Los Angeles, 1985. Every Sunday after midnight, on KTTV Channel 11, an independent commercial television station, something appeared that had no business being on commercial television: Alice Coltrane, appearing as Turiya, broadcasting devotional wisdom, meditation and music straight into the Californian night. The programme was called Eternity's Pillar. It ran until 1988, then vanished, thought lost for decades, until seventeen episodes surfaced from broadcast master tapes held by the Coltrane archive. Criterion Channel began streaming four of them last year, as part of a year-long celebration of Alice's legacy. Here, for the first time, are all seventeen - nearly nine hours, 514 minutes - presented the way they deserve.

By 1985, Alice Coltrane had already lived several lives: the Detroit church organist born Alice McLeod, the bebop pianist who studied with Bud Powell in Paris, the woman who met John Coltrane at Birdland and stood beside him through his most searching years. Widowed just before her thirtieth birthday, she taught herself the harp John had ordered for their home, an instrument that arrived only after his death, and used it to open a new path in spiritual jazz - A Monastic Trio, Journey in Satchidananda - before immersing herself in the Vedic tradition, moving to California to direct an ashram, donning the orange robes of a swamini, and taking the name Turiyasangitananda, "the Transcendental Lord's Highest Song of Bliss." After the live Transfiguration in 1978 she withdrew from the commercial music world altogether. The records stop there. The story does not: in 1985 she received a call to create a devotional music programme, an echo of the celestial instruction that once set Sun Ra on his own mission, and she answered it the practical way, researching how television was made, finding a local studio, enlisting a skilled cinematographer, and putting Eternity's Pillar on the air herself. Each episode runs just under half an hour: Turiya opening at the piano with the hymn "Let Us Praise God Together", her followers chanting the Lord's Prayer in English, Spanish, German and Hebrew, Bharatanatyam dancers in traditional regalia, organ and synthesizer guiding the singing, ocean waves and floating crystals in pure mid-80s color. It resembles the televangelist programmes of the era only on the surface. This is something far deeper, and far stranger.

Also included is a genuine piece of history: Black Journal #26: Alice Coltrane, A Love Supreme, a 1970 documentary segment shot on 16mm film at the Coltrane family home in Dix Hills, NY, where she recorded most of her Impulse! albums, with an interview with Alice at home and footage from a Glen Cove performance alongside Pharoah Sanders, Reggie Workman, Bill Wood and Rashied Ali. The edition itself is built with serious care by Exotic Material, the label of Nick Wrigley, two decades of Blu-ray work for Masters of Cinema, Arrow, Criterion and Indicator: two BD50 discs, region free, sourced from the archival broadcast masters and encoded by Fidelity in Motion, plus a full colour 80-page book with a detailed episode guide, Alice Coltrane's own written responses, a new interview with Michelle Coltrane, a remembrance by Jaya Lakshmi Moss, and three new essays by Kevin Le Gendre, Ross Wallace Chait and Nick Wrigley. Exclusively licensed worldwide from the Coltrane estate, announced and released on the same day, and strictly limited. Television will never be this holy again.

Directed by Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda | 1985-1988 | USA | 514 minutes | Limited Edition | 2 x Blu-rays (both BD50) | Region free (ABC)

Available worldwide, this 2 x Blu-ray set contains nearly 9 hours of seldom-seen transmissions from the jazz visionary and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane. In 1985, KTTV Channel 11 (an independent, commercial, Los Angeles-based TV station) began broadcasting Eternity's Pillar every Sunday after midnight. Seventeen episodes from the Coltrane archive are lovingly presented here, overflowing with devotional wisdom, meditation, and music. Also included is a Black Journal segment from 1970 filmed in Alice Coltrane's home, and an 80-page book containing an episode guide, remembrances, new essays, and more.

Seventeen episodes of Eternity's Pillar (1985-1988) television programme, totalling 514 minutes, from broadcast master tapes held by the Coltrane archive.

Black Journal #26: Alice Coltrane, A Love Supreme (1970, 15 minutes) documentary segment, made for TV and shot on 16mm film, featuring an interview with Alice Coltrane at the Dix Hills, NY Coltrane family home where she recorded most of her Impulse! albums, and footage from a Glen Cove performance with Pharoah Sanders, Reggie Workman, Bill Wood, and Rashied Ali. Including new optional English subtitles.

Limited edition full colour 80-page book containing a detailed episode guide, Alice Coltrane's written responses to questions about Eternity's Pillar, a new interview with Michelle Coltrane, a remembrance by Jaya Lakshmi Moss, three new essays - by Kevin Le Gendre, Ross Wallace Chait, and Nick Wrigley - and writing about Black Journal #26: Alice Coltrane, A Love Supreme.

Limited Edition, 2 x Blu-rays (both BD50), region free (ABC).