Ananda's Global Work: Hippie Dream, Yogananda, Jesus and the Rainbow Family
by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
Paramahansa Yogananda has been called the father of yoga and meditation in the West. His Autobiography
helped spark and inspire a spiritual revolution across the world. His Autobiography has been
called the "New Age hippie Bible."
Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in the United
States, propagating a unique hybridized theology that blended Hindu and Christian ideas and practices. ...
In 1940, he published his most famous writing, Autobiography of a Yogi, which combined the personal
account of his own yogic path blended with an account of the most extraordinary and miraculous yogis
of India. The book was lauded among his followers initially, but it became a countercultural
sensation only in the late 1960s when it was widely regarded as the “hippie Bible.”
Swami Kriyananda was a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. He founded Ananda Village and Ananda,
which became a global spiritual work. Kriyanada produced a video titled - Paramahansa
Yogananda: Avatar of the New Age.
For 50 years Ananda Village has exemplified the spiritual ideals of Paramahansa Yogananda’s “World
Brotherhood Colonies” [or, world brotherhood intentional communities]. Under the guidance and blessing of
Swami Kriyananda (1926-2013) and the great guru Yogananda, Ananda has developed communities, schools, businesses, music and the arts, and
retreat centers throughout the world where spiritual friendships, meditation, yoga, and selfless service thrive.
Two paragraphs from an article titled "The Story of How Ananda Evolved From a Hippie Dream to a Global
Spiritual Work" read:
"We were a group of largely ex-hippies, living in the woods and thinking we’d dropped out of society
and would have our ideal little life in the country. But Swamiji [Kriyananda] knew that we were destined
to establish a “great work,” as Yogananda called it, and that it would offer a new way of life for people
everywhere in the dawning age of energy-awareness."
"Yoganada said, 'Self Realization has come to unite all religions.' The true meaning of Self-realization,
and of the movement he started, is that he wanted to show people the spiritual principles by which life
works, and the way to know God."
Wikipedia: When the Summer of Love finally ended, thousands of hippies left San Francisco, a large minority
of them heading "back to the land". These hippies created the largest number of intentional communities or
communes in the history of the United States [Ananda evolved from this hippie dream], forming alternative,
egalitarian farms and homesteads in Northern California, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee
and other states.
I was a part of the out of the San Francisco Bay Area, hippie communal movement, and I was following
Yogananda. At the time, the hippie communal people who I was with traveled with me to Wahkon, Minnesota.
Our mission to continue on in the communal way and add more members, possibly including members of my
large extended Rainbow family (the Mr. & Mrs. I. C. Rainbow family) came to an end.
However, I am now on a mission to influence the original members of our late-1960s communal way to come together again in Wahkon and
establish a commune, and then add more members to our commune or intentional community, especially including the members of the
Rainbow family. I believe this "sign of the rainbow" will appear in Wahkon and another "great work"
evolving from the hippie dream will become manifest.
Wahkon rainbow
The late-1960s hippie communal movement people who traveled with me from the San Francisco Bay Area to Wahkon,
Minnesota, and who I am currently trying to influence to join me again in Wahkon-to reestablish our original
mission and then fulfill it, have joined me, in respect to our current mission (not formally established) to
generally promote the following theology and religious worldview.
A popular Caryl Productions video on the New Age is titled "Yoga Uncoiled - Christ Centered Yoga False
Christianity - Documentary". The video includes an introductory documentary about how the New Age spiritual
philosophy entered the mainstream by way of the Beatles' promotion of the yogic Hindu, 1960s hippie spiritual
revolution. In this video a narrator states that the 1960s spiritual revolution that the Beatles began
to promote, continued to spread throughout the '70s and succeeding decades, and that "it is still rapidly
gaining global acceptance today."
The Beatles promoted the spiritual philosophy of Paramahansa Yogananda and his line of Gurus.
Paramahansa Yogananda wrote:
"In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to
earth....A thousand Christs sent to earth would not redeem its people unless they themselves become
Christlike by purifying and expanding their individual consciousness to receive therein the second
coming of the Christ Consciousness, as was manifested in Jesus....Contact with this Consciousness,
experienced in the ever new joy of meditation, will be the real second coming of Christ—and it will
take place right in the devotee’s own consciousness."
"There is a distinguishing difference of meaning between Jesus and Christ. His given name was Jesus; his
honorific title was “Christ.” In his little human body called Jesus was born the vast Christ Consciousness,
the omniscient Intelligence of God omnipresent in every part and particle of creation. This Consciousness is
the “only begotten Son of God,” so designated because it is the sole perfect reflection in creation of the
Transcendental Absolute, Spirit or God the Father."
Yoga: "No other science has detailed the descent of the individualized consciousness of God as
the soul into man and its evolutionary and spiritual ascent back into Spirit. In this modern age, Kriya
Yoga has been brought forward after being lost in the dark ages, as a definite method to hasten the spiritual
evolution of human consciousness and open the inner cerebrospinal pathway of ascension, releasing the soul
through the spiritual eye into the kingdom of the Holy Ghost, the Christ Consciousness, and the Cosmic
Consciousness of God the Father."
"God the Father is the Absolute, Unmanifested, existing beyond vibratory creation. God the Son is the Christ
Consciousness existing within vibratory creation; this Christ Consciousness is the “only begotten” or sole
reflection of the Uncreated Infinite. Its outward manifestation or 'witness' is Aum or Holy Ghost, the divine,
creative, invisible power which structures all creation through vibration."
"Christ has been much misinterpreted by the world. Even the most elementary principles of his teachings
have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths have been forgotten. They have been crucified at the
hands of dogma, prejudice, and cramped understanding. Genocidal wars have been fought, people have been
burned as witches and heretics, on the presumed authority of man-made doctrines of Christianity. How to
salvage the immortal teachings from the hands of ignorance? We must know Jesus as an Oriental Christ, a
supreme yogi who manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union, and thus could speak and
act as a savior with the voice and authority of God. He has been Westernized too much."
The late-1960s hippie communal people that I am currently trying to influence to join me again in
Wahkon-to reestablish our original mission and then fulfill it, have a favorite video. It is also my
favorite video. This favorite video of ours presents a United Church of Christ pastor's homily. It is a
Youtube video and it is titled "Steve Jobs, Yogananda and Jesus."
The internationally renowned Hippie icon, Steven Gaskin (1935-2014), who was the co-founder of the largest and
most successful late-1960s, out of San Francisco Bay Area, commune, wrote in a book of his that: "The [native]
word wakan (holy) has a strong and universal concept and people around the
world know something about it." Mr. Gaskin and his commune had a countercultural worldview mission behind
the word wakan. The aboriginal native word wakan is sometimes spelled wahkon.
For almost five decades, I have been building a platform in Wahkon for the part of the late-1960s,
out of San Francisco Bay Area, hippie communal movement, the part that now has a New Age
spiritual philosophy and countercultural worldview mission behind the word wahkon, to become manifest
on this Wahkon platform, as the I. C. Rainbow family commune (tribe), so that it
can fulfill its divine mission,... with, hopefully, the (living in Wahkon) help of all the
original members of the hippie communal way who traveled from the Bay Area in the late-1960s
to Wahkon.
I have been building this platform in Wahkon by (1.) being an indigenous peoples' rights advocate
who has gained support from several internationally renowned Indigenous activists and two world
renowned indigenous peoples' rights advocates, and by (2.) being the author of articles
on indigenous peoples' rights, history, theology and science, an author whose writing work has been
honored and promoted by world renowned scholarly authors and activists.
For three decades, I have been leading a movement, that I started, to change the faulty-translation derogatory
name of a Minnesota river, the "Rum River." I am on a mission to revert this river's name
back to its sacred Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Native name Wahkon. Most of the support that I have
received from indigenous people has come from this effort of mine.
Reverend Matthew Fox, a world renowned spiritual theologian and indigenous peoples'
rights advocate, gave his support for the name-change of this river and he is now
helping me to promote my hippie New Age (post-Christian) Catholic mission by posting
articles and comments of mine that I submit on his Daily Meditations Facebook site.
On this Facebook site of his, Rev. Fox posted an introduction to my article Pope Francis Preaches Eco-Tribalist/Hippie New Age Beliefs. A paragraph
in this article presents Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's statement about how there is
now a Vatican II inspired "post-Christian" Amazon synod expression of the Catholic
Church.
Steven T. Newcomb (Shawnee, Lenape), is a scholar, author and world renowned indigenous peoples' rights
activist-who is on the forefront of the global decolonization of indigenous peoples movement. Mr.
Newcomb is also an expert on the Doctrine of Discovery or Doctrine of Christian discovery and
domination/subjugation of indigenous peoples. Mr. Newcomb helped me edit my article titled
Promoting Native Environmentalism And The Ecotheology Of Matthew Fox.
This article was recently promoted on a popular site that promotes Newcomb's work.
I have received support for my river-name-change advocacy initiative from several
internationally renowned Indigenous activists, the Tekakwitha Conference, two Mdewakanton
Dakota communities, a Roman Catholic Archbishop and Bishop. In respect to
this advocacy work, I have also received a letter from both, the Pontifical Council
of Peace and Justice and the United Nations Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues. This is how I have built this platform in Wahkon, for the I.C.
Rainbow family to come to and take its place upon, to fulfill its divine mission.