The year was 2006. There were a sizeable number of us seated in the old meditation hall in Delhi Ashram. The room was darkened. There was pin-drop silence even at the beginning of what was to be a precise and unique experience – uplifting. Narad was there, standing. His posture was straight but he was leaning forward slightly as he was standing. He appeared to exude some kind of warmth upon all of us there. His motive was very clear. He wanted all to have the purest experience of that one thing he was there for. He was in the process of calling down a new music.
This was OM choir in Delhi Ashram. Narad gave us some instructions on breathing and posture and carried us through exercises on voice training and tone recognition. Then we were ready. A lone voice started singing OM. We were invited to join in at different times as dictated by something deeper within, or something from above, other than the mind. We had to offer our sound and ourselves. I remember Narad asking us to produce the most beautiful sounds on OM within ourselves and then to concentrate on producing the most beautiful OM as a collective body. Just after a few OMs, I felt the magic. The hall was taken over by something spectacular that I had never encountered anytime in my life. Pure human voices, quite raw and “untrained” – as it were, were coming together in waves as if by magic and creating a unified music or harmonic resonance. This kind of music was not a common theme then, but during those seconds when it was there, all of us unified, instrumental in producing it, one instinctively knew that there, in that hall, at that moment, something pure and divine was there; a special resonance that could shake the very foundation of the past! This music was not about us. It was beyond ourselves, our little selves rather, beyond our egoistic personality that thinks that it alone achieves and is responsible. I felt what could be humility in the whole endeavour, collective. It was an experience of a life-time, those two or three days during which I attended these OM Choir sessions. The quality of music seemed to be directly proportional to our openness and aspiration and silence deep within.
Now, given the chance of reading all about the OM Choir, its origin and the way forward, everything seems to be falling into place. There is a divine music hovering above our heads which can be reached only through bridges that we can build collectively, bridges of harmony, love and joy. Even if these could be achieved for those brief periods we sit in a circle and let an OM choir emerge, something significant could be achieved. These can only be seeds to something divinely pure and beautiful that is to fill our lives as we open ourselves up more and more to the light and love pouring from above. OM has a large part to play in all these. This is an intriguing prospect.
- Jayanthy
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