Art Reboot

24 When we slip beyond the chattering mind to encounter the full, uninhibited experience of music we enter another domain that defies satisfactory explanation. The often-described trans- cendent moment when we ‘become’ the music is open to all, and in brief glimpses is enjoyed by many. And this experience is by no means restricted to music. We can enjoy similar transcendence in the face of the grandeur of nature. However they are achieved, such moments have a common core: all sense of time and place, of setting, of self and other, evaporate into a transcendent, direct, unified experience that is utterly unlike that of our day-to-day lives. As the musical example demonstrates, the mind cannot be in both the intellectual mode and the transcendent mode at once. The moment we think about the transcendent experience we become aware again of the concert hall, the orchestra and our fellow audience members, particularly the one who has just dug us in the ribs with a comment about the conductor’s hairstyle. We step back onto the stage of time, where the self that is separate from the music reasserts itself. But while incompatible, the two modes are complementary, entirely capable of working together. Indeed, when they do so they become infinitely more powerful than they were when separated. Once we realise this, we can integrate the two into something far more than the sum of their parts – an experience that allows our consciousness to expand and to efficiently aspire to fulfilment.