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!

Another musical quote from "The Occult" by Colin Wilson incoming!

I have myself experienced the sense of 'power over time' on two occasions. On the first of these, I was working in a hospital in a job that bored me. Weeks of inactivity and minor irritations had reduced me to a passive state where I felt almost incapable of concentration. At this time I was deeply interested in Nijinsky (who had died recently), particularly in his attempt to create a new kind of choreography with tense, heiratic movements. When I was alone I used to practise ballet exercises; and if there was suitable music on the radio I would experiment with these Nijinsky movements.' One evening, the 'Liebestod' from Tristan came on; its unexpectedness produced a shock of pleasure and concentration. I made an effort to retain this concentration; it seemed as difficult as balancing on one toe, but the movement helped. As my attention began to waver, the climax of the 'Liebestod' induced a new effort of concentration, and quite suddenly, for a space of a second or two, I had a sense of absolute and total control over time, as if I could order it to stand still. The past ceased to be something that receded from me, like the scenery going past a train; it felt as if I could relive it as easily as I could put on a gramophone record for a second time. The metabolic processes of the body seemed to be as much within my control as the muscles in my arms and legs.

The second occasion was related to the first in that I was again listening to Tristan in the gods at Covent Garden. The sheer length of the opera ends by inducing a sense of freedom, for the unwonted concentration leads to 'second wind.' It was in this second wind that I decided to try to re-create the sensation of timelessness; accordingly, I again began to make an all-out effort of concentration in the last ten minutes. This time there was no need for physical movement to reinforce the effort; after a few moments there was again the sensation of floating, or being suspended, and again the feeling that I could arrest the time- processes of the body.

This should make dear why I am inclined to reject the notion of a three-dimensional time. Is not Priestley making the same mistake as Dunne in treating time as though it were a real entity, like the sea, when in fact it is a process, like a wave in the sea? And as a process, it is a function of what I have, for convenience, agreed to call 'the astral body,' to distinguish the living, conscious 'me' from the physical shell that will eventually die.

What happened in these two cases should be fairly clear. Instead of allowing the aesthetic experience to operate upon passive sensibilities, I made an effort to accelerate the process by concentration. This may seem the wrong attitude: for surely doesn't music, like poetry, require a wide-open attitude, Keats's 'negative capability'? But phenomenologists know that this is an error. All perception is an intentional act, even if we are not consciously aware of it. If you relax too much, as in watching television, you begin to feel bored and depressed. I convulsed the muscle of concentration in an all-out effort, and the result was a glimpse of the kind of control over the body that will be possible at the next stage of human evolution.

This, incidentally, can be done at any time, without preparation (although it is a good idea to try it early in the day, when you are feeling fresh). By way of checking this, I just broke off my writing and looked at a coloured picture in a Country Life volume on England. It showed a half-ruined monastery against a background of Yorkshire hills. To my ordinary, 'un-boosted' perception, it was just a picture that produced little or no response. I half closed my eyes and concentrated hard, as if preparing for some enormous effort; there was an instant shock of response to the picture, a sense of brooding meaning, as if the hills and the sky were saying something. It remained when I relaxed again.

And if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!