Sound Science?

I’ve dreamed of going to India since 1984. On the run from college, over-achievement, the East Coast, and certainty, I moved to Berkeley, California, and there I was first frightened by the ecstatic street chants of the Hari Krishnas, afraid I’d become one of them; freaked by a friend who visited Guru Mayi (of Siddha Yoga) at her Oakland Ashram and returned to say he’d “handed in all his marbles and she gave them back in a different color;” and inspired by the Krishnamurti movie, “Challenge of Change,” which confirmed my quest for meaningful living. Since that time, India’s spiritual traditions have been a source of sustenance in my life.

With a sense of destiny, I finally arrived in India last December on a ten-day trip to study Indian classical music in the ancient city of Varanasi.

One day our international group of 20 singers visited Dr. Vagish Shastri, a master of Nada Yoga (the science of sound). Deep within his Ashram’s inner sanctuary and far from the city’s noise and filth, we entered a room with short rows of matching blue cushions, each adorned with a brochure listing the accomplishments of this “Great Pandit of Oriental Learnings.” We took our seats and gazed respectfully at him, cross-legged and elegantly poised on padded white fabric and surrounded by iconic Hindu paintings and the gentle clutter of an actively-consulted book collection.

As the muffled sound of tuning tablas drifted in from the next room and the sweet smell of incense caressed our inner beings, Dr. Shastri chuckled, gesticulated and pronounced in his high pitched voice the esoteric details of Yoga’s hierarchy of the human senses. We took notes and thumbed our audio recorders while he, punctuating his points, twisted around and drew diagrams of the senses’ relationship to the natural elements on a small blackboard behind him. He peppered us with arcane questions: what’s an unbeaten sound? Which is more subtle, water or fire? Where does fire go to seek union?

It was exciting to view the world from such a rarified perspective, and Dr. Shastri gradually unveiled a comprehensive system whereby one of the five senses is assigned to each of the five elements in a causal relationship and organized from left to right in a hierarchy of increasingly subtlety and power: earth/smell; water/taste; fire/vision; air/touch; ether/sound.

To give one example of how subtlety manifests along the scale, Earth, the most gross element, can be experienced through all five senses whereas pure water lacks smell; fire lacks both smell and taste; and air lacks smell, taste, or color, etc. Increasing subtlety implies additional creative power, he asserted, and a further analysis yielded Dr. Shastri’s ultimate conclusion: without sound, there is no creation.

Hold on. Nada Yoga’s resemblance to modern physics’ String Theory -- through its claim subtle vibration is the ultimate building block -- is compelling, but I was having trouble getting past the implicit assumption that understanding the natural elements is a serious avenue of spiritual or scientific inquiry. The others in my group appeared to receive the master’s wisdom with reverential humility -- ooing, ahing and laughing nervously. But humility isn’t my strength, and I wasn’t ready to go along without fleshing out my skepticism. Was this a journey to Enlightenment or just to an old-fashioned, vessel-filling style of teaching? Dutiful confluence in a classroom isn’t usually a good idea, in my opinion, and part of me was annoyed at being lectured to.

I raised my hand. I may also have been frowning. I wanted to challenge what seemed like holes in the logic -- why was fire more powerful than water, for example; couldn’t it go the other way? – and invite him to convince me the whole theory wasn’t just an exotic metaphor. I wanted to take it more seriously, and if I could get it, maybe the world could, too.

But when he didn’t call on me after a few moments, I reconsidered. It wasn’t I thought I knew better than he; he just wasn’t inviting dialogue, and part of me had disengaged. This wasn’t the student-centered classroom I was used to.

Then he asked with a giggle: what is beauty? Is beauty contained in sound itself, or within us?

I sat taller. This question reminded me of the ancient Western philosophical debate between St. Augustine, who viewed musical experience as the listener’s responsibility, and Boethius, who believed music itself was the active determinant, capable of either improving or debasing our character. Musical philosophers are still debating the question, and I wondered what Dr. Shastri would have to say.

“Beauty is in the ocean and in our hearts,” he continued, with a gentle smile. He gestured grandly to the room’s shelves and pointed out the many sizes shapes and colors of the books. Noting the patterns created by their organization, he announced: beauty is rhythm!

Before I had much time to ponder this, he directed us into the next room, towards the tabla drums I’d heard earlier, where his two granddaughters and their musical tutor waited. Looking relaxed and like a kindly paternal elder, Dr. Shastri took his place in a commanding armchair as we resettled ourselves on the floor. In another moment we were joined by a little boy who scampered in, quickly pursued by an effervescently smiling young American disciple with a sandalwood bindi on her forehead, who seemed to be looking after him. This room felt more intimate, like a family room.

The girls, beautifully dressed in pastel saris, began droning the harmonium and singing Bhajans – devotional songs – from the Bhagavad Gita. What seemed at first like simple melodies then took unexpected twists and turns, finding voice through a raga (scale) that used both major and minor thirds and a raised fourth degree – very unusual to Western ears. Each time the major third returned it was an unexpected, contrasting delight, endowed with emotional tenderness and longing.

Led by the tabla’s pitched percussion, the music’s rhythmic cycles were satisfyingly repetitive, like the blues, and often with a similarly climactic release of energy at the cycle’s turn-around. But like most Indian music I’ve heard -- organized into 10, 12, or 16-beat rhythmic loops with uneven subdivisions – this was harder to follow, even if the aficionados in the room all smiled and gestured simultaneously at the moment of rhythmic release. It reminded me of trying to post when riding a horse, where understanding and moving with its rhythm enables one to better enjoy the ride, rather than simply sitting and passively hoping it takes you somewhere.

The girls finished singing as dusk darkened the room and an amplified, evening call-to-prayer drifted in from a nearby Mosque. With a few deep breaths we savored the music’s taste – rasa – and then bowed our thanks to Dr. Shastri and his granddaughters, purchased his textbooks, put on shoes, and reentered India’s relentless stream of sensory stimulation.

Navigating around piles of garbage and patches of dubious mud in Varanasi’s back alleys, we passed on-coming cows, walls
plastered with dung, open-air silk shops with artisans working foot-pedaled looms, boys playing cricket, and crouching beggars warming their hands on small fires as we found our way back to another centerpiece of our continuing experience with India and life in Varanasi – the Ganga River.