“I wasn’t sent to the West,” Yogananda often told his audiences, “by Christ and the great masters of India to dogmatize you with a new theology. Jesus himself asked Babaji to send someone here to teach you the science of Kriya Yoga, that people might learn how to commune with God directly. I want to help you to attain actual experience of Him, through your daily practice of Kriya Yoga.” - Paramhansa Yogananda

The final marble statue which is of Jesus just arrived last week from India. Our line of masters or gurus is 5 deep (Jesus, Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Yukteswar and Paramhansa Yogananda) and Jesus holds pole position as you can see from Yogananda’s comment above. He is viewed by Yogananda devotees worldwide as a great Master of yoga.

Marble statue of Jesus to complement other Ananda yoga masters.

Which is the reason we returned to India to commission the same artist in Jaipur, India to hand-carve this statue of Jesus sitting in meditation. He is sitting in lotus posture with hands upturned. The facial features were drawn from a photograph of the Hoffman painting similar to the one which many of your meditation altars. Funds were donated to Ananda Village as our annual community Christmas gift by its members and it just arrived last week.

See previous posts for information on the other statues of the Masters.

Ananda recently held its second International Kriya Yoga Retreat in Gurgaon, India. You can watch and listen to all the talks here. I would like to expand on something I mentioned in one of my classes there.

There is a great deal of talk in modern times about investing wisely for a hoped-for future retirement. Most people invest their most valuable resources—money, time, and energy—into feeding, clothing, and sheltering the body, stimulating the senses, and feeling comfortable. What people don’t understand is that they are investing everything in a “rapidly depreciating asset”—since the human body is guaranteed to decrease in value until it is “pushing up daisies” in the end.

On the other hand, when we put our time and energy into feeding the soul, spiritually changing ourselves, and dedicating to a practice such as Kriya Yoga, we are putting our resources into an asset that will continue to appreciate over time—even over many lifetimes.

What if you don’t believe in reincarnation? You can compare the end of life of a worldly person who has lived selfishly, to the lives of saints. Saints’ bodies have ‘depreciated’ just like everyone else’s, but they are living in a state of divine joy, and are able to share that joy with others.

I have seen this truth proven in the lives of many Kriya Yogis, even those who may not have yet reached the most exalted spiritual states. Compared to people who have lived selfish or worldly lives, I can say unequivocally that dedication to spiritual practices is the best investment of time and energy one can possibly make.

People sometimes think, “It’s too late. I should have begun practicing Kriya Yoga when I was young. Now my worldly life is all I have, so I guess I’ll just keep living like this.” This is called “throwing good money after the bad.” It is similar to a homeowner who keeps throwing more and more of his hard-earned money to put a new roof on a house with a completely rotten foundation.

It is never too late! Paramhansa Yogananda told the story of a woman who took up his teachings late in life:

I once met a lady in the state of Washington. She was 80 years old, and all her life she’d been an atheist. By God’s grace, at our meeting she became converted to this path. Thereafter she sought God intensely. For the better part of every day, whenever she wasn’t meditating, she would play a recording of my poem “God! God! God!” She lived only a few years longer, but in that short time she attained liberation.

It is never too soon or too late to dedicate yourself to living a spiritual life. It is the greatest investment we can make for our future, and in the end, it is the only thing we can take with us when we leave this world.

In these pages I aim to show how a spiritual mission, regardless of its name and tenets, can be made to relate to the whole world.

Paramhansa Yogananda prophesied that some day the purpose of all religions would be accepted as being one and the same: Self-realization. Included in that understanding would be a sense of the non-sectarian fellowship of all truth seekers. His own mission as he stated it was, above all, to teach “the original teachings of Jesus Christ, and the original yoga teachings of Krishna.” He stated that he had come, further, to unite all religions in an understanding of their higher purpose. His mission to show the underlying oneness of two great religions, particularly, may therefore be seen as symbolic also, being meant to demonstrate the underlying oneness of all religions, for humanity everywhere is seeking the same eventual fulfillment: bliss in God. Self-realization—the realization of God as the indwelling Self of all beings—is then, in the broadest sense, the true goal of all religions and the deepest desire in every human heart.

The great master, in his teachings, also drew to a focus countless truths that have been expressed diversely through the ages. He showed that the highest wisdom has always been the same essential truths, the first of which is that all men are rays of the one Divine Light, and the second, that man’s ultimate destiny is to merge back of his own free will into that Light.

For this reason, in my book Revelations of Christ, Proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda, I proposed that this highest truth be called “Sanaatan Dharma, the Eternal Religion,” for in all the universe this has to be the supreme truth: union with God as the final reality of all beings.

Yogananda presented a way of life that was unitive—one that would make spiritually relevant every aspect of human life: business and the art of self-support generally; marriage; education; the fine arts; self-expansion through service to others; and the supreme art of how to live happily in this world.

Finally, he proposed a life-style designed to enable people everywhere to incorporate their varied pursuits into a harmonious, God-centered existence. Through the years that he taught in the West, he urged his audiences to adopt this life-style by gathering together in what he called “world-brotherhood colonies.” I was blessed to be able to found the first Ananda World-Brotherhood community in 1968 on what are today some 1,000 acres near Nevada City, California. At present there are eight functioning examples of this ideal in various parts of the world.

The sheer breadth of the Master’s vision, and its practical relevance to the needs of our age, demonstrate that he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a World Teacher, and not the guru only of a particular group of disciples. In fact, he’d been sent to be the way-shower for a new age, and savior for the “many millions,” as he put it, who would tune into the divine ray he had brought. For mankind has arrived at the dawn of new awakening into a globally heightened spiritual awareness.

Swami Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Paramhansa Yogananda, stated in his book The Holy Science that the whole of mankind is now, scripturally speaking, in a new age. The earth itself entered this age in the year 1900 after an interim, or bridge (sandhya), of 200 years, during which time the new rays gradually grew in strength. The ancient teachings of India gave this age the name, Dwapara Yuga.

The first of four yugas, Kali (the dark) Yuga, was an age when most people perceived everything narrowly, both in material and in fixed terms. Men needed outer as well as inner forms. Outwardly, the more solid those forms the better; and inwardly they felt comfortable with carefully formulated dogmas and fixed ideas. Organizationally, they were comfortable with firm structures; they liked everything to be established and in its own place. They believed the universe to be geocentric, and God, to them, was a bearded old man seated “somewhere up there” on an eternal throne of judgment. The earth being conceived of as flat made it easier, of course, to visualize heaven as literally high up above them.

Dwapara Yuga is bringing greater fluidity to people’s consciousness. This is an age, above all, of energy-awareness. Many people, aware of some new awareness stirring within and around them, welcome it exuberantly as though it gave unbridled license to indulge to excess in everything they liked. In the fine arts (painting, sculpture, and music), traditional forms have been cast aside in favor of the grotesque, the trivial, and the blasphemous. In children’s education, certain experiments have brought more confusion than enlightenment. The same may be said of people’s understanding of morality, and in their social behavior.

Thus the term, “New Age,” is also viewed with anxiety by those who believe in the old traditions. In fact, what we are witnessing is a struggle between the old ways—ways that once seemed “carved in stone”—and a new, more flexible spirit that is struggling for clear self-expression.

This struggle between the old ways and the new, though still rather amorphous, is in evidence everywhere. We see it in religion also, in the struggle between those who adhere to the traditions of the past and those who reject all tradition as antiquated. To the religious traditionalist, the mere hint of a new age “sets his teeth agrinding.”

For Moslems, the cornerstone of whose religion is the saying, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet,” no other way is acceptable.

For Christians, time itself is measured from the year of Christ’s birth. Fundamentalists, especially, are convinced that the world is fast approaching the “end times” that were predicted by the Bible with the Second Coming of Christ. Among Moslems also, there are some who believe that something approximating those “end times” is approaching.

Naturally, a world view in which mankind, after centuries of relative darkness, is postulated as poised and ready to soar up into new realities is fiercely rejected by anyone who believes that the past two thousand years virtually defined the term, “Christian enlightenment.”

Much of the present antagonism on the part of orthodoxy toward the “new age” is due, I think, to the arrogance of some who have embraced it mainly for its novelty. For “new age,” as a concept, appeals especially to the young whose tendency in any case is to reject the old. Many scientists, too, have arrogated to themselves the role of “heralds of a new wisdom,” basing the claim not on any suggestion of being better human beings, themselves, nor on any but the thinnest hope that their discoveries will someday make anyone such a human being, but on the simple fact that a few scientists (the very few real pioneers) have discovered unexpected facts about the universe.

Writers since Einstein have had a hey-day with the theory that morality, far from being absolute (“all things being relative”), may even, with a little manipulation, be discarded altogether.

“Avant garde” artists of all kinds, again, having milked the “new age” concept for every ounce of its shock value, offer nothing to replace the rubble created by their iconoclasm, which still litters the countryside.

And self-styled trend-setters, finally, have no clear notion as to where, why, or how to direct people’s attention. They offer only trivia—or, worse still—blasphemy in place of the worthwhile and the meaningful. Indeed, I personally have reached the conclusion that anyone who follows the dictates of “style” shows himself to be without taste.

The public, quite naturally, finds itself bewildered. Nor is it surprising that many today gaze back for comfort to past traditions which, to them, are at least recognizable. The relativity of time which Einstein claimed, has not, after all, thrown any clocks out of kilter. Scientific discoveries have altered no fundamental human reality. Works of art may titillate or outrage a few people, but the meaninglessness they suggest neither inspires nor offers any hope of new insights. Indeed, the most that the dogma, “art for art’s sake,” will ever accomplish will be to inspire a certain smugness on the part of those who accept it, as they consider themselves favored with insights that are unavailable to the “canaille.”

What is most notable about the times we live in is that, in every field of endeavor, human perceptions are expanding and new windows opening onto the vastness and subtlety of the universe. The need is growing everywhere in human hearts to make sense of these insights. We cannot simply reject them. Nor can we merely embrace them, in the exuberant manner of adolescents, for their shock value. We must assess them and do our best to understand what their implications are for human life.

We must accept first, of course, the simple fact that these new waves of insight are, in fact, unprecedented. We must also transcend any fear we may harbor that eternal values are being threatened. Indeed, Truth cannot be a house divided. Self-proclaimed “wisdom,” moreover, that is rooted in neither Truth nor tradition, is almost always mere superstition.

In this essay I propose to explain at some length what Sri Yukteswar said and meant about the new age, and his reasons for claiming that we have entered it already. I will present facts that support his statement, and that he himself could not have presented back in 1894, when he wrote his book, for science had not yet made the discoveries that would justify his claims.

The first part of this paper will present the general basis for Sri Yukteswar’s predictions, and will explain at some length what is implied by the term, “new age.” The last part will focus more specifically on Paramhansa Yogananda’s mission in this age.

One of the results of the new energy that is now flooding our planet is that people are being challenged to assume more personal responsibility for their lives. In a sense, certainly, religious organizations may continue to obstruct the spread of true, inward religion. I shall also show, however, how religious organizations also can be beneficial and expansive, in the spirit of Dwapara Yuga, and how Paramhansa Yogananda himself set the tone for this new type of organization.

Copyright © 2008 Hansa Trust. All rights reserved.

The full text of the essay will appear in a book by Crystal Clarity Publishers later this year. Click here to pre-order.

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 I (from Colombia) both shared the desire to spread Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings and Ananda’s way of life with Spanish speaking people.

However, without a Spanish speaking population nearby and without a web site, the Spanish ministry was not going to grow very fast – this was obvious. Ram Smith, an Ananda minister, encouraged us to organize a workshop at Ananda’s Meditation Retreat. We created a very simple web site and a whole family from Colombia, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area attended. About 6 people came.

Retreat participants doing yoga exercises

In the following months and years, we continued our outreach efforts, and attracted devotees from all over – including some who were interested in sharing the teachings of yoga and meditation, helping them to reach more people.

Seeing these students’ commitment and devotion to this spiritual path made us feel that Paramhansa Yogananda was helping us to find leaders that could take these teachings back to their own homes, in places like Spain, Argentina, and Los Angeles. When the Internet became popular everywhere, the work was cut out for us.

In time, with the help of Ananda’s Director of the Kriya Yoga Ministry, we decided to focus on finding and training people who were interested in Kriya Yoga. Paramhansa Yogananda called Kriya Yoga “the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite.”

Students who take Kriya Initiation start with lessons in meditation, continue with the Spanish version of The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, and accept discipleship to Paramhansa Yogananda before learning the techniques of Kriya Yoga.

The students download the lessons through our web site: Ananda Español. 3,000 people signed up for the lessons in the last 3 years, and we are getting about 80 new students a week! We have students in 26 countries and new meditation groups are forming on a regular basis.

It’s a team effort!

On one end, we have Marga and I, who correspond with new students, welcoming them and answering their questions. I coordinate North America, Mexico, and Latino America, while Marga coordinates Spain and other countries. We have students from Croatia, Malaysia, and Israel! (You can find Spanish speaking people everywhere in the world.)

An Ananda minister arranging flowers before a retreat in Venezuala

On the other end, we have the leaders of the meditation groups where we send nearby students so that they can have 1-on-1 training. We also offer retreats where people get to know us and can meet other people on the same spiritual path.

In Spain we are seeing an incredible increase in students, and new leaders are coming forth, like Pedro Rapp, who came to a retreat in Segovia in 2005. With other Ananda members in Spain he has trained 2 new Kriyabans in his area and has helped train several disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda.

Having an Ananda community nearby whose teachers can travel – like Ananda Italy – and having a handful of dedicated leaders interested in spreading these teachings, the number of students interested in Kriya Yoga sky rockets.

A challenge is to take this model to Latino America, where there is no community nearby, and where students have a hard time getting visas to come to America. Still, the Spanish ministry has given Kriya Initiation in Cuba, Venezuela, and now Mexico, whose future looks very good. In Mexico, recently, another Ananda member and myself were invited to give discipleship training to 80 new devotees (below) who are now on their way to taking Kriya Initiation.

“Now I love to meditate!”

These are some of the things that we are hearing from our students:

“Thank you, for all your help. I have tried so many different techniques to learn to meditate and not until now have I seen any progress. I feel deep peace and perceive a deep breakthrough in my search.”
– Alvaro, Mexico

“I just started this path and already saw important changes in myself; I have more tolerance, I feel calmer and more patient. Even my friends and family can tell the difference. My goal is to contact God through my gurus with Ananda’s help. Thank you so much for everything.”
– Francisco, Ecuador

“I’m really enjoying the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. I found them exceptional and full of practical and spiritual wisdom.”
– Rafael, Spain

“I have finished the second part of the lessons and I have a strong desire to continue and to prepare for Kriya Yoga.”
– Maria, Argentina

“The Energization Exercises are excellent!! Thank you. Now I love to meditate!”
– Olga, Mexico

One of the great joys of my work with Kriya Yogis is the frequent emails I receive from them, describing the positive effects of Kriya practice. These testimonials come from long-time Kriyabans, and from people who have been practicing Kriya less than a year.

Many times the practice of Kriya brings what I call ‘unintended consequences’ — all of them positive! A recent email from a new Kriyaban described how they had stopped eating meat, were eating half as much as they used to (good in their case, apparently!) – all of this even though they weren’t trying to make these particular changes in their life.

Because Kriya changes one deeply from the inside, the changes can and do manifest outwardly in many ways. In a sense, the Kriya Yogi changes himself from the inside out, rather than in the typical modern approach of changing one’s looks, clothing, or personality.

Here are some of the comments I’ve received from Kriya Yogis:

“My heartfelt thanks to you for giving me the Kriya Technique earlier in the year. It was the greatest gift I have ever received. Words cannot describe the taste of the daily ‘kriya nectar.’”

“I found intense joy, happiness and peace in my life. Kriya and devotion light up my life, and best of all I have daily guidance from the Masters. Since I started my daily practice I became a vegetarian and celibate and living a quiet life, looking at the external world as an expression of God, with compassion and love. I am very happy to be spiritually awakening.”

“My inner and outer life have changed in ways I never thought possible.”

“Kriya is truly a sacred art that has a profound and life changing effect on one’s thought pattern, and a feeling of great joy and bliss.”

How can the practice of Kriya cause so many positive changes? In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda promised:

“One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.”

Yogananda went even further in a discussion with Swami Kriyananda, which he recounts in his book The Essence of Self-Realization:

“I can take a few young men of the most restless sort, and let them practice Kriya for two hours every day in the way I tell them, and, without question, in four or five years I can make saints out of them.

“I won’t preach a single sermon to them. I will simply tell them to practice Kriya for two hours a day, and they will see the difference in their lives. That is a good challenge.

“Of course, they must practice in the way that I tell them. That won’t be easy. But it is surely worth the effort.”

People often make resolutions to change their lives - typically at the start of the new year. Often, these resolutions have little effect, perhaps a little lost weight or a few better habits. Imagine making just one change that will have benefits for every aspect of your life!

Yogananda did not say that his “young men of the most restless sort” would have to change this bad habit or that. He didn’t say that they would have go to church every Sunday. All they would need to do is “practice Kriya for two hours every day in the way I tell them,” and they would become saints in 4 or 5 years.

I can honestly say, based on my own 30-year experience of daily Kriya practice, and on my interactions with hundreds of other Kriya Yogis, that Kriya effectively changes people’s lives out of all proportion to the self-effort required.

If you are interested in learning Kriya Yoga, feel free to email me. If you already practice Kriya, consider dedicating 2008 to a deeper and more devoted practice of it. You may well be surprised at the many “unintended” positive consequences resulting from your deep, sincere practice.
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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 we ran a large full color ad in the Times of India, advertising the event on Wednesday the 12th. We ran a second ad on Wednesday itself.

Both ads were surprise gifts to Swami. When he discovered the ad in Monday’s paper he said with a smile, “I’m a little embarrassed, but not really.” When he saw Wednesday’s ad, he was similarly touched.

The celebration began in the morning with a discipleship ceremony in our temple. Many devotees gathered together to renew their vows of discipleship to Master. In addition, the Life Members of the Ananda’s Sevaka Order renewed their Life Vows–we are blessed to have 26 of them serving here.

After lunching at the ashram with about 80 of our closest friends, we went to the town Community Center to finish decorating and to prepare for the evening.

The event began at 5:00pm with chanting by Haridas and some of the monks. We had a capacity crowd of 400, due largely, we believe, to the Times of India ads. At 5:30 Swamiji arrived, and the choir stood up to sing.

The great news is that many Indians have joined the choir and now make up about half of the singers! We sang Invocation, Lord Most High, Walk Like a Man, and Dark Eyes. We also sang Swami’s chant, Lord I am Thine, in Hindi–Prabhu Mai Tumhara. It is the first of many of his chants and songs that we hope to translate. Singing has been a wonderful way for all of us to share in the music together.

Sri D.R. Kaarthikeyan, Nirmala, and Dharmadas introduced Swamiji. Swamiji gave a powerful talk on the meaning of discipleship, including his own experience of it. He ended with an exhortation for us all to start a community in India, so that others can see the value of living in community not as an idea merely, but as a reality.

Swamiji asked Ruby and Amol to join him onstage. They described a plan to fund and build our first community here in India. Swamiji then stood and said, “I pray with all my heart that we can get something like this going soon.”

He next invited his long-time friend Indu Bhan to join him for a yagya (Vedic fire ceremony). He said that they performed this ceremony together in January of 1961, repeating the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra for the whole world.

After the recitation of mantras over the flames, Swamiji returned to his seat and invited the audience to come to him to a receive a gift: his translation of the 1st chapter and part of the 2nd chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.

These translations are part of his latest project: to publish the complete Gita, containing the verses only. He left out these particular verses from the commentary, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, because they require extensive commentary that would impede the flow of the overall book.

He gave these verses in a little booklet to each guest at the program. Peopled gathered along the walls to greet Swamiji–the line stretched almost all the way around the hall. Swamiji personally greeted each one, and each departed the stage with the booklet and a smile.

Swamiji said he was so happy with the all the aspects of the day. It was a blessed event, full of light, and a glorious beginning of Swami’s sixtieth year of service to his guru, and to all the world.

Read about Yogananda’s vision for World Brotherhood Colonies

Over 200 Ananda members traveled to Southern California last week for 5 days of events. The highlight was the official launch of Swami Kriyananda’s new book, Revelations of Chirst. It was held at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, and was attended by over 1,000 people. You can listen to Swami Kriyananda’s talk and view slideshows by following the links at the bottom of the page.

The Jewel in the Lotus
The first event was a performance of Jewel in the Lotus, a beautiful play written by Swami Kriyananda many years ago. It was performed in front of about 150 people at the Seaside Church of Religious Science in Encinitas on Wednesday, July 18. The following evening we performed the play again, before another large audience at a beautiful auditorium in Malibu.

Both audiences were extremely receptive to the story that takes place 200 years in the future. That is when Paramhansa Yogananda said he would have his next incarnation. The play is a mixture of humor, inspiration, insight, and deep spiritual teaching that ends very poignantly (I won’t give away the ending here!). The play has been performed numerous times, on three continents - testimony to its universal impact.

Gala Evening with Swami Kriyananda
On Friday evening, a dinner was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Century City to raise money for promoting the new book and to help launch Ananda’s new center in Los Angeles. Swami Kriyananda gave an inspiring talk about the book, Ananda musicians performed beautifully, and the food was exceptional!

Launch of Revelations of Christ
This special event on Saturday evening at the Wadsworth Theatre was truly extraordinary. Swami Kriyananda spoke for one and a half hours to about 1,200 extremely attentive souls. I can’t recommend this talk highly enough – please take the time to watch it on the Ananda website.

He covered many topics relating to the book. The common thread throughout his talk was the soul’s unique relationship to God – one that is beyond the power or control of religious institutions.

Religious organizations and churches have misinterpreted the teachings of the Masters throughout history, in order to boost their own importance. Swamiji’s new book brings back the original meaning of Christ’s teachings – unfettered by ‘churchianity’, as Yogananda used to call the church’s misinterpretations of Christ’s words.

Swami Kriyananda spoke beautifully, humorously, and devotionally about our search for divine realization. Everyone I could see around me was deeply moved by his presence and his words. He received several standing ovations before and after his very uplifting presentation.

At the conclusion of the evening Swamiji was presented with two awards. The first was the “2007 Pioneer in Yoga” award, given by the Los Angeles Yoga Fellowship for “blazing a spiritual trail which leads to the highest goal – yoga: scientific union with Spirit.”

The second was the “Beacon of Light Lifetime Achievement Award” presented by the National InterFaith Council for “outstanding and tireless spiritual work for mankind across our planet.”

Launch of Ananda Los Angeles
Ananda has a new center in Los Angeles! They are still looking for a permanent home, but Ananda ministers Krishna Das and Mantra Devi LoCicero have moved to Santa Monica, and begun giving satsangs and classes. About 250 people came to the Roosevelt High School auditorium on Sunday morning to inaugurate Ananda’s newest center. Swami Kriyananda spoke yet again, and stayed long afterwards, greeting everyone who wanted to talk to him.

Video and audio of Swami Kriyananda’s talks in Los Angeles
Ananda Los Angeles
Revelations of Christ home page