Light Of Life

Author(s): Padmasagarsuri
Publisher: Arunoday Foundation

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Omkarnath was a mighty master of the Indian Classical music. He knew that Brahma abides in sound and that the word contains tremendous potentialities. When Mahaveer delivered his discourses, his listeners heard him with rapture forgetting hunger and thirst. They lost all count of time while floating on those sublime waves of tofty thoughts. Omkarnath achieved a similar miracle with the magic of his music. He said to Mussolini : "I will render a song. You listen to it; and you will surely get sweet and sound sleep".
"Will you surely enable me to sleep ?**
"Surely. You will certainly get sleep".
He had that confidence. He took up the Tanbura and sang a song. He rendered the alapana of a Raga. How cruel and heartless Mussolini was ! He was said to be a heartless man, since he had massacred millions of people. That very man slept soundly on hearing the song sung by Omkarnath Takhur.
This was the miracle that Omkarnath performed with his art. This was the miracle of art. This was the power of music. The tune of words; The harmony of sweet music. Using today's scientific terminology we should call it ultrasonic sound. He revealed the mystery of sounds. It could melt away even the adamantine heart of Mussolini. This harmony of subtie atoms of sounds can cause vibrations even in diamonds. Music can melt away even stones. That means, there lies, latent, dormant but potent, a power in the word and in the rhythm of utterance. Intellectually any sound might express any sense, if we are agreed upon an equivalence between them; but it started from an indefinable quality in the sound to raise certain vibrations in the soul of man. True utterance combines the highest intensity of rhythmic movement, the highest intensity of interwoven verbal form and substance and the highest intensity of the vision of truth. Hence, 'rhythm brings about
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