Hi ya'll,

I remember twice in my life experiencing what I'd call heavenly music, both times while asleep.

All I remember and am able to describe about the music itself is that it was vaguely classical. It's what I'd image the music of angels might sound like, though I belong to no religion and know nothing about the existence of such beings. In the music I remember there being no voices, only some type of instrument(s) that I've never heard of. I'm not a musician, and though I listen a lot to a few other kinds of music, I'm not much interested in classical. Still, this music felt to me the most moving, tender, healing, and exquisite type I've ever heard, by far. Both times I remember having dreamed nothing (else), and having woken up immediately or almost immediately after hearing this music, feeling deep gratitude and having tears in my eyes.

The last time I heard the heavenly music was about two years ago, the first time many years before that. I see no clear connection between the music and my meditation practices, or, for that matter, anything else going on in my life. While meditating I've experienced only some mildly concentrated states, no traveling to other dimensions or anything like that, and never while sober have I gotten into states of mind profoundly different from those of daily life.

Since the nature of the music itself is hard for me to recall, it has occurred to me that maybe the music wasn't that special, and that maybe I just was in some kind of super appreciative state of mind, where even farting sounds could have brought me to tears of tenderness. Who knows?

Anybody else here experience something like this?

Hi Sakari,

During a jhana retreat in 2011, I was seeing devas and at night they were having a party outside my bedroom window playing a kind of strange music. I think that kind of deva is called a gandharva in the classical literature. You can read more about it in my practice memoir, Silicon Valley Monk, which I published as a free (except at Amazon) ebook last year.

Note that I don't by any means think devas and gandharvas actually exist in any sense of the words "actually" and "exist", just that I hallucinated them.

Beautiful and amazing things happen during sleep.  There's probably a lot more if you can remember them.  The trick is to remember what happens later when you are awake.  I have had some times when I heard very beautiful music of various kinds.  I think the mind picks the music according to various preferences and stereotypes.  I've heard some really good songs by famous people were first heard in their dreams (or when on drugs).  I've also heard in dreams some narrated stories by voices that were so beautiful, better than any voice over artist on Earth.  One time it was even me doing the narrating, I was someone in the dream in some mystical land and my mouth would open and tell stories and parables to others around me and it was weird in that I didn't know what I would be saying either, my mouth seemed to operate on its own, so I was a listener just like those around me.  I guess I was dreaming about being a channeler.  ;-P  Anyway, anything you can imagine and a lot you could not easily imagine can and will happen in the dreamtime. 
-Eva