Listening to Music

Mother, when one hears music, how should one truly hear it?

For this -if one can be completely silent, you see, silent and attentive, simply as though one were an instrument which has to record it -one does not move, and is only something that is listening- if one can be absolutely silent, absolutely still and like that, then the thing enters. And it is only later, some time later , that you can become aware of the effect, either of what it meant or the impression it had on you.

  But the best way of listening is this. It is to be like a still mirror and very concentrated, very silent. In fact, we see people who truly love music. ..I have seen musicians listening to music, musicians, composers or players who truly love music, I have seen them listening to music... they sit completely still, you know, they are like that, they do not move at all. Everything, everything is like that. And if one can stop thinking, then it is very good, then one profits fully. ...It is one of the methods of inner opening and one of the most powerful.

-THE MOTHER
(Vol.6, pp. 381-82)