Did Yogananda ever say anything about music ?
was he against people listening to music ?
—Billy, Earth
Yes, Yogananda wrote quite a bit about the power of music! A great place to start is in Chapter 15 of the Autobiography of a Yogi. Don’t let the title of the chapter throw you off: The Cauliflower Robbery!
Yogananda also explains in great detail in the original prelude to his Cosmic Chants:
Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe, and music is a divine art, to be used not for pleasure but as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to the contact of the Cosmic Vibration or the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” –John 1:1. God is the Word or the Cosmic Vibration.
I would highly recommend purchasing the Cosmic Chants and diving deeply!
Yogananda would counsel his disciples not to get caught up in the wordly vibrations of much of the popular music of his time, but when they went to see a production conducted by one of his students of “Die Fledermaus”, a light opera by Strauss that had little to do with spiritual principles, he said “It was a good show!” He was not dogmatic, always interested in each one’s individual development.
Consciousness is always a directional movement, and he would advise always to choose music that brings your consciousness upward toward union with God.
