MUSIC FOR A WHILE
We need to backtrack a little. Remember how we said that the Silent One has projected everything, and now sustains it through His Word, His Song, His Music? That’s the key. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Without It was not anything made that was made.” The One Being sings the universe into existence. He speaks His Word, and the creation comes into existence. “When He decrees a matter, He says to it ‘Be!’ – And it is!” And just as He is conscious Being, so is His Word or Music also consciousness.
This creative Word or Music is the dynamic, active power of the One. This is what brings things into being, and sustains their existence. The Word is the One Himself. It is also the essence of our own being or consciousness. And it is musical? It can be heard? Yes.
The creative Word is light and sound, which can be experienced within ourselves, not with material eyes and ears, of course, but with their spiritual counterparts. The divine light of the Word can be seen within ourselves, and the vibrations of the Word can be heard as the sweetest and most compelling music.
This is our salvation. Meditation, as we have so far described it, is only a preparation. To withdraw all consciousness from the body, and to focus the attention in the forehead is only coming to the railway station. We have yet to board the transport that will take us to our destination. That transport is the creative Music, and we board it simply by listening to its enchanting melody.
Some of the world’s greatest composers and musicians may have heard this Music within themselves. But try as they might, they could never capture, in the music of this world, its heart-rending beauty, its wonderfully innate harmonies, and its consciousness-bestowing qualities.
This cosmic Music is the Axis of Being, the Axis of Love, the creative centre of the universe. It never stops. If it did, the universe would cease to be. It is the natural link between the One Being and the little beings who feel themselves to be separated. It is a blissful ladder to the One, a column of glory leading to the Eternal, an ascending stairway to the Infinite.
There is no higher kind of meditation than listening to this celestial symphony. It leads beyond all bodies, minds, birth, death, and everything else in created form.
It is the Silent Music of the Silent One. It contains the essence of His primal Stillness. Therefore, to contact it, the body and mind must become absolutely still. After focusing the mind by repetition of a mantra, after stilling all wayward thoughts and inclinations, then comes the time to sit in stillness, without thought, waiting for the Music to manifest itself. It is always there. Without it, no being could exist.
Just as birdsong is present in the garden, even when our minds are too absorbed in cares and concerns to hear it, so too does the creative Music play on eternally in the centre of our beings, even if we are too distracted to be aware of it. We only have to listen. To become truly still and silent. Then we realize that it has always been resounding.
But how can we attain this state? How can we rediscover our link with the eternal Sound of the Silence? How can we hear the Music of Life? Well, like so much else in life, it helps if we can find someone who has already done it, and whose part it is to show the way to others. That means a spiritual master, a saint, a mystic, a sage, a wise one of the highest order, a “Word made flesh”. Someone who’s living with us, right now.