The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (39 page)

“No. It. Isn’t! It’s a texture—a texture in sound.”

I had never seen Wayne get that way—what he was saying was, “Don’t always try to put music in a box with a pin sticking through it, like some dried-up butterfly in a collection. Let it live and be alive at least for a little while before you analyze it and nail it down. Keep the imagination open and flowing.” Wayne is in the business of creating music that sometimes doesn’t make sense but that always gives people chills.

Bill was right back in ’72. Most people couldn’t hear what Wayne and Weather Report were doing. Back then Wayne didn’t really know how I felt, either, so when I went up to him at the end of that run of opening for us, he was a little cool to me. I could tell that opening for Santana was not his favorite experience.

By the time we got back to San Francisco at the end of that tour, Deborah and I were looking at each other in a way that I had never, ever before experienced. We were in love, and it was time to introduce her to my family, which I did before the year was over. Then I went to Oakland—where her mother, Jo, welcomed me like I was coming home. She was totally accepting of me.

Next I spoke to SK—this was about the third time I got together with him, and this time he dropped his guard to the point where he came up to me and said, “Let me ask you something.”

“Yes, sir?”

He looked at me very seriously. “Do you believe in the Universal Tone?”

I said, “Yes, I do, sir. Universal Tone means that there’s one note that can connect alpha and omega, that can connect heaven and flesh. There’s one note that you can play at any time, in any place, that can make you communicate to all hearts at the same time.”

The first time I heard about the Universal Tone was not from
SK but probably from the hippies, because of their connection to Charles Lloyd and Coltrane, the Beatles, the Doors, and the whole San Francisco scene. I didn’t know much then about the sacred sound, but I knew about
om
from my spiritual reading and of course from the John Coltrane album of the same name. I knew about the idea that there is a Universal Tone and that many religious paths, even those of Native Americans, use it to connect with Father Sky and Mother Earth. I understood that the Universal Tone is about a collective conscious. It’s not about one person but rather about everyone—it’s a way of using sound to connect with the divine in all of us.

I was surprised to hear SK ask that question, and I think he had seen many musicians who were out of balance, who were disconnected from the Universal Tone—some from my generation and I’m sure some from his generation, too. It was the first time SK had asked me a question like that, and I knew that it meant that he was starting to look at me a different way.

I’d love to share something with you: I really get high on gratitude. Gratitude is one of the highest things that a human being can aspire to, because when you’re grateful you go beyond the halo and the horns.
Halo
and
horns
are just words for energy with the guilt. Angels and demons—they give you a standing ovation when you do your best to be grateful. I invite you this second, this moment to embrace unconditional love. Unconditional love is a love that is greater than your issues, greater than your luggage and baggage and illusions. Love makes you and me necessary as opposed to unnecessary. Love does away with distance
and separation. Love turns all the flags of the world into a river of colors. Love is the light that is inside all of us, everyone. I salute the light that you are and that is inside your heart. I salute you.

A
nyone who’s seen a Santana show in recent years knows I like to inject a dose of reality into the concert. Four or five songs along, maybe after we’ve played “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va” and just before “Maria Maria,” the singers will take a break, and I’ll start talking to the crowd. I’ll welcome them to the show, then tell them about the light that they each have inside them, that they
are
light—
luminous
is the word I like to use. I ask them to please consider accepting the nobility and greatness of their lives. I say, “Please consider acknowledging that you’re not separate from your own light, which is what so much of culture and religion wants you to believe—that you’re not worthy, that you’re a wretched sinner, that you came into this world a sinner before you even opened your eyes for the first time. That you need to atone and that you’re alone.”

Sometimes at that point someone will scream, or a few people will yell that they want to rock and yell out what song they want to hear, and I’ll say, “Hey, man, just listen for a moment. I’m grateful you paid for a ticket, and I know the songs you want to hear, but here’s something maybe you need to hear even more. How about a higher level of consciousness for a minute?”

I feel that now, in this part of the book, I want to stop, like I do in concert, and say a few things that connect the dots. I want to explain again why I’m doing this book, to talk about the Universal Tone, and remind everyone that it is not just a saying—we really are all one. I hang all my beliefs on that one note.

I’m many things—a father, a husband, a guitar player, a bandleader, and a believer. I’m also a preacher and a teacher—that’s a big part of who I am now, and it comes from the work I have done on myself, starting years ago with the teachers I decided to follow. One of the most important lessons I learned was to listen to what they were saying and take the time to stop and listen to myself.
There’s a very noble concept that Eastern Buddhists have: you are the gardener of your own mind. It’s the idea that you have to take responsibility for your thoughts, to catch and stop yourself from thinking thoughts that are inappropriate or hurtful.

We should write it in big block letters:
THE EGO IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
. The ego likes doubt, and it will criticize and guilt-trip you to death. It will condemn and judge and draw you into a pit and then laugh at you. That’s why meditation can be very hard. It’s easy to
do
nothing, but it is very, very difficult to
think
nothing. You can never really do that, anyway—the thing is to step back from all those thoughts, like getting out of a rushing river, then just sit there and let the river keep going. Meditation is the first step to controlling all that talk, talk, talk that keeps going on inside you so you can finally decide whom you’re going to trust—your light or your ego. Can you tell the difference?

For a long time I have thought about the exchange between Eastern philosophy and the Western mind in the 1960s and the relationship between the two. There were many gurus and spiritual teachers coming around during that time, and each had a different priority and path you could follow, even if the basic message was the same. There was no guidebook or website you could read to know which one was best for you. You had to listen to each of them with your heart and common sense and look at who was hanging around with them and decide if their ways of talking and their requirements and disciplines made sense for you. If they were real gurus, their messages were about love and connection.

It was an exciting time, and the ideas that these gurus were bringing to us were shedding light on a map that was always there—we just couldn’t see it. Suddenly there were all these paths we could take that we didn’t know existed. Even today I think Eastern philosophy is like a wise old uncle trying to help the Western mind, which can be enmeshed in adolescence, acting like a spoiled teenager, wanting to party, smelling like unwashed socks and beer. Those gurus came on the scene, teaching us how to be spiritual. They helped me face that part of my life with maturity at a time when I needed it.

There’s a big difference between religion and spirituality. I know now that you can only believe in both if you are willing to take personal responsibility. If you see yourself not as a drop of water but as a part of an entire ocean, a part of everyone and everything. If you can master that idea, and if you can master the ego—which many religions count on your not being able to do—then you know your responsibility is not just to yourself but to everything. Loving yourself is loving others, and hurting others is only hurting yourself. If you believe this, then it doesn’t make sense that there can be only one religion and that you’re going to see God but everyone else is wrong and going to hell.

I don’t buy the idea that only one kind of person gets to walk the red carpet, you know? You can keep the kind of heaven that’s selective. I want the heaven that’s for everybody. That’s where Sri Chinmoy helped me the most. He would say that there is only one goal but there are many paths, and that each religion is right in its own way. In the West we have a way of thinking that comes down to this: the devil made me do it, but Jesus has got my back. Another way of saying it is: the devil made me do it, but Jesus will still carry me across the river of life.

Damn. What sort of responsibility is that? Even if you didn’t do anything the devil told you to, just how many people does Jesus have to carry? How about climbing down and doing some of the walking?

Even before 1972 and making
Caravanserai
and getting together with Deborah and meeting Sri, I had made a conscious decision to step away from the churning of conflicts and ego games in my life. It was a once-in-a-while thing, but it was a dedicated thing—regardless of the consequences, no matter what people said, if they came along with me or not, and even if I was on my own.

The reason for gurus is that you can’t do it by yourself all the time—definitely not at the beginning. You need someone else to hold up the light so you can see where you’re going on your new road. A true guru is someone who brings light and is a dispeller of darkness. Jesus was a guru. Sometimes it’s nothing that gurus say or do but how they change things by their presence. Miles, onstage
in the 1970s with all his musicians, without saying anything or even blowing into the trumpet, would shift the whole focus of the music just by looking this way or that or by walking up to someone who would then stop playing shit. That’s how a guru works.

John McLaughlin used to tell me that Miles would say to him, “Don’t forget—
I
was your first guru.” Miles could be funny, but he wasn’t wrong.

I think that’s why gurus and Eastern teachers sought out musicians—because people pay attention to them. Those gurus were smart—they knew what they were doing. They weren’t going to take out ads or do radio commercials. They were talking, and a lot of people were listening, and a lot of those people were musicians whom other people were listening to. I’m not sure why so many musicians were going that way, but I know for everyone there comes a time when you have to make a move for your own betterment. Even the oldest turtle with the hardest shell has to stick its neck out once in a while—and I think it was easier to do that then than it is now. The Beatles stuck their necks out with the Maharishi. Before them John Coltrane was reading Krishnamurti and talking about him with people, educating himself on spiritual principles.

People might still wonder about that—which musicians went with which gurus and for how long. But that’s a distraction—the point is not who studied with whom, it’s the why. For me it was about needing to evolve and elevate and share that with other human beings—to send letters home from the front line while I was waging the battle over the ego. I was with Sri Chinmoy for almost ten years, but my spiritual path never stopped.

I think you can guess by now that the ego battle is never totally won. It takes diligence, patience, and willingness, and from the start it’s got to be a gentle transformation. If you want to make progress in winning the battle over the ego, you can’t just chop off the head or jump into the deep end. It’s got to be gentle, and it has to start in a safe place. Even after you learn to meditate and to focus every day on love, devotion, and surrender, every day is also a chance to fall back into old habits. Even now I must remember to
let my ego go and stop investing in the illusion of separation and unworthiness. It’s a day-to-day thing.

Sri used to say that at every moment we have to decide if we want the division-desiring mind or the union-aspiring heart. I used to think about it this way: when Santana was flying around the world in the ’70s and ’80s, we’d be up above the clouds. I’d look out the window at a big, soft blanket where everything was sunny and quiet and looking perfect. But I knew in an hour or so we had to go back through the clouds and deal with whatever was happening underneath, just waiting for us.

Being human is not easy for anyone. Everyone has to deal with his or her own humanness. If we all could just tell ourselves, over and over, that the spark of the divine in us will triumph over our feet of clay—done. There’d be no need for gurus or guides. If only it were that easy.

It took years to say that with confidence about myself and to be able to speak about my convictions in public and onstage. But there’s no magic bullet that will work for everyone, no perfect master you can go to who can fix everything for you. I learned many things from Sri Chinmoy. Then it was time for me to learn on my own and from others. These days, there are two wonderful thought adjusters—Jerry Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione—who help me stay on the path with their gentle wisdom. I also read from the book
A Course in Miracles
every day and discuss its message with Jerry and Diane and try to apply its spiritual principles.

In the end I think we all have our own experiences and our own emergencies. We need to consider our choices and listen to the messages that various people have for us and choose a path for ourselves. I think that everybody is meant to find his or her own way home.

I believe I am a spiritual kind of person who’s well-rounded and balanced. I like to laugh and don’t carry this stuff around like it’s a heavy message that needs to be weighed and delivered with special handling. To be enlightened means to be light in all senses of the word.

There’s a story I’ve heard about two monks who made a vow to
never touch a woman. They’re walking along and come to a river where a beautiful girl asks for their help getting to the other side. One of them lets her get on his shoulders and carries her across. A little while later the monk who helped the girl sees that the other is angry and upset. He asks what’s wrong. “What about our vows? How could you carry her?” the other monk says. The first monk looks at him. “Hey, I put her down a long time ago—you’re the one still carrying her.”

I’m still going to share during my shows—that’s just who I am, and I think people need to hear what I have learned. And if you listen—
really
listen—you can hear the message, the Universal Tone that I speak about, in all the music that I play.

It’s not just my music, either—the Universal Tone lives in any number of songs that speak with the same message of love and connection, that take away the filters and reveal the best of who we are and who we can be. Sam Cooke—“A Change Is Gonna Come.” Marvin Gaye—“What’s Going On.” John Lennon—“Imagine.” Bob Marley—“One Love.” John Coltrane—“A Love Supreme.” Even “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and its line “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily / Life is but a dream.” These are songs that time cannot wither or diminish.

Thank you for being here. We love touching you with our music, and when you leave this place and you wake up tomorrow and you have to deal with you, I invite you to look in the mirror and say, “This is going to be the best day of my life.” Say it with clarity and soulfulness and sincerity. When you can say that, then you truly are divine, and I salute you because I can see Christ in you. I see Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Rama, Shango. I see holiness in you. If you remember anything from tonight, let it be this. Say to yourself, “Hey, that Mexican said it is my choice. It is my choice alone. I can create heaven on earth.” God bless you and be kind to one another. “A Love Supreme,” “One Love,” “Imagine”: thank you. Good night.