Music Musician
The play of subtle feelings and forces in our being, or realisations difficult to define, and the influence of wider awareness in our life. Much music has personal associations, so you need to define what type of music you dream about, and what it leads you to feel or do.
But our whole being is an example of a wonderful orchestra, with all the different organs and processes working in harmony when we are healthy. In reality you are a musical instrument plated by Life. Life plays us with such skill unless we interfere with its controlling hand playing our notes – the rhythm of our breathing and heartbeat which plays us even when we are asleep. But even though we are an amazing musical instrument, many of us have out notes, our keys, so stuck we cannot be played to our full potential. We are so stuck we are afraid to let the full range of our emotions play, or we are so fixed in just playing one or two notes of our wonderful range, we just play our sexual or digestive organs, or are fixed in just ambition or even playing passive pieces. Yet Life lives in the lightening, the sunshine, the earthquakes and the depth and mystery of the sea, and if we are fluid we have them all as part of our extraordinary range. See Opening to Life
Sometimes music in a dream implies awareness of new areas of experience arising. But for many people, especially during teen years, it is a way of defining your identity. See Identity and dreams
Plato warned that “A change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most – fundamental political and social conventions.” Many people believe these ancient-and modern-warnings should be taken more seriously.
There are also many clichés and images used in books or films. Some of them are the man or woman all in black or in black leather and the scary music suggesting fear. Part of the shutting off to things like art and music is that they involve emotional involvement.
The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of a hero figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices. They grip an audience with deep and mysterious emotions and lift people above their normal experiences. Many people, who visit concerts, often feel a form of hero worship and are very moved by the experience.
Example: When I looked at the green wall again the movement had begun, and there were green dancing figures all over the wall. They all started from an obscure yet fascinating centre point, full of symbols and movement, and radiated out, dancing and interweaving. There were Indian goddesses with beautiful breasts, lithe figures like green grass, all moving in time to the music from the transistor radio. My hips were also managing a similar timing.
Example: I had the following strange dream and experience. I was a young man living in Italy. The surroundings gave me the impression of it being during a period several hundred years ago. I was walking through the streets of a town. As I did so I was thinking about the liver disease I had and about my plans to move to another town where a learned doctor lives who specialised in liver complaints. I wanted to not only be his patient but also his student, to learn what he knew about liver illnesses.
As I walked I started to sing Ave Maria – I believe it is Gounod’s version. My singing was beautiful exhibiting wonderful voice control and expression of emotion. I am not sure of the sequence of this but there was a building I was looking at. People wanted to have the building restored but could not raise the money. So I had painted a huge mural on the building depicting scaffolding covering the house. This attracted public attention and interest in the house, and so money was raised. I realised that I was not just an artist but also an architect and musician.
It was on this thought, and with Ave Maria still sounding its lovely quality that I realised I was dreaming and became awake enough to observe and think about what was happening. I realised that as a musician I had very great ability as a composer, and decided to compose an ‘Ode to Mozart’. No sooner had I decided this than the music poured through my consciousness. So much so I heard it as if listening to an orchestra or record. The music soared and moved in a wonderful expression of human vision and transcendence. As this occurred I could observe the process of creativity or composition, which was spontaneous to an extraordinary degree. It appeared that by asking for or seeking the composition I had opened a window in my mind. Through it I could observe a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it was all that have ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought was in it alive and vital. My ‘Ode to Mozart’ drew on this unfathomed depth of being. I knew as I observed this that the music itself, although precise and clear and Mozart’s own work, proclaimed the human ability to leap beyond boundaries into this immense and apparently limitless world of experience – to allow the mind to soar and fly, to move beyond its own conceptions and rejoice.
I wanted to test this amazing ability and asked the huge mind how I could compose ‘modern’ music. What followed was like being instructed. The experiences arose as if I were being told that music was a reflection of basic life processes. If life had managed to express as a basic process, such as a simple celled creature or a crystal, this was like one note sounding over and over. After doing this over and over for infinite repetition, perhaps the process stumbles upon a slight change in itself. This would be like the playing of two different notes over and over. Then maybe another basic process has learned to play three different notes, and if these two meet they play a more complex music together.
To this meeting was added theme upon theme until an orchestral music was built up, and this was likened to our body, with its many different processes playing together, or society in which so many opposing ‘themes’ in the end form a whole. This was an extraordinary experience for the dreamer and is a doorway that opened to him the realisation that while the dead are slowly absorbed into the whole, the individual person is there too, like a jewel.
Example: I was walking near big, old, blocks of flats. They were very worn needing repair, almost slums. I then noticed that it was all black people in these blocks. Really jet black. One called out from a balcony asking what I wanted. There was a slightly hostile feeling as they all looked at me to see what I would do or say. I was then partly my father, and said I had come for a blow, (i.e. on the saxophone or clarinet). Everybody was now friendly and crowded around. They asked me if I had my brushes with me – that is, drum brushes. I said no, and then started playing the clarinet. It was completely spontaneous, moved by the spirit, and was wonderful music. It brought us all together.
Example: ‘I am a journalist reporting on the return of Christ. He is expected on a paddle steamer going upstream on a large river. I am very sceptical and watch disciples and followers gather on the rear deck. The guru arrives, dressed in simple white robes. He has long, beautiful auburn hair and beard, and a gentle wise face. He begins to tap a simple rhythm on a tabla or Indian drum. It develops into complex intermingling of orchestral rhythms as everyone joins in. I now realise he is Christ, and feel overwhelmed with awe as I try to play my part in the music. I’m tapping with a pen and find myself fumbling. A XE “A” bottle or can opener comes to me from the direction of Christ. I try to beat a complementary rhythm, a small part of a greater, universal music.’ Lester S.
Example: My curiosity as a scientist, I suppose, also played a major part in motivating me towards this research “trip.” Within 10 or 20 minutes after taking the psychedelic agents, I began to notice a wonderful, dawning sense of euphoria. The music from the hi-fi expanded to a new kind of “living sound” more beautiful than any music I’d ever heard before. I could hear all of the percussive noises of the instruments, the scraping of the bow on the violins, the mechanical noises of the other instruments, the breathing and air noises as the vocalists sang, and within the space of a few minutes, the orchestra had transported itself from the loudspeaker and now seemed to be totally inside my being somewhere. I was delighted, amazed, and carried away with the sheer majesty and beauty of these sounds which were liquid and tinged with colored lights. I wondered indeed why it is that the ears of man are normally so hard of hearing. Lambert Dolphin
Playing music: Self expression; expressing our essential self which might be overlooked in general activities. See: musical instrument.
Idioms: Music to ones ears; face the music.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Where there strong feelings or reactions to the dream music?
Did you learn anything or was anything conveyed by the music?
Was there any sense of being in a different time?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Summing Up – Questions – Magical Dream Machine