We sometimes think of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan as a musician who became a spiritual teacher. It is true that he had astounding success as a singer and vina player in India, achieving the title Tansen of India, the highest honor that can be awarded to a musician there. And once he came West, there was no audience ready to understand the highly refined and subtle music of India. Although his musical performances had some impact, especially in France and Russia, he had to suspend them during the First World War, when it was impossible to travel. Meanwhile, in London, he gathered around him his first circle of mureeds and began to train them in many aspects of the mystical life.
When the war was over and it became possible to travel once again, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan nevertheless never resumed giving musical performances. He never stopped several hours of daily personal musical practice, but he never again gave any more concerts or even recitals for his students. Thus it appears that he gave up his music and devoted himself to training mureeds and public speaking instead.
However, as in many if not most cases, the appearance is deceiving. Murshid did not think of his work with mureeds as something different from his musical career. Rather, he saw it as changing instruments. Whereas previously he had to tune his vina in order to play it, now he had to tune his pupils to prepare them for being played by God. He experienced himself as God's flute, and all of his speaking he saw as music with a more subtle melody. For Murshid, music was not just a metaphor for the harmonic structure of reality, it was that reality itself. That music which we commonly call music was for him just the blatantly obvious music; everything else was music too, if only we could train our hearts to experience it that way.
The Persian poet Hafiz wrote, "It is not known how far the destination is, but this much I know, that music from afar is coming to my ears." Murshid comments that for the mystic, the music of the spheres is like the lighthouse in the port which promises that one is coming nearer to the destination. And what is this music of the spheres? If harmony were not the essence of life, we could not have created harmony here, and we would not long for something which is not in our spirit. Therefore our longing for harmony indicates that we are harmonious in nature. The lack of harmony we experience is simply due to the narrowness of our range of experience. In the very depths of our being we have access to the universal harmony which is behind the working of the whole universe. When we are in touch with this reality, we can indeed experience ourselves as what we are, notes of the divine symphony.
It is this experience which opens us to the realization of the source and goal of all religion. It is for this reason that Murshid says that the religion of the future will be music. Our work with music and dance is therefore pioneer work, laying the foundation for the collective awakening of humanity to the divine within. It also contributes to taking a step forward in our attunement to reality, which provides us with an opportunity to transcend the distinctions and differences which appear to divide us. Movement to music is therefore not just one aspect of our work to answer the cry of humanity; it is that aspect of our work which touches the essence of the Sufi Message. |
