Guru Ganesha: The Ageless Art of Kirtan
I got in college, like everybody else back in the late ’60s, I got into some bad habits. I was taking LSD and, I made my body into a test tube. I joke that I majored in chemistry in college. The band was getting popular, and we did concerts with the Allman Brothers and Iron Butterfly and Sha Na Na. But, I got to the point where I had an inner voice that I could hear that was kind of crying out to be heard. And it was saying, “Hey, man, you better find an alternative way to feel good or you’re going to die from all the drugs.”
My mother had taught me about prayer, so I started to pray for guidance. And before you know it, I met a gentleman, a wonderful teacher from India named Yogi Bhajan. He was a master of Kundalini yoga and meditation. And I took some classes with him, got very inspired.
At one point, I talked to him. I was out to dinner with him and some of his close students, and they told him I was a rock and roll musician. I told him that it was getting very hard because I was trying to give up drugs, did Kundalini yoga, but everybody in the band was still into drugs. My name at the time was Michael and he said, “Michael, whatever you leave behind to walk on the spiritual path, the path of yoga, will re-manifest later on in your life in a higher form.” He encouraged me to kind of leave the band because, in your early formative stages on the yoga path, you need to surround yourself with people that are really working on themselves spiritually. And I left the path, I left the band. It was very hard for me to do because I loved everybody but I needed to do it. Interestingly enough, it’s 30 years later, 35 years later, I remember sitting on stage with Snatam Kaur, you know, the great sacred chant artist who I toured with for 11 years, and thinking, my God, Yogi Bhajan was right. Here I am now. I left the band 35 years ago and now I’m sitting next to this angel, Snatam Kaur. A stone gargoyle would cry when she sings, it was so beautiful.
Liane Buck: I’m familiar with Yogi Bhajan’s work.
Guru Ganesha: Well, I remember reading a book at that time by Swami Vivekananda called Raja Yoga. And in his book, He said when this consciousness is ready, the spiritual guide will manifest on the physical plane. Just before I met Yogi Bhajan, I read that and I was consciously praying for a teacher. And then Yogi Bhajan came into my life, I know some people find this hard to believe, but I know you’ll understand it.
Liane Buck: So, what you’re saying in other words is that devotional music, the practice of sacred chants can really transform us into better people.
Guru Ganesha: Yeah. I love all the mantras. They go right to my heart and, kind of leaving the mind behind.
And it for me, these beautiful, positive affirmations that the mantras are because a mantra reminds us that we’re all divine beings. Yogi Bhajan had a saying that said if you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.
Liane Buck: That is utterly and absolutely beautiful, the gift that we receive continuously is divine, it really is.
Guru Ganesha: When I first heard a mantra, tears started pouring out of my eyes, you know? And it was a different kind of crying then I’d ever experienced ‘because it was coming straight from the heart chakra, straight from the heart center.
Yogi Bhajan used to also always talk about work as worship.
I learned the power of mantra because one of the first things he did when I joined the ashram is he told me I needed to learn Karma yoga because I’d never really done an honest day’s work in my life. And I became went from being a rock and roll star to being the dishwasher in our vegetarian restaurant, I was washing dishes 16 hours a day six days a week. But, it wasn’t until I started chanting while I was washing the dishes that all of a sudden it became a joy-filled experience.
