Sri Darwin Gross Book Study
“Your Right To Choose”
Day 30, Chapter 30 – “Music And The Individual”
Tulsa, OK – June 1974
Starting with this chapter, the remaining chapters in this book are transcripts of Sri Darwin’s talks at the annual Eckankar Creative Arts Festival. This one is from Tulsa, Oklahoma iDarji started them in the early 70’s to coincide with International Children’s Day and devote a weekend to young people in the arts. They were weekends full of singing, painting, music and dance – all focused upon creating from our spiritual center in the Shabda.
There are quite a few points here as Darwin improvises around the central theme of Spirit in music. Darwin’s style is to speak casually, and let Spirit speak through him – the very flow and randomity of him speaking in itself serve to lift the attention in a relaxed, natural way.
Rather than offer any commentary, I simply offer a few select quotes that stand out to me to supplement your reading of the chapter. Please feel free to comment and share your perceptions about this chapter. I look forward to your observations and feedback.
Now let’s take a few minutes to read what Darwin has to say in this chapter. Just let the Spiritual Current in Darwin’s words flow through you, expand you, lift you up and fill you with Its love.
Baraka Bashad! May the Blessings Be!
Michael
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212 “Music is to gladden the highway, the path to heaven, that is known as Spirit, the great Sound Current, not only by musicians and artists, but this applies to all endeavors and activities. The individuals who open themselves up to that known as Spirit know how to utilize it without directing it, letting it flow through them to become a vehicle for it.”
212-13 “That known as Spirit flows through you; it flows through a musician and out to reach us as individuals.”
213 “We recognize that in the physical world there’s nothing that is perfect other than that known as soul . . .”
213 “Some of the young ones should be taught how to write a little music or dance and how to do their thing. It’s most important for an individual’s growth, physically and spiritually. If we can teach our children some music as they are growing up at the mother’s knee, and in our schools, not just an appreciation of music, but let the child, the individual, choose whether to take up this or that instrument, or whether to sing”
214-15 “Man in his makeup has various bodies, the outermost sheath being the astral body and some of the folks have seen the aura demonstration that Irwin performed with the piano and different selections. I was a participant up in Vancouver, B.C. at one time. Some that had the ability to see the aura, saw the change with the type of musical selection, whether it was fast, slow, a hard jazz number, rock type or symphonic, each had a little different effect on not only the astral body, but the causal and mental bodies. In turn, it has an effect on the physical body and how we react emotionally, mentally.”
217 “When one reaches the soul plane, there is what is known as the Five Melodies of the Sound Current, but including the five you will hear occasionally, a single note of the flute which is very haunting, very bluesy, very melodious, very uplifting and you hear it very faintly. Once you hear it, you want to continue to listen.”
217 “I have tried to musically reproduce what I heard. It is difficult to put it all down on paper. . . . Because there’s no way to bring it all out, and when you try to bring it out, it is very difficult. Well, this flute of God is sort of a swinging melody, yet very, very gentle and soft. The day that I had been a vehicle for the song ‘Oh, How I Love Thee, Blessed Sugmad,’ and got the last note down on paper, I sat back, then came into the awareness that there was a flute playing behind me, but it was playing a different melody.
218 “The Atoms . . . . are wrapped in that which is known as the Word or the Sound Current, that spoken of as the “Word” in the Bible. For that individual that is on this path who goes down the middle road, neither to the left or the right too far, he should have a happy heart.”
218 “The secret of Spirit in keeping a ‘singing heart, a joyful heart,’ is one of the greatest factors of survival in Man’s life as well as here.”
219 “If one would understand that small part of the Sound Current which is part of the Master in the radiant form, the Light and Sound, he can do many wonderful things, with a joyful heart, for all life.”
220 “The point I’m trying to make is that the influence of sound, and the effects it has on the physical body, sway us.”
220-21 “(W) hen a person knows how to handle the current, that Spirit that flows through one, he can play a discordant chord or note and weave it into the positive heavenly music.”
Now, when I speak of heavenly music, it is the instrumentation and/or chord progression which makes it up. You will find that also is true of attitude and the feeling of the individual who is consciously aware of where he is working at within his soul body. If he’s able to contemplate and get into the pure positive God Worlds with the Master, the Traveler who knows his way through the lower worlds, the music can not only be uplifting to the heart and make it joyous, but you’ll find that it can lead others to that known as the river of Jordan in the Bible. In the sense that, the river of life that the Masters, the Spiritual Travelers, know and use to get through the tunnel of Yreka into the soul plane; they are the only ones who know of the secret to lead one through the void or tunnel.”
All quotations (unless otherwise cited) by Sri Darwin Gross. “Your Right To Choose”. © 1986. Chapter 30: “Music And The Individual”. http://www.atom.org