Rāgamania of Sound

The Rāga of Music

Generative Grammars

Yoga is a geeky pursuit, its fans constantly waxing about the intricacies of the human mind-body connection as psychophysical discipline, whereas Sanskrit lends itself to a nerdy profession, its proponents pursuing psycholinguistics with the precision of a computer scientist.

Both are seemingly interlinked because all classical Yoga techniques have been anointed with Sanskrit names, but that is merely the superficial similarity.

The core similarity is that both can be considered to be based on generative grammars, Yoga for generating advanced states of Mind, i.e. inducing Devas, and Sanskrit for generating words, sentences, and poetry that also induces advanced states of Mind, i.e. Devas, which is why Sanskrit is referred to as Deva-Bhāshā.

The issue, or challenge, is that one is pretty geeky and the other is quite nerdy, and thus not conducive for mass appeal.

Trinity

Music on the other hand, has the very opposite impact in terms of mass appeal, and completes the Trinity of the Generative Mind, in the most pleasant manner.

Bhāratiya music, called Sangeet in Sanskrit, has a highly pervasive quality in the psyche, can be both geeky and nerdy at its core, yet its ability to spread through the emotional fabric of the Mindscape of humanity is immeasurably beautiful. 

Rasa - essence

This power to create in the listener a deep sense of emotion is what is called Rasa - the juice, or essence, of what the performer themselves experiences within. Although Art in many forms has that similar power, yet Music does this instantaneously, both subliminally and overtly.

It’s probably why Music is named so, after the Muses of Greek gods, indeed the sounds of the Devas in melodic form.

Rāga - evoke & invoke

What makes Sangeet unique in the Music systems of the world is that it is based on Rāgas, which are melodic patterns that evoke specific emotions and their undertones/overtones. Just as a Guru’s Sanskrit Mantras invoke Devas and transmits them to followers, it would be fair to say that Rāgas invokes our Muses which makes the journey much more pleasing, and Rasa transmits them to the collective.

Gandharvas - the Muses

In Sanskrit, the Muses are called Gandharvas, where Gandha means the primordial sense of smell that evokes the deepest of memories, beneath spoken language, and lying somewhere above Nature’s sounds, thus bridging them in a very subtle way. Unlike all the other senses, the sense of smell directly hooks into the amygdala of the brain, circumventing the brain’s thalamus and plugs right into the frontal cortex. And these deep memories from music are carried within by psychic energies of the Gandharva. 

Musical Intelligence

Think of Gandharva's as Musical Intelligences, deified for the harmony they bring into our Mindscape.

Since Rāgas are essentially the Generative atomic patterns of Musical Intelligence, there is a certain Math, Physics, and Chemistry underlying its structure, operations, and expressions in our Biological consciousness.

Underneath the Rāga patterns are Swaras, the core musical alphabet that are equivalent to :

• in Yoga: the seed stage Bija Mantras that invoke a certain aspirational quality, which then flower into full Mantras to evoke Devas of our fullest aspirations in the psyche.

• in Sanskrit: the akshara's of the language's alphabet would be considered equivalent.

The impact of all this on the psyche can of course be measured by probes, however being that fact the Creativity is essentially based on Generative Human Intelligence, we prefer proof by example.

Nāda Brhman

Nādam is the ineffable essence of Sangeet, that sets the psyche to resonate with the pyschological universe of Brhman. 

Experiencing this would be akin to experiencing the state of Yoga, through music.