kitab-o-moosa al kabir the big music
book hamza Aladeen I don't know if
people are familiar with him he's a
brilliant food player he actually gave
me his copy and it's it is the big music
book it's about two thousand pages and
hamza has a knowledge of that and if you
go on his website he's got some insights
into the secrets that they discovered
about music one of the reasons that
music is so dangerous
Plato wanted it banished from the
Republic the musicians and the reason
for that is not that he didn't enjoy
music because the gymnasium was actually
música it was what they taught their
children but he felt that most musicians
didn't know what they were doing and
what they could do to the soul was so
dangerous because of the nature of the
power of music the impact that it can
have on the soul and that in the hands
of somebody that didn't know what they
were doing or manipulated it for other
means that he thought it was better just
to keep it away now in in the Muslim
tradition they separated the profane and
the sacred music and many of the
scholars prohibited the profane music
because they felt that it did have a bad
impact on people and the shape of music
they developed a cosmology to this day
in Turkey there is a man there who has a
hospital where they still use
traditional music therapy which was
developed in Persia because the Arab
music has a 24 note system as opposed to
a 12 because they bring in quarter notes
and it's related to the 12 hours of the
day out of 12 organs in the body they
have 12 in their system there are two
hours and this is the same as the
Chinese system and the Ayurvedic system
they have two hours that are related so
heart is nine between nine and eleven
o'clock in the morning so if you want to
work on the heart then that was the time
that for people that have problems with
their heart
you would play certain chromatic scales
that were designed to actually
strengthen the heart during that period
and in andalucía they had insane asylums
in which orchestras were actually
retained to treat the mad people by
playing music to them and these
musicians were master musicians that
they would base it on the pulse and
based it on this humoral theory because
melancholia is from one of the four
humors the out-of-balance of that so
they would try to reestablish
this and they did to have success if you
read their books and believed for what
they're saying they had extraordinary
success with this the culmination of
this second part of these arts was
astronomy and I was very fortunate in
living in West Africa because that is
one of the few places where they still
teach sacred astronomy and again these
are Bedouins that I was introduced into
the rudiments of sacred astronomy which
is the observation of the order of the
heavens and watching that order and
understanding for instance like right
now the moon is in Leo if you go out
tonight and you see the constellation
Leo which is a stunning constellation
that can actually be seen in this area
the moon is in Leo right now and it will
be in Leo for two and a third days and
then it moves and this is not related to
astrology although it was used for
astrology as well and there were many
astrologers but this is not astrology
it's observing these lunar mansions
there are 28 lunar mansions that the
moon goes through every month because
the moon does around the earth what the
Sun does the experience of the Sun in a
year the moon does in a month and there
is a correlation between these movements
all based on 360 degrees and related to
this secret of the circle I mean this is
very deep order that people were
introduced to in these traditional
cosmologies that are found all over the
planet I mean this is not something that
is simply found in West Africa this was
also found in India it was found
Central Asia was found in Asia it was
found in Europe and it was certainly
found here I mean we have extraordinary
evidence here of the Native American
Indians that were heavily involved in
sacred astronomy and aligning the
heavens and the earth and this is part
of the sacred tradition of the ancient
Greek idea the Pythagorean idea as above
so below that in serving the order of
the heavens and is what Plato says is
the greatest gift of the stars is that
they enable us to see order and in turn
desire that order in our own souls and
so this is at the root of a classical
understanding of Education was how do we
order ourselves that we are in harmony
with the world because everything out
there seems to be an extraordinary
harmony and it is the human being that
seems so adept at being disorderly at
being chaotic at being out of sync with
the world and Wordsworth's home is a
complaint about that that we're out of
sync with nature that we've lost that
ability and he preferred being a pagan
that what we could see that order
and experience it then to have a creed
that divorced him from that I want to
finish here with two things and then
I'll close up a couple of quotes about
education education is a perennial
problem it always has been Will Rogers
said schools ain't what they used to be
and they never was so it is an ancient
problem people have been complaining
about it for a long time Mark Twain said
that first God invented idiots for
practice and then he invented school
boards there's some really extraordinary
things that have been said about
Education Alexander Dumas remarked how
is it that little children are so
intelligent and men are so stupid it
must be education Robert Frost to find
education I think this is the
things I've seen and that's why I wanted
to comment on it a little bit education
is the ability to listen to almost
anything without losing your temper or
self-confidence and I would say that is
a civilized human being and so
ultimately if I have an illiterate
person that's able to do that I would
consider them educated and that's why I
personally do not equate education with
literacy I really don't some of the most
intelligent people I've ever met were
illiterate if you want to know the whole
American foreign policy it was summed up
to me by a Bedouin from Yemen who
absolutely had no education and he said
you know what the problem with your
country is and I said what he said it's
like a story we have in Yemen about a
wolf that came down to a pond and he saw
a sheep about to drink from the pond and
he said I'm going to eat you
and the Sheep said what did I ever do to
you he said you mucked up my pond he
said I haven't even touched it yet he
said well you did it last year I wasn't
born last year well your father mucked
it up that's basically what he said
that's America I want to give you
another good example we can get rid of
all the environmentalists and all the
UNESCO and all these United Nations
councils on saving the environment and
employ a deaf illiterate man that I met
in West Africa who one of the Western
students was there and he wanted to
build a tent because I lived in a what's
called a host you go out and you get
branches and you set them up and then
you show up burlap sacks and then make
your little house and that was student
housing that I lived in and this young
Western student went he was started to
chop down a tree and this illiterate
slave really from
group of people that were traditionally
slaves in Mauritania illiterate he came
up me said don't do that what are you
doing he said I was going to chop it off
to make a hose he said no you don't do
that just take a branch and go from
another tree and take another branch
don't chop down the tree he said you
have a right in the tree but the tree
has rights with you don't take the tree
away because there's animals that
benefit from that tree there's people
that sit under the shade and that's how
he explained it to this young Western
person who just thought I'll just chop
the tree down well that's somebody who's
lived in an environment that understands
that natural resources are limited
trees are limited in West Africa and
that's when he taught that young man it
and that's an immense lesson to learn
take what you need but don't destroy
there's plenty to go around very simple
lesson so in learning without losing our
temper or ourselves in our temper or our
self-confidence is to really I think the
conjugated and the Arabs have a
beautiful word for intellect which is
him and this word in its root meaning is
to suck milk the breasts in Arabic is
Halima and it comes from the same root
it's to take milk from the mother and
the reason that they use that is because
him is an unperturbed state it is the
state a child is in when it is suckling
and the word for intellect is the same
word intellect is to be unperturbed to
be in a state in which you can make
sense of your world even in the midst of
immense chaos immense calamity that you
maintain that unperturbed state because
you've been given
this incredible gift of intellect of
reason that losing your state like
Chicken Little that state of the sky is
falling the sky is falling of losing
that is to lose your sanity and sanity
is another beautiful word which means
hell I mean that is a sane human being
as a healthy human being and so at the
root is learning how to listen to others
to absorb the ideas of others to
recognize that you don't know everything
that I don't know everything that with
this is give and take the children have
as much to teach us as we have to teach
them because they remember things that
we've forgotten and that's why their
world is so extraordinary it has immense
things to offer us and one of the things
that I do with my children as a practice
sometimes my children will come in say
you have to see this you have to see
this and I try to force myself to get
into the same state they're in and say
what what and they said this this bug
and then we both run outside and they
show me look and I oh my god
that's the most extraordinary thing I
want to be in that state I want to
experience the world with those those
new eyes because it's all new you know I
hate when you ask people how things
going same old same old what are you
talking about where cells have been
replicated in the last three months you
don't even exist the same person I saw
three months ago doesn't even exist
they're gone the physical being is
completely renewed it's all new and that
newness of life that is what children
have and that's what our educational
system Rob's from them
destroys losing that excitement about
learning the word in Arabic to find
something means to become ecstatic
Vegeta ecstatic in Latin ex faces to to
come out of the cell and that is what
education is about is rosing the cell
you reach
I mean we have that in our tradition
Eureka and the story is that he was so
excited he ran down the street naked
shouting Eureka Eureka because he
discovered something extraordinary about
the physical universe and those
discoveries about the physical universe
are hors d'oeuvres for what we discover
about the metaphysical world really and
they're both there for the taking and
and I would really like just to see our
children be allowed to retain that
innocence and that power and that desire
to know that so deeply embedded in every
cell in their body thank you very much
[Applause]