Can cosmic evolution be compressed into 8 minutes of electronic music, namely a progressive trance track? As a music, science, philosophy and religion enthusiast, I believe it can. What makes me say this? Let me try to explain. My starting point is the idea that art, especially music, expresses the deepest of human motives. Through art, mankind celebrates its existence, even though this existence is full of bitter pain and enormous suffering. Along science, philosophy and religion, art is another way of transcending mere existence and reaching Existence. Instrumental music, as the most abstract of meaningful art (there is also postmodern abstract l'art pour l'art, which often lacks any sense or skill) delves into deepest layers of the human spirit and brings inner secrets into light.
Let's now embark upon an 8-minute journey through cosmic evolution. Try to listen to the track and pause for reading or vice versa. It's clear that every soundscape arises out of silence. This silence is the motherly-fatherly abyss out of which all beings and phenomenon arise. In world's spiritual traditions, this Source is called by different names: Abyss (Christian mysticism), brahman (Hinduism), Tao (Taoism), Ein Soph (Kabbalah) or, most commonly, God (Islam, Christianity and Judaism). In modern audio production, silence is regularly cut out from the beginning of the composition that starts with the first sound. Similarly, our scientific knowledge doesn't reach further than the measurable start – the Big Bang, what happened in the silence before remains unknowable to us, at least through scientific method.
A progressive trance track usually starts with a rhythmic bass pattern and gradually adds background sounds and effects. Unutterable silence gives birth to sound as its expression, the spirit becomes flesh. In Christian tradition, this is the Word (Greek Logos) that was in the beginning and that was with God, and the Word was God. Silence and sound were one. In Hindu tradition, this sound is called OM and it arises out of Absolute Consciousness of brahman whose nature is satchitananda (being, consciousness and bliss). In analogy with cosmic evolution, it's the age of forming of first elementary particles after the Big Bang. Gradual development of a progressive trance track, including richer and richer sounds, reflects the forming of first intergalactic clouds of dust – birthing places of future stars and galaxies. This slow start of the track, characterized with not much more than bass patterns, happens in the first minute.
Sound composition becomes more complex in the second and third minute. In the cosmic scale, stars create chemical elements essential for the emergence of life through spectacular explosions. On some planets with appropriate conditions, occurs the transition from inorganic to organic existence, from matter to life. Biosphere emerges out of physiosphere. After some time, young life gains complexity to finally (with many developmental sideways and dead ends) reach the mental level. The emergence of mental life (the noosphere) happens in the fourth minute of our track.
In the fourth minute, the composition includes a clear melody, that was looming in the background until then, peeking out under the surface of rhythmic patterns and sound effects. Melody is a symbol of the emergent intelligent life and in that moment – both in the trance track and in cosmic evolution – intensity reaches its climax. Next, there is a sudden drop in composition richness and sound intensity, sometimes even a standstill for a few seconds. This part is analogous to the moment in which intelligent life, becoming deeply self-aware, zealously searches for its essence and meaning. It's a quest that finally leads into the Abyss, the primordial Silence emanating all sound and life. This endeavour was taken both in the East and in the West, especially in the Axial Age, when in a period of less than a thousand years, lived and taught the Upanishad sages, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Buddha, Mahavira, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Jewish prophets and Jesus Christ. These spiritual giants have become beacons for billions of souls sailing through the ocean of existence. In our trance track, they are symbolized by gradual return of melody out of silence.
Close to the fifth minute there is still no bass pattern, but melody becomes fuller and louder, growing gradually and signalling the return of rhythm. This is a classic feature of dance music – a soundscape full of dissonance, crying out for cathartic solution in ecstatic return of the full melody and rhythm. It can last a minute or more, and in spiritual analogy it represents the process of self-actualization as intelligent being seeks the Truth and encounters obstacles along the way (so called dark night of the soul).
In the fifth minute the track reaches its climax in explosion of sounds, the return of melody and hard rhythm. It's the end of spiritual journey, resulting in fullness of Truth, peace of mind and joy of life. Only ecstatic dance remains – playful celebration of existence. Time sinks into eternity and man is united with its source. However, after aeons of unconscious celebration of existence, the celebration becomes conscious. Spirit becomes aware of itself through the enlightened person and know itself as the first and the last or eternal (alfa and omega).
However, this is not the final stage or a permanent condition because the evolution of the cosmos and of humanity continues. In the seventh minute, the rich tapestry of sounds gradually disappears. Melody becomes simpler until it completely disappears. One by one, sounds sink back into the silence.
Finally, in the eighth minute only the rhythmic bass remains. It was first to emerge out of silence and it will be the last to sink back into it. Only silence remains in the end. What does this mean in analogy with evolution of humanity and the universe? From the cultural perspective, it signifies a decline of civilisations, from biological viewpoint it can even mean the extinction of intelligent life or life in general. In the cosmic scale, there are two popular scenarios for the death of the universe. First one is the heat death of the universe which consists in reaching the thermodynamic equilibrium or maximal entropy. The other is Big Crunch, a theory of contraction of the universe back to a single point (singularity), a return to the state before the Big Bang. Here lies a positive chance for a new beginning of a new universe and so ad infinitum. However, these theories cannot be tested at this moment.
Of course, these are my subjective interpretations. I will be happy if reading them encouraged you to think more integrally. There are many ways to approach reality, someone will think, someone will create, someone will meditate, and someone will dance.
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