A recent recording of the Hanuman Chaleesa is revealing its own extraordinary and ordinary nature to us each day. It descended from the sky and landed in a cozy little recording studio in Fairfax, California in the spring of 2000. It was done within the framework of a lila that was bigger than any one of us involved. A certain power inside this precious invocation dictates its own time and its own way. With this awareness, we went about attempting to make a new western Hanuman Chaleesa recording.
Jai Lakshman, along with several others has been brewing this Chaleesa recording idea for some time. It actually goes back quite a few years. The first mass exposure in America of a Hanuman Chaleesa recording was Bhagavan Das' rendition on Ram Dass' "LOVE SERVE REMEMBER" album put out circa 1972. I remember hitchhiking around the country that year going to different ashrams and hearing people humming and chanting along with it, hungry for a reference point to anchor their mystical spiritual longings in song. Then there was a precious version available on cassette that Jai Lakshman and Vishu Magee put together in the 80's. Krishna das Kagel also recorded a version on his CD "One Track Heart." These were, as far as I know, the only available Chaleesa recordings of western devotees of Maharaj-ji.
The Hanuman Chaleesa is Maharaj-ji's most precious gift to us as a practice and a sadhana. These recordings were important learning tools for many. It takes some people, especially westerners many years to finally memorize the entire prayer in its proper order and cadence. The melodies and steady rhythm often come later.
Around the end of 1975 I went out to Montclair, New Jersey to visit my friends Ganga Dhar and Jai Gopal (Uttal) who just returned from studying with the Bauls in West Bengal. On my first visit, while I stood alone in their kitchen, I heard this incredibly angelic female voice singing the Hanuman Chaleesa in the back yard. This was Diana Rogers. After then doing 108 Chaleesas all night that same year with Jai Gopal in the basement of Jai Lakshman's house in Queens NY, I was determined to memorize it. It took me three years, and in 1978 at the Bhandara in Taos when we first opened the new Hanuman murti from its shipping box on Vishu Magee's land I finally got it into my memory and the learning and grace continue flowing.
The idea of this current CD project was to make a recording that people could enjoy listening to as well as sing along with to help learn the words. We started with a plan to try to capture the type of gathering of satsang that has happened numerous times. We tried to have an environment where the self- consciousness of being recorded was at a minimum. Of course it wasn't really the case. We had to plan basic tracks, recording as much live as possible with instruments and vocals together, but we were placed in the room so we could separate, blend and add tracks later. There were acoustic challenges but mostly we recorded the basic tracks very much like any gathering for kirtan would ordinarily be. As well as the musicians on board-Jai Uttal, Diana Rogers, Carolyn Shapiro, Jai Lakshman and myself-we had many friends- Suil, Shivaya Cain, Hal Ross, Jacques Achsen and others-joining in for several days with chai, kartals, bells, lots of food and loving support. The studio owner and engineer Hans Christian was completely swept away by the spirit of the project and wound up generously contributing his saurangi (the instrument of a hundred colors-emotions), cello and bass playing which sound so beautiful on the CD.
Jai Uttal joined Jai Lakshman and me for the post production and things went very smooth. The mixing and mastering again were about as organic a process as we can get in today's high tech recording world. We wanted it to feel like an intimate kirtan with a little extra zest. There were a few mishaps and decisions that had to be struggled over but everything seemed to have its own way. In Kainchi a few years earlier, I sat with the children from the Neem Karoli Baba School and recorded them singing Chaleesa's next to Maharaj-ji's tucket. A small portion of this wonderful experience can be heard on the last track of the CD.
The Hanuman Chaleesa has been working its magic on us for many years. The grace of the murti and this prayer coming to America is beyond any of our comprehension. Many thanks and pranams to the Hanuman Foundation for sponsoring and underwriting this project. We could only have done this recording as a complete offering to Maharaj-ji with all proceeds going to support the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram in Taos.

Jai Sita Ram
Geoffrey Gordon