LISTENING TO RESONANT SEEDS
By Daniel Levy
To listen is to be attuned. When one listens to the resonances,
to the harmony of heaven and earth and we ourselves are attuned, as
in listening to music, we actually experience the vibrations and the
harmonies of all that sounds in the universe.
The vital spirits of men, tuned to the tone of Heaven and Earth, express all the
tremors of Heaven and Earth, just as several cithars all tuned on ‘kung’ (tonic),
all vibrate when the note kung resounds.
The fact of Harmony between Heaven and Earth and Humanity does not come
from a physical union, from a direct action, it comes from a tuning on the same
note producing vibrations in unison… In the universe there is no hazard, there is
no spontaneity, all is influence and harmony, accord answering accord.
Tang Tshing-chu, 2nd century BC
Copyright © 2018 Global Listening Centre
Ancient Chinese civilisation saw a significant harmonic balance between
Heaven and Earth, with Rites and Music as the instruments of this harmony.
This ancient concept is equally important in exploring the role of music in a new
culture. The understanding of the laws of music was a natural factor in ancient
societies, where cosmology and daily life played together in a fascinating flux of
energies. The correspondence between sounds and colours, forms, planets,
vital flows, sacred stones, animals and seasons show us that music does not
only represent an aesthetic emotion conditioned by its form or melodic beauty,
but also an essential significance or ‘ethos’. The cathartic power of music, its
healing aspects and its inherent educative capacity is evident even today.
Sounds can evoke emotions, or the images of beings or landscapes in us. This
is because the different aspects of the manifested world correspond to each
other, and music is one way of bringing out these correspondences. The most
inspired compositions are evocations of a state of consciousness. Through a
process of attunement the ‘composer’ perceives an archetype, which has a
profound meditative impact. This intuition is then translated into musical sounds.
During the initial moment of inspiration, a sense of time and space disappears
and a new ‘space’ takes form, with a quality ruled by our audio-mental
perception, similar to language and its grammar.
Time and space perception expresses a particular consciousness of the world
and the universe. In music, a manifestation within time, we have a most
impressive way to transcend these limits. Each sound offers both a limit and a
bridge, a barrier and a golden door in which life is manifested like one of the
rays of the sun. This bridge, beyond time and space, is a channel both from
Earth to Heaven and from Heaven to Earth. Ancient doctrines (and actually our
Western culture as well) recognised and used this bridge in many ways, from
devotional attitudes to mentalised concepts of existence and from the search for
balance between opposites to the conception of Earth as an object without life.
Misunderstanding and disconnection have created a crystallisation of the role of
music and its effective possibilities, because mere limitation to acoustic laws or
to a formal aesthetic leads to imbalance, the same imbalance that we can bring
into our lives.
Copyright © 2018 Global Listening Centre
Life acts in a marvellous and musical way. In each experience, atom or sound,
there is the seed of future expansion: harmonics of the tonic. A whole universe
exists in one sound, and the richness of any one sound is perceived because
within it are vibrating the harmonics or future possibilities of its uniting with other
sounds. It is a law of life. The same happens with rhythm. The principle of ritual
in the universe is rhythm. We comprehend the significance of rhythm because
we see the relationship between two events, or two musical beats. When rhythm
accelerates, we experience the loss of our perception of the space between the
elements, and so attain a new consciousness of a different and higher wave that
is both a synthesis of the past rhythms and something more.
The steps to attain patterns of a new civilisation are the same as those for the
expansion of consciousness. When this expansion of consciousness occurs the
whole past gradually and rhythmically diminishes to become part of a new
whole. The centre changes and each of our atoms is infused with a different sort
of energy. Our point of view assumes a growing perspective and our vision
expands from seeing parts of the whole to an awareness of the reality of the
greater whole.
Music in a more mature culture will have a broader significance. The harmonics
that are imperceptible to us today will vibrate powerfully, resonating with the
higher qualities of life streams. Human beings are natural musical chords, and
everything in nature and the cosmos is sounding the song of the universe. Our
inner strings and their physical counterparts will be prepared to attune to
necessities. This process of mutation doesn’t mean that we project our present
consciousness into some illusory future, but rather that we become at one with
life as it unfolds. We must harmonise our rhythms to those of life.
As we comprehend these laws we will be able to enlarge our ideas about
music and its function in the world. We will come to see how music permeates
each act, from the vital development of the cell to the opening of the heart and
the interflow of the brain waves. Music will let us discover the real patterns of the
universe, the significance of galaxies, stars and ‘who’ planet Earth is as a whole.
Copyright © 2018 Global Listening Centre
Sound and vibration will form the basis for a new scientific approach to the life of
nature. The emission of sounds by the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms
will be keys to understanding their essential origin. The pitch of the human voice
will reveal the most important aspects of personality for development of soul
qualities, and psychology will truly be considered the Sound of Soul (Psyche-
Logos). We will more thoroughly understand the connection between politics
and music, a connection Confucius and Plato found both normal and natural.
Art is deeply linked with civilisation, announcing the patterns of change. The role
of the artist is to prepare the way to new insights, without limitation or prejudice.
I believe that at this point of transition it will be the artist – in the highest sense of
the word – who will be one of the principal guides to the next step.
The goal of the coming decades is to enlarge the vision of music through global
education and experience, with new ways of participation and application of
knowledge. The first step is to help musicians to experience the significance of
what they are doing; how radiation of consciousness is necessary when we sing
or play an instrument, how everything is connected with life. Some of the forms
of the role of music are music therapy, catharsis, communication, harmonic
relationship, creative contact and healing of the Earth. But its essential role is to
express carefully, joyously and scientifically, with a new Sound, the Love that
permeates the Universe.
Then, as a consequence, only effective and conscious listening can capture
the resonance and let the seeds germinate, with all its potentiality for daily life
and mutual understanding. The seeds evolve in the right context to become
trees, flowers and fruit. They include all the resonance in its harmonics within
themselves. If we only hear without listening deeper, these seeds will dry, losing
energy and becoming like words and sounds without significance. Just hearing
is the physiological base, and in it there is an absence of feeling and
understanding.
Copyright © 2018 Global Listening Centre
Listening is the ear of the conscience. And the need of contemporary man is to
develop and learn the Art and Science of Listening, if he wishes to implement
an urgently needed real communication with humanity and the universe.
Daniel Levy
Internationally renowned classical pianist, educator and creator of the method,
‘Euphony – The Art of Listening’
www.academyofeuphony.com | www.daniellevypiano.com |
www.edelweissemission.com
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