Excerpt
from The Path by Swami Kriyananda
Some of my most impressive memories of Master are of his
public lectures. While they lacked the sweet intimacy of
talks with the disciples at Mt. Washington, they rang with
the spirit of a mission destined, he told us, to bring spiritual
regeneration to the world.
I remember especially how stirred I was by a talk he gave
at a garden party in Beverly Hills on July 31, 1949. Never
had I imagined that the power of human speech could be so
great; it was the most stirring lecture I have ever heard.
"This day," he thundered, punctuating every word,
"marks the birth of a new era. My spoken words are
registered in the ether, in the Spirit of God, and they
shall move the West.... Self-Realization has come to unite
all religions.... We must go on ó not only those
who are here, but thousands of youths must go North, South,
East and West to cover the earth with little colonies, demonstrating
that simplicity of living plus high thinking lead to the
greatest happiness!" I was moved to my core. It would
not have surprised me had the heavens opened up and a host
of angels come streaming out, eyes ablaze, to do his bidding.
Deeply I vowed that day to do my utmost to make his words
a reality.
Often during the years I was with Master he exhorted his
audiences on the subject of this cherished dream of his:
"world-brotherhood colonies," or spiritual cooperative
communities ó not monasteries, merely, but places
where people in every stage of life could devote themselves
to living the divine life.
"Environment is stronger than will power," he
told us. He saw "world-brotherhood colonies" as
environments that would foster spiritual attitudes: humility,
trust, devotion, respect for others, friendly cooperation.
For worldly people, too, who dream of a better way of life,
small cooperative communities offer the best hope of demonstrating
to society at large that mankind is capable of achieving
heights that are so scornfully repudiated in this age of
spiritual underachievers. Such communities would be places
where cooperative attitudes were emphasized, rather than
social and political "rights" and the present
social and business norms of cut-throat competition.
"Gather together, those of you who share high ideals,"
Yogananda told his audiences. "Pool your resources.
Buy land out in the country. A simple life will bring you
inner freedom. Harmony with nature will bring you a happiness
known to few city dwellers. In the company of other truth
seekers it will be easier for you to meditate and think
of God.
"What is the need for all the luxuries people surround
themselves with? Most of what they have they are paying
for on the installment plan. Their debts are a source of
unending worry to them. Even people whose luxuries have
been paid for are not free; attachment makes them slaves.
They consider themselves freer for their possessions, and
don't see how their possessions in turn possess them!"
He added: "The day will come when this colony idea
will spread through the world like wildfire."
In the over-all plan for his work, Paramhansa Yogananda
saw individual students first receiving the SRF lessons,
and practicing Kriya Yoga in their own homes; then, in time,
forming spiritual centers where they could meet once or
twice weekly for group study and meditation. In areas where
there was enough interest to warrant it, he wanted SRF churches,
perhaps with full- or part-time ministers. And where there
were enough sincere devotees to justify it, his dream was
that they would buy land and live together, serving God,
and sharing the spiritual life together on a full-time basis.
As I mentioned in Chapter Seventeen, Master had wanted
to start a model world-brotherhood colony in Encinitas.
He felt so deeply the importance of this communitarian dream
that for some years it formed the nucleus of all his plans
for the work. Indeed, ruler of his own mental processes
though he was, even he on one occasion became caught up
in a whirlwind of enthusiasm for this project. He told a
congregation one Sunday morning, "I got so involved
in thinking about world-brotherhood colonies last night
that my mind got away from me. But," he added, "I
chanted a little, and it came back."
Another measure of his interest may be seen in the fact
that the first edition of Autobiography of a Yogi ended
with a ringing report of his hopes for founding such a colony.
"Brotherhood," he wrote in that edition, quoting
a discussion he had had with Dr. Lewis in Encinitas, "is
an ideal better understood by example than precept! A small
harmonious group here may inspire other ideal communities
over the earth." He concluded, "Far into the night
my dear friend ó the first Kriya Yogi in America
ó discussed with me the need for world colonies founded
on a spiritual basis."
Alas, he encountered an obstacle that has stood in the
way of every spiritual reform since the days of Buddha:
human nature. Marriage has always tended to be something
of a closed corporation. The economic depression of the
Nineteen-Thirties had had the effect on a generation of
Americans of heightening this tendency by increasing their
desire for worldly security. "Us four and no more"
was the way Yogananda described their attitude. America
wasn't yet ready for world-brotherhood colonies.
A further difficulty lay in the fact that the core of his
work already was his monastic disciples. It was they who
set the tone for all the colonies. Householders couldn't
match their spirit of self-abnegation and service. Families
were crowded out of the communal garden, so to speak, by
the more exuberant growth of the plants of renunciation.
But Yogananda was too near the end of his mission to fulfill
his "world-brotherhood colony" dream elsewhere.
"Encinitas is gone!" he lamented toward the end
of his life. It was not that the ashram was lost. What he
meant was that his plans for founding a world-brotherhood
colony on those sacred grounds would not be fulfilled ó
at least not during his lifetime. He stopped accepting families
into the ashrams, all of which he turned now into full-fledged
monasteries. For in his renunciate disciples he found that
spirit of selfless dedication which his mission needed for
its ultimate success.
Nevertheless, the idea of world-brotherhood colonies remained
important to him. It was, as he had put it during that speech
in Beverly Hills, "in the ether, in the Spirit of God."
Kamala Silva, in her autobiography, The Flawless Mirror,
reports that as late as five months before he left his body
he spoke to her glowingly of this dream of his. Master knew
that, eventually, the dream must be fulfilled.
World Brotherhood Colony Links and Resources
A Place
Called Ananda: The Trial by Fire That Forged One of the
Most Successful Cooperative Communities in the World Today
Read the entire book online. The complete story of how Ananda
was founded, beginning with Kriyananda's training under
Yogananda.
Excerpt on
World Brotherhood Colonies from The Path, by
Swami Kriyananda.
Article on World
Brotherhood Colonies, by Paramhansa Yogananda
Autobiography
of a Yogi Chapter 48: In the first edition of Autobiography
of a Yogi, Yogananda speaks at length about world brotherhood
colonies. Read Chapter 48, from the online Autobiography
of a Yogi, to see what he says.
Yogananda on World
Brotherhood Colonies, from The Flawless Mirror,
by Kamala Silva.
Related
Autobiography
of a Yogi online edition
The New
Path online edition
Streaming Video
of Yogananda
Photo Album
of Yogananda
Articles by Yogananda
World Brotherhood
Colonies
