Perhaps no other artist's music has had so many diverse and varied interpretations and meanings derived from its expression as have Jimi Hendrix's musical statements. But I feel that most of them have not done justice to what Jimi tried to convey, and so I am penning down my thoughts and feelings which I feel are closer to Jimi's. But in any case, I would like to mention that whatever my views or anybody's, the music of Jimi has been immortally engraved in the astral realms of sound, and the vibrations are going to remain, regardless of whether the sun refuses to shine or the mountains fall into the sea.

There have always been many conclusions drawn from what Jimi said in his songs, interviews and concerts. That's because Jimi was an artist. An artist appeals to many different kinds of people. That's his quality of establishing the same wavelength with whosoever he communicates. But there is always the underlying meaning of what he himself wants to convey, without taking into consideration the other person. That is what I want to put across. Jimi had to speak in such a multi-essence language to get through to such a lot of people. It is something like trying to put across the theory of relativity to a farmer. And that is the quality of Jimi's music which has endeared him to so many people from such diverse backgrounds.

Jimi was no ordinary musician. His work is testimony to this. But his extraordinariness lies in other spheres too. Anybody seeing him play can clearly witness the remarkable dexterity with which both his left and right hands moved. The unique style in which Jimi played was an outcome of his soul inspired left-handed picking of the strings (Jimi was right handed).

It was his left hand which defined Jimi's music in the way which we perceive it. I perceive it as music from the astral realm of which dreams are made of. The Hindu scriptures mention the fact that the soul has three coverings, the causal, astral and physical bodies. Freed from all these coverings, it becomes one with the creator. When a person leaves his physical body he passes on to the subtle astral world. The physical world is gross, the astral world subtle and the causal world indescribably subtle. To give a feeling of the astral world, when a person dreams and he creates and changes objects in his dream according to his wishes, he is in a kind of astral world, the world of light. In Jimi's case sound seems to be flowing through him, and he seems to be acting as a medium for its transport from the astral realm. Jimi just willed and was able to produce it on the guitar. No wonder generations of guitarists have had a tough time figuring out for a long time what Jimi produced in the blink of an eye.

Such a sound can emanate only from a highly evolved soul like that of Jimi which many times touches that pinnacle of divinity which transforms the listener's soul into a blissful state of equilibrium. Many songs just came to Jimi in his dreams or just materialized in his mind. They have been associated with psychotropic drugs and other mind influencing substances e.g. Purple Haze. I agree Jimi was involved with drugs, but I disagree his songs were an outcome of that. Drugs transform the normal person to an astral realm which is something like a lucid dream. But Jimi was transformed into that realm even without drugs. The song Purple Haze reveals this quality of Jimi. Its a song which came to Jimi in a dream. I don't know if Jimi really comprehended its real meaning, but he did know it was something ethereal, something not from this world. In order that people could associate themselves with the song, he put forward many interpretations like a state of mind of a guy bewitched by a girl or something to do with a purple death ray. But I believe it has a deeper meaning, and he also knew that, but he had to make sense to all the people listening to his music.

In the Hindu scriptures it is mentioned that the human body is divided into seven "chakras" or cerebro-spinal centers which are the centers of radiating life forces, the awakening of which leads to evolution of the soul to higher levels. One of these chakras is associated with the color purple and the "purple haze" to which Jimi referred subconsciously. Due to Jimi's unconscious astral trips he had a glimpse of this purple haze in his dream, but couldn't really place what that meant to him.

Due to his higher evolved soul, it was possible for Jimi to engage in numerous astral voyages. But a person who returns back to the physical realm, will have just a faint recollection of what he saw, and won't know what those visions represent. Somewhere deep in his soul Jimi had an affinity to all the divinity which emanated from his music. Thus, he released his album "Axis: Bold as Love" with a cover representing a scene from the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic. It shows the incarnation of the Hindu God Krishna, in which Krishna reveals his true form at the request of prince Arjuna. Krishna shows himself as comprising of all creation. He shows the unity of the creator and his creation. Jimi has put his, Mitch's and Noel's faces in place of the central figure. He wanted to show his own unity with the creator and the creation revealing his higher consciousness, even if that was expressed unconsciously.

All the astral sounds have manifested in Jimi's guitaring from time to time. His revolutionary usage of feedback effects, coupled with wah and fuzz filtering and many other effects incorporated into his sound were an effort by him to bring out the sounds and ideas he experienced in his astral trips. In songs like "...and the Gods made love", he has tried, in particular, to bring out those sounds, though they are omnipresent in all of his songs. He has also tried to describe the astral world in "Have you ever been ( to Electric Ladyland)", though of course physical manifestation can never bring out that surreal aspect of the astral realm which is made up of light. It can be imagined as flashes of electricity traveling at unimaginable speeds through the cosmos. This explains Jimi's penchant for electricity, ad all the electric sounds and Electric Ladyland!

Many people may be skeptical due to the fact that Jimi indulged in sex and drugs, and may be thinking that what I have described cannot befit such a person. I would like to point out, that people like Jimi who are highly artistic have the aspect of the planet Venus which governs there activities giving them the Venusian touch. They are artistic in many ways, there actions, words and thoughts. I believe sex to be an art as depicted in the famous Hindu treatise "The Kamasutra". People like Jimi will be attracted to sex and there is nothing unholy or gross about that. As far as drugs are concerned, it is a way to experience the astral realm, without really being as evolved as Jimi to have such trips without drugs. But such trips using drugs are not as pure and enchanting as Jimi had, uninfluenced. And moreover these things do not help in raising your consciousness and are hence useless. Jimi knew that and he did not attach any such importance to drugs unlike the general feeling prevailing at that time.

The Hindu scriptures relate the creation of the cosmos to the sound of the word "Aum", the vibration of the cosmic motor. This has metamorphosed into the Christian "Amen" and the Muslim "Amin". The power of sound has not been unknown to centuries of Hindu musicians. In the ancient and medieval periods there were musicians who could make the skies burst with blessed rainfall over a drought stricken land or appease a ravaging forest fire with their calming and enchanting "ragas". On 27th November, 1942, a flash of light entered the womb of Jimi's mother from the astral world and was born Jimi Hendrix. He had a purpose. To show men that things were not just what they sensed, they were much more than that. That music is not the mere arrangement of notes and chords within a harmonic structure, music is the hum of the cosmic motor of creation. And so he blew a few minds around him and left for his astral abode.

Well, the night I was born, Lord, I swear the moon turned a fire red. The night I was born, I swear the moon turned a fire red. Well, my poor mother cried out, "Lord, the gypsy was right," An' I see'd her fell down right dead.

- Jimi Hendrix "Voodoo Chile"

{ END }