Enlightened Perspectives: Deva Premal & Miten: How Mantra Heals

Deva Premal and Miten are partners in love and music. German-born Deva (née Jolantha Fries), a bodywork practitioner, and British native Miten (né Andy Desmond), a former rocker who opened for bands like Fleetwood Mac, met at an ashram devoted to the teachings of Indian spiritual leader Osho in 1990. Together they create community through meditative musical gatherings, chanting retreats, and Zoom rooms. The symbiotic duo’s albums, including 2018’s Grammy-nominated Deva, reverberate with her sonorous voice and his harmonic compositions. Eckhart Tolle, Cher, and the Dalai Lama are fans. The couple’s version of the Sanskrit Gayatri Mantra is the gold standard. In advance of a world tour that will take them to the U.S. for the first time since 2019, they recently shared with contributing editor Karen Brailsford how mantras heal—and why their relationship still sings after all these years.

Karen Brailsford: There’s an American children’s series called Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? So, where in the world are Deva Premal and Miten?

Miten: We’re in Deva’s birthplace, in Nuremberg, Germany.

KB: I see you as living the dream life because you get to travel from place to place. Is this the life you envisioned?

Deva Premal: There was a natural flow where we wanted to travel with the music. Pretty quickly a migration pattern emerged where we would stay two months in Greece and three months in Australia, and then a few months in Europe and a few months in America, sometimes South America. We just loved it. We never missed having a home or felt like we wanted to stay just in one place.

M: We never set out to create what’s happened to us. It just happened. And the music, especially the mantras and the Gayatri Mantra, has taken us on its wings.

DP: And then when corona happened, we found ourselves in Costa Rica.

M: For a program. And we never left.

DP: We never left. And now we’ve built a house in Costa Rica. So, we actually have a home in Costa Rica.

M: At last.

DP: For the first time in our lives, we actually have a real home.

KB: Of course, you would end up in Costa Rica, a spiritual hot spot!

M: We’ve been going there 20 years. We’ve watched many gardens blossom in different parts of the world after all these years, but the Blue Spirit resort in Costa Rica is where we bring people for groups. It’s in the jungle. We have monkeys as friends. It’s becoming a little more commercialized as people get to know about it. But the animals are there. You just have to be quiet and let them come to you.

KB: Deva mentioned migration. I’ve been listening to your new live single, “All the Birds Fly Home.”

M: It was one of many songs I liked from my time at Osho’s ashram in Pune [India]. The “spiritually incorrect mystic,” as we like to call him, inspired so many people. We would dance with our eyes closed before sitting in silence. It was almost like the birth of rave music before there was any such thing. The song came back to me in Costa Rica, and we started to play it at the end of our concerts.

We were there when Covid hit and so we didn’t leave. We had the joy of watching nature unfold in front of us through a whole year. We had a house in the jungle. We watched birds building nests. We watched when the babies came out of the nests to look and opened their beaks for food. We also watched their first flight.

KB: Part of me wants to tease, Oh, you poor things! Stuck in Costa Rica during Covid!

M: [Laughs] Somebody had to do it!

DP: We thought, Well, we are in this incredible place. What can we give from here? Like everyone else, we went online. Every day for 77 days at 2 or 3 p.m. Costa Rica time, which is when Australians and Americans and Europeans could meet, we sang the Gayatri Mantra. And there were 50 to 100,000 views every day of those meditations. We’ve heard it was such a lifesaver, an anchor.

M: For all of us.

DP: Yes, for all of us. There was such a strong community, we then said, “Okay, let’s now do it once a week.” We haven’t stopped in four years.

M: Every Saturday, live.

DP: We also decided to give this community a home, so we made an app called Gayatri Sangha. It’s become a beautiful virtual omline appshram. We do everything from holding daily meditations to sharing vegan recipes.

M: We also introduce people to other teachers we’ve crossed paths with and to friends we’ve learned things from. It’s an amazing garden of the beloved.

DP: And it’s really tangible, even though it’s virtual. You can really feel it.

KB: You’ve always been focused on building community and cultivating a sense of oneness.

DP: Osho is our root, and Osho’s vision was always very inclusive of all spiritual paths.

M: And traditions. The way that I came to Osho was to read one of his discourses on Zen parables. It just opened our minds. We were very young. Well, she was. [Laughing at the reference to their 23-year age difference]

DP: That really informed the way we share the music. We’re not Hindus although we transcribe Sanskrit mantras. It’s a healing modality of sounds that have no ideology or belief system attached to them. They’re pure sounds.

M: We’re not just singing rock songs or ballads or pop songs. Every time Deva sings, she’s sending healing energy out to the people. And to us too.

KB: What is so special about the Gayatri Mantra and how has it influenced your lives?

DP: The Gayatri Mantra invokes the sun, spiritual light, and enlightenment. And because my father chose it to welcome me and my sister into the world, and then chanted it with us every night as a good night song, it’s been with me from day one. But I let it go when I was 10 or 11 because I was like [rolling eyes], Oh, God! Mantras? That’s my parents, not me.

And then I found my own spiritual path with Osho, which didn’t include mantras unless you wanted it to. But in my late 20s, the Gayatri Mantra came back to me while I was at an Osho center. I realized that I had this treasure inside of me that I’d basically forgotten but had been growing somehow within me—because once I reconnected to it, it just burst forth. It changed my voice, and it changed our lives. That’s the version [on the 1998 debut album The Essence] that, like seeds, flew everywhere.

M: We’ve chanted it just about every day ever since. It never feels old. It’s a living entity. You never know musically how it’s going to unfold. You have a structure, you have a chord sequence, but once the genie comes out of the bottle, you just hold on and let it go wherever it needs to go to connect.

KB: When my daughter was young, she heard the Gayatri Mantra one time and immediately knew the words.

M: There is definitely something that children tap into. We’ve met many parents who tell us their children chanted mantras throughout their childhood. It’s a beautiful connection.

KB: Many say they heal after listening to your music. Miten, you yourself experienced a healing.

M: After my heart surgery [in 2018], I was convalescing and found that if I lay down and just trembled, a certain relief came. It wasn’t until later, when I read Peter Levine, an expert on physical trauma, that I learned that’s what animals do when they heal. I carried on for about a week nonstop and then I had this incredible night of red-hot catharsis. I was screaming and crying, and Deva was holding the space for me like an angel. Toward dawn I could feel the energy beginning to subside. I was about to say to Deva, “Let’s put Osho’s voice on. I need to hear him.” But before I said those words a voice said to me, “What about your healing? What about your music?”

DP: Your own medicine.

M: Deva put on the recording of the Gayatri Mantra, and we lay down on the bed in each other’s arms. Eventually we fell asleep. When we woke up in the morning, it was like a new day. The sun was pouring through the window. I felt like a newborn.

DP: We are receptive to vibration influencing our bodies. It feels like we are bringing sacred order into our system. According to the scriptures, the most powerful way to tune into the mantras and to receive their power is when we think them, not when we say them out loud. They say it’s 100,000 times stronger when you think the mantra. The more you become a master of your thoughts and of the mind—focusing that energy just on the sounds within—the more it becomes an inner cleansing, an inner tidying up.

KB: I read that you begin your concerts with meditation. Is it your intention for everyone to be thinking the mantra?

DP: Our whole concerts are a meditation. They just have different expressions of meditation. Some are more up, and some are more silent. We usually like to begin in silence to have a breath and just arrive. And then, you know, take it from there.

KB: Earlier I said you’re living the dream life because you get to travel. But it’s also because you get to work together. What makes Deva and Miten work?

DP: It’s a good question. We’ll let you know when we find out! [To Miten] I’m curious about what you’re going to say.

M: If we knew the answer, we would be couples’ therapists. We’ve never had to work at this. We’ve been together 24/7 for 32, 33 years. As long as I do what she tells me, no problem. [Laughing] That’s my message to all the men out there!

KB: What do you love most about Deva?

M: How long have we got? I would say Deva is as true an angel as I’ve ever come across in this world. It’s not only on a spiritual level. She’s also so caring—not just with me, but also with friends and other people. I’ve watched that all through our life together. I find it absolutely inspiring. And she can sing. Is there a God, or what?

KB: Deva, what do you love about Miten?

DP: I don’t think I could be with someone who didn’t make me laugh. Humor is a huge thing. And he’s like a shaman. I think that’s also why our relationship works. When we work together, there’s a clear understanding. I know he’s the leader, the shaman in our musical expression. We don’t bump into each other because I want to be the leader. Of course, I have moments of thinking, Where are you going with this? I have such a deep appreciation of Miten’s love and wisdom. It just doesn’t get old. It just keeps being very delightful.

KB: Do you remember the first time you saw each other at the ashram?

DP: I remember being attracted to this very loving being. We have a nice little story, which you can tell. [To Miten] Shall I tell it? Or will you tell it?

M: You go ahead.

DP: Miten was going on a world tour to all the Osho centers. The Osho Times newspaper held a photo session with the artists. The photographer felt that to reflect the diversity of the group, there should be a blonde in the picture.

M: They all had long, black hair and beards. [Laughs] Even the women.

DP: And he found me.

M: She was sitting on the wall reading a book. She was literally the first blonde woman I saw. I just walked up to her and asked if she’d be in a photograph for the ashram newspaper and explained it to her. I took her hand and walked her over to the photographer.

KB: Can you describe how exactly you make music together?

DP: I still haven’t really found a huge flow of composition. I’ve composed one or two things here and there [like “Seven Chakra Gayatri Mantra,” from Deva].

M: Everything is done together.

DP: Yeah, but the songs, you really write.

M: I feel like we tune in together. We’re collaborators. There’s no one defining way that we can say, “This is who we are, this is what we do, this is what our relationship is.” It’s become so vast. We’ve learned through Osho’s wisdom not to try and manipulate life, but to say yes to it. That’s how this happened. It’s all a big, mysterious unfolding to find ourselves together after so long and building a house in Costa Rica.

KB: You’ve collaborated with others as well—like India Arie.

M: These two great singers got together to chant a Buddhist mantra [“Tara Mangalartha Mantra (Climate Balance)”]. We recorded it and put it out on Spotify. The money it generates goes to a charity that’s helping to clean up Mother Ocean, which is in a really bad way right now. Cher covered our Gayatri Mantra on tour. That blew our minds.

KB: Your original chants are used for meditation, stress management, yoga, massage, and sleep playlists. What’s a quick way to calm oneself?

DP: Remember the power of the Om [sound of creation] mantra. In moments of frazzle, of overwhelm, take one breath and let the sound travel on the out breath till the end transforms your next one. Do it every night when you go to sleep. First with the voice, then silently in your mind. It prepares you for the next morning.

M: Actually, now that I think about it, there’s one song that really answers your question about Deva and me. It’s called “Till I Was Loved by You.” It says, I never was loved so deeply, never was loved so true, never was loved so completely till I was loved by you … Time can only take away the things our minds have made, but love’s glory is no small thing. And I knew it when I heard you sing … I never got to see the man in me till I was loved by you.

KB: That’s so beautiful. A devotion to Deva!

M: Well, like I said, as long as I do what I’m told!

Deva Premal and Miten are Grammy-nominated musicians known for performing contemporary versions of ancient Sanskrit mantras. Between them, they have released more than two dozen albums. In 2024, Miten published In the Garden of the Mystic: Songs of Love, Wonder & Devotion, a book featuring lyrics from 25 of his songs. Their 2025 spring tour will include concerts in Mexico City; Miami; New York City; Boulder, Colorado; San Diego; Sedona, Arizona; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Vancouver; Seattle/Edmonds, Washington; Toronto; and Montreal. Visit devapremalmiten.com.

This article appeared in the Jan/Feb 2025 issue of Spirituality & Health®: A Unity Publication. Subscribe now.