More On The Future Future Of Communication 04 Of 04

You may remember about this morning I described the situation as follows.

I'm talking to you and you understand what my words mean.

Situation A.

Situation B is taking situation A as a whole, my talking to you and you understanding what

I mean, what does that situation mean?

And we find it doesn't mean anything.

This could be a way, when we say something is meaningless, it's a way of putting it down.

But on the other hand, when you consider a mountain, or a cloud, or a tree, and ask what

does it mean, and you realize it's not a word, it's simply an authentic existence in its

own right, it doesn't mean anything, but it's great.

And so in this way the nearest thing in that kind of achievement, that nature does all

the time, in human activities is music.

Once when Gustav Holst was giving a lecture on music, he started out this way, he said,

music is a natural and universal language.

He took a step backwards and said, that's so important I'm going to say it again, music

is a natural and universal language, but nobody knows what it's about.

Sometimes we say music represents emotions, but a great deal of music, although it has

a very strong feeling quality, does not represent specific emotions.

Inferior music copies natural noises.

So that you hear the sound of water, the thunder of the hooves of horses, or in that dreadful

composition the 1812 Overture of Tchaikovsky, you hear Napoleon's armies retreating from

Moscow, or in some of the bad work of Debussy, like La Cathédrale en Blouty, makes noises

like bells tolling from under the water.

But our very great musicians of the West, Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart and so on, they don't

do anything with the music except create elaborate patterns of sound.

Bach is very mathematical, and yet curiously, despite his tremendously developed intellect,

the music has a very strong feeling quality, joyous and exuberant.

But it's all pure play with sound.

And therefore one might say that the communication that you make with music is in a curious way

the most important kind of communication you can make, even though you're saying nothing.

The music delivers no information, but what a form of communication.

And so it is also with dancing with somebody.

All you are saying with dancing is I love you, if you're delivering any message at all.

I want to play with you.

All I really want to do is baby be friends with you.

What does it mean, what is the content of friendship?

You can't say, what is the content of love?

I want to screw you.

That's a sort of a part of it, it's incidental, it's a way of saying very strongly yes I do

want to be with you.

But basically love is something we can't put our finger on at all.

We say, we use such words as warmth, tenderness, all these things they don't really get to

the point.

When you're loving somebody you are simply delighting in that person as such, as if another

human organism in its mental and its physical aspects, where a piece of music or a work

of art or a glorious morning that you were just enjoying every inch of it.

And you go over another person's physical form and look at it from every possible point

of view and play with it and tickle it.

And that's what it's about, it's the adoration of the form of a human being.

And you do that adoring in terms of physical contacts that are say dancing with your fingers

across the skin or whatever it may be.

But this is the nitty gritty, the nub of love, it is not that I here and now solemnly undertake

to support you for the rest of your life.

That's a delusion of the West, you think you don't really love me unless you will sign

on the dotted line here and give me this contract and then I know I can rely on you always.

What did you want it for?

Why did you want the contract?

Just to be fed indefinitely?

Just to be supported indefinitely?

What at all?

One wants something much more than that, you want to be played with indefinitely.

That's more like it.

To have this vibrancy going through you.

And this then is why music of all the arts is the most meaningless art.

You could regard as a matter of fact we could scare the entire American public by writing

up music as a form of dangerous addiction.

After all music is a major industry in the United States.

The money invested in orchestras and operas in the recording business is fantastic.

Horse racing is a very great industry but music I think is probably absorbs more millions

than horse racing.

And you could make a case that this was a complete dissipation.

It solves no useful purpose, it doesn't help anyone to survive.

It is a noise, meaningless noise, endless meaningless noise going down the drain.

And all these energies, orchestras are all a power of electronics that delivers this.

It's total waste.

And people get hooked on it.

They get a thing called Chorditis which is addiction to harmonics.

And they have to have this repeated day after day.

Some people get up in the morning and they can't function till they've had a cup of coffee.

But many more people get up in the morning and can't function till they've turned on the

radio and got some music.

They are hopelessly hooked on narcotic music.

And what would you say then of a culture which took this standpoint?

Music not allowed.

Music is a diversion from reality.

You can imagine the sort of state of mind going on in red China or somewhere like that

where everybody has to be tremendously realistic and face facts and get up every morning and

do exercises for your physical improvement.

You know that kind of awful utilitarian attitude.

But really one of the basic things you see that we live for.

What makes it worth surviving and going on is there can be such a thing as music.

There can be dancing.

In other words that we can do things that are absolutely irrelevant so far as mere survival

is concerned.

Now we have the proverb that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All for work.

And people who play so that they shall be able to work for a living, justifying their

play by making it a means to that end, those people never play.

Because you don't really play until you get so absorbed in the music or the dancing or

the whatever, the making the part or doing the calligraphy, until you get so absorbed

in it that there is no reason for it other than what you are doing.

The sheer delight of that.

Then because you are absorbed in something for which there is no ulterior motive and

which is pure play, this by way of a by-product produces sanity.

In other words if you play in order to be healthy, in order to be sane, you are not

playing.

But if you play just to play, then as a by-product, as something you couldn't aim at directly,

you are sane.

And so a culture which allows for this, which allows for this sort of goofiness, is a healthy

culture.

This is not the culture that we live in very healthy.

Because it is extremely anxious about play.

Everybody when they play they have to find an excuse for it.

They say well this is culture.

You try and persuade the city of San Francisco to support its opera.

What sort of propaganda do you have to use?

You can't say we should have a good opera house here because we dislike going to the

opera.

Say this improves the city's image.

After all they have it in New York and wouldn't you think that San Francisco could equal New

York?

It's a matter of prestige and therefore the city should support the opera.

And then finally you get this terrible racket that all kinds of people belong on the committee

and it's a matter of social one-upmanship as to whether you get on the committee, how

much money you contribute to it and so on and so on.

It has nothing to do with the symphony or the opera at all.

And that is because we do not allow ourselves the idea that life is not serious.

Because somehow you feel if you aren't engaged in something serious you are a loafer.

You are not contributing to the social welfare.

And so in this way the artist has a peculiar role in this society.

Very very interesting.

Because the artist is a very deceptive fellow.

He appears to be the supreme luxury, the irrelevant fellow.

You can afford an artist, you can afford to buy paintings if you have surplus money.

That's a luxury.

So you can support an artist and we call it fine arts.

The completely useless person who makes paintings which are sort of big labels or posters that

you stick on your utilitarian walls to decorate them.

And as if to say around here we can afford frittery.

But on the other hand the artist is the man who shows you the future long before everybody

else sees it.

The artist is the eye-opener.

Just because the artist is distinct in role from the preacher and the philosopher.

The artist can get away with all sorts of things.

For example in our culture if you are a university professor, a doctor or a minister.

Take these three professions, teacher, doctor, minister.

You have to be very careful about your private life.

Because the moment you have any alliances that are not quite regular, people's tongues

begin to wag.

And why do they wag?

Because they say the way you behave is inconsistent with your profession, with what you profess.

You are teaching people the good life, the healthy life.

And you live in this disreputable way.

You have a mistress, you have something or other going on.

But the moment an artist should take a mistress this is what is expected of him.

Everybody says oh he is an artist.

In other words he doesn't matter, he is irrelevant.

He is an entertainer, some sort of clown.

But on the other hand if you belong to high culture you patronize artists.

So the role of the artist is very fascinating.

Because he appears to be the clown, the jester, the absolutely unimportant and irrelevant

person.

And yet it is actually through the artist that we learn how to live.

Not through the preacher, not through the philosopher, not through the professor.

It is the artist who teaches us whether he does it visually with painting or sculpture,

tactually or with above all with music.

So a man like Mozart who could well claim to be the greatest man in European history

was a kind of a gay happy go lucky fellow with problems, money, illness etc.

But what a songbird, what a nightingale.

And so then to this day listening to Mozart in England at the Glyndebourne Opera this

is about the farthest out fashionable aristocratic thing you can do.

Go to this lovely country house in Sussex and hear the Mozart operas.

It is as much a matter of status as going to church, almost more so.

You should read if you can get hold of it.

An interview with George Harrison, one of the Beatles, in a recent issue of the East

Village Other where he explains the deep philosophy of music that they understand and follow.

How the very nature of sound reveals the meaning of the world and why because of this he regards

himself as a Hindu.

In Hinduism the fundamental source of life is called Vak.

Vak in Sanskrit means the word to speak but not so much the word that communicates as

the sound, the utterance, the flow of tone.

So you have in India the use of mantra, the use of chanted words as one of the very basic

forms of yoga, understanding the mystery of the world.

The Hindus use the word Om which would be spelled out A-U-M because the letter A, A,

is in the back of the throat.

You push it through the vowel to Aum and M is at the lips.

So the word Om comprehends the whole range of sound.

It's called the pranava and Aum simply means, well it is the sound.

All sounds are basically the sound Aum but varied.

And so Aum is the word that not only signifies but also is what there is.

Everything is Aum, Aum sweet Aum.

The whole universe is Aum.

And so this is a very good word because you can use it instead of God.

God has all sorts of nasty associations attached to it.

The political boss of the world, the preacher, the prig, the nosy parker in charge of everything,

the rotten grandfather and all that, the sentimental mother of the world or whatever it is.

And the word God therefore is a distasteful word now to most westerners.

But Aum has no associations with it.

You might have encountered it in a Vedanta society and associated it with swamis in yellow

robes or something.

But on the whole Aum has no association.

So it is a clean, a clean word and it has no meaning except it is the very pulse of

life.

So I'm spreading a rumor.

In Buddhism you know there is a mantra Aum Mani Padme Hum.

And Aum means nothing except everything.

Mani means a jewel.

Padme is a lotus.

Hum is hurray.

So the jewel and the lotus.

In other words imagine a mandala you see which is a lotus flower with all those petals spreading

out from it.

And right down in the middle of that there is a little crystal ball or a diamond.

And you look into that and it contains the reflection of everything.

You go way way way into that thing down down down down.

And that's the ultimate turn on.

So Aum and at the end Hum or H-U-M you can say Hum in English.

Hum Hum you Hum.

Now there is a new religion existing called Hum.

And this religion has no hierarchy, no organization, no doctrines whatsoever.

No words.

Only music and ritual.

And we will find in a little while that Hum is really what most people belong to.

And but you can't pin it down.

There is no address to write to.

There is nothing to join.

It's just something that people do.

Like they shave and brush their teeth and eat breakfast.

So they Hum.

So now it's very very fascinating for purposes of understanding music as communication to

look for a moment at different fundamental differences between western and oriental music.

Many westerners listen to oriental music.

They have funny reactions.

I know a very very great musicologist who thoroughly understands the world of Bach and

Beethoven and is one of the greatest scholars in music I've ever run into.

But when to his ear Hindu music is childish and he sees no subtlety in it.

He's quite deaf.

But when it comes to Chinese and Japanese music most westerners are flabbergasted.

They can't make any sense of it at all because it sounds as if somebody were making the most

ridiculous noises.

So when it's a Japanese no drama singer comes on.

We think he's sounding as if he's being strangled.

But he's giving sounds of passionate love.

But they are.

Yes that's deplorable.

You can't do things like that and have people pay to come and listen.

You know but we want to give examples of love.

That feels that we really have said we are in love.

Now talking of nightingales.

Do you know this is an apart from the seminar this is just a little piece of information.

Mockingbirds in California can do half of the routine of a nightingale.

And the reason is that Respighi's The Birds has been played by people on their patios

and it has half of the routine of the nightingale in it and the mockingbirds have picked it

up.

Yes down in the south.

And I had an altercation with a mockingbird one night in Santa Barbara.

Very funny you can whistle to them and they will play back your whistle and do all sorts

of funny things.

They are wonderful to play with.

But well you say well what's it all about.

Well now here is the thing in western music when we study music the first thing we learn

is notation.

We have most people begin with the piano or at any rate some instrument where the important

thing is to be able to read the music and then do the stuff from the written paper.

Now this limits you in a curious way because our notation first of all is based on the

chromatic scale and secondly it has fixed rhythmic intervals.

You have you see your whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note

and you can change the value of those notes by dotting them to give them half their value.

And you tend to write in bars four four times, three eight or whatever it may be.

And when an oriental listens to our music it doesn't matter whether it's a love song

or a grandiose tune of praise or whatever.

All of it sounds like a military march.

Because it's that one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two

three four five six, one two three four five six, one two three four five six, he hears

it all the time.

And he hears a mechanism in it.

See he hears this absolute regularity.

Now in Indian music you'll have bars, a very long measure you can count twenty to the bar

sometimes more and when you learn music from a Hindu teacher you don't learn notation.

You learn directly from the teacher.

In other words he takes the instrument and plays it and you copy him with the same instrument

sitting in front of him.

And they think you see that notation could never record music.

They do use a notation.

They use a notation to remember simply themes.

There is a certain raag, a certain theme and they can write that down.

But they don't play from it.

What they do is they according to certain traditional procedures they improvise on the

basic forms and you therefore play the instrument and what you're trying to do is to make it

as completely as possible responsive to the subtle motions of which a human organism is

capable.

In other words just as in moving your hand there's an infinity of waves you can put it

through so likewise in using your voice there is an infinity of sound that you can produce.

Because the same you can with a stringed instrument in moving your finger where there are no rigid

stops as there would be on a piano.

So on the continuum of a violin you can move your finger and produce an infinity of subtle

sound.

And what they do is they delight in the infinite possibility of making sound with the human

organism and they like instruments which are very easily and directly related to the organism.

So the flute, the vena, the drums.

These are direct human contact with an instrument.

With a piano you've got something interspersed.

You've got a hammer mechanism and a rigidly tuned string with a harpsichord the same way

the pluck.

And when Wanda Landowska, marvellous as she is, plays the harpsichord you get a hurdy

gurdy effect.

You hear this going on all the time.

And the clavichord there is a difference because the clavichord doesn't have a mechanical relationship

between the finger and the string.

It is a continuous bar so that by every variation of touch you make on a clavichord is represented

in the sound.

In other words the piano and the harpsichord are like electric typewriters which have a

uniform touch whereas the clavichord is more like an old fashioned typewriter where however

hard you hit has some effect on the print.

So in oriental music that while there is an incredibly subtle discipline and the Hindu

drummer can do the most astounding things and you can count it out, he counts it out

in his very very elaborate patterns but at the same time there is an attitude about it

that is just fascinating.

We attended a concert at the De Young Museum a few weeks ago where there was Ali Akbar

Khan's orchestra and there was a drummer in this who was just out of this world.

And the wonderful thing about it was that as he was playing with the rest of the orchestra

they were all talking to each other with their instruments and they made eye contact while

they were playing and this guy was just in sheer delight.

He was laughing as he was playing and all the other musicians were just loving it.

Coming out of their seats.

So he was this dead earnest person looking at his music and reading that and doing it.

He was joining in with everybody dancing with them.

His fingers were like butterflies, hummingbirds better to say just vibrating in the most extraordinary

way because it takes years and years and years to learn this.

But he was really enjoying it.

But what was he saying?

They have a language for the drums and they can speak a drum rhythm by using syllables

like dit, dee, dit da, dit dee dit da or din, meaning one kind of a hit, din and tin, din,

tin, din, tin, din, tin, dit dee dit da, dit dee dit da, dit da, da da da, da da da, da

da da, da da da, da da da, da da da.

And they explain a rhythm like this sometimes first, they say it and then they play it.

But it's all, what's all about?

It's all about dit da!

I suppose some of you have read a book of mine called The Joyous Cosmology in which

I referred to once a very curious experience I had with Hindu music.

I happened to have acquired from Timothy Leary some of this extraordinary Mexican mushroom

and I was feeling awful.

I'd come back from a trip to the East and was tired and I had a sore throat and was

just lousy.

So I took this thing and at the first it just felt just terrible.

Everything turned into mud.

You know what you expect of mushrooms, the fungus, everything fungoid and kind of clammy

and dark.

Well after a while it all changed and I found myself listening to this Hindu music.

I didn't know what it was because my host whose house I was at didn't explain anything

and I thought when I listened to this, what kind of idiocy is going on?

I thought you see my friend with whom I was spending the day is a pretty wild kind of

fellow and I thought he'd put on a tape recording of his and his friends antics because they

weren't doing anything that anybody's supposed to do.

It was like children making faces.

You know how they do this, the children love to do something with awful faces and make

weird noises.

I thought this is just something absolutely absurd going on.

Then came this Ditt-Da business in the middle of it.

So I said, "Raja, hey let me see the album."

And I got the case and here it says, "Classical Music of India, edited by Anand Danyalu, who

is the most scholarly, respectable pundit on the subject of Hindu music."

I said, "Somebody's pulling my leg."

No, not at all.

Here was this just babbling sound.

Not only do the Ditt-Da business but they also could use their voices like oboes.

You know how that [sounds]

you put a clothespin on your nose and do an oboe sound.

And it sounded like this, it was just this whole kind of business of children

just going out of their heads.

Well I listened to this and I suddenly realized

that that's what life's all about.

And you know it was the most fantastic sudden recognition

that everything in this world

is gloriously meaningless.

And there's curlicues like on phones.

We get mixed up about it because sometimes we think

that a play that is going on

when you see a phone

it has first of all the main branch

then it has sub-branches

and out of these sub-branches come sub-sub-branches

and out of the sub-sub-branches come sub-sub-sub-branches

and so you get a phone.

So now you could number each of these levels on which things are happening

and you say well this is a number one level

this is a number 42 level

this is a number 65 level.

And you judge events and say it's good, it's bad

it's proper, it's improper

but what you don't recognize

is that you say something is improper

because you thought it was a 63 level

whereas really it was a 112.

And you didn't know

you didn't realize the level the thing was on.

So actually the whole play of human life

with all its joys and sorrows

its tragedies, its evils, its good

is just something like a phone.

And a phone has diseases on it

it has tumors on it

that means just simply another clan is making its life there.

See a clan of bugs of some kind are living there too

and they are doing their stuff

they are living off the phone

the phone is living off something else

we are all leaning on each other in one way or another.

And I saw this whole thing as this fantastic play.

So in order to get into the

can you get into that state you see?

You get into it by listening to sound.

That's one way in

there are lots of ways in

but one of the easiest ways in

is through

concentration on a tone.

Because you see this is the easiest way

to stop thinking

for most people.

If you just concentrate on a single sound

it's very easy to do it

you just ride with that sound

and this stops your thoughts

in other words it stops you

talking to yourself inside your head

verbalizing

and the important thing is

if you want the vision of the world as it really is

you have to stop talking

at least temporarily.

Doesn't mean that talking is a bad thing

means it's too much of a good thing.

So that if you silence talking

and you experience yourself

just in the same way as you experience

that's what's going on

and it may be going on

you know in a kind of a way that you call nice

which is

you know it may be going on that way

but so what finally it is that

that's what's happening

and you

we're all taught by our mothers

and fathers

to put a value on it

see

when it goes a certain way

the rhythm of life goes in a certain way

when we say

oh watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out

because that may be the end

what will the end be?

clunk

clunk

clunk

clunk

what's wrong with that?

things that stop

have to stop

things that go on

have to go off

and things that go off

have to go on

but you see we get involved

by putting a value on it all

right now I could say that's bad

you shouldn't do it

but at the same time

getting involved

and putting values on

it's all part of the game too

getting hung up

getting hooked

so you don't get unhooked

by saying to yourself

I shouldn't be attached

I shouldn't do this

I shouldn't do that

all you do is you see that

getting hooked on it

is simply another form of it

more nonsense

more jazz

but deeper jazz

so like you feel you have an ego

that's an illusion

but it's a very weird illusion

see it's a very far out scene

a person who you might call a square

who's thoroughly committed to

the illusions of standard life

is a very far out person

because he doesn't know where he started

he's completely lost

but you could say it's a great show

to get that far out

to get that involved

in seriousness

so when you look at a square

who has this

determined, set

inflexible attitude

you have to say secretly

you laugh and say

my you're doing a wonderful job

how far out could you get

so you can learn in this way

to love squares

and this is the only way

that will ever change anything

you must never condemn the squares

with harsh language

because they are very far out people

they don't know it

involved in other words

in the ultimate curlicues

it's like a labyrinth

see all life is a labyrinth

it's a system of tubes

and there are tubes within tubes

within tubes

and upon the very very great fringes

of this labyrinth

you get all kinds of hot house growths

very complicated games

so complicated

that the people involved in them are lost

but that's simply a function

of being a long way from the center

when a fern

or any form of plant

expands from its center

what is happening is this

inside the stems

and the stalks

and the tubes

which constitute this organism

they're all little creatures

and they're going traveling along

and they're getting out there

they want to go out

of course there's always somebody along with them

who says now be careful

that you get too far out

because if you get too far out

you spoil the form

instead of keeping inside the bounds of the fern

you just go off into gas

and that would be awful

see because you're a fern

you're not gas

but those little creatures out in the end

say man we'd like a gas

so they want to get way off

but there's something there that says

keep out keep out keep out

keep it in keep it in keep it in

but it is a result of the tension

between those little fellows

that want to go way out

see

and the people who want to stay in

that you get the outline

the clear form of leaf

they're working against each other

but they are working

even though the one thinks it's right

and the other thinks it's right

they're both right

and they're both wrong

they're both right and wrong

but they do by being both

and in a counter position like this

they create what we call existence

what we call the shape of the leaf

the form of the fern

so you will find of course

that some of them are in fact escaping

some of them are going off into gas

and some of them are not

some of them are staying put

and if there weren't some of them

going off into gas

there would be no energy in the thing

you see all energy

is a quality of follow through

when you hit a golf ball

you mustn't stop to hit at the ball

you have to go like that

see

right through

so all energies of life

are have in them

a possibility of an excess

of going too far

when you bring up your children

and you tell your children

your various far out ideas

and the children suddenly believe in them

I'm horrified

no all kinds of philosophy

I've talked about

is being believed by children

and they're taking it literally

I think oh my god

what will they do next

but everybody feels that way

in regard to the strength

of a younger generation

that is coming on

because this younger generation

is mmm energy

we think about young people

we have terrible ideas

we think that we know what life is

and that they have to be told

that they will learn it from us

and be like us

we don't take that attitude

when we see the new vegetables

come up in the spring

we don't say the vegetables

have to be educated to be vegetables

we say hooray

at last young vegetables

with all the life and energy in them

new meals for everything

so when we see young people come up

say good gracious

isn't this great to see

the human race is still doing its stuff

I wonder what they'll have to teach us

because wisdom doesn't come from above down

it comes from below up

it's where the wisdom is

surging into us

the old people

they have a function

but they have it

in order to fulfil that function

they have to understand first

that they can learn

from the young sources

if they understand that

then they can be wise

and be teachers

if they don't understand that

they never can

to be wise you have to

that's the meaning of saying

to enter the kingdom of heaven

you have to become again as a child

and finally

to get back to my point

to become as a child

means

that you do things

which adults

consider unimportant

there is a wonderful Buddhist character

his name is

Hote in Japanese

Putai in Chinese

he looks like this

And he carries around a bag, an enormous bag, in which he collects rubbish.

Every kind of inconsequential rubbish, and gives it away to children.

Because children understand the meaning and significance of rubbish.

Something which my father, when I was a small boy, once said, "You are a picker up of unconsidered trifles."

Because the rubbish is the most wonderful thing in the world, from the point of view of a child.

So, once the Zen master was asked, "What is the most valuable thing in the world?"

And he answered, "The head of a dead cat."

Why? Because no one can put a price on it.

So, in this man, you see, who is wandering around picking up rubbish,

all the trivialities of life, who sees leaves floating down in the wind and laughs at them,

this is becoming again as the child. In other words, from the child's point of view,

the things which the adult considers irrelevant to survival, are perfectly important.

And so children collect pebbles, and coloured glass, and all sorts of trivia which they consider as precious as diamonds.

The adults say, "Oh, frippery." But they really have the secret, you see.

Now, the child, as child, doesn't know how to play the adult's game, which is a power game.

And so has to be educated to learn the values of the power game, to learn what's what and what is important.

But when he has mastered that game, he realizes it has no rewards.

That all the things that the adults thought they were gaining by their power game,

are after all, not worth having. That's why you can be rich and miserable.

So that having learned and having seen through the adult power game, you come back to the point of the child.

And so, it said *diblibdiblibibliblib* *clap* *laugh*

Well, let's have a brief intermission. We will serve refreshments after seminar.

Just a stretch for him.