System of giving Prabháta Saḿgiita by Prashanta Das (now Ac. Priyashivananda Avt.)


a wonderful account on how the songs were given

Actually, I consider (myself) the happiest person of the world at the moment - that I could sing songs for Baba. I consider myself blessed and fortunate, most fortunate.




According to the rules done by Baba, three persons should be in His room when He is giving any new song. First of all we enter His room and we do sastaunga pranam and then Baba asks who are the persons present in the room. He wants to know the names of the persons and then He Himself sings the tune. I think He sings the tune of the songs twice. And after singing the full tune, He asks us, actually He asks whether the tune is good or not, whether some song can be giving on this tune, whether we like the particular tune or not. And when we actually approve of the tune, actually approve in the very material sense, when we approve and say that : "Baba it is very nice tune and we must have some song in this tune" - then Baba gives the words immediately. He goes on singing with the words and with the tune together and we note down the words of the song. And Baba goes very fast, very fast. Sometimes we loose a lot of words - because Baba moves so fast, both with the tune and words, so you can't actually keep pace with Him. And after singing the full song, Baba then asks that we should sing the song, how far we have picked it up. Then we sing that particular song through and Baba listens to it. And sometimes, very often it happens that He is not satisfied with the song, with our singing. Then He again asks to sing that very song. We again sing and only when He is satisfied that we have picked up the song correctly, then only He says "it's ok - you can now tape it for recording". That is the usual procedure.




And sometimes Baba tells us many stories, say in context or in reference to the particular words of the song, the particular style of the song - He goes on telling us many stories, even stories of His childhood, stories of His youth etc. etc., many stories. And very interesting stories they are, very interesting stories. And from the world of music He takes us sometimes to very different worlds, to the world of philosophy, to the world of spirituality, to the world of science even - history, yoga etc. etc. Very often I have seen that we were in Baba's room, for receiving a song, we were in His room for about an hour. And the job of the song was finished in half an hour but the rest half an hour He went on telling us many things, many things and we enjoyed it very much, very much. It is inexplainable actually - to remain with Baba...