This centennial year, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Swami Kriyananda’s birth and the many “tasty” fruits of his life and service to his Master, Paramhansa Yogananda.
The main fruit of his life was the founding of a spiritual community, a place called Ananda. Yogananda had given a clarion call to Kriyananda and the other young devotees of his time to establish communities that he called “world brotherhood colonies,” founded on a spiritual basis, as he describes in Autobiography of a Yogi (AY).
Kriyananda was the one who took up that call and made it the work of his life, founding Ananda and, later, other communities around the world. These colonies, Yogananda envisioned, would make Plato’s ideal of a utopia a reality through the inner elevation of each member:
Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower in civic virtue.
Yogananda emphasized in the AY the subtle but powerful impact of brotherhood communities on the world:
By stress on spiritual values, Self-realization, a colony exemplifying world brotherhood is empowered to send inspiring vibrations far beyond its locale.
Ananda’s founding principles are twofold: “People are more important than things” and “Where there is right action, there is victory.” There is another critical point: Yogananda repeatedly stated that “We are not a sect.” Kriyananda was therefore immensely distressed when an influential fellow disciple commented, “Well, we are a sect.”
Kriyananda’s response was vigorous: the “fruit” of Ananda, manifesting Yogananda’s vision, will never have the sour taste of being a sect. In fact, he wrote emphatically: “I have always felt a distaste for sectarianism.”
How did Kriyananda make sure that Ananda would not turn into sour fruit? Let’s have a look at some common characteristics of sects and sectarian organizations, so that we can see how Kriyananda made Ananda non-sectarian, keeping its community fruit sweet and delicious.
Freedom to Think
In sectarian organizations, members are expected to blindly believe and accept the official doctrine. They are not encouraged to think for themselves. Doubt, questioning, and disagreement are discouraged, sometimes even punished, openly or subtly. As a result, even the weirdest ideas can be accepted as truth. Nobody dares to say to the naked king what the child says in The Emperor’s New Clothes: “But the king is naked.”
This was a critical point for Kriyananda, who firmly stated: “Ananda doesn’t want ‘yes-men.’ Think for yourself.” He wrote that his Master set the example:
Yogananda didn’t want ‘goody-good’ disciples: ‘yes-men’ who answered with a limp smile and said, ‘Yeth, Master, I underthtand’—then did nothing! He preferred people who questioned, who even held back until they’d really taken a teaching to heart—as long as, eventually, they took it to heart!
Ananda is not anarchy, however. It needs to function as an organization and therefore asks for “cooperative obedience,” a new and enlightened concept, worth meditating on. As Yogananda’s guru Sri Yukteswar stated:
Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating! The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.
Empowerment
Kriyananda did not want members to be weak and dependent. He took pains to empower everyone, and said repeatedly:
What I have done, you can do.
These powers are all within you. You can do anything you want to.
Always keep in mind, there is nothing you can’t do if you allow Him to do it through you.
He encouraged students to say, “Mine is the power of the universe.” He told them to affirm with strong will: “I can!”
Individuality
In a sect, you can’t behave differently, dress differently, or simply be yourself. Kriyananda was radically non-sectarian in this regard. He emphatically wrote: “We encourage eccentricity at Ananda.” In a song, he even challenged people: “Dare to be different. Dare to be free.” That is the sweet fruit Ananda enjoys.
Kriyananda was radically non-sectarian. He wanted Ananda community members to be free to express themselves—to be different, to dress differently, and simply to be themselves. In fact, he felt that outward uniformity could never be the basis of a spiritual community and wrote:
Should our bonds of friendship ever require strengthening by outward uniformity, Ananda itself would have ceased to serve the spiritual purpose for which it was created.
Kriyananda emphatically declared, “We encourage eccentricity at Ananda.” In a song, he even challenged individuals: “Dare to be different. Dare to be free.” That is the sweet fruit Ananda enjoys.
Ananda members are guided and instructed to act freely, guided from within by superconscious awareness. The message Kriyananda said Yogananda wanted us to hear was simple:
Be yourself. God has a special song to sing through each person. Get in tune with Him, ask Him who He wants you to be. Then with courage, creativity, and attunement, follow that superconscious call.
Freedom from Excessive Rules
“Don’t make too many rules. They destroy the spirit.” –Paramhansa Yogananda
Kriyananda firmly followed this recommendation and implemented few rules. There were, however, two that he felt were essential: No drugs. No alcohol. The rest were “guidelines,” applied according to the person and situation: “We try to work with people as they are, not as an artificial prescription says they ought to be.”
In small matters, did Yogananda and Kriyananda occasionally bend the rules a little? One suspects so, probably as most people do from time to time. One hears about Yogananda crossing the Mexican border into California after buying loads of his beloved mangoes as a gift for everyone at home. The car, it was noted, was fairly reeking with them. His friends were certain they would be confiscated at customs, but… they were not.
Decentralized Leadership
In some organizations, the leader holds absolute, unquestioned power. By contrast, Ananda has a spiritual director but is committed to grassroots decision-making whenever possible. The fruit that grows from this approach is much tastier.
Freedom to Leave
In some organizations, leaving can be difficult. Those who choose to leave may be labelled as having “fallen.” Ananda does not cultivate sour fruit. Members who feel their next step lies outside the organization are welcome to leave and are supported: “Stay only if you feel benefited.”
Openness
Some communities become isolated, avoid contact with other groups and become increasingly insular and self-referential. Kriyananda did not develop that sour taste at Ananda. He always reached out in friendship and respect to other communities and spiritual movements. The spirit he infused in Ananda is expansive, inclusive, and universal. He stated, “We are not sectarian in our dealings with the general public…”
Respect for the Law
Some communities and organizations may come to regard their own rules as more important than national laws, even when those rules conflict with the law. They may see their own laws and regulations as God-ordained and God-sanctioned. Vidura, Ananda’s long-time manager, pointed out that Kriyananda always respected and acted according to national and regional law. He would have refused to do so only if something was a sharp violation of dharma.
Universal Truth
A sectarian mindset says, “We alone have the truth.” Yogananda, the inspiration behind Ananda, was completely unsectarian. He publicly presented his own organization in this way:
Self-Realization Fellowship (Yogoda Sat-Sanga) emphasizes the technique of Self-realization: as scientifically evolved by the saints of India—and still to be discovered by future savants. It is not a sect. It tries to avoid the lack of (Self-realization) of the theological school and the dogmatism of the churches. It emphasizes the fellowship of religions, not for empty theological discussions, but to get together and find the highway of Self-realization wherein the bypaths of all beliefs meet.*
Kriyananda followed in his footsteps:
All great masters attain the same vision of truth: one and eternal, which we call God. Divine vision transcends sectarian differences; it is this direct vision of timeless truth which forms the basis of Sanaatan Dharma. That truth reminds man of who and what he is: a divine soul, forever indestructible.
At every Sunday service at Ananda, the minister affirms, “Truth is one and eternal.” Prayers are daily directed to “saints of all religions.” Yogananda also told his students of his Praecepta Lessons:
Self-Realization Fellowship is not a sect but offers a technique by which you can calm the body and the mind. To become a member, it is not necessary to change your religion. What is necessary is to establish a fellowship of all religions and to find out the quickest route that leads to God. We do not try to monopolize Truth. Do you see the beauty of that? If you are the follower of Truth, you are God’s child.
In fact, members of Ananda include Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and those who follow no particular religion. Ananda is a spiritual movement that welcomes everyone.
This is also based on Yogananda’s teachings. He had once been asked, “Is your teaching a new religion?” The Master answered beautifully, “It is a new expression of truths that are eternal.” This is a sweet fruit indeed.
People First
A sectarian mindset or organization constantly asks: “What is best for the work?” In that spirit, it can easily exploit its members financially, materially, or by making excessive demands, always for the benefit of the organization, without any real concern for their well-being.
Such an organization feels that, if it serves their cause, even an immoral deed—corruption, inhumane acts, the use of institutional power to suppress others, or unethical decisions—is justified: “The end justifies the means.”
Kriyananda vigorously threw such sour fruit into the compost by establishing that “People are more important than things” and “Where there is right action, there is victory.”
Perhaps to prevent his members from eventually turning Ananda into another institutional shrine, he stated that “Religious organizations are a necessary evil,” but Kriyananda built Ananda with all his enthusiasm. He loved not the organization but the marvelous souls living there. He described his main duty as the director in an enlightened way:
To protect the rights of the individual. Sometimes, in the exigencies of an institution, decisions are made that aren’t in the best interests of individuals. When I see that happening, I step in.
Once, when he had a misunderstanding with a longtime friend, he wrote to him:
Nothing is so important to me as the love and friendship we have for one another. For that soul bond, I am grateful in eternity. Ananda would hold no meaning for me were it not for your, and many others’, soul-friendship.
Friendship, love, helping each other on the inner journey, with freedom, creativity, and fun: that is the tasty fruit of Ananda.
The Final Taste
To sum up: after savoring all of these delicious fruits, the taste that remains is that Ananda is as nonsectarian as a spiritual organization can be. It is thoroughly sweet. In fact, it must be the mango of spiritual organizations.
Aha! This brings us to a proposal for a whole new definition of Ananda, one that may serve us well in this new era:
Ananda is like a mango tree. Whatever, in the future, is not in harmony with the nature of a mango tree must be pruned.
Could it be true? Absolutely. Didn’t Jesus tell us, “By their fruits you will know them”? What could be more perfect than for Ananda to produce the mango—the fruit of heaven—in the way it lives and behaves?
What could be better? Perhaps this is indeed the way of the future: to produce year after year, something delicious, sweet, and heavenly—a living community of love and brotherhood, offering a touch of the astral world.
*From Paramhansa Yogananda in World Fellowship – Addresses and Messages by leading spokesmen of all Faiths, Races and Countries, edited by Charles Frederick Weller, General Executive World Fellowship of Faiths, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York 1935.
