To say that Krishna Das has had an interesting life would be an understatement. From the acid-popping rock-n-roll prodigy, to the disciple of an Indian Guru on the Himalayas, then spending 21 years in despair-driven wilderness with bouts of drug addiction and depression, to finally finding his peace in devotional singing that’s made him into the ‘Rockstar of Yoga’, it’s been one helluva journey for Krishna Das.

And thank God for that because, at the end of it all, he’s giving us music that pierces through the flesh, bones and everything else in between to touch us at the core of our hearts, and evokes a feeling of love for someone or something one doesn’t even know exists. Sometimes, while listening to Krishna Das, I find myself welling up with a sense of love growing out of my heart like a cloud. It’s the feeling that makes you want to love everything.

In the documentary One Track Heart, Daniel Goleman — creator of the concept of Emotional Intelligence — says that Krishna Das’ music creates a neuro-neuron connection between him and the audience, connecting them all to a higher power. Music producer Rick Rubin says that Krishna Das has the ability to convey emotion and belief and spirit with his voice.

How does this happen? How do his songs touch you so deep?

Krishna Das himself says that it’s not about him. That he’s just a medium. That somebody else is doing it.

“I am like an old rusty pipe. He just picks me up, makes beautiful music through it, and throws it away.”

Hearing Krishna Das talk about his work seems almost like reading the user manual for the Bhagavad Gita.

Is this where the purity of Krishna Das’ music comes from? Is he, unknowingly, giving us a lesson on Karma Yoga?

The Bhagavad Gita

is an ancient Indian scripture.

On the eve of the great war, Arjuna asks his charioteer Lord Krishna to take the chariot to the middle of the field. As he looks at his cousins, his grand uncle, his Guru, and many other loved ones, people he needs to fight and kill to reclaim what is rightfully his and his brothers’, Arjuna breaks down.

“These I would not like to slay, though myself slain, even for the kingdom of the three worlds, how then for this earth?”

Lord Krishna takes this opportunity to show Arjuna the supreme truth through a dialogue that comprises 18 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita.

Chapter 3 of this dialogue is on Karma Yoga, the Yoga of Works.

Krishna Das

grew up in Long Island, New York as Jeffrey Kagel. He says he was mostly morose and lonely growing up, his only escape being playing Blues on his guitar for hours every day.

At 21, at the cusp of a promising rock-n-roll career, he happened to meet Richard Alpert.

Richard Alpert a.k.a. Ram Dass

Richard Alpert, at the time, was an enigmatic character. He had attained notoriety for having been dismissed from Harvard University where he was a professor in Psychology. He had discovered LSD and had been found experimenting with it with some students.

Soon after, to understand what this chemical actually does to people, Alpert arrived in India with a suitcase full of pills. He traveled to the Himalayas, meeting mystics and sadhus, getting their opinion on the drug.

His search ended when he met Neem Karoli Baba a.k.a. Maharaj ji.

Alpert gave Maharaj ji an LSD pill. Nothing happened. He gave him two. Still, nothing happened. Then, he gave him enough pills to kill a horse. And sat with him the whole day. “Nothing happened,” says Alpert shaking his head in disbelief.

“The ‘Yogi medicine’ puts you in a room with Christ,” said Maharaj ji. “But it can’t keep you there. That’s the thing. The only thing that can keep you there is love.”

Not much later, Richard Alpert became Ram Dass.

From Jeff Kagel to Krishna Das

Kagel was living on a farm in upstate New York with some Jungian acidhead mountain climbers who knew Ram Dass from when he was still “Richard Alpert”.

They went to see Alpert at his father’s place up in New Hampshire, and when they got back, one of them had light shooting out of his eyes.

Kagel drove all the way through the night to get to Ram Dass. The minute he walked into the room where Ram Dass was sitting, without a word being spoken between them, he knew that what he was looking for — whatever it was — existed in the world.

“At first I thought Ram Dass had it, that he was it, so I hung around him as much as I could.”

Kagel chucked up his immediate music career and followed Ram Dass to his family farm where, with hundreds others including Steve Jobs, he started following the technique Ram Dass seemed to be teaching.

“Soon, I could see that everything was coming ‘through’ him. And what was coming through him was Maharaj ji. Ram Dass was just a vehicle.” ~ Krishna Das

Two years later, as part of a group led by Ram Dass, Jeff Kagel reached Maharaj ji’s ashram in Kainchi near Almora on the Himalayas in India.

Kagel lived in the ashram in Kainchi for the next 18 months.

It is here that he became Krishna Das.

Krishna Das, kirtanwallah

Krishna Das took to ashram life smoothly.

Being a musician, he joined the daily kirtans — singing of devotional songs. In fact, very soon, he became the leader of the kirtanwallahs. He knew the words to all the bhajans, could recite the Hanuman Chalisa, knew the mantras and would often experiment with the tunes and sounds. People say he was very good at it.

Maharaj ji also made him the priest of the Durga temple.

Maharaj ji loves every one, but he might have had a special place in his heart for Krishna Das. As can be seen from the fact that the only gift he ever kept from anyone was when Krishna Das’ mother brought him a pullover the first time she came to India.

Yet, Maharaja ji sent him back.

“I had all these Western karmas to deal with. So Maharaj ji sent me back to work them out.”

“I’ll sing to you in America”

were the words in Krishna Das’ head when he turned around for one last look of Maharaj ji before he left the ashram. He didn’t know then that this would be the last time he sees Maharaj ji in flesh and blood. Because, soon after, in 1973, Neem Karoli Baba left his body.

Maharaj ji, in fact, had sent Krishna Das a message to come. But he couldn’t get his things in order in time. And Maharaj ji didn’t wait.

Krishna Das was devastated when he got the news.

“That was it. My life was over. Being with him was the only thing that made me happy that way. There was nothing that ever came close.”

Thus began a downward spiral for Krishna Das that lasted 21 years.

During this time, Krishna Das lived mostly in friends’ homes, did odd jobs, painted fences, sometimes drove a truck, sometimes a school bus. Stuff like that. Plus, for some time he was also seriously addicted to crack.

Fatherhood changed things in him.

In 1994, he approached Jivamukti Yoga in New York for spiritual, devotional songs from the land of Yoga called kirtans.

He got an hour every Monday in the studio. Soon he was pushing the main yoga classes for time.

But the fame and popularity wasn’t exactly working for him. Krishna Das could see himself slipping.

“Because of my hungry desires for fame, power, money, sex…there was no possibility of me doing the chanting the right way. I knew I would use the chanting to feed my desires…I was incapable of avoiding it.”

“I was horrified. I was finally doing the one thing that I thought could bring me back to Maharaj ji’s presence, and I was being prevented from doing this because of myself.”

Krishna Das went back to Kainchi.

Maharaj ji’s big form

Siddhi Ma: So, what’s your plan?

Krishna Das: I’ll be here till the end of May.

Siddhi Ma: No. You’ll stay till June 15. You have to see Maharaj ji’s big form.

So Krishna Das decided to stay till June 15, the day of the Bhandara, when thousands of people come from all over the country to eat a meal blessed by Maharaj ji Neem Karoli Baba.

The night before the Bhandara, Krishna Das went to the roof and looked up at the stars. It was something he had done every night of his stay, looked at the stars and speak to Maharaj ji.

On this night, he looked up and asked

“I am returning in two days. And nothing’s changed. Why aren’t you doing anything?”

The next day, there were 50,000 people at the ashram. Krishna Das stood in the middle of all the noise and commotion, watching the flow of people. Suddenly, in a flash of a moment, everything became quiet and peaceful around him. Krishna Das felt elevated to a different zone. Almost as if he was floating on a sea of serenity in the middle of chaos.

Krishna Das went to the Durga temple, where he was once the priest, and sat behind it. He has no idea for how long he was there. But, he knows what he saw. Maharaj ji made him see everything. The truth.

He now understood what Siddhi Ma meant by Maharaj ji’s big form.

Krishna Das was finally free.

“To be free to sing. I was freed from thinking that I was doing it.”

Finding Karma Yoga in the works of Krishna Das

“I just sit down, play my harmonium, sing and have a good time. And look at this, what’s going on?”

Today, Krishna Das has sold over 300,000 records, is on his way to becoming the most popular chant artist of all time, has been nominated for the Grammys, has performed at the Grammys as well as all over the world to packed audiences.

“Krishna Das only sings to Maharaj ji. And the audience listens in on this tremendous love affair.” ~ Ram Dass

What changed that day in Kainchi? What did Maharaj ji show Krishna Das that day?

“During the course of the day, I saw that when people come to the chant, they don’t really want me. They’re getting attracted to the connection. Once I realised it’s not about me, I was free to sing.”

‘Its not about me’?

“It doesn’t matter what I experience. It doesn’t matter what others experience either. It’s not why I am doing this. My job is to chant and that’s what I do.”

Is this what Lord Krishna means when, in the Bhagavad Gita, he says,

“Be free from the obscuration and bewilderment of the three Gunas, and action can continue as it must continue.

The mind must bring the senses under its control and then the organs of action must be used for their proper office, for action, but for action done as Yoga.”

What does this mean — action done as yoga?

“Karma Yoga.

It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works.

Action full and free done without subjection to the sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.”

“Every time I sit down to sing, it’s Practice. As I sing, everything else moves into the background, as I begin to chant.”

If not desire what, then, is the motive to do any work?

Arjuna asks the same question to Lord Krishna.

“How can I fight and yet in my soul not think or feel that I the individual am fighting, nor desire victory nor be inwardly touched by defeat?”

Lord Krishna replies,

“By doing all works with offering to the divine as the only object. Any action may be done either from the narrow ego-sense or for the sake of the divine. Egoism is the knot of the bondage. By acting Godwards, without any thought of ego, we loosen this knot and finally arrive at freedom.”

“The Karma Yogi recognises that his life is a part of this divine action in Nature and not a thing separate and to be held and pursued for its own sake.

In that divine and not in any personal enjoyment he finds now his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight. He does works for the sake of the Divine only, as a pure sacrifice, without attachment or desire.”

Krishna Das uses the analogy of renting a car. He says this body we have is like renting a car.

“Who’s driving the car? What is His purpose? That’s what we need to be searching for. And that’s where the car needs to go.”

“To participate in that divine work, to live for God in the world will be the rule of the Karma Yogi” ~ Lord Krishna.

Still the temple priest

Siddhi Ma at the Kainchi ashram once told Krishna Das that his destiny was sealed the moment Maharaj ji made him the priest at the Durga temple.

As the priest, one of the things Krishna Das would do was hand out charanamrit, nectar from the Goddess’ feet, to devotees.

Also read, the miracle of love — Neem Karoli Baba. Click here

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