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The Future of Ananda
Excerpts of talks given by Swami Kriyananda
on October 19, 20, 21, 1999
The Coming Changes
I believe this civilization is going to come in for very drastic revision. Ananda will play an important role at that time, because people will ask, “What have you done? What are you doing? How can we learn from you?” We will have a lot to give, not just to people who come to us, but to everybody. It will be a wonderful adventure in the years and decades to come, to see that whenever man goes too far in one direction or another, the divine energy brings him back to his center again. You find this in society when people get too rich, too proud, too greedy. Yogananda often predicted such a widespread change in values.
There is a real war going on at this time, more than in past centuries, between the forces of light and darkness. We are living in a time when light has to take it on itself to resist darkness. We’ve got to realize we are warriors in an inner sense above all, conquering our own inner tendencies. The Bhagavad Gita said that no one ever got out of karma by not acting. We’ve got to do whatever we’re given to do with enthusiasm, with joy. In serving God, I’m finding Him. I feel His joy coming through me. If you live only for yourself you can’t be happy. If you live for others, live for God, live to serve, you are happy. If you give your life to God, even if you are going in the wrong direction, He’ll correct you. Try it and you will find that it works.
The Spirit of Yogananda's Mission
The divine blueprint for Yogananda’s mission is not something fixed. It is an energy, a direction. People ask me what I see for the future of Ananda. I see more of the same spirit there is now how it expresses itself is secondary. If we have the right spirit then everything is going to go right. It is like the story of the Chinese emperors. When they traveled to the provinces, they didn’t ask to see the accounts or talk to the officials they asked to listen to the music. If the music was right, they knew everything was right. If the music was wrong, something had to be corrected. The first thing to correct was the music itself. I think one of the best things we have is that each Ananda community has a choir singing this music. When people sing, they feel God’s spirit and they are in tune. The music is only an expression of the spirit. The spirit is what we need.
There was a man who came to live at Yogananda’s ashram at a time when we had been desperately needing a printer. He told me he was a printer. With great joy, I said to Yogananda, “We have a new printer for the printshop!” He responded, “Why do you say that? First find out if they have the right spirit, then think where they will fit.” I’ve always abided by that in developing Ananda, too. I haven’t thought, “Oh, we can use this person here; we can use that person there.” Let them have the right spirit and things work themselves out. Never use people. People are more important than things. When we develop Ananda, it must always be with the thought that we are here to serve people, to help them in their spiritual growth. Don’t think like accountants or businessmen. We have to be true to ourselves even if it’s inefficient. It’s good to get everything organized, but also be very aware that we’ve got to do it with the right spirit.
We need to be somewhat down-to-earth and practical, but I’ve seen it go wrong. When I was director of SRF centers and meditation groups, I saw that each center had its own way of doing things, contrary to what Yogananda would have said. So I wrote a book of rules and organized them so that if a leader left, the center would go on in the same spirit. I did my best, but I failed. Things don’t work like that. The spirit of a group always reflects the spirit of the leader. Our leaders are not there as businessmen making a ‘thing’ happen. Above all they’re there to inspire, serve, counsel, and draw people to God. If we try to control too much, we’ll control nothing. We’ve got to let loose of the reins in certain directions.
For example, one member of Ananda founded a medical clinic near Ananda Village. He could not run such a public service strictly according to Yogananda’s lines. But he has the spirit and so our people who work there have it too. As a result, what they give to the hundreds of patients they serve is something much deeper than simple medical treatment. Our schools can’t afford to be parochial, with gurus on an altar. They’ve got to be according to a system that can change education everywhere, a system that is desperately needed. The Montessori system is nice, but it’s too intellectual, too ‘thing’ oriented. Rudolf Steiner is fine but it doesn’t have devotion. I have thought of spreading the practice of devotion to Divine Mother everywhere – that aspect of God that is love, compassion, mercy. Ananda schools help to give America that needed quality. Several teachers from Ananda are having success giving classes in business corporations and governmental departments. They are sharing spiritual principles, but in a language that such people can identify with.
Much more needs to be done to bring these teachings into different fields of life: books written on the basis of my books, books written on the basis of the teachings, books written on things I know nothing about. How to be a good mother – I couldn’t write a book like that, but somebody could; it would be wonderful.
Communities in the Future
We’ve got to let some things go in a direction only minimally guided by people who are in Ananda. Then we can keep what we’re trying to do as a group pure and focused. There will be many other communities in the future, but those we have now are a core. They are the last place I want to see compromise with worldly attitudes take root. We need to be not dogmatic but clear that we are devotees. We are not trying to create a beautiful New Age village. We’re here to serve God and to create an environment that will be supportive to our devotion. The ideal of communities is something that devotees everywhere should seek. Apart from that, people everywhere would do well to seek another kind of community, because community as community is also something the world needs today.
I feel that spiritual communities need a monastery to set the example of selfless service, which is something harder for people with children to support to keep in mind. If Ananda becomes too much of a householder community, then I’m afraid it would lose something precious. Yogananda said that the path of worldly responsibility is indeed higher than the monastic path provided the householder do, his duty without any attachment or ego involvement. But not many people are able to do this without examples. If you find people who really feel that they don’t want anything except God and all they own belongs to Him, their example will make it easier for everybody to tune in to that attitude. It would be good if new Ananda residents could get grounded in the monastic attitude before they thought about marriage. In the Buddhist tradition, at least, the young men live in a monastery for one year. They come to marriage with a certain understanding of self-control, of detachment, of service. Let’s first be devotees seeking God. Then, as we bring that level into marriage, we can begin to set an example for people everywhere of a kind of marriage that our culture doesn’t prepare us for. We need to have a different concept of human love than what Hollywood films give us. It’s got to be on a soul level.
I think it would be a culmination of Ananda’s growth to have a place where devotees could retire and spend their time meditating after a life of work. They can receive people who would like to come for spiritual teaching and counsel. Ananda is not in a position yet to support such a place. But, let’s keep this in mind for the future, because meditation and communion with God are really what this path is all about
Families living in communities, consciously dedicated to God, can be a tremendous inspiration to people everywhere. It took only five percent of the Russian people to bring about the Russian revolution. They say that it takes a five percent stock ownership in a company to have effective control, because most people don’t vote or vote in such a way as to cancel each other out. But when a few people really believe in what they are doing, their influence is far out of proportion to their numbers. Our work is having a big impact already and the story of that impact has hardly begun. There will be tremendous changes in society and much of them will be due to just the kind of thing we are doing. Don’t feel that you are standing alone or that we are a few voices crying in the wilderness.
God is trying to bring about a balance between East and West. In the West there is a sort of suppressed spirituality that wants to come out. Many people may have to experience outward hardship in order to start thinking less about their stock investments and more about God. I think we are on the eve of a great change, and you can be a part of that change.
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Ananda is located in the tranquil hills of Umbria, Italy on “Strada Statale 444” between Assisi and Gualdo Tadino. It is the largest retreat center in Europe for Yogananda’s teachings.
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