Spiritual Portal

Welcome pentatonic thanks for joining us - all five of you!

Steve

Thanks Steve! Now I will have a jolly good read.

Pentatonic.

Perhaps I am not aware of how you use the term pentatonic. In music those are scales we used in R&R since i was a young teenager. Are you interested in music also?

Steve, what is that R&R you were interested in as a teenager?
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Pentatonic scales are found in Chinese, Celtic, Eskimo and African music, and may date back to Neolithic times. So says a book I have (The black keys on a piano.) 5 notes. From Greek pente.
I have this most wonderful "Book of Music", compiled by a team of experts from various musical backgrounds, illustrated too. It has EVERYTHING. 
I got it a lifetime ago, so it is probably not available anymore, and these days you can google everything.
Anyway, yes I am interested in music, have a lot of instruments and have played them all from time to time, but these days it is the harp, recorder and mouth organs. Hehe, and sometimes the Irish Penny whistle. With a small group, and we play all sorts, but I think we prefer Celtic.
Two of us have compiled some of our own compositions in a book we got printed. I was rapt when I found out about the latest computer programs which let you write music easily, hear it played back and you can print it.
At the beginning of this millennium I first got a computer, then a cumbersome music program, which I never got to understand. But when I got this one, I was in Heaven. 

Back to Pentatonic. As a child, when I learnt the tune to "Auld Lang syne" I was like transported to a far away "place" and sang it over and over. Maybe that place is the Stone Age? Of course I must have lived during the Stone Age. Where? Was I a Druid? Could be anything. I know a person, who always gets carried away when Pentatonic music is played and starts singing. A person with learning difficulties.
Auld Lang syne is easily played on the black piano keys. D# - F# F# F# - A# and so on.
What IS it about those 5 notes, both in major and minor keys, which is so haunting? Pythagoras is supposed to be the one who put in the extra notes to make our Western scales. 
The number 5 is also mysterious in geometry. 
I am a bit of a fan of number 5, you could say.
If you play the black notes on a piano and start on F# and go on to G# A# C# D# and down again, then you played the F# Pentatonic major scale.
Similarly, if starting on D# instead of, playing up and down, well, then you have played the relative minor scale of D#. They are relatives in that they have the same notes, but start on a different one. Minor scales always have a somewhat more "sad" feel to them.
The white-note scale of Pentatonic major C goes C D E G A and down again.
( no F orB),
and it's relative minor scale goes A C D E G and down.
Of course there are all the other Pentatonic scales as well, but there you have to mix white and black keys (on the piano).
Pianos are so handy, all is laid out to see straight away. However, for old ears it can be a bit harsh and result in ringing, or tinnitus.
A harp is ideal for older ears, and mine is a cross-strung, so it is similar to a piano.
The "white" strings go one way, the black ones (literally all of them black) go the other, crossing each other, without touching. Wouldn't be a good harp if they touched!
The piano developed from the harp. And the harp probably from the bow and arrow. Some smart hunter went twang, twang while tightening his bow and thought, hmm, that was interesting, maybe I could have more than one string to my bow? - and the harp, or lyre, was born. I think I might have been that hunter!!! :).
There, I have answered you! :)
Pentatonic.

It just fascinates me how fluidly you talk about music. I started playing some of those major and minor pentatonic scales on the mandolin after you wrote your last post above mine. It is always nice to drill yourself to be more conscious of what you are playing. You see when i play the mandolin i am not always conscious of what i am doing. Sometimes I am more aware of the make up of music after the fact. I believe that we can actually find where we came from in the past by are preferences in art and music.

You see I pick up a mandolin and start composing and the music comes out as some sort of Celtic or Irish music from the British Isles. However, I really haven't played or listened to much of it this life. It is just easier to start with pentatonic scales when learning a new instrument. Soon you add a flat 4rth to a minor pentatonic scale and you have a blues scale and that flat fourth would be a flat 3rd in a Major Pentatonic scale.

A pity we are half a globe apart. I would love to be able to play blues, but have not grown up with it. I prefer playing by ear, but understand notes too, of course. 
Must examine what you are telling me here! 
I have a mandolin too, but have not played it for many years. Dug it out recently and the metal holding the strings had broken. How? It slept in a very good case, so how? Never mind, I got new strings to put on it, and a new piece of metal, whatever it is called, to screw on.
Have not done it yet, as summer is coming fast here (guess where I live!), and the outdoors has to be tended to first of all, as everything is growing very fast.
I have a bluegrass mandolin book with both notes and TAB from way back, and learned just a few pieces. That was before I moved to the country, with lots more outdoor jobs.
The book has a RECORD with it, a floppy one, that I can't play anymore, but I think I put it on a tape as well.
Tape recorders were good, you could easily play tunes in, and edit them too.
You make me feel like getting the mandolin out now, but I can't! Have things I must do.
SOON!
Could you please tell me exactly the note names with that 4th added to make it a blues scale. Any key will do :)- if it is not too much trouble? Sometimes I hear these blues in my head, but when I get to an instrument they are gone. That is where music books come in handy, but it is a bit bothersome to read notes......

Pentatonic.

When I was just very young I remember hearing rock bands on T.V. I was impressed by the charisma of some of the musicians and the unworldly astral influences some of them could bring into this physical dimension. I remember a monk tell me at the Vivekananda Monastery (Where i lived for years.) that these souls go to certain regions of the astral realms to acquire and learn such gifts. I also soon learned how to solicit the help of spiritual guides to channel music into this physical realm.

Later I expanded this somewhat of a hero worship to great avatars as well- as I realized that they were bringing in much higher strata into this physical realm and that there are many kinds of magnetism. Soon I was performing myself yet somehow my life was always destined to many years in solitary meditation and working with others to bring many together with the same life goal of finding our ultimate liberation.


I will be seeing Amma next week. She is a tremendous spiritual magnet and also uses music to summon Gods' presence.

Nomaste if you live in Australia or New Zealand  i have always had an interest in that area of the world. I try to understand it rationally. Perhaps some of it has to do with the ocean surrounding most of the Populated areas. You can use your rational mind to understand attractions but it often requires past life recollection to understand where these interests originated.

O.K. Let's start with a minor pentatonic. Why? Because it is probably the easiest given the fact that you will use all the white keys for the scale and the identifiable black keys for the blues notes. You will not have to squeeze your fingers thru to hit white notes which you would have to do if we used all black keys. As I have said a basic blues scale is distinguished by the presence of a flat 5 which in a minor scale or a flat 3 in a major scale. The flat 5 in the scale a minor is e flat. You will play all the notes you did for the minor pentatonic scale starting with a then c, d, e, g and back to a but this time you will add e flat. So when you get to d you play e flat and e in succession. There is one more note added here that is all. This is a start. Next you must work with it and understand how to use blues notes.

All for now,

Steve

Thanks! Yes, I do have it somewhere else too, what a blues scale should be.
I just quickly played it on my harp, which is always staying out, ready to use.
No trouble with the fingers!
Now, here I got excited. You know a "normal" diatonic scale consists of 8 notes, an octave, starting and ending with the same note.
When I play the Pentatonic scales, I like NOT to stop suddenly after the 5 notes have been played, but go down again, as I showed yesterday. It gives you 9 notes and feels "complete".
With the blues scale you get 7 notes and can stop comfortably at the top note which is also the starting note, the key note.
How strange that lately I seem to get on to that "rhythm" outside music, like for instance hammering in a star post in the garden. 
You will have to excuse me, I am a little bit of a nut case sometimes! :)
Hammering in a star post I do 7 hammerings, then have a little rest. If I am stubborn and feel strong enough, I can hammer 13, but never an equal number.
I read that the Indians prefer 13 over 12. Might sound completely silly for some, but for a musician numbers are very important. In rhyming poetry numbers are also everything. Called stanza. I am not into poetry.
Anyway, next time I hammer a star post in, I will be aware of that it is really a blues scale I am hammering! Applying it to notes might be a different matter. My ears are not accustomed to blues. You can't do everything. I will have another try one day.
I might have been a troubadour/minnesinger/minstrel. Wandering around, singing and playing. Appeals to me. The troubadours were strongly involved with the Cathars.
In the meantime we have all these different birds outside, with each their melodies and rhythms. 
All is vibrations!
Cheers, Pentatonic.

R&R.  -  stupid me. must be rock and roll!?  ::) roll eyes, but not rocking!

pentatonic.

R&R meant rare rears but transmuted into roaring rumps and then escalated into rock in roll. Just thought I would expose the history of the anacronym.

                                                                                      Alfred Hitch

                                       

Yes, of course! ;D

Pentatonic.

Oh my sweet heart you can not roll eyes at music itself.

Sweetheart? How do you know which sex I am? ::)

Pentatonic.

I had to dare a bit - who am I kiddin? I had to dare a lot

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qn6wqt01cwM/Ua_DARMj5OI/AAAAAAABBok/MtvwwLSMEZs/s1600/Liberace-fashion.jpg (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qn6wqt01cwM/Ua_DARMj5OI/AAAAAAABBok/MtvwwLSMEZs/s1600/Liberace-fashion.jpg)

He had hairy legs! Those times I saw him on TV the legs were always hidden by the piano, and in long pants as far as I remember.

Pentatonic. ;D

Hey I wonder about your spiritual interests? I will be seeing Amma this week. She goes all over the world including Australia. i also wonder if you are around other spiritual aspirants.One reason I thought about having a site like this is that people can share their experiences from all spiritual views. I am fortunate to have met so many Buddhist aspirants in my life. I actually sincerely think I have met an avatar in Amma. She can transfer some of her consciousness to you if you are receptive. Being with Yogananda has been nothing short of miraculous. Life has been never boring or depressing with such Masters. If you keep meditating they will make sure of that.

Most people do not know the value of spiritual friends. Think of it. We can meet these people over and over from life to life. We can grow with them. They can be our spiritual family. God can work thru them easier to show us so much about life. It is so wonderful to be around people who have been touched by the joy of meditation. That joy and happiness spreads everywhere!

My spiritual journey: you know me from the SRF devotee board.
I was baptised and confirmed in the Lutheran church in a Scandinavian country. I very much liked Jesus, but could not fathomed the virgin birth and all the other doctrines. Still, I believed in what he was supposed to have said and done. Never enjoyed the " holy communion", thinking it very odd, so was not very keen on going to church, but always had a longing for something.
Got married, got divorced, immigrated to Australia with my two small children. Totally madness! Anyway, all went well, got a good job as a technical drafts(wo)man. At work met some guys who were Rosicricians (AMORC), and became one myself. They got me interested by a booklet called "Mastery of Life", and that was a big WOW-moment for me. Especially the reincarnation bit. And the affirmation idea, which was familiar to me, as I always stuck with the teachings of Jesus. "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains."  Apparently a mustard seed is quite small. I have not seen one!
So many wonderful miracles happened to me, and synchronicities, because I managed to have that faith. A lot of the times, but there have also been times where my faith faltered a bit; however, as I have written down a lot of the good things, I remind myself about them, and my faith comes back.
In the Rosicrucian Order I met a man, and we lived together for ten years, 5 more than I was married. :)
Then that soured, but we were friends again later, although still apart, till he died.
What next? I retired from work and moved to the country, not far from my son, when he became a father. He and his wife built my house at the same time as they finished their own.

Christmas 2003 they came here as usual, but he had his arms full of new, interesting books. One was called "Autobiography of a yogi". Well,well, I had read it before, but hastily, a borrowed book, in around 1964, as I was struggling to establish myself in a foreign country. There was a story about a cauliflower robbery, and ever since, when I was preparing cauliflower for dinner, I thought of these Indian masters, and what a pity I could never meet any of them.
Crickey! This was that same book! I read it all on Boxing Day.
An even bigger Wow-moment than the Mastery of life booklet.
As soon as I could, I got the lessons, and as soon as I could, I became a kriyaban. But lately I just can't sit for such a long time, I get cramps. I am also running out of time for long meditations, as I am 82 years old now, and there is still so much gardening I must do to make it safe for the fire season. I do not feel like having my lovely place burn down at my age, so I am clearing and clearing, and my son comes and helps when a whole tree has fallen down in the gales we are getting sometimes. I take care of all the branches and still use chainsaws, but now with wonderful lithium batteries, so there is no hard starting all the time. But I get a bit tired! And I also want to practice my harp.
Was busy working full time, but absolutely flat out being retired!
I have bought all the SRF books, and loved reading them, underlining a lot. Yogananda is so right in what he is saying. 
But the last year I have been reading about the spiritualists, such as Suzanne Gieseman's "Wolf's message". Amazing book, lovely woman, and after her books others spawned from that. Not that I will become a spiritualist. 
Earlier years I read about the Cathars in France, who got burnt at the stake by the Catholic Church.
Then there is the Hasidic rabbi Yonassan Gershom. From Wikipedia: He is best known for having written several books on the topic of the Holocaust and reincarnation. Beyond the Ashes and From Ashes to Healing recount stories of people who claim to have died in the Holocaust and are now reincarnated,[7] while Jewish Tales of Reincarnation deals with Jewish accounts of reincarnation, including a few from the Holocaust but mostly others from classical Jewish texts and oral tradition.
Riveting reading. He has such a friendly face and a great sense of humour.
One woman at harp goes and gets hugged by Amma, when she is in our part of the world.
Last year I read something about kundalini awakening, which scared me, and I now have a book by Gopi Krishna called "Living with kundalini". He did the kriya the wrong way round, did not have a guru and nearly went insane, until he found out how to correct his mistake. He burnt badly in his spine. Scary.
I am not searching any more. I will never look for another guru but Yogananda, but at the moment I am not doing serious meditations.
I feel I am doing the right things, though, and have no regrets, and all the people I have met, many still my friends, and the ones whose books I have, they have enriched my life. Also the two men in my life, even if they were not ideal relationships, they and my family are my karma. Earlier I sometimes bemoaned my life, but now I am happy. 
And when God surprised me with the harp, well, it just shows, somebody is looking after me. And I am far from being an angel! :(
I am working hard to sort things out, so I can have a good departure, when the time comes. Not come back to spook, earthbound.
I hope for at least 10 more years, also so my dogs will not be left orphaned! 
I hope you will enjoy your meeting with Amma to the fullest.

Pentatonic.

Dear pentatonic i read your quote about not being an angel (i'm not either) and it made me laugh ;D i see you are a kriyaban. Next best thing!  :D  I will soon tell you of my meeting with Amma. Once a disciple of hers told me she is Yogananda and has said so. I asked her if she was, or is Yogananda or a guru. She said Yes, Yes, Yes now set beside me.

Anyhow I remember you saying you have a mandolin. I would suggest playing ( if you have not already) the g major pentatonic scale on it starting from the 4rth string open. G, A and B on the 4rth string. D, E, G on the 3rd, A , B and D on the 2nd string and E, and G on the first.

Well pentatonic i hope you had a  chance to try the mandolin. It took me a while to learn the fingerings since they can be separated by frets. I do believe the g pentatonic.  It would be the easiest scale to start with because the g scale has more open strings and as you mentioned the pentatonic using the black  keys on the piano.

I used to use the rosicrution ephemeras' so in those days they were the main ones out and helped in the location of the planets. Using the table of houses and atlas were also essential. The cauliflower robbery in the Autobiography had a totally different meaning for me since I always carried expensive  instruments around i learned to watch after them.

Have you been to see Amma yet?

About the mandolin. I have not had time to put the new strings on yet, as there is a lot of gardening going on at the moment. My main instrument these days is the harp.

When Christmas is over I might have a look at the mandolin again.
I wrote you a long, long letter about music, which I would like to send to your personal message place, if you are interested. If you are not interested, I won't send it.

All the best from Pentatonic.

Dear friend

Thank-You so much for thinking of me and our interest in music.... of course I would like to hear from you.

steve

Yes. I saw Amma. She talked with me and asked a question about this entity and his life. Never had that experience with her.

Jitendra

Hey I really hope you're O.K. i have not heard from u in a while. Miss you....

Steve