This week we honor Swami’s Moksha Day—the sacred anniversary when, thirteen years ago on April 21, he consciously left the body and attained spiritual freedom. Next month we celebrate his birthday, and this year marks the centennial of his birth—a hundred years of a life (and beyond life) dedicated to sharing the light of Paramhansa Yogananda and our line of Gurus’ Kriya Yoga, the path of Self-Realization, and spiritual community throughout the world.
This centennial is a reflection of the remarkable century past, as well as a celebration of a thriving divine work, and an inspirational vision of the next century to carry these blessings forward.
When I first came to Ananda Village in California in 2009, I had the darshan, or spiritual blessing, of meeting Swami Kriyananda personally. I found him an unassuming, blissful, divine friend—who instantly seemed to know my soul. He recognized intuitively that I had found my life’s path, guiding and strengthening my spirit without having to say or explain any of this to me.
Over the next few years, I attended every public satsang and event I could to be in Swami’s presence. I poured myself into every aspect of service and Ananda community that I could. I followed Swami to Europe and India to sing his music, see and support his ever-growing spiritual family and work, and receive and share the Light he so freely and wondrously shared with all of us. He blessed my wife Gita and I in 2012—coincidentally in Portland, Oregon, where we would (never have thought we would!) move 11 years later to help serve and lead Ananda’s work. We had one final blissful meeting with Swami in India in 2013, just weeks before his moksha.
Looking back, I am struck by these poignant years and in particular, an interesting parallel: I was about the same age when I met Swami as he had been when he met Yogananda—just twenty-two years old. And the span of time I was able to be with him, even peripherally, on this earth—just a few years—was almost exactly the same length of time he had with his own Guru, Paramahansa Yogananda. This is not a personal significance, special to me, but an observation of the spiritual relay race between Guru, exalted disciple, and the generations of disciples that follow. Many of my peers had a similar, brief but meaningful, spiritual overlap with Swamiji.
Yogananda explained that our spiritual enlightenment requires contact with the Guru—and that presence can come through the attunement of spiritually empowered disciples. Swami Kriyananda played that role powerfully for countless spiritual seekers around the world, and in doing so, the sacred trust was passed down to share with successive aspirants.
In the relay race of Self-Realization, the spiritual strength of our Ananda spiritual family depends on the attunement of our individual and collective spirit. Swami Kriyananda outlined this beautifully in his The Last Will, Testament and Spiritual Legacy —not for his own personal reasons, but to help us carry this divine work forward.
In this profound document, Swami left us not a list of policies or strategies, but a set of guiding principles—simple, powerful, and deeply practical.
He reminded us that Ananda was never his personal work. It was, and always must be, the work of our Guru and line of masters: Jesus Christ, Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar, and Paramahansa Yogananda.
And he gave us two enduring ideals to guide everything we do:
“People are more important than things.”
“Where there is dharma, there is victory.”
These are not just mottos to guide our organization, but spiritual laws on which depend the success and integrity of Ananda’s great mission to empower individuals to find God, and to share God’s light with the world.
Swami not only codified but showed us countless times, that kindness and compassion must always take precedence over efficiency, popularity, or any kind of institutional success. He taught us—and again, lived as an example—that victory is not measured by numbers or recognition, but by loyalty to truth and love.
If we remain aligned with dharma—right attitude and right action—then victory is assured, regardless of outward circumstances.
More than anything else, Swami Kriyananda—and Paramahansa Yogananda before him—emphasized attunement to the Guru.
The spiritual path is less about personal effort than about inner alignment—listening, feeling, and responding to divine guidance. Attunement is not abstract or reserved for a few special disciples. We ourselves cultivate it through our daily practices of meditation, service, devotion, and joyful harmony.
And among these spiritual tools given to us, the music of Swami Kriyananda holds a special place. When Swami said, “If you want to get to know me, listen to my music,” he gave us a powerful spiritual hint. Singing and listening to these chants and songs is a form of meditation that attunes us vibrationally. It is a divine gift and one of the most direct ways we can stay in living contact with Swamiji and the consciousness of the Guru.
Swami Kriyananda showed us through spiritual community, music, kindness, and divine friendship—and above all through attunement with the Guru—that this life is a sacred opportunity. He reminded us, again and again, that the purpose of Ananda is simple: to find God, and to share that joy with others.
As long as we do this with attunement to the Guru, there is an unbroken flow of everlasting darshan—guiding us, strengthening us, and leading us steadily toward divine freedom.
