Question: I can't sing. I sing in a monotone, and I can't learn an instrument.

Sri Chinmoy: The word 'creation' is a complicated term, and 'appreciation' is also a complicated thing. But creation and appreciation can be made very simple. Creation, when it is oneness with God's Will, need not be on the physical plane or the vital plane or the mental plane. It can be on God's own plane, through oneness with God. Suppose somebody has composed a beautiful piece of music. If you can identify yourself with the inner cry of the music, then you become a co-sharer, a co-creator. I always tell my disciples to identify themselves with my songs, with my music, with my poetry. If they can do that, they have every right to feel that they have also composed these songs, that they also have written these poems, that they also have created these paintings. It is one hundred percent true. On the physical plane, I used paper and pen, but that is immaterial. On the inner plane, the real creation is oneness. When an individual realises God, he does not create anything; only he becomes one with God's operation. In the inner world, he and God are not different beings; they are one, like a tiny drop and the vast ocean. When the tiny drop has totally identified itself with the ocean, then it has every right to call itself the ocean. In the same way, sometimes your soul responds to my music. The soul thrills to the music; it just melts and becomes one.

So you don't have to carry a tune properly. If you can identify yourself with the music, at that time you become the source, the composer. Also, when you listen to spiritual music and identify yourself with the singers, if the music is being sung very soulfully, I wish to say that this is nothing short of your own prayer and meditation.

Sometimes there is a lack of oneness between an individual's own mind and heart. Just as human beings are jealous of one another, so also the mind becomes jealous of the heart, or the vital becomes jealous of the heart. A most beautiful song has come from the heart and not from the mind or vital, so the mind and the vital throw cold water on it. Those other members revolt. Sometimes composers create something so beautiful; it has directly come from the aspiring heart. But the mind and the vital do not identify themselves with the aspiring heart. When the heart is singing, the mind shows a kind of jealous face, a sulking face. Then, he who composed the song does not get utmost joy from his own creation.

Your soul is one with the divine Musician. Your soul knows how to sing, but your outer life does not know how to sing. Your voice is not trained. Sometimes your soul does not cry for musical capacity, but your mind, body, vital and heart — your earthly existence — want it. So your soul at that time surrenders, because it is a harmless desire. Your soul does not want to manifest itself through music, but when your soul sees that it is spiritual music that you want to play, then it has no objection. If the seeker wants to add something to his inner life, his spiritual life, at that time the soul does not have any objection.

Spiritual Masters have the capacity, if they want to, to make somebody a singer or a musician overnight. If I see that you have a tremendous inner cry to learn songs or the guitar, and if your soul really cares for it, then I can give you the capacity on the physical plane. Some of the disciples were not poets at all; far from it. Even their forefathers didn't write poetry. But they have written most beautiful poems. I never tell them that I was the one who made them into poets. Yet how many souls have come to me for help after struggling for hours to write one line properly! So, if the soul wants it, the capacity will definitely be granted.

But if you can identify yourself with other musician-disciples, if you can claim their music as your own, there is nothing wrong with that. The other individual may say, "I did it; you didn't do it." But when there is inner oneness, you have every right to claim it. If you want to identify with the creation of others, which is your own expanded reality, then you can do that.

From:Sri Chinmoy,God the Supreme Musician (1976), Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/gsm_1976