HIGHEST SONG OF BLISS: Alice Coltrane and the MAHA-MANTRA
By Satyaraja Dasa
The wife of jazz great John Coltrane, a legend in her own right, met Srila Prabhupada and brought the Lord’s holy names to the ears of thousands.
WHEN YOU’RE CHANTING the maha-mantra,“ said the late Alice Coltrane, "your soul responds, because the soul knows these names.” The wife of the great jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, she was known among her followers as Turiyasangitananda (which she translated as the Transcendental Lord’s highest song of bliss"). She continues: “The soul relates to them, the soul is enlivened, the soul is lifted up upon hearing the names of the Lord. It’s something people would open their hearts to and experience. They don’t have to be any certain age-they can even be children. And they don’t even have to understand the meaning of the words. Whether they understand or not, the hearing of that chanting is going to produce their spiritual good.” HOW is it that she spoke so eloquently about Vaisnava spirituality? Who was she, and how did the sounds of transcendence come to engulf her life so thoroughly, transforming her music and, through her, hundreds of thousands of others?
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