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William House – It may be the greatest secret on the spiritual path. Most of today’s music is a hindrance not a help. This has been written about from ancient Greece and even more so today but has fallen on deaf ears. Why? Because this very same music makes us feel good, relieves our stress and tensions, releases anger and we’re happier listening to it, so it can’t be bad.

Before investigating why feeling good may be bad, lets review the evidence published and otherwise documented.

Dr. John Diamond published a book called BK, Behavioral Kinesiology, later changed to Your Body Doesn’t Lie. He relates the story of feeling terrible one fine day in New York City. Being a health practitioner set him on a path of deduction. He wanted to know what common elements over two days made him feel ill. The only thing he could come up with was a visit to the record store Sam Goodys each day. But why would that effect him that way? The clue came when he realized the same song was played both days in the store. Voila! the common denominator. He just happened to be an expert in kinesiology and so began his odyssey of muscle testing himself and other people listening to various kinds of rock and roll for that is what he heard in Sam Goodys. The results startled him. The harder the ‘rock’ the weaker people became. From that harmless side trip to a record store, began a new career for Dr. Diamond. He has gone on to write several books on the positive side of music, discovering that even the consciousness and abilities of a conductor can effect how much ‘energy’ comes from a performance or recording.

In their 1973 classic, The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird devote a whole chapter on how music affects plants, called ‘The Harmonic Life of Plants.’ Dr. T.C. Singh, head of the Dept. of Botany at Annamalai University discovered that ragas helped plants grow. He observed this down to the microscopic level as well. They go on to describe several other experiments in Canada and the United States in the 50’s and 60’s where plants and crops grew faster and healthier when listening to Bach, Gershwin and certain sound frequencies. Continue reading →