The first compositional act I remember occurred when, at age 9, I taped "Within You, Without You" backwards on my family's old reel to reel, cut it into pieces of random length, and spliced it back together in a different order. Later, I created sonic art installations, played in a jazz ensemble, made experimental films, sang in choirs and wrote music for dance troupes. Eventually, I got an internship at Columbia Pictures, and moved to Hollywood to work in the movie industry.

A film editing project took me to an ashram in India. I wasn't consciously seeking anything, and I knew very little about Eastern spiritual traditions. I had been practicing yoga for a few years, but my involvement with it had more to do with managing some persistent back problems than with any process of spiritual inquiry. On a number of occasions I had been invited to meet different gurus who were visiting Los Angeles, but had always declined.