Swami Kriyananda

in 2009

Swami Kriyananda (born ”’James Donald Walters”’; May 19, 1926–April 21, 2013) was an American religious leader, yoga guru, musician, and author. He was a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, and founder of the spiritual movement named “Ananda”.

Yogananda made Walters a minister for his organization, Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), based in Los Angeles, California. He authorized him to teach kriya yoga, and in 1960, the SRF Board of Directors elected Kriyananda to the Board of Directors and eventually to the position of Vice President. However, in 1962, the SRF Board of Directors requested his resignation.

Kriyananda founded Ananda, a worldwide movement of religious and communal organizations based on Yogananda’s World Brotherhood Colonies ideal, in 1968. Also, he established a new Swami order in 2009, the Nayaswami Order. Kriyananda authored about 150 books, which altogether have sold over 3 million copies, in 28 languages. He lectured in different countries throughout the world. In addition to English, he spoke Italian, Romanian, Greek, French, Spanish, German, Hindi, Bengali, and Indonesian.

Biography

Early life

J. Donald Walters was born on May 19, 1926, in Teleajen, Romania, to American parents, Ray P. and Gertrude G. Walters. His father was an oil geologist with the Esso Corporation (since renamed Exxon in the United States) who was then assigned to the Romanian oilfields. He received an international education in Romania, Switzerland, England, and the United States. He attended Haverford College and Brown University, leaving the latter with only a semester left before graduation to dedicate his life to searching for God.

Time with Yogananda

In September 1948, in New York, Walters read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, a book that transformed his life. By September 12, Walters had decided to leave his old life behind, became a vegetarian, and soon afterwards traveled cross-country by bus to southern California to become one of Yogananda’s disciples. In Hollywood, California, Walters first met Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship temple there and was accepted as a disciple.

As recounted in his autobiography, The New Path, Walters, twenty-two years old at this point, took up residence with other monks at SRF’s mother center headquarters located on top of Mount Washington in Los Angeles. A year later, Yogananda had put Walters in charge of the monks there, asked him to write articles for the SRF magazine, had him lecture at various SRF centers, ordained him a minister, and appointed him to initiate students into Kriya Yoga. In their three and one half years (Sep. 1948–Mar. 1952) together, Walters took notes of his conversations with his master, publishing them in his 2003 Conversations with Yogananda.

After Yogananda

On March 7, 1952, Yogananda was a speaker at a banquet for the visiting Indian Ambassador to the U.S., Binay Ranjan Sen, and his wife at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. While giving his speech, Yogananda suddenly dropped to the floor and died. Walters was present in the hall, and this was a pivotal moment for the young monk.

In 1953, SRF published Walter’s book Stories of Mukunda, and in 1960 an LP album with him singing Yogananda’s Cosmic Chants, titled Music for Meditation. In 1955, Walters was given his final vows of sannyas into the order of Shankaracharya swamis, by Daya Mata, SRF president from 1955 until her death in 2010, and took the monastic name of “Kriyananda”.

He was made the director of the SRF Center Department, which guides SRF’s meditation groups and centers,and a minister of the Hollywood temple. He lectured for SRF in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and India. In 1958, when Daya Mata, then President of SRF, traveled to India with Ananda Mata and another nun, he came along as well. In 1960, upon the death of Board member and Vice President of SRF, M.W. Lewis, the SRF Board of Directors, elected Kriyananda as a member and Vice President of the Board. He served in that capacity until 1962.

Dismissal

Kriyananda remained in India, serving SRF until 1962, when SRF’s board of directors voted unanimously to request his resignation. According to Phillip Goldberg, SRF won’t say exactly why except that he was self-serving. He was told by SRF leadership never to mention his guru’s name again in public.

Outward accomplishments

Swami Kriyananda was known as a modern day renaissance man, accomplished in an astonishing range of endeavors, ranging from music composition, singing, photography, to yoga, lofty philosophical interpretations in his writings, and leadership of his church.

Kriyananda established Ananda Village as a World Brotherhood Colony in 1968 on 40 acres of land near Nevada City, California-–his portion of a 160-acre (0.6 km^2) parcel acquired with Richard Richard Baker, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. The village was actually founded with the signing of the first purchase agreement of a larger parcel of land on July 4, 1969. According to Kriyananda, these communities provide a supportive environment of “simple living and high thinking” where more than 1,000 full-time residents live, work, and meditate together. The establishment of World Brotherhood Colonies was one of Yogananda’s central “Aims and Ideals” published in his Autobiography of a Yogi until 1958.

Kriyananda founded various retreat centers: The Expanding Light Yoga and Meditation Retreat and nearby Ananda Meditation Retreat, both located near Nevada City, California, U.S.A.; Ananda Associazione near Assisi, Italy; and Ananda Gurgaon, India.

The Expanding Light retreat in 2008. Photo by Jack Byrom

Kriyananda stated that at Yogananda’s request he devoted his life to teaching. Over the course of sixty years, he lectured on four continents in five languages. He gave thousands of lectures and continued lecturing in Asia, Europe, and America until his death.

Kriyananda met a number of well-known spiritual teachers: Anandamayi Ma; Sivananda Saraswati and his disciples Chidananda and Satchidananda; Muktananda; Satya Sai Baba; Neem Karoli Baba; the 14th Dalai Lama; A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada; Ravi Shankar; Vicka Ivankovic, visionary of Medjugorje; and a few others. In the early 1960s, one of Kriyananda’s inter-religious projects near New Delhi, India, received personal support from India’s Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He also had personal contact with Indira Gandhi; Indian Vice President Radhakrishnan; and, in 2006, with India’s President, Abdul Kalam.

In following his guru’s guidance that his task would be “writing, editing, and lecturing”, Kriyananda wrote about 150 books, each of which he stated was intended to help individuals expand their awareness. By the application of Yogananda’s teachings, they expand on such varied topics as marriage, education, leadership and success, spiritual communities, yoga, self-healing, art, architecture, astrology, and philosophy, as well as Yogananda’s teachings on the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and other scriptures.

One of Kriyananda’s landmark books is the memoir The Path (originally published in 1976, and then revised as The New Path in 2009), which contains details of the three and a half years he spent as Yogananda’s disciple in Los Angeles. Kriyananda started Crystal Clarity Publishers and the East-West bookshops in Sacramento and Mountain View, California, and Seattle, Washington. His plays include The Peace Treaty and The Jewel in the Lotus. He wrote his first play at age fifteen and worked and studied with the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, South Carolina, in his early 20s. Rome’s famous Teatro Valle (its oldest still-active theater) hosted The Peace Treaty in June 2009.

In 1973, Kriyananda developed a system for educating children called Education for Life. Education for Life schools state that they offer character development, strong academics, and development of moral strength. The school curriculum is ecumenical; students from all religious backgrounds may attend. There are schools in Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Palo Alto and Nevada City, California (all U.S.A.); in Italy near Assisi; and one was recently (2009) started in Gurgaon, India. Other schools are adopting the curriculum and ideals of Education for Life. Kriyananda’s educational ideas also inspired Ananda College, a yoga university as envisioned by Yogananda, located near Nevada City, California.

Kriyananda took over 15,000 photographs, many of which he said captured the consciousness of human beings behind the image. His photos have been used on inspirational posters, on album covers, for slideshows, in film productions, and in books. He also was a painter and produced inspirational videos.

Other work aspects

• 1948–2013: As a renunciate or householder, Kriyananda dedicated his life in service to others. Copyrights to his books and music were placed in a trust. Royalties were directed toward the work of sharing Kriyananda’s teachings with the public. For many years in his later life, he received no salary or stipend, and depended on donations for all his needs, including food, housing, and medical care.

• 1997: After the destructive 1997 Umbria and Marche earthquake that damaged large areas around Assisi, Italy, including the Basilica of St. Francis, Kriyananda raised funds to help rebuild homes in the area, in a campaign called “Hope and Homes for Italy”. He encouraged the use of wood instead of stone building materials, to minimize future earthquake fatalities.

Legal cases

Self-Realization Fellowship Church v. Ananda Church of Self-Realization & J. Donald Walters litigation

In 1990, Self-Realization Fellowship filed suit in federal court against James Donald Walters (a.k.a. Kriyananda) and the Ananda Church of Self-Realization regarding the changing of the name to the Ananda Church of Self-Realization and on issues regarding specific writings, photographs, and recordings of Yogananda. The litigation lasted for around twelve years (1990–2002). SRF asserted Yogananda wanted SRF to maintain the copyrights to his works and to publish them. This would end up being a landmark legal case, involving fundamental constitutional rights, and petitioned all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied SRF’s request to hear the case.

Prior to the final ruling, the federal court ruled that the written works of Yogananda were not done as “works for hire”, as SRF had claimed. In other words, SRF had not hired him to write these books. This ruling held to the end of the case in 2002.

In 2002, the long litigation was completed with a jury verdict. As reported in The Union, a newspaper located in Grass Valley, California, on October 30, 2002:

“The case hinged on the writings and recordings of Paramahansa Yogananda, a native of India who founded Self-Realization Fellowship in the late 1920s. He died in 1952. Walters became a member in 1948 but was 'thrown out' in 1962, said Stillman’s legal partner, Michael Flynn.”

“Walters, known as Kriyananda, later started Ananda Village in Nevada County. It became home to hundreds of followers who also revered Yogananda and his words. The group republished his articles and sold his recordings, according to Stillman and Flynn.”

Jurors ultimately agreed with Self-Realization Fellowship’s argument that Yogananda had repeatedly made his intentions clear before dying, wanting the Fellowship to maintain copyrights to his works. But Ananda won significant concessions from the court case, such as recognition that the 1st edition Autobiography of a Yogi had lost its copyright and was now in the public domain. Ananda furthermore won the right to use the term Self-Realization, ruled to be a generic term.

Anne-Marie Bertolucci v. J. Donald Walters & Ananda litigation

In 1994, with support from SRF, the attorney Ford Greene, the lawyer for Anne-Marie Bertolucci, a former resident of Ananda, filed suit against Ananda, Ananda minister Danny Levin, and J. Donald Walters. Journalist Vicky Anning wrote that “Walters was sued for sexual harassment and fraud by former Ananda member Anne-Marie Bertolucci, whose lawyers claimed Walters fraudulently used his title of swami, implying he was celibate.” Kriyananda categorically denied all sexual harassment allegations.

At the end of trial in 1998 the jury found the church (Ananda) and Kriyananda liable. During the trial, six women testified under oath that Kriyananda had taken sexual advantage of them when they were impressionable twenty-somethings in search of spiritual advancement.

Kriyananda was judged to have misrepresented himself as a monk and to have caused emotional trauma, and was ordered to pay $685,000 in compensatory damages, and another $1 million in punitive damages. The jury also found that Danny Levin had made “unwelcome sexual advances”. The punitive damages were reduced by $400,000 on appeal. The Ananda Church responded to the million-plus-dollar judgment by filing for protection under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code.

Later years

Kriyananda married in 1981, and publicly renounced his monastic vows in the Shankaracharya order on the occasion of his second marriage in 1985 and returned to using his birth name, James Donald Walters. He was later divorced. In 1995, on his own, he resumed his monastic name and vows.

From 1996, as Kriyananda, he lived and taught for seven years at the Ananda Italy center, near Assisi.

In 2003, he moved to India, where he began an Ananda center in Gurgaon, near Delhi. For five years (until May 1, 2009) he appeared on Sadhna TV and Aastha TV, television channels that were broadcast throughout India, Asia, Europe, and the United States. Since his 2003 move to India, Ananda teachers have been giving classes on meditation and Kriya Yoga in many major Indian cities. In 2009, at age 83, he moved to Pune, India, to start a new community.

In 2009, he established a new swami order. According to Kriyananda, he believed that in this new age of Dwapara Yuga not all old patterns remained valid, and some reformation was necessary. Some of the features of the newly formed Nayaswami order are: (1) Nayaswamis can be single or married. (2) They can be freely creative, if the purpose is to serve others. (3) A new Nayaswami is named not by one Nayaswami (which had been the tradition), but by three. A Nayaswami of this new order is called “Nayaswami”, with “naya” meaning “new”.

On April 21, 2013, he died in his home in Assisi. His remains were brought back to Ananda Village in May 2013.

Attribution

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