Interview with Jaya Jagannath Das.
They call me “Jaya”. My spiritual journey began when I was 17. At that time, I was training as a ballet dancer in New York (I had started training when I was 11 years old). I was also on the quest for love. I had a vague idea what to look for, but nothing that was very concrete. Sometimes, I would walk a hundred blocks hoping that I would bump into love someday! Of course it never happened. Later on, my roommate and cousin introduced a book to me by Carl Jung called “Man and His Symbols”. In that book he talked a lot about consciousness and super consciousness, dreams and architypes, dreams and songs. That kind of steered my quest for love in the spiritual direction. So, I started reading a lot of philosophical and religious books in order to inform myself about what love was.
I started reading a lot of philosophical and religious books in order to inform myself about what love was. So both of their conclusions were not satisfying… One day, I stumbled upon Srila Prabhupada’s book called “The Science of Self-Realization”
So, I started reading a lot of philosophical and religious books in order to inform myself about what love was. I was reading a lot from both Eastern and Western traditions. What I liked about the Western traditions was that their conclusions often were about the relationship with God, although it was very vague. What I liked about the Eastern traditions was that they had a lot of philosophical content that was just absolutely profound. But their conclusion was often very morbid: either you cease to exist (my understanding of the Buddhists at that time) or you merge with the Absolute and also cease to exist. So both of their conclusions were not satisfying, although the profound philosophical content was very interesting, fascinating, and nice. One day, I stumbled upon Srila Prabhupada’s book called “The Science of Self-Realization” (I was 18 at that time). The way I stumbled upon this book – I was starting to get into hip-hop. I was also writing hip-hop and we found a friend who was an actual artist (a lot of his music was about spiritual subject matter). So, I became his friend just to kind of pick his brain on spiritual subjects.
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