Everything has already been said… I am only placing the accents.
Existence is movement. Everything has its beginning, development, completion, and transition into the unmanifest. From the unmanifest, something arises into manifestation, and at the end of its cycle it returns once again to the unmanifest. From the manifest to the unmanifest, and from the unmanifest to the manifest, the eternal movement of consciousness and matter unfolds – this is how the Universe pulsates. Consciousness and Matter, Shiva and Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti cannot exist without one another. They are an inexhaustible Pulsation that manifests in all things, and all things manifest as pulsation. Pulsation is existence Itself. Infinity pulsates in every part of everything that has a manifestation in time. Time itself is a manifestation of pulsation.
As a painter works with colors and brushes, so does a musician work with time. For the musician, time is the foundation not only of meter and rhythm, but of everything that becomes music. Melody, harmony, meter, rhythm, and all other musical components – like beads on a string – are threaded onto the cord of time, which reveals itself as pulsation. Unlike melody and other acoustic, audible, and easily grasped musical manifestations, pulsation has a non-acoustic nature.
Non-acoustic pulsation is as integral to a musical work as the acoustic sound itself. It is the underlying fabric of the entire composition – a tense, living, pulsating non-acoustic matter of consciousness which must be performed and reproduced just like everything else. Pulsation becomes manifest, visible, and present through the mind – an instrument inseparable from the human being. Pulsation is created through the performer’s willpower and concentration. A musician must feel and perform it as something entirely real and independent. When the musician feels pulsation inwardly, it reveals itself and becomes perceptible despite its non-acoustic nature.
The musical sonic continuum unites the acoustic and the non-acoustic. We cannot speak of “non-sounding”; everything sounds – but part of that sound is non-acoustic. We can control only what we perceive and are aware of. Non-acoustic pulsation must be visible, and it does not matter in what form it appears on the screen of our consciousness. The sonic images of imagination are often far more powerful than any external perception.
Pulsation has a continuous axis of movement. The pulsating continuum: continuity, motion, matter. Everything pulsates. Everything has its own pulsation. The pulse is matter itself. The pulse is the space-time continuum of the flow of sonic matter unfolding in space.
The continuity of the pulsating flow of sonic matter manifests itself in metrorhythmic perfection and precision. Although a metronome measures equal beats, it is in its nature ametrical. True meter can arise only from the uninterrupted flow of pulsating sonic matter. The continuity of the pulsating flow is the most natural thing that can exist – it is the foundation of existence itself, because movement (pulsation) is the form of existence of matter.
The speed or tempo of pulsation, even on a micro-level, may change according to the agogic nuance of a musical piece, but this does not break the flow. The heart may accelerate or slow its pulsation, but it never stops. If the heart were to interrupt its flow even for a micro-moment – we would die.
Pulsation is the continuity of existence. A vibration of matter. A trembling of matter. The beating of something elusive. Being. Existence. The Pulse is an interaction – the connection between two beads of a necklace. But what connects them? They are connected by the emptiness (the gap) between them. Only this emptiness can create a pulse; only emptiness can endow anything with life. In essence, pulse is properly structured emptiness.
Pulsation contains:
- Axis. That which exists in a state of absolute stillness – the point at the center of the circle, absolute zero, Shiva – relative to which all movement takes place.
- Continuity. The very principle of movement, like a spinning top, which embodies Shakti. Shiva is the axis of the top; everything that spins is Shakti.
- Axial through-continuous non-acoustic pulse. That which arises from the interaction of the first two.
Pulsation also has a multi-level structure:
- Axial level. Pulsation of the axis – the zero level.
- Elementary level. Pulsation of the smallest beats of the bar, a “barless” pulsation.
- Complex level. More complex structures: triplets, duplets, sixteenth-notes, and more.
Non-acoustic pulsation of music. Non-acoustic pulsation of the matter of the composition. Non-acoustic pulsation of the matter of consciousness. The non-acoustic axial pulse is the pulsation of conscious matter itself, and this process requires energy – Shakti. The non-acoustic axial pulse is Shakti pulsating as Consciousness.
Pulsation is reproduced by the performer. The musician who feels and performs it acts as a messenger of the Absolute, and the music itself is a manifestation of Shakti. Controlling the non-acoustic axial pulse is an energy-intensive process – yet this is the true inner work. It demands full attention and concentration.
The art of music is the art of pulsation. And, like any genuine art, music is a yoga of truth, where the artistic product is the immortal union of idea-consciousness with matter-form – the union of Shiva and Shakti, of the acoustic and the non-acoustic, of sound and silence (pause). Pulsation, as the unfathomable cosmic play of God, manifests and fully realizes totality and wholeness in every expression – in the pulsation of our heart as well as in the pulsation of a musical composition. Pulsation (music) is the way (movement, fugue), the truth (authentic emotion), and life (existence, composition).