Music and Kabbalah... What is the connection between them? Everyone has a conception of what music is, but not everyone, by far, knows what Kabbalah is. The essence of Kabbalah is shrouded in secrecy, but interest in Kabbalah has always existed. According to legends, one who knows Kabbalah and masters its' secrets can govern our world and the mysterious spiritual worlds that influence our world, revealing its past, present and future.
Kabbalah is the science of the structure of the universe, the developmental laws of spiritual worlds and our world, and of the purpose of man.
Kabbalah is a science of the impact of human desires on the surrounding world.
All Kabbalistic books are written in the language of feelings and desires. This is a special, strictly scientific language that employs graphs, formulas and diagrams. It explains how to alter our own desires in order to purposefully influence the entire world. Through these graphs and schemes, Kabbalah talks of mans' feelings, his soul, and music. Music also talks to man in a language of feelings and emotions; therefore it is close to Kabbalah.
What is music? It is an emotion, captured in its evolvement. Only music can deliver the process of transforming feelings through time. That is why the music of Kabbalah provides those who do not yet perceive the spiritual world with a certain analogy of the impression of spirituality that is felt by the Kabbalist.
The more evolved mans’ feelings are, the more he will delight in what is heard. A sensitive man opens an entire world for himself in music, undergoes different emotional states from bliss to tragedy. And the more man develops his feelings, the more intricately he will sense that which the music transmits.
In much the same way, one who studies Kabbalah cultivates in himself appropriate inner instruments for comprehending spirituality, through which he then begins to perceive spiritual information.
As a musician looks into notes and hears music through his inner feelings, a Kabbalist, while reading Kabbalistic texts, senses the spiritual world within him.
Man's very first spiritual sensation when spirituality is revealed to him is thankfulness to the Creator. Man begins to sense this higher power and sees how it brought him out of a dead end existence into an infinite, flawless world of absolute awareness and perfection. It is this sensation that Rav Baruch Ashlag transmitted through his music for the words of the psalm:
"I thank you for saving my soul from death
My eyes from tears
My feet from entering hell."
The great Kabbalists wrote all the books of the Torah. They tell of the secrets of the universe, but we are also privileged to the melodies, created by the great Kabbalists Yehuda Ashlag and his son Baruch Ashlag. Through the language of feelings, their melodies express spiritual sensations and information.
Rav Yehuda Ashlag wrote the commentary on the book of “Zohar” and the primary textbook of Kabbalah “Talmud of Ten Sefirot”. He attained all of the secrets of the universe and implanted them in his melodies.
The existing location of the soul in the spiritual world is referred to as its root. The roots of souls differ. Souls descend into our world and incarnate in bodies. As the roots of souls differ, the objectives that each soul must complete in our world differ as well. That is why each body is nothing more than a mechanism for completing the soul’s plan of development.
Man begins to feel drawn to spirituality, a striving to his spiritual root, desires to attain it right now, to be able to sense all the worlds today, while still living in this world.
Kabbalistic music reveals and develops man’s spiritual potential.
Kabbalistic melodies are not subjected to the typical musical analysis. From the point of view of classical music, these melodies may appear banal in their structure and musical language.
But those persons with an inclination for the ascension of their souls in this lifetime, who wish to attain the Upper World and the entire universe, sense in this music something beckoning them into the unexplored.
We do not know how our musical comprehension is structured. Why do we feel the major chords in a different emotional and sensible tone than the minor ones? Why do we sense the major as something brighter, more open, and happier than the minor?
Many musicians with perfect musical hearing see colors in notes, chords, and tones. No one knows how this occurs and why such associations of color, sound, taste, and sensations appear within us. No one knows the structure of our receptors, which perceive absolutely immaterial information.
However, Kabbalists understand how these devices work within man, because they know the structure of his soul. They can instill spiritual information into musical sounds. That is why Kabbalistic music is a means of infusing the inner world of man with information of all that surrounds him.
What the music of our world contains is connected to the personal, earthly sensations and emotions of the composers. Composers have always aspired to reflect the predicaments of creation in music, yet these attempts had never gone beyond a mere surmise or personal feeling.
Only melodies written by Kabbalists actually enable us to enter into sensations of eternity, sensations of soul’s movement, pushing us to an understanding of our essence as a part of one eternal universe.
Kabbalistic music is written by great Kabbalists as an expression of their spiritual sensations. It is inherently located at a high spiritual level. A spiritual sensation can not be forgotten. That, which was played and felt once, remains and at any moment can be repeated. This feeling can later be manipulated, creating most refined shades of said emotion. In every melody there is a different feeling corresponding to each particular spiritual state. Due to the elevated level of its composer, each melody speaks of the ethereal as it elevates and escorts one across the spiritual world. This music delivers the listener to eternity and perfection.
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