As you probably know, Swami Kriyananda, the founder of Ananda, recently passed away. Since that fateful night, I have felt drawn to re-read some of Swami’s books. One in particular, Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography, stood out to me. As I went over all those touching, charming stories, I reflected on my own relationship with Yogananda…

I felt inspired to write the following article during my recent seclusion at Ananda’s Meditation Retreat in Northern California. I also felt to share my thoughts on seclusion after reading a beautiful book during my experience entitled, : The Joyful Art of Sharing Quality Time with God, by a dear friend and long time Ananda…

I spent my first winter at Ananda Village serving in the Yogoata dairy with a great devotee named Virani. She is responsible for supplying many of the village residents with nutritious and delicious goat milk products. I would say she has the strength of several grown men. After being with her for about a month,…

I arrived at Ananda Village on January 3rd, 2009. I was looking for my spiritual home on earth and had not found it in any of the ashrams that I’d attempted to live in before this. Within 2 weeks I was certain that this was what I was looking for. I spent the rest of…

When I awoke one morning and realized that I had dreamt I was skipping through a bed of thick, green kale leaves, I knew that the farm life was for me. At that point I was already aware that my time on this Earth was meant to be spent digging in the ground, getting dirt…

Maintenance at the Expanding Light Guest Retreat, here at Ananda Village, is a study in contrasts.  The job can at times feel like smooth sailing, but barely a week later resembles treading water to stay afloat.  Many repairs are straight forward, such as fixing toilets or sinks, but others are larger projects requiring more expertise…

This was originally posted at YoganandaBiography.com/blog. “Smile because you are fearless; smile because fear is ashamed to cause you apprehension and failure” –Paramhansa Yogananda I’ve just about finished reading Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography, and one story stood out to me in particular. Yogananda was giving a talk in New York and he accused some very…

Devotion is the foundation of our spiritual path. All the teachings, writings, and talks emphasize its primary importance. Yet it took me over 16 years at Ananda before I realized it and started to actively practice it. My own nature is more “mind” than “heart” focused. I grew up in a Christian religion that never…

An affirmation is a statement of truth which one aspires to absorb into his life. It has been said that we are what we eat. It would be truer to say, “We are what we think.” –Swami Kriyananda September 15, 2011. Where was I?… Glued to my computer screen, of course! A new gem had…

In one of Asha Praver’s excellent MP3 lectures she expressed a remarkable thought that I like to remind myself in many situations: When we are worried and anxious about things that can happen to us, the cause of this is that we actually don’t trust God enough. So, even though I have not yet achieved…

Working on an organic farm can be a very interesting and entertaining endeavor, especially when you have little or no experience in farming! There are all those preconceived thoughts that come to one’s mind with what goes on, on a farm: waking up early, lots of manual labor, remembering when and how much to water…

Q: What inspired you to come live here? A: I’d never seen anywhere else a large amount of people dedicating their lives to God. I saw the results happening here that I had longed for in my own life. I could see the joy in their eyes and in their lifestyles and attitudes. For the first time…

Question: How did you become interested in following the spiritual path? Answer: I was interested in consciousness, and wanted to know how to use more of my brain and unlock the potentials of body and mind. I got into the Indian philosophy when I read Autobiography of a Yogi. I wanted to do a meditation retreat, so I…

Brahmacharini Narayani has been travelling with Swami Kriyananda for the past several years through all our Ananda Communities. She has become one of his personal staff. Dear friends, Swami Kriyananda’s health has in general been doing very well, and his spirit is always soaring in divine joy. As you may know from having seen the…

This past holy season brought many blessings. One of these was on the occasion of Christmas Eve, with the Festival of Light and the living creche representation in Ananda Village. When Devaki, the director of the creche scene, asked me to be the Virgin Mother, I started to think about Mary. Who was she? I…

Last June I initiated a project to film short video clips of Swami Kriyananda while he was at Ananda Village, promoting a few of his books from Crystal Clarity Publishers. This project kept getting postponed, possibly so I could learn a few lessons along the way. The original shooting date was postponed due to the…

Our progress here in the Pune community has been steady these past weeks. We hosted two retreats in October: one for future residents, and one to celebrate All Saints Day:  “How to Become a Saint.” Ananda Pune residents All the members of Ananda Pune put out a lot of effort to make both retreats wonderful.…

Living in a spiritual community isn’t all it’s cracked out to be. It’s much, much more. Besides the fountainhead of bliss gushing forth amidst daily spiritual practice, service and fellowship, there come truly beautiful, blessed and rewarding opportunities. Such was our recent two-day trip, as myself, along with my six fellow 20-something-year-old gurubhais (fellow disciples)…

Over the past several years, the Yoga Festivals in Italy have grown in size and importance. Ananda has been involved from the beginning, cooperating with the organizers and making presentations of Ananda Yoga and meditation at both the Milan and Rome venues. The Rome Festival is held in the large park of Villa Pamphilli, an…

Note from the editor: May 22 marked the launch of a newly published original edition of the Autobiography of a Yogi in Italian. The event took place in Milan. Swami Kriyananda addressed a full room of 500 avid listeners, after having given a number of magazine and television interviews the previous days, and a private…

The city of Frederick reclines in the rolling hills of central Maryland as it has since before the days of the Civil War. It is from this charming, quiet city that I began my adventure to the woods of northern Massachusetts for my first Kriya initiation.This journey starts, as many Ananda journeys have started, with…

Note from the editor: Krishna Deep, a monk at Ananda’s new community in Pune, is writing about Yogananda’s birthday celebration there in March 2009. Dear Gurubhais, Wish you all happy Master’s birthday!!! Entrance to the community, graced by Master’s presence. Today is a special day for all of us, no doubt. The sacred ceremony of…

Dearest friends, Many of the Ananda India staff and devotees from Gurgaon – Delhi – Noida (also known as India National Capitol Region – NCR) went to Pune the weekend of March 27–29 for a retreat on our new community land. It was hard to believe just how much things have progressed in just one…

The year 2009 was one of great expansion for Ananda Sangha outreach. All of it came through the grace of God, which is reflected in the title of this post.

Here are some of the year’s highlights. …

Dear ones, My name is Medardo Vargas Muñoz. I am an architect in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, Mexico. I am a Bramachari (1) at heart. “Truth simply is, it cannot be created. Everyone has to perceive it in the Self within.” These are the words by my Guruji Yogananda, which stir my mind, a mind that…

Every day should be a day of Thanksgiving for all the gifts of Life — sunshine, water, the luscious fruits and greens, which we receive as indirect gifts from the Great Giver. Paramhansa Yogananda with Native American friends He makes us work so that we may consciously and thankfully deserve to receive His Gifts. The…

Dr. Aditya with young patients Dear ones, I am grateful for this opportunity to share with you all, my spiritual family. My name is Aditya. I am a medical doctor, and a recent addition to the ever-expanding Ananda family in Pune, India. I’m a monk. Since joining my brothers in the monastery, my life has…

Editor’s note: Swami Kriyananda is visiting Ananda Europa at the time of writing. This is an account of his 83rd birthday celebration at Ananda’s center in Assisi, Italy on May 30-31. It is written by Asha Praver, spiritual director of Ananda Palo Alto, who traveled to Assisi to join the festivities. “I feel so much…

Looking for this year’s garden tour? Visit the Spring Garden Tours page for current dates and times that the garden is open, plus directions and more. For the past two years, spring tours of Crystal Hermitage Gardens have become a Northern California event. About 1,000 people drove from as far as the Bay Area during…

Recently, Ananda Sangha in Pune held the first Youth Campout and Retreat on the land where the future Ananda Community will be, an hour outside the city.

We defined “youth” as being “anyone willing to sleep in a tent.” Indeed, the participants ranged in age from pre-school to a youthful gentleman in his seventies.

For the past two years, I have had the blessing of living with Swami Kriyananda and many Ananda friends in India, our spiritual homeland. My husband Tim and I moved to the Ananda ashram in New Delhi in October 2006. This past November we moved to Pune with a few other “pioneering members,” taking up…

In the spring of 2007 a dear friend suggested that we build a new entry sign at Ananda Village to welcome people to the community. To help it happen, she volunteered money for the project. This started discussions in our monthly planning meetings about building an informational sign that was also “nice-to-look-at.” So began the…

Editor’s note: These are excerpts from a 77-page article by Bhasbuto, a young man who visited Ananda Village in the summer of 2008. For the sake of privacy, his online name is used here. Bhasbuto was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the age of 15 he received a gift from his father: Autobiography of a…

I recently returned from a trip to the Morni Hills where the Ananda Solar team is installing their first wind turbines and solar panels in India.

It is Saturday night, April 19, just past 10:30 in the evening. We are with Swamiji in Rome, Italy. The long-anticipated event, the launch of the just published Italian version of Swamiji’s Revelations of Christ as Proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda is now an event recorded in the ether for the ages. It was a triumph,…

Or, “What Happened At Our House During the Big Storm.” The short version A huge oak tree fell on our dome-home at noon on Friday in the middle of a large windstorm. We were at home, but not hurt. We have quite a bit of damage to the dome, but we have received tons of…

Ananda’s outreach efforts in Spanish started in the ’80s with Marga Dominguez-Goering. She began by translating Swami Kriyananda’s “Festival of Light” ceremony performed at Sunday Services, and Ananda’s beginner lessons in meditation. In 1997, with my arrival at Ananda Village, we founded Ananda’s Spanish Ministry, which is now online at www.anandaespanol.org. Marga (from Spain) and…

Paramhansa Yogananda says, in an article written in 1923: “The week should be allotted to work, amusement, and spiritual culture—five days for money making, one day for rest and amusement, and one day for introspection and inner realization.” There probably isn’t too much question about working: most of us don’t have much choice about it.…

I have to say that one of the greatest blessings of my life has been working with Treasures Along the Path talk-of-the- month club, featuring a collection of archival talks by Swami Kriyananda. It was originally founded in 1998 by Daya Taylor, an Ananda member who since moved to India to help our work there,…

Ananda Solar Technologies is a start-up company by the members of Ananda India. Swami Kriyananda is the inspiration behind the company. He tells a story of when he was a youth, and happened to lay on the pavement one night after he and some friends lost their way in the dark countryside of upstate New…

My wife Anandi and I recently returned from a trip to Japan where we celebrated 20th Anniversary of the Sharing Nature Foundation there. We were thrilled to see its principles wholeheartedly embraced by Japanese society. The Japanese Ministry of Education is launching a new program to use Sharing Nature methods and activities in every elementary…

“Spiritual education” is still a new concept for most people. Many adults are only too familiar with the superficially related, but fundamentally different term of “religious education.” The indoctrination and coercion embedded in this latter approach drove many people away from any form of religious practice. Their reaction has often resulted in an unwillingness to…

September 12th was the 59th anniversary of the day Swami Kriyananda met Master. We celebrated it here in India as the first day of his 60th year of discipleship. One special aspect of the day’s events is that they were organized primarily by our Indian devotees. In a sense the celebration began on Monday, because…

I first came to Ananda Village in the fall of 1979 for a vacation. I had been practicing hatha yoga for about 6 years, and I really wanted to learn how to meditate.

I had a great longing for “something more” in my life, and I knew I could find it within …

Recently, the parent of a first-grader told me how grateful she was for the culture of calm and compassion at our Living Wisdom School. She had just seen her son, on his way to fill his water bottle, turn to a classmate and ask if he can fill her water bottle too. The mom attributed…

Blessings come in many forms. When we offer those blessings back to the Divine with our highest aspirations, we find them multiplied, and our lives transformed. Such has been the experience of Ananda Seattle in the building of its new meditation temple in Bothell, WA. The Dream is Born Since 1995, Ananda Seattle was located…

The history of Ananda is comprised of a series of miracles. Ananda Sacramento has been blessed in this way since its inception in 1977. In 1991, after purchasing a 48 unit apartment complex that serves as our Community, Ananda Sacramento rented a 2,100 square foot doctors’ office for our teaching center and Mandir (Sanksrit for…