Glastonbury and the Path of Devotion
Even though I am now a veteran of over thirty Glastonbury festivals, I can still safely say that the place never ceases to amaze me. It’s rare that I’ll find myself at any of the main stages as the best stuff is usually found hidden away and this year was no exception. Our tea-shop in the Healing-Fields, was in the fortunate situation of being located right next to the Kirtan tent. ‘Kirtan’ comes from the Sanskrit root to call, recite, or praise and is the act of praising and glorifying some kind of divinity. While such worship can be expressed in many ways, the Kirtan takes the form of a call and response singing of a mantra often accompanied by musical instruments. This devotional form of practice usually focuses on one of the Hindu deities such as Rama, Krishna, or Sita.
The sound can be quite hypnotic and is an enchanting way to start the day whilst listening in from the tent next-door. One morning I was drawn right in to the middle of the Kirtan, lured by its mesmeric chants and soothing rhythms. Once inside the circle I began to fully embrace the trance-inducing nature of the Kirtan. The love, passion and devotion that the singers and players were emanating, left me covered in goose-bumps and I could feel energy rushing up and out of my spine. At one point, with tears streaming down my face, I may have even joined in the chanting!
The path of devotion is not one that comes naturally to me, even though it is the main path shared by all the world’s major religions. I was brought up in a Church of England school, where we were subjected to the stifling and boring hymns about God and Jesus. The austere and forbidding nature of modern Christianity put me off of worshiping for life and I later concluded that organised religions were really just used as a way of controlling the masses. But here in the Kirtan tent, this felt like something else. This was a feeling and an experience of connecting to something that is higher than oneself, through devotion, love and song. Maybe if I’d have gone to Gospel church all those years ago I may have had a different take on Christianity, as those guys certainly look like they’re having fun!
Taoism, the philosophy that I have studied most extensively, doesn’t have any God-head figures to be worshiped, although they do have some interesting theories on the idea. Devotion, where you humble yourself in front of a deity, can create a profound state of humility. True humility creates an energetic vacuum within the body, which then has the capacity to draw more Qi inwards. Once enough Qi has been gathered then the energy rises up the spine and out of the top of the head, sometimes causing the forehead to be drawn rapidly down to the ground as the Qi seeks a way to be earthed. This causes the body to prostrate itself in to the classic pose employed by many of the religious practices around the world. However in Taoism the prostration is involuntary and the energetic mechanisms of the devotion are sought to be understood.
Later on in the festival I had another similar experience but this time in a very different setting. Whilst seemingly the rest of the world were watching Elton John, we headed to the Glade for a bit of psychedelic trance. For those who have never heard it, psy-trance is a genre of electronic dance music that began in Goa and was popularised in the West of England during the 1990s. I have been a fan of it ever since then. It has a pounding hypnotic quality to it and is often overlaid with samples taken from Indian devotional music. In a classic Glastonbury twist of synchronicity, we were joined by one of the leaders from the Kirtan tent and here amongst the psychedelic rhythms, the lights and the trees we trance-danced the night away. The goose-bumps and energy that was flowing around, distinctly reminded me of my time in the Kirtan circle. The feelings of love and connection were there, as was a sense of being part of something greater than oneself. But this time the object of devotion was different. Not a God, so to speak, but something equally as powerful. The connection of people through music. This to me felt like a Kirtan for the new-age.