{"id":784,"date":"2022-02-05T16:42:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T16:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=784"},"modified":"2022-02-05T16:42:16","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T16:42:16","slug":"a-place-called-ananda-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/a-place-called-ananda-conclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Place Called Ananda — Conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
An early view of The Expanding Light, the public retreat at Ananda Village. guests gather after meditation and before breakfast to pray before doing Paramhansa Yogananda\u2019s energization exercises.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everything in life necessitates cooperation.<\/strong> Breathing itself is an act of cooperation with Nature. Great works of genius require the work of many: those who make the tools used in creativity; a general foundation of awareness from which the individual can soar; the inspiration of others\u2019 thoughts; an appreciative audience. Would Leonardo have produced his masterpieces had no one been interested in his work? Would Jesus Christ, self-complete and perfect, have given outer expression to his wisdom had no one cared to hear him? Jesus himself said, \u201cCast not your pearls before swine.\u201d A need must exist before it can be addressed. Cooperation of many kinds is essential to life itself. Without it, there would be only one hand flapping, but no answering clap.<\/p>\n

Cooperation within intentional communities can lead to madness, however, if it isn\u2019t based on a desire to cooperate with wisdom, at least to the extent that its members understand the concept.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kriya Yoga initiation in the Temple of Leaves, Ananda Village. Click image for larger view.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have tried in these pages to present the principles out of which Ananda grew and has flourished. I admit that my first expectation was that I\u2019d tell more of Ananda\u2019s actual story: to bring it up to date with anecdotes, and to explain the lessons we learned from our tests, adventures, and interesting or amusing episodes. Fortunately, these events were mostly a proving ground for the teachings of our Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda. I say therefore that, apart from the blessing he bestowed on the concept itself, he is, in fact, the patron saint of modern communities. His frequent intervention in times of need, though subtle, has been repeatedly a lifesaver for us. Instead of writing the anecdotes that make up Ananda\u2019s history, what I have done is leave you \u2013 poor reader! \u2013 stranded on a beach. The launching of the ship, Ananda, to which I thought I was inviting you, has been delayed. By 1970, the point to which this story has taken us, the ship was still unfinished. Many events followed, some of them dramatic. In fact, I wonder whether the story can ever be told fully.<\/p>\n

In March of the year 1970, I received a second threat of foreclosure, this one from the trustees for Ananda farm. (On the last possible day I was able to send the check in the mail!) One month later, on the fourth of July (Independence Day, of all dates!), our temple burned down. This proved in fact to be a blessing, for rebuilding it provided a means for uniting the community in a common purpose.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ananda members (all of them!) with Swami Kriyananda in front of the publications building. The roof required a miracle for its successful construction.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Again and again, miracles saved us \u2013 like the day our carpenters, constructing the publications building (renamed since then, \u201cHansa Mandir\u201d), were saved from disaster. The roof had an unusual design, which the men couldn\u2019t carry to completion. Extensive research hadn\u2019t provided a solution for its construction. The men were literally leaving the job when a car drove up, and a man stepped out of it. \u201cI\u2019ve come from Santa Barbara today \u2013 five hundred miles!\u201d he announced. \u201cMy purpose in coming was to ask if there\u2019s anything I can do to help you.\u201d Hope glimmered faintly. The men explained their predicament, whereupon the visitor exclaimed, \u201cWhy, I\u2019m probably the only builder in California who knows just the technique you need for this job. It\u2019s something I learned in Canada, brought over from the Orient.\u201d With this help, the roof was completed.<\/p>\n

We were blessed with tests also \u2013 like the forest fire I\u2019ve mentioned already \u2013 and the pluck that helped us persist in the face of seeming defeat: Jyotish turning to his wife Devi, who ten days earlier had given birth to their only child, and saying, \u201cWell, at least this fire solves the problem we\u2019ve been having with leaks!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\u201cDowntown Ananda,\u201d late 1980s during a Festival of the Joyful Arts. At right, members of the children\u2019s horse club enjoy a leisurely ride. Click to expand image.
\n<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could go on and on. Indeed, I expected I\u2019d do so: What a lot remains to be told! And I\u2019d have enjoyed the telling of it. Such a book, however, might easily run to more than a thousand pages: far too long, and counter-productive to its real purpose. Indeed, the story has already been told by the explanations I\u2019ve given of the principles on which Ananda was founded. Those principles tell who we are, what Ananda is, and why the whole experiment has turned out so successfully. I hope I\u2019ve shown convincingly why my belief in cooperative communities is very deep. To me, they are an essential solution to the problems of civilization at this stage of history. Small, clearly thought-out, consciously lived experiments are needed as a way of working out the challenge before humanity: how to preserve human values under the onslaught of technology. I\u2019ve explained basic attitudes without which, I think, no community can succeed. What would follow the telling would only be details. A plethora of them might cause the reader to lose sight of more important points.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ananda members do Yogananda\u2019s energization exercises at the beautiful American River Parkway in Sacramento before a Joyathon fundraiser for the Living Wisdom K-8 School at Ananda Village. (They raised $5,000.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I built Ananda on principles I\u2019d learned through meditating on the life of Paramhansa Yogananda; after years of working with people, as head of the monks in Self-Realization Fellowship, and as the director of SRF center activities throughout the world; as the victim of ongoing attempts to suppress, and then ruin me; and as a consequence of having to deal with people\u2019s indifference to interests other than their own. One of the things I learned was the relative importance of cheerful, willing cooperation compared to blind obedience.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ananda minister Ram Smith sings a song by Swami Kriyananda.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At Ananda, I delegated responsibility to others as much as I could. I did so partly because it takes the energy of many people to create a work of which the goal is to benefit people. Partly, too, I did so because I recognized that others were blessed with skills in which I myself was lacking. I always took care to protect, and also to further, principles of practical spirituality in keeping with my Guru\u2019s advice to me: \u201cBe practical in your idealism.\u201d I contributed my own energy \u2013 often to the limit of my strength \u2013 while never forgetting that we are all only small cogs on life\u2019s very large wheel. Community leadership requires team effort. Success is not a one-man show.<\/p>\n

I tried, therefore, to channel energy and inspiration through<\/em> others, in cooperation with them, and never stood over them as \u201cthe manager,\u201d nor intruded on their free will. Instead, I tried to win them by kindly reason, and by my own sincere commitment to truth no matter who utters it.<\/p>\n

At this point in my story, then, practicing as ever the principle of delegating authority, I leave to my companions in our thirty-four-year odyssey the task of telling what remains \u2013 the bulk, indeed \u2013 of this saga! Each of them will tell it differently, and will give his or her perspective. And so they ought to do, for it is their story and Ananda\u2019s quite as much as it is mine. The story will be the richer because I didn\u2019t write all of it myself.<\/p>\n

There are a few points I\u2019d like to make here, at the end of my account: a few final hammer taps, so to speak, to make sure the nails are set as tightly as possible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Choir members sing the Oratorio \u201cChrist Lives\u201d composed by Swami Kriyananda.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of those \u201cnails\u201d is a question that several readers, I suspect, will have asked: Is it necessary for a community like Ananda to be spiritual? Much thought has been devoted in modern times to finding solutions that depend entirely on human effort, without God \u2013 and without even such high ideals as love, happiness, and voluntary (as opposed to enforced) cooperation. I\u2019ve written unabashedly of my own ideal: to live wholeheartedly for God. I fully realize that to say so is frowned upon in today\u2019s society. Even granting that Ananda has worked well, is there a hope that a more \u201cnormal\u201d community can succeed?<\/p>\n

No; frankly, I see no such hope. The reason is perfectly simple: A so-called \u201cnormal\u201d life is not<\/em> really normal at all: It is ab<\/em>normal! If people live selfishly, what hope have they of clambering out of their habit-worn mental ruts? Attempts have been made, and the results always have been disappointing.<\/p>\n

I hope you won\u2019t mind if I have a little fun here? I have a counter-question to offer: Is it necessary for a community to be alive?<\/em> Is it necessary for a body to have a head, and for that head to hold brains? Is it necessary for human beings to be conscious?<\/em> Modern communist philosophy exalts muscle over brain, and the \u201cproletariat\u201d over a so-called \u201caristocratic elite.\u201d In effect, what it encourages is stupidity with the purpose of gaining mass control by a false \u201celite\u201d of self-centered, cloddish bullies. Tara Mata\u2019s concept of crowd management was essentially no different from that of Marx, Engel, and Lenin. Cooperative communities can succeed only if greater, not less, awareness is encouraged. The concept of God symbolizes, if nothing else, the need of every human being to aspire to the highest potential he can imagine for himself.<\/p>\n

What do people think it means<\/em> to be spiritual? Do they imagine it to be a matter of telling long strings of beads and mumbling incessant prayers? What kind of tasteless pudding do they think the masters have invited mankind to ingest? Do people want ideals without challenges? or safe platitudes that merely fall flat, like an eggless souffl, the wisdom sucked out of them for fear of giving offense? Do they want popular acclaim without integrity, and principles so bland that no one even notices they exist? If you want to \u201cpeople\u201d such a wasteland with cactuses, go to your Nietzsches, your Sartres, your biologists who claim life is meaningless because they\u2019ve worked out a handful of mere evolutionary mechanisms! An intentional community with no higher goal than economic security is not what I\u2019ve proposed in these pages. Nor is it what I have struggled, suffered, and even risked my life to achieve. My dream at fifteen remains unchanged after sixty years. I am no longer young, but in spirit I am younger than ever, secure in a way that I see leads to inner freedom, happiness, inspiration, and the richest possible sense of meaning. If your own quest is for something else, then ignore this book. Warn your friends not to read it. Pretended solutions, however, that skirt the question of spirituality are sodas without the fizz; lemonades without the lemon; books without a light for reading.<\/p>\n

Yes, I believe that if a community would find meaning in life, and not a sleeping pill slugged down with a glass of water, people have no choice but to be spiritual! The only thing I concede \u2013 in fact, insist upon \u2013 is that spirituality not be lumped with religiosity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Man is a spiritual being. Of this I am certain. If he rejects the higher reality of his being, which would inspire him to highest achievements, he is a walking, eating corpse, incapable of bringing life to this planet, and able only to procreate other corpses like himself.<\/p>\n

One of the most important aspects of Ananda, and a fitting note on which to close this book, is music. I have noticed, as have many Ananda members, that those who have become involved in our music, played it, sung it in our choirs, listened to it at home and at work, have understood in their hearts<\/em> what Ananda is all about. To convey this understanding by words alone would be impossible.<\/p>\n

Man consists essentially of sound vibrations condensed from the music of Creation. Without music, life itself would cease to be. Communities can succeed only if every member seeks his own center, not in outer consensus, but in himself. It is from this center that he should reach out to touch others. From within, finally, and in attunement with the inner Song of Creation, comes the harmony that enables people to work together in a spirit of true<\/em> harmony.<\/p>\n

Therefore Yogananda said, \u201cSeclusion is the price of greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n

We must listen to the voice of God in our souls. Inner communion with Him will put us in touch with our conscience. To walk with others in lock-step togetherness is to become at last a mere lemming, plunging to destruction because one has failed to develop awareness, lives oblivious to present realities, and ends in the gray oblivion of death. To stride through life in company with others, singing joyfully, is to become the hero, or heroine, that God has ever intended us to be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything in life necessitates cooperation. Breathing itself is an act of cooperation with Nature. Great works of genius require the work of many: those who make the tools used in creativity; a general foundation of awareness from which the individual can soar; the inspiration of others\u2019 thoughts; an appreciative audience. Would Leonardo have produced his … 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-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Place Called Ananda — Conclusion - Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda reflects on the founding of the Ananda communities.\" \/>\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-conclusion\/\" \/>\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 — 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