Music as linguistic articulation of Religious communication

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

This is not something I’m going to have a large elaborate amount to discuss at this point with much in the way of validity or proof of concept, but it’s a thought of pondering that strikes me.

The undertaking of doing something that I am imagining would be quite laborious and very difficult, and would require accomplishing a smaller sample for proof of concept first before attempting a full language foundation being designed, and would likely never truly be complete of final but evolutionary over time and culture.

It is of no real unknown that music has communicative properties, but generally speaking we tend to think of these as quite vague and not very articulate by comparison to spoken or written communication.

However, in the realm of spiritual communication, I think there is a case to be made for better communication capacity in music than in spoken or written communication.

I am not referring to mood or inspiration exclusively, though those are definitely benefits that music brings in force by comparison to spoken and written communication, but instead I am referring to actual articulate communication by way of music of a religious construct in detail.

Here’s the starting point of this thought.
It is my theory that all religion is allegorical and that it is ultimately attempting to transfer a communication of a life perspective all the way down to the core root of the person; rather than simply cognitively.

For instance, a person that adheres to Judaic practices devoutly is going to inherently have a radically different life perspective of understanding all relationships between components in reality sensationally and emotionally than a person that adheres to a religious Taoist practice.

And this is because the allegorical faces that create impressions of how reality is expressed and related to as an identity are drastically different in each case, but in each case, the commonality is the desire to convey the life perspective from one person to the other so to allow the recipient to gain, as much as possible, the life perspective of the author(s).

The most effective method in writing and speaking seems to be allegorical conviction; meaning holding what is in allegorical terms as factual literalism or incredibly powerful and accurate metaphor (either).

As I see it then, religion therefore is inhibited by textual and oral limitations of the cognitive reasoning separating inherently from the emotional and sensual by a radical range of depreciation.
So much so that rituals are created in religions to help overcome the limitations and produce the desired affect that is desired by a given group of religious adherents.

These rituals typically include music of some caliber, even if the most sparing of soundscaping is used such as pure silence with intermittent chimes, bells, or clicks.
More common, however, is the use of full range music in some variation.

Currently, the mass majority of rituals of music are built on a crude formation of naturally grasped relations of cause and affect.
A particular music sound and combination is felt to generate a certain feeling generally by the adherents and therefore becomes of use in structure and format.
Each adherent group therefore generates their own constructed sound that is useful to their ends in creating the experience of setting they require to accomplish a better inspiration towards their spiritual life perspective otherwise much inhibited by the limitations of the textual and oral.

With this in mind, I ponder and think:
We know a great deal about the neurological affects of acoustics at this point.
We also have a very detailed measuring system for acoustical sound outlined into specific frequency spectrum and decibel ranges; and too the sum and product of these frequencies and decibel ranges intermixed.

Theoretically, with great time and labor, one could create a musical lexicon for a specific religious life perspective of associating oneself to life and reality much in the way of the above examples that are accomplishing similar affects by observing crude first hand cause and affect, but intentionally in measure and accounted for in a lexicon that allows for articulate construction with intention.

This, in theory, could be used exclusively without any textual or oral communication for religious conveyance of a given life perspective by it’s shear neurological impact upon the sensation and emotional functions of the human body.

Theoretically; it could surpass the textual and oral methods, as even the written format of this lexicon would be in musical format of notation which greatly reduces the error rates of translation over time in recreating the conveyed message.

This is the pondering that I consider now and then.
I would not suggest that it could replace already existing religious practices or even function within established religions easily as the rituals and practices of those religions are already developed into an already running lexicon that would be among the most radically difficult to translate between.

However, for a new religion…it seems to me that this could actually work.

2

I guess most people may agree that music (like some other things) may affect us in different ways. And it can be used to communicate something, naturally.

Now, I don’t know what you really mean by “religious communication”, “spiritual perspective”, etc.
Although I’ve read your threads and discussed with you about your view on religion, I still think that your perspective is somewhat unclear on issues around religion.

Personally, I do think that most religions are used as drug and distraction to ease the pain and provide (false and often hopeful) perspectives.
I think humans have the natural tendency to overrate things, and religions boost the tendency to skew and confuse our perspectives.
And music can help boosting emotional undertones for creating more skewed perspective.

In other words, I think music can intoxicate our emotion, and that religions may use it to blur the view and increase the religious numbing and intoxication of the mind.

Can we construct music that is more efficient in doing so?
I guess so. But I’m not sure if the current scientific method/capacity is totally adequate for achieving it.

Can we construct religions based on music?
Don’t we have them already? The religion of Rock, Tango, Flamenco, etc.
I guess you can make another one, if you like. :slight_smile:

But I think humans need to be more sober, in general, as I can’t think very well with the tendency to overrating and seeing more or less ordinary things as special, sacred, religious, spiritual, and so on.

As long as one thinks in the perspective that has “sacred” and other worshiping/overrating fixtures, in which something is considered/venerated as if it’s good/right/desired without much reasoning and often in absolute manner, the person remains in the skewed and narrowed view that I don’t think it’s possible to think clearly.

PS.

There are some anecdotes of people waking up from intoxicated/skewed perspective by hearing sound. And certain sound might have the tendency to shutter dreamy and hopeful perspective. Some people have tried these method, too. And they were effective to certain degree, I guess.
But if our mind can be affected to go in and out of skewed perspective, it means we are the slave to these effect, in a way. The same thing can be said for any other “method” and “techniques” supposed to “help” the mental state.
Crutches may seem to help you in one way or the other, but it can drag you as long as they are helpful/effective. And you can become dependent/addicted, too.

Many humans are addicted to music, these days, mostly just to break the silence which might have helped them to sense subtle things.

3

Well that’s an interesting perspective on life; always provocative Nah. :stuck_out_tongue:
There’s nothing wrong with not seeing a need for reverential association to reality, and I would say there’s nothing inherently wrong with a reverential reality either.
You prefer the former; I prefer the latter.
Though I would add that I don’t consider it skewed in a meaning of not able to discern reality from what I construct that is not materially there; as I’m fully aware of that.
The difference is that it’s that I see it as a means of talking to myself; communicating to myself; what things are as a multidimensional associative thing in my mind.
I enjoy knowing things by more than the cognitive; I enjoy having an associated sense to cognitive information.

I don’t really care if God is real; nor do I honestly think there is a material or ethereal object known as the human soul; I’m pretty sure I can identify the phenomenon of the cause of that impression accountably well enough to create a plausible explanation more than the acceptance of a literal transcendent soul.

I just wish people were more open with religion as a creative sense like art, but an art of the way of living and seeing the world.
Personally, I would advise sober is preferable, but to each their own I suppose.

Nowadays, my religion is about me and not about much else.
It’s about me and what I think of me, what am I to myself?
And it’s about what I think of everything else that is not me, what is everything else to me?

So I tend to think of what spirituality is in neurological terms; what is the human spiritual experience neurologically speaking.
Not psychologically, but neurologically.

Because if we know what it is neurologically, then we can learn how to maneuver it like an arm; with full articulation and effective capacity for any use it provides.
To me; this is a good thing.

I know it’s not required to exist, but it sure makes the boat ride glimmer; and I like that.
I like seeing the world with the minds eye of emotion.

That’s what I call religion truly.

Well anyways, because I think of things like this; that’s how I get to music as a communicative process.
And you are right, music such as Reggae or Rock already moves on this tangent to a great degree.
It is lacking by comparison to what I am talking about only in that it lacks a directly cognitively created lexicon by which the motions of the frequencies are carried out by knowledgeable understanding of their neurological evocation.

shrug
I don’t think I’ll ever see such a thing; I’ll be lucky if I ever do.
But it’s a thought in passing.

4

Darwin believed that, in the evolution of humans, music preceded language. I suspect that he is right since both are dependent on our experience of structural functioning. Without the structural foundation, music would not exist. It is improbable, for me at least, to find some dichotomy between the foundation and the aesthetic appreciation. As a universal language, music evokes emotional responses. It does so because of its common, among humans, structural functions that can extend into aesthetic appreciation. “Church” music relies on this extension of structure as commonly experienced.

5

Well, seeing more value (as if it’s an absolute value) in something isn’t rational/logical thing to do because of relative nature of any “value”.
So, I’d say that “reverential association” is inherently irrational/illogical.
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with being irrational/illogical.
It’s a matter of preference.

And some people prefer to be irrational/illogical, while they think they are rational/logical.
Thus their preference and perspective are contradicting, and that can make them uneasy (if they are aware/intelligent enough to sense the contradiction).
Fortunately, many religious people do not detect this kind of contradiction. :slight_smile:

I don’t think we need religion to explore oneself or whatever.
I don’t think we need religion to be creative.
I don’t think we need religion.

I think it doesn’t have to be a religion. You can simply think, feel, sense, etc.

What’s the “spiritual experience” and “non-spiritual experience”?
Where is the dividing line?
To me, there are simply experiences of different nature.
And possibly, many of them can be explained in neurological terms, as well as magical terms, engineering terms, logical terms, and so on.

If you are attracted by more ability/power/freedom/etc, it usually means you feel limited/feeble/limited/etc.
Studying how you really feel and why you feel like that may tell you a lot about yourself. It’s a simple way to “talk to yourself” without religious skewed perspective.

Emotional mind is “skewed” by the preferences and beliefs, I’d say.
Of you can become honest to the emotional perspective, the ride will be absolutely wild. :smiley:
Usually, people stay the mixture of emotional and bad logic and don;t taste the beauty (and craziness) of the really emotional ride, and they keep dreaming about it.

Some people can “communicate” A LOT with a single note (vocal or instrumental).
And some others may “communicate” even more, without any sound. :slight_smile:

6

And yet church and religious music has its own sound. I like it when the sound makes me feel mystical and cosmic, like the rhythm of nature or the music of the spheres or our cosmic origin. Eastern music was originally set up that way. Have you heard Indian music played and sung to the lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore, for example? It’s just transporting. Also, I think there are inklings of it in the Gregorian chants and some of the classical stuff.

7

And people use these allegories to complete their daily lives :slight_smile:

I personally use music as wisdom teaching (Other sources too, but the topic of music is at hand so…), here’s some of my favorites:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IllyrTaeTO4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGa0ZK2gPI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKcgcUnWWVI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c_1rht-oE4[/youtube]

And some I just use for feeling good. Here’s some of them:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6A7nf3IeeA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl7tssXhwfA[/youtube]

All of these mix my emotions, which make me feel empowered. With this new empowering I go about daily life. The sounds of the world also make me go about daily life differently. If I notice the birds chirping, I’ll smile, feel better. If I hear a powerful engine revving up, it makes me feel awesome. Other things do different things.

Allegories to my life :astonished:

8

Conceptually the same thing, yes.
Now figure out a means of getting how that makes you feel as a life perspective into another person so that they can see the same, or as close to as possible, life perspective as you are seeing.

Shared vantage point.
It’s difficult; and simply just music does a good job, but it’s hit and miss dependent on if someone likes that kind of music.
However, music is ultimately just tonality of frequency and there is a set of somewhat uniformed physiological and neurological responses to tonality, amplitude, and frequency unlike when we think of music that we listen to typically.

In a way, perhaps I am better understood if I say a soundscape rather than music.

For instance, your music there would not be likely heard or openly considered by, let’s say, the average conservative protestant middle-aged American.
But what if you could?
What if you could communicate the physiological and neurological sensations this batch of music gives you to another human being by articulating such in soundscapes of tonality, amplitude, and frequency which more “universally” cause the human body to experience the same.

It’s a hard thing to explain…I’m sorry if I’m not being very clear here.
I’m not sure how to describe the concept very well yet; as I don’t think there’s a lexicon for describing this concept yet.

9

To be quite honest I think you just wrote the Preface to your future book, available at all Coles bookstores in Canada and Barnes & Noble in America :laughing:

If I wanted to use music, I would just write that which gives the most people goosebumps in the test audience. Play a piece for them, measure how many people got goosebumps (I get them ALL the time listening to music), and write the song. Doing it novel style, I’d be taking 50 people, hearing what they love the most, finding out what kind of music they like, where the focus is for them, etc. As a guitarist, I don’t get goosebumps from the lyrics as much as I do the Guitar, likewise for everyone else, and some even focus on loving everything about the song or being “eclectic” as they say.

From that point we have earned step 1 of the discovery process. Now step 2 includes writing NEW music based off of the styles the 50 people liked and seeing how they respond to the new music. Find out what kind of clashes they like, what kind of simile’s they like, etc.

The third step is identifying how they will use this music in real life. Record a few conceptual albums to hand out, see what tracks they listened to most, when, and what happened prior, during, and after the music.

So really, it takes all three social studies to do this book and/or work of music. Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology. I think this topic needs a forum move! :astonished: :laughing:

10

Well, that’s one approach that would give you some result indeed.
But there’s another, which is more akin to my thoughts.
Basically it’s akin to what we call “sound weapons”.

I look at religious writing as allegorical spiritual emotional evocations that personify reality in conviction of the identity so to better create the totality of immersion in the desired emotional evocations that produce, in combination and frequency, a tendency towards interpreting life experience as a given sensation that then aids in cognitive understanding of identifying reality and interacting with it on a personal level of identity.

Which means, I’m looking at how sound augments the neurological function of the brain, and the physiological response of the body; both to the sound.

For instance, Stonehenge has been shown to create such a vibration with nothing more than a couple of drums place correctly in the central area that if you stand near the edge, you may pass out or vomit; but previous to doing this; you enter a form of shift in sensation regarding reality due to the brain neurologically altering to match in line with the drum vibrations, which are a sum of tonalities, amplitudes, and frequencies, being experienced.
The concussion, as I would refer to the causal affect this produces physically in the area, of such drums is powerful enough to interrupt torches or fires all the way out in the outer ring of the structure from just a few drums (creating the right decibels) in the central locations.

It is more akin to this concept that I am thinking.
It’s borderline hypnosis that I’m talking about, but the difference is that I’m looking at the pondering of using such as a communication method between two or more people rather than a conviction or conversion medium.

Does this better explain the difference between regular music and what I’m talking about?

As a followup for the concepts I’m thinking about, one similar approach (that is more close circuited than I prefer) is binaural beat’s of controlled frequency ranges with specific intent.
cellphonesafety.wordpress.com/20 … the-brain/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats

(On an unrelated tangent…I’ve often thought of producing a song that uses this affect so that if you put headphones on, a new song emerges where it did not exist previously.)

11

Here’s a better understanding of the area of Science that provoked this thought:
bwgen.com/theory.htm

For instance:

Which is exactly what I’m discussing.
The difference is that I’m wondering if it would be possible to accomplish the same net effect, psychologically, that translative dialects of religious texts accomplish conceptually in emotional conviction response to life perspective guidance, but in sound using this method of approach.

The reason why this is interesting to question to me, is that if you use sound instead of text, then you remove a much larger range of the cognitive that could stand in the way of the clearer translation of the intended life perspective being conveyed.

I think this because religion is ultimately generates a sense of feeling about reality and life.
Cognitive is there too, yes, but the driving force is feeling; not cognition.

A compelling religious spirit is a sense of emotional responses in the body; regardless of what you believe causes that to be experienced.

Once one is fixed into a strong emotional sense of reality and life, they’re cognitive approach to life will follow suit with appeasing these emotional states rather than countering them which would cause confrontation internally between the emotional impulse and identity of reality and life and the cognitive.

Text, it seems to me, is a really dated and poor method for communicating on such a range of emotional provocation if the interest is to communicate the overwhelming sensory of high emotional states of spiritual experiences regarding life and reality.
Sound, on the other hand, may very likely not have this deficiency.

12

Hello Stumps:

— Here’s the starting point of this thought.
It is my theory that all religion is allegorical and that it is ultimately attempting to transfer a communication of a life perspective all the way down to the core root of the person; rather than simply cognitively.
O- I don’t know what you mean exactly by “life perspective”. Perhaps the direction is the opposite. Perhaps religion originates at the “core root” of a person. Religion then would be the attempted communication of a deep conviction seated in a person’s “core root” and which informs that person’s “life perspective”. As such, religion would never bee a purely cognitive exercise but involve deeper and unconscious levels in a person, inherited traits of an evolutionary past.

— …in each case, the commonality is the desire to convey the life perspective from one person to the other so to allow the recipient to gain, as much as possible, the life perspective of the author(s).
O- The desire of communication is always to convey. But religion has for the most part always recognized the limits of communicating about certain realities. There enters the mystic and the possessed, those who desire and live in a union with the Divine that cannot be reduced to a cognitive value, or be communicated through normal resources, practical language or words or numbers. They employ sex, drugs, and yes, even music, to induce an extra-ordinary experience. The communion with the Divine is thereby direct, but incommunicable other than by initiation, and that only by other than regular communicative skills.
When we get to oral/written reconstructions, these are given as an enigma, as a paradox, to retain the singularity of the experience. In the translation of these glimpses into the incommunicable, the translator, like the philosopher, is aware of the tentative nature of his translation, which is why such experiences, to this day, it is highly regarded.

— We also have a very detailed measuring system for acoustical sound outlined into specific frequency spectrum and decibel ranges; and too the sum and product of these frequencies and decibel ranges intermixed.
O- According to the link, a lot of the details are speculative, so what exactly is measured is an interpretation.

— Theoretically, with great time and labor, one could create a musical lexicon for a specific religious life perspective of associating oneself to life and reality much in the way of the above examples that are accomplishing similar affects by observing crude first hand cause and affect, but intentionally in measure and accounted for in a lexicon that allows for articulate construction with intention.
O- I believe that one will be able to create for one’s self such a lexicon, but will be faced with the same limitations as before when the person tries to broadcast and reproduce this experience.

— This, in theory, could be used exclusively without any textual or oral communication for religious conveyance of a given life perspective by it’s shear neurological impact upon the sensation and emotional functions of the human body.
O- I think that music will also encounter the same problem of conjuring a given, instead of alternate life perspectives.

13

Omar:

I agree that religion isn’t cognitive, and I could accept a portion of genetic propensity, but mostly I hold it as the emotional.
Indeed, much is speculative at this point; mostly because we’re only tinkering with some basic frequencies and reading results on EEG machines in small studies.
When I think of this idea, I spend time pondering how best to go forward with building the outline of frequencies that accomplish what kinds of affects, and so far I’ve simply concluded that we don’t have sufficient data about frequencies to emotional responses.

The closest we have is the “God Helmet” by Michael Persinger, but that’s magnetics instead of sound, and it’s quite debated whether it works since no one but Persinger has been able to replicate the results; though people (even some fellow scientists) who go under his experiment continue to claim it’s authenticity due to their experiences there.
But he doesn’t really catalog the neurological emotional response to the stimuli; instead he just has a pattern of kicking up magnets at the brain to induce forms of euphoric religious-like experiences (some near hallucination).

I do often think that it is possible that nothing can be achieved on this grounds beyond building such for one’s own self, but then again; it is pretty universal what happens with Stonehendge acoustics, it’s pretty universal what happens with sound weaponry.
This means when you are working with sound, rather than just “music” - which I tried to correct the terminology before, that subjectiveness and relativeness seems to be reduced in certain measures; specifically ranges which also seem to cause at least mild passive physical affects even in the surrounding non-human area.
Because of this; I think it might be possible to reach at least a fundamental outline of tonalities, amplitudes, and frequencies to common emotional responses.

As to whether it would be possible to be more clear or not; I believe that depends on what we mean by translating one’s religion.
If we mean one that exists today already; I could agree that would be difficult, but I think it might still be possible.
If we mean a religion by how a religion makes one feel about life; that could be done indeed I believe.

The real difficulty in my mind isn’t the sound output but the sound input.
If such a lexicon did exist, then a person that has a certain “message” they want to convey would firstly have to know how to translate their senses into the standards of sounds that would then be repeated unto the recipient.
Getting from the first person into the dialect is the difficult part in my opinion.

14

Hello Stumps

— I agree that religion isn’t cognitive, and I could accept a portion of genetic propensity, but mostly I hold it as the emotional.
Indeed, much is speculative at this point; mostly because we’re only tinkering with some basic frequencies and reading results on EEG machines in small studies.
O- But what I meant was that the nature of the discipline, be it in smaller or greater scale cannot escape the philosophical problem of other minds, of applying a datum to a feeling. Mental activity can signal to a type of state but religion is much more specific and personal, requiring an input, a declaration, which would be beyond the meaurent of machines, or even the person him/herself, as futher instances to determine a pattern, would demand from the test subject to declare for a state that is no longer before him.
In certain areas this science will be great, such as when we try to determine if a comatose patient is aware, because “aware” here would be vague enough to require no imput from a subject. But to find out what one is “aware of” would exceed the capabilities of science and require that one interviews the individual.

— When I think of this idea, I spend time pondering how best to go forward with building the outline of frequencies that accomplish what kinds of affects, and so far I’ve simply concluded that we don’t have sufficient data about frequencies to emotional responses.
O- A general response can be tied to a frequency, I think. But communication cannot be so general. If what is under study is the ability of a frequency to enhance a meditative state, then there is no question because any person, or animal, can be shown to generally react in such and such way to a frequent pattern. But if the study is about how to communicate a deeper truth, a message about God, or recreate a mystical experience, then that is going beyond what science can permit itself to tell us. Can we suggest a pattern in meditative states? Yes. Can we link a frequency to all meditative states? No. And not because there cannot be one, but because what a “meditative state” is or is not, will likely vary from any groups of “mystics”. What indeed is required for a person to consider himself a mystic? Suppose that you attach that person, who considers herself a mystic, and find that she is unlike the rest of your “control” group. Can we thereby deny that she is a mystic? No. We can only deny that she is like the mystics in control group X.

— The closest we have is the “God Helmet” by Michael Persinger, but that’s magnetics instead of sound, and it’s quite debated whether it works since no one but Persinger has been able to replicate the results; though people (even some fellow scientists) who go under his experiment continue to claim it’s authenticity due to their experiences there.
But he doesn’t really catalog the neurological emotional response to the stimuli; instead he just has a pattern of kicking up magnets at the brain to induce forms of euphoric religious-like experiences (some near hallucination).
O- Here is a question about motivation. I have gone so far from the supposition that this affair is made in order to approach religion. But does it, or does it in fact alienate anyone from religion? Is there something extraordinare in religious states of mind, like an encounter with the Divine, or is it just a quirk of our evolution? Even farther down this vein, if religious exstasis could be replicated through aural stimulation, would we be that far away from the “God-Store”? Where you can literally buy your Virgin Mary experience, for example? Wouldn’t that be the height of nihilism, a complete denial of what is extra-ordinary, the reduction of the object of religion to what Huxley wrote about in Brave New World?

— The real difficulty in my mind isn’t the sound output but the sound input.
If such a lexicon did exist, then a person that has a certain “message” they want to convey would firstly have to know how to translate their senses into the standards of sounds that would then be repeated unto the recipient.
Getting from the first person into the dialect is the difficult part in my opinion.
O- On that we agree. From the general to the particular there is a long road to be traverse, if not an unsurmountable chasm.