Silence ...... Wat a Gr8 Music....!

The first thing to understand is that music is a by-product of meditation. The first musicians, the pioneers, were really not trying to create music; they were trying to find some way to convey the silence, the beauty, the calmness, the soothingness that they had felt in meditation. They have worked in many ways; in fact all the arts have their origin in meditation, but music comes the closest, because music is nothing but a play between sound and silence.

To the ordinary musician the sound is important. To the master musician the silence is important: he uses sound only to create silence. He raises sound to a high pitch and then drops it so suddenly that you fall into a deep silence.

In the East classical music is absolutely devoted to meditation. It has not forgotten its origin. But the origin must have been thousands of years ago. There is no written record about it, so whatever I am saying is

according to my inner experience. I have felt it, that I use language also in the same way... words to create moments of wordlessness. Basically it is the same technique. So it is possible: listening to music you may remember me. You may feel close to me, although I am not a musician. There is no superficial connection between me and music, but there is something deeply connected.

The musician is using notes of music to create periods of silence.

I am using words to create gaps. Those gaps are more real, closer to my experience than the words. But it is difficult for people to understand the gaps – they can understand only words. So I have to trick them into the gaps. They come to listen to the words, but slowly, they start slipping into the gaps. And finally they will find that they have been tricked: the words were irrelevant. What was really relevant was the gap between two words.

So because I am using the same technique... not being a musician, I cannot play any instrument; there has not been time for me to learn to play any instrument. I have been involved so much with consciousness that whatever time was available to me, I have given to consciousness. So I am the most unskilled person. I cannot sculpt, I cannot write poetry, I cannot play music -- all that I can do is in some way create the

same technique through words.

And that's why listening to music -- particularly classical music -- you may feel closer to me. You may feel very close. It does not matter what technique is used; the basis is the same. All the arts have their origin

in meditation, and all the arts have moved far away from meditation -- and this is a calamity. Otherwise every artist, whatever his special art, should find a way towards meditation. But it doesn't seem so.

On the contrary, most of the modern artists, musicians, dancers, poets, painters, sculptors, rather than reaching to meditation, end up in madness -- that is the other extreme of meditation. And the reason is because in the original sources the gaps were important, not the words. But as time passed, words became more important than the gaps. If you are going to print a book exactly the way I speak, it will become too lengthy and people will not be able to understand -- what is the matter, why so many gaps? So in printing you will have to bring the words closer and drop the gaps.

The same happened in music, the same happened in dancing. The dancer was trying to express his inner experience. He would go into a certain movement and then there would be a sudden stop, and he would become just like a statue. And that was the moment to understand.

As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely on the right track that you are moving. You have found a way of being close to GOD.

Whenever you are silent, you are close to GOD.

Whenever your mind begins chattering, you start going away. But modern music has fallen from grace because it has forgotten its basic purpose. It has forgotten its origin. It does not know that it has anything to do with meditation. And the same is true about other arts. They have all become non-meditative, and they are all leading people to madness.