Take just a moment to listen to the
silence. Turn off the radio, TV and the computer. Just listen...
What could you hear in that moment of silence? Was it truly silent?
What would life be without sound? No bird songs...no wind sounds,
no sound of the proverbial tree falling in the forest...no ocean
waves crashing on the beach...children’s laughter, people
singing or talking...NOTHING!
Do you realize that everything in the universe is made up of
either sound or light waves emitting from a source? That matter
is just a dense collection of sound waves located in space? Everything
consists of sound or vibration right down to the vibration of
electrons rotating around the nucleus of an atom. Sound is everywhere!
There are so many applications. In medicine, sound waves create
images to help health professionals view organs in the body to
diagnose illness, and, under laboratory conditions, tones and
elongated vowel sounds have actually eliminated cancer cells!
Astronauts used sound to form metals in space, and according
to some futurists, the next super-smart, super-fast computers
will be powered by sound.
The same energy within sound waves that has the ability to
move liquids and solids, when organized in the form of music
also have a momentous effect upon living organisms. Twenty years
ago researchers experimented with plants and the music of Bach,
Ravi Shankar and Led Zeppelin. They found that the Indian Ragas
and Baroque music caused plants to bloom more quickly and become
healthier, while the hard rock had a negative effect on the plants.
It stands to reason then that music also affects the human organism
in profound ways that we may not realize.
Early in recorded history, spiritual teachers were keenly aware
of the affects of music on the individual. Music was viewed not
merely as entertainment but as a real power that could heal individuals
and lift them into a higher state of consciousness. In the Asclepias
temples of the Golden Age of Greece spiritual seekers prepared
for dream state healing by listening to certain musical pieces.
A certain healing sect of Tibetan lamas still carry on the age-old
tradition of chanting or vocalizing while applying pressure to
key points in the ailing body. |
Rulers in ancient China, writes David
Tame in his book The Secret Power of Music, regarded musical
tones as an “outpouring of the One Vibration” and
related the 12 tones of their musical scale to their astrology.
Weights and measures were calibrated to this one tone, and it
is reported that rulers would travel throughout their kingdom
to check the tunings of the villages’ instruments! The
well-ordered Chinese society, which lasted 5,000 years, began
to deteriorate when European and Western traders brought foreign
influences, including their music.
While we may not go so far as Tame goes in connecting the downfall
of ancient Chinese civilization to the arrival of Western music,
when music changes, values change and with a change in values couldn’t
there also be a change in political structure? Could music with
its power also have the ability to affect not only the individual,
but also groups of people or perhaps a whole civilization? Plato
thought so. He wrote that the “introduction of a new style
of music imperils the nation” and that styles of music were
never disturbed without exerting influence on the important institutions
of the state. Music can break up set ideas, opinions and habits.
Had Plato been around during the advent of Rock and Roll in the
50s and 60s he certainly would have attributed a large part of
the “changin’ times” to the revolutionary new
music!
In his essay, “The Influence of Music upon Society”,
Paul Twitchell maintains that a musician is an instrument for a
higher power, whether it be positive or negative.
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