
Padma managed Crystal Clarity Publishers, the company that publishes books by Swami Kriyananda. Padma and her husband, Nayaswami Hriman, now serve as directors of the Ananda community and church in Seattle.
Q: Can you tell us how you came on the spiritual path? Did you have a lifelong interest in spirituality, or did it come upon you suddenly?
Padma: I had a lifelong interest, but I was searching for a better way. A friend gave me Autobiography of a Yogi and told me there was a place in the mountains where a direct disciple of Yogananda had built a community that was based on his teachings.
I visited Ananda Village, but I wasn’t very interested in the community aspect – I thought the whole thing was a bit odd. But when I met Swami Kriyananda I immediately felt that he had something I wanted to experience for myself, and I came back to learn about it.
I moved to Ananda Village in 1973, when I was twenty-two, and I immediately began helping with the general finances. I didn’t get involved with a particular business until later, when Swamiji asked me to help him with some projects.
At that time, he had bought some desktop publishing equipment, and he asked me to help publish his books.
I knew absolutely nothing about publishing, so I had to figure it out as I went along. Just a few weeks before Swami asked me to take on that job, he had told me that my spiritual growth would no longer come through finance and business. He was going to put me in charge of Ananda’s program for new members, but then he called and said, “I know that’s what I said, but I need help running my projects. Can you help?”
Q: No spiritual growth involved at all – right?
Padma: [Laughs] Right!
Q: What was the publishing company like in the beginning?
Padma: We started it with a phone, a typewriter, and a filing cabinet. That was it. It was called JAPA, Joyful Arts Production Association. I remember how I kept going over to Swami’s place and asking him, “Now, what is this job about?” [Laughs.] I would say, “What am I supposed to be doing?” And he’d say, “This is the part of Ananda that takes the work out.” And I’d say, “Okay.”

So I’d go back to my little room, and I still didn’t know what he had in mind. I knew I needed to put a choir on the road, but whenever we went into the churches to give concerts, we couldn’t even tell people who we were, because they weren’t receptive to yoga. So I just didn’t have a handle on it, and I must have asked him the same question six times in six weeks, and each time he would roll his eyes and repeat himself.
So I began to try to figure it out on my own, and at first I organized some concerts at the hermitage. But as soon as the income would come in he’d scoop it up for another project. He kept saying, “You’ve got to go out.” He didn’t mind that I was organizing the events at Crystal Hermitage, but it clearly wasn’t where I was supposed to be generating income, so he would use the money for other projects.
Finally, he entered a phase where he was writing books again, and he began handing them to me to publish, and that’s when I started to understand what to do.
I organized a system where our sales people were going out on the road in a motor home. I had heard Swami say that Rajarsi Janakananda’s money had seeded the publishing of Yogananda’s books, and that the monks in Yogananda’s ashrams had gone on the road to place the books in bookstores. [Rajarsi Janakananda (James J. Lynn) was a Kansas City insurance millionaire who became Paramhansa Yogananda’s most spiritually advanced disciple.]
So we would rotate people out for a month at a time, and they would drive across the country in the motor home, placing books. We opened over two thousand accounts that way, so it was very, very successful, and we gradually honed it to a science. We knew exactly how many bookstores we had to visit each day, and I had someone in the office booking appointments and phoning them to the people on the road.
Q: Did those accounts remain with you over the years?
Padma: They did, at least through my years at Crystal Clarity. Probably two‑thirds of them were lost when we briefly entered into a publishing and distribution contract with Time‑Warner.
Q: What was it like working with Swami Kriyananda?
Padma: Whenever I tried to go along with the things he would tell me, it tended to work out, even though it might not seem reasonable. Sending people out to place books in stores, for example, wasn’t considered reasonable in the eyes of the publishing world.
The publishing industry says that you’ve got to work with publisher’s reps and distributors because you cannot afford to take time to make personal connections with the stores. But by doing it our way, making personal connections with the store owners, it meant that they would remember us. And, also, it was good work for us spiritually.
Most publishers don’t have a community behind them, and the other small publishers soon became jealous of us, because they didn’t have people with the commitment to rotate in and out for a month at a time to perform this service. So that was an important factor, and as it became increasingly successful, I began taking on the regular publishing industry distributors and reps. But those outside sales people never really understood us, and they couldn’t sell our books very well. They were representing lots of publishers, and when they talked with the store owners our books often wouldn’t even make it out of the bag.
Q: It needed Ananda’s people to sell Ananda’s books?
Padma: Exactly, people who had their hearts in it, because our books don’t sell in huge numbers, and that’s why the reps wouldn’t take much time with them. So the only way we could get them into the stores was to do it ourselves.
I think the most important thing we were doing was making the right connections spiritually. Our hearts were in it, and people could feel it. Later, I found that the principle of making personal connections extends to foreign rights, which I still handle. We have over 180 contracts for publishing Swamiji’s books in 22 languages, and it’s continuing to grow.
Q: Did domestic sales grow, too?
Padma: They grew for a long time. As we learned more, our sales continued to expand, and before long our books were being featured in mail‑order catalogs. We had 28 distributors, we had international sales, and we began selling in gift stores, chain bookstores, and department stores. About a third of our sales came through Ananda’s own bookstores and churches, and from our mailing list.
Mainly, I would read the trade journals and attend the trade shows, and I’d keep my eyes open, not just for sales but for product development – how things should look, what sizes and shapes sold best, and what the trends were. Mostly, though, I kept my eyes and ears open to Swami, and to what he wanted to express spiritually. For example, I would try to understand what he wanted to express through the book covers, and the audience he was writing for, and how he felt we could best reach that audience. I would then use whatever I’d learned about the industry to support that, rather than the other way around.
Instead of telling Swami, “Leadership is hot – you’d better write a book about leadership,” he would always write what he felt inspired by God and Yogananda to write, and then I would go out and try to find the audience for it, which is totally backwards as far as the publishing industry is concerned. But it’s what you have to do, if you’re working with divine inspiration. And we had to do it all on a shoestring.
Q: How did it work out over the years?
Padma: It worked very well, but it was always tight, and we were always ten steps behind, what with Swami constantly writing new books. The dilemma was that we always had unskilled people on the staff who needed to be trained. No one ever came to us who knew all about publishing. And also, very often Swamiji would want to help someone spiritually, so he would involve them in his publishing projects, and I would have to figure out how to make it work for them.
Q: You were playing catch‑up lots of the time?
Padma: Yes, I always felt that I was being pulled in four directions – Swami’s direction, the industry’s direction, the community’s needs, and the staff’s needs. So it was quite a balancing act. But we never lost money. We would begin each new project with a donation, so we would get our capital free and clear, and I always honored those donations. I would say, “If you make a gift, we will keep this book in print,” and we did. We had a large reprint fund, plus at least a 1% margin, and that’s how we made it work.
Q: Did being on the spiritual path help you deal with always feeling stretched?
Padma: Oh, absolutely! It wouldn’t have made sense any other way. [Laughs.] In fact, that was a running battle I had with the guys on the staff, because we would go head to head whenever they would try to go the industry’s way, which would usually fly in the face of the way Swami works.
I still work this way. If Swami gives me his input, I’ll say yes and put my heart into it. I’ll try my best to work the way he suggests, and if it isn’t working out, I’ll give him feedback and he’ll accept it, because he knows I’ve tried, and then we’ll try something else. But most of the time it would work out, so I came to trust it.

For me, the creative challenge was “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” [Isaiah 55:8] The creative challenge was always to use the rules of the industry to do it God’s way, rather than to be creative for creativity’s sake. I would learn about publishing so that I could find the loopholes that would allow us to run things the way we needed to, rather than try to run a generic publishing house, which just wouldn’t have worked at Ananda.
Q: Because Ananda isn’t a linear process?
Padma: It’s not linear.
Q: Do you think there might be benefits for other business managers in trying to do things intuitively, rather than always relying on logic and tradition? Or is Crystal Clarity Publishers so far off the map as far as the ordinary business models are concerned, that the lessons simply wouldn’t apply?
Padma: Spiritualizing business practices will never be “off the map.” It can apply to all of our Ananda businesses.
Q: I don’t want to give the wrong impression. The people I’ve interviewed have told me many stories of how they relied on prayer and received intuitive guidance that pulled them through.
Padma: Well, the issues that come up in business usually have to do with people. And the principle that “people are more important than things” is one that Swami always kept hammering on, sometimes to the extent that I had to let people take things in the directions they wanted, even though I could see that it wouldn’t work out.
Swami would often give people the space to play out their ideas, even if the company lost some ground along the way. That’s what really spiritualizes it. And then sometimes you would find that they would actually succeed, and it made it very sweet for everyone.
Q: Did Swami hold to that principle consistently?
Padma: Always. All the way through.
Q: He always gave priority to people’s welfare?
Padma: Yes, and it’s never crystal clear, where you can say “Oh, that’s what he’s doing!” Because it’s always right in your face, at the time when it makes the least sense and it’s the most frustrating, and it’s often with the person you’re having the most trouble with.
Q: Like taking bitter medicine?
Padma: It often seemed that way. A person might be completely selfish or moody, and Swamiji would see that they needed even more compassion at the time, and you would have to play it out.
We all go through these phases, and I learned, in time, to see it as an act of loyalty and friendship to do that for people, always seeing the highest in someone, and patiently holding to that deeper truth. I’ve experienced Swamiji doing exactly that for me on many occasions, during my own moods, and it always evoked a deep sense of gratitude instead of frustration.
In time, I discovered that those tests were actually great blessings. Sometimes people just aren’t capable of thinking in a certain way, and no amount of talking is going to change them. But we never fired people. Instead, I would try to get them a job that would be more fulfilling for them.
Q: Is that part of living in a community, that you don’t just drop people?
Padma: Yes, you sort of massage it around and help them find a place where they can be fulfilled.
Another thing I wanted to mention about working with Swami is that people would feel crunched by the deadlines, because in publishing you’re always thinking ahead. You plan what you’re going to publish a whole year in advance, and then you give yourself a year to produce and design and introduce the books properly. But Swami would feel inspired to write something, and he would want it out right away. It created incredible deadlines, and it crunched the designers and annoyed the publicist types, because it didn’t dovetail with any of the accepted deadline dates and criteria for the market. I always tried to explain to them that Swami had seen many of Yogananda’s writings being sat on for years and years, and to his mind, there was just no other way to do it.
They would say “Well, can’t you talk him out of it?” And I tried in the beginning, but I failed miserably. I saw pretty quickly that it just wasn’t going to work, and that I might as well embrace it and do my best, and then it always went better.
Q: Did you have a sense that divine grace was helping you find a way?
Padma: Yes, but it brought up challenges. It’s not how you would run a regular business. It was often hard for the people working there to understand the process.
Q: “Stop doing this. Do this instead.” That kind of thing?
Padma: Yes, but we were very productive. [Laughs.]
Q: Do you have any further thoughts about Swami Kriyananda’s way of doing business?
Padma: Well, he never really “does business.” Rather, he’s always thinking of how to serve people. He continually has ideas for creating a new brochure, or getting a book out to college instructors, that sort of thing.
He recently sent me some copy that he’d written for a brochure to convince store owners to play uplifting music for their customers – just regular stores, any store, to put people in a frame of mind to make better decisions and be better customers.
That’s a good example of how he works. He isn’t thinking of business, he’s thinking of how to reach people who might be interested in our type of spiritual teachings; in this case, by getting the music played.
It’s a treat for me to read the weekly newspaper at Ananda Village and hear about a mother and daughter who came all the way from Taiwan to visit our school after reading Swami’s book Education for Life in Chinese. [Laughs.] Or that a yogi from Japan visited Ananda after reading Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness in Japanese. Swami always said that Crystal Clarity Publishers was the “wakeup bell”; that we were publishing books to awaken people.
Q: I was present when someone asked Swami Kriyananda, “What kind of people are we advertising to?” He said, “People like us.” It occurred to me that he was saying there are a certain number of people who will be served by the ideas he writes about, and that it’s our mission to find them.
Padma: Sometimes well‑intentioned people would say, “Well, Swami, why don’t you change this passage slightly, because I think people might not be able to hear it, the way you’ve written it.” And often he’d say, “I’m writing for those who have ears to hear.” In other words, he wasn’t going to dilute it. He says it that way, and even if just one person is changed by it, it’s worth it.
Q: He isn’t interested in persuading people who aren’t ready to be persuaded?
Padma: That’s right.
Q: He’s serving people who might be interested based on their own, inner feeling?
Padma: Yes, and that’s where we sometimes trip up. Sometimes we want to serve people so much that we’re tempted to water it down. I think Swami believes that our way is to feel inspired first, and then offer that inspiration, and be open for creative ways to share it, rather than think first about how to market it. We’re saying “What does God have to offer to people, and how can we offer it creatively?”
Q: Like trying to get store owners to play his music?
Padma: Yes. We were told in the beginning that the store owners wouldn’t even take time to meet with us, because they would rather buy from distributors. And a lot of them did respond that way. But we would say, “Just give us a minute,” and then they would talk to us, and they would end up buying.
Q: You’d play the music for them?
Padma: Sure, we’d bring demos. In fact, we discovered that we got a 1% response from mailings, perhaps 15% from phone calls, but when we went on the road and met the store owners we got an 80% response.
Q: Was that because they could see someone standing in front of them?
Padma: Yes. You’ve gone to the trouble to come see them, so they’ll take time for you.
Q: You’ve talked about being pulled in four directions at once, but you haven’t said much about your spiritual life.
Padma: It’s just a given. I couldn’t imagine trying to do any of it otherwise. The pressures of doing business…how can I say it? Basically, there was a lot of sadhana [yoga practice] during my time at Crystal Clarity, but also there was lots of karma yoga. [Karma yoga: the path of achieving oneness with God by serving as His channel to help others]. And, of course, it was a continual practice of trying to remember God throughout the day. When you’re working on Swami’s projects, it’s easier. [Laughs.] When you’re around him, you can’t be problem‑oriented. You have to be solution‑oriented, and that means you’re always reaching for God‑remembrance.
But it was the most difficult and testing period of my life. Now that I’m doing ministerial work, there’s more of a flow. Maybe I’m reaping the rewards from the time when it was difficult and testing. Trying to combine business and the spiritual life made for lots of tests, and therefore a lot of growth. I feel a deepening now, and the tests are of a different nature.
Q: Were there things that helped people hold it together? For example, did you meditate together at work?
Padma: We meditated together, of course. Our meetings always began with a prayer and a short meditation, and we tried to do things throughout the day that would remind us of God. Also, in the kind of work we were doing, publishing Swami Kriyananda’s books, it was easier to think of how it would help people, so it was easier to feel serviceful. But I really did burn the candle at both ends. I was not only managing a business that was very complicated, but I had a family.
Q: That’s right, you had two children.
Padma: I had young children, I had babies, and trying to keep the balance with children, marriage, work, and business was a challenge. Looking back, maybe it wasn’t just business and the spiritual life that made for so much growth, but raising a family at the same time.
Q: What kind of growth was that side of it?
Padma: It helped me learn to put God more and more in charge, and to let go. I had strong ideas about the way to do things, and I was working with strong‑minded people in all four of these areas of responsibility, so I had to learn a certain detachment. I had to learn to let go, while still guiding it, and then just allow it to happen. I’m sure I didn’t get it all, but I did learn something along the way. [Laughs.]
Q: Are you happier now?
Padma: Yes, I am, actually. I feel I’ve learned a lot about letting go, and that it’s made it easier for me to work with people, and that it’s given me greater insight for trying to help people in the kind of ministerial work I’m doing now.