Ep. 31 - Nina Rao

This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. This is Synchronous. [Music] Welcome to episode 31 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is Nina Rao. And I'm going to get to Nina in just a second. Don't you worry. First things, first business, order of business, this week's book giveaway. Do we not know what the book giveaway is? Welcome new listeners. If you don't know what the book giveaway is, or welcome returning listeners, if you don't know what the book giveaway is, that's weird. But essentially, I'm giving away a book every single week.

It's pretty easy to enter and you are permanently entered. So once you enter, once you are entered once, you're entered in perpetuity. So the way you do that, go to syncpodcast.com, syncpodcast.com, enter your email. You are now part of the community, weekly communications about the podcast, the show, and automatically entered to win the book. It's not really a gimmick so much as I think it's cool idea for people to get books, like on a weekly basis, that's like a good thing. So if you're interested in doing that, that's how you do it. And also, a quick congrats to John in Florida for winning last week's book giveaway, which was Muenjur Rinpoche's "The Joy of Living."

So congrats, John. This week's book is, it's going to be a fiction, the first fiction book after however many weeks I've been doing this, this is the first, first, this is the first fiction book. It's by Tom Robbins and it's "Skinny Legs and All," really one of my favorite fiction books. I love Tom Robbins, really, really great writer, has written some of my favorite books. Love this one. So yeah, if you're interested, you're entered. And thank you so much for everyone who's joined the community before. There's now, I think, 2 billion of you, really incredible that just in a few short months we already have 2 billion people, a part of this, so that's great.

Also before I get to Nina, don't worry, getting to Nina, I wanted to talk a little bit about MindPod Network and some of the things that are going on. I will be in direct communication with people who are on the MindPod Network email list in the coming weeks about some pretty significant changes that are taking place. But before I'm going to delve into the whole thing, and if you don't know what MindPod Network is, it's a website, mindpodnetwork.com, a podcast network with a bunch of really awesome podcasters, and just kind of a destination. So my general idea as a co-founder, founder of MindPod Network was to create essentially a large, a wide spectrum of entry points and touch points for getting into any of this type of stuff I talk about on this show.

So consciousness, mindfulness, quote unquote, spirituality, you know, really just talking about stuff that's important, trying to be substantive and add value through conversations. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that, right? You can do that through the Buddhist lens, you can do it through a Bhakti, Hindu lens, you can do it through an artistic, creative lens. You can do it through so many different kind of prisms you can look at it through. The goal with MindPod Network for me was always to create kind of a cornucopia, a large sampling of different places and entry points. And for people who are different to find what they like, because not everyone isn't at the same thing.

And sometimes, even me as an example, I sometimes really, really like one thing, and then don't really love it anymore, or maybe I come back to loving it later. So that's the idea with MindPod Network. Okay. Onto the news, I'm really happy to announce that Zach Leary and his It's All Happening Show is joining MindPod Network officially. And there's going to be an email coming out there from the list, MindPod List. I really, he's the first of many new voices who are going to be on MindPod Network. And I've said, no, I feel like I've said the word MindPod Network too many times. Let's call it MPN from now on.

But if you're interested in technology, consciousness, just yoga, art, music, Zach Show is fucking phenomenal. One of the podcasts, here's a deep confession. I am not a huge podcast listener. I don't listen to a ton of them, but Zach's is one that I check out regularly almost every week. I've missed the past two because of the baby. But really one of my favorite podcasts, I love his guests, I love his takes on things. He's really just a down to earth, but extremely wise and smart dude and funny too. So I'm really excited to be able to announce that that's going to be on MindPod Network. Okay, rambled on enough there.

Let's talk about Nina. So Nina is a kirtan while in her own right. She sings kirtan. She's also a krishna das is a very, very famous, very successful kirtan singer in the West, krishna das is manager. But she's just, she's a very, very cool and nice person and extremely talented. I, a practice I've been doing for the past few years is chanting or saying the Hanuman chalisa on a daily basis. And I actually learned, which is like a 40 line stands a thing. I learned it from her CD, which I will have links to in this on this page. And she's just a really very genuine and interesting person. And I think that'll come through on this episode.

It's wonderful to hear her backstory and hear kind of how she was affected by things she grew up in India, but then moved to the United States and all over the world. And then she kind of got back into kirtan in the 90s, you know, she, she hadn't really been engaging with it, but you remember some songs that her grandfather used to play and sing and very, very cool story. Really, really excellent. I'm going to have links to her website and some of the event she does in the New York area. She was just at the most recent rambas retreat and her, she was awesome. And I'll try to have some videos from that in this episode.

But yeah, there's not too much more to say except I think you're really going to like her. I'm really, really happy. This is actually, if you remember, very early on, I had recorded a podcast with her and it didn't, my audio didn't record. And it was an awesome conversation. I was super bummed. I actually got really upset about it, which is not the point of this podcast to make me upset. And you know, we've got to record this other one and it was equally as awesome. Really happy it turned out well. And yeah, I guess there's not much more to say. So yeah, rate review, the ratings and the reviews continue to come in on iTunes.

And I really, really appreciate it. If you want to support the podcast, there's a couple ways to do that now. There is by rating and reviewing, subscribing as always. And then also, if you want to make a donation, I am now accepting donations just to cover the operating costs of what it takes to run this podcast. So that's like the book giveaways, the social media advertising, the MailChimp list, really basic stuff, not more than like four or $500 a month. But it would be cool to kind of have the community do that. I feel kind of weird asking for it, but I also recognize like, I like to give money sometimes.

So why not accept it? No big deal if you can't. I really appreciate you listening and the continued support and other really cool stuff coming. I know I keep alluding to that, but I think there's going to be some stuff you guys are really excited about. So without further ado, here is Nina Rao. So thank you, thank you for coming on again. My pleasure. You better get your recording straight, buddy. So I mean, I told you last time that, you know, we recorded this and it was one of my favorite ones. It was early on that I had recorded and then I immediately realized that it didn't actually record.

I recorded a whole bunch of silence. So yeah, that was not so great. Well, it's good if you can listen to the silence, I suppose. Yeah, it was good. My reaction to it was not so good. I was really upset and angry. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm having a podcast. We're talking about all these lovely things. It was so wonderful. And then I realized it's not there and I'm flipping out. So we can talk about how potentially chanting can help with that type of stuff. So to get started, could you just give like a brief history about yourself and how you kind of started walking this Kirtan path? I know, you know, starting with, you grew up in India and then you got into Kirtan though basically after you had already been in the West and had, you know, the whole thing going on there.

So could you give a recap of that? Yeah. I actually did not grow up in India entirely. I'd say of the first 20 years of my life, I spent about 10 years off and on in India because of my father's job. So we lived in a lot of places, including Thailand, Australia, Canada. And then that was interspersed with spells of three to six years in India. In those times, we would go to visit my grandfather in his village home, which is on the border of Karnataka and Kerala in the south of India. And it was a tiny village then. I mean, now apparently cruise ships stop there and all kinds of things happen. But as a tiny village with mostly rice fields and fruit orchards and a very old fort and lots of temples in the surrounding area.

And he had a home, a homestead that we would go visit. And he was actually an engineer for the British government at that time. And so he was actually the only person in the village who had a car. So when he came to pick us up at the station was a big thing because, you know, anyway. But so that's how I knew my grandfather as, you know, an engineer, you could fix everything. He was always busy doing something around the house. He was retired at that point. But what he did have was the harmonium in the house and it was an old, like a foot pedal harmonium where you actually sit in a chair and the bellows, you pump with your feet.

Oh, wow. And he would play the harmonium with both hands. As you know, you know, we don't do that. We have one hand pumping the bellows in it, right. And he also played, you know, bamboo flute and he didn't spend a lot of time doing that for some reason, but I was attracted to the harmonium because I always wanted to play piano, but because we moved around, we couldn't have a piano at home. So I couldn't practice. So I never took piano lessons. It was one of those things. So I never really trained in music at all as a child and, or ever actually as a matter of fact. So, but what I, what I did ask him, I said, you know what, what, what is, what do you do on this?

And I said, well, I'll show you as long as you sing with me. So I said, sure, we'll sing with you. So he called my aunts and my mother and my cousins who were all staying in the house at the time. And he started singing these beautiful bajans that I, you know, I'd never done anything like this before where it's all happening in your home. The closest thing that I remembered was when I went to Catholic school, you know, I always wanted to go to some of the kids went to mass in the chapel. But us non-Christians were relegated to what was called moral science. And I said, well, I forget the moral science.

Can I go to church, chapel with them because they would sing. And I love that. I love just singing the hymns. Anyway, so that was the closest thing I had felt to that kind of, you know, spiritual sacred music. And there it was happening in our own home and he was a phenomenal singer, totally natural. He again never trained, but he studied some of the old, the bajans and poems that were composed by some of the South Indian poet saints. And he sang them for us. And I was amazed. And then he said, okay, we're going to sing something simple. And he taught us a couple of bajans and I'd never heard it before.

And I was, I loved them and I, and you know, we did this for a couple of summers and until I was probably about nine, 10, 11 years old. And then I said, I was going to write it down and write down the words in English. And I also had a tape recorder with me and I recorded them, those tapes. And you know, that happened and the tapes kind of got dusty on my shelf. And one of those summers also he invited the entire village to his home. And because he had a big homestead, the living room was kind of open with grills, you know, his tropical out down there in the South and it was beautiful because they set up an altar in the middle of the room and the women sat on one side and the men sat on another.

And everybody took turns leading a chat. And I remember just having this incredible feeling of sense of community and connectedness in a group that I'd never felt before and it was all felt very normal. Nobody was acting as if we were doing anything. It was all part of the, you know, the lives of the people and all the kids, everybody knew the chance and that was very beautiful. We didn't do that at home with my parents because we lived in the West in a lot of the places my father was transferred to. So we had never really done that and anyway, so that was my experience up to the age of about, I don't know, 10, 11 and also during that time when I went for my summer holidays, I would read whatever was on my grandfather's shelf.

And he happened to have copies of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and what was called the Krishna Mahabharata, which is a stories of Krishna, written in lay person form. And they were in English, which was amazing because I couldn't actually read our native tongue, which is kind of I couldn't read that script. So I was amazed he had it in English and I got really absorbed in those books and I would read them every summer that I went back. And I found out much later that the writer of those stories of Krishna was actually a devotee of named Krolli Baba, just found this out like a few years ago.

He doesn't mention that in the books when I read them, it wasn't written anywhere, but his name shows up in some of the stories of Maharaji. So that was interesting for me to see that connection, you know, how our guru is like working behind the scenes. And we have no idea, you know, pulling the strings and so that was cool for me to find out. And so that's one section of my life. And then fast forward to me moving to America in my, you know, as 21, 20 years old. And I came here to kind of make a life for myself because my father felt that in India there weren't that many opportunities for women.

And so I came here to do my MBA, my masters in business and ended up not doing that. I started working right away at a bank on Wall Street and that went on for a few years until I had a burnout and then I switched to, I created, well, at first I worked for a company that led wildlife safaris in Africa and India because I had been to East Africa. Actually the company I worked for was a wildlife safari company leading tours into Africa. And I had sort of become very interested in wildlife there because my parents had moved there and we had visited and I loved it so much. And when I burned out on my bank job, I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, completely else.

And that then transitioned into me creating my own company where I wanted to do very specialized trips to photograph wildlife, but I also wanted to support the wildlife of India. So I went on trips to Africa but also to India to see wild tigers and then I set up a non-profit for saving wild tigers and that's a whole other chapter of my life. But what happened during that time was I started to take yoga classes because that was sort of the beginning of the boom of yoga in the West as far as I can tell. I might have been a little late, that might have begun happening possibly late 80s, early 90s.

But by the time I started taking yoga classes in my gym, it was 1995, I'm going to say. And one of the things that the teachers did at that time was they would play spiritual music. Now they kept it all very toned down because it was in New York sports club, it wasn't a yoga center, but I found it very natural for me to enjoy the yoga, you know, before that I was doing all the cardio and lifting and that kind of thing. So what happened was once at my health club, my yoga teacher left something happened and she had to leave and I asked her how I could study with her some more because we didn't have another yoga class and she invited me to come to a yoga retreat, which she was doing up in the Catskills and one of those summer camps up in the Catskills where she had rented out the place and she was going to do that and I thought, okay, retreat, yoga retreat, sure, let's see what that's about.

What I didn't know at the time was that she was actually a Jiva Mukti teacher. She just didn't bring all those teachings into the health club where she was teaching, so I didn't really know her background. But when I went into the retreat with her, all the spiritual teachings that she had opened up to by being a teacher at Jiva Mukti, she brought to the retreat and what she also did was bring Krishna Das to the retreat to lead Satsang at night, which I had never, yeah, I didn't know what that was, I didn't know who he was, and I was telling my told my friend, I was like, okay, this is some failed Indian musician.

I don't think I'm going to go for this. I was really exhausted because I was working very long days and so we had driven up there and I said, I'm going to come to the Satsang because it's the opening night, I want to be respectful to my teacher and so I went and it was very simple, the room, there was a little table and on the table was a photograph of the, what's, what I now know as the Taos Hanumanji and also a photograph of Maharajinim Krolli Baba with a little candle, and I looked at that and I thought, I wonder who that is, you know, I had no idea. And so after the opening half, the orientation happened, Krishna's walked in with his drummer at the time, and I thought to myself, okay, this is worse because here's this guy, he's a western dude, he's wearing black t-shirt and black sweatpants and then the drummer's wearing like construction boots and jeans and I said, this is really going to be horrible, but I stayed.

And he sort of didn't say very much on that first night, he sat down and he started with singing ome, there weren't sound systems in those days or anything, it was very simple, there was about maybe 50 of us at this retreat and we were in a little room sitting together and I just remember that I had sat in the back of the room so I couldn't make a getaway, but three hours later, really, I was sitting right in front of him, I somehow made my way up there and he started with Sri Ram Jairam and I don't remember anything else until the evening was over and it just got deeper and deeper over the weekend because he did some workshops, I think he did a one or two workshops, I can't even, I don't remember, I just know that kind of descended into this space that I had some inkling of a memory of it from when I had chanted with my grandfather in his home with our village, you know.

And that space was recreated that night with him chanting and at the end of the weekend, my yoga teacher Kachi, she had one of those sharing circles which I dreaded, sure, sure, hate those things and also I was kind of like a part-time yogi, these people were really like practicing every day and they were full on vegan and, you know, all this stuff and I just felt, you know, that I wasn't really fitting in so much, but it was fine. And so they had all these interesting academic things to say in the sharing circle and I was the last person. And the only thing, like few minutes before I was about to speak, Krishna has walked into the room and I just burst into tears, I had nothing to say and it was really like, you know, when you have your heart cracks open, you don't even know that you were waiting for your heart to crack open, you don't know why you're crying because you're not really sad.

Right, right. And I have no idea what's happened and then the retreat was over and everybody left and I was like, "Shit, what just happened here?" Anyway, so I was driving some of the yogis home in my car and I was talking to men. They were regular students at Jeeva Mukti Yoga School and they, and I was like, "What is this, Krishna Dasan? Who is this and what's that?" And they're like, "Oh, don't you have his tape?" And I even, I did, this is how out of it I was, he had actually brought sample audio tapes, cassette tapes, of one track heart, which had just been released at that time, his first album.

Yeah. And he was giving them away and I didn't even get one, I don't know what I was doing. And so they gave it to me and, and on that tape is one of the, in one of the tracks there's a recording of Maharajee saying, "Rama Ram." Yes, yes, yes. And I, I had chills, I mean, the whole, my life changed after that, Noah. It was, and then the best news was that they said to me, "Oh, well, you can reach him." You know, he comes and sings at Jeeva Mukti every Monday night. And I really felt like I'd hit the jackpot, you know, that I could do this. And, but, but he was taking a break for a while because I don't know where he was traveling or something.

And so I just kept listening to the tape over and over and over and over and over again. And on the back of the tape was a phone number for Triloka Records because I could think of Noah the way to reach him. Right, right. I asked Kachimayoga teacher, she said, "Well, he's gone away. I don't know where he is. Here's a phone number for him," which was his label, which was in Santa Fe at that time. Yeah. You know, there weren't cell phones. We didn't have email. Like that really hadn't begun so much for us at that point. So I, I called him and then eventually he called me because I, I felt like I had all these questions.

I didn't understand what was going on. And so it was so helpful because he came back and I continued chanting with him and it just became, it's what happened. You know, I talked to him over the weekend while we were at the retreat and I asked him about Maharaji and you know, I got very irritated because of course Maharaji wasn't, wasn't in the body anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, and Krishna said, "Well, you don't, the guru doesn't have to be in the body." That's all well and good for you to say. What am I going to do now? And so it, that's the process began then, you know, of just descending into this, this lake of devotion and not really understanding what it was but having just enough faith and trusting in my heart just enough to keep going.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I love about that story too and this is something I love about you is, you know, some people when they get into spiritual practices, be it kirtan, chanting, you know, Buddhism, anything, they can get very taken with kind of the exotic, exotic nature of this stuff, right? And then they can kind of buy in, hook line and sinker without even really questioning it. And there's an element of faith there of course, but what I like about you and I also consider myself like this is there is like a healthy dose of realism and skepticism, but when something has like that type of experience on you, when you're bursting into tears and your heart feels like it's cracking open and you're getting these experiences of feeling like you're home in a way that you can't really explain how that makes sense.

It transcends those elements, but yet those elements still remain. So it doesn't seem like we're off just in La La Land talking about, you know, nonsense things because it seems cool. And I love that. There's that pragmatic nature of approaching this stuff, which I think is very important because the act of chanting and kirtan, I mean, it can take people to extremely elevated places. There's no doubt. I mean, you see it all the time, I'm sure, at your whenever you chant and Krishna dance so can you talk a little bit about the kirtan movement as it is now because I mean, you're talking about in the mid 90s and yoga was just coming on the scene and I think my mom had just started yoga.

I think she was just about to study with like Sharon Salzburg and, you know, it was very, very in its infancy stages even then now, I mean, come on, like this is yoga, everyone knows what yoga is, of course, everyone's doing yoga, the bhakti and kirtan scene is blowing up all over the country and around the world. Can you talk about kind of the current landscape and what you've seen change maybe over the past 20 years or so? Yeah. Well, I can only talk somewhat about the last 20 years because that's really how long I've been chanting. You know, bhajan and kirtan has been going on in India for hundreds and thousands of years.

Right. Yeah. And particularly, so I think in the last few centuries, like maybe 500 years, the scriptures and the saints say, and this is the only way I can repeat it, is that it really is the only path for us in this age of what they call Kali Yuga, which is the dark ages where we've lost our sense of direction in terms of being on the path of Dharma and the righteous way and the pure satvik ways. These are just words that they use, but and we've also lost the ability to feel the love that connects all of us. You know, ultimately, I think that's what all these practices are to remind us of because then we can have some peace of mind and hopefully there'll be less violence and anger in the world.

But these are the demons that we're fighting in this age and it's creating war and it's our sense of separateness from each other. And you know, my religion's better than yours or, you know, my color of skin is better than yours or whatever it is that we're fighting about. And you know, there is scarcity in the world, that's, planet Earth has cycles of famines and droughts and hurricanes and fires, and so that's nature that's been going on for thousands and millions of years. Anyway, coming back to the Kirtan scene, you know, when I first started singing with Krishna's, I imagine at that time there had been some yogis who had been practicing this tradition, who had brought it from the west, from the east to the west.

You know, the whole Prabhupada movement with the, with the Iskhan people, they had already begun that chanting had been going on here. You know, Muktananda had brought chanting here through Siddhayoga and Gurumai and they were all chanting as well. But it was, it seems to me that it was restricted to joining a particular culture or a tradition or a community that felt, it seems that was the case. And there were a few others that potentially, and then there were also the Kundalini practitioners who were chanting, you know, Yogi Bhajan and all of his people doing their chanting. But by the time I had started, I think at that time, my, maybe Shandhas had been singing at, at Dhivamukti.

And I know that I had listened to Waa at that point, which you, because she had been singing before that. And I'm sure there are others, I'm missing, but this is just my experience. And the, the great thing for me about Krishna's was, you know, though he talked about Maharaji, there was never, it never felt like there was anything to join. You could come as you are, I mean, and I'll be honest with you, you know, my parents were living in India at that time. And when they learned that I had started doing this chanting with this guy and I had rearranged my schedule, they actually thought I joined a culture because there's a lot of this that goes on in India, you know, I mean, they're all kinds of false gurus and people get taken for a ride and, you know, they want your money.

It's a big thing there. So they were not understanding why I was feeling so pulled to be with him and they hadn't experienced him. You know, they didn't know who he was. And I said, just when you come to America, come and see their householders, their family people, their Wall Street people, their yogis, all kinds of people, and you don't have to be anything to come and chant. You don't have to know anything, you just come and chant. That's it. That's all we do. We go, chant, leave. I mean, we hang out and we have friends, and I developed a satsang of course hanging out with people and they're all my friends to this day.

And that just circle just keeps widening everywhere we go. But what I saw with Krishna, so at that point in time, I had my wildlife safari company, but I wanted to help him, you know, we were friends. I learned how to play a drum, like one drum beat from one of these guys who plays Madanga. And it was hard for him. He didn't have a drummer who was dedicated to being with him. There was no money in this at that time. This was all done by donation. And there wasn't often he didn't have money to even take the subway home after he had chanted. And so I would often accompany him on drum. And when he started to get invitations to go to Pennsylvania or nearby places to yoga studios, you know, we'd drive together and we hung out like this and I made a little business card, which I still have a copy of and it says, have harmonium will travel.

And I made a little email address for him, which was attached to my website, which was wildindia.com at that time. So, you know, it was Katie at wildindia.com, you know, it was very simple, you know, and he had one tape and CD, which was one track art. And then gradually what started to happen was he went out west and he started singing in L.A. And then he got more and more invitations to go and sing in other places and people started to play his tape at yoga studios everywhere and he was invited to sing basically all over the country and even abroad, slowly, slowly, you know. And he wanted me to kind of, he needed an assistant at that point.

But I knew that I had to pay my rent and I had to stay with my safari company. I just couldn't. I said, I'll help you in whatever way I can, but I can't full-time do this because you also don't have the money. You can't afford a full-time assistant in that way or even part-time. But he managed to, you know, we went, he had a few different assistants, including Wai actually worked with him for a while and then there were a few others. And many years went by and he made a CD almost, I'd say on average every one and a half years he put out a new CD because after one track heart came Pilgrim Heart and then we did Live on Earth and so on.

So it kept going and growing. And what started to happen was that the yoga studios got too small for him to sing. And so outside venues were being booked, you know, little churches or high school gym nasiums, you know, that kind of thing where we could fit a few hundred people. And it had become, he would still come back to Jivamotee on Mondays, but it reached the point where it was packed, packed and we needed a sound system and Jivamotee had moved to a bigger location. So they opened up all the rooms, they canceled their yoga class next door so they could open up the divider and everybody could fit in the room for the satsang at night.

It was really something. Yeah. It was very beautiful to watch and you know, he just kept going with it. Meanwhile I had finally beaten it out of him as to where Kenchi is because he didn't really talk very much about needing to go to India, which he still doesn't think so say that when people ask, right, do I need to go to India to practice one. Yeah. But I wanted to go. I felt like I needed to set foot in Kenchi. And so I actually went, it was two years after I met Krishna, so I went in 1998. And that's where I met Sidhima. And that was where I had the experience of what Krishna has had when he was with Maharaj i about what it was like to have the chanting going on in the temple.

You know, as soon as we got there, Sidhima said, "You're Sava," because I asked like, "What should we do? Can we help?" She said, "Your Sava is the chant." And so, you know, our job was to sit in front of Maharaji's temple and do eleven Hanuman Chali'sas in the morning, in the evening, and the rest of the time we sat with the Kirtan Vailas, who sing all day in the temple, so that's going on in India. And you know, I went back and forth every year. Okay, so back to the Kirtan scene, I'm digressing. Yeah, no, no, this is great. And eventually what happened, so now it's the year 2000, and 2000, yeah, 2000, 2000.

And I got married, and I had a baby, and a few things happened. So 9/11 happened, and I had had a child, the tourism and travel business kind of fell apart in a way for me in terms of people traveling, because it was a big thing. It made it, it was hard for people who were in the tourist business. Plus I had a baby, and I couldn't go on tour anymore. And so that started to fall away. I actually gave up that business to a friend of mine, and I was home with my baby. And simultaneously, the person who was an assistant for Krishna Das at that time, who's a good friend of mine, said that, she said, "You know Nina, I need to go and do something else right now, and I can't continue."

It was a part-time job she was doing 12 hours a week for him, so she said, "I would need to tell him this, but since you're not doing your tour stuff, and you can probably do this 12 hours a week, and he would love to have you, can I give him the simultaneous good and bad news that I'm going, but you're going to take it over." So that's what happened. So this was now 2002, by the time I had Uma, and I figured I can do 12 hours a week. And basically, that's how it started, that I started working for him, officially. I've always supported him all along in whatever way, whether I was drumming, or setting up events here and there as needed, or whatever it was, and setting up recording sessions and things like this.

I was just helping where I could. But then it became that I got behind the scenes and helped manage everything. And I saw how he was getting invited everywhere, he had made a few albums, all kinds of things that had to get managed. Because once you make an album, then there's issues about marketing, royalties and accounting, all kinds of things had to happen from there. And then just in the touring part of it was setting up venues where he was going to go handle all the emails, because all the invitations were coming in. And to this day, I've never had to ask somebody, "Can Christianaa sing that?"

All I do is sift through invitations and try to make a tour out of there as best as I can so that he can hit all the places. And then what happened later, and other people I was noticing, of course, were singing also on somewhat the scale Christianaa was, including Deva Premal and Mitan, Sanatam Kaur were singing, all these people are singing in this way, larger venues. And then this idea, and the other thing that was happening was Omega, Stefan created this ecstatic chant weekend over Labor Day where people could come for extended period of time. And there would be a number of Kirtan artists singing in a rotating schedule.

So you could really immerse yourself in the chanting. And that was a very beautiful thing to start. And then what happened after that was Sridhar created the Bhakti Fest Festival out in Joshua Tree. And then he expanded that to Madison, Wisconsin. And now there are so many little festivals here going on and yoga festivals happen. And then there were yoga journal conferences, as you know, all this is going on. And more and more and with the dawn of the digital recording era, all the people who wanted to record and weren't able to before, you know, didn't have access to big recording studios and all were now able to record more easily.

So there's now a variety of recordings available and a lot of young artists are singing and there's chanting going on locally in yoga studios and here we are. And I mean, then of course, the most interesting thing for us that happened was Krishna's being nominated for a Grammy in the New Age category. That was kind of another mile marker, you know? Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, it's such a, it's a big scene now, right? And that with big scenes, a lot of things go into that and people are in it for a lot of different reasons. But I'm not going to go into that whole thing. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the guru concept, the concept of a guru, because you mentioned something that I thought was really important, you know, that your family thought you might be joining a cult.

But then in fact, like my experience has been the same. I am very anti-authoritarian, right? That's why I work for myself. I didn't do well in high school and middle school. I was getting in trouble because I didn't like being told what to do. But something that has always struck me, especially with the devotees of Neem Krolli Baba, is you're not really being asked to join anything ever. If the connection is there, you feel it, you resonate with it, you may explore it, you may go full bore, whatever it is. But can you talk, because the guru concept is something that I think admittedly for myself, for a lot of other people in the West, is very difficult.

People don't like saying, "I'm going to give up, surrender myself to this." Even the words surrender, people don't like. So could you just talk a little bit about the concept of a guru as you understand it and then potentially your relationship with your guru? In the traditions of India, there's what's called Sat Guru, which is the larger guru and in a way like Neem Krolli Baba falls into that category, or Shirdi Sai Baba. For gurus who are not even really in the body anymore, but their teachings and their presence is felt by those who are drawn to them. So Krishna has had the opportunity to be with that guru in his body, Ram Das and all these others.

I realize that I felt Maharaji through Krishna's singing. And that's what happens with, I think, I mean that's what K.D. says is when everybody hears him sing, that's what they're feeling. Who is Maharaji and what he is? I can't say. All that I know is that for me, the flavor, the feeling and the presence of him resonates with me. That's where I can open up, my heart can open up, and where I can find a home, as you said before. And I didn't even understand that that was actually happening. But that's what was happening to me. And then in the traditions again, there are other kinds of gurus, there's a guru who will give you initiation.

And then there are other gurus who give teachings, who are more spiritual teachers and actually teach you scriptures and they teach you that kind of thing. Just hang on one second, Noah. Actually, I'm going to take that later, let's just ring out. So I was just trying to actually think about this the other day because when I did go to see Siddhima, because I was so yearning to have a personal relationship with the guru, you know, when I met Krishna's and I heard all his stories, and when I read Miracle of Love and I'm hearing everybody talk about their experience with Maharaji in the body. And, you know, I went searching, you know, I went, I went to see Amma when she came to New York.

I went to all these places and I don't know what I was expecting, I really don't, but I wasn't getting it. And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with those gurus at all, it's just my connection wasn't there to them in the way that I wanted to feel it. But when I ended up going to Kenchi and I went around the bend on those hills, I'm driving through the hills and I went around and I caught sight of Kenchi, like nestled there in the valley. I knew I was going home, I don't know why. And I walked over the bridge and I heard the Kirtanwala singing over the loudspeaker. And I just, my heart opened, I just, I knew I was in my place where I needed to be.

And then when I met Siddhima, it was so interesting because on that first meeting, she didn't show me herself as her. All that I saw was the presence of Maharaji, if you can imagine that, like that's what I felt, that's what I saw. And that was it, so I didn't really know how I was going to relate with her at that point. Now, it's 18 years since I saw her and over these 18 years, I've developed a personal relationship with her because I've gone back every year and spent time with her and because I can speak the language, she often had me in the job of being interpreter for Darshan, which was wonderful for me because I got to be with her and hear her talk to so many people because like Maharaji, she doesn't give teachings, she doesn't give discourses on anything, you kind of go and hang out with her.

And she'll give you practices if you ask for it or she thinks that you should have it. But mostly it's like being in your mother's home, you know. She feeds you, she holds your babies, you talk to her about your relationships, about money, anything, whatever. And all she ever talked about, if you ask her anything, she says, "I don't know anything," but Maharaji said this to me. And that's what she would repeat. And she would tell them beautiful stories of her time when she was young and she walked over the hills, miles and miles to come and see Maharaji and be with him along with the other miles and how they would sing pajans for him and, you know, she shared her path in some ways with us and that just our faith and our trust and confidence in ourselves grew by being with her.

And that's how it's been for me and she's, I mean, guided me in practical ways and spiritually and so she's my guru, but she's not any different to me than Maharaji as weird as that sounds. No, I get it, I get it, I mean. And I'm trying to, if I try to find an analogy, the only thing I can think of that's kind of silly is, I mean, Krishna says it in a very beautiful way, is like Maharaji is the sun and Siddhima is the moon that reflects the light of the sun. And we are the little drops of water that reflect that light. So that's the way he says it. For me, it's when I imagine Ma, I see her, you know, those, I don't know what you call this, a name for those dolls that sit one, they're like container boxes.

Yeah, yeah, the Russian nesting dolls. Yes. The nesting dolls. Yes. She is like hit one of those sitting inside my heart. I love that. Some that's kind of the visual that comes to mind for me and we're somewhere in there too. Yeah, yeah. I need one. Yeah, they're really small ones. Yeah, sure. Oh man. That's an amazing metaphor. I love that. So yeah, but, you know, having said that, I do know that there are a lot of people who have had wonderful experiences with the gurus that they've chosen to take initiation from. I never had anything formal like that with Siddhima. With her, she just took me in her arms, I mean, metaphorically and physically.

And it was, and I knew this is where I want to be. And I think I had a moment where maybe I wasn't 100% sure I wasn't fully worthy. This is another thing that happens is like, how could I possibly even ask that she might let me consider her my guru, you know, silly things like this. And it was actually on this first trip where I was there in Kenchi and we, they had allowed us to stay for three days and the temple protocol was that you stay for three days and then you go. That's the limit. So I was, you know, there with my friend Ambika and she was my roommate and I said to her, I said, Ambika, listen, we're here for two weeks or whatever we're doing, but we need to let's pack our bags.

Let's go to Nanny Tal, get everyone in the famed Evelyn Hotel and let's come back so that we have the rest of the day here. She wasn't packing and I was like, I really wanted to get it over with so that we could come back and spend the day there and we would just commute back and forth. So while we're sitting there and chatting about this, it's early, it's like six o'clock in the morning and Jaya Diddy who is, the lady who takes care of Ma and she's a, she's an Indian lady and she speaks English though. So she's often the one who's translating and interpreting for everybody. She knocks on the door and she's looking all disheveled and I'm like, Jaya, what's up?

And she said, Ma didn't even let me have tea. She told me. Rahari, Hari, they're packing to leave and tell them they don't have to go. And we hadn't said a word to anybody. That kind of did it for me. I was like, okay, she knows everything. And yeah, I love these, see, these are the moments like this is why, again, I was saying, I love your perspective on this and because this is for me, like I will be skeptical and doubt to a fault. There's no, there's no, that's just how I naturally am. But when I have enough, either synchronicities or, you know, just things that can't be physically explained, something like that, like how does she know that you're packing your bag?

No one, you guys knew. Those are the things when enough of those happen or big enough one of those things happen. It just transcends that it's like the famous, the Randa story, you know, where he's there with Maharaji and Maharaji talks about how his mom died of a spleen. And then his mind starts racing and he's like, well, this is a conspiracy. Someone must have told him, but I never told anyone how would you know what I'm thinking? And it just kind of like short circuited his rational needs to explain everything type of mind. And then it moved down into the heart where it's hard to, I mean, for those who've experienced it, it's not hard to understand what we're talking about.

But when your, your brain and your mind kind of gets short circuited and then your heart is now the feeling mechanism that you use to kind of discern what's going on. When that happens, it's hard, I, I, if I wanted to shake it, if I wanted to say, yeah, this stuff is all fully, I don't really believe any of this anymore, like I couldn't, I couldn't. There's something so real intangible that stays. That's part of the reason in this show is called synchronicity. It's what Carl Jung used to call a causal patterns of orderedness, which is basically alluding to the fact that there's stuff all around us that we can't see or perceive with our senses that really is kind of guiding and dictating what's going on along the lines of a guru, you know, being a puppeteer and pulling strings behind the scenes.

So I love that. I like, I love people who are gung ho and totally into the spiritual stuff and they're naturally going to it, but I really love people who, I want to know that they had some skepticism and then we're into it because that to me is, is powerful. That means there's not just the hook line and synchronicity. It's really using some element of discernment and intuition, weaving that in and I, I just love that. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I got two more questions for you. This is flown by like the last one did. When you talk about specifically the Hanuman Chilisa and what that means to you and why you chant it and why I am chanting it every single day for the past three years.

Is that what you're doing? Okay. I am. Okay. Well, it was an interesting thing, you know, Hanuman Chilisa has been chanted for hundreds of years in India and I had to come to America and learn it from a Jewish guy. That's what happened to me. I heard it first on one track heart and in those days, Krishna's actually didn't sing it in these group settings. He felt it was too much for people to have to read papers and, you know, he wanted them to really focus more on being in the moment and, you know, chanting the simple mantras. That was at that time and then he had to kind of surrender to the fact that everybody wanted to learn the Hanuman Chilisa and it's not because he wants, you know, it's not anything that he it's just it has a magnetic power, but so I don't know what to say.

So when I first heard it on one track heart and I, you know, as I told you, I was listening to this tape over and over again, I was like, what is this prayer? I love this prayer and I just kept listening to it. And the liner notes, you know, had the translation and the transliteration. So I learned the words and I, a couple of friends of mine and I decided that we were going to learn it and we were going to sing it for him on his surprise 50th birthday party, which was coming up in this was in 1997. And so we learned it and we sang it for him at the party. And I just learned recently that, not recently, well, we all know the story now that Krishna tells the story of how they learned the Hanuman Chilisa.

So that they could sing it to Maharajee so that he would let them be with him, you know. And so it was just interesting that they did that for Maharajee and we did that for Krishna so that you could just be in that space, you know, that's, that's how it was. And I'm actually really glad I learned it because as soon as I went to India in 1998, Siddhima was having a sing it all the time so it was good to know it. Yeah, yeah. Helps. And you know, we had just kind of fool around on the harmonium at home and I, like I told you, I have no training. So I had just kind of figured out a few melodies that I liked and just, just started singing it by myself.

So that was a wonderful thing to do. But what's happened over the years also is that Siddhima in addition to doing it in public, you know, in front of the temple and everything, she, anytime anybody ever said, well, this is happening and I need help with this and I need courage for this or I need, you know, whatever it is or I need a wife, I need a husband, I need something she'll say, do Hanuman Chilisa. Yeah. That's her. That's what she prescribes to everybody. I mean, there's some other things, but generally speaking, that's what that is. And you know, for some people, it'll be do 11 a day and other person, it's like, you know, sit and do 108 because you have a special pooja to do or just do one every day if you don't have time or, you know, anything.

And she said in an ideal situation, you want to sit, don't even sing it. She told me this. She said, don't sing. Get the words out, read so that you're paying attention, sit with your back straight and try to pay attention to what you're singing because you know it by rote and you'll forget your mind can wander while this is going on, but really try to. And I found those instructions really helpful because it's really a meditation, you know. But the other thing is, and this is what Maharaj said, he said, people don't know every syllable of the Hanuman chalisa is a maha mantra. And what does that mean?

It means that it has those words, those sounds as we say them out loud or as we hear them in our ears. They have a power of their own that will transform us from the inside out. But they can only work if you do it. Yeah, you got to do it. You have to do it. This is, as Katie says, you know, the thing about practice is you have to do it, I just say you're going to do it, you have to actually do it. So, but the thing is, Noah, it's, you know, for me, the Hanuman chalisa is also wrapped up, you know, it's one of the seeds of the ramcharithmanas or the Ramayanan. Like I said to you, you know, as a child, I was reading these stories and they pulled me in such a way that every cell in my body came alive.

And I'm not just saying this now, this is what the feeling that I had done. And the beauty of Lila or these kind of stories is each time you read it, it's not only is it not boring, and it's not even the same. It gets better. You never get tired of it, you know. You can hear the same thing over and over again, just like stories of the guru. Katie tells them over and over again. But who cares? Yeah. It's true. You want to listen to them, you know? It's so true. It's so true. But the Hanuman chalisa, so what is it? It's a tool. It's a refuge. You know, when anything is wrong, that's where I go. Yeah, me too.

And when things are not wrong, it's what you have to do. That's the practice part of it, where you have the strength to actually do something because sometimes your mind or your emotions or even the physical situation will not allow you to actually do the practice. And that's when the effects of the practice are going to kick in. So you have to do it when you're able, right? It's so true, it's so true. And yeah, it's so many things. It's everything. It's the destination, it's the journey, it's the path, it's the whole thing. I mean, it's been, I am completely unaware of all the ways it has impacted my life.

And like I said, I've been doing it. I don't think I've missed the day since 2013 when I first heard you do it. And it's one of those things that I know it's working. And also I love that you spoke about it's kind of meditative properties because, you know, I now memorize it after the first couple of months. And nowadays kind of a rote thing. And I'll catch myself thinking about five different things as I'm saying all the words and I'm like, well, let me pull back to what I'm actually doing and focus on what I'm doing. I love that aspect of it as well. Right. Okay. So last question, the shoe by, of course.

So could you give the listeners any practical tips that have helped you on your particular path? Yeah. On my, you mean my path in general? Yes. Your path in general. So something that like, you know, we've mentioned a few of them, the Chalisa being one of them, but anything that you're saying, any, you know, every different strokes or different folks, obviously, but any particular tip or thing that has helped you throughout your life. Well, I think first it's important to understand why you want to be on a path. And sometimes we don't even know why it's prescribed in some cases, like a lot of my friends were Catholics and, you know, they had a lot of aversion to the way it was presented to them going to church and so on.

And many of those people come to Krishna says kirtans. And so when he starts singing Jesus on the main line, you know, it kind of scratches them in the wrong places. So, but for me, it was shown to me that that heart opening that happened. And you know how you're talking about when you know something, not because it's physically written down or physically spoken and you learn it mentally. You know it in your heart. So I knew and everybody who's doing their practice knows this and their heart. They have enough faith that it's going to be what's going to help them live their lives in a better way.

However that is, whether you're doing yoga practice to improve your body or breathing, okay, that's one part of it. But where we go from there is how we're going to open our hearts to do what Maharaj said. Love everyone, serve everyone and remember God. And which one comes first? I don't know. It seems like one feeds the other. It does. It does. But you have to start stepping into the circle somewhere. So I think that that's and to just always remember that you just want to do your best to keep your heart open so that not only can you help other people because that can seem like a very lofty goal, but even to just feel better yourself.

Yes. And that's, you know, the truth of it is, at least in my life, is the more you can work on yourself, the more you're going to be of service to other people. If you're walking around trying to help everyone and you're all fucked up, it's not going to work out so well. So I think that's hugely important and incredibly wise too. And the other thing to remember, it's a very long road. It's almost a never ending road, right? It goes into the horizon and we don't know how long anything is going to take. And so that's why it's important to then pick a practice, first of all, that you like doing. Yeah.

Because if you don't like doing it, you're not going to do it. So there's a practice for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. As many people there are, there are that many paths. And you know, K.D. talks about it this way also is that, you know, he's like, you know, how they have these art posters where they like expose yourself to art. Yes, yes. Well, in this case, expose yourself to two sacred things, you know, and I saw a sign the other day, which is alter everything. Yes. ALTAR. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And I love that because, you know, it's like, okay, so take everything that's in your life. Put it on your altar.

I mean, there's no better example of this. I just, I put it up on the social media for Rambas, but he replaced George Bush on his Pooja table with Donald Trump. Ah. It's like, guys on another level, obviously, who's thinking to do that. I love it. I love taking everything. I mean, because the truth is everything in our lives is a vehicle for getting more in touch with the things that really matter. I mean, that's just the way it is. Nina, thank you so much for doing this again. For talking about all these things, I definitely want to have you on again. And you know, I don't know if I told you, but we're planning on moving back to the New York area, Hudson Valley.

No, I didn't know. Yeah. So probably in 2017, but when we do, we will be back and we will be at these things that are going on. And I'm very happy for that, too. Well, all the best, all blessings for the birth and baby and your family. Thank you. Awesome. All right. Thanks, Nina. Okay. Lots of love. No. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Excellent episode. Really good one. Right. Again, Nina, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely person. It was always, I always come away from conversations with Nina feeling very relaxed and very happy. I hope you do too. So that's it. I'm going to keep this outro short again. If you want that book giveaway thing, Synchronicity Community, some other cool stuff there, go to Sync Podcast, S-Y-N-C, Podcast.com, join the community, rate and review on iTunes.

But I don't know. That's it. Have an awesome, awesome day. All right. Bye bye.