The role of Great Music in Existence

There is a tendency encountered with Westerners (and even currently with the Indians) to believe that because they know something with their intellect, they must have understood it. Apparently, they do not realize that knowing something through intellect and understanding what one knows intellectually are two things as dissimilar from each other as day and night. Really to understand what one knows confers strength and knowledge which one can never lose.

A sincere seeker can find unexpected assistance in great music to manage to sense the importance of feelings in a spiritual process.

However, in order that the person listening may understand the message that a great composer’s music is seeking to convey to him, he must already have something of this mysterious truth in himself. And the same goes for any authentic spiritual teaching. A man cannot be touched by serious spiritual teaching if he does not already have at least some level of consciousness, being and intelligence, only through which will it be possible for him to sense its crucial importance to him.

Amongst the principal existing art forms, music is probably the most important and, obviously, the one most used in life. Indeed, there is not one ceremony or event which is not accompanied by the appropriate music to complement it, whether it be of a religious, theatrical or even a military nature.

It is important for the aspirant to note that it is precisely feeling which gives a great pianist the ability to play from memory, eminently complex musical works comprising thousands of notes as well as countless changes in harmony, melody lines and rhythm, without making any mistakes. The same principle applies to the seeker: he must realize that it is his feeling which can connect his mind and body in such a way as to enable him to carry out his meditation practices and other spiritual exercises with the required intensity for him to be put in touch with another world within him; a luminous world which he will not be able to avoid recognizing as sacred if he is sensitive enough.

One cannot but be amazed by the extraordinary prowess with which an exceptional pianist performs, not only with his memory, but also with his hands, when his feeling, mind and body work as one.

The aspirant must always remember that it is feeling, when it is exalted, which has the ability to unite the mind and body. When this union occurs to a high degree and for a sufficiently long period, man can accomplish true marvels.

If the seeker succeeds in truly realizing the predominant role that feeling can play in life, he will not allow intellect to occupy him to the point of suffocating his feeling.

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If he attempts to grasp what happens so enigmatically in his being when he listens to certain symphonic music which conjures up in him a feeling of mystery—such as the monumental work by Gustav Holst entitled “The Planets,” or “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian” for choir and orchestra by Claude Debussy, or “La Peri” by Paul Dukas—a refined man, endowed with acute sensitivity, will notice that an inner descent occurs in him, representing a true change of place in his being’s inner space; a change of place which will prove to be a valuable indicator of what he must try to regain during his spiritual practices.

Consequently, these great artists help listeners by the feelings of mystery that their music evokes in them, giving them, as previously said, the opportunity to be placed somewhere in their being that they never ordinarily find themselves. In fact, they cause a change of place in the inner space of the person listening to their works without his necessarily noticing what is happening within him. In this way, a great composer’s creations help mankind in a manner it could not imagine.

However, it must be emphasized that contemporary man’s intellect has developed to such a dramatic point that it has managed mercilessly to destroy any aesthetic and higher feelings in life. This phenomenon has not spared the various artistic (and even spiritual) spheres of today; it is for this reason that contemporary works of art which are created from an intellectual idea and not from an aesthetic feeling, are nothing but mere degenerate abstractions totally devoid of meaning. By abandoning tonality and the laws of harmony, symphonic music in particular has become a series of ridiculous, cold, dissonant and morbid sounds.

The laws of harmony are not based on arbitrary rules, but on study carried out over the centuries into the wavelengths of different notes and their harmonics which ordinarily are inaudible. That is why when music is constructed by combining notes in a grammatically erroneous fashion, it is in the process, without the listener knowing it, of destroying his being while he continues to listen to it.

When channeled, man’s attention can become a powerful instrument. It can either harm people when it is employed by someone devoid of scruples, or elevate human beings to the heights of the gods when it is used by a great artist or a saint.

It is always man’s attention which is involved in what is happening within him and in everything he does in external life—whether it be for good or bad. Only through his extremely well-developed attention does a great composer manage to produce such prodigious musical works that they uplift listeners to the point of enabling them to experience very unusual feelings which would have been impossible for them to sense otherwise—feelings which belong to a sublime world, inhabited by “Devas” (gods) and their “Gandharvas” (heavenly musicians).

Additionally, this music which a genius created through his attention, will subsequently put the attention of all the members of symphonic orchestras to work, year after year, and even for centuries, without their necessarily being conscious of what is happening within them. So, one can say that, through his attention and great capacity for concentration, a composer such as Beethoven has become, despite himself, a sort of “spiritual master” for all the performers in the orchestra, and even, to a certain extent, for the listeners too !

Can one imagine the long years of work of concentration which are required for a pianist to manage to perform a work such as Beethoven’s Fifth Concerto, or a Brahms’s concerto, which is exceedingly difficult and demands extraordinary technical perfection from him ? Or, can one realize what a great opera singer requires in tenacious practice of concentration, for her to be able to sing, by heart, in front of an extremely censorious audience, an opera by Puccini such as “Madame Butterfly” or “Turandot” ? So, one can understand how much more concentration and, above all, division of attention are necessary for a great composer to succeed in writing a symphonic work (such as the second symphony, “The Resurrection,” by Gustav Mahler) which requires such a large number of varied instrumentalists for its performance and is like the creation of a miniature universe where so many different things occur at the same time !

Hence, one can see that in any great artistic creation, it is always attention which plays the predominant role. Through it, the positive effect of these works never ceases to spread across the world, years after the composer’s death, thus becoming for other men and women embarked upon an artistic or spiritual path, an inspiration and exhortation to master their attention.

Furthermore, one cannot but be amazed when one thinks that even a long time after the demise of a great genius (such as Beethoven, Brahms or César Franck), his music never ceases to nurture the feelings and minds of an incalculable number of human beings, exalting them and bringing a little light to their lives; a light which is out of this world and which can gradually open an unexpected door to them leading to another side of their nature, which they carry in their innermost being without ordinarily knowing it.

Moreover, the music of such a genius never ceases to assist mankind at other levels too, for can one really imagine the astonishing number of people all over the world that have been supported financially by the compositions of a great composer such as Beethoven since he left this Earth—while he himself died crippled by debt ? Performers in orchestras, soloists, conductors, as well as their families, not forgetting music printers, and so on, are all nurtured materially through the labor of this one man—or, perhaps it would be correct to say this giant: Beethoven ! What colossal work this great musician (who only lived for fifty-seven years) did in order to manage to leave behind such a large quantity of works, and this, in spite of the terrible handicap of deafness which started very early on in his life. Furthermore, did he not say one day with indignation, “My music is only one percent inspiration, the rest is ninety-nine percent perspiration !”

The man of this world, plunged into the darkness of his spiritual ignorance, cannot understand in what sense a great mystic or artist is, in a certain way, sacrificed ! He arrives upon this planet predestined to be sacrificed for mankind, in order to assist it in comprehending the meaning of its existence on this planet. A great musical genius is sometimes condemned to spend his entire life in isolation and misery, without any desire in him other than to busy himself with his creations and, in this way, accomplish an enigmatic destiny which remains incomprehensible to the majority of people living on this Earth.

The boundless space of the Cosmos is only made up of eternal darkness with points of light scattered here and there coming from different galaxies and stars which occupy it, separated by inconceivably vast distances. The musical genius or great mystic may, in a certain way, be compared with one of these small points of light in the Universe, who looks to shine through the darkness in which mankind is plunged. He is like a solitary lighthouse in an immense ocean of men and women of all races who, like the waves of the sea, are ceaselessly born and die without understanding the true meaning of their existence on this planet.

As soon as energy has taken shape in time and space, it immediately falls prey to the implacable law of gravity. And, unless man imparts an ascending direction to his energies, which inevitably requires sustained conscious efforts from him, these energies cannot but obey the law of attraction and gravity and take the path of least resistance, that is, downwards. One cannot avoid observing this phenomenon in all creation, including plants, animals and human beings.

By virtue of his extreme sensitivity, a great music composer intuitively senses the gravity problem which constantly threatens his artistic creations; and without even being aware of it, he is actually continually occupied in the fight against this downward force, while he is absorbed in his creative work.

A great symphonic work holds constant surprises as its musical themes, harmonies and rhythms unfold; surprises which never stop acting secretly on the listener’s being, in such a way as to distance him from his mind and help him descend somewhere into himself from where he can start to experience strange feelings that elevate him and which are ordinarily inaccessible to him. In this way, the music to which he is listening not only manages to nurture his feelings, but it also helps him to feel a curious continuity of being, without his realizing how this has come into being within him—a mysterious continuity of being which he does not ordinarily possess.

Without the listener being aware of it, a great symphonic work (such as “Thus Spake Zarathustra” or “An Alpine Symphony” by Richard Strauss) keeps on evoking a subtle inner silence in him (the silence that the composer himself knew during its creation) as well as the feeling of a continuous spontaneity which is unceasingly renewed all the while he is listening to this music. And, each time he listens to it again, it mysteriously continues to give him the impression of always being new and spontaneous.

Furthermore, because generally the human being only lives at a superficial level, as he becomes absorbed by the music he is involved in listening to, he starts (without even realizing it) to descend into himself and, as previously stated, to find himself placed somewhere in his being where he ordinarily never is. And, as the music continues strangely to support his attention and helps him to remain in this particular state which is unusual for him, the moment finally arrives when he feels such a feeling of exaltation that the past, present and future merge into one single point of his consciousness. In this way, by encouraging him to make this descent into himself, a great composer’s music becomes a sort of wordless spiritual teaching for the listener !

The strength born of the exceptional sincerity that some exceptional composers possess at the time of their creative activity is something that can only be understood and appreciated by the person who has experienced it himself in one form or another. The inspiration and aesthetic feelings which move a genius in his periods of creativity cannot arise within him unless he is in a state of extreme receptivity, making each note he writes, in a certain way, inevitable. In other words, every note of the theme and harmony goes where it should and nowhere else, stirring up in the listener the strange feeling of rediscovering an obvious truth which he seems to know already from some enigmatic source, even though he is actually hearing this music for the first time.

Independently of the profound feelings and exalted suggestions that some masterpieces convey (similar to a mysterious wind blowing from a strange and invisible country, and gently whispering a subtle message to mankind), the sort of special tenderness and unusual love that music sometimes communicates to the human soul undoubtedly represents its most important contribution in the field of art.

Under no circumstances can this sort of love be compared with the ordinary love one commonly knows, which is always externally directed towards something or someone, and is mainly born of desire; such love is unstable and unpredictable, influenced by external circumstances and the needs of the moment. It changes like the wind and frequently it even turns into its opposite !

The unusual love which emanates from certain musical works subtly speaks to the heart of man in the language of the gods, sometimes even moving him to tears without any apparent reason. It comes to him like a grace showing him the path to his inner self, secretly influencing his feelings and opening his mind to something elevated which he could not have experienced or known in his customary state of being.

THowever, after all that has just been said on the assistance that great music can provide in nurturing the feelings and intuition of the person listening to it, it should nonetheless be specified that under no circumstances can it spare an aspirant the efforts he will certainly have to make if he wishes truly to know his Primordial Being with a direct experience.

Article published in the french magazine : le 3ème Millénaire