Deva Premal and Miten and Manose. Photo by Rishi (www.HappyLivingMedia.com)
For nearly two decades, audiences around the world have flocked to performances by the beloved mantra singers, Deva Premal and Miten. At the start of their North American Temple At Midnight Tour (which stops at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 27th), they sat down with LA Yoga to talk about love, loss, and redemption.
Don’t miss Deva Premal and Miten’s World Tour, which travels through 18 cities in North America from May 13 to June 11. For more information, visit devapremalmiten.com.
Miten, your much-lauded new album of songs, Temple At Midnight, is a meditation on love, loss, and redemption. How have those themes manifested in your life with your partner, Deva Premal?
Miten: How do they manifest? In everything we do. They can’t be departmentalized…
How do you find your way through the darkness?
Miten: The mantras [that we sing on our albums and in our concerts]…they light up the darkness.
What is love?
Deva Premal: I was given the name [Deva Premal, or] ‘Divine Loving’ by my guru when I was 11 years old, so the flavor of love has been with me for a long time. Love is connection, and everyone is happy when they feel connected. I think the suffering comes when we feel disconnected.
I love the love that I feel with Miten. Every day I wake up with it, and it makes me so happy. [Other types of] love that I feel are the universal connection in nature, and love with strangers. Just smiling with somebody on the street who smiles back at you, it’s so uplifting.
Deva Premal and Miten. Photo by Rishi (www.HappyLivingMedia.com)
You’ve been together for 26 years. What keeps your relationship going strong?
Deva Premal: Humor. And freedom—as much as possible, letting the other person live their own life. But for us, it’s also the traveling. Our life is a flowing river, there is nothing stagnant about it. It’s also the love field that we have around us, with so many friends and such a [strong] community. [But] I think the most important [thing is] that we are creative together. It feels like, in this relationship, we are not looking at each other. We are both looking in the same direction, holding hands. We know the focus is not about each other, it’s about both of us walking in the light, toward the light.
How can people experience or generate more love in their relationships?
Miten: Respect each other’s spiritual journey and make that your highest priority.
For those of us who have been affected by loss, what would you say is the path to redemption?
Miten: If you say, “It will take time,” you’ll never heal, because time doesn’t heal in that way. The only way to deal with loss is to face the fact that you might have an addiction to the thing [or the person] that you’ve lost. You just have to deal with the addiction until you’re free and clear of it and you don’t want it anymore. Then you can wish that person well, [whether they’re alive or not]. Then your perspective changes, [because you realize that] their spiritual journey is their business, no matter how much you think you might be hurt or let down or whatever.
When we’re really raw, when we’re feeling that loss, that’s where the lessons are…not in the steady flow of the river, [but] in the pull and the push of the currents. It’s part of the journey of life…to live and to love and to lose and to keep moving through.
Deva Premal & Miten, the duo dubbed as “the Johnny and June Carter Cash of sacred music” by Yoga International, will bring their North American Temple At Midnight Tour to the Wilshire Ebell Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 27th. Tickets are available here.
