{"id":1493,"date":"2024-05-25T15:06:53","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T15:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=1493"},"modified":"2024-05-25T15:16:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T15:16:19","slug":"conversations-with-ananda-ch-70-nayaswami-nirmala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-ch-70-nayaswami-nirmala\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 70, Nayaswami Nirmala"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Ananda Joy Singers, probably in the early 1980s, with Swami Kriyananda. L-R: Lakshman, Jeannie, Nirmala, Swamiji, Tricia, Vasudeva.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nirmala is co-spiritual director,<\/strong> with her husband Dharmadas, of Ananda Sangha in Sacramento, California. At the time Nirmala when wrote the following, she and Dharmadas were living in India, helping Swami Kriyananda start Ananda\u2019s work there. (Photo: 2000s \u2013 Nirmala and Dharmadas)<\/em><\/p>\n

When I arrived at Ananda Village<\/strong> in August, 1975, I joined the apprentice program, and because I had studied piano as a child, I immediately began playing the harmonium and learning to chant. Soon I was asked to help lead chanting for the apprentices, and I got deeply involved with Master\u2019s music and devoted my free time to chanting on my own.<\/p>\n

A few months later I joined Ananda\u2019s small singing group, the Gandharvas. (The Gandharvas are the celestial singers in the Hindu scriptures.) Shivani had told Swamiji, \u201cNirmala has a \u2018true\u2019 voice,\u201d meaning that I could carry a tune. And so I was enlisted.<\/p>\n

As I concentrated on Swamiji\u2019s music, I put chanting on the backburner for several years. And later, when I got involved in chanting again, I found that my attunement had deepened by singing Swami\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

In the early days, copies of the music weren\u2019t easy to come by. It was the age of mimeograph machines, and even after Xerox machines were invented we had to drive sixteen miles to town to make copies. Those precious copies were in Swamiji\u2019s handwritten notation, Xeroxed from his originals. And because they were scarce, I learned most of the songs by asking Parvati or another singer to sing them in my ear while I sang along.<\/p>\n

In those days the Gandharvas sang at Sunday services, which were held at the Seclusion Retreat. We would wait outside, and when it was time to sing we would enter the temple. As we were waiting one morning, a big black bear came walking on its hind legs toward us through the trees \u2013 we entered the temple a little early that morning!<\/p>\n

In 1978, Swamiji led a nationwide lecture tour, accompanied by the Gandharvas, followed by another tour in 1979, and I went on the second tour. Swamiji often told a story about our experiences:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe singers would start the evening program with a couple of songs, which would take about five minutes, then I would speak for an hour and a half. The singers would close the program with a song or two, lasting another three to five minutes. As I stood at the door shaking hands, people would say to me: \u2018The music was wonderful!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Swami\u2019s point was that the music bypasses the intellectual barriers that people raise about the teachings because it touches their hearts very directly. Even though the singing took just a few short minutes, it was very memorable.<\/p>\n

Shortly after that tour, a group of us moved to Palo Alto to \u201cget the music out there.\u201d We sang in churches, schools, and for many civic groups. The group dissolved after a year or so when Ram and Dianna were asked to move to Italy to head up our work there, and so the rest of us moved back to the Village where we continued the music outreach with a small group called the Joy Singers, with Jeannie, Lakshman Simpson, Vasudeva, Tricia, and me.<\/p>\n

We traveled up and down the West Coast giving concerts, sleeping on couches or the floors of fellow devotees\u2019 homes. It wasn\u2019t an easy life, but we were totally committed to bringing Swamiji\u2019s music to a broader audience.<\/p>\n

One dark night as we were driving to an engagement, someone in the car next to us on the freeway started gesticulating wildly to get our attention. We thought the person was drunk or crazy, so we ignored him, and then another driver started behaving the same way, and we eventually realized that the window in the tailgate of our station wagon was open and our performance costumes were flying out the back!<\/p>\n

We pulled over and spent a hilarious half-hour dodging traffic as we gathered our precious clothing. When we got to the engagement, we found that everything was fine except for Vasudeva\u2019s white shirt, which had a black tire track etched diagonally across the front, and we ended up with one extra shoe! But Vasudeva kept his guitar strapped in front of him the whole night, so we got by unscathed.<\/p>\n

In 1985, I accompanied an Ananda pilgrimage to the Holy Land as the choir director. Everyone on the tour learned to sing Swamiji\u2019s oratorio, \u201cChrist Lives,\u201d which he\u2019d written to highlight the major events of Christ\u2019s life. We wanted to be able to sing the songs in the places where those historical events had taken place, which was a thrilling prospect, but some of the people on the tour had never sung, so preparing to sing was an interesting challenge.<\/p>\n

It was an amazing blessing to sing in the holy shrines. Even if we weren\u2019t technically perfect, the people who heard us would often ask if we were a professional choir because we sounded so good. Devotion plus the good acoustics in the holy places made an amazing sound.<\/p>\n

We ended the pilgrimage in Italy, where we visited the shrines of Saint Francis in Assisi, and then we stayed at our fledgling Ananda center in Como. While we were in Italy, Swami asked Lakshman Simpson and me to stay on and start the Ananda music ministry in Italy.<\/p>\n

That winter, we lived at the center in Como where we worked with Ram, Dianna, and Kirtani as fellow members of our small singing group. It was during the cold winter, when I had to play the harmonium with gloves on, that we discovered how beautiful the guitar and harmonium sounded together. <\/em>Previously at Ananda, only the harmonium was used to lead chanting. Then in the mid-1980s when Swami was exposed to the guitar chanting of the Peki group in Sorrento, the guitar started to lead chanting at Ananda, but the two instruments were never played together. In Como, we began experimenting with the marriage of guitar and harmonium, and we realized that it was a heaven-made match \u2013 the guitar stimulates devotion in the heart, and the harmonium provides the deepening vibration of Aum. And so we began the work of figuring out the chords for Master\u2019s and Swamiji\u2019s chants to facilitage the two instruments playing together.<\/p>\n

That summer we sang for a Blood Bank event in a small village called Veglio near where we were living. It was an evening performance on an outdoor stage, and I remember how we were introduced \u2013 in Italian, of course \u2013 as \u201cAnanda! They don\u2019t eat meat! They don\u2019t drink alcohol! They don\u2019t have children!\u201d These American yogis were indeed an oddity!<\/p>\n

Because it was the height of summer and the brilliant spotlights seemed to be the only illumination for miles around, every flying insect in the country seemed magnetically drawn to land on us! It was sheer tapasya<\/em> to keep still, keep smiling, and keep singing with all the crawling, buzzing, and tickling. Those insects were out for our blood at the Veglio Blood Bank! Sometimes singing for God is martyrdom.<\/p>\n

Later that year the Ananda Europa center moved from Como to its permanent home in Assisi, and during my time there we continued to build the music outreach, touring with various singing groups throughout Italy and Germany.<\/p>\n

In early 1988 I returned to Ananda Village where I led several small Joy Singers groups. I also got deeply involved with chanting again, and it became the focus of my personal sadhana. Our chanting group created a book, Chants for Guitar and Harmonium<\/em>, that mapped out the chords for many of the chants so that both instruments could play together harmoniously.<\/p>\n

We enjoyed many happy sessions with Swamiji to confirm or fine-tune our chord choices. The book gradually evolved, and it took a big step in the late 1990s with the help of Lakshman Heubert, Jeannie Tschantz, and a devotee in the Southwest, who helped put the music into the Finale notation program.<\/p>\n

It was a deeply blessed time in my life. Once or twice a week from seven to nine in the evening we would hold a singing rehearsal to work on Swami\u2019s songs, and then we would chant together late into the night and early morning, figuring out the chords that would work best. It was thrilling work \u2013 our chanting group was invited to lead meditations and kirtans and we would go anywhere, anytime for the opportunity to chant.<\/p>\n

I remember a particularly cold, snowy Saturday morning when we\u2019d been asked to lead a meditation starting at five at the Seclusion Retreat, six miles away.<\/p>\n

In the pre-dawn darkness, we piled into our rickety van that didn\u2019t have a heater and we headed up the slippery road. When we got to the temple it was stone cold, and as we began chanting I noticed that one of my friends was hitting a wrong chord on the guitar at the same point in every repetition. I couldn\u2019t understand it, since he was an excellent guitarist. I glanced over at him and realized that his hand was frozen and he couldn\u2019t form the chord! The effort and sincerity he was putting forth to play the guitar in the cold filled me with such joy that I experienced a rush of energy up my spine!<\/p>\n

At about that time I was asked to lead the music ministry at Ananda, and I spent several years focused on creating programs for special events. The music overlapped with other entertainments, including Reader\u2019s Theatre performances of stories by the British humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, a favorite at Ananda.<\/p>\n

We created theatrical vignettes from Autobiography of a Yogi<\/em> and from the Bible, Swami\u2019s music, the Festival of Light, and other sources to celebrate holidays, the masters\u2019 birthdays and mahasamadhis, themed weekends, week-long programs, and so on.<\/p>\n

We performed excerpts from Shakespeare\u2019s plays to highlight Swami\u2019s Shakespeare songs \u2013 for example, a vignette from \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u201d around the song \u201cFairies\u2019 Lullaby.\u201d<\/p>\n

We had lots of fun acting out other songs \u2013 \u201cHawaiiana\u201d performed by an Ananda member who had studied hula dancing, \u201cDracula\u2019s Castle\u201d with two ladies in black capes as vampires, \u201cCherry Blossoms in Kyoto\u201d with kimonos and Japanese umbrellas, \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Go to School\u201d with singers dressed as ducks in sailor suits, just as Swami dreamed the song as a child, \u201cThe Philosopher and the Boatman,\u201d \u201cIf You\u2019re Seeking Freedom,\u201d and so on. It was great fun!<\/p>\n

The story I\u2019ve heard most often in my years as a choir director is a simple one, it\u2019s often told with varying details: \u201cI almost didn\u2019t come to rehearsal tonight because… (fill in the blank). But then I managed to get myself here and I\u2019m SO glad I came! I feel much better, more in tune, and happier!\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of Swami\u2019s music flowing through us is an unfailing recipe for raising our energy and feeling inspired again.<\/p>\n

Peter Schuppe was in charge of the music at the Ananda center in Seattle, and in 1991 he invited me to lead a music weekend there, and shortly after we were married. We lived in Seattle until 1994, when we returned to the Village at Swami\u2019s request to start Crystal Clarity Design, helping to publish Swamiji\u2019s books and music.<\/p>\n

For the next nine years we continued to be deeply involved with the music, including a Christmas group, \u201cThe Victorian Singers.\u201d The Nevada County Chamber of Commerce had called Ananda in 1980 to say they were starting a Victorian Christmas event and wanted to know if Ananda had a caroling group that could perform. I started the group that year and directed it for many years. It continued while I was in Italy, and after Dharmadas and I went to India in 2003. It was great fun for everyone involved.<\/p>\n

We also led Ananda\u2019s Joyful Arts Ministry at Ananda Village, until Swamiji invited us to come to India to help him start Ananda\u2019s work there.<\/p>\n

So far, in India, our singing groups have performed at Swamiji\u2019s major speaking events, and we\u2019ve performed excerpts from his play, The Peace Treaty<\/em>. We\u2019ve performed Wodehouse plays and we\u2019ve sung regularly for satsangs and Swami\u2019s TV programs. Still, much more is needed to help develop the music in India.<\/p>\n

Ananda\u2019s music gives people a priceless way to develop attunement with this path. Along with chanting it provides a powerful foundation for the devotee\u2019s spiritual life. It has been our great blessing to work with Swamiji\u2019s and Master\u2019s music, and we strongly encourage everyone to take advantage of this wellspring of divine joy. Oh, devotee, come join the choir!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nirmala is co-spiritual director, with her husband Dharmadas, of Ananda Sangha in Sacramento, California. At the time Nirmala when wrote the following, she and Dharmadas were living in India, helping Swami Kriyananda start Ananda\u2019s work there. (Photo: 2000s \u2013 Nirmala and Dharmadas) When I arrived at Ananda Village in August, 1975, I joined the apprentice … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nConversations With Ananda — Ch. 70, Nayaswami Nirmala - Swami Kriyananda: Lightbearer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda recalls touring with the Ananda Joy Singers in the early days.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-ch-70-nayaswami-nirmala\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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