The magic of sound

In discussing The Holy Experience in this Bulletin we have explored many approaches, including, most recently, the aspect of life that I have called “non-awareness.” Last week in the Bulletin I offered a vived “real life” explanation of this phenomenon. If you missed that edition of this publication, I hope you will find a way a to go back and take a look at it.

Today I would like to embark on an expansion of The Five Tools of Non-Awareness. These Instruments are among the most valuable I have found in a lifetime of searching and in discussing with others their own search and experience. The first of these tools is: Resonance 

Everything in the Universe is comprised of energy. What makes one kind of energy different from another kind of energy (and, therefore, makes differentiation possible in a Singular Reality) is the vibration of the energy, or, loosely, its rate of speed. This is sometimes called its frequency. That is, how frequent is its oscillation.

Energy comes in waves. Each particle is a wave-like structure, and many trillions of such wave-like elements, oscillating at the same frequency and strung together, appear to create the Super String Theory that is so much talked about today as the basis of a Theory of Everything (TOE).

Often we speak of a “wave of emotion” that comes over us, and we are describing the experience exactly.

This vibration of the Essential Energy of the Universe creates a distinct sense of resonance within every living thing, sometimes manifesting as sound, or noise. Sound cannot be heard, of course, unless there is someone to hear it. (We looked at this ancient conundrum in an earlier entry here in the Bulletin when we asked: Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there is no one there?) Yet sound is present even if there is nothing else present. It is simply manifesting in unheard ways.

The Resonance of the Universe manifests, among other ways, as the Sound of Life. It IS Life Itself, expressed in one if its most elemental forms. There are times when you may not be able to see raw energy, but you can hear it. (You can also, by the way, often feel it before you can see it.)

Mystics have been known to say, “At the heart of the universe is the sound of om.” The most sensitive microphones that humans have been able to invent have been sent into space to be our “ears” onto the universe, and those devices have picked up a deep, low-frequency, unable-to-be-heard-by- the-human-ear, mysterious and continuous background rumble, or hum.

What is this hum? Could it be the Primal Force, the Essential Essence, Life Itself in its most elemental form? Science tells us this is the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which is supposed to be the “echo” of the Big Bang. This is electromagnetic in nature and is thus a form of light.

We are, at our root, basically light and sound. We resonate deeply with both. That is why we react instantly to any noise, and can be so deeply moved by certain sounds. It is why music is a universal language, touching and uniting people across every barrier of tongue and culture. (Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, Shakespeare wrote, and he was profoundly right.)

It is said that if we ever tried to send a communication into outer space with hopes of having other sentient beings respond to it, we would send not a worded message, but music. Perhaps, as in the science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a simple five-note signature.

The thought is that, if there are intelligent beings within range of this signal, they would respond to the universal language of sound as tones much sooner than they would respond to sound as words in any earth language (although those, too, are tones, yet not nearly as melodic or mathematically structured ).

It is precisely because we are, at our basis, light and sound, that masters of virtually every mystic tradition throughout the ages of human evolution have invited us and exhorted us to use our own essence as an Instrument in the discovery and experience of our own essence.

Chanting and singing has thus been used to invoke The Holy Experience in virtually every religion on the face of the earth. As well, humming and om-ingand various other kinds of noise making have been the tools of soul connectors for as long as we can remember.

Meditators are often told that a good way to begin their practice is to listen to the sound of their own breath. Move deeply into the sound, meld with it, become one with it.

Training ourselves to listen to the sounds of life and to seek Resonance with life is a wonderful beginning on the path to Non-Awareness of the Self. We experience our Selves not as individuals, but as part of the Whole in the moments of transcendence that focusing on nothing but sound can create.

Read this week's Letter to Neale here

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Read a message from one of the prisoners impacted by our Prison Outreach HERE