Asha Nayaswami
Nayaswami Asha has been a spiritual seeker since she was a young girl. In 1969 at Stanford University, she heard Swami Kriyananda speak for the first time. Instantly, she recognized him as her spiritual teacher. “I knew the moment he walked into the room that he possessed the consciousness I had long been seeking.”
She soon became a founding member of the new community Swami Kriyananda was starting near Nevada City, California, called Ananda Village, based on Yogananda’s dream of world brotherhood colonies for “simple living and high thinking.”
Swami Kriyananda placed Asha in the role of teaching and counseling soon after her arrival at Ananda. She also served as Swami’s correspondence secretary and personal assistant for many years.
She has served as one of the spiritual directors of Ananda Palo Alto since 1987. Asha is author of Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him, a collection of more than 200 stories by people who have been touched by his teachings and spiritual friendship, often in remarkable ways. She is also author of Loved and Protected: Stories of Miracles and Answered Prayers.
Asha’s free video talks on YouTube and her audio recordings of classes are a spiritual lifeline for people of many faiths around the world. Thousands of students have received training from her over the past 40 years, and been immeasurably helped by her unusual insight and clarity.
Articles and Videos
Answers to Spiritual Questions
How Should We Relate to Spiritual Authority?
I’ve always considered Swami Kriyananda to be Paramhansa Yogananda’s chosen messenger. Master told Swamiji that he would not be merely a teacher, but that he would have spiritual responsibility for people. And an essential part of our relationship with him
How can I have God all the time?
Many of the techniques we practice on the spiritual path are so simple that we can all too easily fail to see how powerful they are. We imagine that if something is complex and hard to understand, it must be
God as Divine Mother
In the summer of 1970, I visited a friend who lived on the small property that was Ananda’s only land at the time. Later, it became the Ananda Meditation Retreat. But at the time, it was all there was of
Yogananda’s Writings on the Bhagavad Gita & the Chakras
Dear Friend: There is a book published by Self-Realization Fellowship called God Talks to Arjuna. It is Yogananda’s commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita. His original manuscript forms the basis of it, but it has been highly edited by SRF so it
Son of God or Son of Man?
avatarDear Cody: Every Self-realized master has the same state of consciousness and teaches the same essential truths. Sanaatan Dharma it is called in India — Eternal Truth. Another definition that I particularly like is, That Which Is. Spiritual truth is
Thoughts Are Universal
Dear Mihir: “Please elaborate” is an open-ended request that could encompass the whole spiritual path! In Autobiography of a Yogi, the chapter with the amusing title, The Cauliflower Robbery, Paramhansa Yogananda summarizes this idea with brilliant simplicity. “Thoughts are universally
A Blank Mind: Dangerous or Desirable?
Dear Carina: The only meditation I have studied and practiced is Kriya Yoga as taught at Ananda. Kriya to me includes not just the technique learned through initiation after a year or so of preparation, but also the whole approach
