Now, can you actually hear anyone who is listening?
 Can you hear any difference between all these sounds on the one hand, and yourself on the other?
 Now when you were about to absorb this sound, where were you?
 This would be called a state of consciousness, where we have a primitive form of samadhi.
 That is to say, we are happily absorbed in what we are doing, and we have forgotten about ourselves.
 You can't very well do that and worry, or think anything serious.
 And you'll notice that there's a special way of doing it.
 Because, I mean, we can go crazy, and we can do kind of the wild Indian chants.
 But in this, you are sort of straining too much, as a rule.
 If you keep it down to a soft thing like this, and get that floating feeling of the voice,
 if you instantly, you feel any sound that's uncomfortable, avoid it.
 Slip down if you're going too high, slip up if you're getting too low.
 If your voice tends to change, follow its change.
 So that you're just swinging along with it.
 This is the point of why from ancient times people discovered humming and singing,
 and everybody used to sing while they worked.
 But you will notice that today, very few people sing at all.
 You have to make a thing of it.
 People are afraid of their voices.
 Their melodic voice is distinct from the spoken voice.
 I know an enormous number of people who never sing at all.
 Why is it that when the scriptures, the Upanishads, the Sutras are read, they are invariably chanted?
 Because an extra dimension is added to the voice as soon as you bring a note into it.
 That's the divine element, you see, the note sound, the singing sound, symbolically speaking.
 So, this is a form of what I would call free mantra chanting, like we did it then, which isn't used much.
 But it does give you, as you do it, a very good idea of what the meditative state is.
 Because it isn't just the lettings happen, only the things going on around, that's inside you as well.
 As distinct from the prescribed mantra, like "Om Mani Padme Hum" or "Om Ah Hum" or "Om Aram Sri Ram"
 "Jai Jai Ram, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare" etc.
 Each one of them has a different feeling to it.
 The Tibetan monks go down to an extraordinarily deep sound.
 They go as deep as you can get.
 There is a reason for this.
 It's very difficult to explain, because you have to do it.
 But when you go down into sound as deeply as you can get, you're going to an extreme of the vibration.
 And everybody feels naturally that what is deep is sort of the underpinnings, the foundation.
 And when they go into that deep sound, they are literally exploring the depths of sound.
 As we say, "Go into it deeply." But you can very readily see, once you get into that,
 that you are in another state of consciousness altogether.
 You are not any more intricately chattering to your skull every day consciousness.
 What I call "normal restlessness".
 But in this way, you always get a sensuous feeling of the breath, that it's very enjoyable to breathe.
 And then you will find this will help in the quality of the sound you produce.
 And we will of course have to get away from some of our musical prejudices when we do this.
 Now, I know, I'm sorry, but everybody thinks that to spend a lot of time gently humming nonsense to yourself is a waste of time.
 What are you going to do with the time that you save?
 But the point though is, with all this, the first thing we have to understand is what I would call "deep listening".
 And very few people ever really listen.
 Because instead of receiving the sound, they make comments on it all the time.
 They're thinking about it.
 And so the sound is never fully heard.
 You just have to let it take over. Let it take you over completely.
 Then you get the samadhi state of becoming it.
 And it also means that you abandon your socially nervous personality.
 Where one of the reasons why people don't sing is that they hear so many masters on records, and they're ashamed of their own voices.
 And they think there's no point singing unless I'm good at it.
 Well, that's like saying there's no point my doing anything at all unless I'm particularly gifted at it.
 Which is ridiculous.
 But singing is of course very good for you, but we won't mention that.
 But it brings in too much purpose with me, doesn't it?
 And, but it's like a child will make noises because of the absorbing interest of making noises.
 The child will make all sorts of...
 See? You explore the possibilities of what you can do with a voice.
 See?
 Look at the adults going around it.
 They're all too shy.
 Oh, we are not.
 And you're...
 See? You're under fun.
 But all this is perfectly incorporable with the meditation.
 It embarrasses the hell out of some people.
 You say, "What are you laughing at?"
 I don't see any point in laughing at something funny.
 I had a friend who was a theological student, and he was very fat.
 And he used to sit on the elevated train that went from Evanston into Chicago.
 He'd sit on the middle of one side, and everybody in the car could see it.
 He was fat, and he would sit there.


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