In 1966, John Novak was a college graduate eager to understand the meaning of life. So he packed his bags and moved to California. Now, 50 years later and renamed Nayaswami Jyotish, he is posed to head a global movement dedicated to the search he began decades ago.

Jyotish will head Ananda, a global spiritual community based on the teachings of yoga master Paramhansa Yogananda.

In 1920, Yogananda became the first yoga master from India to launch a spiritual movement in the United States. The movement, called the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) focused on gaining self-realization and a personal relationship with God through yoga and meditation.

It was Yogananda's direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, who founded the Ananda movement and served as its leader until his passing last year.

The fight for authority after the death of a religious leader can often cause breakaway movements within the religion.

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“It’s like cells dividing,” said Stephen O’Leary, Associate Professor at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, whose research focuses on religious communication, rhetorical theory and criticism. “There’s always an authority problem at the moment when the leader dies or goes away."

But according to Jyotish, the rise of opposition that often splinters religious movements hasn’t occurred yet. He credits Kriyananda with this. 

“If you were to put it into terms of a monarch," he said during an interview while on tour with Ananda in L.A., “it was like Swami was the king and I was the prince for 45 years.” Everyone knew who would take over. “We would have just as happily bowed out,” Jyotish laughed.

But O’Leary thinks it will take time to determine the sustainability of Ananda. It has been a year since Kriyananda’s passing, but it often takes much longer for a disgruntled member to form a breakaway movement. This cycle is ancient and one that has touched practically every religious group, including SRF.

After Yogananda’s death in 1952, his movement continued through SRF. His famous book "Autobiography of a Yogi," published in 1946, catapulted the spiritual revolution throughout the West. Today, the book has been translated into more than a dozen languages and remains a best-selling spiritual classic.

Kriyananda claimed his leader had tasked him with expanding the fellowship beyond the boundary of a monastic community. The next step in his mission was to incorporate families and community members. This demand was supposedly made in secret before Yogananda’s death. However, the SRF community did not agree with Kriyananda’s mission. Eventually he was asked to resign. He then moved forward with his concept and settled in Northern California, founding the Ananda community in 1968.

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According to Clark Strand, author of "Waking the Buddha: How the Most Dynamic and Empowering Buddhist Movement in History is Changing Our Concept of Religion," spiritual organizations that focus on a cause rather than their leader fare much better after his or her death. This could be a movement centered on peace or even nuclear disarmament. “A leader can die, but a cause can’t,” he said. 

Take, for example, Joseph Smith, the charismatic individual who established the Latter Day Saints Movement in 1830 and offered his followers a religion that condoned polygamy in an extremely conservative era. They became known as Mormons. The group received much backlash from the community. Smith was murdered by a mob of anti-Mormons in 1844. Brigham Young succeeded Smith and led the persecuted religious group to Utah. 

O’Leary explained that groups that start out as radically different from society are forced to change and conform. “Every group will try to seek normalization if it survives,” he said. In the case of Mormonism, the religious group sought recognition from the state of Utah and, within 60 or 70 years, was forced to renounce polygamy. 

“[People] move back and forth between the need for excitement and the need for order,” O’Leary said. This explains the evolution of religion. But what makes some of them stick and others die?  

Unlike his predecessor, Kriyananda ensured that his mission was clearly known by his followers.

“It wasn’t like, huh who’s next?” said Nayaswami Devi, who is married to Jyotish. “It was very clear where the group was headed.”

Kriyananda appointed the born-and-bred Minnesotan as his successor in 2000, but he had been molding him for the position from day one. Jyotish had long seen himself as Kriyananda's right-hand man, and he and Devi were often called on to serve as Kriyananda’s substitute for classes and presentations.

Jyotish was raised in Austin, Minnesota, the original hometown of the canned meat product Spam. “That was the town’s one claim to fame,” he laughed. He initially moved to California simply to get away from Minnesota. Searching for a deeper meaning of life and consciousness, Jyotish relocated to San Francisco. “I knew there was a hunger to understand consciousness in San Francisco,” he said. “Part of it was its vibrancy.” 

He pored over religious texts. From the writings of Zen Buddhists to the traditions of the Native Americans, no study could satiate him. Then he read "Autobiography of a Yogi."

“That was the answer I had been really hungry for,” he said. 

Jyotish tracked down the address of a direct disciple of Yogananda—Swami Kriyananda. He knocked on the door of Kriyananda’s San Francisco home and introduced himself. He immediately began working with the guru. Within a year, Kriyananda asked Jyotish to quit his job as a social worker and work full-time as his assistant. He helped Kriyananda establish the original Ananda community in Nevada City, California, about a dozen members on a small plot of land.

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Devi was one of the first members to join Kriyananda’s following. After seeing a flyer on her Wisconsin college campus, she hopped in a car and went right to California. “I didn’t even stay for the graduation ceremony,” she said. Seven years after moving to the ashram, she married Jyotish. The couple says Kriyananda’s selflessness made him a very easy leader to follow.

“He presented himself with simplicity and humility,” Devi said.

But not everyone seems to have felt the same way. In 1994, seven women filed a lawsuit claiming the guru had sexually harassed them. Members of Ananda believe that these allegations were SRF’s attempt at retaliation. The legal battle remains a blemish on Ananda’s history.

Nevertheless, the small group has since spread across continents. Today, there are approximately 10,000 Ananda followers. One thousand of those permanently live at the several Ananda ashrams around the world. Kriyananda appointed Jyotish and Devi as Ananda’s worldwide directors. They’ve held the position for over 10 years. 

Devi and Jyotish recalled that Kriyananda would often tell his followers, “I’m nothing special, but I’m a disciple of the great master, Yogananda.” That focus, according to Strand, could help the Ananda movement withstand its founder’s death.

“Did his death leave a vacuum?” Strand asks. Or did it leave an opportunity for a mission to be fulfilled?

 

Reach Staff Reporter Kaysie Ellingson here.