Music

The rhythms of music and painting express the meter of man’s heartbeat and the universal heartbeat. They have the power to reach the Soul through their dynamism, which sculpture and architecture lacked.

The beauty of a piece of music is not in its technique but in the Soul of its creator; nor is it in the sound vibrations of the piece but in the silence of the Light from which the sound springs.

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For thousands of years the pagan-barbarian civilization remained at a very low unchanging level. About eight hundred years ago a greater spiritual awakening advanced man to an ever-increasing level. Steadily gathering momentum it progressed the human race farther intellectually in the last one hundred years than in previous thousands of years. During the last eight hundred years, painting and music, and literature, the greatest of the spiritually transforming arts, came into being. Sculpture and architecture had been here before. These are the static arts which did not reach to the Soul of early man. The rhythms of music and painting express the meter of man’s heartbeat and the universal heartbeat. They have the power to reach the Soul through their dynamism, which sculpture and architecture lacked.

The diatonic scale in music was unknown to man until one hundred years after Leonardo lived. Caesar never knew the divine music which is ours to know. The human Consciousness had not unfolded in that day to the stage where it would have meaning: A Bach, Beethoven or Wagner rendition would have been but boring noise to a Caesar or Nero, just as it still is to a prize fighter or any lover of blood shedding sports today. An age of paganism which gloried in gladiatorial fights, one in which the greatest pleasure of women and children was in witnessing lions rend humans, or bloodshed of man by man in the arenas of that day, could not possibly have understood our tonal music had they had it.

Music, however, was the greatest cause of bringing love into the human race. As the music, painting and sculpture of the great masters came into the world, cruelty and blood-lust went out of it. The rhythmic beat of all great music, and the tonal harmonies of all great art, interprets the universal heartbeat. It reaches man’s Soul by inducing inner thinking to replace outer sensing. Inner thinking is meditative and gives birth to desire for prayer and prayer is an innate and intuitive desire to talk to God.

The growth of music awakened the spiritual in man and inspired in him the urge to find God. Music and worship are synonymous. Each is the other. The Christian spirit rose from its ashes and uplifted man one step higher upon his long climb. It was but a little step higher but it transformed the human race.

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As love again goes out of the world, ugliness and brutality are coming into it in all human culture, as in all human practice. As the culture loving people of the Hellenic age saw its beautiful sculptures thrown into the seas, so do the culture loving people of today see the ugliness of modern art gradually infiltrating even our art museums, and the jazz of jungle rhythms displace our gracious minuet and our happy Viennese waltz. Even the musical instruments which have the capacity of reaching the Soul through their likeness to Nature’s sounds, are being discarded from all but the symphony orchestras and replaced with noisy brass instruments to please the ever-increasing decadence of the masses.

The poetic quality of musical rendition is being replaced with raucous noise more reminiscent of the jungle than of gentility. The violin, flute and piccolo are suggestive of whispering winds, the songs of birds, the reedy sounds of insects, and the humming, droning, buzzing and chirping sounds of wood life. The soft, dreamy, restful dinner music of the 1900 era, which lent inspiration to social gatherings, has been replaced with ear splitting brass horns in dining rooms, night clubs and television. The rhythmic harmonies of our fast disappearing cultural age are no longer heard. In their stead as much discord as possible is introduced into syncopated melodies to destroy all that is fine and uplifting in this greatest of the spiritual arts.

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The great masters could not possibly interpret God’s rhythmic language if even the slightest trace of evil touched their thinking. Likewise, no man can listen with his Soul to the rhythmic symphonies of the great masters and think evil while so listening. Herein lies the great power of music in conserving and multiplying the Christian spirit among men. Music is the greatest of all the powers used by man to bring about the state of Universal Brotherhood, which is primarily essential for a Christian civilization. Painting is the next great power for inducing inspiration which leads to inner thinking.

These statements are so liable to challenge by the unthinking, that it is necessary to recall that painting and music, such as we know them in our day, were unknown until the 12th and 15th centuries respectively. The spiritual nature of either music or painting could not unfold while the memory and love of bloodshed was so strong in the race that the greatest pleasures of its men, women and children, were gladiatorial killings and the rending of humans by lions.

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It is impossible to estimate the value of painting and music to the spiritual unfoldment of man. When one realizes that less than one hundred men transformed thousands upon thousands of barbarian stage men into the realms of spiritual consciousness, it should help one to realize the value of every genius to the world. One Beethoven or one Leonardo is worth more in material value to mankind than the value of all the gold and real estate in the world, yet mankind crucifies genius today as he crucified Love 2,000 years ago. It is imperative that you more fully understand why there is such an incalculable power in the masterpieces of world-geniuses to transform men from sensuality to spirituality. It is equally imperative that you fully understand what is meant by “God’s language”, which you know as inspiration.

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Outer thinkers desire sensual rhythms which do not synchronize with body pulsations. Excitation can come to bodies only by changing the rhythm and tempo of their heartbeat. The moment the tempo of a heartbeat is slowed down in any musical rhythm, it slows down the heartbeat of the listener. That is why a baby goes to sleep when the mother croons a soothing lullaby. The power that music has within its rhythms and tempos to affect life, is inconceivable. The rhythms and tempos of the great world geniuses uplift the whole world toward its high heavens and causes those whom it can touch to seek the kingdom of heaven which centers them. Likewise, the discordant and split rhythms that are not in tune with Nature and the heartbeat of man multiply the sensations which the purely physical man seeks as entertainment for his body.

However, the one-two-three balanced rhythm of the waltz focuses attention upon the body by combining both the spiritual and physical emotions. The third beat, which characterizes the waltz, is in perfect balance with the two, and creates the desire for happy movement of balanced rhythms which combine the physical with the spiritual. Beyond that three in musical rhythms one cannot go without splitting one or all of them. The greater the departure from the balanced rhythms of Nature to the syncopated rhythms of man’s desire for physical sensation, the greater the possibility of spiritual suppression in favor of physical degradation.

The power of music to degrade as well as to uplift is well exemplified in the jazz rhythms and tempos which shriek out their degrading power in raucous sounds that violate Nature’s rhythms, as the sounds of a busy factory violate its peaceful countryside environment. Sensual men do not appreciate the music which deeply inspires inner thinking men. They have not sufficiently unfolded as yet to understand it. The power of spiritually inspired music is so great, however, that many thousands are gradually being transformed by oft repeated renditions.

Classical records are being distributed by the hundreds of thousands, and their effect is one of the most hopeful signs of the times, as well as being one of the greatest demonstrations of the power of music to transform sensual thinkers to spiritual thinkers. The greatest passion of every genius is to give to all the world treasures of heaven that have been given to him. A Beethoven, Mozart, Leonardo or Tennyson could not possibly withhold his treasures unto himself. Having become aware of their Oneness with their Creator, who gives freely of all He has, and without motive, they also must give freely and without motive.

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All people have great moments of baring their very Souls to the urge within them to forever seek that Oneness of divine Mind which centers their Consciousness. When you hear a happy child cry out its love for all the world and everything in it, that is its great moment of response to the Soul urge to attain Oneness with God. When you hear the whisperings of the forest, and the sweet music of warbling birds, the buzzing and droning of bees and insects’ wings, and the majestic pounding of surf on great rocks and sandy shores with inner ears attuned to the Infinite, you are responding to that urge of your Soul to attain your divine state of universal Oneness. Deep love of Nature is an expression of universal oneness in man for it is love expressed universally. When man expresses love for other humans he individualizes them and measures his love out to each one in different measure, but his love for Nature is love for ONE. The Voice of Nature is God’s Voice speaking to us His way and in His language. He whose inner ears are attuned to its mighty rhythms knows in them only the harmonies of God’s love.

When Beethoven became one with the mood of the night he had attained Oneness with God’s rhythms. He became transcendent because of his exaltation and he, in turn, inspires you to become transcendent and exalted. When a dear friend dies your deep grief at his passing tells of your oneness of love for him and for the world. Another friend is sorely distressed and love repeats his distress in you. A plane crashes with many people you have never known but the agony of your severance from them comes from the fact of your oneness with them. You feel that you have lost something of yourself. These moments of grief and distress are great moments of exaltation where love is all that is and all else ceases. These are your high moments when you are very close to God– and God is very close to you.

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Every planet and star in the heavens has its own musical tone. The “music of the spheres” is not a poetic thought, it is factual. You do not hear it though because of your limited sense range. You look at a busy ant hill and hear no sound. There is a tremendous sound activity there, however, but your ears cannot hear it.

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The science of Mind healing marks the greatest step in the spiritual unfolding of Intelligence in the human race since the birth of music and painting several centuries ago. As music and painting awakened the Light in man in their day to give birth to a higher culture, so is the Science of Mind command over motion hastening man toward his illumining in this day.

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The clergyman needs years of preparation after he hears the Voice of God calling him to serve man. The doctor and the surgeon, likewise, spend hard and earnest years before taking the responsibility of life and death of other men. Even the genius musician, composer, painter and sculptor who already have power within them, give years of loving preparation to equip them- selves to give out the power that is in them.

 

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You do remember the essentials, however. If you have been a musician for several lives, and have thought music more than any other thought during those lives, you will undoubtedly think music again in succeeding lives. It is quite understandable why a musical prodigy exhibits such great musical talent at four or five years of age, if one thinks of it that way.

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