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PAGE SEVENTEEN; FEATURE SERIES -- Page 1
Once again, our own Mr Bliss takes us for a walk through unrecorded history. It is, however, a shame no one has a tape machine because there is certainly some recording to be done. In part 2 of his deep examination of the ritual roots of Vedic India, Mr Bliss puts his earphones in and listens to the sounds of silence.
CULTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Pt. 2
Communion with the Gods has forever been one of man's most lofty aspirations. And to gain Their attention and favour, every possible device has been employed. None, however, is more potent that the Yagyas that are designed to entice the Gods down to earth through a combination of rituals, offerings, chanting and powerful transcendental prayers. In the second part of his penetrating look at the key elements that make yagyas one of the most enduring of sacred practices, Mr Bliss examines the use of sound in the equation. And decides it is a case of hear and now.
IN THE BEGINNING WAS
THE WORD
According to Vedic teaching, the regular movement of the world order and all its activities converge on one aim — to foster life. This is the cosmic in-breath and out-breath, the essence of sacrificial exchange, whereby the sacrificial downward movement of the One towards the earth is balanced by the sacrificial upward movement of the world towards the One. In this way yagya, the sacrificial fire ritual, mimics the ritamamritam — the eternal law by which cosmic order is maintained — the law of give and take, of receiving and releasing, obtaining and returning, the law of exchange and balance. And all for the purpose of more enhanced life, greater evolution and more joy.
....If there is one essential element in this eternal process, it is the sacred wisdom of sound — a wisdom known as Nada Brahma in the Indian tradition. All life is essentially sound, everything in the universe is manifest sound, the vibrations of sound structure the physical form of all things and objects in the universe. As the opening of the Gospel of St. John puts it: 'In the beginning was the word' (in the original Greek, it describes the 'word' as 'logos,' which is the creative vibration of sound) 'and the word was with God and the Word was God.' Thus the universe is ‘the Word made flesh.’
....Similarly, in Vedic ritual, the chanting of those primordial sounds that lie at the causal level of life acts to maintain the physical universe in harmony. We are told that: ‘The Gods revel in the sacred song of rita.’ (Rig Veda 1.47.)
....Thus the commonest Sanskrit word for the Absolute, that creative consciousness from .which everything springs, is Brahman, which comes from the root BRI meaning not only ‘to grow, to expand’ but also ‘to praise.' So Brahman is the Absolute, the macrocosmic energy which is ever expanding and creating forms. And these forms exist to sing the hymn of praise to their Creator. On the microcosmic level, the human being, made in God’s image, has an invisible and subtle physiology comprising a network of thousands of nadis, or channels, through which the life energy (prana) flows. The word nadi is related to nada, and means not only ‘stream’ but 'sounding.' So God is sound, sound is God; God is the world, the world is sound: and all is Brahman.
....The best known Vedic texts in the West, the Upanishads, deal much with Brahman. As the Taittiriya Upanishad puts it:
Brahman is the Absolute.
Everything that exists is Brahman, the Sacred Word, which cannot itself be explained.
It is unconditional and without properties.
It is the world-soul that contains all the individual souls, as the ocean contains all the individual drops of water that comprise it.
Brahman is life,
Brahman is joy, Brahman is the Void . . . .
Truly, Joy is the Void,
Truly, the Void is Joy.
....Millennia before modern physics and physiology belatedly came to the same realisation, the Vedic people had realised that as we are bundles of vibration constantly effected by other vibrations. That being so it was inevitable that conclusion would be reached that it is possible to influence those effects. One of the most clearly defined and easily witnessed vibrations is that of sound.
....Thus it was that the science of mantra came into being. Mantras are sounds whose vibrations resonate with the vibrations of our nerves, ganglia, cells and beyond our apparent physical limits, with all the cosmos harmonising and invigorating all levels of life, gross and subtle, seen and unseen. The very flesh of our body is delicately kneaded with sound, and the result is that human consciousness becomes opened to the subtle levels of existence to which we are normally blind. The great mantra is OM, that primordial sound which contains all others, the cosmic hum at the source of creation, the first stirring of life as the universe expands from its seed in the divine consciousness.
....This idea, central to the Vedic civilisation, was in time to be expressed over and over in various ways throughout the traditions of mystical knowledge the world over — what Aldous Huxley memorably called ‘the perennial philosophy.’ All the ancient traditions were in time to realise and utilise the power of sound. Chanting of the ancient scriptures is central to all the great religions; the ancient Greeks and American Indians used chanting for healing, the Aborigines of Australia use it for telepathic linking over distance in their travels through the outback, the Tibetans and Mongolians developed shamanistic techniques of overtone chanting, by which two notes are sounded simultaneously, as a way to liberate blocks in the psyche and open up to higher planes of reality. The foundation of plainsong Gregorian chant, the beginnings of Western music, is the daily lectio divina (chanting of the holy scripture) when a short passage is read slowly and with full attention then silently repeated syllable by syllable as a way to open up the innermost heart. Even in Islam, the youngest of the great world religions, and thus furthest in time from the days of the vedic civilisation, chanting of the Koran is the highest art form and the supreme act of worship.
....The highest type of sound perceptible to humans is that of the four Vedas: the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Artharva Veda. Western scholarship dates these texts from about 1500 BC, but they started out and still are to a certain extent essentially an oral tradition and are said to have existed for aeons before being committed to writing. That the Vedas were cognised perhaps millennia before they were written down is not important for the truths they contain are eternal and, therefore, impervious to time.
....It is not easy at this distance in time, geography and culture to fathom the deepest meanings of the Vedas but they seem to deal with subtle perceptions into different levels of reality, perceptions that the Sages reached while in deep meditation. The early Western scholars, many of whom were conditioned by a Christian worldview that saw other religions as primitive, partial and pagan, took the Vedas to be little more than early man’s stuttering wonder at the marvels of nature. This Eurocentric bias persists even to this day among some Western theologians and academics. Added to which, the great antiquity of the Vedas, dating from at least fifteen hundred years before the Old Testament, biased scholars against them in an age when the crude ideas of Darwinian evolutionary theory (that whatever is later in time must be more developed and advanced) were very much in the intellectual air.
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