Music as an Opening to Religious Experience
Keywords:
Christian interviewees, traditions of sacred sound, music and the emotions, musicAbstract
Based on qualitative research interviews, the author describes the ways in which Christian interviewees reported religious experience emerging in relationship to various forms of sound and music. Listening to liturgical music and popular songs as well internally heard music or sounds, chanting or singing as a practice are all considered in relationship to recent research on music and the brain, traditions of sacred sound, music and the emotions, and the healing properties of sound and music. The author concludes that the interviewees were largely unaware of the many ways they might use music as a meditation practice if they or their spiritual directors were more familiar with its potential uses based on current research. At the same time, the research clearly confirmed that music is one of the almost universal “triggers” of religious experience.
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