Music and the Soul

The Rautavaara Connection: In the second to last chapter of Music and the Soul, I wrote a lengthy essay on the music of the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928), whom I consider to be an "evolving mystic." Rautavaara's music, considered as a whole, records his spiritual evolution beyond the level of thinking mind that most composers work from.

I believe that the higher levels of creative achievement are related to higher levels of consciousness experienced by longtime meditators. Beyond the thinking mind comes higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, and overmind. (These terms come from the Integral Yoga developed by the early twentieth-century spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo.)

An evolving mystic is one who is progressing through these states with each stylistic period. Bach represents the highest level of development, as an overmind composer. At this level, the cosmic or God consciousness works directly through the composer with no interference from the ego. On the other extreme, thinking mind composers are bound by the ego.

The determining factor is where one's music originates from. The easier it is for a composer to access the seventh (expanded consciousness) and eighth (cosmic consciousness) centers in his or her music, the higher the level of spiritual evolution, and the greater the likelihood of producing a transcendent musical experience in a listener. Rautavaara seems to me to have achieved the level of illumined mind, a rare distinction. Illumined mind composers write music from middle or upper 7. posted by Kurt Leland Saturday, December 17, 2005 at 9:22 AM