Throughout the world, many philosophies contain the concept that each of us has a "calling" or road we follow in life. The road we travel on life's journey and the voice that calls us along it, often give meaning to our lives, particularly in a spiritual sense. The British musical group, Kula Shaker, and Indian Sitar master, Ravi Shankar, have made their journey or voyage one of blending music and spirituality and in doing so, bringing traditional Indian philosophy and spirituality into the mainstream of Western music.

Ravi Shankar's record, "Chants of India" (Angel/Dark Horse), was produced by Shankar's longtime friend and musical collaborator, George Harrison. The songs on the album were composed by Shankar, who based them on prayers and ancient chants of his native India. For Ravi Shankar this album reflects the culmination of an idea whose roots had been with him for a long while.

Kula Shaker, whose singer/guitarist Crispian Mills is son of actress Hayley Mills and grandson of actor Sir John Mills, stirred up the British charts when their album K (Columbia) went to #1. Hit songs on the album, "Govinda" and "Tattva," are based on meditations and mantras that Crispian and bass player Alonza Bevan learned while traveling and studying in India. For the members of Kula Shaker, who besides Crispian and Alonza, are keyboardist Jay Darlington and drummer Paul Winter-Hart, bringing a spiritual message back from India and incorporating into their music is part of, as Crispian and Jay told us in a recent conversation in San Francisco, "their Grail Quest."

Crispian explained, "One summer we went running around the West Country of England, led by our instincts and in a sense looking for our Grail. It's a odd quest to be on. We took the approach of the mad fools--the fool being the only one says the truth to the king, but at the same time we had our madness. Part of this was meeting, through friends, a psychic madman who took us on a quest. This person was a scary version of Robin Williams in The Fisher King. The summer ended with us forming the band, and doing the Glastonbury Festival. At the time we called ourselves "The Kays," because of the symbolism of the "K" in the word magick and the tie to Sir Kay of the Holy Grail. We went on for two-and-a-half years under that name, which in a sense seemed like an apprenticeship, until we felt it was time to move on. This was when we went to India and met our spiritual teacher Kula Shaker and took our name from him."

Similar to the Celtic Arthurian Grail legend, the Vedas of Hindu mythology are also about the conflict of good and evil, light and darkness. This is largely because both Celtic and Indian mythologies are derived from the same Indo-European roots. The Vedas, whose literal definition is "divine knowledge," are four collections of prayers, hymns, and rituals. Ravi Shankar in his new album "Chants Of India," used the Vedas, which as he said in a recent interview, were "from my childhood."

He explained, "The idea for "Chants Of India" came from the President of Angel Records, Steve Murphy, who just finished an album of Gregorian Chants which was very successful, particularly among young people. He had this idea for doing the same thing with Indian chants. I was excited by the idea, and then enlisted the support of George Harrison, without whom I could not have done this album. During the recording, he was always in the studio along with me, and then later on mixing, editing, and he even played some of the background instruments. As far as the chants we chose to record, I belong to a Brahman Rishi family and am very familiar with various mantras and chants. It was traditionally secretive and wasn't written down. All I had to do was choose the right ones for this occasion."

In Hindu mythology the Rishi was a holy man or sage, mind-born from Brahma, and the traditional composers of the Vedas and the progenitors of the Brahmans. The four chief Vedas are entitled the Rig-Vedas, the oldest and most sacred, Sama-Veda, many hymns from the Rig-Veda accompanied by musical notation, Yajur-Veda, prayers and spells, and Atharva-Veda, which consisted of popular material. Traditionally, each Veda is divided into the Mantra and Brahmana, of which the later was a commentary whose parts included the Aryanakas and Upanishads, treatises speaking upon the nature of the divine. Ravi Shankar describes his process of assembling the chants on his album as one of weeding out that which was added later.

He told us, "In time all the chants were added on with a lot of fundamentalist and ritualistic words. When I was composing the songs for "Chants Of India," I wanted to weed these out and make the music universal. I chose all those special chants that deal with peace, love, good health and well-being. Traditionally, people kept these chants in their families and did them exactly as they were done a thousand years ago. Music, in much the same way, has been handed down by musicians from generation to generation. Using the three mystical and magical notes--the central note, the lower note, and the upper note, which can shift--produces something that is so strong, that when repeated again and again, has a fantastic effect. This music along with the Sanskrit words, which is the oldest of languages, has a very special connection. When you listen to the combination of the music and words, you go into a trance-like state, and it has a tremendous power and spiritual quality."

Kula Shaker utilize this Vedic philosophy of combining music and spirituality, but take a step further when they blend Eastern and Western cultures on their album "K." For example, their song "Govinda" which begins with the chant, "Govinda Jaya Jaya, Gopala Jaya Jaya Radha-ramanahari Govinda Jaya Jaya Nrsingadeva Jaya Nrsingadeva." which Crispian described as a "mantra with magical overtones."

He went on to talk about how Kula Shaker came to use the lyric for the song. "Govinda is a Hindu folk song about Krishna that is thousands of years old. I first heard it when I was in India. In India, the folk songs use the names of gods so they take on a spiritual quality. It wasn't a conscious thing to start singing "Govinda." It happened very naturally in that the band was playing, and I started singing and jamming over the top of it. It's amazing how people respond to "Govinda" because they don't know it's a mantra and magical sound formula. They think it's just Indian song and don't know why they are drawn to it. My personal understanding of mysticism and spirituality comes from India. So even though I have an interest and respect for other traditions, that's my yardstick, and I measure everything in relation to that. They talk about the yugas and cyclic time, as opposed to time as linear, starting and stopping. Everything is going in cycles. Where we are now is the Age of Kali, not the Goddess Kali, but the magician Kali, which is very dark, full of ignorance and materialism and so forth. But within Kali is a Golden Age where people can understand very deep profound mystical secrets that previously weren't available to anybody. Now is a very auspicious time. With the band Kula Shaker, we are trying to bring back in our music all the things that were inspirational in the past. Music is so lame and meaningless at the moment because it doesn't have any substance. We want to put feeling and emotion back into rock'n'roll by reminding people of where those inspirational feelings came from in the first place."

Much like the yugas and cycles of time expressed in Hindu mythology, Kula Shaker and Ravi Shankar are part of a cycle that began when the cultures of India and Europe split thousands of years ago from their combined Indo-European roots. Now as modern voyagers whose "calling" is to blend music with spirituality, they are introducing Indian culture and mysticism, once again, into Western culture, and thus cycling forward into the future with an eye on the past.