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Harmony: The One Universal Code of Communication.
Ann Bendall, B.A. Dip. Psych., Australia
"Harmony, the music of the seven levels of melodious association, is the one universal code of spirit communication. Music, such as Urantia mortals understand, attains its highest expression in the schools of Jerusem, "(500).
The revelators value music. They use some interesting musical metaphors (364;2080). The term "attunement", their desire for us with our Thought Adjuster, is a musical term. Jesus' voice from adolescence onwards is referred to as "musical." Music is important!
And yet we know so little about music and its impact on the individual. There has been no research into how a composer creates his music, and many of the famous composers describe the process simply as 'hearing" the melody in their head. Researchers have studied the difference between skilled musicians and rank amateurs, the findings being mainly in the nature of enhancement of our understanding of mental processing and mind/body co-ordination.
Perhaps of more interest are the findings on the impact of music on the listener. Music can influence emotions and muscular activity. Dependent upon the particular melody, listeners may have difficulty in either resisting tapping their toes to the beat or going into reverie. Music can take a person into a hallucinatory stupor (by subjection to prolonged periods of reduced or featureless sensory experience, i.e., a monotonous drum beat). Alternatively it can induce a state of calmness bordering on rapture, or spur an exhausted soldier to stand straight and march onwards to battle. And it is not known how!
Is there a sector for musical intellect in the brain?
Music is allocated its own area in the brain. The cortical centre housing musical intellect appears to be in the right hemisphere (in a sector of the temporal lobe), with the left hemisphere appearing to have a minor function in musical intellectual activities.
This area appears to be particularly resilient to cortical death or injury. Case studies are documented of individuals who have had brain trauma, resulting in inability to access old memories, who will deny ever having played a musical instrument, and yet when presented with an instrument they once were proficient in, play magnificently, but continue to deny any knowledge of same. There have also been case studies of severely aphasic (speech production damage) patients who can carry a tune and even sing the words to previously learned songs.
Music is powerful! We can hear a tune once and be able to hum it perfectly. But if we tried to recall even one of the beautiful sentences of The Urantia Book after a single reading, most of us would fail. It is also remarkable that, on hearing a tune for the first time, our senses may be jarred by a note played off key.
What do we call music?
It is hypothesized that what is recognized as music is ultimately a function of the physiological or biological nature of man. It appears innate, which The Urantia Book would confirm perhaps as spiritual responsivity.
Music is decidedly culture bound, and hence although Eastern music might not appeal to a Western ear, it is still regarded as music by the latter. Although we cannot define it, we are all certain as to what constitutes music. For example, the sounds of nature, although regarded by some to be musical, are not held to be music. In examining the difference between the sounds of nature and the sounds of music, the latter are "constantly changing from instant to instant in the frequencies present and in the amplitudes of the frequencies." (Beament, 1977, p.7). In contrast, Beament notes that music primarily involves sounds with sustained constant frequencies (heard as fixed pitches) without which melodic and harmonic music could not exist. He maintains that fixed pitches "are virtually an artifact of man". The Urantia Book differs. Music is in reality a gift from the gods!
When is musical appreciation formed?
It is recognized that the earliest form of intelligence to emerge in humans is musical - the appreciation of melody, rhythm, timbre, and the quality of tones. In the normal course of development, children at two months have been observed to match the pitch, loudness and melody of their mother's songs, and at four months can match rhythm as well. At about the age of one and a half, children begin to sound out their own patterns of tones - seconds,
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