{"id":739,"date":"2022-01-04T15:10:51","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T15:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=739"},"modified":"2022-01-04T15:10:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T15:10:51","slug":"a-place-called-ananda-chapter-24-crystal-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/a-place-called-ananda-chapter-24-crystal-clarity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Place Called Ananda &mdash; Chapter 24: Crystal Clarity"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_742\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-742\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1950s-Swami-Donald-Walters-and-Dr.-Lewis-pclear.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-742\" src=\"http:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1950s-Swami-Donald-Walters-and-Dr.-Lewis-pclear.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"410\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1950s-Swami-Donald-Walters-and-Dr.-Lewis-pclear.png 410w, https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1950s-Swami-Donald-Walters-and-Dr.-Lewis-pclear-300x245.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-742\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Swami Kriyananda with Dr. M. W. Lewis, Paramhansa Yogananda\u2019s first disciple in America and vice president of Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>An almost universal denominator of thinking during the \u2018sixties<\/strong> was a tendency deliberately to cloud one\u2019s ideas in a sort of impressionistic haze. This style of self-expression may have derived from Zen <em>koan<\/em>s, but it fitted admirably a decades-old practice in the arts. I, by contrast, did my best to make my ideas as simple, clear, and \u201crealistic\u201d as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it wasn\u2019t that I subscribed necessarily to realism in the arts. To clarify this apparent anomaly, I should explain that whereas I like impressionism in art, if it is good, I also like realism, if it is good. I am not, however, in favor of <em>pointless<\/em> realism or <em>pointless<\/em> impressionism. A brick building, to take an example, is something with which all of us are familiar. What point is there in painting it just as it is? When it comes to philosophy, however, and even more so to mystical truths, the subject is known to few people. To be as simple, clear, and \u201crealistic\u201d as possible is, in this case, a virtue, assuming it can even be managed. To cloud the subject deliberately merely renders it opaque.<\/p>\n<p>Paramhansa Yogananda did something no one before him, to my knowledge, has ever done, in describing with extraordinary lucidity the state of cosmic consciousness. His poem \u201cSamadhi,\u201d especially, is a masterpiece in spiritual literature. Not for him the vague, \u201cmind-blowing\u201d mysticism of Western legend, as in the apocryphal story of the Himalayan sage who told a Western seeker, \u201cLife, my son, is a rainbow.\u201d (To that remark, in the story, the seeker exclaims, \u201cYou mean, I\u2019ve come all this distance, braved steep mountains, snow, ice, and driving rains only to find that life is nothing but a stupid rainbow?\u201d The \u201csage\u201d replied anxiously, \u201cY-y-you mean, it <em>isn\u2019t<\/em> a rainbow?\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Art, too, ought to convey some kind of interaction, I believe, between the person seeing and the thing seen: some impression the brick building has made upon him; some hope, or even sadness, he may have felt in looking at it. In this way a painting, though two-dimensional, can add not only the illusion of having a third dimension, but can produce an <em>actual<\/em> third dimension \u2013 of consciousness. How well the impression is conveyed demonstrates the artist\u2019s skill. How spiritually <em>valid<\/em> that impression is demonstrates his wisdom. His depth of wisdom determines also his greatness, or his shallowness, as an artist. Even sadness, though usually a negative state, may suggest aspiration toward higher things and be, therefore, spiritually valid. Spiritual validity is what lifts a person toward Self-realization, instead of depressing him and increasing the hold delusion has on his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the criterion of clarity must be determined by one\u2019s <em>feelings,<\/em> and not only by the intellect. If an allegory is wholly literal, like an algebraic equation, it may please the intellect but will hardly satisfy the heart. What satisfies the viewer of a work of art is, above all, that which awakens in him a sense of intuitive soul-recognition.<\/p>\n<p>The clearer the intuition, the clearer the heart\u2019s feeling. And the clearer the feeling, the more strongly it resonates with inspirations of wisdom. The intellect alone, lacking intuition, can never achieve true wisdom. For if reasoning begins with a wrong premise and one lacks sufficient clarity of heart to <em>feel<\/em> that it is wrong, he may devote his life to following a false trail, as modern philosophers have done who devoted their lives to \u201cproving\u201d that life is without meaning. The world, unfortunately, contains many intelligent idiots.<\/p>\n<p>What I sought, during the chaotic \u2018sixties, was intuitive clarity. Many people, I realized, were seeking intuition but not clarity. For me, clarity would come not as a result of laboriously thinking, thinking a thing through to a logical conclusion, but of attuning myself to my Guru, from whose deep, intuitive wisdom flowed ever-fresh revelation. Most of the people with whom I came in contact, because of their lack of clarity, decided it was simplest merely to claim insight, then clothe their utterances in abstract verbiage to stun others to silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLife is a rainbow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, wow! that\u2019s <em>heavy,<\/em> man!\u201d (What did it matter if it meant anything?)<\/p>\n<p>The Zen teachers in Japan had honed to a fine art the technique of clothing deep insights in enigmatic declarations, penetrable only with the keen blade of developed intuition. Yogananda used this technique, also. For example, if he saw that a piece of advice wasn\u2019t getting through to a disciple, he might deliberately make some utterly implausible statement with the only purpose of cutting through that person\u2019s rational defenses. In the ensuing stillness of mind, an opening appeared through which wise counsel could then penetrate.<\/p>\n<p>The goal in this kind of teaching is to quiet the reason and open the mind to intuitive insight. The important ingredient here, however, is intuitive insight itself. Unless the teacher has such insight to convey, silently even, the disciple will receive nothing. If he mistakes vagueness for wisdom, he may be impressed, but he will not be enlightened.<\/p>\n<p>There was a lot of muddy thinking going on in the \u2018sixties. Indeed, lack of clarity was a thread running through the whole tapestry of the Twentieth Century. It manifested itself as pretension in art, in literature, in philosophy, even in religious teaching. I thanked God for the blessing of a true master \u2013 not only for his simple, direct, and deeply insightful words, but for the attunement with his consciousness that I found myself developing, helping me to penetrate the dense ideational fogs around me with the searchlight of clarity.<\/p>\n<p>Years later I gave our Ananda publishing house the name, \u201cCrystal Clarity, Publishers.\u201d Clarity seems simple and obvious enough once it is achieved. Achieving it, however, can be a challenge. Many people undervalue it. And few there are who achieve it.<\/p>\n<p>I had no interest in \u201cblowing people\u2019s minds,\u201d as the expression was in those days. Many people, perhaps for that very reason, accepted with a shrug what I said in lectures and in songs. They wanted something \u201cdeep\u201d \u2013 that is to say, incomprehensible.<\/p>\n<p>Such woolly-mindedness was rampant among those who dreamed of starting \u201cNew Age\u201d communities. Somehow they thought the only thing necessary was a parcel of land, and bands of pot-smoking hippies floating on waves of \u201clove\u201d and wishful dreams. Apart from their lack of clarity, they had no devotion to God, nor dedication to a down-to-earth spiritual life.<\/p>\n<p>For myself, I had been pondering how to create a successful community since I was a boy. I, too, had left God out of my reckoning at first. It was on meeting Paramhansa Yogananda that I discovered the right direction for my dream. God had been the missing ingredient.<\/p>\n<p>There is an allegory from the life of Krishna. Once, when he was a baby, his foster mother Yasoda wanted to tie him to a bedpost so she could be free to get on with her chores. The string was too short, so she fetched another and tied it to the first. Still it was too short! She added more string. No matter how long the string, it remained too short for the job.<\/p>\n<p>At last she understood what she\u2019d been doing. No one can bind the Infinite! Most people try to do so, with dogmas and definitions of truth. They conduct their activities without a thought for God, the Sole Doer. Yasoda, recognizing her error, folded her hands and prayed to the Supreme One in that tiny form, \u201cPlease, dearest Lord, permit me to tie you!\u201d At last she was able to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Communities were being attempted throughout America during the \u2018sixties. Most of them failed \u2013 mainly, I believe, because of that \u201cmissing ingredient\u201d: God.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that devotion to God accomplishes is that it opens the heart to love. It also opens the mind to wisdom. People\u2019s worst problem is that they enclose themselves in little boxes of self-will. Most \u201cNew Age\u201d thinking concerned itself with creating newly \u201cpackaged\u201d ego-games. I wrote a song to address this tendency. (Not a misty reference in it to rainbows!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I had a little box when my Lord made me,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And in that little box I did put a tree \u2013<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">A pony, a teddy bear, a bright green sled:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Everything around me that my eyes did see.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">How can a little box ever hold a sled,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">A pony, and a tree \u2013 puzzles your poor head?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">It can\u2019t, of course! But in a tiny baby\u2019s mind<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The mighty world becomes a little box, instead!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Well, as I grew older my box grew, too:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Held airplanes and ships and a birch canoe,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And schoolbooks, a foreign trip, and college proms,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Good times, and friends aplenty \u2013 yes, and also You!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">But somehow in this box would only fit one school,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">One family, one country, and one social rule:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And certainly one church, for only my way\u2019s right,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And anyone with other ways is just a fool!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Well, so I used to think, but now I must confess<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">At judging fools I wasn\u2019t any great success!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Truth somehow lived without me, though I called it mine:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">What box could hold the world? It\u2019s just \u2013 preposter-ess!<\/p>\n<p>Even my father enjoyed this song!<\/p>\n<p>The important thing is to remain open to the truth, whatever it be. Of special importance to openness are humility and a lack of pretense (especially toward oneself).<\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite compliments, though possibly it was meant differently, was one I received at the Zen temple in San Francisco. This was years after the founding of Ananda, following a ceremony to install Richard Baker as the new <em>roshi,<\/em> or head priest, of the temple. Richard \u2013 Dick, I called him \u2013 was a friend of mine and was, in fact, as you\u2019ll see in the next chapter, the person through whom I acquired the first land at Ananda. The present story concerns a conversation I had with a young woman outside. We\u2019d been talking several minutes when she asked me my name. I told her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKriyananda!\u201d she cried in astonishment. \u201cBut \u2013 you\u2019re famous!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, maybe,\u201d I replied. \u201cBut why the \u2018but\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, all the famous people I\u2019ve known seem important!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hoped she meant \u201c<em>self<\/em>-important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Buddhists claim not to believe in God. Generally, however, they do believe in openness, and humility, and compassion. With these attitudes, whatever God there be must surely be pleased, as He is with sincere devotion (I think even more so with devotion, however, since love for Him sublimates the ego altogether). The important thing, for the seeker, is that his or her <em>attitude<\/em> be right.<\/p>\n<p>I once visited the Zen center on Page Street, in San Francisco. The sincerity of the residents was obvious. True, they lacked that ingredient of faith in God, but they were sincerely committed to an ancient truth, and I could see that, as a group, they were thriving.<\/p>\n<p>I was astonished, however, to see them all so solemn. Why, I wondered? Could it be due to their concentration on <em>\u201chara,\u201d<\/em> as that center in the body is known, located in or near one of the lower chakras? Such a downward direction of concentration would naturally have a depressing effect on a person\u2019s consciousness. To Zen students, yoga practice, with its primary focus on the upper chakras, separates one from the \u201cconcrete\u201d realities of life. Attunement with the lighter aspects of truth, however, gives power over even the concrete ones. For matter is itself only a condensation of light and energy.<\/p>\n<p>Love is the first ingredient in a community\u2019s success. Can there be spiritual love, however, without joy? Without both love and joy, surely judgment and intolerance must enter the scene, sooner or later. Judgment, whether of others or oneself, is discouraging, and keeps one from rising in inner freedom.<\/p>\n<p>Dick Baker explained to me the Zen approach to action. He said one shouldn\u2019t do anything until one has mentally perfected what one intends to do. I disagreed with him. Perfection is achieved first in the mind, true, but it requires doing one\u2019s best, also, with the tools at hand, and thereby clarifying one\u2019s understanding.<\/p>\n<p>A foremost disciple of Yogananda, Yogacharya Oliver Black in Michigan, would occasionally voice criticism of Ananda for its shoe-string life-style \u2013 a valid comment, during our \u201ctepee city\u201d beginnings. \u201cDo they have to live in poverty?\u201d he asked. He himself was a rich man; I was not. At Ananda, we did what we could, then determinedly kept growing from there. Yogacharya Oliver, on the other hand, never succeeded in creating a community, though he tried. A few months before his death he wrote, complimenting me on Ananda\u2019s success. He then asked my advice on how to create a community himself. By this time he was in his nineties. I admired him for still dreaming, but what chance had he, at that late stage in his life, to fulfill his dream?<\/p>\n<p>To return to Buddhism, I have met joyful Buddhist monks. They expressed love, also. I think their belief in a higher consciousness must at least resemble another person\u2019s belief in God. For in their belief system they open themselves to higher guidance, and to the infinite wisdom and love that are associated with God. I still say, however, as Brother Bhaktananda (a fellow disciple) has declared: \u201cDevotion is the <em>only<\/em> thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today, humanity is trying to redefine a universe stripped by science of all traditional definitions. It is a time when people need a bridge to new ways of thinking and looking at things. People in the \u201cNew Age\u201d movements have perceived this need intuitively. They err only in imagining they can <em>create<\/em> a New Age. The truth is, whether people like it or not, we <em>already are<\/em> in a new age! If nothing else, we\u2019ve been pushed into it by science. The fundamentals of a new age lie in the very discovery by physics that matter is not the solid substance it was once imagined to be: It is energy.<\/p>\n<p>Swami Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda\u2019s guru, explained that this insight has come because new waves of spiritual energy are entering the earth\u2019s atmosphere at this time from the cosmos, and making people more sensitively aware of higher levels of consciousness, and of subtler levels of reality. There occur cyclically, Sri Yukteswar said, vast movements within the galaxy that affect human enlightenment. Our planet is on the rise, now, toward a higher state of awareness.<\/p>\n<p>This book is not the place for a discussion of this teaching. I\u2019ve treated the subject at some length in other books. A brief treatment of it is contained also in <em>Autobiography of a Yogi.<\/em> The point here is that the human will is incapable of <em>creating<\/em> a new age. A truth, as Yogananda said, can only be perceived. The essence of the new age, which we\u2019ve already entered, is a greater awareness of energy as the underlying reality of the material world. This awareness of energy affects every aspect of our lives. It will produce greater flexibility of thought, and ever-greater clarity. Rigid definitions, whether in religion, morality, art, or even the standards of social comportment are being undermined. They will not, however, be destroyed. What people need is to <em>experience<\/em> values of all kinds in a new way. The vagueness of hippie and \u201cNew Age\u201d thinking in general was only a premonition of another, much greater clarity to come.<\/p>\n<p>I myself sought clarity, not refuge in beguiling vagueness. One result of my commitment to clarity was an invitation by a Christian radio station, KFAX, in San Francisco, to give a half-hour show weekly in order (as the station manager put it) to attract the younger generation, many of whom were no longer listening to their programs. The show continued for more than five years. Not long after my first radio show in San Francisco, I also began one in Sacramento. Later, another radio station scheduled me in Pasadena. At this time, I was forced to sacrifice all three programs to concentrate on Ananda.<\/p>\n<p>In search of clarity of another kind, I used also to travel south to Ben Lomond, near Santa Cruz, California, where a group called Bridge Mountain held programs that were slanted differently from what I was accustomed to. They involved students rather than only lecturing to them. I was intrigued, and wanted to draw from what they did any benefits I could for my own teaching.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, another world opened to me: the self-help or \u201cself-actualization\u201d movement. Students in the classes would make surrealistic drawings supposed to express their inner fears, anxieties, and motivations. I had no fears that I was aware of, but the leaders claimed that everyone harbors such psychological complexes.<\/p>\n<p>I remember telling a member of the staff, Pat Kutzner \u2013 who for a time was my secretary, after Bridge Mountain closed \u2013 that I\u2019d never known my parents to have a falling out. \u201cThat can only mean,\u201d she replied dismissively, \u201cthat one of them is suppressing a lot of frustration!\u201d Well, I\u2019d seen no evidence that this was so. Nor had anyone I\u2019d ever known. My father\u2019s droll explanation for the harmony between them was to say, \u201cWhen my wife and I were first married, I told her I would make all the important decisions in our marriage. Since then,\u201d he concluded with a grin, \u201cthere haven\u2019t been any important decisions to make!\u201d None so important, anyway, as to come between them.<\/p>\n<p>I went along with what was taught at Bridge Mountain, however, because it seemed a good place to learn an aspect of what was in vogue those days.<\/p>\n<p>That was also the time of \u201cPrimal Scream\u201d therapy, and other methods of venting suppressed frustrations: \u201cletting it all hang out,\u201d as the expression was, that people might regain the uncomplicated freedom of their primordial nature. One of these methods was to scream like a demented animal. Those were also the days when people met for \u201chonest confrontation.\u201d They\u2019d pair off, face each other, and announce \u201chonestly\u201d just what bothered them about one another. It was all meant to relieve them of inner tensions. What it really did, of course, was <em>induce<\/em> tension. I never saw people purged of animosity by these treatments.<\/p>\n<p>At Bridge Mountain we threw wads of mud at a board to vent our anger, thereby, supposedly, releasing it from the subconscious. I tried to join in the fun, though in fact I couldn\u2019t think of anything to vent, not even anger against SRF. It seemed to me this approach was all wrong. I wanted, however, to learn what people were thinking and doing to improve themselves. The leaders at Bridge Mountain made kindly excuses for me. No doubt, they seemed to feel, I\u2019d dig up something from my subconscious eventually, and discover the boiling cauldron I\u2019d been suppressing. For my part, I thought I might learn a few ideas for conducting classes involving students instead of only lecturing to them. Eventually, I realized that in fact I was involving them already, in a subtler way. What I did, and still do, was tune in to them spiritually, and commune in my spirit with their spirits. People have often come to me after a lecture and thanked me for clarifying a problem they\u2019ve been having. I\u2019ve never discouraged others, however, from seeking ways to involve students in the learning process. Basically, Bridge Mountain\u2019s idea in doing so seemed good to me, even though I still consider the emphasis on releasing subconscious repressions a mistake, generally speaking. All it does, according to my observation, is <em>affirm<\/em> one\u2019s own negative tendencies.<\/p>\n<p>In 1966 another opportunity came my way. I was invited to teach a cultural program for the Peace Corps. A hundred young men were to go to India; they needed preparation for the experience. I was delighted at the thought of helping them to become cultural ambassadors. I myself had long contemplated the need for such a program.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, the young men themselves were mostly interested in weekend binges at the local bars. India, to them, held the prospect only of being a rousing adventure. After some time, they complained that what they wanted from the cultural program was information on such efficient matters as five-year plans \u2013 information they would find of minimal use in the Indian villages. Since this was their desire, however, I scouted around for people who could give them what they wanted. It was not easy for me, for I\u2019d put my heart into helping them to become cultural bridges. I let them know, however, that if any of them wanted what I had sought to share, they could come to my room after hours and we\u2019d chat together. Gratifyingly, about twenty-five of them came regularly. I heard from some of them, later, that those gatherings had helped them really to appreciate their Indian assignment.<\/p>\n<p>An advantage accrued to me from this assignment: The pay was good. All of it went toward the work I was slowly developing. First, I printed books to make what I was attempting better known. Then I bought land for Ananda.<\/p>\n<p>The books I published first were a small book of aphorisms, <em>Yours \u2013 the Universe!,<\/em> and <em>Yoga Postures for Self-Awareness.<\/em> I also printed a small booklet, mostly as a means of earning money for Ananda, <em>The Book of Bhrigu,<\/em> which I\u2019d written years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out, Ananda\u2019s time was rapidly approaching.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An almost universal denominator of thinking during the \u2018sixties was a tendency deliberately to cloud one\u2019s ideas in a sort of impressionistic haze. This style of self-expression may have derived from Zen koans, but it fitted admirably a decades-old practice in the arts. I, by contrast, did my best to make my ideas as simple, &#8230; <a title=\"A Place Called Ananda &mdash; Chapter 24: Crystal Clarity\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/a-place-called-ananda-chapter-24-crystal-clarity\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about A Place Called Ananda &mdash; Chapter 24: Crystal Clarity\">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-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Place Called Ananda &mdash; Chapter 24: Crystal Clarity - Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda recalls the spiritual ferment and New Age movements of the 1960s.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/a-place-called-ananda-chapter-24-crystal-clarity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Place Called Ananda &mdash; 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