OLAV Oftedal '71 is a case in point. In senior high, he had been a nature lover, a loner who spent a lot of time in the woods. During his sophomore year at Harvard, he worked for the strike and later helped start Harvard New College, a free university. Still later, he became an officer of the Conservation Club and worked for Ecology Action. Last spring he went to lobby in Congress after Kent State and the Cambodia invasion. He came back depressed by the ineffectiveness of talking as a tool for transforming society and by his own sore need for personal transformation. No matter what he'd undertaken, he'd always yielded to apathy or frustration. But he saw no answers to his or society's problems in increasingly divisive radical politics, and no answers in society-and life-denying mysticisms.

Later in the spring he saw a poster announcing a lecture by a yogi and thought, "Well, I'll go listen to another one." But the man's speech and presence deeply affected him. "I felt that he was a man who exuded tremendous love," says Oftedal. "He was very dynamic-he slept only a few hours a night-and all the time was engaged in continual interaction with people at a human level."

Oftedal stayed close to "Dadaji" (respected elder brother) during his five-day visit. Oftedal found out that the yogi was one of more than a thousand teachers in a rapidly growing world movement named Ananda Marga ("Path to Bliss"). Oftedal became increasingly excited, and Dadaji eventually suggested that he go to India. "It was very interesting," says Oftedal. "I had had several very promising job opportunities fall through right before he came, so I was free and open for the summer, totally unexpectedly." He went to India.

Ananda Marga headquarters itself in a rather simple compound in Ranchi, a city of the eastern state of Bihar. During the past seven or eight years, the organization has set up more than 600 primary schools, many children's homes-orphans in India usually don't survive-hospitals, homes for the aged, and higher educational institutions. Ananda Marga is able to establish and operate these concerns at minimal expense-mainly because many are built by hand and all are run by Avadhutikas and Avadhutas, women and men who work as full-time volunteers and expect no material compensation, or by other dedicated Margiis who expect little.

ANANDA Marga does relief work where few others dare to go. Margiis-followers of Ananda Marga-plunge into flood areas where cholera and dysentery are epidemic, bringing food, medical care, and solace days before others arrive. During the recent crisis in East Pakistan they provided food and shelter for thousands of refugees fleeing from the massacres.

The organization also establishes "tribal units" in the hill-country to prepare tribes, many of which have already suffered at the hands of fortune seekers, for inevitably increasing contact with "civilization."

The organization has a tightly coherent ideology which is a synthesis of social and spiritual principles. Its Sanskrit motto means, "Liberation for self-well-being of the world (or service to humanity')." Ananda Marga sees the universe as. One and the goal of all human life as the attainment of unity, emergence with the Universal Self. Ananda Marga calls for service not at some magical future moment when "selflessness" is attained, but at this very instant; and it stresses that the service itself is an integral part of the self-purification process.

In this way Ananda Marga differs from those mystical traditions which deny the reality of the world and seek liberation from the human self, rather than for the human self. Margiis, following a path of involvement in society, stress that all human beings are in fact brothers and sisters. They want to be able to relate to all human being as fully, directly, and humanly as possible. For example, the Ananda Marga University, which teaches mainly practical skills, requires a degree in "Humanity": it sends the students out to work with the local people to see how well they relate and get along with them-and if the students don't pass, they don't graduate.

So social action and spiritual practice, "service and sadhana," are equally stressed in Ananda Marga. Thus it is able to attract a diverse group of people. For instance, Dadaji, the first Avadhuta to visit Boston, was a spiritual person from childhood-he began meditating at the age of six. But two other teachers who are now in the U.S., Acharya Raghaw Prasad and Acharya Yatiishvaranda Avadhuta, were much more socially oriented.

In the late '50's, Acharya (a title meaning "spiritual teacher") Prasad was an Indian student radical, and he reacted scornfully when a friend suggested that he come to a lecture on yoga. But he went, and much to his surprise, found a yogi talking about social interaction and the necessity to transform society. He learned that the man was in Ananda Marga, joined the organization himself, and soon began "whole-timer" training. But in 1962, at the request of the Guru of Ananda Marga, Shrii P. R. Sarkar, Prasad left whole-timer training, got married, and continued his education as an engineer. He now lives in New York, has a full-time job, takes a course in computer programming, and spends weekends in various Ananda Marga centers on the East Coast, teaching and giving spiritual instruction.

The new Avadhuta, Yatiishvaranda, arrived in this country just a week ago. He worked in a factory as an engineer until 1965. Earlier in his life he not only scorned but actively disliked all yogis. Yet he too was drawn to Ananda Marga despite himself, and he became a full-timer only a month after receiving personal contact with the Master in spring 1966.

SIRH P.R. Sarkar founded Ananda Marga 16 years ago and continues to direct its activities. His given title, Shrii Shrii Anandamurtiji ("Beloved Image of Bliss") is loosely translated by devotees as, "Upon seeing him, one falls into Bliss." He is referred to informally as "Baba" ("Holy Father").

Shrii Sarkar attained full realization of his mission at the age of four, and acknowledged it by accepting his first disciples at six. Now the number of disciples has grown to more than five million, and he guides them through the agency of some 2000 Acharvas. He is now married and has a child to demonstrate that a Yogi, a man of God, need not be an ascetic or world-renunciate. His wife Mata ("Mother") is said, in spiritual terms, to be his female complement; she directs Ananda Marga's women's liberation sector. Shrii Sarkar has assumed the burden of his own obligations during his entire life. As a younger man, he worked as an accountant at a railway factory (he gave lectures during lunch hour); now, as prime mover and Guru of Ananda Marga, he and his family refuse all gifts and live instead on the meager profits from his cheaply printed books.

THE following is the story of how a grandfather and senior Indian government official. Mr. Mangal Bihari, came to Ananda Marga. Mr. Bihari is Chief Director for Sugar and Oil in the Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture and has been in the U.S. recently on state business. I taped his story last weekend at a gathering of Margiis in Stony Brook, N.Y.

In 1962 Bihari was deputy secretary of finance in the state of Rajastan. Born a Brahimin, he had participated in his family's devotional practices as a boy and young man, but got little out of them, despite his "very keen desire to realize the Truth." His faith in the traditional forms diminished in the course of his life as he realized, in the face of various tensions and attractions, that he had no stability. Eventually, with his mind "churning," he made a pilgrimage to the Himalayas to see if he could find someone who could lead him to the Truth.