Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him

The first time I saw Swami Kriyananda was in a tent set up behind the Beta Chi fraternity house on the campus of Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. It was late November 1969. He was in his early forties. I was twenty-two years old. Usually the tent served as an expanded venue for the parties for which the fraternity was famous. It was the '60s, though, and everything was changing. Someone thought it would be interesting to invite a swami to speak. I had attended Stanford University, but had dropped out after only one year. I had hoped to find teachers there who were not only knowledgeable, but also wise. It soon became apparent to me that my professors, though brilliant in their own fields, were groping in the dark for happiness even as I was. So I left. Soon after, I discovered the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna. Even as a child, I had the feeling that something far more important was going on in life than most people were aware of. At fi rst, I thought the adults around me were all in on the secret and were just holding it back from me as a kind of elaborate practical joke. "Soon," I thought, "they will reveal it to me." Only slowly did I come to know that this was not the case. My parents and teachers were good people, intelligent, honorable, and kind. For the most part, though, they accepted life as it appeared to be and expected me to do the same.