2002: The Jury Trial Concludes SRF’s Lawsuit Against Ananda

Carpenters help rebuild Durga and Vidura’s home at Ananda Village after the 1976 fire that destroyed 21 of 23 dwellings.

 “Nothing is more important than our quest for God,” Swamiji said in a recorded message sent to all the communities on New Year’s Day. “Even when you are working, feel that God is working through you, using your hands, guiding your feet, directing your thoughts and feelings. Ask God, ‘What do You want from me? Help me, in every circumstance, to respond as You would respond.’ If you live this way, you will find, behind all your experiences, the deep sweetness of God and Guru.”

At the word sweetness, his voice broke. There was a long pause, a deep indrawn breath, then, in a voice choked with tears, he said, “Bless you that you feel this sweetness more and more deeply, as I am feeling it now—and my love for all of you.”

***

Swamiji was plagued by a cough that simply wouldn’t go away. Now that he could no longer “override with willpower” his physical limitations, the “underlying weaknesses,” as he put it, were being revealed. Mostly he lived quietly at Seva Kutir, concentrating on writing.

For the Mahasamadhi celebration in March, Swamiji would be the main speaker. His health had taken a turn for the better, but people were still concerned. “Don’t worry,” he said, “Master always gives me the energy I need.” Even the new temple wasn’t large enough for the all-Europe event they planned, so it was held at a beautiful hotel in Assisi. Swamiji spoke in Italian, with simultaneous translation into several other languages. There were five hundred people in the audience, from twelve countries. Master for the World.

In America, we treated Swamiji respectfully, but there was little outward display of reverence. He preferred it that way. The Italians were either unaware of his preference, or chose to ignore it. Whenever he entered or left a room, everyone stood up to honor him. Many would walk out with him, to pronam, offer thanks, hand him a Kriya mala to bless, or just to be in his presence for a few minutes longer.

       For the Mahasamadhi weekend, Swamiji had a room at the hotel, but after each program, he stayed a long time with people, talking, blessing them, posing for pictures, and signing books, before retiring to his room. Master gave him all the energy he needed.

       In April, he came to America, with major public events scheduled in every colony. Perhaps it was because so many had visited Assisi, and seen how Swamiji was treated there. Maybe it was the longing in our hearts to express outwardly the feelings we cherished inside. Or maybe Swamiji’s aura had changed and the veil over his consciousness was thinner now. Perhaps he felt it was time to let go of his preferred role as a “simple, unaffected friend.”

       Whatever the reason, spontaneously now Swamiji received in America the same gesture of respect that was given to him in Europe. At the Village, and in all the communities, when he entered or departed a room, people stood in reverent silence, with hands folded over the heart in pronam.

***

Autobiography of a Yogi was Master’s best known book, but he had published several others, all now in the public domain. His first was The Science of Religion, written just before he came to America in 1920, to introduce his teachings to the West. The premise was simple. Every human being is motivated by two desires: to escape pain and to find happiness. Both desires could be fulfilled through the practice of Self-realization. The book was a particular favorite of Swamiji’s, and Crystal Clarity was about to publish it.

The writing style, though, was cumbersome. Swamiji assumed it was because Master was just learning English. Later he found out that Master didn’t write the book himself, but gave an outline of his ideas to a disciple who was fluent in English and could write it for him. Swamiji decided to polish the writing, but soon realized that a complete rewrite was needed—ghostwriting for Master as the other disciple had done.

In Autobiography of a Yogi, it says that Lahiri Mahasaya, when interpreting scriptures, would sometimes tell a disciple, “Please expound the holy stanzas as the meaning occurs to you. I will guide your thoughts, that the right interpretation be uttered.” In this way, even though Lahiri himself did not write any books, many of his teachings were written down and published.

“All my writing has been guided by Master,” Swamiji said, “but this was the first time I wrote as Master. It was quite a challenge. I couldn’t use any stories about him; nor could I refer to my own experiences with him, as I usually do. Master speaks often in the book of the discoveries of science. Much better examples exist now, but I couldn’t use anything after 1920.”

Swamiji intended to leave his name off entirely, listing Master as the author, as the first disciple had done. When SRF got wind of it, their lawyers raised such a hue and cry that Swamiji gave up the idea; it wasn’t worth another lawsuit. He put himself as author, but used Master’s name in the title: God is for Everyone: Inspired by Paramhansa Yogananda. SRF strongly objected to this, too; but they didn’t own Master’s name, so there was no way they could stop him from using it.

Durga and Vidura’s house after the fire, which a local fire official confidentially said was suspected of having been started by an arsonist. An airplane delivering fire retardant crashed during the firefighting efforts, killing the pilot.

***

For years we had been trying, without success, to compel SRF to produce the original manuscript of Master’s Gita commentary, and allow us to examine it. Now that it was the central issue in the upcoming trial, we finally had a winning argument. SRF’s assertion that Master intended for them to have it was based on the claim that they did, in fact, have it. The manuscript was evidence we had a right to examine, and to compare to the book, and to the published articles.

SRF monks put the manuscript inside a heavy safe, bolted the safe into a van, and drove it from Los Angeles to their temple in Richmond, just north of San Francisco. We met in one of the classrooms there. The monks, wearing white cotton gloves, sat on one side of several long tables they’d set up; we sat on the other. The manuscript was on the table between us, placed so that we could read it and they could turn the pages.

We divided our side into teams of two, to compare each section of the manuscript to the corresponding magazine article and pages in SRF’s book, God Talks to Arjuna. Having the monks across the table, looking at the manuscript upside-down, proved cumbersome, and before long, we were sitting side-by-side, disciples together, entranced by the treasure before us. Swamiji remembered not only the content of the manuscript, but the pages themselves. Many had suggestions from him, handwritten in the margins.

As we pored over the pages, Swamiji chatted with the monks in the warm, informal way he talked to everyone. He had an interesting theory about our line of Gurus that he now shared with them.

Master had said that many well-known spiritual figures in history were earlier incarnations of one or another of our Gurus: Babaji was Krishna; Lahiri was Kabir; the three wise men in the Bible were Sri Yukteswar, Lahiri, and Babaji; Master himself had been Arjuna; Rajarshi was his younger brother, Nakula. Perhaps, Swamiji speculated, our Gurus are the guardians of the whole planet, and have been for a very long time. Maybe every planet is under the care of particular group of avatars.

It was certainly interesting, but at the time it seemed like an odd choice of subject! Only later did it occur to me that he was trying to open their minds by asking questions that couldn’t be answered with dogma.

Then Swamiji began to reminisce about being with Master in the desert, working with him on the very pages we were now examining. He told them about the monks’ retreat when he stayed there; they described it as is now, bringing him up to date on all the changes. Swamiji behaved as if he and the monks were old friends, talking about good times they’d shared together.

“Everything they know of me they learned from others,” Swamiji said later. “I wanted them to have their own experience. I believe they responded, subconsciously at least, as if I were the senior monk—which I am.” But he wasn’t optimistic. “I think their experience was slightly positive, but when they go back to Mount Washington, they’ll remember that nothing positive is welcome, and will recast their experience in a negative light.”

We had scheduled two days to review the manuscript. On the morning of the second day, Swamiji said, “I was very restless last night; I am quite disturbed by this situation.” One of the monks was a prominent, next-generation leader. With great intensity, Swamiji said, “I want to speak alone with him in the chapel. I need to tell him, ‘I don’t want to be your enemy. You don’t feel like my enemy, you feel like my friend.’” Swamiji still hoped for a harmonious resolution and felt a possibility with this man.

We tried to arrange it, but the monk had already gone back to Mount Washington. Very quietly Swamiji said, “I guess Divine Mother didn’t want it to happen.”

***

Linda Gerber and her husband Jim were long-time members of Ananda Palo Alto. They didn’t live in the community, but had a home in Hillsborough, just south of San Francisco. He was a successful businessman and generously supported Swamiji and Ananda. She was very devoted, with a marvelous sense of beauty. For the holidays and other special events, she decorated our temple in lovely, imaginative ways. Years before, she had been treated for cancer. When it came back with a vengeance, she flew with Jim to Assisi to say good-bye to Swamiji. She was afraid she might die before he returned to America.

She asked him, “How should I pray?”

“Pray always to be in the Light,” Swamiji said.

Linda bought a large sculpture of the sun, made of beaten silver, which she put high on the wall where she could see it from her bed. The light reflecting off its surface was a constant reminder to her of the divine light within.

Now, in the first days of August, Linda was on her deathbed. Swamiji came to see her.

“Tell me about the astral world,” she said.

“Everyone goes to that astral world that matches who they are inside,” he told her. “For you, it will be a beautiful, spiritual place. There will be angels to help you, and people you love who are living on that side now.

“You’ll understand everything more clearly there, than you can here. The brain is such a limited instrument, and the body weighs us down, preventing us from feeling the full joy of our inner nature.

“Many people think of the astral world as vague and cloud-like, but it is not. Reality there is greater than it is here. This world is copied from that one. Compared to the vivid reality of the astral world, it is this world that is vague and cloud-like. What you see here is what you’ll see there, only much more beautiful. You are going to a world of love, light, beauty, and joy.

“Our desire to create beauty here, to have beautiful experiences, is because we remember that beauty from our life in the astral world. Recreating it here helps us to recapture that memory. If we can let go of our attachment to this world, we can be very free in the astral world.

“Here we are surrounded by both good and bad people. Spiritually, this is helpful, because we learn to discriminate between that which draws us toward God, and that which pulls us away. In the astral world, we live in a vibration that matches our own. We get to mix with saints, and people who are highly advanced, spiritually.

“The astral world is not a myth; it is a reality many have experienced. You will find your sense of beauty gratified a thousand times more than was ever possible here. When you go there, though, be careful. Don’t think, ‘I have everything I need; I don’t need more than this.’ Beautiful as it is, the astral world is only the beginning. There is much more. Always think of God. That is the key to everything.”

“Oh, Swamiji, you’ve made it all so clear,” Linda said.

“Yes, it is very clear and very real. When you go, keep your mind on Master and he will come and take you there. You have been a blessing, Linda—you and Jim and your family—a blessing for all of us. I wanted to come and say good-bye. You are in my prayers, and all my love goes with you. Thank you, and God bless you.”

“Goodbye, Swamiji,” Linda said. Two weeks later, she peacefully entered the beautiful world Swamiji had described.

***

Even though X had lived for years in California and had an office there, he never took the California bar exam, but practiced under his Massachusetts license. Lawyers from out of state can petition, case-by-case, to be attorney of record, when they can show a good reason why, like special expertise. That’s how X got into the Bertolucci lawsuit—as an expert on cults. This time, when X asked to be attorney of record for SRF, we were ready.

On his application to Judge Garcia, X listed Massachusetts as his primary residence. We responded with a copy of his driver’s license, the deed to his condominium, and evidence that for years he been president of his condominium association—all in California. His application was denied.

X would have no official standing. He could not speak to the judge, question witnesses, or even sit at the table with the other lawyers. He still came to court, though, and tried to run the case from the sidelines.

We hired Rob Christopher to be our trial lawyer. He and his colleague, Richard Jones, blended perfectly with us; in no time at all, we were a solid team. SRF also had a new attorney, a competent professional who was an expert on copyright law.

SRF filed a motion asking that everything from the Bertolucci lawsuit be incorporated into this trial. Judge Garcia knew about that lawsuit because of SRF’s motion about tarnishment.

“This case is about copyrights,” he said sternly, when he denied the motion. Judge Garcia made it clear: These antics may have played well in state court, but no one is going to turn my courtroom into a circus.

The trial started at the end of September. On Friday of the first week, Judge Garcia ordered the parties to try and settle, then adjourned for several days so we could do it. Swamiji wrote a proposal—not about legal issues, but taking a broad view of history.

“Over the ensuing decades,” he wrote, “a complete rift would unfailingly arise between the two organizations, and would become carved, so to speak, in stone. The hostility developing out of such a rift would increasingly endanger the integrity of our Guru’s very mission. For the public could not observe without cynical laughter and disgust the spectacle of two lines of Yogananda’s disciples refusing to cooperate together, when their stated purpose is to foster world brotherhood and inter-religious harmony.

“It would be idle to pretend that gloomy predictions like this are impossible. Too many of history’s pages are darkly stained with examples of exactly this sort. Schism between Ananda and SRF would, at the very least, be like the ancient rift between the Church of Rome and the Greek Orthodox Church, a schism which has endured, so far, for one thousand years.”

Swamiji was determined to get the proposal into the hands of the monk he had tried to meet at the Richmond Temple. Ever since then, Swamiji had been trying to talk to him; but the monk always seemed to leave just when Swamiji arrived. Perhaps SRF was hiding him; perhaps Divine Mother was preventing it. One of the other monks agreed to pass on the message that Swamiji was looking for him.

The next day, the monk phoned. He and another monk could meet Swamiji in Nevada City. Ananda was just twenty minutes away, but the monks “did not have permission to come to Ananda.” They met Swamiji at a restaurant in town. Jyotish and Devi were also there, but at another table. Only at the end of the meeting did they join Swamiji and the monks.

Speaking frankly, strongly, and with every ounce of his willpower, Swamiji pleaded with the monks to stand up to the other directors for the cause of settlement and future cooperation. They were the next generation; they could effect a change.

This time, though, Swamiji said, the SRF leaders would have to come to him. He was not willing to go to Los Angeles. After the trial, he was going back to Italy. Now was the moment.

The monks carried the message back to Mount Washington: Swamiji wanted unity. For twenty-four hours, it looked like something might happen. Then it became clear that, to SRF, unity meant subservience to their authority in everything relating to Master.

We reported back to the judge: No settlement.

Judge Garcia kept a tight rein on his courtroom, so the trial proceeded in an orderly manner. X sat in the front row of the audience, right behind the SRF lawyers, passing notes and whispering instructions, which sometimes they tried to follow. But every effort to derail the proceedings was stonewalled by Judge Garcia. Finally X pushed it too far.

When an important SRF witness seemed unwilling to give a false answer to a key question, his lawyer called for a break. “Instructing a witness” to give a specific answer is a big no-no in court proceedings, although privately it must happen all the time.

X now took the SRF witness into the hall, and in a loud voice began to berate him, saying that if he failed to answer the question in the right way, SRF would lose the whole case and it would be all his fault.

Most of Ananda’s legal team had already gone into our private conference room. I was lagging behind, and heard the whole thing. I told Jon, who brought it up to Judge Garcia when court reconvened.

“Is this the same X who lied on his application?” the judge asked.

In Jon’s wry, understated way he said, “Yes, your honor, I believe he was less than candid.”

Judge Garcia had been watching X all through the trial, and was not pleased by what he’d seen. Now he ordered him to leave his courtroom and then leave the courthouse altogether. When X responded by shouting insults, the judge called the bailiff. X had to scurry out before he was forcibly ejected.

Swamiji didn’t come to court every day, but that morning, even though there was nothing of interest scheduled, he decided to come. After X was ejected, he said, “I felt something was going to happen today. That’s why I am here.”

Swamiji testified in person; Daya Mata pleaded ill health, and her testimony was excerpts from the video of her deposition. Shivani came and testified brilliantly about copying the Bible and Gita commentaries. If the Catholic Church refused to let the Protestants have a Bible, she said, they would have to find a way to get one. Master is our Guru. This is our scripture.

All through the trial, Rob had been working on his closing statement. The summation in front of the jury can win or lose a case. The evening before he was scheduled to speak, when he was going over his notes, his mind was suddenly flooded with new ideas. “I felt Yogananda himself was explaining to me what he intended,” he told us later. He stayed up until 5:00 a.m., completely rewriting his closing statement.

When a fully Self-realized master incarnates, his consciousness is free, but his actions are circumscribed by the time and place into which he is born, and by the karma of his disciples. The Guru can’t compel his disciples; he has to magnetize them according to their own natures. Daya Mata and the other leaders of SRF were deeply devoted to Master, and he was equally devoted to them—as he was to all his disciples, including Swamiji.

Master copyrighted almost all his writings in his own name, and died without transferring the copyrights to SRF. That almost, however, left a loophole that SRF exploited to the max. Master must have known how it would all play out—that everyone, including all of us who came long after him, would have a chance to work out our karma. But when all the dust settled, it would be, as he intended from the start: Master for the World.

In a brilliant, more than two-hour summation, Rob walked the judge, jury, and the courtroom packed with spectators, through the whole story as he had come to understand it through Master’s inspiration the night before. It was so moving, after all these years, finally to have someone tell the truth.

Afterward, when we crowded around Rob to thank him, many of us were in tears. Rob said, “When I saw the last pages coming, I was almost in tears myself.” He knew what a great responsibility had been placed on his shoulders. He had done his best; now it was in God’s hands.

That evening, we planned to meet the lawyers at a nearby restaurant for a celebratory dinner. When we walked in, Rob was sitting alone at the bar, with something considerably stronger than lemonade in front of him. He knew none of us drank alcohol and seemed a little embarrassed that we’d caught him. He was so much the hero of the hour, though, that with Swamiji in the lead we surged around him in a loving circle, assuring him, “If anyone deserves a good stiff drink, it is Rob Christopher!”

Daya Mata’s video testimony, predictably, was, “I was with him, don’t you think I ought to know?” The whole issue was Master’s intent. The jury decided she did know, and gave to SRF the copyrights to the magazine articles and the recordings. The photos had been dropped from the case.

Shivani’s testimony, however, also impressed them. Even though we had violated SRF’s copyrights, our action was deemed “fair use”—which is the same as being innocent. SRF had asked for $33,000,000 in damages for the commentaries; they got nothing.

The recordings, though, the jury deemed a violation. Self-Realization Fellowship had many recordings of talks by Master, but had released almost none of them, until we published the ones Swamiji got from Italy. Then SRF started selling the same talks. The jury refused to award the damages SRF requested, but we did have to pay them the amount we earned from selling the tapes:  $29,000.

SRF agreed not to appeal. Finally, it was over. Twelve years of litigation cost Ananda $13,000,000. SRF’s costs we estimated to be four or five times that amount. We had raised and spent $10,000,000; $3,000,000 was still owed.

SRF sent out a triumphant announcement: “We won!” X put a very nasty and untrue statement in the Nevada City newspaper. We issued our own press release. Yes, SRF did win this last issue; but in the previous twelve years, every decision favored Ananda. Most importantly, we had won everything needed to insure Master’s legacy for all time.

“SRF had to be able to declare a victory,” Swamiji said. “Otherwise they would never have left us alone.”

His statement explained two anomalous incidents in the trial. When Judge Garcia issued the jury instructions, the most important section was garbled. Usually he was very precise, but when Rob asked him to clarify that part, the judge refused. Why, at the eleventh hour, was he being so careless?

Swamiji was our key witness on the recordings. The facts were compelling; his testimony was not. Was he unwell? Did he not understand what was at stake? Eventually Swamiji admitted that he did it on purpose.

His testimony, and the veil Divine Mother dropped over Judge Garcia’s keen mind, helped insure SRF’s victory, bringing the lawsuit years to a close.

***

Swamiji went back to Asissi, and resumed work on God Is for Everyone. He also spent time polishing his poetic allegory Land of Golden Sunshine, which he gave as a Christmas present to everyone in the communities. It is the story of a young girl named Lisa who is “thrice visited by the Golden Sun Man.” He offers her a choice: cling to the life she has, dreary and unfulfilling though it is; or risk everything and follow him.

In the introduction, Swamiji said, “This little story, more than anything I’ve ever written in words—more deeply even than my autobiography—is an expression of who I am, inside. My music does it also—much of it—but no other literary work.”

In the note enclosed with the book, he said, “The mood of the poem expresses my lifelong desire to leave forever this limited earth existence. With advancing years, however, I find that my disillusionment with earth is actually diminishing, being replaced by a desire simply to be wherever God wants me to be, and to do whatever He wants of me.

“From early childhood I’ve always felt that heaven was my true home. More and more, however, I’m coming to realize that this world is, for one who wholeheartedly embraces God’s will, no less heaven than anywhere else. Praise and calumny, success and failure, love and hatred—all these come to us as divine blessings. God alone matters: All else is a dream.”

 

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