SPIRIT A LIVING FACT
"Is Music the inarticulate Speech of the Angels on earth? Or a
voice of the Undiscovered Bringing great truths to the birth?"
_F. W. Faber_
Life is a diversity in unity, and the expression in countless different
forms and shapes of the one fundamental reality, spirit. We ourselves
are comprehended in this definition, being part of this fundamental
spirit, and claiming thereby our divinity. Music also, as a part of
life, is subject to the same explanation: and thus the spirit of Music
is a real thing. The Muses of a Classical day typified this same idea of
the spirit behind the form. Indeed man, spiritual as at base he is, can
never rest finally satisfied with the outer semblance and form: just as
the body craves sustenance, so does the spiritual part of him. No amount
of physical satisfaction will ever allay the heart-hunger, and no flood
of Rationalist thinking will ever put an end to the instinctive search
after the Unknown God.
In spiritual law, as in natural law, nothing is ever lost. We study the
physical, and by analogy we may learn much of the spiritual: we have not
been left without guidance in the maze of life. But the first essential
is that we should study those things which are open to us, and through
them learn something of the wisdom that otherwise lies hidden. Nothing
is lost: we see, as the hymn puts it, "change and decay," but the decay
is only change of form, and death, in the form of extinction, simply
does not exist. Even thoughts, transient and gossamer as they may
appear, do their work in our brains and leave their permanent impress
with us. Occultists further assure us that they are recorded in the
eternal archives. It is said that there are the Akashic Records, in some
subtle way which we cannot pretend to understand, imprinted in the
ether. "This primary substance is of exquisite fineness and is so
sensitive that the slightest vibration... registers an indelible
impression upon it."[7] If this be so, then here is the story of all
that has ever been, and all that is. In our own subconscious minds we
know full well that there is such a perfect and complete record as to
constitute an individual Judgment Book within of unimpeachable accuracy,
and there seems to be nothing intrinsically unreasonable in the idea
that there should be something of the kind on a world scale. Monumental
histories of the traditional lost continent of Atlantis have been
compiled, professedly from this source, and we find an interesting
inkling of the same idea in the way in which objects will sometimes
impress sensitive folk with their own history. Things sometimes have a
"feel" about them, pleasant or the reverse, just as buildings acquire an
aura and an atmosphere, sacred or convivial, or even unholy.
[Note 7: Dowling. "The Aquarian Gospel."]
The musician, then, may obey Nature's universal behest, and change his
form from the physical of to-day to the more tenuous of a finer realm.
He may die: but his music lives on. He perhaps has played his part in
the world symphony and, his present work finished, he lays his
instrument aside. This body of ours is the instrument of the spirit: no
wedding feast without a wedding garment, and no part or lot in the
physical world without a body. The tuning of the body to delicate
response and high endeavour enables the spirit to express its melody the
better, and therefore it is incumbent upon the musician to cultivate a
high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of
nourishment, combined with stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the
contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably
rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the
body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's
little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when
we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished
the artist, or annihilated the music: we have merely put an end to its
expression for the time. So when our instrument of the body grows old,
worn-out, or decrepit, so that it can no longer answer to the dictates
of the spirit within, we cast it aside, as an instrument whose keys are
broken, or whose strings are for ever mute. Then the musician goes upon
his far journey.
But long though the journey seem, it is a change of state rather than of
place: as if from being cased in solid ice he now were buoyant in limpid
water. His music and his melodies which were so great a part of him now
constitute his real self, besides being for ever inscribed upon the roll
of eternal remembrance. So the great musicians still live on, and when
we claim that such-and-such an interpreter gives us the spirit of Bach,
we may be saying more truly than we realise. There is no limit to the
range of thought save the intrinsic nature of the thought itself. All
thoughts seek their own, by the law of sympathy: like to like, fine to
fine, and gross to gross. "Not all of us give due credit to the
anomalous nature of love, reaching as high as heaven, sinking as low as
hell, uniting in itself all extremes of good and evil, of lofty and
low."[8] So when a man steeps himself in thoughts of a type, when he
ponders over and lives in the music of a master, his thoughts span the
realms and the ages, and he reaches that master, even if only to touch
the hem of his garment. Then the master's thoughts are his, and he truly
gives of the spirit of the music, for a measure of inspiration has been
vouchsafed to him.
[Note 8: Jung. "Analytical Psychology."]
Whatever we dwell upon has its "tuning" effect upon our thoughts, and
thus we reach some of the lore and wisdom of those who have trodden the
way before us. The inventor and the discoverer are truly what the words
imply: the inventor "comes upon" the new idea or principle, and the
discoverer "uncovers" and makes plain. But all the ideas and all the new
and novel discoveries, and all the laws, were there before: we only
reach them when we have climbed to a sufficient height to be able to
apprehend them. So the musician who reaches the spirit of Bach has, by
the attunement of his thoughts and his aspirations, crept into the heart
of the music and has tugged at the musician's heart-strings. He has
touched the composer's soul, and henceforth he plays Music, not notes.
Again, Bach, and all the masters of Music have in their turn but
discovered the Music that was already there. No man really creates, any
more than the gardener creates an oak tree by the planting of an acorn.
The gardener provides the necessary conditions in which the oak, already
miraculously pent within the acorn, can unfold and develop. So the
musician also provides the necessary conditions in which the spirit of
Music can blossom and bear fruit. He need take to himself no vast amount
of credit, for he is but a trustee of that which has been lent to him:
he neither creates it nor owns it. His music is a gift of spirit, and
when by his life's work he has glorified that gift, then henceforth that
is his contribution to the universal store of spirit, and his Art
belongs to the ages.
Inspiration is a commonplace of life, though only too often we think of
it solely in connection with religion, and especially with reference to
the Bible. Because thought flies free and ever consorts like with like,
so almost every moment of our days we are inspiring others and being
inspired in return. It is mere delusion that we consider ourselves
independent units, for we are literally built of one another. Memory
largely constitutes the man, for his every experience and thought is
recorded by his subconscious memory, and goes to the making of his
characteristics and his personality. Day by day we meet, and perforce
remember each other: we remember also those to whom we may never have
spoken, and so--unintroduced--they creep in this subtle way into our
personality. "We are, each one of us, united by bonds of emotional
influence with the personalities of all those with whom we have had to
do. If we could see them, they would guide us to their objects, for they
never lose their way. Thus by threads of love, threads of hatred,
threads of adoration, threads of thought, the universe of souls is
interpenetrated and linked up into a unity of correlated activity, an
intricate web of life."[9] Something of myself goes, in my thoughts,
into this written word: you read it, and as the thought incorporates
itself in your mind so does some tenuous element of my personality creep
into your own. Our independence is a fiction. We inspire each other,
whether we like it or no.
[Note 9: C. J. Whitby, M.D. "The Open Secret."]
But inspiration is of all kinds: it is like those neutral forces of
faith and thought, which depend for their result upon the direction in
which they are turned. Inspiration can uplift, but it may also degrade.
We ourselves by the tuning of our own thoughts determine which it shall
accomplish. Like can only answer to like: anger can never play echo to
love, for their vibrations are so far apart in attunement that the one
cannot influence the other. But anger answers to anger, and love to
love. It is the eternal response of the love implanted in the spirit of
man that ever bids him answer to the love that radiates from the divine.
Hence, in whatever age or clime we look, always there is to be seen man
in quest for the unseen, after joy, beauty, truth, happiness, after all
those spangles that glitter on the garment of love.
The mind of man is ever the tenuous instrument upon which are playing
the invisible forces of inspiration. All the thoughts that have existed,
exist still: all the thoughts that man can ever think are there already,
they do but await the time and season in which he can sense and
interpret them. These are the future discoveries for you and for me.
The pioneers who have passed our way are still working at the tasks
that were at once their life and love: and they have not gone so far
upon the journey that they have outspanned the reach of thought. If our
thoughts be fine and unselfish enough, if aspiration tune them
sufficiently high, they will reach their aim: and the reply will be
vouchsafed. There was never yet an aspirant who was unable to find a
teacher. It is most true that the living and the dead are still one
family, for of course there are no "dead," unless we most correctly put
into this category the dull of hearing, the dull of heart, and the
loveless who still walk this earth. But if we deem the pioneers defunct
and inarticulate, then it is little likely that we shall comprehend the
reality and the naturalness of this interplay and inspiration. If we
never seek, information and insight will scarcely drop upon us from the
skies.
We talk of inspired playing, inspired teaching, the gift of song, and so
on, and we talk of a reality. The playing that is not inspired is worth
but little, it has the worth of a nutshell with the kernel gone
amissing. It is sound, perhaps it may even be fine sound, yet it
signifies nothing: it is as the painted face aping true beauty. Art
without inspiration is our electric light bulb disconnected from the
main current. There are prophets in the world to-day, for a prophet in
the strict sense of the word is one who speaks forth his message.
Everyone who senses something of the eternal message--which is love--is
in his degree a prophet, yea and a saviour too. He may speak or sing, he
may perform or compose, he may wait and serve, or he may just pass his
message on with a handshake and a smile: he is an interpreter, a medium
twixt wisdom and the unwise. Thus we must place the true artist,
whatever be the particular bent of his activities, as a prophet in his
day and his generation. That he may be far from being regarded as such
by those to whom he ministers is merely one of the incidental
disadvantages of being a prophet.
Quite obviously also there will be both good prophets and bad: even a
prosaic telegram may be repeated on payment of half the original cost,
because of the possibility of error occurring in the text. How much more
may error occur, then, when tenuous messages are being sent from high
sources by the power of thought, and when the receiving instrument is so
often imperfect, so frequently out of gear, and when that instrument in
addition is more than a trifle wilful and tainted with selfishness.
Inspiration is ever ready, it floats around us like tuned wireless
vibrations waiting to be picked up by a sympathetic receiver. Yet so few
receivers, being but human after all, are sensitive enough and
sufficiently delicate in in their poise to catch the floating news: and
so the harvest is plenteous but those who garner it are few.
Perhaps Sullivan felt something of this when, in the "Prodigal Son," he
penned the simplest and yet most eloquent of melodies to the words, "O
that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments," ending up with the words,
set too simply for any but a consummate artist to sing with complete
effect,--"Turn ye, turn ye--why will ye die?" The marvel truly is that
we are already so dead, so immured and petrified in our hard
self-satisfaction, when we might so easily develop the freedom,
fluidity, and delicacy of fine response to these tenuous intimations of
our own spirituality and high destiny. Here we live, as some writer has
aptly said, on top of a gold mine, and the tragedy is that we are
ignorant of the gold. We live, and move, and have our being in an ocean
of spiritual and inspiring thought: surely our problem is to find the
conditions that will avail to put us in touch with this lively world of
inspiration in which we are accustomed to pass so dead and unresponsive
an existence.