Kriyananda's talk at the launch

Hilton Trident Hotel, Gurgaon, 2005. (listen to audio recording)

Good afternoon to all of you. This afternoon I want to begin by inviting all of you to join me and to become partners with me in a new vision. That vision in a sense began very interestingly a year and a half ago. I was in the Privat Hospital with pneumonia. And I was stretched out, practically unconscious, when a doctor came over to me, and he said, "Sir, I would like to ask for advice."

Usually when you're in a hospital and desperately ill, they come to give advice. He said, "Sir, I would like to know how can I meet my practical needs in life and follow the principles of yoga and dharma in which I believe?"

I said to him, "If you follow the way of dharma, you will be more successful."

Well, I'm afraid I was not a good advertisment for success, lying there practically unconscious! I thought the next day: that is just what India needs today. (Editor's note: Read Kriyananda's answer to the doctor in the excerpt from Lesson Five.)

Let me tell you a little bit about myself so that you can understand whatever I may have to give to this course. I was born in Rumania but of American parents. I am really not American or Rumanian—in a way I'm more Indian than anything else—but really wherever I am, I am at home. I had an international upbringing: my father's company was Esso, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (now it's Exxon in the West). At that time it was the largest company in the world. He was an executive in that company and was given the French Legion of Honor for his discoveries in France. All the adults I grew up with were executives and leaders in this very large company.

I grew up, you might say, with "big business." I also grew up hating big business. I had absolutely no interest in it. At the age of sixteen my father offered to buy me a tuxedo (this is the sort of dress that a man wears when he goes to the opera or to big banquets or whatever). I said, "Dad, don't bother. I will never earn enough money to pay income tax."

And in fact that has been true because I became a monk at the age of twenty-two and I have always lived a kind of life that might make you say, "Well what can he tell us about business principles?" Well, in a way, I can say, it's in my blood. I grew up with it, I was surrounded by it, and my father and his friends were honorable people. I didn't dislike their way of life because of any lack of honor. They were very truthful, sincere, honest: all the good qualities that you hope for in business, but often don't find.

I did not like what they were offering. I did not like buying a beautiful home in the suburbs. We lived in Scarsdale, which is supposed to be the "millionaires' zone" in America. I did not like having a home there. I did not like getting married and having children. I did not like any of those things. I couldn't stand the thought of growing up that way. I wanted to become a hermit. I wanted to know God. And I didn't know how. And then I found Autobiography of a Yogi.

Now I know that many of you have read that book, perhaps all of you have read it. I also know that many people in India think, here was the sweet and wonderful young man who had the grace and the wonderful opportunity to meet all these great saints. Well, when I read that book I said, "This is what I want!"

I took the next bus from New York to Los Angeles where he was a living: a journey of four days and four nights. The first thing I said to him was, "I want to be your disciple." I have never had the least doubt on that score in my life. I lived with this great man of God from 1948 until now, nearly sixty years. He passed away in 1952. He said to me, "You have a great work to do." I didn't want to do a great work. I tried to get away from it. I tried to get him to change his mind. What I really wanted was to be a hermit.

Well, that has not been my karma. And I am grateful that it is not because when I came to him I had two desires. One was to know God, and the other was to find some way of sharing inspiration with others. I thought, "People are wandering in darkness. Their materialism has given them so much outwardly and what have they got? They gather together and talk about nothing. They work, work, and at what happens at the end of it all?" When people in my dad's company retired at the age of sixty-five, within two years they were either dead or senile. They'd lost interest. They had nothing to live for. What kind of a life is that?

We have been born for a noble purpose. My guru said, "Someday America and India will join hands and lead the world on the path of dharma—on the path of how to live rightly in this world—spiritually as well as materially.

Marco Polo passed through India on his way from China back to Venice, Italy. His comment on India was very interesting. This was around 1200 AD. He said, "India is the richest country in the world." He lived here long enough to see that. It's very strange that, after just a few centuries, England came here and suddenly England became one of the richest countries—if not the richest—and India became a poor country. One cannot but suspect a cause and effect relationship.

I have noticed in my worldwide travels that wherever Indians go, within one or two generations they're "at the top of the pile," you might say. Because they have intelligence, and they have ability. Whatever they do, they do well.

I came to India in 1958 and lived here for four years. Now I have returned. And I have to admit it has not been easy at my stage of life, at my age, to begin a new work in this country. Thank God I have some very good co-workers. But I am dedicated to this dream that my guru held up before us: that someday India and America will join hands.

India has developed spiritual efficiency through the science of yoga. Swami Ramatirtha predicted, when he was in America back in the beginning of the twentieth century, "Someday, you Americans will take this yoga science and make it practical and bring it back to my people." When I was lecturing in Delhi forty-five years ago in 1959, this consciousness that my guru brought, people wanted. When I was lecturing here I had two thousand people at a time coming to my lectures. They were tired of having the shastras quoted at them. They wanted to know, "how can these teachings be relevant to our daily lives?"

The truth is, I have found in my life that by sticking with dharma, by living by true principles, I've been able to succeed in a way that many people are surprised at. I suppose it might be something laudable. I have to say that the reason I've succeeded is because I didn't do anything. I let Him do it. But I did not let Him do it by sitting back and dreaming and saying, "God, You do it."

Many years ago I was giving a lecture in Los Angeles and I thought, "My guru told me, when I speak, to let God talk through me." I thought, "well then let me get out of the way and let Him talk!" So I decided not to speak. And I stood there. You know when you're talking to a room of a hundred or more people, when you suddenly stop speaking people begin to get anxious. Some of my friends were perspiring thinking I had frozen with fear. But no, I was perfectly comfortable. I was just waiting for God to speak. After two minutes (in those circumstances, two minutes are a lot!), I finally thought, "He isn't going to."

My guru taught, "I will reason, I will will, I will act, but guide Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right path in everything." I understood that we have to act, but we have to draw on His inspiration. We cannot say, "I am doing it" and be nearly so successful.

I have found this quite a few times in my life when I've had a project in writing and I haven't had the time to really think it through because I've had a deadline. There was one: Warner Books wanted me to write a book titled, Meditation for Starters. This was due out the Spring of 1995. In April, they phoned me to say that they didn't want that title, they wanted a book called Superconsciousness. Well you can't just take a new title and plaster it on an old book. You've got to rewrite the whole book!

The book I had been thinking of writing was easy for me. Meditation for Starters is nothing for someone who's been teaching it for many years. But to write a book on superconsciousness I thought would take at least two years. I said, "Well, how long will you give me?" They said, "Two months."

Four weeks of those two months were already committed to lecturing in different parts of the country and other things. So basically I really had only one month. I closed the doors, I wouldn't see any mail, I wouldn't receive any telephone calls, I just wouldn't see anybody. And for one month I just threw myself into it. I said, "I can't do it but You can!" And everytime a problem would come up and I would think, "Oh, this is more than I can handle," I'd throw myself into it and suddenly the answers came. And they came without my knowing beforehand what they were!

The second to last day of June I was able to send the finished manuscript by Federal Express to New York.

This sort of thing is what I'm trying to help you, through this course, to understand. There is a higher wisdom that you can tune into. If you understand business in the right way, you don't have to rely just on your little brain. It's amazing what you can accomplish, in practical ways.

I learned some of these things back in college. I remember that I took a course in Greek. Well, it's not really truthful to say that I took it. I was enrolled in it. I didn't go to class. I did no assignments. I was through with college. I didn't like what they were teaching. I would sometimes come to class and the professor would start preparing us for the final examination. I would recognize, out of a paragraph of Greek, works like 'a' and 'the'. It was pretty pathetic. The professor said, "There are some people in this class who might as well not even come to the exam." Everybody would look at me and laugh.

I said, "No, I'm going to pass that course." The week before the exam I picked up the book and said, "I'm really going to study and do it well." But then I thought, "It's too difficult. I'm just not interested," and I put it aside. I said, "I'll do twice as much work tomorrow."

Well, the next day came and I didn't do it again. A whole week went by and suddenly the night before the exam I thought, "My God, what am I to do?" They say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Well, Necessity was a good mother at that moment. Suddenly I got an inspiration. I told myself, "You're a Greek." Suddenly thinking of myself as a Greek and really putting myself into that bhav, I was a Greek. And somehow I read the book on Greek and it all was very easy. I tuned into that consciousness in humanity which produces the Greek language.

To make a long story short, I did take the exam the next day. It was a difficult exam and only two people passed. I was one of them.

How? Not my credit. Credit to these principles. I had stumbled on a very important truth: if you think you cannot do something you cannot do it. If you think you can do it, you have to take the practical steps, but remember that this brain of ours is very limited. If you can learn to understand that there's much more behind it and be sustained by that, then you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Now, none of you (I think it's a fairly safe guess) is interested in learning Greek. But you are interested in maintaining and achieving greater heights of success.

When I started our communities, I had no money. My father was well-to-do, yes, but my father absolutely disapproved of my yogic way of life and would not give one paisa to what I was doing. He never helped one cent. But I was determined to create a community because my guru had wanted communities.

Now you don't start such things without money. I'm not the kind of person who can toady to rich people. I simply cannot. I just treat them as brothers and sisters. I've grown up among them but I don't look up to them. I don't look down on them. They're just brothers and sisters. And so I never flattered people, and so those rich people who wanted flattery didn't get what they wanted from me. So how could I build a great work? I had no rich supporters. I had to earn it myself.

I gave classes. There were people in America who have earned much money giving classes in these things. I refused to earn money off of people. I wanted to give to them. But I did discover one thing: unless they paid something, they didn't take it seriously. It was like when I studied singing. My teacher said, "Every lesson will be five dollars. It's not that I need the money. You need to pay it." She was right. I had to go out and earn that money because I would never ask my father for it. I worked in restaurants and so on. But I earned the money to give her that five dollars every lesson.

This is the truth: as a student you need to pay for your own sake. I did charge a little bit but I tried to put it at a level where everybody would be able to afford it. If they simply couldn't I gave it anyway. With that, I built Ananda.

It's been a big work. There are about a thousand people living now in all our different communities. We have twenty-five people here now in India, and they have all come with that same spirit of giving because we believe in this mission of our guru. You might say, "Why would you come here? After so many years you've had your great success in the West. Ananda is very well-known."

It has hurt me to see that this great guru, with such a powerful message to give to the world, is not understood here in the sense of his mission that can help India, too.

I had had that world. I didn't want more of it. I wanted to be a hermit. It surprised me when he stated as unequivocal truth that scripture should help man physically, spiritually, and mentally. But physically also!

He made the astounding statement that earning money is the next greatest art after finding God.

Now how can you figure that one out? It's the truth. If you don't have the ability to function in this world effectively—not greedily, but effectively—then you have not yet found the happiness that you've been hearing about. Success is not just money. There's a cartoon I saw of this man standing in the top floor office of his big enterprise, proudly surveying his great factories, his steel mills, and everything. His wife comes in wearing rags and says, "Dear, when will we be able to use some of this money for ourselves?" That's not success. You have to learn to accept and handle all aspects of your life.

This is what my course tries to accomplish. I have tried to show people what I have had to do, in my own life, to learn how to succeed in a practical way. I've had to fight the usual battles: people trying to foreclose on me, people trying to destroy me. I've had so many battles. I remember when I was beginning Ananda I almost resented having to earn that much money. And yet, at the end of it, when I did earn it, I realized that what I really gained was not the money (yes, that came), but the strength of will to do whatever God has given me to do.

Now God has given each one of you a job to do. Do it well and you will find that you succeed much more. There have been times in my life when certainly I might have been tempted to go the shortcut. One time when Ananda was very new a young man came to me and said, "I've inherited quite a bit of money and I would like your advice. Should I stay here at Ananda, or should I go to India?"

I said, "How much money was it?" He said, "Two hundred thousand dollars." Back in 1969 that was a lot of money. I meditated and I wasn't even slightly tempted to say, "Stay here because that money will build Ananda." I said, "I think you should go to India." (If he had wanted to stay at Ananda, he would have said so.) It was not even a temptation for me. I wanted to do what was right.

Our main community is in the forest in the foothills of the Sierra-Nevada mountains. At one point there was a forest fire that destroyed 450 of our acres (we had 650 acres at that time), and 21 of our 22 homes. It was a disaster. We had no insurance. Everybody assumed that we would simply go bankrupt. At that time neighbors telephoned us excitedly. They had discovered that the cause of the fire was faulty spark arrester on a county vehicle. They said, "We can sue the county and get all our money back!"

I wrote to the supervisors, "I know that you're worried about us because we were the biggest losers. We will not be suing." And we did not. Everybody said we would go bankrupt, but we're still here. In fact, the day after that fire we were just out there with joy cleaning everything up. And ten years later our neighbors were still weeping over what they had lost.

A woman in our community had just ten days earlier given birth to her first child. She and her husband lost everything. Her husband said to her, "Well, dear, never mind. At least we won't have any more trouble with those leaks in our roof!"

That's the kind of spirit that Ananda has fostered. The wonderful thing about it is that it works. Don't think, "What can I do to squeeze money out of other people to succeed?" There is a wave in life. I have made it work in my life, and I know it works. Thousands of experiences have proved it to me. If you will get into that flow, and go with that flow, there is a power that will sustain you.

Faith is much more practical than most people realize. With faith, there is nothing you cannot accomplish. I have always believed. I have also proved it. And these lessons which I have written, I myself am amazed by them. I didn't know I knew all that. It isn't I who am writing it, it's a greater wisdom that is flowing through me. I was just working on one lesson last night and I thought, "This is my guru! I wouldn't have said these things." But with his consciousness I knew them. With his consciousness I could express them.

My reason for inviting you to be my partners in this great vision is that I know that India can come up, will come up, but is not coming up as it could. There is not enough truthfulness.

I'm a playwright among other things and I wrote a play when I was in America. I wanted an Indian friend of mine to lend me a dhoti for this play because it was set in India. There was a friend of his there. As I was leaving, this friend said, "I will definitely be there." I thought, "He hasn't asked me when. He hasn't asked me where. He hasn't asked me what. I know he won't come!" He didn't come.

Why that word, "definitely"? When I say I'm going to go out and buy a newspaper, and later on I decide I don't want to because it's raining, I'll go anyway because I said it—even if I said it only to myself. When you say something, do it. When you commit yourself, follow through on your commitment. These principles are very important. Otherwise you become sort of like jelly. You don't have a straight spine. These principles of yoga which are the backbone of India will bring India up again.

India and America are destined to work together: America, because of its material efficiency, India because of its spiritual efficiency. Don't be embarassed by this great ancient science of yoga, which is that which the whole world needs. Learn how to concentrate. Efficiency experts go into factories to show how you can make the flow better. What about your own factory? Your own mind? If you learn how to concentrate, you will know how to do whatever you try to do.

Whenever I have tried to do something that I didn't know how to do, and that has been many times, I've asked Him, and suddenly the answer is there. It isn't as if He appears to me in a vision. I'm not expecting that of you. In this course I show how in each aspect of your life you can offer it up and attune yourself to a higher truth, or you can offer it down and cut yourself off.

What makes a single string on a violin or sitar play so loudly that a whole concert hall can hear it? The sounding box. If you don't have a sounding box, you won't be effective in this world. You need to get away from that thought, "I'm doing it." If you can feel that you're part of a great reality, you'll see that reality can guide you to any practical solution, any practical answer you need.

One time, quite a few years ago, I was in a bookshop. It was near where my parents were living in Atherton, California. The owner had asked me before if we wanted to buy it and I didn't think she was serious, so I didn't answer. This time she said, "Would you like to buy my shop? I'm getting old, I'm seventy-five years old and it's time for me to retire. Would you like to buy it?" I said, "Are you serious?" She said, "Yes." Well as soon as I saw that she was serious, I just stopped for a moment. I didn't sit in my meditation seat and start chanting "Om." I just thought for a moment and I felt, "Yes." So I said, "Yes."

We got it. We needed a forty-five thousand dollar down-payment in order to get the shop. We didn't have it at all. But with faith, it came. Somebody gave a donation of thirty-five thousand and we were able to do it. But the first thing was that I needed to feel inwardly, was it right?

You will see that you can do that if you can go within at least a little bit. You can't stop while you're driving a car for example and go into samadhi. You have to stay on the highway. You have to keep an eye on the traffic. You have to know what you're doing in a practical way. But inwardly there can be this consciousness behind you. And you will see that it will guide your way. And you will do the right things.

In business it's crucial to know the right way, and the wrong way, to make a decision. This course is, I think therefore very practical, and I invite all of you to join me in this great adventure. Because I believe with all my heart that this can change the face of India. If India can embrace these principles and see how their yoga teachings and practices can be aligned to the practical needs of every day, then they will be able truly to stand shoulder to shoulder against any nation in the world—not militarily, but in competence, in ability to be successful. India has that destiny. It is the only ancient civilization that remains alive, and is becoming vibrantly alive again.

India's role is, and always has been, the guru of the world. And this is not to make you have swelled heads. It is to help you to know that there is something in the soil which you can tune into. Even this time, when I came back from Italy, as the plane was landing on the tarmack, I was amazed to feel this joy in the air. It's in the soil. Don't ignore it, because that can carry you to the heights. That which has kept India alive, when all other ancient civilizations have crumbled, has been its spiritual principles.

Nowadays many people say, "Oh, well, ha ha." Don't put it down. On the basis of that, America too has grown to where it is. America was founded on spiritual priciples, and there are many more spiritual people than you may know or than I knew, certainly. I wanted to leave America and come to India or go to South America, anywhere! But after I met my guru and I began to meet all these people who were following his teachings, I saw there's a lot spirituality in our traditions in America too. But it needs to be made practical. That's what the teachings of yoga can do.

Don't think that you have something to be ashamed of. The English tried to make you ashamed. The Moslems came and killed everybody to convert them. The English came and sneered. It's much harder to take sneering. But you've got so much more than the English have. You have that which will save the world.

Joy to you.