The Gong Bath

 

The last session of the day was a ‘Gong Bath’.

A ‘Gong Bath’!

In a room full of other gong bath neophytes, I lay down upon a black blanket that the kindly gong master had provided

Then this grey-haired man began.

The sound was unearthly.

It suggested the heavy progression of doomed planets turning upon their axes and drifting slowly through space.

It was a dangerous unnatural sound: one that perhaps should only be found at the banished outer edges of the universe even though its presence there would have been in defiance of physics. It was a sound alien to human ears, with sounds within sounds in wave after wave.

Initially, it was fine but then these rolling, vibrating sounds, became too loud and too monotonous to long endure.

Lying on my soft black blanket of velveteen with closed eyes these sounds created great rolling clouds above me; crashing sulphurous cumulous clouds that were edged with dark yellows and grim browns. I looked for breaks amongst them but the wave after wave of sound was relentless and even more oppressive. It is as if it would be understood by whales and I feared their distress upon hearing it, and the deviation from their ocean paths it might cause them for this sound did not seem bound by the confines of the room and appeared to carry persistence, confusion and the ugliness of metals freed from their bound state into the greater beyond.

I yearned for lighter tones. I yearned for more variation. I yearned for softness and the cirrus clouds of finer vibrations. But the gong master fills his gong bath only with the deepest, loudest sounds. These were the striding manly sounds that go on and on like the rolling cries of successive wars victims being flung against the blackest rocks.

Then this dreadful sound (‘dreadful’ here with the old meaning of awe and fear) was broken unexpected by something that sounded like the trill of a bird but again it this was too loud and also far to artificial to have any relevance.

The dark clouds above my head had by now became heavier and even more oppressive. Also, a chill was creeping up from the floor below and into my spine. Feeling by now very uncomfortable I sat up and opened my eyes. I discovered that a friend nearby had also sat up.

“When will it end?” she whispered, as if drowning.

We both wanted to get out of this bath.

I watched the gong master at work. The gongs were decorated with symbols. He used different mallets softened with felted heads to caress and tap them to create his sounds. I wondered if there were ritualistic ways of sounding these gongs, and if each different method released different patterns of vibrations, but watching very closely I could detect very little in the way of artistry in his movements, and the sound remained heavy and oppressive no matter which stroke he used.

He then picked up another instrument rather like a flute and blew a few breathy notes. These notes were not quite right, and I could not help but be amused by these high pitched squeaky sounds which had so little affinity with bird song, which I guess he’d hoped to emulate, and which also failed to blend with the sonorous gongs. My friend by now was stifling giggles. These giggles were mounting, being fed by a boy who was sitting on the back row with his mother, for he was doubled up with mirth at the ineptitude of the gong master, and every time he caught my friend’s eye the two giggled even more.

It was like they had rumbled the king with no clothes.

The gong master, who hopefully remained oblivious of all this, returned to his solemn gongs, unleashing even more poisonous clouds of sulphurous sound, and we at the back worked even harder to stifle our giggles. Then as he walked around the room playing different instruments he set off our giggles anew as soon as his back was turned.

The gong bath would have been wonderful if an eruption of laughter had been allowed to weave its magic into the gonging as part of the sound. Or if at the start of the session we had been told feel free to add any sounds of your own, instead of his expectation that there would be passive participation and respectful silence.

Laugh if you want to, sing if you want to, be yourself! What a treat that would have been. Instead we were left buttoned up with inhibitions and frustrations.

Instead of the gongs bathing us with mystery, we were instead bathed in muddy waters of sound which left us feeling dirtied and choked up.

I wanted to grasp the mallets from his hands and create a more ethereal sound, one that spoke of blue skies and the sweeping flight of birds. I wanted someone else to play the flute. Someone who would find  pure invisible notes to harmonise and add colour to his heavy monotonous brown wash. I wanted him to have taken more time over the initial meditation, when he asked us to imagine holding a ball of energy, and that energy seeping up first one arm and then down the other, and then down the right leg. It was all far too hurried. And he had also forgot the left leg. Why did he forget the left leg?

“If you want to tell me of any of your experiences I will be happy to speak to you,” he says quietly right at the end.

He is hesitant, self-effacing, a quiet gentle man who is under the delusion that his gong bath was magnificent and that he has given us a wondrous gift. That we attained astral heights. That we felt our bodies levitated and our chakras cleansed. That we were healed of aches and pains. That our souls were strengthened and rejuvenated; and that we were realigned to our true appointed destinies. That we touched the meniscus of enlightenment and managed to pierce its skin. He does not know that some of us were slipping off the slopes that could have taken us to such hopeful peaks, or that some fell into dark valleys through his lack of skill and empathy, and that many simply wanted the oppressive sound to stop.

And I feel sorry for him, because he truly believes in all this, and he’s such a nice man.

So once our gong bath plug is pulled, we rush away, releasing gurgles of laughter.

But sadly we are not energised, we are exhausted.

And I am only too eager to treasure the simple non-silence of stillness, and the beauty of true music held in the chirping of birds.