DEHRADUN: Chidanand Saraswati, head of the largest ashram in Rishikesh, Parmarth Niketan, has been appointed as a member of the board of India Development Foundation of Overseas Indians (IDF-OI) along with Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar by the Modi government. The mandate of the government body which is under the ministry of external affairs, is to facilitate contributions by overseas Indians for social and developmental projects in the country for which the seers are expected to play a key role. After attending the 8th annual board meeting of the foundation chaired by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in Delhi on Saturday, Saraswati, who is involved in a number of initiatives to clean the Ganga and promoting the use of toilets in rural communities, said that his role will be to motivate people to experience the joy of giving back to the country. Spirituality lays stress upon giving, since giving is living, he told TOI.

He added that in the board meeting, he had pointed out that people living abroad who are successful have an innate desire to give back to their motherland, but often dont know how to go about it. Our objective is to reach out to people and connect them with various development programmes that are being undertaken in the country for women empowerment, skill development, education and healthcare as well as the Namami Gange and Swachh Bharat initiatives. He added that all contributions will be deposited in the IDF-OI Fund. Often, people want to do something for their own village. They can accordingly sponsor construction of a school, toilet etc in their own village where the money given will be strictly utilised only for that.

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Head of largest ashram in Rishikesh appointed member of India ... - Times of India

CUTTACK: The district administration has chalked out steps to make Swaraj Ashram, the epicentre of freedom struggle in the state, an attractive tourist spot. About Rs 50 lakh has been allocated by the tourism department for the ashram's beautification. The money will be spent on construction of an audio-visual room, a cafeteria and a park on the ashram premises.

Mahatma Gandhi stayed at the ashram for two days during his first visit to Cuttack in March 1921. He addressed a public meeting on the banks of Kathajodi river on March 24, 1921. During his visit to Cuttack in December 1927, a spinning competition and a khadi exhibition was organized at the ashram.

Besides, authorities also have plans to construct a welcome arch at the entrance of the historic monument. "We have plans to showcase films and documentaries on our freedom fighters in the audio-visual room to make our youngsters aware of their heroism and contribution to the state," said district tourism officer Reena Rath.

She said after completion of the construction work steps will be taken to prepare some documentary films on noted freedom fighters of the state. Landscaping of the ashram will be done and beautiful lights used to illuminate the structure to make it a perfect hangout zone in the evening. Ornamental plants and flowers will be planted on the ashram premises.

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Cuttack: Rs 50 lakh for Swaraj Ashram's beautification - Times of India - Times of India

A government trust has inducted Art of Living foundation head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Parmarth Niketan Ashram chief Swami Chidanand Saraswati on its board.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj welcomed the new board members and sought their support and guidance in encouraging and enabling overseas Indians to make contributions. Swaraj is the chairperson of the India Development Foundation of Overseas Indians (IDF-OI), a government-established body to facilitate contributions by overseas Indians for social projects in the country.

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The decision was taken at the eighth meeting of the trust in New Delhi on Friday. Senior officials from the ministries of home affairs, external affairs and finance were among the participants. The newly appointed members also include Indian-American Bharat Barai.

The board members discussed ways to ensure contributions by overseas Indians to implement the governments two flagship programmes Swachh Bharat Mission and Clean Ganga initiative, the foundation said, adding they also discussed strategy to enhance contributions.

The IDF-OI is currently implementing eight projects in Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Telangana, and has several projects available for funding across the identified sectors, said an official statement.

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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar And Parmarth Niketan Ashram Chief On Board ... - Outlook India

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Police, legal authorities go an extra mile to unite mentally-challenged man with family The Hindu It's after more than three years that Nohar Bhog from Chattisgarh saw his mentally-challenged, 25-year-old elder brother Javaharalal Bhog in the Seon Ashram in Gandebagilu in Belthangady on Friday. They hugged each other and were overwhelmed to see ...

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Police, legal authorities go an extra mile to unite mentally-challenged man with family - The Hindu

At just a stones throw away from the hustle, crowd and noise of Vizags most popular destination, The RK Beach is a serene and tranquil haven; the Ramakrishna Mission. This light pink summit, emulating most Indian temples, surrounded by lush greenery lends the famed tourist beach destination its name. The modest yet inspiring edifice came into existence in Maharanipeta in 1938. The waves of the Bay of Bengal lashing persistently about a hundred yards from the ashram make it explicitly imploring. The proximity to the bay allows an early morning visitor to enjoy a panoramic view of the sun rising like a ball of fire from the blue ocean. The Ramakrishna Mission carries the work of the socio-religious Ramakrishna movement, influenced by 18thcentury saint, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and shaped by his chief discipleSwami Vivekananda.

Take up the idea. Make that one idea your life think of it, dream of it, live for it. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, murmur that idea, and just leave every other idea solitary. This is the way to success; this is way great spiritual giants are produced.

Swami Vivekananda

In front of the main ashram building, is an imposing bronze statue of Swami Vivekananda. Within, the spacious marble prayer hall harbours a unique spiritual silence. It is designed for regular worship and spiritual rituals as well as for meditation. The most mesmerising aspect in this hall is the incredible glow emanating from the eyes of the marble idol of Sri Ramakrishna. Worshiped daily, one can feel the aura of spiritualism and devoutness around the idol.

Many are known to do great work under the stress of some strong emotion. But a mans true nature is known from the manner in which he does his insignificant daily task.

Ma Sarada Devi

The mission regularly celebrates a number of festivals and the birth anniversaries of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda. Guru Purnima, Ganesh Chaturthi, Durga Puja, Shivarathri, Janmashtami and even Christmas are celebrated in the ashram. It opens at 5 a.m. and the rituals begin with an aarthi, followed by the pratha bhajan or dawn prayer. Slokas from the Bhagavad Gita are recited and holy offerings are distributed among the visitors. Its only after this that the hall is open to the general public for meditation. Bhajans enliven the ambience from 7 p.m. every evening. The summit remains open till 9:30 at night.

The mission provides a variety of educational, cultural and medical facilities, and also services for the relief and rehabilitation of the poor and needy. The ashram conducts free medical camps, an English medium school and a physiotherapy clinic for children with cerebral palsy. Spiritual retreats are conducted at different times of the year for devotees who are drawn to the mission for its piety and peace. Also within the precincts is an impressive library, inaugurated in 1997. It contains books on a variety of subjects, from religion to allied subjects to childrens titles, and also houses a reading room with about 16200 books! The library is open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. There is also a stall selling books on Vedanta and Vivekananda.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

Swami Vivekananda

In spite of RK beach being one of Vizags busiest areas, the Ramakrishna Mission ashram is a temple of serenity and tranquillity. It provides peace and spiritual bliss to any visitor.

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A Spiritual Look Into The Ramakrishna Mission Ashram in Visakhapatnam - Yo! Vizag

Alice Coltrane released A Monastic Trio, her first album as a bandleader, in 1968, one year after the death of her husband and collaborator John Coltrane. Over the next decade, working as a composer, pianist, and harpist, Coltrane produced a revelatory body of work at a rate of about an album a year, playing thick and exploratory modal jazz imbued with a sense of spiritual questing that was entirely her own. Then, after the release of the live double album Transfiguration in 1978, she disappeared from public life almost entirely, returning to recording only for her final album Translinear Light, just a few years before her own death in 2007.

In the intermediary, Coltrane devoted herself to religious pursuits. In 1975, she established the Vedantic Center, an organization for the study of the ancient Vedic religion of India and spiritual wisdom and insight from all faiths. She took the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda, which translates from Sanskrit as the highest song of God. In 1983, she relocated the center to a sprawling 48-acre complex in the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles, renaming it the Sai Anantam Ashram and inviting a group of followers to live and study there.

Coltrane didnt cease her musical activities during this time, but redirected them toward the ashram community rather than the jazz-listening public at large. Under the Turiyasangitananda name, she recorded a series of cassettes that mix traditional Vedic chant with the American gospel Coltrane learned during her upbringing as a church organist in Detroit and the intense improvisation shed spent the previous decades honing. She worked in collaboration with singers at the ashram, and released the tapes on a private press, distributing them exclusively to her religious followers.

World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, a new compilation from David Byrnes Luaka Bop label, collects highlights from Coltranes ashram period and releases them publicly for the first time. Its difficult to overstate the significance of the release: This is a major body of work from a master musician, previously unheard outside of a community of religious devotees and any lucky collectors who managed to secure copies of the original cassettes.

Listening to the music as an outsider to that community, you sometimes feel youve wandered into the ashram unbidden, a situation that might be discomfiting if it werent for the nearly overwhelming warmth and joy with which the performers perform their material. Luaka Bop clearly approached the question of releasing the compilation to an audience so divorced from its original context with careful consideration: The label worked with Coltranes children Ravi and Michelle and her longtime engineer Baker Bigsby to secure and remaster the original tapes, and the compilations liner notes include a lengthy interview with a musician and ashram resident alongside more purely musicological writing.

And frankly, the music inside World Spirituality Classics 1 deserves to be heard. The ashram tapes are the only known recordings on which Alice Coltrane used her singing voice, an instrument as restrained and plaintive as her harp and piano are wild and expressive. Om Shanti, the second track and the first to feature Coltrane the singer, is transfixing. Accompanied at first only by stand-up bass and her own organ, she sings a lilting bluesy tune, sounding almost amused at the beatific atmosphere shes managed to conjure with just a few simple elements. Halfway through, the ashram singers join in wailing call-and-response, sounding like spirits beckoning Coltrane to join them in some nether realm. But the singers unflappable calm prevails: as the music around her becomes haunting and cavernous, her voice never rises above a conversational patter.

The compilations eight tracks run from between four and a half and eleven minutes in length, tending toward the longer end of that spectrum. Many of them are bifurcated in a manner similar to Om Shanti. One half might feature a vocal solo from Coltrane or another singer, the other hypnotically repetitious Vedic or gospel chanting. These chanting sections will be familiar to listeners of Rada-Krsna Nama Sankirtana, Coltranes 1975 album of devotional songs, but the addition of the compilations other most distinctive instrument gives them a new otherworldly glow. Coltrane frequently plays an Oberheim OB-8 synthesizer, a hefty piece of analog equipment that was state-of-the-art at the time. Her favorite mode of expression on the OB-8 is a huge, arcing glissando, sliding continuously from somewhere near the bottom of the keyboards range to somewhere near the top. These figures often loom behind the proceedings like futuristic monoliths. They recall Coltranes ability on the harp, like her husbands on the soprano sax, to play shimmering arpeggiated lines so smoothly that the distinctions between pitches seem to break down entirely. Thanks to the electronic capabilities of the OB-8, they actually do.

Theres a renewed interest in Coltranes music and spiritual life among listeners, many of them coming from outside the orthodoxy of traditional jazz fandom. (The work of her nephew Steven Ellison a.k.a. Flying Lotus, a frequent childhood visitor to the ashram whose own interstellar musical explorations owe a great deal to the woman he calls auntie, surely has something to do with this revival.) Through curated reissue labels and musicians like Botany and Visible Cloaks, were also in the middle of a new age renaissance, with artists exploring the musical potential of sounds that were originally intended as aids for meditation and spiritual experience. And the tumultuous political climate has encouraged musicians and listeners alike to view music as a balm against wounds inflicted in the outside world. Though the music onWorld Spirituality Classics 1 was recorded decadesago, 2017 is a felicitous moment for the compilations release.

Luaka Bop has done a remarkable job of collecting recordings that were originally scattered across multiple releases and giving them the feeling of a consistent whole. The insistent rhythm of Rama Guru is particularly invigorating in the wake of the slow and exploratory Rama Rama; the melody of the choral centerpiece Journey to Satchidananda finds a rippled but recognizable reflection in the harp motif that opens Er Ra. The most affecting of these thematic restatements comes during the 10-minute closer Keshava Murahara, whose pensive strings and vocals soon swell toward the tune of Om Shanti with an ecstasy that was only hinted at previously. Three quarters of the way through of the song, the small orchestra has settled down. Coltranes voice is back in the sparse setting where we heard it first, weary but unwavering, ready to begin the next journey.

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Alice Coltrane's Ashram Recordings Are Nearly Perfect Music for Our Current Moment - SPIN

Source: The HitavadaDate: 11 May 2017 10:21:15

Staff Reporter,

CENTRAL Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducted National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) in a neat manner on May 7. Over 30,000 candidates appeared for the examination conducted at 54 centres in city.

Students not only from city but from upcountry and adjoining places of the nearby district chosen Nagpur as a centre for the examination. Shree Gurudev Sewa Ashram of city made arrangement of lodging and boarding for the out station candidates free of cost coming for the exam.

Adv Ashok Yawale, one of the main organisers of the event, while talking to The Hitavada said, Since Nagpur is one of the main centre, many students from nearby districts opt for it. We at Nagpur are organising many event and distribute free meals on several occasions.

The students coming for the exams are mostly teenagers and are accompanied by their parents. We thought of providing free loading and boarding to the students from May 6, Shree Gurudev Sewa Mandals team including Satvik Thaware, Krupal Bhoyar, Suresh Rajurkar, Gyaneshwar Rakshak, Praveen Paradkar, Tapas, Subash Bangade, Anand Mathane, Vitthal Punse informed people about services on social media.

We had given option of prior registration, to avoid rush on time. More then 90 students and their parents took the benefit of the services, informed Subash Bangade. Gyaneshwar Rakshak added, People spend lot of money on several celebrations. We thought that this is a crucial examination and people from other cities, many of them coming for the first time to the city.

They even dont no the centre and places to stay, as well as to find quality food amidst scorching heat. We decided to help them.

This is the true help to the aspairing doctors of the country. This was a noble gesture, very rare to see. Even aspirants coming for other exams like police recruitment etc often are forced to sleep on the railway platfrom.

A little help to the strugling youths can carry a good name for the city. Its a new begining and we will continue the same in future also, said Praveen Paradkar.

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Shree Gurudev Sewa Ashram's noble gesture towards NEET aspirants - The Hitavada

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Nagpur: Sarvodaya Ashram, situated at near Bole Petrol Pump, Dharampeth, has organised a combined meeting at its premises on Tuesday, May 9, for chalking out a plan to celebrate sesquicentennial (150th) birth anniversary of Ba-Bapu. The meeting, to be presided over by President of Sewagram Ashram President Jaywant Mathkar, is being held on the joint auspices of Nagpur Zilla Sarvodaya Mandal, Mahatma Gandhi Vichar Manch, Servants of India Society, Jagrut Nagrik Manch and Maharashtra Gandhi Smarak Nidhi.

The meeting will be held at 5.30 pm on Tuesday, May 9, 2017.

Kasturba and Mahatma Gandhi were of the same age. The 150th birth anniversary of both is commencing from next year. The meeting is being held to chalk out a detailed plan to celebrate the anniversary. During the meeting, Senior Editor and Writer Suresh Dwadashiwar will deliver a lecture on the topic India Today and Political Legacy of Gandhi and Gokhale. Gopalkrishna Gokhale was political guru of Mahatma Gandhi. Renowned Sarvodayi thinker Anantrao Ahmedabadkar will be felicitated on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Similarly, IIT-Mumbais retired Professor and writer Ravindra Pandharinath will elaborate on Gandhi 150 celebrations.

A meeting of Nagpur Zilla Sarvodaya Mandal is also being organised just before the combined meeting at 4.30 pm to discuss following subjects: 1) Election of new executive, 2) A proposal to organise triennial convention of Maharashtra Sarvodaya Mandal and 3) Preparations for centenary celebrations of Champaran Satyagrah and Gram Swavlamban Agitation.

For detailed information, those interested can contact the organisers on 9822253229.

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Sarvodaya Ashram meeting to chalk out plan to celebrate 150th birth anniversary of Ba-Bapu on May 9 - Nagpur Today

Alice Coltrane She never compromised her music. Ever. Photograph: Courtesy of the Sai Anantam Ashram

Alice Coltranes ashram can still be found at the end of a winding road, in the California town of Agoura Hills. The Sai Anantam Ashram a spiritual retreat and monastery, of sorts is spread over dozens of wooded acres that are dotted with small buildings. At its center is a surreal sight that seems to emerge fully formed from the verdant landscape, like a desert apparition: a striking white building where services are held.

Coltrane who took on the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda after her spiritual transformation died in 2007, and the property that the ashram is on may be sold soon. But in the white building, for right now at least, services still take place, and the ashram is still filled with her old friends and disciples. Inside the white building, adorned with flowing gold curtains and bright blue carpet, beatific images of her are laden in flower garlands, nestled near portraits of the Indian spiritual leader Satya Sai Baba. Members of the ashram, many of them African-American, and wearing saris and other traditional Indian clothes, still gather to sing bhajans traditional Hindu devotional songs, in arrangements written by Coltrane.

A new reissue of her devotional recordings from the 80s and 90s, World Spiritual Classics: Volume I: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, is being released by Luaka Bop, the label established by David Byrne and best known for re-releasing William Onyeabors Nigerian electro-funk. It collects devotional music from the ashram albums that were issued on cassette tape via the Avatar Book Institute in the 80s and 90s recordings that were previously known only to ashram denizens and serious Alice Coltrane aficionados.

In the music, you can hear traces of Coltranes Detroit roots she grew up there, as Alice McLeod, playing in churches and shows steeped in gospel, blues, and jazz, before moving briefly to Paris and then New York. She fell in love with John Coltrane in 1963 and they married in Mexico in 1965; he died of liver cancer, at age 40, in 1967.

She was very upset, says the musician Vishnu Wood, who befriended her early on in Detroit. I had been following this guru Satchidananda and I took her to meet him. They got along very well and he reached out to her, and next thing I knew we were doing an album, Journey in Satchidananda. (Wood plays oud on the album, released in 1970.)

For those whose knowledge of Coltrane centers mainly on her classic albums for Impulse and Warner albums such as Journey in Satchidananda with Pharoah Sanders and Universal Consciousness the ashram tapes come as a bit of a surprise. They involve synthesizers and voice, elements lacking in her classic 1970s work, with their lush arrangements of harp, woodwinds and other acoustic instruments. She sings on many of the ashram recordings her voice a sweetly husky, low alto and she plays a big 1980s synthesizer, the Oberheim OB-8, in addition to organ and other instruments. Several members of the ashram join in too, on voice and on additional instruments.

The synthesizer on the ashram recordings was her daughter Michelle Coltranes idea. Her daughter Michelle said Lets look at synthesizers, mom, you might like it, and she found the Oberheim OB-8, which was easy to use, and she applied that rather liberally to her music, says Baker Bigsby, the audio engineer who worked with Alice Coltrane as well as Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman.

Michelle Coltrane remembers that her mother generally shied away from technology; she even shunned using appliances like microwave ovens. She was happy having a grand piano, a big Steinway grand, and she did love the organ she had one at the ashram and one at her home, says Coltrane. I said, Mom, you gotta check out Roland and Korg and all these products that are coming out, that have arpeggiators and all these things that she might find attractive, and that are easy to transport as well the next thing you know, were on that Oberheim.

When looking through the spiritual eye, or the third eye encased within the human mind, one can see vividly beyond the ken of human eyesight, beyond the material atom, and into the future, thereby transcending the limitations of time and space, she wrote in her book Monument Eternal, published in 1977 after shed become a swamini herself. Through it all, she continued making music. In the 1980s and 1990s, she shied away from major labels, choosing instead to release material on private press cassettes.

Now theres a movement to reintroduce Coltrane. As well as the reissue of her ashram tapes, theres also an upcoming film by director and sound artist Vincent Moon is in the works, and numerous tributes, including the closing concert of this years Red Bulls New York festival, featuring her son Ravi Coltrane (her grand-nephew is Steven Ellison AKA Flying Lotus). Meanwhile, with these newly rediscovered tapes from the 1980s and 1990s, perceptions of Coltranes body of work are changing, too demonstrating that she was a tremendous musician whose work did not end with her legendary 1970s run of records.

On a recent Sunday at the ashram, the musician Surya Botofasina played some of these bhajans on keyboards rousing and jazzy renditions, imbued with gospel and blues while everyone sang along. I was one of a number of kids who grew up on the ashram, what we call our ashram family, Botofasina says. To this day it still remains home sweet home for the heart, because of the tremendous spiritual energy that swamini put into it on every level, including the bhajans we were fortunate enough to sing every Sunday.

World Spiritual Classics: Volume I: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda is out now on Luaka Bop; The Ecstatic World of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda will take place in New York on 21 May

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Higher state of consciousness: how Alice Coltrane finally got her ... - The Guardian

Asiphe Mkulisi assists one of her clients at the salon.

The Sarva Dharma Ashram of Welbedacht, Chatsworth has gone the extra mile by supporting the opening of a small business for a hardworking and well deserved youth member of the ashram.

Asiphe Mkulisi, 19, a young early school leaver and a mother, who resides in Welbedact, was sponsored by the ashram to complete a hairdressing, manicure and foot massage training course.

After successfully completing the training, the ashram assisted her in opening a small salon and massage business which is housed in the ashrams community centre.

ALSO READ: Rotary Anns assist Sarva Dharma Ashram

The name of the business is Sylvias Salon and Massage, named after Asiphes mother. The business is currently managed by the ashram until Asiphe gains the necessary business management experience and shows potential towards sustaining the business.

The ashrams community centre has the potential to become a small business start-up hub for business inclined youth of the ashram. The youngsters and some of them young adults have spent most of their lives growing up in the ashram environment and are now keen and ready to go out on their own.

The ashram is appealing to the public to come forward and support the ashram in making dreams come true for the youth of the ashram.

Youth will require skills and training sponsorships and some of them do have some skills and available for employment. Contact the ashram on 031 406-3766 or visit http://www.sarvadharmaashram.org.za

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Sarva Dharma Ashram stays true to social commitment - Rising Sun Chatsworth