In assembling this issue I have had in mind a distinction between religious experience and mysticism. Naturally the two are aspects of a similar phenomenon, but while the former occurs in connection with a revealed tradition of systematic wisdom, the latter is a perception of the unity of multi–dimensional worlds of experience that transcends tradition. Even allowing for semantic distinctions it’s significant that religious experience comes with an evolved vocabulary (implying involvement of the left hemisphere of the brain) whereas mysticism doesn’t (implying the right hemisphere). Nevertheless both are semi–volitional, involving the subject’s active participation or mental assent. Beyond either lie the altered states of trance, varieties of automatism and ultimately ecstatic frenzy – whether induced by psycho–physiology or drugs.

Mystical experience may be defined as being an ‘infinite intimacy’, a sense of fulfilment in which the subject is simultaneously aware of the limitless nature of the Universe and yet of hir intimate relationship to a force sensible as an identifiable personality. It is simultaneously the experience of everything and nothing, of knowing all yet being empty, of hearing within silence all sound. Different religious traditions identify this state individually – nirvana, mushín, Shambhala, Buddhahood, mystical union, alchemical marriage, shekinah – yet it can be seen as a common goal of all esoteric teaching, an experience of oneness beyond the world of duality. It need not even occur in a religious context. To me those very rare moments of total understanding that can arise in connection with works of art are clearly in the same category – that clarity of vision and sense of contact with some archetypal personality. Only those withdrawn from the world are likely to sustain such visions on anything more than an occasional basis, yet however rarely it occurs the mystic is quite clear that s/he is in contact with some archetypal source of consciousness that transcends rational knowledge.

Eurocentric culture is normally only willing to allow significance to thoughts or actions proceeding from an exercise of will, volition, and accordingly has tended to ignore whatever proceeds from involuntary states except where it eventually assumes a coherent form. Indeed it might be said that the most highly charged cultural ‘fault line’ in humankind divides those who believe ultimate significance lies within the volitional and those who believe the exact reverse – the distinction in practice defines the Eurocentric view of ‘civilisation’. However if one believes there is a holistic, or multi–dimensional, logic to all experience then a distinction between the volitional and the non–volitional seems artificial. The so–called Freudian slip is symptomatic of the way in which the non–rational governs apparent rationality.

European consciousness has subjugated and wherever possible annihilated those ‘lesser breeds beyond the law’ who fail to acknowledge the supremacy of a supposedly–rational Cartesian world. One by-product of this has been a history of the systematic rape of our physical and psychological environment. By a process of reductionist logic we have deprived ourselves of any coherent belief system or myth whose over–view might assist us to acknowledge our common humanity, let alone our common eco–system. Nowadays swathes of the arts, which for ‘advanced’ cultures have replaced religion, are similarly visionless, while other areas –mass market music– have been surrendered to Dyonisiac ephemerality.

But as the juggernaut of Eurocentric rationality rolls onward, undaunted by the murderous record of its ‘scientific’ beliefs, the mystical insights of those ‘lesser breeds’ have begun to assume an immense importance – like the genetic root stock of an overbred species. I hope these articles may open a way for musicians to rediscover a tradition of wisdom and imagination which has always existed and will always exist because it is an archetypal element of the psyche. The great mistake, actively promoted by Governments and academics at present, is to confuse information with knowledge – yet ironically thanks to modern communications, at no time have the insights offered by mystical awareness been so readily available.

In the last 40 years Eurocentric culture has been radically reinvigorated by the discovery of the wisdom traditions and holistic thought–forms of the East and of indigenous peoples. In these quasi–mystical traditions the Cartesian distinction between subject and object falls away, and there is a corresponding diminution of differentiation between creator and recreator, composer and performer.

Any contemporary discussion of Music & Mysticism ought to be trans–cultural. I should very much like to have secured an article explaining the mystical function of aboriginal music–making and its relevance to 20thC musical practice such as the impasse of the concert hall, or an article on populist mysticism of gospel revivalism, but could not locate potential contributors with an overview of the subject.

I am particularly sorry that we have no female subjects or writers. I assure you I sought them. Two were slated to contribute but for separate reasons withdrew, a third wished to contribute but was unwilling to write for the rates offered.

Those who wonder at the omission of articles on or by John Tavener and Arvo Pärt are directed to the recent Contemporary Music Review Music & Religion issue. Other notable absentees may have felt what Alfred Schnittke expressed, that ‘while the subject has always fascinated me I really don’t know enough to write on it.’

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And if you sing like angels but love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and voices of the night. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Healing, making whole, is much more than the therapeutic restoration of ‘normalcy’, it is a profound drawing into vibrant Unity of every aspect of our life so that we function in a loving reciprocal awareness with all life from the microbial to the cosmic.

Active engagement in this process, alone distinguishes the numinous life from other paths. That this ‘wholing’ was conceived to be an integral part of musical experience from Pythagoras onwards is a truth which we are now ignoring to our detriment.

Industrialised Education can no more make musicians than industrialised medicine can make healers. The practice of regarding someone as ‘qualified’ because s/he holds a piece of paper and of treating this ‘qualification’ as a negotiable career currency is so inimical to the profoundest character of musicianship that if we don’t abandon the idea of training musicians as if they were pin-headed lawyers, the moral bankruptcy of technocratic society can only accelerate the already-manifest social disintegration and violence which vitiates Western ‘civilisation’.

By failing to understand the psycho-physical nature of sound vibrations and how these modulate humans’ perception of ontological reality those who have it in their power to ‘whole’ and to promote well-being are acting as the very jailers of young minds who should be being shown the open door. In the kingdom of the deaf, the one-eared person hears in stereo!

The adoption of the Arts as a state culture has (in Britain at least) multiplied a leaden footed government + academic bureaucracy whose exoteric myopia never sees beyond the political realities of ‘post-modern’ capitalist culture. Such a reductionist environment no longer even possesses the vocabulary to discuss non-material values or esoteric spiritual meaning in the Arts. (See the article Music & Inner Meaning.)

Having recently visited India and encountered at first-hand the living traditions of Sanskrit scholarship, I am convinced that the only way for Education to recover its role as a vehicle for the transmission of profound ideas lies in the Ashramic principle – people drawn to the energies of specific person(s). And that ‘academy’ existing only while those energies, that magic, lasts. Western Education has, quite literally, been corrupted by money – by the bourgeois financial expectations of its hierarchs – by the Procrustean thuggery of political control – by the pursuit of quantity at the expense of quality.

Whilst I wouldn’t wish to see education returned exclusively to the sectarianism of organised religion I certainly do think that, for all their failings, religious institutions were better guardians of the idea of education for the preceding centuries than state control has been during the 20th.

But this too will pass.

The age of scientific materialism is drawing to a close. It’s own success in explaining the phenomenal world has exposed the algorithmic substructure of matter for which a new vocabulary is emerging. For this new world, a new vision is required. The vision must necessarily be inclusive where the old one was exclusive.

The numinous view of life seeks meaning in the inexplicable, and by continuously redefining its awareness begins ultimately to penetrate the timeless mysteries of existence that remain a source of perplexity to the materialist.

To those on that inner journey this issue is dedicated.