
When film director Ted Nicolau first started working with Swamiji, they were going to make a movie about his life with Master based on The New Path. Then they decided to include more about Ananda than was in the book. Now, Ananda had become the whole focus; the new title was Islands of Happiness. There was no script yet, just the outline of a plot.
A journalist named Juliet comes from New York to write a story about Ananda. Her son, Adrian, is a troubled character, addicted to electronic gadgets, cynical about life, unkind to his mother. It is a professional assignment for Juliet, but also personal. She hopes to find at Ananda a more positive way of life for herself and her son. Juliet is fictional; everyone she meets, including Swamiji, would be Ananda people playing themselves.
At the beginning of January, Swamiji said, “It isn’t fair to leave it to Ted and Roberto to figure out the story; they don’t know enough about Ananda.” Speaking of Juliet and her son, he said, “I can see the need to have someone with whom the audience can identify. But why make Adrian such a pill? Why all the juvenile sulks? That’s not the vibration we want in this movie. Let them be a loving mother and son, and the problem be his college professors who have caused him to doubt the meaning of life.” Swamiji started a new script, with a new title: Cities of Light. Within a week, the first draft was done.
He then went to Mumbai to launch the biography of Master. Jyotish and Devi were already in India; David and I were coming from America. Because of delays at the airport, we missed the event and were checking into the hotel at the very moment Swamiji returned. He came up from street level in an elevator. The doors opened just a few feet from where I was standing. I turned, and the unexpected sight of Swamiji’s eyes, radiating so much light, temporarily dissolved every other reality.
The launch had been a huge success—twelve hundred people in the hall, four hundred more watching a video screen in the foyer.
The Agastya reading had drawn a close parallel between Swami Kriyananda and Swami Vivekananda, a foremost disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. Agastya said it would benefit Swamiji—spiritually and in his service to Master—to make a pilgrimage to Vivekananda Rock, a tiny stone island just off the coast at Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. Vivekananda had a vision there that defined his life mission.
Swamiji planned to go with just three companions: Narayani, Miriam, and Dharmadas. He thought a small group more suitable for such an inward journey, the same as when he visited Medjugorje. Afterward, we would all meet for a holiday in Goa. As we were walking to the breakfast table, though, a few hours before he was scheduled to leave, Swamiji decided everyone should come with him on pilgrimage. So in between sips of coffee and bites of toast, reservations were cancelled and new plans made for Jyotish, Devi, Nirmala, David, and me.
It turned out to be an arduous journey. All eight of us, plus a wheelchair, were needed to get Swamiji to his destination. He was determined to make as much of the pilgrimage as he could under his own power; but plane, train, car, and ferryboat, combined with blazing sun, steep terrain, and rocky paths, made our help essential. Sometimes it took two men to push the wheelchair.
Three bodies of water collide at Kanyakumari—the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal. So it was a rough ferry ride from the mainland to the Rock. Because of certain medications, Swamiji’s eyes were sensitive to light, and the sun reflecting off the water was almost blinding. It was an auspicious time for pilgrimage, and the sites were crowded. Fortunately, the Indians were inspired by Swamiji’s determination, so no one objected when we took shortcuts through unauthorized areas or skipped to the front of the lines. Swamiji visited every site and followed every pilgrim’s protocol.
During the many hours we spent on the ferry and at the Rock, we hardly spoke. Swamiji’s mood was inward, and we didn’t want to distract him. We had all worked together for so many years; intuitively we knew what to do.
At the end of a long day, back in the car heading for the hotel, we continued to keep silence—we were so spent, we didn’t have the energy to speak. Finally, Swamiji uttered two words: “Masala chai!”—spiced Indian tea. As we looked around for a suitable tea shop, we speculated as to whether this would be his final message—and all the ritual tea drinking that would result for generations to come!
We had been so focused on the task of getting Swamiji through the pilgrimage, that we paid little attention to our own experience. But that night and the next morning, the blessing grew. Swamiji agreed. I never heard him say more about the effect of the pilgrimage, but I was deeply touched by his humble obedience to the guidance of the sage Agastya.
***
As a culture, India was at a crossroads. Two opposing forces had to be reconciled: the world-transcending spiritual tradition that made India great; and the drive, especially among young people, for material success.
Although Swamiji lamented the loss of certain aspects of Indian culture that were being swept aside in the rush toward prosperity, he said, “It is only temporary, a necessary transition. In the end, India’s spiritual greatness will emerge untouched. This country is far too important to the future of the planet, and to the coming Dwapara Yuga, to remain backward and impoverished.”
To an audience of fifteen hundred in Delhi, he said, “It is your destiny to put out the energy to transform India, to bring it into the modern world, to attract wealth to this country, so that India can assume its proper role as a leader among nations.
“And it is your sacred responsibility to accomplish this goal according to the laws of dharma.”
***
In March, Swamiji was back in Rome, at Teatro Valle, to launch the Italian edition of the biography of Master. Nandini wrote, “Every seat was filled, yet the atmosphere was one of intimate friendship, all hearts united in a single wave of love brought by Swamiji and Master. Some of our guests said that coming into the theater was like entering paradise. A little bit of Heaven had come to Earth. None will forget Swamiji’s last words to us: ‘Love God. That is the real meaning of life.’”
A few weeks later, he was a keynote speaker for the Congress of Parapsychology. Swamiji had long admired the work of Raymond Moody, one of the pioneer researchers in life after death. At the conference, they met for the first time. “Like brothers reunited after a long separation,” Narayani said.
As often happened now for Swamiji, in a crowd of strangers “everyone seems like an old friend.” He began his talk to the audience of nine hundred people, “Vi amo tutti. I love you all.” He spoke of the importance of having a childlike spirit. Blessed are the pure in heart. Joy is within you. Love God. Man is complex; truth is simple. Afterward, Swamiji signed books until they sold out of everything they had brought.
Creative ideas, even important guidance, sometimes came to Swamiji in dreams or in the transition between sleep and wakefulness. “In the subconscious state, the mind is more open,” he said. “When we are awake, thoughts often keep superconscious impressions at bay. Departed loved ones, for example, frequently come in dreams. When the conscious mind is asleep, or barely wakeful, it is easier for the superconscious to communicate with the subconscious. Many of my best songs, especially the melodies, have come to me in sleep.”
While vacationing in Goa after the trip to Kanyakumari, Swamiji had a dream for a series of programs that could be posted on the internet. He saw it then as Ask Me About God, but later changed it to Ask Me About Truth. He asked Dharmadas and Nirmala to share the program with him, posing questions that he would answer, but it would be more conversation than interview.
They had come with Swamiji to Assisi, and together recorded 108 programs, thirteen minutes each. The graceful flow of energy among the three of them, the unity of spirit, the friendship in God, made this series—the last he ever recorded—perhaps the finest of all.
Afterward, Swamiji wrote to a few friends, “I am very tired. Tired of living. It is an effort to keep going. Maybe that is what Master meant when he said, ‘Death itself is the final sacrifice you have to make.’ Not dying at the time when I would welcome it. Still, I will keep soldiering on.”
“Just a ‘down-ish’ moment that passed quickly,” Narayani said, in the reassuring email she sent the next day. “Even in the midst of it, his bliss was always there. Master is always with him.”
Swamiji said, “I am trying to feel it is not myself, but Master who is in this body. Much of the time I feel it is Master looking at, and enjoying the world through my eyes.”
He led a few Sunday services, including Easter. Jayadev wrote, “Sometimes tears of love made it impossible for him to speak. One Sunday he stopped in the middle of a talk, and for a moment or two, the temple was filled with a potent silence. Then, in a whisper, he said, ‘What joy. What joy. What joy.’”
He went to another Yoga Festival, and did programs in several other cities. In between, he continued to refine the movie scripts. “It is my duty to fulfill Master’s mission,” he said.
***
At the beginning of May, Swamiji came to America, landing in San Francisco and resting for a few days in the Palo Alto community. He felt the Living Wisdom School there was of particular importance to the whole movement of Education for Life. It was located next to the church, almost across the street from Stanford University.
“If we can make a success of our school in such an intensely intellectual environment,” Swamiji said, “it will be the platform from which we can reach the whole world.”
He decided to give a satsang for the children, their teachers and parents. The students sat in the front rows, and it was to them he addressed his remarks—simple, but deep: See everyone as your brother and sister. To increase your own happiness, give happiness to others.
Every child had written a note or drawn a picture, expressing to Swamiji their appreciation and gratitude for the school. The teachers bundled the notes by class and presented them to Swamiji, assuming he would take them home to review at leisure. Instead, he opened the bundles and looked at each of the seventy cards.
The children ranged in age from four to fourteen years, yet all sat silent and attentive while Swamiji carefully read, examined the artwork, and then commented on each one. He asked the child who made it to raise a hand, or stand up so he could address him or her individually. Usually his comments were complimentary, but to some he also gave pointed advice. The teachers were amazed at how accurately he appraised each student, and how appropriately for each one he framed his comments.
When Swamiji arrived at Ananda Village, his first satsang was about the soon to be filmed movie, Cities of Light. Cast and crew had to be organized and money raised—lots of money. It wasn’t the best time for fundraising. We still had a million dollar debt from the SRF lawsuit, and were determined to pay it off by the end of the year. Ananda Palo Alto had also launched a million dollar campaign to retire the debt on our church.
One of the longtime accountants said jokingly, “We don’t have any more money than we did in the past. The columns still add up to zero. But the columns are longer, and the numbers we’re adding up are bigger. The nothing we operate on now is a much bigger nothing than it was at the beginning. The explanation is simple: Many hands make a miracle.” Somehow, Divine Mother worked it out. Both debts were paid off—and we made a movie.
On his birthday weekend, three hundred people gathered in the garden at Crystal Hermitage. Swamiji individually greeted and blessed each one. In June, he went to Los Angeles for two weeks of satsangs, media interviews, and public events, including launching the biography of Master at the Ford Amphitheatre.
Jon Parsons had just published a book about the SRF lawsuit, his once in a lifetime case. He called it Fight for Religious Freedom. Swamiji asked Jon to speak at the book launch. It was the right place to set the record straight, and with his humor, intelligence, and childlike humility, Jon was the right man to do it.
***
For Cities of Light, one professional actress was needed to play Juliet. The script hadn’t yet been put out for casting, but somehow a copy found its way to the agent for Elisabeth Rohm. He vaguely remembered that Elisabeth was “kind of a Buddhist” and thought the part might interest her.
Growing up, Elisabeth had lived with her mother in several different ashrams. A few years earlier, her mother had died. Since then, Elisabeth had felt spiritually adrift. One night she prayed desperately to God for guidance; the next day, the script for Cities of Light was handed to her.
“Swami Kriyananda! Paramhansa Yogananda! Do you know who these people are?” she asked her agent. He admitted to complete ignorance. “I know who they are! I want to be in this movie!”
Shivani was now the executive producer for Cities of Light—with help from Roberto Bessi. A meeting with Shivani, then a Skype call with Swamiji, got Elisabeth the part. “I like her eyes,” Swamiji said, not referring to their striking color, but to the spiritual sincerity he saw there.
Using the script Swamiji had written, Ted conducted auditions among Ananda residents. He needed someone to host Juliet, to take her around the community and introduce her to people. He also wanted to get a feel for how Ananda people would behave in front of a camera.
Afterward, he told Swamiji, “Your people are pretty terrible reading from a script, but wonderful when they speak from their hearts.”
Swamiji laughed and said, “I have no intention of speaking from the script! No reason why they should either.”
Filming began at the Village at the end of July, starting with Swamiji’s scenes. We didn’t know if we’d ever have another chance to film him. The crew was a combination of Ananda volunteers and Hollywood professionals, most of whom Ted and Roberto had worked with before. We soon became one happy family.
At the same time the movie was being filmed, two community residents were dying of cancer—at home, cared for by their friends and family. One was Tim Kretzmann, a much-loved friend, husband, and father. All three of his children had been born and raised at the Village. His daughter had married and settled there, too, and was pregnant with Tim’s first grandchild, a baby he would not live to see.
The other was Lila, Swamiji’s longtime housekeeper, cook, and dear friend. On her birthday, July 7, she made dinner for Swamiji; it was the last meal she would ever cook. The next day she was diagnosed with advanced cancer, took to her bed, and a month later was gone. Tim and Lila died within a day of each other, right after the filming was done.
Their last days were too personal for the film crew to invade, but everyone knew what was happening. Lila lived in a room at Crystal Hermitage, on the other side of the wall from where Swamiji was being filmed. When she was still well enough to pay attention, she had a wireless headset on her pillow, and listened to Swamiji and others speaking.
Any doubts the crew might have had about the authenticity of what they were filming were dissolved by the courage, clarity, and love the community showed in the face of death. It wasn’t for the cameras; it was real life.
For Elisabeth, the line between professional and personal soon blurred. In the last scene, when Swamiji blessed her, neither of them was acting. In a movie, the same scene has to be shot from different angles, so repeatedly she knelt before Swamiji as he placed his finger on her spiritual eye. In the movie there is no dialogue, but in the moment, we heard him whispering, “I’m asking Master to come into you. To guide and bless you. To fill your heart with his bliss.”
Swamiji was radiant, on camera and off. No sign of age or weakness, only wisdom and bliss. Even the most worldly among the Hollywood crew were touched by his presence. At the wrap party, each knelt humbly before him to receive his blessing and the gift of one of his books.
“It is not enough for this movie to touch people’s feelings,” Swamiji said. “It needs to awaken their aspirations. The point is not to impress them with what we have, but to give them hope for the happiness they can have in their own lives.”
Later, Narayani said, “I had lots of strategies for how to help Swamiji rest between his scenes, but he would have none of it. Instead, he spent his free time working on The Answer. One movie inspired him for the next. Then, the evening of the day he finished filming, he went to work on a commentary for Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras!”
The Sutras are considered the Scripture of Yoga. They are so pithy, though, that different commentaries, even different translations, vary dramatically one from another. In the 1940s, Master gave a series of classes on the Sutras. There was no recording, but Daya Mata took notes, which she shared with some of the SRF center leaders. Eventually a bootleg copy found its way to Ananda. Swamiji considered editing those notes into a book, but Jon told him that when SRF protested, as they most certainly would, the law was on their side.
Now the notes were forgotten. “Master is giving this to me,” Swamiji said. “I’m having so much fun.” By the time Spiritual Renewal Week started in the middle of August, he had finished the book—Demystifying Patanjali: The Yoga Sutras: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda.
“I am very grateful for what has flowed through me. In fact, I feel quite astounded,” Swamiji said. In addition to the commentary, he also created a new English version of the Sutras themselves, which he felt more clearly expressed Patanjali’s meaning as Master explained it.
***
That summer, Swamiji visited every one of our American colonies. Whenever he came to Palo Alto, word of mouth was enough to fill all three hundred seats in our temple. For his visit in September, the last stop before he returned to India, we decided to rent a thousand-seat auditorium at a nearby college and publicize the Sunday morning event throughout the Bay Area. When the day came, almost all the seats were filled. It seemed everyone whose life had been touched by Swamiji—including many friends and former members we hadn’t seen in years—felt called to come, to hear Swamiji talk, and, without knowing it, to say goodbye.
No matter what the announced topic, there was only one subject Swamiji would talk about now: Master, discipleship, the bliss of living for God. He had said, “I am trying to feel it is not myself, but Master who is in this body.” That morning he did not have to try. He was the living embodiment of his Guru.
When Swamiji finished speaking, he asked people to stand and sing together Thy Light Within Us Shining. He often ended his programs this way now. Recently in India, when it came time to stand, he was so weak, he not only leaned heavily on Narayani’s arm, she also had to support him around the waist to keep him upright. Afterward she said, “He has become the light within us shining.”
***
A few days before the Palo Alto event, Swamiji said, “Looking back at all I have done in my life, I think people won’t believe it was done by one man. Alphonso X wrote 420 songs and historians presume at least some of them were composed by others.”
So Swamiji wrote a two-page document called My Legacy. He mentions the controversy around Alphonso X, then says, “In future people will probably argue that I could not have personally run Ananda and at the same time composed over four hundred songs (including all the lyrics) and instrumental pieces; written 144 (or more?) books; taken fifteen thousand art photographs; founded so many communities, and given hundreds of lectures on three continents, in five languages. Because all the work I’ve done is an expression of my own vibrations and consciousness, while channeling my Guru, I think it would be a good thing to forestall some of that discussion.”
In terms of the communities, he delegated as much responsibility to others as possible; but the rest, he said, listing his accomplishments by category, was all done by him, including editing his own writing. “I say these things not because I feel I have really done anything at all, but because I want it known that all my published works have been as my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, inspired me to produce or compose them.” And as for Alphonso X, he concludes, “I suspect this is how he worked also, for I believe I was he.”
He encouraged us to write confirming declarations as eyewitnesses to his creative process.
Swamiji traveled more slowly to India this time, taking a holiday in Paris, then a few days in Dubai before landing in Gurgaon. A week later, Narayani married Shurjo Jha. From then on, the two of them took responsibility for Swamiji’s care. Even just to walk now, he needed someone on each side to help him.
India is Shurjo’s home country; he knows the customs and is fluent in several of the languages. Swamiji was scheduled to give talks in a number of different cities. Shurjo took charge of all the practical details, freeing Narayani to focus solely on Swamiji’s physical and spiritual well-being.
***
A few months earlier, Swamiji had written to a few friends, “I had an interesting dream last night: We decided to redo the SRF lessons and put them out ourselves. Actually, I find this thought quite attractive. What do you all think?”
SRF calls them Master’s lessons, but in fact, the four-year series was not written by him. It was compiled by a devoted nun from his articles and talks. She had no experience as a teacher, and no idea what people needed. Her goal was to keep the students tied to SRF for as long as possible. Techniques that were usually taught in a single evening class, she spread out over eight weeks of lessons. Even simple stories, she broke into parts. When two unfortunate frogs fell into a bucket of milk, it was a month before students learned their fate!
Master himself told Swamiji, “I am not satisfied with the SRF Lessons. They should be redone completely.”
During the time he was serving SRF in India, Swamiji spent a year reorganizing the lessons. He didn’t write any new material—“At that time, it would have been a presumption,” he said; he just rearranged the existing content to make the course more appealing.
“I had shared Master’s teachings publicly for almost nine years, and had a clear idea of what the new student needed.” He started using the revised lessons in India, but then Daya Mata decided it wasn’t a good idea. “If a student in America should move to India,” she said, “it would be better if he could continue the lessons where he left off.”
Within SRF, it was understood that Mrinalini had the job of rewriting the lessons. So far, she hadn’t done it; the same set was still in use. Now she was elderly and had all the responsibilities of being president.[1]
At the end of September, Swamiji started writing Lessons in Self-Realization: by Swami Kriyananda, written under the inspiration of his Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda. It was a yearlong course in two parts: twenty-six lessons on philosophy, and twenty-six on techniques of meditation.
“The philosophy takes time to absorb,” Swamiji said, “so those lessons would come biweekly, with one on techniques in between.” In each philosophy lesson he included a story, a selection from Whispers from Eternity, and an affirmation.
Swamiji felt he owed it to his students to explain why he was writing a set of lessons that duplicated what SRF offered—especially since most people thought Master himself wrote those lessons. So Swamiji began the course with a brief history of the SRF lessons and why Master wanted them redone.
For us, 1948 was a long time ago. For Swamiji, those years with Master were now. His attitude differed, though, from that of Daya Mata, who had lovingly exclaimed, “I live in those years.” Swamiji didn’t live in those years; he lived from them. For him, it wasn’t enough to know what Master did then; he needed to feel what Master would do now.
Swamiji pushed himself to write one lesson a day. Even when he had a major talk in Gurgaon, he still met his self-imposed quota. “The reason for my urgency is to get the maximum benefit from this visit to India,” he said. “For that reason, this time I am also promoting the idea of little, self-sufficient communities.” He had a lecture scheduled in Mumbai for the middle of November and planned to introduce the lessons then.
“I am extremely happy with this course,” he said, when he finished. “Through it I’ve rendered a major service to my Guru. It contains all his basic teachings and takes just a year to get them all.” He suggested distributing the lessons through the internet on a donation basis.
“My old age doesn’t seem to be giving me any rest,” Swamiji said. “I don’t want this to be the pattern for all Ananda members. I believe in spending one’s last years in seclusion and meditation. If God hasn’t given me that, He is making up for it in other ways!”
In Mumbai, Swamiji met Kaveeta Oberoi Kaul and Pavan Kaul. Both had years of experience in the Indian movie industry. She became the executive producer, he the director, for The Answer.
“Everything has fallen into place,” Swamiji wrote, including all the money needed to make the movie. “We’ll begin shooting The Answer on February 9 in Kolkata.”
In November, he also did a final rewrite of The Wayshower, although it was unclear who would turn the script into a movie. Several directors wanted to make a movie about Master, but they all wanted to base it on Autobiography of a Yogi.
“As a direct disciple,” Swamiji said, “I cannot support that idea. Master’s humility and self-effacement were beautiful, but to present him to the world in the humble way he presented himself in that book would be an unpardonable insult, a betrayal of my duty as his disciple. He was a hero among heroes, a giant among giants. Those of us who lived with him were awestruck at his utter spiritual greatness.”
At Christmastime, during a satsang with a small group of devotees, one of them said to Swamiji, “The way you feel about Master is how I feel about you. For those of us who look to you as the Guru, will you accept us as your disciples?”
Usually Swamiji demurred, directing our devotion to Master. This time he said, “I will. I do. And I shall. It is my privilege and my duty to do so. If you wish, you can come to me one by one, and I will give you a blessing.”
In the past, Swamiji had sometimes said that once he was freed from this material plane, he was not going to reincarnate again. Now he told Narayani, “My desire to help people is so strong. I want to help everyone. I know that is unrealistic, but I still want to try; which means, of course, that I will need to come back.”
[1] Mrinalini Mata died in August 2017. At her funeral, SRF announced that in the last year of her life she had finished revising the lessons, and the new series would be released at the SRF Convocation the following year.