All that exists in the manifest state does so because it has a complementary unmanifest state that is its source, says Elizabeth Haich, elaborating on years of research on the subject. We perceive light, therefore, in the manifested state only because there exists an unmanifested state which is total darkness, she says. We hear sound only because there is an unmanifested state of absolute silence, the state from which all sound originates.
Therefore, sound is the source of silence and silence is the source of sound. All sound dissolves into silence; silence tends to manifest into sound. It is because of this principle* of sound and silence that esoteric musical philosophy recognised two complementary components which in Sanskrit writings are referred to as the “struck sound” – which we can hear – and the “unstruck sound” – which we cannot hear.
Unstruck sound is the centre from which all struck sound emanates. Through the practice of music one may experience the state of absolute equilibrium, absolute balance, perfect unity and harmony which exists both at its centre and our own, for both are identical to and inseparable from the unmanifest creative state of the cosmos. At the centre lies the perfect emptiness of total union to which we, music, and all manifested things aspire.
“Things”, in essence, are not “things” but processes in a state of continual becoming. Therefore music, as a manifestation of energy, is a force that interacts with the physical world for music influences our thoughts, our emotions, our dense physical bodies and the electro-magnetic field that surrounds us.
Because the entire physical cosmos is in continual movement, writes Lama Govinda with a great degree of affirmation in Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism… “All things or beings produce sounds according to their own nature and to the particular state in which they find themselves. This is because these beings and things are aggregates of atoms that dance and by their movements produce sounds. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes… Each atom perpetually sings its songs and the sound creates each moment dense and subtle sound forms. Just as there exist creative sounds, there exist destructive sounds. He who is able to produce both can, at will, create or destroy.”
These philosophical concepts became the foundation upon which all musical practice of the ancient world was formed. The musicians, shamans, priests, prophets and philosophers held one philosophical concept in common – that music represents a microcosm of the order of the universe and follows cosmological laws, and that through the practice of music one could better understand these laws as well as the intelligence behind them.
The ethereal quality of music was regarded as a miniature of the ethereal substance that fills the vast spaces of the cosmos within which the celestial bodies move.
The rhythm of music, for example, reflected the movement of galaxies, stars and planets, of the sun and moon, the cycle of seasons, days and nights, the tides of the seas and the birth and death of our own cells.
Music was regarded as the force that could bring about harmony within the mind and body of Man, within the human community and ultimately within the heavenly bodies themselves – the fluidity of energy changing and merging with energy, the primordial force of the cosmos.