How music changes our lives: A qualitative study of the long-term effects of intense musical experiences

Music and peak experiences

Intense experiences that change the listener’s state of consciousness and are accompanied by strong feelings of happiness have affected humans across the ages. Ancient religious writings from almost all types of religions have reported such unusual, mystical experiences (Liester, 1996). Abraham Maslow was one of the first to take a psychological approach to understanding intense emotional experiences, introducing the term peak experience (see Whaley, Sloboda, & Gabrielsson, 2009, for a discussion of the nomenclature of peak experiences). Leach (1962, p. 11) formally defined peak experience as

that highly valued experience which is characterized by such intensity of perception, depth of feeling, or sense of profound significance as to cause it to stand out, in the subject’s mind, in more or less permanent contrast to the experiences that surround it in time and space.

Maslow (1962) strove for the establishment of a health-oriented psychology, in contrast to conventional psychology, which is oriented toward pathology. He investigated the behavior and feelings of healthy people. His idea was that the healthiest and most highly developed individuals are those who have reached the fulfillment of needs that are at the top of a hierarchical pyramid.

At the base of Maslow’s pyramid were physiological needs, which were followed in ascending order by desire for safety, social needs, and desire for self-esteem and self-respect, with self-actualization at the top. Later he added the desire for self-transcendence (see Maslow, 1964). People in a state of self-actualization frequently report having deep emotional experiences, moments of great astonishment and truth, satisfied longings and a dissociation from time and space (Maslow, 1962, 1971). Because of the high similarity of peak experiences and the cognitions and sensations of a self-actualized individual, Maslow postulated a relationship between peak experiences and self-actualization (Maslow, 1954). He believed that people engaged in a peak experience are in a state of self-actualization; that is, they are healthy and self-fulfilled, which grants therapeutic strength to such experiences and makes the research on the mechanisms behind the experiences meaningful for a health-oriented psychology. He conducted numerous interviews on people’s “most wonderful experiences . . . happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love, or from listening to music, or suddenly ‘being hit’ by a book or painting, or from some great creative moment” (Maslow, 1968, p. 71) and he studied literature on mystics, religion, art, and creativity. He found that peak experiences are natural phenomena that arise spontaneously and can be activated by a variety of triggers (Maslow, 1964, 1971), the most frequent of which are sex and music.

The importance of music as a trigger for peak experiences is also supported by studies from Laski (1961), Hay (1990), and Lowis (2003). Lowis even considered music to be the most frequent trigger of all. While Maslow considered only classical music to be a potential trigger for peak experiences, Panzarella (1980) found that folk and rock ‘n’ roll music could also act as triggers. This finding supports the idea of investigating peak experiences independently of musical genres, as was done by Gabrielsson at the end of the 1980s (see below).

Are there any long-term effects of peak experiences? Studies have revealed that they often lead to positive changes in individuals’ lives. According to Maslow (1962, 1964, 1968), peak experiences can have permanent after-effects and add meaning to life, permanently changing how we view our lives (see also Frick’s work on transcendental psychology, 1982; Usher, 1989; Warmoth, 1963; Wuthnow, 1978). Laniere, Privette, Vodanovich, and Bundrick (1996) also found that most participants in their study considered their peak experience an important milestone in their lives. Peak experiences are experienced as a kind of catharsis or as a remotivating event (Wilson & Spencer, 1990) that might cause (pathological) symptoms to vanish. People might develop a new attitude toward themselves, other people, and the world in general. Most studies, however, have only investigated whether there are any consequences at all (yes/no), or refer to long-term effects only incidentally. Of the participants in Lowis’s (2003) study, 50% stated that they experienced positive, long-lasting changes after their peak experience, 0.3% mentioned a negative development, and the other 49.7% declared either no change at all or could not specify what had happened. In Ebersole’s (1972) study, 50% reported long-term effects, while Panzarella’s (1980) participants reported such effects in 90% of cases. Panzarella (1980) also provided the most detailed analysis of long-term effects of peak experiences. Based on Maslow’s (1968) findings about potential after-effects, he derived a list of seven broad categories (see Whaley et al., 2009): (1) general appreciation of music or visual art, (2) altering of self-appreciation, (3) altering of relationships with other people, (4) altering of attitudes toward life or world in general, (5) increased aesthetic sensitivity, (6) enhanced perception of everyday reality, and (7) long-lasting mood effects. In sum, we can conclude from past research on music-induced peak experiences that positive long-term effects are to be expected, but evidence about the significance of these effects and how they emerge is still incomplete.

Strong experiences with music

The descriptive and phenomenological findings from Maslow and Panzarella were extended by the seminal work of Gabrielsson (2001, 2010, 2011), who asked interviewees to describe the “strongest, most intense experience of music that [they] have ever had” (Gabrielsson, 2010, p. 551) in as much detail as possible. He referred to these experiences as strong experiences with music (SEMs). Gabrielsson broadly classified participants’ statements of the strongest and most intense experiences with music into seven main categories comprising general characteristics, physical reactions and behaviors, perception, cognition, feelings and emotions, existential and transcendental aspects, and personal and social aspects (Gabrielsson, 2001, 2010; Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003). The last two categories contain some interesting indications of potential long-term effects of SEMs. The category existential and transcendental aspects contains statements about the meaning of existence and being. Some statements suggest that the experience changed life profoundly: “I realize that I normally live enclosed without deeper contact with reality. But here it appears fresh and new-born and always new, as it probably was when I was a child” (Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003, p. 181). These kinds of statements are consolidated in the category personal and social aspects: They indicate a high potential for individual development through the acquisition of new insights and possibilities. Other statements in Category 7 referred to the appreciation of identity and oneself as well as shared social experiences.

What long-term effects can be expected from an SEM? Pursuing a positive psychology approach, Lamont was able to show that SEMs had the potential to increase the wellbeing of a sample of young musicians (Lamont, 2012) as well as of a sample of young music listeners (Lamont, 2011). She concludes that making music provides a “eudaimonic route to wellbeing (through engagement and meaning)” (Lamont, 2012, p. 574), and that strong experiences with music provide the listener “with valuable and overwhelmingly positive memories which they can draw on to generate higher levels of happiness” (Lamont, 2011, p. 244). Gabrielsson and Lindström (1995, p. 200) concluded that music is very powerful and can reach people in a way hardly anything else can do. Using statements from the SEM reports, they came up with several implications regarding positive outcomes of music therapy. Music may provide relief from physical pain; alleviate deep grief and provide consolation and new hope; help in overcoming temporary depression; release barriers or defenses, often unconscious, giving contact with hidden thoughts and feelings and providing feelings of openness and freedom; provide new insight concerning one’s way of living, relations to other people, and to reality in general; make one feel acquainted with, and confirmed by, other people, thereby increasing one’s self-confidence; be used deliberately to confirm, strengthen, or change one’s state of mind; and create a strong feeling of one’s own ego, the conditions of human life and existence.

Gabrielsson and Lindström (1995) further argued that SEMs enable insights into alternative ways of being and lead to intense spiritual or religious experiences. However, systematic evidence regarding long-term implications of SEMs has remained relatively scarce. The implications of SEMs drawn from the statements above can only remain speculative. In the SEM project, people were asked for a description of the moment of a SEM, not for a description of what happened afterwards. Only eight reports mentioned long-term effects and another 19 mentioned immediate effects (Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003). Gabrielsson (2011) has begun to integrate these statements into the SEM descriptive system, deriving three distinct categories: (1) valuable memory of the experience (experience is a resource that can be used as a means for self-therapy), (2) increased interest in music (inspiration, motivation, and insights into the value of music), and (3) personal and social consequences (self-realization, insights into what life and existence mean and into the value of relationships). There were also emotional reactions “of a more lasting character such as feeling relaxed, alert, free, elevated, purified, consoled, hopeful” (Gabrielsson, 2011, p. 442). These results provide valuable hints at potential long-term effects. Nonetheless, we may consider them preliminary, as they are mainly based on statements about long-term effects only incidentally made by the respondents.

Music and altered states of consciousness

As early as the 1960s, Maslow was considering altered states of consciousness to be a characteristic feature of peak experiences – he used the term “unitive consciousness” (1964, p. 68). More recently, several researchers have interpreted intense musical experiences (IMEs) as altered states of consciousness (e.g., Baldemair, 2003; Becker, 2010; Gabrielsson, 2011; Hess, Fachner, & Rittner, 2009). Due to the different scientific foci, a connection between IMEs and altered states of consciousness is not immediately obvious. Yet looking at the definition of altered states of consciousness reveals that there are many similarities between these two concepts. Vaitl (2007, p. 46, translation by the authors) defined altered states of consciousness as “temporal changes in the whole pattern of subjective experience that make the person believe her mental functions are significantly different from general norms of the ordinary state of consciousness.” Changes refer to perception (e.g., hallucinations, illusions, synesthesia), time perception, thinking and experience of meaning, body image, and positive or negative emotions. Such changes in the quality of experiences during IMEs are reflected in many categorical classifications that can be found in the SEM descriptive system. Rittner (2007, p. 282, translation by the authors) noted that “music helps us to temporarily transcend bodily troublesomeness and narrowness, to make audible what is unspeakable, to incarnate what is ineffable.” Music as a “mental mode of transportation” (Fachner, 2007, p. 8) is more than just a medium for inducing altered states of consciousness; it also helps us to maintain such states, to structure them, and to step out of them (Hess et al., 2009). We can conclude that IMEs and altered states of consciousness are of a highly similar nature, if not the same. Note that there are several concepts that have emerged from different theoretical backgrounds. It remains a challenging task to develop precise definitions and distinctions and to arrange these concepts into a comprehensive system (see Herbert, 2011, for a commendable example).

As has been done for IMEs, altered states of consciousness have been arranged into categories. Besides broadly phenomenological classifications of different states of consciousness (e.g., Ludwig, 1966), there is the prominent work of Dittrich (1996) who generated three core categories resulting from factor analysis: oceanic experiences (being at one with oneself and with the world, being freed from restrictions of time and space, anticipating a higher truth), anxious dissolution of the I (loss of self-control and reality control), and visionary restructuring (visions, optical hallucinogenic phenomena, synesthesia, changes in the perception of meaning). Oceanic experiences are known to be very pleasant for the people who have them, while the dissolution of the I is associated with negative feelings and high levels of anxiety, sometimes referred to as a “bad trip.” If IMEs are similar to altered states of consciousness, we should take these dimensions into account when thinking about long-term effects of musical experiences.

Aim of the present study

To sum up, the influence of IMEs on the way people think of, plan, and live their lives is not easily derived from past research that was more concerned with the moment of these experiences. Although Gabrielsson and Lindström (1995) drew therapeutic implications from some of the SEM reports, Lamont (2011, 2012) identified a substantial impact of SEM on happiness and well-being, and Gabrielsson (2011) has begun to integrate long-term consequences into the SEM categorical system, the question of how IMEs can change and shape people’s lives is far from being conclusively solved. With the present study, we set out to explore potential long-term effects in detail. Since there is so little known about the classification of long-term effects of IME and the process in which they emerge, we felt obliged to start our exploration from the ground up, using a qualitative approach that is rooted as deeply as possible in individual reports about IMEs. Our purpose was to provide an empirically-driven model of these long-term effects as a basis for further research. Thus, we decided on a grounded theory approach. We define an IME as an unforgettable experience with music that stands out from usual experiences because of its quality; it is characterized by changed perception, deep feelings, and an intense physical reaction.

Method

Sample

When recruiting the sample, we looked for people who had had an IME in the past – according to the definition we gave above – that they remembered very well. Note that we did not ask, however, if the experience had had any long-term effects. We sought a sample with a broad age range, and we looked for people who had listening experiences and people who had performing experiences. The sample (N = 13) is described in Table 1. Interviewees were recruited through a flyer at Chemnitz University of Technology and three local schools of music in Chemnitz, Germany. In addition, the authors approached people they knew had had special experiences with music in the past.

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Table 1.

Demographic characteristics of the interviewees.

Initials	Gender	Age (years)	Profession	Musical education	Time of IME	Music	Listener (L) orperformer (P)
UN	F	31	Student (sociology)	5 years’ classical music	2001	Classical	L
LP	F	44	Student (psychology)	None	2009	Classical	L
DA	F	25	Student (psychology)	Piano, 7 years’ singing	1997–2004	Gospel	P
HM	M	28	Student (psychology)	School choir	2001	Rock	L
RH	M	33	Security manager	Horn	1995	Folk	L
BM	M	41	Mechanic	None	1985	R’n’B	L
MR	F	35	Paralegal	4 years’ clarinet and saxophone	2007	Classical	P
SR	M	75	Retired physician	Piano, church music	50 years ago	Classical	P
AS	M	55	Social worker	Singing lessons, piano	2003	Classical	P
SP	M	48	Orchestra musician	Bassist, philharmonic orchestra	1985	Classical	P
IS	F	18	Student	Flute, singing lessons	2008	Classical	P
GA	F	24	Student (psychology)	Violin, piano, guitar, choir	2006	Classical	L
LJ	F	28	Student (psychology)	Violin, piano, singing lessons, accordion	2004	Classical	L

In most cases, the IMEs reported date back no more than 10 years. Four interviewees talked about experiences they had had 15 to 50 years ago. One woman referred to several IMEs within a couple of years. There was almost equal numbers of people who had had the experience as a listener (7) and as a performer (6). The statements did not show any substantial differences between participants with and without musical training, however. Most of the experiences occurred with classical music, but no specific musical genre was found to be necessary for having an IME.

Results

The aim of our study was to develop a theoretical model, consisting of several core categories and their relationships, that describes and explains potential long-term effects of IMEs. After several rounds of coding, and after several changes and reorganization of the system of codes and categories, we generated a model that proved stable and valid concerning the data from all the interviews. We first present a summary of the model, that is, of all the core categories and their relationships, and then describe the categories in more detail. Where applicable, we refer to connections of the derived categories with existing concepts discussed in the Introduction. Because all categories and relationships were derived from only 13 interviews, we consider the model a starting point to be validated in quantitative research with larger samples in the future.

Summary of the derived model

Figure 1 shows the derived model of IMEs and their long-term effects on people’s lives. The ellipses show core categories; lines between them indicate that they occur simultaneously and do not have any temporal order; arrows between them indicate causal temporal relationships. The dashed and the two shaded boxes can be understood as “supercategories.” These divide the phenomenon into three main phases: the IME itself, the shift back into reality, and the long-term effects that follow from the experience.

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Figure 1.

Process model of intense musical experiences and their long-term effects on people’s way of life

Starting with the moment of the IME, it was very clear that people left their ordinary state of consciousness and entered an altered state of consciousness. Most respondents reported that there was a “letting oneself go” experience – characterized by the absence of stressors, requirements, and problems – leading them into the altered state. All feelings that dealt with anxiety, stress, and worries seemed to disappear and only positive feelings were left. Moreover, respondents described becoming emotionally sensitized to perceiving their basic and interpersonal needs. This sensitization appears to have been irreversible and affected people’s lives even after the IME had faded out; it strengthened their emotional relationship to others and made them more mindful of their personal needs. The sensitivity, along with the release of problems, worries, and anxieties, enabled the respondents to explore their self. There were no barriers behind which socially undesired aspects of the self had to be hidden. People clearly recognized their own values, norms, and wishes. Their own personality emerged and most of the interviewees reported that it was the first time that they had really recognized and accepted it. This experience culminated in a deep feeling of harmony, that is, the feeling of being one with oneself and with the world. People approached and finally reached a state of experienced perfection and completeness, and they were self-realized. The state of harmony was further characterized by deep relaxation, an inner balance, satisfaction, authenticity, freedom, clarity, and deliverance from egocentrism.

The feeling of harmony did not last, however. At the end of the IME, people were confronted again with thoughts of stressors and ordinary requirements and they returned to their ordinary state of consciousness. Going “back to reality,” the world seemed gray and sad for a moment (disharmony). This stark contrast between the experience of harmony during the IME and the experience of disharmony afterward left people with a strong motivation to achieve harmony in their daily lives and to do everything to repeat this positive experience (need for harmony). To retain this motivation people made use of resources they had acquired during the IME: they remembered the positive experience and all the positive feelings that had accompanied it. The memory of the harmony gave them power and confidence, improved their mood, and made them forget thoughts of problems and worries. In the end, long-term changes expressed by our interviewees concerned social relationships, their personal values, the meaning of life, engagement, and inspiration. In parallel, they analyzed their IME deliberately, which resulted in an individual avenue of insight and knowledge (consciousness).

Detailed description of categories

We now describe in more detail the derived categories and their relationships in the order they appear in the model. Table 2 summarizes the supercategories, categories, and subcategories, and contains exemplary statements for each subcategory. After the name of each category, there are two numbers in brackets, which refer to the number of statements and interviewees that were relevant for this category. For instance, (27/4) means that the category is based on 27 statements from 4 interviewees. Statements are introduced by the initials of the interviewee.

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Table 2.

Supercategories, categories, and subcategories of the process model.

Supercategory	Category	Subcategories	Exemplary statements
Intense musical experience	Altered states of consciousness	Oceanic experiences	UN: “When I travel to the ocean I get nearly the same feeling, that is, a feeling of freedom, a feeling of boundlessness inside myself. Yes!”
		Visionary restructuring	GA: “These sounds, I somehow perceive them as physical forms, like spirals or . . . um . . . stripes, as if I had received them in my body.”
		Anxiety-free dissolution of the I	MR: “Anxiety is gone. That’s very important, that it is a situation without anxiety.”
	Thoughts	Absence of thoughts	DA: “There were no thoughts anymore; I think that was the most positive [aspect], you just got rid of it all at that moment.”
		Mental reflection	AS: “Like on a second level, I thought, yeah, you can do it, you can use your voice.”
	Feelings	Ineffability	GA: “. . . and these quite inexpressible equivalents of particular emotional states.”
		Deep inner experience	UN: “It was not an emotional experience, such as first love; it was just more than this . . . mental and spiritual things came together and exploded, yes!”
		Affective dominance	DA: “You got rid of it all in that moment, you just felt and did it [his performance].”
		Sensitization	AS: “Well, since then – I can link it to that experience – I have to expend more energy not to get emotionally swamped in situations like this.”
		Emotional learning	LJ: “It was like, it had something to do with my father and somehow I suddenly felt sorry for him; I don’t know, I never heard this piece again, but somehow there was something I suddenly understood.”
Harmony–disharmony shift	Harmony	Moment of relaxation	RH: “So that you felt unbelievably relaxed, with this song; relaxed, and it was beautiful.”
		Moment of perfection	RH: “. . . you want to stay there, you want to live there and live a simple, pleasant life.”
		Inner balance	IS: “It is not what you get from outside that is really beautiful, but to be in consonance with yourself.”
		Authenticity	LP: “Yes! It feels like . . . then I feel veeeery authentic, as if ‘me’ and ‘I’ were amalgamated.”
		Deliverance from the ego	UN: “Well . . . say, the ego was totally unimportant, and it was just beautiful to stand there without the big I.”
		Freedom	DA: “. . . the daily stress and all the things going wrong. And this was gone, it didn’t matter anymore, at that moment; you did nothing but music, for instance.”
		Clarity	SP: “It’s like the curtain rises for a moment . . . and suddenly you have a glimpse of something that is usually covered. . . . And we live in our mundane relationships, and these are just short moments showing what it may be like in the life beyond the mundane.”
	Disharmony	Grounding	LP: “I have to get myself back from far, far away, to ground myself again. . . . And coming back to reality has something to do with a loss that I feel.”
		Accepting the change	LP: “. . . this emotional force cannot stop, then; but at home or in my car, I mean, then it is okay. But it is not okay when I’m really stressed.”
		Longing for repetition	MR: “. . . you know how you have to practice and to prepare, so that it can happen again. That’s important, because you just want to experience it again and again.”
	Resources	Treasure	BM: “Well, a song like this is like a treasure. It is like the partner by your side.”
		Unforgettable	BM: “. . . it is so etched in your mind, it’s really crazy, you always hear the seagulls crying [an element of the piece he had his IME with]. That’s really crazy.”
		Mood elevation	UN: “Well, sometimes, I play it. When I’m down, I motivate myself, yeah, and then it’s like a very successful vacation.”
		Recharging the batteries	AS: “So, 2 years later I had a relapse, that is, there were new cancer cells, followed by a new radiotherapy. So, actually, it was a new depression. But the experience helped me a bit to get out of this second misery.”
		Distance from the daily routine	RH: “. . . it was like suddenly you get rid of all the stress you have in civilization.”
		Confidence	IS: “Well, in everyday life, I could use it to persist. To persist without lying in bed in the evening and running out of steam, [to be] up for the next day.”
Harmony motivation and way of life	Relationships	–	BM: “Yes, because I experienced it myself. I’m living proof that it is true. Soon I’ll have my silver wedding [anniversary] and we’re happy together. I hope, it is the same for H. But, you never know in the end . . . I just feel that she does!”
	Values	Shift of values	AS: “For me it was a shift of values. A shift from ‘you have to be perfect, you have to give a good performance’ to the belief that it is more important for me that it’s harmonious.”
		Communication of values	SP: “Often it is the veneer that you perceive the most, and the silence you need to let things impress you is hardly there in our hectic everyday lives. But all the more it is important that music manages this [the communication of values] and possibly will be used for it more in the future. Anyway, as a musician, I think this is part of my task.”
	Meaning of life	Meaning	HM: “. . . you got the feeling, your search is over now, you have found perfection.”
		Culture	UN: “And I mean, without education and culture, we reach the end of the line. And that is the main reason why I’m here, because I deem it [education and culture] important and I want to preserve it.”
		Vitality	MR: “Really, poverty is not always an effect of too little unemployment benefit, but . . . for many people, [poverty means that] joy of life is not definable at all. And . . . I’m really grateful that I had that experience and I would like to share it with others. There is a lack of . . . fascination, of really meaningful fascination [in the world].”
	Engagement and inspiration	Exploit one’s potentials	AS: “I just want to know it [how good his performance can get], what it is like, what I can really do, how it works.”
		Inspiration	HM: “Before that, I only drew in black and white, and then I had the feeling, I have to work with colors now.”
		Vocation	SP: “But it would be so important that music still discharges its tasks and that it will be used increasingly in the future. At least, I mean that is my task as a musician.”
	Consciousness and development	New insights	LJ: “. . . this aggression is sort of reactive, and then, to have this kind of compassion suddenly, this is like another level.”
		Maturation	AS: “Grown is not the right expression. I mean, not for me. But I would describe it as matured.”
		Knowledge	IS: “. . . and, um, I think, I’ve been thinking a lot about it [the IME], and it helps explain a lot.”

Intense musical experience (247/13)

The codes and statements in this supercategory referred exclusively to the exact moment of the experience. Notably, all respondents remembered the particular moment as a very pleasant one without any negative memories. Many statements described an altered state of consciousness, which was further expressed through altered thoughts and feelings.

Statements in the category Altered states of consciousness (102/12) mirrored the psychic characteristics of the experience, which went beyond ordinary everyday experience (regarding perception, representation of time and space, experience of meaning, body scheme) and were described as very positive and pleasant. Since nearly all statements in this category suit Dittrich’s (1996) concept of altered states of consciousness, we decided to adopt the dimensions of this concept for labeling the subcategories: oceanic experiences, visionary restructuring, and anxiety-free dissolution of the I. Note that we changed the original label “anxious dissolution of the I” to “anxiety-free dissolution of the I” – which is the positive pole of this category in Dittrich’s conception – because there were exclusively positive experiences in the interviews.

There was a clear difference between the IME and the usually experienced reality of everyday life. People crossed a border and arrived at a new “reality” that was experienced as very significant and very pleasant. There was nothing that could be better in this moment and there were feelings of happiness and fulfillment. Some felt carried away by the music or even levitated. Transcendence means that people leave their ordinary experience and enter a world “that is not comprehensible in rational terms” (SP), beyond logic and knowledge. Spatial dimensions and chronological structure ceased to exist. Across the numerous statements in this category, it becomes apparent that people abandoned their egocentricity.

Given the very good fit of the statements of our interviews with Dittrich’s (1996) dimensions of altered states of consciousness, we can conclude that the state of consciousness during an IME is different from the state of consciousness that people usually experience in their daily lives. That is, we can describe an IME as an altered state of consciousness. This conclusion was reached in earlier research, as discussed above. Interestingly, however, we did not find any statements about negative experiences: IMEs were reported as being exclusively positive and pleasant. Oceanic experiences, in addition, allow for new horizons of experience, which go beyond the usual and often result in transcendence. This kind of state of consciousness has been referred to as spiritual experiences in past research (e.g., Aldridge, 2007; Bucher, 2007; Nelson, 2009; Rittner, 2007; Walach, Schmidt, & Jonas, 2011). In particular, the transcendence “of our little I into a big whole thing” (Rittner, 2007, p. 281) is a prerequisite and a characteristic of spiritual experiences and may lead to long-term changes in a person’s consciousness.

Statements in the category Feelings (107/12) referred to affective components of the experience and were manifold. Many spoke of rather vague affective states that were sometimes difficult to describe. Codes were included in the category Thoughts (38/8) when they explicitly referred to the presence or absence of thoughts. Notably, many statements in the category feelings indicated that there was no rational or analytic thinking during the experience. Only one interviewee referred to reflexive thinking, which we deemed important enough, however, to include as the subcategory mental reflection. In sum, the IME was predominantly characterized by strong affect. This became evident from the categories altered states of consciousness, thoughts, and feelings. Interviewees spoke of a deep inner experience and they felt freed from rational analytic thinking.

Parallel to and closely interconnected with the three categories just described is the category harmony, which appeared as the most important one for describing the character of IMEs. In addition, together with disharmony, this category was involved in the shift from the IME itself to the time afterwards, which will be important for understanding long-term effects.

Harmony–disharmony shift (76/11)

This supercategory consists of the two categories harmony and disharmony that can be understood as opposite poles of a continuum. When people allow themselves to enter an IME, they enter an altered state of consciousness; stress and anxiety diminish, and they move toward the harmony pole. Here, societal demands, norms, and values lose their meaning and people are not afraid of potentially going against them. This enables them to become entirely involved with themselves; they start to discover their own self, which results in more clarity about their own personal needs, goals, and values. They find themselves and their inner balance. This state of consciousness does not last for long, however. After the IME they fall back into their usual state of consciousness. Everyday demands and stressors return and people recognize again that there is a discrepancy between their needs and reality. That is, they move toward the disharmony pole of the continuum. It is these discrepancies that drive them to act as soon as they are back in their everyday life. After having experienced that total harmony is attainable, people are motivated to experience a state of harmony even in their daily lives. We now describe the categories harmony, disharmony, and resources in detail before we investigate how this motivation finds expression.

The category Harmony (65/11) was defined as a state of total relaxation, satisfaction, and inner balance. A moment of harmony is a perfect moment in which people are self-realized (self-realization means that “our desire and need to achieve our potential” is fulfilled; Nelson, 2009, p. 545). It is a moment of relaxation, perfection, inner balance, authenticity, freedom, and clarity.

We defined Disharmony (43/8) predominantly by referring to (a) the reappearance of stress or people’s recognition of stressors, which they interpret as potential threat or excessive demand, and (b) the interviewees’ motivation to re-experience the feeling of harmony within or outside a musical context.

Statements in the category Resources (57/11) referred to permanent resources people acquired through the IME. Resources can be used to shape and improve one’s life. Some people talked about flashbacks: thinking of the IME made them re-experience the feelings, actions, and thoughts they had had back then. The use of resources can be a means to approach the initial state of the IME, that is, a state of harmony. The respondents used their resources by thinking of the experience, which gave them power, confidence, and distance from their daily routines and put them in a positive mood. This category is very similar to the category “memory of the experience” identified by Gabrielsson (2011) who even considered it a long-term effect because the resources may be used in terms of self-therapy.

Harmony motivation and way of life (114/13)

This supercategory refers to the main focus of the present paper, that is, to potential effects of IMEs on people’s way of life. As described above, harmony and need satisfaction diminish after an IME. The experience leaves people with new resources and a strong motivation to shape their lives so that they are in harmony with their needs, values, norms, and goals. Processes of change are initiated that are expressed in people’s social relationships, values, meaning of life, engagement, and inspiration. The purpose of these changes is to approach a life of harmony and satisfied needs, which is similar to the experience during an IME. When stressors appear that hinder people from adhering to their “new life” they can use their resources as a motivator or source of energy.

The category Relationships (19/6) includes statements about people’s motivation to establishing or intensifying social relationships as a reaction to the IME. For most people, this was especially true for others who participated in the IME. The IME also enabled people to understand each other without words, since they were sure that they felt the same at that moment.

Statements in the category Values (26/8) referred to changes in people’s values and standards or to their motivation to communicate their values to others as a result of the IME. We define values according to Schwartz (1994, p. 20):

A value is a (1) belief (2) pertaining to desirable end states or modes of conduct, that (3) transcends specific situations, (4) guides selection or evaluation of behavior, people, and events, and (5) is ordered by importance relative to other values to form a system of value priorities.

The establishment of new values requires people to reject social norms. People leave their former self-image behind and create a new one that comes from their inner self. This process of disengagement enables them to recognize and establish their real values and goals.

The category Meaning of life (23/7) includes descriptions of how meaningfully the IME was experienced. Meaning resulted from the experience during the IME that problems and anxieties are not overly powerful and that needs can be satisfied. The interviewees had the impression that they could influence and shape their lives with their own actions. Obstacles were no longer seen as a threat, but as a challenge. It was easier, then, to adhere to their desired way of life. The experience conveyed vitality and was recognized as an important part of their own culture. Note that the categories relationships, values, and meaning of life are pooled in Gabrielsson’s (2011) category containing “social and personal” consequences.

The category Engagement and inspiration (11/5) is due to some interviewees who reported that as a result of the IME, they had passionately dedicated themselves to activities that were directly related to their experience or to what followed from it. They exploited their full potential; they felt inspired and called upon. Statements included here would fit into Gabrielsson’s (2011) “increased interest in music” category.

Many interviewees mentioned that they began to ponder their experience afterward (Consciousness and development, 25/10). They faced up to their experience and tried to explain and construe it individually. The purpose of these considerations and reflections was to reach the experienced state of harmony in daily life, that is, outside of musical experiences. They talked about new insights, maturation, and knowledge. We believe that the knowledge serves as “consciousness-raising” and thus gives life its idiosyncratic course. We also believe that a conscious reflection upon the experience is a precondition for unequivocally attributing life-shaping effects to the experience.

Spirituality – the superior category of harmony, harmony motivation, and way of life?

While reading and coding the interview transcripts we clearly recognized parallels to the concept of spirituality, which has received increasing attention in academic psychology over the last decade (see Bucher, 2007; Cobussen, 2008; Hays & Minichiello, 2005; Nelson, 2009; Walach et al., 2011). Here, we describe these parallels in more detail and argue that spirituality is a promising concept that may support the categories harmony, harmony motivation, and way of life.

According to Nelson (2009, p. 547), spirituality has often been defined as “the experiential and personal side of our relationship to the transcendent or sacred.” Bucher (2007) identified transcendental experiences as the predominant component of spirituality, which results in a feeling of relatedness to the universe, the social environment, and/or a superior being. “To the extent to which the I transcends into this relatedness, thus far the realization of the self . . . is going on” (Bucher, 2007, p. 33). There are strong parallels of Bucher’s suggestions to our codings. Most of them are included in the category oceanic experiences and they predominantly refer to experiences of transcendence. Transcendence refers to something “that takes us beyond our current way of thinking, feeling, or acting,” that defies “comprehension, understanding, and control,” and that happens “when we find that life cannot be put into a box or reduced to a set of propositions and rules despite our best efforts” (Nelson, 2009, p. 4). Self-transcendence can lead to the experience of relatedness to all the other aspects (superior being, nature, social environment) only after a conscious and deliberate involvement with the IME (see our category consciousness and development). For instance, SP described his new “spiritual” self-image and his relatedness to a supernatural entity:

And all this with a music that is hundreds of years old. And to me, that is, these are things that go beyond our mundane being . . . That is a metaphysical component that is not really comprehensible by rational measures.

There were additional statements describing clear motivation to shape the way of life. For SP, the IME was a “pivotal experience” and he spoke of an “inner compass” that guided him through his new way of life. Moreover, relatedness to the social environment was included in our category relationships. People established and/or intensified emotional social relationships. In sum, we suggest that harmony and its effects on people’s way of life can be interpreted from the perspective of the spirituality construct. Most importantly, people described the value and meaning of their personal experience in general in terms of spirituality. Thus, IMEs having an impact on people’s way of life is quite conceivable given the similarity of musical and spiritual experiences.

Discussion

The aim of the present research was to investigate potential long-term effects of IMEs on people’s way of life. Narrative interviews were used to allow interviewees to talk about their experiences in detail. Grounded theory enabled us to reconstruct the whole process of the development of long-term effects as well as to identify the processes that are potentially responsible for the occurrence of these effects. Based on this reconstruction we derived a process model and a number of conclusions that should be tested with quantitative research in future studies. We found that IMEs had a very strong impact on our interviewees; having an IME left them with a clear conception of a state of harmony. They gained many resources from the experience and were motivated to reach the same feeling of harmony in their daily lives. We uncovered several strategies that they used to achieve this harmony: recognizing their own needs, changing their values, establishing activities that are more meaningful, establishing and intensifying social relationships, and recognizing the spirituality in their lives.

We now offer some final reflections on the research method and data. To obtain a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon we tried to include a heterogeneous sample regarding age, gender, and time of the IME. An obvious limitation of our study is that we only asked people who remembered having had an IME in the past and were willing to tell us about it. Thus, our results – in particular, the conclusions we have drawn – will have to be verified with broader samples in future research. This will also answer the question of the practical implications of the long-term effects of IME described here. Moreover, it is an interesting question as to whether musical experiences need to be intense for people to keep them in mind for the rest of their lives, or if similar effects could also occur with less intense musical experiences. This question may be answered by designs that correlate the intensity of musical involvement with the long-term effects. We strongly believe that music in general has positive effects on people’s way of life, as described here, and that we have only touched the tip of the iceberg of musical experiences. As argued above, we have reason to believe that intense experiences with music are spiritual experiences and that the positive effects of these experiences contribute to what has been called spiritual well-being (Ellison, 1983). Given that humans have a need for transcendence, “this type of well-being provides integration, harmony, and freedom within the personality” (Nelson, 2009, p. 359). Not least, it would be worthwhile combining the model and the conclusions we have drawn with previous research on intense experiences (e.g., Gabrielsson, 2001, 2010, 2011; Herbert, 2011), in order to build an even more comprehensive model that includes both a fine-grained description of the categories of IME and their relationships in terms of causes and effects.

We would like to point to striking similarities between some of our respondents’ strategies to live a harmonious and self-fulfilled life and the report from a nurse about the most common regrets of dying people, which we came across while writing this paper. In her recent book, Bronnie Ware – who has worked in palliative care for many years – delineated the five most common regrets of older people who were facing imminent death (Ware, 2011): (1) “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” This regret is clearly related to the experience of self-realization we found to be a core component of harmony induced by IME. People recognize their inner self, their needs, goals, and dreams and can decide to live in accordance with them. (2) “I wish I didn’t work so hard.” This regret also refers to self-realization in that it is about the most important things in life, about living a simple and authentic life and caring for one’s children and partner. (3) “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.” People recognized that they had often suppressed their feelings for the sake of peace with others, often resulting in an unsatisfied life that fell short of their desires. We found that IMEs are very affectively shaped experiences where feelings are clearly dominant over thoughts and where people have the freedom to allow all the feelings to appear. Such deep inner feelings can be understood as a compass that people can use to adhere to their desired way of life. (4) “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” It goes without saying that this regret is akin to our category social relationships. During their IME, our interviewees recognized the importance of friendships and they made up their mind to establish new and/or intensify relationships. (5) “I wish that I had let myself be happier.” This regret mostly refers to people’s insight that happiness is a choice and that they had often remained stuck in their old patterns and habits. Our category harmony included statements that clearly described the recognition of such patterns and habits, which is the first step to leaving them behind and living a life with more pleasant experiences.

In sum, it seems that intense experiences with music have the potential to prevent people from having regrets about their way of life. If an IME, within a few moments, can elicit insight and personal growth and development that most people do not attain until they are facing their end, it would be an invaluable resource (see also Croom, 2012; Vachon, Fillion, Achille, Duval, & Leung, 2011). Of course, this conclusion should be considered an important rationale and motivation for forms of involvement with music such as music therapy (see also Bonny, 1999).

As noted earlier, none of our interviewees talked about negative or anxiety-related experiences. This is in contrast to the results of Gabrielsson’s (2001, 2010, 2011) interviews about strong experiences with music (SEM). This would appear to be another interesting starting point for further research. However, Gabrielsson (2010, 2011) already noted that negative experiences may result from a negative context – such as death or disease – rather than from the music: on the contrary, music may even act as a buffer between people and their negative experiences. It is possible that music helps people cope with such experiences and prevents excessive suffering. Furthermore, regarding the absence of anxiety during IMEs, anxiety-free dissolution of the I also occurs outside music-induced altered states of consciousness, namely, in the course of meditation (see Vaitl, 2007). This similarity may provide an interesting avenue for further thought and theorizing about the relationships between music-induced and meditation-induced states of consciousness. If we were to cautiously generalize our present results to a broader population we would infer that IMEs are extremely pleasant and positive, that they can empower us to recognize our basic needs and personal values, and that they help us to realize our true inner selves in order to live a more authentic, fulfilled, and spiritual life.