Ep. 605 – Music Makes the Medicine with East Forest (Reupload)
Mindrolling with Raghu Markus
Be Here Now Network
4.7 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Blending psychedelic wisdom with the sacred power of sound, Raghu Markus and East Forest explore music as a gateway to nonduality, healing, and everyday spirituality.
Check out Music for Mushrooms, a narrative documentary highlighting the personal journey of East Forest.
In this episode of Mindrolling, Raghu and East Forest explore:
- East Forest’s creative process and setting Ram Dass’ teachings to music
- Putting trust into the process and the vast audience that East has reached
- Music as a vehicle for nonduality, emotion, and direct spiritual experience
- The infinite potential of music—why we’ll never run out of songs
- Raghu’s substanceless psychedelic experience listening to John Coltrane
- Accessing altered states and higher consciousness through multiple paths
- The role of song in indigenous plant medicine and sacred ceremony
- Bringing spirituality into daily life rather than chasing peak experiences
- Living fully and embracing even the uncomfortable parts of healing
- Leaning into suffering with tenderness and recognizing that it can bring us closer to God
- How psychedelics can help us remember that we are all interconnected
- The healing power of motherly and divine love—and how it’s always available to us
- Cosmic peek-a-boo: Remembering that we are loving awareness and not being discouraged when we forget
From this episode:
- Grab a copy of the book Walking Each Other Home
- Learn more about Saint Mira Bai and her devotion to Krishna
About East Forest:
East Forest is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and ceremony guide. Since 2008, East Forest’s “lush” (Rolling Stone) and “blissful” (NPR) music has blended ambient, neoclassical, electronic, and avant-pop to explore sound as a tool for inner journeys and consciousness expansion. Known for being the first musician to collaborate with Ram Dass, his latest endeavor is the feature-length film Music for Mushrooms, a narrative documentary showcasing the transformative power of psychedelics, music, and community.
“There's something about the combination of how music can unlock–it makes the medicine so smooth and the emotion is so amplified that it’s just right there. It’s a core human experience that they're reflecting back, and it’s for all of us.” – East Forest
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone, it's Rago, I'm back with Mind Rolling, and I'm with now who has become an old friend, older friend. |
| 0:24.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:24.9 | Krishna East Forest. |
| 0:27.5 | Welcome. |
| 0:28.7 | Well, how long has it been? |
| 0:30.0 | I guess it was 2017 or 18 or something like that. |
| 0:33.3 | Yeah, something like that. |
| 0:34.1 | Yeah. |
| 0:34.4 | It's going on 10 years. |
| 0:35.9 | That's the truth. |
| 0:37.8 | Amazing truth. The amazing truth. |
| 0:39.7 | I think you all know East Forest out there and that wonderful music that he creates and ceremonies. |
| 0:49.0 | But if you don't, then one day I get a call from who was known as at that time and still as Trevor. |
| 1:01.6 | And hey, you know, I got this idea. He says, I want to put some music behind, you know, |
| 1:07.9 | some of Ram Dass talks, blah, blah. |
| 1:28.3 | And I go, all right, well, I get a lot of, I didn't say this, but I get a lot of requests all the time. You did say that, you did. You did it. Did it? Yeah, yeah. But you hadn't done a lot of it, so I'm not sure why, what was the, you know, your thought process. Well, no, that's not true. You know, we had done Beretta, right? |
| 1:30.5 | Justin Beretta before you. |
| 1:30.7 | Wasn't? Was it before? |
| 1:31.5 | Yeah. Yeah, never was during, Ram Dass had already had the stroke. |
| 1:46.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:46.7 | Yeah, never found him, by the way. |
| 1:48.7 | He did an interesting thing. |
... |
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