“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
Nikola Tesla
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1-4, KJV, Holy Bible
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
“What science cannot declare, art can suggest; what art suggests silently, poetry speaks aloud; but what poetry fails to explain in words, music can express.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Whoever knows the mystery of vibrations indeed knows all things.”
A Copernican shift occurs in one’s spiritual life and understanding when one awakens to a vista of the inner and outer universes as a dynamic, living process with activity as the fundamental atom of creation arising out of a sea of quiescence and silence. One might go so far as to say the world can be represented in a binary fashion, the “1”s being vibration and the “0”s being stillness. From this fundamental axiom, the entirety of creation can be built up, just as in the computer world, sophisticated programs capable of many things all grow from this simple 1/0 binary dichotomy. In this understanding, sound and light become the primary carrier waves of spiritual imprints on the face of creation, and these grosser energetic manifestations sensible to all of us have their correlates in the inner universe as well. The language of energy, and particularly of sound and music, then becomes a particularly apt way to speak of spiritual matters. When we follow Tesla’s intuition and begin to conceive of a world composed of the interplays, both harmonious and discordant, of various waveforms and frequencies, much immediately stands revealed in stark relief. The language of music in particular captures the nuances of this new world view well – terms and concepts such as harmony, tone, rhythm, resonance, and dynamics all translate very well in considering and meditating on the spiritual ground of manifestation. More importantly, this understanding begins to explain why sound is so evocative for us and music induces such a deep vital joy in us, touching our emotions in a way that few other artforms can match.
Further understanding arises from recognition that this perspective is not restricted to the observable universe while we somehow remain segregated apart from it as static entities beholding the play from afar. We, too, are expressions of vibrations in our very essence. You might go so far as to say we are each standing waveforms in the universal plenum – arising for a time as a note held forth in a symphony, then gradually decaying and lapsing back into the silence from which we arose. So what paths does this lead us down in considering who we are?
The science of mantra arising in Hinduism and later exported to Buddhism and other Eastern traditions is premised on exactly this understanding. The key to mantra practice (japa, as it is frequently called in Hinduism) is feeling the vibration induced by the mantra in the core of one’s being. What is effective for an individual can vary from one to another. But on the whole, this is indeed a royal road one can travel on the spiritual journey.
A mantra (Pali: manta) or mantram (Devanagari: मन्त्रम्)[2] is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers. Some mantras have a syntactic structure and literal meaning, while others do not.
The earliest mantras were composed in Vedic Sanskrit in India. At its simplest, the word ॐ (Aum, Om) serves as a mantra, it is believed to be the first sound which was originated on earth. Aum sound when produced creates a reverberation in the body which helps the body and mind to be calm. In more sophisticated forms, mantras are melodic phrases with spiritual interpretations such as a human longing for truth, reality, light, immortality, peace, love, knowledge, and action. Some mantras without literal meaning are musically uplifting and spiritually meaningful.
The use, structure, function, importance, and types of mantras vary according to the school and philosophy of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. In Japanese Shingon tradition, the word Shingon means mantra.
Mantras serve a central role in tantra. In this school, mantras are considered to be a sacred formula and a deeply personal ritual, effective only after initiation. In other schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism, initiation is not a requirement.
Wikipedia, Mantra, Accessed 6-15-2023
This is a large topic, with many facets. I’ve just scratched the surface of it here. More will follow.
Via Perennis 