The Sound of Meditation

Have you ever listened to the sound of silence? Or does this sound like a trick question or a riddle (or maybe a song from the sixties)?

One of the techniques for approaching God (whatever your word is for That) is to sit in the silence. But is silence even possible? If you could effectively plug your ears so that no external sounds could be heard, you'd just be stuck listening to the sounds of your own body. Or does one simply dissociate from the body at that point? Well, people dissociate from their bodies all the time and rarely experience anything spiritual or divine by doing so, and many don't even know they're doing it. And then there's that business of having to listen to your mind. Makes you wonder if silence is even possible, doesn't it?

There is a phenomena that occurs in natural meditation that is the precursor to the precursor to the meditative state (no, that was not a typo). Practitioners of this type of meditation often report that they are so surprised when this occurs that they are thrown out of this pleasant state the moment they become aware of it. At first. Later, when they become used to it and are no longer surprised by it, there is a shift to an even deeper state which in turn, leads to a true meditative state. Once this begins to happen, the practitioner moves so effectively to the deeper states that this phenomena is dismissed as trivial, and soon the practitioner becomes entranced by . . . you guessed it, sound, Divine Sound.

Sound is inevitably associated with silence. Where contemplation and meditation are concerned, sound can either be a distraction and and nuisance, or it can be the central feature of deeply inspiring and fulfilling spiritual experience. In fact, there is an entire branch of meditation called nada yoga, the sound of union (with God or Truth), that has its roots in this experience.

Your body is a tuned musical instrument brought into being by divine sound, and is sensitively susceptible to sounds from the environment. Sounds from external sources affect your body just as sounds often affect an otherwise silent musical instrument.

Sound can be beneficial or detrimental to the body, the mind, the senses, and the functioning of the life energy and the nervous system. It all depends on the sound.

All sound is either tone or noise. Tone and noise are both the result of vibrations, but the vibrations that create tones are of equal size, duration and distribution, regular and even, whereas the vibrations that create noise are irregular and uneven.

Music consisting only of tones is usually the most beneficial form of sound. Music consisting of sounds that are untuned (not tonal) is most likely to be detrimental, or neutral at best. For example, it is known that cows give more milk to the music of Mozart than to music with heavy rhythmic sequences of noise from indefinite pitched (not tonal) instruments.

In the center of your body there is a musical scale. This musical scale is your chakra system. When the life energy in your body moves through the central channel in your body and passes through the chakras, divine music is created. This is nada yoga, the sound of union, in its highest form. The composer is Kundalini. In these deepest states of meditation, you are the audience.

© Copyright 2009, Durga Ma, Phoenix, AZ