...of which the 'Ray Man Shabd' is both, are to be able to bypass the endless running thoughts of the mind, and become one with the sound, the word that brought us all into creation. And "as Debussy himself said, once the work is complete, the scaffolding can be thrown away." ("Harmonies of Heaven and Earth", Joscelyn Godwin - professor of music at Colgate University). Music is the magic that creates the universe. Brian Greene, in his book "The Elegant Universe", explains this in layman's terms through his explanation of superstring theory, and how these strings resonate like a violin. In a very real sense, musicians are the magicians who wave their instruments like the wands of conductors, and give us a taste on earth of the harmonies of heaven. And it is all divine. No part is seperate. The creator God, the immanent God, is wild and inspires music in many modes and styles. To say that something is Devil's music, is an expression of attachment to likes and dislikes, an inability to see that everything is made from this energy. Dualism is a creation of the human mind. The energy is simply there. Make of it what you will.
When I think of the musician as magician, I think of, yet again, Jimmy Page, and Mick Wall's words in the acknowledgments of his book: "...your right arm raised, the wand, your body bent towards them like a hook, your whole being at one with the column of light emanating from the stage, spiralling up and out and all around, a grand swirl of deep, dark colours that turned into a tower of steps, which you bade them all to take, one by one, just you, the piper, to follow. Up, up, up...the stairway..."
The Muslim esoteric order of the Sufis stresses 'sama', or audition, or hearing as the path. Listeners are transported to states of ecstasy through the recitation of the Quran, through devotional songs (like the Bhakti yogis), and instrumental pieces. The 'Whirling Dervishes', "properly called the Mevlevi Order, and founded in Konya, Turkey, by the Persian poet Rumi (1207-73)...practice a 'sama' of whirling dance accompanied by the music of the nay, or reed flute." It is only modern Christianity in it's fundamentalist form that has demonized the piper, the Robert Plants on their recorders, and the Jimmy Pages dragging their violin bow wands across guitars...
These Sufis, 'Lords of the Dance', are creating, evoking and invoking the divine in much the same way as modern Wiccans and Pagans, who see themselves as co-creating with God. Procreation is not the only way to create. "They dress in tall felt hats like truncated cones, and white gowns with broad skirts that stand out as they whirl. Their hats are said to be tilted at the same angle as the Earth's axis, and their dance to symbolize the movements of the planetary spheres as they circle in perfect order and love for their Lord. Rumi, in one of his poems, explains the purpose of this devotion:
'We all have been parts of Adam, we have heard those melodies in Paradise.
Although the water and the earth of our bodies
have caused a doubt to fall upon us,
something of those melodies comes back to our memory.'
"...What happens to the Sufi during the 'sama'? I will summarize the accounts of the philosopher brothers Al-Ghazali: Abu Hamid (1058-1111) and Majd al-Din (d. 1126) who both wrote treatises on Sufi music and dance. Both agree that 'sama' can bring one to states that are otherwise very difficult to attain. Above all, it arouses one's love and longing for God - just as for the ordinary person, love songs arouse sexual longing - and from this single-minded devotion comes a purification of the heart. Following purification come visions and revelations that surpass all other ambitions: a hundred thousand states in a world of lights and spirits otherwise undiscoverable even through the most perfect religious observances."
While listening to the Ray Man Shabd in Bound Lotus, I have drifted into a longing, and intensity, like that of a Romantic lover. I've been through whirling around my living room to the sounds of B-Tribe, through harmonizing along with Bjork on 'Vespertine', through doing Vinyasa to 'Kashmir' and 'Stairway to Heaven'...thinking of those forests echoing with laughter and those who stand looking, I read the words of Suhrawardi:
"The suprasensory realities encountered by the prophets, the Initiates, and others appear to them sometimes in the form of lines of writing, sometimes in the hearing of a voice which may be gentle and sweet and which can also be terrifying. Sometimes they see human forms of extreme beauty who speak to them in most beautiful words and converse with them intimately about the invisible world; at other times these forms appear to them like those delicate figures proceeding from the most refined art of the painters."
And the German writer Matheson, writing in 1757, said, " Those who cultivate the art of music are preparing themselves a path through the heavens to the place of the Blessed, just as surely as the most powerful geniuses. And the choir of divine singers exhorts the soul which rises to accomplish this ascent, or rather each one salutes it on it's way as it mounts from one heaven to another..."
The gift of reading Godwin's elucidative writing on music came from reading a quote of his in the liner notes of Dead Can Dance's CD 'Spiritchaser'. Thus I find the words as well of Macrobius, who says that many cultures, indigenous and otherwise, have the "...belief that souls, on quitting the body, return to the origin of music's magic, that is, to heaven." As I listen to B-Tribe and spin around my room preparing for Bound Lotus, as I listen to 'Stairway to Heaven'...as I sit, tied in a knot, listening to the Ray Man Shabd, I lose all track of time. On this 39th day of Bound Lotus practice...I feel I have died and gone to heaven.
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