Ananda Marga: Spirituality and Activism

OLAV Oftedal '71 is a case in point. In senior high, he had been a nature lover, a loner who spent a lot of time in the woods. During his sophomore year at Harvard, he worked for the strike and later helped start Harvard New College, a free university. Still later, he became an officer of the Conservation Club and worked for Ecology Action. Last spring he went to lobby in Congress after Kent State and the Cambodia invasion. He came back depressed by the ineffectiveness of talking as a tool for transforming society and by his own sore need for personal transformation. No matter what he'd undertaken, he'd always yielded to apathy or frustration. But he saw no answers to his or society's problems in increasingly divisive radical politics, and no answers in society-and life-denying mysticisms.

Later in the spring he saw a poster announcing a lecture by a yogi and thought, "Well, I'll go listen to another one." But the man's speech and presence deeply affected him. "I felt that he was a man who exuded tremendous love," says Oftedal. "He was very dynamic-he slept only a few hours a night-and all the time was engaged in continual interaction with people at a human level."

Oftedal stayed close to "Dadaji" (respected elder brother) during his five-day visit. Oftedal found out that the yogi was one of more than a thousand teachers in a rapidly growing world movement named Ananda Marga ("Path to Bliss"). Oftedal became increasingly excited, and Dadaji eventually suggested that he go to India. "It was very interesting," says Oftedal. "I had had several very promising job opportunities fall through right before he came, so I was free and open for the summer, totally unexpectedly." He went to India.

Ananda Marga headquarters itself in a rather simple compound in Ranchi, a city of the eastern state of Bihar. During the past seven or eight years, the organization has set up more than 600 primary schools, many children's homes-orphans in India usually don't survive-hospitals, homes for the aged, and higher educational institutions. Ananda Marga is able to establish and operate these concerns at minimal expense-mainly because many are built by hand and all are run by Avadhutikas and Avadhutas, women and men who work as full-time volunteers and expect no material compensation, or by other dedicated Margiis who expect little.

ANANDA Marga does relief work where few others dare to go. Margiis-followers of Ananda Marga-plunge into flood areas where cholera and dysentery are epidemic, bringing food, medical care, and solace days before others arrive. During the recent crisis in East Pakistan they provided food and shelter for thousands of refugees fleeing from the massacres.

The organization also establishes "tribal units" in the hill-country to prepare tribes, many of which have already suffered at the hands of fortune seekers, for inevitably increasing contact with "civilization."

The organization has a tightly coherent ideology which is a synthesis of social and spiritual principles. Its Sanskrit motto means, "Liberation for self-well-being of the world (or service to humanity')." Ananda Marga sees the universe as. One and the goal of all human life as the attainment of unity, emergence with the Universal Self. Ananda Marga calls for service not at some magical future moment when "selflessness" is attained, but at this very instant; and it stresses that the service itself is an integral part of the self-purification process.

In this way Ananda Marga differs from those mystical traditions which deny the reality of the world and seek liberation from the human self, rather than for the human self. Margiis, following a path of involvement in society, stress that all human beings are in fact brothers and sisters. They want to be able to relate to all human being as fully, directly, and humanly as possible. For example, the Ananda Marga University, which teaches mainly practical skills, requires a degree in "Humanity": it sends the students out to work with the local people to see how well they relate and get along with them-and if the students don't pass, they don't graduate.

So social action and spiritual practice, "service and sadhana," are equally stressed in Ananda Marga. Thus it is able to attract a diverse group of people. For instance, Dadaji, the first Avadhuta to visit Boston, was a spiritual person from childhood-he began meditating at the age of six. But two other teachers who are now in the U.S., Acharya Raghaw Prasad and Acharya Yatiishvaranda Avadhuta, were much more socially oriented.

In the late '50's, Acharya (a title meaning "spiritual teacher") Prasad was an Indian student radical, and he reacted scornfully when a friend suggested that he come to a lecture on yoga. But he went, and much to his surprise, found a yogi talking about social interaction and the necessity to transform society. He learned that the man was in Ananda Marga, joined the organization himself, and soon began "whole-timer" training. But in 1962, at the request of the Guru of Ananda Marga, Shrii P. R. Sarkar, Prasad left whole-timer training, got married, and continued his education as an engineer. He now lives in New York, has a full-time job, takes a course in computer programming, and spends weekends in various Ananda Marga centers on the East Coast, teaching and giving spiritual instruction.

The new Avadhuta, Yatiishvaranda, arrived in this country just a week ago. He worked in a factory as an engineer until 1965. Earlier in his life he not only scorned but actively disliked all yogis. Yet he too was drawn to Ananda Marga despite himself, and he became a full-timer only a month after receiving personal contact with the Master in spring 1966.

SIRH P.R. Sarkar founded Ananda Marga 16 years ago and continues to direct its activities. His given title, Shrii Shrii Anandamurtiji ("Beloved Image of Bliss") is loosely translated by devotees as, "Upon seeing him, one falls into Bliss." He is referred to informally as "Baba" ("Holy Father").

Shrii Sarkar attained full realization of his mission at the age of four, and acknowledged it by accepting his first disciples at six. Now the number of disciples has grown to more than five million, and he guides them through the agency of some 2000 Acharvas. He is now married and has a child to demonstrate that a Yogi, a man of God, need not be an ascetic or world-renunciate. His wife Mata ("Mother") is said, in spiritual terms, to be his female complement; she directs Ananda Marga's women's liberation sector. Shrii Sarkar has assumed the burden of his own obligations during his entire life. As a younger man, he worked as an accountant at a railway factory (he gave lectures during lunch hour); now, as prime mover and Guru of Ananda Marga, he and his family refuse all gifts and live instead on the meager profits from his cheaply printed books.

THE following is the story of how a grandfather and senior Indian government official. Mr. Mangal Bihari, came to Ananda Marga. Mr. Bihari is Chief Director for Sugar and Oil in the Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture and has been in the U.S. recently on state business. I taped his story last weekend at a gathering of Margiis in Stony Brook, N.Y.

In 1962 Bihari was deputy secretary of finance in the state of Rajastan. Born a Brahimin, he had participated in his family's devotional practices as a boy and young man, but got little out of them, despite his "very keen desire to realize the Truth." His faith in the traditional forms diminished in the course of his life as he realized, in the face of various tensions and attractions, that he had no stability. Eventually, with his mind "churning," he made a pilgrimage to the Himalayas to see if he could find someone who could lead him to the Truth.

But instead of legitimate teachers, he found people "selling their wares," and he was not satisfied. He had come on a real search, and found nothing. By 1962 he had come to believe that "all these things are bogus, life is really enjoyment." Shortly before that time he had got a promotion, so he now felt himself well-equipped for a hedonistic life, and even made some beginnings in that direction.

But at that point he was visited at his office one day by an Acharya of Ananda Marga. Bihari thought the man must have wanted a grant for a school or something, but the Acharya informed him that he wanted instead to discuss spiritual matters. Bihari told him that this was not the right time or place, that, besides, he was no longer interested, and directed him to someone else. But the Acharya went that evening to Bihari's house, where Bihari finally yielded, and they talked-for ten hours, non-stop. During this time Bihari brought up all the arguments, reservations, and skepticism he could produce-at one point he even offered the Acharya a job-but the Acharya patiently, confidently, and considerately out debated him. The next day Bihari took initiation.

Bihari continued in the practice assigned him, feeling confident in the stature of his teacher. Later, at the suggestion of an Avadhuta, he saw Baha, the Guru, while on a vacation journey. The sight of Baba mystified him at first-here was this apparently ordinary man, clad in simple white clothes, with short-cropped hair and eyeglasses, but dignified adults were breaking into tears and near-hysterics in his presence. But later Bihari began to feel the Guru's presence himself, and after receiving personal contact became devoted to him and Ananda Marga.

Mr. Bihari has taken a week off from his official government work to speak with Americans about Ananda Marga and the solutions it offers tothe problems of the world. He is in Cambridge now, helping members of the local unit make contact with interested adults.

The Boston-Cambridge unit is one of the most active groups on the East Coast. Mr. Bihari's efforts to reach local adults bear witness to one of this unit's main weaknesses: its limited base of membership. Because it is composed almost entirely of students, the local group of Margiis has so far had a difficult time growing and establishing itself.

Of course there are other factors involved. The core of Ananda Magra in Boston-Cambridge consists of about 20 people, but over 125 have taken "initiation" or preliminary instruction. Some people simply aren't interested in spiritual organizations and prefer to meditate on their own; and some newcomers are rubbed the wrong way by the enthusiasm of organizers. One Harvard student, for instance, said he felt put off by the group's intense style of interacting. Hassles have ranged from dealing with male dominance to overcoming the generation gap, from philosophical uncertainty to individual dislikes; and everybody has had struggles in meditation.

But that is only the bleak side. Many people agree with Doug Ravenel, a Brandeis graduate student, who simply says that joining Ananda Marga has "changed my life and made me happier than I ever thought I could be." It has taken struggle, to be sure, but many earlier difficulties have been overcome. From the viewpoint of Ananda Marga, life is struggle, and to avoid struggle is like giving up and dying.

So life on this path can be described more aptly as "pleasantly tense" than as "blissful." And it is full of surprises: about a month ago Ravenel and Lea Hunt, an assistant teacher of retarded children, began to feel an extraordinary attraction to each other. They had only recently met, and the attraction more perturbed than pleased them both, for each had thought of becoming a whole-timer. They went to Yatiishvaranda in Toronto, and, after long moments of suspense, he informed them that they ought to be married-as soon as possible. He married them yesterday, with the assistance of Ravenel's father, an Episcopal minister, in the Currier House courtyard in the presence of their families, Acharya Raghaw Prasad, Mr. Bihari, and Margiis from many units in this part of the country.

THE GOAL of Ananda Marga is not the denial or obliteration of each human personality, but its perfection: Ananda Marga is unabashedly striving to create a one-world society of Universal Men, human beings' each unbound by the limitations of time, space, and person, and yet each uniquely personal. In such a context the Guru, Shrii Sarkar, appears in sharper focus as a model man than as a human god.

Yet the movement is not romantic. It does not look forward to apocalypse. It accepts the necessity of a morally upright police force, and it accepts the necessity and usefulness of science and technology. It refuses, however, to allow the human spirit to be subjugated to these powers. It demands only that each and every human being be allowed to realize what is his birthright as a man: full consciousness.

Still, in lived life, we seem so many light-years away from any such "cosmic society" that even accepting such goals as realistic is a major step. But through their meditation and service, local members of Ananda Marga are beginning to realize these goals in themselves and with others. They are taking the first steps to transform ideology into reality; and it is whether steps are taken, and not how long the road is, that matters.

One of the most important local developments, in this light, is that at least ten Boston people plan to work full-time for Ananda Marga this summer, and many plan brief trips to India. Wendy Jenner, a 3rd year student at Northeastern who plans to work full-time, says that she "earlier doubted that this rather inept group of people could really do much. But now the prospect and responsibility of full-time work have catalyzed in me a new sense of purpose, of reality: that Ananda Marga here is no longer just a 'socializing-spiritual' thing but a live work group, something that can do what it says it's going to do."