Sa re ga ma- HMV music company has joined the bandwagon of meditation chants, sensing the growing popularity of spiritualism (pop spiritualism?) and meditation among the hoi polloi. With television channels providing space to a multitude of gurus of all hues, and maybe the growing stress levels of modern day living, this age old Indian practice has seen many celebrities taking to it with a vengeance.
Meditation
What is meditation? No, I?m not exactly a spiritual seer by any standards, hence any exposition on this subject would woefully fall short on quality. Hence, let me desist from propounding my surreal thoughts here.
Instead, let me try and describe my limited personal experience with this universal but unique concept. For a novice like me, the main aim of meditation is to attain a level of concentration and thoughtlessness for a reasonably long period of time. For this, the method is to select a specific thought, a picture, a sound or even just your own breathing and focus all your senses on this. Eventually this object of your concentration melts into your consciousness and you become one with the Supreme Consciousness. This state of thoughtlessness is extremely difficult to achieve and can be attained by regular practice only.
Meditation aids
Since meditation is an intensely personal subject, each one has his own approach towards it, which he is comfortable with. Using external sounds to aid concentration could be a good idea if you are able to strike the right chord. I remember visiting a Shiva temple some months ago where an ?Om Namah Shivaya? chant was the only sound pervading the serene atmosphere and a few devotees had gone into a blissful trance.
The album
Jagjit Singh has been one of my favorites singers. He lends his mellifluous voice to those dreamy ghazals which he renders with that special touch. The intonation of the Urdu verses is done so beautifully that very few people can make them sound as good. Of late, he has also been singing some bhajan albums which, though not as good as his ghazals, are still worth listening.
Hence, when somebody of the stature of Mr. Singh comes out with a ?OM? Chant album, it would certainly rank above all the other common meditation cassettes you find in any store.
However, to my utter dismay, the album was a BIG disappointment. Although Jagjit Singh chants the powerful mantra very softly and quietly, the accompanying tanpura is very loud and grating. The background noise is too overwhelming to allow you to transcend into peace. Even fiddling with the equalizer is to no avail.
Moreover, the gap between two chants is very long. Normally, one tries to coincide the chant with one?s breath. You take a deep breath and while exhaling, you chant the mantra. Hence your breath cycle ? i.e. one inhaling and one exhaling ? becomes one mantra cycle as well. This allows you to harmonise your breathing with the chanting. But because in this case, the gap between two chants is longer than necessary, the harmony is difficult to achieve. Finally, after a while, you would rather switch of the cassette and rely on your own chants to make some progress.
Comments
Meditation aids, especially audio cassettes, can certainly be of help while trying to meditate. I remember purchasing a Buddhist chant from a ramshackle store outside a monastery in Nepal. The chants had some strange sounding mumbo-jumbo which I could not understand at all. But it was so powerful that for some moments, I could meditate very intensely. The cassette however, was of such a poor quality that it conked off after a few replays.
With a name such as Jagjit Singh, this could have been a remarkable output. Unfortunately, that was not to be.