Alakh Analda interview by John Ransley
Used with permission from John
John
When you took sannyas, what were you doing at the time, and what sort of things impelled you to take sannyas? Or did you do it in stages? Was it a sudden decision, that sort of thing?
Alakh
I was living a business life, married, and working with my husband. We were both working for our own companies, which we directed in England and then Australia. I got involved with yoga almost by accident. My brother was working in what they call a yoga ashram, and we didn’t even know what an ashram was. The young Swami, whoever he was, had arrived from India and was teaching them, and they were working voluntarily up there on this little piece of… well, it was a big piece of land that only had a little hut on it, and I actually used to only go up there on weekends to see him because I’d been working for five years in England. And during that time, he’d left school and become a university student. He actually finished university, and I’d been overseas for about six years altogether, so we hadn’t seen one another. I used to go to catch up with him. So that is how I got into yoga.
John
And this was in 1975?
Alakh
Yeah, it was ’75. I came back from England to Australia to live and I just happened to go and live in Manly and the Swami happened to go and live in Manly and there were yoga classes at Manly and I used to go every week to the yoga class and sometimes I used to say to myself, I used to say to my husband I am not going to yoga tonight and he said: “go, go” you know…” no, go!” and I used to think, oh that’s funny, I must be different when I come back from yoga classes, because he is really encouraging me to go and we usually did everything together, so it was quite interesting. And then at weekends we often used to go up and see my brother, and he would tell me a little bit more and a little bit more about yoga and what they were doing, although he himself didn’t know.
At that stage, there was no concept of sannyas in Australia, except for this little Swami from India who was here. He arrived in 1975; his name was Swami Akhandananda, and he had a shaved head and wore geru (orange) robes. That didn’t seem unusual to us because he was Indian. And there was one Australian who is actually a New Zealander, Achutananda, who also happened to shave his head and wear geru, but he was so sort of amiable, and he didn’t seem to make too much of a trip out of it; we could accept that, and he was actually my first yoga teacher. I used to go to his class at the community centre in Manly.
And what happened was that another Swami came from India, once again, with a shaved head, geru robes, and once again very, very amiable, which I can relate to very easily, Gorakhnath, and so I could accommodate that they were Swamis and they had taken sannyas and being some sort of yogic monks, that they had given their lives to their guru, whom they called a guru and they were teaching on his behalf. And I wasn’t very comfortable with meditation, but I found I was really flexible with asanas. I found that Achutananda put a lot of emphasis on practising every day. He used to say, “Look, it’s no use coming to class if you’re not going to practise. Practise is everything”. So, I did; I practised a little bit every day. I put emphasis on practising a little bit every day, and I did; I used to do Surya Namaskara every day; it was a breeze.
But what I can see looking back is that, if the Australian ashram had been any bigger than it was, and at that time there were five people living up there, and they were sort of feral? One was Sankalpa, Nischkalpa, Vedvyas, Tapasmurti, and one other boy. And they were sort of quite devoted to that Swami Akhandanand, and I could see why, because he was once again a very amiable sort of fellow, and very simple, and if they had been…you know, all shaved heads, wearing geru, and all this sort of thing, and myself just arriving back from England, my brother was living as what I would have seen a cult, I wouldn’t have gone near him. But at the time, they were wearing jeans, they had long hair, and they were resisting shaving their heads and wearing geru. They thought it had nothing to do with their spirituality. And slowly, step by step, I heard my brother had shaved his head, and he looked fine. Slowly, step by step, things started to change.
Actually, before that change, I went to India, and the way I got there, which really got me into sannyas, was that Swami Goraknath said, as part of his wheeling and dealing nature, that he knew I had money, so he said one time, “if you give me the fare, I’ll take you to India”. He just wanted to set himself up with a trip back to India every year. And I shook his hand and said, “Yeah, o.k.” I thought, great, it would be fantastic. to go to India with a Swami. But that went really deep into my mind, and after that, I couldn’t get the idea of going to India out of my head, especially since Bruce and I had planned a trip back to Europe. We nearly cancelled it, but I wanted to go to India so much that I said, ‘No, we are going to Europe and India, and I want him to come with me. And he wanted to come, and he was very open to the Swamis; he really loved them. He was actually, you know, loved them, and he didn’t always come up to Mangrove Mountain at the weekends to see my brother or anything like that; he saw it as sort of family. But…he loved them, but he didn’t want to get involved much, and we went to a seminar. This was a turning point: we went to a three-day seminar together in Sydney. We got up very early in the morning, had a cold shower and all that sort of thing, did yoga practises, which were actually pre-kriya, mudras, bandhas and things like that. And when I came back from that, I thought I had been away for a month, so that was the experience I had from my three-day seminar, and after that I was much more I was interested, and a bit of a conflict started between my husband and me because he used to say, ‘You go, you go’, and I used to say, ‘I don’t want to go without you’, and we had that conflict. Anyway, needless to say, we went on that trip to England and were coming back through India, and I’d arranged to do a kriya course there. At the last minute, he decided he had to see Japan, and he went back through Russia and Japan, saying he’d meet me back in Australia. I went to India by myself. Swami Goraknath’s comment sparked the idea of going to India. Before that, I was quite happy with the life I had, and I did a little yoga every day; sometimes I went up to the ashram, and sometimes I saw the swamis. And the swamis used to come to my house quite a lot.
So, I was really happy with that life. It hadn’t even occurred to me to go to India. So when I arrived in India, I nearly missed the plane. And I travelled all night. I travelled around in a taxi because I didn’t sleep very well on the plane. I travelled around Calcutta in a taxi trying to get my ticket to Monghyr that night, and I got one on the train, so I was awake all day, then on the train all night, so I didn’t sleep properly. And when I arrived in Monghyr, I was really emotionally upset, actually, and all the people in Monghyr were like a white person like me, in tight jeans and a tight T-shirt. It was really laughable … I had a crowd of 40 people around me straight away, and I was just about to start weeping when this little face appeared with a shaved head, geru, out of the middle of the crowd, and said, “Yoga ashram”? And I just said yes, and it was Krishnaprem, and he looked like Akhandanand to top it off. And I just- it just saved me from cracking up at that point, because I was actually physically pretty exhausted when I arrived. And I’d heard that you might not see Swamiji; I had gone to do kriya anyway, and I thought in the back of my mind that I might meet this amazing person that they talk about, the big swami, but I’d heard that Brad Weis had been there 3 months and hadn’t met Swamiji; Richard had been there 3 months and never met Swamiji. So, I arrived, and I’d been quite friendly with Mungulmurti, so I thought, at least I’ll know one or two of the swamis; I’ll do kriyas, and I’ll come back.
Well, I arrived with Krishnaprem in a taxi about an hour after that because he had always been the person who got people. And the next thing I know, Amritnanand came out and met me. Luckily, I asked her, and she said, ” Oh, what have you got and I had a typewriter, which I gave to her, and she said, ” Oh, have a bath, have some food and so Achutanand had given me two dhotis, and luckily, I asked her whether I could wear it. Some of the boys who were on the land (Mangrove Mountain) at that time had dhotis and wore geru, and Achutananda decided to give me or sell me these two, and I used to wear them on the land. But I did ask her, and she said it was the best, and I changed into geru, but I think Swamiji was surprised when he saw me in geru.
But yeah, the next thing, before I even went for a bath, I looked around, and Swamiji was standing there, and he was seeing somebody off. And I go, no, no, I’m seeing things, and he went to the door and said goodbye to his visitor. So, he didn’t look at me, which was just as well, because I was nearly turning to jelly, perspiring, and it was very hot; it was June.
John
What year was it?
Alakh
It was 1976. I’d been practising yoga, and I found it interesting. I’d been travelling around Europe for 2 months. I used to get up every morning in the hotel room and do Surya Namaskara, and I really kept my sadhana (yoga practise) going, just a little bit every day. And yes, that was June 1976. There were 2 or 3… about 4 students there for kriya. At that time, they were doing a kriya yoga course every month. There were a few members every month, whereas now there are… You know… maybe a hundred for six days once a year.
And so, the reason you know it’s such a long answer as to why I took sannyas is that I didn’t consciously. It was all… sort of… I almost feel like it’s happening all around me, and I didn’t actually decide to take sannyas. It was a process over a couple of years. And in the beginning, in 1975, I wouldn’t have even believed I would end up, a year later, by myself in an ashram away from my husband. I didn’t do that sort of thing, you know, with these funny people. When I found myself there, I was completely at home, though, like I said, I was physically exhausted. I just felt like weeping and crying, you know… And that was my first experience. When I got in the shower, I think I did. I think I was too tired to, and I saw Swamiji straight afterwards. Even when I’d arrived in Calcutta, I just had this feeling of being home. And it was very hot in the ashram, and there weren’t many visitors. I did the kriya course, which was from 4-6 am for three weeks.
