From Dharmadas, 27 July

Dear Ones,

Ruby, Nirmala, and I travelled to Pune for a series of beginning level meditation programs and a meeting with our Kriyabans in Pune this past weekend. As I write, we're on the flight back from there, still very much feeling the blessings of serving God in the new and long-term devotees there!

This was our first set of programmes in the southwest section of Pune called Kothrud. That is the area where Amol's family stays and he has an office. We found a nice hall there, quite suitable for future meditation programmes, even large ones! It was very clean and well lit, and could seat several hundred people. Another nice feature is that the hall is almost walking distance from Amol's family home in the neighbourhood nearby.

About 80 people attended the free "Introduction to Kriya Yoga" discourse on Saturday evening, and 45 registered and paid for Sunday's Meditation, Level I, programme. Good people and very sincere. Almost all of them had read Master's Autobiography of a Yogi.

Among the wonderful adventures on these trips is meeting the new Kriyabans and various others who have called or made contact and requested interviews. On this trip we met (separately) 2 wonderful and dear 85-year-old men. One of them is a friend of a friend whom we met in late May when we were last in Pune, and the other has been a Kriyaban for the last 35 or 40 years. This 2nd one came to the hall during the break between our meditation class and our satsang with the Ananda Pune Kriyabans. Quite an interesting fellow and very devoted to Master and the spiritual path. He credited his entrance onto the spiritual path to his (at the time) 6-year-old son who somehow borrowed Master's AY from a friend's father to give to him to read!

One of the things we wanted to do was to help establish regular group meditations among the Kriyabans in Pune. Because they are scattered around a wide area of the city, it has been challenging for them to get together regularly. After some discussion, we came up with a schedule that should work pretty well for everyone. The plan is to have meditations in 3 different places during any given month. The 3 locations and rough timings are every Saturday evening at Amol's office in Kothrud, once per month (first Sunday) in Camp area, and once per month (3rd Sunday) in Hinjawadi. We'll check and write out the details before we send them out to our mailing list. It's a good step forward for the group here to have this organized.

We also showed the model of the community and discussed the next steps in moving the project forward. Naturally the group was very interested and excited! We also brought back a couple of donations, one for Swamiji's TV programme!

What a joy to meet and serve such wonderful devotees! We look forward to seeing you all when we get back to India the last week in August.

Joy,
Dharmadas

Ananda Sangha India  B–10/8, DLF Phase I Gurgaon (Haryana), India 122 002 Directions

Phone: 98990 14209; 98992 67698; (0124) 405-9550 Fax: (0124) 410-3386 E-mail: ananda@anandaindia.org

©2007 Ananda Sangha