In 1976, Swamini Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda established The Vedantic Center in the Santa Monica Mountains neighborhood of Agoura Hills, later naming it the Sai Anantam Ashram. This 50-acre ashram served as a sanctuary where seekers of all faiths were welcomed to experience sublime teachings on spiritual life.

As Michelle Coltrane once shared, “Sunday services were filled with music, chanting, meditation and my mother’s discourses.” These discourses were a meditation on the transformational power of sound & that in chanting the names of god one could connect to divine consciousness. Music, as the foundation of Turiya’s spiritual practice, was led in epic collective bhajan sessions where chants were guided by the swirl and pulse of her Wurlitzer organ into uncharted, cosmic planes.

It was around this time in 1977 when an organization of young naturalists calling themselves TreePeople moved into the site of an old fire station further east along these same mountains. Working from the belief that the simple act of planting a tree can carry broader societal effects, TreePeople placed roots just down the 101 from the The Vedantic Center, within the 45-acre Coldwater Canyon Park. Today, TreePeople is one of the largest environmental organizations in Southern California and have been responsible for planting more than 3 million trees in LA County among providing accessible equitable ecological education. When the Sai Anantam Ashram burnt in 2018’s devastating Woolsey Fire, TreePeople were on the front lines of habitat restoration, bringing thousands of native plants back into the landscape.

This August 27th, on the night of Swamini Turiyasangitananda’s 89th solar return, we hold these legacies of communal self-determination together and bring this devotional music back into the familiar scent of coast live oak, black walnut, and california sagebrush that first carried the ashram into being. Please bring an offering for evening’s altar & we look forward to sharing this night with you.

Before and after we’ll be listening to mixes of the Ashram Tapes as well as very informally screening episodes of Eternity’s Pillar.

Doors at 7p
Ensemble performance around 8p

This evening is presented and organized by Surya Botofasina, a sun of the Sai Anantam Ashram, with love and support from Carlos Niño, TreePeople, KCRW, and Living Earth. This is an evening for living music, for breathing music, with bhajans and progressive sounds inspired from Turiyasangitananda’s devotional music. Your donations go towards supporting this evening’s ensemble, a dream of one day restoring the Ashram, and to TreePeople’s continued initiatives towards providing free and accessible environmental education.