Ananda's Global Work: Hippie Dream, Yogananda 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 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.

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.

 

{peace love freedom} within the perimeters of {universal consideration}, which is only logical, which hatred of logic is not.

this is not a separate thing from simple sanity

my personal beliefs belong to no one age, nor to any one brand name flavor.

they begin with knowing the unknown is unknown, and that it fallows from this, that there are quite likely mostly harmless stranger things exist, then what anyone tells anyone about them.

it is only when people tell each other they have to believe a certain way, about anything, that they begin to mess up.

the truths discovered by the process that is known as science make no such insistence, but rather pursue consistency with what can be most often observed.
nor does it, in any way define the beginning and ending of what is possibly real. (by this i do not mean to imply that reality is obliged to be consistent with intuition)

again there will always be a great deal that is not known, because we live in a very big and diverse universe, though its substance exists so primarily as mineral,
that were we not dependent to some degree on life, one might never notice otherwise that it was there.

gods fairies unicorns dragons all my be resembled by things that may exist somewhere, though assuredly not often spotted here,
and again, those are only name for classes of objects that are only familiar because we came up with them ourselves.

there is absolutely nothing to prevent the unknown from being far more wonderfully, and mostly harmlessly, stranger.

the 'magic' i believe in, is that what we don't know, can and does exist, and in far greater measure then we think we do.