In the midst of historical and natural disasters of world-shaking dimensions, the soul of man looks for a stronghold in the dangerous fluctuations seemingly bursting all firm foundations. Reflective natures flee into an inner world and seek their salvation in dogma, ideology, or the frivolous. Revolutionary spirits put their trust in an overturn of all established values, and in a wholly new orientation in the realm of thought, feeling and inspiration. However, those for whom mankind’s efforts in the past are not merely old fairytales, do not expect so much a possible road for the future in meditation or revolution, but rather in a regeneration of what has proved true up to now. They seek first of all within themselves a state of mind from which such a regeneration only can be possible.

If we listen to ourselves, and test the manifold feelings, wishes and thoughts of our psyche, for a state of mind which leaves old things in their truth while joining the new in a natural continuation to the old, then we shall find two spiritual forms out of which the old can be revived, and the new can be begotten in the womb of past cultures. These two forms of spirit we can best name with the terms measure and value: measure as term for the order of things, value as term for the law of things – the synthesis thereof is what we call harmony.

For hundreds of years our thinking has been more and more trained to work and to investigate logically, exactly, objectively, critically. The whole realm of the psyche, insofar as it has kept its autonomy in religion and the arts, went its own way, detached from logic and science; it emancipated itself to the same degree that “science” made itself independent and absolute. Thus we find ourselves today in exactly the opposite position from the ancients: with them the soul, the heart, the psychic power of imagination, threatened to overflow, and demanded limitation by reason, measure and number. We today are spiritually impoverished, and in spite of religion, philosophy and art, are to such an extent delivered to the complete domination of science and her legitimate daughter, technology, that we need, and must seek again, a turning inward, an inner immersion in the meditative powers of the soul, thus giving new value to the logical, tangible side of our world image.

Placed side by side as equals, measure and value would lead our modern thinking to build a new spiritual world, that of hearing.

The fact that from far back we habitually ally the conception of beauty with a work of art seems to show that in all the arts we are dealing with a matter of the heart, beside which reason, intellect and belief play only a secondary role. But can we altogether separate the diverse capabilities of the soul as they relate to any subject? Are they not somehow deeply anchored within ourselves as human beings?

Precisely here, concerning the nature of beauty, this becomes especially apparent. Let us reflect how much of purely logical, even mathematical, work is required to construct a building, how exactly a painter has to consider the form and color balance of his picture, how carefully a composer must think over the structure of his score before he can transform his idea into reality – not to mention poetry, where the idea, words and thought of a poem are welded together into unity.

Therefore, there must be a centre within us human beings where heart and reason join, some inseparable wholeness in the depths of our unconscious and subconscious out of whose measure and value springs forth that splendid thing we call beauty.

In word and in language, hearing and thinking unite in a bond resulting in what we call cognition. If it is shown that the audible, acoustical factor, with its peculiar laws and principles, regulates the forms of nature as well as of the soul, then we have here an explanation for the not self-evident fact that we human beings communicate by means of word and speech, and not by optical, tangible, or other means – as even the blind and deaf are capable of doing – and that the acoustical is also the medium of expression of our spirit and our reason.

Any rhythm, through increasing its frequencies, may be transformed into a tone. If a string vibrates so slowly that one can see its regular to-and-fro movements and count them as a rhythm per second, one can hear perhaps a buzzing noise, but not yet a tone. Only when the pulse is accelerated do our ears hear tones. The same holds true for different rhythms per time unit. From this knowledge the rhythmical verse measures in poetry are seen to be not only mere additions to the language, but as parallel forms of word creation born of the auditory laws of language. Thus rhythm heightens speech in poetry not merely by the addition of a strange new element; when rhythmical speech approaches musical tone, our spiritual powers become doubly rooted in that mysterious realm of sounding shapes which form and regulate the world at its core. Here in poetry the hearing of the word attains its highest fulfillment, and it is precisely the timbre, not the thought or linguistic expression alone, that gives poetry its loftiness.

Anyone who occupies himself for any length of time with harmonic problems will soon notice that something decisive is at stake: first, the observation of the world and the fullness of its appearance at their most important and sensitive junctures; second, the demand of the “I” to establish an equivocal inner relationship and valuation with the “you”. Nature is not merely “recognized” in its differentiation and then claimed as a unity, but at every moment places the “I” before the decision: Do you belong to me and my necessities, or are you able to gain your freedom? The impelling inner logic of harmonical deductions in no way excludes the capacity for action, but on the contrary intensifies one’s capacity for activity, and also one’s humility. For we are dealing here with nothing more nor less than a reorientation of man to the Deity, conditioned by means of the perception of harmonic laws.

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is a niche, wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is as a shining star kindled from a blessed olive tree, neither of the East nor of the West. Its oil would well-nigh shine forth, even if no fire had touched it. Light upon light. God guides unto His Light whomsoever He will, and God sets forth parables for mankind, and God is Knower of all things.

Noble Qur’an, Light : 35