Our Whole Being is Music

‘The law of music that works throughout the whole Universe’

The Sufi musician Hazrat Inayat Khan said his whole aim of life was to direct the attention of those who seek the truth towards the laws of music that work throughout the Universe. He said in other words it may be called the laws of life, the sense of proportion, the law of harmony, the laws of balance, and the law which is hidden behind all aspects of life which holds the whole Universe in tact and works out its destiny, fulfilling its purpose. It was because of this knowledge that the wise of the ages have considered music to be a sacred art. For in music the seer can see the picture of the whole Universe and the wise can interpret the secret and the nature of the workings of the Universe.

Hafiz, the great Sufi poet of Persia refers to a legend which exists in the East and which tells how God made a statue of clay in His own image, and asked the soul to enter it, but the soul refused to be imprisoned, for its nature is to fly about freely and not to be limited. The soul did not wish in the least to enter this prison. Then God asked the angels to play their music and as the angels played the soul was moved to ecstasy, in order to make the music more clear to itself, it entered this body.

It is a beautiful legend and much more so is its mystery. The interpretation of this legend explains to us two great laws. One is that freedom is the nature of the soul, and for the soul the whole tragedy of life is the absence of that freedom which belongs to its original nature; and the next mystery that this legend reveals to us is that the only reason why the soul has entered the body of clay or matter is to experience the music of life, and to make this music clear to itself. And when we sum up these two great mysteries, the third mystery, which is the mystery of all mysteries, comes to our mind. This is that the unlimited part of ourselves becomes limited and earthbound for the purpose of making this life, which is the outward life, more intelligible.

Therefore there is a loss and a gain. The loss is the loss of freedom, and the gain is the experience of life, which is fully gained by coming into this limited life which we call the life of the individual.

What makes us feel drawn to music is that our whole being is music; our mind and our body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us, all that is beneath and around us, it is all music: and we are close to al this music, and live and move and have our being in music.

Article edited from “Sufi message Vol 11, Mysticism of sound, word, cosmic language, Chapter 2 “the music of the spheres”