“Every time I call you, I am filled with you; and every time you call me, I feel empty of myself.So full and so empty. In love, everything is equal.” -Hadi
Sometimes we read great poetry, but then it does not touch us in spite of all its literary value.Sometimes we see a very popular and famous masterpiece of art, but we cannot connect to it.Sometimes the extraordinary music we listen to sounds perfect, technically, but it does not touchour hearts. Why? The creation of any art work depends upon consciousness; consciousness of the creator as well as consciousness of the receivers.
Music is the play of the pain and bliss of the creator. It is a celebration of love, light, and peace within. A home where the creator and the creation merge, so that the creator becomes the creation and the creation becomes the creator; only then can any work of art connect with the inner consciousness of others. No duality exists. Shephali is referring to music that transcends the Rasiks (music lover, listener, or audience) into the music itself, a powerful expression of humanity that brings divinity into all the acts we perform in our lives. She also talks about the influence of music, which breaks all the man-made boundaries, be it religion or nation.
It was an intense evening with deep gratitude of love, which is spreading around the world and motivating towards the union of the self. A marvellous musical evening in Aurovalley.
Aurovalley is a place of deep silence and peace near Haridwar, India. In one sense, it is a
laboratory for the growth of human consciousness. What a laboratory does is give freedom and allow researchers to do experiments. Whatever knowledge already exists in the world, the laboratory adds new dimensions to it by providing space and environment for going beyond existing results, knowledge, experiences, perceptions, judgments, and so on, in order to break free from old schools and bring new light and new consciousness into the field of human life. In a similar way, Aurovalley is a laboratory for the change and growth of human consciousness, a place where one can re-search the self, discover and re-discover the purpose of human life, and find the light within and become light, love, and peace.
There was a group of 20 people from Iran in Aurovalley for a few days. The group consists of
painters, musicians, yoga practitioners, and psychologists. They were all very open and quiet. They participated in Aurovalley’s daily routine work, such as collective meditation and readings, participating in cooking, etc., during their stay. The group blissfully and peacefully stayed there. They offered a musical evening to Aurovalley before they left. Oh, how graceful it was, as if the Divinity was expressing the language of love through the music.
The performers, the music, and the audience became one.There was no separate identity. There was no distinction between religion and nation. Music crosses all the boundaries. It transformed the boundaries and established unity. Hadi Kenevisi and Firouze Fazeli, for their performance, they sat in the middle of the Om room, a big round circle hall in Aurovalley, facing each other, in such a graceful way as if their body does not exist; in such a light way, as if sitting is not just sitting, offering the entire physical presence to the universe, and there is no duality left at physical level. One can see harmony between the self and the earth. When they both started playing music, they transformed into light. We were all listening with our closed eyes, and for us, Hadi and Firouze became light descending from the sky. One cannot imagine unless he or shehas never gone through such a delightful experience. It is very rare, very rare when all dualities are offered and transformed; only love is left between the two. Love for the divine, love for all.
There is no he or she… no ego… There is no feminity or masculinity, no darkness or light… Thevery divine harmony we felt between both the performers. They began with Kirtan and moved on to other musical forms/
The music of Hadi and Firouze filled the listeners with inner silence, and an inner dance
began.Hadi and Firouze are both graceful and beautiful. Beauty without desirability, beauty that does
not attract, beauty that enters. True beauty comes from the harmony of being and simplicity.
Firouze’s open black, shiny, long and curly hair, the grace on her face with a soft smile remindedme of the image of Goddess Saraswati. Her silent presence was very powerful. Firouze Fazeli spent her childhood in a small village in Iran, near the beach, forest, rice fields, flowery plains,and climbing trees. When she was 4 years old, the first time her mother’s lullaby took her to the higher world, she used to sing poetry and sing to God alone for years, believing that He heard her song. She sings spiritual music from the depths of her heart and conveys the message of unity of existence all over the world. Hadi Kenevisi is a psychologist, yoga teacher, and musician. He was born in the city of Mashhad in the northeast of Iran. He works in the field of understanding and interpreting dreams and believes that every human being can go through the path of spiritual
growth and excellence through the correct understanding of their psyche through the study of dreams, Hadi understands yoga as a relationship with all, ‘Yoga is about your relationship with everything. Your relationship with yourself, and with all the things you have known as others, love, society, economy, values, everything, even the trees in front of the house. Yoga is the quality of your relationship with the whole world. Remember that with all the things that mean the world to you, at the end of the day, you are all yourself.’(21 st June, 2022 on The World Yoga Day, from Instagram hadi.kenevisi). When we see Hadi and Firouze, we can feel it. In present India, the popularity of yoga has distorted the true meaning of yoga. Yoga means establishing harmony, peace, beauty, and love within oneself. And, at some point, yoga expands and transcends simply balancing the body and mind; it unites the entire world by establishing harmony, peace, beauty, and love within. Yoga is not just for the sake of personal enlightenment or just for physical fitness. The true meaning of yoga and tapasya, or austerity, is to establish a relationship with the self and with each atom of this universe… with the whole existence. Throughout all cultures, the quest for establishing harmony, peace, unity, and universal love has been there for thousands of years. It is part of human evolution. It was not just limited to the Indus valley, Saraswati (now gone), and Ganges rivers. Similar discoveries are being made in Europe (mostly in Greece), the Middle East, and China. It is astonishing that the discovery of similar concepts being talked about in the spiritual practices and philosophies of the expanse of the world is made. However, the prototypes and metaphors were reformed to fit the indigenous cultural setting. In India, the evolution of human consciousness has been influenced not only by the various yoga practices, margas (paths) of yogis, and various philosophies, but also by the
silent tapasya of countless common people, as well as educationists, engineers, scientists, social scientists, and artists who have contributed to the field of the evolution of human consciousness.
Here, it is not a question of the superiority of religion, culture, or nation. It does not matter which civilization is the oldest or who has contributed what. It is about our efforts to establish harmony, peace, and love on the earth at present. This effort can only come through a sense of togetherness. Living in the past is an egoistic way of living. The spiritual ego is the most dangerous hindrance in the path of the evolution of consciousness. Time has changed and evolved. The Earth’s consciousness has evolved. One nation is not going to be the spiritual guru of this world. It is the biggest ego. The globe is experiencing a tremendous amount of work and consciousness-level change. In essence, there are currently two forces at play in the planet. One is silently working on changing individual consciousness and collective consciousness. This energy is at work on individuals who are open to harmony, peace, oneness, and light or who have the potential to be. The other drive is the opposing power, an egoistic force that thinks a single country can only be a spiritual master. The main position of these forces is that radical religion should be transformed into the Eternal Religion (retaining all forms of orthodoxy and conservatism). Their task is to repeat and interpret the past in such a manner that the communal mind becomes entangled in the web of ingrained conservative loud religious rituals and provocative flashy, vulgar, greedy ways of worship. They do not permit changing old behaviors.
The lower mind and lower vital plane of the human being are being affected by the misuse and deception of the beautiful past of evolution. These forces aim is to destroy the collective
consciousness by whatever means necessary. India has the same ego as it does at the moment. It is imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance. Great philosopher, yogi, seeker, and author Sri Aurobindo states: “For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation…. the
Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharti, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. To get rid of Tamas we have but to wake the Brahma within.
What is that so many thousands of holy men, Sadhus and Sannyasi, have preached to us silently by their lives? What was the message that radiated from the personality of Bhagwan Ramkrishna Paramhansa?…It is this, that in every one of these three hundred millions of men*, from Raja on his throne to the coolie at his labour, from Brahmin absorbed in his Sandhya to the Pariah walking shunned of men, GOD LIVETH. We all are gods and creators, because the energy of God is within us and all life is creation…” (On Nationalism, Sri Aurobindo, pp.69, 70).Yes, all life is creation. We are all gods and creators. Each act and every breath creates something for the entire world. Each person is an avatar, an incarnation of God. We all have to follow our own guru, situated within, our own light, and own path in order to bring the magic of unity to this planet. Worship is transformed only if it does not become just a ritual; otherwise it restricts our consciousness and it does not allow us to go beyond it. So the question is not who comes from which religion and which nation. The question is, one comes and lives with what aspiration and what consciousness.
The Krishna song and the Allah song… Krishna and Allah are two different words from two
different religions, but the singing of Hadi and Firouze has the power to unite the spirituality of two religions in such a way that nothing exists on the plane of the evolution of consciousness; just love… And love is the one which has the power of unity to manifest harmony and beauty in this world, where all dualities are transformed and harmony is established.
Let us aspire that each artist and every human being becoming so powerful and silent that he/she transcends themselves in the service of the evolving consciousness and unites with the eternal.
*Population of India at that time.
** Kirtan is a form of music which signifies the practice of calling, reciting, or praising some form of divinity.
Shephali is an independent researcher, writer, and teacher trainer, storyteller, who loves working with children and does workshops on various aspects of life.
