SPIRIT A LIVING FACT

Life is a diversity in unity, and the expression in countless different forms and shapes of the one fundamental reality, spirit. We ourselves are comprehended in this definition, being part of this fundamental spirit, and claiming thereby our divinity. Music also, as a part of life, is subject to the same explanation: and thus the spirit of Music is a real thing. The Muses of a Classical day typified this same idea of the spirit behind the form. Indeed man, spiritual as at base he is, can never rest finally satisfied with the outer semblance and form: just as the body craves sustenance, so does the spiritual part of him. No amount of physical satisfaction will ever allay the heart-hunger, and no flood of Rationalist thinking will ever put an end to the instinctive search after the Unknown God.

In spiritual law, as in natural law, nothing is ever lost. We study the physical, and by analogy we may learn much of the spiritual: we have not been left without guidance in the maze of life. But the first essential is that we should study those things which are open to us, and through them learn something of the wisdom that otherwise lies hidden. Nothing is lost: we see, as the hymn puts it, "change and decay," but the decay is only change of form, and death, in the form of extinction, simply does not exist. Even thoughts, transient and gossamer as they may appear, do their work in our brains and leave their permanent impress with us. Occultists further assure us that they are recorded in the eternal archives. It is said that there are the Akashic Records, in some subtle way which we cannot pretend to understand, imprinted in the ether. "This primary substance is of exquisite fineness and is so sensitive that the slightest vibration... registers an indelible impression upon it."[7] If this be so, then here is the story of all that has ever been, and all that is. In our own subconscious minds we know full well that there is such a perfect and complete record as to constitute an individual Judgment Book within of unimpeachable accuracy, and there seems to be nothing intrinsically unreasonable in the idea that there should be something of the kind on a world scale. Monumental histories of the traditional lost continent of Atlantis have been compiled, professedly from this source, and we find an interesting inkling of the same idea in the way in which objects will sometimes impress sensitive folk with their own history. Things sometimes have a "feel" about them, pleasant or the reverse, just as buildings acquire an aura and an atmosphere, sacred or convivial, or even unholy.

The musician, then, may obey Nature's universal behest, and change his form from the physical of to-day to the more tenuous of a finer realm. He may die: but his music lives on. He perhaps has played his part in the world symphony and, his present work finished, he lays his instrument aside. This body of ours is the instrument of the spirit: no wedding feast without a wedding garment, and no part or lot in the physical world without a body. The tuning of the body to delicate response and high endeavour enables the spirit to express its melody the better, and therefore it is incumbent upon the musician to cultivate a high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of nourishment, combined with stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished the artist, or annihilated the music: we have merely put an end to its expression for the time. So when our instrument of the body grows old, worn-out, or decrepit, so that it can no longer answer to the dictates of the spirit within, we cast it aside, as an instrument whose keys are broken, or whose strings are for ever mute. Then the musician goes upon his far journey.

But long though the journey seem, it is a change of state rather than of place: as if from being cased in solid ice he now were buoyant in limpid water. His music and his melodies which were so great a part of him now constitute his real self, besides being for ever inscribed upon the roll of eternal remembrance. So the great musicians still live on, and when we claim that such-and-such an interpreter gives us the spirit of Bach, we may be saying more truly than we realise. There is no limit to the range of thought save the intrinsic nature of the thought itself. All thoughts seek their own, by the law of sympathy: like to like, fine to fine, and gross to gross. "Not all of us give due credit to the anomalous nature of love, reaching as high as heaven, sinking as low as hell, uniting in itself all extremes of good and evil, of lofty and low."[8] So when a man steeps himself in thoughts of a type, when he ponders over and lives in the music of a master, his thoughts span the realms and the ages, and he reaches that master, even if only to touch the hem of his garment. Then the master's thoughts are his, and he truly gives of the spirit of the music, for a measure of inspiration has been vouchsafed to him.

Whatever we dwell upon has its "tuning" effect upon our thoughts, and thus we reach some of the lore and wisdom of those who have trodden the way before us. The inventor and the discoverer are truly what the words imply: the inventor "comes upon" the new idea or principle, and the discoverer "uncovers" and makes plain. But all the ideas and all the new and novel discoveries, and all the laws, were there before: we only reach them when we have climbed to a sufficient height to be able to apprehend them. So the musician who reaches the spirit of Bach has, by the attunement of his thoughts and his aspirations, crept into the heart of the music and has tugged at the musician's heart-strings. He has touched the composer's soul, and henceforth he plays Music, not notes.

Again, Bach, and all the masters of Music have in their turn but discovered the Music that was already there. No man really creates, any more than the gardener creates an oak tree by the planting of an acorn. The gardener provides the necessary conditions in which the oak, already miraculously pent within the acorn, can unfold and develop. So the musician also provides the necessary conditions in which the spirit of Music can blossom and bear fruit. He need take to himself no vast amount of credit, for he is but a trustee of that which has been lent to him: he neither creates it nor owns it. His music is a gift of spirit, and when by his life's work he has glorified that gift, then henceforth that is his contribution to the universal store of spirit, and his Art belongs to the ages.

Inspiration is a commonplace of life, though only too often we think of it solely in connection with religion, and especially with reference to the Bible. Because thought flies free and ever consorts like with like, so almost every moment of our days we are inspiring others and being inspired in return. It is mere delusion that we consider ourselves independent units, for we are literally built of one another. Memory largely constitutes the man, for his every experience and thought is recorded by his subconscious memory, and goes to the making of his characteristics and his personality. Day by day we meet, and perforce remember each other: we remember also those to whom we may never have spoken, and so—unintroduced—they creep in this subtle way into our personality. "We are, each one of us, united by bonds of emotional influence with the personalities of all those with whom we have had to do. If we could see them, they would guide us to their objects, for they never lose their way. Thus by threads of love, threads of hatred, threads of adoration, threads of thought, the universe of souls is interpenetrated and linked up into a unity of correlated activity, an intricate web of life."[9] Something of myself goes, in my thoughts, into this written word: you read it, and as the thought incorporates itself in your mind so does some tenuous element of my personality creep into your own. Our independence is a fiction. We inspire each other, whether we like it or no.

But inspiration is of all kinds: it is like those neutral forces of faith and thought, which depend for their result upon the direction in which they are turned. Inspiration can uplift, but it may also degrade. We ourselves by the tuning of our own thoughts determine which it shall accomplish. Like can only answer to like: anger can never play echo to love, for their vibrations are so far apart in attunement that the one cannot influence the other. But anger answers to anger, and love to love. It is the eternal response of the love implanted in the spirit of man that ever bids him answer to the love that radiates from the divine. Hence, in whatever age or clime we look, always there is to be seen man in quest for the unseen, after joy, beauty, truth, happiness, after all those spangles that glitter on the garment of love.

The mind of man is ever the tenuous instrument upon which are playing the invisible forces of inspiration. All the thoughts that have existed, exist still: all the thoughts that man can ever think are there already, they do but await the time and season in which he can sense and interpret them. These are the future discoveries for you and for me. The pioneers who have passed our way are still working at the tasks that were at once their life and love: and they have not gone so far upon the journey that they have outspanned the reach of thought. If our thoughts be fine and unselfish enough, if aspiration tune them sufficiently high, they will reach their aim: and the reply will be vouchsafed. There was never yet an aspirant who was unable to find a teacher. It is most true that the living and the dead are still one family, for of course there are no "dead," unless we most correctly put into this category the dull of hearing, the dull of heart, and the loveless who still walk this earth. But if we deem the pioneers defunct and inarticulate, then it is little likely that we shall comprehend the reality and the naturalness of this interplay and inspiration. If we never seek, information and insight will scarcely drop upon us from the skies.

We talk of inspired playing, inspired teaching, the gift of song, and so on, and we talk of a reality. The playing that is not inspired is worth but little, it has the worth of a nutshell with the kernel gone amissing. It is sound, perhaps it may even be fine sound, yet it signifies nothing: it is as the painted face aping true beauty. Art without inspiration is our electric light bulb disconnected from the main current. There are prophets in the world to-day, for a prophet in the strict sense of the word is one who speaks forth his message. Everyone who senses something of the eternal message—which is love—is in his degree a prophet, yea and a saviour too. He may speak or sing, he may perform or compose, he may wait and serve, or he may just pass his message on with a handshake and a smile: he is an interpreter, a medium twixt wisdom and the unwise. Thus we must place the true artist, whatever be the particular bent of his activities, as a prophet in his day and his generation. That he may be far from being regarded as such by those to whom he ministers is merely one of the incidental disadvantages of being a prophet.

Quite obviously also there will be both good prophets and bad: even a prosaic telegram may be repeated on payment of half the original cost, because of the possibility of error occurring in the text. How much more may error occur, then, when tenuous messages are being sent from high sources by the power of thought, and when the receiving instrument is so often imperfect, so frequently out of gear, and when that instrument in addition is more than a trifle wilful and tainted with selfishness. Inspiration is ever ready, it floats around us like tuned wireless vibrations waiting to be picked up by a sympathetic receiver. Yet so few receivers, being but human after all, are sensitive enough and sufficiently delicate in in their poise to catch the floating news: and so the harvest is plenteous but those who garner it are few.

Perhaps Sullivan felt something of this when, in the "Prodigal Son," he penned the simplest and yet most eloquent of melodies to the words, "O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments," ending up with the words, set too simply for any but a consummate artist to sing with complete effect,—"Turn ye, turn ye—why will ye die?" The marvel truly is that we are already so dead, so immured and petrified in our hard self-satisfaction, when we might so easily develop the freedom, fluidity, and delicacy of fine response to these tenuous intimations of our own spirituality and high destiny. Here we live, as some writer has aptly said, on top of a gold mine, and the tragedy is that we are ignorant of the gold. We live, and move, and have our being in an ocean of spiritual and inspiring thought: surely our problem is to find the conditions that will avail to put us in touch with this lively world of inspiration in which we are accustomed to pass so dead and unresponsive an existence.