Music

I am inspired to write this blog because of the recent death of Japanese "pseudoscientist," Masaro Emoto, author of a book that has been important to me entitled, Messages of Water. Messages of Water offers the results of Emoto's studies of the observable effects of thought, prayer, words and language, music, and other forms of energy on the crystalline structure of water molecules. Though his research and findings have been challenged and never corroborated by the scientific community, the power of thought, of intention, of placebo, is inarguable--even within the scientific community. To me, that is what Masaro Emoto's contribution to the world dialogue on cause and effect, disease and health, and mind over matter has been: the emotional content or intent of language and/or artistic expression has a very direct effect to the health and condition of the life and reality within its sphere of proximity. Also, his work helped to add to the "proof" that atoms and molecules are a part of the community of living, reacting things.
    Sound, especially in the organized form of music, can have extraordinary, powerful effects on humans . . . on all life forms. In Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird's The Secret Life of Plants, we witness the positive and deleterious effects music can have on the health and vibrancy of plants. Extrapolate this a bit and it makes sense that all life is equally affected by sound and music. It should go without saying that chaotic, aggravated, mean-spiritied, frenzied, frenetic, dissonant music can have the same effects on mood, health, and well-being. This should be intuitive truth. And yet such musics exist and even proliferate. Why? Why do humans feel drawn to create and/or expose themselves to distressing music? Because music can be used to express as well as to affect emotional states. Emotions that are hidden or repressed as well as those that are recognized and proud can be given vent through music. Expressing one's "shadow" elements through art can be therapeutic. The art form allows flow, diminishment, and processing of such sticky, weighty, congesting conditions as anxiety, pain, suffering and fear. This connection to internal states of health is the reason art and music can play such an important, even necessary, role in health and healing.
    Though our shadow elements are viable and valuable means to growth and process, I believe that the expression of Beauty, Joy and Love as Spirit knows it usually has a more uplifting, evolution-enhancing effect on its participants. Music especially has the ability to directly affect spirits. According to British composer and author Cyril Scott, many Theosophic writers, and Life-Between-Life hypnotherapist, Michael Newton, the "language" of music is most expressive of and similar to the underlying language and structure of the Spirit World. Scott extolled the virtues and effects classical music has on the human psyche. In fact, according to Scott, (who was writing in the 1930s), Handel's Messiah is the highest achievement of human expression and is, therefore, for humans, the most uplifting call to Spirit.
     Many tribal, cultural and religious traditions have used music to divert human individual and group consciousness from the Earthly physical. The Bible and mythological traditions claim that sound was the first creative force. (Remember all the quotes from Genesis describing God's steps of creation: "and God said . . .", and "In the beginning was the word and the word was the beginning" or something like that.) Individuals and groups experiencing music- and rhythm-induced altered or heightened states of consciousness seem to enjoy health benefits like stress reduction and improved immune function. It seems only fitting, then, that a musician or musical instrument can be attributed very powerful and even sacred status in many cultures. Many tribal musicians are given 'medicine man' status and the list of instruments that are sacred to many cultures is as long as that of any orchestra: drums of many names as well as many other percussives, lute, lyre, flute, voice, gong, horns, bowls, cymbals, etc., etc. Western musicians like Glen Velez, Carlos Nakai, Mickey Hart, Peter Gabriel, Coyote Oldham, Peter Kater, Jim Wilson and many others have tried to bring native healing musical traditions to light for our modern Industrialized public with the intention of encouraging not only awareness and appreciation but for health and healing.

     Alfred Tomatis and the Institutes that bear his name used a scientific approach for the exploration of the use of sound for therapy and healing. The Tomatis Institute is particularly noteworthy for being the first to recognize and extoll both the superior effects certain types of music and the human voice (especially the mother's) have on ameliorating human dysfunction, dis-ease, brain development, and in the treatment of things like trauma and stress management. They were among the first to study and outline the effects of classical music in comparison to those of rock and roll. Within classical music, The Tomatis Institute was able to discover the superior effects that Gregorian chants, Baroque music and the compositions of Mozart (especially his concertos) have over other classical musics. Also, they were able to bring to light the power of one's own voice in the healing process. Through a technique called "toning," they have documented improvement in many conditions and ailments from learning disabilities to nervous tissue damage--including brain injuries like stroke-damaged areas. Since the 1950s, Audio-Psycho-Phonology has been able to establish replicable treatment methods and protocols, called "Tomatis Method," which has allowed thousands of patients to experience varying degrees of healing from a broad spectrum of conditions. 

     In the effort to explore consciousness and expanded awareness (in preparation of "a Global Awakening for Humanity"), Robert Monroe and The Monroe Institute have experimented with sound and music in relationship to brainwave activity since the 1960s. They have experimented with and discovered various means intended to help induce varying states of consciousness. Like The Monroe Institute, places like The Listening Program with its Advanced Brain Technology and The Deep Listening Institute have been researching and creating sound and music recordings that target specific therapeutic effects, both physically and psychospiritually. The Learning Program in particular has posited its opinion that all musics are mere partial and inadequate efforts to replace the full spectrum sound that is naturally present in and from Nature.
     British rocker Brian Eno (Roxy Music, 801) began to explore the effects music can have on the human psyche in the early 1970s. It is largely from his "Ambient Music" albums and sound systems that the New Age Music phenomenon took wave. Originally intended to create stress-reducing relaxation effects, later, New Age artists like Deuter, Steve Halpern, Steve Roach, Alain Eskinazi, Dean Evenson, David Darling, Peter Kater, Andrew Weil, and the Gordon brothers, (to name a few), incorporated studies in brainwave technology to create and back their music compositions with therapeutic intentions.  
     Robert Gass, Jonathan Goldman and Olga Kharitidi and have spent their lives trying to educate the Western mind to the spiritually uplifting or spiritually accessing effects of trance-inducing musics like chant and repetitious group musics. They use both recorded and live music from Eastern or non-Western song traditions in group or individual settings to demonstrate the mind-altering effects music can have on the humans--and life in general.
    In the late 1980s Don Campbell caused quite an international stir with his The Mozart Effect books and tapes. Based primarily on the work of Alfred Tomatis, The Mozart Effect has had a dramatic effect on the way the public has come to use music during the brain development of children--both pre- and post-natally. Since then, music tapes targeting specific desired outcomes such as "relaxation," "creativity," and "concentration" have become ubiquitous in homes, schools and daycares, pediatric, pre- and peri-natal care facilities, as well as in the adult workplace.
    Many other research institutes, musicians, music therapists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists have spent countless hours exploring the effects music has on the world and its millions of species. On an interesting side note, I found it interesting to read that whale musicologists claim that since about 1964 the song of humpback whales--and whale song in general--have lost the upbeat, "happy" feel it had previously had. Scientists theorize that this is due to significant increases in the ambient levels of white noise in the oceans since the mid-20th Century caused by the increases in human shipping traffic.

     My wife and I just watched a documentary film that makes an almost irrefutable case for the power of music. Alive Inside: The Story of Music and Memory shows how music is used to bring human beings affected with neurological disorders like Alzheimer's, dementia, multiple sclerosis, and even schizophrenia into states of full engagement, full memory recall, and full mental and even physical capacity. It is nothing short of miraculous to watch despondent, angry, disengaged or even catatonic humans come fully back to life (and Love) as a direct result of being stimulated by music. These broken down humans are quite suddenly and unexpectedly able to have conversations; they regain motor function where they have had little or none; they are able to retrieve and retell the stories of their lives--all due to the (re-)introduction of music into their world. It is truly miraculous to see how music not only bypasses the damaged neural networks of the brain, but seems to overcome and repair them--if only temporarily.
     This is, to me, yet one of many examples that illustrate the magical way that music bridges the physical and emotional tar pits of the human experience with the boundless, limitless Joy, Beauty and Love of our Source in the Spirit World. I think that music is a medium, a language, which quite naturally opens the flow of Spirit and Spiritual energy into the so-called physical and emotional human--through its neural network, which is, according to spiritual traditions, the interface point between Spirit Energy and the much denser four-dimensional matrix of human physiology.

     The current number of Alzheimer sufferers in USA numbers over 5 million. This number is expected to double over the next ten years as the population bubble of "Baby Boomers" continues moving into the ranks of the elderly. Music and music therapies could be critical for both quality and dignity of life during the end-stages of many of these lives.

Psychologist Michael Newton has been working with hypnotherapy as his primary treatment tool since the 1960s. Very traditional and conservative in his approach, it was almost by accident that Dr. Newton began to hear stories from his patients of life outside of or beyond the ones we know here on Earth. Fascinated, he opened himself and his practice up to more of this work. It was not long before he had accumulated thousands of hours of recordings from sessions in which his patients had revealed copious amounts of evidence of life outside and beyond the typical human Earth lifespan. Dr. Newton has since gone further to recognize and document the existence of an entire "world" in which Souls or Spirits thrive without contraction to the effects of physicality or time. This Spirit World, or "inter-life," is what he addresses in what he now calls his Life Between Life hypnotherapy sessions--as well as in his first two books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls.
     Within the thousands of hours of Life Between Life sessions Dr. Newton has stored on tape, there are many accounts which shed light on the place music plays in the Spirit World. It is revealed that music is very much constant in the Spirit World and that harmonic, melodic musics are key means to conveying messages and information between Spirit beings and among the Spirit World. It is also interesting to learn that music performance--particularly vocal music (usually choral) and dance--are very much enjoyed, practiced, and pursued in the Spirit World. Apparently, in the Spirit World music has a much broader spectrum, much more harmonic dimensionality, than it does here on Earth--and it is very much constantly present. Music can even be a primary pursuit of beings while in the Spirit World--both instrumental and vocal, solo, collaborative and choral. It is very much a source of great Joy in the Spirit World. I think it is intended to have that same effect in the Earth School World as well.

I don't think anyone here will argue the amazing effect music can have on the human spirit. What I have tried to do here is give the reader many resources with which to support your own personal beliefs and claims with regards to the uses and impact of music. Whether or not you choose to espouse my own personal belief that music can be a direct link to healing spiritual energy is of no import to me. I am merely trying to serve as a provider of information--information that is, of course, intended for you to test your own beliefs, understanding and comfort zones.
    You may wish to try a little experiment for yourself to demonstrate the effects of music. Try journalling your mental, emotional, and even spiritual states (and changes in these) as you listen to a wide variety of musical types. Try a piece by Mozart, Handel or Bach next to a piece by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky or Prokofiev; live jazz versus studio jazz; thrash metal, doom metal or punk rock versus Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra or Neil Diamond; angry rap versus smooth Soul/R & B like Nat King Cole, Marvin Gay, or Whitney Houston; Gregorian chant or church music versus opera (try Mozart, Verdi, or Puccini) or Broadway music; Gregorian chant or 18th century church music versus a piece by Jonathan Goldman, N. Carlos Nakai or Ravi Shankar; a piece of African drum music versus The Grateful Dead; Arlo Guthrie or Pete Seeger versus Hank Williams, Jr., Johnny Cash, or Waylon Jennings; a classical piece presented by solo instrument (e.g. piano, guitar or harp) versus a fully orchestrated piece; etc., etc. The combinations and permutations are endless.
     If given the chance, live music is always preferable to recorded music due to the fact that recorded music is but a fragmented sample of the full energetic and sound effect of live music. If recorded music is all that is available to you, try comparing analog, digital, and compressed MP3 versions (of the same songs, when possible). Also compare music listened over headphones to the experience of listening with various different speaker systems and even a variety of speaker arrangements. The point is to try to really pay attention to how the music affects you. Differently. Emotionally. Physically. Positively or negatively. And then make music an important element in your personal health care program. Use it as you would a shower, exercise, or meditation. Use music as you would a nutrient; like food and drink, music comes in all forms: junk food, comfort food, healthy food, and poison.
     Learn to use music as a central part of your life. You won't regret it.