🌺 Rubaba Kirtan Ceremony

6 pm onwards

From Tamas to Rajas to Sattva: Befriending the Mind through Nāda

Invocation

The ceremony begins with the sacred chant:
“Asato mā sad gamaya, tamaso mā jyotir gamaya, mṛtyor mā amṛtam gamaya”
(O Supreme Sound, lead us from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from mortality to immortality).

This mantra sets the sankalpa (intention): to move through the three guṇas — tamas (inertia, heaviness), rajas (motion, passion), and sattva (clarity, harmony) — by offering the raw energies of the mind into the current of sacred sound.

Philosophy of the Ceremony

In Rubaba Kirtan, we do not name anger, sadness, or desire as doṣa (faults) or pāpa (sins). Instead, we see them as drivers of inner evolution — energies longing to be transmuted by sound that help us move through what no longer serves us and live our highest truth. By chanting Sanskrit mantras over Indian classical rāgas, the emotions are neither suppressed nor judged, but felt deeply, witnessed fully, and carried into silence.

Naad Yoga teaches that the twenty-two śrutis (microtones) of Indian music each hold a unique emotional signature — keys that unlock specific states of awareness. When offered with devotion, these notes guide the listener to befriend the restless mind and discover its natural center in the heart.

The Journey of Rāgas

1. Rāga Bhairav – Befriending the Tamasik Energies

• Emotional Signature: solemn, grave, devotional.
  
  

• Effect on Mind: Bhairav embraces the weight of tamas — lethargy, grief, despair — not as poison, but as fertile ground. Its flattened notes (komal re, komal dha) mirror the heaviness of human suffering, allowing participants to sit with pain without resistance.
  
  

• Mantra Flow: Om Namah Śivāya chanted in Bhairav dissolves fear and awakens awareness of inner strength.
  
  

• Healing: The listener learns to rest in their darkness, befriending it, until the first glimmers of movement arise.
  
  

2. Rāga Desh – Awakening the Rajsik Fire

• Emotional Signature: patriotic, romantic, expansive.
  
  

• Effect on Mind: Desh ignites rajas — the fire of action, longing, desire, and passion. Its oscillating notes (ma–pa–ni–sa) reflect the fluctuations of the restless heart.
  
  

• Mantra Flow: Om Śrī Rām Jai Rām Jai Jai Rām sung in Desh channels passion into devotion, converting restless striving into creative offering.
  
  

• Healing: By singing into the rajas state, participants experience movement and transformation. Desh teaches that even longing and turbulence can become prayer.
  
  

3. Rāga Hamsadhwani – Arriving in Sattvik Clarity

• Emotional Signature: joyful, pure, luminous.
  
  

• Effect on Mind: Hamsadhwani (literally “the sound of the swan”) lifts the heart into sattva — balance, lightness, and harmony. Its clear pentatonic scale (sa–ri–ga–pa–ni) embodies simplicity and grace.
  
  

• Mantra Flow: Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya in Hamsadhwani crystallizes the experience of stillness and surrender.
  
  

• Healing: The listener rests in centeredness, a silence infused with joy, where the mind feels like a friend, not a foe.
  
  

Closing Silence

The ceremony concludes not in more chanting, but in shared silence. Participants are invited to witness the after-sound (anāhata nāda) — the unstruck vibration within the heart. Here, sattva is not effort, but presence.

Impact on the Listener

• Tāmas → Rājas → Sattva becomes not just philosophy, but embodied experience.
  
  

• Each rāga activates emotional currents, allowing anger, sadness, longing, and joy to be felt as sacred energies.
  
  

• By traveling this arc, the heart learns compassion for its own shadows, and the mind discovers its true nature as silence.
  
  

✨ Rubaba Kirtan is not performance but pilgrimage — a return to the eternal sound within, where all emotions become gateways to truth.