Mother's Chronicles (Book 1)

10

Musical Waves

"Music, Mother."

The Second World War was more than a year behind us. My twenty-first birthday was approaching. Mother gently asked me, "What would you like, child, for your birthday?"

"Music, Mother," I said hopefully.

She smiled softly.

Dear Reader, would you not have done the same in my place? For "It is not music that I play," Mother explained to Satprem some fifteen years later. "I don't try to play music, it's a kind of meditation with sounds."

Of which "sounds" the Italians were much appreciative. "The Mother had a remarkable experience," Sri Aurobindo said. "She was staying in northern

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Mother at her organ

Italy for some time and was once playing on the organ all alone in a church. After she had finished, there was a big applause. She found that a crowd had gathered and was ecstatic in appreciation."

But Mirra was more gladdened by the ecstatic appreciation of her music from a . . . yes, a toad!

"I was playing —don't know what, a Beethoven or a Mozart piece —in Tlemcen." Mirra was on a visit to Theon, the occultist, in Algeria. "Theon had a piano, because his English secretary played the piano. The piano was in his drawing-room, which was on a level with the mountain, halfway up, almost at its top. That is to say, you had to climb two flights of stairs inside the house to reach the drawing-room. The drawing-room had large French windows opening on a level with the mountain. It was very pretty. So then, I used to play there in the afternoon, with the French windows wide open. One day, as I finished playing, I turned round to stand up and, I saw a big toad, all warty —a huge toad —and it was going poff, poff, poff! You know how they puff up and deflate. It was puffing up, deflating, puffing up, deflating . . .

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as though it were in seventh heaven! It had never heard such a wonderful thing! It was all alone, big like this, quite round, quite black, quite warty, in the middle of those big doors —large bay windows open to the sun and the light. It stood in the middle. It continued a little longer, but when it saw that the music was gone it turned round, hopped-hopped-hopped . . . and vanished."

Mother's lips curved in a sweet smile, "That admiration of a toad filled me with joy! Truly charming."

The "meditation with sounds" —or music —"is the first embodiment of Consciousness as joy." And that joy is what the Italians felt, as well as I and the toad.

"I remember, I found the same vibration of joy in Beethoven and Bach (in Mozart also, but more subdued)."

Beethoven vividly reminded Mother of Ysaye, the renowned violonist (1838-1931) and colleague of Rubinstein.

"The first time I heard Beethoven's Concerto

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in D, in D major, for violin and orchestra —the violin starts up abruptly, not right at the beginning; first, there is an orchestral passage, then the violin repeats. Well, with the first notes of the violin —Ysaye was playing, what a musician!—with the very first notes, it's as if my head had suddenly burst open and, I was cast up into such a splendour, oh! . . . Absolutely marvellous. For more than an hour I was in a state of bliss. A true musician was Ysaye!"

Not only music, but painting also had the same effect on her. "When I looked at a painting, suddenly there would be an opening in my head and I would see the origin of the painting —and such colours!" In those days Mirra had no knowledge of the zones of artistic creation. All her experiences came "unexpected, unsought."

Mirra also knew some people who, "when they began playing, felt as if another hand had entered theirs, and who would play in such a wonderful way as they could never do on their own." She noticed another phenomenon. "There was even a person, a lady, who played the violoncello. When she played

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Beethoven, her features underwent a change and absolutely resembled those of Beethoven; the way she played was sublime, as she could have never played had not something of Beethoven's mentality got into her."

After all this, it will not be surprising to find that one of Mirra's earliest experiences was brought about by music. "I haven't very often been to churches," said Mother. "I have been to mosques and temples—Jewish temples. Now, the Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music. Oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was marvellous (I was up in the galleries with my mother). The music (Saint-Saëns, I was later told) was organ music —the second best organ in Paris, sublime! The music was playing, and I was up there, rapt (I was fourteen then). There were some leaded-glass windows —white glass, without designs —and I was gazing at one of them, when suddenly, through the window came a flash, like a thunderbolt, like lightning. It entered — my eyes were wide open —it entered like this [Mother

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strikes her breast violently], and next ... I felt myself becoming vast and all-powerful.... It lasted for days."

After a few months Mother gave some more details: "That Light which went through me, I saw it physically enter me. Obviously it was the descent of a Being —not a past incarnation, but a Being from another plane. The Light was golden. It was the incarnation of a divine consciousness."

But where does music come from?

"Once I went to the world of music," Satprem said to Mother. "And what I heard was so marvellous, so unbelievably beautiful, that even after waking I remained stunned for hours. Unbelievable." He asked Mother, "Where is that world situated?"

"I am very familiar with it," Mother replied. "I often went there. It is to be found at the very top of human consciousness. Very high, it is very, very high."

Mother went on to explain that there were several 'zones': "The first zone you meet is painting, sculpture, architecture: all that has a material form. The zone of forms." Artists, sculptors, writers, landscape

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gardeners, all-all draw their inspiration from that zone. "Next comes the musical zone. There you find the origin of the sounds that have inspired various composers. These are great musical waves without a sound. It may seem a bit strange, but that's how it is.

Is this the ethereal music supposed by Pythagoras and other early mathematicians to be the "music of the spheres"? I don't know. But in India, very probably, it is this that is known as "unwounded music" — anāhata vāni (lit. music that never hurts or strikes against anything). The Indian yogis know it. It comes as rhythmical waves. Waves with a slow rhythmic beat, like the beat of great wings. Unceasing waves that come from Eternity and go away to Eternity.

Mother also explained that each zone is made up of several layers. And, "At the very top of the musical zone it starts to become waves, vibratory waves. But it is directly related to music. It is a zone where you don't hear any sound, but which, afterwards, is translated into sound, into music. That's the topmost."

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Mother drew down her music from that topmost source.

"Constantly I hear like great musical waves. I have but to go within a bit and it's there, I can hear it. It's always there! They are not sounds, yet it is music! Great musical waves. And each time I hear these waves my hands long to play."

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