Listening To Music As Spiritual Practice

Music has been a spiritual practice in India for millennia as part of Nada Yoga

When the Creator fashioned the human body, the human soul refused to enter because it didn’t want to take on the body’s limitations. The Creator then began to play music. In order to feel the fullness of this music through the senses and receptivity of the human form, the soul was coaxed into the body. — Russill Paul relaying an ancient Sufi story in The Yoga of Sound

In the movie Her, Samantha the disembodied artificial intelligence tells the protagonist Theodore that she has been listening to a song on repeat: “I can’t stop listening to it.” This scene prompted me to ponder the nature of music, the vibratory nature of the Cosmos, the importance of embodiment, and what it means to be consciousness. In contrast with a disembodied AI, there is something deeply significant about the fact that our bodies can resonate with music.

Music has been used by cultures around the world for healing, from Ancient Greece to Egypt to India. Hippocrates took his ‘frenetic’ (“insane”) patients to the temple of Asclepius for musical therapy, to listen to healing symphonia.

Music is healing because we have a body, and the body is in the soul; as in the Sufi parable above, we can feel music in our soul. The matter that comprises our bodies vibrates to music, as does the stuff of mind.

Furthermore, the nature of the Cosmos is vibratory. The cosmology of yoga and quantum physics both confirm this: Physics through theory and mathematics; yoga through subjective, personal, phenomenological experience resulting from the practice of different yogas, including the yoga of sound — Nada Yoga. This vibratory nature is why sound, and music in particular, is so effective in attuning the mind, body, heart, and soul.

This style or tributary of yoga called Nada Yoga, which is the yoga of music, a part of the broader system of the yoga of sound, includes mantra and Indian classical music. The word ‘nada’ in Sanskrit means a loud droning or rushing, a current of sound. Interestingly, the names of many rivers around the world are derived from the root “nada”: the Norwegian Nid, the German Nidda, and the Polish Nida, to name a few.

Nada Yoga leverages the fact that currents of sound appear in both the Cosmos and the human body; it is a practice for connecting more deeply with the Cosmos. As we will explore below, the practice is one of deep listening.

In this post, I would like to explore the idea of music as a sādhāna, or spiritual practice. By using Nada Yoga as a jumping off point and incorporating relevant Western philosophical perspectives that support my central thesis, I intend to arrive at a cohesive and integrative approach to music as a spiritual practice, in the broad sense of spiritual practice in which the practitioner is embodied, comforted, attuned, liberated, and filled with joy and gratitude, all as a result of establishing a deeper state of unity with the Cosmos.

The Cosmology of Nada Yoga

According to classical Tantra, there is a throbbing or pulsing at the heart of all creation called the spanda. There is an entire scripture about the nature of this vibration of cosmic consciousness called The Spanda Karikas. It describes this cosmic substrate, this creative pulsation, as both dynamic and without any movement, serving instead as the foundation of all vibration and movement. In this cosmology, all material reality is the concretization of the vibrations emerging out of the spanda. As Russill Paul describes it:

This primal humming of the Divine presence is a tremendous bidirectional vortex of power, intelligence, and energy, spinning constantly and effortlessly while generating the multitude of sound vibrations that become the universe. Information continually flows outward to every aspect of creation and is simultaneously received from every facet of being through an eternal process that composes the music of life.

The vibratory and energetic manifestation of this spanda is the naad, the transcendentally “loud” droning or humming that reflects the Vedic origin story of Brahma bringing all of existence into being through the sound of Om. And it turns out this is not dissimilar to the hypothesized sound of the Big Bang.

Dr. John Cramer, a University of Washington physicist, developed a simulated “recording” of the Big Bang, first using data on cosmic microwave background from NASA’s WMAP satellite mission, then using the data on cosmic microwave background from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite mission. According to Dr. Cramer, the Big Bang likely created a deep hum more similar to the sound of Om than some sort of explosive sound. The Yog-Vedantic cosmology is entirely built on this idea of Cosmos as creative vibration. The same can be said for modern physics, with the Big Bang. Here, the two cosmologies appear to converge.

Nada Yoga is one of four branches in the yoga of sound within the larger system of yoga. It is the branch associated music. The other four are associated with mantra from different tributaries of yoga: Vedic, Tantrik, and Bhakti. Where the other branches are for cultivating strength or relationships, Nada Yoga is all about harmony, meditation, and deep listening.

There are two Indian music traditions that derive their cosmology and musicology from Nada Yoga: classical Carnatic music from South India and the Persian-influenced Hindustani music of North India. More on Indian classical and raga music below. (I have assembled some of my favorite Hindustani classical music in this playlist.)

Let us now turn to the classical Western conception of harmony and the music of the spheres to discover a cosmological synthesis between the two traditions.

The Harmony of the Cosmos

Plato’s student Plotinus believed that music is of another realm. Expressing a sentiment that mirrors the Yog-Vedantic cosmology of the world being created by Brahma uttering the sound of Om, the Russian poet Alexander Blok tells us that music “created the world.” And Arthur Schopenhauer thought that music was the direct manifestation of a higher truth.

Fabre d’Olivet adds that harmony resides neither in the instrument nor in physical phenomenon. And music, for Ptolemy, was a means for accessing the musica universalis; he thought that harmonia, although the ultimate cause of manifest reality, is neither God nor matter but some intermediary thing.

Then where does music reside? What is music? What is this other realm in the Western conception? Western philosophy does not offer a consistent conception of this other realm; instead it is an ever evolving series of ideas building on each other through a dialectic stretching across centuries. The most accurate characterization we can apply is that this other realm that music points to, vibrates within, and arises out of is the ineffable transcendent, whether that is a Platonic realm of Ideas, a kind of Christian heavenly realm, or the nebulous, parochial, phenomenological realm of Henri Bergson, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In contrast with the Vedic tradition, the Western cosmology of the transcendent does not arise out of the mindless experience of yogic unity but out of mind, reason, and contemplation.

Western philosophy does not come with a series of transcendental practices, making elevated, active musical listening all the more crucial for a world now mostly dominated by the Western mode.

The purpose of spiritual practice is to induce in us the direct experience of unity with the Divine, God, the Cosmos, or, if your inclination leans more in the direction of melancholy, the brooding omnipresence. Of course the purpose of music is also celebration. But, for the harried, modern mind, it is also the most accessible means to a more embodied and ensouled relationship with the Cosmos.

Music connects us with the world beyond our senses, beyond our minds, beyond our mundane reality, to something thoroughly beyond. As we will see below, this is why it is so powerful as a spiritual practice.

Attunement & Resonance

Putting a primordial sound back into the body is like reminding it what station it should be tuned in to. — Russill Paul

Regardless of the precise nature and contours of the ineffable transcendence that music points to — whether it is some Tantrik unity, a realm of Platonic Ideas, or a more indeterminate, phenomenological modus vivendi between metaphysics and empirical science — what is certain is that all of manifest reality appears to exist and operate in terms of vibration, resonance, and various degrees of harmony.

Most ancient and archaic cultures believed that the Cosmos is dominated by a vibratory consonance and harmony. For example, Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon, and planets all emit their own unique frequency based on their orbital revolution, an idea later confirmed by modern astronomy. In the seventeenth century, Johannes Kepler proved through his Third Law of Planetary Motion, that a number of musical harmonies exist among the angular velocities of the planets. Not only that but, out of the seventy-eight tones created by the different planetary proportions of the Solar System, “seventy-four belong to the major scale (a most harmonic sequence) — a truly overwhelming configuration that no ‘chance’ in the world will be able to explain.” Harmony seems to exist at all layers of existence. Of course there is also dissonance, but far less of it. Despite the current state of humanity, the Cosmos seems to favor harmony, to bend toward it. It is this overriding harmony that we tune into with Nada Yoga, with music as a spiritual practice.

When we listen to harmonious music, we are attuning our entire being to something beyond itself: our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our souls. We could call this an energetic chiropractic adjustment in the sense that it is restoring order and wholeness to a system out of alignment. We are taking advantage of a fundamental property of the Cosmos that things tend to come into sympathetic resonance with other things that are vibrating, so long as they are roughly of the same wavelength. This is such a deeply shared understanding of the world that we speak of “getting onto the same wavelength,” or of “not being on the same wavelength.”

In short, sympathetic resonance is a fundamental property of the world, a function of the vibratory nature of the world. And our bodies are resonating chambers.

Beyond the Mind and the Five Senses

Attunement is a primary aspect of Nada Yoga; the flowing currents in our body — especially our emotions — can be adjusted to the frequencies and tones used by the practitioner. — Russill Paul

From the perspective of Nada Yoga, the primary vector of, and reason for, the effectiveness of music as a spiritual practice is this resonance or, more precisely, a multidimensional resonance. As with any spiritual practice, music moves us out of the realm of the conditioned, limited personality. Through the senses of hearing and touch, more embodied and subtle ways of being are awakened: mindlessness, intuition, imagination, receptivity, gratitude, trust in the collaborative dance of life, and the love that is all around us. After all, the ear is connected to the heart in a way that no other organ is.

Music is also attuning the energy that flows through our body, including the emotions, which can be coaxed into moving through music. Moving is what the emotions want to do.

Music also liberates us from the limitations of our ego, from our conditioning, from the realm of our five senses into something greater. As W.A. Mathieu reminds us, “Resonance is an answer coming from the unknown, a confirmation of order. It bridges the phenomenal world and the world within.”

Music helps us to come into attunement with our environment, both the seen and unseen components of it. Music has the power to override all other vibrations in the mind, especially those that are dissonant or inharmonious.

Moreover, sound is closely connected to the soul. Aristoxenus of Tarentum invites us to pay careful attention to the soul in the act of making music. This is the only way, according to him, that we can come to understand the nature and origin of music. The same applies to actively listening to music. The ancient Greeks, like the ancient Indians, recognized that music attunes the body, mind, and soul.

In contrast with the eyes, which are more active, the ear is receptive, resembling a conch shell or even the female reproductive organ. It is the yin to the yang of the eyes. So listening with the ear of the heart allows us to derive healing and nourishment for our soul with music.

In the Yog-Vedantic tradition, and in modern physics, sound and vibration emerge from wholeness. Touching the spanda through the naad can restore us to wholeness.

The Practice

Because man himself is an expression of the Creative Word, sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him, offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin. Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

How exactly do we approach music as a spiritual practice? There are many approaches to using music to attune the body, heart, and soul. Although dissonance might appeal to some listeners going through a challenge that is bringing up intense emotions like anger or frustration, in general, the music one would use as a spiritual practice will be more consonant.

Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is not a passive process of receiving information from the world, but rather that it is an active process of engagement with the world. This is the sort of practice we want to engage in.

Let us now describe the contours of a robust musical engagement practice based on the philosophies, cosmologies, and phenomenologies of harmony and attunement we have encountered. Crucial elements of the practice include the following (notice how they expand outward in ever-increasing parts of the larger self).

1. Listening with a larger ear. Keeping an open mind, cultivating a state of receptivity to new sounds, and new experiences. This includes breaking out of any habits or ruts of musical genre and experimenting with new musical forms. More on this below.

2. Listening actively. This is a surrendered and receptive active listening. Although this may sound like a contradiction, it is not. The active quality is one of focused attention and having an intention to engage with the music; it is a receptive active engagement. And the receptive quality is not at all a passive, checked-out state; it is an active receptivity. This receptively active state will feel more natural when we let go of any idea that being active involves forcing, exerting, or any kind of struggle. It is similar to most traditional forms of meditation practice: we are relaxed, open, and aware.

3. Listening through the ears with the heart. “It is the quality of your love that matters,” says W.A. Mathieu in describing musical practice. This aspect of the practice is as simple as bringing our attention to the heart center as we listen, cultivating an imagined softness there. By listening with the heart, we are learning to live more from the heart.

4. Listening with the whole body. This step follows nicely from the prior step of listening from the heart. Here, we expand our awareness to our entire body. Perhaps we scan the body with the mind’s eye. With a consistent musical sādhāna, we will become more attuned to the sounds of our body as well, and the sounds of nature. Everything in our awareness then comes more alive, more vibrant.

5. Listening with our soul. In this stage, our awareness encompasses the larger self, allowing any sense of a boundary determined by the body to fall away. In this way, we begin to merge with the music in a more profound way, and to allow the music to connect us more directly to the Cosmos, as a lived experience.

We might start with just one of these elements, adding additional elements as we gain consistency in our practice. Through this process we are becoming more present, more aware, more in tune with the Cosmos.

In terms of musical genre choices, listen to whatever feels right; cultivate “the arrow of intuition,” as W.A. Mathieu says. Having said that, let us explore a few specific suggestions, starting with Indian classical music, otherwise known as raga sangeet.

The Power of Raga

Ragas help create what I call “vertical” music. By this I mean that ragas are internal, drawing one inward. Like the Eastern culture and religion, it is introverted. Eastern religions advocate looking within to discover the inner reality and mystery of one’s being and Eastern music facilitates this process. Western music, on the other hand, is essentially “horizontal” in character. It has an intrinsic expansive quality that, by its very nature, causes it to move outward. This is typical of the Western culture, which is basically extroverted. — Russill Paul

Raga is the traditional musical expression of Nada Yoga, used as both a sādhāna (spiritual practice) and a form of celebration for millennia in India. It has a heart-centered, devotional quality baked in. Sangeetkaars (raga performers) approach their craft as a form of beautiful service to humanity. It has been used for achieving the state and experience of cosmic unity and healing for millennia in India. There are North Indian ragas (Hindustani classical music) and South Indian ragam (Carnatic classical music). Either tradition works well as a musical practice.

The musical scale of Hindustani classical music is connected to the chakras and therefore inherently embodied. The notes of the classical scale ascend upwards through the energetic body through the chakras: SA at the root, RI at the sacral chakra, GA at the navel center, MA at the heart, PA in the throat, DA at the third eye, and NI on the crown. This reflects the fact that low tones resonate with dense structures and high tones with subtler, higher structures. In this way, music is vibrating the entire pranic body, aligning and balancing all seven chakras, whether the listener is aware of this process or not.

Recall that this lines up with the frequencies of the visible planets, which are situated in the same order as the first five chakras, from Saturn (the root chakra) to Mercury (the throat). From lower and denser to higher and lighter.

Party of why raga is so perfectly suited to sādhāna is its emphasis on mood-emotion, or ras-bhava. It is known in India as “contemplative music.”

Other Music Examples

Aside from raga music, other styles of music that are especially useful for listening to music as a spiritual practice include drone music, choral musicfrom the Western classical tradition, ambient music, and Native American flute music. Although it may not contain the divine melodic qualities of raga, drone music’s similarity to the droning of the Indian tanpura produce a hypnotic quality that is effective at stilling the mind. Singing along to a drone can also be healing practice.

Next, not only does choral music evoke a celestial realm, it has been shown to reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance cognitive function.

Furthermore, with the increasingly popularity of psychedelic-assisted therapy and indigenous plant ceremonies, the music used to accompany those experiences — including ceremonial icaros — can also be uplifting, transcendental, and healing on their own, outside the therapeutic or ceremonial setting. One can find numerous albums and playlists used for these purposes on the popular music streaming services.

Again, the reader is invited to experiment with different genres and see what works for them. However, as with any spiritual practice, it is best to choose one piece or genre to work with on a consistent basis and stick with that for some period of time, rather than jumping around. The mind, body, and soul respond well to consistency. Thirty or forty days is a common sādhāna length in many spiritual traditions.

The Importance of Consistency

Speaking of consistency, like Patanjali says in The Yoga Sutras, for a practice to become effective, it must be consistent: “Practice becomes firmly established when it has been cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time.”

There is something about consistency that is soothing for the mind, body, and soul. When your constituent parts know what to expect and are able to fall into a sense of stability and routine, the mind, body, and soul can relax and open more easily. Mathieu makes the same point in The Listening Book in the chapter on “Cosmic Practice”: The more your music practice becomes regular, the more real it feels and the more it pays off.

The Benefits

Progress along the spiritual path is best measured in terms of consciousness, which becomes more refined, heightened, spacious, deep, full, and rich as we journey inward. An evolved consciousness also contains all the spiritual qualities we admire: peace, love, joy, freedom, confidence, connectedness, integrity, wholeness, and abundance. — Russill Paul

Like the benefits of any spiritual practice, the musical absorption practice I am describing here can not only be healing but can be expansive and celebratory. Music can make us feel calmer, helping to stabilize our nervous system and increase clarity and focus. The more we cultivate our connection with the Cosmos through embodied and active listening to harmonious music, the more at home we feel in the world and in ourselves. We start to cultivate that feeling that Krishna talks about in The Bhagavad Gita that no experience is too big for our soul to handle.

With this new, deeper connection to the Cosmos we cultivate through resonating with music, we start to develop a more spacious and unobstructed consciousness. In this state, we are able to choose our thoughts instead of being at the mercy of a seemingly endless stream of discursive thoughts arising out of a relative state of unconscious ignorance. We stop being the victim of our mind, and become the master of our minds.

With the right kind of intentional, active musical sādhāna, we can re-pattern the brain, enter deep states of meditation, and become our best selves. This, then, makes us more adaptable and less reactive, more gracefully responsive.

In addition, the more we move beyond the realm of the five senses and the mind, the more we gain access to our intuition, that small, quiet voice that guides us to our best decisions.

Ultimately, in cultivating the feeling and the experience that no experience is too big for us to handle, we become more powerful. Not powerful in the sense of an aggressive power over others, but quietly powerful in the sense that we are masters of ourselves, responsive to life instead of reactive, acting for the highest good for all.

This is the beautiful magic of connecting deeply with the Cosmos.

Conclusion

The Yoga of Sound generates a unifying power that allows us to experience life as a seamless piece of music with varying themes and textures. We learn to fulfill each of these themes as we move on to new ones, resulting in better resolution of our life experiences. . . . The Yoga of Sound can help us move as a species toward a life in which mystery is as important as information, depth of emotion is as important as rational thinking, and spiritual awakening is as important as worldly pleasure. Where we cannot see, sound can guide us. — Russill Paul

In the mythology of the Yog-Vedantic tradition, there are demons known as asuras who represent our base nature, the result of living entirely from the ego. The word “asura” is derived from the Sanskrit root “sur,” which means to be in-tune. In Sanskrit placing the letter A at the beginning of a word negates it. So asuras are beings who are out of tune, which points to the power of any practice that helps you to get into tune. In this post I argue that music is highly effective in helping us to do that.

We live in a time of information overload, disembodied and distracted. Music can help us to become more present, drop into our bodies, and feel our feelings — three shifts in experience that are crucial to the ushering in of a true revolution in consciousness, the kind of revolution that will usher in a new, holistic, ensouled worldview. By attuning our souls and restoring our connection the Cosmos, we heal our souls. Music has the power to usher in the ensouled world of the second Axial Age, of archetypal cosmology.

In this post we have explored the idea of music as a spiritual practice, in large part inspired by Nada Yoga. I am confident that, if the reader approaches music in this way with consistency, they will feel more embodied, comforted, elevated, and filled with joy and gratitude, all as a result of establishing a deeper connection to the Cosmos.

As Mathieu said, “music is deep work.” But we have to approach it intentionally, with a larger ear, an open heart, and listen with our whole body.