Music born out of meditation

Milarepa, sex is dropping so many people that the problem is not that sex is dropping you also, the problem is that many others may start picking it up! Dropping is okay; avoid picking up.

And I can understand your worry. You are asking, Sex seems to be dropping me. Is music next?

Music is not something biological; it is not something concerned with your chemistry or physiology. Music is not even of the mind. Music is something… a space between mind and meditation. It is one of the most mysterious phenomena. To conceive of it in intellectual terms is almost impossible for the simple reason that it is beyond mind – but it is not yet meditation.

Music can become meditation – it has both possibilities – it can come down and become mind. Then you are only a technician, not a musician. You may be playing perfectly on the instruments, without any faults, but still you are only a technician. You know the technique perfectly and entirely, but it is not your heart and it is not your being; it is just your knowledge.

Music can go higher and further away from mind, and then it starts becoming closer and closer to peace and silence. One is a musician only when he understands the sound of silence, and one who understands the sound of silence is capable of creating sounds which are synonymous with silence. That is the most miraculous thing. Then the musician has come to his full flowering. Beyond this music starts the world of meditation.

In fact, as far as the East is concerned, the ancientmost sources say one thing definitively about music, and that is that it was born out of meditation. People who went deep into meditation enjoyed the silence of it, loved the peace that seems to be unfathomable. They wanted to convey that you are far more than you think you are, far bigger than you think you are; you are as big as the whole universe – but how to say it? Words are very poor philosophical concepts, almost like beggars.

The ancient meditators tried to find some way to convey their peace, their silence, their joy, and those were the people who discovered music. Music is a by-product of meditation.

But you can go both ways: either from meditation you can come to music as an expression, a creative expression of your experience; or you can go from music to meditation, because music brings you closer and closer to meditation as music becomes immense silence, sounds merging into silence, sounds creating deeper silences than you have ever known. Then you are very close to the boundary of your meditation.

You need not be worried about music. Music is not in the same category as sex, although in the West the modern music has fallen so low that it has come very close to the category of sex. Only that music is appreciated in the West which provokes sexuality in you. Sex is the lowest point of your life energy, and if music is used to provoke sexuality, then naturally it has to fall to the same category.

Superconsciousness is the highest point of your life energy. When music reaches superconsciousness, it provokes within you unknown territories, unexplored skies. It can become a door to the divine. Just as it can become a door to the animal on the lowest, on the highest it can become the door to the divine.

Man is only a bridge to be passed. Man is only a bridge between the animal and the divine. You should not make your house on the bridge – bridges are not for making houses on – you have to pass on, from this shore to that further shore.

Your fear that perhaps music is going to be the next to be dropped comes from your Western conditioning, because in the West only that music is appreciated which is sexual. The West has completely forgotten its own great musicians who have almost touched the superconscious. But even the greatest musicians in the West could not go beyond life energies, they could not reach to the cosmic energies. […]

Milarepa, when music becomes perfect it does not drop; you become music itself. Your every gesture, your eyes, your hands, your feet, your whole being starts throbbing into a music which is in tune with the universal music. Don’t be worried about it.

Osho, Satyam Shivam Sundram, Ch 2, Q 1