Below is a publication from 2017. It was written at a time when Ananda Marga was already mostly disintegrated. The situation has not improved, to say the least. I wrote it while I was still at El Misterio, when I had more contact with the A.M. world. Now I see the whole show from afar, like a story that has already been told, that has already come and gone.

Currently, I see more vitality in the teachers who are younger and came to Ananda Marga because they understood the ideology and have benefited from the spiritual practices. Instead of treating A.M. as a religion, they see A.M. as a system of meditation and way of life. As far as the older monastics go: the best ones are already dead. The respectable, older ones still living suffer a lot and still try to give people a rosy colored filter of the present with stories from the past. There is very little present activity inspiring anybody and so they tell stories of the glorious past. Unfortunately, they end up being sanctimonious priests who, while doing no direct harm with any negative actions, end up creating a false narrative of the movement with their spin-doctoring. Just last week I saw that a very well respected monk published a eulogy for the famous Ananda Marga mafia man, Karunananda, saying that he was such a great asset to Ananda Marga and the entire planet would miss him. I wrote about my experiences with the gangster pimp Karunananda and the Ananda Marga mafia in “The Debate.”

I confronted the author of the eulogy because I know him well. He said he believed my account about Karunananda but still has the eulogy posted on his timeline. He said he did not know about Karunananda´s criminal acts. Everybody knew about Karunananda, at least the people who were around since the 1970´s and 80´s. How is it possible that when I was 23 years old in 1995 and only involved with A.M. for 2 years that I could find out about Karunananda´s criminal acts from decades ago while senior monks know nothing? People working under Karunanda went to jail and this was a huge scandal in the 80´s that was very well known. These older monks remember this and were in A.M. even before I was born!

The author of the eulogy is right, the global society of Ananda Marga will miss their false figure heads. They really have nothing without them. Instead of making sincere efforts for self realization in the present, they love to hear stories about their great departed guru and the lineage of priests. They idolize these priests who manipulate them by giving them their “likes” and comments of “Baba Nam Kevalam,” just like a Hallelujah! I am afraid the religious cult mentality of the movement far stronger than any of the rational fragments that remain, yet there are still a few fragments and also a little truth left and so the story continues….maybe,,,,,,, hopefully?

Ramananda - 2017

Last year one of the few remaining noble monastics from Ananda Marga came to visit me. I considered him their spiritual and social leader, their wisest. He wanted to join us in the revolution and said that our work was exemplary. I knew he had suffered greatly remaining within the old, corrupt order. He admired us for being moral rebels and going against the grain of our own tradition and withstanding the attacks against us for this. We are not monastics nor formal meditation teachers yet people around the world think that we are doing the work of Ananda Marga when in fact we are entirely independent. I told him that I was commissioned by some of the older, direct disciples of Anandamurti to help continue the work of Ananda Marga after the organization had failed. I told him about our meeting with Ramananda so many years ago and how Ramananda spoke well of us just before his death and said we were doing the work that Anandamurti intended. I met with some leaders of Ananda Marga after the Purulia Arms Drop in 1995. They knew Ananda Marga was infiltrated and was no longer really Ananda Marga. Some factions of A.M. had sold out to the Indian government, others to the communists in West Bengal, while others had sold out to Big Brother to help frame Ananda Marga as a terrorist organization. Due to this an entirely different approach must be taken. Anandamurti had foretold this years ago and said that the social organization of Ananda Marga would be annihilated but the ideas would later continue under new forms. Ramananda, although still holding a very high organizational rank in Ananda Marga, inspired us in this revolutionary direction.

After hearing this history the noble monk visiting us slammed his fist on my table, alighted upright and shouted “Let us tell them all to go to hell and start over with just Yama and Niyama and Kiirtan!”(the basic practices of meditation and ethics) I was so happy because we needed some orange in this revolution, monastics who can work outside the organization, yet still follow the essential discipline of Ananda Marga monasticism.

I thought we had some hope. However, he went back to his tribe in Ranchi that is controlled by gangsters and and nun beaters and told me we needed to make deals with them. This effectively put an end to any possibilities of working with him or any other Ananda Marga monasics.

Ramananda died recently. He left an autobiography about his life as personal secretary to Anandamurti. I first met him in 1995, just before the Purulia Arms Drop. He came out of his room to speak to a few of us who were visiting from Europe and the U.S. His eyes were a little sleepy. If it weren’t for his overall blissful composure, he almost appeared intoxicated. It was so obvious this man was really god-intoxicated and had just been truly enjoying a trip into deep meditation. And now he has to come out of it and talk to us. How could a mundane person understand such a state of mind other than referring to some sort of drug or alcohol induced state? Only his eyes were sleepy-looking, but his mind was so awake and sensible. His presence could certainly make one chill out much deeper than with wine or weed.

My friends had noticed something in me of late; that after deep and long meditation along the river, it looked like I was stoned. The joke with them was that I wasn’t really meditating, but secretly smoking something, that I was truly an incorrigible Austinite. I didn’t mind because I was really much lighter and healthier than I ever had been in my entire life and without pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs, alcohol, or meat.

I really liked him from the first moment he entered the room. I got a little of that eternal floating feeling that I would later experience even more strongly when I would meet Chandranath and his wife, Ram Parit Devii. I learned to distinguish between the politician and the saintly monastics by the vibration they left upon me. Sometimes that subtle vibration would last for days and would make one wonder, “where do they get this energy from? how can they invoke this bliss in others?” I saw that Ramananda had probably been enjoying for decades of meditation what I had only recently discovered after my initiation into tantric meditation a few years earlier.

When I saw Ramananda again it was several years later. I was already way far out on the fringes of A.M. I knew who was true but could see how so many people were falling into scandals and all sorts of non-sense. My protests were never public in those days and I only spoke about these issues with my friends.

I once again met Ramandanda in Mexico in 2002. He was surrounded by clowns and posers; monks puffed up with the vanity of being the ones chosen to implement “the mission of Baba.” It was all mostly ambitious self-delusion, the discourse of these spin-doctors. I had very little respect for the orange cloth by that time, but I felt very different near Ramananda. I remembered our first encounter and realized that this monk really belongs to an altogether different category than the others.

I meditated near him and some other monks. There was a dense vibration with the other monks. They were all mostly depressed, angry, and suffering from a lack of confidence in themselves and their organization after the arms drop and the A.M. civil war that ensued. There was also a recent scandal about how the monks were editing philosophical and social texts of Anandamurti. Not even a decade had passed and they had already started the adulterations that would give more power to the monastics instead of lay members of A.M. A few months later there would be a great and violent confrontation in India between the “Hindi” and “Bengali” factions of A.M. where they would crush each other´s skulls! It was difficult to meditate near them. I opened my eyes to see who was sitting beside me emitting such a heavy vibe. I saw who it was and then I saw Ramananda sitting on the other side of me at total peace. I closed my eyes and tried to forget about the other monks. I once again felt that lightness emanating from Ramananda like I remembered from 6 years earlier. It was a pleasant relief to know that there were still some yogis left in A.M.

The next morning he told me a story of how he was present when Anandamurti mentioned that he had created alternative movements in case the monastic institution of A.M. fails in its objective. Ramananda was amazed to see Anandamurti speaking to another, unknown person in great detail about some other organization that Ramananda had never heard of. Ramananda was next to Anandamurti almost 24 hours a day and could not conceive of how such clandestine activities were possible. He told me this story and then looked at me intently and said, “you know, we really could fail.”

I was shocked. Why had he told me this? Nobody in A.M. spoke in that manner. Anandamurti was the incarnation of god and the monastics were chosen to propagate his mission over the entire planet. This was the common discourse, anyway. And why was he speaking to me so sincerely about this? He really didn’t even know me, at least in the common sense of having spent time with somebody and shared experiences, etc. However, I realized that he trusted me as much as I trusted him, and that he too felt a deep connection with me ever since our first encounter. It was so obvious he was telling me something more, but what was he saying?

Later that night I practiced my meditation. I knew that some really good energy had jumped over to me through Ramananda. I could feel that the gurus blessing was transmitted through him, as if Anandamurti had left a package with him to deliver to me in the right moment. I start to hear the OM sound more loudly than ever before, as if somebody had started up a motorcycle inside the house. I fell over in a trance for I don’t know how long. I heard OM for 3 days and hardly slept. It was perfect bliss. I could see my future unfolding before me and knew that the principles of A.M. would continue despite what happened to the organization. It was all very mystical. I understood I was to take radical measures regarding A.M., and prepare for its absolute disintegration. I knew I should undertake an alternate path to help preserve the ideals of A.M. It was all so lucid, and only becomes more so as the years pass on and I recall those realizations. Ramananda never gave orders, he only gave me his trust. He knew all would be well. It was one of the clearest and simplest heart connections I have ever had with another human being.