God's work was what I felt was the greater work.
— Alice Coltrane
After I fulfilled my Warners contract, I really wanted to go deeper into what the Lord wanted me to do.
I didn't have to inspire John toward the avant-garde; he did not need anything from me. That is why it's so interesting that critics decided to dislike me. At some point the members of the quartet felt it was time for a change, and left on their own.
Once, John and I were coming form a concert that he had played, and it was late in the morning. We heard a couple leaving, and the lady said, oh, I have to hurry home. I'm going to church tomorrow. And her friends said, church? You've already been to church.
The mind is a great gift, but it has to be quieted down in order to feel, hear and see the presence of God.
Communicating with people was found to be like suffering judgment. In fact, it was almost impossible for me to dwell upon earthly matters, and equally impossible for me to bring the mind down to mundane thoughts and general conversations.
The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within.
I don't feel deprived in not completing my artistic endeavors.
Maybe other musicians are interested in different things, maybe they have greater monetary concerns. I hear people who have not changed, who haven't elevated anything, who are the same as they were back in the '50s and '60s.
John not only taught me to explore, but to play thoroughly and completely.
Just as it is fire's nature to burn, it is meditation's nature to heal, to bring peace and uplift you beyond your worldly environment and transport you to a higher plane.
I believe that meditation is the highest spiritual practice, the pathway to God.
I didn't want to be equal to him. I didn't have to be equal to him and do what he did. That, I never considered. I don't think like that. And whatever in the women's liberation - that's what they want. I didn't want to be equal to him. I wanted to be a wife.
Look at what trance means. It means to transcend... it means to become transcendental! So if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness, of revelation, of spirituality, of spiritual power.
You're creating ' it comes from the heart, the spirit, the soul. You're not manufacturing somebody else's plan, somebody else's blueprint, somebody else's idea that's not yours. So when you're creating, that's the beauty side of art, you know? It comes from within you.
When John said that he wanted me to play with him on piano, I told him that there were many others who were qualified. He said, 'I want you there because you can do it.'
You have got to stress the freedom of music to really branch out and be universal.
When you quiet your mind, you can enter a world of clarity, peace and understanding.
When looking through the spiritual eye, or the third eye encased within the human mind, one can see vividly beyond the ken of human eyesight, beyond the material atom, and into the future, thereby transcending the limitations of time and space.
I came through the bebop era, and to me that was enough.
