How Your Donations Are Used
Ananda provides you with the techniques and inspiration to achieve Christ’s inner peace, through these ministries:
Healing prayers
Ananda receives daily requests for healing prayers. These are answered by our Healing Prayer Council of about a thousand members worldwide.
Our ministers also travel to conduct seminars on the healing techniques taught by Paramhansa Yogananda.
To help people near and far, we have created several guided healing videos:
Ananda’s Websites
Online Training and Inspiration to Accelerate Your Spiritual Growth
Ananda.org homepage
Over one half-million people from every corner of the world (in 220 countries and territories) visited us online in the past year alone. They came looking for inspiration, instruction, spiritual support, and fellowship.
Over a million and a half pages were read, thousands of audio and video files downloaded, hundreds of questions asked and answered… the list goes on.
Everything on Ananda.org is offered free of charge.
In addition to maintaining Ananda.org, this small web team has helped to design and launch sister Ananda websites worldwide, including Ananda Laurelwood, Sunlight of the Spirit, and Ananda meditation groups and centers. They also share their skills with other Ananda members by training them in web development.
Thus, the message of the Kriya Masters is spreading “like wildfire,” in Yogananda’s words, to bring hope to receptive hearts everywhere.
In 2013 our plans include making more online videos, and helping people to have a meditation a daily practice by improving the Ananda.org meditation section.
Kriya Yoga is a jet airplane route to God.
—Paramhansa Yogananda
Ananda Kriya Yoga Sangha prepares devotees for initiation into Kriya Yoga, offers ongoing support after the initiation, and promotes the benefits of regular Kriya Yoga practice.
In 2012 our ministers conducted Kriya Initiations throughout the world, including Mexico and Argentina, Ananda Village, the East and West Coasts of U.S., Ohio, and Texas.
We also created new courses on Online with Ananda to prepare devotees for Kriya.
Meditation support
The peace of your soul awaits you at the center of your own being. It is through meditation that you discover, and live in, this peace.
—Swami Kriyananda
We continue to publish online Daily Meditator Newsletter. Reaching over 5,000 subscribers, it makes Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings available for both experienced and new meditators.
Ananda Meditation Groups
Ananda meditation group in Torrance, California
Meditating together increases the degree of Self-realization in each member of the group by the law of invisible vibratory exchange of spiritual magnetism.
—Paramhansa Yogananda
Ananda has more than a 120 meditation groups in 28 countries.
Members of the meditation groups receive ongoing support and guidance through correspondence, counseling, and visits by Ananda ministers.
Live webinar on healing prayers
The broad scope of Yogananda’s teachings represents a special Ray of divine grace. His is no merely intellectual teaching: it has a transforming spiritual power.
—Swami Kriyananda
Wee now offer 21 courses and 30 webinars in meditation, yoga, and spirituality to 8,500 students. We are currently developing our Lessons in Meditation online course in Spanish, which will be open for enrollment soon. Along with the online courses, we also offer regular webinars with different Ananda Teachers and Ministers on a variety of subjects - from the Yugas, to Vedic Astrology, to a How to Live Series with Nayaswamis Jyotish and Devi, and much more.
Online with Ananda is host to the Ananda Virtual Community, making it easy for truthseekers everywhere to experience spiritual community and satsang. Virtual Community members have free access to all our live webinars, and participate in book study groups, forums, and guided meditations and healing prayers several times a week.
As the global economy makes travel less affordable, online learning provides students from the farthest reaches of the globe with an easy way to participate in the virtual classroom environment.
Autobiography of a Yogi
Crystal Clarity is the publishing arm of Ananda Sangha Worldwide. It offers over 150 books, audio, and music titles based on the
teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Kriyananda, and Ananda ministers. Many of these are available online, including the best-selling Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda.
In 2012 your donations helped us publish:
- Paramhansa Yogananda, A Biography, The Time Tunnel, Self-Expansion Through Marriage, and A Pilgrimage to Guadalupe by Swami Kriyananda
- How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality by Paramhansa Yogananda
- A Fight For Religious Freedom by Jon R. Parsons
- Spiritual Yoga by Gyandev McCord
Finally, your donations help us reprint a number of books, including The Essence of Self-Realization, Living Wisely, Living Well, Education for Life, Lessons in Meditation, Global Kitchen, Meditation for Starters, How to Have Courage, Calmness and Confidence, Conversations with Yogananda, The Art of Supportive Leadership, and Simply Vegetarian.
Ananda Ashram in Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico
An average of 60 students per month register for online meditation lessons. Each of them receives personal support through correspondence and phone calls from our Español department.
Every year we perform Kriya initiations in Spain and every two years in Latinoamerica.
The translation department is always busy making our teachings and books available to the Spanish-speaking readers.
Clarity Magazine website
In summer 2009 Clarity Magazine became an online only publication with its own website, and archived articles dating back to 2000. Since then our visitors have increased steadily.
Clarity is becoming an important means of attracting new viewers to our Ananda websites. Search engine referrals now account for over 23% of Clarity's readership.
Radio Ananda website
Environment is stronger than will power
—Paramhansa Yogananda
Radio Ananda helps one to create an uplifting environment wherever they might be, by broadcasting free Ananda inspiration 24/7, 365!
Ananda Choir
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. In India, music as well as painting and the drama is considered a divine art.
—Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
Music and the arts have always been an essential part of Ananda's ministry and way of life.
Ananda musicians perform at every Sunday Service, as well as most special events. The Sunday Service music is now broadcast online along with the sermon, helping to convey the spiritual atmosphere of the Service to thousands of listeners in our worldwide audience.
Ananda Meditation Retreat
The Ananda Meditation Retreat is the original site of the Ananda Worldwide Brotherhood Community. This exceptionally beautiful and spiritually charged environment has been a spiritual haven for more than 40 years for individuals and groups who have come to retreat, seclude, or participate in special programs.
In order to keep the Retreat, maintain and upgrade its facilities and gardens, we urgently need your support. We would very much like to continue to attract and serve spiritual seekers from all paths and religions. Your generous contributions will allow us to carry on with our work and honor the legacy of Swami Kriyananda and the Ananda Community.
The Expanding Light
The Expanding Light, Ananda's Spiritual Retreat for Meditation, Yoga, and Health, hosts hundreds of guests from around the world every year. People's lives are changed through the opportunity to experience the healing vibrations of Ananda and the techniques for soul freedom as given by Paramhansa Yogananda.
Donations support our ability to provide scholarships and our outreach to bring more guests to the Retreat.
Your donation is tax-deductible
Ananda Church of Self-Realization of Nevada County
(Ananda Sangha Worldwide)
A Non-Profit Tax Exempt Religious Corporation
14618 Tyler Foote Road
Nevada City, CA 95959
USA