Entries in the 'Music' Category

“Why Does Music Heal Our Pain?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why does music heal our pain?

Music acts on our sense of hearing, which is the most sensual of the five senses.

When there is a properly-tuned harmony, it affects us almost instantaneously. A few beats is all it takes to draw us in.

Likewise, music has the ability to raise our moods, to calm and to heal us.

Nonetheless, it is still a merely an earthly means for doing so, and we should not be deceived that it is anything more than that.

Much of how music affects us has to do with how we have been raised. We have to understand the music we listen to. For instance, indigenous cultures typically will not understand classical music, and those raised strictly on classical music will not understand contemporary music.

However, despite the different kinds of music, it remains a very powerful accompaniment to humanity’s history. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, music is at the level of Bina, which is the sense of hearing.

Based on the TV program, “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman,” on January 18, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

The Power Of Music

932Question: Psychologists have one common point for all problems—pure music, without words. Music is a remedy from stress, from pain, from depression. What is there in music that heals and cleanses and raises?

Answer: Music affects the ear. This is the most sensual thing in a person, not smell, not touch, not taste, but hearing. When harmony is properly tuned, it affects you almost immediately. A few beats, and a person is already in it.

Music is able to lift and lull and heal. But these are all such small, weak, earthly means.

Do not be seduced by this, because the fact is that it depends on the preparation of a person, on his upbringing. He must understand this music. The Papuans will not understand Bach. And the classics will not understand contemporary music.

But no matter what kind of music it is, it is still a very strong accompaniment to the entire history of mankind, because it is at the level of Bina, and this is the sense of hearing.

Music is very powerful.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/18/21

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Melodies Of Baal HaSulam

627.2Question: Why did Baal HaSulam start writing music?

Answer: Baal HaSulam’s group consisted of less than ten people, and everyone came from different places. Each had their own melodies that they played at mealtimes or during prayers, especially on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

So Baal HaSulam composed his own melodies, and taught the students not to sing foreign prayers to the words from the prayer book. That is how the melodies to the texts of Ari and “Bnei Eihal” came out, “Kel Mistater,” etc.

Question: Can these melodies and their text somehow affect a person listening to them?

Answer: They do possess certain spiritual forces. A melody has a great power, but it can only be attained to the degree that a person is dwelling in it.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/16/16

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New Life #361 – Musicians And Inspiration

New Life #361 – Musicians And Inspiration
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Music is part of our life and it is a powerful expression of our feelings. How can we be part of its effect on us; what characterizes musicians and what is their contribution to society?

Music is a special composition that expresses harmony and the connections between opposites. A listener with minimal experience in life can be impressed by the composition.

Composers have an inner hearing. They feel their internal world through sounds. There are different styles of music and of composers. Sometimes composers seclude themselves in order to hear themselves, but nonetheless, a composer is actually the outcome of society as a whole.

The difference between a mediocre and a brilliant composer is the extent to which he can feel the sorrow and hope of society as a whole. This has nothing to do with his spiritual level. A genius composer can also be a savage.

A composer has to try to learn the secret of life in order to reach the highest level of composition.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #361 – Musicians And Inspiration,” 7/21/14

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New Life #360 – Music Connects The Hearts

New Life #360 – Music Connects The Hearts
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What is the essence of the connection between a musician and the audience for whom he performs? How does it connect us with a sense of harmony and how can we use this essence in teaching integral education?

The sound of music that a person plays is a means of connecting his heart with the heart of the listeners. Great musicians can feel how the audience before them swallows the sounds and the feelings they convey.

The sitting arrangement in a live performance is important in order to connect the audience; this is the reason that an amphitheater is built the way it is. Before a musician begins his performance he needs to tune himself to the fact that he is going to connect everyone as one.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #360 – Music Connects The Hearts,” 4/27/14

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New Life #359 – The Effect Of Music On People

New Life #359 – The Effect Of Music On People
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Music is a universal language that directly strums the strings of our emotions. What makes it affect us so strongly and how does it create the feeling of harmony, elation, and connection between us?

Summary

Music is a language that expresses our innermost feelings,; it can change our mood.

Music immediately reminds a person of something and arouses certain feelings as if it skips the mind. Music is an emotional language. It is different from ordinary language that requires understanding, a mind, memory and the ability to compare.

When I hear sounds, my feelings begin to operate to the rhythm of the sounds, they control me. We have an understanding and feeling. Our sight operates on understanding; our hearing operates on feelings,

In order to hear better we sometimes close our eyes so that our sight will not interfere with our attempt to focus on the music. Hearing belongs to our insight.

The sounds that we perceive give me a sense of harmony and balance. I enjoy the wholeness of the sounds.

There is something in musical harmony that is similar to the upper wholeness in nature. This is the reason that music elates us. There is nothing threatening in music and it brings quiet joy, tears, and something that is very internal, personal, and deep.

All of nature plays music and music can heal.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #359 – The Effect Of Music On People”, 4/27/14

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The World Of Music

laitman_932Question: Music is a meaningful part of our lives. They say that music is a universal language that doesn’t require words. It is stronger than words and penetrates directly into the heart; it opens hearts and connects people. So what is music?

Answer: Music is a language that can express the deepest inner feelings of a person. It can excite and elevate a person, change a mood and the direction of thought.

Music can transport us from one place to another, depending on its style. According to a few sounds or chords we already feel where it comes from: is this European, Indian, or South American music?

In the United States national styles of music from all over the world became mixed together, producing a kind of musical “salad” that has spread all over the world because it is suitable for most of humanity.

Music immediately arouses memories in a person and produces special feelings in him. Words penetrate into us through the mind, and we are compelled to activate a mechanism of comparison, memory. And music, in contrast, immediately takes the emotion out of memory and awakens it within us, whether we want it or not. It penetrates into a person without asking permission.

Music connects us with the surrounding conditions in which it is heard: with time, space, movement and events; all of this is immediately awakened in our memory together with the sounds that we hear. Music is the world and everything that fills it.

All of our senses, other than sight and hearing, are very meager, as if they were undeveloped. Even though the sense of smell has very great significance; it developed in us when we were still living in the trees. When we came down from the trees and became humans, we began to be involved with all kinds of work that isn’t typical of animals and we spoiled our sense of smell.

Our sense of taste was also spoiled because we are no longer animals. There was a time when according to smell and taste we could distinguish what nourishment was appropriate for us and what wasn’t. But today we are no longer able to do this. We create many food products with tastes and smells that attract us; however, in fact, they are poison for us.

Even the sense of touch has limited possibilities and confuses us too much. We have stopped living in an environment of natural simple things that are appropriate to our nature. We create so many artificial products and phenomena that confuse our sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste so that there is nothing true in them that we can trust.

But from the great variety of sounds that we hear, music impresses us to the greatest degree. Only the crying of a baby or a siren that immediately arouses us is stronger than music.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/27/14

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A March In Honor Of The Few!

laitman_576_01Baal HaSulam wrote a march in the honor of the few who have reached the end of correction, the complete ascent above their ego, and absolute altruism, the attribute of love and bestowal for everyone.

This march is dedicated to very few who managed to reach their personal end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) in every generation throughout history.

The march praises and glorifies the great people who have attained the upper system of nature. It is a recognition of the uniqueness, the persistence, and the ability to ascend above themselves and during their lifetime become guests in the highest halls of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 9/2/14

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Music That Attracts One Towards Attainment Of The Upper World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: For me, the “Melodies of the Upper Worlds” is a unique series. The inimitable spiritual experience that a person feels when performing this music can be compared to a rainbow, which is singular, but at the same time produces a variety of different colors and leaves a very wide range of emotions, musical impressions and experiences.

What is this music? How does it become integrated into the world and with the general spiritual attainment of a person?

Answer: Music fills the whole world. On the face of the globe there is no place in which a person doesn’t express himself with some kind of sound. Even animals sing, hum, and echo in different voices, expressing happiness, bitterness, fear, and suffering. And all of this is music, an expression of inner emotions.

The world is full of melody. Even when you look at the sky, the stars, and the universe, you feel that they are filled with harmony. And music is harmony.

In our world there are many kinds of musical styles and various expressions of music. People from all nations in the world and throughout all historical periods have used a variety of musical forms or particular types of external conventions of communication that express their inner emotions.

But besides the usual earthly music that composers throughout all times and societies have created, there is spiritual music which a person experiences when he is speaking not about earthly happiness and suffering, but about emotions that he feels on attaining the upper world, the higher power, the Creator. Throughout human history we have had unique spiritual teachers who marched alongside humanity, but in parallel to it or above it. They used their own methods of expression of spiritual understanding when the true soul sings. The soul doesn’t include our earthly experiences, but the experiences of the discovery of the higher state, the upper world. There have not been many people like these in every generation.

Left to us are some sketches and memories of them. But we don’t know what musical instrument King David used. Was it a stringed instrument, a flute, or possibly an instrument similar to a violin? Even though we read Psalms, we cannot sing the songs as he did.

The written words don’t give us a clear sensation or understanding of how to perform them. At the same time, for example, in the Torah, above and below the letters are clear signs, the marks of cantillation, that give us an understanding of how to sing the text of the Torah.

And if the person is advanced in his spiritual attainment, meaning in the feeling of the controlling system in our world, how he enters into it, feels, understands, and adapts himself to it, he begins to cooperate with it. And he then begins a conscious emotional and intellectual dialog here.

That is, that attainment is carried out on two levels in the heart and mind. Between them are created unique and interesting transitions with a predominance of emotions or with a predominance of the intellect. And yet the music is derived either from emotion or from intellect. In other words, the music of the soul and its general feeling is born as a result of good harmonious relationships between the emotions and the mind. That is what is amazing about attaining the upper world.

When a sage enters into the spiritual world, he begins to feel a higher harmony that cannot be described in words because completely different feelings and a multileveled mind are produced within him. Contradictions merge and approach each other, and unity is extended instead.

So our earthly musical means cannot contain the volume and intensity that a sage feels upon attaining the upper world. No orchestra nor organ will help here, since after all, the idea is not about the instruments that carry what a Kabbalist feels on attainment of the upper world, rather he is also in an audience, which is said to be ready in some form to understand what is conveyed to him.

For example, those who attend  symphonic concerts are not people from the street, or those who are outside playing dominoes. A particular audience goes to these concerts, knows about musical culture, and by way of the musical sounds, aspires to feel particular levels of our world, life and death and everything in between them and what fills them. That is also how it is here.

It is necessary to prepare an audience to grasp spiritual music. This is so that people will begin to hear something higher within those sounds, greater than what the human ear usually can grasp. If we prepare people, they will begin to discern the sounds of the upper worlds hidden in these melodies as if they are heard within them, clothed within them and which are revealed only to people who can hear them and understand about what they are speaking.

The exceptionally unique characteristic of spiritual music is that it attracts the listener itself, and he then begins to aspire to it, be interested in its inner content, and tries to understand the inner layer of emotional and intellectual information that it contains. It is possible to play it before an entire audience and it will itself attract them. When the time comes, it will be possible to give a short course to help people to discover the inner layer that exists in these works.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 2/09/14

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The Flight Of The Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We know that a spiritual action is performed by the intention. How should we approach the performance of the music of the upper worlds correctly in order to attain the goal in the shortest possible time so that, together with that, we will keep on advancing spiritually?

Answer: I think that the main thing is the constant guidance of the upper providence with joy.

About 20 years ago, I conducted an experiment in a retirement home, and I gave out the tunes of “Who is the Secret of Life” to the residents there. Then, I conducted a survey. People over 65 told me that they cried when they listened to the music.

I understand them. First, an elderly person who hears this tune immediately delves into his memories and the life he has lived, but these experiences are basically different from what this kind of music should convey.

It is about joy, about the upper Light, about a very clear state. It is a feeling of awe, inspiration, an ascent and flight of the soul! It swims in the white Light, and such a glorious state is embodied in our world when a bride is dressed in a white dress.

Therefore, the main thing is to at least understand and feel as much as possible what the tune is by focusing on joy and trying to resemble the person who wrote it. It is because he wrote it out of his attainment of the upper worlds, the upper state, and the upper force. There, one discovers only the joy of the eternal attainment, wholeness and harmony that excites and fills everything!

We should try to detach from our ego, from what it does with us in our world, from its distortion, and by ascending above the ego, we should try to live in a the totally different dimension of love, bestowal, and good mutual connection. Then, the melodies of the spiritual worlds would be felt in a totally different manner.

This is a little revelation for every student. I think that if he constantly remembers this, he will be able to begin to feel the spiritual world without studying anything else of all the enormous method of attaining the spiritual worlds of which Baal HaSulam wrote. There is no need for words! If a person opens himself to these sounds and to their internal sources, he will begin to understand everything.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 2/09/14

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