A new spiritual center, Ashram for Unfoldment, opened in Briarcliff Manor last month. The ashram is a new facility of the International Foundation for Spiritual Unfoldment (IFSU), a nonprofit that specializes in offering individualized spiritual practices so people can advance in their own way and at their own speed. 

According to Merrill Harmin, president of the board and senior teacher for IFSU, its founder was the Gururaj Ananda Yogi, a spiritual master who died about 40 years ago. The organization he started now has centers around the world.

“His message was that we all shine with spiritual purity, yet almost all of us have our pure light clouded by busy mind activity,” Harmin says. “IFSU is dedicated to showing people how, in practical terms, they can up-level not only their own lives, but also the trajectory of our long-suffering world.”

The Ashram for Unfoldment will offer programs in schools, prisons and other institutions; host weekly meditation and musical meetings; and offer teacher trainings in its special methodology. 

“The aim is lofty: to help change the world,” Harmin says. “The strategy is to demonstrate in practical, personal realities that change happens effortlessly when we experience ourselves not as much as isolated, limited persons, but as unlimited expressions of the whole of nature…. We now know how to foster that advance in self-knowledge. Evidence suggests that unless we make such advances, our dire world problems are more likely to worsen than to improve. There is, therefore, some urgency that we each do our part very soon, and show others how they can also do so.”

For more information, including questions about participating in or registering for an upcoming weekend retreat, contact Raman Leonato, program director, at 929.400.4347 or [email protected]. To learn more about programs at the Ashram, visit Individual-Meditation.com.