One Devotee's Story 
by George (Rambhakta) Beinhorn
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I joined Self-Realization Fellowship nearly thirty-four years ago, in August, 1967. I took Kriya Yoga initiation in 1969 at the SRF headquarters in Los Angeles, and until 1970, I attended services and meditations at the SRF churches in Fullerton, Redondo Beach, and Hollywood. I was a member of the Lay Disciples group during the latter part of that period, and I served briefly as a part-time volunteer gardener and second service leader at the SRF church in Redondo Beach.
I moved to northern California in 1970. I had attended Stanford from 1959 to 1966, and I loved the Bay Area for its natural surroundings and relaxed atmosphere. I settled into an apartment in Mill Valley and kept up my association with SRF, tithing regularly and performing small service projects, such as translating letters from SRF's members in Germany. I also occasionally attended services at the Richmond and Los Gatos SRF centers.
The SRF headquarters were not yet called "Mother Center" at the time. When disciples wrote to Mt. Washington, they were answered by a men's or women's correspondent. I treasured the many letters I received from Brother Bhaktananda, but when the letters began to be signed "Mother Center," my interest waned. It was not only the form of the letter that had changed, but the contents, which seemed to be cut from a mold, whereas Brother Bhaktananda's letters had been rich with inspiration and individual advice. "Learn to relax and enjoy the spiritual path," he wrote, responding to my overly desperate style of prayer. And, in response to my question about how to develop more devotion, he wrote inspiringly, "Fathomless depths of love for God lie hidden in the human heart, waiting to be uncovered by the Guru's liberating discipline."
Lacking regular contact with SRF friends and ministers, I had already begun to feel distanced from SRF, and the increasingly impersonal nature of my contacts with the organization left me cold. As I gradually lost interest in SRF, no one in the organization thought to inquire about my spiritual welfare. Was I doing all right? Was I in good health? Did I need help getting to the nearest center to attend services? A flurry of increasingly urgent letters from the "Mother Center" only exhorted me to keep up my tithes.
Meanwhile, my inner life was anything but dormant. I meditated twice daily with unwavering consistency, and I increasingly felt Paramhansa Yogananda's guidance and inspiration in my life. Not for a moment did I feel that by leaving the organization he had founded, I had offended him, or that I had been expelled from his spiritual family. On the weekends, I regularly spent the entire day walking in nature and praying to Yogananda while I pursued my hobby of photography. Some of the pictures I took during those walks remain among my most treasured.
With Brother Bhaktananda's encouragement, I had taken up running for exercise. ("Master considered running an ideal exercise," Brother Bhaktananda wrote in a letter. "The monks are encouraged to run daily.") Learning of the famed Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco, I entered and had a wonderful time. After the race, I picked up a copy of Runner's World magazine. To make a long story short, I began doing volunteer work for Runner's World, translating magazine articles and taking pictures. One evening, at a party at the home of a famous woman ultramarathoner, the publisher offered me a job. I immediately moved to Mountain View, on the San Francisco peninsula, and began working at Runner's World as an assistant editor and staff photographer.
At the time, there was a small new-age bookstore in Palo Alto that was run by a Sufi group. Browsing there on a Saturday evening in 1974, I picked up a copy of Swami Kriyananda's book, Cooperative Communities—How to Start Them, and Why. I had noticed Kriyananda's picture in old copies of Self-Realization magazine. Nearly always, the pictures showed him in far-flung lands, usually India or Southeast Asia. I was intensely curious to know what this former SRF traveling teacher was doing, founding a community. I found the book deeply, unexpectedly inspiring. After practicing Paramhansa Yogananda's path in relative isolation for years, the idea of a community of fellow disciples was very attractive.
While reading the book, I had absolutely no doubt that Swami Kriyananda was no longer connected with SRF. Nor, when I visited the community for the first time in September 1974, or at any time thereafter, did anyone at Ananda ever make the slightest attempt to trick me into thinking that Ananda was connected with SRF. I say this in indignant refutation of SRF's claims to the contrary. Far from advertising itself as connected with SRF, Ananda's residents made it clear to me that, even if they had wanted to pass themselves off as connected with SRF, they could not possibly have done so, since SRF made a special point of publicly and aggressively attacking Ananda and Kriyananda.
Paramhansa Yogananda's dream of Spiritual Communities
Swami Kriyananda had founded Ananda as the fulfillment of one of the fourteen points that Paramhansa Yogananda listed in the first edition of Autobiography of a Yogi as main elements of his world mission: "To spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples, and to aid in establishing, in many countries, self-sustaining world brotherhood colonies for plain living and high thinking." All references to the "world brotherhood colony" idea were removed by SRF from editions of Autobiography of a Yogi published after the Master's death. While still a monk in SRF, Swami Kriyananda asked Daya Mata about this idea, and she replied, "Frankly, I'm not interested." SRF's official position is that the time is not yet ripe for this colony idea. Yet when Paramhansa Yogananda spoke about the idea, it was with great urgency, as Swami Kriyananda reports in his book, Cooperative Communities—How to Start Them, and Why:
In his last years on earth, the great teacher Paramhansa Yogananda repeatedly and urgently spoke of a plan that he said was destined to become a basic social pattern for the new age: the formation of "world brotherhood colonies," as he called them. In almost every public lecture, no matter what his announced subject, he would digress to urge people to act upon his proposal.
"The day will come," he predicted, "when this idea will spread through the world like wildfire. Gather together, those of you who share high ideals. Pool your resources. Buy land in the country. A simple life will bring you inner freedom. Harmony with nature will give you a happiness known to few city dwellers. In the company of other truth seekers it will be easier for you to meditate and to think of God."
"What is the need for all the luxury with which people surround themselves? Most of what they have they are paying for on the installment plan. Their debts are a source of unending worry to them. Even people whose luxuries have been paid for are not free. Attachment makes them slaves. They consider themselves freer for their possessions, and don't see how their possessions in turn have possessed them!"
Yogananda stressed the joys of simple, natural living and God thinking a way of life that, he said, would bring people "happiness and freedom." But his message went beyond simply presenting people with an attractive idea. There was also urgency in his plea.
"The time is short," he repeatedly told his audiences. "You have no idea of the sufferings that await mankind. In addition to wars there will be a depression the like of which has not been known in a very long time. Money will not be worth the paper it is printed on. Millions will die."
On one occasion he cried: "You don't know what a terrible cataclysm is coming!"
To place reliance upon prophetic utterances may strike some people as superstitious. Even these people, however, may be interested to note that, of persons reputed to have prophetic vision, every single one has predicted terrible sufferings for humanity in the years to come.
During my initial visits, and later, during my years of residence at Ananda Village, it was natural for us to talk about SRF, if only because SRF behaved so intolerantly towards us. The stories of SRF's behavior were legion. Far from being covered up by the community's leaders, they were circulated openly: how SRF refused to sell us books for sale at Ananda's guest retreat. How an SRF monastic had criticized Kriyananda scathingly to a group of visiting Ananda members at SRF's guest retreat in Encinitas. How another monk had called Swami Kriyananda "the Anti-Christ." How SRF accused Swami Kriyananda of pretending to be a "guru" and distorting Yogananda's teachings. These stories evoked howls of laughter, because we all knew them to be patently untrue. "Why don't they even bother to visit us?" we wondered, amazed by SRF's lack of concern for the truth of their claims.
Kriyananda never remotely claimed to be a guru, nor did he ever expect us to treat him like one. He was, quite simply, a spiritual friend and, if we requested it, a willing mentor. I recall, during my first days as a resident at Ananda, once telling Swami Kriyananda, "I believe you're my spiritual teacher." He was pulling on his boots in the vestibule of the publications building. Standing, he said dismissively, "Well, I'm not a perfected being."
Regardless of SRF's official attitudes, I was deeply conscious of the priceless benefits I had gained from its teachers, and I was determined to correct any misunderstandings about the organization, as I knew it, that I might encounter among my new friends at Ananda. On deciding to move to the Ananda community, I therefore wrote a letter to Daya Mata in which I promised always to work for harmony between the two organizations. I received a reply from Daya Mata's secretary, in which she said that Daya Mata wished me well in my new life.
I have never broken that pledge. Nor have I found it necessary to remonstrate with Ananda members for portraying SRF inaccurately. While Ananda has been forced to defend itself against SRF's lawsuit, I have sensed an underlying respect at Ananda for SRF's leaders as fellow disciples of our Guru. When Brother Anandamoy violently criticized Swami Kriyananda to a group of Ananda members, for example, Swami Kriyananda wrote him a letter in which he said (I am paraphrasing): "I thank you for your criticisms, because they impel me to bless you even more than ever." As for mocking the SRF organization, the truth is, SRF's own statements and behavior made invention superfluous, even if we had been so inclined.
________________Respect for SRF
I had joined SRF in 1967. Like countless others in the 1960s, I had sought meaning through drugs and had been sadly disappointed—though the fire of my search for understanding burned as brightly as ever. I was consumed with zeal to experience God, and in my search, SRF served me admirably. I found its ministers never less than inspiring. Week after week, I attended services at the SRF churches in a mood of ferocious longing for God, and my pressing questions would invariably be answered in the sermon. My longing was fed by the ministers' transparent spirituality.
This was true of each SRF gathering I ever attended. I can't think of a single exception. I recall, for example, sitting transfixed in the audience at a talk by Brother Anandamoy, during an SRF annual convocation. Each movement of his hands, each phrase, each look suggested divinity. I knew with intuitive certainty that he was inspired by God.
The same was true of my rare encounters with Daya Mata. I never spoke privately with her, nor did I ever receive her verbal guidance, yet she always conveyed the Master's inspiration. I've shared two stories of Daya Mata on my Web site; please see: http://www.oceansofenergy.com/dayamata.htm.
To put it in a nutshell, I looked to the SRF senior ministers quite literally as channels for divine help, and they never let me down. But, as I was to discover later, the capacity to serve as a channel for the Guru does not preclude fallibility.
Far from leaving me bereft, the realization that even saints can make mistakes, eventually inspired me. I was at first disappointed to find that SRF's leaders, with Daya Mata and Brother Anandamoy in their forefront, could lie about Swami Kriyananda and Ananda and, for no good reason that I could ever fathom, try relentlessly to destroy them. But when I began to realize the deeper implications of the fallibility of the saints, I was, as I say, deeply inspired. An angry God, a vengeful God, would surely have cast them down in damnation. The saints—lie? Defame? Manifest contractive, cold-hearted attitudes based on ruthless organizational pettiness and jealousy? Trying to reconcile the two sides of SRF that I had experienced—the profound spiritual blessings, and the incredible narrowness among its highest leaders—I could only wonder in awe at the superhuman measure of God's patient love.
This world is a mixed bag, poorly accommodating to the tidy, black-or-white divisive tendencies of the human mind. I remember once praying to the Divine Mother and asking for Her forgiveness, after I had committed some small error. "I guess you'll just have to accept me as I am," I prayed. The answer came instantly, as an intuitive voice, accompanied by a sense of bustling motherliness: "I am not concerned about your faults. I am concerned only with your continual improvement!"
I'm 59 years old now. I've been on the path for 35 years. If there's one thing I've realized about God in all these years, it's that He is fathomlessly tolerant and forgiving. "I don't think Divine Mother even notices our faults," is how Seva Wiberg, a senior Ananda member, once put it to me. The one thing God cannot abide is intolerance. Over the years, I noticed that those who fell into unrepentant criticism of others tended to leave Ananda—possibly because they found it difficult to bear the company of positive, cheerful people, or possibly because the Divine Mother simply removed them.
I had once considered Daya Mata, Anandamoy, and the other orange-robed SRF monastics more or less infallible instruments for the Guru's guidance and blessings. I certainly had devoted no energy at all to rooting out their faults, or testing their attunement. I had simply prayed with total zeal, and I had frequently found God answering my prayers through these inspiring people. My relationship with them was neither personal, intellectual, or organizational. It existed one hundred percent on the plane of spiritual aspiration.
I would come to understand that saints who haven't yet fully realized God are like spiritual elder brothers and sisters, holding a light to guide our way. I realized that it would be madness to reject their help, because of any personal peccadilloes that stood between them and final liberation.
"Kriyananda is a good Monk"
Before moving to Ananda, I had an interview with Brother Dharmananda, to discuss whether I should apply to enter the SRF monastic order, or if I should move to Ananda Village. The interview took place at the SRF church in Richmond, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Brother Dharmananda began the interview by asking me some questions that were clearly intended to test my spiritual mettle. ("How long have you been meditating?" "About eight years." "Well, that's nothing!" "I know...")
I said, "I've been thinking of moving to Ananda Village, and I'd like to know your thoughts on the matter." Dharmananda fell silent. Then, brightening visibly, he said, "I don't know why Kriyananda left SRF—and I don't care! Kriyananda is a good monk. If you do what he tells you, you'll make progress."
Once again, a senior SRF monastic had proved capable of acting as the Guru's channel. His words were more than advice; they were prophetic. For twenty-five years, I've discovered that whenever I follow Swami Kriyananda's suggestions, I thrive spiritually, but when I resist them, my spiritual light wanes and I feel distanced from God.
I loved the SRF senior monastics as older, more experienced brothers and sisters in God, and I felt profoundly inspired in their presence. I recall a conversation with Brother Turiyananda, following a Sunday service at the SRF Lake Shrine. He told me the story of his meeting with the great Indian saint, Swami Ramdas. He described how he had entered the room and, instantly perceiving Swami Ramdas's advanced, God-realized stature, how he had fallen at the saint's feet in a torrent of tears. "Tears were streaming down my face, out of my nose and mouth," he said. Swami Ramdas told him that he would find his guru later; and so it proved. In fact, it was Swami Kriyananda who persuaded the SRF leadership to accept Turiyananda, even though he was past the accepted age of 30. Brother Turiyananda never turned his back on Kriyananda, regardless of SRF's anti-Ananda policies. "When Kriyananda was here [in SRF]," Brother Turiyananda once remarked sadly to Daya Mata, "laughter rang in the halls. Now, it's like a tomb."
I recall my first formal meeting with Swami Kriyananda. I had just moved to Ananda Village and had begun working at "Pubble," the community's publishing house. Swami Kriyananda asked several members of the staff to meet with him to discuss the marketing of one of his books. As we hiked the trail over the hill to his house, I felt increasingly tense, wondering if I would measure up to the great man's standards. I needn't have worried When we arrived, we found Swamiji playing "The Vatican Rag," a recording by MIT professor Tom Lehrer, and laughing heartily:
First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect, and
Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
You can do the steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff,
Everybody say his own kyrie eleison,
Doin' the Vatican Rag!
Later, I realized that Swamiji had simply been trying to set my mind at ease, and to let me know that genuflection wasn't a feature of life at Ananda. I'm not sure he succeeded, since where my brain had initially been bowed with the weight of awe, it was now splattered all over the ceiling. Certainly, in the twenty-seven years I've known him, I've never known Swami Kriyananda to strike a pose. Since he was kicked out of SRF, he has led hundreds, perhaps thousands of public gatherings. Outside of Kriya Yoga initiations and funerals, I can't recall an occasion where at some point he didn't have the audience rolling in the aisles. "When I was first learning to lecture," he writes in his autobiography, The Path, "Master gave me the following words of advice: 'Before lecturing, meditate deeply. Then, holding that meditative calmness, think about what you intend to say. Write down your ideas. Include one or two funny stories; people are more receptive when they can enjoy a good laugh.'"
(The Path contains over 300 stories of Paramhansa Yogananda. Readers can view the book online at: http://crystalclarity.com/kriyananda/.)
The spirit of Paramhansa Yogananda permeated SRF. How could I not feel inspiration there. And I believe it is so even today. I ask the reader, therefore, to hold this image of SRF steadfastly in mind as I describe how my understanding of the organization and its leaders gradually evolved. I still hold them in the highest regard. I am by no stretch of the imagination trying to persuade anyone to leave or turn against that organization.
________________I See SRF from Ananada's Perspective
I moved to Ananda Village in February, 1976. Two-and-a-half months later, at the end of June, a forest fire destroyed 21 of the village's 23 homes. I worked in the community's publishing house, where I helped to publish a magazine that went out to our members worldwide. Living at Ananda, I often reflected on SRF's animosity towards us. At the time, I chalked it up to institutional jealousy. "If only they would send one of their directors here for a week," I thought, "they would see what Ananda is really like." Surely, if they would exert the simple integrity to study us before they judged us, then all might be well. I couldn't imagine that their views on Ananda were based on anything deeper than misunderstanding.
I was wrong. When SRF sued Ananda in 1990, we would discover that Ananda's destruction had become a guiding obsession with SRF—a virulent fixation that had been ingrained in the institution by some of its leading lights, most notably Tara Mata. The story of Tara Mata's influence, and of SRF's relentless persecution of Ananda, is told in Swami Kriyananda's book, A Place Called Ananda: The Trial by Fire That Forged One of the Most Successful Communities in the World Today. (The full text of this book may be found online at http://www.ananda.org/aplacecalledananda/.)
Suffice it to say that I was amazed by the actions and attitudes to which the leaders of SRF and their supporters showed themselves willing to stoop. This behavior is documented in A Place Called Ananda.
Those of us who lived at Ananda found it incredible that SRF would stick to the same old, patently absurd claims—that Swami Kriyananda touted himself as a guru, that Ananda was trying to pass itself off as part of SRF, etc.—when we all knew them to be untrue.
In its ten-year legal barrage against Ananda, SRF's behavior is hardly reflective of the courageous dedication to truth that Yogananda espoused. Readers interested in comparing SRF's legal attacks with Ananda's restrained and dharmic replies are referred to the case files: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Case Number: Civ. No. S-90-0846 EJG PAN.
Meanwhile, SRF's success in wooing Ananda's members was notable for its absence. A few members left over the years, as would be expected of any organization with over 700 resident members worldwide. But almost none left because they were persuaded by SRF's claims; nor did they turn against Ananda upon leaving. A few—again, as expected—became the community's most vocal critics. In nearly every case, these were individuals who had failed at Ananda—who had either rebelled against Swami Kriyananda's guidance (which was always offered, never imposed), or who had chosen to distance themselves from the community long before they left.
One of their most outspoken leaders was a man who had lived at Ananda for twelve years, during which he steadfastly refused to pay rent or participate in community activities, including performing any serviceful work. Amazingly, the community tolerated this behavior, primarily because of the gentle urging of Swami Kriyananda.
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