Muzaffar Ali

Listening is the most sacred of all human acts. It comes from deep silence... from limitless purity which engulfs the soul. Every sound, every word is as much a miracle as it can be cursed and self-devouring.
A Sufi’s khanaqah or ashram is as close as it can be to nature, and here the sounds are celebrated with silence. You erase all knowledge to enter the realm of the heart and then let your wisdom gently and gracefully move stealthily to show what not to do. You wash off every trace of noise and feel the word with your soul. Then out of the oblivion emerges a note, a series of notes which elucidate the sacred word. This is the adab and aadaab of a sacred space, so true in the sacred art of listening. The essence of sound is the act of breathing which connects one to the primordial source of creation. In the Sufi way it is “Hosh har dam”, awareness of each breath.
Nature is the greatest guide in this sacred domain. The essence of the breath is to remove the impure and take in the pure. Zikr takes this process to a divine level. “La iIlaha ill Allahu” in which La iIlaha is the rejection and ill Allahu is the acceptance. There is no god but God... This pattern of sound is enveloped in rhythmic movement of breathing and swaying of the head in negation and then affirmation. It is the remembrance of the Creator of the breath, and the universe in which we breathe. You begin to associate your breath with a sound, sound with a movement, movement with the miracle of His presence.
Cultures and societies have to be civilised and spiritualised to understand the larger dimension of sound and hearing, images and their invocations, legends and their relevance. “Valmiki — when he set himself to write the great Ramayana that bestows on all who hear it, righteousness and wealth and fulfilment of desire, as well as severing of ties — sought deeper insight into the story he heard from Narada, thereto took his seat according to the yoga ritual and addressed himself to ponder on that subject and no other. By these yoga powers he beheld Ram and Sita, Lakshman and Dashrath with his wives in his kingdom laughing and talking, bearing and forebearing, doing and undoing, as in real life, as clearly as one might see a fruit held in one’s hand. He perceived what had been, but what was to come. Then only, after concentrated meditation, when the whole story lay like a picture in his mind, he began to shape it into shlokas.
A. K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivideta said: “Such was the power and depth of silence and such was the word and image that emerged out of it”.

I think of poetic rhyme while my Beloved (God)
Tells me to think of and nothing else
What are words that thou should’st think about them.
What are words but thorns of the wall of the vineyard?
I shall put aside expressions, words and sounds.
So that without all three I carry an intimate discourse with Thee.
— Jalaluddin Rumi

“It is precisely because such poetry is the fruit of spiritual visual that it is able to convey an intellectual message, as well as to cause what might be called an ‘alchemical transformation’ in the human soul.”
— Seyyid Hossein Nasr

The Beloved (God) is the greatest listener. No resonance addressed to Him goes unheard. And for this He is also known as “as sami”, The Hearer. The act of listening is the most sacred of all acts. We are constantly in communication with the Divine. The Divine as we feel is the act of listening. And our faith stems from the fact that He listens. Thus, to feel divine we must listen. In being a listener we feel close to the listener, the creator of the word, sound and idea; form and image.
There is so much within us going unheard with the cacophony outside that we are becoming poor and depleted. To be a human listener we have to be in a world of our own. In His world. We have to create listeners who emerge from an ocean of silence within to receive what is important for human evolution and emancipation. When the world listens from the depth of silence the thought has to be ecstatic and evolutionary. It has to come from talking to the Creator. The link is therefore triangular. Everything heard or said has to go through the Master. The rab. Allah. Or His chosen one. Sama is listening to pure sound, the pure word in pure music, a pure voice of the soul with a pure heart. It has to be received and returned through the chosen one, the one in a state of love and surrender. But how does one perceive the signs? Through the depth of silence. Through the sense of beauty He has given His creations which emerge only through submission and surrender, through hearing your own heart sounds.

— Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter. He is the Executive Director and Secretary of the Rumi Foundation. He can be contacted at www.rumifoundation.in