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Hello and welcome to Wise Talkers. I’m your host, Ronald Fel Jones.
This episode is the fifth in what I am calling my Legacy Editions, which I am producing to launch the podcast. All five of these episodes feature recordings of live radio interviews I conducted decades ago, most of them around 1980 on KVMR radio in Nevada City, California.
You can find the other four Legacy Editions, and much more information about the podcast, on the Wise Talkers website, wisetalkers.com.

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This fifth episode features an interview I conducted in 1981 with Swami Kriyananda, whose birth name is James Donald Walters. Walters became a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda in 1948, at the age of 22. 20 years later, in 1968, as Swami Kriyananda, he founded Ananda Village, an intentional spiritual community north of Nevada City that has since grown to have a global presence.
I give a brief biographical background on Kriyananda in the introduction to the upcoming 1981 interview, and I will provide some additional relevant information about him here. But first a few words about the revered yogi that Donald Walters became a disciple of, Paramahansa Yogananda.
Yogananda was born in India in 1893 and came to the United States at the age of 27, where he lived the final 32 years of his life. Yogananda founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920, headquartered in Los Angeles. SRF, as it is often called, is still very active today as the primary disseminator of Yogananda’s work and teachings in the West.
Yogananda is widely regarded as the "Father of Yoga in the West” for his many years of dedicated efforts to introduce and popularize yoga and Indian spirituality in the western world. Quite a legacy, given the enormous popularity of yoga, in its many forms, today.

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Some listeners may know of Yogananda through his famous book, Autobiography of a Yogi. I read it myself sometime around the age of 30, and absolutely loved it, as have countless others. It was published in 1946, has been translated into more than 50 languages, has sold millions of copies worldwide, and is still in print! A spiritual classic of the highest order.
Autobiography of a Yogi has inspired many famous people. Steve Jobs instructed that a copy be given to every person who attended his funeral. Elvis Presley was known to have gifted copies to friends and kept one by his bedside. George Harrison said it changed his life. To name but a few.
It also changed the life of James Donald Walters. He read the book in 1948 and then became a disciple of Yogananda soon thereafter, as he discusses in the interview I am about to replay. Walters attained a leadership position in Yogananda's organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship.

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And in 1955, three years after Yogananda died in 1952, he was ordained as a swami and given the monastic name Kriyananda. He held many key positions at SRF and in 1960 he became vice-president of the board of directors.
And then the relationship between Kriyananda and SRF took a dramatic downturn, as he was forced out of the Fellowship two years later, in a bitter dispute with the SRF president Daya Mata and, even more so, her sister and co-director Tara Mata, leading to the sisters’ denunciation and ex-communication of Kriyananda from the Self-Realization Fellowship.
This quarrel lasted many years and had many ripple effects, including trademark and copyright lawsuits and back and forth accusations for years. Indeed, to this day, the SRF website, yogananda.org, makes absolutely no mention of Kriyananda, despite his prominent role in the Fellowship at one time, and the fact that he was undoubtedly one of Yogananda’s most-favored disciples.
The rupture with SRF was devastating for Kriyananda, even leading him in the period soon after his departure to, in his own words, pray fervently to die. A few years later, however, he re-constituted his life mission to advance the teachings of Yogananda on his own, without SRF, by starting Ananda.

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I did not know much if anything about this rift before I interviewed Kriyananda, but it came up in the interview and we discussed it at some length.
And in doing research this week while producing this episode of Wise Talkers, I also learned that Kriyananda was accused of sexual misconduct while he was at Ananda Village. This led to a 1994 lawsuit by one of Kriyananda’s accusers, spearheaded by one of SRF’s lawyers, which she won.
The timing of my conversation with Kriyananda was rather interesting, in retrospect, as in 1983, just two years after our interview, Kriyananda let go of his monastic vows, which includes a vow of celibacy. He began using his birth name again, got married in 1985 but then divorced in, I believe, 1994.
In 1995 he resumed his monastic name and vows. He spent his later years traveling and teaching primarily in Europe and India, where Ananda had also established a number of centers and meditation retreats. He was very active and well-received in Europe and India in his later years, revered by many until his death in 2013 at the age of 86 in Assisi, Italy.

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As you’ll hear in the interview, Kriyananda’s views and teachings are centered around finding joy in life, community with others, and, in his words, “finding God.” In the interview, I found him to be engaging, humble, friendly and sincere.
Listening to the interview again now, after learning about the more controversial aspects of his life and career, I wonder if I am also hearing some inklings of these other parts of the man. I certainly saw and heard how he was deeply wounded by his forced exit from SRF, and felt he was not treated fairly. He says as much in the interview.
In any case, with this largely new information in mind – new to me, that is – it was quite interesting to listen anew to this 43 year-old interview. I’ll say a few brief words after the interview, and I’d love to hear your take on it all.
So here we go, my 1981 interview on KVMR radio in Nevada City, California, with James Donald Walters, aka Swami Kriyananda.
———
Ron 

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And I'm very pleased tonight to have a special guest, Swami Kriyananda, founder and spiritual leader of Ananda Cooperative Village north of Nevada City here. Swami Kriyananda probably doesn't need much of an introduction to most people, but nonetheless I thought I would give him a brief one. Swami was born Donald Walters on May 19, 1926, in Romania to American parents. His father was an oil geologist, mother a housewife.
As a child, Donald studied in Switzerland, Romania and England before moving to the United States at the age of 13. His scholastic interests included music, philosophy, astronomy, poetry, ancient history. His mother was an Episcopalian and he did a lot of his education at Quaker schools. At the age of 22, he came across a book by Paramahansa Yogananda called the Autobiography of a Yogi and, to use his own words, practically caught the next bus to Los Angeles to meet Yogananda, then spent the last three and a half years of Yogananda's life around and talking to Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles. After about a year of being there, Yogananda made Swami Kriyananda the head of the monks.

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Swami Kriyananda got his name I believe it was in 1955 and spent a total of 14 years with the Self-Realization Fellowship. I believe he was the vice president of international relations or international vice president of SRF. He left SRF after 14 years in 1962 and spent a hiatus of six years in San Francisco where he did some writing and thinking and planning, planning to start a community and looking for land to do that with, to start Ananda. Well, he found that land in 1968 in Nevada County and has been involved as the head of Ananda since that time, here in Nevada County. Swami speaks nine languages, lectures around the world, has written 16 books, many, many songs. He's a singer, an artist, a photographer and, of course, the administrator at Ananda. And welcome to the show.
Kriyananda

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Thank you.
Ron 

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You started off life in Romania to American parents. Is that a function of your father being in the oil business?
Kriyananda

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And I'd always found that when I really wanted something, the doors opened. And here, suddenly, it seemed as if they were closing and it just didn't seem to fit the pattern. Many different thoughts were raging in my mind and I then decided well, maybe I'm not ready. And that's the kind of thought, a humble thought that I needed to be ready. And I started to walk out the door thinking I'll just meditate and when I'm ready, I'll be, I'll be allowed to see him. And the moment I had that thought, the secretary came up behind me and said since you've come from so far, I'll ask him if he wants to see you. And because I'd come all the way from New York to Los Angeles, you see. And then when he saw me, he said it isn't because you've come from so far that I agreed to see you.

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Yes, he was an oil geologist. He worked there for 15 years. They were actually both born in Oklahoma. So somebody told me a couple of years ago that she was a third generation San Franciscan and I sort of did a double take and I said, well, I'm not a first generation, anything.
Ron 

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You were 13 years old before you moved to the United States.
Kriyananda

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Yes, We'd come over here every three years just on vacation. But then we came here in 1939 and the war broke out, so we stayed. If it hadn't been for that, we might have gone back. Actually, we were going. Dad was posted to Zagreb, Yugoslavia, at the time, which again was good luck or good karma, whichever you'd like to use, because all our furniture was stored ready for shipment and otherwise we'd have lost it all. But it was ready for shipment. We just had sent it to America instead of Zagreb.
Ron 

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Did the experience of growing up in Europe… how would you say that influenced your views in a way, say other than you might have had you been born in America?
Kriyananda

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I think certainly that kind of thing would make a person less insular. I'm not just American, I'm European and I'm Indian and I end up feeling that I belong everywhere, which is a nice feeling, and I can appreciate that. Every country has something good to offer the world. And, as Yogananda used to put it, if we could only get all these countries to share their talents, we could have a tremendous stride forward. That's partly what we've got with Ananda, calling it a world brotherhood colony has that connotation of bringing people with different outlooks, different skills and so on together. Because that's how, always, if you look back through history, you find that the real gains in civilization have always come with the infusion of some outside influence, like the Renaissance began with the rediscovery of Greece, and the Western civilization took a great spurt forward when Christianity was introduced into it.

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In fact, that was the salvation of Western civilization during the Dark Ages.
Ron 

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It's often a painful infusion, though.
Kriyananda

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Oh well, of course it's painful, but after all, without growing pains you don't grow.
Ron 

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Yes, that's true.
Kriyananda

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So I'd say that once you've made up your mind that growth is what's needed, then you discount the obstacles to the growth. If you decide that avoidance of pain is what's needed, that's when you grieve about growing.
Ron 

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Right. As a child and a youngster. Were you growth or spiritually oriented, or was that something that came?
Kriyananda

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Well, I was, and I wasn't, Ron. I had no interest in the church particularly. It was the sort of place to go to and sing hymns and I wasn't very comfortable with the hymns. They all seemed a bit heavy to me.
Ron 

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Was this Episcopal?
Kriyananda

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Yeah, but I don't mean to make it personal. I feel basically that the Western emphasis in Christianity – and I use that expression deliberately, because Christianity isn't owned by anybody, it's a universal truth.

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But coming into the Roman Empire it took on a heaviness that I believe the Roman Empire and civilization gave to it, rather than it being just necessarily a part of the Hebraic, although I'm well aware that the Jews also have a rather grim attitude, at least in the Old Testament, toward truth. God being a jealous God, and you find a lot of anger and so on expressed. But there is certainly room in the Judeo-Christian tradition for joy, and that's sort of been what I've always looked for is joy. Even as a child I was looking for that which would give joy, but trying to understand joy in terms of something that would last. Because if you get an ice cream cone, you enjoy it while you eat it and then you don't have it. If you have a happy experience, usually it's followed by a sad experience. The kind of joy that's permanent is that kind of joy that you can have whether your life is going well or badly outwardly.
Ron 

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You mean, even as a child you were looking for that more sort of joy. Were you finding any answers, or…?
Kriyananda

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Well, I was always sort of sitting back and looking and trying to understand. Trying to understand what made people think and talk the way they did. And I remember my dad when I was six. I remember standing out on the porch with him one time and he was saying that all creatures have had their turn at being the masters of this planet, except the birds. And he said someday, I think, the birds will be masters of this planet. And I remember even then thinking well, but that doesn't indicate any kind of direction, it's just accident. Everybody gets his turn. And isn't there some kind of direction of development? Birds are obviously not above men. Does that mean that they'll be above men in order to be masters?

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I was always looking for meaning. And how soon the definition of joy came in, I don't know, but I think it was there from the beginning, because I was always looking for things that would give it to me Like, oh, obviously in early childhood it wouldn't be as philosophical as it would be from just being absolutely thrilled with color. Beautiful color would practically throw me into ecstasy. Or lovely music, that kind of thing. I was always looking for that.
Ron 

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It was the age of 22 before you came across Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda, right? Was that also your first exposure to any sort of Eastern thought?
Kriyananda

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Yes, except that I got it through Emerson and Thoreau and Whitman indirectly and I had been very much influenced by those writers.
Ron 

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What was it about that reading in 1948 of Yogananda that inspired you?
Kriyananda

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Well, several things. One was that all truth, as he defined it and as the Indian scriptures define it, isn't just a mental concept. I'd had a lot of philosophy and done a lot of thinking and I'd reached the point where I felt, well, there's no end here. It just, I mean, it, doesn't lead you anywhere. It's a dead end, is what I'm trying to say. And when they talked about truth not just as something you believe but something you experience, that made a lot of sense to me. Another thing was that he said that religious experience is a joyful experience, and I'd never read that before.

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I had been already determined to just leave everything. I'd wanted to be a playwright, but I thought well, I don't know the truths I'm hoping to teach others, so why impose my ignorance on them? And I wanted to drop out of everything and just go off to some lonely spot and try to find God. I didn't know what that meant, but I assumed that there was some greater consciousness that we're a part of and that if we can be in tune with that greater consciousness, we'll have more of whatever we're looking for. And I assumed that the most I'd ever get was peace of mind and I thought it was worth giving up everything just to get that.

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Then I read Autobiography of a Yogi and I found such joy. I remember just weeping reading all night long and just thinking it's too wonderful. And so that, I think, turned me on more than anything else. And then the sheer goodness of his character. He was so humble and so kind and so compassionate and loving.

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And finally, I think what turned me on was that I'd had a lot of training in Western thought and I had felt that the findings of modern science stood totally in the way of the kind of religion that the churches seemed to tell us the Bible was, giving us the idea of a personal God and so on. And I found in Yogananda's book two things. One, an amazingly scientific view of God and reality, where there is a vast impersonal truth that we can tune into, that we're a part of. And two, that in its impersonality it can also be personal, because it's become personal through you and me and our mother and father and children and friends. And it's both personal and impersonal. I'd never read a synthesis so perfect of these two apparently warring concepts, where you suddenly discover that they're really one, just different aspects of the same truth. And I suppose all those things together just made me decide this is it, and I've never for a moment had a change of heart in 33 years.
Ron 

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Do you have a clear memory of your first visit with Yogananda?
Kriyananda

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Very, clear. In fact, in my book The Path I've described it. Yeah, it was a wonderful meeting for me.
Ron 

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Can you tell us a little bit about it here?
Kriyananda

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Well, I can say a little bit. I'd always been very much a product of Western thinking that says that nobody can teach you anything, you've got to find it out for yourself, which I think is basically true. But I carried it to the usual egotistical extreme of thinking nobody knows more than I, and that isn't true. There are all kinds of people we need to go to to teach us how to write, how to sing, how to compose music, how to cook, how to do anything we want to do, and if it weren't for that, every generation would have to reinvent the wheel, start over from scratch. And so I had this idea that, when it came to truth, there wasn't anybody who could teach me anything, and that's taking that fact too far.

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It is true that we have to experience it ourselves, or it's never true for us, and to just dogmatically accept or allow anyone to dogmatically tell us what to believe is wrong. We have to experience it. Otherwise, no matter how true it is, it isn't true for us yet, and that's the only truth we individually can ever know. But at the same time, not to listen to the experience of others who have gone before us on the path is stupidity. And after reading his book I felt that at last I had met, even though just in the pages of a book, someone with the integrity and the wisdom to guide me. And the first words I uttered to him when I met him were, “I want to be your disciple.” Words I never thought I could possibly utter to anybody.
Ron 

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What was his response.
Kriyananda

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Well, his response was to sit there and try to feel me from inside. He asked a lot of questions outwardly that were more or less to pass the time, because what he was mostly doing was just sitting there and feeling me, not speaking, and I was almost too overwhelmed with emotion to say much myself and I was just sort of inwardly hoping I wouldn't cry. You know, I was just inwardly saying I know you know what I'm thinking and you must accept me. You can't not let me come.
Ron 

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And he was saying?
Kriyananda

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Well, he didn't. For example, when I first came I was told that he couldn't even see me for at least two months. And his secretary sat, and I thought, my God, this is more than I can bear, after four days and four nights on the bus.

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There was a lady last week who came all the way from Sweden after reading the book and God didn't tell me to see her. So I didn't, but he told me – he called God ‘Divine Mother’ – he said Divine Mother told me to see you. So it was, all frankly, totally beyond me. I hadn't read anything like it. In fact, all his book is full of miracles.

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But I just had to put those on a shelf. I had to say I believed in him utterly. I couldn't imagine that he'd tell a lie, but on the other hand I couldn't imagine that miracles were possible. So I just had to put those, as I say, on a shelf and go with my faith in him. After living with him for a time, I began to find out that those things really did happen around him, and that way, of course, I developed faith that I couldn't have had without the experience. But that's been my way, too, of teaching people over the years. Not to tell them you've got to accept this, but if it makes sense, try it and see for yourself if it works.
Ron 

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Have your own philosophies, over the years, grown to be different from Yogananda's in any way?
Kriyananda

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Well, there are people who would say that they have. I don't feel that they have at all. What I've done is meditate on his teachings for many years and then encounter situations that his teachings didn't cover and try to understand, from a basis of whatever understanding I may have of his teachings, what he would have done under such circumstances. And that's been where I've differed. But some people would say, no, you should just quote him, and my way of thinking is that unless you can take a teaching and make it your own and apply it creatively, you've never really understood it. Parrots can quote, but that doesn't mean understanding.
Ron 

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What is the philosophy of the Self-Realization Fellowship? Do they try to stick to the quote, so to speak?
Kriyananda 

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They are much more going by the book and my whole feeling, and I don't at all disagree with them. Somebody's got to do it, but since they're doing it, I feel I don't need to. So what I've tried to do, by going in different directions, is trying to explore avenues that his teachings would shed light on, and I've written books on a lot of subjects with that thought in mind. Two ways you could put it. One, to reach out to people in different spheres of interest and show them how all these spheres lead back to their own center, because I always tell people that I'm not interested in converting them except to their own higher self. That's the only kind of conversion I would countenance, and the other kind is useless.

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And then the other way you could put it is going into those fields and showing them how these teachings, if they add a dimension, for example, of spiritual thinking, of meditation, of expanding their consciousness to include the welfare of others instead of just thinking of themselves, that then they will get what they themselves are looking for, because basically people are all looking for the same things. They may not define them in the same ways, but we're all looking for an escape from pain and an increase of joy. We're all looking for an expansion of awareness and identity that ultimately has to take us away from the ego and embrace everybody, not only as brothers and sisters, but as our own self. That's the goal, that's the direction of all spiritual development I'm interested in.
Ron 

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So there's a difference in your philosophies, let's say, with regard to Yogananda's teachings and broadening it, or making it your own and the way SRF teaches it. Does that cause a rift between SRF and Ananda?
Kriyananda

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It causes a rift and I regret the rift. I myself insist that people who join Ananda must be SRF members.
Ron 

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That's interesting. I didn't know that.
Kriyananda

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Oh yeah, I believe very strongly in unity. After all, he's my guru. I can't talk against my guru's work without talking against my guru. I totally support it.

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I do not agree with everything that they do, nor do they agree with everything that I do, but they have a conflicting feeling here, based on the fact that they feel that their work is the organ through which his work shall spread. My idea about that is that he belongs to the world and the sooner the world claims him the better, that nobody should exert a monopoly. Rather, they deserve, instead of monopoly, the respect that goes with people who have sat at the feet of the Master and know his teaching from inside. They deserve that respect, they're worthy of it. But I don't think that it's right, frankly, because I think that where there is humanity there is error, and I don't think that they do everything right. But I think that the things that they don't do right are superficial and based basically in this respect that they don't open up enough, and I don't mean that to be a criticism in a negative way. I wish that I could sit down and talk to them and help them to see that this work is too big to be what I sometimes say is something like a museum, keeping it all just as he had it. But anyway, a museum is needed and if they choose to do that, fine. But I feel then all the more impelled to show people everywhere.

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Look, his teaching is useful where you are. You don't have to go and become a monk in SRF to get the teaching. You don't even have to take up meditation. If you take a little bit of this teaching it'll give you a taste, and with a taste you may get to want more. But to say it's either this or nothing I don't go along with. I don't go along with rules.

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The irony of that is that I'm the one who is responsible for starting the direction of SRF's development toward rules. During Yogananda's time there were no rules and I saw that without rules it would not be possible to really build the work. It would have to be after he left, and he admitted that himself. And so when he put me in charge of the monks for the first time ever in the organization. Somebody, namely me, developed the monastic order and the women took their whole thing from what I was doing. And I developed the centers and organized the office and organized the churches and was the director of center activities, and virtually every direction I established. But I always did it with the thought that if we can keep it simple then it will be a service. And people came in and saw at last we're getting organized, isn't it wonderful. And they defined the organization with rules and it became more and more rule bound, to the point where I personally began to feel sort of not at home with it.
Ron 

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Did that have to do with your departure, feeling not at home?
Kriyananda: 

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No, I was kicked out, and I think my being kicked out had to do with that.
In other words, it was political reasons, really, that I was seeing the work in ways that they weren't seeing it, and I don't blame them. I believe that they were quite justified in acting according to what they felt was right. I personally didn't feel it was right. Don't feel it was right. I was never even given a hearing.

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This was all decided while I was in India and I was called to New York and told I was out. So not to be given a hearing, not to be given a warning, not to be given a chance to do penance if you're wrong, those things may not have been the best way to go at it, but it had to be done and I don't think it could have been done in any other way. The reason it had to be done is that I did have a work to do and I couldn't have done it… I mean, I'm so loyal to the work even now, after you know, you can see these things in different ways, but how could anybody see it from my angle and not feel it misused? I don't think it would be possible.
Ron 

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It sounds like they consider you to be a renegade.
Kriyananda 

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That's right, and yet I had no choice. So how could I be called a renegade?
Ron 

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Did you have your vision for a spiritual community while you were there, or did that come during…
Kriyananda 

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I had it from the age of 15. Then I found that Yogananda had it too. So that sort of was part of the attraction, not to him but to the communities. The fact that he also wanted it gave me a lot of energy to put behind it. And then many times he told me that I had a great work to do and looking back on it I can see that I couldn't have ever done it if I'd stayed there. I mean, here I am 55. And if I was the vice president maybe I'd have been the president. I don't know and I don't care. But assuming even that, what work could anybody begin at my age? You have to be younger to begin any kind of real work.
Ron

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What about somebody who's 60 hearing that and was just thinking of starting a new work.
Kriyananda

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I'm 55, and I'm willing to say it, I don't know about them at 60, willing to hear it. I really feel at my age that I feel like dropping out. Not dropping out, but withdrawing somewhat. I've done what I set out to do. Does that mean much? I'd much rather sort of vibrate with people on a person-to-person level than do things. It just doesn't mean anything to me anymore.
Ron

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I don't know if I'm picking this up right, but it sounds like that means you might possibly no longer be involved with Ananda at some point, is that right?
Kriyananda

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I always tried to organize Ananda in such a way that others could take over. I've never in my life tried to create a niche for myself. One of my songs is, “Make rich the soil, but once the seed is sown, seek freedom. Don't linger. Go on alone.”

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And I don't mean to leave Ananda, but the only thing holding me to Ananda is the love of the people there, not the project. Once I've done a thing, I just never even think of it again. It's gone. Even the autobiography of mine, it's no longer like a book of my own life. It's just something that happened. The love of the people, that could hold me forever.
Ron

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So what sort of things do you fantasize yourself doing, now that you say you've accomplished what you want?
Kriyananda

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I fantasize being with people more and sharing with them. I've done my projects and I don't want any more. There's only so far you can go with projects, and I guess I'm lucky in being able to say I've done them, because most people can't say that ever. But the things that I set out to do I've done, and I see the road getting narrower and narrower if I go in that direction, and so I'd rather leave that altogether or as much as I'm able to and just share as I'm sharing with you right now. I mean, we're talking and I know there's an audience out there, but I feel I'm talking to you. That's meaningful to me. If I can somehow – and I get letters all the time from people, every day I get several – that somehow being with me has given them joy. I think that's what makes my life meaningful and nothing else could, except, of course, finding God. But we're talking of work and outward things and that alone gives my life meaning.
Ron

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It sounds like maybe you're interested in slowing the pace a little bit.
Kriyananda

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Yeah, in a way, but you know there are longer rhythms that aren't necessarily slower.
Ron

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That's a good way to put it. Got a couple of calls and we may as well move right into their questions, so I don't forget them, if nothing else. A woman called and was interested in your feeling about the emerging role of women in today's world, maybe specifically as it relates to spiritual questing. Or, to take the words out of her mouth she said can a woman become a guru, a self-realized human being, a teacher? And she's also interested in your feelings about families, divorce, the growing divorce rate and the whole family life. I think that's a big question.
Kriyananda

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Well, it's a very good question, though. I feel that throughout history, whenever there's been an imbalance, nature – human nature, if nothing else – has corrected that imbalance. Very often you've found women coming to the fore when more love was needed, more refinement. You find, for example, in the French great literary and artistic movement of the 17th century that it was women who started it. And women in our culture today are responsible for the beautification of the country and for the humanization of science and politics and things. Women tend more naturally to go by heart, by feeling, and I think that without heart there can't be any spiritual beginning, not to speak of progress. And women are really desperately needed today to help bring that balance. We've gone too far in the direction of reason and I think, for example, in literature today, that the best writers are mostly women because they have feeling. The men talk about things, the women talk about the beauty of things, the reaction to things, and they make it human. So women are not only always needed, but particularly needed now, and I think that there is a strong trend in that direction that women feel they have a mission, but they haven't found what that mission is yet. Many of them, for example, are trying to compete with men in a manly way. Well, women can never be as good at being men as men are, and men can't ever be as good at being women as women are. They should, and I hope, I think that they will in time. More and more are beginning to realize that they have a special gift to give. So, so much for that. Yes, women can be gurus. Yes, women can advance spiritually.

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My great problem on the path for many years was where are all the men? So many women were in it. Now, thank heaven, you've got more sensitive men coming up who therefore, because of their sensitivity, turn to religion. Divorce and family and so on, I'm very interested in that. In fact, I'm getting out a book out of my own called How to Spiritualize Your Marriage, and it includes your family.

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I was saying at a wedding that I gave recently at Ananda that in certain ways, this whole problem that we face with divorce and instability in marriage and so on isn't as bad as it looks. It's a symptom of a transition trying to grow out of old definitions that were too narrow, where two people just look at each other and turn their backs on the world.
That isn't a growing experience. And where a man's house is his castle and he just cuts out the whole world for the sake of his family. That's not expansive. It goes against what our own nature calls us to and, if we can and I feel that this is what's really happening today and again, just as women haven't found themselves, families haven't found themselves.

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We're in an age of transition, but I think that what's going to come out at the other end of all this transition is a redefinition of male-female roles, of women's roles, of family, of how to relate in a marriage where people holding hands give each other strength to face the whole world, where their love for each other becomes expansive and includes their neighbors and everyone. So I don't think we're, I don't think we can afford to just look at the present, but rather step back from it a little bit and see, where do I think it's heading? And I don't think, personally, that it's heading toward dissolution. I think it's a regrouping.
Ron

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Yeah. I think so too. Let me ask you a specific question Do you have a position or a feeling about divorce as a viable option for a couple who have problems?
Kriyananda 

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I think it's essential sometimes. I do believe that people should be loyal to each other, even if they get divorced. I do believe that they should be loyal and try to work it out, if they can.
Ron

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Loyal in what sense do you mean?
Kriyananda

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Loyal in the sense of at least being friends, at least respecting each other, even if they separate. There doesn't have to be the mudslinging and the hatred and the self-justification. If there was enough to bring them together, there should be enough to keep them at least friends. And then loyalty within the marriage means there's too much – and I think our country is perhaps worse than any other in this respect that I know – too much thinking of personal gratification. What's in it for me? If I don't feel good in this thing, then I leave you. That's not good. We should try to work it out.

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But if our values are really changing … and in an age of transition like this, they do change. I've seen a lot of people, for example, come onto the spiritual path and then, if it's the wife, the husband will try to stop her from meditating and get jealous of God. Amazing attitudes. And in a case like that, the Indian scriptures say that if a lower duty conflicts with a higher duty, then it ceases to be a duty. So our highest duty is to seek truth, not personal fulfillment in the sense of being more comfortable or happy on an emotional level. But if our search is for a happiness that includes all of humanity and includes service to our fellow man and service to God, and the marriage is blocking that, if the marriage is holding us down spiritually, I think it's a disaster and should be gotten out of. Marriages that are made in heaven shouldn't be gotten out of, but not by any means is every marriage is made in heaven.
Ron

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Okay, good, Well, to change the subject drastically. The second caller's question related to your, I guess, recent trip to Egypt, and wanted to know what your experience of the pyramids was like, what you felt being in ancient ruins.
Kriyananda

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Well, Ron, I tell you it's interesting, because everybody I've ever met, I think, who believes, as I do, in reincarnation and metaphysical teachings and spiritual philosophy and so on, feels that he's been in Egypt in some past life or many lives. I don’t. I don't have any feeling of that, or at least I didn't before I went. I went because it was a good opportunity to learn from a spiritual standpoint what went on over there. You know, what's going on. But once I got there I did find one place where I felt very definitely I'd been before. And then the experience of being in these different temples and in the pyramids gave me something that I hadn't gone with any expectations and maybe it was the more wonderful for me because of that, because it was really very high. To describe what it did isn't easy just quickly like this, and probably whatever I gained from it is something I'll experience over the months to come, but that there was a spiritual blessing there was, to my subjective view anyway, very, very clear.
Ron

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Yeah, one of these days I want to see them myself.
Kriyananda 

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But going into the King's Chamber and meditating there and feeling a real… this is something I could share with people. The temples and cathedrals I've gone to – for example, Notre Dame in Paris and so on – I felt immediately the vibrations of spiritual power and devotion. And yet, having felt it, it didn't grow. It remained at that level. In the King's Chamber, as an example, I didn't feel anything at first, but as I sat there and tuned my mind, it got stronger and stronger and stronger, until it seemed as if there was no end to it, to the possibility for growth. So it's very subtle, but very, very powerful. I believe personally that the pyramids were built in a higher age than now, and that's not something I could possibly jus justify in a quick interview, but I think so.
Ron

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Does that include beliefs in ways that they might have raised those rocks?
Kriyananda

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You know, I just read something really interesting in a book Who's Who in the Ancient World. It’s like a dictionary or encyclopedia and it described some poet who in legendary times, created the Walls of Thebes with music.

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And it's entirely possible, now that we're just beginning to discover the power of magnetism, of vibration and so on, it's possible that there would be sound vibrations, for example, that could move things. We're just on the eve of a whole new way of looking at life and at matter. You know, at the end of the last century some senator in the US Senate seriously proposed closing down the patent office. He said everything that could possibly be invented has been invented. That was the end of the last century. Everything that we know of modern civilization has been discovered since then – radio, TV, planes, everything. And so I feel similarly, now that we're on the eve of a whole new way of looking at matter, realizing already as we do that it's energy. We're going to start discovering that through energy we can do things with it that don't require cranes and heavy forces, thrusts and so on. That's a claim I can't back. But I believe it.
Ron

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There's obviously a lot of weighty authority that would say that that's impossible and ridiculous.
Kriyananda 

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I know, but the interesting thing is that there's a lot of weighty authority starting to say, well, yeah, it's impossible.
Ron

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That's right. There is a real movement in physics and…
Kriyananda 

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You know, Max Planck, the famous German physicist, said that a new scientific discovery doesn't gain acceptance by being logical or even proved. It gains acceptance because the old scientists die.
Ron

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The young scientists grow up or don't have that habitual resistance to it, attachment to old ideas.

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There's another question that I want to ask that I actually wrestled with, whether or not I wanted to or would, because I feel that it's a very sensitive one, and I'm doing it because my sense of you here is good. And it has to do with Jonestown. Like it or not, ever since that happened, there seems to be a whole painting of spiritual communities, spiritual leaders. My question is – and I don't think anybody who knows you or knows the community would ever make any serious association, but nonetheless inferences have been drawn, even in local papers and in more broadly read ones. My question is sort of, what is it like to be a spiritual leader in the post-Jonestown era? It seemed that would be a very heavy test for you and of your faculties.
Kriyananda

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Ron, I just don't care. It isn't a test at all. I'm much more interested in what I can do than what other people say about what I'm doing.
Ron

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Does that mean that it doesn't have any effect on you when people…
Kriyananda

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No, it doesn't have any effect. I simply tell them quite frankly that what can create a thing like Jonestown is certain situations that don't apply up there. When you've got somebody trying to draw everybody to his personality and say obey, I've never told anybody to obey me. I'm in a position where I have every traditional right to say that, but I don't and I'm not interested in it. I always, whenever counseling people, say well, consult your heart. If it makes sense, do what I have suggested. But I don't even give advice. They're always complaining that I ought to advise more. So it doesn't fit those facts.
Ron

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Well, that I'm clear about, and I think most people that know you in the community know that. How do you get yourself to a point that it doesn't hurt you to hear inferences or to be associated that way?
Kriyananda

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I guess it takes a few years, maybe. But I remember a story of St. Therese of Lisieux. She was in a room and somebody said oh my dear, you look so well, it's wonderful to see you looking so well. And she walked out of that room into the next one and somebody saw her and said what's the matter? You don't look well today. And she laughed and she thought, what does opinion matter?
Kriyananda

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I'm not interested in opinion. I'm not interested in my own opinion. I am interested in truth and I've tried my level best to guide my life by truth. If what people say whom I respected because I felt that he was not talking from likes and dislikes but from truth, emotional arguments don't mean anything to me. As I say, my own opinions don't mean anything. I'm always questioning my opinions to see, well, are they true? And many times I've found in dealing with the community that I'll come up with an idea and they'll come up with something opposite and I'll listen to them and I'll say well, you're right.

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And I can change my opinion in a second if I find that they've given me a good reason to change it. I've done that often enough for people to know that I'm speaking the truth on that. So when people come up with opinions, I don't care what they think, unless what they're thinking is true. And I just consult my heart and if it's true, then I say great, I've made a discovery. So why waste time feeling badly? If I find that they're right and I'm wrong, I say how wonderful, thank you. And then I change, or I do my best to change.

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It takes a while to school your mind to think that way, but once you have done it, then you feel so free, because anything people can say, you just find yourself thinking well, okay, are they right? If they aren't, you discount it. If there's a possibility, you think about it further. But you don't get all tied up. Oh, they mustn't be right, oh, it can't be. So you just think, gee, if they are right, I really want to know it, because that's an opportunity for me to grow some more.
Ron

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That leads me to a question of interest to me that has to do with spiritual development in general. Do you find or do you believe that one reaches a point, so to speak, some point in spiritual development where they become enlightened or self-realized, or Christ-conscious?
Kriyananda

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Ron, if you can reach that point… I can say I haven't reached it, so I don't know. I'm just struggling along the way.
Ron

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What would Yogananda say about that?
Kriyananda

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Somebody asked him the question once, is there any end to evolution? And he gave a really interesting answer. He said, no end. You go on until you achieve endlessness.

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That's what I've meditated on for years now
Ron

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I could see how one could meditate on that. Do you meditate a lot in any given day, every day? How many minutes or hours?
Kriyananda

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Uh-huh, Yeah.
Ron

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No matter where you are?
Kriyananda

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Right. Well, I sometimes have to cut it down to one or two hours, but still wherever I am.
Ron

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Certainly people who are interested in spiritual development – of which it seems there are a growing number every day – it seems both in my personal experience and from observation, that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to that is the busy everyday world and just demands from work and family and so on and so forth. And it seems like time for meditating or time for yoga or time for whatever one finds to be spiritually rewarding just diminishes to nothing.
Kriyananda

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I know. I'm sure there's an answer to it. I think that part of the answer is that we always find time to do the things we really want to do
Ron

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Priorities. Yeah, does always seem to come back to that.
Kriyananda

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Yeah, and when you get a habit, then you find yourself… I mean, look how much time people spend in front of TV. And they may argue well, but this is sharing with the family. But you know you're locked into your own little world, sharing during the commercials or something.
Ron

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Yeah, if that. Okay, well, it looks like we are just about out of time. I really appreciate your coming and I appreciate your answers. I felt like you were being very honest. Not that that surprises me, but it feels good anyway.
Kriyananda

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Truth alone wins, and why waste time on anything else? Thank you for having me.
Ron

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Okay. Thank you very much, Swami Kriyananda.
Epilogue…
Ron

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I don’t have a lot more to say about Kriyananda, or the interview. His split with Self-Realization Fellowship is a central fact in his life which, as I said in the introduction, and had a many ramifications and complexities, and a profound effect on the life of James Donald Walters, aka Swami Kriyananda. One of which was his founding of Ananda Village. And while Ananda began in Nevada County, it spread to many places in Europe and India, and remains a vibrant spiritual community and global organization.
Kriyananda’s life was a fascinating one, and there is a lot of information online if you are inclined to learn more. I found two sites to be particularly rich resources, one at yoganandaharmony.com and another at yoganandafortheworld.com. I will provide the full URLs online, in the blog post describing this episode on wisetalkers.com.
And a side note of interest and relevance to the Wise Talkers podcast… The piece of land that Donald Walters started Ananda Village on was his portion of a 160-acre property he purchased with three other well-known people: Richard Baker, who became abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1970s and early ‘80s, famed poet Allen Ginsberg, and Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Gary Snyder. The very first Wise Talkers episode features my 1979 interview with Gary. Of course it was the proximity of KVMR radio in Nevada City to this piece of property and its prominent residents that led to the opportunity to interview both Snyder and Kriyananda. Small world.

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A quick note on the next Wise Talkers episode, which will be the sixth and likely final of my Legacy Editions featuring interviews conducted decades ago,

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before I start conducting new interviews. And in this upcoming Legacy Edition, the tables are turned, as I will replay an interview in which I was the guest rather then the host!
During a year or two of my time in Nevada City, I gave some classes in meditation, based on my own method and experience. A DJ on the other local radio station, KNCO is Grass Valley, invited me on his show to talk about meditation.
I’ll be producing the episode featuring that interview in about a month, and will of course announce it on the Wise Talkers website, the Wise Talkers Facebook page, and in the newsletter to subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber to the podcast, you can sign up on wisetalkers.com, using the link at the top right corner of every page on the site. Wise Talkers is also available on Apple, Spotify, and many other podcast distributors.
Thanks for tuning in, hope you enjoyed the show, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Wise Talkers.