A Conversation with Krishna Das: Love Everyone. Serve Everyone. Remember God. -Transcript

This interview was recorded on November 5, 2021, on ZOOM:

Anna Stromquist: Hello, Kristina.

Kristina Wiltsee: Hello, Anna.

Anna Stromquist: Hello to our viewers today, we have a special guest, Krishna Das, and we are going to just first preface this with Kristina is quarantined in London with COVID and her wifi has COVID. I'm going to be leading the majority of this conversation. So please bear with us and welcome KD (Krishna Das).

Is that what we should call you?

Krishna Das: KD is fine. You can call me Al.

Anna Stromquist: So for anyone who's not familiar, I just wanted to give a brief biography about you. If that's okay? To some of our listeners who might not know you.

Krishna Das: I'll try not to get nauseous.

Anna Stromquist: All right. You were born Jeffrey Kagel and as your sanya’s name is obviously Krishna Das. And you met Ram Dass and followed his teachings.

And then in the 1970s, you went to India to meet his guru, which is Neem Karoli Baba. You spent about two or three years there and you were coming back to the states and you heard your own voice in your head, except for it was a clairaudience. It was some voice from beyond: your own voice saying, "I will sing to you in America."

You came back to the US and within six months, your beloved guru died and you spent the next 20 years feeling lost because he was your anchor to the divine. And you fell into addiction to cocaine, freebase, and other things. And you always had this sense of something was missing. Then you visited a festival in India, the Bhandara at Kenji, which was the opening of a temple.

And a friend told you, “You have to see the Maharaji and his big form.” And this made me cry. When I, when I heard this story, you were watching everyone come and go, everyone come and go. And you have this understanding that you were all connected and we were all one. And your guru was always with you and you, you could feel that he loved you.

I'm going to quote you: "When I felt the love in me, I could see I was getting in my own way and I stopped. There was no one to get in my way anymore. And the chanting brings me back to that state of not getting in my own way of being nobody." And so with that, your life shifted, you came back to the US and you did, as you promised years ago, brought your music to the Americas.

You went on to have 17 albums. One was nominated for a Grammy in 2013, a beautiful documentary about your life is called “One Track Heart”. And that came out in 2012. We can watch it on Gaia, which is the Netflix for yogis.

Krishna Das: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Anna Stromquist: And you established in 2014 the Kiertan Wallah Foundation, which is essentially a nonprofit organization to spread the teachings of your guru.

And essentially that teaching is love everyone, serve everyone, remember God. And currently you do a weekly sating called “Hanging out in the Heart Space.” That's free, online, and you have some live satsangs and online courses about opening and living from the heart. So that's my little biography of you — in a nutshell,

Krishna Das: I wish I knew who you were talking about.

Anna Stromquist: Was it nauseating?

Krishna Das: No, not too bad, not too bad. One, one little particular point. So in 1995, I went back to India. I had started chatting with people about six months before.

Well, I quit because I, I, I saw that I couldn't do it the right way. And what I wanted to get from the champion was to reconnect with, with Maharaji to find his hand again. And I saw that I was not gonna be able to, I wasn't going to let myself do that. I was going to actually get stuck in all the bullshit around becoming well-known and et cetera, et cetera.

So I quit and I went to India and it wasn't just a friend. Well, in some sense, it was my, one of my best friends, which was [Sri] Siddhi Ma who is this woman right here? Oh, I don't know. It's not video? Right?

Anna Stromquist: Well, people won't see, I can put a link to her in our notes.

Krishna Das: Yeah. So she she's, Maharaji’s great disciple, and she took care of the temples and the, and all the devotees for 30 years after he left the body. More, almost 40 years.

And she's the one who said. She asked me what my program was. I said, “ well, probably gonna go back to America by the end of may.” And then she said, “no, you have to stay until the Bhandara.” which is the celebration of the original opening of Maharaji’s first temple there in the Hills. “You have to stay until the Bhandara.”

“You have to see Maharaji's big form.” I thought, “what is she talking about?” Yeah. But, you know, she asked me to stay and I had no reason to go home. So I said, okay, I'll stay. And then on that day, that's when my whole life changed. Very simply. I did have an experience that absolutely totally changed following.

Anna Stromquist: And I was curious about that experience. Do you ever kind of feel like you take a few steps away from it and need to come back to it? Through your music? Or are you always there?

Krishna Das: Good question. On one hand, I'm running as best as I can away from it all the time. But on the other hand, there's nowhere to go where, where you're not.

So it's a question of allowing yourself to come back home again and again and again and again, and that's what spiritual practices about, and that's what chanting is about. It brings me back not to something that happened in the past, but something that is present right now, which is everything. Yes. So the chanting is very powerful for me that we're in.

And it's a practice that my guru said over and over to us through the repetition of these, what they call in India, the names of God whose divine names, everything is accomplished. So that's a lie. That's a major statement. I would say that I probably believe that about to present it. It's a good 2%. If I really believed that, you know, would I ever stop singing?

You know, so my own stuff, our own stuff gets in the way of us finding, you know, what we really want.

Anna Stromquist: So I wanted to share a story with you, and then it'll lead into my next question, which is, I actually had a visitation from your guru a couple weeks ago. It was in my bathtub. And I was really -

Krishna Das: He likes bathtubs.

Anna Stromquist: Oh does he?

Krishna Das: Well, he likes people in bathtubs.

Anna Stromquist: Oh, I didn’t know that. So, I was trying to get in touch with my human vulnerability of guilt and worthlessness. And I was trying to magnify that feeling and need to see what was on the other side of it. And he entered the room and he put his hand up on my forehead and without words. He showed me the image of a beautiful flower.

And the idea was something like, you know, we worship the flower, its flowers are on wallpapers and on fabric. And you know, we think flowers are so beautiful, but they grow out of the soil. And then I saw how the soil was like made of dead bugs and carcasses and worm shit and just crap. And, and he was showing me that it's not that the flower grows from the shit it's that the flower and the shit are a pair.

They, you know, it's a package deal and that all the worthlessness and guilt in me, it didn't mean I wasn't also a flower and it was really beautiful. And, and I was like, okay, I'm a shitty flower, I'm a shitty flower. And then he left and then believe it or not, your, your friend Ram Dass shows up because he's been visiting me a lot.

We talked about that sometimes on our podcast. And I said to him, “well, why aren't I changed people who come into contact with this Neem Karoli Baba always changed and I'm not changed. Like, okay, I'm a shitty flower, but I'm still just me.” And he said that the love that the guru has for me and that Ram and Hanuman, and even Ram Dass has for me, is always available.

But the limitation is in me. The resistance is in my own heart and in my own mind. So it didn't matter if the guru was in my bathroom or didn't matter if I was in India, meeting him in the flesh. It's the resistance will always be in my own heart. And so I wanted to talk to you about resistance because I believe that your music has a lot to do with removing the resistance, to feeling the divine.

And I wondered if you could talk more about that.

Krishna Das: The guru or God (or whatever that means) loves us as we are, as we really are. They see who we are and what we are, and we don't. And so we're always judging or evaluating. We're always believing the stories. We tell ourselves about ourselves all the time, every day. And we believe everything with me. That's total insanity.

So practice spiritual. Good. What's it, it frees us from believing those things. It frees us from identifying with those kinds of things over and over. And the thing is this, you might feel you're ground zero, maybe on a piece of shit. Okay. “I'm a shitty flower, but I am shitty. “ That's, that may be your ground zero, your basic feeling about yourself, but what happens over time?

It was very interesting through practice and by practice. I mean, anything that opens you up to a deeper place in yourself over time, you don't think that so often that you don't notice, you can't notice that you're not thinking that because it's the evaluator, the judger, who's always noticing all that stuff.

And it's the evaluator and the judger that's thinning out and disappearing, but you don't see how much time you don't spend thinking. You're a piece of shit. So it's very interesting. So in the time that you're not thinking of usership, you're not engaged in egoistic identity. Like when a kid is playing, right.

There's nobody he's just playing. He's not thinking, oh, I'm really playing now. This is super fun. I'm playing now. This is great. No, they're just craving it totally into it. So when you're totally in the moment, there's no mind stuff going on. If there is then you're not. So I don't think that Maharaji showing up and blessing you and rom does come too.

Don't think that doesn't have an effect. It has a tremendous event, but not in your conceptual thinking. Yeah. It's when you're not thinking that way that you feel what that's all about. And that's why champion is so powerful, because it's such a simple practice you sing when you notice that you're not paying.

When you notice you've been lost in imagining something about the future or thinking about the past planning or blah, blah, blah, then you come down. If you don't add a practice to your life, you don't come back because there's nothing to bring you back. We're just lost in Greenland all life long. We do it again next time.

So, the presence of these great beings, the divine beings, are powerful magnets that pull us into ourselves and believe me, we don't have a fucking clue how we're doing. If we're get we're getting anywhere on this path, I'm not, we'll never have a clue. It's just this just bullshit thinking, just live your life.

Do your practice. Watch some TV and that's it. Maybe a couple of other things.

Really. Neem Karoli Baba used to say, “don't worry. Be happy.” Okay. How that's, how is that? That's not the issue. Don't worry. Be happy. Okay.

Anna Stromquist: So I'm going into one of our other questions was so your, your cure time you're chanting helps bring you back to the divine. I actually had a dream of you —

Krishna Das: That was a nightmare.

Anna Stromquist: —that an angel was telling me that the brain, a nightmare, I dreamt that this angel was telling me that you cannot conceptualize that we are the divine.

And in order to remember, we are the divine. We have to visit the divine again and again. And you were there and Ram Das was there. And it [the angel] was saying that Ram Das would visit the divine through his drugs before he found it in real life. And that you visit the divine through music.

Krishna Das: Chanting.

Anna Stromquist: And so. And I'm curious aside from music, what are other ways that the everyday person listening can visit the divine?

Krishna Das: There's a million ways. First of all, when you say “divine”, I, I cringe a little bit, you know, it's because it implies it's somewhere else. Something else it's better than us. It's above us, supremely pure, and we're not et cetera. I just, we talk about, I talk about our true nature. I talk about the love that lives within us as who we really are.

Right? So how do we get to that place? Whatever helps us release the stories we tell ourselves and the negative emotions and, and the traumas and the betrayals, whatever helps us release that, those things. When we release them, we automatically come back. We don't have to try to. Um, and it's not the me that becomes divine.

It's when the me is not there, that everything is done. So it's not you doing it. You're not going to make it happen. You just have to let go of thinking all the things you think about yourself, and then you uncovered the Juul and inside it's not, you don't add onto it that you can, because what's inside of us is the whole universe you can't add on to something that already includes everything.

Right. But you can uncover that awareness. Right. Right, right, right. By coming back again. And again, just like you say, yeah, there's a word about, there's a word. One of the definitions of meditation is becoming familiar with what it feels like to let go to just be here to not be planning, cannot be judging, not to be imagining, you know, all those things that pull us out of ourselves. It's hard to get familiar with that and you can only touch it for a second and then your mind just jumps it up and move on. But that's why coming back again and again, and again, eventually you get familiar with being here and you don't go away.

And when you do go away, you don't stay gone so long.

Anna Stromquist: yeah, you'll be like, “that sucks. Let me go back.”

Krishna Das: I don't know. No, I'm kidding.

Yeah, but you know, once again, see, that's just

Anna Stromquist: Falling back asleep is fun. Isn't it? I mean. . .

Krishna Das: Well, not if you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, you know, with your feet halfway over, you don't want to fall asleep when we are. Right halfway off the court. And it's only by grace that we don't fall off and number ourselves, you know, it's the reason we say that, you know, part of the fun is falling asleep is because,

because we're the expectations that we face when we tried to calm down are very disturbing and sense that they really wireless up. We have sit down to meditate, we have such expectation. We're going to calm down. We're going to feel love. We're going to expand. And we don't every day we don't every day for years, we don't know.

And that's very hard to deal with it. So it's so, okay. I just want to give, I want to Val, I'll just get drunk tonight, you know, fuck it. I'm outta here. Yeah. But the problem is then you've just reinforced again.

The corners of not being here. So at some point there's this, there's like a figure ground reversal, and you just naturally stopped doing the shit that hurts you. There was this Lama that said what most people call bliss is just a little bit less pain. And that's that really, that's where we're at. There is a thing called this on under ecstasy, our true nature.

That's what it is. And we just turn the level of volume down so far. We don't even know where the novice turn it back up. So we're willing to put ourselves to sleep. We're willing to create more and more suffering for ourselves and others. And we don't even give a shit most of the time. That's the amazing thing.

And not just you and me, but everybody read the newspapers. Where are we now? Look what, look what we're known for this world. Because we're doing each one of us to ourselves and it expands exponentially in all directions,

Anna Stromquist: Kristina, do you feel well enough to ask some questions or . . .?

Kristina Wiltsee: Just, well, no, well, cause I I've just enjoyed listening so much. It's been a nice thing.

So, you know, and I, on a previous episode, we've talked a lot about the inner kind of guru versus the outer guru. Right. And after what you just said, I kind of feel silly asking this question in some ways, but you know, I wonder, you know, Like what was the experience of an outer cuter human guru to have that, you know, or, or outer divine guru, you know, that you had in order to like, how did that help you on your spiritual journey?

And like, have you internalized, like in, in the process of him ascending in passing, have you internalized that. 'cause. I know that some people feel that they need a guru in order to be able to, to do the work. Right. It's like, it's like they're as we call it kind of the aid that helps to get to that place where you maybe feel a little bit of that bliss, or you maybe are able to get out of your way a little bit better when you have that attitude.

So can you speak to that?

Krishna Das: Yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, unfortunately the story that, that people tell themselves, I need a group in order to blah, blah, blah. That's just another way of not doing anything. And the fact that people believe that show that they don't understand what Google actually is in the first place and the second place.

They just, they're not motivated to actually do anything to help themselves. So group inside, outside, first of all, there is no inside or outside. It just looks that way to us. There is no inner guru, no of. The group is within all the time, because that's where everything is.

If that grew, that lives within shows up outside of us in a, in another body, it's only outside the us, not to him just to be clear, okay. Him or her, it's not to the group, but because we are attached to our bodies and identified with our bodies, we see this is me and everything else is something else. So if it's best for you in your, if your, if it's the right thing for you on your path to meet the group in an external form, that's what will happen.

If it's not the best thing for you, it won't happen because the whole thing about a group is that a real group, they only do. What's best for you all the time. There's no other reason for them to be here other than compassion. So if it isn't what you need, they won't show up. If it is what you need, they show up

So in my case, I needed that because I will, I, I, I grew up in a way that didn't allow me to feel any level and did not allow me to feel loved in any way. And I needed to have that experience in order to survive. I would not be alive if I hadn't met around us. And then I, I hadn't gone to Maharaji. I just wouldn't be alive.

I didn't have it in me. The karma. I had this life where too destructive and there was no way I was going to be around. So I got lucky and I didn't have to die in early age at this point. So in this life, and I would have, I was very depressed and [00:23:00] I wouldn't have made it. I wouldn't have been probably, I would say I wouldn't have made it past the, if I made it to 25, it would have been amazing.

And even if I had lived that age without making the whole idea, I wouldn't have been happy. I wouldn't have been, it would have been a hard shuffling. So as it has, you know, about my history, I got strung out on freebase, cocaine, years after being with him, you know? So it was, as you know, it was like, it was like, we were all on a train.

And the train stops at a station and we looked out the window and there is no hurry. So they all go running off the train and we're sitting with him and we're with them. And then the next thing we know, we're back on the train of our lives, but we've been with him. So it's different group God. And your true self are not different.

They're one thing, but we don't know that. So what you're going to wait around and watch TV, the rest of your life, waiting for a good or knock on the door. When you're suffering enough, you will find something to do that helps you get through the day in a good way. And if you don't, that's just, that's who you are.

You can't pretend you're not. If you're sitting around not doing anything because you don't have a group, it apparently is your common to waste. And not do anything to help yourself or other people.

The guru’s teaching to us were not ego-centered. It was think of others.

Don't think about yourself, think about others. Love everyone, serve everyone and do some practice. Remember God that's practice.

You know, there were people who knew him for 50 years and they didn't seem very special. And then there are people who known for like where I'm past. Didn't spend much time with Mara do this life. He spent a few months, the first time and about a half a year, the second time he went and, and his presence.

So it's not. It's not about that. It's about what life means to you, what it means to us, what we want out of life, how we want to go through all day.

Anna Stromquist: I've been calling it my Rom Dass work, these visitations, and I'm trying to live more from my heart. And I'll be honest. It is really fucking hard to feel, to feel everything.

Krishna Das: It’s not hard.

Anna Stromquist: Maybe you haven't felt in a long time. And I'm wondering if you can talk about the painful tenderness of the heart opening in the beginning, and does it get easier?

Krishna Das: [Long pause.] Well, why don't we begin to feel our own stuff and other people's stuff. It is. It can be very painful, but that's what practice is for when you're chanting or meditating or quietly champion, you have to let go and come back. That's the remake with yourself without the tears that come are not bad. They're not, it's not a mistake. It's not a, you're not doing anything wrong. Let them come because there's a lot of pain in our hearts. A lot of, a lot of sadness, a lot of, a lot of years of not feeling loved. And there was no way around that and you have to go right through it. But when you look around, you see that you're not alone. Everybody feels that way. It's only certain people that will allow themselves to really feel it. Most people are victimized by it. They don't feel it. And when they're victimized by the pain that they feel, they closed down what people on the path, so to speak they're on the path because they have the ability to live through that. And there's no shortcuts, but if you really notice it doesn't last that long, it's not all the time. And even though we're so accustomed to, uh, judging ourselves for our emotions and giving ourselves a hard time about our feelings, no, it's something that suddenly changes as time goes on. It shifts and it shifts as the heart gets wider, not smaller, not tighter because when the heart is as wide as the world, everything is free to come and go.

Everyone, all feelings, all emotions, everything passes right through like clowns without any problem without causing suffering. Sowhen we're in the presence of that love, I mean, I, I cry. I mean, I guess maybe I should. I actually think, well, I should be happy, but there's this there's a poignancy about it. There's a, there's a, there's a such a sweet sadness to it and that's okay. You have to, you know, allow yourself to be, you, you know, you don't have to push things away and judge things and try to understand things. That's one thing when I understand things, thank you.

Yeah, I haven't this last week. I think it was, I can't remember the details. It was nice. We were together for over 50 years, you know,

it was the last 20 years were fantastic. And that makes up for the first 30. You know, the guru told him when he went back [to the USA] He said, “don't talk about me”, but what did he do? That's all he did was talk about him. And then, then he had to live with the fact that all these miserable Westerners decided to go to be with Maharaji because he talked about it,

Anna Stromquist: He was so pissed. I listened to that lecture.

Krishna Das: He was. He hated us. Absolutely hated us and love this [00:31:00] at the same time, but he hated us and the things he would say and do to me were just so horrible. I can't even, but it's understandable at the time. Maybe it wasn't, but you know, certainly for the last 20 years, we hadn't seen each of the months much for the 10 years before the stroke.

At least maybe a couple of times a year, we'd go out to dinner, but we didn't, we weren't spending a lot of time together. Then after the stroke, I went to see him and we're just, we really fell in love with them. After that it was wonderful. We've got better and veteran bedroom. Um, we would just sit in silence mostly hours.

Nobody has anything to say, but we just together and I realized that later, After he left the body, I realized that we had developed [00:32:00] that this way of communicating a win would be developed and deepen so much over the years that it wasn't about talking or doing, or it was really being together in that space.

One time we used to sit together for hours and hours after breakfast and everybody else would go away and just be the two of us. There were one day I recorded our conversation. We were having this conversation about all the things, some of our history together and are in Miami. And then some of the nasty shitty that we laugh.

And then, you know, at the end, I said, well, what should I call this recording? So he went calling Dick and Jeff's journey to soul land that.

Anna Stromquist: That's good. Publish those [00:33:00] files. I'm sure many would love to hear that.

Krishna Das: I haven't gone back and listened to it again. I will.

Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. When the time's

Krishna Das: right. Yeah.

Kristina Wiltsee: I, I have a question. I have a question for you, unless you were, you were going to say something

it's funny because on our podcast a lot, we have a tendency to intellectualize a lot of these concepts because it's, for me, especially, it's what helped me kind of get into the heart space. And I'm still working on that all the time. But one of the things we talked about at the beginning of the season was the idea of not being the Dewar of action.

And I feel like when I listened to your music, That's the closest, I can come to understanding that without my mind.[00:34:00]

And I wanted to thank you for that. The one thing for, for, for putting that out there, but also,

I don't know, like how, when you, when you are chanting, like what is the space that like, do you need to prepare, do you need to do something to get to that space? Or is it automatic now when you're there, you know that so that you can convey that so that I can feel, I mean, you know what, I'm trying to say.

The words lack.

Krishna Das: Yeah. Well, listen, if it was up to me, I'd probably just be watching television. So do I have to say anymore? It's all in my arms, his blessings, he's just transmitting. That's what you feel. I'm just. On all am radio, then he turns on and off as he wishes the radio is [00:35:00] denying anything about anything.

There's nine things about music. He doesn't know what's coming through. It just makes noise. That's what it does it transmits. And I also feel that when I champ and his presence deepens, it's a different experience than the rest of the day, for instance. So if that's his blessings, that's his transmission.

That's his grace. Now the thing about being a doer, this is something that you will experience directly yourself. It's not something you have to manipulate yourself into thinking or believing, and that's, that's not useful when you're really not being the doer and use your a hundred. Doing what you're doing.

There's no part of you. That's going like, wow, I'm really doing this. There's no of thought. No small S self-awareness [00:36:00] is just immersion in the moment, whatever it is and whatever you're doing in the moment. So if you, it's not something you have to make up yourself or talk yourself into, through the ripening practice of chanting or meditating or service to others, we will experience reality, which is that there is no one in here.

There is no me in here. That's just thoughts. There's no one thing. That's my ego. The ego is just a bunch of thoughts that we are identified with because of our comments. It's not a thing. So. Through practice and living and ripening, that awareness will bubble up from inside.

But I think it's the, the, the pain that we have [00:37:00] and the longing that we have to be immersed in that loan. That's what pushes us forward, you know, and calls us actually, and draws us within. And so that's by letting go of the step. That's keeping us stuck in thought and emotions, stories, et cetera, by letting go.

We naturally just move on and move towards our center. It's all these things. We were experienced ourselves. Sooner or later we have to, because that's the deal. So it's not required. And nor is it useful to try to understand how not to do it because who's thinking that you're, you know, you're, you're, you're in quicksand, you know, being set down to the bits, I'm thinking now, what is quicksand?

How does that work as you go down, down, down and [00:38:00] do it.

So, so you just do your practice. Find out what helps you connect, do something regularly and live your life, go for it, whatever whatever's in your head to do, do get out there and be yourself. Be real, be engaged. Don't hold back thinking you're going to be a spiritual person and you're not going to do these things.

That's bullshit. So

love the best lights you can become the best human being in your convenient and heard as few people as possible, including himself in the morning that can ask

Anna Stromquist: that kind of ties into a question I have for you about, you know, Sheila, that the precepts not killing. Do you, what are your. Yeah, there's a bunch, but let's just [00:39:00] focus on that was my question was about vegetarianism or veganism. I know that there've been times in my life when I have been a vegetarian or vegan.

And there's times when I stray. And I'm wondering, what are your beliefs about that regarding your spiritual

Krishna Das: practice

Anna Stromquist: or do you, I think rom does was a big vegan, um,

Krishna Das: Ron vessels not, and nor was he a vegetarian meat, but I believe he ate fish. Okay.

Anna Stromquist: So it's not like a quote unquote requirement because it seems so attach math-based to be attached to the veganism or the vegetarianism. Right.

Krishna Das: Anything you're attached to is not healthy, but it, but on the other hand, doing what you feel is best for them.

It's okay. To be attached to that. I mean, attachment is causes suffering. [00:40:00] That's the definition, the quality of attachment. So when you say that it's not good to be attached, to being vegan, it's not going to be a good to be patched to thinking you are who you think you are. Right. Start there. Right. But since that's too, you know, okay, well then I'll fuck around with all this external stuff.

Oh, you have veganism. I don't want to be attached to that. I don't want to be. So personally I became a vegetarian.

The minute I quit, I quit playing basketball in college and stuff. Getting premier servers in the dining hall, I had already been, started doing yoga and Asana practice at the time. And. In the two or three books about it. At that time, they would talk about vegetarianism. So I just stopped eating meat, fish, chicken, and all that stuff.

At that point, I think I still ate eggs for a while, but look, the man said it clearly. It's not [00:41:00] what you put into your mouth. That man, it's just what comes out. Damage the suffering we create with what our actions and our words. That's where the that's, what's important. Not what we need. Now. There are people who would feel differently about that, but you're asking me, I know people who would kill you if they found you eating a chicken chicken.

Really, really you're, you're angry at me, another human being from my actions. You're ready to kill me because I'm not, I don't believe what you believe.

Anna Stromquist: It's like killing the abortion doctors. Cause you're pro-life, if you're at mat it's, you know,

Krishna Das: This world is completely fucked up completely fucking crazy. 24 7 365. If you have any moment, slight minuscule, a little second of [00:42:00] not being crazy, it's an extraordinary blessing. And then you look around and you see what's going on. And it's, it's a fucking horror show. That doesn't mean that our hearts need to be destroyed by it because if our hearts are destroyed by it, we can't help anyone.

So the work we do on ourselves is not just for themselves. It's for everyone that we come in contact with.

I sinked anybody who wants to sing with anybody who wants to sing. I don't care if they're mediators. I don't care if they're killers. I don't care if they're the worst people in the world. If they want to Chan I'm there to chat with them. Why? Because if I don't, then they don't have that opportunity to

create, to plant the seeds [00:43:00] that will help them in the future. And if you don't help them, if they can't help themselves, then they'll continue causing suffering for everyone, including themselves. There've been places there've been like places that I've gone to sing, where there've been terrible, sexual abuse, all kinds of nonsense, going on, power, tripping, manipulation, cold kind of stuff.

And people have been very angry. The singing in those books. But they don't understand if I don't send them. Yeah. W w where are you going to sing with is only good people where there's only people who never do anything wrong, except they shit on the floor of their own house. You know what I mean? Come on.

They need you the most. Yeah. And I don't even feel like I'm doing it. Like if I'm, if I'm doing something great, I just, whatever I'm asked to sing are try to go if possible, because [00:44:00] that obviously when my heart is sending, so it's people who are suffering, who need help and we're all suffering. So the anger that, that the self-righteous instead, a lot of people have, and of course it comes out of pain and their own betrayals and their own pain, but it's a lack of understanding, unfortunately, and they get very angry about that.

So, uh, what can I do if you want to get angry about it? I can do, but if you want me to sin, if you want, assume with me, you're welcome.

Kristina Wiltsee: I have a funny follow up question about rules regarding singing and you're chanting. I got my yoga teacher training from Kashi in Atlanta, which is magia Bhagavad teas. Yes, you do. And it was interesting there because the first time I ever went to a curator. From there. Nobody [00:45:00] was moving their bodies. I really wanted to dance because when I get into cure time, you know, even just like, I want to really move my body.

And someone said to me, oh, you're not supposed to. Cause you have to like, keep the Kundalini in your spine. And I said, that seems like a silly rule. So I just had to ask, have you ever heard that? Is that a common thing that people saying during,

Krishna Das: I have no idea the things I've heard now everybody's selling something, you know, it's whether you're willing to buy it or not.

So if that works for you, knock yourself out. If it doesn't find something else to do, everybody wants everybody.

There are a million paths up. And everybody on each one of those pasts thinks their path is the only correct way. [00:46:00] That's just the nature of being a human it's just dependent. So you just find the best thing. That's why the whole path to me is learning to trust oneself, the whole path. If you don't trust yourself, where will that love manifest next door?

You know, it's kind of open up. It's your heart's going to open up. And for that to happen, you have to allow those feelings to come. And if you don't trust yourself, you're not going to allow them. You're going to constantly shut yourself down. Yeah. So

that being said, you know that. So whether you get involved in a, in a, in a, a situation like the one you just described or you do. It's a question of, you know, how you feel about it. And there are a lot of people who like to be [00:47:00] told what to do. My group never told us what to do. That was the weirdest thing.

And here it is my last moment in India. The last time I saw him in the body so far, and I'm leaving for America after two and a half years in India, walking around naked, naked, walking around barefoot with a red dress on, you know, I'm about to come back to New York and I, as at work, what am I supposed to do there?

You know, you said, do what you want greatest teaching, do what you want because you know what, that's what you're doing anyway.

So might as well cut through it and not. Yeah, this is what I'm doing is what I want to be doing or what I have to be, because I want to do what I have to do. I have to take care of my responsibilities. I want to do that. [00:48:00] So that's forcing to pay ultimately to pay attention and to, to work through a whole lot of stuff that I wanted to do that I thought I want them to do and see where it led.

It led me to drug addiction. Let me just sickness and disease and suffering and torture. And then I guess, well, maybe I don't want to do this anymore. So then I finished with that next and ultimately it led me to champion again, back to the practice that have I have met in India, but if I had all the.

That was around us, used to say uncooked seeds inside of me, I would not be able to channel the way I do, but I, those seeds got cooked because I followed what I wanted to do. And not [00:49:00] there wasn't a wholly. What most of it was terrible. Ridiculous, ridiculous, torture us and horrible and selfish.

Anna Stromquist: You think that you think by being graced with the presence, your guru, that, that you accelerated the burning of those karmas, so those seeds could toast or you think it was your life practice?

That, that he didn't do anything. I mean, he clearly had a big impact on your life, but do you think he just necessarily just accelerated what would have happened anyways? Yeah, we don't know. We can't do a case study, right?

Krishna Das: Yeah. It is what it is.

Anna Stromquist: He must have though, you know, I don't know.

Krishna Das: Well, you know, I can't prove it to you, but I would agree with him.

Not that he saved my ass many times. I know that for sure. I used to the image I always have about myself as I've just jumped off the [00:50:00] cliff and he moves to Quip and I land on the ground instead of 400,000 feet down crust in the rocks. He moves the coat or jump off and he moves it. I can't even fucking kill myself.

He won't let me, so, but yeah. So when you, you said the, so one time, you know, my Harvey used to tease us. He used to look at us and saying, I have the keys to the mind. I could turn your minds against me and we will follow don't do that. Don't do that,

you know, but.

He used to say, I'll transfer you. And you know, you wake up one day and you go like, what am I doing in India? I want to go back to New York. I feel like going to a blues concert, I'm going to get in your head. Well, what do you mean? [00:51:00]

Anna Stromquist: He transferred you. He put that thought in your

Krishna Das: head. Yeah. He could do whatever he wants.

He can just, he can, he can put whatever thought he wants in your head. You can move you like, like a, like a chess piece on a board. So he has the keys to the mind. So many years later I set the Sydney mom. I said, mom, Mara just said he has the keys to the month. So to me, that means that I am where he wants me to be.

So is it all his doing, is it all grace or is my effort. So she said something that was so great. She said, Christian us is all grants, but you have to act like it. Isn't I love

Anna Stromquist: that.

Kristina Wiltsee: Oh no, you won't forget that one. Well, my mind's just like, [00:52:00]

Krishna Das: I love it. So

Anna Stromquist: then why are we here then?

Krishna Das: Y once again, why the question is irrelevant to us because it can never be answered by us. We can't

Anna Stromquist: understand,

Kristina Wiltsee: and it can never be answered. And it's not the point. It's a distraction of the mind, right. To try and figure out.

Krishna Das: I think the only question you could ask is really how slept do I get this? No, how do I deal with this?

How do I bring myself? How do I show up for others? Is this a good question? Why not useful? Yeah, but so, but because it, in the sense, you know, in Buddhism, I talked about [00:53:00] ultimate reality and relative reality, the reality is our reality is the table is real. Microphone is real. We're talking the CCO.

Ultimate reality is the perfection in which everything, as it is, is very complicated and also very simple, but we don't live in, in ultimately on and relative reality in relative reality.

Every being in the universe, that's in living in relative reality suffers. So we don't want to suffer. So we have to free ourselves from that. And when we, we, when we become free of all pain and suffering, then where we recognize, we recognize ultimate reality. So the grace mark is doing everything it's all done already.

That's [00:54:00] ultimate reality that we don't know that we know we wake up in the morning and we start bullshitting ourselves all day long. And then we try to figure out what's going on. You sit a little bit and we go through our lives. So in that reality, we have choices to make people say, you know, love. I say, if you think you have a choice, make it, you can't don't, don't try to, up-level all it's already done.

It doesn't matter. Yes, it matters you

Anna Stromquist: on this planet does,

Krishna Das: but there are people who don't want to admit that they say, oh, nothing matters. It's all done. It's all grace. That's the kind of thinking that's super destructive because it, for us, that's a fantasy. We don't really feel that way. We don't really know that it's all done.

That there is no ego that there's no second. We, for us, [00:55:00] there is so to try to Uplevel with mentally,

Anna Stromquist: it's trying to like by bypass, bypass your yeah. Your practice and your Seva serve, serving others for those who don't know that.

Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. So, so the craving for the form list, it's my favorite, my favorite cravings

for the form list.

Krishna Das: You're lying because when you say formless, it isn't formula, it has a form you're calling us. So it's not the formless. You crave it's freedom from thinking and freedom from suffering. Formless can only be approached through form because we're informed, right? You said that you said it's through the form that you reached the formulas, because the essence of all form is formulas, [00:56:00] but we don't even know what that means.

But when you're saying you want the formulas, that's not really what you want. You want to be happy. That's what you want. Can you imagine that the thing that you're calling formulas will be happy for you, but that's not one word. That's another feeling that you want to have as opposed to other feelings that you don't want to have and feelings of form.

Yeah. I'm not hard to say it's all one, all one, all one. But we don't know that. I think I may, you think you're using that's two right there and three with the three of us, and then there's all these other people. So all one is open relative, realities, us dealing with our ship,[00:57:00]

which is the only way to get beyond it. You have to deal with it. You have to, you have to recognize it and learn how to release it and generate and plant the seeds of what you really want in your life. Yeah. All the complicated stuff. When you start to talk about,

Anna Stromquist: thank you so much for. You can talk about this shit with everyone, you know?

Kristina Wiltsee: Yes. And I, and I'm eager to, I'm eager to hear. And did you have any more questions? Cause I'm eager and say give them some time to play. Cause I would love to hear, cause I feel like we've talked a lot about it and then we can experience it.

Anna Stromquist: Definitely. I feel like, yeah. I feel like I'm satiated on the apparent level,

Kristina Wiltsee: on the level of form and the mind feels satiated and now the heart's like my turn.

Anna Stromquist: Yeah. Would you licensing, I guess you made a [00:58:00] promise. You can't turn it down, right?

Krishna Das: If you want to, we can talk again. I enjoyed talking to you guys and we can do this again. If you want.

Where are you located? Roughly? Oh, I know where you are. Yeah,

Anna Stromquist: we're both in, well, we're both in Atlanta, Georgia. She's about an hour and a half away. And, um, are you in New York? You're

Krishna Das: on

Anna Stromquist: and I think you were just in Maui. I was looking at your events list on your, were you just in, oh, you're

Krishna Das: going

Anna Stromquist: okay. So I did have one question that was just not that spiritually related, but I was curious how has COVID affected your kirtans?

Cause it looked like you're delivering live for people who don't know kirtan is the call and response chanting that he does. So you're back to doing that now again.

Krishna Das: Well, I've done a couple of things with actual living human beings in the room, but I'm not so far. I haven't really been touring. I'm going to be doing some like on Maui..

We're doing like a seven day, five day retreat that I'm going to post. I'm doing what? The five or six day retreat, then I'm going to Baja in Mexico in the end of January to do at the seven day retreats. So it seems like the retreat situation is a little bit more controllable in terms of health issues and going to different cities night after night, big halls and lots of people, you know, I don't know how that will work at all world.

Although supposedly have something planned for February and March on the west coast, I guess I

Anna Stromquist: misunderstood. So those are kind of isolated long-term events. They're not just like a drop, it's

Krishna Das: not like, or like a big tour one after the other and go. Well, I don't know. I guess we're planning to try to [01:00:00] do that in February, March, and I'm a little bit like,

wow. I forgot what that was about. Realistic. I

Anna Stromquist: saw you have some online courses. I'm really curious about one of the courses in there was talking about how to live from the heart, or you recommend one of your courses over another. For someone like me, who's, who's trying to, I I've done a lot of Vipassana and a lot of mental based meditation, but I'm trying to be more heart-based now.

Or if that makes sense, I want to feel more.

Krishna Das: Well, one thing I would suggest for you since you've been doing the possible would be to look in through Sean Salzburg. TPA is loving kindness, meditation. They

Anna Stromquist: teach that in those courses. But

Krishna Das: for me, it's the whole thing really. I mean, [01:01:00] it's a very powerful practice, but method is also a big part of them.

Anna Stromquist: You said Sharon Shalba ?

Krishna Das: Salzberg. S A L Z B E R G.

Anna Stromquist: Okay, perfect. And I'll put a link in the show notes.

Krishna Das: Yeah, she's fantastic. She's a very good. Met her in Bodh Gya in 1971. She kept meditating all these years and I just kept watching TV.

Anna Stromquist: you keep referencing TV. What's your favorite show right now?

Krishna Das: I don't have a favorite show. I just watch it. Um, I'm even embarrassed to tell you what I like. I like really dark, serial killer.

there's a lot of good stuff on it. So I don't know, you know, there's, I don't really know what's on my website, so I don't know what to tell you. But the last I did three courses for [01:02:00] the shift network. I would say those three. Um, if you want them to do one, try the last one, the third one, just it's I think it's really more natural and more kind of, I think it was really good, but I also just did one for the, another network called.

Yeah, I wish I had a mind and body philosophy that's not available yet, but hopefully it will be available soon. And then just look, I think there's a lot of stuff on my website that screen,

Anna Stromquist: and to let our listeners know that who's listening, that you have, you have free courses, you have lectures, you looked downloads.

You've got, I think you have more stuff for free than you do for sale in that, in that shop or that in the free area. So if you're loving this interview, please go check out his website. It's [01:03:00] www.krishnadas.com.

Kristina Wiltsee: I also have a follow-up question that's just dropped in because for years I did a, I did my own little Cureton with me, myself and I on the full moon.

And because I was living in a really remote place at the time when I did it. So for someone who is interested in. Not just necessarily obviously participating in care to come, but also seeing keratan themselves. Do you have any advice for someone who might want to use that as their practice open

Krishna Das: your mouth noise?

Lauren Bacall said, just look her up and below, you know, you can sing along with the CDs that's practice too. You don't have to be with other people which can be problematic and you don't have to just do it by yourself. And you know, when you don't have any support, that's what the CDs are for that. There could be some best practice, you know, for sure you can check out.

I'm sure it's easy to prime, different groups who are [01:04:00] champing, but you'll have to really see if it works for you because it's not so easy to find one that doesn't have. Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Stromquist: I just want to drop in. We like to give little practical tips on our, on our podcasts. And I just want to put this one out there that whenever I'm cleaning my house, which I do have a lot of ego resistance to, I put in my little wireless headphones and I play your music, excuse the, the hacking dog in the background.

And I get into the zone. I just, I just, listen, I do the call, repeat with you while I clean and my house, it turns something that I find a note into, just something beautiful. Like I'm like, I'm going to transmute, today's cleaning session with, I want to know what love is by Krishna death or whatever.

And it really makes some of these tedious life chores, so enjoyable. So thank you. You've been with me many, many a house cleanings.[01:05:00]

Krishna Das: Yeah,

Anna Stromquist: exactly. Exactly.

Krishna Das: Wonderful. So what would you like me to sing?

Anna Stromquist: Gosh, my son's favorite is Jai Ram. He always sings that, he's a little six year old. He loves that one. I love the one. I want to know what love is that one, so beautiful.

Krishna Das: whatever

Anna Stromquist: you, whatever you feel inspired, whatever you

Kristina Wiltsee: feel inspired to

Anna Stromquist: pick it,

Kristina Wiltsee: pick it.

Krishna Das: < PLAYS MUSIC >

Kristina Wiltsee: Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming to visit us. Thank you for your wisdom.

Anna Stromquist: Thanks so much.

Kristina Witlsee: Take care.

Links from the episode:

Anna’s Favorite Kirtan

Krishna Das’ Online Courses