Gazing in the Mirror

November 17 - The Spiritual Nature of Music & Poetry

Music gives you happiness or sadness,
but it also, heals your soul.
Let the music heal your soul. Let
the music take control. Let the
music give you the power to move
any mountain.
~ The Backstreet Boys,
"Let the Music Heal Your Soul"

What would be the nature of this
inner action ? It could not be physical –
as we understand physics – but would
have to be by the Power of some inner
movement of Life, ie the Voice of God –
God standing for the First Great and
Only Cause of all that is.
~ Ernest Holmes

Though poetry has a more objective model in the external, physical world than music does, both have been important conduits in my experience for apprehending some types of spiritually-discerned information. What the artist intended and the actual effect on my own self are two totally different and yet somehow harmonious effects of the very same thing. All art has a special and inspiring value in human life. As Rudolph Steiner said in 1906 in a lecture titled The Occult Basis of Music, "music speak(s) so intimately to the heart" that a composer who has nothing physical to copy from must draw that music out from the soul. Steiner believed music was found in "the worlds which are not perceptible to the ordinary senses". I believe that spirituality and the seeker arise from a desire in the soul to reunite with that place from whence it originally came.

We have within us an inner eye that can open to a larger sense of reality than what our physical eyes can see around us in the external world. I recently read about a neurosurgeon who experienced a period of being comatose and describes the place where he was during that time as being in a world of musical sound. Visionaries such as Steven Spielberg, in his youthful work Close Encounters of the Third Kind, perceived music as a universal language that could be used to communicate non-linguistically with alien races from other planets inhabited by intelligent life from the depths of space. Many spiritual thinkers also perceive an inner ear that hears sounds as perceptions that are not physically audible.

Rudolph Steiner perceived a devachanic world (the astral home of Spirit) as tones "shot through with light and colours" in an "endlessly flowing and changing ocean of musical tones". He believed that connecting these with the ground tones of the physical world allowed continuous consciousness to bring the astral tones over into physical expression through the genuine art of music. He believed that the soul traveled during sleep through waves of living sound which he termed "the music of the spheres" and which he apprehended as a harmonious state. It is interesting that harmony and harmonious are both emotional feeling states of being and expressions of music. The human ear can experience harmony through sound. He believed that the nightly journey of the soul was a kind of return to it's in "between incarnations" home.

Steiner recognized that the subtler aspects of the human body vibrate in tune with the expression of music. He experienced music as a pleasurable experience and felt that the soul becomes naturally elevated to feel the intimate relationship with Its existence in that primal ground. He believed this to be the reason why even the "simplest of souls" is receptive to music. For my own self, Nature has a similarly intimate feeling. Nature is filled with a kind of music of its own that has the same quality of reminding our soul of its eternal home.

One poet, Carol Aronoff, in her collection of poems and photography titled "The Nature of Music" and in the poem titled "Circadian Rhythms" describes "Early Bird / In Praise of Slow Mornings" and "Rain is a Music / The Beckoning Storm". In "Early Bird", she speaks of "bees bless . . . blooms with honey songs, while birds poke beaks into dark centers, wings humming in mystery. I step softly, wanting to be part of this symphony of morning". Another poet, Rama Devi Nina, who hears spiritual songs in nature captures "Winds strum sweet chords of amber light / cast through feathered fields of flaming grass". Poetry and Music embody that "endlessly flowing and changing ocean" that Steiner described existence as embodying. This poet says – "To hear, I enter silence. / To see, I look from within."

My own spirituality is so intertwined by the poetry of musical lyrics and the balancing center of being in Nature that it is truly impossible to say where any of this begins or ends. This is the wholeness pattern of my unique self expressed individuality – in the conscious awareness that interprets a physical reality through a heart embedded in a place unseen, in music and perceived thoughts apprehended from some deep place within my very soul that I embrace happily as the beauty that makes it all worthwhile.

~ perspective

Music and poetry speak to me
in personal ways that allow my
heart to perceive the vast terrain
of a larger reality.
Bits of lyrics, snatches of words
and the sounds of nature combine
within me as my own brand of
special consciousness expressed
musically as flow.
I love the way music intensifies
my experience of physical life.
I feel the way music vibrates
within my heart and soul in
wondrous ways.
Music soothes me or lifts me into
joy, music gives my sadness and
grief emotional outlets.

~ Dedicated to my mother, Julie Sue Dittmer Hart, who was a lifelong musician and composer. She passed away September 20, 2015. ~

#artist #beauty #communication #harmony #heart #lyrics #nature #receptivity #sleep #soul