Unlike most workshops that we do here I'm going to minimize
talking about the metaphysics of the Course which I almost always emphasize.
When we talk about the ego which we will invariably do I will not dwell on
some of the gory details as I usually do. The focus will be much more
on what healing is rather than what healing is not.
That doesn't mean that we won’t get into some metaphysics, of course,
because that always is the backdrop for everything that we teach in the Course,
but the focus will be a little different.
We'll be talking about healing which is not unusual for us here
but I am going to be talking about it from the perspective of music
and use music as a framework within which we could talk
about what healing is in all its different forms.
And I thought as a general introduction to what we'll be discussing
I would discuss a little bit about my own background with music
and specifically focus on three experiences I had many years ago
with Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner as really as examples of principles
that are so central in the Course and so inherent in the
Course’s teaching on healing and the practice of healing.
In one sense I think this is one of the more important workshops I have done
in focusing on what it really means to be a student of the Course
in terms of how we are with each other.
Everybody knows that the basic message of the Course is forgiveness
but the practice of it is, as almost everybody knows, is very, very difficult.
And hopefully the workshop today will zero in exactly why it is so difficult
and how one overcomes that. Because in the end if we can’t be more loving,
more kind and more gentle with each other then there is no point in anything in this Course.
The principle focus as you could tell from the title will really be on learning how
to hear what's happening in the other person and how to listen
to what is really going on in the other person.
Without that ability to really hear there is no way you could be of help.
Indeed, what you would end up doing probably is reinforcing
the very problem that you're committed to undoing both in others and in yourself.
And again, music I think offers us a wonderful way of looking at all of this.
So again, I want to begin by talking a little more personally about
my own background with music and how in a sense it kind of led me to the Course itself.
I want to start when I was in high school when two events occurred that
in retrospect were obviously very significant for me. One was that I began reading Freud.
I was a junior in high school and I was an avid reader and I had heard Freud’s name
mentioned in a class in school and I was looking in the library one day
and I came across a little book, which is kind of a summary of Freud in theory,
and I began reading it and I fell in love with it. And I began to devour everything
I could read about Freud and Freud himself. At one point in that period
I read the interpretation of dreams and God knows what I understood.
Again, I think I was only about sixteen years old, but I recognized that there was
something really important in his work and then I began reading other theorists as well.
And it was at that point I decided that I would become a clinical psychologist
and in a sense I never wavered from that until actually I was midway through graduate school.
But I became very, very focused that that's what I would do
and I majored in psychology in college, I went on to graduate school, etc.
Roughly that same time I began to develop an interest in classical music.
My mother felt that it would be nice if my brother and I were exposed to music
so she joined a couple of record clubs and so we began listening to classical music.
And again this was probably my second or third year in high school.
One of the record clubs that we joined was RCA Victor which at that point had
as their introductory gift the Toscanini recording of the nine Beethoven symphonies.
And so that opened up the world of Beethoven for me and while I loved
almost all of classical music his music really grabbed me like no other.
And for the next probably ten, fifteen years I think, again in retrospect,
it was obvious that Beethoven really acted like a spiritual director or spiritual guide for me.
That period of my life I was not interested in religion; I was not interested in anything spiritual,
but I could feel something in his music unlike anything else that I had felt in my life
or certainly in any other composer’s music.
When you look at Beethoven one of the reasons he is so popular
aside even from his music is that unlike any other artist you could see
throughout his work the whole scope of spiritual development.
Commentators usually break his music into three periods, early, middle and late.
And you could see right from the beginning up to the end again
that he was resolute in his pursuit not necessarily consciously
but you could again trace ones’ spiritual development through his music.
One English music scholar, Marion Scott, in her book on Beethoven
divided the three stages this way or talked about it this way,
that the early stage was when Beethoven looked at the material world through material eyes.
And that's the period when he was very heavily under the influence of Mozart and Haydn
the so-called classical period where the emphasis is on form
and the works are very, very structured.
And that basically takes us to the first two symphonies of Beethoven
his first two piano concertos, first six quartets, a whole slew of piano sonatas etc.
The second period, his middle period, Marion Scott said is when Beethoven
looked at the spiritual universe through material eyes.
And that's the period of his most popular music.
It began with the Eroica symphony, his third symphony, and goes through
the eighth symphony then his last three piano concertos,
violin concerto, his opera and the middle quartets.
And again this is the most accessible of his music and you can feel in this music
not only the great power that is characteristic of Beethoven
but the beauty and the development of the works
both within each individual work as well as from work to work.
Again, it is almost like a window to his soul. And as I was listening to his music
more and more that's when I could really begin to intuit and feel it in myself.
The third period, which is the end, is when he began to look at
the spiritual world through spiritual eyes. And this is by far his greatest music
and I would venture to say probably the greatest music ever written.
Mozart is always in a separate category. You don't even talk about Mozart.
Rossini once was asked who the greatest composer was and he said
without hesitating, Beethoven. And the question was well what about Mozart?
And he said well again Mozart is in a different category.
But the late music of Beethoven is unlike any other.
And what we're talking about there would be the ninth symphony
and the Missa Solemnis, which is his great mass which really formed the bridge
between the middle period and the late period, his last piano sonatas,
and above all his last quartets, which is the acme of any spiritual artistic work.
And at some early point in my listening to Beethoven I had read about these quartets
and I began listening to them and I remember saying to myself in effect,
I'm not ready for these at all. It was totally beyond where I was.
But they stood for me as like a lighthouse that was always casting light
saying this is where it's at. And I really began to see, again looking in retrospect,
especially that everything that was going on in my life was getting me closer and closer
to really hearing what was in that music.
And what was going on in my life at that point was basically a two-track experience.
On the one hand, I was very clear about becoming a psychologist
and doing everything that I should do to make that happen.
At the same time, aware that everything I was reading, everything I was studying
had nothing to do with the level of experience that I could feel in music
and especially in Beethoven’s music. And as my later college years went on
and then on into graduate school, and I began to really hear those late quartets,
I realized that no psychologist came anywhere near in touching that
and I realized that 'that that', I do not know what I called it, was really the only thing that was important.