I get the sense you don’t see yourself as a member of one specific religious tribe.
No. It’s funny you should ask that. Right before you called I was writing this seven qualities of inner-knowing list. My faith would be holy willingness, divine confidence, perfect perception, sacred certainty, spiritual knowing, heavenly awareness, state of grace and illuminating thoughts. I’d rather have that kind of diet than an organized religion.
That makes sense. There’s a lot of bureaucracy and rules in organized religion.
Yes, especially rules tainted with fear. “Thou shall fear thy God.” No, no, no, no. God is love. Why shall I fear him? I love him and he loves me. That’s what Bob Marley was talking about. “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.” Mental slavery is fear and lack of self-worth and thinking that you’re a sinner. That’s slavery because it means you are done. You’ve got to set somebody free so they can feel worthy of God’s love. That’s the same message of Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon and Michael Jackson.
To switch gears here, I hear you’ve reunited with the original Santana band and have been cutting new material with them for the first time since the group split up in 1972.
Yes, I’m happy to tell you that. Everyone is healthy and very powerful. Neal Schon [who founded Journey when he left Santana] got this started. He hunted me down like a guided missile. We called up Gregg Rolie, Michael Shrieve and Michael Carabello. We’re making Santana IV because we stopped at Santana III. We had three days in the studio and we put a lot of music together. I’m happy to tell you it was just like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix. There’s a chemistry with us. These are the people who were playing with me at Woodstock. It’s amazing to light that kind of dimension.