Your Brain On Music

“Music gives such pleasure that human nature cannot live without it, ” said Confucius. Music is essential says Victor Hugo because “ it expresses what cannot be put into words and what cannot remain silent.” The acclaimed neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist and musician  Daniel Levitin  explores the mystery of music and how music affects our brains, thoughts and our spirit.  He says : The moods that music creates are part of its mystery. What most of us turn to music for is an emotional experience. Because music has the power to induce a certain emotion that will bring back a certain

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Feeling of the Eternal

The friendship between Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland at the turn of the 20th century, and how it sparked the interior voyage and the spiritual realization of Rolland The French Nobel laureate writer Romain Rolland (1866-1944), foresaw the power of Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) analytical assessments at the turn of the century in 1909, long before Europe recognized his seminal work on the human psyche. He regarded Freud as “a fellow pilgrim on this black continent, courageous and genius navigator. ” Intrigued by his work, Rolland visited Freud and his daughter Anna Freud (1895-1982) in their apartment in Vienna in 1924.

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Divinity and Final Judgement in Ancient Egypt

  Kindness is a man’s memorial For the years after the burial.   Ancient Egyptians (3100 BC) believed in the immortality of the soul, and in life after death. The journey of the soul to the other world and the scenes of divine judgement are colorfully illustrated on the Papyrus of Ani (1250 BC). The hieroglyphs highlight the deeply seated knowledge of ancient Egyptians and their strong belief in the divine order of creation which they name – Maat. It governs the entire universe in an immutable unity : nature, state, society, the individual and all forms of existence are seen

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Living Through the Passage of Time

  “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” says author Annie Dillard. Goethe, meticulous about the passage of time reflects:  “Every second is of infinite value”  for one who captures it. Seneca states that what we do each day figures the meaning of our life and calibrates the “relative” passage of time. He says, “ Life, if lived well, is long enough, ” and one can depart with a sense of contentment. In his renown ouevre, the Divine Comedy,  Dante vividly depicts the states of souls and their dwellings in the other world. He

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Curing Power of Age-old Herbs

  One of the most read mystical poets, Rumi (1207-1273)  recounts in his seminal Mathnawi the story of the temple of  King Solomon . When he started the construction of the temple following the divine order, medicinal plants sprouted one after the other in the courtyards of the temple.  Endowed with the gift of speaking the language of animals, plants, and other creatures in nature, King Solomon would ask the emerging sprouts : Tell me your name, what you heal, which medicine are you? whom you hurt, and whom you cure Plants would speak up and count their remedies and

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Dante, Sommo Poeta

Italy is marking the 700th anniversary of the departure of Sommo Poeta — the Great Poet, Dante Alighieri  (1265 Florence-1321 Ravenna), and his masterwork, The Divine Comedy. He wrote this monumental epic at the age of 35 when he was exiled from his hometown of Florence to spend the rest of his life in Ravenna, until his death. In this timeless book, Dante sets out on a voyage to the other world where souls embark upon terminating life on earth. Depending on their merit earned on earth, they were to reside in one of these realms :  Inferno, Purgatorio, or

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Looking for the Shepherd’s Star

  “We are obliged to change and rethink the whole civilization,” says Boris Cyrulnik, the eminent neuropsychiatrist known for his work on resilience and trauma. Our culture has lost the compass, we navigate by sight, jostled by events […] We must take a new direction because we have just understood that man is not above nature, he is in nature.  Physically, psychologically and spiritually we are much more sculpted than we think by our natural space. He focuses on healing the soul in his latest book, Souls and Seasons, and marks “psychological ecology” as the  crucial component of the remedy

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Pythagoras and the Music of the Solar System

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras (circa 570 BC), the sage philosopher and polymath was born on the Greek island of Samos. Renown by his fundamental theory of mathematics and his studies on the pre-existing link between music and mathematics, he demystified the music of the planets of our solar system which he defined as musica universalis – the music of the spheres. Attesting to the fact that the planets and stars move according to mathematical equations, their movement correspond to musical notes and each emit their

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Divine Comedy

  But already my desire and my willWere being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,By the love which moves the sun and the other stars. Dante Alighieri[1265 Florence-1321 Ravenna] Dante started to write Divine Comedy at the age of 35 when he had to leave his hometown Florence due to a political dispute between the two prominent families. His journey in exile coincides with the narration of Divine Comedy which is considered as one of the timeless masterpieces of western literature. In his epic book, he recounts his afterlife journey to the other world where souls dwell in

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