We spoke with Keshava at the Ananda Church of Self-Realization in Palo Alto, California on February 12, 2020. An accomplished singer, cellist, actor and choir director, Keshava is deeply involved with the arts as a path of personal transformation and service. He is on the staff of Ananda Sangha and is a full-time teacher at Living Wisdom High School in Palo Alto.
Q: Were you born at Ananda Village?
Keshava: That’s right.
Q: Were you hearing the music of Swami Kriyananda and Paramhansa Yogananda literally from the cradle?
Keshava: Yes, definitely. My dad would put us to sleep by chanting to us every night, and when I got older I would try to stay awake because I enjoyed the chanting so much, and when he would leave I would fall asleep. [Laughs]
Q: When did you begin singing Swami Kriyananda’s songs?
Keshava: I actually don’t remember, because being in an Ananda school it’s hard to say when it began. I imagine I started singing some in kindergarten or first grade. But then it sort of came out that I could sing, because David Eby was my cello teacher from when I was five. I had met him at Ananda Portland and studied with him briefly, and then my family moved back to the Village, and a few years later he moved there, too.
So my music education continued with David, but then he became the music teacher at Ananda school, and he discovered that I could hold a pitch and carry a tune, and it’s a good quality to have in a seven-year-old when you’re doing a concert. So I started singing solos in our school concerts when I was very young, and that’s really when I started having to pay attention to Swami’s music, because all of a sudden I was singing it alone, and I couldn’t just sort of go on autopilot for those performances and rehearsals.
Then David started trying to get me to sing more and more beautifully, and I wasn’t necessarily tuned into the consciousness of it deeply at that young age, but it was a really fun experience, because I had a boy soprano voice, and I started singing soprano solos for the oratorio, singing all the soprano parts. And then as I got a little older and my voice started changing, I started singing alto, and then as I got a little older I started singing tenor as I bridged into high school. And then what was sort of amusing was that when I went to Los Angeles there were no basses, so I had to learn bass. So I’ve sung all four parts in the choir at varying stages of my life, and that was very useful when I started conducting the music, because I’m familiar with all of the parts.
But really, it all started coming into a clearer focus when David had me sing “The Annunciation” from the oratorio as a boy soprano, and I remember really enjoying it.
When I was younger I had this quirk that music didn’t necessarily speak to me in rehearsals because my awareness wasn’t keen enough. But in performances I was really lucky that there was always a wave of grace that would descend and flow through me. It was an ongoing joke that I would perform better than I would rehearse, by the grace of God, and perhaps due to some old past life memories.
I remember singing those solos as a young boy and feeling the peace that came from them, or the inspiration, even when I was seven or eight.
Before a play at an Ananda family camp one summer they had me sing “Invocation to the Woodland Devas.” I was probably nine and Chaitanya coached me, and I remember when I got up to sing there was so much power that I could feel in the song. It felt like a divine incantation that I was intoning on behalf of the audience, just before the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that was another powerful experience that helped me realize that this music has more in it than just melody and words.
Q: Did you have any formal music training along the way?
Keshava: I started studying cello with David when I was five, and I continued with him for almost twelve years, and as I got a little older and started singing more, he was also the conductor of the choir, and I would go over for a cello lesson and he’d bug me to practice my singing. So I did have that formal education, and I competed in classical music for about ten years and played a lot of chamber music. I was in a really excellent trio of piano, violin, and cello, and I didn’t get exposed to a lot of classical music, but I was lucky to be able to play with some really excellent players. I played with some youth orchestras and as a guest performer with the Nevada City orchestra a few times, and for a while people thought I was going to go into music professionally, but I didn’t.
Q: What did you study?
Keshava: I ended up studying acting in Los Angeles. The arts were always an easy outlet for me, and it was a tossup which one it would be.
But coming back to the music, I had a fun experience when I was perhaps twelve, which is an interesting time from an astrological perspective, because it’s your first Jupiter return when some of your latent spiritual tendencies might be coming into focus.
It was the first year that I sang the entire oratorio with the Ananda choir, and one of my vivid memories was when we sang “Living Water,” and we got to the phrase, “He can redeem you from every evil.” And it was amazing, because I was twelve years old and we were singing this song, and often I would just sing the words and notes without realizing what we were saying, but in that moment the music sort of broke through my lack of understanding and I had a real taste of what that promise was, and I could feel Christ’s compassion and Christ’s promise to be the Redeemer of all souls. And I remember, after the song, I had to sit down because I was weeping and couldn’t sing anymore, I was so overwhelmed by the feeling of Christ’s presence.
It was a startling experience for me, because then I would go to school and none of my peers could relate to that kind of thing, so I had to sort of sit with that experience and not know where to file it. And the only time it would make sense was every Tuesday night when I would go back to choir rehearsal and I’d go, oh, yeah, this is what that’s all about.
It was a profound experience, and then I ended up performing the oratorio, and the same thing happened. Whenever we would perform the oratorio, I would get swept up in the energy of the music, and by the end I was in such an exalted state of consciousness that I had to sit down because I could feel so much energy rising in my spine.
Being twelve or thirteen, I had no idea what to do with that inspiration, so I just sat there feeling a little overwhelmed for maybe forty-five minutes.
I was blessed with a few of those experiences that sold me on this music as something special, and different from classical music.
Around that time, David organized an entire orchestra to play “Life Is A Quest For Joy” at Spiritual Renewal Week, and I was, again, maybe ten or twelve, and I wasn’t good enough to play the melody, so it meant that I was relegated to the supporting string parts, which are very boring, it’s just bum-bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum. And if you do that for twenty-seven minutes it’s pretty boring when you’re ten years old, especially without the context of the melody.
I remember in rehearsals how we would be playing and I just didn’t get it, but I remember the evening of the performance very vividly.
I particularly remember because Steve D’Amico was sitting behind me, and it was the first time I’d met Steve, and we played that piece together. David played the melody, and I don’t remember who was on violin, but we had twelve or fifteen musicians, and we played the whole piece, and it was transcendent.
It brought me into a different state of consciousness, and I could feel the joy coming out of the music. And even though the part I had to play was so simple, I was utterly delighted to get to be a part of that moment. And afterward I walked up to David and said, “David, I’m sorry for complaining. I’ll play this every year if you want me to.”
It was an incredible experience because I was learning complex classical music at the time that was technically very challenging and virtuosic, but it wasn’t as satisfying as that performance.
As an aside, I had a beautiful full-circle moment last year when David again organized a group of us to play “Life Is A Quest For Joy” for the fiftieth anniversary of Ananda. It was David, myself, some friends of mine from high school, and Steve D’Amico, and it was like the band had come together ten or twelve years later, with the difference that we could actually play the music now. [Laughs]
We were more sophisticated, and it was such a blessing. We had just one rehearsal and a sound check before the evening, but in that one rehearsal we played an introductory measure, and then David came in with the melody and my heart just went through the roof, and I felt a soul intuition that it was one of the reasons I had decided to take incarnation, so that I could play that piece with David and these other musicians in a moment like that. Because it spoke so much to the quest, to man’s eternal quest – Life Is A Quest For Joy – and it transcended the intellect.
When we played together at the 50th anniversary, it was the absolute highlight of the celebration for me, and it felt like the culmination of a lot of discipline and sacrifice by a lot of people, including David.
It was such a beautiful experience because we were playing with musicians who’d been in Swami’s vibration for ten or twenty years and we’d finally matured sufficiently as musicians and devotees to be able to tune into the music deeply.
Teen Years and Beyond
Q: What about your teenage and early adult years? Did you leave Ananda?
Keshava: I stayed at the Ananda school until the end of my sophom*ore year. I was getting a little frisky and beginning to experiment with some extracurricular activities. But what was interesting to me was that I was really bad at being bad. I would go and have my extracurricular activities and get in trouble with my friends, but on Tuesdays I’d go back and sing with the choir, and I’d sing the oratorio.
Then on Wednesday afternoon I’d have my voice lessons with Ramesha, and he was a real kindred soul. We would sing and talk about God and spirituality and devotion, and I felt so at home with him. Then I’d go spend time with my friends, and I felt like I was only able to present half of myself because I had to keep the other half hidden – where I knew in my heart that I loved God.
I was trying desperately to fit in and be a teenager and be influential and all these sorts of things, and then, you know, it all crashed down on me and I suffered a lot. But all the while the music never left me.
In fact, music was one of the things that tossed me a lifeline when my experimentation got me in real trouble and caused me pain.
I actually got suspended from the Ananda school for two weeks, and it was perfect timing, because it was just before my biggest music competition. I thought, I’m suspended from school and I’m at a low point and I’m ostracized from my friends and my community, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, but I’ve got this music competition coming in two weeks, and I guess I’ll just play a bunch of music.
What was particularly fun about it was that I was preparing to compete with a piece of music that David Eby had written. It was his first solo cello piece, “Celtic Passage,” and he’d written it before he came on the path, but it’s a very joyful piece.
So I practiced three or four hours a day, and I mostly played that piece over and over, trying to refine it, and that experience helped me rediscover that my inherent nature is joy, and that I don’t have to do drugs or alcohol or party to experience that enjoyment, and that the music was a doorway for me to recognize my soul nature.
I ended up leaving the Ananda school, and I went to an early college high school in Grass Valley for a while, but then I left high school early because I had taken an exit exam, and then I went to Los Angeles when I was seventeen and joined an acting conservatory.
The music didn’t go on pause, because I was living in the LA Ananda ashram, and I was singing with the choir. I lived with Ramesha and Bhagavati, who are both singers and musicians, so the music was still very much alive for me. But I was going to school, and I was deeply invested in trying to become an actor, so it sort of took a backseat for a while.
When I graduated from school I was trying to pursue a career in acting, but it wasn’t happening, and then Ramesha and Bhagavati left Los Angeles and it left a vacuum in the music ministry, so there was a big question of what would happen next with the music. I was a little reluctant, because I was just nineteen, but then I thought, I have all these skills – I can sing, I know the parts, I’m a musician, and I’ve been around this music for ten or twelve years. I’ll do it.
So I volunteered to take over directing the music in Los Angeles, which was sort of a joke, you know, to call myself a music director since it was just five people if we were lucky, and most of the time it was just Narayan, Dharmadevi, and me, and we’d sing four-part pieces with three people. [Laughs]
But that was the beginning. That was the origin story of my life as a music director.
Storm Clouds and Sun
So that was an interesting time, and I actually went through a very hard period. I bring it up in relation to the music, because I got into powerlifting, which is a very intense sport, and aside from powerlifting I had been slowly getting into hard rock music, then metal, then heavy metal. And I was in this place where I felt really alone and isolated and sad, depressed, and powerless. That was one of the keywords – I felt very powerless in my life.
I had started listening to that music because it has a lot of power – just untamed willpower – and I reveled in it because I liked the sensation. So I was listening to that music more and more and more, and it went hand in hand with powerlifting, where I was doing my utmost to develop my will.
I think it was useful, but I took it too far. And there was this ironic dichotomy, because in my personal life I was listening to heavy metal, this really intense music, and then I’d go to Sunday service and sing Swami’s music, and I would try to tell people that they should listen to his music and that they should come sing in the choir. [Laughs] And after a time I finally realized that it was kind of hypocritical.
I’ll fast forward a bit. Years of this went by and some karma got expunged, and I matured and worked through a lot of my griefs and pains and wounds, but there came a moment when I started to realize that I could effect positive changes in my life by intelligently practicing the techniques that Master and Swami taught us.
As I started trying to take more control of my life I realized, wait a minute, I’m telling people at Ananda that this music affects their consciousness, and that if they listen to Swami’s music they’ll be uplifted, and that if they chant Master’s chants they’ll become attuned to his vibration.
And I knew it for myself, because when I chant I feel it, and when I play “Life Is A Quest For Joy” I feel it. But I thought, well, why don’t I start listenening to my own advice and actually try this.
I was working as a personal trainer. I had a business with a friend of mine, and I was powerlifting, preparing for a competition, and I was in the stunt industry, and then I was serving at Ananda as the music minister, but most of my energy was out in the world, and I decided, you know, I might not be able to change everything about myself, but I can change at least one habit.
So I decided that for the next month I would stop listening to everything else, cold turkey, and the only thing I’d listen to would be the Gayatri Mantra and the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, and that was it. And I wouldn’t avoid listening to it – every moment that I would normally be listening to music I was going to listen to those mantras. So on the way to work, and while working out, and on my way back from work I would listen to it, and even when I’d be doing research and reading articles about the industry I was in.
So I had the willpower to make the transition, just cut-and-dried, and it was challenging at first because my nervous system was so used to the stimulation. I forgot to mention that what also helped me make the switch was that I had started experiencing what Swami said about that music – he said it burns your nervous system, and I could actually feel my whole nervous system being overloaded by all the things I was doing, and I could feel that the music was aggravating my whole system, like drinking too many cups of coffee, where you feel like your skin’s burning.
I knew the music would do that to me eventually, just burn up my nervous system, so I said, I have to do something different, and that’s when I started listening to a recording where Swami chants those two mantras. I remember being in the car on my thirty- or forty-five-minute commute to work, listening to those mantras and thinking sometimes, “Oh my god, I am so bored! I just want to hear that awesome metal song that I had a few weeks ago.”
Allegro
But I stuck with it, and I was amazed to discover how much I had changed in one month. I felt so much lighter and so much freer. I could think more clearly, and I was suddenly becoming more and more joyful. There wasn’t as much rage in my heart, or anger or indignation, and I could just accept life. I became more me. And I was just blown away, because the only thing I had changed was that one thing, the music, and I thought, “I’m never going back.”
Why would I? Why would I ever go back to that music? It was poisoning my consciousness. And that’s when I started getting on this adventure of wondering, well, what other things could I change that might positively affect my life? I started energizing six times a day. And then my whole life just took off. But it was a very direct experience of the power of music on our consciousness.
It was interesting to me that even though I had stopped listening to the metal music, four or five months later I would wake up with it in my head, because music sticks in my consciousness.
I was laughing with Saiganesh yesterday, because we were trying to have a meeting and there was music playing softly in the background, and he got up and turned it off. I said, “Oh, thank you, Saiganesh.” Because if there’s music playing my mind will go to it and not to the conversation. And he said that it’s the same for him, that he can’t concentrate if there’s music playing.
But because I had listened to some of those songs so many times and with such concentration, they were carved deeply into the grooves of my brain, and I would wake up with those songs in my head or with those lyrics in my mind, or they would be going through my subconscious while I was driving or working, or anytime I would become subconscious, and it was really disturbing to me. Because here I was, energizing six times a day, meditating two or three hours a day, starting to teach classes, and then I would have these absolutely heinous lyrics running through my head, and I thought, I want to get these things out. But I couldn’t seem to do it. I was doing affirmations and chanting all the time, and they were still there.
And then one night I sat down to meditate after a long day of service. And in my meditation I had done my Kriyas and was sitting and trying to absorb myself in the inner stillness. And I don’t normally have deep supernatural experiences in meditation, but this was one of the clear instances where I felt that grace came to me in answer to a prayer. Because I suddenly perceived a blue light that entered my brain at the spiritual eye, and like a surgeon it went into my brain and cut away all of those negative thought patterns that had been created by listening to the metal music. I felt the light removing the memory of the lyrics and the memory of the melodies. And I kid you not, when I came out of that meditation I couldn’t even remember the lyrics that used to haunt me, and that I couldn’t get out of my head for the last six months.
They were just gone, and I thought, “I have no idea what they even were.” There was just one sentence out of all the lyrics that I could still remember, and I guess it was the one that the light missed. But the light took everything else, and it was an incredible experience of how we need to be really, really careful about what we listen to, because it will cut grooves in our brain. And it took divine grace and intervention, and the light of God to come in and wipe it out of my consciousness.
Since that time I’ve been very careful about the music I listen to, and I basically only listen to Master’s and Swami’s music. Swami said, “You shouldn’t hang art on a wall unless you would have the artist over to your house for dinner.” And I don’t know about many artists’ consciousness, but I want Swami over to my house for dinner. I want Jyotish to my house for dinner. I want Master to my house for dinner all the time.
So I’ve had a few experiences that have shown me how imperative music is to our consciousness, and how we need to be very conscious about what we consume in that way. And even though classical music can have an uplifting vibration, some classical pieces can be very rajasic. And with folk music, it can be fun and peppy and the musicians can be very good, but after five minutes I want to turn it off, because it’s just rajasic for the sake of being rajasic, and I don’t need that in my life.
At any rate, that was an important moment, and as the years went on and I was taking the music ministry seriously, I realized that the only person who could set the bar for the music in Los Angeles was me, because nobody else had experienced it the way I had. I don’t mean that egotistically, but I realized, “No one else is going to do it if I don’t step up.”
So I started trying to dive into Swami’s music as deeply as I possibly could, and Yogananda’s music. Because when I was in the acting field, I learned that if you are able to experience something on a deep level, people will pick it up. When we would perform Shakespeare, it wasn’t so imperative that the audience understand every word you’d say, because what’s important is that they understand the human experience you’re having. And as an actor, what’s important is to understand that moment of human experience and be able to live it authentically and completely.
I realized that with the music, if I could dive into the consciousness of the song or the chant so completely that I became engrossed in it, everybody around me would be pulled into that consciousness to some degree by the power of magnetism. And I made it a personal quest to try and not just chant, but try to spiritualize the chants, and go so deep in them that they would unveil themselves to me.
I looked at the spiritual qualities that Master had assigned to each chant, like “Desire, My Great Enemy” – “to overcome all material desires.” And I thought, well, that sounds pretty awesome. Let’s chant that. So I sang that chant every day for six months, thirty minutes every day, just trying to get into an experience. And I found that when I went deep enough in the chant, it wasn’t just music anymore, it was pranayam. I could feel the energy in my heart changing and expanding, and it became an experience of expanded consciousness.
The same with “Swami Ram Tirtha’s Song.” It’s not only an energizing song, it’s a divine power moving through you. And “Ever New Joy” – what does it actually mean to experience ever new joy. Or “Thousands of Suns” is a chant for wisdom – and what’s that about? I sang that chant for six months, just trying to taste God as wisdom.
When I would lead sadhanas or Raja Yoga classes I would invite people verbally, but mostly by magnetism, into an actual experience. Because it’s through their own experience that they’ll understand that yoga can be a tool to transform their lives.
Swami wrote a short list of the ways his songs can be used as antidotes for negative tendencies. I’ve found them very effective, and because I was desperate I would look at the sheet and think, okay, what am I experiencing? Okay, a little bit of bitterness. Okay, what’s the antidote? “Have You Seen Sorrento?” And I would sing it over and over, not mechanically but trying to go deeper in the vibration beneath the words, under the music, while constantly asking what the consciousness was that Swami had put into it?
“Have You Seen Sorrento?” is about gratitude and appreciation for the beauty and joy and wonder of God’s creation. And of course that’s the antidote for bitterness, because if you’re engrossed in appreciation, how can you be bitter?
A Soul-Healing Ministry of Music
I was thrilled to discover that I could apply the music to touch into that essence. And because I’m someone who shares the music, learning to serve as a transmitting station for that consciousness.
It was a thrilling journey, one that all of us who sing this music are walking.
At any rate, that’s been the exciting aspect of Swamiji’s music for me, that it’s not just brilliant as music, and entertainment, but it’s a key to higher consciousness and inner freedom.
For example, “The Hill That Was Tara.” I don’t remember what he says about the song, though of course it’s for courage, and I think he said it’s for overcoming fear of death.
I sang it daily for a long time, and as an amusing example of how magnetism works, I didn’t tell anybody I was singing it, but I could feel a moving power in it, and it was always deeply touching to me to sing it.
As I said, I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing. I was just trying to develop my own understanding of the song, and the magnetism latent in it. And then two years ago at Spiritual Renewal Week Ramesha said, “Keshava, somebody was supposed to sing ‘The Hill That Was Tara’ but they didn’t show up. Can you sing it? I said, “In five minutes?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Actually, yes, I can sing it.”
So I got up and I shared the song, and what was particularly beautiful for me was that I felt the magnetism I had developed with the song seizing the opportunity to share itself with others, and a number of people told me afterward that it was their favorite rendition.
So I went back and listened to it to see, well, okay, was it that good? And I saw that I had made some vocal mistakes because I was nervous and you could hear it in my voice, but I think the undercurrent of Swami’s consciousness came through because I’d spent so much time deeply pondering what’s it’s really all about, and how I could convey that consciousness as I sang the piece? And that was utterly thrilling.
We’re preparing for the oratorio, and each of the songs is a treasure. I don’t know what others have felt, but there have been many times when I’ve listened to the songs from the audience or I’ve sung them, and there are songs that I might be tempted to check out on, especially some of the instrumentals, like “Land of Milk and Honey.” But I have to wonder, what would the experience of the oratorio be like if every song was that deeply investigated, and if it was that fully invested with our interest and our wonderment and our devotion until it blossomed?
Every song has the potential to be a soul-stirring moment, and we have forty-nine of them in the oratorio alone. So it’s a significant experience, and the singers have been receptive to getting into the music that way.
Q: As far as educating people, and attracting them to Swami’s music, do you have thoughts about that, and what it can do for them?
Keshava: What it can do for them is a lot, but I’ve had varying degrees of success trying to convey that. For whatever reason, the choir in Los Angeles initially tended to have its ebbs and flows, where it would build and crumble, and I would build it up again and it would crumble. And what I learned is that the music can never stand on an individual’s personal magnetism. I learned that whenever I tried to build up the choir by my own magnetism it would collapse, because I couldn’t sustain that level of energy.
But where I think the choir begins to have real magnetism is when we place the emphasis on the sadhana, the spiritual practice of the music, because that’s an experience that can be ever new. And then it doesn’t depend on whether the choir director is peppy, and it’s up to the individual to go in and feel the music.
As far as helping people have that experience of the music, I think the best thing is to just get them started singing.
People are often really scared to sing, and I think chanting by yourself or in kirtans is a great way to have an experience – “Oh my God, this music really can move me.” It’s a safe approach where there are lots of people around you, and it’s simple melodies, and it’s easy to get into the vibration by sheer repetition.
And then I think teaching people to chant on their own. Because I’ve noticed that when I chant alone it’s much easier to be sincere, but as soon as I’m chanting with other people there’s an awareness that it’s not just you and God.
That’s something I’m working on, how to get to the point where it doesn’t matter if I’m chanting in my closet or in front of a hundred people, because it’s always just me and God.
Aside from that, just helping people sing Swami’s music and understand what they’re saying. I think that has helped me the most.
The poetry in the music isn’t always obvious. Swami is very clear in his meanings, but, for example, with “Living Water,” which has been one of my favorite pieces for fourteen years, I only really understood the opening lyrics two weeks ago. “Though fallen deep in sin, by men abandoned, if longing for His grace, truth be your guide…”
I was thinking, “I understand most of that, but what the heck does it mean, ‘by men abandoned’?” And I might be the village dunce, but Karen helped me figure out what it’s saying: “Though you’ve fallen deep in sin and your fellow men have abandoned you, if you’re longing for His grace and taking truth as your guide, He can redeem you from every evil.”
It’s funny that the song suddenly makes more sense to me now after years of singing it, and it has more relevance for me.
That’s something I did a lot with the singers in Los Angeles, and it was reflective of my training as an actor. I noticed that people would sing the music, or sing Swami’s or Master’s chants, and they would be doing it sort of subconsciously, without really asking what it all means? And how can I sing these words with sincerity if I’m just snoozing over the words?
For example, “I Live Without Fear” is a straightforward song. There are no hidden, layered allusions. “Though green summer fade, and winter draw near, my Lord, in Your presence I live without fear.”
And it’s really a question of asking people to stop and ask, what would that feel like? What would it be like to feel the presence of God so palpably that you were unafraid? And the funny thing is, when I asked that question, people would usually go, “Oh!” As if they hadn’t thought of it before.
Understanding the poetry intellectually doesn’t do it for you. But when we put our intellectual understanding together with the music, the music informs the heart, and then you don’t have to be wondering what it would feel like, because the music shows you.
That song is one of my favorites. I think it’s an incredible piece of music because the journey of the song is so thrilling. But I found in Los Angeles that helping people understand what they were singing, and then actually sincerely singing to the Lord transformed their musical experience, from being mundanely interesting to spiritually very beneficial.
So that was one of the best things I discovered. But for new people who are looking to get started with the music, I think the first thing is simply start listening to it, and then start singing it as much as you can. I would recommend singing with great focus, as well as you’re able, because Master said to sing a chant until we’ve pierced the veil of superconsciousness.
He said that about Whispers from Eternity, too – to go after that seed until you can crack it open and get to the oil of inspiration.
Master said that he had spiritualized those chants – that he chanted them until he went into samadhi – God-consciousness. I haven’t chanted them until I’ve gone into God-consciousness but I’ve had glimpses, and those small glimpses are now permanent doorways that remain open for me to the Divine.
It’s come to a point where chanting is such a powerful technique that I remarked to my girlfriend, “If I get in a bad mood, make me chant.”
I said, “Even if I resist and I get all grumpy, make me chant.” And obviously we shouldn’t put the responsibility on other people, and I should be able to hold that for myself. And, in fact, I’ve used chanting that way many times.
But there was an occasion when I got grumpy and down and sad, and she said, “Keshava, you should go chant.” I said, “No!” And she said, “Keshava, go chant!” And I finally said, “Okay.” So I sat down and started chanting, and after thirty minutes I felt awesome. I got up and said, “Thanks for making me chant. Let’s go have a nice day.”
Chanting and music can become powerful tools in your spiritual kit. I’ve gotten a lot out of them, and I know that everybody can.
There’s can be the thought that you can’t really sing unless you have a beautiful voice, but that’s not the purpose of chanting or singing. We have to remember that the power is not in the sound but the vibration, and you could sing like a crow, but if you’re singing with the right vibration and sincerity, it’s going to transform your heart.
One of the most rewarding kirtans I’ve led was during a Diwali celebration for Lord Rama. It was a group of forty or fifty people with just me and a harmonium and not even any microphones – just old-school, we’re going to chant and we’re going to call on Lord Rama to come and be with us. I remember hearing some of the people who could sing and people who absolutely could not sing, but everybody was so moved, and many people would bump into me over the next year and say, “That was the most inspiring kirtan I’ve ever been to.” And it was because we were calling Rama to come and bless us, and for those who couldn’t sing it didn’t matter to them.
I’m thinking of one woman – the kirtan was her first experience of Ananda, and she ended up returning and taking Raja Yoga, so I got plenty of opportunity to hear her voice, and she can’t sing, but she loves chanting, and it was very effective for her.
We would sit down together and chant, or I would lead a chant in our Raja Yoga class, and she would be singing with so much fervor, just chanting, chanting, chanting, and every single time we chanted she was completely off – her tone and pitch were off because she was practically tone-deaf, but she was so sincere, and she got so much out of it. And she wasn’t self-conscious about the fact that she didn’t have the technical skills of a singer, so it didn’t get in her way, and the chants just grabbed her and revealed a lot to her.
So I guess I would say that, yes, the tonal quality of the voice isn’t the limiting factor; it’s really just how sincere we are in our heart and our receptivity, and in attuning our heart to the vibration.
Now, of course, refining our technical skills helps us refine our attunement, but it’s not necessary. It’s just a helpful tool. I grew up in classical music, and I have some technical training with the voice, and I know a few things about how to improve voice tone or whatever – but then it’s so hard to get a choir to remember the technical notes, even relatively simple things like dynamics, “Write this down in your book and circle it.” And they’ll forget. But what I discovered is if I could help people feel the vibration that we were searching for, they would get it immediately.
We would sing Swami’s song “Peace,” which is deceptively simple, but then all you need are a few sopranos who are checking out and it can turn into a train wreck really fast. Just on the first phrase, and all of a sudden it’s “Oh, God, make it stop!” [Laughs]
I remember a choir rehearsal in Los Angeles that was a complete disaster. I was working with sopranos who’d sung the song for years, and at first I started trying to address the technical issues of pitch, tone, vocal placement, and breathing, trying to fix the problem through technique. And it wasn’t working, because those people weren’t musicians and they didn’t care, and the more I talked about technique the less interested they were and the worse it got.
And then, by the grace of God, I sang the first verse solo, which is a single note, and I said, “Tune into the vibration. Forget all the technical stuff, just tune into this vibration and let’s try and act as channels for this vibration. What does peace feel like in your heart? How can we allow that vibration to expand and come out through our voices?”
So I sang the first verse and I tried to expand my own aura as a vehicle to share that vibration of peace, and then we started singing the second verse, and all of a sudden it was working, and I thought, “Oh my god, that sounded good.”
I can’t tell you how many times I made that mistake, but I finally realized that if I started by searching for the right attunement to the consciousness of the piece the singers would naturally do the right things, but if all I did was harp on the technical side it was always lacking.
I was blown away by how well it worked, and with the soloists over the years in Los Angeles it worked really well, too. The soloists are standing there thinking “I’m singing all by myself, and I’m so exposed, I’d better make sure my voice does all the right things or people will think I’m a bad singer.” But really, my job just seems to be to help the singers more fully understand the vibration so they can have an experience of it for themselves and learn to express it, and if they can do those things the song will always take care of itself, and they naturally then become musicians, and they naturally express musicality because they’re coming from the appropriate consciousness.
I worked on a song the other day with one of the soloists in Palo Alto – it was “Blessed Are They.” [Sings – “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”] And the thing about that song is that it’s very repetitive, and the words are sort of arcane, so it’s easy to check out and just blow through the words and melody, and everyone falls asleep for three and a half minutes. But it’s one of just three pieces in the oratorio where Christ is actually speaking, so I think that means we should probably be paying attention. And all I did with the singer was go through the Beatitudes and say, “What does this actually mean? What is Christ saying?” “Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” And when we started digging into what each phrase actually meant, it was thrilling. And then we said, okay, now let’s sing it again, and it was so beautiful and entrancing.
And then the next song he sang was “In the Spirit.” The words are, “I was caught up in ecstasy. ’Twas a day sanctified by God.” And he sang it fine – it was technically proficient. It was fine. But I stopped him and said, “What does that mean, to be caught up in ecstasy?” That this was the day that God came and revealed the secrets of heaven to you? This is Samadhi. This is your consciousness expanding beyond all boundaries.
I said, “Put yourself there. Just imagine that this is the moment that you’re expanding effortlessly through all time and space.” And once he could get into that vibration, I said, “Now sing, but sing from that effortless soul expansion across all space.” And then he started singing, and it was so different, because every note was an invitation to join him in an expansion of soul consciousness, and it was impregnated with the power of that consciousness. You don’t have to be a professional singer to do that, you know – you can be anybody and tune into that level of consciousness.
