Part I  –  Mythmaking

            In the eons long life of the world soul, each great revolution on the axis mundi corresponds to an age in the slow working out of the destiny of our own ancient but still young species.  And we find ourselves now at the edge of a new circum-vivification,  mythos, noumenon, world view, opening up to our as yet uncertain gaze. 

            In this upcoming age we hope to find a healing of that great psychic rift, collective as well individual, which has reached its greatest expression in the European culture which now threatens to dominate the world.  I refer to the tremendous split in our culture which was given clear expression in the pact tacitly formed between the Church on the one hand, as self perceived guardians of learning during the long night of the middle ages, and Descartes on the other hand, as representative of the new urge towards secular intellectual exploration. 

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            This article is about one of the modalities in which, in small groups, concerted action springing from positive mutual regard leads to collective experience of the numinous, communal touching of the divinity which is in us, and in which we are.  These are reflections on that form in which (o miraculous day!) I encountered the shared experience of the divine: group musical improvisation, a microcosm of life, and therefore a therapeutic environment for change.

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            So if we can accept that we are our own myth-makers, that myth-making is the process by which we define ourselves, then when we are gathered in the developed improvisation group we are myth-making via the collective engagement with sound actions, which are simultaneously within the structure and part of it, the container and what is contained. We redefine ourselves, or in James Hillman's phrase, we are soul making.

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Part II  –  Sensing

            What actual perceptual possiblities do we bring to collective soul making activity, enabling conscious awareness of the experience?  In group musical improvisations there is naturally hearing, but beyond that other senses play their part.  Smell, and possibly taste, no more than in any other group situation, subliminally or even consciously inform us about the emotional states of our fellows, part of our knowing the extent to which trust may be given in the situation.  Vision and the tactile sense, however, have more direct roles, as has proprioception. 

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            Homo musicus is a naturally resonating system, a system which reaches out beyond the body, via resonance with it’s surrounding electro-magnetic field (the aura) to interact with the fields of other persons and things (8).  Not strictly a sense, and entirely unconscious except for certain sensitives who ‘see’ or otherwise sense auras, nevertheless it is another mode of connection between us, which will play its mysterious part in the group work.  

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            In the work of healing the breach between estranged and impoverished mankind and the earth that in the rage of our estrangement we have raped and pillaged, is it too far fetched to suggest that as we reconnect with the true ground of our being, in parallel with that healing we may recover lost abilities and perceptions that maybe once we took for granted, or were simply unconscious of, which may, consciously perceived, marvelously enrich our interactions with the world?

            So, for those of us who work through the modality of sound at that breach, may we be conscious in all possible fullness of the vibrations of what we are doing, in hearing, vision and body awareness.  But also that we who lack the synaesthetic enrichment may become open to the possibilities of parallel sensings?

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The full article can be read in the first issue of Music & Psyche, the journal of the Music & Psyche network