Swami Kriyananda,Dwapara 226 to 313

[ re-posted from Facebook source, Sunday, from Ananda Sangha, Pune ]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our beloved Swami Kriyananda left his body this morning at his home in Assisi, Italy. I include below a short description of his final hour as sent to us by Nayaswami Lakshman, Swamiji's secretary.

Miriam (Swamiji's nurse) filled me in a little on Swamiji's last hour. He slept from 2 till 7 a.m., then, as usual after waking up, went right to check his e-mails. Jaidhara asked if he'd like a pancake breakfast, to which he nodded his approval. Miriam asked him how he was, but he didn't answer. At first she thought he was just in a withdrawn frame of mind, but before long it became clear that something was wrong. He had a brief seizure for about twenty seconds, then appeared to be doing better. But he had increasing difficulty breathing. Soon KIrtani and Anand joined them (Narayani and Shurjo, who live downstairs, were already there). People chanted Om in Swamiji's right ear and urged him to try to breathe, which helped a couple of times. But at 8:00 he breathed his last. They all stayed with him -- crying, of course, but also rejoicing in his long-sought freedom. Miriam said that his joy and freedom filled the room.


We will have a Memorial Service and Astral Ascension Ceremony for Swamiji at the Ananda Kriyayoga Community tomorrow (Monday) morning at 11:00 am. All are welcome to attend.

Please keep Swamiji in your prayers and see him in freedom, embraced by Master's arms. Hold to your heart the words by which he wished to be remembered, "He was a good disciple." His example will be our guide.

With blessings,
Nayaswami Jaya
(Spiritual Director, Ananda Sangha India)

Fifth laptop donated to children in developing world

All profits from the Dwapara Yuga blog, associated print books, electronic books and iPhone/iPhone apps are donated to the One Laptop per Child Charity for the benefit of children in the developing world.  

For the five years to date, five laptops have been donated.  Ironically, even the most hate-filled book 'reviewers' or  flaming  online posters or emailers have inadvertently contributed to this effort, with profits not going to fund their imagined 'enemies', or any supposed 'cults', instead children who have no connection to any of the individuals or groups that so animate zealots.  

In pointing at others, four of our fingers point back at ourselves.   Such a small contribution is trivial in the face of the world's problems and nothing compared to the riches of many churches and tax free religious organization but the author rather likes Mother Teresa's positive and action-oriented saying -

"If you can't feed 100 people, then feed just 1"

A new book just came out called "A fight for religious freedom."

It details the 12 years of Ananda-SRF lawsuits, a much milder form of the Catholic vs Protestant wars of the Middle Ages.   The protagonists themselves believed the disputes to be karmic echoes of those times.

It's an electrifying read, with twists and turns worthy of a Grisham novel, pulling back the curtain on many aspects of SRF unknown even to long time members.

The real winners of the lawsuit have been the general public, able to access Yogananda's writings without limits and filters by any priestly organization, able to draw their own conclusions regarding his teachings on the Yugas and other subjects.

In launching the 2007 blog and book, I was careful to take legal council, well aware of the persecution rained down upon Amrita and then Ananda by SRF for daring to say anything that might be perceived as heresy against an "authorized" history,  which omits many events.   At the time, much of the materials were not well known, or accessible from FaceBook and a myriad of sites, as they are today.   As always, the question is not what one's opinion is of a fact, rather whether it is true.

Other than a couple of flaming reviewers inadvertently making clear their affiliations along with their opinions, and some nastygrams, have made many new friends and learned a lot in correspondences and meetings over the past 60+ months.

It would have been hard to cover a subject such as DY and PY and not touched at all on the lawsuits since they're part of the transition from KY to DY, a move from hierarchies and collective rigidity to a more personal focus.

Gyanananda

Gyana (sometimes written jnana) is wisdom, the goal of all learning and knowledge.  Ananda is bliss.  The author's spiritual name is Gyanananda - bliss thru divine wisdom.   

My pen name is Poor Richard, an homage to Ben Franklin, who used the same "nom de plume" to spread his own Dwapara Yuga ideas and ideals.  

The site gyanananda.com redirects here.   There are many Gyanananda's, with some famous Indian and Western ones, but this particular one is me.

A Canadian friend writes this Guy-ananda that's charming, less high fallutin' and much easier to spell.

Over the years I've had a lot of correspondence, especially from zealots writing several times a day and it's been rather nice to try to return hate (fueled mostly by misunderstanding and past hurts to the writers) with love, although I've not always succeeded.  As Swami Kriyananda says, if you try to do good, expect persecution sprinkled on your morning cornflakes!

If I were to quickly name influencers they'd be Sri Yukteswar from the Holy Science, Ben Franklin, Oliver Cromwell, Clive Sinclair, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Page, Bobby Fischer, Bertrand Russell, John Berger and Bruce Lee (photo) -- folks happy to speak truth to power and tradition.

Updates are mainly now to Facebook since it's the medium that most 'net savvy folks use today.   I regret most there the inability to refine ideas as well as faults of spelling and grammar (of which I seemingly have many in first drafts) that act as traps to stop some minds in their tracks. FB has the power of spontaneity but sometimes posts are rather rough.

Gyanananda/Poor Richard maintain only two sites -- dwaparayuga.com and facebook.com/dwaparayuga.   There are many other "Poor Richard", "Dwapara" and "Gyan-Ananda" monikers and variants on the 'net but not the same author.  Just as there is no monopoly on truth, or "owning" of this guru, idea or theme, or that, so there is no "monopoly" on relatively generic names and tags.   Even in business the idea of (tm) trade marks is much less strong than is popularly imagined.

If I were to re-write the 2007, Dwapara Yuga book, I suspect I'd provide fuller explanation of some of the ideas that on balance assume too much background knowledge from readers and drop the discussion of particular Kriya groups since the bickering among them is a distraction from the saints, sages, gurus, prophets, artists, political, military and scientific leaders shaping Dwapara Yuga. 

As a footnote, it's looking like Facebook will soon be a joining MySpace, AltaVista, Netscape, Gopher and other tools as its stock hype crumbles and users awake to the privacy/security issues it poses.    It's amazing to me as a business insider how little discussion there is of how tools like Facebook, Firefox or Chrome are funded with EULAs (end user license agreements) where users are selling their privacy for usage rights, forgetting the old adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Facebook

More timely updates are now on the Facebook Dwapara Yuga site.

The 2007 Dwapara Yuga book and old posts are being left up for historical reference, although were they to be rewritten today would have the benefit of five more years of Ascending DY consciousness and a veritable explosion of new sources and perspectives.
 
It looks like Facebook in the 10's is where discussion is happening rather than the forums and blogs of the 00's.  In another 5 years, Facebook will likely be a quaint memory.

It struck the author that Yogananda's text in the Autobiography is timeless and yet Tara's footnotes are something of a time capsule (at least in the original edition).