[A sannyasin said that he had decided some time ago to dedicate his life to music. He went on to say that he played drums and had been part of a group in Australia.]
Osho – Really devote yourself to it… religiously devote yourself. Sacrifice your whole being. Music is a very subtle meditation. The seven notes of music are concerned with the seven chakras of the body and each chakra has its own note. If you concentrate on that chakra, you will start hearing that note arising within your body. The second chakra has two notes, the third, three. One is important, the other two are just part of it but create a harmony. It goes on becoming a greater harmony, rising higher with each chakra. On the seventh chakra it is an orchestra.
Each chakra has its own form, its own music, its own taste, its own smell. The deeper you move inside yourself, the more you find the whole world, because if it is not within you, you cannot see it without either. Something is needed to correspond. Your eyes can see things because your eyes correspond with the light outside. In fact they are part of the sun. That’s why you can see in the light and you cannot see in the dark. Your eyes are the most responsive part of your body for light; your ears, for sound.
We know only five things in the world because we have five senses. Not that there are only five things – there are millions – but we can know only that which is also within us; otherwise there is no way. to know it. If a man loses his capacity to smell, the whole world becomes smellless and all perfumes are alike; good or bad, the odour is alike.
If you lose the sense of taste, as it happens after a long fever, then everything is tasteless. If you become deaf, there is no sound in the world, and if you are blind there is no light. Whatsoever you know, you know through something that exists within you. Everything can become an inner growth and an inner discovery. Music can become tremendously helpful, but then one has to become completely lost in it.
So play the drums… and just remember one thing: by and by lose the player completely so that there are only drums and playing, and the player is no more. You will start hearing the drums within yourself. You will be playing outside on the drums and something corresponding to it will start happening within you. Then for the first time you will become a drummer. Then you are in tune. Music was basically found out by meditators, by deep inner investigators, and they have used it for centuries. The quality of the mind determines what centre it will hit. Jazz, modern music, hits the sex centre immediately. It is sexual, pronouncedly sexual. It excites, thrills… almost massages the sex centre from within. It makes people more erotic. If this can happen, then the other thing is also possible.
There are a few compositions in the world which can hit the hara and a person can die immediately. It makes people so silent that even life starts disappearing, because life is also a tension. Death is absolutely non-tense. Only death is absolute relaxation. Life cannot be absolute relaxation. It can be, at the most, relative – more or less tense, but it will remain tense. So there is music that can create such a deep response that a person simply disappears.
In India there is a story of a great musician. He had become one hundred years old and there was great celebration. He had a thousand disciples from all over the country and they all came to pay their respects. Maybe this was going to be his last birthday and he would not be among them again. They had brought many things. Even kings were among his disciples, emperors – very rich people – and rich gifts were there. A beggar, who was one of his disciples, had also come. Somebody asked, just jokingly, what he had brought as a present. He said, ’I have brought myself.’ Then he went to the master and played on his sitar. He died there playing. The master had even yelled just in the middle, ’Stop!’ but by that time he was gone.
So play deeply, meditate daily. Devote your whole life to music… devote it completely. Surrender to it. And don’t think of it as a hobby. Hobby is a profane word. Think of it as prayer, and go to your drums with deep respect. First bow down to them… they are the doors… and be respectful to them. If you are not feeling good, if you are feeling angry, don’t play. If you are feeling sexual, don’t play. Choose the most silent, blissful moments to play, so as the playing becomes more and more associated with blissful moments, it will create more bliss.
If you play when you are in anger you may start hating the drums. Subtle anger, catharsis will be there. It may be good for catharsis, but not good for growth; not good for the inner growth of musical sensitivity. In India, real musicians will play only in the morning, at three o’clock, when everything is absolutely silent and rested and the whole cosmos is full of energy and waiting for the sun to rise. Ordinarily musicians go on playing late into the night – almost a music marathon – but then that music is more or less sexual and erotic. Just early in the morning is best. And when you get in tune with it then any moment is right, mm?
Source – Osho Book “Get Out of Your Own Way”