Music goes hand in hand with meditation. The ancient spiritual practices had included sound intonation in religious ceremonies and worship. Music has been an inherent part of all religions. Nada yoga viewed the sound intonation or nada as the representation of God, as in ‘nada brahma’.
Why do We Meditate?
We come across many disappointments and frustrations in life – mostly due to our own desires and expectations. We find it difficult to express them, and start storing them inside us, without realising that as they accumulate over a period, they tend to act as poison in our minds and as a consequence; for our physical body as well. This results in several physiological problems including diabetes, blood pressure, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
Meditation helps in overcoming – if not erasing – our negative thoughts and feelings, making us positively tuned to our surroundings. Through meditation, we get into the very depths of our beings, enjoying the supreme bliss which awaits us with open hands and available to all of us. The only condition to enjoy this bliss is to be trained to be involved with our inner locus.
Meditative Music
Now where is music in this scheme of things? Music, we all know, affects our mind. Many psychologists have studied the impact of music on one’s moods and mind. Neuro-musicology is a recent avatar in science which studies the impact of music on the human brain. It is also widely known now that music affects one’s behaviour.
Playing appropriate music while we meditate and visualise is a quick way to overcome all our negative thoughts and enmities towards persons, things and events. This can expunge all negative feelings and emotions accumulated in our mindscape over years of expectations and desires, unfulfilled and gelled inside us.
The steps involved has to be:
- throwing away the mental junk through a ‘psychic surgery’ by selecting an appropriate musical structure which acts as the knife of the surgeon;
- after the ‘surgery’ with such music allowing the mind to rest in silence;
- Adopting ‘psychic wound healing methods’ with positive assertions, accompanied by loving and pre-active ‘sunshine’ music.
Let me explain further..
All we have to do is to select two types of music: one to thaw these frozen feelings and to break them into pieces as one employs pickaxes to break the ice. The best music for this is one that uses definitive beats and powerful drums and rhythms that can extricate pure condensed feelings. Picture using a sharp instrument to break the glaciers within us; I would call it a ‘pickaxe’ music. An ocean of such music is readily available. In the western classical music world, this system uses a powerful and masculine multi-piece orchestra and usually a pro-active ‘horizontal’ melody (unlike in Indian classical music which normally uses feminine and ‘curvaceous’ ragas as in-gamakas, particularly in Carnatic music.
After successfully (and aggressively) breaking the hard rocks of ice in our mind and melting it into water – say in 3 to 5 minutes – with the help of such highly rhythmic and powerful music, and through appropriate visualisation that all the negativities inside us get repeatedly beaten and washed through these beats, the next step would be to take rest – extending rest to both body and without any movements. Shavasana would, no doubt, be an ideal posture for this rest, which lasts for 3-5 minutes.
Now let us progress to the next stage. We should tune ourselves to music which gives us sunshine and love so that the molten rocks and water in our mind get smoothly dried up and evaporated into ‘thin air, leaving no ruck behind.’ Here the Indian ragas can do wonders. A slow or medium paced sunny raga (say, a morning raga) played with love and reverence – depicting compassion and cuddling can expunge the remnant negativities in our mind. As the music floats, we should acknowledge its love by involving ourselves and letting it embrace us, cajole us, caress us, love us without any restraints from our part.
This again should last around 3-5 minutes. Repeating such an exercise everyday not only makes us stand tall and ‘face the worldly music’ that arises in our family and work environment, but also kindles the invaluable ‘human love’ within, giving us the confidence to love every fellow human who comes across our life-path, without any distinction and without any value judgement.
Music not only loves us; but also makes us capable of loving our interior and exterior milieus unconditionally.
This article was published in Dignity Dialogue December 2007 – Pages 16,17
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, July 13, 2021