Where Were the Angels?

I went to a concert last night, the first of the season. A violnist and pianist, world-renowned, thought not among the first rank, were playing mostly 20th century music, including the Ravel Sonata and Enescu Third Sonata. I went to hear the latter, a favorite piece, deeply spiritually moving.

The audience was small, maybe eighty people. As we waited for the program to begin, I noticed an odd atmosphere in the performance hall. It felt empty of something. I couldn't put my finger on it. Strangely, I kept wondering whether the performers were even there. Could they have been held up in traffic?

They did eventually come out and play. The Ravel was first on the program. No shape, no line, no intelligence, no beauty. Only show. technical perfection. Quite the opposite of an Anne-Sophie Mutter live performance I heard some years ago that was enchanting, full of wit and grace.

The last movement is a perpetual motion machine. Impressive, of course. Lots of applause when it was over.

But during the performance I kept checking on the psychic vibe of the audience. They could have been auto crash dummies, all facing the stage with blank expressions. No one was moved.

I dodged out just after the performers turned to exit the stage between numbers. Clearly, there was nothing here for me.

Now, the question. I've been reading about devas, angelic beings who guide the process of bringing anything into form, including music. Presumably, there would be a deva of the concert hall, a deva of the Ravel, perhaps also devas of the piano and violin, all participating to create a live performance of this piece.

But the hall felt cold and empty, despite the people in the audience. The only thing I could figure was that the devas didn't show up. Something about the attitude of the performers scared them off.

When I hear the Borromeo Quartet play in the same hall, there's a very different atmosphere: warm, congenial, engaging--even when they play challenging music like Schoenberg. The audience is uplifted and melts into a unified presence. I guess the music devas show up for such performances. The lines, shape, intelligence of the music always comes through clearly.

I had no preconceptions about the performance I attended last night. I went to hear the Enescu, which I've never heard live. Only later did I realize that I once owned an unsatisfactory recording of Bartok by the same violinist. But the atmosphere in the hall told me there would be nothing in the performance for me about 15 minutes before it began. I don't have another way to explain it than that the music angels stayed away.

What scared them off? And what can performers do to invite them in?

Only the Perfect Remains

I just got back from Northampton, Mass., where I attended a performance by Shantala. I wrote about the group in a review of their album The Love Window last year.

They came through the area last October when I was in Germany. I was sorry to have missed them, since The Love Window is one of my favorite new-age CDs. I was glad to discover that they were coming back.

I could have seen them closer to home. But my friends Steve and Beth, who live in the Northampton area, are also Shantala fans. I gave them a copy of The Love Window while Beth was pregnant and it was the first music their child Olin heard when he was born. I was hoping that we could attend the concert en famille.

Olin is now a year old, just about to walk, and beginning to verbalize intelligibly. Unfortunately, he was too wound up after dinner out (still a new experience). He couldn’t settle down by concert time, so only Steve and I attended.

The performance was held in The Yoga Sanctuary, a beautiful yoga studio in the center of town. As Steve and I entered, we passed a group of blissed out yoga students--Shantala had played for their class. That was a fair omen of what we too could expect.

The touring group consists of Heather and Benjy Wertheimer, who sing and play acoustic guitar and a variety of Indian instruments, from tablas to the esraj, a fretted, bowed sitar-like affair from northeast India. Benjy recently released a CD that features the latter, Voice of the Esraj, which I’ll soon be reviewing here.

Tuesday night’s performance was a Shantala speciality: Kirtan, a form of devotional chanting in Sanskrit, using mantras and ancient Vedic texts going back thousands of years. In Kirtan, the lead singer, usually Heather, who has an effortlessly clear and natural voice, performs a line of the chant and the audience sings it back.

The first few times through, the music is tranquil and meditative. But the tempo gradually speeds up, often climaxing in an ecstatic tabla solo by Benjy. Then comes a moment of silence and the opening meditative music returns.

When the chant is finished, there’s no applause. We all sit in silence, feeling the energetic presence in the room as we absorb the musical and spiritual journey we’ve been on, noting how we’ve changed. This was my first Kirtan experience, and it was profoundly transformational, a transcendent musical experience.

All of the chants originated in the seventh center. Some came from a level of lower 7 (awe of God, the sublime) that I’ve newly discovered. It lies right at the border between the sixth center (visionary) and the seventh (expanded consciousness). I call it soul invocation. The purpose of such music is to connect us to the soul as a gateway to the divine.

Devotional singing often targets middle 7 (love of God). As the tempo increases, we move to praise, spiritual joy, and finally ecstasy, all characteristics of upper 7.

The new experience for me in attending this concert was the participatory aspect. I suppose that someone looking in from outside could see Kirtan as something like singing spirituals around a campfire, in Sanskrit instead of English. But I was moved in a way that never occurred in summer camp or singing hymns in church.

I can’t remember a time when I’ve sung for two hours straight. I used to be a boy soprano. But my voice once cracked during a solo in front of a large church congregation. I was so embarrassed that I avoided singing after that. By the time I got to college, my voice was so disconnected from the rest of my musical abilities that I never could read the notes of a melody line I was supposed to sing, or sing it on pitch.

On Tuesday night, I found that I could sing effortlessly, and not just on pitch. I was also able to match some of the elaborate ornamentation of Heather’s chanting. I was amazed at how clear and flexible my voice got, and how free of self-consciousness I was. This was a healing in itself.

I also had a number of unusual inner experiences during the evening. The first came at the opening, when we were asked to sing Om three times to the accompaniment of an Indian instrument I don’t know the name of. It was something like a hurdy-gurdy, producing a wonderfully buzzing drone in which the buzzes went through long swells of increasing and diminishing intensity. Swells like this are capable of producing an expanded state of consciousness almost instantly, and maintaining it indefinitely.

As we added our voices to the drone, I felt completely one with that sound for the duration of a breath. Then there was a long slow breath in preparation for the next Om.

I felt as if I was dissolved into a universe of sound, what the Hindus call Nada Brahma (“Sound is Lord”). When I sang, I was completely one with this universe, and the sound was inside of me. When I paused for the breath, the sound was all around me, embracing me.

After three rounds of feeling inside, and embraced by, the universe, and then having the universe inside me as I chanted, I could well understand why the Hindus say that Om is the sound of the Absolute: how All That Is has its origin in this sound.

And that was only the beginning. Not long after the call and response chanting began, I felt a deep memory arising within me. I’d done this before, in another life. It was more than a memory, though. The whole self that I was then wanted to come in and take over, as if to say, “Here, let me show you how to do this.”

It was strange sensation. Tears of recognition came to my eyes. At the same time, my throat began to close up, as I felt pangs of fear over setting my ego aside and letting the past life come through. After a brief struggle, I found a balance in which I could allow myself to be guided by the past life into the heart of Kirtan without losing my identity in the process.

There was another notable moment, during a later chant, in which I began to feel something like liquid bliss pouring into my head at the crown chakra. This chant alternated lines in Sanskrit with others in English, which translated them. As long as we were singing in Sanskrit, the bliss poured in. The moment we switched to English, it stopped. All the power seemed to drain out of the words.

I’ve often heard it said that Sanskrit is a magical language in which the sounds not only stand for the realities they express, but also literally bring them into being. Now I understood what this idea means, from inside. It’s as if English merely points and tells, whereas Sanskrit embodies the fundamental essence of things.

The performance ended with the chant that’s also the final cut on The Love Window, about perfection. I love the zen-koan-like line that translates: “Take the Perfect away from the Perfect, and only the Perfect remains.” That's a great definition for a transcendent musical experience, as this concert was. The music was perfect. I was perfect. When the music was over, the perfection remained.

Afterwards, I had a chance to introduce myself to Benjy and Heather--wonderful, warm, open-hearted people. They knew of my review of the The Love Window and are preparing to release several more CDs of devotional chanting in the next year or so. I can hardly wait to get them, and will certainly review them here.

Here’s a link to Shantala’s touring schedule. I drove a hundred miles to see them. It was well worth it. Look them up if they come within range of your hometown.

Deep Reflection

This review of Chuck Wild's Liquid Mind VII: Reflection presupposes that you’ve read the earlier reviews in this series. If you want to know more about the eighth, or cosmic-consciousness, center, then you might want to check out the review of Liquid Mind III. If you want to know more about the seventh, or expanded-consciousness, center, then check out the review for Liquid Mind IV.

1. “Gently Down” (14:14): The beginning of this track is poised right at the transition point between the seventh and eighth center. It alternates between the world weariness of the crisis point between these centers and the compassion of lower 8. The result is a meditation on human suffering that stretches the heart and opens it wider. In this respect, it reminds me of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106), which has a similar centering, and is also a moving meditation on human suffering (even though it’s not always played this way). By the end, the music has arrived at the acceptance of middle 8 grace.

2. “Into the Silence of My Being” (12:33): This track hovers at the boundary between lower 8 compassion and middle 8 grace. Most eighth center music carries a strong sense of entering human consciousness (that of the composer as well as the listener) from beyond the human sphere. This piece, however, seems more like the tentative reaching of a human being--modestly, humbly--into the upper reaches of meditative development. It’s very relaxing, but its surprising harmonic progressions are like a series of little spiritual openings. It ends firmly in the grace of middle 8.

3. “In the Stillness” (6:30): This little lullaby mostly targets the first (arousal) and second centers (sensual quality of sound), with occasional comforting whiffs of the eighth center. The result is a very relaxing trance state, ideal as background music for a massage. The message seems to be: “Let go. Relax. You’re completely safe. Sleep.”

4. “Finding My Way” (9:20): The centering for this track is similar to that of the first, except that it spends a little more time expressing world-weariness, the seventh center crisis point side, than the compassion of lower 8. The movement of consciousness in the first track is down into the crisis point and back up to lower 8. In the present track, it’s up from the crisis point into lower 8 and back. This is a perfect illustration in sound of the experience many of us have of tentative spiritual searching, doubts leading to discoveries, more doubts, more discoveries, and finally a sense of peace (middle 8 grace) at the very end.

5. “Reflection” (8:18): This track is similar to “In the Stillness.” Once again the first and second centers are strong, creating the sense of a relaxing trance, with whiffs of middle 8 grace. The message is: sleep/quiet/peace. At about the six-minute mark the eighth center becomes more present (middle 8 again). There seems to be a push to get into the union of upper 8, creating a sense of uplift. But the music doesn’t quite achieve this goal.

“My Orchid Spirit” (7:40): This is another deeply relaxing piece, in which the same kind of trance that occurs in tracks 3 and 5 is the aim. The emphasis is on the sensual beauty of sound, the lower second center, which I call relaxation. Attenuating the other centers (3, intensity; 4, expression; 5, well-being; and 6, analysis) is one way of truly quieting the mind. There are whiffs of hymn-like middle 7 devotion or nobility.

1 plus 2 plus 7 is one of the patterns for what I call transcendental longing. Yet the piece seems more human, secular, than spiritual in the sense of reaching for the divine. Instead, it seems to express a longing for a closer relationship with nature, or with natural beauty, as expressed in an orchid.

From Jury Duty to Union with the Divine

Shortly after the beginning of the year, I was called to serve on a jury. The trail lasted six days. It was an interesting process: a county court was on trial for age discrimination in the workplace. But it put me behind on my reviews. What a relief it was, after all the contentiousness of deliberating for about seven hours on the verdict, to turn once again to the music of Chuck Wild so that I could review Liquid Mind IV: Unity.

Like Liquid Mind III: Balance, which I reviewed in my previous post, this is an excellent CD to use as a meditation aid in the Yoga of Listening outlined in my book Music and the Soul. My purpose in writing these reviews is to provide a tutorial in how to use various currently available CDs to experience higher states of consciousness, perhaps achieving what I call a transcendent musical experience (TME).

Achieving TMEs--peak or mystical experiences that result from composing, performing, or listening to music--are the main objective of the Yoga of Listening. Chuck Wild’s Liquid Mind series is one of the best introductions I know of to the possibility of experiencing higher states of consciousness through listening to music.

One key to achieving TMEs is exposure to what I call eighth center, or cosmic consciousness music--a relative rarity. Like Liquid Mind III: Balance, Liquid Mind IV: Unity contains quite a bit of eighth center music. (For detailed information on the eighth center, please see my review of Liquid Mind III.)

More so than the previous CD in the series, Liquid Mind IV draws on the seventh, or expanded consciousness center as well. The seventh center may express itself in two forms. The sacred form reaches up to the eighth center, reaching for oneness with the divine; the secular form looks lovingly back toward the physical world.

The levels of the seventh center are:
Lower 7 (sacred: fear of God, spiritual mystery; secular: awe or the sublime)
Middle 7 (sacred: love of God; secular: nobility)
Upper 7 (sacred: praise of God; secular: ecstasy)
Crisis point (spiritual disillusionment or loss of faith)

The crisis point is where people end up when they’re not able to raise their energy enough to cross over from the seventh center to the eighth. (There’s no crisis point music on Liquid Mind IV, but you may be able to hear it in “Laguna Indigo” from Liquid Mind III.)

Here’s a center-by-center analysis of Liquid Mind IV:

“Unity” (9:48): This track begins with upper 8 (union with the divine) and cycles through the other levels of the eighth center in long, slow, leisurely waves. The different levels can be identified by the states of consciousness they engender.

When the music is quiet and reflective, the resulting state of consciousness is spiritual peace, an expression of upper 8. When the music has more forward motion, the resulting state of consciousness is grace, a dynamic lifting or push toward the moment of arrival in union, or a sense of gently falling toward or into balance. When the music seems wistful or sad, the resulting state of consciousness is all-embracing compassion (lower 8).

This track seems to portray the Divine Mind timelessly ruminating on the spiritual states and needs of humanity.

“From the Silence” (8:30): This track is similar in many ways to the previous one. It begins in upper 8 and ends in middle 8. My image for it is the Divine Mind meditating in long, slow breathings in and out.

Here, the sad moments once again touch the compassion of lower 8. The noble moments touch the grace of middle 8. And the serene moments touch the union of upper 8.

“Gold in the Shadows” (8:37): This track is like a spiritual journey that begins with the call of the Source to return to it, a mysterious sound of bells that targets lower 7 (spiritual mystery, awe).

One way to tell the difference between the seventh and eighth centers is by the degree of human longing. The seventh center is suffused with transcendental longing for union with the divine. In the eighth center, this longing is satisfied.

Thus, the seventh center always conveys a sense of reaching toward something higher. In the eighth center, there’s a sense of arrival, and often a feeling of being filled with the energy of cosmic consciousness, descending from above.

In “Gold in the Shadows,” there are moments of devotion that derive from middle 7 and a constant sense of travel or upward movement. This is uplifting music, in the sense that it lifts you up toward the eighth center. The best way to listen to it is to allow yourself to surrender to its flow and be drawn along. By the end, it has arrived at middle 8 (grace), a sense of resolution after all the work of rising up to meet the divine.

The human element (longing) is much more present in this track than the earlier ones, which seem to lie beyond our daily pains and sufferings. In the first two tracks, the sad moments are more objective, as if experienced on behalf of humanity. But in this track, they’re more subjective or personal. This is another way of telling the difference between the seventh and eighth centers.

“Society of Dreams” (15:24): In addition to targeting certain centers in a piece of music, the composer may write the music from a higher center, which suffuses it, giving it a richer and more subtle spiritual savor. The center targeted by this track is the point where middle 7 shades into upper 7. The music takes the form of a hymn (devotion, middle 7) of praise (upper 7). But it’s composed from the center of compassion (lower 8), which suffuses it with a whiff of cosmic consciousness.

The note of human love is sounded--the kind of love in which a beloved is perceived as an object of devotion, an incarnation of the divine.

Once again there’s a strong sense of upward motion, a feeling that the music is taking you somewhere. It reaches up to touch lower and middle 8 at several points, then returns to the starting point of devotion and praise. The end result of these motions is a sense of spiritual joy at being in the world, a balance of the sacred and secular aspects of the seventh center.

The music finally arrives in the eighth center and circulates between lower 8 compassion and middle 8 grace. Toward the end, it returns to the music of the beginning, the hymn of praise and longing (middle to upper 7).

“Wrap Me in Your Love” (7:49): The chakra centering of this piece is the most complex on the album. It begins with a duet in which the first (arousal/rhythm), second (desire/sensual quality of sound), and sixth (analysis/intellectual play) centers are present. This pattern often appears in music intended to relax the mind, creating the musical equivalent of a massage.

Gradually, the composer adds in the fourth (melody/expression) and seventh (expanded consciousness) centers, bringing in the qualities of love (fourth center) and spiritual devotion (middle 7). The resulting texture is once again hymn-like, and includes a strong upward push. The addition of spiritual depth to the earlier mind-quieting music is quite noticeable.

Here, the hymn seems to be offered up to the Beloved, which could be another person, God, or oneself (composer or listener).

“Take Me Tenderly” (6:54): This is yet another hymn to the Beloved, solidly in middle 7 (devotion). It’s very like a spiritual, a bit more solemn and God-centered than the previous tracks.

There’s no upward motion toward the eighth center. But the piece has been composed from lower 8, and exudes a deep sense of compassion, conveying the message that we, the listeners, are the Beloveds of God, or of some divine presence like an ever-watchful, deeply caring Bodhisattva.

If I were to rearrange the tracks on Unity to reflect a constant upward motion from the lowest to the highest centers, this would be the order: “Wrap Me in Your Love,” “Gold in the Shadows,” “Take Me Tenderly,” “Society of Dreams,” “From the Silence,” and “Unity.” Such an arrangement can be a useful way of gently introducing yourself to the higher centers, rising (or being lifted up) from level to level so that you’re fully prepared to receive the eighth center’s infusion of cosmic consciousness.

I sometimes find that I need multiple listenings to eighth center music in order to let it all the way in. I suspect that most of us are not used to a direct experience of being loved by God, or some superior spiritual or divine presence. I’m deeply grateful to Chuck Wild for bringing me such an experience--and I hope you will be too.

In my musical meditations, I like to use this CD in the same way that I do Liquid Mind III. I play either the first three tracks, for a session of about 28 minutes, or tracks 4 through 6 for a session of just about 30 minutes.

Finding Balance in the New Year

Happy New Year, everyone!

I have a suggestion for finding balance in the New Year: Listening to Chuck Wild's Liquid Mind CD series, starting with Liquid Mind III: Balance. (See the posting entitled Liquid Mind for an introduction to this series of reviews.)

I've so much enjoyed meditating to this CD that it hasn't been easy to pin down the dominant centers (chakras) targeted by his music. Time and again, after lying down on the couch in my living room with headphones on to listen to Balance, the first of his CDs that I encountered, I would drift so far beyond the thinking mind that any sort of analysis seemed impossible.

Yesterday, I finally found the perfect way to keep the thinking mind awake enough to accomplish this analysis. I can well understand why Wild's website contains a caution against using his music while operating vehicles or heavy equipment. It's so relaxing. My solution was to put on Balance while I was working in the kitchen: put a few dishes away, make a note; wash a few dishes, make another note; slice some vegetables, stir the sauce--you get the picture.

This has to have been one of the most ecstatic episodes of kitchen duty I can remember. I can only hope some of the love this music sent coursing through me got into the veggie dish I made for the potluck New Year's Eve dinner I went to.

Eighth center (cosmic consciousness) music is relatively hard to come by. In my book, Music and the Soul, I did the best I could to determine the characteristics of this music on the basis of listening to a few examples, often under ten minutes in length. The amazing thing about listening to Balance is that it accesses different aspects of the eighth center continuously for a whole hour, giving me an opportunity to discover various shadings of cosmic consciousness, as expressed through music, that I wasn't aware of previously.

Here's the makeup of the cosmic consciousness center:

Crisis point (transition from the seventh center--expanded consciousness--to the eighth): Spiritual disillusionment.
Lower 8: Bodhisattva-like compassion
Middle 8: Grace
Upper 8: Union with the divine
Crisis point: Translation (out of the physical into the nonphysical, beyond the reach of sound)

Each of these levels represents a higher or fuller expression of cosmic consciousness.

Here's the breakdown of the five tracks on Liquid Mind III: Balance:

1) "Lullaby for Grownups" (5:20). This track lies at the point where lower eight compassion shades into middle 8 grace. It begins with grace, sending the message: "Rest, all is forgiven." After a couple of minutes, the music slides over the boundary to lower 8 (compassion). You can tell the difference because the music begins to ache a little, as if adding a sense of longing for grace or forgiveness into the mix.

2) "Laguna Indigo" (18:27). When I wrote Music and the Soul, I suspected that the eighth center, like the seventh, came in two varieties, sacred and secular. For example, the Hosanna movement of Mozart's Requiem is an instance of sacred upper 7, ecstatic praise of God; the "Ode to Joy" at the end of Beethoven's Ninth is an instance of secular upper 7, also ecstatic, but a celebration of the human (brotherhood) and the divine (without reference to religion). "Laguna Indigo" is an example of secular eighth center music. It too lies at the boundary between lower and middle 8, but more on the compassion side. In terms of the centers, this is also the most complex piece on the CD.

The sense is that of being beyond the world and looking back, full of love for the world, but also world-weariness, and developing a feeling of compassion for those caught up in the world's suffering. The progress of the music is a slow cycling between levels of the eighth center. It begins in middle 8, descends through lower 8, hits the crisis point (spiritual disillusionment can express itself as world-weariness, as for example in much of Wagner's Parsifal), then comes back up to lower 8 compassion.

3. "Timeless and Tender" (11:50). I love the title of this cut. It perfectly expresses two characteristics of the eighth center, the sense of timeless, and that of being held in the embrace of the divine. Here we are once again at the boundary between lower and middle eight, but more on the grace side this time. The music is very much like that of the Prelude of Wagner's Lohengrin, which was the first example of eighth center music that I encountered while writing Music and the Soul. The message of "Timeless and Tender" is, simply, "Peace." This is one of my personal favorites.

4. "Dream Messenger (13:45). Another personal favorite, this track plays at the boundary between middle and upper 8. It's a call to union with the divine. The music keeps lifting me higher and higher, especially toward the end. By then we've arrived at upper 8 union, and the music simply fades out and leaves us there.

5. "Balance" (6:41). This track was the only one I had a problem with. At first it seemed less fully worked out than the others, a mere sketch, just a progression of pretty chords. I found myself wanting to turn away from it, avoid it, turn off the CD, or leave it off the playlist when I was meditating.

But last night I had a completely different experience with this music. I realized that the inadequacy was in me. This music begins in upper 8 and keeps on climbing toward the crisis point of translation. It has a powerful pull, and I simply didn't want to go with it. In retrospect, it reminds me of a favorite piece by the Finnish classical composer Einojuhani Rautaavara, Apotheosis, which I wrote about in my book. Both pieces seem to express "the painfulness of a spiritual opening" that "goes beyond one's capacity to embrace or endure it." Apparently, last night, I was more ready to go along with such an opening.

If the chocolate sauce I was making at the time carries some of that energy, the friends I'll serve it to today are certain to have a transcendent dessert experience.

My favorite way to meditate with this CD is to listen to either tracks 1 and 2, for a nearly 25 minute session, or tracks 3 and 4, for a session of similar length. I'll save "Balance" for special occasions, when I want to open myself up more and more to the sense of union with the divine. In that case, I would probably precede it with track 4, which opens the way to upper 8, as a warm up to cosmic consciousness. This would result in a 20 minute session.

Liquid Mind

Last summer while I was vacationing in Colorado, I walked into a bookstore in Glenwood Springs. I was hoping to find a bird book to identify a brightly colored bird I'd seen the day before. As I flipped through the pages of a couple of field guides (western tanager!), I found myself responding in an unusual way to the music playing on the store's CD player.

My first impression was that it was typical ambient new age music, quiet, relaxing, unobstrusive. Yet I couldn't ignore it. My attention kept being drawn back to this music. It bore a resemblance to the Prelude to Wagner's opera Lohengrin.

In Music and the Soul, I'd classified this Prelude as a rare instance of cosmic consciousness music, corresponding to grace (what I call middle eight, meaning that this is the eighth center's full and purest expression, uninfluenced by the characteristics of the centers above and below it).

I ended up staying in the bookstore much longer than I'd planned. The music was strangely compelling.

One aspect of eighth center music is that it seems to radiate timeless, irresistible waves of compassion, grace, or invitation to become one with the divine. It's also difficult to compose. Most examples that I'm aware of are unable to sustain this level of transcendence for longer than ten minutes. But I'd been listening for twenty.

I finally asked the bookstore owner what we were listening to. She produced the CD case for Liquid Mind III: Balance, by Chuck Wild.

I made note of the name. When I got home I did a search on the web and found the Liquid Mind website, ordered the CD and have been listening to it ever since.

Chuck Wild is a film composer in Los Angeles who wanted to write slow music to get himself, his friends, and family to slow down. He says that he considers it a compliment when people say that they fall asleep listening to his Liquid Mind Music.

There are seven CDs in the series to date. Each lasts about an hour. I currently own III (Balance), IV (Unity), and VII (Reflection).

I use these CDs frequently in my musical meditation practice. Typically, I'll lie down on the couch in my living room for 20-30 minutes with headphones and a warm blanket (necessary for a good part of the year here in New England).

I've experienced a wide range of effects during these sessions. First, I would find myself relaxing as if in layers. Each day of meditation to Liquid Mind III allowed me to go a level deeper in muscular relaxation until I felt that I'd gotten down to the bone level. Sometimes I've had a full body shakedown, a ripple of muscular release running from head to toe, seeming to realign muscles, tendons, bones in a much more organic, natural, and lasting way than I've achieved in some bodywork sessions.

I've also had the feeling at times of being held in the warm, compassionate, all-understanding embrace of a divine being. Once or twice I've had the sense of golden light pouring into my head through my crown (seventh) chakra.

People I've introduced Liquid Mind to have gotten spiritual highs from it--one way in which transcendent musical experiences, or TMEs, may express themselves. Others have found it so relaxing that they play it every night to help them fall asleep.

Being a composer myself, I seem to be hardwired to listen to music even if it's long past my bedtime. So I have yet to fall asleep to a Liquid Mind CD. As a composer, I find listening to Chuck Wild's music completely satisfying. At its best, it's like Wagner without the ego or Bruckner without the Catholicism--ravishingly beautiful, deeply felt, intelligently constructed, and spiritually transforming. It's a perfect adjunct for the yoga of listening that I developed in Music and the Soul.

In my next three posts, I'll list the centers touched by the three Liquid Mind CDs that I presently own. In the next several months, I hope to do the same for the other four CDs in the series.

The Rautavaara Connection

In the second to last chapter of Music and the Soul, I wrote a lengthy essay on the music of the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928), whom I consider to be an "evolving mystic." Rautavaara's music, considered as a whole, records his spiritual evolution beyond the level of thinking mind that most composers work from.

I believe that the higher levels of creative achievement are related to higher levels of consciousness experienced by longtime meditators. Beyond the thinking mind comes higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, and overmind. (These terms come from the Integral Yoga developed by the early twentieth-century spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo.)

An evolving mystic is one who is progressing through these states with each stylistic period. Bach represents the highest level of development, as an overmind composer. At this level, the cosmic or God consciousness works directly through the composer with no interference from the ego. On the other extreme, thinking mind composers are bound by the ego.

The determining factor is where one's music originates from. The easier it is for a composer to access the seventh (expanded consciousness) and eighth (cosmic consciousness) centers in his or her music, the higher the level of spiritual evolution, and the greater the likelihood of producing a transcendent musical experience in a listener.

Rautavaara seems to me to have achieved the level of illumined mind, a rare distinction. Illumined mind composers write music from middle or upper 7.

Middle 7 is the full expression of the crown chakra or seventh center, located a the crown of the head. It deals with the nobility of humanity and the love of God. Upper 7 is a more developed version of this chakra that starts to express characteristics of the next higher center, cosmic consciousness, located just above the head. Upper 7 deals with mystical or divine ecstasy and the praise of God.

When Music and the Soul was published, I sent Rautavaara a copy and in return he thanked me by sending me a copy of the newly released CD of his Clarinet Concerto, as played by Richard Stoltzman. Being a clarinetist myself, this work was of special interest to me. Although I've listened to it several times, I'm still trying to track how Rautavaara uses the centers in this piece. So I can't provide an outline yet.

Suffice it to say that for me the concerto has a spiritual impact similar to that of Mahler's Ninth Symphony (an all-time favorite piece of mine), but in 26 minutes instead of Mahler's 81. It's clearly a late period work full of a lifetime of human wisdom, a deep retrospective look at the beauties and difficulties of life experienced in our world.

During an Internet search, I found an interesting article about Rautavaara in the on-line version of the Julliard Journal, a publication for students and alumini of the Julliard School of Music in New York. The Julliard School commissioned Rautavaara to compose a piece in honor of the school's centennial. Much to my surprise, the article about this comission ended with quotations from Music and the Soul.

(The above explanation of what I mean by evolving mystics and the seventh and eighth centers should make the references in the article a bit clearer.)