stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

316 STRIPPING THE GURUS
exactly the same intolerance for discontent being reportedly exhibited
regularly on behalf of our gurus and other “infallible” beings.
Excommunications and threats of eternal damnation for disloyalty,
after all, serve to quell dissenting or independent viewpoints, and
preserve the welfare of those in absolute power, just as well as politically
motivated murders and bloody purges do.
* * *
A number of other kriya yogis have contributed colorful storylines
to the history of yoga and Yogananda, while working both inside
and outside of SRF itself.
One of those, Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters), was
unanimously elected by the SRF Board of Directors as vice president
of Self-Realization Fellowship in 1960. (That board is of
course the same “omniscient” group that had earlier elected Daya
Mata as president.) Prior to that, he had worked, organized and
lectured within SRF since 1948, upon entering the SRF monasteries
at age twenty-two. On returning from India on SRF business in
1962, however, he was forced to leave the organization, despite his
own entreaties to be allowed to stay and do anything except wash
dishes there.
In relating his own side of that story, Walters (2002) regards
the reasons for that that split as being “essentially political” in
their nature.
That position, however, differs somewhat from what the Ananda
Awareness Network website (www.anandainfo.com) has to say.
For there, a number of “sexual indiscretion” reasons are alleged for
that forced departure.
Whatever the specific grounds may have been for his expulsion,
Walters had recovered enough by 1967 to purchase the first of
the lands for his own “world brotherhood colony” or spiritual community,
the Ananda Cooperative Village, near Nevada City in
northern California. That 900-acre village currently hosts a population
of around three hundred disciples of Yogananda, their devotion
being filtered through Walters’ specific emphasis on “service,”
in his casting of himself as a “channel” for Yogananda’s blessings.
Worldwide, the Ananda group numbers around 2500 members; I
myself was once officially among them. Sigh.
The original land—now utilized only as a remote retreat—for
that colony was acquired in a six-investor deal involving Allen
Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Also participating in that land deal