
Divine Light Dawning on New Horizons was the theme for this year’s Annual Appeal. Dwapara Yuga in general, and the internet in particular, had revolutionized the way Ananda could serve. No matter where you lived, or how limited your resources, if you could get to a computer, Ananda was there.
We put whole books online for free, starting with the original Autobiography of a Yogi. We had thousands of hours of recordings of Swamiji, going back decades. A talk-of-the-month subscription called Treasures Along the Path was the outlet for some; others we simply posted online. We started our own internet station, Radio Ananda. With email, people could get answers to their questions the same day they were asked.
Through the Healing Prayer Circle, six hundred people responded to thousands of requests; for emergencies, we had a “prayer hotline.” One person with one computer started a global ministry in Spanish. There were now forty-seven editions of Swamiji’s books published outside the United States, representing twenty-five languages, distributed in one hundred countries. The Japanese version of Do It NOW! sold seventeen thousand copies the first few months after publication.
In their Annual Appeal letter Jyotish and Devi wrote, “How best to respond to the thousands now finding Ananda? The answer is simple: ‘Serve.’”
***
In preparation for the SRF trial, Swamiji was called back to America for another deposition. “I don’t know which will come first,” he said, “my death or the end of this lawsuit.” Death was the reason for taking his deposition, and that of Daya Mata, as soon as possible. Both would be filmed, and if either died before the trial, the video would be their testimony. This was fine with us—not their deaths, but taking the depositions as soon as possible. We wanted to get this over with. SRF, however, wanted to delay, driving up the costs and increasing the pressure.
The trial was set for August, but they filed so many motions and discovery requests that the date had to be vacated, with no new date set. Once again, we were trapped in open ended litigation with SRF.
One evening, when David and I were having dinner with Swamiji, he again started at the beginning, reviewing his whole SRF experience, to see if there was anything he had missed, if, in fact, he was wrong.
During Master’s lifetime the monks and nuns all lived together at Mount Washington. They interacted as little as possible, but it was far from ideal. “After I am gone,” Master said, “the monks should have a place of their own.” Through Swamiji’s efforts, a monks’ ashram was eventually built. Later, though, when he was expelled, this was used as evidence against him: “Getting power for yourself by taking the monks away from Daya Mata.” Master had told Swamiji several times about the need for a separate monastery, but he never said it to any of the nuns.
David asked an obvious question, “Why didn’t Master tell the nuns?”
“I don’t know,” Swamiji said. The conversation ended and he went off to meditate.
An hour later he returned, filled with joy. He had puzzled over the question for fifty years, without getting an answer. But as often happened, he said, when the question was put to him by someone else, the answer was there.
“In meditation, I asked Master—and instantly the answer came: ‘Because I wanted you to think of yourself as working separately from the women directors!’ Master said. ‘You could never have done the work you have done, except independently of them.’”
In the afterword of A Place Called Ananda, Swamiji described the question, and Master’s answer in meditation. “One naturally wonders,” he wrote, “why Master didn’t simply come out and tell me. It was necessary, however, that the karmic pattern follow its own course. I often found in his guidance that he gave only subtle hints of his deeper meaning. My service to him would not have worked out as it did, had I known his intentions from the start.
“I am grateful, though, for what he did state clearly at the time. I might have lacked the courage to think as independently as I did, had it not been for those words of his to me.”
***
Ananda’s greatest asset is its people: their faith, magnetism, creativity, and positive energy. In all the years of litigation, though, except for praying and giving money—essential to our success!—most of the members sat on the sidelines. Not for lack of willingness on their part, but for lack of a way to use their energy effectively.
The one time Swamiji did want everyone to get into the act—to protest the Bertolucci verdict—we weren’t able to rise to the challenge.
Now that we were embroiled again with SRF, Swamiji suggested other possible demonstrations. Most of the SRF members didn’t know about the lawsuit; we could demonstrate outside their temples. But a day later, Swamiji withdrew the suggestion.
Daya Mata did not live at Mount Washington; she had her own home in a nearby city. We could stand outside her house holding signs like, “Master said: ‘Only love can take my place.’” and “Love not Lawsuits.” That idea lasted a little longer. For a demonstration, you can’t block a road or stand on private property; you need a sidewalk. I went to look at her house—her neighborhood didn’t have sidewalks.
SRF had a huge expansion plan for Mount Washington, including moving Master’s body from the crypt at Forest Lawn to a temple they would build on their property. The neighbors were up in arms. Mount Washington sits at the top of a hill, accessible only by a narrow, winding road. Their plan would mean years of construction, followed by greatly increased traffic, especially if Master’s body was there. A public hearing was set for May 10, which happens to be Sri Yukteswar’s birthday.
The neighbors knew we were also in conflict with SRF, and asked us to come to Los Angeles and testify. After some discussion, we decided to do it. I was one of those who would speak. It was a huge auditorium, the audience of about seven hundred was evenly divided between irate neighbors and SRF members, including all their monks and nuns.
In the lawsuit, SRF spoke through their lawyers. For this hearing, although they had professional consultants, the monks, nuns, and members spoke for themselves. I was surprised by the lack of magnetism in their voices and the weakness of their argument; mainly, “We are so nice, you should let us do whatever we want.” Given the many valid concerns of their neighbors, it did not seem like a winning strategy.
When it was my turn to speak, I started right in about the lawsuit, with many examples of how SRF could not be trusted to keep their word. I felt a powerful wave of reaction—and surprise—from the SRF side, especially from the monastics. It seemed most of them they didn’t know about the lawsuit.
I realized that SRF’s power depends on secrecy—hard to maintain in the age of the internet. We should make a website! Then came another powerful intuition: If you stand up to SRF now you will win. I thought of the SRF Convocation in August: thousands of members from all over the world gathered in one hotel—which is surrounded by sidewalks.
Later, when I shared these ideas with Swamiji and then with other Ananda leaders, most people supported the website—as long as the lawyers approved every word before it was posted. As for demonstrating at the Convocation—even Swamiji wasn’t entirely for it. But nor was he against it. If we could get the other community leaders to agree, he said, we could go forward and see what was trying to happen. Many of the other leaders had grave doubts; but eventually, reluctantly, they agreed to let us try and organize it.
We put up two websites: Yogananda Rediscovered for the SRF lawsuit, and Ananda Answers for the Bertolucci case. Later they were consolidated into Yogananda for the World. Swamiji contributed a few excellent pieces, but most of the writing was done by others. He was very pleased.
Even though we had permission to go forward, demonstrating at the Convocation remained very controversial. Many people called Swamiji to object. He listened carefully, and often responded, “I understand how you feel.” He was fair-minded; he could see both sides. To some people he said, “It wasn’t my idea.”
Every few days, Swamiji would call David and me to talk about what we had in mind. He was impressed by how carefully we were thinking it through. The conversation always ended with a comment from him like, “Well, maybe we should do it.” Enough to keep going, but hardly the ringing endorsement we hoped for.
We knew that unless Swamiji felt we were open to his point of view, he wouldn’t offer it. We had tried to be open, but we felt more was needed. So we called him, and without any bias said, “Do you want us to go ahead?”
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. I have concerns.”
“What are they?”
“I’m afraid our people will become angry.” He had often cautioned us: You can’t fight delusion with delusion. “That would send us down the road so many religions have followed, ending in persecution.”
“I am not concerned,” I said. “You have trained us too well.”
“I think you are naive,” Swamiji replied. “When you set up a confrontation, people become angry.”
“We have no intention of setting up a confrontation! Our plan is to sing: your songs, Master’s chants. We are there to introduce people to Ananda and pass out information. We won’t argue; we are not trying to convert anyone. Our purpose is educational.”
“You must promise me,” he said, “that if even one of our people becomes angry, you will stop everything and come home.” Of course, we agreed.
“People are afraid this will harden SRF against us,” Swamiji said.
“Once you reach granite rock, you can’t get any harder!” I replied.
Swamiji laughed, and agreed. He went on, “I haven’t heard any reasons against doing this; nothing substantive. Only a projection of fears.” Then he spoke to us more personally. “If you don’t go, their fears of what might have happened will become what would have happened. Forever after those who opposed it will say, ‘We rescued Ananda from a terrible disaster.’ You both will lose so much face, in future your judgment will always be suspect.”
“We don’t care about face, we’re not embarrassed,” David said. “If we are wrong, we are happy to admit it. We don’t want to think politically.”
“This isn’t politics,” Swamiji said. “This is human nature. As leaders, you have to think about the impact of your words and actions, not only on yourselves and your community, but on the work as a whole.”

He paused, to let that thought sink it. This was not the first time he had encouraged us to consider more thoughtfully realities other than our own.
Then he went on, “At this point, the only way to prevent what I describe from happening, is to go to the Convocation and make a success of it.”
I then told him something I hadn’t said before.
Almost all of Swamiji’s ideas came from superconscious intuition. But he seldom referred to that, and he never used it as a way to compel people to go along with him. Trying to get your way by claiming special intuition—that no one else can access—was what Swamiji called “the last recourse of a weak leader.”
I rarely had that kind of intuition. But as I now explained to Swamiji, the idea for this demonstration had come “in that way.”
“Because of the way it came,” I told him, “I’ve never had any doubt that it would work.”
“Well, then,” Swamiji said, in an entirely different tone of voice, “Of course you have to go.”
We did go, about fifty of us, drawn from all the Ananda colonies. We passed out hundreds of copies of a twenty-eight-page newspaper we had created with the facts about SRF and the lawsuit, and some nice pictures of Ananda. We set up a hospitality room at the Biltmore Hotel, which was a few blocks from the Convocation venue, and the place where many of the participants stayed.
We brought relics of Master and of others of our Gurus which we displayed in a beautiful case. People could buy the original edition of Autobiography of a Yogi, and a video of Master which we had just acquired from the archives of the British Broadcasting Company. SRF had many movies of Master, but they rarely showed any of them, and they were never for sale.
Now people could see Master walking, talking, moving, and—most amazing of all—going into superconsciousness right on camera. “Now I will go into superconsciousness,” he said, and then he did. It was a hot item. Even those most hardened against us would sneak in to watch it and then buy a copy.
We sang our little hearts out, and no one got angry—not even close. After eleven years of litigation, we felt nothing but joy at finally being able to stand up for what we believed.
It is impossible to measure objectively the effect of what we did. Almost all of the five thousand SRF members who attended the Convocation, and most of their monastics, saw us, heard us sing, and read the name of the website on the signs we held. Whatever the results in the material world, we had battled valiantly on the causal plane.
Afterward, Swamiji said, “There are times when our meditation must be action for God, not peacefulness. This is one of those times. Good for all of you that you feel inner joy. This has been a job well done for God and Gurus.”
***
Earlier in the summer, an alternative Los Angeles newspaper had printed a scurrilous article about Master. By the next morning, Swamiji had written and sent to the reporter, a beautiful defense of his Guru. I was mortified to realize how many scurrilous things had been said and written about Swamiji, and how little we had done to defend him. Now, at least we had the websites.
“You have to meet every reality on its own level,” Swamiji said. “You can’t combat great evil with a smile. You have to match its energy force in a way that will actually repel it. In all these years at Ananda, I’ve had to do all the fighting myself. I have to admit, it has been hard on me. It is in the fitness of things that you are now taking a mature stand yourselves. It is not that I want you to do it, it is that you will feel better in yourselves if you do. Children can’t fight their father’s battles, but when they grow up, they come to his defense.”
He likened it to the time when he was persuaded to accept a salary from Ananda. Unless Ananda takes care of its founder, he was told, they will always be like children, relying on their father for everything. “So I took a salary,” Swamiji said, “and that was the starting point for Ananda’s prosperity.”
***
This was not a good year for Swamiji’s health. Nothing life-threatening—but a persistent cough, trouble with his throat and lungs, confusion over medication that put him in the hospital for a few days, then pneumonia. He stopped giving programs in Assisi; even went into silence for some weeks, to give his voice a rest.
In the midst of it all, he wrote a new book. He had planned to do something with the Bhagavad Gita; the responsibility weighed on him continuously. Since he had neither the articles nor the manuscript, he decided to write a short book with the essential message of the scripture, rather than explaining it stanza by stanza as Master had done.
It was Swamiji’s custom to send chapters of whatever he was writing to a group of people he thought could give him good feedback. Sometimes what was crystal clear to the author was less so to the reader. It was also a way to keep us in tune with what he was doing. Instead of a Gita commentary, though, we got the first chapter of Hope for a Better World!: The Small Communities Solution.
Just before he returned to Italy, Swamiji explained, someone had given him a book called Books that Changed the World. It was true, he said, those books had changed the world—but not for the better! He read it on the airplane, and by the time the flight ended, he was filled with ideas for how to refute it.
What he had written before about communities, he said, was too focused on our path. Intentional Communities—How to Start Them, and Why begins with Paramhansa Yogananda as the patron saint of the communities movement. Right away a person has to consider religion, when his real interest may be community. It is a curious fact that when books are written about communities, Ananda barely gets a footnote; and when conferences are held, we rarely get a hearing—even though Ananda is perhaps the most successful enterprise around. The reason, Swamiji felt, was that people see us as sectarian.
Master had talked about writing a pamphlet about communities that would be of general interest, to help get his ideas known. But he never got around to it—a bit of unfinished business Swamiji could complete for his Guru.
Always, Swamiji takes a subject back to its foundation, and builds from there. The authors discussed in Books that Changed the World are widely respected; in some cases, almost revered: Freud, Darwin, Marx, Plato. In fact, though, Swamiji felt that many of their ideas are the cause of what ails society now, not the solution! In their own context, they may have been correct; but none of them asked the right question. It isn’t enough for a theory to be beautiful. The question is, Does it work?
A little known fact is that a wealthy patron supported Plato to set up the ideal society as Plato imagined it. It was a total fiasco. Plato took everything into account, except human nature. People seldom mention the failed experiment, so his theories are still studied—and respected!
In a cover note for one of the chapters he sent of Hope for a Better World, Swamiji wrote, “This book arouses mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, I love it. And yet, it is very different from what my heart feels called to do at this time in my life, which is to write more devotionally. It is a step backward into the kind of writing I had to do years ago, to set a broad base for everything else I had in mind.”
Until the very end of the book, Swamiji doesn’t even mention Ananda, or his own role in founding a community. Even then, he touches on it only lightly. He wanted the ideas to speak for themselves. This book is for a general audience, he said; for people who are “intelligent, skeptical, but open-minded.” The need, he felt, was urgent—especially after September 11, with the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.
On September 14, he wrote an article called What Do We Pray For? “Humanity is caught in a struggle between good and evil: between God (define Him as you will) and Satan (define him, again, as you will). It is a struggle between light and darkness, and between faith and people’s attempts to destroy human faith in everything.
“We owe it to ourselves, and to all humanity, to do what we can. Our duty is to act firmly, even sternly—as in a forest fire, a swath of trees may be cut down to prevent the fire from spreading. No scripture on earth counsels spinelessness. It is sufficient that we not be drawn into hating others.
“Each of us has the power to make an offering to God of this simple prayer: ‘Lord, use me! Let me channel Your love impersonally to all.’ Divine love is a force. It does not succumb weakly to evil, but opposes it with power to destroy it utterly. If we understand that by loving rightly it is God’s love we express, He will be able, through us, to uplift the world’s consciousness.
“What should I pray for? I pray that I become an ever clearer channel for God’s grace. I pray also for my fellow human beings, that they become ever stronger in God’s light.”