If you can sing divine songs
Most soulfully,
You are bound to get the same results
As from your sublime meditation.

You sing songs with endless delight.
I sing songs while walking along
The road of the ever-unknown.
You sing; therefore even in teeming darkness
There is a candle flame that brightly shines.
I sing because You are my Eternity’s comrade.

Singing immediately inspires us and awakens the slumbering soul in us. If we sing a divine song, a soulful song, it immediately brings purity into our system. Singing purifies our limited consciousness and brings to us universal Harmony. In our day-to-day life, we constantly break the universal Harmony, but when we sing, we build and create this universal Harmony in and around us.

If we can sing, we can have the purest consciousness and perfect harmony in our nature. Nothing delights our soul more than soulful singing.

When I sing, I try to communicate with God and offer Him what I have and what I am. In each song I sing, I try to offer myself through the song with utmost concern. The meaning of the words I try to convey through my voice. There are many singers who have extraordinary voices and singing ability. I am no match for them. But I have heard many singers of that type who do not feel the living breath of the words when they sing. Their beautiful, melodious voices carry the tune, but the depth and real significance of the words, we do not get from their voices.

Some people do not have a beautiful singing voice at all, but God deeply appreciates their voice because they sing soulfully. Someone may be a very great singer but sing without any aspiration or devotion. God cares most for the ones who sing soulfully.

When we chant, our psychic being, which is the representative of the soul, is fed. A mother feeds her child whenever the child is hungry. Similarly, we have to feed the soul, the divine child within us, by chanting or meditating. When the soul is constantly fed, it comes to the fore and the soul-bird gets the opportunity to fly in the sky of Infinity and Eternity.

When we sing, we have to become one with the inner singer. Outwardly we may be very expert in music, but if we do not have the capacity to become one with the inner singer, then our singing will not be soulful.

The song and the singer must be inseparable. When a singer sings spiritual songs, if he lives the song that he sings, then God will be a living Reality at every second. Otherwise, God will remain in the infinite blue sky and the singer will remain down on earth. Then there will be a yawning gulf between God’s Feet and the singer’s head.

When a seeker-singer sings soulfully, he immediately feels that he is immortal, or at least that he is going to stay on earth for many, many years. Again, when the same seeker-singer starts thinking teeming thoughts, the world of multifarious activities and problems enters into his mind and weakens it. At that time he sees that his death is fast approaching. So when he sings soulfully, he feels that he has become one with Immortality.
When you sing, you have to think of both the body of the song and the soul of the song. The body of the song is each word. You have to know the meaning of the song well and bring the image right in front of your mind.

If you can meditate for five minutes or ten minutes before you sing, then you will get the soul aspect of the song from your meditation. Even if you have not meditated, sometimes it is possible, while bringing the image of each word to your mind, to also get the soul aspect. But for this you have to be a great seeker.

If you bring the soul aspect forward and also symbolically bring the body aspect forward, the song becomes really soulful. At that time, those who are listening are bound to feel the soul inside the music. They may not even hear the words; they will only see the soul inside the song. They will see in your face the divine reality. Sometimes your soul has permeated your outer face, and your face is shining. At that time, they do not see anything but the soul.

Is it possible to feel our soul through meditation consisting of prolonged singing and chanting?

It is quite possible to see, feel and grow into the soul’s light and reality through singing and chanting. It all depends on how you do it. While singing and chanting, if you look around to see whether others are appreciating your extraordinary voice, you will never be able to feel your soul. If you are watching to see how your voice is giving everybody tremendous joy in the form of a thrill, you have to know that this thrill is in the vital world of the audience. But if you are singing soulfully and devotedly, and if you feel at every moment that you are offering a flower of gratitude to the Supreme inside yourself, then you are bound to feel your soul. You have to feel that you have within yourself an endless supply of gratitude-flowers, and that at each second you are offering gratitude. If you can feel this, then you are bound to see the soul, feel the soul and grow into the soul’s light and reality while singing and chanting.