Many years ago, in the late nineties, there was a UFO sighting here at Ananda Village.
Five residents who lived here at the time saw the alien craft in three different parts of the village—at the Crystal Hermitage, near a housing cluster called Villa Gioia, and near the Sundance housing cluster.
Those that saw the UFO included Swami Kriyananda’s cook and assistant, and four other residents, one of them being a prominent vedic astrologer, who will be talking at our upcoming conference, “Seers, Vedic Astrology and the Yuga Cycles of Time” on November 15, 2025.
I was in a meeting with Swami Kriyananda the day of the visitation and I asked him if he knew about the UFO sighting here at the Crystal Hermitage, where he lived.
“Really,” he said with a smile, “a UFO sighting at the hermitage and I was looking the other way!”
Another person in the room with us laughed, remarking that he had a hard time believing aliens existed.
Swami Kriyananda became quite serious and then said, “Master (Yogananda) said that they are real and they do exist.” He even said that someday we’ll travel to other planets as easily as we go now from continent to continent.
I remember the ensuing conversation I had with Kriyananda. The idea of aliens and UFOs gave him permission to talk freely about them in front of me.
My father, who’d been a young flight instructor in World War 2, told me that fellow pilots had seen alien aircraft when they flew at higher altitudes. He also told me he knew about the government coverup of the crashed alien craft at Roswell, New Mexico. He said the government didn’t want the information released because they were afraid it would scare people.
Thinking I’d like to have more alien conversations with my dad, I bought him a book on the Pleiades, which he devoured with interest.
All this is to say that’s what’s coming in the next three decades here on earth is going to be one of the more interesting times our planet has seen in thousands of years.
If you can remember what it was like 40 years ago, you might recall that beliefs like meditation, being a vegetarian, believing in God as consciousness or following a yogic path were highly suspect.
What’s coming is going to change the way we view organized religion and spirituality.
Perhaps this is why Yogananda professed that the “religion” of the future is “Self-realization”, something you have to do yourself using tools like Kriya Yoga Meditation, intuition and love for all, human and otherwise.
Yogananda also said that “man” is a unique creation, not an evolutionary product of animals because our human nervous system was specifically designed by God (consciousness) for the purpose of Self-realization. According to Yogananda, this capacity to realize one’s oneness with God sets humanity apart from all other forms of creation.
Recently, many NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) have recorded that the future shows our planet covered with “small communities or cities of light” where people live in harmony with each other and the earth.
It may become easier to commune telepathically with each other, with animals, trees, and other life forms in the future.
I’m sure there is much to study and learn about our humanoid species by aliens and extraterrestrials. Things like why do we want to bomb and kill each other? Why do we hate and not love others? Why don’t we have homeless shelters that take care of all our brothers and sisters?
And, what if we remember aliens from a past life?
From a very young age, our son liked to draw aliens—aliens in space ships, aliens with big heads and tiny bodies, aliens doing alien things. We used to laugh about it, but sometimes when we’re quite young we can remember things from a prior existence.
In a webinar with the college after the 2020 Covid event shut campuses down, some of us surmised why Covid had happened and what it was trying to teach us all. We were in a class that was exploring the yuga cycles of time, looking at what may have happened in the higher yugas. I remember saying that what if in the higher yugas, we became aware that there actually are aliens or extraterrestrials with much higher awareness, knowledge and consciousness, and that as we ascend in this current age of Dwapara Yuga, part of our evolution is not to fear alien life, but to understand it.
I asked Sri Vanamali Devi, the Indian mystic and author of many books on the Hindu deities, why Covid was happening and what was its message.
She quickly shot back, “We do not realize that Divine Mother is in control of this planet and she will do as she sees fit. This virus is due to our own disregard and pollution of this planet, and now she has spoken.”
Notwithstanding, Yogananda said that earth is where you can grow spiritually faster than anywhere else because it’s more difficult here. In the astral planes, things are quite lovely and manifesting beauty and peace can be second nature.
Here, every time you want to open a worldwide homeless shelter it accidentally gets shot down by twenty foreign missiles trying to take out a praying mantis UFO.
Right now, technological advancements are rising quicker than consciousness. This is the nature of Dwapara Yuga. “We are experiencing growing pains as consciousness catches up to technology,” says Asha Nayaswami.
Perhaps the aliens we’ve heard about are well aware of the war and destruction we face and are actually looking out for us so we don’t destroy the planet.
Aliens, immigrants, foreigners, people who look and sound different than we do, how can we understand them?
The anecdote for fear is love. It’s always with love and an open heart that we’ll finally know the answers. Meditating and consciously sending out positive vibrations of love and healing to the planet can help.