Music and Mysticism

[Diane Clayton]

Hi everyone!

It's been a rather busy few weeks dealing with personal crap, but it's
dealt with and I wanted to dive back into this group here. So I
thought I'd ask a few questions that I hope elicit lots of responses,
because music is so incredibly important to me and to everyone I've
ever met that I wonder about music in relation to mysticism. I'm not
sure how coherent or relevant any of these questions are, but I'd love
to hear any thoughts on them regardless.

Have you ever heard a piece of music that gave you even a remotely
similar sort of feeling or experience to reading FMW? Please do
describe.

Are composers or musicians whose works suggest/elicit/inspire mystical
experiences in listeners necessarily some sort of seeker or mystic
themselves?

Does anyone know if any known mystics were particularly fond of some
kind of music and whether they used it for pure enjoyment or for
something else?

And this is a rather me-related question...

Does anyone here know anything about flat six progressions and has
responded to them in any kind of way? Or has responded to any other
specific harmonic or melodic entity with some degree of regularity?

Hope you're all doing great!

Diane

[berlake]

Hi Diane,

Interesting questions!

I do play a little music myself, and only two days ago was speaking
with another musician and pondering why I seemed to write so many
songs - and be drawn to so many songs - which follow a similar
pattern. And I was wondering if it was because some kind of version of
the "Golden Mean" which can be found in certain musical arrangements.
(I realise it could be because of something else entirely, but I've
written songs with lots of different kinds of chord progressions, and
forgotten many of them because they just didn't "work").

For me, it would be a stepped down version, because I'm not
classically trained, and I only play the guitar, which I approached on
my own. However, I feel there is a genuine reason for believing that
there are certain chord progressions - in whatever key - which seem to
have a resonance beyond anything arbitrary. In fact, if you look at
Jungian Archetypes, Platonic Ideas, Kantian Categories of the
Understanding, and so forth (all of which Wolff discusses in
Transformations), it would appear to be a constituent part of Reality
at a certain level of human consciousness development. I see no reason
at all why something musical would fall outside this premise,
expecially since music is so "mathematical" - by which I mean much of
its beauty inheres in its laws and its order, and from these laws
almost infinite combinations and complexity arise. I'm not familiar
enough with Pythagoras to say too much here, but you should probably
check him out. He wrote extensively about music and its origins.

My little chord progression follows the C, G, Am, F pattern,
transposed as needed. I'm sure there's a better way of describing
this, but that's all I know! So many popular songs have been based on
this pattern that it is almost a cliche to use it; but it is so well
suited to writing melodies over that it keeps coming up. A recent
example would be a song called "Someone like you" by a British artist
called Adele. It was a number one hit, and sounded like an instant
classic. I thought it was a cover version, but it just has that
quality to it (and no, I don't think it was plagiarised!). It used
only this progression (I forget in which key) with only a minor
deviation for the middle eight.

However, there's nothing particularly Mystical about my response to
this progression. It is far more emotional than anything. But I would
guess that there must be some level on which there is more of a
correlation. I've heard some Chinese music which was very beautiful
and which seemed to come from somewhere closer to the realm you're
talking about. Still, it didn't evoke the same kind of feelings as
reading Wolff's work.

Can you give an example of "flat six progressions" or point to
something which uses them, please?

Thanks!

Tim

[Dorene White]

Hi Diane,
I think Seth is part of this group and he is a very accomplished
musician. Perhaps he'll pop in on this discussion.
Dorene

[Diane Clayton]

In answer to my questions #1 and #4, and to your inquiry, Tim, about flat six progressions...

In chord progression notation you'd probably recognize the flat six as bVI. Whenever this chord appears regularly in a song's harmonic progressions and even when the flat sixth tone of the song's key appears (usually next to the fifth) in the melody I experience a sort of rightness and reality feeling that is similar to my experience of reading FMW. This happens like clockwork. 

A really terrific example is a song called "The Bones of You" by Elbow. The first time I heard this song I came to a dead stop and couldn't do anything but listen until it finished. It's in G major but the opening riff doesn't have G in the bass which is what makes it interesting. The opening riff goes from a G7 chord with the bVII (F) in the bass, to an Eb maj13 with the bVI (Eb) in the bass. The chorus has a sequence underneath the main riff that goes I-V-I-bVI-I, and the I (G) hits underneath the G7 chord that has the F in the bass in the riff, turning it into an actual G chord and making the I-bVI relation explicit. Two other musical elements regularly appear in songs that make me feel this way and "The Bones of You" has them both. The first is when a piece of music freely and unpredictably mixes minor and major, and the second is when a chord contains both the natural second and the flat sixth. The second chord of the Elbow chorus contains this chord.

Another very cool thing about this song is it contains elements of Gershwin's Summertime, one of my two favorite jazz standards along with Feeling Good, the latter of which also contains flat six progressions.

I feel there is a genuine reason for believing that there are certain chord progressions - in whatever key - which seem to have a resonance beyond anything arbitrary. In fact, if you look at Jungian Archetypes, Platonic Ideas, Kantian Categories of the Understanding, and so forth (all of which Wolff discusses in Transformations), it would appear to be a constituent part of Reality at a certain level of human consciousness development. I see no reason at all why something musical would fall outside this premise, expecially since music is so "mathematical" - by which I mean much of its beauty inheres in its laws and its order, and from these laws almost infinite combinations and complexity arise. I'm not familiar enough with Pythagoras to say too much here, but you should probably check him out. He wrote extensively about music and its origins.

I REALLY like this idea that certain musical elements can trigger resonance with "transcendental forms of aesthetic intuition" (Kant quoted by FMW in Transformations p. 91). The depth and similarities of the reactions I have to FMW and to flat six progressions could be so nicely explained this way. I guess the only way to verify it would be to "bring [them] above the threshold of consciousness... by a process of unusually profound introversion" (p. 90), by which I think he means introceptualism. Like I even needed another incentive!!

There are a few composers whose works make me feel something too—Arvo Pärt (especially Tabula Rasa and Fratres) and Gesualdo's sacred works (especially his Deus refugium et virtus) to name two in. But I think like what you said Tim my reactions to these are more emotional.

Diane

[doro...@cox.net]

Hi Diane.
First Beauty, and now Music. Yay. I play the piano, so I love hearing this discussiowhat you have to say, even
though it is beyond me as I play classical.
Music was my first "mystical" experience many years ago, and to this day it is my great love.

Re Seth: He sent a CD, received this last week from Sweden, for our summer FMW conference in early August..
It is his new "jazz" musical presentation of Franklin's Aphorisms. He plays, several instruments, and
speaks the Aphorisms with this deep, resonant voice.

Doroethy

Diane

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff - Consciousness Without An Object Discussion Group" group.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fm-w?hl=en.

--
Doroethy

[John Taylor]

Doroethy, 

Could you attache a tune or two without violating intellectual property considerations? 

It would be delightful to hear what you are talking about.

I love both music and philosophy and consider them expressions of the ultimate potential of the human spirit. 

John Taylor

[Tom McF]

John,
Seth has some of his compositions available on his myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/sethreino
Regards,
Tom

[Diane Clayton]

Hi Doroethy!

> First Beauty, and now Music. Yay. I play the piano, so I love
> hearing this discussiowhat you have to say, even
> though it is beyond me as I play classical.

Is there a piano up in Lone Pine? Now that I'm coming to the
conference we could learn a duet to play together... I play piano
also, having taken lessons as a kid for 12 years and got my grade 9
practical rudiments with the Royal Conservatory of Music. My sister
and I both did the music theory and history courses to go along with
it, though I stopped the theory after Grade 3 Harmony while my sister
continued on to get her ARCT Teachers qualification and now teaches
piano for a living.

I was born two months premature with a neurological disorder that
causes my hands to shake when I get tired or nervous. You can imagine
piano recitals and exams were rather unpleasant for me! But when I
bought my condo the first piece of furniture I insisted on getting is
a piano. I play almost every day because I just love it. I used to
date this composer who I'm still friends with, and we still do
exchanges of design work for custom piano pieces tailored to what I
want. I think it's a very fair exchange! The last one I said "e minor
with lots of flat six progressions". The piece that resulted is pretty
awesome. He has a jazz background too and writes brilliant pieces that
bring in both the jazz and classical worlds. For the curious:

http://www.patrickzimmerli.com/
http://www.myspace.com/patrickzimmerli

I'm looking forward to listening to Seth's jazz representations of the
Aphorisms. Will no doubt have something to say afterwards!

All best,
Diane

[Don Salmon]

Hi guys:

What a great discussion.  You may be interested in an article I wrote for the iIntegral World website, "The-Greg-Goode-and-Alan-Wallace-Wield-Ockham's-nondual-Razor-Rondo". It includes an mp3 of my orchestration (using Logic Pro 9, a mac music program) of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.  I have a brief analysis of the opening bars, which includes a discussion of one of Beethoven's favorite chord progressions, the Neapolitan 6th (which in C minor would be a Db chord in first inversion, which means there's a "sixth" between the bottom and top notes, hence the name).  I find that especially toward the end of the music, there is a deep Silence that seems to well out as the music approaches the final cadence.  

Jan (my wife) and I are working on a video using this music along with the Rilke poem "Buddha in Glory".  Jan took a photo of one of our Buddha statues and has animated it (she's using Motion, from Mac's Final Cut software) against the background of one of those beautiful NASA galaxy photos.

What a wonderful forum. I'm so glad this website and forum are here.  

Here's the Rilke poem:

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

[Don Salmon]

hi again - i forget to tell you how to get to integral world - www.integralworld.net, click on "news" at the top and scroll down to 9-23, the first article: "Shaving Science With Ockham's Razor".  There's 3 responses, from David Lane, Andy Smith and "Anonymous", and 2 more from me, the "Shaving Visser" article and "Greg Goode etc etc Rondo". 

Let me know what you think! (donsalmon7[at]gmail.com)

thanks.

[Hakuin Suso]

"Shaving Science with Ockham's Razor" identifies the "thing in itself"
as an existent science can neither affirm nor deny. Science can tell
us how things interact with each other but has no way to directly
study a thing or even prove things exist in every way, shape or form
outside of consciousness. To prove things exist outside of
consciousness the scientist would need a way of knowing other than
that given through the precept or construct. FMW says there is
another way of knowing and that way is Knowledge through Identity.
But to science knowledge is something that comes into consciousness
via the precept and construct so Knowledge through Identity must be a
way of knowing without actually knowing. And such “knowing” is
essentially identical to an assumption. To the scientist, then,
Knowledge through Identity can only be described as Assumptive
Knowledge.

On Nov 16, 8:33 am, Don Salmon <donsalm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi again - i forget to tell you how to get to integral world -www.integralworld.net, click on "news" at the top and scroll down to 9-23,

[Joseph Rowe]

Greetings Don --- Your article at Integral was so rich and multifaceted that I'm having trouble deciding what I want to focus on, especially considering that this thread has been dormant for a year, and some participants may not even see my attempt to restart it.
[First, I need to confess that I didn't understand how to access your Moonlight Sonata project... I thought it was in the article. If you don't mind, could you repeat the link to that?]
But actually, I decided to focus on the intriguing question you asked at the beginning: what is a "reality check"? I had an experience similar to yours, though not as disturbingly multi-layered. During a period of several years of plentiful lucid dreams and OOB experiences, one night after I'd gone to bed, I found myself standing awake near the window of my 4th-floor apartment in Portland, OR. The sensations were very real, and I assumed I was having either a lucid dream or an OOB. (Lucid dream scientist Stephen La Berge tries to reduce OOB to a mere dramatization of lucid dreaming, but I have reservations about that). In order to check, I looked over toward the bed, thinking to see my body asleep there. The sheets were in their typical jumble, but the bed was empty. "Aha", I thought, "this must be a lucid dream then." Then I thought I'd have some fun by flying out the window and soaring over the night-time city, as I'd done before. But a disturbing thought stopped me: "What if this is not a lucid dream either, but somnabulism?" Obviously, it would be dangerous, even fatal to have my "fun" in that case! So I though of a plan to test it: instead of flying out the window, I'd try to walk through the wall. I did so easily, and floated into the night to have my fun, until the dream ended. But when I awoke I was puzzled: what was the meaning of that empty bed? It was very, very real and detailed. I had a hard time agreeing with La Berge that  it was just a "dramatization", but I had no better explanation of my own to offer. When I told Robert Monroe about this experience, he first asked me whether it was normally daylight when I got up in the morning, and I told him no, I usually got up before dawn, so it was always dark. Then he proposed a most original interpretation of what he considered to be an OOB: the bed was empty because my physical body had already gotten up, and was probably in the kitchen making coffee when I "awoke" at the window --- I had done a small time-jump into the future! Bob claimed that such time-jumps are not all that uncommon. He had experienced a number of them, and he felt that others do too, but don't realize what's happening. (He also memorably said: "You'd have gotten quite a shock if you'd chosen to go into your kitchen.")
So --- to get back to the question of how any notion of "reality check" can survive in a multidimensional universe of realities within realities, I'm wondering right now as I write whether FMW's R = 1/A might not be relevant. In other words, given a choice between competing realities to affirm, what of all possible realities is the most valuable and important to me? Surely it's the indescribable being-consciousness-bliss (satchitananda) that I also call Home? Only when I remember That can I hope to make a good choice as to what relative realm I want to affirm and participate in. This of course doesn't tell me what choice I should make, and I wouldn't  have needed to invoke anything so deep in order to make the common-sense decision about not going through that window. But there might arise other, more perplexing and difficult situations, similar to the one you had, when I need to "get back to basics," so to speak.
I'll close by mentioning a disturbing SF story I read decades ago, called "Dream's End" (can't remember the name of the author --- Kornbluth?) --- it was an utterly terrifying (and fascinating) story of being lost in realities nested in other realities, similar to some things by Philip K. Dick. If anyone knows how to track it down, I'd love to read it again.