Ananda Evolved From A Hippie Dream To A Global Spiritual Work
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.
An excerpt from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia reads: 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
and Ananda Village. 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”. 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 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 San Francisco Bay Area hippie communal movement, and I was following
Yogananda. At the time, the hippie communal people who were with me traveled to Wahkon, Minnesota.
Our mission to continue on in the communal way and add more members, possibly including members of
my large kinship 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, especially including the members
of my large kinship Rainbow family. I believe this "sign of the rainbow" will appear in Wahkon and
another "great work" evolving from the hippie communal dream will become manifest.
