A reductionist argument might be to ask what parts of the brain are involved in religious and aesthetic/musical experiences. I don't think they would be the same but there are probably members who actually know the answer!

For the rest, yes: music moves us to an extraordinary degree. Some musical experiences are very intense. I think they are also very varied. But I do not think that they can be mapped directly onto religious experiences (not that I have ever had one). But religious and political leaders have used the power of music to move us ... ideally in the direction they are trying to get us to go.

 

Enthusiast resurrected a thread from several years ago. Exactly the kind of thread that will directly address religion, spirituality, and Joy to the World, politics much later on.

We know the Tof S especially all the same folks who love to tell us how they don't believe in "Spirituality"--or they don't have a problem with the word as long as it doesn't refer to anything. rolls eyes.

Please move this thread somewhere else. An anti-religion group, anti-spiritual/faith group, or a politics group.

 

One can hear new music in a midnight dream , yet what is remembered upon awakening ? Something .

Once I heard a choir , and they stood upon the waters of a mountain lake , and the song went on and on for as long as I cared to listen . The next day I mentioned this to a friend . Of a sudden , she sang the melody I'd heard . When she paused from this - I asked if she would sing more of it . As she tried , and earnestly so , the music was something else and nothing new and more sad . Well , I think it could not have been entirely something else .

 

music's ability to cause us to react to things that are unknowable.

I don't quite know how one can react to 'unknowable' things. Things I don't know I probably haven't encountered and if I have encountered them and don't know about it, I'm not likely to be reacting... I'm starting to feel like Donald Rumsfeld now.

I'm going to put it down to cultural conditioning on top of certain natural reactions according to how our brains and nervous systems are constructed. The accumulation of this with ever more layers of meanings.

Once people know which buttons to push, they push them. If the question is why do the buttons have the effect they have...well I imagine it is a very tedious and complicated series of events, which isn't made any clearer by positing a simplified (and commonly resorted to) answer to save on headaches.

 

I don't quite know how one can react to 'unknowable' things.

Why the universe happened remains a rather unknowable thing, yet I react to that "mystery" by seeking further information, which is, I would argue, a reaction.

I'm not certain if faith/religious belief begins in rationality or irrationality. I do suspect that both states are in evidence. A child latches onto a particular belief because his family foists it upon him -- little thought, little reasoning involved. Perhaps eventually the believer begins to rationalize, a process which can lead one to polar directions, either farther away from the faith or closer towards it. One can be rational about irrational things, of course. If one believes there is a murderous ghost in one's basement, it proves rational to avoid the basement.

Music often starts rationally with the composer, who selects a theme and picks a key and explores harmonies and tone colors and forms in order to express his work. Yet, that initial theme may come about "from no where" or, you might argue, irrationally.

Listeners, on the other hand, tend to encounter the piece of music first from the irrational side. After all, they don't know what to expect. It takes some hearings to rationalize the work. There seems to me a great difference between technically analyzing a work of music and just listening to it for the first time. Two different experiences, emotionally and intellectually. Of course, this idea may be open to debate. Isn't everything?

I can contemplate religion rationally. I could even posit arguments to defend many of its premises. But I contemplate the universe rationally through physics, yet always end in a space where science breaks down and I have only faith (not religious faith, but a secular faith) to lead me the rest of the way, into the first moments of the Big Bang (Nothingness, after all, is unstable!) or outward to the end of the universe expansion. I experience an almost spiritual awe in such contemplation. Not unlike the awe I feel when listening to music.

And I worship at the shrine of the Bach Cantatas and studied German years ago mainly in order to access the texts of Bach's music and that of Wagner. I count the Missa Solemnis as a great work and hear it in a strangely spiritual way; but I hear non-religious based music much the same way. Art is numinous to my sensibilities, and I can hardly explain why. I just like it. It moves me. I seek its solace and its information, its comfort and wisdom. I know I'm a better being for having "a song in my heart" or a poem on my tongue or a great image in my mind's eye. But much remains ineffable, so I can explain no further. Rather, I settle back and ride the wave. That's often enough.

 

I think there is a natural, universal tendency for all humans to strive to reach a state of "essential being."
This state is 'ineffable' because it is not a product of the mind, or an 'identity' that the mind has fabricated; it is a natural state which lies and operates beyond thought.
People try to reach this state in different ways: drugs, sex, religion, meditation, music; some are successful, others are constantly striving.
I think this state of essential being existed, or was a potential, before any religion or dogma.
Religion can be used as a tool to prolong or enhance this state, but should not presume itself to be "the only way" to reach it.

As far as music, I feel that any music which 'creates a mood' or moves us is on the way to producing this state of being in us. For different people this is can be different music.

 

I have used a similar term to describe my own mystical experiences. I called it "pure being". Of course no one really knows what another person is feeling/experiencing and how real it is. It is easy to mentally conjure some idea of "pure being" and convince myself, that I am living it, while in fact deluding myself. Ultimaly only I alone can tell if I am deceiving myself or not. Essentially, pure being is the intangible state beyond ego, beyond thought. Ego is effort rooted in thought. Pure being is beyond all effort and thought, and cannot be talked about, cannot be captured by thought. It is only when the mind becomes silent (at peace), that it can experience this state. Any effort of the mind to capture silence is disturbing the silence

"There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven."
- Meister Eckhart

and for this reason, I do not believe that music has any place in spirituality at all. Music is a pleasant escapism, a distraction of the mind. Of course it can have a role in religious rituals, but that is not true spirituality.

 

Oh millionrainbows! What is "essential being". Stop holding me in limbo.

 

I can't explain it, it just "is" and I know when I am there. It might be easier to explain what it is not. But any good tennis player is there when he is "in the zone," or when any of us are doing something that is totally natural and does not depend on thought.

 

I've considered the essence of existence to be Acceptance . What gives ? ...perhaps the essence of a Quest .

 

Music clearly has an ability to speak to ineffable things, to leave us in a state that seems unreachable any other way (except perhaps by Eastern meditation).

"Leaving us in a state" is certainly a basic function of art, and not only of music. Changing our feelings/perceptions is also the appeal of other common things we do, from eating to sex to physical exercise to philosophical thinking (as well as more extreme measures such as using drugs). But art has the peculiar power of inducing specific feeling states by means of symbolic representation, and this is what it has in common with religion and is the reason why it has been indispensable to religions in conveying and inducing what are deemed to be desirable "states to leave us in."

The symbolic vocabulary of music and its relation to our psychology is intimidatingly complex and is rendered difficult to describe by its level of abstraction. Music doesn't normally present representations of physical entities as do the visual arts, and it doesn't discourse, argue or narrate in words. The visual and verbal arts (especially poetry) also utilize abstract form, in conjunction with concrete representations and concepts, to evoke feeling, but music's abstract language allies itself with the non-denotative element of sound, which has a direct, primal, visceral effect on us. Music is therefore the art which appeals most directly to the subconscious and the body, involving the conscious mind only to the extent that we choose to let it.

It's because music's effect on us is mostly independent of thought - of the need for conscious identifications and thinking - that it has seemed especially "magical" or "mystical" or "spiritual." I have no problem with the use of terms like this, so long as they don't try to smuggle in assumptions about supernatural entities and religious dogmas. As far as I'm concerned, art and its power to open up to our direct awareness feelings and perceptions otherwise unavailable to us is completely normal and natural to a being whose consciousness must deal with concrete reality in abstract terms. Humans can, and often do, consider the various dimensions of existence - the physical, the emotional, the intellectual - separately, and the interrelations between these realms are often hard to see or obscured by the vicissitudes of life or the simple need to deal with one aspect of reality at a time. Art offers us the incomparable experience of uniting these dimensions in a single flash of consciousness. It gives us a microcosm of a unified reality. And when the reality of an individual artist's peculiar vision strikes a sympathetic chord in an individual viewer, reader, or listener, all's right with the world.

 

"Leaving us in a state" is certainly a basic function of art, and not only of music. Changing our feelings/perceptions is also the appeal of other common things we do, from eating to sex to physical exercise to philosophical thinking (as well as more extreme measures such as using drugs). But art has the peculiar power of inducing specific feeling states by means of symbolic representation, and this is what it has in common with religion and is the reason why it has been indispensable to religions in conveying and inducing what are deemed to be desirable "states to leave us in."

The symbolic vocabulary of music and its relation to our psychology is intimidatingly complex and is rendered difficult to describe by its level of abstraction. Music doesn't normally present representations of physical entities as do the visual arts, and it doesn't discourse, argue or narrate in words. The visual and verbal arts (especially poetry) also utilize abstract form, in conjunction with concrete representations and concepts, to evoke feeling, but music's abstract language allies itself with the non-denotative element of sound, which has a direct, primal, visceral effect on us. Music is therefore the art which appeals most directly to the subconscious and the body, involving the conscious mind only to the extent that we choose to let it.

The first para is absolutely right, I think. But I am less convinced that you have nailed what is special about music compared to other art forms. What you say is certainly interesting and stimulating and I do think music can do things to us and with us that other art forms cannot do. And I do agree that the difference is bound up in music's ability to engage us physically. But I do not see why we should believe that this stems from a privileged access to "the subconscious and the body" or that music is unique among the arts in its ability to bypass our conscious mind. Certainly, literature and drama might need conscious intervention to get to the ideas within it. But visual arts? And, anyway, how sure are we that the route that literature and drama take to reach us is a linear I-understand-the-words --> I-feel-the-meaning? Quite a lot probably "leaks around the edges" having an effect upon us without our being consciously aware it was there (at least until we know the work well). Even our processing of single words is not very simple and involves us in having (for a millisecond or two) multiple candidates for what the word was - a question that is resolved by context and other extraneous factors. But, yes, music can get to us in a very different (and apparently much more immediate) way.

It's because music's effect on us is mostly independent of thought - of the need for conscious identifications and thinking - that it has seemed especially "magical" or "mystical" or "spiritual." I have no problem with the use of terms like this, so long as they don't try to smuggle in assumptions about supernatural entities and religious dogmas. As far as I'm concerned, art and its power to open up to our direct awareness feelings and perceptions otherwise unavailable to us is completely normal and natural to a being whose consciousness must deal with concrete reality in abstract terms. Humans can, and often do, consider the various dimensions of existence - the physical, the emotional, the intellectual - separately, and the interrelations between these realms are often hard to see or obscured by the vicissitudes of life or the simple need to deal with one aspect of reality at a time. Art offers us the incomparable experience of uniting these dimensions in a single flash of consciousness. It gives us a microcosm of a unified reality. And when the reality of an individual artist's peculiar vision strikes a sympathetic chord in an individual viewer, reader, or listener, all's right with the world.

I have a small problem with the sentence I have highlighted in bold - I think it refers to "consciousness" rather than "humans". I do not think it is true of humans. But I don't think that makes a difference with your argument.

The statement that "music's effect upon us is mostly independent of thought" is interesting in the light of the many discussions here about avant garde, atonal or contemporary music. If some of us don't need to think about it or be conscious of it but it works on us (and I do think that is broadly true for me these days for much of it) while others don't need to think about it but it still repels them or bores them ... then it seems we can never agree (well, we know that!).

But, surely, just because a process is unconscious that does not make it something other than "thought". It is still processing in our brains. And it probably is possible to say - even if we can't do so yet - what happens in our brains when we listen to music that is very very different to music we know? The same may be true of our first encounters with classical music (for me it was Mozart and then Beethoven): we listen again and again before we really get it and the more we have heard the easier it becomes to listen and "understand" on first hearing.

What does that process mean for your "single flash of consciousness"? That single flash, perhaps, is the thing I am merely calling understanding. For truly very great music (and great art of all types) that understanding can be earth shattering for us. But lots more music (and art) that is very good can be really enjoyable once we understand it without making the earth move so amazingly. What is this difference?

I'm not disagreeing but perhaps going off in different directions. I may also be demystifying or at least skirting around the subject of the ineffable. There is something about how we come to perceive and understand and enjoy art - how we "get it" - that can be described as mental processing. And maybe there is something more when the effect on us is very great? I wonder, also, whether it makes a difference that the actual effect that great music has on us differs between pieces and, most particularly, between eras - Baroque music and Romantic music move us in very different ways - and I wonder whether the development of music is really a story of exploring the many different things our minds can do in response to ... art?

 

Okay, leaving aside shamanism, maybe it's worthwhile having a free flowing discussion about music's ability to cause us to react to things that are unknowable I'll begin personally, as an example, with the understanding that if this devolves into tomato-throwing, I'm wearing a red shirt.

I am not conventionally religious. My Universe does not require a God to have set it in motion or to keep the clock ticking But if it turns out one is there, I'm not going to freak out - no harm, no foul. That probably makes me a rationalist. I tend to put stock in what science can "prove" (to the extent it can prove anything), and find attempts to make "sciences" out of studies that depend on human behavior (the so-called social sciences) admirable but misguided. And then there are the arts, which seem to have an ability to tell us things that cannot be systematically codified.

So why, despite my manifold disagreements with the Catholic liturgy, do I find listening to Missa Solemnis cathartic enough that I consider it to be perhaps the greatest piece of music ever written? Why does listening to an intense performance of the Opus 111 piano sonata leave me drained? (In his liner notes, pianist Andrew Rangell says its ends with "a silence unlike any ever heard before.")

Music clearly has an ability to speak to ineffable things, to leave us in a state that seems unreachable any other way (except perhaps by Eastern meditation). This, I think may have been what the Shamanism discussion was trying to aim for before it was derailed.

Whether it's worthy of discussion or not, I don't know.

cheers --

Nice post. I am not a believer but Op 111 has always struck me as someone who is angry and challenging God in I, and then being allowed through a door and being shown the vistas if the Universe in II.
Music stops the internal dialogue, that conversation in our head that keeps us thinking about the larger issues, and either replaces it with another topic, or leaves us in a contemplative state. I would reject the idea that all Great Art does this equally, be cause visually related Art tends to deal less in the abstract

 

^^^ I agree 100%.

 

^^^ Sorry if my post was unclear. But I don't think I am confused: I believe that what we are calling the ineffable is a state of mind rather than a spirit or life force that is independent of us. It may be that others here feel that I am wrong? A few posts seem to leave the question open - so maybe they are confused, too?

 

I get lost when others begin to speak of self-conquest, "suffering and confusion" as if such is the very matrix in which we are always embedded, "self-actualization", etc.

 

It doesn't matter whether there is actually something real, or tue, behind the ineffable, behind the mystery and spirituality that might be felt when listening to music. Music can put you in such a state; it conjures up an illusion, one that feels true at the moment of listening. This is why religious music can be enjoyed equally by both religious and non religious listeners.
Let me put it in another way: I don't have to believe in anything related to religion, spirituality, paranormal, the extra-physical etc. in order to enjoy the feeling of wonder, mystery, oneness, the state of "essential being" etc. that are associated with those things. I love the mysterious.

 

Let me put it in another way: I don't have to believe in anything related to religion, spirituality, paranormal, the extra-physical etc. in order to enjoy the feeling of wonder, mystery, oneness, the state of "essential being" etc. that are associated with those things. I love the mysterious.

Wow, if you could put that in a bottle and sell it, you'd be rich. :lol:

 

Music And The Brain
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/music-and-the-brain-2006-09/
it is somewhat of a mystery, why humans evolved music, because it seems to offer no clear survival advantage. Was it an accident of evolution?

 

No; the drummers and naked dancers exuded such confidence in their music that this confidence was transmitted to the other tribe members, and the resulting hunt was extremely successful.

 

I've always liked Bernstein's comment on music that there's no way to communicate, via (wordless) music, a sentence like "Bob went to the store to buy grapes". And yet, music can suggest Bob going to the store to buy grapes in a way that's much more expressive than simply saying that Bob went to the store to buy grapes, or might take a great deal of verbiage to communicate. It might still have to be titled "Bob goes to the store to buy grapes", but the essential ineffability of music is that, by titling a piece "Bob goes to the store to buy grapes", the listener filters everything in the music, every detail and shift of mood, through that tiny word prism, and it gives us access to a shifting, living world that would (theoretically) be very difficult to capture as succinctly in almost any other medium.

I find that very exciting.

 

how much of what music is able to communicate is culturally dependent? Music can try to immitate sounds or melodies from the environment/culture we live in, but is it universally valid? The chinese have developped different kinds of music. I believe that music is incapable of communicating anything. All it does is stimulate our brains and bodies with pleasurable sensations

 

Let's put the "human" aspect back in music! What do you say? Gosh, I'm so excited to communicate with you!

 

"maybe it's worthwhile having a free flowing discussion about music's ability to cause us to react to things that are unknowable"

Spirituality is not incompatible with rational thought and is based on direct experience rather than theory, beliefs, or dogma. It merely suggests that there are invisible, hidden or "unknown" forces at play in the material universe that cannot be seen or explained but can be felt or sensed. Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now goes into this in great detail. Incredible book. Music can be the great awakener because there's a way of seeing one's deeper self reflected in our deeper reactions to the music-where the inner and outer worlds meet. It's like seeing one's own reflection in a pool of water until one becomes aware that there's more to our essential nature than our surface emotions or compulsive thinking that never seems to turn off. It's a great journey and music can be a great connection with those invisible, seemingly unknowable energies.

 

maybe it's worthwhile having a free flowing discussion about music's ability to cause us to react to things that are unknowable

Spirituality (or religion for some) is not incompatible with rational thought. It merely suggests that there are invisible, hidden or "unknown" forces at play in the material universe that cannot be seen or explained but can be felt.

The problem arises when one jumps from a mere 'feeling' to a judgement that this is 'forces at play' and so very often identifying those forces predicated upon zero.

Completely incompatible with rational thought, reason, good sense, or even experiential habit.

 

I used to be part of a Buddhist group (yes, who'd have thought it) in the early 1990s. What Jacck writes above about the three 'marks' of existence had a fairly profound effect upon me until I decided that they were actually themselves in ignorance of what could really been done to alleviate suffering on earth and are themselves really just a form of earthly stoicism with a belief in a great nothing behind it with a lot of clever names.

I think the part that pulled me in the most was the idea of suffering through impermanence, change. There is a lot to be said for this idea, but I don't believe Buddhism's final analysis is any better than a reasoned understanding of the pull between secure comfort (of one's emotional and physical circumstances) and the change that comes in relationships and other results of action in the world, deliberate and natural.

Learning to accept them without recourse to phantasms, and curious resignation wrapped up in even more curious metaphysics, is probably more difficult and requires more strength (of mind and body).

Music offers temporary relief, in the general way Schopenhauer's philosophy is thought to consider its role. It is momentary security, with flashes of impermanence that resolve back to security. It may even explain why music without permanence of key and resolution is so unpopular in general.

 

I was never a buddhist and do not consider myself to be a buddhist. Much of buddhism has degenerated into a mere philosophy or fruitless meditation practices (which are mere navel-gazing done to gain an illusiory result) or belief in karma and reincarnation. Out of the 3 marks existence, I consider the anatta (non-self) to be the most fundamental, but also the most difficult to get (an actual, not theoretical) insight into. Out of all the spiritual teachers and religions, I was influenced most by Krishnamurti. His teaching has overlaps with buddhism, but he is also more subtle in many ways. The main difference is, that for Krishnamurti "Truth is pathless land", while the buddhist believe in the "Noble Eightfold Path". I find some zen more profound than the typical buddhism (Huang Po, Hui Hai, Dogen), especially their concept of a non-abiding mind. But these things have to be experienced. They cannot be made into theories and specualted upon.

 

Of course. Isn't it always the case that 'things have degenerated from what they used to be'? That there was once a profound truth in whatever is under fire, which has since gone to seed, explaining its current lack.

The argument from 'experience' has always struck me as a rather weak foundation for an argument. (Experience of things incapable of even being defined).

 

I understand that a lot of these spiritual teachers can sound like snake oil salesman. A lot of them indeed are - Osho, Eckhart Tolle (who has made a very successful business model out of his "enlightenment"). But my own experiences and study of various mystics have convinced me, that there is something real - especially since the accounts from very different culture are principially the same. The problem with this "spiritual truth" is that it is not a positive state, nothing positive can be said about it, it cannot be actively captured by the mind, it is not an achievement, it is not an end result of some spiritual practice, it is not some "insight" that you gain. It cannot be bought, gained. But again, Krishnamurti can say it better (a randomly googled talk). Now, compare him with Meister Eckhart, and you will notice, that despite very different cultural background and no knowledge of each other, they talk about exactly the same stuff. Another one is Rumi. Take a very talented poet, combine him with the spiritual insight of Krishnamurti, and you get Rumi

 

Who wants to buy empty bottles?

 

My understanding is that, back in the day, a certain inhaled substance in a dimly lit room with blacklight posters made even popular music plus snacks ineffable.

 

Why should any experience be ineffable , beyond words to describe ? Because such words can be socially , cruelly rejected . But they don't cease to exist . They become as a little book hidden away in a safe place when the language for the experience itself had become ineffable . It's ok for it to emerge as music sublime . And music is able to exist for a future time better than the literal meanings of words anyway . Music is conservative .

 

^^^^What we have here is assertion, pure and simple. Nothing wrong with that, except that it is not susceptible to any sort of validation. One may feel better believing such; it may have therefore therapeutic value. But it bears no observable relationship to reality.

 

Jacck, you might want to explore another variety of mysticism, distinct from the introvertive mysticism that someone like Walter Stace of Princeton University described so well in his book The Teachings of the Mystics. Introvertive mysticism, the sort practiced by Meister Eckhart et al comprises 99% of "mystic" experience and testimony, and Stace devotes 99% of his book to it. But he notes that there is another path, extrovertive mysticism, which locates The One entirely outside and beyond the physical boundaries of existence, rather than centrally deep within, and it is not experienced by going within. The late American poet Robinson Jeffers came closest to describing/explaining extrovertive mysticism (and its difference with introvertive mysticism) in his poem Credo. Please note that Jeffers as poet was not necessarily a close student of mysticism--though he developed his own sui generis philosophical structure of Inhumanism somewhat paralleling extrovertive mysticism. Here is Credo....

My friend from Asia has powers and magic, he plucks a blue leaf from the young blue-gum
And gazing upon it, gathering and quieting
The God in his mind, creates an ocean more real than the ocean, the salt, the actual
Appalling presence, the power of the waters.
He believes that nothing is real except as we make it. I humbler have found in my blood
Bred west of Caucasus a harder mysticism.
Multitude stands in my mind but I think that the ocean in the bone vault is only
The bone vault's ocean: out there is the ocean's;
The water is the water, the cliff is the rock, come shocks and flashes of reality. The mind
Passes, the eye closes, the spirit is a passage;
The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

 

I am not sure I entirely follow what the difference between the external and internal mysticism is. The One has a paradoxical nature, even Aristotle called him "the Unmoved Mover", because he creates the ever changing world of phenomena in his heart, yet remains also completely uncreated beyond time and space. The Absolute is immesuarable, all words are like dust. The absolute is beyond existence and non-existence, beyond being and not-being, beyond finity and infinity, because all these concept are valid only within space and time. And as already Kant found out, our mind is incapable of thinking outside the space-time categories. The One is both without and within, but to become one with the One, you first have to conquer the bounderies in you own mind, that separate you from the One. Or rather empty your own mind of the self, because the self is obstructing the One.

 

Well , sure , I've casually seen water more real than water . I think the visions could be from my love for drinking from a mountain stream and without a worry . Without a worry . There is too much social worry, and for so long , and it has been civilized . We have been educated in it until beyond words , as in language diminished . This is is not arguable . The social language of argument has become insufficient . Paradox .

 

I now suspect one of those AI essay machines. There can be no other explanation.

 

We once had a similar entity on a kayaking website posting behind others, like Gollum silently padding along behind The Nine through Moria and beyond. It was attributed to a computer algorithm of some sort.

 

Well it's either that or someone here is having a laugh. It's pretty difficult to consistently read like a fortune cookie.

 

Considering what sometimes appears to be a low bar for art here, perhaps it would be considered high art on a poetry forum.