According to Osho, when you truly connect with the essence of music, meaning falls away and harmony leads you into silence—the soundless heart of meditation. Music becomes a door: its rhythm awakens joy and dance, then its pauses deepen into stillness. At depth, sounds merely frame silence, and finally even instruments drop; you rest in the inexpressible.
Really listening to music makes you happy and then very quiet, so you can feel the peaceful silence inside you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, the other night, I was very touched by the singing of the indian swami who sings before discourse. I felt as if he were playing me like a musical instrument. I felt like a big ear, just listening. Most other music I hear basically amounts to noise -- it's entertaining, but it doesn't touch me. What is it about his music and the music of all those musicians who touch something inside us, that helps us to fly?
Music is born out of deep experiences of meditation; it is a dimension of meditation. By meditating, you may be able to be touched by music, but the reverse is also true: If you are totally absorbed in music, your heart will be touched not only by music but by meditation too. Music is sound. Meditation is soundlessness. The highest music is where the sound does not destroy the soundless moments in between. As the musician becomes more and more refined, he can manage to create sound, and between two sounds he can give you an experience of soundlessness. That soundlessness touches the heart. In the East, music has always been part of meditation. Temples have been full of music and dance. Ashok Bharti loves me. His music is just a communication of his love. He pours himself totally into it. The same is happening with the other sannyasin musician…
In the East we say that all music is an effort to bring that cosmic sound to be. That's why there is spirituality in indian music... a new sensitivity which is nowhere to be found. In the western music there is too much sexuality, it is too sensuous. In the indian music there is too much spirituality -- it is not sensuous at all. It silences you, calms you down, cools you, and brings a breeze from the eternal... the breath of the eternal. It is an effort to give you an indication of the cosmic sound. It is just as when I am talking to you. My whole effort in talking is to bring you something that cannot be talked about... to say something that cannot be said... to bring to words something which is wordless... to define something which cannot be defined and is immeasurable.
Beloved Osho, when I'm not near you physically, music seems to be the easiest way to feel your love. Sometimes, listening to classical music, it touches me so deeply that there comes a moment when I feel I cannot take in more joy. Suddenly I remember you, and all the excitement falls into a greater depth, more calm, silent, soothing. Now there is no more boundary to joy... And so much gratitude.
"You have beautiful instruments and you have beautiful art, but your heart is not in the music; it is in defeating somebody. And unless you drop that idea you will never be equal to Tansen. He has no idea to defeat anybody, that's why he goes on winning." It was very difficult for Baiju Bawara to get rid of the desire, because that was the desire through which he had devoted his whole life to music. But if the master said so, then it was better to wait. He forgot all about Tansen, slowly slowly. And once, when Haridas became very old, be became sick; and he had a kind of paralysis of the legs, so he could not go from his small cottage to the nearby Krishna temple. And without seeing Krishna, he would not eat anything. Many physicians tried to treat him. They could not do anything. Baiju…
But music is natural, it is not arbitrary. One should listen more to the music than to the meaning. The wind passing through the pine trees has no meaning but tremendous music. The sound of running water has no meaning but great music. So it is perfectly beautiful that it has no meaning. Make your life the same. drop the source of meanings, the mind, and start living through the heart from where all music arises. Mathematics is of the mind, music is of the heart and one should live more according to music than according to mathematics. Mathematics is utilitarian. It is good as far as it goes but is does not go far enough, it goes only to the marketplace, but music goes far. It reaches to the ultimate. All the mystics of the world have experienced God as sound.
And when love becomes your being there is great celebration inside. There is no sound, there are no instruments, but one hears a celestial music, a music which is not a created one -- uncreated music. We are made of it so if we go deep in our beings we are bound to find it. It is already there like an undercurrent. Once in a while in certain situations we become aware of it. Seeing a beautiful sunset suddenly you fall silent -- not that you practise being silent or that you try to be silent, no -- it simply happens. The beauty is so tremendous, it is such an awe that you forget to blink your eyes. It is as if for a moment the heartbeat stops; for a moment time stops, mind stops, everything stops; you are in a complete nothingness.