Music, meditation and the forces of

the soul
TorbjørnOctober 3, 2019NewsEdit"Private: Music, meditation and the forces of the soul"

Our soul-life is composed of three main ingredients; thinking, feeling and will. In
normal consciousness thinking, feeling and will always work together, but with one
aspect being the main component. In thinking, an impulse of will always works, and
this is motivated by a feeling (whether conscious or not). In feelings there are always
an element of thought and a desire or will impulse. There is no act of will without a
rudimentary idea to which a feeling is attached, etc etc. Whenever one thinks, feels or
acts, the whole soul is engaged, but with one aspect coming more to the fore while the
others work more or less unconscious. Our soul-life during the course of a day is
mainly filled with already formed complexes and meshwork of these soul-forces in
connection with sense-impressions; mental pictures and memories, day-dreaming,
emotions mixed with desires and mental pictures or ideas, will-impulses flowing from
desires or fixed dogmatic representations, etc- etc.

To make conscious and purify these complexes is part of a catharsis that can lead to a
spiritual awakening of the deeper forces of our being. Catharsis or purification is the
same as self-knowledge – seeing how one´s soul-life is tagged and formed by these
complexes and meshworks such that the pure forces of thinking, feeling and will are
always already formed. Instead of pure thinking our soul-life consists of thoughts and
mental pictures, instead of true feeling self-centred emotions, and instead of true will
we have egotistical desires. This process of self-knowledge involves a self-encounter
in the meeting with the world and with the Other; seeing how one is mixed up with the
soul-complexes and thus appropriates and makes everything related to oneself. To
purify and free real soul-life from the ego-force of individuation connected to the
physical body is one of the main tasks of the first part of the bridge-construction in
spiritual schooling of consciousness. In the schooling-process we study this under the
concept of the reversal and the reversal of the reversal.

In principle such a practice involves everything, our whole life – with the ideal of
creating a wholly new way of life. But we need to begin with some experiences where
we can fully offer our attention. Rudolf Steiner gives the starting point for this in How
to attain knowledge of higher worlds where attention to the soul-forces are practiced in
specific situations and in specific exercises. An important aspect of this is the creation
of pure thinking, as developed through problems of epistemology and ethics in The
Philosophy of Freedom. This is a straight line to a catharsis of the most awake soul-
force; pure thinking already produces a spiritual substance which lifts consciousness
beyond its ego-dominated soul-life. But eventually, in the future, all of our life should
be spiritualized, so that the soul becomes spiritual, i.e. moral: not me in me, but the
Other in me.

In the following I want to explore some beginnings of how a spiritualization of the

soul and its forces can be done with music and the musical experience, based on
Rudolf Steiner´s suggestions and perspectives. From the general meditative work on
oneself and the central problems of knowledge, meditative work can also be extended
to more specific areas. I believe working on the musical experience can energize the
spiritual work on purification and strengthening of the soul-forces as well as give new
impulses to musical practice and experience. Music, when taken seriously, is already a
form of meditation. And, from my own experience, I would say that this can also
activate and differentiate the soul-forces in a way that can be fruitful for a meditative
life.

According to Steiner, music has three main aspects that correspond to man’s threefold
soul-activity. Firstly, the music experience has a thought-element. This is most
pronounced in the melodic aspects. Furthermore, it has a strong feeling element that is
most strongly expressed in the element of harmony. Finally, the musical experience
also has a will-engaging element that is strongest in everything that has to do with
rhythm and metre. But for all of these musical elements one would have to say; they
are the felt reality of the soul´s forces. As a whole, musical experience is at home in
the realm of feeling: the thinking and will that we experience in music is the feeling of
thinking´s movement, and the feeling of the dynamics of the will.

Exploring the musical elements, we learn to know the experience and differentiation of
music as a differentiation of ourselves, of our own soul and consciousness. After all,
music is a phenomenon that becomes itself in and through us. When we experience the
duration of rhythm then we do not experience an object outside of us. We experience
our own duration. The phenomenon of rhythm permeates the body’s life processes and
the inner life of consciousness as much as it is a musical element of a composition.
And the same goes for the other elements.

The characteristics of musical elements therefore also involve a description of the

movements of the soul. If we are to get closer to what kind of phenomenon the melody
is then we must also deepen the experience of ascending and descending in the interior
space. If we are to get closer to the tensions and colours of the harmonies, we must
also take a closer look at what it means to experience emotional nuances and the
difference between feeling something and having an emotional reaction. Thus, such an
exploration of the constituents of music ties together sounding music and the natural
“music” of the soul and the body – the musica humana as they would say in the
Middle Ages.

Trying to feel the elements more clearly in themselves differentiates them and makes
them more conscious. From this they can also be lifted into consciousness, becoming
real forces of the soul. Working with music in this way can, I hope, help develop
feeling as an organ of perception; we learn to feel the activity of thinking – which is
the same as beginning to feel the reality of the will. This feeling for the reality of
virtual movement is something that music can help us bring to consciousness, and then
we can begin to experience what Rudolf Steiner calls the etheric. This – the reality of
time as supersensible life – is the realm of musical formation, it is “where” music
happens. When we awaken to the etheric life-stream we become able to unite the
power of pure thinking with feeling as an organ of perception; the heart can become a
cognitive organ.