109/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Music possesses both suggestive and stimulative potencies. Its constant flow of suggestiveness arouses the imaginative faculty from a state of passivity, so that one’s thought soars aloft in regions of the highest ideals. It lends wings to thought, which enable it to rise to higher planes, where, beyond the border line of definite suggestion, it is released in the realm of spiritual freedom, and left to its own originality, independent of the guidance of distinct forms.
It sometimes fulfils this function best when heard at a distance, beyond the range of perfect audibility. The individual consciousness, overflowing its finite limits, rises to the plane of the Oversoul, where one beholds his deeper Self as in a mirror. As his thought transcends the phenomenal plane, he knows the essence of all things to be an eternal Spiritual Reality.
From this plane of consciousness, the real world is seen to be not less, but more, than phenomenal. The phenomena of life are transfigured until only the spiritual substance of things is recognizable.
As the phenomenal aspect of life disappears, one finds himself beyond the pale of phantoms and sense illusions, standing face to face with all that is real in his Being the spiritual In the realm of the Absolute the conditioning factors of time and space do not prevail.
Were we always to experience the spiritual consciousness, there would be no occasion for denying the reality of phenomenal Being. We would be just as observing of surrounding incidents; nothing would escape our attention. The outer panorama would become so transparent that the eternal Reality, concealed from the material vision by the mask of sense illusions, would always be clearly in view; the material veil would be too thin to obstruct it.
While one’s thought is completely absorbed in the transient, while he sees nothing more in a life, while his attention is engrossed with sense perception, the material mirage appears to be the reality of realities. But let him ascend to higher ground, from which he can obtain a comprehensive view of life, and look down on the finite scene from above, and the whole aspect of things changes. Conditions that seemed all-important fade into insignificance, and assume merely incidental values.
Most of the fine arts represent life, not in its total aspect, but in its fragmentary phases never finished, but always becoming, evolving, growing, reaching out, striving to attain. Architecture and Music alone are capable of revealing its total aspect in rounded-out, complete works. In Music the innermost secrets of the heart are disclosed in the truest proportions of harmony, or relation to the whole Being.