I once saw a woman wearing a tee-shirt that said “Music is my Religion”
and I would have to say that for myself, for some of the most profound spiritual experiences I have ever had, music certainly played a role or was a part of the context. It has also been my experience, that much of the music that is specifically touted as being “spiritual” in nature, is either quite boring, poorly executed, or of a low calibre of musical craftsmanship. That being said, there is something about good music and art in general ( however that can be defined) that simply moves you. It may be the sound of the choir, beautifully rounding out the final cadence of the Hallelujah Chorus, or the silky smooth jazz vocals of Diana Krall, or how about Queen singing Bohemian Rhapsody. If none of these sound very appealing, I would venture to guess that there are some pieces of music that you could mention that move you in a profound, emotional way.
Music is powerful. I like watching European football (soccer) on TV, not because I’m interested in the game, but rather to watch the fans. They get so excited and cheer, and then these songs break out. Old hymns, folk songs, tavern drinking tunes. Something about hearing all those thousands of voices in unison makes you want to stand up tall and proud and salute the nearest flag. Others feel inspired to tear their clothes off and streak across the field :-) Music is best enjoyed in community...a concert, a music festival, a jam session. It’s a way for us all to join together in a creative process. Music is a human, sociological phenomena. And whether in the church choir or at the football game, the music stirs our inner person and connects us with our fellow man.
Is music spiritual? Does it have physical healing properties? Does someone who is a musically gifted person have a better chance of being spiritually, emotionally or physically healthy? We need not look far to see that this is not the case. How many music stars have we seen burn out in a ball of flames. Their screwed up lives played out for all of us pop culture vulture’s TV viewing pleasure. We sit back and watch as another musician, actor or artist behaves irresponsibly, loses their kids, their marriages, their reputations, somehow the fame and the success gets to them, and they lose it all.
It’s curious when you consider the Mozart craze, where expectant mom’s would play Mozart through headphones stretched out over their bellies...to stimulate the health and brain activity of their babies. Music didn’t help Mozart avoid his fatal illness at the young age of 35. Music did not seem to help Michael Jackson, Brittany Spears, or Billy Bob Thorton in keeping their minds healthy and dare I say, sane. Many people continue to be profoundly moved by the music of Kurt Cobain, yet, his music, nor any other form of art for that matter was able to save him from the deep despair he must of felt that eventually led to his suicide. And even some of the most talented church musicians I have met over the years, who can play, conduct, compose, and inspire the masses who gather to worship each week at their churches...once you get to know them, you find, this is just a job, and their own spiritual condition seems less than desirable.
I think that art, and specifically music is more emotional. We express how we feel, through music, or art. Some artists become good actors, and they can put on a show, pretend to feel the music, they learn how to manipulate the heart strings, and they use music to lead their audience to a pre determined emotional response. It works in advertising, it works in the movies, it works in hypnosis, it works rock concerts, it works in elevators, it works in tent revival meetings. Music affects our mood.
But is music spiritual? What is spirit anyway? The Christian tradition, of which I find myself in, has not been able to come up with a unified definition of spirit, but I will attempt to give you my understanding of spirit. God is Spirit. Transcendent, outside, or beyond the realm of the universe. To come into unity with God, is much more than being enlightened, or becoming one with the universe. More so, it is to make a spiritual connection with the Creator of the universe. The eternal One who is not restricted by time and space. In the gospel of John chapter 4, Jesus is asked by the Samaritan woman at the well about the appropriate place of worship. Jesus answered her question about location with an answer that looked beyond the limits of space, and looked deep within to the core of her being. Jesus reminded her that God was Sprit, therefore those who worship must worship in spirit and in truth. Authentic, honest worship from the very depths of one’s being...the part of us that is capable, by the grace of God to respond to the Spirit of God. Location and method is trumped by motivation and deep, intimate honesty. Jesus is later quoted as saying that to find unity with God ( or to acquire eternal life) one must not only be a physical being ( born of water ) but also be born again...born of the spirit. The person he was talking to, Nicodemus, was an elite, educated, religious man. The concepts they discussed were deep, intellectual, yet, this well rounded individual, Nicodemus, found himself looking deeper for eternal significance...for the spirit. So, from my understanding of the Christian perspective of spirit, a person can exist in a physical sense, have engaged their mind, intellect and inner consciousness, yet be “unborn” or waiting to take that first breath in a spiritual or metaphysical sense.
The mind, intellect, emotions, will, consciousness, and perhaps even some aspects of intuition, make up the soul, or psyche of a person. This is the person inside. Psychologists tell us that our minds are constantly thinking, churning through the equivalent of 1,300 words per minute. Plato defined this thinking as the soul’s conversation with itself. If we could audibly speak 1,300 words a minute we would sound like some kind of robot, but our minds are thinking at this incredible rate, constantly. Our thoughts, mind will and emotions are still captive to time and space...but not so much as our bodies. We daydream and time seems to fly. Or when we have a traumatic event, like a car accident, our minds kick into overdrive, and the result is that time kicks into slow motion. I recently had hernia surgery, and as I was getting onto the operating table, I recall the radio was playing music quite loudly in the background, then the anesthesiologist told me he was injecting some happy juice into my IV, and suddenly I felt all warm and fuzzy, and the music disappeared...the next thing I knew it was an hour and a half later, and I was still in happy-land, slowly waking up. I had temporarily been completely unaware of time and space, but thankfully all went well and I am here in the physical world once again! Deja vu is another phenomena where we “escape” time, because as we experience something in the present, we have a sense or memory of seeing this before - in the past. But perhaps it is just our brain playing a trick on us, and the mental processing of the present ( short term memory ) takes a detour through the part of our brain that usually processes and stores long term memory ( the past). Still, the experiences in the de ja vu memory are chronological , in that the memory has a beginning, middle and end and location, so we still are within the realm of time and space.
But when you wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about Uncle Fred in Newfoundland, and then the next day you get the phone call and find out that he had a heart attack last night...we have now escaped the realm of space, but still confined to time. Intuition and premonition are truly interesting phenomena.
Our mind, or psyche is the soul. The doorway between the body and the spirit. The deeper you get into the core, or essence of your mind, I believe you begin to approach the spirit. Yet I don’t believe the spirit is contained or defined, or limited to the confines of the mind, or soul. It is truly a mystery.
Some Christian theologians don’t make a distinction between the soul and the spirit, but I think there is a case for a 3 part being...body, soul and spirit. Yet the 3 are connected. The brain is the physical CPU if you will, making electrical and chemical impulses, and the mind makes sense of those impulses. Yet, with drugs, we can fool the mind into thinking we are happy, or sad, or pain free, or invincible. But the spirit, is beyond the physical, electrical, or even emotional aspect of the mind...but not far away. It is the part of our core being that is connected, or has the potential to connect to the eternal existence that is beyond the confines of space and time.
So back to music. Music ( and sound) is very much a slave of time and space. Rhythm or the pulse or beat of music is certainly a slave of time. One beat follows another. The spacing of the beats is predictable and consistent. When it is not, we might think the musician’s performance was rushed, or it dragged, or was sloppy. Pitch is simply really fast rhythm. It is fast changes in air pressure. Someone who has good pitch can control the number of cycles per second there are in the sound wave leaving their vocal chords or instrument. Someone who sings flat, or sharp simply does not have a good sense of time and so they sing a pitch that is faster or slower than the one intended. If music is a clock, pitch is the second hand, and rhythm is the hour hand, both being defined by time. Good musicians have a very good sense of time. They work well with other musicians, anticipating their actions, and reading cues, almost as if they feel the music, thinking ahead - speeding up time internally, yet keeping in step with the realtime music that we all hear and enjoy.
If you are not near the space where the music is audible, you would be unaware of the music. If you are moving quickly toward the music ( or the music toward you ) the sound of the music is altered, because the speed of the movement combines with the speed of sound and the rate of cycles per second of the sound wave, and we end up hearing a different pitch ( like when the ice cream truck is driving toward you... and you are running towards it, the pitch of the music sounds higher, and then when the ice cream truck stops, the music sounds different. Just imagine if you could become like God, and not be limited by space or time....seeing the beginning and the end at the same time. Music would be different. Pitch, rhythm and tempo would be meaningless. So now perhaps you will agree with me that audible music is very much restricted to the realm of time and space.
Music certainly affects our souls - or our psyche. Neurologist have determined that our brain processes music in at least three different parts of the brain. One part analyzes and processes the rhythm ( or the second hand of the clock...the slow pulses within the music..the part you tap your toe to) another location in the brain receives the information in music that is recognized as pitch ( the fast rhythm, or oscillating cycles..the part that you hum along to ). and yet a third part of the brain responds to the timbre of the sound ( the tone of the guitar, or the texture of the voice, these are human, individual elements that make the sounds unique. Like how your voice sounds similar to, but yet different than your Mom’s. It’s the fingerprint of the source of the music sound.) Some people’s brains don’t process one or more parts of this information normally, and so the music sounds different to them. Perhaps not unlike a person who is color blind sees differently than someone with “normal” vision. All these three parts are then sent to another part of the brain where it puts them back together, and our brain experiences the sensation of music, storing it away in a different part of the brain set aside for “musical” memory. It’s the part of the brain that goes ” That’s our song!” and reminds you of when you danced with your sweetheart for the first time. Alzheimer’s patients have shown significant ability to remember people and events they have forgotten, when you play them an old song from their past. Musical memory finds a back door to the memories they can’t get to via the normal process of cognitive activity due to the onset of dementia. ( see more about music and the mind here http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/show/CTVShows/20090115/musical_brain/20090202/ )
Music can also evoke strong emotions. A minor key sounds sad, while a major key sounds happy. Fast tempo’s can increase our heart rate, make us want to dance. Slow tempo’s can help us relax, unwind, or even sleep peacefully. Music is a catalyst for emotional response. Combine music with visual stimulation such as visual art, dance, theatre, or film and the music enhances the effect of the visual medium, and vice versa.
Same thing with poetry and creative writing. Listen to a certain cd while reading a captivating book, and every time you hear that music again, you will remember the book ( even if the lyrical content, or musical tempo was different than what the book was about - the two in your mind are connected ) Horror films are not nearly as scary when you turn the sound off, because you have just bypassed one of the senses.
Music is basically patterns and designs with sound, or air pressure that we can detect with our ears. Some of our other senses are capable of feeling music and sound as well, but not as acutely as the ears. A musician is someone skilled and often naturally talented with the ability to create intricate patterns for the rest of us to enjoy. Most of us appreciate good music. As with other forms of art, some styles take a while to acquire a taste for. At first it sound foreign, like another language. We hear it and it sounds like nonsense. But with time, we learn to notice the repeating patterns, and the fine details, and then we begin to understand and appreciate the patterns, cadences and designs in the musical style. To one person jazz sounds like cacophony, yet one who has a good sense of rhythm and frequency ( really two ways to say the same thing ) can really appreciate the complicated patterns in the time and pitch. Others are drawn to appreciate the “tone” or timbre of the music. They don’t hear sharp or flat, but they hear the richness of the singer’s deep, sultry voice, or the emotion of the blues guitarist’s tone.
Some people play music by reading musical notation of someone else’s composition, and they repeat what the composer created. They are basically mimicking what another has already said. Other’s hear music inside of them, and they find a way to express it with their voice or instrument in a way that works in our limits of time and space. Perhaps a soundtrack to the 1,300 words a minute processed as our soul is in deep conversation with itself. As our soul connects to our spirit, our soul, will, emotions, and psyche can be moved by the spirit, and from that inspiration music can be expressed, and perhaps someone else can hear that music, and join in with the song, the brain processes the sound and thus their soul is engaged. If that person’s spirit is awake, it can likely recognize the stirring of the soul, and that the original source was from the Spirit, and their spirit echo’s the Spirit song. Psalm 42 talks about “Deep calling out to Deep, and how God’s song is with us in the night. In the new testament, Paul encouraged the Ephesian and Colossian believers to sing spiritual songs to each other, and to sing and make music in their heart.
The music of the heart. I think we all have music in our heart, whether we are musically gifted or not, there is a soundtrack in our soul, that echos the spirit world. Some of us are gifted musically, and can find a way to express that music in the physical world, so other’s can hear it and join in the song. But all of us, musically talented or not, would do well to respond to the spirit echo, the deep that calls out to deep, and seek to come alive and be born again in a spiritual sense, so the song can return, make full circle to the One, the transcendent creator who first sang it and us into existence.
