“PRAYER” – Emotional understanding in musical prayer – Massimo Salotti
PRAYERS | Gurdjieff, Bloch, Messiaen
Emotional understanding in musical prayer
Massimo Salotti, piano
July 25
2021
9:00 p.m.
OXO COLLECTION – The Gallery
Barga (Lu),
Via di Borgo, 28
Piazza Salvi
55051
‘Man does not know himself, so he is not”
Even before it was over, I lay my head on the table and cried.
“What has happened to me?” I said “I was happy when I entered this room.
And then this music… and now, I am happy again.”
“I play objective music to make people cry”, Gurdjieff said.
“There are many types of music of this genre: some make you laugh, others make you love or hate.
This is the beginning of music, sacred music, two or three thousand years old.”
Once, hearing him play, I thought that the music was like a prayer, it seemed to implore.
And then I thought: it’s just my imagination, my emotion, and I tried to erase everything I felt.
But when he stopped playing, instead of smiling and patting the instrument with his hands, he sat completely still, his eyes unmoving, as if he were looking at us through his thoughts. Finally, he said: “It is a prayer”, and left us.
- Anderson (The Unknowable Gurdjieff)
In Christian worship there are infinite prayers, where the attention must be placed on the significance of the words.
But repetition or mechanical intonation cancels any sense and significance of the search for oneself, the one and only necessary purpose of the act of prayer itself.
“When a man who already has his true self, pronounces the words ‘I am’, something similar to a vibration or emotion always happens in him, in his ‘solar plexus’.”
Like the words murmured in sleep, even the word left alone dissolves into nothingness.
Desire and conviction instead become the necessary emotion that permeates the inner world of man and calls his true “I” to “being”. Musical meditation, through vibrations, improvisations and melodies of its most representative authors will try to exclude subjective thought.
Music will shift attention to our breathing, one of the few activities that does not depend on our will, but certainly one of the most important ones.
We will focus on the breath (also an essential practice of Yoga) and it will allow us to appreciate the direct connection we have with that which surrounds us.
Massimo Salotti
“Here there are no Russians or English, Jews or Christians, but only those who follow a purpose: to be able to be”
G.Gurdjieff
Through Keane’s research with ‘’Spiritum’’, we were able to delve into numerous elements connected to traditional teachings; we have understood the mechanism of essential nourishment, the techniques to feed the energies necessary to promote self-evolution. We have reconstructed part of the history of tradition in Christian prayer.
On the twenty-fifth of July, starting at 9:00 p.m., Massimo Salotti will accompany us in metaphysical and mystical dimensions where the emotional center will receive messages; the music will nourish with its impressions evoking the detachment from ordinary thinking in order to savour the sensation of praying in another way.
We will be happy to share with all those interested in deepening the themes developed on the occasion of these events such as: objective music, objective art, ray of creation, being food, prayer, tradition and self-evolution.
oxocurators
“Two men went up into the temple to pray; − the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalts himself shall be humbled; but he that humbles himself shall be exalted. ”
To pray — to enter into touch with a higher level — a man must know and feel he is nothing, in comparison with what is above him. But he must truly see that this is so, and not merely feel it as by looking at the stars a man feels how small the earth is. This is feeling small by physical magnitude: a man must feel small through psychological magnitude. Unless a man feels he is nothing prayer is useless, in just as practical a sense as a match is useless if wet. A man is pure in his emotional life in proportion as he feels his own nothingness, his own ignorance, and his own helplessness. And exactly the same idea is expressed by Christ when he speaks of doing things from oneself and not from one’s vanity: ”
And when we pray, we shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you, they have received their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber, and having shut your door, pray to the Father which is in secret, and the Father which sees in secret shall recompense you. ”
Maurice Nicoll – The New Man
OXOCOLLECTION – The Gallery
Via di Borgo, angolo via di Mezzo
55051 – Barga (Lu)
