Mr Jeff Kober applies the one-pointed concentration required to study Veda mantras to his acting, photography and life.
By Sophia Ann French
When I found out I’d be interviewing Mr Jeff Kober, I imagined an interview with an actor who would share stories about what is was like to work with Hollywood legends like Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood — Mr Kober has appeared in the 2016 film Sully, and his notable work includes roles in popular television series like The Walking Dead, Shameless, New Girl and NCIS: Los Angeles; and his films include, The Hills Have Eyes (2007), World Without Waves (2004) and most recently, Beauty Mark (2017), which has won awards at various film festivals. I was expecting Hollywood stories from an actor, but realised acting was just one of Mr Kober’s talents — he is a photographer, a Vedic meditation teacher, he hosts a podcast (Embracing Bliss), he has written screenplays, and he is currently working on his memoir while studying Veda recitation.
Mr Kober’s pursuit of spiritual solutions to life’s challenges was inspired by “feeling lost as a young person.” He suffered a personal tragedy in his teens, and for a long time, he was looking for “outlets or something in the world that will allow me to find freedom.” He found the path to freedom in the work and writings of Śri Aurobindo. “Śri Aurobindo was the first teacher who really spoke to me. His saying, ‘By our stumbling the world is perfected,’ has really resonated with me. I experienced tragedy in my teens, and I got very lost for quite a long time. At a certain point, I realised that freedom had to come from within and had to have a spiritual answer. There were so many things wrong with my life. I was looking for a central solution — a way to flow into life. Everything I do is to seek that experience of flow, and the reason Śri Aurobindo’s quote resonates with me is that I feel like I stumbled into an acting class, which made me stumble into photography. Then I stumbled into meditation and finally, Veda Studies.”
Mr Kober started practising meditation at 30, and at the time, the methods he found required him to control his thinking, “which made it worse for me,” says Mr Kober. “In the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that trying to control your thoughts is like trying to control the wind; you can’t. When I was 45, my wife encouraged me to attend an introductory talk on Vedic meditation, which is similar to Transcendental Meditation. It is mantra-based. When I learned that practice, it guided my mind to a place beyond thinking, a place of pure being. Finding that practice was the beginning of a transformational experience. Instead of thinking that God hates me and that is why I experience tragedy, I now see challenges as opportunities for growth and love. I ask myself, if love is the reason we are here, how can I love despite life’s challenges? How can I find compassion for myself, and how can I offer something of value to the planet? Vedic meditation and the Vedantic ideas behind it shifted my experience of myself and the world.”
Integrating Art and Spirituality
Mr Kober was practising meditation, Kriya and Tantra before he started reciting Veda, and he even went on a padayātrā with his teacher, Śri M (author of Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master: A Yogi’s Autobiography), with whom he studied the Śri Vidya and Tantra. These teachings made him “get in touch with that underlying field of consciousness or pure being.” I asked him how reciting Veda affected his existing spiritual practices. “With Vedic meditation, I experienced the duality of meditating and then going into the world. I tried to stay connected to that experience and remember it. When I started reciting mantras, it gave me a tangible connecting tool that is available at all times. For example, I use the wet-plate collodion process to make photographs. This 19th-century technique uses various chemicals and really old equipment; it takes between half a second and 12 seconds to take a photograph. The result is a tangible product. It is not just a digital image that lives in the ether. Reciting Veda is like having that tangible experience. I apply it to acting, too. The acting itself becomes more available and more of a flow. I flow between, ‘I am acting now and now, I am not acting.’ I chant in my mind before the director calls action, and then step into the role and really connect with my partner, which is the soul of acting. It is the relationship between another person and me. The practice of mantra recitation with such clarity and specificity is like organising or attuning our vibration to divine vibration. When we were studying Rudram, Shantala said that, ‘the only consciousness worthy of worshipping Śiva is Śiva consciousness.’ So when we recite Rudram, we align ourselves with that consciousness and vibration in tune with the frequencies that the Ṛṣis cognised. When we do that with attention, devotion, commitment and humility, it comes together in a way that can be experienced. Another thing Shantala said that resonated with me was that all the different svaras and conjunct consonants, and the way the text changes, is all there because ‘the Gods and Goddesses want our complete attention.’ So we are practising giving that complete attention and then bringing it to our work and our life. The more I bring my attention to my work, the less I’m trying to protect myself from someone else’s idea of me, or my imagination of what could go wrong. I live more fully and freely. I can express something that has the possibility of being greater than what I could come up with on my own,” explains Mr Kober.
Internalising the Divine
The tradition holds that reciting mantras is a way to live intelligently and refine the mind. For example, one of the first mantras we study is the Pranava Gāyatrī (it appears in all four Vedas), and its reigning deity is Savitṛ (the sun). When we recite the Gāyatrī mantra or the extended Gāyatrī Upāsanā, we invoke and invite the clarity and luminance of the sun upon our mind. Mr Kober loves to explore the deeper meaning of each mantra and feels that Veda theory helps us to “understand the mechanics behind the magic. I don’t like to practise ignorance. When I recite a mantra, I want to understand its underlying structure. If I’m going to learn something and make it part of my life, I want to bring all aspects of myself to the equation. Studying the theory and learning about the various powers of nature and the divine delights me. It allows me to see what I’m doing as relational. It is me in relation to an expression of nature or expressing an aspect of nature’s power. It feels like I am playing within all these different forces of nature — as if I belong, as if I have value and as if I’m meant to be here. If you’re really looking to find your Dharma and express it as much as possible within this brief span of life, Veda recitation is a way for you to express yourself and feel fully alive within the equation of the divine expressing itself through you.”
As I said at the start of this interview, Mr Kober is gifted with several talents, and his life has been filled with rich experiences, frame after frame. I asked him to share advice for anyone wanting to study Veda, and he says the first thing to do is, “To find a good teacher. Śri Aurobindo’s work was the first that got me interested in the deeper meaning of the Veda. I feel I have come full circle from then to now by studying with Shantala — she studied with Professor R. L. Kashyap, who expanded on Śri Aurobindo’s work. Spirituality means finding the truth of life and learning how to embody, express and offer that truth to the world. I feel blessed every time I get to learn from this community.”
Mr Kober will next be seen on The Pitt, streaming on HBO.