Dear Friends,
We want to share with you some of what’s been happening since we arrived in India three weeks ago. First, we want to thank everyone for your prayers during our travels. With your help and the grace of God and Guru, we’ve managed to stay well and to keep going strong.
For these three weeks we’ve been based in the Delhi area offering programs in Gurgaon (where Dhyana and her team serve) and in Delhi (Panchsheel Park—where Keshava, Daya, and their team are located).
In Gurgaon we had a wonderful “Yogananda Fest”—an all-day event at which we gave a morning discourse followed by classes throughout the day. It was great to see the energy and dedication of the Gurgaon team in organizing and pulling off a great event, which included sales of many Ananda-related products.
In Delhi we did satsangs, classes, and informal teas during the past two weekends. The work in these two centers is growing wonderfully, with lots of new Indian teachers and staff helping to run things, and many new devotees joining.
We also were able to visit Brindaban to see the growth of the Paramhansa Yogananda Public Charitable Trust. In our current blog we describe things there in greater detail, so we won’t say too much here, other than that it’s deeply inspiring to see a work dedicated to helping those in dire need. Starting from nothing with a staff of six, we now have a staff of ninety who are serving thousands of homeless widows.
During this time there was a great meeting with Jaya, Dhyana, and the Ananda India Sangha Board of Trustees at which some very encouraging news was shared about moving forward with the sale of a portion of the land in Pune. We’ve submitted almost all of the needed paperwork (an amazing amount) to the government, which they must receive before sale is possible.
A new land commission has been formed that deals with property outside the Pune city limit, and they are much easier to work with. In fact, the person assigned to work with our area is a Kriyaban disciple of Master, who is being a big help in showing us how to move forward.
It will be a huge relief for us to be able to sell the residential portion of property. The Retreat portion, where Swamiji’s house is, will be kept and continue to operate as a retreat. This operation is going well, and in fact, we’ll be doing a big program there next weekend.
Atman and Mark arrived in India last week, although Bhaktimarg stayed in Spain due to a chest cough. She’ll be joining them soon. They were able to attend several of the satsangs in Gurgaon and Panchsheel Park, meet lots of the devotees, and visit Agra and Brindaban. On Monday they took off for their trek in the Himalayas.
Shurjo and Narayani also arrived in Delhi after a period of seclusion in Spain during which Narayani wrote a beautiful book about their memories of being with Swamiji. They both look well, happy, and strong, and are looking forward to sharing their book with others, starting here in India.
One of the very exciting things we’ve been involved with since arriving is using the new recording studio that two long-term Kriyaban members of the Gurgaon center have offered for Ananda India’s use. The audio and visual quality is a vast improvement over what has been done till now, and most of the online classes here are being rerecorded.
But more than just the studio, this couple runs a very successful business of promoting and distributing YouTube channels. They have offered to create one magnetic YouTube channel from the ten existing Ananda India ones, and feel that, within a year, we can grow our subscribership to over a hundred thousand throughout India.
To help create content for this channel, in the last few days we recorded fifty-two short “Touch of Light” video blogs, about three minutes each, to be posted weekly for a year. We used topics from the written blog, but spoke spontaneously, and everyone seemed to feel that they turned out quite well.
We’ll be leaving soon to go to Mumbai, where we’ll have a Kriya Initiation, and an informal satsang with the core members there. Kaveeta and Pavan will also join us for lunch one day to share the news of the release of “The Answer,” which is now scheduled for early March 2018.
As you can see, there is lots of energy, movement, and magnetism here. Master and Swamiji’s blessings are strongly felt, and the spirit of the teams that are coming forward to help build the work is very deep and powerful.
We send our love and friendship to you all.
May the blessings of our great spiritual guides be with you.
With joy,
Jyotish and Devi
View Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi’s Facebook album for more photos from their tour in India.