The Joyful Arts at Ananda

Hriman McGilloway – Facing and Preparing for Swami Kriyananda’s Departure

Posted on May 7, 2012 by pskillman

Swami Kriyananda is such a driving force for this spiritual path and Ananda, what will happen after he ascends to the next level?

From the moment I arrived at Ananda Village in the 70′s, and every moment since when I encounter someone new to Ananda, the most common first question is (and I am going back how many years — 35 years?) : “What are you all going to do when Swami Kriyananda is no longer here?” My parents ask me that question. Really dozens of people have asked that question. Now you are asking it as much from the standpoint of his magnetism as his leadership. Your question is far more subtle and refined than theirs, but it amounts to the same question — just a different form.

I am not sure how others will answer that. I am not sure I can answer that, except in this way: Here in Seattle, having been here 17 years, and because Swami Kriyananda doesn’t come that often. People here will say, “Well. I don’t know Swami Kriyananda. I, unlike yourself, haven’t met him.” Our response to that is basically: “If you know us, if you enjoy what goes on here at Ananda in Seattle…If you feel that we are your friends, then you do know Swami Kriyananda.”

His Gift to Us

His gift to us, that transcends personality, his gift to us is an aspect of or a portion of, his consciousness. In the Bible a famous story and it is a relevant one, but I wont go into the relevance part of it, but the famous story where Elijah asked for a double portion of his Guru’s spiritual power. The guru said “If you are present when I die, then you shall have it.” It says in the Bible that his mantel fell upon him.

I think there is some of that that he has given us. I can only hope and pray and expect that to whatever extent different ones of us can, we will carry that legacy on. We wont carry it on in the things that he did. But, we hope to carry it on in the kinds of things you’re speaking of — which his vibration, the joy that he emits, the magnetism and so on. There really isn’t anything else. If we can’t partake and share that, somehow, then we really have lost something.

That is really all that there is. We can read his books. Anybody can read his books. Listen to his music but it is really that that you felt that is his gift. As a culture, although we intuitively understand something that is universal, we don’t articulate that very often. That really is how spiritual consciousness is passed: person to person. The fact that it is diluted over generations or diminishes over generations is simply regrettable but obvious and normal. Which is why it is necessary, generation to generation or age to age, saints and others must come. Because a scripture or book or a theology or a ritual is not enough to transmit that by and in itself.

Yes, there is power when you read the Bible, of course. But, a scripture can’t correct you. If fact, as it is commonly said — even the Devil quotes the scripture. I know being on the spiritual path, that if I want something, I will find some scriptural passage to support what I want.

Meeting a Saint

You need saints from age to age to bring that which you experienced with him into it. But, the other side of it is when you look at a population, it is like a pyramid. There is only a very small number of people who are even interested in meeting a saint. What to mention ready — ready meaning, not just to gawk, like a movie star type thing and have no effect on their life, but actually to draw. Remember in the Bible, all these people are crowded around Jesus, they were all grabbing at him, but one touched the hem of his garment and was healed. To that one he stopped suddenly and turned: “The power has gone out of me”. Just to one, even though lots of people doing “gimme gimme gimme” like this.

So it is, it is not like we need such people on every street corner. Because, as Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita: “Out of a thousand, one seeks me. Out of those who seek me, one, perhaps, knows me as I am.” Even the woman who touched him (Jesus) who knows who she thought she was approaching or what she understood. But, intuitively, she must have understood something way beyond the others who were touching him.

Thus it is that a spiritual work can go on and grow even reach millions of people on the strength of its outer form and help people. But there is only a very few people who want the inner transformation for which the only medium, and I mean that literally, is consciousness and another human being with that consciousness.

So Ananda can do much good work in the generations to come with what we have. There will be other Kriyananda’s, other such people who will come when the Divine sends them when they are needed. In the meantime. as disciples. we will all carry on as best we can, giving to those who want what we can give, that that helps them.

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Hriman McGilloway – Swami Kriyananda’s Extraordinary Vision

Posted on May 4, 2012 by pskillman

Swamiji has been known to set goals that seemingly are out of reach…

Being a person of some wisdom and understanding of human nature, he (Swami) also wind a path that he didn’t go too far. He talks about a time – I don’t specifically remember this occasion (I wasn’t there), when he was sitting around with friends, at his home, probably at Ananda, at the Village in the early days, talking about his vision, or what he could imagine, let’s say, what the community might become someday. Well. As he tells the story, it was too much for people. So he learned, he said, not to paint too grand a picture of what was possible.

Nonetheless, I can give several examples: one that comes to me immediately — was how he talked about how some day he would like to see his home — where he lived (his area) on the community’s property — to be developed into beautiful gardens. Maybe have a pool and this and that. I must say, I looked around and it was (his home at the time) this dome that was leaking everywhere and surrounded by thick forest on the north slope that nobody in their right mind would build that. Impossible to drive to — deeply rutted roads that turned into peanut butter in the winter. And he was describing these magnificent layered terraced gardens with beautiful flowers and grass — I mean, we had no grass there!. It was just difficult to imagine.

Yet, bit by bit, the Crystal Hermitage is now a place where visitors come and look at the tulips once a year. It is just a magnificent place of beauty. How he could envision it at the time I just could not see. And so — it was like that.

National Tour

For example, again, after the fire when we were dirt poor in a very literal sense, he said “Why don’t we do a nationwide tour? Visit the different cities of America and share these wonderful things that we do.” Well, my goodness, we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. He said, “I’d love to get a motor home!” A motor home?

Sure enough. Somebody donates a motor home, just out of the blue. Sure enough, another maybe dozen or more people go off with him and he said, “Somebody offered me a loan.” Padma and I who did the finances (said), “A loan?!! How are we going to pay that back?”

Well, we did. It took some years but from that tour came many members now who have been there twenty years or thirty years…Who have been great devotees and friends…Who have just flowered spiritually and humanly in every way as a result of that.

It (the tour) was controversial. When he asked some of the members to go even nearby Sacramento to open a center — an Ananda Center — it was shocking to some people. You would think Sacramento was Sodom and Gomorrah or something from the response of the community residents. Even when Padma and I lived in nearby Nevada City, I remember one member coming up to say “How can you live here? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get out of tune spiritually?” I didn’t think that at all of course. But, nonetheless, people were fearful and protective because, truthfully, we’re all new to this. We’re perhaps still too vulnerable to other influences and felt that.

At every turn, he (Swami) would have an idea of what was next for our evolution and service that was always, at least a couple of steps, if not greater, beyond our thoughts.

India

It is extraordinary. When he went to India — that was 2003, in the fall. Over the years, prior to that, there would be occasions where he comment that Yogananda had thought to send him to India. After Yogananda’s passing, as you know, he was sent there by his superiors in Self Realization Fellowship. (Swami) had a clear sense that Yogananda wanted more to happen in his own country. From time to time over the years, Kriyananda would comment that perhaps someday we should do something in India. But one of us took him all that seriously. It sounded like a nice idea. But, we couldn’t imagine how it could be done.

Then, in 2003, there were some friends there who, with a sense of urgency, (reported to Swami) that the work was not doing so well, that Yogananda was not well known as he ought to be in his own country. That report, and these people, came to visit him — they were American but had been residents in India for some years in their retirement. They came to visit him in Italy and it was that that triggered his inspiration, his sense that now was the time. Already, he was 80 something years old. There he went. But I’ll tell you at the time, of course we were in Seattle, even here people would come up to us and say “Why is he starting a work in India? Isn’t there enough to do here? Was doesn’t he come here to Seattle?”

Even as recently as 2003, people questioned the common sense or practicality or necessity of that move as well. So yes, at every turn…

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Padma McGilloway – Working with Swami

Posted on May 3, 2012 by pskillman

You studied linguistics at Berkeley, did this help at Ananda?

Yes. That was my course of study and interestingly, years later, at Ananda, Swami Kriyananda asked me to help with some of his projects which evolved into publishing. One of the aspects, small aspects, at the time of the publishing was Foreign Rights.

He asked us to come to Seattle to coordinate the activities here. He also suggested I bring the Foreign Rights part of the publishing with me and continue doing that because one can do that from anywhere. Through the years I have gotten to work with lots of people in lots of languages, which had been my original interest when I had been going to school. So, you never know how it is going to be fulfilled. I didn’t think about that until I had been doing it a long time.

Our books are in 31 languages. I work with publishers internationally to handle those rights’ contracts .

How did you know what work to do? Did Swamiji tell you? Or did you simply gravitate to the “right” work?

Well, not always did he ask that. In the very beginning, both Hriman and I had some background with accounting. He (Hriman) was a CPA – he had a big background. I had learned on the job kind of thing, in part-time jobs I had had while I was going to school. So, we gravitated with helping out with the finances — eventually coordinating all the finances for all of Ananda because that happened to be a skill that we had…which not many Yogis have. And, it was needed.

Then, at a certain point, Swami needed help with his projects. He invited me to come and help him accomplish those. He was doing lectures on the road. He was writing. He was composing music and our choirs and singers were performing that music. He needed someone to coordinate all of those activities and get them happening once he created them. He asked me to do that and that is what I did.

He asked Hriman to continue with the finances because it was very much needed, which he did. We were both ministers at the same time. Then, coming up here (Seattle) after that, again he did ask us to come and do that – he did appoint us as Spiritual Directors here.

What does that mean? That means you have to figure it out when you get there – “What that means” and start doing it. We didn’t know we would end up building a temple as part of it. We had no idea. We are the least talented that way. We have no carpentry in our nature whatsoever. And yet, there it was. We gathered a group of folks together with a variety of skills around us who could pull it of and you just do it. And this is just one part of many aspects. The next steps unfold.

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Padma McGilloway — Meeting Swami Kriyananda

Posted on May 2, 2012 by pskillman

How did you get to Ananda?

I was going to Cal Berkeley in California. 1970 was the year. A friend gave me The Autobiography of a Yogi to read. I read it in short order. That same friend told me there was a direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, who was starting a retreat center and community in the Sierra Nevada foothills, which was only about a three hour drive for me. If you went up to help on the weekend, you could do work-exchange and stay there if you help build the temple.

I am not much of a builder but I went up to help with the cooking to feed the guys, found Ananda in that way and got to meet Swami Kriyananda on that same weekend.

What was it like when you first met Swamiji?

It was a very important moment for me and I knew it. The first night I arrived, I arrived late on a Friday night. It was dark, so I was led to a place where I could camp. There were no facilites then at all. Well, barely. Not for guests. There were a few residences and small cottages.

I was sleeping out by the fire pit — a camp area. I remember in my dream, that night, passing Swami Kriyananda –I had seen a photograph of him. –Passing him in my dream there at the retreat. And he just looked at me and smiled and he said “Can you come help me?”

And I said :”Sure!” in the dream.

The next day I met him. I was very shy. He asked me where I was from. I could barely get the words out. That was the beginning. Somehow that dream must have been an inspired dream — a superconscious dream, for that, in fact, felt like what I was doing in the years to come. To go and help him fulfill what Yogananda charged him to do: To share the teachings and to build communities.

You had to leave a number of things going on in your life in order to do this didn’t you?

Yes. In a matter fact, I was in college – the University at Berkeley. My parents had immigrated to this country from Holland for the express purpose of having their children have good educations. So, I continued at little bit longer. It took me about two and half years after that to move to Ananda Village. But, I still didn’t finish my university degree.

That was a big decision and I knew it would be disappointing to my family. It was, at the time. But, they were a loving and accepting family so it all worked fine.

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Hriman McGilloway – Meeting Swami Kriyananda

Posted on April 20, 2012 by pskillman

When did you first meet Nayaswami Kriyananda?

When I first visited Ananda Village and first arrived a few months later, he (Swami) was travelling. I believe he was in India.

It probably wasn’t until oh, maybe 6 months after that, when I met him. But I like to think that I first met him when I heard cassette tapes of his voice prior to meeting him in the flesh. My thought, at the time, partly because the cassette tapes being run on batteries in the out of doors was that “he had a very high, squeaky voice and talked really fast.”

So, I really didn’t know what to expect when I met him!

His youthfulness, charm, power, his wisdom, his graciousness, I had never met in anyone. So uniquely and seamlessly combined, appropriately expressed, with great centeredness and poise of person. I was smitten, if you will, from the very beginning.

Where and when did you meet him?

At Amanda Village and at a Satsang (gathering) at this home there which, many years later, became the Crystal Hermitage. Padma and others introduced me. It was a brief conversation but it was very meaningful. It wasn’t so much what was said as who he was and how he spoke.

There was never a doubt in my mind. It would take some years, as it does with any friend, particularly someone like that, to get to know and work with an have conversations with — to understand things that he said particularly as it related to directions of the community. He, and his ideas, were inspired, but often very challenging for the new work of Ananda — which was very much challenged by circumstances and the people there.

In time, I began to trust and understand the directions he set for the community. If I could give an example: I arrived after the fire (1976) and, at the time, most of us had to live in nearby Nevada City. Having been newly arrived and inspired by the teachings, the practices of Yoga and Kriya Yoga, I was naturally most enthusiastic about the spiritual way of life, renunciation and so forth.

But, Swamiji’s thrust for us at that moment was to “Start Businesses”. Well, I had more or less lived in the business world and was quite ready to turn my back on it. So, the last thing I wanted to hear was “March forward, young man! We are going to buy some businesses!” We marched up and down Broad Street, which is the main street of Nevada City, looking at businesses we might purchase. It was a bit if an adjustment. I was looking forward to chanting “OM” in the forest – that seemed to me what you are supposed to do in an ashram community.

But, no — we were going out and looked at soda fountains to buy, a health food store to buy, and an old church to buy. All sorts of things like that naturally involved business dealings and contracts and leases, accounting — all the things I thought I was leaving behind me. In fact, I jumped head first into it for quite a few years.

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Tim Tschanz – Art should be something that makes us better, inspires us

Posted on November 19, 2011 by pskillman

What are the Joyful Arts?

The Joyful Arts is a term the Swami Kriyananda has coined. What he is trying to do is change the focus of Art and usher in a New Age of Art. We are coming into a new age, Dwapara Yuga, which is a higher age than where we have been. I believe what he is trying to do is bring more clarity into Art. Art has gotten to the point where people think Art means something novel. Art has just sort have become something odd.

Some of the art that is churned out these days is bizarre.

It is sort of like the artists are trying to elicit a reaction. Doesn’t matter what kind of reaction; it could be revulsion, or disgust or just confusion. I believe what Swamiji is trying to do is bring the outcome of Art is to uplift somehow. And not necessarily just joyful but to somehow to inspire and uplift the artist and the viewer.

I do these water features that uplift me and it uplifts the people that are seeing it. That is what art should be – it should be something that makes us better, inspires us. Not just necessarily…but it somehow uplifts us, it brings our energy up into joy, into love, into expansiveness. There are so many different qualities. That is what I think where we are aiming is to bring some meaning into art.

Swami has written a lot about that – Meaning in the Arts, Art as a Hidden Message.

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Tim Tschanz – The Joy and Art of Landscape Design

Posted on November 12, 2011 by pskillman

Performing in the Peace Treaty

My name is Tim Tschanz and I have lived at Ananda for about 30 some years. I lived in Illinois before I came here. I came here quite young. In Illinois, I was at college when I was first introduced to this path of Yogananda. I joined a small community in Illinois when I was pretty young and still in college. I was studying art and design and I quit college when I found this path. Lived on a farm with some devotees for a couple of years then I realized that the spiritual path didn’t necessarily exclude school.

I went back to school with a fresh insight and finished out college from a different perspective. So I moved out here in 1981 and I have taught, school, high school, junior high and 4^th, 5th and 6^th grade. Now I am a landscape contractor, although I do a lot of landscape design and installations. Mostly I work outside of Ananda but I do some jobs here.

My degree (in college) was in Product Design which is an interesting way of saying an inventor or problem solver. We would have these courses that were quite unusual – we come into the class and the teacher would say “here is a problem and here is a set of materials – solve that problem.” And is was zany problems, sometimes practical problems, or sometimes they would say “here is a problem, solve it, (using) any kind of materials you want. Or do some research on this problem and solve it.”

It was a school founded by Buckminster Fuller. It was very creative. Our campus was full of geodesic domes.

In what ways do you experience JOY in what you do?

Well, I would say in landscaping, the most joyful thing that I do is meet with a client, a home owner, and interview them and find out as much as I can about them…what they love to do, how much they love to be outside, the colors they like. So the first contact with a client is like that, I am just interviewing. I try to find out as much a I can about them. Then, I take their ideas and just their likes and dislikes and try to combine them with my inspiration and put it on paper for a landscape.

I especially like water features, so if I can, I will incorporate a water feature. So then I will take all these ideas and then I will put them on paper and draw them out as a landscape design. Then, I will go back to the person once before the project is finished and say “what do you think of these?” So we collaborate and we come up with a plan together. I love that process.

Then, once that is done, I like to take that — I change hats – (I am a contractor) so I say “I can manifest this vision for this price.” So, hopefully, they’ll say “yes, go for it.” A lot of times, the people will recognize I love what I am doing – I am not just a worker. They’ll say things like, “You’re the artist!” . I they say that, I know I have struck up a good relationship with them.

I love taking inspiration and bringing it down to earth. I mean literally bringing it down to earth: making this little scribble I’ve made into something beautiful and alive with movement and color, with water and plants growing and animals coming and the people coming into this environment and loving it. To me, that is the big story: For them to come into this environment that is now part of their house and have them feel a sense of upliftment, relaxation, joy, connection with the outdoors.

That probably is the biggest joy for me – to take a process from an idea all the way to fruition and completion.

What is it about water that you like?

I like emulating nature. So when I do a water feature, for the most part, it is a stream and a pool. It’s funny, I think I have thought in years past that I have being trying to play god, in a way – inadvertently. I am creating this little nature scene out of nothing, out of a bare dirt back yard. I have felt, in the past that –Oh my gosh — I feel like this creative process is sort of like Divine Mother. I am sort of like Mother Nature. Here I am, I am playing God in a way. I mean not in an egotistical way.

When I am done I feel wow, I have just created this beautiful nature thing. Then I reflect and think “Divine Mother does so much better than this.” I feel a little taste of that creative inspiration.

(the water feature) adds so much life to a landscape. Whatever landscape you are doing, if you put a water feature that is always like “jewel on the ring” – it is the center, it is the focal point.” It is living – the fish in the water, the wildlife that come, it is moving, always changing.

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Essential Eby

Posted on September 11, 2011 by pskillman

In the following brief segments, David Eby shares his thoughts, stories, music and inspiration derived from playing Swami Kriyananda’s compositions.

Topics

Our Responsibility as Joyful Artists
Our responsibility as joyful artists – we have a great role not only in sharing this music but consciously sharing it…every time I pick up my cello I have an opportunity to create a field of energy; to share not only through the notes but also through the vibration, to bring it alive to people.

David Eby with Swami Kriyananda

Sympathetic Resonance
One of the reasons why music affects us so deeply is that because at our deepest level we are vibrations of energy. What is music but vibrations of sound…When people choose to open themselves up to resonating with certain things, like divine love, or peace or joy, and trying to resonate with that; the more that we open ourselves to those feelings – to say “O.K. I want to choose to feel joy, or peace or love or power…” that is when we truly can open ourselves to vibrate more with that which we seek to attune ourselves with.

What My Understanding of The Joyful Arts Is
Here, at Ananda, our main goal is to uplift the consciousness – not only of people around us here but also throughout the world by offerings in meditation, and offerings through music, in service, in our joy in just sharing this joy with others

Meeting Swami Kriyananda One Night Through Song
I had just joined Ananda and was told to sing a solo in an upcoming concert. I thought I’d better practice this song so I don’t make an utter fool of myself. I sang this very short song. By the time I had finished 40 seconds, my consciousness changed so dramatically that I had to pull off to the side of the road to take stock of what had just happened

Moving to the Spiritual Aspects of Music
I’ve played cello for most of my life –since I was six years old. I went to college and got my bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Cello Performance. The driving force behind it was always some need to share this joy that I felt while playing.

Performances

Paramhansa Yogananda

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Life is a Quest for Joy (Melody) by Swami Kriyananda performed by David Eby

Posted on September 10, 2011 by pskillman

The Composer, Swami Kriyananda

One melody, with variations, hauntingly describes the human condition: love, hope, aspiration, courage, disappointment, sorrow’all directed toward life’s universal goal: joy.

This is a new kind of music: in the tradition of classical music, but not constrained by classical structures. Transcending the emotions and the intellect, it uplifts the mind to a level of inner healing and soul-inspiration. Features solo cello performed by David Eby.

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Life is a Quest for Joy by Swami Kriyananda – performed by David Eby and Ben Skillman