Quote of the Week 265 - The Significance of Music

How fortunate is he or she who loves to sing or play an instrument!...Singing, playing instruments, dancing painting, and composing poetry are all various ways of expressing human emotions in a creative manner…Music is the highest way of expressing emotions…

Permit me to say that the many diseases of man are being researched here, there, and everywhere, but nowhere is there a research center helping people to rid themselves of the great inborn disease of human beings – loneliness. Every human being is lonely. Loneliness is actually the leading cause of death – only then followed by strokes, heart disease, and cancer – and it may even have a role in their development as well. Music, if used as either a preventive therapy or as a cure, can be a wonderful and powerful method of removing that great killer called loneliness. 

Among the different forms of music, singing is the first and most powerful. Next in order of importance comes the ability to produce music by playing instruments…Music is the highest way of expressing emotions…When I observe the effect of music on students, it is evident that those who acquire the taste for singing or playing music are happier than those who do not.

--from Indian Music, Volume 1, by Swami Rama

Quote of the Week 264 - Art and the Spirit

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.

--Leonardo da Vinci

Quote of the Week 263 - Nada: Ahata and Anahata

The word nada means “sound”, or that which is heard by the human ear… Nada is sound produced through the regular and constant vibration of some object in space…When the equilibrium of an object is disturbed (for example, by striking it, hitting it, shaking it, or rubbing it against another object), then sound is produced. Such sound is called: ahata nada, or “struck sound.”

In deep meditation, the yogi actually hears another type of nada. There is no sound in the external world that corresponds to this internal one. This eternal inner sound vibrates in space (akasha) without apparent cause. It is called anahata nada, or “unstruck sound.” 

--from Indian Music, Volume 1, by Swami Rama

Quote of the Week 262 - Bitul: Self-nullification or Selflessness

Bitul is the spiritual state associated with the inner experience of chochmah, whereby one's consciousness opens up to a continuous flow of Divine wisdom and new insight through one's nullifying his sense of autonomous and self-sustained being. Bitul is the experience of ayin, of being nothing within the omnipresent radiance of God's infinite light. In general, there are two identified levels of bitul:

Bitul b'metziut ("existential nullification") constitutes the absolute form of bitul whereby one loses all sense of independent existence. This is the state of bitul in the world of Atzilut, whose consciousness, permeated by the supernal level of chochmah (Abba mekanen b'Atzilut), is solely that of God's omnipresence.

Bitul hayesh ("nullification of [one's] somethingness") constitutes a lower form of bitul whereby one is consciously involved in the process of nullifying the outer layer of self (ego). This is accomplished by the concentrated effort to experience the continual recreation of all reality, including oneself, as "something from nothing." This impresses upon one's consciousness that there is no independent reality attached to one's sense of "somethingness." This is the state of bitul present within the three lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, while its conscious experience is dependent upon one's Divine service. Divine consciousness in the three lower worlds derives from the chochmah of malchut d'Atzilut, referred to as the lower chochmah, thus giving rise to the lower level of bitul.

--From the teachings of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, as prepared by the Gal Einai Institute, www.inner.org