@mahgister 

You would be right if between a mystical experience and a perception of a plant growing seen from a scientific viewpoint there would have been no middle ground perspective nor any levels...

To clarify, I was expressing my doubt regarding what can be accomplished with verbal dialog when there is an absence of share experience. I was not asserting there exists no middle ground. 

We cannot induce or share experience with words for sure...Except in some degree with poetry...

But with prose we can only merely suggest a book for example which can describe how to put together the best conditions to experience a perception for ourself , but no book will replace a perception done consciously in the right conditions and in the right way ...

I suggest here the physicist Henri Bortoft :

https://www.amazon.ca/Taking-Appearance-Seriously-Dynamic-European-

ebook/dp/B0BTTV3PW4/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1703803948&refinements=p_27%3AHENRI+BORTOFT&s=books&sr=1-3&text=HENRI+BORTOFT

And if someone couple it with the book of Wolgang Schad on morphology Of mammals : "man and mammals" ...Then you will fall from your chair realizing you had never seen anything save on a pure surface with no depth in all your life ...As i did myself...😁😊

I recommend it to mijostyn and everybody who want to be astounded by Nature and our own ignorance, not the simple ignorance of facts which can easily be compensated by information , but the deeper ignorance about the way we see and look in a sleepwalker way ...

You would be right if between a mystical experience and a perception of a plant growing seen from a scientific viewpoint there would have been no middle ground perspective nor any levels...

To clarify, I was expressing my doubt regarding what can be accomplished with verbal dialog when there is an absence of share experience. I was not asserting there exists no middle ground.

Myself i dont want to believe what CANNOT be experienced...

But what can be experienced can be experienced at many levels in a different way ...

For example BEFORE perceiving something clearly we must had a concept...

The concept can be intuitively grasped if it is not perceived with the corresponding objects ...

The mysteries in Nature, in the cosmos or in the infinite cannot all be perceived , but we can believe what we perceive in "thinking"  in developing our intuition our imagination and our inspiration ...And someday we perceive it to some degree ...All mathematics is about that too ...

Then between the pure mystic living in union with the One or the source and the materialist pushing a stone and claiming that only that is a real perception , there is many levels of understanding in the physical and supraphysical levels of "vision" ...

Plato asked for the study of geometry why ?

Because the human animal who think that only stones are real not the ideas or the Gods could only  be educated in his thinking perception by geometry ...

Today it is the same thing, if we dont meditate about  music, poetry, art, God, mathematics and truth , what are we ? If we are not at least truly loving our neighbour as ourself, then we are really animals in human forms ...The fact that some animals own a ephone or a computer dont change their existantial status ...

 Technical mastery and hubris is only a low state of being even if it seems superior to animals... It is an illusion ...

Reality and mysticism are always at odds with each other. I have been told on many occasions that I have to give people "hope." I never did when there was none. Miracles only happen in fairy tales. Fairy tales are for children.

I’m aware this is your mindset/perspective. We are actually quite similar in that neither one of us deigns to believe what we have not experienced.

@mahgister

Is it not our stubborn certainty that we "know" how things are and are not that, more than anything else, gets in the way?

We cannot induce or share experience with words for sure...Except in some degree with poetry..

I’m drawn to writing poems... or, at least, to the process of learning to write them. It’s quite a challenging art! There are some poets whose work I admire for its clarity. Others may write in a way that "carries me away" through sound and rhythm. Their work may be less easily understood in terms of "story" but moves me on a level that does not require rational explanation. In such cases, we may be ushered into a "knowing" that does not depend upon rational thought.

Instrumental music need not "explain itself" -- it has the power to affect our body and consciousness directly. Of course, it’s capacity to affect us may still be limited by our mental constructs. This is where I often run into problems because I’m so attached to/entrenched in, personal taste! ;o)

Myself i dont want to believe what CANNOT be experienced...

But what can be experienced can be experienced at many levels in a different way ...

For example BEFORE perceiving something clearly we must had a concept...

Neither do I. If it is true that we can experience something at many levels, then surely, the means of perceiving changes at different levels. And I'm not sure a "concept" is necessarily a prerequisite at every level. There can be "mental comprehension" on one level and "intuitive recognition" on another, no? Especially where spiritual growth is concerned, shifts in perception may not be recognized by the rational mind immediately. It's been my experience that a shift in awareness may occur at one level via a particular faculty that is not immediately recognized at another level associated with a different faculty. To use a metaphor, I may "see the grass is moving" for a while before it occurs to me that "a wind is blowing". 

Well said and very interesting! Thanks ...

@mahgister

Is it not our stubborn certainty that we "know" how things are and are not that, more than anything else, gets in the way?

We cannot induce or share experience with words for sure...Except in some degree with poetry..

I’m drawn to writing poems... or, at least, to the process of learning to write them. It’s quite a challenging art! There are some poets whose work I admire for its clarity. Others may write in a way that "carries me away" through sound and rhythm. Their work may be less easily understood in terms of "story" but moves me on a level that does not require rational explanation. In such cases, we may be ushered into a "knowing" that does not depend upon rational thought.

Instrumental music need not "explain itself" -- it has the power to affect our body and consciousness directly. Of course, it’s capacity to affect us may still be limited by our mental constructs. This is where I often run into problems because I’m so attached to/entrenched in, personal taste! ;o)

The best book ever i know about poetry is "poetic diction" by Owen Barfield...

It is not a book about verses it is about knowledge and language ... Very deep .. Short book which cost peanuts ...

Astoundingly clear book ...It beat anything i have ever read about poetry in a very pragmatic british way and with the same intuition who inspired his friends : C.S. Lewis and Tolkien admired Barfield for his intelligence and originality ...

You must buy it ...

It is not our knowing who got in the way so much as a form of knowing which is deceptive because it is not a well integrated  part of our true self and never had been in our european civilization  ... What we learn without experiencing it inside us is only a useful weight we put on our back to succeed in society ... It is not craftmanship nor creative experience... It is only a memorized imposed external  knowledge ( a mapping )  ...

To understand acoustics we must experiment with it , only reading formula is not enough ...It is not enough to read only sheet music without never listening or playing ...

All that is easy to resume : there is the maps and the mapping activity , the gluing of parts, on one part of the brain and the living territory in which our other brain feel the wholeness as reality , the real territory which cannot be a map nor even be mapped  ... ( all mapping implied a trade-off and a big lost )

The greatest books about that ever written are by Iain McGilchrist ...To read absolutely ...You can see interview of him on Youtube ...

Then the knowledge who interrupt our participation to the Nature and to the Source is a memorized set of maps and the mapping activity , instead of the participating conscious gazing into the whole through the parts and into the parts from the whole , with the realization that parts and whole dont add  externally but merge in one perception ... the books of Goethe in science analyzed by Bortoft are all about that ...

The key is looking for a better balance between the part of ourself who is hypnotized by details in a day to day sleepwalking life and the part of ourself which is dwelling in the whole as children do or great  awaken artists or scientists ...

Sound is a mystery and if it was not one we will be killed by boredom for eternity ...

Only bored boring man can think that sound is not a mystery, or that there is no mysteries...

Even deaf man listen and blind man see the mysteries...

I read this story very young first in the great book of Eric temple Bell about the great mathematicians...It is an anecdote :

«The following anecdote is found in
Thiebault’s Souvenirsde vingt ans de sejour a Berlin, published in 1804. Thie-
bault does not claim personal knowledge of the anecdote, but he vouches for its
being received as true all over the north of Europe. Diderot paid a visit to
Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Second. At that time he was an atheist
or at least talked atheism: it would be easy to prove him one thing or the other
from his writings.His lively sallies on this subject much amused the Empress,

and all the younger part of her Court. But some of the older courtiers suggested
that it was hardly prudent to allow such unreserved exhibitions.The Empress
thought so too, but did not like to muzzle her guest by an express prohibition:
so a plot was contrived.The scorner was informed that an eminent mathemati-
cian had an algebraical proof of the existence of God, which he would communi-
cate before the whole Court, if agreeable. Diderot gladly consented.The mathe-
matician,who is not named,was Euler. He came to Diderot with the gravest air,
and in a tone of perfect conviction said, ’Monsieur! (a+b")/n=x, donc Dieu
existe; repondez!’ Diderot, to whom algebra was Hebrew, though this is expressed
in a very roundabout way by Thiebault-and whom we may suppose to have
expected some verbal argument of alleged algebraical closeness, was discon-
certed,while peals of laughter sounded on all sides. Next day he asked permis-
sion to return to France, which was granted."

The reader of this anecdote must know that Euler , one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived , was not a fool and did not seriouly proposed his simple algebra as a logical proof of the existance of God for sure... But Euler was a deep believer in God and all his knowledge indicated the truthfullness of his faith in the source of all knowledge ,then for Euler , any mathematical simple fact was an EVIDENCE of God not a proof , as the trace of an animals dont proves logically his existence but yet suggest it strongly ( the prime numbers distribution by the way must be interpreted as an absolute fact and is as such by a mathematician as Alain Connes for example and many others )  ...I am sure that Euler enjoyed to close the mouth of a professional doubter or of  a religious and zealot  atheist...

Mysteries are even in the simplest formula as PI or the number E , but not all people are ready and prepared to perceive them ...Most lazy people prefered to negate and live in boredom and in this faith which consist to negate all faiths as pure deceptions  ...

From

The So-Called Euler-Diderot Incident

R. J. Gillings

Sound is a mystery and if it was not one would be killed by boredom for eternity ...

Only a bored boring man can think that sound is not a mystery, or that there are no mysteries...

Even a deaf man listens and a blind man sees the mysteries...

Ask this man if there is no mysteries in music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNrcb-9Gi8c&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_CGFyisehOpLvbpDhdIe_ld&index=204

Now ask this musician and to the composer if there is no music and no mysteries in protein chemistry :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqjsFTjLNyE&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_CGFyisehOpLvbpDhdIe_ld&index=202

«A man who see no mysteries anywhere is a phantom in his own body »-- Anonymus spirit

Sound is small subset of Vibration. Maybe this thread should have been titled "The Mystery Of Vibration Is Mysticism" instead of "The Mystery Of Sound Is Mysticism".

Smokey Robinson wrote these songs:
- “Who’s Loving You?”
- “It’s Growing”
- “Get Ready”
- “Wonderful Baby”
- “After You Put Back the Pieces (I’ll Still Have a Broken Heart)”
- “Since I Lost My Baby”
- “Way Over There”
- “The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game”
- “Going To a Go-Go”
- “My Guy”
- “Better Late Than Never”
- “Save Me”
- “Ain’t That Peculiar”
- “What’s So Good About Goodbye”
- “Don’t Look Back”
- “The Tracks of My Tears”
- “My Girl”
- “(Come ‘Round Here) I’m the One You Need”
- “Ain’t That Peculiar”
- “Cruisin’”
- “First I Look at the Purse”
- “Shop Around”
- “Little Miss Sweetness”
- “Ooo Baby Baby”
- “The Way You Do the Things You Do”
- “When I’m Gone”
- “Being With You”
- “Two Lovers”
- “Mickey’s Monkey”
- “I’ll Be Doggone”
- “Let Me Be the Clock”
- “You Beat Me To the Punch”
- “My Girl Has Gone”
- “You’ve Got to Earn It”
- “I Second That Emotion”
- “Whole Lotta Woman”
- “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”
- “I’ll Be in Trouble”
- “Got a Job”
- “Lucky, Lucky Me”
- “The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage”
- “Here I Am Baby”
- “We’ve Come Too Far to End it Now”
- “Malinda”
- “I Like it Like That”
- “The One Who Really Loves You”
- “The Tears of a Clown”
- “Still Water”

Those are hits for the likes of The Temptations, Mary Wells, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, The Jackson 5, Bobby Breen, The Contours, The Marvelettes, Brenda Holloway, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, his own group, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and his solo stuff, all between 1958 and 1981.
That is just a small sample of his mind-blowing catalog of songs.

I’d love to hear a purely science/data-based explanation how one person can do something like that 😉

Happy Holidays!

Sound is small subset of Vibration. Maybe this thread should have been titled "The Mystery Of Vibration Is Mysticism" instead of "The Mystery Of Sound Is Mysticism"

The vibration suppose a medium, and a perceiving subject in front of a vibrating sound source...

The fact that mankind used sound in a naturally tuned or even designed cavern or megalithic temple or more recently In Mysteries greek temples as Eleusis, to modify his own perceiving body by timing our metabolism rythms with the resonant cavern or temple indicate a high level of consciousness associated with sound and music "meanings" ...

These men who listened the echo of their voices or of instrument they were not in a leisure moment of distraction after work...

They were in contemplative working of the mind going from one level to the other by means of resonance ...

All the cells of the body communicate by not only acoustic vibrations but also electro-magnetic onne from the microtubules to the brain and to the members from low hertz band to mega and giga Hertz...

That is just a small sample of his mind-blowing catalog of songs.

I’d love to hear a purely science/data-based explanation how one person can do something like that 😉

Happy Holidays!

It’s called Channeling. Jimi Hendrix did it and so did Duke Ellington, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Trane, Prince and many others.

A very big mystery is how some people can get so worked up about it.

It is very simple. materialism , especially today is becoming a religion especially after this worldview has been ontologically discarded , it maintain his grip on mind as a technological cult ...Today called transhumanism ...

And most people had no idea of what is science , think about doctors trained by Rockfeller education seized and controlled after the Flexner report ...Some even think that science is a consensus, think about the way some scientific communicator advocated for unscientific measures in the last 4 years because of a "corporate designed consensus" ...

Add to that by education most people have no idea what is a spiritual life , they dont think that our perception doing science observation can be transformed in "exact imaginative perception" (Goethe words as the perception of the dynamic of forms in projective geometry for example or the understanding of poetry and of language itself ); they dont know that what we perceive is already conditioned by our metaphysical concepts , be it materialism or creative one, then they reduce any wholeness and depth to his usable apparent parts...And they sell them as solutions...

They were perfect technological workers for corporate powers who anyway today controls all the main aspects of life ...

This was such that the word "philosopher of nature" were replaced by the word "scientist" , the description of a free thinker aimed at the understanding of the wholeness was replaced by the name of a mind now conditioned by details, specialization and the parts for which he will be paid to study ...The word "nature" was banished as are banished today the word "man" and "woman " in their biological and spiritual meanings ...

All this begin OFFICIALLY in 1833 at a reunion of the British society for the advancement of science, when Charles Babbage the creator of the first computer and a geologist too decided with Charles Lyell the geologist and others to replace the old fashion word "philosopher of nature" by the new word "scientist"... Replacing then the free spirit individual searching for knowledge and truth by a specialized paid workers compelled to serve for the British corporations dominating the world... Think about the doctors slave status now as demonstrated in the last three years ?

Goethe predicted it two years before in 1831 with the publication of his completed masterpiece, Faust, , describing among other trends all this HUBRIS and demonic totalitarism of the paper money and the greed behind all that in ONE play...Faust from " free philosopher of nature " became, guided and possessed by Mephisto, a paid worker "scientist" for the Kings and even solve as economist their money problem creating it with debt based paper money ...( a swiss economist, Binswanger , even wrote a book about the genius of Goethe here)

We live today the concluding phase...the Frankenstein phase described long ago by a woman with great intuition...The big corporations at this moment worked for a hybridation of living cell and A.I. agency ... And they work no more for the replacement of the "philosopher of Nature " by a slave "scientist" paid worker educated by them , but for a replacement of useless "stupid" humans by machines...All science fiction books are like chivalry novels at the times of Cervantes mocking them with his Quixotte, outdated by the actual historical reality because " mostly realized" or in the course of realization ...

Art is not only mere leisure, art is rooted intuition, inspiration and imagination..Each artist is way more than a "scientist" he is a seer and always as Aristotle , Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael-Angelo, Archimedes , Goethe , Vernadsky in Russia and Charles Sanders Peirce in US and many others were, "a free philosopher of Nature" too a name where art and science conjugated together ...Not only a mere "scientist" as a specialized unfree paid workers for big corporations directly or indirectly ...

«Bach is part of nature because the growing of a tree from a seed is a melodic line with a counterpoint »-- Anonymus musician and gardener reading the plant morphology of Goethe

A very big mystery is how some people can get so worked up about it.

Then as you can see the way some people reacted against spirit or any non materialist perspective is not a mystery but a simple historical enigma solved easily if we can retrace the roots of the programmation of minds in history itself  ... This is not complotism, this is history meanings...Convergence of interest by growing corporations and narrowing of the mind coming with hubris for power and greed explain almost all ...It is different today because there is no more democracy only an oligarchy but it is not the place to discuss it ..😊

@tylermunns

Dylan has said he has "no idea" where his 60’s material came from. In the same interview, he implies they came from "somewhere else". Keith Richards, whom few would characterize as a "mystic", has said something to the effect that songs are "in the air" -- the idea being that the attentive/attuned artist "downloads" or "channels" them. if this is true, whatever/wherever the source of songs might be, it would appear to have a much larger capacity than any single human. Speaking of prolific composers, I wonder what Duke Ellington might've said on this topic

I wonder what Duke Ellington might’ve said on this topic

He has, he has told this story before about how especially between gigs on a train, plane and in cars he was always writing/creating news songs on any kind of paper he could find even napkins!

Any creator working with himself know very well that his works to do well must increase his consciousness level from day to day consciousness to another level b-c-d- etc to create something "inspired" not necessarily by an alien entity but by himself from another higher consciousness vantage point ...

Even mathematicians know this as any painter or any poet or musicians composer or not ....

No need to appeal to channelling here even if it exist ...Greatest creations are not so much usually channelling, as instead elevated consciousness level and communication or merging with the part of ourself more higher called the " higher self" by Jung or yes for sure in some case speaking in sleep or in lucid dream with the "daimon" which is another guiding entity so named by Jung also as it was by Plato ...

Some music and meditation in silence practices are precisely complementary ways to forgot the day to day self to embrass our higher self ...

Then only sleepwalking people can think that there is no mysteries in sound experience...Why music can be so powerful in healing technic for medecine ? Placebo effect yes for sure , any wise doctor must use it , but more than that contacting the healer by excellence : the higher self ...

Ask Edgar Cayce did in America not long ago ...A demonstrated non fraudulent health worker for free with 15,000 thousand medical advices from a non educated person as was Cayce ...

Now try to debunk this miraculous healer from Germany after the second world war , i wish you good luck 😊:

Bruno Groning is a VERIFIED case of miraculous healing on thousand of case for NO MONEY ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeJ-zHn-B7U

Miracles and mysteries are everywhere and facts are facts yes , but any fact cover a depeer layers in it we must also look at into ...

And why not debunking this yogi of fire, i wish you good luck too 😊 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfyrWRbmss&t=8s

Even simple water is a complete mysteries even now...Only ignorant materialist sleepwalker dont know that because they are hipnotized by  some technology success  but way less by real science probing mysteries at the frontiers of the unknown  .. :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSbg3cuZNRQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8VyUsVOic0

Wisdom is way more than just knowledge, knowledge is way more than just science, and science is way more than just technology ...

Only ignorance confuse and conflate these 4 concepts...

I just present some facts about fire and water miracles or mysteries , what about air and earth miracles or mysteries now ? 😊

@mahgister 

..Greatest creations are not so much usually channelling, as instead elevated consciousness level and communication or merging with the part of ourself more higher called the " higher self" 

I suppose, for those who otherwise have no awareness of a "higher self" , the act of connecting with it during creative expression may be interpreted as contacting something "outside" one's self.  

Bull Roarer

I suppose, for those who otherwise have no awareness of a "higher self" , the act of connecting with it during creative expression may be interpreted as contacting something "outside" one’s self.

In some case yes for sure...But for those with no consciousness about themselves , it is way easier to negate even external manifestation and even blocking them at the source ... Because of the respect at the cosmic scale for free will , nobody can be forced or coerced in a state he consider alienating for himself ...

This is why sleepwalker walk manipulated by less respecting forces in some cases... See the last 4 years of brainwashing ...

 We can be manipulated to go down , but not to go higher , we must decide it ...

« Myself sorry, but if I am sometimes a robot it is  by free choice »--Groucho Marx🤓

@stuartk I love that interview he gave with Ed Bradley in the mid-‘00s.
I’d always perceived Dylan to be guarded in interviews, and in that one he seemed so unguarded and forthright. 
Bradley asked him, “Do you ever look at music that you’ve written and look back at it and say, “whoa, that surprised me”?”  
Dylan said, “…I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were like almost magically written…
’darkness at the break of noon / shadows even the silver spoon / the handmade blade, the child’s balloon / eclipses both the sun and moon / to understand, you know too soon / there is no sense in trying / pointed threats, they bluff with scorn / suicide remarks are torn / from the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn / plays wasted words, proves to warn / that he not busy being born is busy dying’…
…well…try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that. It’s not Siegfried & Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. I did it at one time”

“Try to sit down and write something like that.”  
What a great comment!  
I love that.  
That sums up whatever it is we’re talking about here, whether one calls it “mysticism,” “channeling,” “magic,” or whatever.

@tylermunns 

Yes -- that was the interview I was thinking of. Thanks for providing the transcript (more accurate than my hazy memory) !  ;o)

Anyone who had written poetry know this state : it is going from one level of consciouness to another ...

«Art is nature speed up and God slowed down » Malcom de Chazal

Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don’t understand us.

« Peace is a state of consciousness which seeds in us gave the fruits waiting for us out of history as the words of prose are already now the seeds of a higher meaning and higher consciousness in what we call poetry »-- Anonymus audiogon poster 😎

«The seeds value is more than the fruit»-- Anonymus gardener

«Words are seeds and the song is the fruit»-- Anonymus Dylan fan

«Children days of amazement dont make  history» -- Anonymus psychologist

Now take a gentle breath and listen to what this awaked gentleman in his last interview, before he died just before 9/11, spoke about and think about the way what he says about time and concsciousness accelerating is becoming truer by the minute nowadays ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdEKhIk-8Gg

If sound is a mystery , time is also one...And one encounter the other in speech (communication as the highest evolutive rate of change ) ...

Now if you think that this Mckenna is in a delirium about his idea of a relation between time and the Chinese most important old book , think again...

Read this  book here the correspondance between Carl Gustav Jung the father of depth psychology and Wolfgang Pauli one of the father with Bohr and Heisemberg of the new quantum physics , discussing about time and synchonicities and another Keplerian and Newtonian deep interest : astrology ...

"Atom and Archetypes" book , the Jung/Pauli letters from 1932 to 1958

http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7042.pdf

I also like that right after Dylan made that comment, Bradley asked him if he thinks he could write something like that again, and he said, “(mm mm)” 😆 (as in, the ‘mm mm’ sound of ‘no’). 
That lack of hubris, expressed so bluntly, is great.  
He’s not sitting there acting like he’s some kind of genius, but instead bluntly saying, essentially, “I experienced something special at one time, but it was a special moment (‘moment’ being the salad days of his creativity, not just that one song) that has passed.”  
He could have said, “Well, Ed, I’m tryin’” or, “I think my new stuff is just as good,” or, “an artist evolves…” etc.  

I just appreciate that he showed that humility, that kind of respect for this thing we’re talking about; the intangible, mysterious forces that seem to motivate these moments in history when artists produce incredible work.

Very deep and important observation...

Thanks...

On the Marionette Theatre

by Heinrich von Kleist

Translated by Idris Parry

One evening in the winter of 1801 I met an old friend in a public park. He had recently been appointed principal dancer at the local theatre and was enjoying immense popularity with the audiences. I told him I had been surprised to see him more than once at the marionette theatre which had been put up in the market-place to entertain the public with dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance. He assured me that the mute gestures of these puppets gave him much satisfaction and told me bluntly that any dancer who wished to perfect his art could learn a lot from them.

From the way he said this I could see it wasn't something which had just come into his mind, so I sat down to question him more closely about his reasons for this remarkable assertion.

He asked me if I hadn't in fact found some of the dance movements of the puppets (and particularly of the smaller ones) very graceful. This I couldn't deny. A group of four peasants dancing the rondo in quick time couldn't have been painted more delicately by Teniers.

I inquired about the mechanism of these figures. I wanted to know how it is possible, without having a maze of strings attached to one's fingers, to move the separate limbs and extremities in the rhythm of the dance. His answer was that I must not imagine each limb as being individually positioned and moved by the operator in the various phases of the dance. Each movement, he told me, has its centre of gravity; it is enough to control this within the puppet. The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help. He added that this movement is very simple. When the centre of gravity is moved in a straight line, the limbs describe curves. Often shaken in a purely haphazard way, the puppet falls into a kind of rhythmic movement which resembles dance.

This observation seemed to me to throw some light at last on the enjoyment he said he got from the marionette theatre, but I was far from guessing the inferences he would draw from it later.

I asked him if he thought the operator who controls these puppets should himself be a dancer or at least have some idea of beauty in the dance. He replied that if a job is technically easy it doesn't follow that it can be done entirely without sensitivity. The line the centre of gravity has to follow is indeed very simple, and in most cases, he believed, straight. When it is curved, the law of its curvature seems to be at the least of the first and at the most of the second order. Even in the latter case the line is only elliptical, a form of movement natural to the human body because of the joints, so this hardly demands any great skill from the operator. But, seen from another point of view, this line could be something very mysterious. It is nothing other than the path taken by the soul of the dancer. He doubted if this could be found unless the operator can transpose himself into the centre of gravity of the marionette. In other words, the operator dances.

I said the operator's part in the business had been represented to me as something which can be done entirely without feeling - rather like turning the handle of a barrel-organ.

"Not at all", he said. "In fact, there's a subtle relationship between the movements of his fingers and the movements of the puppets attached to them, something like the relationship between numbers and their logarithms or between asymptote and hyperbola." Yet he did believe this last trace of human volition could be removed from the marionettes and their dance transferred entirely to the realm of mechanical forces, even produced, as I had suggested, by turning a handle.

I told him I was astonished at the attention he was paying to this vulgar species of an art form. It wasn't just that he thought it capable of loftier development; he seemed to be working to this end himself.

He smiled. He said he was confident that, if he could get a craftsman to construct a marionette to the specifications he had in mind, he could perform a dance with it which neither he nor any other skilled dancer of his time, not even Madame Vestris herself, could equal.

"Have you heard", he asked, as I looked down in silence, "of those artificial legs made by English craftsmen for people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their own limbs?"

I said I hadn't. I had never seen anything of this kind.

"I'm sorry to hear that", he said, "because when I tell you these people dance with them, I'm almost afraid you won't believe me. What am I saying... dance? The range of their movements is in fact limited, but those they can perform they execute with a certainty and ease and grace which must astound the thoughtful observer."

I said with a laugh that of course he had now found his man. The craftsman who could make such remarkable limbs could surely build a complete marionette for him, to his specifications.

"And what", I asked, as he was looking down in some perplexity, "are the requirements you think of presenting to the ingenuity of this man?"

"Nothing that isn't to be found in these puppets we see here," he replied: "proportion, flexibility, lightness .... but all to a higher degree. And especially a more natural arrangement of the centres of gravity."

"And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?"

"The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be.� lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You'll look for it in vain in most of our dancers."

"Just look at that girl who dances Daphne", he went on. "Pursued by Apollo, she turns to look at him. At this moment her soul appears to be in the small of her back. As she bends, she look as if she's going to break, like a naiad after the school of Bernini. Or take that young fellow who dances Paris when he's standing among the three goddesses and offering the apple to Venus. His soul is in fact located (and it's a frightful thing to see) in his elbow."

" Misconceptions like this are unavoidable," he said, " now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the cherubim stands behind us. We have to go on and make the journey round the world to see if it is perhaps open somewhere at the back."

This made me laugh. Certainly, I thought, the human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent. I could see that he had more to say, so I begged him to go on.

"In addition", he said, "these puppets have the advantage of being for all practical purposes weightless. They are not afflicted with the inertia of matter, the property most resistant to dance. The force which raises them into the air is greater than the one which draws them to the ground. What would our good Miss G. give to be sixty pounds lighter or to have a weight of this size as a counterbalance when she is performing her entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets need the ground only to glance against lightly, like elves, and through this momentary check to renew the swing of their limbs. We humans must have it to rest on, to recover from the effort of the dance. This moment of rest is clearly no part of the dance. The best we can do is make it as inconspicuous as possible..."

My reply was that, no matter how cleverly he might present his paradoxes, he would never make me believe a mechanical puppet can be more graceful than a living human body. He countered this by saying that, where grace is concerned, it is impossible for man to come anywhere near a puppet. Only a god can equal inanimate matter in this respect. This is the point where the two ends of the circular world meet.

I was absolutely astonished. I didn't know what to say to such extraordinary assertions.

It seemed, he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, that I hadn't read the third chapter of the book of Genesis with sufficient attention. If a man wasn't familiar with that initial period of all human development, it would be difficult to have a fruitful discussion with him about later developments and even more difficult to talk about the ultimate situation.

I told him I was well aware how consciousness can disturb natural grace. A young acquaintance of mine had as it were lost his innocence before my very eyes, and all because of a chance remark. He had never found his way back to that Paradise of innocence, in spite of all conceivable efforts. "But what inferences", I added, "can you draw from that?"

He asked me what incident I had in mind.

"About three years ago", I said, "I was at the baths with a young man who was then remarkably graceful. He was about fifteen, and only faintly could one see the first traces of vanity, a product of the favours shown him by women. It happened that we had recently seen in Paris the figure of the boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. The cast of the statue is well known; you see it in most German collections. My friend looked into a tall mirror just as he was lifting his foot to a stool to dry it, and he was reminded of the statue. He smiled and told me of his discovery. As a matter of fact, I'd noticed it too, at the same moment, but... I don't know if it was to test the quality of his apparent grace or to provide a salutary counter to his vanity... I laughed and said he must be imagining things. He blushed. He lifted his foot a second time, to show me, but the effort was a failure, as anybody could have foreseen. He tried it again a third time, a fourth time, he must have lifted his foot ten times, but it was in vain. He was quite unable to reproduce the same movement. What am I saying? The movements he made were so comical that I was hard put to it not to laugh.

From that day, from that very moment, an extraordinary change came over this boy. He began to spend whole days before the mirror. His attractions slipped away from him, one after the other. An invisible and incomprehensible power seemed to settle like a steel net over the free play of his gestures. A year later nothing remained of the lovely grace which had given pleasure to all who looked at him. I can tell you of a man, still alive, who was a witness to this strange and unfortunate event. He can confirm it, word for word, just as I've described it."

"In this connection", said my friend warmly, "I must tell you another story. You'll easily see how it fits in here. When I was on my way to Russia, I spent some time on the estate of a Baltic nobleman whose sons had a passion for fencing. The elder, in particular, who had just come down from the university, thought he was a bit of an expert. One morning, when I was in his room, he offered me a rapier. I accepted his challenge but, as it turned out, I had the better of him. It made him angry, and this increased his confusion. Nearly every thrust I made found its mark. At last his rapier flew into the corner of the room. As he picked it up he said, half in anger and half in jest, that he had met his master but that there is a master for everyone and everything - and now he proposed to lead me to mine. The brothers laughed loudly at this and shouted: "Come on, down to the shed!" They took me by the hand and led me outside to make the acquaintance of a bear which their father was rearing on the farm.

"I was astounded to see the bear standing upright on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw raised ready for battle. He looked me straight in the eye. This was his fighting posture. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, seeing such an opponent. They urged me to attack. "See if you can hit him!" they shouted. As I had now recovered somewhat from my astonishment I fell on him with my rapier. The bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I feinted, to deceive him. The bear did not move. I attacked again, this time with all the skill I could muster. I know I would certainly have thrust my way through to a human breast, but the bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. By now I was almost in the same state as the elder brother had been: the bear's utter seriousness robbed me of my composure. Thrusts and feints followed thick and fast, the sweat poured off me, but in vain. It wasn't merely that he parried my thrusts like the finest fencer in the world; when I feinted to deceive him he made no move at all. No human fencer could equal his perception in this respect. He stood upright, his paw raised ready for battle, his eye fixed on mine as if he could read my soul there, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously he did not move. Do you believe this story?"

"Absolutely", I said with joyful approval. "I'd believe it from a stranger, it's so probable. Why shouldn't I believe it from you?"

"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."

"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"

"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."

Going back to Dylan at the beginning of his career, i think that he captured the spirit of all one generation and he let the "spirit of these times" spoke trough him for them ....

He forgot his "ego" and spontaneously produced the poetry emblematic of this era ...Perhaps more clearly than any one else...His mind-body-soul-spirit were one , and his ego not behind his gesture writing ...Like a master of Tai-chi, or any great poet or like an animal able to react in a more efficient way to any agression than human distracted by their "ego" hubris and fears...

Now what is lacking in the Kleist story about the "sin" associated with the "ego" knowledge of itself and the desynchonization of man and the cosmos, is the fact that we can each hour go back to the Eden garden again , and participating anew to the source , if we learn how to suspend and forgive our "ego"  sin ...Every mystics say so ...

Nature, music, and mathematics, meditation and prayers  taught us that they are the same act manifesting the ONE ...

Now look at this and listen to these caves In India erected for spiritual purpose as elevating the consciousness level :

The world dont lack enigmas...

But enigmas always had an answers even if we dont know it...

But some questions, as said Alexander Grothendieck ( "Nothing important can be proved") are mysteries which ask for our being itself and cannot be investigated without a transformation of the one who ask the question first ... Such are mysteries, which we cannot and must not confuse with enigmas ...

Consciousness is a mystery not a mere enigma...

Who was the man with the iron mask in history was an enigma that can be or could not be solved... But this question has an answer independant of the investigator ... As most scientific questions...But not all scientific questions are enigmas waiting to be solved ... Some are mystery waiting for us to be transformed first ...

A mystery cannot be solved in the same way as a mere enigma ...

A mystery ask for an initiation and a transformation from the inquirer ...

In mathematics as in religions, as in science, there is enigmas, but there is also mysteries ... Dont confuse and dont conflate them ... All the work of Blaise Pascal turn around the relation between question of reason and question of faith, between intuition and between logic...."Esprit de finesse et esprit de géométrie" ...

An enigma has a ready made answer waiting for us in history, in mathematics or in Nature ...

A mystery has only for answer our own being before and after... "A felt change in consciousness" as said Owen Barfield speaking of the language and the mystery of words which used in certain way modify the consciousness level ...

There is enigmas in linguistic , many; but the mystery goes way deeper than all the enigmas and questions we can asked .... Studying linguistic was for me as discovering mathematics, a stupendous mystery and a transformation of my being ...

@mahgister 

A mystery ask for an initiation and a transformation from the inquirer ...

I don't know if this is relevant but one of my teachers used to remind me "You are not doing awakening. Awakening is doing you! "

Your teacher is right...

In mystical experience or in samadhi experience the spirit decide not the ego , nevermind his work quality and quantity ultimetaly ...

But here in this thread i dont spoke about the high levels of spiritual experience, i spoke about the way to meditate music mysteries, numbers mysteries. poetic mysteries , mammals morphology mystery , plant morphology mystery , any Natural science mystery as observing water properties etc ...

Here we must ask for our sense to be initiated in Nature or in mind over the ego and his habits ...

And here a truely spiritual perception change us ...At least we learn how to forgot the ego for a moment ...

But no one achieve the highest spiritual heights because he, his ego , decide ...We are guided and not alone ...We are all ONE ...

Anyway we are all already enlightened but we dont know yet...We need some help ...

And those who love anyway are the helpers... And those who dont love are the best teachers ... Love your enemy say the Christ...

But here more modestly we spoke about sound mysteries ...Nature seen before the ego birth ...Numbers thought out of any logic ... Mammals seen for the first time... Plant seen where they are : in time flow...

A mystery ask for an initiation and a transformation from the inquirer ...

I don’t know if this is relevant but one of my teachers used to remind me "You are not doing awakening. Awakening is doing you!

A past sound coming from the future in a dreamed flow of dreams for now  :

@mahgister 

Anyway we are all already enlightened but we dont know yet...We need some help ...

I'd say you have talent for understatement   ;o)

RE: Gary Thomas, I have never heard didgeridoo playing like this! 

I like didgeridoo because with it we learn how there is a cosmic voice who spoke through the human voice and a human voice speak also with the cosmic voice ...

The "primitive" didgeridoo do it  already in a way even the "sophisticated" sarangi could not do so evidently ...(video in the post above)

Some being deaf can claim there is no mystey in the didgeridoo voicing, they are deaf in a way that even deaf people are not ......

RE: Gary Thomas, I have never heard didgeridoo playing like this!

Here too we can hear the cosmic voice speaking through the human voice and we can hear the human voice behind the cosmic voice ...

Language is a mirror of the stars...

The zodiacal circle is music and speech ...

With the surbahar , the king of the sitar realm , we hear mysteries...

But we can also coming back from the stars cosmic voices or from the human voices entering in the earth grounded rythms mysteries with the yoruba drums coming, back near Australian earth grounded and cosmic dreams inspired didgeridoo ...

(By the way the best book i read about music mystery  was a doctorate thesis in acoustics inspired by the Yoruba drums sound source  : "Sound sources" by Akpan J. Essien) :

^«7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!  »Matthew 7-7-11

stuartk

2,209 posts

01-01-2024 at 08:04pm 

@mahgister 

Anyway we are all already enlightened but we dont know yet...We need some help ...

I'd say you have talent for understatement   ;o)

Then even when it look like as just a mere entertainment , music hide his deep mystery in the open surface for all to see and we do not see it whithout attention or without a little bit of help though... If not  awaken we will say that there is no mysteries in sound no more than in music or no mysteries in speech ...

But dont ask to an ostrich with his head in the sand to think ...😊

Can we recreate something from the past and summon it in our present through a work of art ?

Can we introduce ourself into a mystery ?

Yes we can ....In it there is the secret of immortal consciousness which is the participation to the cosmos consciously... And it is also about the lost of this consciouness ...

Each day we awake in awe and go back to sleep in fear or forgetfulness , as civilizations did who passed and will come again ... All experienced this cosmic rythms ...

The day will come when death or being born will no more be behind or under  the forgetfulness veil ...

listen to this 2 hours :