 | From Swami Kriyananda
(J. Donald Walters)
November 1992 Swami Kriyananda shown with Yogananda |
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Dear Ones:
It is no mere formality for me to address you that way. You are dear to me. I can visualize us looking back someday and laughing over certain episodes that, in this lifetime, have been painful to us all.
I don't know what attitudes you've expressed regarding this lawsuit during moments of informal discussion about it. On our part, and despite the fact that Ananda's very survival has been at stake, there's been a surprising amount of joy both felt and expressed. Recently, one of our Ananda legal team remarked, "You all may think this sounds crazy, but I'm going to miss this lawsuit when it's all over!"
At the same time, your suit has posed a serious challenge for us. I might add, moreover, that it hasn't been fun dealing with your lawyers' insults, or, for that matter, with yours. We've simply been determined to keep our spirits up, and to bear in mind that this earth life is, as Master taught us, only a dream.
No wish to harm SRF
We've felt like warriors in battle, fighting because duty called us to fight, but doing so only to defend the truth as we understood it, and not from any wish to harm you. In fact, we've never felt that we were fighting you, either individually or as an organization.
At the same time, wars are not fought with feathers. You have tried your best to destroy us, and are still trying to do so. From feedback we've received, you are, as Queen Victoria once put it, "not amused" with the vigor of our response. All I can say in reply is that when a person enters the boxing ring, he must be prepared to get hurt.
The first thing to face is the fact that you have entered the ring. You've thereby abandoned the right you previously assumed to sit in the judges' box. You can no longer wear the mask of judgment; still less, that of infallibility.
A point of truth: how I have spoken about SRF to the present
You continue even now to claim, in your letters to people, that you've never spoken against me or Ananda, and that I, by contrast, have spoken "freely" against you. In fact, I have never felt, or expressed, this alleged "freedom."
To explain what I mean, I might do well to quote a letter I received recently from an Ananda minister, written to elucidate this point.
"You have never," the letter states, "set yourself up in the kind of unquestioned, unapproachable position SRF has. You interact with people all the time, and are constantly engaged in meeting them and in trying to relate to them on their various levels of consciousness. You accept their questions and, unlike SRF, have never ignored their genuine concerns. You've always tried to accept and to understand their realities, and have never tried to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug. On the subject of SRF, therefore, it has been your practice to give people some kind of an answer, when it was clear they sincerely needed to know.
"In the context of this need, however, you have been very restrained and always supportive of SRF. It is only that you haven't been willing to pretend that the reality wasn't there, as SRF has consistently tried to do. Is this willingness to address a painful issue as sensitively and supportively as possible SRF's definition of 'speaking freely'?
"Even your closest friends have been astonished to the point of disbelief by the facts that have emerged during this lawsuit. Though we have discussed the SRF situation with you countless times over the years, there is so much that you never even touched on, no matter how small the group or how confidential the discussion. And yes, we, your friends, have been exasperated by your continued support of SRF in the face of their unrelenting unkindness to you.
"In fact, your supportive energy has succeeded in keeping this conflict essentially one-sided. That is to say, SRF policy—substantiated in their legal papers and by countless other examples—is that you are despicable. Ananda members, on the other hand, have continued all these years to hold SRF in high regard, and, in fact, have only slowly been able to absorb the reality of this lawsuit—primarily because the picture we have always received from you has been so much more supportive than the facts warrant!"
Prior to your lawsuit, I was always, as this minister's letter makes clear, extremely circumspect in my remarks both to you and about you. My "motive" (you had a heyday, thirty years ago, with my imagined "motives") was rooted partly in love for you, mostly in love for God and Guru, and also in a deep belief that we must strive together to promote unity in Master's work, and do everything we can to counter the forces of disunity. I must add that I know you all personally as few people do. I hold in my heart a deep and sincere respect for you. Beyond that, it simply is not my nature to fight—not against things, anyway; for what I believe in, yes. But what point is there in fighting, if the smallest opening can be found for resolving issues harmoniously?
I have also been afraid—I confess it freely—of erring karmically, and of displeasing Master by sowing seeds of disharmony in his work. Who among us, after all, is in a position to entertain absolute certainty on issues where something as important as his own, or anyone else's, salvation is concerned? Compared to this eternally central issue, nothing else can have any importance at all. This is a further reason why I've always refrained from striking back at you, even when sorely provoked.
People with whom I've worked directly since Ananda's earliest days used often to remonstrate with me for supporting you, as I persisted in doing—and not you only, but SRF ministers and other representatives of the organization who considered that they demonstrated their loyalty by denouncing me, publicly or in private.
The fact that I supported you doesn't mean I always agreed with you concerning the directions you were taking. I always felt, however, that the good that SRF did far outweighed its possible mistakes. It was, I believed, Master's place, not mine, to correct any such misdirections as might exist.
SRF's pattern of harassment
Your "Warning," which you publish yearly in your magazine, and with which you preface most of your books, fails to support your claim not to have spoken against me. Indeed, in one of our legal motions we listed some forty instances of defamation against us on SRF's part. In a more recent instance—one, at any rate, that has only just come to our attention—SRF telephoned one of the overseas publishers of The Essence of Self-Realization, our book of Master's sayings, and threatened to withdraw your books from his publishing house if he didn't himself withdraw this publication from the market. ("Essence," by the way, recently listed eighth on the best-seller list for esoteric books in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.) "Kriyananda," SRF told the publisher, "distorts the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda."
I can't imagine that it is a matter for much pride on your part that the only victory you've won so far in your lawsuit is the judge's decision that you have a constitutional right to defame us if you want to—even (as he put it, citing one of our allegations) to call me the "antichrist." Indeed, if I may introduce a note of humor into a subject so essentially serious, in your claim not to speak against us you've been like the hostess at a dinner party who smiles at the guests, while giving her husband a well-aimed kick under the table.
The need for dialogue, rather than innuendo
I've written you a number of times regarding the lawsuit. Rarely have you responded. When you've done so, you've not seen fit to confront directly the issues I've raised, and have relied heavily on innuendo. Now I find that, in response to people's deeply felt inquiries about the court case, you've been pointing to Master's training of us in order to justify your secretiveness on the subject. It is true that Master didn't want us spreading negativity. He told us, for this reason, to keep negative issues confidential "between the parties concerned." What you seem to want to do, however, is exclude even the "parties concerned"! At any rate, you refuse to enter, or perhaps are simply incapable of entering, reasonable dialogue with them. Your failure to answer my letters, except rarely and by indirection, is an example, merely, of this unwillingness, or this inability.
You have yet to realize that, where the lawsuit is concerned, the number of people directly affected is legion. You cannot reasonably brush off with innuendoes those who question your legal actions, since it is you yourselves who placed the case in the public domain. Every sincere follower of Master's teachings must be counted among the "parties concerned" in this case.
The time for innuendo has passed. A lawsuit is a public affair. Our demise would be a public affair. I do not actually believe you'll succeed in bankrupting us. Your lawyers' tactics, however, could hardly have been designed with any other purpose in mind.
SRF's tendency to pursue its own way, as if it were the only one possible
I've no doubt that they, and you, expected in the beginning simply to blow us away. And I'm sure you had no idea of the depth of our commitment to serving Master through Ananda. Most of all, I'm sure it never occurred to you (though I can't think why your lawyers didn't bring this point to your attention) that the law of our country was not on your side, but on ours. We cannot claim any special brilliance in exposing this fact, though we've done our best to bring into the open all the points of law that touched on the case.
A defect in your legal arguments has been a defect also in your treatment of me all these years: Just as, thirty years ago, you refused even to give me a hearing in my own defense, and since then have rarely deigned to acknowledge my letters to you, so you've consistently ignored our arguments in this case. One might think we'd never voiced them. A number of fundamental issues that we've raised might, for all the attention you've given them, have been written in Sanskrit. Instead, you've continued stubbornly to pursue your own line of reasoning—as though no other line could possibly exist!
Avoidance of reality
This avoidance of reality is no way to arrive at the truth in any situation. The fact is, for years now you have devoted your powers of reasoning to finding ways of avoiding the truth. Your defense can aptly be described as the "Ostrich Method"—or, more elegantly in Italian, "Metodo da Struzzo." How do you expect to win in debate, if you limit yourselves simply to declaring your own point of view over and over again? Of course, debate, in a kangaroo court like that in which you tried me, is in any case ruled out as a possibility. In a court of law, however, there is no way to prevail except through debate.
When, over the years, you've treated me personally with such contempt, I've let it go. Your lawsuit, however, places me in the position of having to stand up to you whether I want to or not, and to confront you with whatever weapons logic places at my command. In the process, I've become increasingly astonished at the weaknesses in your logic. Frankly, your way of arguing a point lacks some of the essentials of clear reason.
Truth vs. Harmony
In short, your lawsuit has changed the relationship between us. It has subordinated the need for harmony to the deeper need for truth.
Your lawsuit has changed matters in other respects, too. For one thing, it has convinced us at Ananda of the vital importance of our own place in Master's work. Never again is any Ananda member likely to permit your ministers to have the last word in their calumniations against us—as, in the name of harmony, we've allowed them to have all these years.
What is a fair fight?
When I was a child in Teleajen, Romania, another boy attacked me in the sandbox by the swimming pool (I don't recall why; he may not even have had a reason). I turned out to be stronger than he, so I simply pinned him to the ground and waited for him to calm down. Meanwhile, another child, a little girl, took a wet towel, and, finding me in no position to defend myself, began whipping me, raising ugly welts on my back. It was a cheap way of affirming her superiority, which otherwise she'd have had to use more intelligence to demonstrate.
I vowed vengeance. Entering her room later that day—she was a daughter of family friends, and was visiting us for a few days—I announced grimly that I was going to "teach her a good lesson."
"You can't hit me," she cried in panic. "I'm a girl!"
To my utter frustration, I realized she was right: I really could not bring myself to hit her, simply because she was a girl.
Well, this is more or less the line you've taken with me all these years. And a very feminine line it is. You've been willing to strike at me from behind, or to kick at me under the table, all the while claiming personal immunity from retribution because of your own unique position in Master's work. I've chafed under your presumption, but I haven't seen that I had any choice but to accept your immunity as a fact, since I, too, wanted with all my heart to help further the growth of our Guru's work.
Your lawsuit, as I said, has changed the relationship between us.
The need for clarity
I wrote you last December 28th, saying, in effect, "I imagine you're all wondering what my [I really meant, 'what our'] attitude is toward you during this lawsuit." I continued, "Because it is Christmas, I've wanted to reassure you [that]..., far from feeling hostile toward you, I feel sincere love....Even while fighting, I bear you only good will."
In your reply on January 21st you wrote, "No, Kriyananda, we are not wondering."
Now let me ask you, Why on earth weren't you wondering? It seems unthinkable that anyone would go to war without wanting to know something, at least, of the opposition's strengths and weaknesses—including, of course, his basic attitude toward the struggle. Not to wonder at all about such vital matters strikes me less as preposterous than it does as impossible. In fact, at the end of that very paragraph you stated, "... there has been a feeling of much hostility, if not from you, from those in your group." (In truth, there has been no such thing. The most negative feeling anyone at Ananda has expressed is an occasional exclamation of exasperation.) To form such an impression of us, it is obvious that you had indeed been "wondering." It would, moreover, have been too great a defect in your handling of the case not to wonder. So why this pose of "not wondering"? Was it to put me in awe of your "infallibility"?
You concluded that sentence by saying, "...yet we hold only good will...." Fine, you hold good will. We hold good will. So why don't we just call off our lawyers, shake hands, and be friends? If there is any point on which we can't agree, why don't we simply "agree to disagree"?
Your reply was written last January, in the full expectation that you'd soon be winning on all counts. Your letter stated that our defeat (merely anticipated by you at that time) was due to wrong attitudes on our part, and to "flaws that have put us in opposite positions" (our flaws, of course). To what, or to whose "flaws," then, do you attribute our subsequent victories—and your subsequent defeat?
What is Yogananda's will?
Two years ago, at our settlement conference in Fresno, Daya Mata led the directors of SRF and Ananda in a prayer to Master that his will be done in this lawsuit. We joined you in that prayer, Daya Mata, quite as fervently, I'm sure, as the rest of you did.
Will you say, now that things are turning out so differently from what you expected, that Master has not yet answered your prayer? that his will in this matter could not possibly be other than what all of you envisioned? Is it reasonable to believe that Master will still give you what you want even now, despite the fact that, so far, he has allowed you to spend two or three million dollars for nothing?
Remember, the words of your prayer were not that your will be done in this case. They were that Master's and God's will be done. We all know, moreover, from our own experience, that such prayers work. For who among us has not received answers to them, sometimes miraculously, and even in relatively trivial matters?
So then, to what court of Spirit can you now appeal your case? Do you really believe that Master will demonstrate his will at last, provided you waste another million dollars in an appeal to a higher court of law? Does it not seem, rather, that his will has been demonstrated already? Considering that you've already lost considerable ground from the point at which you stood when you initiated this lawsuit, are you prepared to go further, and risk having to cede even more territory?
We, too, want only Master's will to be done. Were he to come to us even today, and tell us we've been wrong to contest your suit, we'd change our direction in an instant—yes, even at the cost of everything we've won so far. Our decision to stand up to you has been rooted in our sincere loyalty to him, and in our dedication to doing his will as we were best able to understand it. We bear you no ill will. We'd have borne you no ill will had we lost, either. But our conscience obliges us to follow our own perceptions in this matter. Bear in mind, please, that we sincerely believe that Ananda, too, is Master's work. We are separate from SRF only because you've kept us so.
Establishing a firm foundation for Yogananda's work
I also feel that the lawsuit, owing to its public nature, has made it mandatory for me to address certain issues publicly that I was hoping would eventually clarify themselves on their own. The present time, remember, marks the formative years in the history of Master's work. The importance of resolving, if possible, fundamental issues of direction and policy during our present lifetime, and of resolving them with a full comprehension of the issues involved, far transcends your, my, or anyone else's individual importance in the scheme of things. In fact, this letter is being written not so much to you, personally, as to all the students and disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda, future as well as present, in the conviction that they belong to this work as much as you and I do. I'm addressing you, specifically, in this letter only because of your position as guides of the work. Otherwise this message is not to you, personally. Its purpose is to address certain impersonal and fundamental issues, in the sincere belief that they vitally concern the entire future of Master's work.
The monopoly issue
The booklet I wrote recently, "My Separation from SRF," addressed merely one of the issues begging for resolution: that of expansion vs. contraction. Much more important is the question of monopoly. Religious monopoly is, as you know, the essence of our counterclaim against you.
The future development of Master's work depends to a great extent on how the question of control is resolved. To what extent should it be enforced? To what extent should it be exercised only as an influence? And to what extent should people be won to a right understanding, not by imposing control on them, but by inspiring them?
I repeat, I have no personal desire in this matter. I want only to further Master's vision for the work. I do, however, have very deep convictions concerning that vision, and it would take a great deal more than your merely telling me what he wanted, against my own strong beliefs and actual knowledge to the contrary, for me to change my mind. Show me good reason why I am mistaken, and I will change my mind in an instant. Please, though, don't go on ignoring my arguments, while quoting Master out of context to others, or offering them his words carefully edited in your favor.
And please don't go on making innuendoes against my character. It makes you look bad. The present issues are too fundamental to be confronted with petty fusillades of attacks on my personality.
You risk losing nothing by at least hearing my side; you may even get to see things from a new perspective. For I, too, am following Master's will as I understand it--as I have a right to do my best to understand it, according to my own lights, and an eternal duty to follow it.
If, on the other hand, you persist in ignoring me, I will have to continue to argue my case publicly, as I am doing through this open letter, for the simple reason that, for thirty years now, you have hardly responded to my letters except indirectly, and have assumed a deliberate pose of wise, but long-suffering, patience in the face of my alleged "lack of attunement."
The time for assuming poses is over.
Continued on page 2 of 4 >>>>>>>>>
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