What is Renunciation?

In honor of the meeting of Paramhansa Yogananda by the young Donald Walters (aka Swami Kriyananda), September 12, 1948 at which “Walter” took vows of discipleship.

In a recent class at the Ananda Community near Seattle, WA where students were reading Chapter 22 (“Renunciation”) from Swami Kriyananda’s autobiography, “The New Path,” a discussion ensued about the application of renunciation to our individual lives. In this group were no professed monks or nuns, just ordinary men and women of varying ages and social status.

Paramhansa Yogananda attempted to create a householder community during the 1940s at his property in Encinitas, California. He had to end the experiment with the admission that couples were not yet ready for the spirit of selfless dedication needed for the success of the community.[1] He converted the property into a monastery.

We quote Paramhansa Yogananda saying that someday “lion-like swamis” would come to the West to serve in the work of Self-realization. In 2009, four years before his passing, Swami Kriyananda created the Renunciate Order of nayswamis, brahmacharyis, tyagis and pilgrims. Drawing on previous writings including his book, “Sadhu Beware,” Swami established a new order giving renunciation a new expression that seeks the bliss of divine union, that seeks to transcend the limitations (and pride) of the ego, and which serves creatively in a spirit of attunement to the divine will.

It is axiomatic within the Ananda Sangha worldwide that we uphold the premise that all sincere seekers can, regardless of social status (married, single etc.) can walk the path toward soul freedom. One of the Self-realization gurus, Lahiri Mahasaya, we point to was married with children. (The fact that he was already a free soul shouldn’t be entirely overlooked.)

We also point to the fact that those disciples whom Yogananda considered the most advanced were also, at one point or another, householders.

What seemed to have triggered the discussion alluded to at the beginning of this article were some of the proscriptions given by Yogananda to the young Donald Walter (later to become Swami Kriyananda). These proscriptions had largely to do with the opposite sex. I will quote a few of them below.

Traditionally formal renunciation is mostly characterized by the rule of celibacy. In Swami Kriyananda’s book, “Sadhu Beware,” he quotes Yogananda:

Paramhansa Yogananda once stated, “If you marry as a necessity, you will have to reincarnate again to reach the point where you can live for God alone.” The key words in that statement are not, “If you marry,” but, “If you marry as a necessity.” What did he mean by that word, “necessity”? Obviously he wasn’t thinking of parental and societal expectations. He could have had only one meaning: “If you marry with the perception that you need human love for your fulfillment.” When I mentioned that the Master’s most highly advanced disciples were householders, it must be understood also that those householders did find God. Ultimately, what I think the Master had to mean by his statement was that the devotee must reach the point where he loves God alone, and needs no human being to fulfill his natural longing for love.

In that book, Swami went on to state “I think, it may be time seriously to consider creating, within the total definition of the (Ananda) Sangha, an order of renunciates for men and for women.” The Nayaswami Order (also called the Renunciate Order) was the outcome of this stated intention.

This is a delicate point to make. Here are some of the statements from the chapter “Renunciation” in “The New Path:”

On the subject of renunciation, especially, there was often in Master’s manner a certain sternness, as though to impress on us that the staunchness of our dedication to God was, for each of us, a matter of spiritual life or death.

Nothing won Master’s approval so much as the willingness to renounce all for God. Renunciation meant to him, however, an inner act of the heart; outward symbols he viewed more tentatively, as potential distractions to sincerity.

The three greatest human delusions, he used to say, are sex, wine (by which he meant intoxicants of all kinds), and money. ‘If the sex drive were taken away from you,’ he told a group of monks one evening, ‘you would see that you had lost your greatest friend. You would lose all interest in life. Sex was given to make you strong. If a boxer were to fight only weaklings, he too would grow weak in time. It is by fighting strong men that he develops strength. The same is true in your struggle with the sex instinct. The more you master it, the more you will find yourself becoming a lion of happiness.’

‘Marriage,’ he once told a church congregation, ‘is seldom the beautiful thing it is so commonly made out to be. I smile when I think of the usual movie plot. The hero is so handsome, and the heroine so lovely, and after all kinds of troubles they finally get married and (so we are supposed to believe) live ‘happily ever after.’ And I think, ‘Yes, with rolling pins and black eyes!’ But of course, the producers end the story hastily before it gets to that part!’

‘Remember,’ he advised me once, ‘it is the Divine Mother who tests you through sex. And it is She also who blesses, when you pass Her test.’ He counseled his male disciples to look upon women as living embodiments of the Divine Mother. ‘They are disarmed,’ he said, ‘when you view them in that light.’

Another helpful practice is, as much as possible, to avoid hugging others. Hugging is usually, in any case, a very superficial way of showing affection. I tell people truthfully that I feel much closer to them when I embrace them inwardly than when I grapple them in my arms, as if possessively. The touch sensation, so much a part of sexual desire, is a physical cul-de-sac on the way to the feeling of bliss in every atom of creation.

In the monastery, as I mentioned earlier, Master permitted no social contact between the monks and nuns. When necessities of the work demanded communication between them, he counseled them not to look at one another, and especially to avoid looking into the eyes; also, to keep their conversation as brief and impersonal as possible.

So strict was he that he even discouraged many of the normally accepted courtesies that men and women extend to one another. I remember one day, when Master and I were standing out of doors near the entrance to his Twenty-Nine Palms retreat, a young nun came to the door of the house, laden with packages. Observing that she was having difficulty in opening the door, I went over and opened it for her.

‘You should not have done that,’ Master told me, after she had gone inside. ‘Keep your distance,’ he added, ‘and they will always respect you.’

What, then, do we who seek to practice renunciation do with counsels such as these? Perhaps the most obvious and to some degree the most important is that Yogananda was speaking to a twenty-two year old, brand-new “monk.” The examples given above do not have a literal application to Ananda members if none are professed monks or nuns. But the examples DO have an inner application, however, as it relates to consciousness. Recall that Jesus Christ stated that adultery takes place first in the mind and only secondarily in actual “fact.”[2]

The essence of renunciation relates to the ego out of which lust, ambition, sense-indulgence, or intoxicants arise. There’s no need, I feel, to dwell on the many ways we can practice ego transcendence. Both the book “Sadhu Beware” and the book “The Renunciate Order” have much to offer in this way.

But the point that drives my impulse to share in this way goes beyond the questions that arose in that class. There are two aspects: one personal, one impersonal. On a personal level it is to hold out for each of us the recognition that there will come a future lifetime wherein we walk this earth free from all attachments and desires. “Take no heed for what you will wear, eat or sleep.” Maybe not literally but in your heart; free from the need to have a mate, or children, status, recognition, shelter, food, or career. This awaits you whether by your conscious aspiration or by the natural consequence of your sincere effort to attune yourself with Truth and the Divine.

Secondly: impersonally. A true spiritual work flows from the power of divine attunement. Attunement flows from the self-offering of ego to the divine will drawing the power of grace. The simple fact that Swami Kriyananda near the end of his life laid the foundation for a monastic order is, itself, a hint that the work he founded, Ananda, can only continue to flourish (spiritually) if there exists within it, a dedicated core of renunciates. It is well and good to say that each one of us should seek ego transcendence in our hearts and daily lives, but as Jesus put it: “The Father seeks those to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.”[3] In other words, we have to walk our talk. Therein will those “lion-like swamis” come to the West to help.

Given the worldwide indifference to and destruction of the great monasteries of past centuries, a new dispensation has been offered those who are sincere in our search for God, to affirm inner renunciation and to express this renunciation in our lives as befits our circumstances to the best of our ability in communion with others of like-mind. Kriya Yoga is offered to all who are sincere. The ancient proscriptions were waived by Mahavatar Babaji at the request of Lahiri Mahasya, a householder.

However, this new dispensation is not an invitation to “have my cake and eat it too.” “…Small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”[4] We who live in the Ananda communities must always beware of the temptation to want to create the perfect life for ourselves, our families and our friends. As Jesus put it when told his family were at the door wanting to speak with him, “Who is my mother, my brothers but those who do the will of the Father?”[5]

[1] See Chapter 26, The Ministry of The New Path

[2] Matt 5:27–30

[3] John 4:24

[4] Matt 7:14

[5] Matt 12:48