Music and Contemplation

Saraswati: goddess of music, wisdom, art, and knowledge

The spirit that animates the music of traditional civilizations is very different than the one which dominates our modern Western culture. I think that one of the factors behind this great difference is the West's exaltation of action which has become opposed to contemplation.

It does not take great powers of perception to see that Western society is propelled by action, there is a tangible and inescapable obsession with work and production, and we see the fruits of this all around us: from our private time spent gazing into the void of virtual worlds to the sparkling towers which dominate the horizon of the earth. Activity which is not entertainment or work has no place in such a world, intellectual activity is not understood and even looked down upon, this is the natural result of the unnatural glorification of action, and it poisons everything it comes into contact with. Much has been written on this wide and important topic, and it is not my purpose to set forth a full exposition of the significance of contemplation and action (for this I would recommend Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture and Guenon's The Crisis of the Modern World), here I wish only to focus on how these principles apply to music and see what deeper meanings we can draw from them. As always, what I say here is only some aspects of the greater picture, not an exhaustive or perfect treatment.

Laughing at the World

 June 2020 was the month that humour died. It was in this month that the pitch of public outcry reached such a frenzied point that even someone as checked out as me began to grow weary of it. No longer could anything be tastefully mocked, but now commentators and citizens alike on all sides began to burn with ardent zeal for whatever position they had fallen into. 

Perhaps I don't take things seriously enough but I can't help but laugh at the person in a store wearing 2 layers of medical masks, goggles, and a face shield. Another might be rather disturbed by this sight - which is a fair reaction - but I don't see how one can keep sane if they respond to every bizarre sight with such gravity. Humour can keep men sane when the only other option is despair and resentment, anyone who has worked in a degrading fast food or retail job knows that this is true.

By laughing at the unreality of the world we recognize its falsity and refuse to submit to it, it is put below us in its proper place. Our clown world is funny precisely because it is wrong, the pieces are out of place and the image formed grows stranger and stranger. Without humour it is easy to become the inverse of this distorted image, wrong in different ways but wrong all the same.

Another factor behind the mass inability to laugh at this world is a plague of self-importance. The origin of this self-importance is nothing I can fault anyone for, as it has arisen out the universal desire for meaning in life. All the crises, social movements and phenomena of the past year or so has revealed the bizarre things people will do and believe to fill this void. When you base your life around opposing the group at the opposite end of the social/political spectrum then of course you can't laugh at them because they threaten your very being. Our identities have been reduced to transient political platforms, social goals, and silly moralisms. We are all like children playing a vast school yard game, except that we have forgotten that the whole thing is make believe and that at any second the bell will ring and we will be shocked back into reality where trifles have to be put away.

Trinity Sunday 2021

O never-failing and radiant dawn,

Dweller of the heavens, the eternal east,

Triune Deity alone and unseen

Seated in a shroud of limitless light.

Now behold this throne in the heart of man

Who is but dust and air, a nothingness

When compared to He who is within him,

Closer than the breath and hot flowing veins.

And inwardly the sacred change affects,

As when eyes are opened and dissolve to flame,

Flying like a moth to the eternal glance,

And man is transformed by the vision gained.

Platonic-Catholic Cosmology in one Photo

 

The sun and the circumradiation of its light are the three Divine Hypostasis; the tree is a symbol of the entirety of the universe.

The Soul of the World

 

“Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body- clay and water- or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, "the execration of the Gods" (Plotinus, The Enneads, V.I).

So much for Plotinus hating the material world… This is quite a different thinker than the popular caricature.

One of these days I am going to write in more detail about the Plotinian view of the world and of his cosmology in general, since I have found that this is a highly misunderstood topic, but at the same time an accessible one - especially when compared to the purer metaphysical thought of the tradition. Let this then serve as an introduction.

The above passage encapsulates Plotinus’ view fairly well: matter, being so low in the hierarchy of being spirals headlong into non-being and causes souls to forget their divine nature and origin, it is in this sense that it is considered evil. But this is not the only condition that material manifestation can partake in, as what was abject has been lifted up by the Soul who mysteriously dwells even here: “it envelops the heavenly system and guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all that huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all has been ensouled.”

The material world can only be called good because it has been rescued by Soul; the presence of God in the world doesn’t proclaim matter's goodness, but its emptiness.

Some Thoughts on Divine Simplicity

God’s simplicity as formulated by theologians and philosophers is not something that can be readily inferred from Scriptural revelation (although I wouldn’t discount the idea that it is contained in the unwritten tradition), but this does not mean that it is contrary to it, or among the topics that St. John of Damascus says that we should not pry into. I think the key idea that determines God’s simplicity is that his essence and existence are not distinct: the fact that he does not have existence, but is existence; Absolute Being is then one and unity itself without duality. This is the domain of pure metaphysics. The confusion then arises when we try to apply this view to the realm of particulars and contingency, for metaphysical statements like God’s act is singular or God has no relation to creatures don’t line up with our experience of God, but this is due to our limited point of view which is conditioned by multiplicity.

I believe these sorts of difficulties are why Orthodox apologists and polemicists so often fail to understand Catholicism. They cannot accept the place of a purely metaphysical view, and then they curiously neglect that in Catholicism God resides in the heart of man.

To compensate for this inability, the modern Orthodox will then try to qualify the simplicity of God with further distinctions, all this really does is lower the view of God from pure metaphysics down a few notches on the chain of contingency.  

This all leads me to think that God’s simplicity should probably be left as an esoteric teaching, as it is something that is nearly impossible to sufficiently grasp without proper training, and can easily lead to error and misconceptions. I certainly do not understand this doctrine (noone completely can), but I’m not going to jump to the conclusion that this renders God inert and inaccessible to man, neither will I try to qualify the Divine Essence to make it fit more easily into my rational mind. These are the faults of Orthodox apologists who try to dismantle the doctrine of simplicity, a doctrine which is regarded as a metaphysical axiom in the traditions of both East and West. In contrast, Catholicism preserves the mystery.

At the Feet

 

The feast of Candlemas: a throng of faithful gathered together before the Holy Mysteries in the unassuming confines of a simple basement. Here I had the privilege of sitting on the ground before the feet of the priest when he turned from the altar to expound upon the Holy Word.

Now despite my romantic portrayal of this rather routine event – a sermon – it did prompt some reflection on the transmission of the philosophical/religious doctrine, and why we have far the most part lost this transmission. My experience of receiving the Christian teaching at the feet of a man instilled reverence in my soul not only for the Word but for the man who was teaching it to me. I remembered the importance the Hindus place on having a real human being as a spiritual/intellectual guide. It is safe to say that in the Indian traditions you can’t get anywhere without an authentic teacher, the guru is the one who dispels the darkness in his disciples, and for this reason is given a high degree of veneration. I read recently that Ramakrishna said that a disciple would get absolutely no where if he viewed his guru as merely a man.

Why a Catholic Should Study Eastern Religion

How do I love God and not a product? This is a very important question for those of us who live in the modern West, we who are deprived of organic culture and saturated in a materialist outlook. Those who are not content with what the world gives them are unfortunately by necessity forced to ground themselves in something of their own choosing: religion, philosophy, lifestyle etc. The problem this creates in the Catholic realm is that of a devotion to certain positions (liberal, traditional), schools (Thomistic, Nouvelle Theologie), or forms of liturgical praxis. As long as one assents to certain propositions of a system they have all they need, what goes along with this is usually a strong sentimental attachment to things that accidentally go along with the system, anything else is suspect or downright anathema.

These points of view are elegantly marketed to us in the form of religious products, and it seems like we have to subscribe to one of these endlessly multiplying products in order to be a “good” Catholic. We are no longer just consumers of goods, but now ideas and lifestyles are advertised and consumed in the same manner. Every package seems to think that it’s got it all. I think this phenomenon is inevitable in our individually driven society, but it’s a view that I think can be broken out of slowly.

Chant in its Natural Environment

 

Religious chanting is an event, therefore the music only fully conveys its power in the context of the divine services they are appointed for. It is best heard by listening to those who really live within it, complete with all the mistakes, coughs, hoarseness, and movement around the choir.