The Sound of Music on Mt. Washington Is Caroling

The other day I received a strange telephone call. It was from the international headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which occupies the old Mt. Washington Hotel at the top of our hill. They wanted to know how I felt about their Christmas carols.

We have lived on Mt. Washington for 42 years. Every year at Christmastime, as far back as I can remember, the fellowship has played Christmas carols in the evening, wafting them down over the hill by loudspeakers. I have always liked the carols, but evidently some of our neighbors do not, considering them too intrusive or too Christian, perhaps.

Our house is directly across the street from the southeast corner of the fellowship’s 12-acre grounds. Every Monday evening I used to see four or five nuns, clad in blue-and-white saris, trundling half a dozen trash cans down to the street on a cart.

The fellowship has made a luxuriant garden of the grounds. The hotel was built in 1909 as a weekend retreat for movie stars of the day. After the fledgling industry moved from Highland Park to Hollywood, the hotel failed. It became a hospital for World War I veterans, then a sanitarium. Finally it was abandoned and fell into decay. Vandals broke its windows and built fires in its lobby.

In 1925 it was bought for his headquarters by Paramahansa Yogananda, a Hindu guru who established his Self-Realization Fellowship in the United States in 1920. The fellowship is based on a Yoga discipline teaching that meditation leads to self-realization and to God.

Today the hotel and its grounds are a retreat of serenity and beauty. Meditation gardens abound, surrounded by lush trees and great patches of green lawn. From a green apron in front of the building a circle of benches looks out over the city skyline to the sea. In a grotto back of the hotel goldfish swim in two large pools. Below the hotel, built low to protect the view, are residences for monks and nuns.

The hotel’s configuration has been kept intact. The original dull brown woodwork has been painted white. The wallpaper is a delicate floral print. Indian objets d’art and portraits of Paramahansa Yogananda flourish. Otherwise it is unchanged from its heyday. (It is open to the public every day.)

My wife and I dropped in the other morning for a tour by Brother Paramananda and Sister Shivani, who has served the fellowship as a nun for 33 years. In the lobby four or five smiling nuns in yellow saris were decorating a Christmas tree that rose 12 feet to the ceiling. Elsewhere throughout the building 18-inch trees were trimmed in the symbols of various countries of the world.

The fellowship makes a strong point of being ecumenical. “There is not just one way back to God,” said Brother Paramananda, “there are a lot of ways. . . . We honor all the great teachers--Christ, Mohammed, Buddha. . . . “

Upstairs the old corridors are preserved, with rooms all along on either side now serving as offices. What once was an open porch over the entrance is now framed in, making a delightful sun porch overlooking the entire coastal plain. The third floor is the same, with a northern view that extends from the Glendale skyline to Mt. Baldy.

Sister Shivani led us to an elevator. She said it was a new elevator but it was in the old shaft. “It’s supposed to hold five,” she said skeptically. “If it held five,” I said, “they must all have been the size of Gloria Swanson.”

I asked Sister Shivani whether the fellowship was going to broadcast carols again this year. She said yes, indeed it was.

“How can you not celebrate it?” said Brother Paramananda. “It’s such a joyful season.”

When we came back to the lobby, the young nuns were still pinning decorations to the tree. They kept smiling and laughing. They were radiant. It was love’s labor.

I suggest to my neighbors that they forgo watching TV at 7 o’clock every evening from now to Christmas and listen to the carols floating down over the hill from the four speakers on top of the fellowship. You don’t have to be a Christian. The beauty of Christian carols transcends the faith itself.

Joy to the world.