Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 37 Carmen Ramírez-Hurtado, Victoria Cavia-Naya a vocal phenomenon produced by certain muscles that move when emotions are experienced. These emotions alter the pitches, timbres, and tones of the spoken word, which generates musical sounds. Referring to these sound interpretations or listening and their degree of meaningful indeterminacy, Morley (2009, 160) has coined the terms “floating intentionality” when referentiality is non-existent, and “bounded ambiguity” when this absence of meaning is contextualized in a basic way in a particular cultural and belief system. This combination of features allows the experience of these music’s embedded in a particular Weltanschauung, to be at once both powerfully personal and deeply unified, in the belief that they are shared by those with similar interpretations and personal experiences. From these premises, it is easy to infer that the key to the development of music in general, and singing in particular, finds its essence for the human being in the close link that the individual establishes between himself/herself and the desire to search for the transcendent. Consequently, we can come to understand that ancient practices and beliefs related to the sung voice can become coherent with modern knowledge and technology. This in turn benefits the pursuit of the collective and individual well-being that we propose since our conception of integral music, and that affects our spiritual practices beyond the power it has over our emotions, social interactions, behavior, brain functions or cultural development. This trans-spiritual path that opens up can be beneficial both within current models of education and personal development, in that it can more effectively help to model personalized meditative practices based on song, and within projects that foster the spiritual character, both individually and collectively – in short, the relationship with the Other that we explored earlier. 4.2 Some Philosophical Foundations: From Pythagoras to Mysticism and Science If, so far, we have discovered that there is an evolutionary and ethnographic foundation that frames the purpose that we accord to the singing voice, we now perform a search from the philosophical point of view, although in these pages we can only trace the general lines that support contemplative spirituality and its relationship with music. Nevertheless, there is indeed a century-old persistence of certain concepts that, even with their logical interpretive evolution, have survived into our times. Thus, it is no coincidence that Pythagoras and his school, founders of musical theory based on number and proportion, have also always been considered a mystical school (Cornford 1922,139). His heritage was received by Plato, who, although on the one hand seems to understand music as something hedonistic that exalts the senses, on the other hand also considers it as the highest philosophy (Plato 1997, Fedón 60e–61a): Visiting me many times in my past life, the same dream, which showed itself sometimes in one appearance and sometimes in another, said the same advice with these words: Socrates, make Music and apply yourself to it. And I, in my past life, believed that the dream exhorted me and encouraged me to do precisely what I was doing, like those who encourage runners, and the dream also encouraged me to do what I practiced, to make Music, in the conviction that philosophy was the highest music and that I practiced it. Despite the common interpretation of Platonic thought as dualistic (the world of ideas vs the real world), deeper investigations underline the unity that is reflected in his thought. In particular, the notion of harmony as something that can unify the diverse, both in the human soul and in the cosmos (cf. Plato 1997; Laws 659e; Laws 664e–665a), where he affirms that, through multiplicity, an absolute unity is achieved, both moderate and harmonious. This concept of harmony can be understood as both musical and spiritual, above all when, at the end of the Platonic dialogues, we find what he calls the supreme good or the One as an object of knowledge that is accessed in a non-rational but direct, intuitive, or contemplative way (Reale 1989, 621). In a Medieval church portico, it is Augustine of Hippo who follows this tradition (Ramírez-Hurtado 1992, 219). Although the book De Musica (which begins as a treatise on musical theory) is not among his most studied, the metaphysical affirmations of its last chapters are present throughout his work: the numerical structure of music, which in turn expresses and makes sensitive, has a correlate both in the psychosomatic structure of man (microcosm) and in the systematic order of the universe (macrocosm). This conception that we inherited from the realm of Platonism in Greek philosophy, remained in full force in the culture of the Roman world and that is why it remained in full force well into the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the metaphysical conception of music as the harmony of humankind and, in general, of the universe was not only suggested to Christians (i.e., by Augustine of
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