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.