Inspiration Unbridled
I would like to tell you about one of my students and his experience with the discovery of the superconscious state of the mind. When I first met him, this young man told me that he wanted to be a composer, to write music. He wanted to compose more than anything else in the world. He had just graduated from a university with a degree in music, and he had learned all the accepted, intellectual rules for the composition of music. But he wasn’t entirely satisfied with being told how to compose according to certain mechanical laws. He wanted his music to flow through him without a thought. One day I said to him, “Sit over here at the piano and get in touch with your superconscious through diaphragmatic breathing. Now, find a chord with your right hand. Write it down. You are a composer aren’t you? You are a composer now, not fifty years from now. The superconscious mind that you are contacting works in the eternity of the moment, not tomorrow. Subconscious is yesterday, superconscious is immediate, now.” So he wrote down the chord that his fingers found. “Now write another chord,” I said, “and then another and then another.”
We finished a page of music with the right-hand staff, and I asked him, “What about the left hand? You don’t have a complete piece of music with only the top bars filled in. “Well,” he said, “I would have to work out the left hand according to what I have already written with the right hand.” “No you don’t,” I replied, “Let the superconscious work it out for you. Make your first chord with your left hand now, without referring to what your right hand has done.” He exclaimed that the sound of the two hands together might be terrible, but I insisted that he continue writing the chords with the left hand until the entire page was finished for both hands. When I asked him to play what he had written, he laughed and put his hands over his ears but obliged, “All right, if you insist….” “I do,” I said. He played what he had written. It was a difficult piece of music, but there was no discord whatsoever. I congratulated him, “Now you are a composer. You created that piece superconsciously, without consciously knowing how you put the tones together. But you had sufficient faith in yourself to do it. In the same way, you must always depend upon yourself in the eternity of the moment to be able to accomplish whatever you set out to do.”
The next day, he was right on time for his appointment, and he wanted me to help him compose from his superconscious again. “No,” I said, “I am not going to be a composing machine for you; you will have to find your inspiration from within. It is time you put your yoga laws into practice now and attain concentration and meditation.” He tried and he tried, but somehow his subconscious kept getting in the way. It told him he wasn’t a composer anymore. Then I realized that his present conditions were a little too easy, and he was finding too much security in the conscious mind. Since his next step was to stabilize himself as a composer and find the ability at will to create inspirationally, I sent him on a very difficult mission: to resolve the negative karmas in his subconscious that were blocking his superconsciousness. As his major tool, I gave him the mahā vāsanā daha tantra. I told him that he could not come back until he fulfilled all the conditions of the mission and began to compose again as he wished. He was reluctant, because he would have to leave all of his current friends for a time. But being a sincere and determined student, he went out and successfully fulfilled his mission. In the process, he had to suffer through all of the things in his subconscious mind that had been bothering him since he was a small boy. In doing so, he lifted many of the blocks that had been a part of his subconscious for years, until one day his higher faculties completely opened to him, and music poured through him almost as fast as he could write it down.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 104: WIDOWHOOD’S INNER OPPORTUNITY
Śiva’s devotees who are widows or widowers happily throw themselves into yoga practices. Though their loss is great, so too is their opportunity for religious service and the attainment of the highest spiritual goals. Aum.