Music and space

To our two eyes, the sound of music does not look like anything. To our five senses, it strikes us as a merely auditory phenomenon. But when we examine how music interacts with the psyche, we discover a different picture.

We have all heard the expression "the music filled the room." We have also, at other times, probably had the experience of music filling our "hearts." But since all of our experiences, without exception, are conditioned by the psyche, music must also fill the psyche. Here it may be advantageous to begin a discussion about the shape of the psyche.

Now, one is of course inclined to raise the objection that since we cannot see the psyche we therefore are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to describing its shape. This objection might hold some water if we did not have some access to unconscious processes. But in fact we do. For example, the emotions that overtake us seem, unmistakably, to come in waves. (They may of course strike us, subjectively, as tsunamis or ripples - but there is something unmistakably wave-like about them, something that differentiates them from thoughts.)

Thoughts, on the other hand, seem to come in a thinner form, and there is something about them that is "straighter" than emotion. One may very well get the sensation that a thought - a breakthrough, perhaps - is numinous, or "more than just a thought" but this apparent "thickness" is due only to the presence of an accompanying emotion. (Would anyone deny that, by and large, emotions are more powerful than - and therefore distinct from - thoughts? We may mince words about the definition of "powerful," but the fact is that the subjective experience of an emotion usually affects the individual to a greater degree than the subjective experience of a thought.)

So here we have discussed at least two aspects of psychic content, which helps us imagine the psyche as composed of distinct elements (see "Rumblings... Music" for more detail). But its structure (which, however, is closely aligned with its content) for the time being, remains a mystery. What of matter, then? In an earlier post I hypothesized that since the psyche is the sole conditioner of all experience, we are actually experiencing psyche when we encounter the material world. We do not directly experience the computer, for example, but rather, the psychic version of the computer. This of course seems immeasurably strange - even otherworldly - to the average reader, but the student of the psyche knows that an unmediated experience of the natural world is impossible. All experience - and here we must also include the experiences of animals - is necessarily filtered by a subjective factor, namely the psyche. For example, it is well known that two people may perceive the same object to be two slightly different colors. If we listen only to the neurologists and ophthalmologists we will remain convinced that this is due to differences in the brains and the eyes of the observers. But these specialists will, time and again, ignore the role of the psyche, which towers above physical processes in determining the character of our perceptions.

So, with the psyche as the all-encompassing mediating factor that I argue it to be, it stands to reason that our above-mentioned computer is not only material, but also psychic as well. This raises an interesting question: is the psychic computer an image of a computer, or does it have dimensionality like objects in the material world? Is there room, in other words, to speak of a three-dimensional psychic computer? Is that a too-absurd notion to consider?

If the psyche is as far-reaching as we say it is, can we afford to imagine it as some flat, static disc or some other such two-dimensional configuration? It is something, and it would seem to make more sense to characterize it with the same dynamism with which it animates us. Among other things, this means describing it in three dimensions.

Here again (see "The Difference" for additional discussion) I shall urge the reader to step out of the convention of the age and try to imagine a psyche which is not confined to our heads. If we can manage this feat of imagination (another product of the psyche, I might add), then we can begin to appreciate the psyche for what it is: a vast (as vast as the universe, perhaps!) network of connections, sparks, waves and forces. This characterization may seem overwhelming, outlandish, or both, but the psyche is not the physical world; thus we cannot imagine it in physical terms. It operates according to its own non-Newtonian, non-Einsteinian laws, which lay open for our discovery.

Here I have drifted a bit far from my opening musings on music, but I'll end here and keep the title unaltered, as music and psyche are awfully close relatives.