Guest guest Posted August 6, 2001 Report Share Posted August 6, 2001 Hi Everybody! A friend of mine was recently describing an extraordinary experience based on music, so I became curious as to whether anyone on this list has had any such experiences. Question: Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning music. Thanks everyone! ) Love, Hillary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 6, 2001 Report Share Posted August 6, 2001 Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning music Does hearing beautiful piano music and singing while in a prayer session when I was a preteen count? to come out of the room and find that all was silent, and I'm the only one that heard it? __Loving Embraces__ __Lynette __ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 6, 2001 Report Share Posted August 6, 2001 Interesting question! I was raised as an atheist - no mention of religion or God was ever made in my home while I was growing up. In my young adulthood in the 1970's and 80's, I used to be a confirmed philosophical atheist and egotist. I was a serious proponent of an amoral, individualistic, irrational selfishness, and urged everyone else to be as well. At work, I had a colleague who was a born-again, pentacostal Christian. We had friendly disputes and debates all the time. One day in Feb. 1986, she invited me to a gospel concert. There was a song sung by a lady backed by a full orchestra: "For God So Loved the World," sung in the style of Vanessa Bell Armstrong. Listening to it, I didn't know what came over me - I felt heat and shivers, a rushing wind sound, and a metaphysical excitement. Immediately, I desired to be nice and kind, to stop cursing and lying and sexual promiscuity, and to listen to more of this same kind of music. The next morning, I asked my colleague to let me borrow gospel tapes. I started going to church. Finally I joined a very very traditional Southern black pentacostal denomination. I attended 5 days a week and became a deacon after about 3 years. According to the Christian understanding of what happened that evening, it was that I was "saved, born again." Love, --Greg At 03:21 PM 8/6/01 EDT, druout wrote: >Hi Everybody! > >A friend of mine was recently describing an extraordinary experience based on >music, so I became curious as to whether anyone on this list has had any such >experiences. > >Question: > >Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning music. > >Thanks everyone! ) > >Love, Hillary > > >/join > > > > > >All paths go somewhere. No path goes nowhere. Paths, places, sights, perceptions, and indeed all experiences arise from and exist in and subside back into the Space of Awareness. Like waves rising are not different than the ocean, all things arising from Awareness are of the nature of Awareness. Awareness does not come and go but is always Present. It is Home. Home is where the Heart Is. Jnanis know the Heart to be the Finality of Eternal Being. A true devotee relishes in the Truth of Self-Knowledge, spontaneously arising from within into It Self. Welcome all to a. > > > >Your use of is subject to > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 6, 2001 Report Share Posted August 6, 2001 , JustLynette@a... wrote: > In a message dated 8/6/01 2:22:32 PM Central Daylight Time, druout@a... > writes: > > > > Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning music > > Does hearing beautiful piano music and singing while in a prayer session when > I was a preteen count? to come out of the room and find that all was silent, Dear Lynette, Absolutely! ) Thanks! Love, Hillary > and I'm the only one that heard it? > __Loving Embraces__ > __Lynette __ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 7, 2001 Report Share Posted August 7, 2001 , druout@a... wrote: > Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning > music. Music is like a snake that slips into the deepest crevices of my being and bites! The result can be melodically delicious depending on one's frame of mind. David [snake-charmer] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 7, 2001 Report Share Posted August 7, 2001 Hi Hillary, >Question: > >Please describe any metaphysical experiences you have had concerning music. 1) In teaching meditation I use a joy symbol, and mine is musical. Here's excerpts from my meditation instructions: >If you are not your mind, then what and where is your consciousness? Your >consciousness is your FOCUS, and it is movable. You can focus your >consciousness in the emotional or astral plane and be very emotional. Or >you can focus on the mental plane and be very intellectual. You can get so >absorbed in that book that you don't notice anything else. > >So in meditation we learn to move that focus of consciousness to wherever >we want it. Today we're going to move it up to the mental plane and just >think for a few minutes - that's called reflective meditation. Then we're >going to move it even higher, just briefly, onto the next plane, which is >the plane of the intuition. > >To help us move higher when we want to, we're going to use a soul quality - >JOY. Think of something that means joy to you. It could be a face. It >could be a scene - a field of flowers, for instance. For me it's >Beethoven's joy music from his 9th symphony. When I want to move higher >and for some reason it doesn't seem easy, I just start the joy music >playing in my head, and I go right up. So decide now what it is for you >that means joy - something that, whenever you think of it, brings joy. And >be ready to think of it during meditation. > >snip< > >If you have trouble rising higher, you can use your joy symbol. Whatever it >is - a scene, a face, a piece of music - focus on it and let the joy take >you up higher. 2) I use tones in meditation. I think I started doing it because I normally always have music running in my head - often I don't even notice it consciously, it's just always there - and I realized that the music was distracting me in meditation. I couldn't shut it off, except by concentrating on a single tone. I've come to use tones to get around with in meditation. Sometimes, if I want to go higher or to a certain level, I sound the tone for it and move up there. Hearing octaves, like an orchestra tuning up and all playing the same note on different octaves, and then zipping right up the octaves, is a great way to go way up. And sometimes I hear a loud tone in my ears. Occasionally my guide, my spiritual guru, uses a sudden loud tone to get my attention. But often I think it's simply a meditation guide for me - something I need - so I go into meditation and focus on it, on bringing it in more and more strongly and clearly. Such tones take me to various levels, etc. I have two posts of material from Marcus on shabda, the use of sound in meditation. They were originally on this list, and I think I've reposted them a couple of times. I'll send them to you, and you can decide whether to repost them or any part of them. 3) I sometimes hear music in meditation, usually voices singing. Sometimes I'm aware that I'm doing it myself, and once or twice I've even come in with another voice - my male and female sides singing together. When I listen to the singing, it's so beautiful, it's a kind of immersion in beauty. More joy music, maybe. A few years ago I was hearing the "Ave Maria" in meditation, and then I heard a new "Ave Maria" in a high soprano voice. For some time I heard it every time I meditated and got to know the words and melody well enough to write them out. It's actually more of a chant than a song, and it's been a great help to me in meditation. If anyone would like to have it (one page), I can send it. I'll send you privately a report from my own files of one session during a shamanic vision quest where a great deal of music came into it. It's pretty long and personal to post here. Love, Dharma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 8, 2001 Report Share Posted August 8, 2001 Music: I find that some of the electronic and digital music of trance and techno popular these days on dancefloors in Europe and the US carry an unexpected purity, a directness of expression going from energy to sound. One reason may be that the concept of "the void", "the epmtiness" in Japanese zen practice, called "ma", is an important part of techno and trance music. When every sound is digitally precise and lasts as short or as long as the composer wishes down to the millisecond, the silence between each beat or chord is just as important as the sound of each beat/chord. The preciseness of the beat and unwavering quality of each note, results of the music being expressed by a machine, adds to the purity of the interchange between sound and silence in this music. One might think music expressed via a machine would sound dead and without soul but I find this not to be case. Instead, each sound, because it is so precise, can easily be heard rising from silence and sinking back into it on its own accord. The lack of human voice and lyrics may also add to the directness of techno music. That this music was created to stir up crowds of people into dancing for hours is simply a bonus. The only comparison I can do is with Japanese Kodo music, which is music transmitted by various giant drums. Kodo is performed as part of the indigenous Shinto religion and the idea is that the player invokes the spirit of the drum when playing it, turning it into a spiritual exercise. But where the sound of kodo is a mix of human energy poured into a vibrating and flexible drum with the variation of sound in each beat this results in, techno which is created digitally, gives no room for such human variation. I suspect that the interplay of silence or ma with sound is equally important in kodo as it is in techno. Love, Amanda. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 8, 2001 Report Share Posted August 8, 2001 Hey Amanda, Thanks for this input! I agree with you about this music. For me, trance music does this extremely well, the way that some people say that Bach's fugues do it. There's a background note, a background mood. And against that background, there's the top notes, the melodic highs and progressive inspirational building towards a crescendo. I love it! Love, --Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 8, 2001 Report Share Posted August 8, 2001 , Gregory Goode <goode@D...> wrote: > Thanks for this input! I agree with you about this music. For me, trance > music does this extremely well, the way that some people say that Bach's > fugues do it. There's a background note, a background mood. And against > that background, there's the top notes, the melodic highs and progressive > inspirational building towards a crescendo. I love it! Hi Greg, I enjoyed reading about your experiences with music too. Wonderful that you were brought into what I see was "love sadhana" through gospel music. Yeah Bach would be a composer where the interplay of silence and sound gives the music a very distinct hallmark and musical preciseness. Another would be Mozart. Thank you for sharing your stories. Love, Amanda. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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