Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 5: Nayaswami Asha, Swami Kriyananda’s Advice for Work and Making a Living

Asha shares with a friend.

 

Asha, whose name in Sanskrit means “Hope,” met Swami Kriyananda in 1969, soon after the Ananda community was started. She now serves as Ananda’s global ambassador, traveling in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to share Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings.

Q: You served as Swami Kriyananda’s secretary for six years, and for several years you managed the company that published his books.

Asha: Disastrously, but yes, I did.

Q: Well, maybe that’s part of the story. Did you notice any particular threads that ran through Swamiji’s conversations with Ananda’s leaders and business managers?

Asha: Through the years, and up to the present, I think the characteristic that has impressed me the most about him is that he’s supportive of people without being naive. He knows that people have their limitations, but he recognizes that more can be accomplished when you help people believe in themselves, than when you’re critical of them, no matter how brilliant your criticisms might be.

That’s been a long, hard lesson for me, because I used to believe that intelligent analytical criticism could help people improve. But Swamiji has always understood that unconditional love is a far more effective way to help them grow.

His love isn’t the love of a weak person. Sometimes people embrace the idea of “loving unconditionally,” simply because they’re weak and afraid to deal with the truth. Or they’re simply afraid, so they aren’t really capable of loving unconditionally. They’re just accepting things as they are because they don’t know how to go about influencing the situation.

Swamiji loves, but he also influences. He maintains a vision of our potential that he can project into us, and the combination of his support and his vision of what we can become works magic on people. It’s a slow magic, and that’s another aspect of what makes him a great leader, that he’s endlessly patient.

He measures things in terms of whether people are doing more good than harm. It may sound cynical at first, but many leaders measure people in terms of whether they’re absolutely good or absolutely bad, and nobody is absolutely anything.

Swami is realistic enough to see that everyone is a mixed bag, and that if a person is generally doing more good than harm, you should count yourself lucky to have them, instead of thinking of how you can trade up until you’ve found the perfect person.

He recognizes that things build slowly, and that if you’ve got positive momentum and magnetism, that’s worth a lot. And because he’s so loyal to people, he’ll often say, essentially, “Well, maybe someone else could do it better, but this is the person we’ve been given.” And in the context of an ashram, that’s a very relevant thought.

In Sara Cryer’s book about life at Ananda, Reflections on Living, a couple of the people she interviewed told stories about how Swami had given them more responsibility than they thought they could handle, and how he had just walked away and left them to figure it out.

The way they told it, it sounded as if he’d given them the assignment and left them with very few instructions for how to do it. When the book was published, in at least two cases that I’m aware of, he took the trouble to tell those people that it was a very false representation of what he’d done. In fact, his consciousness had never left them, and far from abandoning them, he was always with them. His magnetism and energy were there, guiding and helping them, because he was projecting a great deal of energy to help them.

Swamiji understands that a large part of leadership is magnetic; it’s not instructional, nor does it require that the leader even be physically present. And after reading what those people had said, he felt he needed to make it clear to them.

Perhaps he thought they’d already understood the point, because he said, “When I ask someone to take on a job, I extend my aura to include them. So even if I’m apparently not involved at all, I include them in my consciousness all the time. This is how all of you ought to lead. Extend your aura to include everyone who is working for you, so they’ll feel you are working with them.”

I’ve found this to be consistently true in terms of how Swamiji has worked with us in leading the Mountain View Ananda community. He doesn’t very often advise us, and there’s no direct supervision at all, yet the sense of his involvement is all‑pervasive, because his magnetism is engaged. And I assume that’s how he works with others.

Q: In the beginning of Ananda, you had a group of people who were trying to start a community on a remote piece of scrubby land in the foothills, seventeen miles outside Nevada City. There was absolutely nothing except an abandoned farmhouse, and it was urgent for people to find a way to make a living. Meanwhile, numerous disasters were befalling the community – contractors were reneging on their agreements, the community’s temple burned down, and then the entire community essentially burned down in a forest fire.

With those hardships, you might expect that money would come to be uppermost in people’s minds, including Swami Kriyananda’s. Yet you say that he has placed people’s spiritual welfare unfailingly before the issue of the community’s survival. I can imagine that there were lots of people who were afraid of the money issues, but Swamiji doesn’t appear to have been one of them.

Asha in 1976.

Asha: Not at all. He’s always been very practical, especially where our survival was at stake, but he’s always understood that money is the effect of right action, and that money is an energy, and therefore if the energy is in balance and everything is being done correctly, the money‑energy will follow.

Now, I know that this principle is often abused. I’ve known lots of people who ended up bankrupt or in impossible circumstances because they were told, “If you do what you love, the money will follow.” But Swamiji combines that understanding with what his guru told him. And Yogananda was exceedingly pithy. He didn’t often spell things out in detail. Rather, he planted seed thoughts, and one of the seeds he planted in Swamiji was, “Be practical in your idealism.” It’s almost a third founding principle of Ananda, after “People are more important than things,” and “Where there is dharma [adherence to one’s spiritual duty], there is victory.” Then comes “Be practical in your idealism.”

Many people on the spiritual path think that “being practical” would mean becoming worldly. But Swamiji’s practicality is very different. He’s so expansive in his practicality that some people think he’s impractical! But, actually, he operates within the appropriate scope of his energy – he just has much more energy than most people, and he never shirks from putting out energy. And he’s fearless in what he’s willing to do, if he feels inwardly guided to do it.

I asked Swamiji, “What is the secret of prosperity?” And he said, “Creativity,” A one‑word answer! I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’ve realized that it’s true. Whenever Swamiji is confronted with a financial problem, he’ll create something new to solve it. In other words, he doesn’t wait for the existing money to be passed around to him. He doesn’t try harder to get a piece of the existing pie. Instead, he bakes a new pie. He acts as a channel for a new wave of energy that creates a new wave of prosperity in its wake. And he’s always creative within the context of what we’re trying to do at Ananda.

Q: Can you give an example?

He’ll write a book, or he’ll go out and give lectures, or he’ll make a new recording of his music. It will be something that makes money, but that also helps spread Yogananda’s teachings.

That’s how he follows his own guideline: “Where there is dharma, there is victory.” When people come to Swami with financial needs, his suggestions will often involve encouraging them to do something that will help spread Master’s teachings.

Of course, Ananda does have businesses that aren’t related to our primary work of offering the teachings, like Mountain Song, the clothing store we owned for many years in Nevada City, or Earth Song, our former health food store and café in Nevada City, or the East West bookstores in Mountain View, Seattle, and Sacramento. But, even in those cases, Swami will usually make suggestions that include creating more of Ananda’s vibration, as a way to solve any financial difficulties they may be facing.

He’ll suggest that we be more serviceful to the customers, by focusing more on their needs as divine souls. Or he’ll suggest that we play more of our music in the stores, or display our products more prominently.

He always comes up with creative ideas. Many years ago, there was a private business at Ananda that was experiencing serious financial issues, and in an effort to help the employees, Swamiji offered them many suggestions for ways they could build up the business, including giving seminars and lectures. But they didn’t act on any of his suggestions, and the business eventually failed. I don’t know if his ideas would have saved them, because they never took them seriously. They thought his ideas were too far removed from what they were doing. But the truth is that they had no inkling of what he was trying to say to them.

It’s not that his ideas are always realizable. In fact, he’s said that it’s very frustrating to him when he’ll make a suggestion and people will run around trying to follow it literally, without trying to tune into the truth behind what he’s trying to say. Because if they tune into the vibration of it, they can often come up with an even better idea.

Sometimes his suggestions are literal, but very often they’re directional. He’s always trying to get people to think creatively, and to break out of the little picture frames they get stuck in, and move out in new directions. Because the secret of prosperity is creativity.

After nearly thirty years, I’ve finally begun to understand how to work with Swamiji. I’ve realized that it isn’t only a question of what he’s suggesting, but of asking myself “What is he trying to accomplish through this suggestion? If we go in the direction he suggests, what kind of energy will we be creating?”

Once I get the picture of the energy behind the suggestion, I can follow his advice wholeheartedly, or perhaps I can suggest intelligent alternatives that are in tune and helpful.

Swamiji has a brilliant, almost uncanny sense of how to move energy. Here’s an example. It isn’t related to business, but it’s a good illustration. When the decision came down against us in the Bertolucci trial, Swamiji wanted everyone in all of the Ananda colonies to come the very next day and demonstrate in front of the courthouse. He even wanted the children to be there. Just close down the businesses, close the schools, and go down to the courthouse. At first I couldn’t believe he was suggesting it, because it frankly scared me so much that I couldn’t relate to the idea. But when Swamiji saw how blocked I was about it, he said, “Think it over.”

So I stepped back and tried to separate myself from my fears and my immediate reactions, and I tried to feel what the magnetic result of doing that would be. And I immediately understood what he was trying to accomplish, and I loved it.

Asha with Swamiji in 1996)

As it happened, we couldn’t do it the way he had wanted. We had a smaller demonstration in front of the courthouse, where we held up signs and sang Swami’s “songs of divine inspiration.” But if we had been able to gather everyone from all the Ananda communities everywhere, I believe it might have changed the course of Ananda’s history. What he had wanted us to do was raise our energy and meet the test fully at its own level. Because if you can raise your energy above the level of the test you’re facing, you can overcome that karma very quickly.

We did have a demonstration. We changed the format a bit so that we were able to put our whole hearts into it. We needed something to give us courage, so we sang, and Swamiji’s music did that for us, because it took away all our sense of embarrassment or hesitation. Swamiji’s original suggestion didn’t include music. It was something we thought of, once we began tuning into the idea. But the demonstration had a huge positive effect on those of us who were there, and to a certain extent I believe it did help mitigate the karma within us, both in the doing and also because we did our best to be loyal to Swamiji’s intention.

That’s an extreme example, but it makes the point. Many times, Swamiji has made suggestions that, in and of themselves, perhaps didn’t even have the facts right. Maybe he didn’t know the details of the circumstances, or the people involved. But if I’m able to tune into what the magnetic result of the suggestion will be, and if I can understand what the energy is that he’s trying to set in motion, I can often see the action we need to take. It may be different from his original idea in the details, but he and I both know that it’s the right action.

Swamiji works with energy. Sometimes the words he puts onto the energy aren’t exactly the right words, but in my experience for more than thirty years, it’s always been the right energy. And often someone closer to the situation will know the right words.

Q: It sounds as if he’s trying to get people to live more intuitively, or “superconsciously” as he puts it. It seems that if you were to try to follow his guidance with the mind or heart only, it might not be possible, because there might be too much personal emotion, or a lack of data.

Asha: To tune in takes all levels, heart, mind, and spirit, because energy has its own intelligence, and if you tune in, it will tell you what to do. Swami is always trying to get people to leave behind their little ideas and fixed forms, and jump into the energy flow and not worry so much about the details, or about conventional ways of doing things.

Q: It sounds like the opposite of business school.

Asha: I don’t know about business school, but maybe it is. He’s always coming from energy and magnetism. Many times, he has said that when the magnetism is right he doesn’t care about the details, and if the magnetism is off it doesn’t matter how accurate the details are, because it won’t work, ultimately.

Sometimes people will describe a situation to him, and they’ll be feeling very uptight about some aspect of it, and he’ll reply, “But the energy is fine!” As far as he’s concerned, nothing needs to be done, because if the energy is right, it’s bound to work out in the long run.

Q: Does it work the other way, too? Where people will say “Everything’s running smoothly – let’s not touch anything”?

Asha: Yes. I’ve heard him say, “Something’s not right,” even though it might not be apparent to everyone. But he can feel that an energy has been set in motion that will take us in a direction that we don’t really want to go.

He said recently, very casually, that he’s always had a gift for being able to see ten to twenty years down the road, and to know where the little decisions we make today will take us. I think it’s because he’s been a leader for so many lives that he has developed a deep, intuitive sense about these things.

In business, he always tells us to think more about people, and not so much in terms of money. Money is created by thinking first about service and magnetism.

At the same time, particularly in the early years when we were scrabbling for money, he would always encourage us to do things that would make money. At every public lecture, he would insist on including a long announcement about the books and tapes we were offering for sale. And some people would be embarrassed by it, but he insisted on it. In part, he was making a course correction, because lots of people in the early days at Ananda wanted to float along and let Divine Mother do it all for us. And in that context, Swamiji had to take a so-called “materialistic” line.

Nowadays I don’t see him talking that way at all, and I think it’s because he knows we’ve won that battle. Most people at Ananda now understand that you need to work hard to make money, and that Divine Mother will then help you. If anything, nowadays he pushes back in the other direction, so perhaps people have become too practical, and a different kind of balance is needed.

Swamiji doesn’t stand for a fixed position. He stands for whatever it takes to direct the energy the way it needs to go. He has a wonderful detachment from the forms of things, and he does whatever is needed to make things magnetic. Sometimes it may mean helping people realize that the money isn’t going to fall in their laps, or he may try to get people away from thinking so much about the “bottom line” and encourage them to think more expansively. I’ve seen him cover the full spectrum, depending on what was needed in the moment, but his advice is always directed toward creating a balance.

Q: Money can play tricks with people’s consciousness.

Asha: Money represents, among many other things, freedom and security, and in the spiritual world it can be a very complex issue. On the one hand, you find a few true renunciates who are genuinely beyond the material sphere. But then you find people who are afraid to put out the energy to make money, and who try to “renounce” what they don’t even possess.

Swamiji has a genius for knowing which way to guide people. I remember hearing him tell a man who was having lots of trouble being successful in business, “You don’t have to master this. It isn’t necessary for your Self‑realization.” Eventually the man went into a service‑oriented profession where he was much more successful.

Q: I’m thinking of a friend who knows how to generate money seemingly without effort, but he’s very detached from it, and he’s very generous.

Asha: Swamiji said to me years ago that the ability to make and handle money is a talent, like music or painting. Certain people understand the dynamics of it and can operate it well, whereas others just don’t have the knack. To be “good at money” doesn’t make a person materialistic, by itself.

Q: When you started the Ananda community in Mountain View, did Swami Kriyananda give you any advice?

Asha: Just before we left Ananda Village to move to Palo Alto, we went over to talk to Swamiji, and we asked him, “What should we do? How do you envision this project?”

Swamiji said, “Go there and work with it for awhile, and then you tell me.” He did describe it in very broad terms. He said that we should try to raise people’s awareness of Yogananda’s teachings in this area – to “lift Ananda above the horizon line,” is how he put it, so that when people begin to think about getting into spirituality, they’ll think of Yogananda. Because it’s an ideal path for the people who live in this area – it’s a path of practical spirituality.

So that’s always been our thought, that we need to become prominent – not big, powerful, or important, just noticeable rather than obscure. That’s one of the reasons David Praver has been driving up and down the Peninsula all these years distributing our program guide. It’s to get the idea out to people that Ananda exists. For years in the beginning we did many things just to get our name out, where we weren’t concerned about whether it was drawing people to us, because it’s a long project, and we’re still just planting the seeds.

When we were planning to create an actual community here, Swami wasn’t in favor of it at first, because we hadn’t communicated very well how we intended to do it. He thought we’d be asking Ananda Village to help us make it happen, and the Village didn’t feel they were strong enough to take it on. But when he understood that we were going to do it with the energy of the people who were living down here, and that we needed to find something for them to do, he supported it completely.

So it’s not as if he’ll make a pronouncement, and that’s that. He’s very interested in hearing responses to his point of view, and he’ll often change his position in light of what people tell him. Later, when he dedicated the community, he spoke of how pleased Babaji is to see communities being started.

Q: I watched a TV program on prophecies of the future. A hypnotherapist claimed to have “projected” people two centuries into the future, and each of the subjects said basically the same thing: that the world’s population would be significantly reduced and that people everywhere would be living in small intentional communities, which they said would be located near the seashore. They said that the communities would be engaged in developing creative new ways for people to live harmoniously together.

Asha: I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to be around to see it happen. From the astral world, will we be able to feel any satisfaction in it, or will we be totally outside of that way of thinking? [Laughs.] Or will we all reincarnate to help create it? As we’re talking, I feel a wave of desire to be there. But then I think, “Do you really want to do it?” I guess I would want to enjoy the “fruits of my labors,” as it says in the Bhagavad Gita.

Q: It would be a beautiful thing.

Asha: Sitting here in this lovely garden, I get a picture of what it could be like, and I think, “I wouldn’t mind a life like that – with a little gardening on the side, in between the long meditations.” [Laughs.] Then I think about it more realistically, and I see that it’s not very likely to be like that, because life on this planet is always a mixed bag.

Q: You’ve described Swami Kriyananda’s guidance for Ananda’s businesses. But you’ve also been present when he’s counseled the business managers one‑on‑one. Have you noticed any threads in that kind of counseling?

Asha: When people come to Swamiji and want to talk about their problems, whether they are problems in business or of any other kind, he’ll spend very, very little energy talking about the problems. He’ll barely let you describe your difficulty, and then he’ll start coming up with creative ideas for how you can shift and redirect the energy. He doesn’t want us to create any more negative energy than has been created by the situation itself.

As a business manager some twenty‑five years ago – which I was for a short time, because I was extremely incompetent – I never, ever understood what he was trying to do. I would feel that I could barely cope with what was happening in the day-to-day, and then he was always wanting me to do something new. As a result, I followed almost none of his directions, until he finally had to remove me, because I was hopeless. I knew I was hopeless, but I was too young to understand what he was saying. Still, it was a very good experience. I failed on the outside, but over the years I learned important lessons from the experience.

He always knew that the way to solve a problem is to create positive energy. Most people think the way to solve problems is to concentrate on getting rid of the negative energy, which of course is also what you’re trying to do. But lots of people think the way to get rid of it is to focus on it, and Swamiji knows that the way to get rid of negative energy is to create a powerful wave of positive energy that will sweep it away.

If one little area of Ananda wasn’t working, instead of hammering on it, he would often suggest that we start a vortex of positive energy, and gradually the new vortex would neutralize the negative one. Sometimes he would try to get people to see the kind of energy that was needed, and then he’d let them figure out the practical details of how to create it.

Padma McGilloway was always very good at that, and it was reflected in the way she managed Crystal Clarity Publishers, the company that publishes Swami Kriyananda’s books. She could tune in wonderfully to what he was trying to create, and figure out ways to accomplish it.

If Swami lets you talk about a problem for an entire minute, that’s a huge concession. Because as soon as he sees that you’re creating negative magnetism with your words and thoughts, he knows that it’s an even bigger problem, and he’ll do his best to shift you out of it. It doesn’t mean that you can never discuss a difficult situation, but you have to learn to do it with the right magnetism.

Q: Would that be the case when people have the right idea, but they aren’t doing anything about it?

Asha: People are trying. They’re in training. Swamiji is already a master at working with energy. Sometimes people try to do things the way he does, and they don’t succeed, and then they begin to think the method is wrong. But it’s actually that they haven’t learned to work with energy as skillfully as he does. But they will, eventually.

What I’m saying is that just because his methods don’t always work out, it doesn’t mean that his methods aren’t the best ones. Straight business plans don’t always work, either. Companies fail all the time. No system is foolproof. Whether you’re successful depends to a very great extent on your consciousness, your karma, and your magnetism. But Swamiji’s way of working with energy is fundamental to success in every area of life, not just in business. It has ultimate value. (Visit Asha’s YouTube channel.)

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.