Music as a Measure of Spirituality
Posted 04-05-2023 at 12:05 AM by MysticPhD
An important aspect of my Synthesis is the import of your experience and preference for music. Our preference in music reveals the level of spiritual development we have achieved, IMO. It also explains why spiritual concepts tend to come into conflict with the spatiotemporal view of modern physics as described by Milic Capek in these excerpts:
. . . In the temporal structure of the perception of melody, features can be discovered which appear irrational in any visual-mechanical model of physical reality: the primacy of events, the absence of infinite divisibility, the compatibility of novelty and mnemic causation, the compatibility of continuity and individuality, the fusion of becoming with its concrete content.
. . . The positive significance of the auditory experience is in the fact that from it a certain imageless dynamic pattern may be abstracted which will probably offer a key to the understanding of the nature of the type of 'extensive becoming' that seems to constitute the nature of physical reality.
In my Synthesis, our living soul is breathed into us by God at birth. It begins as the seed (insemination) of a spiritual embryo developing in the womb of our brain. Our task is to control the development and maturation of our soul toward its eventual rebirth as Spirit upon our physical death.
Energy transmutation is the mechanism underlying its maturation process and energy at the level of quanta is the very substance of our soul. Our true Self (consciousness) is our Spirit in the process of becoming and exists at the level of quanta as a BEC. Our thoughts are the production process for its development to maturity (Death) and rebirth of our soul into its rightful plane of existence as Spirit.
But, pure thought, uncolored with human emotions, is not the type of Spirit we are supposed to produce. For those of us who prefer right-brain imagery and analogy, the musical composition provides the best analog for our existence. In my Synthesis, our mind (Ego) is merely the delayed conscious manifestation of the prior interaction in quantum time between our Spirit and our animal nature. The relative strengths of these two "ingredients" yields the nature of our consciousness (experienced Self).
You can view our consciousness as a mixture of awareness and reaction, just as a piano concerto is a mixture of melody and rhythm. The music is the product of the left and right hands, but it is neither all melody nor all rhythm, and it does not exist except as the product of the rhythm and melody hands. Similarly, our consciousness is the "music" played by our soul and our animal nature through the stereophonic system of our brain.
This is the very essence of cosmic becoming (what you might call transcendence), as Capek suggests,
. . . Let us consider a piece of music. It is hardly necessary to underscore its successive character. As long as its movement is going on, it remains incomplete and in its successive unfolding we grasp in the most vivid and concrete way the incompleteness of every becoming. At each particular moment a new tone is added to the previous ones.
. . . The quality of a new tone, in spite of its irreducible individuality, is tinged by the whole antecedent musical context which, in turn, is retroactively changed by the emergence of a new musical quality. Every musical structure is by its own nature unfolding and incomplete; so is cosmic becoming, the time-space of modern physics.
The phenomenon of music and its diversity of character and appeal is readily understood once this composition of the human psyche is fully understood. The amount and kind of rhythm and melody that is present determines the character of the music. Music appeals to both facets of the human psychic makeup.
This becomes clearer when you consider that rhythm and melody occur at separate ends of the sound spectrum. The rhythm or beat appeals to our animal nature. Our animal nature is the serpent or physical partner, therefore it is in the low-frequency range of solid matter. The purest form of rhythm, the low-frequency sound of savage drum beats, represents a predominance of animal appeal.
Our soul is in the high-frequency range of quanta. Since our soul represents an accelerated state of energy or wave frequency compared to our animal nature, it follows that higher-frequency sounds would be more compatible with our soul than with our animal nature.
Furthermore, consciousness can readily detect and appreciate the altered sequencing of harmonious sounds which is melody, and can understand lyrics. The soft, euphonic, high-frequency strains of a Stradivarius violin in the hands of a master, would represent a predominance of soul appeal.
The mixture of soul and animal that comprises our consciousness at any one time determines our preference in music at that time. The admixture determines the "resultant frequency" of our consciousness and subsequently determines its compatibility with various mixtures of melody and rhythm in music. That is why for most of us our taste in music is a fluid thing, highly dependent upon our mood or the circumstances we are in.
This is further support for the notion that our consciousness is like the "music" played by our soul and animal nature. When the serpent is in charge, we prefer more rhythmic music. When our soul is in charge, we want more refined music. Most of us seek a compromise that equates to our "mood."
Arthur Schopenhauer captured this significant aspect of music in the following excerpts from The World as Will and Idea,
. . .in its language, which is understood with absolute directness, but which is yet untranslatable into that of the reason, the inner nature of all life and existence expresses itself.
. . . As quick transition from wish to satisfaction . . . is happiness and well-being, so quick melodies without great deviations are cheerful; slow melodies, striking painful discords, and only winding back through many bars to the key note are, as analogous to the delayed and hardly won satisfaction, sad.
. . . The short intelligible subjects of quick dance music seem to speak only of easily attained common pleasure. On the other hand, the 'Allegro maestoso,' in elaborate movements, long passages, and wide deviations, signifies a greater, nobler effort towards a more distant end, and its final attainment.
. . . All that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, . . . always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon, without the body.
. . . According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy.
While Shopenhauer's sensitivity enabled this discernment, he was unable to employ his own mandate that "a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy." His highly philosophical approach was the only way he could support what he knew to be true, since contemporary physics was unknown to him.
Today it is obvious how music and nature are "two different expressions of the same thing," once a knowledge of quantum wave theory is employed. After all, music is merely waves of sound at varying frequencies, and matter is merely waves of energy at varying frequencies.
The almost universal preference for lyrics and melody indicates the general superiority of the soul, while the extreme diversity of the melodic character and its admixture with rhythm indicates the tenuous nature of that superiority.
Gospel music can have tremendous soul-stirring power when it successfully merges strong rhythmic appeal with melodic and lyrical expressions of the strongest yearnings of our soul. It is another indication that controlling our animal nature and merging its emotions and prompting with our soul yields the best accomplishments of humankind.
. . . In the temporal structure of the perception of melody, features can be discovered which appear irrational in any visual-mechanical model of physical reality: the primacy of events, the absence of infinite divisibility, the compatibility of novelty and mnemic causation, the compatibility of continuity and individuality, the fusion of becoming with its concrete content.
. . . The positive significance of the auditory experience is in the fact that from it a certain imageless dynamic pattern may be abstracted which will probably offer a key to the understanding of the nature of the type of 'extensive becoming' that seems to constitute the nature of physical reality.
In my Synthesis, our living soul is breathed into us by God at birth. It begins as the seed (insemination) of a spiritual embryo developing in the womb of our brain. Our task is to control the development and maturation of our soul toward its eventual rebirth as Spirit upon our physical death.
Energy transmutation is the mechanism underlying its maturation process and energy at the level of quanta is the very substance of our soul. Our true Self (consciousness) is our Spirit in the process of becoming and exists at the level of quanta as a BEC. Our thoughts are the production process for its development to maturity (Death) and rebirth of our soul into its rightful plane of existence as Spirit.
But, pure thought, uncolored with human emotions, is not the type of Spirit we are supposed to produce. For those of us who prefer right-brain imagery and analogy, the musical composition provides the best analog for our existence. In my Synthesis, our mind (Ego) is merely the delayed conscious manifestation of the prior interaction in quantum time between our Spirit and our animal nature. The relative strengths of these two "ingredients" yields the nature of our consciousness (experienced Self).
You can view our consciousness as a mixture of awareness and reaction, just as a piano concerto is a mixture of melody and rhythm. The music is the product of the left and right hands, but it is neither all melody nor all rhythm, and it does not exist except as the product of the rhythm and melody hands. Similarly, our consciousness is the "music" played by our soul and our animal nature through the stereophonic system of our brain.
This is the very essence of cosmic becoming (what you might call transcendence), as Capek suggests,
. . . Let us consider a piece of music. It is hardly necessary to underscore its successive character. As long as its movement is going on, it remains incomplete and in its successive unfolding we grasp in the most vivid and concrete way the incompleteness of every becoming. At each particular moment a new tone is added to the previous ones.
. . . The quality of a new tone, in spite of its irreducible individuality, is tinged by the whole antecedent musical context which, in turn, is retroactively changed by the emergence of a new musical quality. Every musical structure is by its own nature unfolding and incomplete; so is cosmic becoming, the time-space of modern physics.
The phenomenon of music and its diversity of character and appeal is readily understood once this composition of the human psyche is fully understood. The amount and kind of rhythm and melody that is present determines the character of the music. Music appeals to both facets of the human psychic makeup.
This becomes clearer when you consider that rhythm and melody occur at separate ends of the sound spectrum. The rhythm or beat appeals to our animal nature. Our animal nature is the serpent or physical partner, therefore it is in the low-frequency range of solid matter. The purest form of rhythm, the low-frequency sound of savage drum beats, represents a predominance of animal appeal.
Our soul is in the high-frequency range of quanta. Since our soul represents an accelerated state of energy or wave frequency compared to our animal nature, it follows that higher-frequency sounds would be more compatible with our soul than with our animal nature.
Furthermore, consciousness can readily detect and appreciate the altered sequencing of harmonious sounds which is melody, and can understand lyrics. The soft, euphonic, high-frequency strains of a Stradivarius violin in the hands of a master, would represent a predominance of soul appeal.
The mixture of soul and animal that comprises our consciousness at any one time determines our preference in music at that time. The admixture determines the "resultant frequency" of our consciousness and subsequently determines its compatibility with various mixtures of melody and rhythm in music. That is why for most of us our taste in music is a fluid thing, highly dependent upon our mood or the circumstances we are in.
This is further support for the notion that our consciousness is like the "music" played by our soul and animal nature. When the serpent is in charge, we prefer more rhythmic music. When our soul is in charge, we want more refined music. Most of us seek a compromise that equates to our "mood."
Arthur Schopenhauer captured this significant aspect of music in the following excerpts from The World as Will and Idea,
. . .in its language, which is understood with absolute directness, but which is yet untranslatable into that of the reason, the inner nature of all life and existence expresses itself.
. . . As quick transition from wish to satisfaction . . . is happiness and well-being, so quick melodies without great deviations are cheerful; slow melodies, striking painful discords, and only winding back through many bars to the key note are, as analogous to the delayed and hardly won satisfaction, sad.
. . . The short intelligible subjects of quick dance music seem to speak only of easily attained common pleasure. On the other hand, the 'Allegro maestoso,' in elaborate movements, long passages, and wide deviations, signifies a greater, nobler effort towards a more distant end, and its final attainment.
. . . All that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, . . . always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon, without the body.
. . . According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy.
While Shopenhauer's sensitivity enabled this discernment, he was unable to employ his own mandate that "a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy." His highly philosophical approach was the only way he could support what he knew to be true, since contemporary physics was unknown to him.
Today it is obvious how music and nature are "two different expressions of the same thing," once a knowledge of quantum wave theory is employed. After all, music is merely waves of sound at varying frequencies, and matter is merely waves of energy at varying frequencies.
The almost universal preference for lyrics and melody indicates the general superiority of the soul, while the extreme diversity of the melodic character and its admixture with rhythm indicates the tenuous nature of that superiority.
Gospel music can have tremendous soul-stirring power when it successfully merges strong rhythmic appeal with melodic and lyrical expressions of the strongest yearnings of our soul. It is another indication that controlling our animal nature and merging its emotions and prompting with our soul yields the best accomplishments of humankind.
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