"SING YOUR OWN SONG" ~ SOULSPEAK WITH DEVA PREMAL & MITEN

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I was first introduced to their music in 2011. My best friend and love Dylan shared this song to me, it was called All is Welcome Here. I fell in love with it. It was so inviting, it spoke to me. It became my inspiration for naming my other Facebook page “A Love Gathering”. I explored their other songs, In The Light of Love and So Much Magnificence to name some, they are truly enchanting to say the least. Their songs take you somewhere, and makes you want to stay there, in that center.

 

It is no surprise to find out that they are loved and sought out by so many around the world, to whom they dedicate their music and travels. It is an honor and a dream alike to have been given the chance to share space with two absolutely amazing souls, and to have this opportunity to share the interviews I did with both, with you all. 

 

D  E  V  A

“Just sing your own song. Whatever that is, because if its from you, it’s unique and it’s perfect. Often, we think when it’s something that comes easily to us we think its not worth anything, because we think its easy, but often that’s where the magic lies… in those things that are easy for us. We have a gift in there that can be expanded and shared.” 

 

 

WHO IS DEVA?

I’m still finding out who Deva is. I don’t have so much luck with labels. I don’t know what I would call myself. What I feel most comfortable is the role of being a facilitator for people to come together and sing and chant. To be an inspiration for people to have the power that goes beyond the spoken word infuse their lives and help them to awaken. Through the singing and chanting we go beyond the talking and the figuring things out, and we go straight to the expression of joy, gratitude, bliss, and communion. Yes communion, that’s  a big part. The power of being one with everyone and expressing that through singing and breathing together, which we do when we sing together. That’s my joy in life.

 

 

Not at all. I had a strong experience growing up of coming to the realization that I wanted to do something that I would always enjoy doing and not something that I would be waiting to be over like a work day… Waiting  until you can go home and have a time off. I wanted to do something where I always felt good every moment about doing it. I had no vision what that would be.

I also knew I wanted to travel and those were very basic kind of visions. I’d never ever thought I’d be doing something with music or singing. It’s really beyond my wildest dreams. It’s really something I feel is like a gift or a blessing. Like something that’s been given to me rather than something that I have to take any credit for.

 

Everything. I really like all the different parts of it. Even the packing and the traveling, and all that. The highlight is obviously when we sit down for the concert and we really go into that deep space together. The peak of that is the ecstatic singing and the silence that follows. With so many people who come to a concert we can sit in silence, and nobody moves, nobody coughs, nobody shuffles. Everybody’s just there in oneness and in silence,  in an effortless way. We haven’t told them to be silent. It just happens. It just wants to be there. It’s there without any distraction and that’s really the peak.

 

That’s 21 years now. It’s half my life. It’s the only life I know, really, because until the age of 20 I went to school pretty much. I spent a year in an Ashram, and ever since I was out of school and creating with Miten, so I don’t know any difference. I have just been blissed out ever since, for the last 21 years. It’s been an unfolding. I just feel so blessed. Just to come out and work together… it would be enough. And that’s really rewarding and nourishing. I feel  very humbled by it. It’s challenging too, because music is a strong teacher and I actually don’t see myself as a musician. I don’t compose much myself. Miten is really the composer and songwriter, director and the the musical inspiration and I see myself as a singer or a vehicle for the mantras to come out. There are some challenges for me to see that and to be faced by music, by the God of music. It’s my mirror in life. It’s my challenge.

 

I’ve let go of the idea that I need to be perfect and be enlightened or become enlightened. My guru Osho was physically extremely beautiful and intellectually advanced and bright and intelligent. He was very eloquent. He gave discourses on all subjects relevant to the spiritual path. I came to him when I was a eleven years old so he was my guiding light ever since I was eleven. Through him, first I had the idea “Wow I have to be that amazing to even have the possibility to be enlightened, liberated, or awakened.” And now I realized over the last years that was a bit of a barrier. You will never be perfect. Perfection is being exactly the way you are. That’s perfect. And all those quirky things in my nature and character, they won’t necessarily leave me I would just be at peace with them. That’s a big relaxation. I don’t have to wait anymore for this one moment when everything is good … I just become more and more one with myself and integrated with all the different parts of myself.

 

This lifestyle fills up so much of my physical time and space.  I don’t have much time for anything else. Just traveling is very time consuming. I love being in nature. I love moving and doing yoga and Qi Gong and my 15 minute morning shaking but even for that on the road I don’t have much space. I don’t have another big kind of passion or hobby.
 

Sighs. I don’t really like to put that in words personally. Just an ohm will express it and the silence that follows. I called one of my albums “Love is Space” because I had this realization of love being like the space that includes everything in it.  It’s really beyond words.

So it’s really about the uniqueness  of everyone of us and find ways to keep the uniqueness going.
 

The message is to just keep the spark and the fire alive. To follow their own inner voice. I remember when I was growing up as a kid, actually more of a teenager already, there was a difficulty that I felt. I wasn’t like everyone else. First I thought I wanted to be like everyone else and then I thought I should be like everyone else, and then I realized wow, that’s going to kill my spirit. So it’s really about the uniqueness  of everyone of us and find watts to keep the uniqueness going. Enhance it. Maybe that’s a little kind of intellectual.

 

Just sing your own song. Whatever that is, because if its from you, it’s unique and it’s perfect. Often, we think when it’s something that comes easily to us we think its not worth anything, because we think its easy, but often that’s where the magic lies… in those things that are easy for us. We have a gift in there that can be expanded and shared.
 

 

M   I   T   E   N

“The more you love yourself the more you have to share and by loving myself I can accept what I used to call faults , my faults . I don’t give myself a hard time. I understand that I’m not perfect and I don’t strive to be perfect. In that, I’m a perfect imperfection. Deva helps me to live that. We live that together in a very simple way.”

WHO IS MITEN?

I’m in a very good space. I’m 64 years old. I’ve had an amazing life. My journey has taken me some incredible places and I’ve met some incredible people. I’m very grateful for life right now. For the last twenty years since Deva and I met I’ve been more focused on music than I was previously. I was a professional musician before I came to Osho in the late 70′s and early 80′s . I decided I didn’t want to play music anymore. It felt too much of a painful experience in my years as a rock musician in the business and everything. So when I came to Osho I sold all my guitars and concentrated on my spiritual and communal aspect where I could just disappear into the community and participate and support and learn and grow. That’s how I lived most of my life as an Osho devotee. Until the music began to return in a very innocent and in a way that was just there to express my gratitude to my spiritual master. 

When the music started to return it manifested in many different ways. Mainly in writing and singing songs in meditations in Pune, India. Later on I met Deva and I started to help her with the music. She wasn’t singing at the time so I could help her with expressing herself and to feel the difference between music that was played for money and ambition and music that was played for spiritual connection. Its very different. Fortunately Deva had never played in any other environment other than in meditation. She’d never sung in any kind of rock club. She was not a musician in that way. 

 

As we began to share in the Ashram, our music just grew organically to the place it is now where we’re traveling the world and sharing our connection with Osho through the music with many many people. I find myself in a very beautiful space.

 

I wanted to sing something about living in the here and now, and when you find yourself in this situation of living in the moment, then you can bring everything into it. What I learned from Osho also is that mistakes are okay. Everything is welcome because that’s how we grow. If you’re in a spiritual community, that’s understood. So rather than feel bad about making mistakes, you actually take the risk so that if you do make a mistake you can learn from it. You don’t wanna make the same mistake twice, that’s stupid. But to make a mistake and to be allowed and for it to be ok is very healing. That was the basic thing. And the verse about the father and the son was basically me and my own son. He didn’t grow up with me because I’d left home. It was very painful for both of us but now were really good friends. We’re reunited as the song says, and were dancing to the sacred drum together. It’s been a beautiful connection. That’s the basis of that song.

 

You know what? my parents used to run pubs in England. I grew up as a kid in bar rooms listening to my mother play the piano in the evening. I guess I had a kind of inkling that something musical would happen. There was always music around.

My father was football crazy, and soccer crazy, and so me and my brother grew up to be really good soccer players and at one point it looked like I might become a pro soccer player. Fortunately for me it didn’t happen. My eyesight started to get bad in my teenage years and at the same time the Beatles showed up. That saved my life.

 

The Beatles were incredible. Their whole era was something , it’s very difficult to explain to somebody who wasn’t there but it was so transformative. It was an era where the music changed and it felt like the sun came out or something. It was an amazing time. And with the sun came the dark shadows too. So you had music like the Rolling Stones and the dark part …it was amazing to be there and experience such great music. And then when the Beatles got into meditation that was a big key for my generation.

The drug experience that we were all partaking in was connected to the spiritual teachers of as connected to the spiritual teachers of India and the gurus of India. When we heard them talking about meditation we realized that’s the kind of experiences we were having with the drugs, it’s just an exodus into India and again, the Beatles helped us there with the instruments. That’s how I ended up in India.

 

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I don’t really go there anymore you know? This feeling of being creative– it doesn’t require any dreaming in the way of what’s happening for the future. I used to worry about the future and think about things but I don’t anymore. I’ve come to trust the moment that I’m in and then let the rest take care of itself. As Deva and I have traveled and as more and more people come to be with us and sing and participate with us. We have a small team of people now that take care of our scheduling and business side of things which was never really my interest but still a part of the whole thing. We never began to play this music with any sense of ambition. It wasn’t about making a career. It was just simply a way that we share our experiences with Osho with each other and with the people around him. That’s how we started to play. They related music. Of course it came from the Ashram.

When we play there’s an instant reconnection to the space that we’d all experience together in the ashram. That’s all this music is really, and the love that we felt for Osho, of course it was a universal love it wasn’t directed to one person. Although it looked like it was directed to one person the person in fact was not there as a person or a personality. The guru is just the door. It’s a universal love. What we didn’t really expect is that it translated to people who have never met Osho but it has and it just continues to touch people all over the world. Then we have people who take care of the practical side of things so Deva and I can just hang out and do what we do and stay connected and play music.

 

The only time I look into the future is when they ask us “Where do you want to tour next year?” Or “Do you want to go to America in the Fall or Spring?” So I say lets go to Australia now and then go to America there and go to Europe, and they respond to that and create the touring schedule. Deva and me and our little band of road warriors, we got our managers and light technicians, sound technicians and two extra musicians, we are a happy family and we support each other and travel around

 

It’s an incredible place to find yourself at my age. Now I get inspiration from Blues singers. People like BB King in his age still traveling and playing music. So it’s very beautiful.

I’ve learned to love myself. Through Osho really it’s the love for yourself that you share basically. The more you love yourself the more you have to share and by loving myself I can accept what I used to call faults , my faults . I don’t give myself a hard time. I understand that I’m not perfect and I don’t strive to be perfect. In that, I’m a perfect imperfection. Deva helps me to live that. We live that together in a very simple way, really. We’re not particularly esoteric. Our relationship is simple and down to earth and loving and accepting to each other.

I used to be a teacher and I was a teacher in the Osho school when their parents were in the ashram. Looking after them. I learned from the kids more than they learned from me. I can’t really find a message for the children. I’m struggling to find one.

 

I remember, in the school when they used to have these meetings. The teachers and the adults would be trying very hard to share our feelings. It’s not easy to share that as adults yet outside in the playground where the kids were they were just sharing their feelings absolutely freely and without any self consciousness at all. Things like that. How anger could be there and then the next minute gone.

What is love? It’s everything. It’s this moment. It’s that song again, “All is welcome here” … Love is God. I feel like we exist in this reality and everything that happens, everything we judge as bad and good is for all in a way that we just cannot grasp in our small minds in this planet. But somehow I trust that this is for a purpose and everything is for the purpose of good in some way that is unfashionable to us. In that way I like to see myself living in love, breathing love in and out and just hanging out in what we call LOVE. 

 

That’s how I see it. I don’t see it as a relationship thing. Of course it is that. But I don’t see it as exclusive to Deva. I think that’s what happened when I met Osho. I met something in a body that was unfashionable. I didn’t have a physical relationship with the person. It wasn’t like my father or my family or a lover or my son… Somewhere where you have a physical connection. It was beyond the physical . It was a different kind of love. A love I never experienced before. That gave me the understanding of love being much vaster than I originally thought it was.

 

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(Interviewed via Skype on May 2011)

 

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