In the East it is believed by the Vedantists that the creation originated from what they call ‘word’, ‘sound.’ The same idea has prevailed among the Semitic religions from the earliest times. This word is Ism-i Az’m.
The mystery of this word is explained in the form of stories in the Arabian Thousand and One Nights, stories which have always appealed to the minds of readers both in the East and in the West, although most of those who read them do not discern the mystery hidden within them. To them they are just stories.
However, the name of the Word changes. Vedantists call it Nada Brahma, ‘word-creator’; then there is Ism-i Az’m or ‘word of power’, and other Biblical and Quranic expressions. The fact that the mysterious always attracts leads some people to make things out to be mysterious which are not, and thus they profess to know a secret which others cannot know. Here there is the greatest opportunity for deluding the unwary, but when one has come to understand the mystery of this word, one understands the mystery of all religion, for all religion lies in this one word Ism-i Az’m.
Modern science is coming near to understanding this. On the one hand Professor Bose* speaks about pulsations and shows that vibrations are apparent even in the vegetable kingdom, so that they can be recorded in graphic formulas; and on the other hand investigators have demonstrated the forms which the different vowels make on a glass plate, so that one sees various designs. The forms of plant and leaves can also be shown in this way. On a recent visit to Paris I met a great scientist, Professor Frossard, who for years has been investigating the effect of the vibrations of the voice upon different parts of the human body, and who has been able to demonstrate these various effects scientifically.
However, yogis had worked with sound for thousands of years before any such researches were thought of or undertaken. The school of Mantra Yoga is concerned with this science. The one belief that started this was that vibration is creative and that the whole universe was produced by sound, by the Word; as it says in the Bible, first was sound then was light. This contains the mystical thought that one may understand vibrations as spreading in two directions; when audible they become intelligible, and coming from the form of the Being they become visible. But even if the Word were neither audible nor visible it would have the capacity of being both. If our power of sight and hearing is not enough to help us, it is because the reality is beyond and above the range of our sight and hearing, and therefore it is not intelligible to us; we are not aware of it. But if our sight and hearing allowed us to hear and see it, we would know that all life is vibration.
There is another consideration. Whatever is continuous disappears from our perception, whereas we become aware of anything that is momentarily tangible. This is shown when we start on a voyage. At first the noise of the engines is almost unbearable, but as we go on we get accustomed to it, so that after four or five or perhaps ten days we find that we do not notice the noise any more, while at the same time we can hear the least whisper of a friend speaking to us. The continuous noise is now no longer audible unless we stop to pay attention to it.
It is just like this with the whole mechanism of the universe. It is audible all the time; it is visible both externally and inwardly. As it is said in the Psalms, speaking of the heavens, ‘There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Their sound is gone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.’ But we are so concerned with our own activities, with the things we ourselves are interested in, that our consciousness can only retain these and pays no attention to all the other things, loud as they are.
*Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), a physicist, botanist and chemist who studied, among other things, the action of microwaves in plant tissues.
To be continued…