describe his enlightened, supportive leadership and wisdom, but suffice to say, by contrast, Ananda's very communitarian mission  required fostering an openness and inclusivity markedly different than that of SRF.

Next article is Part 5 - Conclusion: What the Future May Hold

Ananda & SRF: Part 3 - Our Respective Narratives

Part 3 – Our Respective Narratives

Setting aside any residual feelings between Ananda members and SRF monastics for the battles we once waged against each other, I can understand how card-carrying SRF members might be treated differently from the general public. Members would be disciples; disciples would come on pilgrimage, treating these places as sacred ground, attuning themselves to the vibrations of the guru. Thus the impulse to create and validate membership credentials would arise naturally. And, once a visitor presented his credentials, he might be welcomed more warmly than the many casual visitors.

Even if there had not been a long, drawn out lawsuit or preceding years of SRF displeasure, Ananda members would occupy some kind of middle ground between SRF members and the general public. But given the simple fact of Ananda not being a part of SRF and the reality that Swamiji and Ananda were viewed akin to apostates, it is not surprising that for decades Ananda members who visited these shrines encountered from the hosting monastics mixed and confused signals ranging from welcome to disdain.

Most younger monastics, having little knowledge of or interest in Ananda, or any personal animus toward Swami Kriyananda (whom they never knew), were at least cordial if not welcoming. (If they knew anything at all it would have been presumably negative.)

So, you see: quite apart from our particular and specific challenges with each other, we would have been grouped primarily with the general and unknowing (and “heathen”) general public! Polite, yes…..but….

This idea of Ananda members being “neither fish nor fowl” played itself out in our recent visit. Our hosts were friendly and warm and, as is natural and their training as docents, shared stories of the history of the property we were visiting and stories of Master and his disciples. What they presumably did not know was that the stories (even some of the historical anecdotes) were as well known to us (from Swami Kriyananda) as to them. In some cases they were likely repeating stories told them by others who were much more distant in time from the occurrence of those stories than Kriyananda was (who personally knew Master and heard many stories from him, first hand).

The experience was both surreal and disconnecting. We of course appreciated their sincerity and presumed their innocence but whereas other visitors would be naturally appreciative of the effort, we couldn’t help feel distanced for it made our discipleship invisible (or, worse case, considered of no value).

Another facet of these stories is a distinction we have found commonplace between SRF monastics and Swamiji over many years, many visits, recordings, and publications. Swami rarely told a story of Paramhansa Yogananda that didn’t convey a spiritual lesson applicable not only to himself but to his audience.

By contrast, the stories we heard on our tour, apart from the merely historical ones, portrayed the guru as sweet, charming or otherwise being very human or relating in a human way to his close disciples. The lesson of such stories was at least as much the message that those direct disciples were greatly blessed as how charming or sweet the Master was. But no lesson — useful to us — accompanied the story.

This, too, hints at an even deeper distinction (though not an absolute one) between SRF and Ananda. It has to do with the extent each has inherited a view of Yogananda as either unique or as timeless; as personal or as universal.

The narrative goes something like this: Swami Kriyananda came to Paramhansa Yogananda as a young man, age 22. The other close disciples had, in the case of SRF’s leaders, been with the Master many more years, meeting him not only when they, too, were young but when Master himself was much younger and in a different phase of life. Charming, gracious, a powerful orator, and mixing affably with the low and the high of society…...

It is not surprising that the early and close disciples related to their guru in a more personal manner. Think what they went through together; how small was their group; how personal and particular was the form of service they rendered to him (cooking, cleaning, paying bills, etc.) living in close quarters. None of these were appointed as public teachers as Master was the guru. (Who could possibly represent him adequately!) With few exceptions, he appointed men to public roles and with few exceptions these men betrayed him by taking pride in their roles and even competing with their guru for attention.

Next article is Part 4 – Swami Kriyananda & Ananda