Question: Can listening to music raise one's consciousness?

Sri Chinmoy: If you listen to and identify yourself with spiritual music, music from the heart and soul, naturally it will raise your consciousness. But if you listen to ordinary vital music, then it will lower your consciousness. Soulful music already has its own height. While you are listening you identify with it so, like a magnet, it pulls you up. Already the height is there. If somebody has already gone to the top floor of a building, it means that there is a staircase. You have to identify yourself with the staircase and also with the person who has already climbed up it. Then only will he be able to show you how he climbed up and where the staircase is. Appreciation means identification. If you become one with the staircase and also with the person who has created the staircase for you in his music, then you also can reach the top floor.