An excerpt from the chanpter on Listening in my book "Wisdom of the Senses".

The Resonating Power of Sound
by John Herlihy

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. (Keats)

Could we live without the sweet scent of the lilac or the pungency of sage and still attain the paradise? No doubt. Could we pass through life without the benefit of sight and the glorious visions the world has to offer? Perhaps because many blind people are undoubtedly in heaven. Could we forfeit our ability to taste the culinary delights on offer at the dinner table? Undoubtedly, although not without regret. Could we forgo the sound of the voices that every created thing gives utterance to and accept the silence that only outer space has to offer? The answer lies with those deaf mutes that pass through life in the silence of a silent world.

When we think of the five human senses, we think of them in terms of what they have to offer. When we wish to appreciate their vital connection with our lives, for example, we need only think of what it would be like without the sight of our eyes or the music of our ears or the delectable smells and taste on offer to the human connoisseurs by their sublime temptations. What we could not live effectively without and still attain the paradise is the perceptions of the inner eye, the aromatic smells of every created thing that warn us of their true essence, the listening that transcends sheer sound in lifting the human spirit beyond earthly realms, the taste of an experience that opens a secret door to the other side of reality, the ability to channel the inner world of sentiment and emotion through the sense of touch in connecting us with the world. All of the inner senses reclaim the intuitions and insights that the outer senses have given up in their superficial allegiance to the physical world, pretending that what they see, hear, taste, touch and smell represents the only reality that exists and that we humans need to surrender to.

There exists a natural tension between silence and sound that highlights a similar tension that exists between the cacophony of the world and the silence of the celestial spheres. We live in a world of sound to the extent that virtually every created thing both animate and inanimate has a voice that gives something of their essence away and portends their true nature. What complements the true nature of this world and all its physical forms refer back to archetypes and serve as symbols—whether through image, gesture, or sound—of a higher reality of the spiritual world that transcends the physical plane of existence. The song of the lark and the call of the peacock are distinctive and unique to these animals and summarizes through sound something of their essence. The lilting beauty of the lark in stark contrast to the melancholy cry of the peacock represents an experience that only highlights the unique nature of these animals. Trees rustle in the wind; hinges creek on their doorframe; the drum resounds; the bell resonates. Cicadas create a storm of sound on a hot, summer afternoon. Frogs chirp their distinctive burp in country swamps. Thunder complements lightning while lightning itself is the silent, fiery sword of heaven, taming the earth and terrorizing everyone who inhabits it with grand displays of light streaking across the heavens as though the sky itself were but a pond to reflect the spectacular display of God’s power. Both these artifacts of silence and sound terrorize the world with their magnificent show of sound and their accompanying effect of resonance on the ear and mind.

The question is: Are we listening? After all, it is possible to hear something without actively engaging the substance of the sound. Isn’t that why we distinguish people who are good “listeners” from people who pretend to hear, but who do not actively listen to the import of the communication? Sound management strategists now consider the ability to be a good listener to be crucial in the effective interaction between management and their human resources. I once had a close friend who was an audiophile. He spent thousands of dollars on state of the art electro-static speakers that were stand-alone that looked like Chinese room dividers. He played all the great classics from Bach to Wager and was an astute opera lover, having the ability to recognize a singer’s voice within seconds of listening to it. However, I came to the conclusion after years knowing him and observing his obsession with his speakers and the audio support system that fed the sound to the speakers, that he never actually listened to the music. He was too busy listening to the “quality” of the sound and moving the speakers around the room for supposedly optimum effect.

There is no doubt that there are objects and instruments in the world that establish resonant cadences that directly affect the human sensibility and touch the human heart with their infecting and melancholy sound. The eerie melody of a distant horn evokes feelings of longing and loss as its reverberations make their way over the edge of some distant horizon to reach our expectant ears with its evocative music. The intoning of a church bell across the rooftops of a pastoral village resurrects feelings of reverence and praise that lie sequestered within our beings as a remembrance of the golden age of the primordial era when humanity had direct perception of the other side of reality and never questioned the possibility of the world of the spirit as the true counterpoint to the physical reality that we presently worship today as the only reality. The sounding of the church bell contains its own prayer in addition to the prayers that rise up from the parishioners within the church, sending its solemn resonance through the air and into human ears as a faint reminder of their true nature and their place within the design of the universe. We readily respond to the sound of some distant bell because we contain within ourselves an inner bell that when intoned sends reverberations deep in the ground of the human soul with its message of harmony and truth. The rhythmic percussion of a drum, generated by a taut skin membrane spread tightly across a piece of wood, sends waves through the ground, up through the feet, and into the heart of the listener with its intense pulsating beat, in frank imitation of the beating of the human heart. Drums are used for percussion and setting the pace for musical melodies, but they have also been used down through history as a form of communication. The tribes of Africa were adept at using talking drums for communication in the same manner that the Red Indians of North America used smoke signals to communicate effectively with their comrades across vast distances.

In addition, pure sound evolved into sacred sound for traditional peoples down through history. If we wish to understand the profound repository of spiritual practices that traditional people had available to them in earlier time periods, it is necessary to reflect firstly upon the single, most important factor that underlies all rites and rituals, namely the magic and power of words through sound, indeed through sacred sounds, that enliven and substantiate all prayer, meditation, invocation, incantations, scripture reading, mantras, and recitation of all sacred formulas and epithets. Modern humanity cannot even imagine how profoundly the so-called pagan, primitive man experienced the magic of sheer sound, words, and speech. We cannot imagine, for example, to what degree and depth the enormous influence certain sounds had on the culture and the way of life of earlier civilizations, especially in the religious aspects of those societies and how they expressed themselves spiritually through sacred words and phrases. We cannot imagine it simply because we no longer believe in the implicit power of sound and we no longer value the efficacy of the sacred word. The power of sound and the efficacy of the revealed word could continue to have a purpose and a meaning for modernite individuals if only they had the imagination and the inclination to listen and feel the hidden power contained within the sacred and primordial vibrations of certain words and sounds.

The value and power of sound, its secrets and its latent magical forces, had been well understood by the seers, shamans, and practitioners of former, more traditional times. The Rishis who inhabited the slopes of the Himalayas, the Magi of Iran, the adepts of Mesopotamia, the priests of Egypt, and the philosophers of Greece and the mystics of the Arab world all understood and used the power of sound in their spiritual practices in order to establish a rhythm and a vibration through chanting, incantations and music that transcended the literal word in order to penetrate into the mysterious and magical forces that actually form the key to the riddles of creation and creativeness, while at the same time revealing something about the nature of things and of the phenomena of life. Pathagoras, an initiate of Eastern wisdom and a founder of one of the most influential schools of mystic philosophy in the West, spoke of the "harmony of the spheres" in which every created thing down to the atom produced a particular sound because of its movement and its rhythm, creating a vibration that was unique unto itself. The idea of a creative sound was perpetuated through the teachings of the divine logos . The tradition and knowledge of the creative sound lived on in India through various Yoga-systems, found refinement in the Schools of Buddhism, and has been preserved in theory as well as in practice, in the countries of Mahayana Buddhism from Tibet to Japan.

Even modern science has discovered that sounds actually create impressions that can be made visible. We have only to think of both the physical and mental effects that sound has on the human entity to realize that a spiritual effect also exists as a potential force within humanity. The roll of thunder can raise the hair on the back of the arm and head; a shout can cause goose bumps on the body; a scream has the power to curdle blood. A whisper can tempt, enthral, soothe, convey secrets or create intimacy. A soulful cry can create fear, terror, sadness, joy, even spiritual ecstasy, while the human sigh can reflect sorrow, satisfaction, frustration, exhaustion, and resignation. There is, when you explore the possibilities, a limitless capacity of sounds to create "states or stations" of experience that reach deep into the interior of the human being and into the deep stream of life itself through the mysterious power of sound. Snake charmers, found mostly in India but also in other parts of the world such as in Marrakech, Morocco, play their pungi, a simple wind instrument in order to attract cobras and other snakes from the vicinity. The cobra seems to forget the instinct to protect itself from the attack of man or other creatures. The cobra begins to raise its head and move it right and left. As long as the eerie melody of the instrument is played, the cobra remains mesmerized and continues to move to and fro in a kind of ecstasy, impervious to the outside world.