The mysteries of music

Recently on a period of wakefulness in the night, I was endeavouring to let God comfort me, but there was a hymn (one from the new hymnal) hammering in my thought – over and over – so that nothing else could seem to get in to my consciousness. Then came the thought “That's brain.” Instantly, the tune's nagging stopped, and I realised that the message was, in full, “That's brain, not Mind.” I went on to be comforted till I slept. That brain was certainly not my mind. “Man resides in the Mind that created him. Mind does not reside in man”, wrote Joanne Shriver Leedom in her article "Brain or Mind" (The Christian Science Journal, Sept 1979).

Interestingly, it never occurred to me that this “brain” was my thought. Or that the “That's brain” was anything personal to me. It was all impersonal – impersonal evil dominated and banished by impersonal Mind.

I'm not sure that I have reached the full understanding of that message from Mind – “That's brain.”

In this instance brain stood for a mesmeric condition, the music being the conduit of mortal mind's influence. The harmony of Soul was not present with the music. I am reminded of the music in the story of Daniel. Remember, everyone was commanded to “fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up,” when they heard “the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music” (Dan.3:5). The music seems to have been used in some kind of mesmerism.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy has this definition of brain, “the material stratum of the human mind, called brain, which is but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its suppositional activities” (185:29). And again, “Remember, brain is not mind” (372:1). “All that is called mortal thought is made up of error. The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or material consciousness, the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit" (295:26).

I love that there are some of the hymns which include other languages than English; some even composed in that language. I like to think that in Germany or France I could sing along with the congregation. There are 20 languages represented.

On first listening to the whole 2017 hymnal from the flash drive, my favourite hymns were the ones with the tune Finlandia, by, yes, Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius: hymns 469 and 461. I must say that I did find the second setting easier to sing along with. Ah! The mysteries of music!

Joyce Voysey