The Great Tone
I found this illuminating passage in a book called, The World is Sound: Music & the Landscape of Consciousness by Joachim-Ernst Berendt.
Some food for thought in this new year:
The Great Tone is the tone of being or, as the Indians put it, the tone of the self, of the Atma. The Great Tone is Nada Brahma, the tone from which God made the world, which continues to sound at the bottom of creation, and which sounds through everything.
In Latin the term meaning “to sound through something” is personare. Thus, at the basis of the concept of the person (the concept of that which really makes a human being an unmistakable, singular per-sonality) stands a concept of sound: “through the tone.”
If nothing sounds through from the bottom of the being, a human being is human biologically, at best, but is not a per-son, because he does not live through the son (the tone, the sound). He does not live the sound which is the world.
When Buddha returned to everyday reality after his enlightenment he first talked about a sound. Buddha called it the “drum of immortality.”
Going deep in 2012.
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Connect with Peter
Thanks for this inspiration, Mr. Spellman! The Sufi musician Inayat Khan also explored similar ideas in “Mysticism of Sound and Music,” which is another great book exploring the spirituality of music that I highly recommend.
Thanks Cale – I’ll be sure to check it out.
Peter,
This is amazing, and so true.
When I listen to George Benson or Pat Martino or Kenny Burrell,….you know they are in touch with who they are, how authentic they are, through the way they’ve set up their guitars, their equipment and even down to the touch of their fingers on the fretboard….they’ve gone inside and said “What do I SOUND like?”
Talk about being true to oneself…thanks for posting this and getting me thinking and feeling about this.
Rick
Thanks for sharing those thoughts Rick, and for reading.