At the time of our conversation, Nivritti managed Crystal Clarity Publishers, the company that publishes Swami Kriyananda’s books and recordings. She later moved to Seattle, where she co-managed East West Bookshop, a metaphysical bookstore that she and two other women started in the mid‑1980s.
Q: How did your interest in business begin?

Nivritti: I can’t say that I have a lot of interest in business. I was teaching fifth and sixth grades, and before that I was in environmental education, and then I did personnel administration for a big school district. So I was never particularly interested in business, but I was in the Seattle Ananda meditation group, and after a couple of years I felt that I wanted to do more than just attend a few classes and meditations. I really wanted to become totally involved, because every time I would go to work, I’d say a little prayer at the beginning of the day, but then I’d forget God all day, so God wouldn’t be part of my life. And yet it was nine hours a day of work, and I got so frustrated – I kept praying, “I really want to make this my life. I don’t want to make it just ‘after work.’”
I had a family at the time, and it didn’t feel right to move to Ananda. Also, there was nothing pulling me to go there, so I knew it wasn’t time to leave my former life behind.
In the Seattle Ananda group, the idea was growing that it would be nice to have a bookstore. The Ananda East West Bookshop was going strong in Menlo Park near San Francisco, so there was a thought that it would be nice to have a bookstore in Seattle. And then Bob Rinzler, who ran a nature book publishing company at Ananda Village, Dawn Publications, came and talked to a bunch of us about what it would mean to have our own business. He had put together some figures for what it would cost, and we were talking afterward and saying “Wouldn’t this be great?”
We thought that Ananda would send us someone, and that they would fund it and we would just help out. And when we realized that it wasn’t the case, we were so disappointed. I remember driving home that night – this was the first spiritual experience I’d ever had. I was so upset, and I kept saying, “God, you know, I’ve got this feeling that I just have to do more!” And, “What can I do?” I was so frustrated, I couldn’t stand doing what I was doing any longer. It wasn’t that I wanted to go out and find something else to do in the world, I wanted to be immersed in the spiritual teachings.
So I was driving, and all of a sudden I got this sense – this sense came into every cell of my body, and it was saying, “Be patient. It’s not quite time. You’ll know when the time is right. I’ll let you know.” And as this sense of joy and relief came over me, tears of joy came, and as I was driving I thought, “What is this? What is this sense that happened all of a sudden?” I felt such joy and release. And I said, “Okay, it’s gonna happen!”
I went back to work for the remainder of the fall, and it was with a feeling of waiting. I thought, “I know that when the time is right I’m going to be told. I’m going to know when it’s right to do something.” So I was able to go back to work feeling much lighter, and about five or six months later the guidance came again.
I was taking a class at the Ananda center, and it wasn’t that I particularly wanted to go, but I just wanted to support the group, so I went, and I very clearly remember the details of the class, because another wave came over me. I was sitting there, and the teacher was doing an exercise where you look at your life and goals, and what fits in, how much time you’re spending, all of that. So I was doing this, and of course I knew that what I was doing wasn’t working for me. But as I was writing it down, the next wave came over me, and it was telling me, “Okay, now you can leave your job. Now you can resign. It’s okay. Now’s the time. You can move forward.”
It wasn’t an intellectual thought. These things are so deep, it’s like every cell of your body knows, and for me to resign my job was a big deal. It was a high‑paying job, and it wasn’t a job that I could turn around and get again anytime I wanted. It was a really good job, and it had taken me a couple of years to create it. So it was a very big deal to lose it, and to lose the income in particular, because the money was needed. But I just felt sure I had to do this.
So the very next day I walked in and I told my boss, “I’m going to have to leave.” And because of the type of work I was doing, they had to conduct a big search for a replacement, so I gave them three months’ notice, although it turned out to be four months before I could actually leave.
During that time, I had no idea what I was going to be doing next. I was wondering, “What does this mean?” I knew I wasn’t going to be finding another job. And then the answer came in meditation. A month or two later, I was meditating really deeply, and somewhere in my mind I was questioning, “What’s next? What am I doing?” And then it came, and it was “East West,” and it felt so right! It was like “Yes, of course. Why not?” But, even then, all of the doubts came flooding in: “I can’t do it! I have no experience. I don’t have any money.” All of the doubts that come up when you want to do something you think you can’t do. But I felt so strongly that it was right, and I said, “I’m going to start taking steps.”
And that’s what I began to do. At one point I went down to Menlo Park and visited East West Bookshop, and I went to Ananda Village and talked to people. I had a little money of my own to put into the store, although it wasn’t enough, but I started getting information and talking to people, and putting out energy, because I had a date for when we wanted to open the store.
I remember a time when I was feeling so discouraged. I was feeling, “How can I do this?! I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything about business or money or starting something big and new.”
It was scary, and I think the biggest thing that kept entering my mind was that if it should fail, how would I be able to look my gurubhais and friends in the face? Here I am, putting out this big energy, and I was really afraid that it was all just a big hype and that it wasn’t going to happen.
So I had this terrible fear that I couldn’t do it. And I remember, again, how the next wave came over me. I don’t remember when it was, but it was before I knew for sure that we were going to get the money. It was a presence, an awareness of God that told me, “I will give you what you need in order to do this.” I felt it very clearly. “I will give you what you need to do this.” And, “It’s Me doing this.” And I felt so relieved!
Afterwards, it was funny, because I felt, “Well, gee, if it fails, it’s because God wants it to fail.” So there was a big feeling of relief. But then the ego kicked in and said, “Well! But if it succeeds, you won’t get to acknowledge that you made it a success, because you have to acknowledge that God made it a success.”
I remember that balance – the feeling that, oh, I kinda would like to feel like I did it! [Laughs.] But it was very clear that if I wasn’t going to accept the responsibility for the failure, I wasn’t going to be able to feel prideful about the success. So I acknowledged that, and to this day I realize that it wasn’t me who did it, it was God working, not just through me but the team that He put together, because two other people joined me.
So I quit my administrator’s job, and I played a game in my head. I said, “Well, God, just in case I can’t get the money, I’m going to keep my teacher’s contract so I’ll have something to fall back on when school starts in the fall.”
I was going to do everything I could to get the bookstore off the ground, but if nothing happened by September, and if we couldn’t get the money, I wanted to be able to go back to teaching. So I kept the teaching contract, but I had to let them know by mid‑August if I would be teaching.
I set myself a deadline of August 15th, and iIf I didn’t have the money by then I would go back to teaching. And on August 14th we got a loan for $50,000 that we needed to make it happen. So I gave up the teaching contract and I was on my own.
There were lots of hurdles that prevented the store from opening when I wanted it to. We had problems with the building, for example, but we kept taking steps, and the amazing thing is that even though I didn’t know a thing, the resources kept popping up just as we needed them.
My weakest areas were bookkeeping and computer work, and a woman came along and signed on to do them, because she felt it was something she had to do, just as I had felt. Then another woman came and took over the design of the store, and we could see that God had put us together with these skills that blended perfectly. It was amazing how each of us knew an area that was needed to create this.
It was an incredible amount of work, but that was okay. The whole time I remember feeling such grace, and that I was blessed to be able to do this. I was doing God’s work, and even though it was sometimes hard and discouraging, it didn’t matter, because it felt like God’s work.
When I did my budget projections, they were almost a hundred-percent accurate, even though I was really just guessing. It was like an intuition, guessing how our sales would go, so that we would know how much money we could spend. We were living on a shoestring; without anyone feeding us, and if it went under we didn’t have any way of getting more money unless God would provide.
Q: The conventional wisdom is that when you start a business, you’d better have enough backup money to carry you through the first year.
Nivritti: We didn’t. All we had was $70,000 in cash, and a little more from my savings which I used to pay my expenses. So we had about $100,000, but I figured out how to allocate it so that even if we didn’t make money for a while, we could keep going. Because it’s not as if I knew how to do this. Rather, it seemed to be an intuitive process all along the way.
When Swami asked me to move down to Ananda Village, and I went to work at Crystal Clarity, he introduced me to a group of people, and he said, “Cathy’s a very strong devotee and follower of Master.” Which I thought was so special. And then he said, “She also has a very intuitive business sense.”
Those were the only things he said, and it’s not like I have any great business background or lots of experience. But that’s been my feeling, that God gave me an intuitive sense, and an ability to work with what’s real, and to know how to give it a direction and focus. It wasn’t anything that I’d gotten in school, or that I’d taught myself.
Seattle has always had lots of metaphysical bookstores, but just as we were getting started, all the other stores began closing. In the area where we decided to start East West, two other metaphysical bookstores closed for lack of business, and everyone was telling us, “You’re crazy, everything’s closing. How can you think you’ll do better?” But it was God’s will.
The bookstore has been such a channel for God. It’s been a great financial support for the church, but it has also brought many people on the spiritual path. I don’t know how many times people would come in, and we’d talk to them, and they’d say, “You know, I come here at noon because this is my spiritual fix. This is church.” [Laughs.] We heard that all the time.
It also helped us to work together. It helped us become strong devotees. People would come and visit from Ananda Village, and they’d remark that the group we had was very unusual, because of our commitment and advancement, and it was because we were totally immersed in the path. We worked together, we did meditations and prayers together, and when we finally got to live together in a spiritual community, we had everything.
Q: Was it a wrench to leave Seattle and move to Ananda Village?
Nivritti: Yes, it was very hard to move, but I knew it was time to leave. I wrote to Swami and said, “I’m feeling like I’m getting pushed out.” Not that anyone was pushing, because I loved working with the people, and we had all these ideas for what we’d be doing in the months and years ahead, but I could feel it was time.
It wasn’t that the energy was stale, I just knew I had to leave, and there was an awareness that I needed to make room for other people to come and do what they needed to do. So I wrote to Swami and said, “I’ve got to do something else. I have to leave here.”
I was thinking that maybe I would move to the East Coast, because it was something I’d always wanted to do. It’s where my family lived, and I thought I could help start an Ananda center, and maybe help start another bookstore. But Swami said, “No, it’s not time for that. Come here. You really need to be here.”
Publishing is such an incredibly complex business. It’s not really a business, in the sense that there are so many layers that aren’t business, and there’s so much to learn. I felt totally overwhelmed, like I couldn’t do it, but I knew God wanted me to, so I just did what I could.
I basically let people do what they could do, and I think that’s something that had never really happened; yet it was so obvious. We have so many talented people, and I let them do what they feel they can do. I was feeling that I’m not a leader, I’m just a contributing member, I’m a hard worker and I’m a contributor in a team kind of way.
I was with Swami once, and I was thinking, “I don’t feel like a leader, I never have.” [Laughs.] I didn’t say it, but it had been on my mind, and he turned to me and said, “You know, everyone thinks I’ve been this great leader at Ananda. But, you know, I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is allow people to do what they need to do, and allow people’s strengths to come out.” He said, “That’s all you need to do.” Even though I hadn’t asked, he understood that this was really bothering me. So that’s what I try to do.
Q: What’s the environment like at Crystal Clarity?
Nivritti: We seem to get along well. It’s very friendly. Sometimes too friendly, “Okay, get to work!” [Laughs.] But, yes, I think we’re working really well. Not only with each other but with the other departments.
Q: A trick question. Have you ever read The Art of Supportive Leadership by Swami Kriyananda?
Nivritti: [Laughs.] Gee, who wrote that book? Actually, that book is my bible. Yes, The Art of Supportive Leadership is really about what spiritual businesses are doing, I think, more and more. It’s such a temptation to want to get in there and do it all by yourself, and you do have to plan and coordinate, but it’s such a different energy when you’re trying to feel “what’s trying to happen,” and you’re getting other people to do what they do best. So it’s a balance.
Q: Operating from a spiritual base, is there a difference in how you plan your daily work, and in how you forecast what you’ll be doing next week?
Nivritti: The main thing I’m aware of is the need for flexibility. You plan, but then you go with the flow, which means you could change on a dime. You can be going one way a hundred percent, but then something else becomes a higher priority and you turn that way.
At Crystal Clarity, there are things that Swami decides. Of course, he’s in charge, even though he doesn’t get into the particulars, but he decides the direction. His creativity decides the flow, and suddenly you’re working with either the books or the music, because that’s his flow in the moment, even though you may question if it’s making any money – because I am responsible for the bottom line, even though I’m not responsible for everything else. [Laughs.] But it’s amazing. You question it because it doesn’t seem right logically, but you put out the energy to go with his flow and you see what happens. Obviously he’s not infallible, and he’s not always right. I mean, everyone knows that. But he does have an intuition that’s a lot more developed than probably anyone else’s here, so we do our best to follow the flow.
Approaching it logically, it would drive someone who’s a “real business person” absolutely bananas. I don’t see how they could do it, because they wouldn’t have any control. They’d be thinking “It has to go this way, because this is the logical, sensible thing to do,” and it would drive them nuts, because at Crystal Clarity you can’t do it that way. You have to be willing to say, “Okay, well, that isn’t the way it’s happening, so we’ll go this other way.”
Right now, he’s come up with a new idea for a book. I didn’t know he was going to be writing a book, and it wasn’t in the plans – and where are we going to get the money? I don’t know. We can’t do all the other projects, the reprints we’ve got lined up and so forth. So I just go along day by day. There’s always a skeleton plan, but it’s not filled in very well.
Q: Do you find that your spiritual practices help you be able to stop on a dime and change directions?
Nivritti: I think one of the biggest things for me is just letting go. It’s constantly letting go of what my ego says is right. Letting go of the way I want to do something. Letting go of what I think might be most important for me, and tuning into what’s trying to happen in the moment, which isn’t necessarily any of those things. I think that’s the biggest thing, just letting go all the time.
Sometimes you feel like you don’t have anything to offer, or you don’t have anything at all that’s your own, because you’re always letting go and allowing everything else to happen. And, for me, it’s basically trying to steer everything else and then getting out of the way so it can happen.
I think my spiritual practice helps me to let that happen. Otherwise, I think there would be a greater resistance, and a desire to stand up and fight for what you think is right, the way you think it should be, instead of stepping back and trying to listen and hear. It doesn’t mean that I do things I feel are wrong, but I’ve always felt that listening to people is important. You always have to take others’ realities into account.
This is a digression, but one of the biggest differences I noticed when I was managing the personnel office, before I came on this path, was that people’s private lives didn’t matter, and that they were expected to leave that part of their lives at home. At work you were all the same and you worked together that way, but at Ananda it’s not just about working with people for the sake of the business. You’re working with people where they are, and their personal lives and their health – those things always come into play. So it’s a more holistic way of working with people; not that I’m counseling them all the time, but we’re aware of what’s going on with people.
Q: Is there a sense of being at work with brothers and sisters?
Nivritti: Yes, more so than ever. You really get to know people, and you get to care. I think that’s the other thing, because people are sharing what’s going on with their feelings and emotions, and if it’s affecting their work you need to know about it. Some people can’t always come in at the same time every day, for example, because everyone’s rhythms are different, and we’re trying to honor that.
Q: Is there a point past which you should not honor it?
Nivritti: Yes, there is a point where something is obviously dysfunctional, and then we do make changes. Except for Balarama Betts, who’s been here for nine years, the staff has completely changed in the last year alone. So there’s a whole new staff, and the business is just a tool to help us grow. At Ananda that’s what the theory says, and it becomes increasingly clear that it really is what’s happening.
Q: How about women’s energies? Do you think they help run a business? Or do they get in the way? Or are they a factor at all? Do you ever think about that?

Nivritti: It was three women who started East West in Seattle. Betsy and I were full time and Susan was half time, and as we started adding staff we kept adding women, so when I left we had nine full‑time women and two part‑time women, and for almost eight years I worked with an all‑women staff, and just as I was leaving we brought in one man. But it was great. I loved it – we all did.
We would laugh about it, but it was great, because it was a real focused energy. It was more emotional, I think for sure, and when we started to get a couple of men on staff, which happened in the last year I was there, it changed the energy. It was a little less emotional. But it was really special when we were all women, and I liked it. It was very productive. But it depended on the individuals, and some of the last people who joined us began to pull us off center – you could feel that we needed to balance our energy, that it was becoming too emotional. But I like having women to work with. When I started at Crystal Clarity, it was all men and me, and I thought, “I don’t like this as much.” But we’ve balanced it, and now it’s about half and half, and it works fine, so I don’t really make a big distinction that way.
Q: Devi (co‑spiritual director of Ananda worldwide) said that over the years she’s been at Ananda, she’s seen that men operate more by rules – “This is how it’s done – this is how we’ve always done it.” Whereas women will look at the individual needs in the situation, and they’ll come up with a creative solution to meet those needs.
Nivritti: That’s probably true. Women listen better. I find that in working with men, it’s more often “Well, I want to do it my way!” [Laughs.] Women are more apt to listen and say “Well, you know, okay.” They’re more willing to bend with the flow. But there needs to be a balance, and I think having a mixed staff is best, because having men involved keeps the women on their toes a little more. I think it helps them not go sliding into a comfortable routine, because that’s a tendency if you aren’t being challenged. I think personally there might not be as much desire, because the competitiveness isn’t there as much. But I liked the retail business, and I would happily go and do another bookstore, if that’s what I’m supposed to do.
Q: What did you like about it?
Nivritti: It’s much more predictable than what I’m experiencing here. I like this, too, but I also liked the interaction with so many people. You could see how people were being helped by the books and classes – people would come up and be so thankful for a class they’d taken. But here you don’t get to see the customers. We have some contact over the phone, but it’s so much less than I’m used to. I really felt like I was helping people at the bookstore, and I’m sure I am here, too, but more indirectly, and we don’t get feedback. Again, I’m not really attached to it. I came here just to serve, and this is where I was drawn, and I’ll happily move on.