Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple: Sunday Talks
Oct 12, 2026 · 53 min · 11 segments
Swami Atmavidyananda gave this talk on Sunday, October 11, 2026, in the Santa Barbara Temple. * * * Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Music is one of those few experiences that virtually every culture on earth shares.
and it comforts us, it challenges us, it lifts us up, and sometimes it breaks us open in ways that nothing else can.
And yet, we often underestimate just how powerful it is, and we don't really understand how it can be so powerful.
It seems to be one of the greatest gifts of human beings, and One author said that it was emotion made audible, memory made alive, spirituality made tangible.
We tend to, especially Westerners, tend to be in our heads a lot, but we are also emotional beings, and the music is emotions made audible.
And it also reminds us that beauty is not optional, but it's essential in our lives.
Music is really universal because it expresses things that words cannot.
However, there are many things about music that are universal, but there are some things that are not universal.
And this makes studying the effects of music on emotions a little bit more difficult than studying some other psychological aspects.
And so they hooked them up to MRI machines to see if they were just speculating this or whether their brains actually said they were enjoying one more than the other.
And so here we have an example in the same general genre of classical music, Western classical music, and people's tastes differ.
I remember one devotee telling me that when he was in high school, there were literally gangs devoted to one rock group or another, and they didn't like the other one.
But we're vibrational beings, and so we react to the vibrations that are coming into us.
Music is one of those few experiences that virtually every culture on earth shares.
and it comforts us, it challenges us, it lifts us up, and sometimes it breaks us open in ways that nothing else can.
And yet, we often underestimate just how powerful it is, and we don't really understand how it can be so powerful.
It seems to be one of the greatest gifts of human beings, and One author said that it was emotion made audible, memory made alive, spirituality made tangible.
We tend to, especially Westerners, tend to be in our heads a lot, but we are also emotional beings, and the music is emotions made audible.
And it also reminds us that beauty is not optional, but it's essential in our lives.
Music is really universal because it expresses things that words cannot.
However, there are many things about music that are universal, but there are some things that are not universal.
And this makes studying the effects of music on emotions a little bit more difficult than studying some other psychological aspects.
And so they hooked them up to MRI machines to see if they were just speculating this or whether their brains actually said they were enjoying one more than the other.
And so here we have an example in the same general genre of classical music, Western classical music, and people's tastes differ.
I remember one devotee telling me that when he was in high school, there were literally gangs devoted to one rock group or another, and they didn't like the other one.
But we're vibrational beings, and so we react to the vibrations that are coming into us.
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