In Indian music, when several instruments are played together the effect is not produced by the chord or by harmony, but by melody. Each instrument has the melody. In the West, the music is made brilliant, impressive, lively by the chords. We make it so by the melody alone. When music is played before a thousand or ten thousand people, then of course many instruments are needed. When music is played before a few listeners only, then three or four instruments only are needed, or only one. When it is used for concentration, then one instrument, one voice is quite enough. If ten instruments each play a note, then there can be no concentration, the mind is drawn to the ten notes.

The mystics, especially the Sufis, have used music in their prayers, in their meditations. It was a part of their devotions. Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Khwaja Bandanawaz, made great use of music. I have practiced and experienced myself the use of music in meditation, and I have understood that it is the best means of meditation, the quickest means of freeing the consciousness. When the poet imagines a lake and a mountain, he has the forms, the lake and the mountain, before the eyes of his mind. When the musician thinks of a melody, he has no form, no name before him. He is a plane higher than the poet. Sound has been called God, Nada Brahma, in the Vedanta. In the Gospel of St. John it is called the Word, from which all things have come. First there was the sound, God was sound; and from the sound, by the sound, all this world was manifested.

The story tells that when man was created first the soul was unwilling to enter the body, saying, "This is a prison, it is dark, and I have always been free." Then God commanded the angels to sing. When they sang, the soul was in such an ecstasy that it entered the body, not knowing where it was going. By music, also, it can be freed from the physical consciousness. The mother's voice, when she says, "Sleep, sleep," puts the child to sleep, and her voice awakens it again.

Music produces so great an ecstasy. Even among those musicians who were not mystics, such as Beethoven or Paderewski, you may see that their ecstasy is so great that they have no attention left even to arrange their hair. To brush their coat becomes a very difficult matter for them. In the West and in the East also it is so. In the East you may see a musician going out to play and leaving his sitar at home. His abstraction is so great that even the instrument is forgotten. In ancient times music was the sacred art. The great musicians were great mystics. Such were Tansen, whose miracles are known all over India, Narada, and Tambara. There are many different practices, but music is the best mystical practice. By music the highest state, the state called samadhi by the yogis, can be produced much more quickly than by any other means.

At the present time in the East, music has sunk very low. It has been regarded as an amusement, as a diversion. It was regarded as a national possession, as a source of pride to the ego of the nation, to the nafs. The heritage of their fathers, that which had been built up with so great an effort, with so much care, is now being lost by carelessness, by negligence. In the West also music is being brought down. The musician who advertises himself very much is a great artist; the one who cannot afford to advertise enough is nothing. So much is done for money: it is commercialized and degraded. That which should be valued most highly is brought down to the lowest circles.

Our work is not only to speak before you, to lecture before you, to bring you the Sufi Message in books and lectures, but to bring it to you also in music, to play before you, to sing before you, to bring you the truth in the realm of music. In ancient times it was very difficult to speak openly of the truth. The governing authorities were so strict, the religions were so narrow in their interpretations, in their understanding. Especially it was difficult for the Sufis. Many of them have been beheaded for speaking the truth. The mystics therefore invented a way of speaking the truth in music, in words such as, "tum," "dim," "tarona," "la," that apparently had no meaning, so as to be understood by the initiates while to the uninitiated it seemed merely a meaningless song. At the present time, even in the East, there are many who do not know that such words have any meaning. They know that the song is called "tarona;" they do not know what it means.