My article in Darklore Volume 1 - as many of you would know - was on the topic of the common sounds heard during border experiences/altered states ("Her Sweet Murmur" - you can read it online at the Darklore website as a free PDF download). Author Michael Prescott emailed me to point another historical instance of the 'sounds' of altered states. It is mentioned in the writing of Peter Kingsley, discussing techniques of the ancient Greeks for reaching altered states:
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"4 The Sound of Silence
There’s one simple detail in Parmenides’ account of his journey to the underworld that’s so easy to miss. During the whole of his journey there’s no mention at all of any noise — apart from one single sound. That’s the sound the chariot makes as the daughters of the Sun draw him along: ‘the sound of a pipe’. . .
After Parmenides mentions the sound of the pipe he uses the same word again to explain how the huge doors spin open, rotating in hollow tubes or ‘pipes’. This use of the word is extraordinary. It’s the only time in the whole Greek language that it’s ever applied to doors or parts of doors, and scholars have pointed out that Parmenides must have chosen it for a particular reason: not simply to describe what the doors look like but also to give a sense of the sound they make. On his journey everything that moves has to do with the sound or the appearance of pipes. (DPW 126–127)
The word for ‘pipe’ that Parmenides keeps using is syrinx. It had a very particular spread of meanings. Syrinx was the name either for a musical instrument or for the part of an instrument that makes a piping, whistling sound — the sound called syrigmos. But there’s one aspect of these words that you have to bear in mind: for Greeks this sound of piping and whistling was also the sound of the hissing made by snakes.
It would be so simple to dismiss as totally insignificant the fact that this piping, whistling, hissing noise is the only sound Parmenides associates with his journey to another world — except for one small matter. Ancient Greek accounts of incubation repeatedly mention certain signs that mark the point of entry into another world: into another state of awareness that’s neither waking nor sleep. One of the signs is that you become aware of a rapid spinning movement. Another is that you hear the powerful vibration produced by a piping, whistling, hissing sound.
In India exactly the same signs are described as the prelude to entering samādhi, the state beyond sleep and waking. And they’re directly related to the process known as the awakening of kundalinī — of the ‘serpent power’ that’s the basic energy in all creation but that’s almost completely asleep in human beings. When it starts waking up it makes a hissing sound.
The parallels between standard Indian accounts of the process and Parmenides’ account of his journey are obvious enough; specialists in Indian traditions have written about them and discussed them. But what hasn’t been noticed is that the particular sound mentioned by Parmenides also happens to be the sound made by a hissing snake..."
(PDF here)
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As I've mentioned previously, once you know the connection, you start seeing it everywhere...
Sounds of Silence
Michael beat me to it. I had also thought of your piece when I came across this passage.
Kingsley fascinates me; I need to read his books. If he's right, it really throws into question all of our assumptions regarding logic, as Parmenides is widely regarded as the father of western logic.
Apparently we weren't supposed to understand that it's divine logic we're after . . .
for those of you
who may be interested, I have mentioned many times in the past of frequency assosiated with vibration of dimensional realities.
After reading Greg's great artical"Her Sweet Murmur"I was compelled to write a short blog entry that encompassed my understanding of these sounds associated with many, if not all, paranormal experiences.
I base my understanding on actual personal experience as well as insights that seem to come from nowhere into my head at any given time.
I won't link to the blog here but if you wish you can find it easily under "latest blogs"...
I feel it is great news that something that hasn't really been investigated is now being looked at. Lets all hope that it sheds a little more light onto other wise Taboo subjects.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
Sounds
I'm not an engineer so I'm going out on a limb here, but I've had this suspicion for ages that there is a 'sound' within the universe that is not only creative, but could - possibly has - been used for engineering practices. I hint at it here:
http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2007/...
Mythology speaks of it, mystics speak of it. And I suspect we once utilised it - before we began our present technological course.
...
Reality, like time, is relative to the observer
Anthony North
thanks Anthony, enjoyed that read.
many have sugested the GP and in particularly the Kings chamber as being an harmonic zone or rather created with certain harmonic attribrutes.
Sound and or frequency for some reason is largly ignored as a source of power. Bruce Lee based his style of martial art on water. He often said that water was the most powerful force in nature. So to use the fluid motion of water one could channel the most power. Nowadays you can go to an engineering shop and have any shape cut from steel or any material precisly useing water jets.
In many ways sound is very similar to electricity, it is a concertina effect of atoms and molicules.
But we could go much deeper then that, as all atoms have an vibrational resonance. So if they vibrate, they make sound.
The radio waves we send out from radio telescopes are a measured vibrational frequency. We know the band width and the time it takes to travel. This is how we measure distance,shape and size by the time these waves take to bounce back.
But like the spectrum of light, which is also a measurable frequency, there are possibly many sound or vibrational frequency we are yet to find.
So we could very well be co-existing with a vibrational realty we haven't noticed yet.
This reminds me of a Star Trek episode many years ago. The old, original one, where a species of people not unlike us were so fast that Kirk and his crew were un aware of them being there. All they heard was a slight buzz like a bee.
But they were unseen because their vibration was beyond our perseption.
If you move your hand as fast as you can up and down before your eyes, it is invisible. This is an example of a vibration.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
Infinite harmony
Anthony,
Have you read High Priests, Quantum Genes by Michael Hayes (Amazon UK)? It's a follow-up to his out-of-print Infinite Harmony. He proposes a musical code that is the building block of life and the universe, quoting source after source after source from mythology, astrophysics, molecular biology, and religion. Brilliant stuff, it deserves more publicity. In fact, I'm going to reread it and review it for TDG next week. I have a proof photocopy of Infinite Harmony I can lend you if you like.
The Pythagoreans were onto something. ;-)
Rick
Music of Creation
Good morning Rick,
Yes, I'm familiar with this work. Mysticism and the mystical experience and so closely related to the particle world philosophically, but 'proof' is so difficult to grasp.
Damned Heisenberg!
It's one of those annoying areas of research.
...
I'm certain of only one thing. Nothing is certain
Anthony North
It's more than ironic that I
It's more than ironic that I clued Prescott into Kingsley (as is documented on his blog) but then Prescott banned me for focusing on what the Chinese call the "microcosmic orbit" or "small universe" or "small heavenly circuit" which is the 12 harmonic nodes along the outside of the body -- based on the 12 notes of the music scale with yang as 2:3, the perfect 5th and yin as 3:4, the perfect 4th.
I discovered this secret basis for nonwestern harmonics and documented it in my masters thesis, "Epicenters of Justice" (2001), freely readable and linked at http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm
My blogbook, "When the Mothership Lands" connects this sound alchemy to UFOs and philosophy of science in further detail. It's a VERY radical viewpoint and so remains on the fringe of the more "rationalist" anomaly scene. Nonwestern music is not science but does govern the structure of science through the "mass squared inversely proportional to energy frequency distance" equation.
Correct me if I'm wrong!
Wasn't Syrinx the Minoan version of the Greek word Sphinx? And isn't the Sphinx supposed to make some weird noise at sunrise??
What's the connection here?
Regards, Kathrinn