Book II / IX

How can we listen to the Sound Principle?

The next question is how the Shabd can be contacted and attuned with. The Saints tell us that we can listen to the Sound Principle if we can introvert and stop listening to the outer sounds of the world around us. In other words, we must learn to recede into our own Self by a process of inversion and become a Pure Self by releasing the soul from the prison of the facts of life, before we can qualify the Self for Self-realization, which comes by listening to the Sound Current. A holy communion with and practice of the Sound gradually disenfranchises the soul of all that is of the world and reveals the cult of love, life and light that is at the back of all creation. We have, in brief, to stop the energy flowing out through the sense organs, particularly the eyes, ears, and tongue and concentrate it at the still-point in the body, the centre of the soul, leaving the mind high and dry, before we can listen to the Music of the soul in Its fullness.

Close down the three outlets and attend to the ceaseless Music, oh Nanak! in the deep silence of the soul, there is a perpetual light with no sunrise and sunset. 

Pran Sangli

Kabir says:

Close down thine eyes, ears and mouth, and hear ye the unending melody of the Shabd.

Shah Niaz tells us:

Sound is pervading the whole world in Its fullness, ye can surely listen to It with transcendental hearing, this ye can do by closing the outer bodily ears, for surely then shall ye hear the endless song, and It shall take you beyond the sway of destruction and dissolution.

Apart from the physical senses, we have with us subtle senses much more powerful than the physical. At present these subtle senses are lying dormant and unused. They can, by regular practice, be wakened into consciousness and pressed into use in the astral world, where we can witness and experience supra-mental patterns and colours just as we do on the physical plane; nay, with much more clarity and understanding than we do here.

Alone with the five physical senses, we are endowed with five subtle senses as well, these are of solid gold when compared with the others of copper.

Maulana Rumi

Shabd can thus be heard by the ears of thought. Both the soul and the Shabd are of the same spiritual essence and as such soul can, without the aid of physical senses, apprehend the subtle Sound.

Soul is of the essence of God and is His very own Self, and it can sing His praises in an unspoken language without any outer aids (tongue, lips or palate).

In the holy Koran also it is stated that soul is the fiat or decree of God. It is His authorization that pervades everywhere, upholding the sky and the earth and all that exists.