"Puruṣa bound from within / without looking on": Gurani Anjali's Sāṃkhya-Yoga Music on Long Island, New York

Gurani Anjali (1935-2001) arrived in the United States in the 1950s before the major influx of immigration from India that would follow in the 1960s. She eventually established Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville on Long Island, New York, where she taught Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophy within the context of the United States’ countercultural and post-countercultural periods. Central to Anjali's repertoire of yoga techniques were music and mantra practices. This presentation shows how Anjali's universal ideas about Sāṃkhya-Yoga became entangled in this new sonic environment as her yogic lyrics merged with her students’ acoustic folk ensemble, but also how Anjali intended for her music and lyrics to lead students toward a transcendent experience of yoga’s higher Self, puruṣa, thus transcending their social environment altogether.