Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven, portrait by Karl Joseph Stieler (1820)

Ludwig van Beethoven is recognized as one of the greatest composers who ever lived.

He was born in Bonn, Germany, December 16, 1770, died in Vienna, Austria, February 26, 1827. He had a very difficult childhood with a father who was an alcoholic. He had no friends save his mother. His father beat him and made him practice by the hour, not only that he would be another Mozart, but that he could provide him with drink and lots of money.

He composed many of his finest works after he had become almost totally deaf.

He was a chela of the Great Divine Director, and he served on the twelve o’clock line of the cosmic clock.

The soul of Beethoven

Beethoven’s soul expresses the intensity of the initiate. So many times the initiate is not fully aware of the levels of initiation. Beethoven did not have anything but his music and his own inner attunement with God as an explanation as to why he was facing such tests in life. As we study his life, we can learn something about our own lessons.

Beethoven wrote:

I have the more turned my gaze upwards; but for our own sakes and for others we are obliged sometimes to turn our attention to lower things; this, too, is a part of human destiny.

The just man must be able also to suffer injustice without deviating in the least from the right course.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

I am not bad; hot blood is my wickedness, my crime is youthfulness. I am not bad, really not bad; even though wild surges often accuse my heart, it is still good. To do good wherever we can, to love liberty above all things, and never to deny truth.

He knew he was a son of God. He could not necessarily explain the surge of the white fire through him preordaining his music and actually consuming substance or perhaps manifesting righteous indignation for outer injustice. So he explains his philosophy:

It is my sincere desire that whatever shall be said of me hereafter shall adhere strictly to the truth in every respect regardless of who may be hurt thereby, me not excepted.

Thus Fate knocks at the portals!

I will grapple with Fate [karma]; it shall not quite bear me down. O, it is lovely to live life a thousand times.

I shall, if possible, defy Fate, though there will be hours in my life when I shall be the most miserable of God’s creatures.

Sinfonia Pastorella. He who has ever had a notion of country life can imagine for himself without many superscriptions [descriptive words] what the composer is after. Even without a description, the whole, which is more sentiment than tone painting, will be recognized.

How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it. Woods, trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires.

So he gives to us this tremendous attunement with the Holy Spirit in nature which he transfers to his symphonies. So we have heard the son of God with the wrath of God in his heart, his determination to face his karma, his sense of justice, and that even when injustice is upon us, he must still cleave to and love justice. All of these are attributes of an initiate on the Path.

Many a vigorous and unconsidered word drops from my mouth, for which reason I am considered mad.

I hope still to bring a few large works into the world, and then, like an old child, to end my earthly career somewhere among good people.

But what humiliation when some one stood by me and heard a flute in the distance, and I heard nothing, or when some one heard the herd-boy singing, and I again heard nothing.

Beethoven was deaf, and he brought forth these magnificent works through the inner ear. It is a tremendous demonstration of what appears to be a human handicap, and yet the Lord decreed that he should hear pure sound and have not any interference of outer sound with that inner hearing.

Such occurrences brought me nigh to despair, a little more and I had put an end to my own life—only it, my art, held me back.

His art was his dharma. The devotion to the dharma would not allow him to despair that he could not hear with his outer ear.

O it seemed to me impossible to quit the world until I had produced all I felt it in me to produce;...

This is lawful desire. It was God in him desiring to release the fullness of itself through his lifestream; and under all adversity or the facing of karma or initiation, he could not be altered because of his love of God as the dharma and his oneness with his desire to produce, to release all of the God that was in him.

... and so I reprieved this wretched life—truly wretched, a body so sensitive that a change of any rapidity may alter my state from very good to very bad. Patience—that’s the word, she it is I must take for my guide; I have done so—lasting I hope shall be my resolve to endure, till it please the inexorable Parcae to sever the thread. It may be things will go better, may be not; I am prepared—already in my twenty-eighth year forced [by his handicap of deafness]—to turn philosopher: it is not easy, for an artist harder than for anyone. O God, Thou seest into my inward part, Thou art acquainted with it, Thou knowest that love to man and the inclination to beneficence dwell therein. O my fellow-men, when hereafter you read this, think that you have done me wrong; and the unfortunate, let him console himself by finding a companion in misfortune, who, despite all natural obstacles, has yet done everything in his power to take rank amongst good artists and good men.

Is this not all that God asks of us? To face all natural obstacles in our lives, whatever they may be, and not to be drowned in the tears of our own self-pity or sense of injustice about what life has given us but to do everything in our power to rank among the good artists, the ascended masters, and the good men, their chelas.

Handwritten page from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

The “Ode to Joy”

Four days later, Beethoven wrote:

So I take leave of thee—sad leave. Yes, the beloved hope that I brought here with me—at least in some degree to be cured—that hope must now altogether desert me. As the autumn leaves fall withered, so this hope, too, is for me withered up; almost as I came here, I go away. Even the lofty courage, which often in the lovely summer days animated me, has vanished. O Providence, let for once a pure day of joy be mine—so long already is true joy’s inward resonance a stranger to me. O when, O when, O God, can I in the temple of Nature and of Humanity feel it once again? Never? No—O that were too cruel.

He wrote those words years before writing the “Ode to Joy,” the magnificent finale to the Ninth Symphony, which was setting to music a poem by Schiller which it is said was originally called “Ode to Freedom.” For political reasons, Schiller did not use the word freedom and substituted for it the word joy. Between the poem and the music, had the word freedom been used, it might have incited people to actually overthrow their overlords politically or economically.

Beethoven understood this, so he sent forth the message of freedom of the soul as the “Ode to Joy,” and for him the poem was an expression of spiritual freedom. It meant the emancipation of the soul, the freedom of the spirit from all physical and material limitations. It meant freedom to roam at will through the higher spiritual realms, to contact celestial beings who inhabit those realms. It meant for him the freedom to interact with the immortals, the ascended masters, and to listen to the glorious music of the spheres.

When Beethoven received this tremendous “Ode to Joy” and this burst of freedom, he also wrote these words of his depression, “Oh, if I can but for a moment once again retrieve that joy.” He was going through the initiation of having to balance in his being the anti-art or the anti-Christ to that freedom and to that joy.

Flowing through him was the matrix of soul liberation that will be played upon earth and anchor the music of the spheres. In order to be able to receive it, to be qualified as a chela, he would have to hold that depression and not go down under it. If he had thrown away his score and said, “I can’t do it. I’m too depressed. I’ll come back another day,” he may never have heard again the “Ode to Joy” and the music of the spheres because he would have submitted to a greater master, the master whose name is depression and discouragement.

Discouragement, depression, and the forces of confusion are anti-freedom, and as a conglomerate of energy and consciousness, they are condemnation. And that condemnation is the opposition to the release of the stupendous power of God on the twelve o’clock line by the hierarch of that line, the Great Divine Director.

The nine symphonies

Saint Germain has said that no greater music of freedom has ever been written than the nine symphonies of Beethoven. These symphonies contain the power of the three-times-three, the action of the Trinity multiplied by power of three. The nine symphonies are degrees of initiation. There are nine degrees of initiations on the path of the ruby ray, and these degrees of initiations are lowered by frequency, vibration, sound, and then ultimately by God consciousness.

On April 22, 1979, Cyclopea spoke of “the symphony of the elementals, set forth by the hand of nine of the Elohim who delivered to Beethoven the nine symphonies of life. Will you not hear within them the power of the three-times-three, the threefold flame in the heart of the angels, in the heart of the sons and daughters of God, now waiting to be delivered into the heart of the beings of the elements?”

The importance of playing the symphonies

A number of ascended masters have spoken of the importance of having the nine symphonies playing in our homes.

Archangel Michael:

I would remind you that for the protection of the very souls of the people, there is needed in your home an instrument to play perpetually the music of Beethoven. It is in the nine symphonies that you will find the power of the three-times-three to neutralize the rock beat that is continually playing on this planet, gaining momentum on the airways from satellite, through television and radio, on stereo systems, in headsets, vibrating through the very marrow of the bones of the people as newer and more perfected forms of technology allow these sounds to resonate to the very core of the cell.

Blessed hearts, I tell you, it is so. Even the nucleus of the cell, that has been sealed by a certain sealing of the flame there, is now penetrated by the sound itself. And thus, you see, where you are, wherever you are upon earth, even if you are not within ear of the sound of the rock beat, most likely it is playing through your body through the very waves and currents of the earth.

Thus, I tell you, the music of Beethoven itself, when played continuously from the first to the ninth symphony, has a rolling momentum. And if it can play in your homes and if you can remember to have it in your automobiles, you will understand how it does its work of transmutation in its own way and aids and secures your health and your life.

It is like having a decree tape playing. It forms a matrix of light, a rhythm and a sound that counteracts that which is discordant at the same levels of vibratory rate and frequency in the earth; for the music that travels is actually stealing that area assigned for the holding of the harmony through sound by the Elohim of God.

Lady Master Venus:

Let there be the restoration of music in every home, and let the classics build the inner code of life. Let it re-create the DNA chain. And by the power of the nine symphonies of Beethoven and much that should be known in the cell level of every lifestream, let the portals of Venus open once again.

Helios:

You have heard the “Victory Symphony” and I tell you that victory, beloved, is the fanfare of our presence. And this music has been given to Beethoven by ourselves that you might have the spirit of victory in sound.

I say, play it and play it again and play it every day until you have victory in every way in your personhood, in your church, in this nation and in this planet. And play it, beloved, in this court when you shout your fiats of the judgment, that victory might come shining through. And see that victory descending as a mighty V that parts all darkness, which can no longer coagulate—no, beloved!

Let the full power of the “Victory Symphony” descend into your very midst and let it be the power of that music which does amplify the sounding of your word and the sounding of our light in your heart!

Sanat Kumara:

The great symphonies, the works of Beethoven, Mahler and many others—play these also perpetually in your homes, for they are upholding a certain level of vibration of molecules, of atoms and of the earth.

Mighty Victory on Beethoven

Mighty Victory speaks of the music of Beethoven:

It is untouchable. It cannot be stolen. Though mortals have attempted to pervert it, they have only bound themselves further by the sacred fire that pours through it. It is the poetry of sacred fire plucking the harp of the heart. It is the sound of Elohim.

There is one initiate called of God who will one day appear in Matter to deliver the conclusion, the finale, of six other symphonies that continue the path of initiation of the ruby ray. But that one of Cosmic Christhood shall not appear nor shall the music be heard until a retinue of lightbearers has so incorporated this mighty music of the spheres as to have assimilated it as the Body and Blood of the Cosmic Christ, Lord Maitreya.

When every atom of your being whirls to this music, when the fiery core resounds it and transmits it from the Great Central Sun, when you stand as a pillar of fire of ascension’s flame and the ruby ray and the sound of freedom emanate from you to drown out and swallow up all dissonance of the betrayers out of the pit who have spread abroad their anti-music, anti-art, anti-dharma, polluting the sound waves of the earth and the soul, when the force of the music within you can swallow up the anti-light and the anti-freedom, then you will understand.

When the sound of Elohim, of the ruby ray and its initiates is heard in physical Matter and the balance is held as pillars of fire proclaim the name I AM THAT I AM, the Word and the sound of the Word in the music of freedom, then will the music descend. Then will that one descend to record it.

You will know that in the beginning was the Word, and by the Word spoken and transmitted as the music of the spheres of Elohim, by the Word transmitted as the sounding of the soundless sound, the intoning of that music will spell the final round of the consuming of evil within the spheres of this solar system. And there will be no stopping that sound across a cosmos when it is emitted from initiates of the sacred fire, from the sacred heart of souls comfortable and comforting all life in heaven and earth by the intensity of the Blood of Christ.

Therefore listen, O children. Harmony, O blessed harmony, is your challenge for the preservation of your freedom. And you will note how accurately he, [Beethoven], said, “I do not write noisy music.” Noise, the noise of dissonance and discord, side by side with the veritable sound of fiery vortices of moving galaxies, of Elohim humming the sound of the HUM, the OM, the HRIM—all the sounds and tones of the Universal Ma can be heard in those nine symphonies of the Word....

His vibration is the light of victory, freedom and joy! Victory is his flame! Victory is that vibration! You can be it too. You can choose to be that flame if you will.

Sources

Lectures by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, December 2, 1973; July 3, 1979.