{"id":1102,"date":"2023-04-23T05:14:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T05:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2023-04-23T05:15:20","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T05:15:20","slug":"conversations-with-ananda-ch-27-nayaswami-haridas-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-ch-27-nayaswami-haridas-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 27, Nayaswami Haridas, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Nayaswamis Haridas and Roma in India, 2014<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Years ago, the folks at Ananda Village<\/strong> put on a Winnie the Pooh play at The Expanding Light. Haridas was a natural choice to play Tigger, the cheerful tiger who bounces as he goes. It\u2019s impossible for those who know Haridas not to associate him with words like \u201cwillingness,\u201d \u201cenergy,\u201d \u201cgood humor,\u201d and \u201chigh spirits.\u201d Haridas and Roma now serve with Ananda in India.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Tell us about your early experiences at Ananda.<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> I was just out of high school, and I was trying to find Ananda but I didn\u2019t realize it. I was hitchhiking around the U.S. and Canada and Mexico, looking for my spiritual family, and I saw Ananda\u2019s address on the back of one of Swami Kriyananda\u2019s first books, Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness<\/em>. I thought, \u201cYogananda \u2013 Ananda \u2013 hmm, there\u2019s some kind of tie-in.\u201d<\/p>\n

My friends and relatives all knew I was looking for my spiritual family, and my brother gave me the address of Ananda Village. He said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you try this?\u201d Because I would regularly return to Manhattan Beach to work in a gas station or some other job for three to six months to make my stake before heading out to try and find Ananda. This continued for two years, and I never could find Ananda until my brother gave me the address.<\/p>\n

This time I really meant business \u2013 I had bought a sleeping bag because I was heading off to the East Coast to get snowed-in and see if I wanted to be an SRF monk. That was my latest campaign. It had been one campaign after another, and everybody would laugh when I came home and they would discover that for the umpteenth time I had failed to find my spiritual family.<\/p>\n

So at the conclusion of those two years I had that little slip of paper with the address of Ananda, and I didn\u2019t know anything other than to go to Nevada City and ask if they had heard of Ananda, just ask someone at a store or something, because I was on my way to the East Coast, and this was just going to be another stop before I took off for Vermont or New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

In my fantasies I would get snowed in and have a Big Think about whether I should join SRF. I didn\u2019t think I could do that, but I didn\u2019t know what else to do, because I\u2019d been frustrated so many times and I hadn\u2019t found anything. I\u2019d spent some time at the SRF shrines, and I\u2019d loved it, but it didn\u2019t feel like it was my own.<\/p>\n

I arrived at the Village on May 25, 1970, and I was totally entranced. I met Swami the first night at the Meditation Retreat, and of course it was an amazing experience. It was love at first sight, recognizing such a magnificent being.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Did Ananda feel like home?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Absolutely. I went into the temple, and it was funny, because I must have had a veil over my consciousness. I didn\u2019t even realize that this was Yogananda\u2019s community. So I entered the temple at the Meditation Retreat, and there was the line of gurus, and I was so shocked I could have fainted. That was the old temple, and six weeks later it burned down.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Did you move to the community right away?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Yes. Jyotish gave me his tipi at the Meditation Retreat.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> So you got to live your dream of being snowed-in.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> That\u2019s exactly right! In fact, one morning I woke up in the tipi, and it was so light I didn\u2019t know what to think. We had sixty-mile-an-hour winds out there on the point where my tipi was, and my whole tipi skin had blown off in the night, and all that was left was the plastic inner liner. So I was waking up all groggy and looking around, and wondering what was going on, and it didn\u2019t dawn on me until I walked outside that my whole tipi had disappeared. Sadhana Devi was making tipi skins at the time, and I humbly asked her to make another, and she did.<\/p>\n

There are so many touching stories of how people came to Ananda, and it\u2019s still happening, where they don\u2019t have any money and they\u2019ll just land there, and the next thing you know they\u2019re members and they\u2019re serving at Master\u2019s Market or The Expanding Light. As we get along in years, we\u2019re like the old dogs, and when the new puppies come in, fresh with enthusiasm, we remember how it was.<\/p>\n

As Yogananda said, if we could keep the \u201choneymoon\u201d phase of our spiritual life alive, we would find God very easily. So whenever these new people come in and see this place with fresh eyes, seeing their enthusiasm sends the energy soaring up our spines and we vow to renew our efforts.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Where did you work when you arrived at the village?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> I worked for Shraddha Ma, the cook at the Meditation Retreat. I was on work study, where we paid $30 a month, if you can imagine, and $15 if you wanted to eat. So for grand total of $45 a month you would work about four and a half hours a day and get your full room and board. I slept on a picnic table the first three weeks in my sleeping bag, and then Jyotish willed me his tipi.<\/p>\n

Membership back then cost $1000, which was quite daunting because I didn\u2019t know how I could come up with that amount of money. But I thought, \u201cWell, okay, now that I know the place exists, that\u2019s everything, and if I need to go make some money, I will.\u201d But it was a very hard decision, because I did not want to leave \u2013 no way! But I was willing, and you know how it is on the spiritual path, as soon as you\u2019re willing, it all comes together.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, Binay was starting a little company with Jaya and some others. Swami had asked Binay to start a cottage business, and I got in on the ground floor. I ended up being his right-hand man in his jewelry company for three years. We had a dozen employees and a sales crew that traveled across the country and sold to big department stores. It seemed that the timing was right for our products, because it didn\u2019t take long for things to take off. Meanwhile, Jyotish had started an incense and oils business, and between the two companies along with the publishing company and meditation retreat, there were those four main employers in the early years.<\/p>\n

I then joined Santosh in a cottage-industry firewood company. It was an amazing job. We had a thousand-cord contract with Southern Pacific Railroad on the forest land that the company owned, and we would work all day, loading the truck and delivering, then coming back and starting over. Our shift would end at one a.m. in the morning.<\/p>\n

We were farming wood on very, very steep and rocky ground \u2013 half the time it was like climbing a fire pole to get the logs, and we could only get three cords a day, working with a twelve-man crew. That\u2019s how difficult it was.<\/p>\n

Binay and I would wake up Santosh at one in the morning and we\u2019d meditate for an hour. And, again, the joy of being young and footloose and free was wonderful. I vividly remember those meditations in our little tents, and they were so deep. Then we\u2019d get up in the morning, all fired up, and go at it.<\/p>\n

At the tail end of the season we were gathering the last little bit of wood by winching the truck up a very steep hill and winching it back down again. It was November and snow was falling. It was a dramatic way to end the season, after we\u2019d been working since early spring.<\/p>\n

I helped with many other cottage industries as they got started \u2013 I remember we had a business selling sprouting kits, and a macram\u00e9 business.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Building a downstairs bedroom for Swamiji, 1977. L-R: Haridas, Kalyani, Ananta, Santosh, Ken Norwood.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q:<\/strong> Was there a strong feeling of community back then?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> It was a little rocky. None of us really wanted to move down to the Village. We\u2019d all been living at the Meditation Retreat where Swami lived at the time, and there was no way we wanted to get involved down at the Village because it was still like the Wild West down there.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> I remember hearing that there were people at the Village whose attachment to Ananda was rather loose.<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> That\u2019s a good way to put it. But Swami asked Jyotish to go down there and start pulling things together, and the next thing we knew Swami began to build his dome on the first segment of the property. So in the fall of 1971 we moved our tipis and funky trailers down and started a monastery. There were seven of us, and we would commute from the monastery over the hill to the Village \u2013 we would walk, because there was no road.<\/p>\n

It was pretty scary moving to the Village, but when the monastery started it was fine because we had that support; we had our meditations and we had the group. But even then, it was challenging. At the retreat we at least had showers, a kitchen, etc., but at the monastery we had nothing \u2013 it was just bare ground, and we really had to tough it out. After a couple of years we finally had outdoor showers, but up to that point it was bucket baths, or else go over the hill to the shower at the Village, where you wondered if you were cleaner before or after because the water was piped down from the pond. But it was fun.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Was there a community-like feeling at the monastery?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> It was very strong. The women had more esprit de corps, and Swami would regularly remind us of that. The monks tended to be fiercely independent. We were always teasing the head monk, Nitai, because he was always trying to drag us off to sadhana or a workday, and we kind of prided ourselves, which was sort of silly, come to think of it, on joking, \u201cHere comes Nitai, let\u2019s run off in the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there was a wonderful feeling. Swami was there, and we were over at his house for satsangs all the time, just the monks and nuns, while he was writing his early books, 14 Steps to Perfect Joy<\/em> (since retitled The Art and Science of Raja Yoga<\/em>) and The Path<\/em>, and he would read to us from the manuscripts. A lot of the time, he was in seclusion and silence, and Jyotish would read for us while Swami would be sitting there. Lots of great memories.<\/p>\n

In our heyday, I think there were three dozen nuns and a couple dozen monks. We had about sixty in all at the monastery, and it comprised about a third of the community. We were very, very active, meditating long hours because we had the free time, and serving during the day. There were hardly any activities outside of serving and meditating, with long meditations on the weekends, and of course Sunday service.<\/p>\n

Sunday service was at the Meditation Retreat, because The Expanding Light didn\u2019t exist. We would jump in any vehicles that were going and ride up together. When Seva arrived, she had her VW, which of course we ran into the ground, or we would hop in the old farm truck, which was called Crummy.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> How would you describe the quality of life in those days?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Well, the quality of life wasn\u2019t anything. I remember when Vidura and Durga put in a telephone, I was very skeptical about whether that was truly simple living. And the first toilet \u2013 it was always a big question, because we didn\u2019t want to get caught up in materialism. I remember when Jyotish put an oil stove in his dome, I would wonder if that was a departure from the simple life. But that was just me. Everybody else perhaps was more mature, but I would question everything.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been raised in an affluent home, and I knew all that stuff was fine, but now that I\u2019d become a monk and was living in a tipi, I thought perhaps I\u2019d be there in that lifestyle for the rest of my life. But after several years, I built a platform for my tipi and I had a Servel propane refrigerator outside. So we began to appreciate that people have to define for themselves what it means to live simply.<\/p>\n

But the quality of life was very spartan, at least for the monks and nuns, and I think for the householders, too, because I had a hand in helping build a number of the houses at the Village, and by the time you\u2019d finish, you would wonder if they would stand up, because we didn\u2019t know what we were doing. We got all our wood from Sage\u2019s mill, just extremely rough lumber, and we\u2019d haul it over and find used windows and doors, so of course there were lots of leaks.<\/p>\n

We had lots of plastic houses \u2013 just a bare rickety frame with clear plastic sheeting stapled to it. One house that was very unique was Tom Sutliffe\u2019s. He made a rammed-earth house, but he unfortunately didn\u2019t seal it, and it was all hand-tamped, unlike the rammed-earth houses we built later, which were hydraulically pressed and so forth. So it disintegrated in the winter, and he left soon after. But it was quite a feat, because that was one of the first real modern houses.<\/p>\n

This was before Arjuna moved up from Southern California with the know-how to build real houses. Also, there was a fellow named Steve Sheridan from Florida, and he was a contractor. There was a lot of excitement in the months before Steve\u2019s arrival, because we didn\u2019t have any people who were skilled. Jaya hadn\u2019t learned the trade. He had built a little cabin for Seva, but he wasn\u2019t a certified builder, as he became later. So as soon as Steve landed at the Meditation Retreat we asked him to build an outhouse, because we wanted to see if this was possible, and he built this magnificent outhouse, and then of course he went on to bigger and better things.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the childlike spirit there was, and it\u2019s still very much a part of Ananda. Someone would come in, and they would happen to know how to do something, and everybody would be in awe, because most of us were artists and philosophers. Jaya was an anthropology major out of Berkeley, which is fine for the city, but we didn\u2019t know a carrot from a broccoli.<\/p>\n

We also had lots of fun spending time with Haanel Cassidy, a seventy-year-old man who had retired after a long career as the chief photographer for the Conde-Nast magazine empire in New York City. Haanel ran our garden, because he knew all about raising organic food. I was one of Haanel\u2019s sidekicks, and I ran his Roto-Tiller in the early years.<\/p>\n

He would take us to town, and I remember one time he wanted to teach us how to eat properly. So off we went to a restaurant, and he showed us where the forks and spoons went.<\/p>\n

For Ananda to have Haanel Cassidy in our midst was a bit of a phenomenon. He was always giving singing lessons, and everything had to be just so, and the tools had to be brought back sparkling clean. He was like a grandpa. He was a dear soul, and we learned a lot from him.<\/p>\n

Haanel\u2019s house at the Meditation Retreat was one of the few real houses up there, and it was just a simple dome. I ended up living there later with Roma and our daughter, Rose. I laugh now, because I remember thinking when it was first built, \u201cNow, is this simple living?\u201d Because I was pretty austere.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> It sounds like a fairly higgly-piggly existence, but at the same time, if it was all holding together, surely you must have seen God\u2019s hand taking a part?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Yes, at all times. On the material plane, a forest fire burned everything down in 1976, and I think it was partly because the buildings we\u2019d built were so bad that they needed to be rebuilt, so we had to start over again. The material plane was pretty crazy. We had two or three washing machines for two hundred people, and one funky shower where snakes or frogs might come out of the drain. It just went on and on, and yet the spiritual energy was very high. I didn\u2019t know anything about these things when I first arrived, \u201cvibrations\u201d and so on, but there was no question that when I walked onto the property I thought, \u201cAaah \u2013 my gosh, something\u2019s going on here.\u201d Because there was no question about it.<\/p>\n

At one point we had the strength to begin to leave our little nest at Ananda and start forming colonies. But, you know, Swami waited, and it didn\u2019t happen until the mid- or late seventies \u2013 so a good ten years after it had all started. He didn\u2019t even give the higher Kriyas for nine or ten years. We didn\u2019t even know they existed, because he wanted us to get ourselves grounded in the basic practices.<\/p>\n

In those years Swami gave all of the talks at Spiritual Renewal Week and all of the Saturday classes and Sunday services. He would perform a fire ceremony in the summer before Sunday service, and he was with us all the time, doing all of the entertainment. It took a while, but then one person would learn to play the guitar and sing a few songs. And Swami always kept us on track, and that was very important, because we didn\u2019t know what \u201cspiritual\u201d was, or what service was, or what meditation really was. We didn\u2019t know anything at all, because we\u2019d come in as completely green, raw troops.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Would you say that Swamiji was holding it all together?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Yes, just as he holds it together now, because he\u2019s irreplaceable. Anyway, after all those early years, people like Jyotish began to go out and teach. I remember when Jyotish finally became a minister and gave his first Sunday services. His first Sunday service was ten minutes long, and most of it was about a bug crawling up the windows of the dome or something. We were very green \u2013 even Jyotish, and he\u2019d been teaching with Swami in the Bay Area before coming to Ananda. I remember his first Spiritual Renewal Week, when Swami was in India and Jyotish had to do the whole thing. These things were a big deal at the time, but it gave us the confidence to put out more energy and try to find more ways we could serve. But all of us were so new, and we were scared, because we didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I remember when we started the center in Sacramento, we had a couple hundred people that Swami attracted to an event that we\u2019d promoted, and I was supposed to introduce Swami, and I was incoherent, that\u2019s how scared I was. I could hardly get out a word. So we had lots of tests that forced us to get to the point where we had the confidence that we could serve in any of these ministerial capacities, not to mention other ways.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> This is all very interesting in light of what\u2019s happening in the community here in Mountain View. It seems that the creation of the Village was \u201cdeep background\u201d for what we\u2019re doing now.<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Oh, yes, absolutely. When you think about it, a hundred years after Christ, his disciples were still the pioneers. So here we are \u2013 Yogananda has barely left, only fifty-plus years ago, and a hundred years from now when they look back at Ananda, our great grand-kids will still be the pioneers. I don\u2019t think we realize that this experience we are having is really, really special, and that we are very fortunate.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Because the spiritual energy of a great movement is still new?<\/p>\n

Haridas:<\/strong> Absolutely, this is still the golden years. When people say \u201cOh, I wish I had been at Ananda in the early years,\u201d I can appreciate that, but really, it\u2019s happening right now. You know, the pipes are still breaking here in the community, and what\u2019s the difference between now and then? The same challenges are being given, inwardly and outwardly. The same fun, the same adventures, the same opportunities. They\u2019re all there. It\u2019s a great spiritual adventure for anyone who wants to take part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago, the folks at Ananda Village put on a Winnie the Pooh play at The Expanding Light. Haridas was a natural choice to play Tigger, the cheerful tiger who bounces as he goes. It\u2019s impossible for those who know Haridas not to associate him with words like \u201cwillingness,\u201d \u201cenergy,\u201d \u201cgood humor,\u201d and \u201chigh spirits.\u201d … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nConversations With Ananda — Ch. 27, Nayaswami Haridas, Part 2 - Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda recalls his early adventures as a young Ananda member in early days.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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