The Secret Power of Music
by David Tame
(304 pages, pb, $12.95)
Destiny Books, 1984
ISBN 0-89281-056-4
Simply the best, non-technical introduction to a Pythagorean way of thinking about music
and life. Get it, read it, love it.
Chapter Titles
Overture: Music and its Power
1. The Ancient Wisdom: Music in China
2. The Twentieth Century; The 'New' Music
3. Assessment: Music, Man and Society
4. The Ancient Wisdom: Music in India
5. The Twentieth Century: Jazz and the Blues - Their Nature and Origin
6. Assessment: The Physics of the OM
Appendix to 6. The Mystery of Pythagoras' Comma
Coda: The Ancient Wisdom Revisited: The Modern Esoteric Viewpoint
Selected Excerpt
pp. 20, 21
One evening in London I attended a concert of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Seating
myself, I exchanged some words with my companion, and took pleasure in glancing around at
the marvelous Royal Festival Hall as it began to fill up. It was only as the players came
out and took their bow, and as they tuned up, that I dimly began to feel it. Something
very different and unique was lurking about. It could not be seen or heard, but I
could feel its presence, and it seemed to be approaching!
And then, as the players prepared to begin and as the audience hushed, this unknown something
saturated the air with a crackling pregnant potential of which none other seemed to be
aware.
Then, literally from the first note , the timeless moment was upon me. Yet I was
already far beyond the ability to reflect consciously upon it, for the experience was
totally engulfing and all-encompassing. It left no scope whatever for any other mental
activity other than to be the perceptions to which my mind now seemed to have been
opened.
My body seemed to come alive with light; my heart was a fire which flared forth to consume
the dross of my soul. My perceptions were opened as though they had always before been
firmly closed. Never had I heard music in that way! What previously I had often listened
to as abstract sounds were now Sound -- a tangible, living filigree lattice-work of
mathematical precision which I could almost reach out and touch, and which I could
virtually see as it flowed form the leading violin. Every note hung suspended in the air,
timeless and immaculate beyond all powers of verbal description. My body froze into a
coma-like rigidity as I hung my consciousness upon each next chord. For several long
minutes I lost all awareness of myself. The sheer beauty of it all was quite
indescribable. From the first bar, silenttears ran from my staring unblinking eyes.
The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto had opened the evening, and just as the sublime vision
seemed about to wane, there began the concerto's unique harpsichord solo. Again I was
whisked quite beyond myself, and saw the music in a way never perceived before. The long,
fugal arpeggios trilled through the air like visible, emanating waves of divine essence,
one behind the other, filling all the hall and passing beyond its walls into the city. I
cannot say that I saw the music-waves, for the process did not involve my eyes; yet
nevertheless I somehow did see them. I saw the music!
As the other instruments came in once more with indescribable loveliness, this impression
of emanating waves of a tangible goodness became reinforced still further. It felt
as though the music possessed a definite and very real energy , and that this was
radiating out beyond the hall in all directions. My consciousness seemed to encompass the
entire city. For a few moments I felt as though I were looking down from a viewpoint which
revealed to me the entire urban spread; and not only the visible, physical city, but also
the underlying, causative forces which shaped and moulded it. The understanding came that
this music, as it radiated forth, was somehow acting as a sustaining, invigorating force
for the whole surrounding area.
As the awareness of my body returned, sitting in its seat in the Royal Festival Hall, the
impression was left with me that the concert was in some way a glowing light amid a great,
chaotic sea of darkness. The darkness threatened to encroach upon the flame and extinguish
it forever. I shall never forget this sensation: one not of fear, but of the deepest,
gravest concern; of the vast importance of the music which I was hearing, of the deepest
gratitude for the opportunity of experiencing it, and that it should at all costs be
preserved for the humanity of the future.
Mystical experiences have been a subject of debate for centuries among philosophers. Up to
the present day no general consensus of opinion has been arrived at as to the reality of
such experiences. Are they less real, equally real, or more real than our usual experience
of everyday life? Each must judge for himself. But it is interesting that visionary and
mystical experiences are known to have provided the initial inspiration behind many of the
world's greatest inventions and scientific breakthroughs; even those of such giants of the
mind as Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla.