Hoday I was in a choir lesson. What happened there was a very intense shared experience. I'll try to describe it as objectively as possible. We (around 60 participants) started with breathing exercises, 'warmed up' our vocal chords, sang four-part chords and scaled the pitch. The choirmaster pointed out that we were not here by chance. We were in Auroville because something had drawn us here. I think most of the people in the room understood what he meant, for others it might be a little difficult to comprehend. It's a bit like when we like something that others don't like. Many can't understand it at all, some meet it with tolerance and only very few can put themselves in the other person's shoes in such a way that the other liking becomes understandable. But it is actually only understandable if we share the liking.
So there was a certain consensus: we all came to Auroville somehow because we wanted to be here. Many share a spiritual openness.
OM
So the choirmaster reminded us. Now that we had warmed up our voices, discovered the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, tried out the basic principles of breathing technique and remembered why we were there, the real part began. Singing OM in chorus, sitting three times and standing once. The instructions? Leave your ego outside, don't feel embarrassed, sit together in silence for a short time (about 1 minute) and wait for someone to start with a sound. What developed from this was indescribable. A complex harmony, with microtonal shifts that repeatedly allowed polyphonic circling of harmonic centers. It was singing together, merging into ONE highly complex voice. It was deeply meditative and at the same time activating.
The spiritual overtones of this singing are the thought that we are all the same, and this unity of being in the sense of the Upanishads manifests itself in Brahman. Further up the overtone scale of spirituality, the sounding of a music that did not exist before, not a composition, not an individual or collective improvisation, but a sound that uses the participants only as a medium. The sound itself, the sound waves, even further up the spiritual overtone scale, is a harmony that can also be found in Sri Aurobindo's texts. At this point at the latest, I find it difficult to keep up. But who knows, perhaps this is an atman of Brahman, an avatar speaking here, the supramental manifesting itself. Why not? It's always better than the idea that money rules the world 🙂
