Is there anybody out there?
Lyrics, “Is there Anybody Out There” & “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd – The Wall
Hello?… Is there anybody in there? … Is there anyone home?
Who among us has drifted away from a prayer life because of the growing feeling that there was no One listening, that our prayers seemed to have no real or noticeable effect, that we were just talking to ourselves, whether aloud or silently, to no real end? There are those of us fortunate enough not to have lived in this lonely aridity, who feel a connection with the Supreme through their hearts and know that their prayers are received and acted on. A little bit more on these fortunate ones later. But I know in my prayer life I certainly felt as the lyrics quoted expressed, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that I had a Eureka moment about it.
What if the reason our prayers seemed to go no further than our lips or our minds was because we were not speaking the same language as Deity? It may be even more amiss than that – perhaps we are not connecting because we are not even on the same wavelength of communication. We humans are funny creatures. Our prowess in the development of language – words, concepts, and abstractions – to communicate meaning to one another can make us solipsistic in thinking that all the realms of universe and nature, seen and unseen, high and low, must of course communicate the same way that we do – through words with meanings, filtered through our mental structures and edifices. How else? We believe that surely God above must be easily accessible through our highest and most cherished faculty, our most unique and defining characteristic as human beings. And so many of us lead with our mind in prayer life – simultaneously our conceit and our blindness. But by doing so, we are thinking of the One as a prime factor when we should be approaching Him/Her from the perspective of the most common factor.
I’m beginning to strongly intuit that communicating with a Higher Power, however we may conceive of that, is at root much more elemental than languaging. John hinted at it in his gospel, when he stated: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos in the original Greek), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” With due acknowledgment of the Christian interpretation of the Word as synonymous with Jesus, I must respectfully disagree. We are talking about a cosmic principle here, not a pre-existent person, however exalted; not a particular being or Deity. That principle in action may have later incarnated as a specific being, but it obscures the point from the outset to consider the principle as a specific person before manifestation. Re-reading John 1:1-5 and replacing every masculine pronoun with a neutral pronoun, the complement of “the vibration,” instantly illuminates and clarifies a mysteriously veiled scriptural reference.
We think meaning is only in words and only conveyed by words, forgetting that language was a later development of the human race, a thinly-painted veil over a seething mass of shifting and roiling phenomena we struggled to capture early on in making sense of the world to one another. The content and meaning of the Word is ultimately irrelevant, or at the least misleading, when considered from within the context of our limited minds and their often frenetic gibberish. So we are invited to look more closely at the roots of languaging. In its essence, the Word is any vibration of energy rising from a background of quiescence or stillness. Within certain frequencies of energy, we perceive that vibration as sound; in other regions of the wavelength map we see it as light. Even feeling and sensation are fields of subtle vibration, and the capacity to receive those vibrations, particularly through the heart, has its own energetic domain on the energy spectrum. But there exist many other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum outside our perceptual boundaries that are also alive with activity and “expression.” Expressions that resonate together, on the same wavelength with similar amplitudes, become communications. The Word is a harmonious symphony going on around us at all times, on an infinite variety of scales.
Hazrat Inayat Khan, a prominent Sufi of the early 20th century said it thusly:
{Man] begins to see that he gains power by sound, that in every vowel, word, composition, a certain effect or element is hidden, because life and the whole of manifestation is the outcome of what may be called vibrations. The scientist today says that life is motion, but the mystic has said so for thousands of years. At the same time he has worked with what the Hindus call Nada Brahma: sound-God or vibration-God. He has worked with life according to the law of vibrations, and has seen what great power vibration has.
This is the heart of the language of Deity – the energetic pulse or pulses of “expression” analogous to human speech, but at the most elemental level. Think frequency; think vibration: the carrier wave of communication in the celestial realms. If we can tap into that carrier wave, we can learn to elevate our prayerful communications in a language that Deity can hear (or better hear, for the fortunate ones) and respond to. For those of us who have been leading with our minds, our cherished words are too puny and weak to do this; their wattage is microscopic and their broadcasts don’t get much beyond the broadcast station; those who live by and through their hearts have a head start on those who live by their minds in this respect. The heart is actually an excellent example of vibratory potency; think about it: it pulses hundreds of thousands of times in our lives. It is the strongest electromagnetic organ in the body by far. Prayers from the heart are already expressed in the language that can be heard; the words expressing them are merely incidental.
For those of us leading with the mind, by finding a way to actually connect, we can be assured that our cries and pleas, gratitudes and rejoicings are actually heard in the halls of Heaven and responded to in ways that let us know we have been heard. For those of us already leading with the heart, further vibration can only enhance and amplify the communication. The way to connect or to amplify an existing connection is by learning to induce vibrations into our languaging, and even more – to induce it in our very sense of self. This is the science of Mantra Yoga and more broadly, chanting, done across many religious traditions. This is what Paul meant in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 about “Pray(ing) without ceasing.” It’s about learning to vibrate oneself so as to BE the communication, not merely to say or think it; the vocalizations of mantras and chants teach us how to do so.
Hallelujah! The prayers and petitions can be heard. That indeed is Good News. We just need to learn to speak into the cosmic microphone!
I invite you to explore this topic in some depth across numerous religious traditions on this page:
Via Perennis 