Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 15 -
MUSIC
WE have now arrived at the third factor of human spiritual life, namely, the language expressing emotions, or the former spirit-language, a language that cannot be verbally translated because its beginnings, incomprehensible to the world of created beings, can only be surmised.
You usually call this language "music"; but although you perceive music in the room, in the forest, in the air, and sometimes even below the earth's surface, you are still unaware of its spiritual significance, namely, what it is, why it is and what its true fundamental meaning will be.
Now look, as for the articulated language, I have explained to you that the soul, urged by external impressions and coerced by an inner need, invented a means by which it could impart to its peers what filled it to overflowing and I have also explained to you all further implications, such as its origin, effect and end.
As for art, I have shown you how it wants to give material expression to the pictorial language in signs, pictures and forms, which in the verbal language is too hasty. Already with this latter way of expression another manner of language is involved; for, if I want to call the former "the language of the head", the latter is the language of the hand, or of the action. But already here, with a higher enthusiasm, the language of the heart, or the language of emotions (and of sound) is involved, though it is often used together with the former, verbal language, but only in connection with extremely sublime divine matters, where knowledge ceases and faith begins.
So let us now concern ourselves with the latter most sublime language, used only by the spirits, with the language of the heart. And so listen:
Whenever a soul, moved by sublime emotions, opens itself to the influence of nature, provided they can penetrate the auditory canals, the sounds reaching the ear through the sound waves are sometimes of such a sublime nature and arouse in the spirit indwelling the soul's center a yearning for its former true homeland, that the soul feels a certain something almost resembling a spiritual lust. However, it is incapable of describing it by means of words, signs, pictures and forms. This flowing together of various sounds according to rhythm and pitch is that which you know by the term "music". It is a vibration of the spirit within its tiny cell, a vibrating for sheer delight, brought forth by the violent trembling of air waves which, likewise incited, rub against and repel one another to the point where collision occurs and, generating warmth, releases the bound harmonious spirits of the elements contained in the air. These spirits, enraptured and liberated, in joyful delight soar away from their prison and in their great joy bring forth one or several sounds which, on reaching the eardrum, arouse harmonious sensations in the innermost of the spiritual man and then impart this sensation to the soul and even to the body.
Since these sounds, as a spiritual product, have only been imparted to a spirit and can thus only be understood by the spirit, this language is inaccessible to the soul. For the latter is still too little united with the spirit and, though able to have a foreknowledge of it and revel in future pleasures, cannot interpret it.
This is why music, with its great power over the human heart and every other being, sweeps over the earth without being understood. Everyone feels its sublimity, but no one knows the "Why"!
Now, in order to catch these air-sound-waves or to produce similar sounds yourselves, you have invented various instruments which are suitable for reproducing this vibration of the incited airwaves also in the substances of which they (the instruments) are made and elicit a similar vibration of their components, since there too imprisoned congenial spirits extricate themselves.
This freeing and mixing with the free spirits of the air then imparts to each instrument its own timbre, where in some instruments two, three and even more objects have to work in unison so as to produce the desired sound.
In order for you to know how you attained to your music, I must first tell you that you, as well as all other living beings, have obtained the urge to give vent to your inner feelings through inarticulate sounds in the following way:
When a love-wind goes through the whole of creation, waking, rousing and inciting everything, when neither the animal nor man know why they are so merry and light-hearted, man feels a gentle urge which finds its ultimate release neither in speech nor in pictures or forms, but in singing, shouting and jubilation. And this very feeling which urges man to sing and shout with joy incites also the animal, every one according to its manner, to thank the Creator and Originator of its bliss in sounds which do not mean to express words but, individually, far more than words.
Since I, the Creator, did not create a dead nature, but one that meets Me joyfully, I also laid into the organs of the more sensitive animals arrangements for the production of sounds, so that in similar spiritual-prophetic moods they can use them. Thus I endowed the beings that were denied the spoken language with a much more sublime one, the language of sounds.
Thus you see the songbirds, every one in its own manner, offer Me thanks as their innermost vibrates with joy through warmth, which is equivalent to love.
And so you see the lark early in the morning when the first sunray meets its eye as it prepares to rise. Singing and jubilating it rises higher and higher, and the higher it rises, the lighter it becomes within it, the more it can give vent to the feelings locked in its breast, the better it can relieve itself of its song of praise in My honor until, a tiny dot in the height, it sends Me the last greetings after which the inexorable law of gravity again pulls it down to earth. There, after a short time, it again begins the same flight, always with the same result.
If you could understand the various songs of praise of the flying, humming and chirping world which in spring when nature has woken up and the sun is rising, greet Me daily, you people in your selfimagined wisdom would hang your heads in shame because of your godlessness and hard-heartedness For you alone, among so many beings devoted to Me, stand there with hardened hearts although you, too, let the strong breath of spring permeate your lungs, at the same time thinking who knows of what, certainly not of Me!
Do you know where this singing of the birds and the diversity of their song originate?
Look, I want to tell you also this; for you must know that no instrument invented by you has its origin other than from the nature of the created beings themselves. There the attentive observer of the animal world gave his instruments similar arrangements that he then perfected, and from this endless improvement the musical instruments now in usage among you resulted.
You see, many instruments, in particular wind-instruments, had as their model the human or animal throat, where in the larynx down to, and inside, the canal, the windpipe, the whole arrangement of the vibrating and quivering apparatus is located; the cartilaginous circles in the larynx proper and the glottis with the small vibrating tongue reaching into it. The latter, when uttering a sound, modifies its vibration according to its pitch and then, through the vibration of the air column within the windpipe and its own vibration, produces the sound which the soul tries to utter, which sound then, striking forcibly against the vault of the palate, reaches its actual characteristic timbre.
What there is the glottis, with the string instruments are the notches in the wood, mostly in the shape of an S, where the vaulted walls correspond to the palate, as sounding-board, etc. Thus, if you earnestly scrutinize every instrument in usage among you, you will recognize as the first fundamental principle the human or animal vocal organ.
Since, however, the voice must vary according to the size of the organ and particularly with the birds the mouth is formed differently, namely, as beak, also there the sound is individually modified, as befitting every song-bird.
A great difference, which also contributes to altering the sounds, their vibrations and modulations, consists in the fact that with both man and animal the inhaled air differs from the exhaled air. In the air to be inhaled, other elements are bound which, absorbed into the animal's body, are processed and chemically broken down. Thus when a bird sings, the sound is usually composed of the elements of the inhaled and the exhaled air, that means of elements that invigorate the bird and of those that are spent. Now look, this is why the song of every bird is different, because although it inhales the same air as all the others, in exhaling it expels only what it cannot use; this exhaled air varies with every animal and also with man. Thus, apart from the various vocal organs, the sound produced by these expelled substances in combination with the air is also different. And so, as everywhere so also here, in a simple process involving one and the same substance, it is again the diversity in which it is utilized, which proves My divinity and My might, for also here as always I achieve much with little.
Look, there is still another cause that exerts a great influence in the whole of nature. From natural history you will know that most songbirds of plain feathers and colors are at home in the northern hemisphere of your earth, whereas in the southern hemisphere the birds by far surpass their fellow-creatures in the north in colorful splendor. However, as for song, they are so poorly endowed that it is the most resplendent birds that raise the most ugly clamor. Now this has again its reason in the spiritual interpretation of music.
The earth's northern hemisphere, together with the North Pole, is that part which sucks in the Spiritual for the earth from the great etherspace and the South Pole with its great mountainous bulge is the place from where that which has been utilized in the earth streams back into the ether-space.
You see, the northern part corresponds to the upper part of a human body, where the head, the heart and the lungs are located and the southern part corresponds to the lower part of man. On the other hand, the earth in its upper part is male and below female, in the upper part positive and in the lower negative, in other words, in the north the spiritual has preponderance, and in the south, the material.
In the north, the influence of the great ether and of the sun, exerted on the Spiritual, brings forth in the products of the earth, if not the great diversity, then the most vigorous, most nutritious plants. Its flora and fauna are small and inconspicuous, but in the spiritual sense on a higher plane.
In the south the opposite is the case; there, everything is on a larger scale. What in the north is merely a small plant, in the south is of a treelike size, but bearing little fruit. For the pole of the south expels the spent substances. The latter, traveling from the ether-atmosphere towards the Equator, fructify all the plants with many elements which further their growth and clothe the birds with substances implying a different light refracting in the coloring of their feathers. And so the south distributes its vital forces, coupled with the spent elements of the inner earth, and furthers the outer growth, whereas in the north the outer appearance seems to be neglected, whilst the inner spiritual nature thrives all the better. That is why the great ability to sing and the diversity of the birds in the north, and their great colorful splendor in the south.
Here, in the north, the divine penetrating ray of the great spiritman and there, in the south, the influence of the worldly man; here, wisdom - there, form; here, spirit - there, matter.
And if you now wanted to soar up to listen to the music of the spheres of the worlds orbiting around each other, you would find these opposites there also: In the head and in the heart, splendor of the spirit and in the lower part, splendor of color and forms; here, life of love, there, a life governed by reason. And further up into the spiritual heavens, sound is ever more refined, ever more harmonious and purer and more sonorous because there, more spiritual life is prevalent and only the language of the heart is spoken and understood.
Up there in the great spirit-man, where music has attained to its highest purity, there in the center, the sound is again personified in Me, as the All encompassing, in Myself. There everything vibrates: the light, the air and the sound, and thus quivering in never-before experienced bliss the spiritual life is enhanced to its utmost potency.
There, only the feelings of the heart are understood and one sees expressed in every vibration of the purest air and light waves correspondingly the most beautiful love-words and prayers of thanks in a form. There poetry is alive, which also only on account of the rhymed rhythm and its similar sounds impresses the listener as more exalted than prose. There harmony lives in the heart of the spirits and in the flowing together of the sounds. There, only one sound prevails as the fundamental tone, which serves everything as a basis, permeating all, and this sound: I am.
And so, beginning with language, which is there the wisdom of My spirits, continuing with art, which is there represented by the spiritual archetypes of all that was created and, finally, music which is there the language of the innermost feeling for which no language possesses words, where nothing can be spoken or formed, but only felt, there everything is united which here appears separated as a trinity, into language, art and music; into wisdom, form and love; or cause, effect and reason; or past, present and future; existence, being and becoming; warmth, light and love; thought, concept and idea, Jesus - Man and God is now standing before you.
There in the center stands your Father, with His arms sustaining His creation, His created beings, quickening them all with food from the divine source and calling out to you all: "Use language to educate others, Use art to inspire others Use music to show others the road to emotion and Me!"
As I once said in a hymn: "Without tone nothing is born," also now I say: "Without an emotional life there is no spiritual rebirth!"
Wherever only reason reigns supreme, or only externals are observed, but feeling is absent, there is only half a spiritual life or none at all, only a vegetative progress.
However, where the door to the heart is wide open, admitting to the spiritual ear by means of the sound-waves of the air spiritual reminiscences of a more sublime and more spiritual world, there lives the right sense of feeling. It is life which, though perhaps not exactly a musical treat, is nevertheless rich in the fullness of life and finds its culmination point far beyond all the material and spiritual worlds, all in the center of a single Being, in Myself.
Seek to unite with that One, strive in that direction, where language, forms and music will stand before your eyes, spiritually embodied in all creations. There you will one day obtain the solution to many other secrets of creation which here cannot be written down in thousands of years, but there can be grasped and understood with one glance.
This is your goal. Now you know whether it is worth the effort to submit during the earthly course of life to its troubles (and difficulties), there, in the purest sound, one day again to find your Father, who during your earthly illusory life let you have a foreknowledge of many a beautiful thing and many a bliss!
So battle on! It is worth the effort to become a child of Him, who for one look of love can give you solar regions and cosmic systems! Amen.