music

June 1994 (Vol. VII, No. 6)

"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"  BLESSINGS, my friends ...

God is a singing sound in the heart of silence

Kalichi In the Heart of Silence

I woke up from a dream several years ago and wrote the words, "God is a singing sound in the heart of silence." ... Silence is not an absence. It is a presence. Listen to the bird. Its sound comes from and returns to silence. Trees are surrounded by silence. They grow from silence. All things in nature are children of silence... At the core of my being there is an open road, and three words to guide me, TRUSTING/BREATHING/ATTENDING. Trusting that the universe is a friendly place. Breathing from the deepest part of myself. Attending to the process of becoming. These three guiding words of wisdom call me to travel the open road. To attend, breathe and trust in the heart of silence. To listen for the singing sound of God.

Why does a bird sing?

Chinese Proverb
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

In the new creation souls will sing together like this

Andrew Harvey Hidden Journey

Late that afternoon I listened to Thomas Tallis's SPEM IN ALIUM, a motet written in the 16th century for forty voice, forty separate parts... I was sitting in my chair looking at Ma's photograph as I listened. At once, as the music began, the photograph started to emit great waves of Light. The Light possessed my mind and body, and I heard the music not without me but within my heart.

Her voice: In my stillness all the voices of the world rise in ecstasy. In my silence all the voices of the world are reconciled.

Each voice in the sublime motet sang in perfectly lucid ecstatic harmony with every other voice, forming endlessly changing transforming masses of illumined ripe sound.

In the new creation souls will sing together like this.

I heard spiral after spiral of ascending glorious sound rise calmly, with a passion at once detached and supremely intense, from its bed of Silence, rise, commingle in bliss, and finally culminate in the vast prolonged cry of Light on Light at the end of the work, a cry that does not end but seems to reverberate throughout the cosmos forever.

We know that we are part of this grand orchestra

White Eagle Spiritual Unfoldment 4

Within this life we live and have our being; this is the power, the wisdom and the love in which we are encompassed. And yet bodily we remain in shadow because we are clothed in the darkness of the earth. But no one need ever remain a prisoner; it only requires the will to aspire and so to know the wisdom of the divine -- and the prisoner is free! And so we ascend in spirit, and being raised, we then step forth into a life heavenly in its beauty and are encompassed by a heavenly concourse... We may become conscious of music -- delicate, gentle, sweet music beyond all description -- which may swell in grand crescendo to embrace the great universal music of all creation. And we know that we are part of this grand orchestra.

Music is always in the air

Hargrave Jennings

Music is always in the air, particularly at night, for nature (being born of it) is necessarily more sensitive at night to the beautiful.

My musical productions came into existence through understanding and pain

Schubert

My musical productions came into existence through understanding and pain. Those which pain has brought forth seem to please the world most ... (out of pain comes new birth ... new life).

If you sing from deep within you, transformation happens

Susan Osborn

When I sing I feel ecstatic, as if in communion with God. Maybe, when I sing, that's when I feel and experience it most in my life -- that lack of separation from God... I think that a song, if you allow it into your heart, can remind you that you are whole, that you are not just a fragment, but everything. If people sing, if they let themselves really sing, they can feel that inside... No matter who you are, if you sing from deep within you, transformation happens. A song, whether you are singing or listening, can let your heart open to the spiritual world.

The spirit alone truly lives in the artists' incessant creative activity

Dr. Eaglefield Hull

Dr. Eaglefield Hull describes Scriabin's attitude to music: His first symphony is a "Hymn to Art" and joins hands with Beethoven's Ninth. His third, the "Divine Poem", expresses the spirit's liberation from its earthly trammels and the consequent free expression of purified personality; while his "Poem of Ecstasy" voices the highest of all joys -- that of creative work. He held that in the artists' incessant creative activity, the constant progression towards the ideal, the spirit alone truly lives.

Divinity sings this song to our soul

God takes such delight in the human person that
Divinity sings this song to our soul:

O lovely rose on the thorn!
O hovering bee in the honey!
O pure dove in your being!
O glorious sun in your setting!
O full moon in your course!

From you,
I you God
will never
turn away.

A perfect pitch of attunement

If we surrender who and what we think we are, we may come to such a perfect pitch of attunement that each note struck within us is an everlasting example of the first note, the first sound, from which all music extends ... J.S. Bach once said, "When the right notes are struck at the right time, the instrument plays itself." We are the instruments of God. We must never forget this if we are to truly be of service ... We are asked to be open, to be aware, to be in love with the Beloved with a passion that defies all reason. The expression of love that shatters the discursive mind is the music of life, if we will only listen, if we will only be receptive and awake.

Chanting as a prelude to silence

In a cave, all outer sounds are smothered by rock and earth, but this makes the sounds of one's own heartbeat and breath audible. In the same way, contemplative stillness turns us away from everyday clamor but allows us to hear the subtle in our own lives. When listening not with the ear but with the spirit, one can perceive the subtle sound. By entering into that sound, we enter into supreme purity. That is why so many religious traditions pray, sing, or chant as a prelude to silence. They understand that the repetition and absorption of sound leads to sacredness itself. The deepest sound is silence. This may seem paradoxical only if we regard silence as an absence of life and its opposites. It is both sound and soundlessness, and it is in this confluence that the power of meditation emerges.

The music in the Universe seeks to be expressed

The people sing individually, in groups and often in harmony. I realized some of the songs were as old as time. These people repeat chants created here in the desert before the invention of the calendar. But I also experienced new compositions, music being composed just because I was there. I was told, "Just as a musician seeks musical expression, so the music in the Universe seeks to be expressed." ... A musician carries the music within.

The music of the stars

Peter Matthiessen in "Earth and Spirit" speaks of reclaiming our harmony with the universe:

As a first step we might consider this Great Mystery that is all about us ... It is the music of the stars, the color of the winds, the dead stillness between tides ... It is no less and no more strange than our life itself.

I hear the bluebird's song

Silent and still
my father stands
before our summer shelter

He is thinking a prayer
to the Holy Ones,
asking them
this day
to keep our feet
on the trail of beauty.

Filling the silence
of my father's prayer
I hear the bluebird's song.

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