The History and Development of the OM Choir

Narad

In an introduction to the quotations I complied of Sri Aurobindo's words on OM, I wrote the following: '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 bodyof 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 was given by the Mother in these words to me in 1961, 'You must bring down a new music!' I have come to realize that the New Music will be achieved through collective bodies (soul-groups descended upon earth for a specific work to advance the evolution) 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 word.

Mother has said that OM is the signature of the Lord.

This coming year, 2011, will mark fifty years since my first meeting with Mother and Her adesh to me. The meeting lasted about one hour and there are only a few things that are very clear as a long time was spent in meditation with Mother. I was twenty-three years old. As I have said in my talk, Remembering Mother, after Mother gave me this adesh, I said to Her, 'Mother, I don't know anything about combining words and music.' Mother replied, 'No, no, you must go far above words and bring down the pure music.'

We began as a small group sitting in a circle as Mother had advised. At one point I wrote the following to Mother,

'Dearest Mother,

We are meeting once a week, every Saturday evening, aspiring to bring down the new music. I have been thinking about the Mother's organ which is with Padma. Would You feel it to be a good idea for me to play the organ once or twice a week or is it better to work only with the voice at this time?'

Mother replied, 'It is better without the organ.'

A few of us began in the Ashram. Anie remembers that she, Lisa Uberle, Mona and I began. I remember that Mother said 'There is a music just above our heads, waiting to come down. Anie recalls further that Mother said this music is 'looking for instruments who have the opening to bring it down and it should not be mental but spontaneous and as a result of meditation and direct opening.'

In the very early days of Auroville not long after we began the Matrimandir Gardens Nursery, we would meet in the old building of Bharat Nivas. It was a very powerful beginning with people from the Nursery, Alan Klass, Mary Helen, Shraddhavan and others. We gathered in a circle, standing, and each opened his or her soul to the Divine Presence and aspired through sound to be one channel for the new music. Certainly a New Music was descending but I had not yet received the inspiration that OM would be key and the transforming word. At times our group would sing OM or chant on a syllable while one person would recite lines from Savitri or other great poems. In those years I had called our aspiration in chant, 'The Meditation Choir'.

It was in n 2003, I believe, that I was given the clear guidance that we should sing only OM and the OM Choir was born. In 2004 a small group would meet in Ashok Acharya's Recording Studio. From there we would go from venue to venue, until the Video Room was completed in the Ashram and became the home of the OM Choir and the Hall at Savitri Bhavan became our consecrated venue in Auroville.

Here then are some guidelines that have evolved during the past seven years.

They have been revealed to me progressively as we go deeper and deeper and slowly awaken to the knowledge that we are one body, opening as a flower to the sun, to allow the descent of the New Music.

Not to be enamoured of one's voice or even of our collective voice but to become truly an instrument for the Divine to sing His songs of love and transformation through our group soul, is one of the prerequisites, but only one. For here, in the OM Choir, one must leave all the past outside, past ideas of good and bad music, past ideas of harmony and disharmony, of what seems to the ear a discord, and also the feeling that one is doing the chanting.

The concept of singing in the Eastern or the Western tradition, too, must be abandoned. Yet this is not all, for one must prepare the body to be a fit instrument for the New Music that is descending. To build up one's strength, one's breath control, to learn how to produce the most beautiful sound of OM one can offer, to practice and develop flexibility, to take care not to strain the voice are other areas that must be concentrated on to become a malleable, plastic, supple instrument for the Divine music to descend. We utilize many exercises that have been given to singers for centuries to develop their voices, learn to focus tone, project the voice, to be able to control or completely eliminate vibratio, develop resonance, and a good sense of pitch by listening carefully and then reproducing it, and so forth. And yet, many come who are 'tone deaf' or hearing impaired, either not hearing a tone or not able to reproduce it. Still, it has been revealed to me that all are welcome. Some, over time, will develop the ear, some may not, but we are gathered as a collective body, as channels, and it is only the Divine who can judge the sincerity of our aspiration.

Then too, the sense of ego must be put aside. We are not singing, the music is being sent down through us, for if the cuja is full, how can anything be poured into it? The OM choir is not a platform for individuals to display their voices, beautiful though it may be. It is an intense sadhana through music, using the human body as the instrument for its descent into humanity and into the earth, to heal and transform.

As we work on all these aspects we then enter an area that must be explored more deeply, i.e. the inner realization that we are a group soul called by the Divine to come down for His work in this very special time. One has only to read The Hour of God to understand the importance of this age. Then, as we aspire to know this consciously, we begin the process of the 'inner listening', as I have termed it, where we unite soul with soul and aspire for the perfection of blend, a higher harmony, a Oneness, achieving through OM the unity that we all are but have not realized as yet outwardly.

And as we open more and more we shall become like a vibrant harp of many strings, a single voice of infinite tones. There is no road map but we have the constant inner guidance and the Divine Grace supporting our aspiration. Mother told us to sit in a circle and have no preconceived ideas as to what we would come. One can read Her words about how She played the organ and it is exactly how she instructed me.

Recently I was given another small booklet in which Mother speaks of OM to Shoba-di, one of the finest singers in the Ashram.

OM Chanting

'One day, being deeply moved by Her formidable voice, I asked the Mother, "Mother, teach me how to chant 'OM". The Mother became quite upright, closed Her eyes and started chanting 'OM'. My words cannot express the experience I had at that time! It was magnificent. I wish we had some recording facility to record both Her recitation and 'OM' chanting. The Mother kept silent for a little while and then started speaking: "Choose an open space like the open sky of sit in front of the sea and chant 'OM'. – as I have shown you. If you do it sincerely it will certainly widen your consciousness. You will find a vaster, wider consciousness growing in you.

She said on another occasion" "When you are ill or you are attacked by some unpleasant element which you want to get rid of – chant 'OM'. It will disappear. You will find so much peace.

On one of my birthdays I asked: "Mother, how to go within?"

Mother: "Ah! I have spoken about it many times."

(She keeps silent for a very long time as if in trance then speaks again)

Mother: Put your body in a comfortable position and start chanting 'OM'. You will find that you are before a tunnel. A long, narrow tunnel. Go on chanting, go on chanting, intensely, wholeheartedly. You will find that tunnel slowly getting illumined. Go on, go on doing it as often as possible. You will find one day that you have come to the end of the tunnel, and at the core of your heart where the Lord is. It is a long process. But you are sure to arrive at it if you are sincere."'

In the book Words of the Mother – Vol. 15, page 37, a disciple asks the Mother,

'It occurs to me to beg Thee for a key word for japa.'

Mother replies with only one word,

'OM'

Next year I will be at the Center , fundación auromira, in Colombia, South America, to work together with disciples of Mother and Sri Aurobindo for an intense period of twelve days of OM Choirs held twice a day. Next month, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry a group of thirty people from a factory in Gujjarat will come to go deeper into the opening to the New Music through OM. All of them work in one company and begin each day with an OM Choir. Imagine how the world would change if businesses and groups in all countries would begin OM Choirs at the start of their day.

Briefly then, to sum up a few points and describe the procedure of the weekly OM Choir, we gather in concentrated silence. There are now at times sixty to one hundred people attending.

At the center is a candle and around it flowers are arranged.

We begin with a brief but deeply focused meditation.

Next, we begin the exercises to 'warm up' the voice, always beginning with a hum. There are numerous exercises to develop flexibility, designed not to strain the vocal chords. After we have prepared our voices we have some moments of concentration.

Then, to heighten our aspiration, a few lines on music, sound, mantra, from Savitri or other works of Sri Aurobindo and Mother, are recited. Again, some moments of concentration.

In the darkened hall, lit only by the pure flame of a single candle, a voice or a number of voices are heard, then as if a symphony, they are joined by other voices and the New Music descends and the room is filled with the sound-vibrations of OM. There comes a moment when the collective body feels the completion of the descent and there is again a deep concentration. After this a few lines are recited once more and we prepare for the next OM. Then, after the descent, once again silence, a few words from Mother or Sri Aurobindo and then the third OM begins.

After some moments of deep concentration we stand for the fourth and final OM of the evening. Those who are unable to stand sit in an erect position. Now the body is in its most receptive position and at times there is a tendency to sing loudly, forgetting the unity and harmony that must be always foremost in our consciousness. At other times it is a profound experience of the New Music felt throughout the body as is also true of the three OM descents when we are seated. In fact, the force is at times so powerful that people have had to leave the room as it was too strong for their body. Yet there are many 'miraculous' events of healing as well, but it is best not to go too deeply into this or the visions that many experience. On the website sriaurobindoashram.info one can find more information on the OM Choirs.

There are no wrong notes.

There are no incorrect sounds.

If there is a seeming disharmony it is only harmony seeking for a higher expression.

If there is dissonance it is only consonance preparing to express a greater unity.

Be comfortable, but sit in an erect position. Let the body be at ease. If ego tries to come in push it gently but firmly away. Have no expectations for it is the hour of the unexpected.

Aspire ardently as one voice for the New Music to come down through these voices gathered here and raised as one to the Supreme.

Lastly, forget about all forms of eastern or western music, forget about everything except the Divine to whom we offer ourselves as the instruments for His song.

Sri Aurobindo on OM

Volume 12 - The Word has its seed-sounds – suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, AUM.

A note on the Chhandogya Upanishad

"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.