Music and the Soul

Where Were the Angels?

2007-09-29T06:48:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-19T19:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-01T10:06:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

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.)

Good Review, Weird Location

2005-12-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Authors are always happy to get a good review. I found this one, on www.dentalplans.com, while doing a web search on my name. After reading it, I wondered just how many people who come to this site looking for dental plans are also in the market for books on the yoga of listening.

Maybe "music of the soul" is a hot topic for dentists who want to make their patients more welcome and comfortable during a root canal. There is a root chakra in yoga, and music that activates it--but, as far as I know, it has nothing to do with teeth.

All-Time Favorite Music Quote

2005-12-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

Since my last post, I was in Germany for three weeks, from the end of September to the middle of October. I was back in Boston for a month, then out of town for another ten days at the end of November. All this travel has made it difficult to update this blog. But I have a ton of ideas for CD reviews and journal entries, so stay tuned.

Here's my all-time favorite music quote, from the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931):

"A melodic third ought to be regarded as a gift from God, a fourth as an adventure, and a fifth as the highest bliss."

Sometimes when I'm playing my clarinet I think about this quote and try to play the connections between the intervals in the melody with utmost consciousness, as if they were the tools of an alchemist or magician. It's amazing how much more alive the melody instantly becomes--not just more expressive, but somehow more dimensional.

This is one of the easiest ways to breathe, bow, pluck, or press the soul into whatever music you're making.

Meditation for Musicians

2005-09-06T12:44:00.000-05:00

A couple of summers ago, while doing research for Music and the Soul, I decided to read the ancient Hindu scriptures called the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. I carefully sorted through the available translations at a local bookstore until I finally settled on those by Sri Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999).

Easwaran was a professor of English literature in his native India and came to this country in the early 1960s, where he eventually founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, in California. I enjoyed his translations of the Upanishads and the Gita because they read like great poetry and contained a great deal of spiritual wisdom, which Easwaran rendered more practical than esoteric in his excellent introductions.

It was only natural that I would eventually become curious about the form of meditation he had orginated and taught at the Blue Mountain Center, named for a mountain range in Kerala state, where Easwaran grew up. I bought his book Meditation: A Simple 8-point Program for Translating Spiritual Ideals into Daily Life. Since then I have not only recommended the book to numerous clients and friends, but have also read just about everything by Easwaran that I've been able to get my hands on.

I did a lot of deep reading in the Indian classics and yoga philosophy while working on Music and the Soul, which allowed me to recognize how well grounded Easwaran's meditation program is in the basic teachings of Hinduism, his native religion, and Buddhism. But Easwaran has also read widely in world mysticism. He constantly draws examples and quotations from the mystical literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, demonstrating the nondenominational basis of our yearning for oneness with the divine and how meditation can not only assuage, but also fulfill that yearning.

Best of all, from my perspective, was that Easwaran had all the loving charisma of a true spiritual teacher without any of the cultish tendencies so common among Eastern gurus and their followers, and so alarming and confusing to us in the West. His teaching was a form of personal empowerment through meditation, embracing all faiths, and motivated by a selfless desire to achieve peace in the world through finding peace in the self.

Easwaran's eight-point program is simply summarized:

1) Meditation on an inspirational passage from the treasury of world mysticism.

2) Inward chanting of a mantram, a sacred phrase or name of God from any of the world's religions.

3) Slowing down the mind, which begins with taking one's time in word and deed.

4) Developing one-pointed attention through doing one thing at a time, with full presence and focus.

5) Training the senses through recognizing and subverting the control that our likes and dislikes tend to exert over our freedom of choice.

6) Putting others first, which involves sharing time, energy, and attention with those we love and not withdrawing from opportunities for loving interaction with those we find difficult or trying.

7) Spiritual companionship, which means hanging out with other spiritual seekers for support.

8) Reading the mystics, whose perennial philsophy ("We are all one") may be one of the best cures for the ills we see portrayed every day on the news.

For a somewhat more expanded explanation of these points, check out Easwaran's website.

My interest in writing Music and the Soul was to create a yoga of listening, a spiritual practice based on the composition, performance, and hearing of music. I've found that Easwaran's eight-point program was easily adapted to my needs as a spiritual musician, as follows:

1. Instead of meditating on a literary text, I've used the music that I was composing, practicing, or listening to as my focal point for meditation. In the yoga of listening, the best music for such a purpose is that which touches the seventh (expanded consciousness) or eighth (cosmic consciousness) chakras. (See my review of The Love Window, a CD of Sanskrit chanting in contemporary settings, for a list of the expanded states of consciousness targeted by each cut and a description of how I use this CD in meditation.)

As a pianist, I always include something by Bach in my practice sessions, usually from The Well-Tempered Clavier, for much the same purpose. Each repetition of a phrase or piece is like repeating an inspirational passage from the literature of the mystics in Easwaran's program.

When composing, I try to place myself in a state of expanded or cosmic consciousness, often through listening to pieces that produce such states. I then try to replicate these states by recalling how they feel as I approach the piano or computer keyboard to begin composing. The eighth center's cosmic consciousness (compassion, grace, union) is harder for me to reproduce in this way than the seventh center's expanded consciousness (awe, love, or praise of the divine), just as the higher states of meditation are often difficult to achieve without continual practice. The goal is clear, however, and I'm always working to achieve it.

2. Of the eight points in Easwaran's program, the mantram may be the most difficult to translate into the practice of music. I suppose that if I were attempting to memorize a piece of music for performance, I could practice running it through in my mind in great detail, and achieve something like the clarity, focus, and relaxation that comes from inwardly chanting a verbal mantram. But I've also achieved enormous benefit from the verbal mantram.

I use the "Hare Krishna" mantram, Easwaran's own, which he learned from his maternal grandmother, his spiritual teacher. I repeat it inwardly, rhythmically, without pitch. But there are sung versions as well--for example, the second track of The Love Window. Sometimes, much to my amusement, this mantram fits itself in my mind to the bass line of the Pachelbel Canon, a piece which I used to find more annoying than spiritual. I never dreamed it could become an aid to meditation.

3. Slowing down can be applied in every area of life, to make more time and mental and emotional space for composing, practicing, or listening. In practicing, I've benefited greatly from slowing down passages that are technically difficult or a challenge to hear properly. Doing so gets them under the fingers and in the ears, making them easier to reproduce in concert.

As a composer, I've found that slowing down means focusing on only as much of a piece or passage as I can effectively take to the next stage in a period of 60-90 minutes. Beyond that point, I lose my focus. Not only does it take longer to get less music, the rest of my day can be thrown off by spending too much time at the piano or computer keyboard. If I allow myself to become obsessed with finishing something, rather than simply taking it to the next stage, hours will go by, I still won't be finished, and I'll end up either in a hurry or too exhausted to do anything else.

Slowing down as a listener can best be achieved by listening to slow music, such as the symphonies of Bruckner, even if it seems boring or likely to put one to sleep. Slowing down the mind to be receptive to such music can free us from our addiction to hurry and speed. It's amazing how the moments open up and yield far more richness and depth when the mind slows down enough to be fully present with whatever is going on.

4. As a composer, I've found that one-pointed attention means putting myself into a trance state in which I'm able to hear what comes next and the piece seems to compose itself. The quickest way for me to enter this state is to ask myself the question, "What would happen if," as I consider the passage I'm working on, and then listening inwardly for possible ways to proceed.

As a performer, I've found that one-pointed attention means focusing on the passage and piece I'm practicing or performing, while eliminating all other thoughts, including concerns over how my playing may be affecting my audience.

As a listener, I've found that one-pointed attention means constantly bringing my awareness back to the piece or song that I'm listening to, a practice that parallels Easwarn's method of meditating on a sacred text.

5. My nonphysical guide, or spiritual teacher, Charles, often speaks of what he calls "flexibility of consciousness," by which he means creativity, adaptability, and susceptibility to altered and expanded states of consciousness. Easwaran's system of meditation provides an important key to the development of flexibility of consciousness. For him, training the senses means learning how to loosen up the ego's rigid adherence to likes and dislikes.

In music, this rigidity often shows up in our preference or taste for certain kinds of music over others. Since writing Music and the Soul, I've developed an appreciation for many kinds of music that I used to turn up my nose at. The same states of consciousness, from drama to celebration to spiritual ecstasy, turn up in music the world over. If I were to reword the quotation from Sa'adi at the bottom of this page, I would say: "Every piece of music becomes a page of sacred scripture once the soul has learned how to hear."

6. As musicians, putting others first means reminding ourselves that composing or performing is not merely a means of self-assertion or expression. Such activities can also be means of serving others.

My goal as a composer and performer is to create transcendent musical experiences (TMEs)--peak or mystical experiences that move a listener emotionally or spiritually. My belief is that such TMEs open people up to the presence of the soul within them, awaken the soul's yearning for oneness with the divine, and propel them along the path of spiritual growth that may allow them to achieve that sense of oneness. Such service requires a rigorous monitoring of the ego's desire to draw attention to itself, especially in displays of compositional or technical virtuosity.

7. One of the most satisfying forms of spiritual companionship for me is playing chamber music with others. I've had wonderful experiences of playing the Brahms Sonatas for clarinet and piano, Op. 120, and nearly merging consciousnesses with my accompanist. I think professional musicians leave far too little time in their schedules for playing for pleasure or spiritual communion.

Listening to spiritual music with others can also be a source of spiritual companionship. One of Boston's churches is famous for its five-year weekly cycle of Bach cantatas with soloists, chorus, and orchestra, every Sunday. The coffee hour after the service is an excellent opportunity for spiritual and musical fellowship.

Perhaps you remember getting together with friends in high school or college to share your favorite music--another potential form of spiritual companionship. Whenever I visit my friends in Germany, we spend many an evening, just before going to bed, coming together over a glass of wine to listen and discuss our reactions to the pieces of spiritually moving music we've discovered since our last visit.

8. For musicians, reading the mystics translates into listening to music that targets the seventh and eighth chakras, such as Bach, the late works of Beethoven, sacred music, gospel, certain songs by Yes and Led Zeppelin (e. g., "Stairway to Heaven," which expresses the seventh center state of transcendetal longing), jazz (such as Coltane's A Love Supreme), New Age music (such as The Love Window and other contemporary settings of Sanskrit chants, or that by Enya). Music and the Soul contains many suggestions for exploring the great mystics of Western music through listening.

If you're a spiritual musician interested in developing a meditation practice, you might want to consider reading Easwaran's book on meditation, checking out the website of the Blue Mountain Center, attending one of the center's residential programs or outreach workshops, and perhaps tailoring your program to your needs as a composer, listener, or performer by using the suggestions listed here or in Music and the Soul.

The Love Window

2005-09-02T07:49:00.000-05:00

Back in February, I visited a friend in Norfolk, Virginia. He took me to a yoga class where I heard a CD of Sanskrit chanting that continued to ring in my ears for weeks afterward.

The chant was sung by a male voice. I thought that I remembered the words ("Jaya, jaya, jaya rambo"), but searching on the Internet turned up nothing. Maybe I'd misremembered the words?

I continued my quest to locate this chant on a visit to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in western Massachusetts, where I listened to a number of CDs in the bookstore. My working hypothesis was that the artist was Krishna Das or Jai Uttal, two contemporary kirtan (Hindu devotional) singers; and that the chant I was looking for was "Rama Bolo," which I'd misheard as "Rambo." But the tunes and voice qualities were not what I remembered.

Finally, in June, I tried a search at website for Tower Records for every conceivable spelling of jaya (Sanskrit for something like hurray!, but more appropriate for temples than parades) . That turned up the chant and the album: "Jaya Shambho" from The Love Window: Sacred Chants of Devotion, by the husband and wife team Benjy and Heather Wertheimer, who call their joint effort Shantala. I ordered the CD and haven't stopped listening to it since it arrived a couple of months ago.

This is one of those albums that is so uplifting, you have to play it for everyone you know. When I shared the first cut, a chant to the Great Mother for protection, with friends of mine who are expecting their first child, they said they had to have it as an accompaniment to the natural home birth they were planning. Wouldn't it be wonderful to welcome a child into the world with so much beauty, they said. The chant ends with the happy laughter of a baby.

Listening to Heather's voice on this same cut, a musician friend of mine said that it was as close to effortlessly natural singing as he had ever heard. I agree.

According to the liner notes, "Sacred chanting is a love window into the heart." The album makes use of solo and call-and-response chanting, with a mixed chorus of men and women, as well as a wide range of instruments, including guitar, bamboo flute, percussion, didgeridoo, and my personal favorite, a traditional Indian string instrument that I'd never heard before, the esraj, a bowed sitar, played by Benjy with heart-melting soulfulness.

Perhaps because of the huge upsurge of interest in yoga over the last ten or fifteen years, albums of sacred Sanskrit chants in contemporary settings, like The Love Window, have proliferated. Besides albums by the male artists mentioned above, I've enjoyed similar ones by female vocalists such as Deva Premal (doesn't that mean Love Goddess in Sanskrit?) and Wah!.

The danger of such settings is that they can easily be overproduced (too much reverb, overdubbing, and reliance on fanciful synthesizer sounds), resulting in a cluttered texture that tends to compromise the higher states of consciousness usually targeted by kirtan chanting. The Love Window is refreshing in its use of acoustic instruments and avoidance of electronic special effects.

My favorite way of listening to The Love Window is to take it with me on walks in nature. I load it into my portable CD player, put on my headphones, press the On button, and instantly go into a state of expanded consciousness. Everything about the natural world looks more vivid as I listen and walk. I feel that the 70 minutes of music is showering blessings on me inwardly as it draws me into a closer, devotional relationship with the natural world and the divine. Singing along with Heather and Benjy and their chorus greatly enhances the higher states of consciousness encoded in both the chants and the music.

In the yoga of listening described in my book Music and the Soul, this music touches the seventh chakra, which I call the expanded consciousness center. (In this system there is also an eighth chakra, cosmic consciousness, that shows up in music more rarely.)

I've identified three energy levels in the expanded consciousness center. Lower 7 is fear of God, awe, the sublime. Middle 7 is love of God, nobility, devotion. Upper 7 is praise of God, spiritual joy, and ecstasy.

Here's an analysis of the states of consciousness encoded in the music of The Love Window:

Track 1: "Amba Parameshwari." Middle 7 love of God.

Track 2: "Hare Krishna." Upper 7 praise of God.

Track 3: "Durge." Between lower 7 fear of God and middle 7 love of God is an interesting state of consciousness that I call transcendental longing. It expresses our longing for, and fear of oneness with, the divine. Such longing propels us to overcome our fear and deepen our relationship with the divine. This chant begins from transcendental longing, rises to upper 7 praise and ecstasy, and returns to transcendental longing.

Track 4: "Shiva Invocation." Music that invokes God or the soul stands at the transition point between the intellectual sixth chakra, which I call the command center, and the seventh center's expanded consciousness. Its purpose is to leave the ego behind and call in God or the soul for support in states of expanded consciousness.

Track 5: "Jaya Shambho." Lower 7 fear of God (awe, the sublime), moving to upper 7 ecstasy, and ending once again in lower 7.

Track 6: "Nataraja." Upper 7 praise of God, rising to divine ecstasy.

Track 7: "Om Mata Kali." Like track 3, an example of transcendental longing. This one also rises to upper 7 ecstasy and returns to transcendental longing.

Track 8: "Purnamadah." Like track 4, an instance of soul invocation. The Sanskrit text, one line of which translates as "When the Perfect is separated from the Perfect / only the Perfect remains," includes an intellectual component, typical of the sixth chakra, and poses a Zen koan-like paradox, which can only be resolved by yoga (Sankrit for union) with the divine. The music supports an opening to that union by leading the listener into a state of expanded consciousness (lower 7).

The album is beautifully thought out in relation to gender, both in terms of the human singers (Heather sings tracks 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8; and Benjy sings tracks 2, 4, and 5) and the divine (tracks 1, 3, and 7 honor the Divine Mother, Durge, and Kali, respectively; track 2 honors Krishna and tracks 4 and 6 honor Shiva; tracks 5 and 8 appear to be gender neutral, honoring "the great God" and "the Perfect," respectively).

Anyone interested in experimenting with a playlist based on The Love Window, expressing a gradual rising of energy through the whole range of the expanded consciousness center, might program the tracks in the following order: 8, 4, 5, 3, 7, 1, 2, 6.

If you're curious about how the album sounds, this link will take you to a set of 30 second samples of each track.

Go here to listen to longer excerpts from tracks 7 and 8.

If you decide to buy the CD, please consider doing so from the artists themselves. I'm sure they'll appreciate your direct support.

Om Shantih (Peace)