Music is the food of the spirit

Bismillah.

Everything has its own food,

and music (sama') is the food of the spirit.

- Nasrabadi in Attar:Tadhkirat, 793

*******

When many melodic arrangements and spiritual harmonies
- that is to say, music -

are evoked within someone,

his nature comes to prefer them over all else.

Thus, when a person listens to harmonious melodies

which allude to those archetypal meanings relating to heart-savor

and to the realities of divine Unity,

his whole being inclines to these things,

each limb receiving its own individual delight.

Hence, while the ear hearkens to the subtleties of the harmonies of the Infinite,

the eye apprehends the concordance of movement,

the heart the subtleties of ideas,

and

reason ('aql) knows rapture of the harmonies of the Infinite.

- Ahmad Tusi: Bawariq, 121-122

From ' The Wisdom of Sufism' Compiled by Leonard Lewisohn.

___________________________________________________

Picture : Haqqani Mawlid Ensemble performing for Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, KL Malaysia, May 2009.