In Hinduism, the mind is a double-edged sword. It is the centre of all we consider either good or evil. In contrast to philosophies that separate us from God, where good or evil is attributed to external agents, in Vedanta the mind is, in reality, the creator of everything.
This is the one concept of Hinduism that is hardest to get one’s head around – that the world as we know is unreal in actuality, and that all we experience is only true to a certain extent and no more. It is this one concept of Maya and the subterfuge of the mind that finally stops us from truly realising our true self. In most cases, it is much easier to just think of God as someone or something external and attribute characteristics to him/her/it and get on with life.
The unreality of the universe is not outright unreal. It is relatively unreal, that is, unreal compared to the reality of the foundation or the basis of the universe. Thus it is called mithya – unreal real. It is this concept of the unreality of our reality that people from time immemorial have butted their heads against, some with success and others with despair.
All schools of philosophies in Hinduism, from dualism (dwaitham) to non-dualism (adwaitham) to special approaches to adwaitham (Vishist Adwaitham) agree on the universe being unreal. Only the approach they adopt in illustrating this unreality differs or only the method they offer in overcoming this unreality differs.
Thousands of years ago, our ancients broke down how the mind works, and what it can do for us (or against us) depending on the control we have over it.
In life, we humans go through our ‘reality’ based on our reaction to stimuli from our environment. The stimuli is sorted out by our senses and our brains and presented to the mind for decision-making, for storage as memory and for stitching together the mosaic of our lives.
This sorting out is initiated by the senses (sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell) which send electrical impulses to the brain for collating into either a visual picture, a memory or an action response which ‘we’ as the mind/personality/ego decide to act on. In general, this process is supposed to follow the basic input, process, output method of dealing with everyday things.
But not quite, since the information has to be fed into a background and shot off in the appropriate zone to find a collaborative piece for it to make any sense. That means we already have a field of information that we need to relate new stimuli for it to work at all. New material without a corresponding fill-in in our brain puts us in a panicky state and this is clearly seen in babies, who need to be introduced to new things gradually.
The ancients went a bit further than most when delving into the workings of the mind. They started with ten senses, five of action and five of mental understanding. The five senses of action – the karmendriyas (Karma/Indriyas ) – are the five elements that make us act – eliminating, reproducing, moving, grasping and speaking. The five sense of understanding (sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell) are called the jnanendriyas (jnana/Indriyas).
In all philosophies of Hinduism, the senses are deemed as unreliable. What you sense is not the truth or reality. It is only the sum of what we receive through our senses and this will vary according to what our minds are attuned to.
So, right from the start, we are duped by the senses because they are designed only to take in/receive information to the limits of their function and can do no more than what is demarcated as their boundaries. They do not present the world/universe as it really is, only as what they perceive the world to be. And they can be defective (see note below on synaesthesia).
And it doesn’t get any better. The mind, that elusive thing called manas in Sanskrit, has its own agenda. In the first instance, the manas is ruled by one or the other of the trigunas - Tamas, Rajas and Satthwa. It is this triple strand of attributes or qualities that determine how we respond to any given situation. The trigunas are tamas (indolence/dullness), rajasic (fieriness or active) and satthwa (balanced or pure) gunas.
The closest English translations we have of this gunas is ‘attributes’ or ‘qualities’ but it does not explain everything. In lay terms the gunas tinge our minds, and either ‘force’ or ‘allow’ it to make decisions based on a preset ranges of habits or behaviour. ‘Forced’ in that the conditioning is so great that the individual has no chance of making a decision other than what is stored up. This can be called a character trait or tendency. Or that overpowering impulse that you have to give in to.
‘Allowed’ in the sense that when one has worked at making the conditionings more malleable, one can make a decision that can go against our instinctual behaviour (against that reaction of our mind that is so conditioned so as to appear as our innate nature). This is achieved by rational analysis of one’s own self – one of the hardest endeavour ever taken by man.
It is our mind, then, which decides based on how we are tinged in our personality.
Tamas, Rajas and Satthwa. Modern day researchers talk of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, with the latter seen as being same as the unconscious mind by some and as a separate entity from the unconscious mind by others.
The mind, according to the ancients, is made up of our unconscious mind, the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. What we in daily lives say is the conscious mind is actually the subconscious mind that the ancients talk of.
For example, we can be unconsciously swayed in the way we act or make a decision based on an external factor. Rather than our instincts coming in play or we being aware of what we are doing, external factors continually prime us in making a decision in which a judgement is passed without any analysis on our part. This comes from our subconscious mind which operates when we are awake and in action mode but of which we are not aware of.
New studies by psychologists at Yale, based on experiments to alter people’s judgments, have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
These reactions have been analysed to the nth degree and are most apparent in how marketing ‘helps’ us in making choice – through advertising and other marketing tactics. These subliminal tactics are part of our everyday lives, employed by our own selves in reacting to both overt and subtle stimuli.
The autopilot mode takes care of a very large percentage of our waking lives. While there are many things our lives that need concentration – from shaving to crossing the road to eating - many of these activities, because of their repetitive nature, are shunted off to the subconscious. How many of us can recall how we crossed the road, or how we ate this morning? Or how we hold the razor when we shaved? How do sportspeople continually keep making those amazing shots, or the perfect dive? How do people have a gut feeling that is spot on? Or never forget how to ride a bike or drive a car? The list is endless. And all are forms of our subconscious mind.
On the other hand, the conscious mind as demarcated by the ancients is one of concentration and awareness. This is called being mindful.
The conscious mind comes into play when there is a need to concentrate, to bring about a situation where all our abilities are required. This means we are very much aware of what we are doing and how we are doing and we are storing away this experience as something new and unique, or important to us.
In creating our reality, the mind uses all three states of consciousness, but with more emphasis on the unconscious minds.
Some researchers say the human unconscious mind resides along the spine and the nub of the brain, which is also called the reptilian brain (reptilian complex/R-complex). This part of the brain is enclosed by the mammalian brain (the paleomammalian complex (limbic system)) and both of these are covered by the human brain (neomammalian complex (neocortex). Please note that presently this theory of brain triune is accepted as true only by a smaller section of the scientific community.
And it is this lower brain that is the dominant power of our minds and which lends us our animal ways. It probably is the basis of the self-deluding, self-indulgent power that the ancients said was a mix of moha and maya; a power that leads to ego-preening, fault-shifting, making allowances for ourselves and those important to us, of hidden subjectivity that one can’t acknowledge and rejecting that which will not fit into our framework of references.
This deluding power is a mixture of both individual and cultural conditioning, a nurturing of ideals, creeds, traditions that aims to do one thing and one thing only – protect the ego, namely the mind and its waves of thoughts. This is the mind baggage that our ancients targeted through the spiritual efforts of sadhana, meditation to raise our awareness from the base level to a level where we could develop our intellect through vivek (discrimination) and vichar (analysis).
The mind, then, creates our personal reality, and each personal reality is based on a ‘background’ reality that is shared by others in the vicinity, or from knowledge factored into that reality through becoming aware of more information.
But none of these reality can be the same. Similar, but never the same as it is all invented inside of individual heads. It has no basis in the external, if an ‘external’ exists.
Science states is this way:
If we look at the nervous system there are basically two functions. One is sensory—the ability to respond to the outside world—and the other is the ability to do something about it, the ability to modify the world. As the nervous system gets more complex in higher animals there's another totally astounding property, which is the ability of the nervous system to invent things inside the head, which it can then make into reality.
- Neuroscientist Rodolfo R. Llinás, Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience at the NYU School of Medicine.
Now this property/aspect of the mind to invent things inside the head and then making it our reality is what the ancients concentrated on. What this means is that we have a field of awareness inside of us, based on information we have stored up in the years we have experienced and we see this as the field of operations. Like the operating system in a computer, it is the RAM in the background that can make computing possible.
The triune, the trinity, the trimurti is an ongoing element of Hinduism and the ancients were spot-on in determining the brain/mind function according this tri-sectioning. The tamas or conditioned element is said to be found in the instinctive reptilian mind, the active element or rajasic bhava (attitude) is played out in daily life in the subconscious mind while man finds the truth of things/purpose of life only through the balanced approach of the satthwic attitude. The satthwic attitude comes about when the mind or manas is motivated by the buddhi or intellect and is in a state of mindfulness.
A higher stage of this conscious mind is called Constant Integrated Awareness (Prajnanam) - when one is mindful of everything in creation. In fact it is said that one achieving this state is God himself or herself, as stated in the mahavakya Prajnanam Brahman (Consciousness is God).
We call this the super-conscious mind – that which is aligned to the divine/cosmic awareness. This is where the reality of the world is known, where the cosmos and you become the same, in which your true identity is discovered.
Swami Vivekananda “criticises most popular religious ideas to the extent that they are based on faith and belief alone (which is mind-based), rather than direct personal experience (which goes beyond the mind)”. In his search of God, the Swami tested gurus by asking if they had a direct experience of god. Ramakrishna Paramhansa said he had, and Vivekananda accepted it as true based on the conviction with which it was stated.
This direct perception is what the ancients urge people towards – to know the divine, the truth or the reality through realisation. Call it enlightenment or anything, the direct perception is the final step in all religions. Because it goes beyond the limits of the mind, it is accepted as the true way of discovering that “which by knowing, everything else is known”.
It is not easy, this discovering of the self. Through meditation and control of sense, it can come about. The ancients gave some ideas of how this can be done.
Laya, Vikshepa, Kashaya and Rasasvada are the other four obstacles to getting this direct experience. Laya is sleepiness, when the mind in a state of quietude brings on sleepiness to counter the prolonged inactivity it is subjected to.
Vikshepa is excessive tossing of mind from one object to another object, the making of castles in the air or holding conversations with one’s own self. This is the excessive monkey-nature of the mind.
Kashaya is Goodha Vasana (hidden subtle desires) which one never thought were there and the unconscious ambitions within the mind. They can take endless shapes.
Finally, Rasasvada is the bliss of Savikalpa Samadhi (lower Samadhi). This itself is an obstacle so long as it prevents you from enjoying the Highest Nirvikalpa Bliss. Vichara (analysis), viveka (discrimination), Pranayama, further earnestness and struggle in meditation will remove the above four obstacles.
Notes
A person bound by objective desires will try in various ways to fulfil them. He becomes a slave to his senses and their pursuits. But if he withdraws the senses from the world and gets control over their master, the mind, and engages that mind in thapas (penance), then he can establish Swa-rajya or Self-mastery or independence over himself. Allowing the senses to attach themselves to objects is what causes bondage. When the mind that flows through the senses towards the outer world is turned inwards and is made to contemplate on the Atma, it attains liberation or Moksha. – Satya Sai Baba
Synaesthesia - Sensory connections can even be crossed: One of the ways that it is easy for us to understand the unreliability of the senses is by considering the neurological disorder called synaesthesia. With this disorder, a person's brain connections are different from the typical. When, for example, light comes in the eyes (normally used for sight), the neurological connections might be to the smelling centers of the brain. Thus, one might experience smell when looking at certain objects, or may hear some particular color. How very different would be our descriptions of external reality if all human brains operated this way. (It is estimated that approximately 1 in 25,000 people naturally experience synaesthesia.)
The triune brain consists of the reptilian complex, the paleomammalian complex (limbic system), and the neomammalian complex (neocortex), viewed as structures sequentially added to the forebrain in the course of evolution. The triune brain hypothesis became familiar to a broad popular audience through Carl Sagan's Pulitzer prize winning 1977 book The Dragons of Eden. Though embraced by some psychiatrists and at least one leading affective neuroscience researcher, the model never won wide acceptance among comparative neurobiologists.
Dr. Paul MacLean, Chief of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. says there are essentially three brains, each of which developed during a particular stage of evolutionary history. The earlier part of the brain, found in reptiles, could be called the reptilian brain, or R-complex. In mammals another structure appeared: the paleomammalian brain, with a new range of particularly mammalian behavior--care of the young, affection, mutual grooming, etc. This is the home of the limbic system and the capacity for feeling and emotion, for the sense of smell and sexuality. With the development of human beings came the most recent evolutionary structure, the neomammalian brain -- with a hugely expanded neocortex in the prefrontal lobes. The neomammalian or "thinking" brain brought with it the capacity for language, visualization, and symbolic skills unique to human beings.
As Vivekananda said: Imagine if you had an additional sense, an electric one – how would you see the world then? How indeed? Many people attest to seeing auras, that electrical or magnetic emanation that comes from every living thing. Many see halos and various other things. These people either have developed their senses to a higher level or are in possession of a ‘sense’ in addition to the ones all regular people have.
Showing posts with label manas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manas. Show all posts
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The scriptures versus the interpretation of the scriptures.
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).
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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