Think of religious scriptures as a live thing, a thing with an awareness of its own, of being able to impart knowledge to one who wants it. On its own volition.
What this means is that scriptures have a power of their own – if given the chance by people to allow it to teach them, scriptures will do so without any fuss or prejudice. Unlike religious organisations or gurus or the like, scriptures don’t see class, creed, race or sex – but only the effort of an individual in the journey towards truth/god/absolute.
Let’s not think of scriptures as a collection of books, dusty from non use or falling apart from overuse. Do not think of them as pages containing ideas put together by someone ‘wise’. Or a set of ideas or creeds that one has to follow to ‘attain’ the grace of god.
The scriptures of any ancient religion never started out like this: that is, as a set of beliefs offering salvation to its followers. Initially, scriptures were nothing but sounds. Sounds as similar to the cosmic sounds as humanly possible that seers isolated and identified as conducive to spiritual growth. The scriptural sounds were designed to raise our own vibrations in concert with the vibrations of the universe.
These sounds were voiced (with the proper intonations, nuances and the like), and it was memorised and then it was given a form that today we call mantras or chants. For millennia these chants or mantras remained the basis of spiritual development for mankind. It formed the basis of language and other auditory interaction for mankind also.
Then man developed writing. With this began the dubious work of ‘translating’ sound and giving them arbitrary symbols. The sounds of the universe now could be put down in writing.
Few people know that Sanskrit has never been a ‘written’ language but one that is vocalised only. Only in the past thousand years or so has Sanskrit been encrypted into writing. Sanskrit in India is written in the Devnagri script, the Tamil script, the Telugu script, the Bengali script, the Gujrati script and any other script you can think of. The textual rendering of the sounds of Sanskrit is based on the vocal traditions that India had been passing on through the generational lines – from father to son – for millennia before it being written down.
In the past 100 years of so, it has been written in English as well. Each rendering of the sounds of Sanskrit in a different language loses some of the nuance of the vocalised language in its traslation.
Almost all religions agree that in the beginning was the Sound/Word and everything else emanated from it. Sound and resound, and reflection and vibration intermingling gives rise to this universe. The elements of this sound, its reflection and vibration, make up the universe, as we see it as well as what we can’t see.
For example the true intonation of Om or Aum is very long and drawn out, it is described as an all pervading sound. Science can also confirm that a radiation, called the cosmic background radiation or the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, also pervades the universe as a faint background glow in the darkness of space seen by a radio telescope.
So two things are established – sound vibrations do pervade the universe alongside a cosmic background radiation. We are dealing with sound here presently.
This Universal Sound, and the various forms it has taken over the past four billion years of so, appears to be the basis of almost all religious teaching in this world. As can be seen from the scripture selections below.
In the beginning was the Word, says the Bible. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Islam calls the Universal Sound Nada-e-Asmani, Celestial Sound or Awaz-i-Mustaqim. It is said of Prophet Mohammed that he heard the Eternal Sound, Awaz-i-Mustaqim, for fifteen years before receiving the Koran.
Hindus call it the unstruck, endless sound - Anhat Shabda. Or Naad, the sound which created the entire universe.
Anhat Shabda does not have a cause we humans can think of. Imagine it: a sound that is not produced by hitting something or without any cause behind it. It is impossible to imagine it – any example of a sound we have - whether it is speaking, music, crashing, grinding, anything - has a cause and beginning.
The Universal Sound does not have a beginning, it is endless and knows no limit.
So what does science say about all this? Scientists know that a vibration of sorts permeates the entire universe – a vibration that strums a rhythm through the length and breadth of space, forming a foundation of ‘music’ echoed by all things in the universe. Planets, stars and other celestial bodies emanate notes of music/sound and scientists are using these notes as identifying elements of particular heavenly bodies.
This from www.universetoday.com:
Astronomers have been able to monitor the sound waves of a star 100 light years away and found a magnetic cycle analogous to our Sun‘s solar cycle. “Essentially, the star is ringing like a bell,” says scientist Travis Metcalfe from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a co-author of a new study. “As it moves through its starspot cycle, the tone and volume of the ringing changes in a very specific pattern, moving to higher tones with lower volume at the peak of its magnetic cycle.”
Scientists recently also discovered that black holes emit a strong sound, one that modifies its gigantic appetite for nearby stars by offering a counter force of sound waves. This sound emanation from black holes stops the black hole from swallowing entire galaxies – it puts up a parameter of operations for black holes; to be active enough but not to too active that entire galaxies disappear into it.
How strong is the sound that comes from black holes? Sound waves can travel 100s of thousands of light years from a black hole, and remain constant for 2.5 billion years (see below).
This latest from the NASA website:
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The "note" is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. The tremendous amounts of energy carried by these sound waves may solve a longstanding problem in astrophysics.
The black hole resides in the Perseus cluster of galaxies located 250 million light years from Earth. In 2002, astronomers obtained a deep Chandra observation that shows ripples in the gas filling the cluster. These ripples are evidence for sound waves that have travelled hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster's central black hole.
In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing.
If so, the B-flat pitch of the sound wave, 57 octaves below middle-C, would have remained roughly constant for about 2.5 billion years.
Far from being ‘dead’, the space element of the universe that take up 95 percent of the volume of the universe is a throbbing, filled-with-activity entity. It is filled with magnetism, electricity, radiation, sounds beyond our hearing, sights beyond our eyes. Only now is science starting to pick up these sounds while the ancients were aware of it, and its importance, for millennia.
Our ancients - Hindus, practitioners of Islam, Zoroastrians, practitioners of Judaism – all knew of this throbbing element of the universe based on sound. Every mystical approach to god is based on this sound – the endless, boundless sound of the universe. Call it what you may – anhat shabda, the Word, Nada-e-Asmani, Awaz-i-Mustaqim, 'Udgeet' (the song of the Heavenly Regions) or Pranav (OM) – it is the sound of the universe that science is now starting to hear.
The ancient Greek philosophers also mention this sound. Socrates states that he heard within him a sound which took him to indescribable spiritual regions. Pythagoras called it the "Music of the Spheres."
Musica universalis (lit. universal music, or music of the spheres) is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets—as a form of musica (the Medieval Latin name for music). This 'music' is not usually thought to be literally audible, but a harmonic and/or mathematical and/or religious concept. (Wikipedia)
In Buddhism and Hinduism it is believed that one can literally hear this music when one develops siddhis after extensive meditation practice. This siddhi is sometimes called clairaudience, the talent of receiving messages in thoughtform from another frequency or realm. It is considered a form of channelling.
* Clairaudience or clear hearing, is the psychic ability by which the psychic can hear sounds and voices that are not audible to common people.
All ‘scriptures’ or revelations in all religions are based on this universal sound. Thus, stating again, scriptures are not the books that we consider holy but the set of knowledge based on the Universal Sound. In some religions it may be the basis of all revelations, such as Hinduism and Buddhism; or be the basic process by which God can be reached (Sufism and Sikhism); or play only a part in the overall set-up, as in Christianity.
In Hinduism, the Universal Sound is the basis of every religious process – the pranav (Om recitation), the mantras, the naamasmaran. This sound is the basis of all our original ‘religious’ books, the shrutis. The name for revelation in Sanskrit is Shruti, which means hearing. The revelation of god is ‘heard’ in the sound of the universe.
All else is either cultural or historical or philosophical – a shown by The Laws of Manu, which are not a revelation; they are not Sruti, but only Smriti, which means recollection of tradition. As are the Puranas, the Brahmanas (not to be confused with Brahman, or the Brahmin caste), Agamas, etc.
Only the Vedas are considered shruti – the Vedas are apauruseya "not human compositions", being supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called shruti ("what is heard").
Even the Upanishads and Arayanaks (forest books) are considered philosophical speculation, not really revealed scriptures, although they are part of the Vedas.
For the earnest seeker, God provides a personalised Gita as good as what Krishna provided for Arjun. One has to prepare himself/herself for receiving this Gita – this sound of the universe – by recitation of Om, namasmarana, etc.
This personal Geet emanates from the Universal Sound, the Udgeet or Song of the heavenly regions. It another way of saying that a seeker of spirituality has to align or harmonise himself/herself to the Universal Sound first before ‘receiving’ enlightenment.
The Udgeet is divine energy, which regulates the entire functioning of the universe. It is the Pranav, the Om/Aum and, by reciting it with awe and reverence, you link yourself to this energy. Thus are you part of the geet of the universe, a part of the udgeet.
Endnotes
The Shastras (scriptural directives) direct and counsel everyone. People yield to delusion and become one with the darkness caused by false values and attachment to the unreal, the “me” and “mine”. But scripture is the mother; she does not give up. She persists and pursues; she reminds people of their goal in order to ensure that they will be saved. One need not drink the entire ocean to know its taste; placing just one drop on the tongue is enough. Similarly, it is impossible to understand all the contents of the scriptures. It is enough if one grasps the important lesson that is elaborated therein and puts that lesson into practice. The lesson is: Constant thought of God.
- Satya Sai Baba
Sound in general is an integral component of the universe/s – some of it can heard, a whole lot beyond the scope of our instruments of hearing - the ears. A good example is ultrasound, the cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing (which is approximately 20 kilohertz). The production of ultrasound is used in many different fields, typically to penetrate a medium and measure the reflection signature or supply focused energy, for example sonography which produces pictures of fetuses in the womb.
Within everyone there is a subtler force, an inner vibration named Vital Air (Prana). The mind (Manas) within is subtler still, and deeper and subtler than the mind is the intellect (Vijnana). Beyond the intellect, people have in them the subtlest sheath of spiritual bliss (Ananda).
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