When I started to practice Kriya Yoga a couple of years ago, it was with a backdrop of the Autobiography of a Yogi and its miracles of Kriya highlighted in it: levitating, fighting tigers, materializing in two bodies, surviving without food and so on. My expectations – if not the same but on similar lines – touched the sky: I … Read More
The Year of “My Heart Remembers Swami Kriyananda”
This year, for us, can be most aptly described as the year of “My Heart Remembers Swami Kriyananda.” When Swamiji asked me, towards the end of his life, to write a book about my time with him, it felt like a “mission impossible.” But he had planted a seed in my consciousness, and sooner or later it had to bear … Read More
Happiness Camp: Paramhansa Yoganandaji’s Teachings for Children
Getting up in the morning, albeit generally unwillingly, the little ones prepare for attending school. There they spend a regular tiring day, filling themselves up with the syllabus and of course on most days having fun with friends too. On reaching home they have meals, study, play and another day has ended. Off to bed they go. But then summer … Read More
One United Ray
The glue that holds Ananda together is one of friendship. Our entire worldwide work has no legal cohesion. We are not one legal entity, but many. Swami Kriyananda specifically wanted the communities to be run autonomously from one another. In keeping with this individualistic expression of Ananda, especially in each country, what, apart from the teachings themselves, will unite the … Read More
Making Our Name a Synonym for Goodness
Apart from a burning desire to find God, a common theme that animated the lives of Paramhansa Yogananda and his disciple Swami Kriyananda was an intense zeal to serve God and spread afar the message of Self-Realization. Master and Swamiji were also united in their energetic expectation that we, as disciples, have that same zeal toward this God-ordained mission. In … Read More
Ananda Seva – Practical Suggestions
Within our path of Kriya Yoga, we give great emphasis to balancing our lives: on the one side with the practice of meditation, deepening our inner life; on the other side, by doing service, spiritualizing our outward life. We have many teachings and materials on how to develop our inner life, but what does it mean to serve within our … Read More
One Picture and a Thousand Words
There is an old saying: “One picture is worth a thousand words.” This blog tells the story of one well-known picture of Swami Kriyananda—that photo is also worth using a thousand words. As a photographer of many years, I would look at photos of Paramhansa Yogananda and wonder: “What was going on in the room during that photo? Why does … Read More