The world made of sound: Whitehead and pythagorean harmonia in the context of Veda and the science of mantra

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University of Connecticut’ PYTHAGOREAN HARMONICS IN THE CONTEXT OF VEDA AND THE SCIENCE OF MANTRA fel A. Sound, Vibration and Mantra Revisited: The Birth of Sound From Vibration The Supreme Devi Sarasvati, Mother of the Vedas and of the Worlds, manifests as a totality of name (Nama) and form (Rupa) which literally: is the appearing Universe. She is Mother of all possible sounds and, plays them on the Vina, the supreme musical instrument. These Sounds: are the subtle letters and Ideal Sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet, con-sidered by Veda as divine in origin. The Universe itself is said to emerge from the subtle sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet, a Varnamala. or Garland of Letters gross and subtle which functions through the subtle Tattvas (Categories) of creative evolution to excresce into audible sound, light and indeed the entire appearing cosmos. In a profound way, Sarasvati points to Brahman’s evolution into the Divine: Talk of subtle and Ideal Sound (Sabda Vibration) that constitutes; not only words but the created objects (artha) themselves. Sarasvati is the mental apprehension (Pratyaya) of objects, a literal: “going towards’ (saras) the objects in Consciousness that is fundamentally constitutive of the objective world as an aspect of Conscious-: ness. Pure Consciousness (Cit) evolves into an expanding matrix: which is ultimately Cit at every phase. There is nothing but Cit. Veda. broadly captures this emergence as Supreme (Para) to subtle (suksma) to gross (sthula). The Supreme and subtle aspects of creative evolution do not appear. Only the gross aspect appears under the veil of Maya, the obscuring and illusionary power of the Supreme (Pure) Consciousness! 1. Here Veda implies a phenomenology of Consciousness that easily breaks the’ bounds of ordinary western phenomenology by expanding the consideration of consciousness to a Cosmic Consciousness the processes of which are the archetype of creative evolution at every level. No Husserlian epoché or bracketing’ of the world is intended. The so-called furniture of the world is recovered as a cosmic ideation from subtle to gross and there is no concept of ‘matter’: as a contrast to Cosmic Pure Cit. Matter is a gradation within Cit, of evolutionary expansion (Spanda) of Consciousness, a limit

A stirring of Pure Cit from deep within Itself arises as Para (Supreme) and issues into supremely subtle perm anently unhearable initiation of vibratio n as Para-Siva. Para-Siva, though not Supreme is Supremely Subtle, beyond even the five Tattvas of Pure Creation of which the First Category is Siva-Tattva who represen ts the first conscrescence of Siva into extremely subtle vibration, the initiation of subtle heartbeat and musical pulse for what will prog ressively become an appearing Cosmos, Though the Primordial Stirring of the Supreme Brahman begins a Spanda or expansion of the Primo effectively rdial Pure Cit into articulation and evolution, both Brahman and Para-Siva remain Transcendent. Para-Siva is still. Niskala, Niskriya, Asabda and Amanaska, or that is, Without Parts, Without Activity, Beyond Langu age, and Beyond the Reach of Mind. Para-Siva is the initiation of pulse or vibration. Though Sound (Sabda) before itis sound is vibration, there will be no sound per se until Nada (Sound) is attained at Sadasiva-Tattva, and Nada still remains subtle or esoteric at a long remove from the gross, audible sounds of the appearing world order. The conceptual or subtle evolutionary “dist ance” from Para-Siva to Nada is qualitative and nonmeasurable. It is analogically captured as the intitiation of the rolling sound OM which approximates the actual sound accompanying creation. stirring The complete Cosmos is then a and vibrating continuum broadly tracked as Supreme, subtle and gross along a Divine continuum that begin s in Supreme Disappearance, a longhand in great detail for the Bergsonian shorthand of é/an vital in a scenario where everything begin s by a process of begin ning, a true process philosophers picture of organic evolut ion and emergence.? A word about the genealogy of the Tattvas is in order to provide full frame for the picture of concrescence or subtl e phase adumbration that builds an ideal formal vibratory structure, and then projects the order into appearance. The five Pure Tattvas ìn order are Siva-Tattva, Sakti-Tattva, Sadasiva-Tattva, Isvara-Tat tva and Suddha-vidya-Tattva. They are characterized in meditation respectively by Consciousness (Cit), Bliss (Ananda), Being (Sat with Iccha or will 2. dominant), Extreme The projective schema in Veda recovers Bergsonian insights about the excrescenc e of current in the é/an vital with even more systematic rigour than that with which Whitehead intended to recover them in Process and Realit

the sense of God's subtle Knowledge (Jñana), and Action (Kriya in am This (Idam)” emerges Activity). At Sadasiva-Tattva "| (Aham) “| am This’ emerges with with emphasis on “1.” At Isvara-Tattva in the sense of switching the emphasis on the direct object, ‘This’ ha-vidya-Tattva “| am This’ reemphasis to "This am 1.“ At Sudd ct and direct object, as "Jam emerges with an equal emphasis on subje am... ." such that in the subtle this" or better ”/am This am / am This Tattvas there is a balance between Cosmic Consciousness of the five Pure emergence ofthe duality between subject and object and no formal so characteristic of the appearing subject and object and (otherness) and ephemeral world. s (suksma), subject and As this is an ideation in subtle consciousnes mar of creative evolution object are part ofa universal cosmological gram split off as the direct object of where the world is prepared to become d in the emphatic equipoise a complete cosmic sentence, but is still fuse equipoise, Suddha-Vidya-Tattva of subtle stage adumbration. Despite is gradually increased to the retains subtle vibratory character that Sabda (Sound Vibration) and mark of subtle Action (Kriya), subtle nce of "I" (Aham) and “This” artha (object) while yet retaining the bala This” (Idam) in the Cosmic Ideation of “| am subtle form, God's Sadasiva-Tattva is Nada or Sound in extremely is an extremely This an. Talk arising close to the stirring of Brahm evolved from the subtle, though no longer supremely subtle stage, Siva-Tattva and Transcendent Brahman and Para-Siva. It occurs after Sakti-Tattva, but still within the range of the five Pure Tattvas. The five a-Siva. Saktiarises as Pure and thirty one Impure Tattvas arise out ofPar this same continuous the Second Pure Category (Sakti-Tattva) out of the cosmic pulse, as the stirring stream as a further concrescence of lled feminine dynamism. true concrescing dynamis ofthe Cosmos, its so-ca rest The first truly kinetic vibration that arises is Sakti. All the has been initiation of such true kinesthesia. during the emerThe extremely significant Parabindu is initiated to Isvara-Tattva-to gence into duality that occurs from Sadasiva-Tattva of Sabda (Sound Suddha-vidya-Tattva as the gradual concrescence Sadasiva-Tattva. Vibration) into subtle sound (Nada) at The Bindu “drop” in Isvara-Tattva emerges as a supremely subtle (para) “point” or forms a Parabindu that where the equipoise of I-This (Subject-Object) is the “togetherness” later generates an effect-Bindu. The Parabindu

or relation of Nada-Bindu balance as the equipoise of Siva-Sakti and forms a Subtle Trinity of Power, the Trinity arising as the effect or “third” or seed (bija) of Nada-Bindu. : This Trinity can be internally realized both visually and acoustically in the deepening stages of meditation. It is accompanied by a simultane-. ous triangulation and equalateralization in light, sound and kinesthetic feeling: inthe body environment accompanied by the experience of equilibrated transfers across energy ‘fields’ such as sound, light, heat, all of which the Yogi experiences as balanced beyond their opposites. The “‘warmth” and intense calm of vibratory waves in the body can be heard as complex harmonics of esoteric sound arising beyond the paifs of opposites of hot-cold, high-low, weak-strong and so on. The Sixth Tattva and the first Impure Tattva is Maya. It emerges just on the heels of the articulation of subject and object, the hallmark of duality, as a sensing of an "Il" and a “This in such a way that the inherent nonduality of Consciousness is obscured, veiled and enveloped. Maya severs the connection of the subject and direct object in the cosmic sentence and continues an evolution of duality through the rest of the Impure Categories. The following five Categories are in fact Kancukas or Constrictors which limit, narrow and thereby obscure nonduality.2 Maya itself is a Power of Illusion susceptible of the predications of the temporary, or 3. The specific Kancukas are Kala (temporal limitation), Niyati (spatial restriction) Raja (attachment to particular things), Vidya (limited, not Supreme Knowledge), and Kalaa (limited agency). Purusa is next arising as individual Soul enveloped in the five Kancukas geometrically projected around it as an envelope. Next is Prakrti (Higher Nature) as the corresponding envelopment on the side of objects. Both subject and object are thereby severed from each other ina progression into duality. This is ‘‘seeming development‘’ only in the Pure Cit of the non-dual Brahman. Following the creation of these two major envelopes is the evolution of Buddhi (clear intellect), ahamkara (ego individuation), manas (mind), the five _ organs of sense (jñanendriyas), the five organs of action (karmendriyas), the five essences of elements (tanmatras), and the five gross elements (ether, air, fire, water, end earth.). So far as Platonic and Whiteheadean considerations go, a major part of the Forms and Eternal Objects are at the level ‘tanmatras as essences of elements with parallel evolutionary of chains in Light -- and Sound, though they clearly infer the more subtle abstract regions.

namely, there is a time in which it is, a time in which it was not, and a time in which it will be no more. Maya is a limited, dazzling and magnificent achievement of Consciousness, a Dream in full color, articulation, imagination and movement, a Divine Play staged in Cosmic Dream and vibrating grammar. As Prime Dreamer, Brahman remains Supremely Supreme, utterly beyond any movement or articulation whatsoever, and yet utterly connected to creation in exactly the way that Whitehead’s Process God remains integral to the subtle and gross products of creative evolution. Brahman persists as the Eternal and Pure Cit who grounds the creative evolution of Cosmic Body and ‘‘projects’’ it into ‘‘seeming appearance” and ‘‘seeming duality.’' In reality, there is nothing but the nondual Brahman, Supreme (Para) beyond all sound and language, the Soundless, Calm and Quiescent. The classic emptiness of conscious merging into Brahman described by the meditative experiences of Samadhi, Nirvana and Turiya is never asimple nothing, but an emptiness of waves or vibration that rejoins its grounding in Brahman, a Primordial Equipoise of Holy Substance. The realization of Brahman is verifiable in reproducible levels of meditative experience that are carefully described and recorded in the reliable record of meditative realization that is preserved in Sanskrit culture.* 4. The Nyaya-Vaisheshika School lists four valid means of knowledge : Perception, Inference, Comparison and Testimony. A school of pragmatic logic it encompasses and goes beyond western analytic modes. Perception must be determinate to be true, and implies verification that goes beyond sense contact which is always indeterminate by itself. Determinate perception involves the sixth sense of mind or appraisal (Buddhi) where ability to Name or classify correctly (Nama- Rupa/Name and Form) is suprasensory. The Categories of the Vaisheshika System are: substance (as atomic, eternal indivisible and secondarily recombinant), quality, motion, generality, particularity, inherence and nonexistence. Yogic powers are also directly considered, as the perception of past, future, hidden infinitely small and so on as is the perception of abstract formal reality and its capacity to facilitate transfers across senses such that what is proper to one sense organ can become an object for another sense (as in something looks soft). This resembles Whitehead's notion of perception as a re/atíona/ phenomenon of Eternal Objects to various sense organs where blue related to the eye isa color, to the eye is a color, to the ear a blue note, to moods a blue mood. Inference and Comparison resemble their Piercean counterparts, incorporate testing, experience and working hypothesis and consider archetypal, logical fallacies

Important facts emerge from this basic accoun t. First, not all Sound is heard. Much of it is ambient, as it were, in the cosmos as subtle or esoteric sound heard only in Yogic Hearing. Esoteric sound. remains fundamentally connected to audible sound and provides ready access to the subtle dimensions of creati on from within the heart of the gross appearing cosmos. It is the business of Mantra Science .to make clear and useful these sound connections as one among a number of powerful meditative aids whose goal is godconsciousness or Brahman realization. Secondly, Brahman is not removed from creation but is so intrinsic. to it that we must clearly reconc eptualize the created, appearing universe as an aspect or mode of Brahman Body. The incarnation of Brahman becomes a daily fact and not an unusual event in acontext where incarnation is the norm, not the exception. The corollary of this is the fact that among appearances human birth is holy birth, since only in human form and only with human consciousness can Brahman be “realized”. Human consciousness, particularly aided by a samyama (concentration) on Sound, contains within it the special capacity to re-enact the Cosmi c Creative Evolution process by using its own gross processes to go beyond language, beyond even mind, to merge in Brahman climbing as it were an umbilical chord of sound between human and Brahman. In the deeper stages of meditation mind (manas) vanishes accompanie d by progressive visual and acoustic fading of the appearing world. Huma n consciousness withdraws into a literal projecting point (bindu) of vibration and light outside measurement, Physical contac t time and space hidden within the body cave. . The Supreme, subtle and gross articulations of Brahm an resemble in general outline the modes of Whitehead's proce ss God from Priand expanding simple western syllogism from 3 steps to 5. Knowledge from Sabda or Testimony is the result of the word of a reliable, absolutely honest person who actually knows (determinate perception) what is being communicated and such that the hearer underst ands exactly what has been said. Supraconscious experience of Brahman is a valid determinate perception only knowable in suprasensory contact by direct experience following the reliable record and working documentation of Testimo ny such that it may not contradict other known truths (therefore implyin g coherence in the truth body.) This is skeletal of Nyaya-Vaisheshika.

in voluminous detail. mordial to Concrescent to Consequent ion from a concrescent and articulation of Whitehead’s coordinate divis parallels the emergence and therefore not yet appearing perspective within the subtle Body, parevolution of the Tattvas or Categories Reality where Whitehead ticularly as described in Part IV of Process and measurement, especially in the severs the ties between geometry and Para-Bindu and the “point” chapter on "Measurement, just as the es is clearly abstract and or ‘’drop''of geometrizing projection it impli mystical interpretation of holds company with the pythagorean and the true meaning of geometry. There is additional conformity to the d gives consciousness the role of Consciousness in Veda as Whitehea ding activity of the Process deeply internal feeling-appraising-prehen the world by modality. This God in ascenario where God becomes of Thought and other works on theme is reitterated in his Modes geometry.? the axioms of descriptive and projective B. ehead, Pythagorus and Toward a Mysticism of Sound: Whit Mantra ugh the door of the apparatus We must enter Sanskrit Sound thro ciousness ion. of the human body asa holy creat In Veda human cons eme Consciousness and thereby is a microencapsulation of Pure of Supr activity of Pure Cit on a reduced contains within itself a replica of the ch and the utterance of sound scale. The conscious activity of spee on a smaller scale ofa divine is in Sanskrit a particular re-enaction We shall explore this in more act of cosmic creative evolution. detail. order ofthe letters of the There is nothing accidental about the Sanskrit alphabet. Every vowel, semivowel, nasalization and cont to palate to lips sonant is precisely placed in order from throa — 5. of abstract loci and Geometry is here taken as the study relation. secondarily as drawn figures Or manifest moving relations and only See especially Whitehead, and Row, 1960), Part IV: The Theory Process and Reality, (New York: Harper sive pp. 460-471. See also Ch. Il, “Exten of Extension, Ch. Ill, “Flat Loci,'’ (set aphy topogr atical mathem ct abstra Connection,” which contains Whitehead's connection between the severs ty explici which nt” theory) and Ch.V, “Measureme t replacing quantification with Einstei material quantification and measuremen relata among s ousnes and feeling consci nean abstract relational field dynamics of sets). as qualitative organisms (coherences

upward and out into the air. There is no need to memorize it in the way one memorizes English and other alphabets, whose sounds flip randomly about in the mouth outside the logical progression of body order, and is finally best memorized by the singing of the “ABC...” jingle. The order of Sanskrit letters follows the flow of air outward from the body. One need only refer back to the human body, breathe outward and flex the muscles of the throat, mouth, tongue and lips to uncover the easiest natural order and possible positions for vowels and consonants. Wind rising is the current on which all language rides. Vowels, which are wind or aspirates, are shaped along the current by varying the muscles of the throat and mouth. In Sanskrit, vowels are the “living” part of language since no sound can be made and no consonant pronounced save it is in the company of and propelled or resumed by avowel. Consonants are therefore the “dead” language for they do not and cannot move of themselves. part of Following Panini, the role of consonants is to ”stop’’ the constant stream of air that is vowel sound. The Sanskrit alphabet assigns precise ranges and stops for each letter and vowel, and though there will be fluctuation from speaker to speaker stemming from individual differences in the body apparatus, pitch, tone, duration of sound, moods of the speaker, and even dialects of sound, these ranges are constants and provide consistent values for the letters and vowels. Vowels become analogous to the vibratory current or pulse which pervades the appearing world while consonants represent the material “stops, gross bindus or “drops'’ of sound covering Ideal Sound Vibration, temporary excrescences of the gross Cosmic Body characterized by Maya‘ 6. See for example Part | of the Taittiriya Upanishad, divided into three parts (vallis) by the comentator Sankara. Part | contains twelve chapters. 1.2 is devoted exclusively to siksha or pronunciation to the end that though meaning is important, the text must also be chanted properly to press out its proper and fullest meaning, 1.3 teaches meditation on the combinations of words beyond the letters of text, and explains their symbolic meditative reference in order to achieve one-pointed concentration. Classically there are six works auxiliary to Veda siksha (science of pronunciation), chandas (science of prosody), vyakarana (science of grammar), nirukta (science of etymology), jyotish (science of astronomy), and kalpa (science of rituals) which all parts and privileged access in consciousness, have their counter:

ument according to Wind is skillfully manifested in the body instr moves constantly who n the will, knowledge and action of the perso h is produced and intentions between quiet and articulation as speec a microencapsulation of Divine made manifest or projected. This is , Will, Knowledge, and Action (Iccha, Jäana Kriya) expressing in In this it is not primarily the five Pure Tattvas or Categories of Creation. manifests. Language the body but consciousness which speaks and of the stomach, stirring is secondary. Wind is mobilized from the pit ting into supremely initia ng, up out of quiet that resembles Brahman stirri ng into a barely percepsubtle vibration that is like Para-Siva, and arisi the chest, then into subtle tible rumble or roll of Sabda vibration in sound (Nada) in the upper chest and the pit of the throat. become audible, Wind and intention (will, knowledge, action) first manifestation, at the which we should not forget is a form of material that voiced vocal chords at the top of the larynx in the throat such sound that ‘cover’ the speech is a geometrization of relationships in subtle nonappearing reality of consciousness. Here the cartilaginous of the windpipe form plates of the human vocal chords perched on top al instrument. a kind of reed such that each person is on one level a music and mouth. The reed vibrates as wind is pushed up into the larynx the pitch vary to ess Muscles attached to the plates allow consciousn and frequency of the sound emitted. The tongue, lips, teeth, ridges specific and muscles of the mouth help shape the stream of air into form consonants. vowels and assist in the assignment of stops that will Tantra between There is an important distinction in Veda and sound is “lettered” but lettered and unlettered sound. Not all gross i is the sound that may also be Dhvani or unlettered sound. Dhvan any created element or forms the Natural Sound or Natural Name of cannot make. The organic whole, the gross sound that a creature things as a waterfall, unlettered audible sounds of Dhvani are such crying and laughing of wind in the trees, an elephant trumpeting, the sounds, sounds heard garbled humans, rain, other generalized animal and even bird song. from very far away, human crying, laughter e of not intentionally Thus Dhvani is unlettered only in the sens Sanskrit alphabet sounds, using or projecting the precise clarity of the tionally lettered, loses its Notice that garbled sound, though inten ulation of meaning as it travels. clarity of projection and thereby its artic In a fundamental sense, all lettered sound loses its clarity as it travels

and fades, and thus returns into natural sound, once again becoming Dhvani unless it manages to be decoded by someone with finely tuned interpretive hearing. To be heard some type of Abhigata or ‘‘clashing ’’ as friction or resistance, be it ever so slight and even subtle, is Clash implies articulation, required. duality and plurality that begins among subtle fields and is only secondarily gross and audible in ordinary ranges. Therefore, even a cry or sob or laugh “stops” at positions along the throat, palate or lips and can be transliterated into the various writing systems of the world, but it is not technically a letter that communicates meaning. The cockadoodledoo of English is the cocorico of the same or indeed similar Rooster in French. We cannot fail to notice the precise assignment of “stops” in the songs of certain birds, such as the long calls of the Cardinal. These calls are consistent with minor variations of pitch and duration from bird to bird and are analogous from region to region as “dialects”. Young birds are easily distinguished from the voice of more experienced birds by pitch, intensity of sound, hesitancy, in other ways that have to do with the smaller throat of the bird, and by the intertwining musical line of the older bird as both birds brighten and thrill the spring air. The call is there, and itis not the call of another species. /t is consistent and characteristic for only the Cardinal. But itis not on that account an alphabet of lettered sound, despite stops or the intentional behaviors and communicative content pressed into song and noted by ornithologists. Birdsong is Dhvani or the Natural unlettered Sound or Mark of that species and no other. The song of the Oriole is not the song of the Cardinal. What, then, is distinctive Birdsong? First, it is part of the gross range of sound the species cannot make, its Dhvani or natural name, More importantly, it is the Concrescence of Will, Knowledge and Action, in short intentionality of the Bird at the level of Subtle Conscious Projection or Feeling Consciousness. In an environment pervaded by the process philosopher’s maxim that there are no things, only processes and no beginnings, only processes of gradual beginning. Birdsong like all Dhvani and like Para-Siva is the initiation of the full adumbration and capacity for the articulation of Meaning in lettered sound. As initiation of Meaning it is the feeling or affective content of language absent the letters and the articulation into which they

words, sentences, clarified project as the progressive development into human melody minus meanings and so on. Birdsong like unlettered of the envelope the lyrics is an expressive emotional reality on the edge , on the other Opera of excrescence into articulate word and language. age with matchhand, is the boosting of the affective content of langu ing affective musical tone.’ affective tone and To understand Animal Sound we must enter the or systematization of pitch of the sounds emitted, and next the syntax manifesting from animal those tones to decode the Feeling Expression warden must someconsciousness, something a naturalist or a game ultimately constitues times know and communicate to survive. This lamb under the careful mechanics of how the lion can lie down with the tone of ive affect certain conditions, and how animals “sense” the sound as an human language and even a particular human's total (psychological) affective tone indicative of a general level of emotional development. a system of Animal Dhvani, though capable of integration into sense of lettered feeling-meanings, is not fully language in the human poetic-referent and sound which goes beyond feeling into straight on nor meant to be, logic. It is not that language is devoid of emoti . but rather that it pushes emotion into articulation Itis both.® Animal that human Dhvani is profoundly reaffirmative of the teaching in Veda 7. 8, c example of musical expression Puccini throughout provides the outstanding operati and expanding total impact in the echoing in emotional and lyric expression and content and propels toward way a Sacred Mantra formula conforms in form sustaining it in one-pointed and Ideal meaning, building vibratory resonance meditation, its systematic logical abstraction A classic error of anglo-analytic philosophy is the surface meaning of language from the emotional subtext in the direction of and projection. This ignores that but not its deeper metaphysical grounding of the same continuum and are ces the two are adjacent progressive emergen nalytic view moves toward a anglo-a The ing. cross-referential without interfer would in another setting be vielevel of disengagement of the two texts that than ‘‘scientific purism’’ or wed as an emotional learning disability rather emotional subtext unchains reason philosophy, Extreme disengagement from the ent flight into mere surface logical from metaphysical grounding. The subsequ as Parfitt’s creation of the pure fiction relations results then in such things ities emerging from person A after of multiple logical (but unemotional) personal so-called moral dilemmas and The the fiction of a brain hemispheroctomy. gement ethical responsibidisenga identity profound disintegration of personal

birth is holy birth for only in human birth can Meaning be articulate unto its grossest manifestation or limit of expression. But by a marvelous continuity of the gunas the whole world is to an extent remaining in man. Human dhvani may actually incorporate aspects of animal sound and its emotive quality and intentions as in the emotional expressions in shrieks, screams, whistling, the disoriented laughter of extreme fear that converges on tears and sobbing, and others. Thus though inadequate to fully express Brahman, language is concrete and articulate enough for us to grasp it and use it as a set of articulate footprints of Brahman that contains inextricably linked emotional and grammatico-logical subtexts. Because the tracks are capable of such precision they are able to launch the rocket of human consciousness precisely to the target of their rendezvous in Akasa and beyond with Brahman, even though Brahman rests permanently beyond their official reach as Asabda (Beyond the Reach of Words). In the process a prime metaphysical place is given to Sanskrit alphabet, sound and grammar. Lettered sound and grammar track and express Meaning by Jiiana or intellectualization. Unlettered sound vibration tracks by bhakti or faith-feeling. The two paths are not detachable from each other but function in full integration. Like lettered sound, Dhvani shades off into subtle or esoteric sound. Such ideal or esoteric sound as is permanently associated with a particular created object or with a particular gross letter, for a letter is also a created object albeit in sound, is considered by Veda more real than gross appearing sound because it is constitutive of the object. Or again, in the severing of Subject and Object, Sabda (Sound Vibration now concresced as Nada) goes off in one direction and Artha (object) in another at Isvara-Tattva though both are in reality formerly flowing from the same Equipoise in the Cosmic Sentence and lity, and the mostly convenient amnesia that result more closely resemble the toutine disengagements we observe in psychotic and sociopathic behavior, particularly of the criminally insane whose psycho-social profiles are punctuated by their brilliant forays into logical rationalization and conveniences this sort. Ironically, one does not arrive at pythagorean of just Idealism or sound Mysticism by totally eliminating the emotional subtext, nor even the world, rather by honoring and recovering it, just as in Veda.

Grammar, eventually making the Word, any Word, flesh.® Such Ideal Sound as eventually adumbrates is Sphota or Meaning in a supremely subtle sense, with the Sphota of an Avatar or the Christ bearing a high level of compression of Divine Meaning into Its Ideal Sound and objectification. Sphota is recoverable by ordinary human understanding only in brief intuitive and more sustained meditative samyama (concentration) as standing permanently behind and grounding any appearance in exactly the same way that, for example, the re/ationships and ideal defining proportions of the equilateral triangle are mentally recoverable as grounding the multiple figures with which we “'cover“’ this Ideal meaning. There is never any question of the reality of Sphota, only of the idiosyncratic and complex Identity of any particular Sphota, in a word its Meaning in the broadest sense. Not all Schools formally accept the Doctrine of Sphota as adumbrated by the great Grammarian Panini, though it should be noted that Patanjali taught the Doctrine and that all Schools acknowledge Patanjali’s Yoga System and Yoga Psychology. Sphota is a subtle doctrine to grasp, and | would submit despite its occasional denial is always operative and implicit at higher stages of serious meditation known only to advanced realization. The usual debate occurs over interpretations of Dhvani that overlook the strong continuum of vibration from Dhvani to Sphota and incorrectly merge Sphota into Dhvani. Natural Sound does not simply trail off into the background of the Cosmos. It trails off into Sphota or Ideal Sound, which is a formal constitutive set of proportional meanings manifesting as subtly formed simple or recombinant proportioned integrations or subtle vibratory organisms of sound, or again organic coherences of relata, or again 9, The ‘‘seeming development” and projection of Sabda and Artha into ‘separate’ dual realities is depicted iconographically as the two sides of the Kamakala Triangle or Tribindu discussed later. Sabda and Artha are severed and projected from the apex “point” and shoot out as ‘sides’ of an equilateralized relationship in the cosmic Body. This is a projection in Dream of seeming dualities within the one Dreamstuff, later to be reabsorbed into the deeper dreaming consciousness during Laya (Dissolution). See also ibid, The Garland of Letters, Ch. XVII, *'Kamakala,’ pp. 175-184 for reliable detailed descriptions of the Kamakala in terms of its other referents to numerous analogical trinities in Tantra, as White-Red-Mixed, Sun-Fire-Moon (Candrabindu) and so on, P. 180 of the ‘same chapter gives a description of the lines, angles, circles and points as Tripure (3 Cities or Abodes) of the Kamakala.

Ideal proportions and their permutations and combinations formed and worked through the Tattvas in the subtle background of the cosmos. That is, Ideal Sound is subtle and is either simple or nested. When nested itis “at play” in combinations and overlaps which go far in explaining aesthetic transmutations, similes and metaphors of meaning across supposedly discrete categories as poetic-referent logic in ‘‘heaviness of light,” ‘blue mood,’ a personality that is sempre allegro, “woven light,” “liquid sound’, “light-hearted'’ and so on. Ideal Meanings are what Whitehead calls in more visual imagery internal abstractive hierarchies in Process and Reality, particularly in Part IV. This is a vast and instructive topic in its own right. Suffice it to say for the moment that Sphota as Ideal Sound can function at one level somewhat like Platonic Essence or Form, and again is analogous to the Pythagorean ‘relationships’ and ‘proportions’ manifest in sound and figure, and again like the deeper levels of mediating meaning in the Structuralists’ concept of consciousness, or again the coalescence of norms in consciousness.!0 The Doctrine of Sphota or Ideal Sound and Meaning is frankly suggestive of the harmonic analogies Pythagorus made between the subtle “sound’’ of mathematical proportions transposed as definable, discernible musical resonances picked out from the continuum of sound, Pythagorean Harmonics extends to astronomy and cosmology and one of the Six Studies that Plato prescribes in concluding the Allegory of the Cave in the Repub/ic is astronomy and harmonics not separated but defined by him as the study of solids, any solids, in motion and 10, have explained this elsewhere in an aesthetic translation of Whitehead's set theory where sets evolve toward abstract ‘punctual’ (point) status and then “overlap without inclusion” in each others’ internal abstractive hierarchies. The first event achieves Whitehead's Eternal Objects or formal constituents for an The second achieves what | have called in less laborious language ‘’overepoch. The overpaints are transparent zones of nested abstract punctual loci such that they are not reducible to each other (points are idiosyncratic), but are nevertheless ‘‘apparent’’ (visible, audible and so on) simultaneously in a super paints.’’ locus. This is the abstract mathematical viewpoint on the reality of intuiting the Ideal in the real, Form or Essence (s) in appearance. For the details see Part | of Quality and Reality: A Pythagorean-Whiteheadean Redefinition of the Existential Mode of Appearance, Barbara A. Amodio (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1979), Part I, pp. 1-118, especially A: ‘Abstraction and Attainment of Qualitative Relief and Appearance.”’ Extension’ and D: “The

following from geometry. There is no particular Platonic reason to limit solids in motion to astral bodies for we see harmonic function again in the motion of people woven in the social fabric by the Statesman as also in citizens who attempt to discern the essences standing behind and in the proportions of human action, suprasensuous conscious intuitions of the One in the many. Certainly the equilateral triangle, a special case Euclidean figure, provides a Pythagorean-Platonic model for justice in rulers and others, with justice becoming the imitation of the figure's defining relationship of equal sides, equal angles and internal mathematical isotropic space. Becoming ‘equal’ or ‘‘just’’ toward all is also the Vedic ideal of compassionate detachment. The easy transfer and transposition of the Ideal meaning of defining relationships across figures, light, vibration, sound and even light points us to the deeper nonappearing primacy of Ideal relationships that inhere in appearance, indeed project into appearance, what Whitehead will call in Process and Reality the “prime conditions” for an epochal order of emergence.!! One has only to look beyond the integrated gross reality of acut crystal prism struck like a tuning fork, echoing, glowing and shining forth in the midday sun to persue the reality of Ideal transposition across the fundamental constitutive realities of the present cosmic epoch. Regarding transposition, we should not forget that the resonance of a perfect Fourth to a perfect Fifth was primarily an acoustic phenomenon for Pythagorus, who was able to hear the resonance and resolution of the complex chord. The resonance of the chord is only secondarily arithmetic and unresolvable as the computation Insofar as sounds sounding the proportion is of or 3.1416... hearable as a togetherness of the played chord with an infinite trailing resonance expressed by the eternal repetition of the permanent arithmetic lack of resolution. The eternal return of 1416... is permanently 11. “Prime conditions’’ are especially classified by Whitehead in Process and Reality, Part IV, Ch. Il: “Extensive Connection’’ where the set theory is principally lodged, and in the immediately following Ch. Ill: “Flat Loci,’’ especially Section III regarding prime reference of conditions to an overarching set. Appearing reality is always prime to certain Prime sets of abstract conditions that constitute the Eternal Objects for an epochal order. Epochal order is the Whiteheadean counterpart of a World or Yuga in Veda.

middle to lower ranges of the Subtle Body, particularly in the fairly sophisticated and late adumbration of the Tanmatras or Essences of Objects. Following the indirect tradition of scholarship on Plato, there are numerous clues that Plato, like the Sanskrit inner traditions that continue today ín a line of unbroken transmission, and like Pythagorus, never intended full dissemination of all he taught beyond an inner circle.13 C. Mantra Sound: The Mystical Role of Mantra-Sadhana Returning to Ideal Sound, we should note that in Veda itis complex and is always sounding. For example, in Tantra the Supreme OM Sabda and the Varna Sabdas (Sounds of Letters) sound con13. lam following the Tübingen School of interpretation of Plato's unwritten doctrines, particularly as unfolded by Hans Joachim Krämer. In my view the indirect tradition is anything but marginal in interpreting Plato’s Dialogues, and goes far in clarifying much in the Republic and throughout pointing to a Platonic mysticism. Such a mysticism can be viewed with some justice in the context of the descent of Classical Greek from Sanskrit language and the culture of mysticism it supports, as also in the context of standard mystical practices regardless of culture, among them the sanction against imparting inner circle teachings and practices to noninitiates and the absolute necessity of direct contact and observation to ascertain if someone is a ‘qualified hearer.’’ In the Epist/e, VII 340B1-345C3 Plato states he will never write down the more esoteric truths since they cannot be communicated in words; and moreover one loses control over what has been placed in writing as anyone may get his hands on it. Inthe Meno 76E3-77B1 he refers to initiation into the mysteries about the evolution of the plural from the singular, and in both about the figures one rubs out to reveal the real or hidden, ideal geometry. Similarly, not everything that is known or knowable about Mantra is written down, nor is it intended to be. There remainsa body of Sanskrit literature that continues today to be preserved and available only orally by certain Brahmanic families who devote their entire lives to its preservation, employing the arts of word and syllable counting, recording and counting of metres, and countless other mnemonics necessary and ancient to the task. This potent witness of the techniques of oral culture, mostly extinct in the west, is a reminder that certain truths are not meant for general readership. Rather are they reserved for the ‘‘qualified hearer’” to whom Veda never tires of referring. One such additional tradition of uninteru; pted initiation directly traceable and observable from India is Chinese Zen whose lineage traces from Dharmadatta, the first Zen Master. Circle of Ammonius Sacchus mitted, Another may be the inner in Egyptian Greece to which Plotinus was ad- Plotinus’ initial destination was Persia, not Rome, to more fully study (clearly Sankrit derived) mysticism.

tinuously and without interruption (Nitya and Anahata) even when they are unmanifest (Avyakta) to the gross perceptive organs. OM and the Varnas still sound during periods of Cosmic Dissolution (Laya) known as Cosmic Dreamless Sleep (Susupti) during which the appearing cosmic Body is withdrawn into a causal or seed state and “sleeps' beyond the precise articulation of Name and Form (Nama-Rupa) which we so well associate withthe world under the imprint of duality and plurality.* Sabda, though translated accurately as Sound, is unfairly conceptualized if extracted from the continuum along which it emerges. Sabda is vibration even before it is sound. There are analogies between the stirring forth of Brahman into Sabda and our own experience of stirring forth from calm into either a feeling, a thought, a sigh, agesture or even a word. In the Whiteheadean terms of the set theory in Process and Reality we are in our calm resting in the strain seat, the strain locus or the regnant monad, which for all practical purposes are functional Whiteheadean equivalents of Veda's atom point and from which we stir forth in Whiteheadean terms while yet remaining internally integrated (prehended). The Stir as Sabda gradually increases comes in range of Sabda as Sound. in kinetic energy and Since all Sabda is vibration, by extension the subtle Body as well as the gross Body of the cosmos is fundamentally vibratory both for Whitehead and for Veda, The gross compound vibration which we coarsely think of as ‘matter is on both accounts the gross vibratory /imit of evolved Consciousness within a particular Cosmic Dream. 14. The Mandakya Upanishad analyses the metaphysical primacy of the conditions of waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and the Fourth or Turiya which is Silence, Calm and complete Nonduality. States of Dream Consciousness are foundational Vedic imagery and the Mandakya is named for its likeness to a ‘‘razor’’ on this elegantly simple truth. Also see John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)‘s treatment of the four primary states as specifically related to Mantra in The Garland of Letters, Sir John Woodroffe, (Pondicherry, India: Ganesh and Company, 7th Edition, 1979), especially Ch. XII, ‘‘Nada-The First Produced Movement, ‘’ Pp. 123-126 and throughout the chapter. The book is acomplilation of Sir John’s papers on Tantra emphasizing Mantra-sadhana and is a highly instructive record in a single place of careful scholarship on the Tantras for the reader interested in deeper meanings;

One such Dream is for Whitehead a cosmic epoch and there is no difficulty in Whitehead with positing a plurality of possible epochs either simultaneously or in sequence each with radically different formal internal ordering. Similarly in Veda, though Veda would set one corrective limit on Whitehead’s use of the term “‘radical’’as a term of art. The corrective occurs in the form of a doctrine of subtle and constitutive Ideal Sanskrit Sound which is constant and never fully dissolves,!5 but for most practical purposes the difference will show as negligeable. The vibratory pulsation of existents into and out of creation in post-Einsteinean terms complements the Vedic image of a vibratory continuum of sound which pulses between gross and subtle ranges of light and sound, sustained as it were by Siva who in three-fold aspect is Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer of the Worlds. Hunger, for example, begins gradually until it is noticed, and it is sustained for a period of time until food "destroyed’’ or goes away. is taken, and then the hunger is This is the micro view of the three steps with which God is always coming in Veda. Mantra-sadhana!® builds on the understanding of the vibratory character and connection between subtle and gross Sabda and is an important feature of all Indian spiritual discipline. It operates to some extent in every school and is a manifest experience in deeper meditation regardless of continent or school. Mantra-sadhana receives emphasis by the Grammarians and the Yoga School following Panini and Patanjali, in the Tantric texts of the Sanskrit tradition, in the Yoga Sastras (Mantra Sastras) where the Science of Mantra is welldeveloped, and Tibetan Buddhism. 15. That is supremely subtle sound does not change by epoch. Om and the Varna Sabdas are constant during Laya (Dissolution) when they rest in the supremely subtle Causal Body the age in Cosmic Dreamless Sleep (Susupti). The causal Body awakes into Cosmic Dream which germinates the seeds as abstract formal constituents for some epoch slated to appear. evolution occurs in The specific detail of the abstract the Tattvas of the present epoch, Though the Tattvas may issue into other Categorical schemes and in turn the projective geometry of radically different worlds, they do so onthe same subtle to gross current of Sabda vibration and Ideal acoustic manifestation of All this really means is that vibratory character Om and the Varnas. persists in supremely. subtle state and that is has a constant esoteric audition that is metaphysically constant. 16. Mantra-sadhana as the actual practice of Mantra, positioning the body consciousness inside the reality of sound as a Yoga posture,

Mantra is a precise science of sound both gross and subtle based on Veda and is directed at enabling aspirants to gradually attain Nirvana or the Turiya state of meditation. Mantra is no stranger to the Sanskrit tradition and is at once prayer, immanent-transcendent metaphysics anda willful remagnetization of the body ‘field’ of the aspirant to bring it in tune with the subtle and Ideal Sound of the cosmos. Mantra may in fact be a more appropriate framework in which to understand the famous Voice of Socrates about which was not the least bit bashful even at his trial, stating it was not really language, more like a sound that had always been with him, more an urging on and a protection than anything like a precise voice telling him Mantra sound as subtle specifically what to do or not to do. esoteric sound has precisely this capacity and does come on in this way. It is also the way the Supreme Gurus communicate with disciples across continents. Man + Tra (saving character) is “thought which saves.”!? Itis literally thought movement or vibration of the mind (manas) which begins in speech, though by far not the most important part of mantra is to be found in its gross “voice,” but rather in its hidden but close The aspirant ascends by and soon-to-emerge subtle and Ideal sound. gradually as if by a chord or ladder or magnet into mental apprehension (Pratyaya) of subtle sound and then into the Ideal formal reality of sound which, though extremely subtle, is always available as a pulsating esoteric ‘‘field’’ only heard in suprasensuous or Yogic Hearing. Its suprasensuous audition depends on a progressive calming of the mind in a move that parallels the ascent toward the quiescence and nonduality of Brahman the Soundless. When heard, such sound is curative. The remagnetization by Sound Vibration is one of the subtler levels of meaning implied in Ch. 13 of the Bhagavad-Gita in which the body 17. More usually, That which saves, though the element of thought (from manas or mind) cannot be ignored in its connection to sound, both heard and unheard, lettered or unlettered, Supreme to subtle to gross. Objects are constituted in thought-sound vibration and are the direct objects of the articulation of the Cosmic Sentence emerging through the Tattvas. aphysical point that we should better speak of This is such a crucial metthe grammer speech of the world than the so-called furnituyre of the world; parts of

is described as one of a number of "fields" of Brahman.!8 Here as elsewhere the Knower of the field must distinguish himself from the actual field as its silent, detached and eternal Witness. The aspirant must explicitly differentiate between body and eternal indwelling Self in order to become qualified for transformation into the Brahman nature. Such transformation is gradual and involvesa deeply internal ‘’remagnetization” to the degree that the Yogi's body is literally not like other bodies. We could equally well call this a transformation by grace in prayer. Mantra sounds work on the body field in the way of a polarizing current of vibration or as a magnetic chord and may be both simple and combined. Combined sounds occur principally as rhythms of a series of words or sentences. However, words are also recoverable as composed in the sense that their discrete letters (varnas) may each have esoteric meaning representative of connections between the letters and created elements. Such letters are connected to the sound-form of the actual element. The gross sound that ‘‘covers” the Ideal Sound must be gradually left behind in favor of the unuttered or unproduced voice inside the head without ‘‘ghost'’ movements of the tongue, and then in favour of sounds in Akasa or Space. At a certain point the Yogi need make no effort whatsoever but will hear the Sound as told to him/her by God. That is, the ideal trails of esoteric sound will sound by themselves and other esoteric realities of the meditative experience will become manifest. Gross sound is always approximate to Ideal Sound, but always stabilized within a precise range for a particular sound. ‘B’ does not escape into “P’‘ neither as a sound nor as a position in the mouth. Vowels and consonants are ranges which imply broad abstract loci that project broadly not narrowly. If not, we could not understand the "J" of diverse speakers for they will never sound entirely the same though they remain within the firmly established locus ofa range. They are the many for the One locus that covers them. 18. Minor analogies are found in the remagnetizations medical MRI testing in which the usual deliberately scrambled and then caught in an The credit strips left in cards, however, have restore and do not return to the sustained magnetic reality body field. MRI. occur clinically in mass is image as it returns to its norm, and also any credit cards with magnetic image pocket during the that magnetization of the body no the patient's capacity of thet living

tedly in the way of a Mantra sound must be mentally uttered repea d on and on target for a. prayer of japa that recovers the sound as locke actual mantra rhythm range or locus of Ideal Sound. Sometimes it is the as a complex appropriate of a longer sentence which as a whole locks on deeper meaning of the rhythm. The ability to “lock on” to sound is the hy catalogue of Celestial “arrows directed by sound alone” in the lengt tive of the peculiar Weapons in Valmiki’s Ramayana. It is also reflec a disciple’s inner attuneability of a Supremely realized Guru to access else's for that matter. The ment and level of development, or anyone Guru enters through a door of sound. -mantra and it terminThe Mantra of a single letter is a Bija or Seed ndu or M sound. Technicates classically in Tantric use with a Candrabi a or anywhere is meant to be a ally, the M that ends a Bija in Tantr on the palate of M without nasalized vibration, or again, the vibration esoteric sound is the labial element of closing of lips, especially since unclosed trail. ultimately directed toward the continuously vibrating and t pressure of the Unsounded NG with the throat left open and sligh or again any of tongue retained on the roof of the mouth at the G-Stop, ts, will also give an the Sanskrit nasal vowels or their French counterpar ng classic Candrabindu appropriate placement and/or effect of the closi of air and vibration. of M is important The nasalization of air encoded in the function also terminates in the and is indicated in the Sacred Syllable OM, which ling is the posiclassic Candrabindu. An important key to nasal vowel ain at the root midbr the tion of the throat and palate with reference to Equal columns of of the nose, which becomes calmed in meditation. quiet the midbrain, air taken in along the top of the nose stimulate and lly directed up menta but so does air or esoteric vibration physically or gh the palate. the larynx at the back of the throat or straight up throu other languages A nasalized vowel, though an unusual sound to most which would only except French, does not close the throat and nose, d an open result in whining or an extended, vocalized N. It is instea as out the well as sound which lets air up the larynx and out the nose flight on the wind. mouth, a sound that flies in the air like a butterfly in mental vibration Beyond the language of any Mantra the subtle be directed within continues to be perceived. Subtle consciousness can subtle esoteric this region of the cave of the body and also into the

realms of Akasa and Ideal Sound. As Mantra is worked, there evolves heightened sensitivity to other sounds within the head cavity and then outside it.!9 Beyond work with mantras there are other initiating causes for the ability to sense esoteric sound, such as the touch of a Supremely realized guru, grace, extreme humility and compassion, and the results of perseverance in meditative samyama. Among the earliest esoteric sounds are typically a sound like the ringing of church bells on a distant hill, pipe sounds, intense high pitch humming, rolling ocean sound and others, The simplest explanation of such early meditative sound is that it represents the motion of fluids and body processes within the cranium picked up by attention directed inward. And what else is attentio n than Consciousness? and what and why should such body motion be at all? Deeper explanations point to the Natural Sound, Natural Name (Dhvani ), and Ideal Sound constitutive of the organism, as also to the nesting or play of Cosmic Ideal Sounds in the dense body of sound that is Akasa (Space). The ordinary language meaning of a Bija may not make immedi ate sense, but the connection to subtle Ideal sound organisms always exists. Certain sounds or syllables may be repeated as if to propel the vibration and increase its felt acoustic impact or percussion, as in HRING HRING (classic HRIM HRIM) which resonates upward from the heart and chest and echoes in the head high above the palate and beyond, aligning with the sushumna or current passing through the body from top to bottom and felt in advanced stages of meditat ion. Especially if the Bija uses a whole set of vibrations as in a mantra sentence, its real potency may be wholly in the combined rhythm of the sentence as a cosmic sounding whole. Other letters, though parts of a word or a Bija syllable, may individually represent a connection to an element in virtue of a permanent Ideal sound attached to the letter, such as 19. This is no more astounding than a blind person who can hear whispers and 33 rpm records spun at 45 rpm or 78 rpm with perfect audition, or the kind of audition one can attain by using high tech enhancing instruments. Dogs, dolphins, whales and bats among others posess sensitivi ty to different acoustic ranges. The real claim made by Mantra Science is that Sanskrit Letters provide a range of access from within the total range of sound that leads to Ideal Sound, and that this is one of a number of accesses to the same Ideal esoteric sound body.

Ha to Akasa, Ra to Agni, | to Ardhanarisvara and M to Nadabindu which together function as the ancient HRIM of the Omkara, or the Ha, Ra, Ya, classic and well-known association of the elements with La, Va.2° D. The Reconfiguration of Akasa (Space), Light and Sabda (Sound) = as Dynamic Field: The Cosmic Body of Sound As Post Einsteinean Field Both Sarasvati and the terrifying figure of Kali are most parti ed cularly clothed in Akasa and Light, and as Mother both are associat or n formatio of either with the dynamism of the evolution process, of dissolution. Both are aspects of the same Divine Cit and there is no ate need here to construct a pantheon of gods and godesses to accomod in them. They are the same Reality, neither masculine nor feminine its origination, as seen from different aspects or modalities, pictographs or signposts along the road to the One Brahman. Both Sarasvati and Kali are “Mother” to the Worlds from alternate and complimentary perspectives. As Devas, and the word means no more and no less than s on luminous or luminaries, they are illuminated or opened window developthe One Cit. As symbols they draw our attention to a parallel the Body, Cosmic gross and ment of Light and Sound within the subtle a not difference between Sound and Light being one of gradation and light is quantum leap across different orders of events. From sound to or ment” develop g a difference of wave peculiarity. Each is a “seemin within ‘projection,’ to use Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta terminology, seeing the One Nondual Brahman, rather like hearing thunder and fact referred to lightning through the transparent air. Sarasvati isin in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as Daughter of the Lightning. 20, Mantra,'’ especially Pp, 262-266 for ibid, Gerland of Letters, Ch. XXVI, “Bija Bija's. John Woodroffe maintains wn a listing and analysis of several well-kno as the classic closure for a ‘‘M’’ ndu a rather rigid reading of the Candrabi off from ‘popular’ closurit setting ns, translatio and Bija in scholarly texts in M should What | have said about the function of nasalization encoded only be known in be kept in mind since the real impact of the Bija can es. authenticity do not reside sound mysticism as an experience. Its potency and is nothing at all inferior in scholarship removed from experience, and there subtle function about certain other closures provided one understands the hidden of nasalization that can only emerge in experience.

to view them as strictly ‘’man-woman’’ nor inferior Superior to each other. Both are Brahman. As literary representatives of God and the World, both are divine aspects of the Cosmic Dreamer where their roles are oscillating like woven sound. The Chinese notion of Yin (negative) and Yang (positive) is another way of stating this coördination in terms of a metaphysically necessary ‘charge’ or polarity that functionally articulates an epochal order. The Taoists Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu ground Yin-Yang in a Source or Tao (Dhao) beyond language, a functional equivalent of Brahman. Thus Yin-Yang and Siva-Sakti are both grounded in ultimate Source, later called The Great Ultimate in Neo-Confucianism. Akasa grows out of Sakti as in a sense the transparent embryonic fluid of a cosmic epoch. Akasa a/ong with and as its contents emerges as a transparent and acoustically rich, diversified, dense vibration, an abstract compositional locus of Sound, vibration and wave projected to a limit of definition which is the canvas of the appearing and sounding world. Akasa is a transparent vibrating Bubble of a Locus. That which happens “in” Akasa is more properly happening as Akasa, as a further excrescence within and of the Cosmic Bubble. The famous Pearls worn by Brahman are not exterior but emerge as and of the Cosmic Body. Each Pearl is a World.2! Dynamic emergence requires the multiple individual space-time systems of the post-Einsteinean matrix in place of the blanket notions of homogeneous “space” and “time.” They configure a virtual web or nexus between and among objects which are of the Akasic Body, not in” it as detachable furniture, It is not only Kali who is clothed with Akasa, but everything which is so clothed, veiled or enveloped. There is nothing promiscuous about Kali for She emerges out of a dense Body of Sound and so is densely veiled whether or not one attains Yogic hearing and is able to ‘see the Empress’s clothes.” The confrontation her image creates on this and many other levels, for the image of Kali is complex, with reference to our ordinary understanding 21. The Song of God : Bhagavad-Gita, trans. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood with an Introduction by Aldous Huxley (New York; New American Library, 1972), Pp. 70-71 Know this my Prakrti| United with me: | The womb of all beings.| lam the birth of this cosmos: Its dissolution also .„... Upon me, these worlds are held] like pearls strung on a thread.” (Gita 7. 4-7,7)

of space, nudity and interactive emergence is an opportunity to refine our metaphysical understanding of ordinary phenomena. The interactive dynamics of field force a fundamental reconfiguration of our understanding of the term Vajra used to describe the Ether. Vajra need not imply a separate, rigid container of Akasa to house the affairs of the epoch. If Akasa is no container then Vajra as hard, stable, lasting, unwasting, rigid, a static manifestation of Brahman must mean something else.?? Brahman is unwasting because Brahman is Eternal Source. The stability of the world is the entire emergent field of Akasa as lasting because it is refreshed and persists in Cosmic Dream, like any other dream. This refreshment is the continuous pulsation without interruption (Anata and Nitya) of the Cosmic Dream State with its Cosmic Grammar and all the Cosmic Sentences unto gross, rich and diverse appearance. The dream, indeed the epoch, is the effect of the constant work of Brahman. Krishna explains this to Arjuna: “There is nothing, in all the three worlds, which | do not already possess; nothing | have yet to acquire. But | go on working, nevertheless. If | did not continue to work untiringly as | do, mankind would still follow me, no matter where | led them. Suppose | were to stop? They would all be lost. The result would be... universal destruction.’’23 Akasa as Vajra in the sense of hard and rigid need only mean that the world is definite as a complete subtle canvas of loci that is in dream sufficient to project an epoch into appearance. This requires that each locus be idiosyncratic enough to be itself and no other. This is really all that is ever implied by the phenomenon of resistance whatever else we may wish to impute, That resistance should be both subtle and gross changes nothing. Such resistance as we encounter in the world is not thereby the materia/ antithesis of Cit or Cosmic Substance, as 22. ibid, The Garland of Letters, Ch. |, “Vak or the Word,” Pp. 2-11, especially P. 11. Here, even such a careful scholar and translator as Sir John Woodroffe tacitly presupposes throughout the notion of container space and uses Vajra to imply the rigid borders of the container, coming as something of asurprise to a process oriented reader and the process orientation of the emergence detailed in the Tanmatras. 23. This in effect translates the letter but hardly the necessary spirit of Akasa and creates the potential for a philosophical contradiction that is unwarranted by Veda. Gita 3, 22-3.24

we might expect in a merely Cartesian formulation of “extended substance,” but the stubbornness and high definition of any abstract, qualitative and sounding “point” or nest of points that will exclude other points from themselves as a matter of identity. This is what Whitehead calls “abstract punctual location” and what | term “overpaints” in the aesthetic translation of his set theory in Process and Reality.24 E. Conclusion: A Bindu on the Worlds: The Projection of Reality from the Thousand Petalled Lotus The Cosmic Evolution of Pure Cit into the gross appearing Body of God is accomplished during the evolutionary process that is described in detail in the Tattvas or Categories. Gross. The Tattvas are both subtie and Appearance begins as a process of beginning in the five Pure (Suddha) Tattvas and nears subtle readiness for actual appeara nce at Sadasiva-Tattva with the arisal of Nada or Subtle Sound and at IsvaraTattva with the arisal of a metaphysical point of stress or Bindu followed closely by Maya and the thrity-one Impure (Asuddha) Tattvas. This Bindu, literally a “point” or “drop” as Para moves graduall y into a Trinity of Powers (Iccha, Jñana, Kriya) going toward Suddhavidya-Tattva. These powers (Divine Will, Knowledge and Action) are a subtle ripening and readiness of the Power to create. The Parabin du contains all the seed forms of an epoch including those of all the jivas or individual souls who will populate the epoch. It is Ghanibhuta or full to bursting. Itis with the effulgence and bursting of the seed, which can be punctuated by the audition of the approximate sound Om, that the seed progressively evolves into gross flower. To begin to underStand this, a person should hold a tiny flower seed in hand at least once, and watch and ponder what grows from it froma subtle locus that is clearly outside of time, space and appearance, but which is also clearly the locus of that seed and not some other. Poppies do not come from petunias, In meditation, the center of the Thousand Petal Lotus as visual contains a yellow dot rather like a mustard seed resembling a single 24. Abstract punctual location leading to overpaints as discussed previously regarding aesthetic translation of Whitehead's language for the set theory,

point of pollen that “covers and veils the real Bindu, which is abstract, subtle and complex. The Thousand Petal Lotus marks the crossroads of the subtle and the gross worlds. The yellow seed point at the center of the Lotus is a “point’’ or ‘drop’ that obscures an equipoised supremely subtle Nada-Bindu or Siva-Sakti in balance emanating into light and sound and ready to project or burst into the human body, indeed into the entire epoch across multiple fields of vibratory points, the sound organisms that are seed or causal body to the epoch and all within it. To mix Whiteheadean and Vedic metaphors, the Thousand Petal Lotus is the strain locus of the Causal or Seed State for each human birth. Consciousness can be positioned and drawn through the Thousand The Lotus forms visually as a red Petal Lotus from either direction. cloud or vapor through which the world can initially still be seen. It acquires a reddish-orange glow with yellow striations throughout and the yellow pollen point acquires several smaller yellow grains like satellites around it reminiscent of the center of a Gothic Rosace or Rose Window. From the pollen point grow spindles of light as perfectly balanced and multicolored lotusses which are surrounded again and again in concentric circles of more perfectly formed lotusses layered with depth until the glowing red circle is filled in, leaving a scallopped red border like a mandala,?5 25. There is minor analogy between the two experiences of migraine aura, neither of which can fully account for "seeing red‘ and the image of visual hot iron poker the Lotus. First, the glow of the circle more resembles a loss of possible and fainting precedes that thered than fire placed in the Though there is here. ness conscious of loss no is There ess, consciousn flow during some elevation in blood pressure and increased tempo of blood aura. migraine wavy a meditation, there is no analogy to the experience of The Lotus is definite, forming from the center and not the sides, has dimension, is perfectly regular and balanced in incredible complexity of color, perfectly luminosity and thick transparent light, and retains a sharply defined circular circumference that remains within the red circle. Moreover, the red not consumcircle forms into a distinctive regular scalopped border which is Indian and other and ed by the Lotus, This scallop decorates some Buddhist Chinese art, a sign to those who understand it. Furthermore, such migraine and seeing red as would result from a massive head effects is not necessary in injury to create such to see Lotus. deepest meditation in order an aspirant may also be drawn into a vision of this most Ancient By grace Effect.

The visual experience is accompanied by a paradoxical intensification yet calming of vibration as sound dissolves into light. Both light and vibration are transposed into heat and picked up kinesthetically as a wave passing through the body. This is an equilateralization in the sense there is equipoise in subtle sound and light, and extreme intensification and calming within the human body cave. Heat, intensified and calmed vibration, and extremely complex balanced patterns of colored, white and transparent light become manifest and pulse in the way of a living creature, a crystal sea anemone within. Visually the Lotus most closely resembles a perfect and complex round cut diamond with facets beyond human measure separated by transparent white light so dense it resembles grey shadow and forms the outline of each separate facet. The diamond contains no flaws in any table and is neither cold nor frozen in stasis, an infinite and warm living iris on the individual person that is scarcely described in words, and which glows and pulses in the tempo of vibration manifesting mildly during the time of meditation. It dissipates as the Lotus shrinks and the red circle blows away as clouds revealing the word. However, the red glow of the circle dissipates and remains throughout the body, pervading it as grace and transforming it like the poker, still formed and shaped but glowing in internal light. The experience of the Lotus is a full resting in Soul between the gross and subtle worlds. The perfectly balanced and pulsing triangulation or equilateralization is actually drawn as one of the classic and ancient religious symbols of the world, the Kamakala Triangle or Tribundu of Nada, Bindu and Bija which is the effect- Bindu. As effect it is the projected effect of the supremely subtle Parabindu emergent in Isvara-Tattva. The drawn triangle ‘‘covers” the subtle triangular locus in just the way that any drawn geometrical figure “covers” the abstract locus of relationships that constitute it Martin, Therese The Autobiography of St. Therèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul, trans. John Beevers, New York: Image Books, 1957, P. 144. ‘After Holy Communion one day He made me understand the significance of these words in the Canticle of Canticles: ‘Draw me: we will run after Thee to the odour of Thy ointments.’ ...The simple words, ‘Draw me’ are enough! For when a soul has been captivated by the intoxicating odour of Your ointments, she cannot run alone. Every soul she loves is drawn after her - a natural consequence of her being drawn to You.” One is reminded that Jesus said: ‘’No man can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him.”

and which project it into gross form. This includes the projection ized current of sound into gross body and its retrieval as a localal of vibration running straight through the body core from top to bottom along the sushumna. This vibration melts into calm and heat at the Parabindu. Without the abstract qualitative loci evolved to be no “points” or “drops” of Ideal Sound and Light there would ance, basis for the lived togetherness of the gross figures in appear sound. Om the On the Kamakala Triangle is also in short no world. eqThe Pythagorean analogy for the Kamakala triangle is the uilateral triangle and the resonance of a perfect Fifth to a perfect Fourth. They are expressions of eternal relationships beyond figure or audible chord, equally manifest as equipoise of abstract relationship, subtle sound and light, and the trailing sound which mimics OM. Stepping back from attachment to the dazzling world, the jiva,s will, knowledge and action are gradually pulled, magnetized and drawn into the Bindu and conform more and more to the Silent Witness deep within the body Cave at the interior atom that is the Luminous One sounding, vibrating, projecting and magnetizing with grace from just behind the Thousand Petal Lotus. Therése de Lisieux, the Little Flower, addressed the experience in the from of a prayer, “Draw me”, From this point are projected the vibrations and currents of light within the body without which it is justa dead body. As a drop, it is the place where the Madhu or Honey of the Honey Doctrine of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad drips with pulse into the body,26 gtadually transforming every cell. This atom point projects and sustains the body as an envelope around it in full array, creating the complex study which we call but never fathom as Medicine, It is in the world but never of it and grounds and projects the gross body from it as aflower. 26. See the formulation of the Honey Doctrine in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, The Sanskrit madhu is used to connote an effect and to indicate the mutual dependence and causal relationship of the earth and all beings. Bees and honey are related as world and Brahman in a continuous recycling. The earth body of as the honey of all beings is also clearly the honey of the causal in the dwells who being immortal bright the of honey the the cosmos, cave of the human body. Br. Up. Il. V. 1-11, V. 19.

pollen point at the center of the Lotus is always open and available. To those who know it, it is easy to find. Itis smaller than a mustard seed and a window through which heaven and earth extrude, more difficult to enter than the eye of atiny needle. From it is emitted the Ideal Sound, Light, Name (Nama), Form (Rupa) and Letter of every appearing element compressed into causal seed and projecting as the Thousand Petals of a warm organic Lotus, is all sustained, and into it is all dissolved. Toward By it it proceeds Lao Tzu’s journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step and passing through a Cave that is the body led on by Patanjali as a valuable guide. It is Regnant of Monads and the true Resident of the Cave of the Body, friendly and patient, witnessing, drawing, Protecting, projecting and waiting to be found when all distraction and delusion are over.

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NCC/IBL aanvraagbon A102539715 Materiaal Titel Journal of Dharma : an international quarterly of world religions PPN 841063036 (OCN ) Deel Auteur | À n° . Ih NN N x (A AN Corporatie Dharmaram College Jaar/Editie 1975 Uitgave Bangalore Dharmaram College. Centre for the Study of World Religions Serie/Sectie ISBN/ISSN 0253-7222 Plaatscode 841063036 ; 000 001144750 ; ; 1980 V5 - 1998 V23 Jaar "4992-00-00 Volume ISBN-13 Datum indienen 12-07-2016 16:12 Datum plaatsing 13-07-2016 12:09 Aflevering PTE Leenvorm | KOPIE Afhandelen voor Datum rappel Leveringswijze E Aantal rappels Coöperatiecode(s) R Geplaatst bij Aanvraagidentificatie Auteur artikel 18-07-2016 0006 In bezit bij bibliotheek amodio Artikel the world made... Bladzijden (233. PPN artikel Aanvrager 0003 Bibliotheektype UKB (U) Aanvrageridentificatie BADER,N.G. Particulier N Eindgebruiker 116633 Bron Opmerking Componist Artiest Bewerker/Samensteller Bezetting Vorm uitgave Moeilijkheidsgraad Klant Opmerkingen Afleveradres post Bader, N.G. Thorbeckelaan 46 1412 BR Naarden E-mail info@stichting-pythagoras.nl Telefoon Opmerking m.b.t. kosten Stuur rekening? Factuuradres N Clearing House [1] origineel gestuurd [4] nog niet aanwezig [7] uitgeleend [2] kopie gestuurd [5] niet aanwezig [8] wordt niet uitgeleend [3] overige [6] niet beschikbaar [9] bibliografisch onjuist [0] bij de binder Aantal eenheden So E a JO Aanvraagnummer A102539715 13-7-2016 12:28