Swami Kriyananda’s relationship with the other direct disciples of Paramahansa Yogananda was, by all accounts, both intimate in its beginnings and troubled in its later development. When he entered the Self-Realization Fellowship in 1948 and lived at Mount Washington, he moved within the inner life of the monastic community, interacting regularly with many of the principal disciples. During those early years he formed close friendships and enjoyed a sense of camaraderie, receiving responsibilities and attention that placed him in visible association with senior figures such as Daya Mata, Tara Mata, and others. In that formative period, his connection with the disciple-family around Yogananda could reasonably be described as close, at least in daily contact and shared service.

After Yogananda’s passing, however, the harmony of those relationships began to erode. Differences emerged over the direction of the organization and the manner in which the guru’s teachings should be expressed and administered. Over the 1950s and early 1960s, tensions with the SRF leadership, especially with those in governing roles, gradually intensified. This process culminated in his being asked to resign from the SRF Board and leave the organization in 1962, an event that effectively removed him from the inner circle of Yogananda’s direct disciples within SRF.

From that point onward, his relationship with most of Yogananda’s prominent disciples who remained in SRF became distant and, at times, openly strained. The separation was not merely geographical or administrative; it reflected deeper disagreements about authority, succession, and the appropriate way to represent Yogananda’s legacy. Legal conflicts between SRF and the work Kriyananda later founded further deepened these divisions and made cordial collaboration increasingly unlikely. For many within SRF, he came to be seen as standing outside the accepted line of interpretation, which naturally limited close personal ties.

Yet the picture is not one of complete rupture with every individual. Even after leaving SRF, he retained some degree of cordial or respectful contact with a few disciples who were less central to organizational governance. These relationships, however, were generally limited and not central to his later ministry, which developed largely apart from the institutional framework of his guru’s original organization. Throughout these shifts, he continued to honor Yogananda as his guru, but his lived relationship with most of the other direct disciples moved from early closeness to a state that was, in the main, distant and often conflicted rather than intimately collaborative.