Symphony

[Güney27]

I wanted to share this , it helps.me to think more clearly sometimes.

[Federica]

I wanted to share this , it helps.me to think more clearly sometimes.

Thanks Güney,

I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.

For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.

[Güney27]

I wanted to share this , it helps.me to think more clearly sometimes.

Thanks Güney,

I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.

For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.

Thanks for your opinion Federica.

Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?

[Federica]

I wanted to share this , it helps.me to think more clearly sometimes.

Thanks Güney,

I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.

For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.

Thanks for your opinion Federica.

Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?

No, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.
But I may listen to music while I am reading the forum, or a book. Recently I have had Youtube videos of Paneurhythmy and other music by Beinsa Douno in the background, and I find it harmonizing and beneficial.
Do you listen to this concert (or other music) while meditating?

[Güney27]

Thanks Güney,

I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.

For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.

Thanks for your opinion Federica.

Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?

No, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.
But I may listen to music while I am reading the forum, or a book. Recently I have had Youtube videos of Paneurhythmy and other music by Beinsa Douno in the background, and I find it harmonizing and beneficial.
Do you listen to this concert (or other music) while meditating?

I sometimes listen peter deunovs music after waking up, then I drink a warm glass of water and focus on prayers.
But I didn't try do listen to music while meditating.
I don't know it's effect on concentration maybe I'll try it out.

I realized that music has a very big influence on my Metamorphose trough the day.
If I listen to for example rap or pop music, it feels like my thoughts and feelings are 'low'.
When I'm listen to for example peter deunov or classical music it feels definitely like my thinking and feeling life
becomes more elevated.

Music and prayer have somehow a similar effect.
And I can feel more devoted trough music when I'm praying.

[Cleric K]

...

...

I personally take listening to music and meditation (as means of deeper exploration), as distinct activities. And listening to music itself could be of various kinds.

One thing I like to experiment with is to listen with the 'whole volume of the room', instead of only ears. In a nutshell, we try to feel how imagination expands to fill the whole space of the room and in a sense becomes like a string on which the sound waves play.

To achieve interesting results, we need to seek that fine balance between activity and receptivity as described in Part 2 of the Phonograph essay. We need to expand our imagination, to fill the space with our expanded thought, but at the same time concentrate at our center. The imaginative space around us is only gently supported as a string which the music agitates.

Initially, interesting sensations in this expanded space are only dimly felt, our concentration breaks, occupies the sensation, and deadens it. The key is to resist this. The more we resist, the more interesting the periphery becomes. And this experiment very well exemplifies the 'splitting of the now'. Instead of trying to inflate and encompass more of the music, we do the opposite - we concentrate into a finer and finer slice of the now. Nevertheless, the temporal dimension of music becomes even more objectively felt.

I don't know if this experiment ties well with the more general goal of inner development. I guess it's more on the amusement side of the spectrum. I'm only sharing it as an observation - how to make music into a 'psychedelic' experience, through natural means, with our own effort. When this concentration in 'splitting the now', centered in the head space, is sufficiently prolonged, the whole imaginative space that fills the room begins to take interesting forms, forming a soundscape as it were. But even if it is only an amusement, this concentration skill is exactly what we use when we meditate on the deeper aspects of existence. In a way, it can be seen as a test to see how strong our concentration is, whether we can resist being dragged by the sounds. Also we may understand more about the way we normally experience music. This is something which is not usually observed but in music our inner being is instinctively active. It nods its head, sings, hums, dances, plays air guitar or air drums. By trying to resist all these inner movements we may discover some of the inner gestures that we perform without noticing and which in fact constitute our enjoyment of music.

[Federica]

...

...

I personally take listening to music and meditation (as means of deeper exploration), as distinct activities. And listening to music itself could be of various kinds.

One thing I like to experiment with is to listen with the 'whole volume of the room', instead of only ears. In a nutshell, we try to feel how imagination expands to fill the whole space of the room and in a sense becomes like a string on which the sound waves play.

To achieve interesting results, we need to seek that fine balance between activity and receptivity as described in Part 2 of the Phonograph essay. We need to expand our imagination, to fill the space with our expanded thought, but at the same time concentrate at our center. The imaginative space around us is only gently supported as a string which the music agitates.

Initially, interesting sensations in this expanded space are only dimly felt, our concentration breaks, occupies the sensation, and deadens it. The key is to resist this. The more we resist, the more interesting the periphery becomes. And this experiment very well exemplifies the 'splitting of the now'. Instead of trying to inflate and encompass more of the music, we do the opposite - we concentrate into a finer and finer slice of the now. Nevertheless, the temporal dimension of music becomes even more objectively felt.

I don't know if this experiment ties well with the more general goal of inner development. I guess it's more on the amusement side of the spectrum. I'm only sharing it as an observation - how to make music into a 'psychedelic' experience, through natural means, with our own effort. When this concentration in 'splitting the now', centered in the head space, is sufficiently prolonged, the whole imaginative space that fills the room begins to take interesting forms, forming a soundscape as it were. But even if it is only an amusement, this concentration skill is exactly what we use when we meditate on the deeper aspects of existence. In a way, it can be seen as a test to see how strong our concentration is, whether we can resist being dragged by the sounds. Also we may understand more about the way we normally experience music. This is something which is not usually observed but in music our inner being is instinctively active. It nods its head, sings, hums, dances, plays air guitar or air drums. By trying to resist all these inner movements we may discover some of the inner gestures that we perform without noticing and which in fact constitute our enjoyment of music.

Cleric, I am glad that it's possible to experience music in the way described! For my part this sounds a long way ahead of what I can hope to grasp at this point. I read the words, but I lack the concepts to extract any meaning, already from “listening with the whole volume of the room”. It was not long ago when I was imagining an object of concentration by mentally placing it in space more or less in front of my physical eyes. Then I learnt to let go of the idea of physical space in concentration. So the indication to expand into a given volume in space hardly lands for me, let alone the answer to the question: “Expand what?”, which is: something in between an organ of perception and a musical instrument
To conclude, I lack intuition for the whole idea of permanently resisting the flow of everything that makes music music - like melody, rhythm, harmony - to find real enjoyment in that negation (a temporary resistance, an elasticity of the rhythm, is inherent to what music is, and that I would understand).
Given all these difficulties, I would like to ask: what would be a first small step one can take with music that would orient in the right direction?

[AshvinP]

Thanks for your opinion Federica.

Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?

No, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.
But I may listen to music while I am reading the forum, or a book. Recently I have had Youtube videos of Paneurhythmy and other music by Beinsa Douno in the background, and I find it harmonizing and beneficial.
Do you listen to this concert (or other music) while meditating?

I sometimes listen peter deunovs music after waking up, then I drink a warm glass of water and focus on prayers.
But I didn't try do listen to music while meditating.
I don't know it's effect on concentration maybe I'll try it out.

I realized that music has a very big influence on my Metamorphose trough the day.
If I listen to for example rap or pop music, it feels like my thoughts and feelings are 'low'.
When I'm listen to for example peter deunov or classical music it feels definitely like my thinking and feeling life
becomes more elevated.

Music and prayer have somehow a similar effect.
And I can feel more devoted trough music when I'm praying.

Guney,

I have similar experiences with music and also other activities, like watching videos or simply thinking about various topics. It can become quite dualized like the image in Cleric's essay, where moving our spiritual activity in one direction leads to a swamp of dark and stormy thoughts/feelings, while another direction elevates to much more idealized experience. Overall, this is a sign of inner progress.

It means we are delaminating the layers of our inner life. Normally we experience that inner life as a monolithic space with all its layers merged together. Perhaps we dimly differentiate between thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensations. Yet this differentiation can go much further and take on a more lucid character. For ex., after we engage in phenomenological pursuits for some time, we can experientially differentiate between our life of sense-based thinking, where we passively flow along with sensory events and comment on them, our life of artistic thinking, where we work with sensory events in a more creative way to bring them into new relationships, and the life of our supersensible thinking, where we concentrate our thinking within its own living structure and dynamics, independently of the senses. We can notice how, through the latter, our thinking is exploring entirely new territory and forming new intuition for the perceptual flow of existence.

Eventually, we can start to sense how our spiritual activity, as it moves up against the various experiential constraints of the inner/outer environment, subtly influences our soul life and either harmonizes or disharmonizes the layers of intents, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. These rhythms of influence are always there but we are normally insensitive to them. Once our inner life is delaminated more, the influences make stronger impressions on us, just like we will be more sensitive to temperature changes if we have consciously experienced the whole gradient from extreme cold to extreme heat, compared to if we have only experienced a tiny range. We have a larger 'dataset' by which to intuitively understand the points of balance for our soul life and how our spiritual activity deviates us from the balance points. We don't need to have clear concepts or calculations for any of these things, rather it is experienced at a mostly intuitive level.

We gradually gain cognitive distance from the soul constraints and understand their purposeful flow in much deeper ways. For ex. we may notice how we carry a lot of tension in our face or other parts of our physical body, which is related to our intellectual and emotional life. Or how our erratic physical gestures and speech express our deeper soul life and feedback on our inner state in certain destabilizing ways. Or how we are often getting snagged in repetitive loops of thought and feeling. We can start to intuitively trace these inner states to the paths of experience through which we move (or fail to move) our spiritual activity. In that sense, our 'mundane' daily activity is experienced with increasing sensitivity like you are already starting to experience in relation to how your activity moves through various kinds of music. As long as we flow along with the already etched pathways of the soul flow, our sensitivity will remain dim. So we must remain active and resist the flows to gain a deeper appreciation of how they influence our thinking.

PS - how do you heat your water in the morning? Is it just warm or boiling hot? I asked Cleric about this OMA exercise previously and if it's best to avoid electric sources of heat. He recommended trying to heat it through the Solar warmth, but that's not very practical for me, especially at this time of year. Even when it's hot, I can only do it by leaving water in my car. I would like to restart the exercise, though, since it's such a simple way to cleanse the system in the morning. Have you noticed any specific effects from this practice?

[Cleric K]

Cleric, I am glad that it's possible to experience music in the way described! For my part this sounds a long way ahead of what I can hope to grasp at this point. I read the words, but I lack the concepts to extract any meaning, already from “listening with the whole volume of the room”. It was not long ago when I was imagining an object of concentration by mentally placing it in space more or less in front of my physical eyes. Then I learnt to let go of the idea of physical space in concentration. So the indication to expand into a given volume in space hardly lands for me, let alone the answer to the question: “Expand what?”, which is: something in between an organ of perception and a musical instrument
To conclude, I lack intuition for the whole idea of permanently resisting the flow of everything that makes music music - like melody, rhythm, harmony - to find real enjoyment in that negation (a temporary resistance, an elasticity of the rhythm, is inherent to what music is, and that I would understand).
Given all these difficulties, I would like to ask: what would be a first small step one can take with music that would orient in the right direction?

I want to repeat, though, that I don't think this method of experiencing music is something that we should strive for as a goal. Rather, it seems to come as a side effect of inner development.

We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself. You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you don't find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop — you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19130826p02.html

We enter a world that has real things and beings in it, and we connect ourselves with it, we grow into this world. As the beings and things of this world move into us we lose our head thoughts — it's as if we had stuck our head into an anthill. Then we become aware of the elemental world. As our soul life gets stronger through thought concentration and our inner self gets increasingly separate from the physical body, the things of that world appear before our soul's eye in ever clearer Imaginations and visions.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/En ... 05e01.html

The 'psychedelic' experience of music is precisely of this anthill type. In a nutshell, these experiences demand that we should be prepared to behold inner soul contents that do not in the least follow our own thinking intents. This can be disturbing at first. Because even if we have intellectually accepted that it is all One Consciousness, this rarely takes the trouble to conceive the intimacy of what it implies.

Yet the experience doesn't need to be disturbing. Prayer is our ally here. We concentrate as if we try to peel away the layers of being, as if we try to unveil the naked "I", which is the infinitesimal Divine point. Then the elemental anthill is felt as something much more lawful, even if we're still very far from understanding it. Nevertheless, the context of prayerful trust illuminates that anthill.

Another thing that can help in expanding the volume of imagination has been mentioned before. It's to get in the habit of following the sensory world with our thoughts, as if we try to touch the forms with our thinking-hands, to glide our thinking-rays along their lines and surfaces. And this doesn't need to be confined to mineral nature only. We can follow a bird and its wing flaps with our thought gestures. We can imagine in timelapse a blooming flower. These things are done in 'doll-mode' but in this context it is in its proper place. It's not about fantasizing that the forces that animate Nature are of the same nature as our intellectual thoughts, but to expand the volume of our imaginative degrees of freedom. When we can do this, we'll find that music can also be followed in a similar way. Our thought-gestures can feel like butterflies dancing on the sound waves. This is not yet the anthill experience but it already probes the volume where imaginative butterflies will be found to fly on their own.

[Federica]

...

Thanks for elaborating, Cleric. I am clearly very far from all this. I was just wondering about ways to help rewire the experience of music in general, in much more basic terms, having in mind that it's soon the end of music that stirs feelings, as you recently said.