(As published in the 9/03/09gc issue of the Desert Valley Star) By Sunny Sundowner
When I was young- about ten or so years old, my parents took my brother, sister & I out from our dwelling in the suburban O.C. to a mystical retreat center in the high desert, called back then: “The Mentalphysics Institute.” It was like nothing I’d seen up to that point in my life, with it’s “other-worldly” sanctuary buildings. It was founded by Edwin John Dingle, who had visited Tibet in 1910, where he studied for nine months and reportedly learned the East Indian Yogic art of pranayama (breathing control), the remembrance of past lives, and other advanced spiritual disciplines. His “Science of Mentalphysics,” based on Tibetan and other Asian teachings, was begun in 1927 in Los Angeles, CA. The Institute was incorporated in 1933 and land for the 460-plus-acres retreat center in Joshua Tree was acquired in 1941. Dingle, who came to call himself “Ding Le Mei,” was a friend of Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, (one of the first Yogis to come to the West from India, all documented in his infamous work, “Autobiography of a Yogi”) and was the author of many books on spirituality, history and economics. Like Yogananda, he incorporated Eastern spiritual notions into Western Spirituality to create a "Super Yoga of the Western World.” Buildings at this spiritual-vortex-site, now called “Joshua Tree Retreat,” came to include the “Preceptory of Light,” the “First Sanctuary of Mystic Christianity” and the “Caravansary of Joy,” a 700-foot-long residence designed and built by Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It had been years earlier still that I had been introduced to the singing and chanting of devotional songs to open the heart to Divne Grace: songs that Yogananda had introduced to us here in the West, such as “Hey Hari Sundara!” (“Oh God Beautiful” in English). I was also introduced to Yogic exercise around that time, and when school-mates got wind of these things while visiting my family’s dwelling, I was made fun of as an “oddball” in what I call our “Western Dysfunctional Society’s” schooling system. I had to live with this “stigma” for years, until something happened in August of 1969: Swami Satchidananda (who, like Yogananda, was another “Harbinger of Yogic Methods of Enlightenment” in the West) opened up the Woodstock Music and Art Fair by teaching upwards of half a million people about meditation, yoga and devotional chanting (and “enlightening” untold millions more on the experience through the subsequent movie and media attention). Finally, to my great joy as a young American teen, with this event and others like it I was emerging from “oddball” status to “trendsetter.” East was truly beginning to meet West, as the Swami told the gathered multitudes: “There is a dynamic manpower here. The hearts are meeting. Just yesterday I was in Princeton (NJ), at Stony Brook in a monastery, where about… three hundred Catholic monks and nuns met and they asked me to talk to them under the heading of ‘East and West—One Heart’… I would like you all to join me and our group here in repeating a very simple chant. As I was reminding you of the sound power, there are certain mystical sounds which the Sanskrit terminology says are the bijak-shara, or the “seed words.” We are going to use three seed words, or the mystic words, to formulate the chants... “Hari” is one word. “Om” is another word. (The third word was “Ram,” and the entire festival then chanted the “Hari Om” and “Hari Ram” chants together.) He also informed us, “Here, I really wonder whether I am in the East or West. If these pictures or the films are going to be shown in India, they would certainly never believe that this is taken in America. For here, the East has come into the West. And with all my heart, I wish a great, great success in this music Festival to pave the way for many more festivals in many other parts of this country.”
One of the attendees at that monumental event was a young aspiring yogi from New York who had acquired the spiritual name “Sridhar.” He took these words to heart, as four decades later almost to the day, he and his team of Bhakti Yogis (or devotion practitioners) have created the West’s largest gathering of yogis and devotional-chanters to ever occur in America, the “Bhakti Fest” at Joshua Tree Retreat Center Friday through Sunday, September 11-13. Because of the planned 3 days of around-the-clock chanting, yoga workshops, nutritional vegi-cuisine, yoga-related vendors, healing arts center and more, in the ever-expanding yogic community (with yoga centers now outnumbering Starbucks!) it has been dubbed the “Spiritual Woodstock.”
Besides the most renowned “Yogis of East and West” appearing (live by satellite), Deepak Chopra (made famous by Oprah) and Baba Ram Das (author of “Be Here Now” and countless other enlightening literary tools), the list of Western Indian Kirtan (call and response chanting) performers and yoga instructors is seemingly endless. While you will (basically) have to rely on the new saying, that “a website is worth a thousand words” (www.bhaktifest.com), I will take a moment to touch on some of my favorites (which is difficult to do, in that really “all” of those in the line-up are my “favorites!”). So, in that light- quite some time ago, while listening to internet radio stations like sacredsoundsradio.com, I would experience kirtan divas such as Donna Delory. Like fellow female BF-performer, Wah!, she has such a unique approach in bringing traditional Hindu mantra into contemporary music styles, that it’s easy to see how she must’ve been a great influence for Madonna’s (Hindu music-oriented) “Ray of Light” album, in that she’s been one of Madonna’s back-up vocalists over time! Larisa Stow and Shakti Tribe fit into that same category as Donna and Wah!, and it will be a wonderful home-coming for them, as they are “high desert kirtan pioneers,” having previously performed their “Shakti (“Awakening Power of Divine Grace”)-Saturated” music at this same retreat center, as well as for a (Conchus Times Production) Integratron Spring Equinox Celebration.
Add to these an AH-mazing “unfolding mandala” of other performers such as Jai Uttal, Shiva Rea, Dave Stringer, (Alanis’s twin brother) Wade Morrisette, Wynne Paris, Shyamdas, (Joshua Tree’s own) Art Kunkin and another favorite that the younger generation can’t get enough of: MC Yogi. Like his predecessor (and fellow BF performer) Girish, MC Yogi has not only fused Hindu Kirtan-Style chanting with a contemporary hip-hop style, but he was recently featured (in a ‘what goes around comes around’ fashion) rapping for a Starbucks’ “Community Organizing” TV commercial. With all this and more (and with the additional mention that these chanting yogis in India have been known for centuries as Kirtan “Wallahs”) I look forward to seeing you at the Joshua Tree “Wallah-Stock,” where I invite you to “tune in (to the heart of devotion), turn on (compassion for your-self & others) and drop out (of ego-clinging)” and I guarantee you’ll hear the words “Hari, Om, and Rama” vibrating more than once amidst the 108-thousand mantras and asanas manifesting at the “1st Annual Bhakti Fest!”
-Sunny Sundowner can be reached at conchustimes@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment