The Auric Envelope: How Affected 321 



Sound is ever creating something. Shall it be 

 evil or good? 



A few years ago, when the National Society of 

 Musical Therapeutics was formed in New York, 

 the newspapers took the usual lively interest in de- 

 veloping a " sensation," and interviewed many 

 prominent physicians to obtain " views " on the 

 subject. The ignorance developed was amazing. 

 One of the most noted nerve-specialists ( ?) in 

 town said : " I have found music attractive to 

 idiots, degenerates, and persons of abnormal tem- 

 peraments; but I do not regard it as a therapeutic 

 agent. ... A sonata of Beethoven's may 

 benefit a lunatic, but in that case so would the 

 rattle of elevated railroad trains." Thus this 

 so learned specialist is unable to distinguish be- 

 tween building and disintegrating sounds be- 

 tween harmony and disrupturing discord and 

 is absolutely deaf and blind to their corresponding 

 effects upon the nerves, man's sound-register 1 



Every tone of the human voice, whether in 

 speech or song, shares with the thought it expresses 

 in the effect upon the vital currents and their eman- 

 ations in the auras. It affects instantly the aura of 

 the speaker, then influences those of his hearers. 

 Therefore is the training of the speaking voice of 

 highest importance in the perfecting of the indi- 

 vidual. "If the words we utter bear the color 

 of the Agni Tattva [ Tejas~\ anger, love, lust 



