listen Archives - Easy Sound Healing

Listen to a fading sound

Any sudden thing or sound makes you awake. Suddenness breaks your sleep, and ordinarily we are asleep. Unless something goes wrong, we are not out of sleep, we go on doing things sleepily. That is why we never feel the sleep.

This sleepiness can be broken. This technique says, in the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter awake. Try with any sound, with any letter – Aum, for example. In the beginning, when you have not yet created the sound, AWAKE. Or when the sound moves into soundlessness, then awake. How can you do it?

Go to a temple. A bell is there or a gong. Take the bell in your hand and wait. First become totally alert. The sound is going to be there and you are not to miss the beginning. First become totally alert, as if your life depends on this, as if someone is going to kill you this very moment, and you will be awake. Be alert – as if this is going to be your death. And if there is thought, wait, because thought is sleepiness. With thought you cannot be alert. When you are alert, there is no thought. So wait. When you feel that now the mind is without thought, that there is no cloud and you are alert, then move with the sound.

Look when the sound is not there, then close your eyes. Then look when the sound is created, struck; then move with the sound. The sound will become slower and slower, subtler and subtler and subtler, and then it will not be there. Then go on with the sound. Be aware, alert. Move with the sound to the very end. See both the poles of the sound, both the beginning and the end. Try it with some outer sound like a gong or a bell or anything.

This seems to be very simple, but awareness is very difficult, right now you think you are already aware and awake. Try this ”I will be awake, alert, for ten breaths,” and then count the breaths. You will miss. Two or three, and you will have moved somewhere else. Alertness is one of the most difficult things and then you will know that it is not child’s play. You are not aware – and when you try it, for the first time you will know that you have been asleep your whole life.

First do it outwardly, then you will be able to do it inwardly. Then do it. Wait for the moment when the mind is vacant, then create the sound inside, feel it, move with it, go with it, until it disappears completely.

Listen to a stringed instrument

You are hearing an instrument – a sitar, or anything. Many notes are there. Be alert and listen to the central core, the backbone of it around which all the notes are flowing, the deepest current which holds all the notes together – that which is central, just like your backbone. The whole body is held by the backbone. Listening to the music, be alert, penetrate the music, and find the backbone of it – the central thing which goes on flowing, holding everything together. Notes come and go and disappear, but the central core flows on. Become aware of it.

Basically, originally, music was used for meditation; particularly Indian music developed as a method of meditation, Indian dancing developed as a method of meditation. For the doer it was a deep meditation, and for the audience also it was a deep meditation. A dancer or a musician can be a Technician, if there is no meditation in it, then the soul is not there, only the body. The soul comes only when the musician is a deep meditator.

And music is just the outward thing. While playing on his sitar, one is not only playing on his sitar, he is also playing on his alertness inside. The sitar goes on outwardly and his intense awareness moves inside. The music flows outwardly, but he is alert, constantly aware of the innermost core of

And that gives samadhi. That becomes ecstasy. That becomes the highest peak. But what are you doing when you listen to music? You are not meditating. On the contrary, you are using music as something like alcohol. You are using it to be relaxed, you are using it for self-forgetfulness. These techniques developed for awareness were used for sleep,hence kept secret and given only who were ready to shake their sleep.

This sutra says: while listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound, thus omnipresence. And then you will know what is to be known, or what is worth knowing. You will become omnipresent with the music, finding the composite central core, you will become awake, and with that awakening you will be everywhere. Right now, you are somewhere – a point which we call the ego. If you can become awake, this point will disappear. You will not be anywhere then, you will be EVERYWHERE – as if you have become the all. You will have become the ocean, you will have become the infinite. The finiteness is with the mind. The infiniteness enters with meditation.