Favorite Musical Book Quotes?

Here's another musical quote from "The Occult" by Colin Wilson:

It can, I think, be seen that James's experience of 'expanding horizons of fact' is nothing less than a sudden total awakening of Faculty X, which is, as I have said, a sense of the objective reality of other times and places, instead of the usual subjective worm's-eye view in which we are trapped all our lives. It is like standing on a mountain-top and seeing far more than you are able to see from the valley. In fact, Priestley's image of the mist rising on the Grand Canyon expresses it admirably. It can be understood why Graves felt he 'knew everything' while this glimpse lasted. Equally interesting is the fact that, although James believes that such experiences are bound to be momentary, Graves's lasted for about twenty-four hours. This is of immense importance. For the experience that suddenly happened to Graves was a kind of mental counterpart of Home's ability to float in the air. And it lasted. If it could last for a day, there is no reason why it should not last all the time.

It is necessary to try to gain further insight into the nature of this 'glimpse.' It is quite clearly what the mystics have always talked about. And the mystics have asserted that it is 'ineffable,' that it cannot be talked about or analysed. In this book we have gone a long way towards analysing it, and perhaps may go further still.

Warner Allen, in his interesting book The Timeless Moment, describes how he experienced the fundamental mystical 'glimpse':

When the writer was on the threshold of fifty, it occurred to him as it must have occurred to many another ordinary journalist, no less hostile to the apparent sloppiness of fashionable mysticism than he was, that he had lived for nearly half a century without discerning in life any pattern of rational purpose. His views on the matter might have been roughly summed up in a vague notion that the universe was shrouded in impenetrable darkness by the powers of Life and Death, for fear life should lose its savour as a brave adventure, if the mystery of death and suffering was solved, and uncertainty was exchanged for the assurance of future beatitude. A curiously vivid dream shook his faith in this tentative explanation of human ignorance...This quest of truth led through paths of unforeseen darkness and danger, but within a year...an answer came.

It flashed up lightning-wise during a performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony at the Queen's Hall, in that triumphant fast movement when 'the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' The swiftly flowing continuity of the music was not interrupted, so that what Mr. T.S. Eliot calls 'the intersection of the timeless moment' [with time] must have slipped into the interval between two demi-semi-quavers. When, long after, I analysed the happening in the cold light of retrospect, it seemed to fall into three parts: first, the mysterious event itself, which occurred in an infinitesimal fraction of a split second; this I learned afterwards from Santa Teresa to call the Union with God; then Illumination, a wordless stream of complex feelings in which the experience of Union combined with the rhythmic emotion of the music like a sunbeam striking with iridescence the spray above a waterfall – a stream that was continually swollen by tributaries of associated Experience; lastly, Enlightenment, the recollection in tranquillity of the whole complex of Experience, as it were, embalmed in thought-forms and words.

That this is the experience William James is talking about becomes almost certain when we consider James's preliminary remark that his own experiences were extremely brief: 'In one instance I was engaged in conversation, but I doubt whether the interlocutor noticed any abstraction.' Allen's second phase – the wordless stream of complex feelings that was 'swollen by tributaries of associated Experience' – makes it clear that this is that outward expansion of associations described by James. In short, the pleasure and excitement of the music energised Warner Allen's mind until suddenly, like a spark flying upward, it achieved 'insight,' the bird's-eye view.

This is the mystical experience that Chesterton described as a feeling of 'absurd good news,' the joy that burst on Faust as he heard the Easter bells, the overwhelming feeling of insight that often accompanies the sexual orgasm.

Charlotte Bronte describes a similar glimpse in Shirley, a sudden ecstatic 'vision of life as she wishes it. No – not as she wishes it; she has not time to wish: the swift glory spreads out, sweeping and kindling its splendour faster than Thought can effect his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings.' Here, the language is so similar to James's that one could almost believe he was unconsciously quoting it.

Here's hoping that you have glimpses of other times and places that may help you in your life! Thanks for reading!