
At the time we talked, Gyandev managed The Expanding Light Retreat at Ananda Village. In the late 1990s Gyandev moved on to other dharmas (still within The Expanding Light staff).
Q: I hesitated to interview you, because The Expanding Light isn’t really a business. Yet surely there are business aspects to running a successful spiritual retreat.
Gyandev: Most definitely – I see it every week when I’m paying the bills. But it’s true, it has to straddle the worlds of business and ministry. Yet it’s not quite purely a ministry, in the sense that one might think of a ministry as being supported entirely by donations.
Q: Would you call it a non‑profit service business?

Gyandev: Oh, absolutely – non‑profit? Yes, we’ve got the debts to prove it. [Laughs.]
Q: Do you ever find that the business and ministry are in conflict?
Gyandev: Yes, business considerations will sometime try to dictate that you go one way while the ministry would dictate that you go another. But I find that it has to be resolved on a case‑by‑case basis.
People’s spiritual growth is always more important than any business angle, so while you do have to make business decisions, I’ve never seen them be made here on purely business grounds. Often it may look like two different directions, business and spirit, but they tend to come together. It may be that God is helping, saying, “Okay, you don’t understand so I’m going to bring these two directions together for you.” We’re always trying to find the right balance, although external factors can force you to behave in a certain way.
Q: A big tax bill, for example?
Gyandev: Yes, or when the income isn’t matching the outflow. I vividly remember the winter of 1987‑1988 when we more or less abandoned this facility. We held Sunday services, but that was all. There were just four people on staff, plus a couple of part‑time cooks, and all of the classes were taught by volunteers from the community, including the week‑long courses. But by God’s grace, we made it through the lean time.
Q: How do the business and spiritual aspects balance in terms of dividing people’s responsibilities?
Gyandev: I work with Jyotish and Devi on anything remotely resembling a major decision, and for lesser things that involve spiritual issues, Haridas and I will work together.

Q: Such as deciding which classes to offer?
Gyandev: Not so much that sort of thing as figuring out any ways we might help the staff keep feeling happy and fulfilled, and establish a high vibration for the retreat, and see where there may be holes in our energy as a retreat center.
We’re constantly looking at that kind of fine-tuning, where we’re always examining what the daily experience is like for the guests, quite apart from the class topics. We also work on personnel issues. If somebody on the staff is having a difficult time, to the extent that they’re really getting nailed and it’s affecting their service, we’ll look at how we can support them and give them the space they need, while preventing the walls from tumbling down.
When you’re at the edge of the cliff in terms of scheduling and finances, those decisions can be hard to make. We’ll say, “Okay, we’re going to pocket any shortfall in this situation, because this person needs space.” Or we’ll create an exceptional situation for a guest because they need it.
Q: Does it work out for you in the long run?
Gyandev: Sometimes we do end up shooting ourselves in the foot, but sometimes it works out fine. At one point we had a guest who was a genuine burden, yet I felt strongly that this was probably the first place where he’d been accepted. You couldn’t talk to him without realizing that he’d had a very difficult life. He was a powder keg. It was a challenge to keep him here for as long as we did, but we felt we couldn’t simply put this man out on the road, because he had no place to go. In the end, I think it was a good experience for him, but it was a challenge for all of us.
So many people are spiritually seeking because they’re in deep pain. The people who come here are the nicest people in the world, but many of them are going through very difficult times. Not always, but it’s a reality that anyone who runs a spiritual retreat will have to deal with. There’s a lot of TLC [tender loving care] that has to be given, and that’s fine.

Q: Do your spiritual practices help you serve people who need TLC?
Gyandev: Oh, certainly. It’s amazing how a wrong decision will very often get smoothed out if you’re sincerely trying to do the right thing. You discover that there’s a graceful way to change direction.
Q: I spoke with a guest here who owns a company with seventy-five employees. He said he believes business people are ready for something deeper than the usual formulaic success seminars – he believes they’re looking for something that will evoke an actual change of consciousness, rather than just a change of ideas.
Gyandev: People seem to be realizing “Uh‑oh, this isn’t doing it for me.” But they won’t find solutions until they realize that the spiritual side is the only answer.
The first thing that happens when they come here is that they feel something different. For many, it’s a very new experience to realize that one place can feel different from another. It takes them by surprise when they realize there’s something more to personal change than just reading another self‑help book. They feel the power of a truly peaceful vibration, and whether or not this is their destined path, they realize that reading and planning aren’t enough. They realize, “I’ve got to do some inner work if I truly want to change my life.” They feel an inner awakening.
Q: Swami Kriyananda talks about the five instruments of human expression – body, feeling, will, mind, and soul – and how they are incomplete without the Spirit.
Gyandev: It’s true, you can do the emotional, mental, and physical work up to a point, and then you find that you’re feeling stuck. You realize that what you need is something a lot bigger. It’s often frustrating for people because the spiritual doesn’t present itself as an obvious, easy, familiar solution. For most people, the spiritual is vaguely connected with going to church on Sunday.
Most people assume that the spiritual is outside. My body is telling me one thing, my emotions are affirming it, my ideas are confirming it, and my will wants to do it, but God is telling me to do something else entirely. It can be very hard to understand, and we can only ever learn to play it well by trial and error, trial and error, trial and error.

Q: What can a business person get out of the spiritual instruction that you offer here?
Gyandev: To talk specifically about the man you mentioned, he’s been coming here for a long time, and I think he sees new ways of looking at the issues and circumstances in his life. He’s been running in hyper-drive for a long time, and it’s taking him a while to slow down. He comes here to slow down a little, and to get insights into himself, his life, his situation, and the conversations he’s having with people. And then he feels that he can take it all back and apply it in his work. He’s an interesting example of a person who is deeply involved in business and has enormous drive, yet he’s drawing on the spiritual in the ways he’s able.
People are so plugged‑in. They’re constantly on the phone, fax, and email. It’s an addiction of the mind. People are getting so wound-up that they’re breaking. “Faster and faster.” People are getting smoked, and they’re doing it to themselves. “Everybody’s doing it, I better be doing it.”
I read an interview with John Scully when he was CEO at Apple. He mentioned that he routinely worked all night, napping for an hour and getting up and working again. And it’s absolutely insane.
Q: When I visited Ananda for the first time as a guest, years ago, I volunteered to work in the publishing house. After I’d been working for an hour, I asked the foreman, “Is it okay to take five‑minute break, or does this job have a high priority?” He looked at me in surprise and said, “Your head has the highest priority!”
Gyandev: Some years ago, a woman on our staff went through a painful marriage break‑up, and we gave her six weeks’ paid leave. She wasn’t going to be very functional while she was here, so we basically said, “Go heal.”

Q: That’s a different perspective.
Gyandev: It’s not to say that we would do it in every case. But what company would do that for you, even if you were in dire straits? They would say, “Nope, not our policy.”
Q: In yoga, a basic principle is that whatever the Spirit is saying, the other human instruments had better listen. The Expanding Light appears to accept that.
Gyandev: I think that if you give priority to the spiritual you’ll find that it’s the long‑term solution to all the other business problems. Short‑term it might not look like it, and most companies are looking at the short‑term bottom line. So even if they’re inclined toward the spiritual, they can’t always see an opening to embrace the spiritual as the highest priority.
Only in the direst emergencies have we ever focused on the short‑term bottom line. It can happen – for example, if it comes down to being able to pay the propane bill. But I think there’s a general recognition that paying attention to the spiritual is the answer to all the other problems, if you’re patient.
Q: Do you talk to the other business managers in the community?
Gyandev: I don’t have a business background, but Vasant Weber does [the Ananda Village business coordinator and consultant], and I like to consult him about various decisions. I’ll ask him, “Is this completely coo-coo?” He has a level of relaxation about decision-making that is very helpful. I’m conservative, but I realize that you can’t always play it that way, because you may be safe but you won’t grow. So I definitely look for advice.
Q: What kinds of issues do you talk about with the spiritual directors?
Gyandev: Personnel issues, the types of programs we offer, the teachers we invite to speak here. Relationships with other community departments. Dharma [right action]. People are constantly calling us to offer to teach or give a concert. I used to talk with Jyotish and Devi quite a bit until I began to get a feel for what was appropriate. I’ll talk to them about the vibration of our advertising, and the vibration of the retreat itself.
Q: Does that apply to the type of guests you want to attract?
Gyandev: Yes, definitely. We could be teaching nothing but yoga postures or yoga philosophy – the body or the mind – and there are many retreats that do that. They get more guests than we do, which is fine, but it’s simply not what we’re doing. Anything we teach that’s oriented toward health or the mind is always ultimately aimed at spiritual growth. Anyone who’s the slightest bit conscious wants to make their business harmonious, magnetic, and attractive to the customers. But here the whole business is the atmosphere, so it’s a big issue for us.

People may come here for the first time to attend a program, but that’s really not our product. Our product is the spiritual vibrations, but you can’t advertise a vibration, because it’s too ethereal.
You can offer testimonials, but even then you can only say so much before it begins to sound airy‑fairy and off‑putting. The courses are very helpful because they give valuable instruction and they’re grounding, but once people get a feeling for what it’s like to be here, they quickly realize that it isn’t of the mind.
Once they get the spiritual teaching in the context of a vibration, it becomes a directional thing. People aren’t hungry for information, they’re hungry for what will fill their spiritual void. They remember that when they were here, they were filled, and that’s what changes people: when you can give them something that gets the heart going in a spiritual direction.
Q: You’re helping people develop an inner relationship with God?
Gyandev: Absolutely. Of course, that doesn’t mean we want to neglect the physical plane. The reason it’s good to do things right is that it creates a God‑reminding vibration. It lends a calmness and an inner order, where there might not be an apparent order outwardly.