With Ananda Sangha Worldwide

Swami Kriyananda reflects on the personal and universal aspects of the eternal, mystical bond between guru and disciple. He explains that the guru is a liberated soul through whom God works as someone who has walked the same path of struggle to guide us to Self Realization. He shares touching stories, including Lahiri Mahasaya's mystical reunion with Babaji, and a single person in a large audience who was recognized by Paramhansa Yogananda as a disciple even though he didn't come back to study with Yogananda until decades later.  These stories illustrate that the guru never truly loses sight of a soul, even across incarnations.

Kriyananda contrasts this with the conditional nature of human love, noting how even parental affection fades with death and rebirth. He also describes avatars who retain "inner freedom" while living ordinary lives to set spiritual examples. He shares his own story of being drawn, almost against his will, into buying Autobiography of a Yogi, guided by Yogananda's unseen presence.

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With Swami Kriyananda

With Swami Kriyananda

Swami Kriyananda reflects on his guru Paramhansa Yogananda's extraordinary inner freedom, fluidity of consciousness, and ability to remain centered no matter the circumstance. He describes Yogananda as a "flawless mirror" who always reflected others' higher selves.

Kriyananda shares personal stories illustrating this equanimity: photographs where Yogananda's appearance seemed to shift with his surroundings, a playful test of endurance while leveling sand mounds, and a public insult from a judge met with calm inner respect rather than outward reaction. The teaching throughout is that true freedom comes from being centered in oneself, unattached to gain or loss, praise or blame, so that divine joy, rather than fear or anger, can shine through in every circumstance of life.

With Swami Kriyananda

Swami Kriyananda explores how spiritual discipline, instead of being harsh, is meant to guide us toward joy. Using stories about a boy who resisted his guru's guidance, the sage Durvasa's ecstatic transformation, and the devastating fire that struck Ananda's California community, he illustrates that life's tests, however painful, become blessings when accepted without ego and surrendered to God.

Kriyananda teaches that true security lies not in possessions or circumstances (which God can take away) but in our inner connection to the divine, which can never be lost. Drawing on personal experiences, including receiving an unexpected gift in Paris and a moment of transcendence in the mountains, he shows how inner surrender transforms not only one's own life but radiates outward, changing the "vibrations" of one's surroundings and positively transforming everyone along the way.

Swami Kriyananda tells a story from his guru Paramhansa Yogananda's boyhood about a threatening neighborhood bully who was transformed through deep prayer to Shiva.  This boy became Yogananda's devoted disciple, and Yogananda then taught him to overcome his anger not by fighting it directly, but by meditating on its opposite, peace, until the negative quality dissolves on its own.

Kriyananda expands this story into a broader spiritual principle: true goodness isn't passive weakness but a dynamic inner power, exemplified by saints, by Buddha's unshakable resolve under the Bodhi tree, and by Shiva's role as the destroyer of delusion. He encourages us to offer our limitations to God, drawing on divine strength to conquer anger, fear, and pettiness, and to recognize the infinite power already present within.

With Swami Kriyananda