Energy depletion leads to fatigue, which gradually leads to diseases or even death, if it is not restored through nutrition.
While food nourishes the body, music nourishes the mind.
Music nourishes through a regular pattern which when synchronised with the irregular pattern of our mind gets nourished and rejuvenated.
In order to find greater energy in our lives, we need to affirm expansive and positive attitudes looking beyond our selfish interests and attitudes.
Yogic practices like pranayama or breath-control, coupled with the absorption (not plain hearing or listening) of musical patterns attune us with the state of reality (superconscious state), the Great Whole to which we are all parts and parcels.
It has been found in all traditions – including yoga and shamanism – that in order to have more energy, one has to affirm one’s oneness with its source.
It is also to be realised that energy is not like the money we hoard. While the hoarded money in the form of bank deposits may yield dividends, in the case of energy, it is the energy which we distribute makes us ‘alive and kicking’!
To love somebody, you need more energy than what you need when you hate. It is easy to hate anyone on any grounds, but it is difficult to love and be compassionate. Therefore, one needs more energy to recuperate. There is a mistaken notion that all energies come from eating. It is not true. Yoga recognises immense transformation of energy through kriyas. Even yoga aims at deriving energy from the very source that has made our existence possible.
Faith and energy go hand in hand. Music helps us in building faith in us, by re-orienting our thinking processes from self-oriented to universe-oriented, which gives us greater confidence and conviction in ourselves. We turn out to be people who can transmit lots of positive energy (happiness) to everyone around us, despite colour, creed, caste and whatnot.
If one has deep faith in what one is doing (like, for example, creating music), energy is always highest. The greater one’s faith, the greater is his will-power. The greater the will-power, the greater is the energy-flow in him.
As music is the non-verbal affirmation (it can be made verbal too by lacing it up with affirming words!), by listening to music frequently and intermittently, we end up developing a habit of affirmations.
In using affirmations, we concentrate on positive qualities, which not only keep us healthy and cheerful but also equally make others who come across in our fold positive and cheerful.
All these need building up of our inner “power installations”. Music can play the role of an engineer – excavating our incongruities, erecting faith, drilling away the negativities and cementing the bonds of love and fraternity, which ensure sustained flow of energy – not only for us but also to all who are our fellow-travellers.
Silence which is interspersed in music can be equated with our trance experience. Nada yoga considers such a stage as anahata or the ”unstruck-sound” stage. It is a state of consciousness, generally involving reduced awareness of surroundings and external events. Because trance is as natural as sleeping and waking there is no danger in it. We cannot get “lost” or “stuck” while in trance.
Sounds which help us reach this relaxing state of trance are in the nature of love and compassion. Simple tones emanating from the ripples of sounds called harmonics in low decibels can enhance relaxation.
Basically, they should be soothing tones or proto-ragas, which do not invite our minds to participate in the process of listening.
For, once the mind enters, the relaxation would be gone! It will even start questioning the quality and origin of the loving tones in its own kinky way!
Therefore, in selecting relaxing tones or proto-ragas, we should ensure that our mind is not incited. Rather, the mind should be curbed by repeating monotones so that it is made not to question anything and accept everything as they come!
The pro-trance sounds are necessarily to be simple but mysterious – as the sounds emanating from the Tibetan singing bowls or ek taras. The ancient Indians have found primitive instruments such as conch-shells, damaru etc can produce similar effects in sweeping our consciousness from alert-levels to relaxed levels.
Not-so-gentle bleeps, clips, and blips than you can shake a stick at – in short, a noisy concoction of sounds of changing decibels with irregular beats can disturb the trance.
In the legendary stories of Ramayana, Kumbhakaran who was known for his deep sleep used to be woken up with relentless drum programming and weird synth tones.
Our experience with the workshops conducted at Lebenshilfe, an organisation devoted to 457 mentally retarded children at Visakhapatnam (India) reveals that such sound emanations help the severely retarded children – at least temporarily – to wake up from their deep slumber or inactivity.
The article was published in Bhavans Journal – March 15, 2007 – Pages 67 to 69
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, July 7, 2021