Swami Kriyananda Stories — Ch. 4: Sing Out With Joy

Ananda Palo Alto choir performs during Christmas concert in 2023.
Choir during concert, Christmas 2023.

I’m rarely able to go deep in meditation. I was paralyzed from the chest down in my mid-twenties. After two surgeries, I began to recover, but my left leg still has lingering spasticity and my right leg is mildly paralyzed. The nerve currents on the left side of my body and brain dance and crackle.

After I met Swamiji, he didn’t waste time urging me to spend long hours meditating. Instead, he suggested that I serve Master’s work through writing and editing, and by singing his music.

Swamiji would often give his advice in such a friendly, relaxed way that it was easy to miss how important it was. I’m ashamed to say that it was thirty-five years before I took up his counsel to sing his music.

When I joined the choir, I had the good fortune to be able to sing alongside Dambara and Chaitanya, both accomplished tenors who had performed the music for many years.

It baffled me how they could sing the high passages with such ease.

Because I couldn’t read music, I learned the songs by listening to a recording of the tenor parts and mentally singing along. I would practice while driving, going over the hard parts until I could sing them smoothly. Before our Sunday morning rehearsals I would drive in the hills for an hour or longer and sing the songs again and again.

Still, my voice seemed to be forever in training. I could never sing the high parts as clearly as Chaitanya and Dambara.

In 2008, Swamiji stayed in our community for several days on his way to India. I saw him only briefly, when we greeted him upon his arrival.

When he left, I realized that I could sing the high parts effortlessly. I knew that he had responded to my desire to share the inspiration of the music.

Later, I watched a video by Ramesha Nani, an Ananda member and professional singing teacher, in which he demonstrated a technique for freeing the voice by relaxing the throat. I realized that it was exactly the “method” I had learned during Swamiji’s visit.

There were many occasions when I became aware that Swamiji had blessed me silently. I realized that it is the nature of a saint to give to all as an impersonal channel for God’s loving help. Swamiji’s blessings were especially given when they would help us offer ourselves more fully to God.

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