Qualities and Sound

Title

En Qualities and Sound

Date

En 1983-Apr-17

Decade

En 1980s

Sequence

En 8

City, State

En New Lebanon, NY

Location

En Abode

Description

En Morning of second day of weekend retreat. The first 20 minutes is talking, followed by sound and music to guide the meditation. Explains that wazaif and mantram correspond to archaic language and their sound conveys meanings. Intones wazaif like Qadr, Quddus, Haqq, Hayy, Fattah, Alim, Ishk Allah M'ahbud Lillah. The sound of the singing bowl, gong, harp, vina express primitive forms of life and convey the universe in the early stages of evolution. Talks about music of Brahms, Schumann, Bach. Ends with choral music from Thomas Luis de Victoria's Lamentations.

Topic(s)

En Meditation Practice

Music

Personality

Sufi Path

Wazifa/Wazaif

Subtopic(s)

En Obstacles|Supports|Sound|Brahms|Schumann|Bach|Victoria

Type of event

En Retreat

Type of publication

En Recording

Media

En Audio

Transcript

Extent

En 0:54:28

Identifier

En 1040

File Format

En mp3

PDF

Language

En English

Digitizing Team

En Abad

TajAli Keith

Telema Hess

Author(s)

En Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Full Text

En Yes, well, I'd like to play this a little by ear. We're trying to explore how we can work with personality in order to catalyze, let's say, the unfurling of those qualities that are enfolded in the depths of the personality. Now, of course, there are two things. One is, remove the obstacles. I see people individually as I said, giving initiation because otherwise generally I don't give any interviews. I must say that what strikes me as the obstacles, first, like, so long as this person has this resentment, they will never be able to unfold the splendor of their being, for example. Or so long as this person is untruthful, she will never be able to develop her majesty and power. And so long as this person is entertaining this guilt and is not doing something about it, he or she will never have self-confidence.

And, of course, it's really heartbreaking to see how people are struggling with their lack of self- esteem and trying to give themselves a bit of confidence and so unsure of themselves and struggling against the devalidation that one is subjected to by other people who are trying to, willy-nilly, are kind of eroding one's sense of self confidence and particularly in a marriage situation where the husband is criticizing his wife or the wife criticizing her husband instead of helping each other.

And of course, the only way of helping each other would be to see the beauty of each other, just that which transpires, instead of criticizing that which appeared. But then, so there's that, of course, removing the obstacles on one hand, and then on the other hand, helping a person to discover the beauty within. One just doesn't believe in it. Most people don't believe in it, and don't even believe in the value of life. And there is a lot of self-destructiveness because people have been disappointed, like, you know, they believed in Santa Claus, and then they were told there's no such thing as Santa Claus. So they've lost confidence in people, all the beliefs were taken away one after the other. That's one of the reasons why I feel like saying the things that I do, because it's in our mind and there has to be a lot of clearing in our mind and our way of thinking, in our understanding what this is all about.

You see, ultimately, of course, as I say, it's the harmony of the universe—which is, of course, the same thing as the order of the universe—but it is the way that the order of the universe manifests as vibrations. That's the meaning of the word, the verb of the word, actually. And then it becomes forms and so on, like I talked about the crystal. You see a structure but behind it, it's really a symphony, it's really vibration. So, it's at that level, vibration, that we understand what harmony means. The order we understand with our brains, our minds, but harmony, that's something that we have, a sense of harmony. And then, until we discover that, actually, what we call an object, like the leaf of a tree or the trunk of a tree or a piece of paper or plastic or cup or glass or a gong, everything has a signature tune. And so what I'm wondering is whether we can't use the signature tune to trigger off a quality. Now that's, of course, the art of the mantra. What one is doing with the mantram is one is simply using sound, which is repeated, in order to convey meaning, so that not only objects have their signature tune, but even qualities, and an example of it is like some of our mantram like [sounded in mantric way] YA QADR, divine power, QUDDUS, pure spirit, HAYY, life, Ya Wahhabo, Ya Wahhabo, continual advance of the surge of divine qualities manifesting in all forms of life. YA HAQQ, the truth. YA FATTAH, you're opening up a door. You see, each one of these qualities is absolutely different from every one else, each one having their own not only different tones, but a different kind of feeling about it.

ISHQ ALLAH M'ABUD LILLAH [repeats it] Love, divine love.

YA ALIM, YA ALIM, glorification. Every word is totally different. The difference between these words and, of course, the Sanskrit words corresponding to the different mantrams, and ordinary language is because these words belong to archaic languages in which the words are not conventional. They correspond to a real ... the sound of the word conveys the meaning.

So, it gives us access to a whole universe of sound, which conveys meaning. Now, we're using ... after all, there's some conventionality in it, I suppose, in that, well, these languages are archaic. And in that sense, they took much more into account the intuitive sense of the meaning of a sound. But still, we tend to conceptualize so easily, so, even I was using the word like power and majesty and so on. These are concepts, after all. And to such an extent that Plato even thought that the archetypes were kind of realities that had a static kind of status somewhere in the heavens. Whereas actually, as the Sufis say, an archetype has only a reality in its typification, like rosewood only has a value in roses, otherwise it doesn't exist except in roses. There's the word [?] that means to typify. And so our music is very sophisticated. Now we use music and the Sufis use music for meditation. And as I said, there is no accounting for taste but one has to be very careful what music one chooses. And that's why I think what Mikhail is doing is very helpful in distributing some of the music that we kind of developed in our meetings together and conveys spiritual emotion. But even amongst that music, we have to know which music for which occasion. Our taste has been sophisticated like the taste for tea or for Haagen Dazs [laughter] so we've lost our taste of you know, just boiled carrots [laughter] with all our sophistication, but sometimes there's a point in getting back to the original background sound.

This is what Sant Kirpal Singh calls, of course, the sound current. And a lot of his pupils sit and listen to the sound current and try to perceive the sound current. He's against using mantram because using mantram one is prefiguring ... one is producing one's own sound instead of being receptive to the sound of the universe. Now on the other hand, I think that if one is working with the mantram in a very sensitive way, one is listening in. One is not only producing sound, but one is listening into the feedback and then readjusting. So it's a kind of feedback system. But still, the question in my mind is, are there sounds which are produced by our instruments which, however, are not too sophisticated and therefore can bring us in touch with this whole world of imagination better than the more artificial sounds that we're using. And it occurred to me that indeed there are. The sound of the gong, the sound of the wind harp and even the sound of the vina, at least the original vina, which --I'm trying to make a vina myself out of ... You know, my great grandfather played the vina with two enormous gourds. It's an enormous rudra vina and it has a very deep sound. But originally it was Shiva who discovered that it took two gourds and linked them together with bamboo and used the guts of dead animals. And of course the sound of that vina must be very special in comparison with the metal sound of the modern vina. But as close as we can get to the Shiva vina is, of course, the rudra vina that is being played now by Hussein Duggar, who was in the United States. You see, let's say sound is the most immediate expression of archetypal thinking, before it has been—how can I say—constrained into form, sclerosed into form.

So it all starts, let's say, by archetypal, well, thinking is perhaps not the right word ... grasping ... well, creative imagination, let us say, and then it is translated in terms of sound, vibration, and then it becomes tangible, concretized in form of a form. Now, you know that in our dreams, for example, that's typically the way the mind works in order to be able to sense the airy nothing, to give it some kind of expression, one projects it into the form of forms, like landscapes and other forms. And one can make those forms as fluid as possible. I talked about those different stages and starting with a more concrete landscape and getting into these very fluid landscapes which are much more subjective than objective. Now, what I suggest that we do now is to let these unsophisticated sounds catalyze in us forms, like landscapes. And the beauty of a landscape is that it's not just a form, but it's a form that you are living in, that you are moving in, that you are advancing it. And so it's really a projection of oneself. As Murshid said, in the physical world, the world seems to be other than ourselves, outside ourselves. In the other world, let's say, the dream world, the universe is inside oneself. So, one projects oneself into a landscape in order to be able to see it better. But it's oneself. But of course, as landscapes become more subtle then eventually it's a real being. It's a person, and ultimately, it's an angel or an archangel. Do we have the vision of the archangel? I mentioned that yesterday Suhrawardi coming across that being of beauty which he refused [?]. And that's the Dhul Jelal Wal Ikram, you see. I said, it's the archetype of his being. It's really how his being could become, if the typification of that archetype would be up to the greatness of the archetype. That is, if one works with one's personality, so that it corresponds to how the archetype could be. So it's not like the archetype is already. There's an action of the personality upon the archetype, not just of the archetype upon the personality.

So that's what I suggest that we do. Now, of course, the sound is going to manipulate our imagination. So I don't say it's the ultimate answer. But there is no doubt that sound will carry one into very different, let's say, emotional landscapes than the usual one. Because that sound is really expressing the order of the universe. And when I say the order, I don't think of it as an order that’s static. It's an order that's dynamic and continually moving, inventive, but still ... And even I don't say that it's orderly. There's a certain amount of randomness, of redundancy, as we call it in the Information Systems theories. Which makes more creativity because it's, as Prigogine says, fluctuations from a position of rest. So it's not static. There's randomness, like in the inventions of Bach. And at the same time, there's a certain orderliness that is always renewed, and there's always subtler forms of manifesting this orderliness. Now you're going to project forward forms that correspond to very great need in your being. And in a very simple manner, it might at first manifest as an earthly landscape or watery landscape or a fiery landscape or an airy landscape. Or it might be mountainous or desert, or whatever. And then as time goes on, it will be much more like a soul landscape, much more like the impressionists, as I mentioned yesterday. And what we want to do is to perceive ourselves in the landscape being of the nature of the landscape, so if it's a desert, well there's something barren about our being. And if it's a landscape of snow and ice, then it reflects our need for peace and purity, an immaculate state, and so on and so forth, you see. If it's fiery, well, then, our need to burn, and so on. The landscapes, are, after all, rather—how can I say—formal; after all, they are forms, and we want to reach into something that gets more and more fluid. And so maybe you free yourself eventually from the whole concept of an archetype and you get into the consciousness of beings, beings of majesty and glory and joy and beauty. And eventually you can even reach beyond beings into, well, the One and Only Being beyond all beings. But this is just ideas so that you don't get stuck into thinking that you have to imagine a particular landscape. So there's room for your creativity.

And there's a time then that even the sounds themselves seem to have done what they had to do. And they seem to stand in the way of one's spontaneity and then we will be putting the sound down a little bit and then after the sound has ceased, then let yourself just be carried by your own incentive. The sound has done what it had to and now you're working further. It's just like when one has turned off the engines of a plane and one is gliding.

[sounds of a singing bowl and PVK talking at the same time]

Imagine geometrical forms, if you like, and even colors, the color of the sound. [different ringing bowls, gongs, and sounds at varying frequencies, pitches, at the same time] 23: to 36:13]

39:00. RIGHT. Just a few words about my personal impressions here. You see the sound of the gong or the wind harp and even the vina in this case, are expressing the primitive forms of life and consequently the way the order of the universe is, in its early stages of evolution, and that very order becomes homonized—to use a word of Teilhard de Chardin—in the music of Brahms, for example, where there's compassion, personal triumph and despair, and even Schumann, which are not to be found in the primitive forms of the order of the universe. That's why I'm saying that this order, you mustn't think of it as static. It's dynamic, it's continually evolving and that it is processed by beings in whom it is carried one stage further.

And so what we're doing is getting attuned to those very early surgings of life where organization was still exploratory... well, it still is, but ... it's still very early stages.

And then the whole, let's say, organization, the whole order gets more and more ... I use the word sophistication, which is perhaps where there's been artifice, alienation from the way the order is advancing. But it's true that qualities come through which are not yet distinguishable in their earlier stage. And for example, the music of Victoria is a very good example of heavenly music as compared with the sound of the sea or the sound of the wind or the sound of what I call the primitive forms of life. Now, they had already been kind of anticipated. They haven't yet come through in this music. Is there, Mikhail, a way of listening to Victoria's Lamentations, particularly the latter part of the Lamentations? You know that the Sufis distinguish in the course of saut-e-sarmad—which is listening to the sound of the universe—they distinguish between nine different sounds. If I remember, one was the fluttering of the leaves of the trees; and the other was the sound of the whistling of the wind; and the other one was the bells or the gongs; and then there was the cracking of the thunder; I think it was the chirping of birds; the sound of the vina; the sound of the choruses of the angels; and then the symphony of the spheres. Maybe I've missed some, yes, I missed some out, maybe.

So that we're listening to one aspect of the symphony of the spheres in its primitive form. But the sound of the angels represents a further development. And then you get the homonization of this in two composers like, of course, Johann Sebastian Bach, which is a departure from the early Gregorian style, which gets more into human glorification. And then finally, you have to get into very human emotions like Beethoven and Brahms. And it's all part of the order of the universe. I don't want to limit that order to the sound of the gong, although it opens up spheres which are familiar, aren't they? I think that some of you like listening to something that's so familiar to you. Early gropings of life transports you into a little bit like an anticipation of what one might experience during death, but then I thought after death, but I think for myself, well, I hope experience after death is a little more interesting than that [laughter]. I imagine choruses of angels rather dull repetitive sounds. Much more--I suppose it's sophistication. I was speaking against sophistication, but maybe that's what is gained by humor, and [tape turns]

despair and triumph and compassion. There is no compassion in the music of the sea or the music of the wind. They're all further developments of the order of the universe’s, as Teilhard de Chardin calls it, homonization, that is become human … become human. That's why Murshid says, "What we want is a human spirit."

[choral music plays: Thomas Luis de Victoria's Lamentations]

Victoria was a monk living in a monastery where they were dedicated to glorification and he is describing the glory of the heavens.

One has to live in that attunement to be able to convey that emotion in the language of music.

And we have the great privilege of being able to listen to it and relive some of his experience.

Aren't we lucky to live in a time when we have accessible to us all this tremendous heirloom of experience.

We have a break now for lunch. We begin again at two o'clock.