The Uncompromising Spiritual Passion and Positivity of Carlos Santana
An interview with Carlos Santana 
by Craig Hamilton and Jessica Roemischer
(by “What is Enlightment Magazine“, Issue 28 /March–May 2005, USA )
The Preacher
Santana on intention, motives, and purpose
Carlos Santana defies cynicism. A half-million people watched the electrifying performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival that catapulted him to stardom. And since then, millions upon millions, one generation after another, have been touched by his music. However, few may realize that Santana’s life is dedicated to keeping alive the utopian ideal of the sixties: the dream of equality, unity, and love that so many of us have since abandoned as naive or nearly impossible to fulfill. And perhaps even fewer realize that this dream is inspired by his deeply felt spirituality that transcends race, culture, and religion. “To live is to dream,” he said at the 2000 Grammy Awards. And because he continues his passionate commitment to the dream of human harmony, Santana is a global ambassador of optimism, opportunity, and love. The goal of his music—and his life’s purpose—far transcends entertainment. “It’s not just to make people happy or make them dance,” he explains. “It’s to change things—so that we can have a clearer vision of our life and ourselves, so there won’t be so much disharmony in the world.”
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT: Over the course of your career, your spiritual beliefs have changed and evolved, and yet spirituality continues to be the foundation of your life. You have said that “everyone has divine qualities to be able to heal and transform. . . . Once you believe, the rest will follow.” What constitutes the essence of your own beliefs today?
CARLOS SANTANA: Your intention, motives, and purpose really define who you are. It’s not whether you’re Santana or Smith or Jones, or whether you’re Mexican or Hebrew or Catholic or Buddhist. I don’t think God and the angels see any of that stuff. They just see your intention, your motives, and your purpose. And once those three are crystallized and sharpened and are tuned into something, things open up for you—supreme synchronicity and blessings, opportunities, possibilities. Everyone is destined to prosperity, to progress, and the keys that humans need to find are intention, motives, and purpose, because that is who you really, really are. I’m surprised they don’t teach those three things in school. That’s the gasoline that you need to take you to the next destination, not all the other stuff. The other stuff is just dust. But for me, what I’m learning more and more is that those three things—intention, motives, and purpose—really define who you are.
WIE: You grew up Catholic, and then at a certain point became interested in Eastern religion, and then returned to Christianity. Does Christianity, or any traditional religion, continue to play a role in your life?
CARLOS: Well, it’s indoctrination; that’s just what it is. It’s like branding a cow with guilt, shame, judgment, condemnation, and fear—that’s what religion has meant to me. I get in trouble a lot with the press and with TV because I say that I don’t subscribe to the three P’s: politicians, pimps, and the Pope. I think that all three of them are designed to sell you fear. And if we are going to move to a new world, we’ve got to work with joy—the opposite of guilt, shame, judgment, condemnation, and fear. There’s nothing spiritual about telling people, “You’ve got to be like a Christ. You’ve got to carry your own cross.” What the hell is that? Are you telling me that we only come to this world to suffer? What kind of perverted God would do that? But nevertheless, a lot of religions have that as their basic foundation. And people swallow it, believe it, and then you have a whole bunch of seriously professional victims.
In my life, I don’t want to be a victim and I don’t want to be a tragedy. I want triumph—spiritual triumph—with humility and grace, beauty, elegance, and excellence. You know, I learned a lot from Duke Ellington about class, and from Nat King Cole and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Coltrane about humility. So I have crystallized all my religion into no religion—into spirituality. Religion is finely designed to divide and separate; spirituality brings unity and forgiveness and compassion.
WIE: Can you elaborate on how spirituality, in the way that you’re describing it, changes or impacts our fundamental perspective on life?
CARLOS: When you give birth to your own sense of clarity, that’s when you realize that spirituality can turn people around to the fact that we have choices, that we’re not stuck with our karma. Most people give up, thinking, “My astrology says this, my karma says that, and my parents were no good so I’m acting no good.” So people resign themselves, but it’s because they don’t realize that in every breath, you have a choice. Whatever you think, you say, you do, it creates a momentum.
Spirituality to me is water. Religions are like Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, wine, beer, or whatever. But spirituality is what’s really going to save you in the battle, man. Champagne is not going to do much for you in battle. And so that’s how I look at things. To me, it’s very clear. And I think the more we get people this information, spiritual information, they will be able to choose, to realize the power of choice because, again, that’s the most empowering thing you can give people. And I’m really happy to say that I’m not the only one waking up to this new dimension.
WIE: You seem to be suggesting that choice and free will are really the cornerstones of spiritual life. Can you say more about that?
CARLOS: When we die, when you die, when I die, we will get a standing ovation from demons and angels because we did things that they cannot do, because we have free will. Angels and demons cannot create a Golden Gate Bridge. We come out of a woman and are so frail and so weak, yet we dream. People may tell us, “It could never happen. It will cost too much money; it will take an army of people; it will take a long time; it will be tough—concrete and cement and steel.” But there’s the Golden Gate Bridge! Jesus didn’t do that. And after all, he told us, “You would do things that I cannot do.” That’s spiritual.
But most people are not in a place where they can hold their worth. God made me worth something, but we’re not programmed to think like this. Most people squirm or interrupt you when you give them a compliment because they think, “I’m not worthy” or “It will go to my head.” Man, suck it up; be gracious and say, “Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Because when we wake up to the fullness of the world, the foundation being spiritual principles, then we can see what Jesus wanted, or Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Rama, Jehovah—what they really wanted from us.
WIE: Where do you find your greatest source of spiritual inspiration?
CARLOS: My meat and potatoes is my intention, motives, and purpose, and the company that I keep. My phone rings and it’s Mr. Desmond Tutu or Mr. Harry Belafonte. It’s okay to brag because they are the people that I would rather have calling me—and people like Miles Davis or Wayne Shorter. If I never got an award, that would be fine with me, because the company that I keep is very inspiring and stimulating. I love hanging around vibrant people, people who don’t walk around with a tag. You can never put a tag on a Mandela or a Desmond Tutu or a Harry Belafonte. You cannot buy these people, and once they set out to do something, you can’t bribe them. Those are the kinds of people that I’d like to be center stage with.
WIE: You have said of the 1960s that you “miss those days, the fire and the hunger that people had and the urgent sense that things had to change.” How do you experience that urgency now, at the threshold of a new millennium that’s fraught with unprecedented global crisis?
CARLOS: I bring practical spirituality together with the rebel from the street, because I still live the principles of the sixties. I’m still a hippie. We were rainbow warriors, reincarnated Native American Indians who wanted a different dimension of existence. And it may sound idealistic, but it’s working for me. It’s working for me better than the so-called meat-and-potatoes reality of a lot of people. To me, being spiritual is not being meek. I don’t know anything about turning the other cheek. I don’t believe in violence, but I believe in taking action. And I guess that’s why my wife, Deborah, and I are so involved with children, because if you change the children, you can change the world. The older people, they’re already set, but we feel very passionately that if you put new data and new information out, something miraculous is possible.
I think we have to tell Dunlop, Nike, Starbucks, all the biggest tobacco and oil companies, all those people: you can make a difference in the world. You can do something from your heart that will benefit a lot of people on the planet, and you’ll still be profitable. That’s spiritual. And if you’re not doing that, then you’re basically retarding the existence of this planet. I do believe what Thomas Jefferson used to say—that tyrants are disobedient to God, and we can’t let them continue to destroy this planet, the people, and the ocean. So obviously, I’d like to change the powers of the world because they’ve had their turn. I think it’s important to see a new parade of people who are in a position to change the consciousness—not just the same creepy old guard.
WIE: You have been quoted as saying that through your music you “want to connect the molecules with the light.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
CARLOS: When you hear something incredible that moves you to dance, to cry and dance at the same time, your molecules change. To a meat-and-potatoes person, the first time your molecules change is when you French kiss or when you play hide-and-seek and you touch someone’s hand; something happens to your body. But how do you put spiritual principles into practical everyday reality that people can digest? Well, it’s not impossible.
So in conclusion, I’m happy to tell you that we’re not alone; there are a lot of people who are resonating with this and want the same thing. I think the door is open; we want it now. We want spiritual revolution, consciousness revolution. That’s what the Beatles and Marvin Gaye and John Lennon and John Coltrane were talking about. We all want the same thing, and that can be attained! It’s not impossible. And more than anything, I invite you to crystallize your intention, motives, and purpose, because if you don’t do that, you’re always going to blame somebody else for what you didn’t get to do.
Deborah and Carlos Santana share the heartfelt conviction that the responsibility of success is to “give back” to the world. During the early 1970s, they began working with international aid organizations, such as Save the Children, to support children living in poverty around the world. Over the last decades, their humanitarian impulse has only grown—resulting in the founding, in 1998, of the Milagro Foundation to meet the needs of underprivileged children, and more recently in their commitment to Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA), which is addressing the AIDS pandemic ravaging that country. Despite their high-profile stature, the Santanas are choosing to work at the grassroots level through these organizations. Supported by donations as well as through proceeds from ticket sales (twenty-five to fifty cents from each ticket sold for Santana’s concerts goes to the foundation), Milagro has aided a youth enterprise and leadership program in Zimbabwe, a youth theater-project in San Francisco, an integrated school for Arab and Jewish children in Israel, and more. As the Santanas both emphasize, their philanthropic work is not to procure more fame but to spread the miracle of a new possibility to those who need help. “To me,” Carlos says, “Milagro is the hand of God, picking us up when we fall, raising consciousness, healing.”
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT: How would you describe the mission of the Milagro Foundation?
DEBORAH SANTANA: We created the Milagro Foundation as a repository for all of the thousands of requests that we received for help. Milagro means miracle, so the philosophy is basically that through serving children and youth in the areas of health, education, and the arts, we are helping each child to reach their destiny as the miracles that they were created to be.
CARLOS SANTANA: Our mission is healing and restoring some of the things that children might lose by being in the wrong environment, sometimes not having parents, or having parents who are not spiritually evolved. It’s very much about giving the gift of the awareness that you have a choice, that you’re not always stuck with karma or with the worst mom and dad. And for that, we are getting requests for help from all over the world.
It’s somewhat like irrigating. I always think of Milagro as being like the people who open those irrigation wheels and let the water come out from the Sierras all the way to LA, Fresno, and Bakersfield, all the places that are basically desert. So we’re like people who turn those wheels and are able to give money, which is time and energy. Since I was a kid, I understood that if you put time and energy into something, they give you a check, whether it’s washing dishes or whatever. And so we like to share this energy and time and love with all the people who are deeply dedicated all over the world to rescue children and teenagers.
DEBORAH: One of the things that I think is important to understand about everything that we do is that it comes from the same source and it’s a spiritual source. Whether it’s getting the band out on the road, making a new CD, or working with children and youth in Milagro, we try to be completely organic in terms of asking for direction from within ourselves from that place of light and peace—asking from a selfless place of service. So whatever we’re doing has that same thread. And in that, you have to constantly be open to growing and changing.
Milagro is not stagnant. We started off with the vision to serve youth and children and have become very, very interested in the disparity between economic classes, because in reality, the children and youth who are underserved and underrepresented are often children of color and children in urban areas. We’re noticing that the theme of spiritual equality—of putting that light out there for everybody—is really the driving force behind everything that we do.
WIE: What are some of the most inspiring results you’ve seen from the work you’ve supported?
CARLOS: The letters and paintings that children send, the smiles before and after. My whole life has been about feedback, whether it’s feedback from my guitar to my amplifier, from us to the audience, from God to us and the angels—it’s all about feedback. So the only thing that I do request once in a while is that I get to see letters and the videos of an organization before and after it has received funding.
WIE: How does being world renowned and having celebrity status impact the philanthropic work that you’re doing?
CARLOS: Look at a person like Paul Newman who very quietly gives away millions a year. That’s my true bona fide hero, because he very quietly does the salad dressing and the popcorn and the lemonade, but man, a lot of that money is helping the world. So we want to help but be invisible and anonymous as much as possible, because you get more done when you’re invisible. To be able to be anonymous is one of the supreme luxuries that people don’t realize they have. Because when you’re visible, man, it’s like duck hunting season. So I’m saying from experience that it’s more productive to be invisible and anonymous and to help and be of service to the world.
DEBORAH: And even though we have this other life and people may look at us and think, well, he’s a musician, she’s a writer, they have a company, they drive this kind of car—people may see something external about us, but our intention is to keep our lives in tune with who we are inside. And who we are inside is spiritual beings. So that’s always my intention.
WIE: You have also made large donations to Artists for a New South Africa, which is addressing one of our greatest humanitarian crises—the AIDS pandemic in that part of the world. Can you speak about the impact your support is having?
CARLOS: I had a dream about going to Africa with two 747s full of medicine and musicians and doing a concert there. Although, you know, it’s nothing new. Bill Graham did it with Peter Gabriel, and Sting, and Bruce Springsteen. Anyway, my dream wouldn’t fly, because by the time you pay the gasoline and the hotels and the crew and everything, you don’t have any money to give away to anybody. But I refuse to become cynical. I put that dream aside and I mentioned to Deborah last year, “Why don’t we just give the money from the whole Shaman tour (2003). Let’s pay the taxes, pay the bills, and give them the whole thing.” Because a lot of concerts that people do for benefit never benefit the people who really need it, because the money ends up with the lawyers and the accountants and the business.
So we did that, and we feel very confident and very at ease that once you have a gentleman like Mr. Desmond Tutu as the administrator who’s going to distribute the funds, you can’t do anything better than that, because it’s not going to go into somebody’s pocket other than the organization’s. And I feel very honored and very grateful to be of service to the ground zero of AIDS in Africa. The statistics just break your heart. There are hundreds of thousands of orphans. And it impacts the world when children grow up without parents because they grow up very hateful and very resentful. You need nurturing, you need the mother’s touch, you need a father—it’s that balance. So we feel very honored and very grateful to be part of that.
DEBORAH: And both of us talked about feeling the tremendous amount of love that came from our hearts and went to South Africa, and came back in phone calls from Desmond Tutu telling us how excited he was that we would make that kind of offering to his country and his people, and how excited the people were, and that maybe two or three people had more hope because someone like us cared. Our hearts swelled with that response. The money would do tons because it’s going to go through Artists for a New South Africa, which we totally trust. Already the result from that act is that there are generic drugs that are going to be produced in South Africa that people will actually be able to afford. So the ripples that came from that act have been very heartwarming and wonderful. But I think the most important thing we felt was love, and it was immediate. And it wasn’t always spoken, but what could be better thing than to have your heart feel like it was expanding from something you couldn’t even see was coming back to you.
CARLOS: Deborah told me that Mother Teresa once said, “You don’t have to be Mother Teresa and do it the way I do it. Just do it wherever you are, whoever you are.” You don’t have to be able to heal or clean leprosy or feed the poor in Calcutta. Whoever you are, just do it in your own time, on your own block, in your own district. Deborah and I can only react and respond to my heart and to her heart. We have been given so many blessings. And so for us, it’s a joy to be of service, and we’re just starting; we’re just rolling up our sleeves. People can really live their truth according to their immediate passion for life. We call it spreading the spiritual virus, and it’s very contagious.
Carlos plays and testifies México
Versione Italiana
A True Legend