Music and Mysticism: Parts 3 and 4

In assembling this issue I have had in mind a distinction between religious experience and mysticism. Naturally the two are aspects of a similar phenomenon, but while the former occurs in connection with a revealed tradition of systematic wisdom, the latter is a perception of the unity of multi-dimensional worlds of experience that transcends tradition. Even allowing for semantic distinctions it’s significant that religious experience comes with an evolved vocabulary (implying involvement of the left hemisphere of the brain) whereas mysticism doesn’t (implying the right hemisphere). Nevertheless both are semi-volitional, involving the subject’s active participation or mental assent. Beyond either lie the altered states of trance, varieties of automatism and ultimately ecstatic frenzy—whether induced by psycho-physiology or drugs. Mystical experience may be defined as being an ‘infinite intimacy’, a sense of fulfilment in which the subject is simultaneously aware of the limitless nature of the Universe and yet of hir intimate relationship to a force sensible as an identifiable personality. It is simultaneously the experience of everything and nothing, of knowing all yet being empty, of hearing within silence all sound. Different religious traditions identify
this state individually—nirvana, mushín, Shambhala, Buddhahood, mystical union, alchemical marriage, shekinah—yet it can be seen as a common goal of all esoteric teaching, an experience of oneness beyond the world of duality. It need not even occur in a religious context. To me those very rare moments of total understanding that can arise in connection with works of art are clearly in the same category—that clarity of vision and sense of contact with some archetypal personality. Only those withdrawn from the world are likely to sustain such visions on anything more than an occasional basis, yet however rarely it occurs the mystic is quite clear that s/he is in contact with some archetypal source of consciousness that transcends rational knowledge.
This book is one of the most scintific and knowledgable references to be published lately more over the book should be of great benefit to those who are interrested in the studies of the philosophy of music and music history…..