What was it like when you first met Swamiji?
I was very, very fortunate. He came to speak at Stanford University. His talk was not sponsored by the University but by a fraternity at the university in November, not quite Thanksgiving, 1969.
It was the ‘60’s, end of the 60’s, a pretty tumultuous time. There was a lot happening. And this fraternity, which was known for being a really party fraternity for some reason got the idea to have a Swami come and talk would be really far out, I guess. They had this big tent set out behind their fraternity house
I had actually attended Stanford but I dropped out. I was still living nearby. Friends of mine had met Swami Kriyananda. He was building this community (Ananda Village) by living in San Francisco and teaching a lot of classes and earning money in order to pay for it at that time.
There was this tent. There were bleachers. I would have sat in the front row but the people I was with wanted to sit in the last row. So, I was at the top of this set of bleachers. Swami Kriyananda, who was 44 at that time, strode in with this aura of energy that was unlike anything I had ever seen.
I was already studying the concept of self-realization through other paths than Master’s (Yogananda’s) path. I had an idea of what was possible. In fact, I was in a state of great frustration: I had an idea what was possible, but I felt like I was on the other side of a glass wall. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how you took all those wonderful book ideas and made your life look different. My life looked exactly the same.
Swami Kriyananda walked into that room and literally, in my mind, I heard “He has it! He has what I want!”. This inner thought came to me. I don’t even know what the ‘it” was. When I reflect back on it (Of course I see it as vividly as possible) – it is like he had no boundaries.
One feels other people’s energies without even thinking about it. Swami had no edges. It is like this force field walked in with himself in the center of it. His whole demeanor was so giving and he had something to give. I wanted to be giving but I didn’t have anything to give.
He hadn’t even spoken a word and that was it for me. I just thought, “this is what I am looking for, He’s got it, I am going to go where he is, I am going to learn.”
Then, Swami talked. I don’t remember hardly anything that he said. But, I remember when he finished I thought “This is the most intelligent man I have ever met.”
It took me about a year to organize myself to leave everything behind and move here. From that point to sitting here this minute, it was just : ‘He has what I want and I am going to do whatever it takes to become as much like him as I can.’
Not a day has gone by since that day that I don’t thank God for finding me, rescuing me, pulling me out of it.
What a delight to see these!
I really enjoyed the quality of the video, the background colors, and mostly the flow of the editing. I confess I’m not much of a video-watcher (at least, talks or services)–I get restless before too long just sitting & watching; prefer instead to listen to audio mp3 recordings of them while driving. By contrast, it was very enjoyable to watch these! The visual movement during these was edited perfectly, in my opinion. Neither too busy nor too boring. Made it very easy to view & absorb.