A Bold Thought Experiment

Music is precious to most of us.  Stereotypically, it stirs the soul, inspires joy, sorrow, passion, patriotism, dread -- you name it.  And it is mysterious; as far as I know, no evolutionary biologist has been able ever to explain what role it plays in facilitating our individual or collective survival which, supposedly, is all that we care about.

Let us now imagine that mankind will face a new global pandemic, worse than the previous one of the 2020's insofar as literally everyone will suffer its severest symptom -- being struck deaf, totally and permanently.  And also, that this malady will be passed on genetically to our children, ad infinitum.

One consequence of this is that music will be a thing of the past.  For a while it will be preserved in the internal monologue and perhaps also in sheet music that wistful historians will peruse with regret.  But over time, even those vestiges will disappear.  It will be as if music, which played such a big role in our emotional lives, never existed.  But we know that in fact it did exist, and that its loss was due to a mere contingency -- the fact that our senses could no longer perceive it.

What else is there around us that is equally real but equally walled off from our normal perception?  (We know, for example, that we cannot see infrared or ultraviolet light, but that other creatures may perceive these parts of the spectrum.)  Scientists are taking these unseen worlds more seriously of late, whether they posit a literal multiverse, or conclude that drugs like psilocybin and LSD do not distort our perceptual apparatus but rather remove filters so that we can experience, for the first time, raw inputs that are as legitimate as the aural inputs that we prize as "musical" but that have disappeared in my hypothetical.

The veil is being torn in so many places, and via so many modalities, that it seems in danger of being ripped apart entirely.  What modalities?  Ayahuasca and DMT, near death experiences, incubi and succubi, cryptids like "dogman" and "mothman," glowing orbs in the sky and in our bedrooms, apparent "portals," and yes, more conventional close encounters of the third kind.

When psychonauts go "all in" via one of these modalities, they often report that the other realm, masked as it may be, is at base a realm of pure, unified consciousness that feels like the Ultimate Source, the One, the Godhead.  They also often report that while it is a realm beyond spacetime, it strikes us as extending in all directions, without limit.  This perception can be both awe-inspiring and terrifying; we know not how to navigate this space!  (More and more I reject the template of the Tunnel of Light, with Jesus or Mom/Dad there to welcome us, at least as the ultimate answer.  I think that the Tunnel of Light may  merely be Step One on a much deeper journey.)  Here is where I look for guidance from certain among the ancients -- the Tibetan Buddhists, the Gnostics and the Kabbalists in particular.  They are like the Lewis and Clark of the unseen worlds, taken in their full abundance.