OM CHOIR
I have been seeking through sound the Divine Voice; not only to hear the heavenly music but to manifest it’s vibration in the collective body of those who are called to help the New World descend and by a supreme sympathetic vibration to establish a new harmony upon earth.
My directive as given by the Mother in Her words to me, ‘You must bring down a new music!’ I now realize will be achieved through collective bodies (soul-groups) around the world whose prayer and intense aspiration will sing one sound, the most powerful word of all ages and all the languages of the world, OM, the effectuating force. Mother has said that OM is the signature of the Lord.
Here are Sri Aurobindo’s words on OM, from his collected works.
Sri Aurobindo on OM
Volume 12 - The Word has its seed-sounds – suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, AUM.
“OM is the syllable (the Imperishable); one should follow after it as the upward song (movement); for with OM one sings (goes) upwards;
“The Chhandogya,… is to be a work in the right and perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolised in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda, not therefore, the pure state of existence only, but that existence in all its parts… OM is the symbol and the thing symbolised.
Volume 13 - “the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word)
Volume 13 – Page 315 - The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM, - OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name – it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self- existent above all manifestation in supernal being.”
AUM – A the spirit of the gross and external, Virat, U the spirit of the subtle and internal, Taijasa, M the spirit of the secret superconscient omnipotence, Prajna, OM the Absolute – Mandukya Upanishad.
Page 475 – OM is the symbol of the triple Brahman, the outward-looking, the inward of subtle and the superconscient causal Purusha (Conscious Being, Person)
Volume 23 – Page 745 – OM is the mantra, the expressive sound-symbol of the Brahman Consciousness in its four domains from the Turiya (the superconscient, the Absolute) to the external or material plane. The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead towards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the inner being and in the supraphysical world, in the causal plane above now superconscient to us and, finally, the supreme liberated transcendence above all cosmic existence.
Volume 24 – The Triple Transformation - OM (golden) rising to the sky means the cosmic consciousness Supramentalised and rising towards the transcendent Consciousness.
IN 2005 I wrote the following to the OM Choir which at that time was called the Meditation Choir.
A number of you have spoken or written to me of your experiences in the meditation choir. I am truly grateful to hear these and yet, we are only on the threshold of the new music. In the coming weeks I will share briefly with you some aspects of the human voice, voice production, timbre, vibrato and straight tone, basic warming-up exercises just as we warm-up the body before physical exercise, or an orchestra warms up, white or spread tones vs. covered tone s, controlling the wobble that comes with advancing age, etc.
Although important, even essential, these are still a far second to the intensity of our aspiration and the joy of our collective offering. Tonight I will ask only one thing. I once met the great choral conductor Paul Christiansen of the Concordia choir. I had the temerity to seek him out after the concert and asked him to tell me his secret to getting college students to sing with such perfection. He was a very tall man and towered over me. He looked at me with great kindness and quietly said, “it is just paring away all the crud to get at the essence.”
Now when I remember his words I think of the line in Savitri, “as a sculptor chisels a deity out of stone.”. We must become “the ungarbed entity within” and have also to work to develop the ‘witness self’ that, standing behind, hears its own voice and the voice of all other voices which are its own. I would ask tonight that you listen to the voice on either side of you, blend with it, merge with it, become one sound with it that we may truly become a harp of many strings, as we are already the children of one mother.
Again, in 2007 I wrote:
Words seem such an inadequate medium to express the experience of the OM Choir in Auroville last night. I felt the Divine Presence filling the atmosphere, charging it with love and light.
There was a special sweetness and an indescribable beauty in every voice, a sincere call to the Mother for the New Music and the New World for which we aspire so intensely.
When the music swelled in moments of power, it was the power of One. I have never experienced a more profound and moving expression of the human soul opening its instrument to receive the Celestial Song.
I would also like to thank the Divine Messenger who came in feathered form and sang so beautifully and for so long, joining us and blessing us with his song until day went down to dusk and he returned to his home.
My prayers and my gratitude to all.
A few nights ago I had the strong impression of a voice saying, “There must be an OM Choir in Russia.” I felt this to be exactly true, the next step in the progression of OM Choirs throughout the world chanting their aspiration to the Divine for the descent of the New Music and the New World. But, how to begin this choir?
The next morning I was walking on the Ashram street near the Post Office and a young man, Dimitri, approached me. He said, “We would like to begin an OM Choir in Russia. Would you help us?” Last night the members of a group from Russia that had come with Dimitri joined the adult voice class and we sang OM together. Russia is the ‘soul’ of choral song and the intensity and sincerity with which they offered their profound prayer surely was the beginning of the OM Choir in Russia.
I close with these quotations from Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri.
An ear of mind withdrawn from the outward’s rhymes
Discovered the seed-sounds of the eternal Word
The rhythm and music heard that built the worlds,
Savitri – Book Two, Canto 11, Page 280