Life Is Music – Music is a form of art. When different kinds of sounds are put together or mixed together to form a new sound which is pleasing to human beings, it is called music. Life is also music if through our awareness we can put everything together in organic unity then silence is taking birth as a new sound, freshness through this body. The body will be a vehicle to carry universal sound. Once you have tasted this universal sound you will be intoxicated.
Give life to things which are beautiful. Don’t give life to ugly things. You don’t have much time, much energy to waste. With such a small life, with such a small energy source, it is simply stupid to waste it in sadness, anger, hatred, in jealousy. Use it in love, use it in some creative act, use it in friendship, use it in meditation; do something with it which takes you higher. And the higher you go, the more energy sources become available to you. At the highest point of consciousness, you are almost a god. It is in your hands.
Music is the only language that comes very close to silence, the only sound which is able to create the soundless. It has to be understood that music has no meaning. It is sheer joy and celebration. It is the only art that can somehow impart the inexpressible.
The ancient tradition of music is that it was born out of meditation. The people who meditated could not find any way to impart their experiences. They invented different instruments so that something can be said without creating a meaning in you but certainly a joy, a dance.
It must have been a tremendously valuable revelation for those who in the beginning discovered a language which is not a language. Sounds in themselves have no meaning. Meaning is man’s imposition on sounds. Sounds are natural. The wind blowing through the pine trees has a sound and music of its own. Or a river, descending from the mountain through the rocks, has its own sound and its own music.
Meditators, listening to the inner silence, must have felt the tremendous difficulty of how to share it. It was in those beginning days that music was discovered. The discovery is simple: take away the meaning from the sounds and instead of meaning, give the sounds harmony, a rhythm which penetrates the very heart. It says nothing, but it says the unsayable too.
The ordinary idea of music is that it consists of sounds, but that is only half the truth – and of lesser importance. As the music becomes deeper and deeper, it consists of silences between two sounds.
An ancient proverb in China is, “When the musician becomes perfect he throws away his instruments” because instruments can only create sound. The silence is created by the musician. But at perfection, the same sounds that were creating small pieces of silence start becoming a disturbance. A strange idea, but perfectly meaningful, and significant. It applies to every art. When the archer becomes perfect he throws away his bow and his arrows; just his eyes are enough to look at a flying bird and the bird will fall down. The bow and arrows were only a preparation.
The same applies to music, to painting, to all the arts which man has discovered. At the ultimate peak, you don’t need the steps, the ladder which has helped you to reach the peak. It becomes irrelevant.
Every one of us has experienced that some time we think and it happens. What is at that time we are unconsciously at the peak of our awareness and totally silent. At that moment what we think happens. Meditators consciously reach the peak so they are throwing the medium, which they have used to reach their highest state of consciousness. What is the difference between us and them only one thing they become perfect through consciousness and we become perfect out of practice. This means when we practice we don’t watch ourselves but meditators while practising watches themselves also. This is consciousness and awareness. In that awareness, you will be able to hear the sound of AUM without any medium of music.
