By SADHGURU, Isha Foundation
SADHGURU: Today, modern science sees the whole existence as a vibration. Where there is a vibration, there is bound to be a sound. The whole existence is a complex amalgamation of sounds. For one who does not perceive the wholeness of the sound, it is noise because he hears in bits and pieces. For one who listens the right way, everything is music.
In one dimension of yoga, it is dialectically expressed that the human body is Shiva’s damaru (drum). Shiva always carried a drum because it is symbolic of the rhythm of life. When you run a race or when you are excited or scared, you hear ‘dhun, dhun, dhun’ in your head. This is the rhythm of the body. This rhythm is not just in the beat of the heart. Every fiber and pranic nadi in the body has its own tune. Every chakra has its own sound. What is sound and what is your form are not two different things. There is a whole science about sound and the form, which looks at what uttering different sounds or being under the influence of different sounds does to the system.
Every little sound has a certain impact. If you listen to a certain kind of sound, you become loving. Some other sound can make you joyful. Some other sound makes you aggressive. Sounds change the very chemistry of your system. So the kind of sounds you are exposed to, and the kind of sounds you generate, have significant impact on you.
The Power of Sound
Classical Indian music has, to a mathematical precision, recognized which sound can do what. If you know how, a proper arrangement of sounds can do incredible things to people and to the situation.
There are stories and legends about various musicians in India. One of the more famous ones is Tansen. They say that when Tansen sang, he could light lamps with his music. It may not be an exaggeration. Whether he actually did it or not we don’t know, but in theory, if you look at it as a science, it is possible that sound can do things that you have not imagined. In some of our programs like Samyama, just one utterance, ‘Shiva,’ will explode people into a completely different dimension of experience. In your own experience of life, if you are keenly into music, music opens up many doors.
Elevating Your Consciousness
In Indian classical music, the way sound is used – the ragas, the tunes, everything – is such that if you get deeply involved in this, it will bring meditativeness. This is the way this culture was created. Every single act that you perform was aimed only at elevating your consciousness.
For a very long time, when people looked to this land, they always saw it as a possibility because India has been the greatest experiment on the planet in terms of making a whole culture into a spiritual process. Once you are born in this land, you may do many things – you may pursue your careers, you may build your families and many other aspects of life, but essentially, your life is basically about you attaining to the highest liberation. Mukti is the only goal.
So in this culture, music, dance or whatever else you did was not entertainment, it was also a spiritual process. In Indian classical dance, if you use the postures and the mudras properly, it will lead to meditativeness. Similarly, one who is very deeply involved in classical music can be saint-like. Entertainment was not the attitude in life. Everything – even sitting, standing, and eating – was a sadhana to reach a higher level of consciousness.