Eastern Religions
From the early 1960s Bell was a friend of Swami Kriyananda, also known as J. Donald Walters (Walters is also an avid composer of music for the Irish harp). Bell and some associates visited Kriyananda at his spiritual centre in Ananda village in Nevada City, California. Bell wrote a preface to an edition of Kriyananda's book Art As a Hidden Message. He writes, "After reading it, I decided to get in touch with him... I also visited Ananda several times, the beautiful village Kriyananda himself founded in 1968... I offered to record some of Kriyananda's music". His first album the "Mystic Harp" with Kriyananda was well reviewed by the New York times - "This is a lovely, light album full of charm and innocence The Mystic Harp will take you to places that stretch from the innocence of childhood to the mystery and otherworldliness of the spiritual." His final album was also with Kriyananda, the Mystic Harp vol II, a collection of compositions in a new age style, for solo harp, quite different from the traditional and classical compositions for which he was otherwise known. In August 2002, only weeks before his death, Bell visited Kriyananda. Although Bell was born a Protestant, he became a Buddhist later in life.
Read more about this topic: Derek Bell (musician)
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or religions:
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)