Almost every one of us maintains a list of go-to music that will forever be our dopamine dearest, some for reasons quite obvious and others for reasons that words have a lesser capacity for. If you were to pick one such piece from your list and play it in your head, the most conspicuous part of the music you would readily hum in recollection will be the melody. If you are the obsessive kind who listens on repeat mode until you start hearing the song in your sleep, then you might probably recall even the ensemble of instruments that rides alongside the said melody.
But try listening to it again, preferably with headphones and deliberate intent, and you might notice that underneath those perceptible vocals and accompaniments is an imperceptible presence of a musical layer that flows like an undercurrent. It could be an instrument teasing the ears at a lower pitch or playing a note subtly different from the rest. Or it could be another layer stratified underneath what you thought was the initial layer. In any case, try to listen consciously because this presence is not going to readily yield itself to our immediate attention unless we disregard the obvious part of the music and trail its flow on purpose.
An easy reference in point would be The Wedding String Quartet, where the cello with its simple eight notes stays as a grounding constant throughout the piece as the ribbony swirls of violins and viola add on to fill out the music. The undercurrent in Maestro Ilaiyaraja’s Sundari Kannaal Oru Sethi is in the soulful glide of violins beneath the vocals in a performance that is otherwise a swirling deluge of woodwinds and brass crashing about. In Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase, it is in the strings that weave in and out at first and then recede into just a reminder as the piano and organ take over.
But in the stretch between 1:00 and 6:00 minutes of The Danish National Symphony Orchestra’s Game of Thrones – Suite & Rains of Castamere, the undercurrent is an entirely different creature altogether. Push the volume up for this one, wear noise-canceling headphones or cup your hands over the earbuds. Do whatever it takes to keep the experience exclusive because the impalpable entity traveling beneath the music here is no specific instrument or vocal, but rather a deep, rolling reverberation that seems to emanate from nowhere in particular. If you think it is the bass, wait until Johan Karlström’s brilliant vocal begins. If you think it is the vocal, then wait for the rest of the orchestra to swoop in. The undercurrent here is simply that, a mere sensation that is lower than the lowest rumble, a will-o’-the-wisp presence of an elusive subtlety that seeps even into the silence between the notes.
Much like the indiscernible rumble underneath thunderous music, I learn that there is a different kind of rumble underneath the silence of meditation, a rumble called Awareness. But this requires a different kind of zeroing in to know its presence. It requires a flip of a switch so fundamentally simple that it is the most difficult to do because it goes against the meticulous grain of evolution.
We think that we can reach into our soul’s stillness by being still. But the tool we use for that purpose is not designed to be still. In all fairness, the brain is not built to be in the now, but rather to analyze the past and contemplate the future for our precious survival. By virtue of association, the mind which is the front end for the cracklings and snappings of the brain is no better in this predicament. So if we ask the mind to be a mere spectator of the comings and goings of our thoughts or gaslight it into going full-on AWOL to be in the now, it is certain to buck and resist. But give the mind a task, something to look for and it might just do the trick.
Ask the mind to look for the rumble beneath the silence and it might just lead us to the source.
“Knowing or being aware is the primary ingredient in all knowledge and experience. It is the background on which all knowledge and experience take place.”
Rupert Spira
