Un­like al­most any other or­gan, our ear is di­rectly con­nected with a vast num­ber of our or­gan­ism’s func­tions. This con­nec­tion runs via the 10th cere­bral nerve – the vagus nerve – which, as the “vaga­bond”, is con­nected to all im­por­tant or­gans and vas­cu­lar sys­tems and, as op­po­nent of the “sym­pa­thicus”– the sym­pa­thetic nerve – keeps its func­tions un­der con­trol. Looked at from this point of view, our ears have at their dis­posal, di­rect trans­mis­sion lines to the most im­por­tant or­gans of our body.

At the same time, our in­ner ear – stored in a bony laby­rinth – is also where our or­gan of bal­ance is lo­cated and has eve­ry one of our body’s mus­cles un­der con­trol.

Prof. Tomatis talks of a “cy­ber­netic regu­la­ting cir­cuit: brain (com­mand) – mus­cle (exe­cu­tion) – ear (con­trol) – brain (cor­rec­tion of the com­mand).” So in this way, our in­ner ear – un­like al­most any other or­gan – is cross-linked with our en­tire or­gan­ism. But our ear also has yet an­other spe­cial status: none of our other or­gans can rec­og­nize such fine im­pulses and, at the same time, cal­cu­late these with such exact mathe­mati­cal pre­ci­sion. At all times dur­ing this proc­ess the ear takes the cal­cu­la­tion of an oc­cur­rence of vi­bra­tion and clas­si­fies it in har­monic and dis­har­monic or­ders. And this brings us to the sec­ond part of my talk: to the natu­ral laws of har­mony.

Eve­ry­one is born with the abil­ity to dis­tin­guish natu­ral har­monic sounds from un­natu­ral dis­har­monic ones – this is just as true for the small child as it is for the old per­son. This abil­ity to dis­tin­guish sounds is the re­sult of the ear’s exact cal­cu­la­tion of vi­bra­tion in­ter­vals in re­la­tion to one an­other.

Par­ticu­lar gaps or in­ter­vals be­tween two vi­bra­tions are rec­og­nized by the ear as “har­monic”, other in­ter­vals as dis­har­monic. This or­der of the har­monic in­ter­vals is called har­moni­cal, and the laws which de­ter­mine this or­der are known as natu­ral laws of har­mony, just as Herr Huebner ex­plained to us ear­lier. This har­moni­cal con­for­mity to a law is not, how­ever, char­ac­ter­is­tic only of our ear, but is also an­chored in our psy­che.

You might now ask what all that has got to do with health. Well, a great deal, as you will soon see.

These har­moni­cal laws, you see, do not only de­ter­mine what hap­pens in the in­te­rior of the sound and in our ear and our men­tal tone ex­peri­ence, we also find these laws of har­mony in many of our or­gan­ism’s fun­da­men­tal func­tions. And this is surely no co­in­ci­dence.

Re­cent stud­ies have shown that the natu­ral func­tion of our hu­man or­gan­ism is de­ter­mined in many dif­fer­ent ways by these natu­ral laws of har­mony, which also gov­ern the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic. Here, not only the spa­tial struc­ture of our or­gan­ism is vari­ously di­vided up, its bio­logi­cal-rhyth­mic time struc­ture is also or­dered ac­cord­ing to these natu­ral laws of har­mony – which Prof. Dr. G. Hildebrandt from the Uni­ver­sity of Mar­burg has, fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive re­search, been able to show.

Chro­no­medi­cine shows that a natu­ral rhyth­mic har­mony forms the basis of those proc­esses re­spon­si­ble for the healthy and eco­nomic func­tion­ing of the or­gan­ism – whereas long-term aban­don­ment of this har­mony leads to mis­in­for­ma­tion in the nerv­ous sys­tem and to mal­func­tions in the meta­bolic ac­tiv­ity, and points the way to ill­ness. To­day there­fore, in many bran­ches of medi­cine, rhyth­mic dis­or­ders are rec­og­nized as im­por­tant in­di­ca­tors of an on­com­ing or ex­ist­ing ill­ness.

Our or­gan­ism strives to main­tain the natu­ral rhyth­mic har­mony and as soon as it loses it, the or­gan­ism be­gins to rec­re­ate it dur­ing rest­ing phases or sleep. Pro­fes­sor Hildebrandt was able to de­ter­mine how, each night, the or­gan­ism vari­ously re-es­tab­lishes its har­monic or­der again. This regene­ration of the natu­ral har­mony in our or­gan­ism en­ables us to em­bark re­freshed on the ac­tivi­ties of each new day, and it shows us that our re­gen­era­tion means pre­cisely the re­cov­ery of our or­gan­ism’s natu­ral har­monic mode of func­tion­ing.

If we con­sider all this, we can­not not be sur­prised that, nowa­days, Pro­fes­sor Hildebrandt de­scribes the hu­man or­gan­ism as noth­ing short of a ‘mu­sic physi­ol­ogy’, be­cause the way in which it func­tions ori­en­tates it­self on the same natu­ral laws of har­mony as the mi­cro­cosm of mu­sic does.