NOTE: This is a long, combined posting of two chapters in Gurudas’s life, before and during the years when he worked closely with Swami Kriyananda as manager of Crystal Clarity Publishers, the company that published Swamiji’s books. For readers who are interested to know what it was like to work as one of Swamiji’s “right-hand men,” this chapter is bound to hold special interest. As Gurudas tells, Swamiji often held out their working relationship as a model for how others should aspire to work with him. As such, it holds continuing value for those who serve the great work today.
The first time we spoke, Gurudas managed East West Bookshop in Mountain View, California which is owned and run by Ananda. East West is the largest metaphysical bookstore on the West Coast.
Gurudas became interested in spirituality in his late teens. He recalls, “I had an inward experience of truth, and I had a love for God that was growing, but I wanted to know more.” His spiritual life was first nurtured by six years of tae kwon do, a Korean martial art similar to karate in which he earned a black belt.
Marriage and the birth of a son put Gurudas’s spiritual interests on hold, and when the marriage ended he found the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
Q: Is tae kwon do a spiritual martial art?

Gurudas: It depends on the teacher. My teacher taught philosophy and right livelihood, as well as many Buddhist precepts. We learned to breathe, to use energy properly, to focus our will, and to “live in the spine” – as I later realized, it was pure yoga.
All this business about fighting that you see in the movies was really just for the new people. Once you had earned a black belt, the teacher would look at your belt and say, “Now what?” And you would think: “Well, I’m a black belt!” As if you were really something. But he would say, “You don’t know anything.”
In that respect, it was a little bit like the movies, but I was privileged to see a number of people who lived the true art. It was an art of life, an art of Self‑realization. In fact, they even used that term. And when you became a black belt, it was a whole new level of training, with much more emphasis on philosophy and treating others well, using your energy properly, and being responsible in life. So there was a lot more to it than just “Wow, I can break this board.”
Q: At a recent meeting of the East West staff, you seemed to be aware of the energy in the room. You seemed calmly attuned to the consciousness of the staff. Did tae kwon do help you develop that awareness?
Gurudas: One of the first precepts in tae kwon do is to increase your awareness. I had no particular plan for the meeting. I simply wanted us to meditate together and talk about our lives, because I feel the most important thing is our connection as devotees. It’s something Swami Kriyananda reminded me of last spring. I had managed several Ananda businesses aver the years, and he said, “This time, just be a devotee. Think of the people first, not the profits.”
Of course, you have to work with the bottom line, but if we take care of each other, and if we’re devotees first, spiritual principles will come into play and the profits will tend to take care of themselves. I believe that if we treat each other with respect, and with a recognition that God dwells in each of us, the natural result is that we’ll succeed.
Q: Does it make for a different atmosphere in the shop?
Gurudas: It seems to. In my mind, the staff at East West typify the Ananda experience, because we’ve got people who are willing to sacrifice their personal view for another’s well‑being. And we make allowances when someone needs to work on something they’re going through.
Q: Do your personal spiritual practices help you in your job?
Gurudas: Absolutely. The most important thing was my training with Swami Kriyananda, which has made all the difference in the world. Any abilities I may have had were deepened and enriched by my time with him. He’s alive and present with me every day. I feel his presence more deeply than ever, even though he’s living in Europe.
I was blessed to spend quite a bit of time working with Swamiji. When I worked at Crystal Clarity, the company that publishes his books, I was around him a lot.
Q: What do you remember about that time?
Gurudas: What struck me most strongly was his way of dealing with people. There were times when everyone, myself included, would be saying “What is it with this person? They’re doing it all wrong!” And Swami Kriyananda would unfailingly stand up for them, even at the cost of what we all thought were monumental expenses. It would just make you shake your head, because he would stand behind them, stand up for them.
Living in the Ananda community, we’ve all heard these stories, but I got to see it firsthand. Swami would say, “Very well, if you’re not able to work with this person, then I will.” And what struck me was his undying loyalty and devotion to each soul, and to God in each of us.
When I say “my training” around Kriyananda, I feel that being in his presence was the training. I saw and learned lots of things through the years, but just being around him was the real training – feeling that vibration, and that respect.
Many times, I would go to his home on some errand with my wife, and every time he would come down and welcome us. “Hello. Welcome! Would you like some tea? Could I make you some tea?” He would always say that. And we would say, “No, sir, but can we make you some tea?” And he’d say, “Well, I wouldn’t object!” But he never presumed. And that’s something to say, isn’t it? He never presumed or imposed on anyone.
He would always ask. He would never say “Do this, do that” – never. Even when I felt that he’d be perfectly within his rights, he would never say anything harsh, or direct people to do something in any way that wasn’t appropriate. It was always with respect for the soul. Certainly, he has sharp opinions at times. Don’t we all? But I never heard him express them in a way that was hurtful to anyone.
Q: Which Ananda businesses have you managed?
Gurudas: I lived at Ananda Village for six years. When I arrived, I served at Earth Song, Ananda’s former health food store and restaurant in Nevada City. I was then asked to manage the market at Earth Song Cafe, and I was there four years. Later, I was asked to do road sales for Crystal Clarity, Ananda’s publishing house, where I was national sales manager for about a year.
Q: Is Swami Kriyananda’s management style reflected in the Ananda businesses?
Gurudas: Everyone brings their particular strengths and weaknesses. The overall business manager at Ananda Village, Vidura Smallen, always impressed me as embodying much of what Swamiji teaches. I saw that Vidura immediately understood the principle of respecting others. Whenever someone wanted to talk to him, the door was always open.
I also worked with Padma McGilloway, who for several years managed Crystal Clarity, the company that publishes Swamiji’s books. What struck me about Padma was how deeply she had attuned herself to Swami’s vision for Crystal Clarity. She could see very clearly that we weren’t publishing “Ananda’s books,” but that the books were a ray of light into the world. In fact, Swami Kriyananda never said “These are Ananda’s books.” They were simply the teachings of Yogananda, expressed by Kriyananda – and, oh yes, we have Ananda over here, too, if you’re interested. It was never that you had to get into Ananda in order to be involved with the teachings.
Q: When a person is working at East West, how would you like them to treat the customers?

Gurudas: If you can find joy within yourself, I think you’ve done your best for the customer, because it will naturally bring out the joy in them. They’ll have a pleasant experience, and so will you. I believe it’s why our customers come back. Generally speaking, the people at the front desk are calm, energetic, joyful and happy. People feel that vibration, and it draws them to come back. They may not know what it is, but they like how they feel when they come to the store.
Q: I was in the store, and I overhead a customer say, “I thank God for this wonderful store!” It occurred to me that there aren’t many businesses where the checkout person is praying for you.
Gurudas: Isn’t that true. We have pictures of the masters behind the register, and very often we’re praying for people and giving them spiritual energy.
Q: Do you have ideas for how the store can change or improve?
Gurudas: I see us doing more of the same. I would like us not to lose sight of the people who serve there. The usual idea that you want to grow a business rapidly with a big bottom line and lots of money – none of that is important to us. It’s more important that we have an environment where we can serve God in each other and in the customers.
If the store doesn’t grow, we’ll work with that reality. We don’t have to let the finances dictate truth to us. The real bottom line isn’t about profits, but being here for each other. I feel that living for God each day and having an experience of His joy is what matters. That realization has come over me more strongly than ever. Two of our staff are on vacation so I’m carrying three jobs, but I feel fairly joyful about it, and not too pressured.
Q: Do you see yourself being a manager forever?
Gurudas: I don’t see myself as a manager or a businessman now. I used to think of myself that way, but I’m happier now that I don’t. It’s all a passing show. I don’t feel attached. If I’m gone tomorrow, fine. I’ll do what I need to, and I’ll put all my energy into it.
Q: That sounds like the martial arts – putting forth energy while remaining detached.
Gurudas: I am coming back to the martial arts, to a degree. But I’ve learned nonattachment through yoga and the teachings at Ananda.
Q: Does meditation help you in your work?
Gurudas: It does. It brings a sense of inner calmness that helps you deal with what’s before you, and with the waves of energy swirling around. You go into a state of meditation, and you can carry that state with you. It’s a process of attunement. When you latch onto the ray of divine light, it’s transforming.
Meditation is one of the tools that leads us to that, but really, attunement supersedes the techniques. The connection to the Divine in your life transcends the tools to get there. It’s a very inward experience. It’s an inward permanence. I owe all gratitude to Swami Kriyananda, because that’s where it’s coming from, that blessing of inward awareness.
Swamiji has always been there for me. Paramhansa Yogananda has always been there for me. They’ve never failed me in anything I’ve needed. I think I’m fairly reasonable – I don’t ask for silly things, but whenever I’ve needed it, the guidance has been there. God is there for each of us, all the time.
In our second conversation, more than twenty years after the first, Gurudas described his time serving as the manager of Crystal Clarity Publishers, Ananda’s publishing arm, and working closely with Swami Kriyananda.
Ch. 21: Working with Swami Kriyananda
Q: Can you tell us something of your life leading up to the years you spent helping Swami Kriyananda.
Gurudas: I’ll start with a period that began a few years after I managed East West.
Going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, I managed Earth Song Café in Nevada City, then later I managed East West Books in Mountain View, California; and then there were two separate periods when I managed Crystal Clarity, the company that publishes Swami Kriyananda’s books, which was then located at Ananda Village, but has since moved to Los Angeles.
My relationship with Swamiji changed over the years, reflecting the way Swamiji’s own way of expressing changed. Swami, as I understood him, was always the same, but his outward expression changed as time passed. And where the force of his personality had been directed more outwardly in the earlier years, he had withdrawn more in the later years, and his consciousness was expressing itself in a much broader way than before.
But in the way we worked together, he was the same. And, speaking generally, it was a blessing and a really special time.
Q: My ears perked up when I heard that you were willing to talk about your time at Crystal Clarity, because it’s been very interesting to talk with other people who worked with Swami, For example, Padma talked beautifully about her experiences at Crystal Clarity. So whatever you feel to say about that period would be very welcome.
Gurudas: I’ll start with the time when I managed East West and lived in Palo Alto. I was going through a time of great personal transition, and when Swami visited our Mountain View community, I took the opportunity to ask him, “Swamiji, what do you see that I should do next in my life?”
Usually I would make a special effort to go and see him, but on that occasion I was trying to blend with the crowd. We were at Asha’s for a gathering with him, and I was feeling very inward. And then most of the people left and I was remembering my old days with Swami, and how I would have just gone to him. But a big part of me was thinking, “I don’t want to bother anyone.” And another part was saying, very strongly, “Go see him!” So I went in, and he just boomed out in his normal way, “Skip, come sit here.”
There were a half dozen of us, and he looked at me very pointedly and said, “How is your life?” And I answered noncommittally, as we’re prone to do when we’re feeling more private. But then I went home and I wrote to him, and I told him about the various changes that had happened, and how I felt a change in my life was needed.
I said, “Swamiji, all my life I’ve felt, I guess as we all do, that we live to the potential that we can understand, or the guidance we understand.” Because I don’t know about others, but I think I was a little afraid to face the Divine, as we sometimes are when we’re in trouble and trying to hide behind our life, or get so busy that we’ll forget.
I said, “At this point, I want only what Master wants for me, Swami, and I don’t want anything else.” And the only person, of course, that I knew who could give me any shred of understanding would be him. So I said, “If you see that I should do something different with my life, please tell me, and I will follow it. If you see that I should stay in Palo Alto, I’ll do that.”
He didn’t respond, and he didn’t say anything back to me. But then I went up to the Village for his birthday – this was in 2007 – and at that point I was fairly calm, and I was glad to see him, and we had lots of nice experiences at his birthday party in the Crystal Hermitage garden.
And then I went up to get his blessing, and he gave me such a powerful energy, and he blessed me, and it was one of those experiences where a power would come through him – a diksha as it’s called in India. And he said, “Find the Glazzards. Go to Portland and help them.” And I said, “Okay.”
So I left the work I was doing, and I moved up to Portland, and I was only up there a short while. I think I was there just to meet my wife, Nicole. And I hadn’t been there long when I got a call that there was a need at Crystal Clarity, and would I be willing to come down and manage it? I said, “Right away.” And I moved back down to the Village. But I have to think that the main reason I was in Portland was to meet Nicole. And then we had a two-year long-distance connection before she was able to move down to the Village.
So I came down and took over Crystal Clarity. Sean Meshorer, the publisher, had been through a long illness, and he and I had had a long and close friendship over the years, and a good connection. And when I took the position, Swami told me, “This is for now, but if Sean is better, it’s his role, It’s his job.” But Sean said, “I don’t see that ever happening.” Because he wasn’t doing well physically.
So I took the job of working with Swami, and over those years, which were the last years of his life, from the end of 2007 until his passing in 2013, we did lots of books, but the book that was on my mind when I got there, and that had more or less gone to press, was In Divine friendship, a collection of Swamiji’s letters that Naidhruva had compiled.
I didn’t have much of a hand in that book, but I helped coordinate some of the connections between people.
When Swami would do book signings, Pranaba and Seva and Parvati and I would work with him every day. We did that for a number of the book signings from that point, and it was always interesting.
I remember how, on one of those titles, he had me sit with him while he signed books. I’m guessing he swapped us around to give us all a chance to work with him more closely. But he had me sit with him at some of the signings, and when someone approached to have their book signed or to greet him he would turn and say to me, “Who’s this? What’s going on with them?” And of course I didn’t know all the people, but between Seva, Parvati, Pranaba, and I we were pretty much able to figure out who we were talking about.
He would sign books until he was tired, and then he’d say, “That’s it for today.” And we’d come back and do it again the next day. And there was a lot of joy at those events.
So that went on for In Divine Friendship, The New Path, Demystifying Patanjali: The Yoga Sutras, and Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography And one of the last big projects we did together, after Swami was gone, was his memorial book.
But in my day-to-day experience I would generally be in the office trying to coordinate things and keep the physical realm on the rails, and then I’d get a call from Swamiji. And it would be along the lines of, “Skip, I’ve written this.” And he would always say, “It’s going to be a bestseller!” with great enthusiasm. And I’d say, “That’s great, Swamiji.” And then he’d have me come over and we’d discuss things. And every one of the books had its own story.
Swamiji was fully focused on every book that he would put out. And when I would come over, often I would have ideas that I thought were important and that he should be aware of, but generally my job was just to be there as he asked, and to facilitate into the physical realm what was coming through him.
He was writing so fast, and there were so many books coming through him in those days. He would call me with another title and say, “It’s going to be a bestseller, it’s the highest priority.” And I would say, “Well, you know, should I stop the other books, because they were the highest priority, and we’re a little stuck with money, or other books.” And he would say, “No, do them all.”
As I’m sure you know, his energy and power would come through and make it all work. And my role, toward the end of his life, as I saw it, was to be a liaison. Because I felt he was living not so much here on the physical plane with us anymore, especially toward the end.
I’ve been told that he expressed trust in me. He told me that, in fact. But he would give out his thoughts in the form of a book, and then he would trust the process with the team that we had put together at Crystal Clarity.
He did his own editing, of course, but for punctuation and so on, Dayanand was very good at that, and it relieved Lakshman of some of that work, which he’d been doing for years.
So Dayanand would talk to us, and we had Madhavi doing a great deal of the production side, organizing it, and she gave so much of herself to the books until it was time for a change for her. Narayan had done a great job as a salesperson when I got there, and we had various people in the production and design elements. But I would always take everything to Swami to see.
He wanted to see all of the candidate covers for the books. There had been a thought, occasionally, that maybe we should just show him what would work, as if maybe he wouldn’t understand what would work in the physical world. But I never thought that way about him, not for a moment. And if I had ten book covers as options, I would give them all to him, and he expressed his gratitude for that.
During my time he picked the covers we used, and he would give direction or guidance on various aspects.
There was Amala (Cathleen Elliot), a devotee who worked with the top publishers in New York, designing covers, and she worked with Swami on The Time Tunnel. She was a top-level professional designer, and he drew her in because it was a way they could work together a bit, and she picked up really well on how to work with him. Because, in my experience, whenever Swami would want something, “Yes, we’ll do it – yes, sir” was usually the right answer.
Sometimes people might run around doing something very precisely to the letter of what he had asked for, according to their best lights. But what he wanted, in my experience, was that we would reflect back to him what would actually work.
I remember how Amala, the designer in New York worked on The Time Tunnel, and how Swami wanted certain colors on the cover. And, in her way, she said to him, “That’s great. That’ll be beautiful. And, you know, it might be a good idea to use this color because the more expensive color won’t quite work, and this will look really well. What do you think of this?”
And then Swami would say, “Great.” And that’s how I worked with him as well.
There’s a book called Do It Now that we did when I was at Crystal Clarity the first time. It was a small book that Swami wanted us to hand out for free. I remember how we were in our booth at the big book expo in Chicago, and Swami and I were handing them out to people. I was a sales manager in those days. And then Neale Donald Walsch came up, and I think it’s the first time he had met Swami.
He said, “You copied my format.” Because Neale’s books, the series called Conversations With God, were in a narrow format. And Swami said, “Yes – isn’t it wonderful?” [Laughs] He just laughed, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
In those days, when he handed out the Do It Now books for free, he told us that it was in response to the financial crises we were having. He wrote a book for Warner on meditation, and also Awaken to Superconsciousness, and Do It Now, and he was telling us, “Put it out in twenty here, fifty there, and change the consciousness.” – even though we didn’t actually have the money to print the darn things. But his response was always to be bigger than the problem. And later in his life, it wasn’t any different.
At any rate, we had done that book in the mid-1990s, and then years later we were redoing some of the earlier books, and he retitled that one Do It Well. Madhavi did a nice job of working on the interior and cover, so we went to print and we had books coming from overseas, and we’d sold it into the market, including to Barnes and Noble who had placed big orders, and they always needed, in general, an eighteen-month lead time for books to go out to the big stores. But we never had that much time, and I had to get titles out in ten or eleven months to get pre-orders, to be able to get the payments to come down the road.
And then Swami came to the airport, and I would always go see him at the airport with Asha and David and others. He would jump off the plane, and he would say a word or two to everybody, and then right away he would want to know about some book. It was always one of the first things he would talk about after he came off the plane, so I learned to be ready.
But in that particular instance, he got off the plane and began talking about his new book, Living Wisely (rewritten from the Do It Now and Do It Well books), of which we had oodles of copies coming on the boat.
So we got to the Pravers’ home, and we were talking at the lunch table, and Swami said, “Skip, come here.” And he said, “What do we do with those other books? Because this one is much better. And can we just swap them?”
But the world doesn’t work like that, and I couldn’t do it. I wish we hadn’t done Do It Now, because Living Wisely, Living Well living was so much better.
I said, “No, they’re on a boat coming from China, and we have to sell those first, if we can, before we print more.”
So a little while later, he said, “What if we gave them all to Canada?” [Laughs] You know, “What if we just give them all away and print the new ones?”
He was always thinking about some way to get around the limitations of the physical world in order to get the real goods out, as it were.
Our designer in Italy, Tejindra Scott Tully, is one of my best friends. We had a great connection working together, and I would work with him on book covers on occasion. He did many covers in the last years of Swami’s life. And Madhavi, Renee Glenn, and Amala also designed our covers, as well as David on our staff.
But with that particular book, I realized that I needed to rethink my process a bit. I realized that if Swami had a book in his hand, it would work better for him. So from that point I would always print a reader’s copy, as they are called in the trade. These are advanced reader editions, or uncorrected proofs. In the old days we called them galleys. But it’s more refined now, because you can get an actual bound book.
But once we went to offset printing, which was the cheapest way to print, say, 3000 copies, you’re kind of stuck with that.
So it came to me to print maybe a hundred advance reader copies and make sure he got ten, and then he could mark them up, make lots of changes, and get them back to us in time to insert the changes before we went to press.
But every book had its own story. And the universal trend was that Swami was always intensely focused on how it could be more clear, and how the reader could be touched more deeply, and how he could make the language work more smoothly. He told me, “I have a bad habit – I won’t put the pen down. I keep wanting to make it better.”
So we had a running joke, where I would say, “I have to go to press in five hours.” And he’d look at his watch and say, “Well, I better get to it.” It was a way to keep it light. But he taught me how to work with him in a way that facilitated an understanding of what the real deadlines were.
Sometimes people would have questions about why we couldn’t do this or that. And every book was highly individual in terms of how it reflected Swamiji’s relationship to Master, by expressing his consciousness through the written word.
And always, without fail, Swamiji would talk about, “This is the way Master wants this.” And we would put the book out that way.
With Master’s works – the Patanjali book and Whispers, for example – Swami took the editing and production very seriously. Of course I would say that it was true of all the books. My understanding was that, for Swami, every book was a light unto itself, to draw others to God and find God within themselves through the teachings.
But the books were, at the same time, both part of, and independent of our overall work at Ananda. The books stand on their own, and he wanted them to be available to people in bookstores everywhere. And whenever there was some physical issue in the way of our getting something out faster, he would exert a fair amount of will or pressure to be sure we weren’t dragging our heels. But, in fact, we weren’t.
He lived in the awareness of the work already occurring, whereas we were stuck with boats coming and finding money and getting books printed overseas.
And because we’re all individuals working out our own delusions, people would say things to me over the years like, “Well, you know, Swami’s mind isn’t working as well as it used to.” “Well, you know, Swami’s forgetful.” “Swami’s forgetful, you know, he doesn’t remember.”
And, well, he would say to me, “I want this out right away.” And I’d have to re-explain the process and how it worked, and that happened almost every time. But did I think he was forgetful? Not in the least. My job was to organize the physical elements and present a timeline so that he could understand what was happening.
In my personal view, he lived – let’s put it this way – closest to the causal realm of anyone I’ve known in this life. He was drawing from that awareness, and from that eternal presence to a degree that I had never experienced, and my job was to serve as a link from that consciousness into this physical reality of printed paper and Kindle and ebooks and audio books, and to do whatever was needed.

So that’s what we focused on, and I never for a moment thought that his mind wasn’t working well. I took offense when people would say that to me, because that wasn’t my experience of him at all. But I understand why they might think it, if they didn’t have the same understanding, because if you have to explain something a number of times, you might say, “Well, gosh, so-and-so used to remember a lot better.”
But that wasn’t the case with Swami. It’s not how I saw him. And that period was the greatest blessing for my life that I continue to draw on now.
When I said in our earlier conversation that I felt his presence daily, well, I actually did. But in the later years when I worked at Crystal Clarity, it wasn’t in the same way as in the past, where I would go over to his home and watch a movie, and so on. A lot of it now was by email, phone calls, and so forth, where he could call me from anywhere in the world at any time of day, and I learned to be available.
I made sure that I had an iPad and a phone wherever I went, because it didn’t happen all the time, but it could. And it would certainly happen at inopportune moments, although to me it wasn’t inopportune because it was my life’s purpose.
Q: You worked on some major titles. The Gita, for example, is a tremendous book.
Gurudas: Oh, yes. Sean Meshorer published that one, along with many others. I only worked on helping get it into paperback and doing the revisions.
There were a number of books like the Rubaiyat that I did work on with the team, and then we put it into paperback.
When I was at Crystal Clarity the first time, we worked on Autobiography of a Yogi and other books. I remember meeting a woman who had left Mount Washington with Bernard, and later I said, “Swami, I feel Master’s hand over her life.” And he whipped his head around and said, “But of course! Master never leaves us. Never.”
So my time at Crystal Clarity led to lots of interesting experiences, and everything we receive, I believe, is given to us to share with others.
When we had our earlier talk, I said that I was around Swamiji a lot, and I guess I feel a little funny about saying that. Because my understanding is that it all happened very impersonally.
There were times, for example, when I went to Italy with my former wife and we spent nearly every day with him. And he said to us, “Don’t tell people.” So that’s on my mind, how to understand whether it’s appropriate to talk about it. Because people can get a sad feeling, “Well, if only I’d been around him.” And, you know, everyone can be around him by cultivating his presence, and listening to his music and reading his books.
So I feel that anything he might have given to us, or that he gave to me, was meant to be shared with others, and I don’t want to come across as anything special.
Q: I’ve had the experience of being on the other side of the fence and appreciating what’s to be learned from being on my side also, you know, where I did not spend a lot of time with Swamiji. But I’ve always been friends with Asha, who spent a lot of time with him. And I see her life from my perspective as filled with tremendous God-sent lessons about the maturity and the inner qualities and humility and the sheer courage to be able to go to the teacher’s feet and cooperate with him and let him work on you and change you. And that is, to me, what Asha models for all of us. But I see it also when you are talking about working with Swamiji. And I’m thinking, my goodness, you know, you must have served him in many ways in former lives and had lots of square edges planed off in order to be able to go and serve so wholeheartedly.
Gurudas: For whatever reason, I had a powerful experience during my first visit to Ananda, where he blessed me and I couldn’t talk, and he walked away very quietly and left me to honor the experience.
And then, I don’t know, he just drew me into his aura. He would come to Earth Song and, say, “Let’s sit down and have lunch. Let’s talk.” And I was always sort of hiding out, until I ended up managing Crystal Clarity, and then there was no hiding. We hide out behind being busy and not really embracing who we could be, I guess. Or we project a personality, and then something happens and we kind of find the wish to be hidden being blown away, and we just start being who we are, and it’s a lot more free.
At Earth Song, Swami would come to town, and if I was having a bad day I would try to hide from him. Maybe I’d go down a different aisle when I saw him enter the store, and then suddenly he’d be in front of me and he’d say, “What are you doing?” He physically would stand in front of me, like, “What are you doing? I want to talk to you.” Because he knew what I was doing.
But at Crystal Clarity I couldn’t hide. He knew every thought in my head, you know, and I never thought for a moment he didn’t know everything that was going on with me. But he didn’t presume, he was always respectful, each and every time, and I never had a single moment that he wasn’t aware of. There were some tense moments, at times, but I always felt that my job, and this is the key point for me, in talking about the books and all, was to serve.
One morning I got a phone call at four a.m. We’d been working to get out The New Path before Swami left for Europe. When I was at his home, we had talked about The New Path and what was going to be in it, and I remember asking him if he wanted someone to help update the section on Ananda at the end of the book, and so forth. And he said, “No, this book isn’t about Ananda.” And as you’ll realize when you read The Path versus The New Path, he took Ananda out at the end of the book all those years later, and it became more universal.
So, anyway, we worked on it, and we got the type all figured out. That was the last book that Madhavi worked on. She typeset that book, which is not easy, and I would give her so much praise. She killed herself to make that book work just right, and it was a beautiful, selfless work. She won’t take credit for it, but I was there and I saw her do it.
So I get a phone call, and it’s Swami at four a.m., and he’s a little elevated. “Skip, stop the presses – the typeface is too small. We must get it larger.”
And I’m not even awake. But he’s calling from Italy, and I said, “Swamiji what is it that you’d like?”
“The type is not large enough. We need larger type. The font is too small.”
“You know, Swami, we discussed the typeface, and the ten-point type is exactly what’s in the Autobiography of a Yogi. You and I discussed it before you left for your travels. We’re at press, and we could change it if you want, but this is what it means.
And he said, “Oh, we did discuss it. It’s all right then.” And I said, “Swami, it’s fine.”
I happen to think he did that for the benefit of the people who were present there with him, and it wasn’t really about changing it. I believe it was for the benefit of those people who had been with him for a long time, and he loved them. And they had the thought, you know, based on what they’d done in the past with him, that maybe this wasn’t the story. But then Lakshman came on and started asking about a change that did need to be made. “What about that paragraph – did you get it fixed?” I don’t remember exactly what it was.
And Swami said, “That wasn’t fixed? Stop the presses!” [Laughs]
I said, “Swami, we fixed that just as you wanted it, okay? And if there’s anything else, let me know.”
He said, “Oh, good. All right,” And we rang off.
I saw that dynamic more than a few times. That was one of the few times it happened while we talked about a book, but I saw it in person with other people more than a few times. And I finally kind of got the message that it wasn’t always about what I might think was going on. And if I tuned in a little bit, there was a little more happening.
He knew he could call me and I wouldn’t lose my cookies over changing stuff, or jump up and do whatever. I could just tell him what was happening. Because I was never afraid to tell him, “We need this and this.” “Swami, we can do that. Now, here’s what this will cost. This costs this much. We can have this now, we can have that there.”
Swami’s biography of Paramhansa Yogananda is another story that I like. I was reading my email and having coffee at about 6:40 a.m. at home, and I got an email from Swami that said, “Be here in the morning first thing at six or whatever, I want to talk to you.” And just then the phone rang – “Where are you?” [Laughs]
“I’ll be right there.” So I threw on some clothes and ran over to the hermitage, and he said to me, “I’ve finished Master’s biography and I want to launch it in Los Angeles next month.”
I said, “Okay, Swami, I see. You know, I don’t believe we’re going to be able to launch the book in one month in Los Angeles and actually have physical books.”
He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because we won’t be able to have physical books. We have to go to the printer, and it has to be typeset, and so on.”
I just had to explain the routine. And, now, that goes back to the question of, is his mind working right? Well, of course his mind was working right. He wanted to launch the book and get it out to people.
But then I said, “Why is it time sensitive now?
“Well, I’m going to India.”
I said, “All right, Swami, Sangita can publish it first in India.” He had me working with Sangita; he had told her to work with me and to be in touch with me. The three of us had met numerous times, and my job was to help her.
I said, “I can help Sangita get the book going, and you can launch it in India and then do something when you come back.” Which is what we did. But in the moment, you know, I just gave him what I knew the facts were, and I didn’t jump up and get crazy and reactive or anything, because I felt very comfortable in his presence. I could say what I needed to say, and if he wanted it, then I would move heaven and earth if I could to make it happen.
But if he didn’t know the facts, or didn’t know the details, then he couldn’t make a decision. How could he make a proper decision without the details, and understanding how it would work?
There were a lot of people who had such love and energy and just made things happen, and then sometimes maybe it would need a little refinement to be what he wanted. And so when one of us would give him the feedback he needed, because I wasn’t the only one, he would be happy with that. And I didn’t mind doing that, because it was my joy.
Sometimes he did override me, and I would do whatever he wanted. I always told him, “These books are coming through you, and I do what you say, but I want you to have the knowledge of what we’re seeing so you can make an informed decision, and then whatever you say, we’ll do it.” And we had sort of an unspoken understanding that way after a while.
So for me it was impersonal, even though there was a personal touch, but at any rate it was a great blessing.
Returning to the biography of Master, that morning we got the cover and other things settled for the book, and it was fun to get that book down the road.
There was a donor, and Swami could always manifest whatever money was needed. He could call the right person, and he had the discernment to know which person God had ready, and what would be good for that person. So somebody would step up, and in this case a big donor funded the entire book. But we never had money, and we were always scraping by, and then he would come back to America and ask me what was going on, and what we needed, and he would generally use his birthday money to keep the books going.
People from all over the world gave him money, and he would spend it on the books, or he would help Assisi to publish books.
It was always an interesting dynamic. Late in his life we had so many books going at once, and I can’t believe we got them all published, but the team was really superb, getting everything out, and it took us a year after he left his body to wrap up and finish the ones that were in process.
There were other things he had wanted done, and we got some of it done, and in time, some more will be done – there were books that he wanted to get back in print, and Dayanand worked on those because he had the funding to do small runs.
But when Swami was no longer around, we didn’t have the money anymore to print books. We certainly had a lot of books, though, and it will take a long time to work our way through all that he left for everyone.
I’ve been deeply touched by Narayani’s book, for example. She came late in Swami’s life and was with him all the time, and so she had a chance to really see and embrace his essence and his connection to the Divine. There are books you read because maybe there are some subjects or events you want to read about. But that book is a clear mirror of the experience of his presence, and for me it was like a day in my life with Swami Kriyananda. That’s how I felt while reading it. You dip into the book and it gives you a nice experience of bathing in the beautiful waters of his presence in her life.
I’ll tell you one more – I think of it as a teaching story. It’s from when I came back to Crystal Clarity the second time. Swami had told me he always wanted to be there, and he was so glad I had come back.
When I was at Crystal Clarity the first time, he’d put me there after I had managed Earth Song. And then he was in India in 1995, and the dynamics of our lives were such that my wife and I moved to Oregon. And as Padma put it, “Swami always had one person who was a contact for everything that was going on with his books, and you are that now.” Because Danny Levin was no longer there, and I had that connection with him. But then he went to India, after not being there for a long time, And when he came back I got a phone call, and he said essentially, “I went to India and came back and you’re not here.”
Well, I could have died, because he had put me at Crystal Clarity, and it’s a long and complicated story, because it was a crazy period. But I had left with this other dynamic, and then he was like, “Where are you?” And I felt horrible.
And then fast forward some years, and I still had that connection. We would still talk occasionally, or write, and there were life chapters that opened and closed. And so I moved back down to the village in 2007 at Christmastime, and then I believe it was in February that Swami came back, and he had me over and he said, “I always wanted you at Crystal Clarity, and now you’re back.” And then he said, “I keep hearing the good things you’re doing. You’re doing such a great job. You’re doing great work there.” And I looked at him. “Swamiji, I appreciate that, except I need to tell you, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything at all.” And he leaned forward in his chair and said, “I know the feeling.”
So then my time with him started again, and we were doing Whispers From Eternity that he had edited. The former manager, Sean Meshorer, had launched it as a reprint, but then some things happened, and there were legal issues, and so we were all still trying to dance around the topic, and the dynamic of what was legal. And then we finally made the decision that the book was fine to do. But we were doing Whispers. And for some of the people on the team, before I arrived, the way of working with Swami was thought to be, “Well, we’ll get him some red herrings. We’ll make sure he sees one thing that we know will work, and that way we’ll get it into print and it’ll make some sales.”
And, you know, I wouldn’t work that way with him. But some things were already in motion. There was a cover that Chitra had done, which is the current cover of Whispers as published by Crystal Clarity. The cover had a beautiful deep-blue and a beautiful lotus flower and so forth, and that was the cover we put into the catalog for pre-orders.
Now, in the book world you can have a cover, and people sometimes know you’re going to change the cover, but at other times they were adamant about what they wanted, if they had placed an order.
So we were down there, and Swami was signing books, and I brought Swami the printout of the layout of Whispers From Eternity for him to see. But Swami wanted us to use a cover with a painting he’d done back in the day when Tara Mata wasn’t interested in his ideas for Whispers.
So I went over to Swamiji’s, and I forgot to bring the cover, and Swami asked, “Where’s the cover?” “Oh, I left it at the office, I’ll go get it.” “No, no, bring it tomorrow.”
But the next morning, before we went over, Narayan said, “Hey, Skip, you need to see this.” And I looked at what he had, and it was an order from Borders Books for four thousand copies of Whispers From Eternity, but only if we used the original cover that we’d put into the pre-order catalog, and not the published cover that we were telling everyone we were going to use, which was Swami’s painting.
Narayan said, “What are we going to do?” I said, “I’m going to take it over and tell him.” And I could see in his eyes, “Better you than me.” [Laughs]
So we went over, and I said, “I have the cover, Swami.” Because I had the cover that he loved, and he said, “My cover!” And I said, “But Swami…” And he could hear it in my voice, and he said, “What?” And he looked at me deeply. “Well, you need to know, Swami, that we can go forward with this, but we just got an order from Borders Books for thousands of copies, and they want the other cover we did. They don’t want the one that you like, with your painting. They don’t want that.”
He looked at me, and he said, “So much for my ego – crushed again! Give them what they want.”
So we printed that cover. Unfortunately, we made an error – the cover came out black. There are issues about matte finishes versus glossy finishes, and now the book looks matte black, and not the deep, rich blue that we wanted to print. So it’s still not the cover Swami wanted.
But Swami’s point was, if that’s what makes it work, then so much for what I want, just give them what they want. [Laughs]
Vidura used to call Crystal Clarity Swami’s personal karma mill. [Laughs] And I don’t think that’s wrong.
At any rate, I’m glad that these stories are being told, because at least for me, these things have value. But for whatever reason, Swamiji just pulled me in. There were many other stories, but the last part of his life was so significant, when his focus was to get everything out as quickly as possible, all of the books that he had written and had so much energy for, and we were able to facilitate it. We had great printing, and I had a great foundation to build on because Sean and Padma had done it before me, along with Puru, and all the people that had been there had left a great foundation to work from.
Looking at Crystal Clarity from the outside, there could be the thought that it had cost all this money over the years and it didn’t ever seem to work. But we were a church publishing house, and Swami kept it separate for a good reason, you know, so that it wasn’t bound by only religion or whatever, but it would be bound by truth for all souls. That’s why he used the name Crystal Clarity Publishers instead of Ananda Publications, because he wanted it to be broader, and not hindered by anybody’s preconceptions. It’s why he tried different names, like using Donald Waters for certain books and Swami Kriyananda for others.
The way Swami looked at it was to reach out to people where they are, and he had the magnetism to draw the resources we needed in order to do that, and he left us with plenty to work with for the decades after his passing.
I remember him saying when I was at Crystal Clarity in the early nineties, “There can be a center, a work, built around every title. Every one of my books could be a central part of our work. We could build a work around Education for Life.” Which of course we’ve done, but we could build works around these other books, reaching out to people where they are, because that’s how he looked at things, as well as coming from a deep, deep truth. And these are all things I hope that we can impart to others, and that we can bring to fruition in time. Because he had planted his ideas in the ether, as Master said, speaking of his inspiration for world brotherhood communities. And he was adamant that he wanted us to get his books out after he was gone.
I’m not the only one who heard him speak that way. But we all have our roles at different times. But I certainly don’t want to say I was anything special for being around Swami a great deal. I don’t like that thought. In fact, he told me, “Don’t speak that way,” and I want to honor that.
I think there are people that knew him as deeply who maybe didn’t get to spend a day in his physical presence. So, to me, it isn’t special. It’s simply that what’s given to us is for us to give to all. And to whatever degree this is useful, I would like to do that.
Gurudas. Thanks for sharing such deeply inspiring stories about your time with Swamiji. It’s such a blessing to get a true perspective of who Swami was and how he worked tirelessly to help devotees of every ilk. Thanks for being an integral part of the show! Bless you Dear One!!