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Music – Indian and European THE
difference is both in regard to the source and the expression and in an
inverse way. In European music a very high – spiritual – inspiration is a rare
thing. The psychic source also is very rare. But if at all, it is a very high
spiritual source, or otherwise it is the vital that is the source. The
expression is always there, apart from some exceptions naturally, but it is
almost always vital, because the source is very often purely vital. At times,
as I said, it comes from high above, then it is really marvellous. At times,
more rarely, it is psychic: something of it was there in the religious music,
but it is not frequent. Indian music, on the other hand, almost always, that is
to say, when we have good musicians, has a psychic source, the source, for
example, of the Ragas. It does not come from the top heights, it has rather an
inner and intimate origin. But it has very rarely a sufficient vital body. I
have heard a good deal of Indian music, quite a good deal indeed. I came across
very rarely any that has a great vital force, not more than four or five times.
But I have heard quite often that with a psychic inspiration behind. It is
music directly translated from the inner into the physical. To listen you must
concentrate, as it is something very thin, very fine and tenuous, having
nothing of the vital vibration with its strong intense resonances. You can
glide into it, let yourself be carried along the flow, entering the psychic
source. It has that effect, it acts something like an intoxication, something
that takes you into a kind of trance. If you listen well and are attentive and
let yourself go, you slowly glide and dip, dip into the psychic consciousness;
but if you remain in the external consciousness, such a thin stream expresses.
itself there that the vital gives no response and finds it extremely flat and
monotonous. If, however, along with the
Page – 426 psychic
vibration there were also a vital force expressing it, the result would be
interesting indeed. I
like this kind of music, with a theme, a single theme moving and developing
gradually with variations: countless variations playing out the same constant
theme, variations branching out and coming back again to the original basic
theme. In
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