Introduction to Divine Awakening

I first read Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi in 1969, during my last semester of college in Madison, Wisconsin. As I began reading the book, I soon realized that it was answering the questions that had been with me for a long time: the meaning and purpose of my life.

A few weeks later, a friend handed me a one-page black-and-white brochure about a yoga center in Northern California called “Ananda Meditation Retreat.” It had been founded in 1968 by Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Yogananda, and offered classes and training in his guru’s teachings.

Even now, more than five decades later, I can’t explain why I took such an unprecedented step for me: I traveled alone for two thousand miles to Ananda Retreat. In retrospect, I realize that I must have been guided by higher powers to change the course of my life so completely.

Though I had been an honors student and had received the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa award, none of this seemed relevant to me at the time. I took my final exam, skipped the graduation ceremony, packed my few belongings, and found a ride to California from the college ride board with some students I didn’t know. After a long, hot, three-day journey across the country, my fellow travelers dropped me off at what I thought was Ananda Meditation Retreat.

The drawings in the brochure had depicted people meditating and doing yoga postures amidst innovative domes set in a beautiful pine forest. To my shock, I found myself standing alone in front of a run-down farmhouse on an abandoned piece of rural property. Confused and disappointed, I wondered, “Where in the world am I?”

At that moment, I sensed from behind me what felt like a powerful wind. I looked up at the nearby trees, but their leaves weren’t moving. What I was feeling was no wind of this world. Rather, it was a wave of energy unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. A voice within me said, “Something important is going to happen here.”

As I turned to look behind me for the source of this energy, I saw someone walking toward me. At first he seemed rather ordinary—a man in his mid-forties, dressed in summer shorts and shirt, with long brown hair pulled back in a bun. But it was from him that this strong wave was coming.

His first words to me were, “You look like a Phi Beta Kappa,” and, “What a lovely shirt you’re wearing.” I was amazed that he could perceive these things in spite of my crumpled, soiled appearance after having traveled in a hot car for three days. Over the course of many years, I came to see that Swami Kriyananda—for this is who the man was—always related to the best and highest in each person he met.

Even in this brief exchange and the conversation that followed, I began to sense that Kriyananda was, in fact, no ordinary person. There was both a hidden strength and a deep awareness about him that I’d never seen in anyone else before. Although outwardly friendly and gracious, he was at the same time impersonal, and a bit remote. Even then, in my ignorance of spiritual realities, I knew that he was a man with a higher purpose in life.

I asked him if we were at Ananda Meditation Retreat. Smiling, he replied, “No, that’s a few miles up the road. This is a new piece of property that we just signed the papers on today. It will be here that we’ll build Ananda Spiritual Community.”

It was July 4, 1969. The day of my arrival coincided with both the birth of America and of Ananda Community. In a sense, it was a birth for me, too, for it was the beginning of a new life—one that far exceeded anything I could have imagined.

From the beginning, Swami Kriyananda trained us in the teachings and techniques that Paramhansa Yogananda brought to the West. Yogananda was an enlightened master, and taught a balanced path of meditation and service. He gave the precept “plain living and high thinking” as the guideline for the spiritual communities he envisioned. Following the Master’s guidance, we lived simply in humble dwellings, tents, and tepees; meditated morning, noon, and evening; and served to build Ananda throughout the remaining hours of day.

Kriyananda was an inspiring, magnetic teacher, guiding us with wisdom and kindness. Yet, beyond his spiritual training of us, we could feel that his mission for his guru was always present in his mind. Slowly, as we came to understand more fully the scope of this mission, we did our part in helping Swami fulfill the “great work” that Yogananda had given him.

During the nearly forty-five years that followed, Kriyananda led us in the transformation of eight-hundred acres of raw, wooded property into a beautiful cooperative community. We created homes, schools, businesses, gardens, temples, and a new retreat center. In short, we built a true “world brotherhood colony,” as Yogananda had called his dream for spiritual communities. Even as Kriyananda led us in the transformation of the land, so too did he lead us in the more important transformation—of ourselves.

As the years passed, Swami continued to guide each of us forward to fulfill our own individual destinies. For me, what came—with his encouragement and blessings—was marriage in 1975 to Jyotish Novak. A year later our son, Mark, was born. Recently we celebrated fifty wonderful years spent together in ever-deepening love for each other and for God.

Jyotish had been one of Kriyananda’s two “right-hand men,” and was Ananda’s General Manager from its inception. We knew that our life together would be one of serving others and spreading Ananda’s work, and so it proved to be. In 1979, Swami asked us to move to San Francisco to start a center there; in 1983, we moved to Italy to help build a community; in 1985, Swami appointed us Spiritual Directors of Ananda Worldwide; and in 2003, we went with him and a small team to begin Ananda’s work in India.

In 2013 the idea for this book first came into being. Jyotish and I were visiting Swami at his home outside of Pune, India. At the time, he was eighty-six years old, and though still engaged in teaching and writing, his health was quite fragile. It was during this visit that he encouraged me to write a book about his life. This idea had already begun to percolate in my mind.

“What would you think of a book about how you fulfilled Master’s mission?” I asked him.

He briefly considered this idea, and replied, “Yes, that would be a good approach, but make the introduction personal. People need to feel it’s not just history, but your own experience.” This was the only instruction he was to give me.

At the end of our visit, in February 2013, as we were about to leave for America, we knelt before Swami for his blessings. Little did we know that this would be the last time we would see him in this world. A few weeks later, Kriyananda flew from India to Ananda’s community outside of Assisi, Italy. There, on April 21, 2013, he left his body. His passing was a deep loss for everyone who had known him, or who had drawn inspiration from him.

Fortunately for the future of Yogananda’s mission, Swami had trained a whole generation of Ananda members in discipleship, attunement, leadership, and an understanding of how to carry this work forward. Since Swami’s passing, Ananda has continued to grow in strength and magnetism, and has brought inspiration to millions of people throughout the world.

Though the writing of this book remained in the back of my mind since that 2013 conversation, life, as they say, persistently intervened. Week after week, there were blogs to write, classes to teach, and seemingly endless meetings and events. On top of all of this, Jyotish and I have spent a good part of each year visiting Ananda communities around the world.

Fortunately, in the last year our schedule began to open up, and it seemed possible that I could actually begin to write the book that Swami had asked of me. Fresh ideas and approaches started to form in my mind, but self-doubt also plagued me. The thought continuously arose, “Can you really pull this off, and do honor to the great souls who have directed your life?”

Then I found a quote from Kriyananda that gave me the courage to go forward: “Focus on seeking to channel a higher power. Whenever I’ve really wanted to do something well, I’ve found that by asking God to guide my understanding, rather than asking for the blessing to succeed, I’ve done many things for which no experience could have prepared me. I’ve told myself, ‘Even though I don’t see how I can do that, I know God can do anything, even through the poorest instrument.’”

I have felt Swami’s presence guiding me each day as I worked on the book. I’ve tried to tell the story of what I’ve witnessed personally: how Swami carried forward Yogananda’s great work. This was, in truth, a whole new way of life for our times: “world brotherhood colonies”; Kriya Yoga and meditation; “how-to-live” education; the unity of all religions; and the blending of the best of East and West, to name a few. Kriyananda not only taught and wrote about every aspect of his guru’s mission, but more importantly, he actually brought each one of them into being.

So now, through grace and inner guidance, this book is completed, and is in your hands. I actually finished writing it on July 4, 2025—exactly fifty-six years to the day since I’d first come to Ananda and met Swami. The wave of energy that I felt at our first meeting in 1969 has been the wind in my life’s sails ever since. Now it has blown my ship forward to share with you the miraculous adventure that I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of.

May this book inspire you to see the infinite possibilities that lie before you. And through it, may you realize that God’s light is ever guiding us forward to the dawn of a divine awakening for all.

Nayaswami Devi
Ananda Village
July 4th, 2025
--Introduction from Divine Awakening