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Nondual Highlights #2075 - Monday, March 7, 2004 - Editor: Gloria
"The eyesight has another eyesight and the hearing
another hearing and the voice another voice." - - Thoreau
"When a communicator becomes stuck on his high
level of abstraction, his discourse is often characterized by
vagueness, ambiguity, and even meaninglessness. It is as if the
link between words and realities has been severed. The would-be
communicator then possesses only the words and has lost touch
(wholly or partially) with the things they stand for."
- S. I. Hayakawa
Echoed in all the world's faiths and traditions, Universal matter was created by sound: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God', St. John reminds us. Hopi and Navajo traditions even assert that in ancient times shamans would utter words onto sand and create patterns, a concept not dissimilar to the Hindu mandalas which are said to be expressions of the vibration of God. Consequently, the Eastern faiths- Islam in particular- chose sacred geometry to express the image of God, a technique later used in those hymns to sacred geometry, Gothic cathedrals. Modern science now shows that these geometric rhythms lie at the centre of atomic structures. When Andrew Gladzewski carried out research into atomic patterns, plants, crystals and harmonics in music he concluded that atoms are harmonic resonators, proving that physical reality is actually governed by geometric arrays based on sound frequencies. Even that primeval Hindu sound, the OM, from which is derived our modern term 'hum', when sung into a tonoscope produces the very geometric shapes attributed with 'sacredness'. Perhaps the most important of these shapes is the hexagon, upon which the Egyptian matrix named the Flower of Life is based. This series of outwardly-rotating divisions of the circle accommodate the branches of the building blocks of life, the amino acids.
The tonoscope was constructed to make the human voice
visible without any electronic apparatus as an intermediate link.
This yielded the amazing possibility of being able to see the
physical image of the vowel, tone or song a human being produced
directly. (se below) Not only could you hear a melody - you could
see it, too!
Jenny
called this new area of research cymatics, which comes from the
Greek kyma, wave. Cymatics could be translated as: the
study of how vibrations, in the broad sense, generate and
influence patterns, shapes and moving processes.
In his research with the tonoscope, Jenny noticed that
when the vowels of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Sanskrit
were pronounced, the sand took the shape of the written symbols
for these vowels, while our modern languages, on the other hand,
did not generate the same result! How is this possible? Did the
ancient Hebrews and Indians know this? Is there something to the
concept of "sacred language," which both of these are
sometimes called? What qualities do these "sacred
languages," among which Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese are
often numbered, possess? Do they have the power to influence and
transform physical reality, to create things through their
inherent power, or, to take a concrete example, through the
recitation or singing of sacred texts, to heal a person who has
gone "out of tune"? [...] What Hans Jenny pointed out is the
resemblance between the shapes and patterns we see around us in
physical reality and the shapes and patterns he generated in his
investgations. Jenny was convinced that biological evolution was
a result of vibrations, and that their nature determined the
ultimate outcome. He speculated that every cell had its own
frequency and that a number of cells with the same frequency
created a new frequency which was in harmony with the original,
which in its turn possibly formed an organ that also created a
new frequency in harmony with the two preceding ones. Jenny was
saying that the key to understanding how we can heal the body
with the help of tones lies in our understanding of how different
frequencies influence genes, cells and various structures in the
body. He also suggested that through the study of the human ear
and larynx we would be able to come to a deeper understanding of
the ultimate cause of vibrations.
Trinity
In the closing chapter of the book Cymatics,Jenny
sums up these phenomena in a three-part unity. The fundamental
and generative power is in the vibration which, with its
periodicity, sustains phenomena with its two poles. At one pole
we have form, the figurative pattern. At the other is motion, the
dynamic process. 
These three fields -
vibration and periodicity as the ground field, and form and
motion as the two poles - constitute an indivisible whole, Jenny
says, even though one can dominate sometimes. Does this trinity
have something within science that corresponds? Yes, according to
John Beaulieu, American polarity and music therapist. In his book
Music and Sound in the Healing Arts, he draws a comparison
between his own three-part structure, which in many respects
resembles Jenny´s, and the conclusions researchers working with
subatomic particles have reached. "There is a similarity
between cymatic pictures and quantum particles. In both cases
that which appeares to be a solid form is also a wave. They are
both created and simultaneously organized by the principle of
pulse (Read:principle of vibration). This is the great mystery
with sound: there is no solidity! A form that appears solid is
actually created by a underlying vibration."(4) In an
attempt to explain the unity in this dualism between wave and
form, physics developed the quantum field theory, in which the
quantum field, or in our terminology, the vibration, is
understood as the one true reality, and the particle or form, and
the wave or motion, are only two polar manifestations of the one
reality, vibration, says Beaulieu.
In
conclusion, I would like to cite Cathie E. Guzetta´s poetic
contemplation of where the investigation of the relationship
between sound and the arising of various life forms might lead us
in the future: "The forms of snowflakes and faces of
flowers may take on their shape because they are responding to
some sound in nature. Likewise, it is possible that crystals,
plants, and human beings may be, in some way, music that has
taken on visible form."(5)
excerpted from: http://www.mysticalsun.com/cymatics/cymatics.html
Sacred Geometry
The word “Mandala,”
is rooted in Sanskrit and literally means "Circle,"
which is the first enclosed archetype of Sacred Geometry. The
single point at the center of the circle is called the
"Bindu."
It has been suggested that
meditational Mandalas were brought to Tibet by the wandering Guru
Padma Sambava in the 8th century A.D. The construction and
meditation of spiritual Mandalas is an important aspect of
Buddhism and Hinduism. Mandalas are to be found all over the
orient and always used as a tool to facilitate contemplation and
meditation. This process of experiencing Mandala, has the
potential of moving the witness into his or her spiritual center.
The contemplation of Sacred Geometry through the processes of
studying or creating Mandalas (open-eyed meditation) can
literally lead the student to enlightenment,
Even though Mandalas are generally thought to be an Eastern
invention, it is hard to find a culture (past or present) that
has not recognized the symbolic qualities and transcendental
potentials of the circle and its various geometries. The circle
is the first two dimensional archetype, a metaphysical doorway to
God Mind and Oneness.
Black Elk
Long before that great teacher
(Guru Padma Sambava) traveled to Tibet with the healing and
centering concepts of Mandala, native American Shaman had already
discovered that same healing power within the circle. Much of the
symbolic geometry of Native American art and ritual is rooted in
the balance of the circle and its natural division.... the four
directions; North, South, East, and West. The famous Lakota
Shaman "Black Elk," called the circle the "Sacred
Hoop" (see "Black Elk Speaks" by John G. Neihardt
- published by University of Nebraska Press).
excerpts from: http://www.charlesgilchrist.com/SGEO/AboutMan.html
The Sri Yantra, or Yantra of Creation, originated in our pre-history. It has been known in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and since the Vedic times as the most powerful and mystically beautiful of all yantras (geometric mandalas known as power diagrams).
