Seeking out silence in this modern, noisy world can be a real challenge, but some things are under our control, such as resisting the urge to talk with people when out in nature or quieting our minds while we garden.
When I go to the Island, my brother and I usually head out to a provincial park that’s big enough to be alone in and our slow steps and stops through the hushed forest floor and along the river are always with the understanding that neither of us say a word to each other so that we can be truly present to consciously experience all the sights, scents, touch sensations, sounds and the silence around us.
But that silence didn’t actually exist, because in reality there was a whole lot of racket going on that our ears just couldn’t tune into.
Our planet is constantly being bombarded with energy such as photons and cosmic rays that travel at different high and low speed wavelengths.
This is known as the electromagnetic spectrum, and within those ranges of vibrational frequencies are things like radio, ultra-violet and infrared light and X-rays as well as the visible light and audible tones that our eyes and ears are designed to receive. When these waves travel through a medium such as water or air, it creates a sound or audible frequency.
All matter, such as living organisms and their sub-systems such as organs, rocks, gases, distant planets and even the excretion of nectar by plants to attract insects – emits or vibrates a unique energy ‘signature’ too, and all these individual signatures then create countless interacting energy fields and sound frequency patterns.
Hans Jenny, inventor of the tonoscope that translates the human voice into visible patterns, became convinced that biological evolution was a result of these vibrations, and that their nature determined the ultimate outcome – that sound is the creative principle and must be regarded as primordial.
He was able to demonstrate that when the vowels of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Sanskrit were pronounced, the patterns produced were in the shape of the written symbols for these vowels, such as the sound or tone of OHM.
That group of three sacred vowels and their meanings of earth, atmosphere and heaven, is central to the Indian philosophical belief that God first created sound, that the universe arose from it and is continually held together by it.
In the Bible it says: “In the beginning was the Word,” which (to me) may have meant the same thing except in a different language, because God’s ‘word’ was a sound vibration, and sound vibrations can create, generate and influence all kinds of patterns, shapes and moving processes – even into highly ordered 3-D forms.
Plants are affected by varying kinds of sound or music, and experiments have shown that when they’re subjected to high-vibration classical or traditional Indian music, they exhibited earlier flowering and fruiting, as well as increased growth and seed yields by as much as 60 per cent, but failed to thrive with low-vibration rock or especially heavy metal.
More and more farmers and gardeners worldwide are now becoming aware of this phenomenon and broadcast high-frequency music or sound over their fields and plots (see Sonic Bloom). Singing, as well as bird song and the buzzing of insects, are also known to be important stimulators of plant growth.
Linda Long, a biochemist from Exeter University, recently took our understanding of plants and sound vibrations a giant step further by demonstrating that plants actually create music.
She did this by grouping the sound emissions of protein constituents into seven sequences, which she then related with the seven musical notes – one note per sequence, then her software read the structure of a protein and converted it into corresponding musical notes. What was truly astounding though, was that she found that instead of random notes, the sequence formed a kind of musical tune. Her conclusions were that each protein in a plant has its own specific note, so if it had 100 proteins, then 100 musical compositions could be created.
So maybe the heavens – or the distant harmonics of the planets – and nature actually do ‘sing’ in their own special, mysterious way.
If only we had the ears to hear in those silent moments, that incredible symphony of sounds and the epic-sized choir of nature’s ‘voices’ that are all around us, all the time.
-This column is dedicated to Heide Hermary, co-founder of the Gaia College, who ‘listens and hears’ everything.
