The mystics, especially the Sufis, have used music in their prayers, in their meditations. It was a part of their devotions. Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Khwaja Bandanawaz, made great use of music. I have practiced and experienced myself the use of music in meditation, and I have understood that it is the best means of meditation, the quickest means of freeing the consciousness. When the poet imagines a lake and a mountain, he has the forms, the lake and the mountain, before the eyes of his mind. When the musician thinks of a melody, he has no form, no name before him. He is a plane higher than the poet. Sound has been called God, Nada Brahma, in the Vedanta. In the Gospel of St. John it is called the Word, from which all things have come. First there was the sound, God was sound; and from the sound, by the sound, all this world was manifested.