NADA BRAHMA: The Sound is the Teacher
By Paul Temple – with guidance and insight from Althor
Part 1: Harmonic Overtones
This is the first of a two-part blog on sound and vibration. This first portion
was made into a presentation for the Shift Network Sound Healing Retreat
and the Globe Sound Healing Conference. The second portion has additional
gleanings on sound and vibration.
Let’s open into the topic NADA BRAHMA: The Sound is the Teacher with
a quote from the great Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan
“One who knows the secrets of sound
knows the mystery of the whole universe”.
To truly understand this concept we need to shift into the mystic, into the
“meta-physical”: that which is beyond the constructs of the physical world. I
ask you suspend your sense of normality so we may move into the “para-
normal”: that which is outside the boundaries of your normal reality.
So what is the mystic?
The mystic path is the path of the heart. This is not the anatomical heart,
nor even the heart chakra, but the energy center of the heart we know as
the place of love, spiritual connection and soul-wisdom. The seed of divine
light in your heart centers – we call it the Pearl of Light – is the seat of the
soul. The mystic path takes you through the heart to the soul.
The mystic is coming to know the greater reality of the soul that is beyond
the veil: the multi-dimensional realms that are difficult to access from the
density and restrictions of your current human mental perception.
The mystic realms are not accessible through mental awareness. These
realms are accessible through the heart. Most indigenous cultures still hold
this expanded reality, knowing all things are connected and it is through the
heart that this connection happens. It is through the heart you can connect
with the mystical, multi-dimensional realms.
As you learn – or re-learn – to activate your heart centers and cognate
through the heart, you can begin to connect with these mystic realms and
universal wisdom.
Music and sound are special vibrational media that facilitate access into the
mystic. Music and sound open and activate the heart center – and since they
are vibrational media, they can connect you directly with the most powerful
forces in the universe.
A succinct Earthly explanation of this phenomenon is the Sanskrit phrase
Nada Brahma, with which many of you may be familiar.
I (Paul) had the privilege of hearing an explanation of this phrase from a
Hindu swami which deepened its meaning for me. I have heard western
musicians explain it with the translation “Sound is God”, but the swami
expanded its meaning for me.
“Nada” translates from the Sanskrit as “pulse” or “vibration” which expands
to sound and music – which are vibration. But the deeper meaning of Nada –
or the Naad – as explained by the swami, refers to the “primordial pulse of
creation” – the ancient, original expansion of the creative force in the
conscious universe. My teacher, Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo calls this “The
original song of creation”. It correlates with the Christian mythology of “In
the beginning was the Word….” – the word being sound infused with
meaning. It could well correlate with what modern science calls the “Big
Bang” as well.
“Brahma”, as many know in the Hindu pantheon, is the supreme creator and
the purveyor of knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Brahma is the embodiment
of the supreme divine creative force. What takes Brahma 10 million years to
create, Shiva can destroy in an instant.
So Nada Brahma together is the simple but profound recognition that
sound, vibration and music are the same as the primordial pulse of creation,
are the same as the divine creative force and are the same as the source of
universal knowledge and wisdom: Nada Brahma, the unified vibrational field,
the master teacher.
Nada Yoga is the body of Vedic practices encompassing sound and
vibration: mantra, kirtan, devotional chanting and Bija seed sounds. These
practices all catalyze evolutionary and awakening experiences that activate
our higher consciousness. They provide access to mystic realms. Some say
mantras are ancient vibrational codes, like passwords, that open portals and
activate archetypal energies in our deep, soul-level memory.
So, with a little help from the sound itself, we can tap into this field of
primordial awareness and journey into the mystic, into the timeless source
of all being. We can expand beyond the mental-emotional constructs of
earthly reality into the sacred heart, into multi-dimensional realms. We can
connect with our own higher soul wisdom and akashic memory, which
includes who we can become in this life.
It is here we realize that the sound – the vibrational field itself – is infused
with infinite knowledge, it is the teacher, it is the source, it is the wisdom, it
is the One.
The sound is the teacher: through accessing our higher awareness through
this vibrational field we come to learn, to intuit, to receive, the wisdom that
is needed for our souls in this time. Through the sound our consciousness
can access expanded levels of wisdom and insight about our soul, our path
and the true nature of what is.
Nada Brahma reveals the mystery of why people “love” music: because it
connects us with the universe, with the universal field, with universal love
and universal intelligence. It helps us feel whole and divine, energized and
powerful. The complexity of how humans have stylized, monetized and
digitized music is another tale for another time, but as the Doobie Brothers
say:
“Give me a beat, boys, to free my soul,
I want to get lost on your rockin roll
and drift away, and drift away.”
When I received this piece from Althor there were four gleanings offered on
the mysteries of sound. In this first posting we will present one of the
gleanings called Harmonic Overtones: All in the One & One in the All,
but I want to share the titles of the others which are in a separate blog titled
Nada Brahma – Part 2.
- Sympathetic Resonance: The Vibrational Connection
- Subjective Relativity: Notes, Chords, Scales & Keys
- The music is the News: Catching the New Generation’s Evolutionary
Message
- Harmonic Overtones: All in the One & One in the All
Harmonic Overtones: All in the One & One in the All
The simple exercise of a plucking a string can teach us something of the
great mystery of the universe, in particular the principle of all-in-the-one
and one-in-the-all. When we pluck the A string on a guitar we hear the
single note A. But that single note is actually made up of many other sub-
notes: or better to say the wave form of A 110 is comprised of many sub-
waves in the string, the most predominant of which we call harmonics or
overtones.
The A string vibrates at 110 cycles per second, but it is not creating one arc
from one end of the string to the other at that speed. The actual vibrational
pattern in the string is an infinite number of micro-waves. The largest of
these micro-waves is exactly half the length of the string, which results in
sounding the octave, which is A 220 in this instance. There are actually two
A 220s because there are two halves of the string. The octave is called the
first and strongest harmonic.
I don’t want to get bogged down in complicated mathematics, but the string
continues to sub-divide into quarters and thirds, and then quarters and
thirds of each sub-tone, generating harmonic intervals of the 5 th , the major
3 rd , the 4 th and on into almost infinite sub-vibrations that ultimately contain
all the notes in the gamut – the full 12 note spectrum.
So what we perceive as the single note A actually contains almost infinite
sub-vibrations, enveloping every other note in the gamut, but in a unique
particular pattern that make it uniquely an A 110. The same is true of the E
string, but it vibrates in a different pattern at approximately 82 cycles per
second to make it uniquely an E.
The key mystical observation here is that what we perceive as an individual
note actually contains all the other notes. Each individual note is a unique
vibrational pattern composed of the other notes in the sonic universe. In
parallel, each individual person, or each individuated consciousness, is a
unique vibrational pattern composed of the entire conscious universe.
We each have a seed of divine-light consciousness in our heart center. The
Tibetans call it the Vajra or indestructible Diamond Light that is our essential
luminous nature. We each have a unique vibrational coding in our hearts,
our unique Akashic imprint, containing our soul memory and purpose. This
vibrational pattern is our note, our unique vibrational tone – and this single
tone is composed of infinite sub-tones that make a hologram of the entire
conscious universe.
A quote from Osho states this in another metaphor:
“We are not a drop in the ocean;
we are the ocean in a drop.”
We each contain the infinite all. The seed of divine consciousness in our
hearts is a hologram of the infinite, multi-dimensional universe. We each are
Nada Brahma: creator of worlds. We are all sub-tones of the universal sound
and we each contain the infinite universe within the mystery of our hearts.
The challenge, of course, is remembering this through the density and
corrupt patterning of our present-day collective Earthly consciousness. The
ocean of contemporary human awareness has been distorted and polluted
from an eon of dissonant darkness. Our ancestors, in order to survive the
burning times, ages of war, torture, genocide and centuries of horror, had to
shut down their hearts and lose connection with the mystic realms. The
heart of humanity got shut down and disconnected during this passing “Age
of Kali”. We are now just beginning to come into a new era when we can re-
awaken our hearts and re-activate these mystical connections through the
web of light – the radiant matrix.
But this is another tale for another time — the topic here is the all-in-the-
one and the one-in-the-all as reflected in the overtone series. We are all
singing the song of creation – creating worlds, like Brahma, with the
vibrational generators of our conscious awareness, our voices and our
actions. We are each a unique tone in the symphony of the universe, and we
each generate multi-dimensional harmonics with our creative energies.
As a final note on this topic, I am reminded to share a tidbit on “Sound
Healing” in relation to harmonic overtones. Sounding overtones when a
person is in a receptive, meditative state can activate what are called the
upper chakras in the energy body. Those of you who attended my
ReCalibating the Energy Body or Akashic Soul Code Activation workshops
have gotten a taste of these.
The energy body is composed of layers of awareness, each layer being a
higher-dimensional aspect of the over-soul. These upper chakras are
doorways or portals to these dimensional layers. The portals sequence in the
spiralic pattern of harmonic overtones, with the root tonic being the
vibrational tone of our akashic imprint.
The simple application of this teaching is that sounding harmonic overtones
can open these upper-chakra portals to sympathetically resonate and
awaken akashic memory and awareness of higher-dimensional self.
I like to generate harmonics on the flute, which has a simple ability to do so.
You can also sound harmonics on a stringed instrument by lightly running
your finger down the string while plucking. Violins and cellos can make those
wonderful whale-like sounds, which are made by this technique to generate
overtones.
So generating harmonic overtones is a simple way to help us open to
mystical memory and to remember the mystical principle of all-in-the-one
and one-in-the-all: we each contain the infinite universe within the mystery
of our hearts.
In closing this portion, I invite you all, as sound explorers, to embrace the
mystic and the mystery. To let yourselves become students of the great
teacher – the sound itself.
It is imperative that we awaken the world to the reality of the mystic – to
Realize – make real – the expanded possibilities of human potential.
To comprehend the power of sound from the perspective of the mystic
realms is to open possibilities of our humanity to vast new horizons – and
plant evolutionary seeds for a heart-awakened future on Earth.
Eckhart Tolle has said “humanity has a choice: evolve or die”. The power of
sound is a vital resource to help us make this choice and manifest our
evolutionary potential.
****************
To see Part 2 of this piece on sound and vibration, look for the blog:
NADA BRAHMA: The Sound is the Teacher, Part 2: Further Gleanings