Swami Kriyananda

Born James Donald Walters, he became a direct disciple of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, an encounter that shaped the entire direction of his life. Yogananda's vision of World Brotherhood Colonies — intentional communities where spiritual practice and ordinary living would be integrated — gave Walters both a model and a mission. He took the monastic name Swami Kriyananda and directed his energies toward bringing that vision into institutional form, building communities where the principles of Yogananda's teachings could be practised collectively.

He founded Ananda, a worldwide network of spiritual intentional communities organised around Yogananda's teachings, built on the premise that God could be experienced as a tangible, loving reality within ordinary daily life — not as an abstraction, but as something accessible to anyone. Alongside this community-building work, Kriyananda produced an unusually large body of written and musical output: approximately 150 books and booklets, and over 400 musical compositions. Across both forms, his work has sold in excess of three million copies.

Ananda has grown into a global movement with communities established across multiple countries. Kriyananda's published works remain in wide circulation, spanning practical spiritual instruction and devotional music, and the movement he founded continues to function as both a residential community experiment and an active carrier of Yogananda's teachings. The communities themselves — intentional, cooperative, organised around a shared spiritual framework — remain the primary site where his ideas about integrating spiritual practice with daily living continue to be tested and carried forward.