Music Moves the Immovable - Maharishi

Excerpt from a talk by Maharishi on July 23, 1972 at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Maharishi comments on music and the creative process following a piano performance by Ron Altbach. When Maharishi refers to Being, he is speaking of pure consciousness, the source of thought, which we experience during meditation at the quietest level of our mind.

Maharishi: Music is the flow of consciousness, the expression of the flow of life. It is the expression of the flow of consciousness of the musician, of the composer. And when that comes parallel with the flow of evolutionary process of the individual, the individual gets in tune with that.

This happens on the very subtle level of feeling, when the feeling is tender, when the feeling is matured, free from resistances. When the icebergs are missing in the lake, then the lake flows even with the slightest wind, and then the waves are set up.

The silent bed of Being, the wholeness of Being gets warmed up in its own intelligence, and that is the background of creation on which the waves of creativity are set up.

'And because music resembles this basic process of creation and evolution, and because every living being is exposed to this process of creation and evolution, there is that likeness in the music which attracts.'

The whole phenomenon of the creation of music resembles the phenomenon of creation. Creation of the individual life in the wholeness of eternal Being. Silent it is, and then it warms up. 

Intelligence Becomes Aware of Itself

In one of the lessons on the Science of Creative Intelligence when the mechanics of creation were discussed, it was said: “The wholeness of intelligence, the flat field of eternal silence, that intelligence becomes aware of its existence.”

Just this. Intelligence becoming aware of its existence. This becoming aware is the warming up of that eternally silent field of life, unmanifest. Like a seed sprouting, this silent field of unmanifest life warms up. This is the beginning of this process of sprouting of the seed of creation.

This warming up of intelligence, by intelligence becoming aware of itself, is the first impulse of creativity. And when intelligence becomes aware of its existence, existence becomes intelligent.

When existence becomes intelligent, it starts to dance in the joyfulness. It rejoices in the process of growth. And this is how from the state of unity, multiplicity starts. From the silent bed of the ocean, the waves start to flow. And when the waves rise, they rise and rise and rise. And the fall of the wave is also a part of the process of rising which makes the wave the ocean.

Both strokes of rise and fall of the wave mean progress and progress and progress, because that fall is blessed which makes the wave the ocean.

This is precisely what happens in music. The rise of a tone and fall of a tone, both the rise and fall are in the process of progress of music, which ends in fullness. There is that fulfillment when a wave of music has arisen and has fallen. It creates fullness. And there is the contentment of that experience.

The Wave Becomes the Ocean

We say rise and fall just because that’s the way we can express the phenomenon. But when we say the fall, it’s the supreme value of rising, because it is this fall that brings the wave in terms of the ocean, in the value of the ocean.

So one rise and fall makes the wave, and gives the wave the value of the ocean. This phenomenon of creative intelligence is so obvious on the level of experience in the rising and falling tunes of music.

That is why music is dear to everyone. It can move the immovable. It moves the immovable. At the very start of it, creative intelligence is that value of life which moves the immovable, eternal, infinite, unmanifest. It manifests the unmanifest.

Music generates that fullness. This is the act of creative intelligence. We see the intelligence becoming aware of its own existence. Existence becoming intelligent, and in its being intelligent, it grows in all directions.

This is the story of manifest creation where unity gains the structure of multiplicity, of diversity. And this diversity on the foreground and background of oneness rejoices, just as a rose rejoices on the background of green grass.

Creative intelligence creates its own background and foreground of life. And then it flows in the steps of progress and evolution. It finds fulfillment again when that which was the background comes on the foreground, without damaging the individual values which have been dancing and playing in their activity on the foreground.

So when the background becomes the foreground without damaging the value of the foreground, then we say: “Fullness of life.” Nothing remains unlived. Nothing remains unknown. Everything becomes known. Everything becomes a living reality of daily life.