05/09/2026
AKSHARA
34 Musical Meditations Inspired by the Upanishads
THE ELEPHANT MAP — A MONK
What if some of humanity’s oldest philosophical questions were not presented as lectures, commentaries, or academic study—
but as music?
Who am I?
What is the Self?
What lies behind thought?
Who moves the mind?
What remains after death?
What is worth choosing?
What is consciousness?
What is the relationship between the individual and the whole?
And what happens when knowledge itself reaches its limit?
These questions stand at the heart of AKSHARA, a 34-track musical journey inspired by the Upanishads.
The Upanishads belong to the philosophical and contemplative foundation of the Indian spiritual tradition. They do not present one simple doctrine in one single voice. They contain dialogues, questions, stories, metaphors, declarations, paradoxes and contemplative instructions concerned with some of the deepest questions available to human consciousness.
AKSHARA does not attempt to replace those texts.
It is not a translation.
It is not a new Upanishad.
It is a contemporary musical interpretation designed to carry selected teachings, questions and images into a form that can be heard, remembered and contemplated.
Across 34 songs, ancient questions about Self, consciousness, death, desire, knowledge, discipline and ultimate reality become a continuous psychological and musical journey.
The album moves through four large stages:
THE SELF → THE KNOWER → THE CHOICE → BEYOND KNOWING
WHY THE TITLE AKSHARA?
The Sanskrit word Akshara carries associations with what is imperishable, enduring or not subject to decay.
That makes it an appropriate title for an album that repeatedly asks:
What changes?
And what does not?
The body changes.
Names change.
Roles change.
Thoughts change.
Desires change.
Memories change.
Relationships change.
Ideas change.
Even our understanding changes.
The Upanishadic inquiry keeps moving beneath these surfaces.
If everything I normally call “me” can be observed changing—
what is the deeper ground of experience?
AKSHARA follows that question through the entire album.
THE COMPLETE ARCHITECTURE
VOLUME I — THE SELF
Brihadaranyaka → Chandogya
01 — I AM THAT
02 — NAME AND FORM
03 — DEAR FOR THE SAKE OF THE SELF
04 — THE SEER OF SEEING
05 — NOT THIS, NOT THIS
06 — WHEN DESIRE FALLS AWAY
07 — THE CLAY AND THE FORMS
08 — THE SEED YOU CANNOT SEE
09 — SALT IN THE WATER
10 — THAT THOU ART
VOLUME II — THE KNOWER
Aitareya → Taittiriya → Kena
11 — THE WORLD ENTERED THE BODY
12 — WHO AM I BEHIND THESE INSTRUMENTS?
13 — CONSCIOUSNESS IS BRAHMAN
14 — DO NOT NEGLECT THE TRUTH
15 — FROM FOOD TO BLISS
16 — WHO MOVES THE MIND?
17 — BEYOND KNOWING
18 — YOU THOUGHT THE VICTORY WAS YOURS
VOLUME III — THE CHOICE
Katha → Isha
19 — TO WHOM WILL YOU GIVE ME?
20 — WHAT REMAINS AFTER DEATH?
21 — TAKE EVERYTHING ELSE
22 — THE GOOD AND THE PLEASANT
23 — WHO HOLDS THE REINS?
24 — ALL THIS IS ENVELOPED
25 — SEE THE SELF IN ALL
26 — REMOVE THE GOLDEN VEIL
27 — REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE DONE
VOLUME IV — BEYOND KNOWING
Prashna → Mundaka → Svetasvatara
28 — ONLY THIS FAR I KNOW
29 — TWO KINDS OF KNOWING
30 — TWO BIRDS, ONE TREE
31 — WHAT MOVES THE CAUSES?
32 — GATHER THE MIND INWARD
33 — ONE WITHOUT COLOR
34 — FACING IN EVERY DIRECTION
VOLUME I — THE SELF
The first movement begins with the most fundamental inquiry:
Who am I?
Not:
What is my profession?
What is my name?
What happened to me?
What do I own?
What do other people think of me?
But something deeper.
I AM THAT
The album begins almost before identity.
Before name.
Before history.
Before the familiar word “I” has gathered its normal associations.
The opening track introduces the phrase:
Soham — I am That.
The movement is not toward acquiring another identity.
It moves backward through identity.
Before the story.
Before the title.
Before the roles.
Before the personality has organized experience into:
this is me.
this is mine.
this is other.
The album begins by asking whether being is deeper than the identity built around it.
NAME AND FORM
Then differentiation begins.
A name appears.
A form appears.
Another name.
Another form.
The world becomes divided into objects.
Stone.
River.
Body.
Face.
Mine.
Yours.
The song does not argue that names and forms are useless.
Without distinctions, ordinary life would be impossible.
The question is subtler:
Do we eventually mistake the name for the reality?
Do we mistake the conceptual boundary for the whole thing?
A child receives a name.
A body receives a history.
A history becomes identity.
Then identity becomes defended.
The album begins examining the possibility that what we call a person may be deeper than the language used to describe that person.
DEAR FOR THE SAKE OF THE SELF
Track 3 turns toward love and attachment.
We say:
I love this person.
I love this place.
I love this life.
I cannot lose this.
The song does not reduce love.
It asks us to follow love inward.
What is the heart ultimately seeking through everything it calls dear?
What remains when possession is removed from love?
What remains when fear of loss is removed?
The track suggests that love becomes deeper rather than smaller when we stop at neither possession nor surface identity.
THE SEER OF SEEING
Then attention turns around.
The eye sees.
The ear hears.
The mind thinks.
But what knows that seeing is happening?
What knows that a thought has appeared?
Instead of looking at the object of consciousness, the song asks us to look toward the knowing itself.
Not another image.
Not another object.
Not another concept.
The witness does not become another item inside the picture.
This becomes one of the central movements of AKSHARA:
attention turning back toward the one to whom experience appears.
NOT THIS, NOT THIS
Then comes one of the most famous Upanishadic methods:
Neti Neti.
Not this.
Not this.
The body?
Changing.
Not this.
The role?
Changing.
Not this.
The memory?
Observed.
Not this.
The wound?
Known.
Not this.
Achievement?
Temporary.
Not this.
Failure?
Temporary.
Not this.
But the song carefully avoids turning Neti Neti into another identity.
It does not end with:
“I have now discovered the correct thing to call myself.”
Instead it keeps removing conclusions.
Because anything completely contained inside thought has already become something known.
The question concerns the knower.
WHEN DESIRE FALLS AWAY
The album then moves from identity into causation.
A desire appears.
The mind leans.
The will forms.
Action follows.
Action creates a path.
Repeated action begins shaping the person.
The song reduces this movement into a powerful chain:
Desire → Will → Deed → Becoming
What we repeatedly follow gradually teaches us what to become.
This is psychologically immediate.
We are not simply shaped by our beliefs.
We are shaped by what we repeatedly feed.
Attention becomes tendency.
Tendency becomes movement.
Movement becomes character.
But the song then asks:
What happens when desire no longer rules?
Not because the world becomes meaningless.
Not because the heart becomes empty.
But because the Self no longer depends upon acquisition for completion.
The hand opens.
The road remains.
But the road no longer pulls automatically.
THE CLAY AND THE FORMS
A pot.
A bowl.
A jar.
Different names.
Different shapes.
But one clay.
This ancient Upanishadic metaphor becomes one of the album’s clearest ways of exploring unity without denying difference.
The forms are genuinely different.
But difference of form does not necessarily mean difference of underlying substance.
The song therefore does not say:
ignore the forms.
It says:
look through the form toward what the form is made of.
This distinction becomes important throughout the entire album.
Unity does not require the destruction of diversity.
THE SEED YOU CANNOT SEE
A seed is opened.
Inside it appears almost nothing.
Yet a tree comes from it.
Roots.
Branches.
Leaves.
Height.
Shadow.
Form.
The track uses this image to challenge the assumption that only what can be seen is real.
Invisibility is not necessarily absence.
The subtle cannot always be reduced to the visible surface.
Then the metaphor turns inward:
What is the subtle essence beneath the name you carry?
SALT IN THE WATER
Salt dissolves into water.
The eye cannot find it.
Yet taste reveals it everywhere.
No edge owns it.
No center contains it.
Still it is present.
This becomes another Upanishadic image for something unseen yet pervasive.
The album again questions the authority we give perception.
If I cannot see something, do I automatically conclude that it is absent?
The teaching does not reject the senses.
It simply refuses to make them the final judge of reality.
THAT THOU ART
Volume I culminates with:
Tat Tvam Asi.
That Thou Art.
The metaphors of the seed, salt, river, form and essence converge.
What began as inquiry into the world now becomes personal.
The teacher’s direction moves closer.
Then closer.
Then closer still.
The teaching is not merely:
there is some hidden metaphysical reality somewhere beyond the universe.
The statement points toward the listener.
That Thou Art.
Not something you must manufacture.
Not merely something you will become later.
The search crosses the distance between subject and object.
The first volume ends with the teacher falling silent—
but the teaching remaining.
VOLUME II — THE KNOWER
If Volume I asks:
What is the Self?
Volume II asks:
What is knowing?
The inquiry moves through the body, senses, mind, consciousness, ethical life, inner layers and finally toward the limits of knowledge itself.
THE WORLD ENTERED THE BODY
The body is presented not as an isolated object but as a meeting place.
Light becomes seeing.
Air becomes breath.
Space becomes hearing.
The person does not exist independently of the world.
Eye requires light.
Breath requires air.
Hearing requires space and vibration.
The body becomes a threshold where inner and outer meet.
The song asks:
Where exactly does the person end and the world begin?
WHO AM I BEHIND THESE INSTRUMENTS?
Speech speaks.
Breath moves.
Eyes see.
Ears hear.
Thoughts rise.
We say:
I spoke.
I breathed.
I saw.
I thought.
But the track asks whether these functions are the whole of identity—or instruments through which experience occurs.
Speech can stop.
Sight can stop.
Sound can disappear.
Thought can dissolve.
Then comes one of the album’s strongest questions:
The instrument stopped.
Did you?
CONSCIOUSNESS IS BRAHMAN
Track 13 introduces another major Upanishadic declaration:
Prajñānam Brahma.
Consciousness is Brahman.
The song distinguishes consciousness from the particular contents appearing within it.
Thought is known.
Memory is known.
Desire is known.
Perception is known.
But consciousness is not treated merely as one additional object alongside them.
It is the field within which they are known.
The song refuses to turn consciousness into another picture.
Because the picture itself would also appear within knowing.
DO NOT NEGLECT THE TRUTH
Then something important happens.
The album leaves metaphysics and returns to ordinary conduct.
Truth is not enough if it remains conceptual.
Speak truth.
Act rightly.
Continue learning.
Teach.
Receive.
Give.
Honor the guest.
Honor those who taught you.
Let knowledge enter behavior.
The song’s central statement is:
Let what you know enter what you do.
This prevents AKSHARA from becoming a purely abstract philosophical project.
The Upanishadic journey must eventually survive contact with the ordinary day.
FROM FOOD TO BLISS
This track moves inward through layers of human experience.
Food.
Body.
Breath.
Mind.
Knowing.
Bliss.
The album does not reject the physical.
It begins there.
The body is not an obstacle to skip.
It is the first layer through which the journey moves.
The song becomes progressively quieter as the inquiry goes inward.
By the time it reaches bliss, rhythm itself begins dissolving.
Bliss is not treated as excitement or emotional reward.
It is a quieter ground beneath the grasping movement of mind.
WHO MOVES THE MIND?
Then comes the central Kena Upanishad question.
What directs thought?
What enables hearing?
What makes speech possible?
Who—or what—is behind the faculties we normally assume belong to us?
The question is not satisfied by simply naming another object.
Whatever we point to would itself become something known.
The inquiry therefore begins pushing language toward its limit.
BEYOND KNOWING
Track 17 makes this limit explicit.
The intellect is not rejected.
It is used carefully.
But eventually it reaches something it cannot hold as an object.
The song asks:
If I say “I know Brahman”—
what exactly do I know?
A word?
An image?
A concept?
A conclusion?
The album’s answer is not anti-intellectual.
It says:
use the intellect until it reaches its own boundary.
Then see the boundary.
The deepest knowing is not presented as ignorance.
It is presented as something that cannot simply become a possession of thought.
The mind does not fail.
It bows where it cannot contain.
YOU THOUGHT THE VICTORY WAS YOURS
The second volume ends with humility.
Power begins claiming ownership.
“I did this.”
“This victory is mine.”
Then the Kena story punctures the claim.
Even a blade of grass becomes enough to reveal the limit of power.
The greater the claim—
the smaller the test required to expose it.
This is one of AKSHARA’s most psychologically contemporary tracks.
Achievement easily becomes identity.
Ability becomes ownership.
Success becomes ego.
The song asks what remains when power reaches something it cannot command.
VOLUME III — THE CHOICE
The third movement shifts dramatically.
The question is no longer only:
What is real?
Now it becomes:
How should I live?
And:
What will I choose?
This volume draws especially from the Katha and Isha Upanishads.
Death becomes teacher.
Desire becomes test.
The mind becomes a chariot.
Possession becomes a question.
And spiritual knowledge becomes inseparable from decision.
WHAT REMAINS AFTER DEATH?
The Katha Upanishad begins with one of humanity’s oldest questions.
When the body dies—
what remains?
The album does not treat death as a decorative spiritual theme.
Death becomes the pressure that strips away secondary questions.
Status matters less.
Possessions matter less.
Reputation matters less.
The central inquiry becomes unavoidable.
What am I if everything normally supporting my identity disappears?
TAKE EVERYTHING ELSE
Nachiketa is offered wealth, pleasure, power and longevity.
The album turns this into a contemporary question.
What if everything you desire is offered—
but the deepest question remains unanswered?
Take the possessions.
Take the pleasure.
Take the status.
Take the years.
But answer the question.
This track becomes one of the strongest declarations of spiritual priority in the entire cycle.
THE GOOD AND THE PLEASANT
The pleasant and the good are not always the same.
Something may feel immediately rewarding while leading away from clarity.
Something difficult may ultimately deepen life.
The album refuses simplistic morality.
Instead, it asks the listener to examine direction.
Not:
Does this feel good now?
But:
Where does this lead?
This is the beginning of discernment.
WHO HOLDS THE REINS?
Then comes one of the most famous images in the Katha Upanishad.
The body is the chariot.
The senses are horses.
The mind becomes the reins.
The intellect becomes the charioteer.
The Self is the rider.
The album translates this into a practical psychology of self-regulation.
Movement alone is not mastery.
Intensity is not direction.
A horse can run powerfully in the wrong direction.
A mind can work endlessly without wisdom.
A life can move quickly and still fail to approach what matters.
The question becomes:
Who holds the reins?
ALL THIS IS ENVELOPED
With the Isha Upanishad, the teaching returns directly to the world.
The table.
The street.
The room.
Food.
Work.
Weather.
People coming and going.
Nothing needs to disappear.
The teaching is not necessarily withdrawal from the world.
It is a transformed relationship to the world.
The hand can remain open.
Possession can become lighter.
Forms can remain without being converted into absolute ownership.
This is a crucial movement in the album:
spiritual seeing does not require the destruction of ordinary life.
It changes how ordinary life is held.
SEE THE SELF IN ALL
The inquiry into the Self now expands toward relationship.
If the same ground is seen in all beings, the consequences are not merely philosophical.
Alienation changes.
Hatred changes.
Exploitation becomes harder to justify.
Otherness becomes more complicated.
The album moves from private realization toward relational ethics.
Seeing the Self in all is not merely an interesting mystical idea.
It asks how perception changes conduct.
REMOVE THE GOLDEN VEIL
Even beautiful things can conceal.
Light itself can become a veil.
Ideas can become a veil.
Symbols can become a veil.
Spiritual language can become a veil.
The track asks for the covering to be removed.
Not because beauty is false—
but because appearance can still stop inquiry prematurely.
The movement remains:
deeper.
REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE DONE
Volume III ends with responsibility.
Not theory.
Not metaphysical speculation.
Memory.
Action.
Consequence.
The album turns again toward the life already lived.
What have my choices created?
What have I practiced?
What patterns have I strengthened?
Spirituality without responsibility remains incomplete.
Knowledge becomes meaningful when it transforms action.
VOLUME IV — BEYOND KNOWING
The final volume begins after certainty has already been destabilized.
The listener has encountered:
Self.
Consciousness.
Death.
Desire.
Choice.
Discipline.
Now the album moves into a final set of questions concerning knowledge, causation, meditation, multiplicity and the One.
ONLY THIS FAR I KNOW
One of the strongest qualities in the Upanishadic tradition is that not every teacher pretends to know everything.
The title itself becomes a lesson:
Only this far I know.
Spiritual maturity includes the capacity to admit where knowledge ends.
That protects inquiry from turning into dogma.
Not knowing is not always failure.
Sometimes it is intellectual honesty.
TWO KINDS OF KNOWING
The Mundaka Upanishad distinguishes different kinds of knowledge.
There is knowledge of texts, rituals, language and disciplines.
And there is another kind of knowledge concerned with that which does not decay.
The album does not dismiss learning.
It asks whether accumulation of information is the same as realization.
One can know many spiritual terms.
One can read many books.
One can memorize doctrines.
And still remain unchanged.
The distinction is between knowing about and knowing through direct transformation.
TWO BIRDS, ONE TREE
Two birds sit on one tree.
One eats the fruit.
Sweet.
Bitter.
Pleasant.
Painful.
The other watches.
This becomes one of the most psychologically elegant images in the whole album.
One aspect of experience is completely involved.
It reacts.
Consumes.
Enjoys.
Suffers.
Another witnesses.
The metaphor does not necessarily require dividing the human being into two permanent entities.
It creates a contemplative distinction between experience and awareness of experience.
Can the one eating the fruit become aware of the one who sees?
WHAT MOVES THE CAUSES?
The inquiry now goes behind ordinary causation.
What moves nature?
What moves time?
What moves the forces from which events appear?
The question is not answered casually.
Instead, the album allows causation itself to become mysterious.
We explain one process through another.
Then explain that process through something deeper.
Eventually the question becomes:
How far can explanation go before explanation itself reaches a horizon?
GATHER THE MIND INWARD
Track 32 becomes explicitly contemplative.
The senses have spent a lifetime moving outward.
Sound.
Light.
Impression.
Thought.
Reaction.
Again and again.
Now the movement reverses.
Body quiet.
Breath steady.
Attention gathered.
Not by violence.
Not by suppressing experience.
But through steadiness.
The track gives a practical sequence:
Steady body.
Quiet breath.
Collected senses.
One-pointed mind.
And then:
listen.
This is not about manufacturing some extraordinary state.
The lyric says:
prepare the conditions.
The depth is not created by force.
ONE WITHOUT COLOR
Track 33 returns to unity and multiplicity.
Blue.
Red.
Gold.
Earth.
Cloud.
Skin.
Leaf.
Stone.
Flame.
The world appears in difference.
Yet the source is described as one without color, giving rise to colors.
This is important.
Unity does not mean uniformity.
The many do not have to disappear for the One to be present.
The source does not become divided simply because expressions differ.
This becomes the bridge into the final track.
FACING IN EVERY DIRECTION
And then AKSHARA ends.
Not with a massive revelation.
Not with a triumphant declaration.
Not with a final theological formula.
The final song turns toward:
this face.
this room.
this breath.
this stranger.
this tree.
this sky.
this ordinary hour.
The search began with:
Who am I?
Then:
Who moves the mind?
What remains after death?
What lies beneath the many?
What lies beyond knowing?
After 34 tracks, the answer is not delivered as a final concept.
The listener is told simply:
turn your head.
Look.
The forms remain.
Difference remains.
The world remains.
But the search no longer easily finds an absolute outside.
The musical arrangement itself gradually disappears.
Percussion leaves.
Bass leaves.
Harmony leaves.
Eventually there is almost nothing left but voice, breath and the album’s recurring motif.
Then:
one breath.
one note.
silence.
No final answer.
Only—
this.
THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE OF AKSHARA
The album was designed as more than a collection of philosophical lyrics.
Its production architecture supports the movement of the teachings.
Across the 34 tracks, the sound travels through:
neo-classical electronic sacred chamber
cinematic ritual ambient
deep drone
organic downtempo
cinematic trip-hop
minimal sacred techno
polyrhythmic organic electronica
restrained deep electronic pulse
cello
resonant piano
frame drums
wood percussion
warm mono sub-bass
breath
silence
The principal vocal identity is a mature, close-miked male baritone.
The delivery remains intimate and human rather than theatrical.
Silence is used deliberately.
Questions are often allowed to remain unanswered.
A recurring three-note musical motif connects the album.
It appears in different forms across different tracks, gradually becoming clearer as the inquiry develops.
By the final track, the motif reaches its most exposed form—
and then disappears into silence.
WHY MUSIC?
The Upanishads are often difficult for modern listeners.
Their language belongs to another historical and philosophical world.
Their metaphors can appear simple until one begins to examine them carefully.
Clay.
Salt.
Seeds.
Chariots.
Birds.
Fire.
Breath.
Light.
The images are ancient.
The questions are not.
Music creates another doorway.
A philosophical proposition can become a refrain.
A metaphor can become emotional memory.
A question can remain inside the listener after the song ends.
Who holds the reins?
Who moves the mind?
What remains after death?
What is present before the thought names itself?
These are no longer merely sentences on a page.
They become musical structures capable of returning unexpectedly during ordinary life.
THIS IS NOT A TRANSLATION
AKSHARA should be understood clearly.
The lyrics are original musical interpretations inspired by and developed from the Upanishads.
They are not presented as literal translations of the Sanskrit scriptures.
They do not replace scholarly translations.
They do not replace traditional commentaries.
They do not replace teachers, practice or study.
The project belongs to another category:
contemporary contemplative interpretation through music.
The intention is to preserve the essential questions and source architecture while allowing them to enter a modern sonic and psychological form.
TEN UPANISHADIC STREAMS — ONE JOURNEY
The album draws its structure through major Upanishadic sources including:
Brihadaranyaka
Chandogya
Aitareya
Taittiriya
Kena
Katha
Isha
Prashna
Mundaka
Svetasvatara
But AKSHARA is deliberately sequenced as one journey rather than ten disconnected textual studies.
The movement is psychological:
THE SELF
Who am I beneath identity?
↓
THE KNOWER
What is consciousness, and what makes experience possible?
↓
THE CHOICE
How should knowledge change the way I live?
↓
BEYOND KNOWING
What happens when intellect reaches the boundary of what it can possess?
The progression is therefore not random.
It moves:
identity → awareness → responsibility → openness.
HOW TO LISTEN
AKSHARA can be heard in several ways.
As Four Albums
Listen to each volume independently.
THE SELF
For identity, Self, unity and inner inquiry.
THE KNOWER
For consciousness, mind, perception and the limits of knowledge.
THE CHOICE
For mortality, discipline, desire, ethics and decision.
BEYOND KNOWING
For meditation, deeper knowledge, unity and contemplative openness.
As One 34-Track Journey
For the full experience, listen in order.
The sequence matters.
Ideas introduced early return later in transformed forms.
The first volume asks what the Self is.
The second asks what knows.
The third asks what that knowledge requires from life.
The fourth gradually releases the need for a final conceptual possession.
The final track only fully makes sense after the previous 33 have prepared it.
WHAT CAN THIS ALBUM DO?
AKSHARA cannot give someone realization.
Music cannot substitute for practice.
A song cannot replace direct inquiry.
But the album can create conditions.
It can introduce questions.
It can make difficult ideas accessible.
It can interrupt automatic thinking.
It can invite meditation.
It can encourage self-observation.
It can return ancient metaphors to memory.
It can lead someone toward the original sources.
And perhaps most importantly—
it can remind the listener that the great questions of the Upanishads are not only questions for philosophers.
They are questions about the person listening.
Who am I?
What am I becoming through what I desire?
What knows my thoughts?
What governs my actions?
What do I choose when pleasure and wisdom diverge?
What remains when identity changes?
What is consciousness?
Where does the individual end and the world begin?
What does knowledge mean when the knower cannot stand outside reality and hold the whole as an object?
These are not dead questions.
They remain available.
THE JOURNEY FROM SELF TO THE ONE
AKSHARA begins by stripping identity down.
It moves through names and forms.
Through love.
Witnessing.
Desire.
Matter.
Subtle essence.
Consciousness.
Truth.
Body.
Mind.
Death.
Choice.
Discipline.
Possession.
Knowledge.
Meditation.
Multiplicity.
Then something unexpected happens.
After all the metaphysics—
the album returns to ordinary life.
A room.
A breath.
A stranger.
A tree.
The sky.
The ordinary hour.
Perhaps the purpose of going so deeply inward is not to escape the world.
Perhaps it is to return to the world without seeing it in quite the same way.
The forms remain.
Difference remains.
Life remains.
But the apparent separation between seeker and reality has been questioned all the way to its foundation.
And the album refuses to replace that mystery with another easy answer.
It ends where contemplation often begins:
silence.
AKSHARA — COMPLETE 34-TRACK JOURNEY
VOLUME I — THE SELF
01 — I AM THAT
02 — NAME AND FORM
03 — DEAR FOR THE SAKE OF THE SELF
04 — THE SEER OF SEEING
05 — NOT THIS, NOT THIS
06 — WHEN DESIRE FALLS AWAY
07 — THE CLAY AND THE FORMS
08 — THE SEED YOU CANNOT SEE
09 — SALT IN THE WATER
10 — THAT THOU ART
VOLUME II — THE KNOWER
11 — THE WORLD ENTERED THE BODY
12 — WHO AM I BEHIND THESE INSTRUMENTS?
13 — CONSCIOUSNESS IS BRAHMAN
14 — DO NOT NEGLECT THE TRUTH
15 — FROM FOOD TO BLISS
16 — WHO MOVES THE MIND?
17 — BEYOND KNOWING
18 — YOU THOUGHT THE VICTORY WAS YOURS
VOLUME III — THE CHOICE
19 — TO WHOM WILL YOU GIVE ME?
20 — WHAT REMAINS AFTER DEATH?
21 — TAKE EVERYTHING ELSE
22 — THE GOOD AND THE PLEASANT
23 — WHO HOLDS THE REINS?
24 — ALL THIS IS ENVELOPED
25 — SEE THE SELF IN ALL
26 — REMOVE THE GOLDEN VEIL
27 — REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE DONE
VOLUME IV — BEYOND KNOWING
28 — ONLY THIS FAR I KNOW
29 — TWO KINDS OF KNOWING
30 — TWO BIRDS, ONE TREE
31 — WHAT MOVES THE CAUSES?
32 — GATHER THE MIND INWARD
33 — ONE WITHOUT COLOR
34 — FACING IN EVERY DIRECTION
SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
AKSHARA is a contemporary musical and contemplative work inspired by selected teachings, dialogues, metaphors and philosophical inquiries found in the Upanishads.
The songs are original adaptations and musical interpretations.
They should not be treated as literal Sanskrit translations, replacements for the Upanishads, authoritative doctrinal statements, or substitutes for traditional study and qualified teaching.
The purpose of the project is to translate major contemplative questions concerning Self, Brahman, consciousness, desire, mortality, knowledge, ethical life, meditation and unity into an accessible contemporary musical journey.
With respect and gratitude to the Indian philosophical and contemplative traditions through which the Upanishads have been preserved, studied and transmitted across generations.
THE ELEPHANT MAP
Cinematic electronic music for the body, the inner world, and the path from fragmentation to wholeness.
A MONK
Who am I?
Who knows?
What will I choose?
What remains when knowing reaches its limit?
