My name is a combination of three words:

Prana means vitality, pronounced praana. "A" is pronounced like the "a" in father.

Krsna means the devotional nucleus of the universe. "R" is like a vowel and a bit like the Irish say it.

And Ananda means joy or perpetual happiness.

So I am he who gets his joy and inspiration from the devotional nucleus of the universe.

I am originally from USA. I left there in 1970 and haven't been back since.

I lived in India and Southeast Asia for 23 years. I went to Europe in 1993. I lived in Italy for 6 years and travelled to Poland, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland and New Zealand. Now I am living in Australia.

Actually the color is saffron. It is the traditional color of renunciation, giving up the usual way of living to be of greater service to others. It is a color that combines red, the color of activity, movement, dynamism, and yellow, the color of high thinking and philosophical thought.

So I wear saffron because I try to occupy my mind with higher ideas and work dynamically to see those ideas put into practice.

I am neither a Buddhist nor a member of Hare Krishna. I am an Ananda Marga teacher.

Ananda means perpetual happiness. Marga means the path. So Ananda Marga means the path to perpetual happiness, happiness that continues to be in my mind in whatever circumstances I may be.

Ananda Marga is a socio-spiritual movement, discovering the real meaning of spirituality from the inside and expressing that experience through the way I act towards the environment around me.

I have been teaching meditation since December 1971.

I meditate usually four times a day for a least an hour each time.

In Southeast Asia people have greater difficulties with physical disease and natural calamities so I was involved in doing many types of physical service as well as holding workshops and seminars on meditation.

I was also involved in projects that were aimed at raising social consciousness and thinking about spirituality as a base for social change.

However in Europe I was more involved in doing workshops and seminars to help people resolve their emotional difficulties, difficult experiences and personal issues.

I am doing the same type of workshops and seminars in New Zealand.

There is no need to be a member of a religion. Meditation just needs to be practiced carefully and with sincerity from a qualified teacher.

Ananda Marga is dedicated to maintaining the quality of the teachers and ensuring that unnecessary rituals do not pollute the practices.

Meditation is an internal practice that leads to the feeling that everyone and everything is part of me and I am part of them. It is inclusive and leads to unconditional love. The techniques of meditation are standard.

Meditation guides each individual along his or her own path and feeds the growing awareness of the underlying happiness as difficulties and emotions that occupy the mind are resolved. Learning meditation is not difficult.

It involves learning certain skills to make it successful, such as withdrawing the mind from the external environment and the physical body, focusing the self in a point, which is then associated with the Divine, my own, true Self.

Stress is the result of looking at the world from the wrong perspective. Meditation gives the capacity to convert stress into selfless service.

Well Santa Claus is the person who gives good things to people at Christmas time. I guess I am a kind of Santa Claus because I like to give good things to people all the time!

I do look like him, don't I?