Observations placeholder
Monk hears another choir
Identifier
005816
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
When we hear music during a vision or hallucination, I believe there may be one of three things happening :–
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we may be hearing a spiritual function or set of functions - a ‘system or program of the universe’ - being executed, much like we hear when we run a program CD through a music CD player - songlines
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we may be getting a replay of some stored music. In effect we may be simply hearing music from perceptions and this may be the music from an individual’s perceptions or it may be music in ‘shared perceptions’ – what some mystics call the common consciousness or world soul. This would be like accessing the Internet using Google say or YouTube to listen to a piece of music [shared perceptions] or simply something simple like listening to our own or a friend’s collection of music on the computer in our own database [own perceptions]
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we may be simply converting the input we are getting through our senses – sight, taste, touch, or smell to that of another sense. This phenomenon is known as synaesthesia
Quite possibly any sound which is close to being earthly is earthly – even a supposedly heavenly choir may be the choir of King’s College Cambridge being replayed. One of the giveaways as far as I could tell was when words were included in the replay. Words being language specific are from humans, so whatever is being heard is likely to be from souls.
In the following the monk had a ‘hallucination’, but I think he had a hallucination of another choir singing the same song but with different words. Given the huge spread of the Catholic church and the prevalence of Latin, this would not have been at all unusual. So he was listening to the ‘spiritual radio’ of a broadcast or a recording.
His composer had found another composer and was listening via the other composer to what was going on there, which means there must have been a bridge between the two men [or a woman]
A description of the experience
From Musica Disciplina editor Lawrence Gushee; Aurelian of Reome – Hearing Angels sing
If my memory of the past does not fail me, there was a certain monk of the monastery of saint Victor, near the city of the Cinnamanni, who by the grace of prayer arrived at the basilica of the Archangel Michael on Mount Gargano.
Holding vigil by night before the porch of the church, he heard a choir of angels singing the responsory which is sung at the Nativity of the Apostles; the respond Cives Apostolorum et domestici Dei advenerunt hodie portantes etc as far as the verse Emitte Domine spiritum.
When he came to Rome he repeated it to the clerics of the Roman church and left a record of it as he had heard it. They changed the verse In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum etc and thus it is now sung not only by them but by the whole church