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Spirit of Ma'at: "Music of the Spheres" — Vol 3, No 3 with Jonathan Goldman by Celeste Adams
Writer/musician/teacher Jonathan Goldman is an authority on sound healing and a pioneer in the field of harmonics.
Celeste: Many people believe that the idea of the Music of the Spheres is more than a metaphor. Pythagoras was thought to have been able to hear the sounds of the planets and their vibrations. Can we develop the ability to hear the Music of the Spheres? Jonathan: If a person truly desires to hear the sound of the cosmos, it's possible to do that. In my book Healing Sounds, I talk about the sonic yoga of listening. Active listening changes the way you perceive reality. Listening is one of the great active experiences in which we can easily learn to partake. It is one that we are quite naturally born to do, although unfortunately it is an ability that many of us lose as we grow older. "Hearing" is a passive experience in which sounds may or may not be received and perceived by the ear and then sent into the brain for stimulation. "Listening" is not passive. It is active.[1] In the Vedic language of Sanskrit, there is a differentiation between inner and outer sound. There is audible sound, called ahata. This is also called "struck sound," and is the result of vibration on the physical plane. There is also the anahata, the inaudible, inner sounds, which are not the result of some physical vibration, but rather are "unstruck." Almost everybody can hear ahata. However anahata can be perceived and experienced only by advanced meditation practitioners.[2] Celeste: In Healing Sounds, you write that the Ancient Mystery Schools of Egypt, Rome, Greece, Tibet, India, and other centers of learning had a highly refined science of sound, where the priests and magicians were often musicians. Why are some cultures more aware and attuned to the power of sound than others? Jonathan: I actually believe that if you examine different traditions on this planet, you'll find that virtually every culture and indigenous group is attuned to the energy of sound. By its very nature — by its very being — sound as an energetic form is there. Certain traditions simply have forgotten it, including many of us in the West. For example, there are Peruvian whistling vessels. My friend Daniel Statnikov rediscovered these about twenty years ago, and they're very powerful. They were found buried with mummies in Peru, and there are certain ways of blowing into them that change brainwaves and create altered states of consciousness. About ten years ago, I was speaking to a Peruvian shaman and asked him about these vessels. He actually knew about them — and said an American told him about them! What I'm suggesting is that the knowledge was there and was then assimlated from one group to another — it didn't disappear. Celeste: What kind of ancient wisdom on the Music of the Spheres do you think has been lost? Jonathan: Pythagoras's school in Greece was burned down. It had three levels of initiation. The third level learned to use sound and music as a healing modality. The libraries at Alexandria also were burned. This kind of thing has been going on for a really long time. One side tries to subjugate another side that has certain kinds of knowledge. Throughout the ages, it seems that many different people have tried to remove and deny our knowledge of the power of sound to heal and transform. Quite simply, I believe that this knowledge of using self-created sounds to create shifts and changes in our physical, emotional, and etheric body — assisting and restoring balance and resonance — as well as our ability to use sound to alter and awaken consciousness has been lost or forgotten. I am fortunate in assisting the reawakening of this awareness upon the planet. Through forgetting this, we've been denied knowledge of the power of sound to heal and transform. This is a power — a Divinely given gift that each and every one of us has within us. We can shift and change frequencies with our own sounds. It's extraordinarily powerful and transformative, yet it's also quite gentle and natural and very easy to learn. Celeste: Are you concerned that we're going to lose the wisdom that the Tibetans and other cultural groups have about the power of sound and music? Jonathan: Actually, I'm not. I'm very hopeful because of the various types of recording techniques. For example, my friend, the Venerable Lama Tashi, who is the Chant Master of the Drepung Loseling Monastery, now has modern digital recording equipment to go in and record the chants of his masters and his masters' masters before they pass away. He also digitally catalogs them in his monastery. There are a lot of Westerners learning didgeridoo and working with the aboriginal people of Australia. There is assimilation, and certain cultures are disappearing — but at the same time, there's a re-awakening, particularly here in the West. Many people are exploring the sacred sounds of other traditions and cultures. Patricia Moffitt Cook, for example, has recorded the sacred rituals and chants from many different traditions — remote villages in India and Indonesia, for example, where some of these rituals and sounds were being forgotten. She is a spiritual ethno-musicologist doing remarkable work. There are many other people doing similar things to keep these sounds alive. So I think that some of these sounds are becoming part of World Music. This World Music is beginning to incorporate some of the sacred sounds from these different traditions, and is really opening up people's eyes, ears, and hearts to different ways of hearing. Last week I performed with Kitaro, who is a dear friend of mine. Last year he went around to different temples in Japan recording things like Japanese peace bells. So, although some cultural wisdom and music is disappearing, and this is sad, there are individuals who are inspired to record and preserve these sounds. Celeste: I read your visionary fiction novel The Lost Chord. Your protagonist, Christopher Shade, is desperate to retrieve a computer-generated sound — the Lost Chord — that can create interdimensional gateways and unlimited power over the destiny of humankind. This seems a lot like Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship's trying to destroy the Ring, or Harry Potter's trying to keep an evil wizard from possessing the Sorcerer's Stone. Jonathan: The Lost Chord is set in Boulder and is the story of a rock-and-roll musician whose friend, a keyboard player, creates a series of frequencies. They're able to take mantras and turn them into frequencies. Then, with the use of a synthesizer, they artificially create layers of frequencies that give rise to inter-dimensional gateways. There's a bad guy who wants to control the Lost Chord. He's got a cult, and he steals the Lost Chord in order to enslave the people on the planet. The rock-and-roll guy, Christopher Shade, wants to get the Lost Chord back and save the world. It's really a lot of fun, and there's an incredible amount of spiritual truth and information there. The Lost Chord was actually to be the first of a trilogy. The second was to be The Tibetan Blues, and the third, set in Australia, was to be called Danger in Dreamtime. I wrote about half of The Tibetan Blues and stopped. I've gotten busy with so many other things I haven't gotten back into doing it. Celeste: Have you ever tried to capture the sound of the Lost Chord on a recording? Jonathan: After I wrote The Lost Chord, I created a safe Lost Chord which would assist people in their evolutionary development, using a sonic Merkabah. The Lost Chord CD is an incredibly advanced recording. It is a journey both through the chakras and the Kaballistic Tree of Life. Celeste: Do you think it's just as important to learn to make sounds and tones ourselves as it is to listen to particular tones and sacred sounds? Jonathan: It's my belief that we all are unique vibratory beings, and that our physical, etheric, emotional, and spiritual resonances can vary from day to day, and minute to minute — particularly through different activations and evolutions. Therefore, I believe that beyond listening to tones, we should expand our own voices. Celeste: I was pleased to see that you dealt with the fact that different systems describe different sounds corresponding with the chakras. Your Healing Sounds book contains charts of various chakra sound interpretations, including those of Randall McClellan, Kay Gardner, Peter Michael Hamel, and your own. Jonathan: I think we are all unique vibratory beings, and therefore to say that this frequency is good for this chakra or that frequency is good for that organ not only locks you in but it's not true. I remember sitting one night at my computer going, Oh, my goodness gracious, how can this be? If there's a scientific basis for using sound for healing, how can it be that spiritual Master A will tell you this mantra resonates to this chakra, and spiritual Master B will say that this mantra resonates to this other one, and C will say something else, and they're all different. I saw that the systems of using sound, music, and color for healing all disagreed with each other. It put me in a state of spiritual angst. Then I distinctly heard a voice, saying: It is not only the frequency of the sound that creates the effect, it is the intention of the person creating the sound. In my book there's a formula, and I think it's one of the most important formulas that I've brought forth: Frequency Plus Intent Equals Healing This means that the frequency plus the intention and the energy that you're putting into the sounds you're creating all influence the effect. It was like a lightbulb going off, and I totally got it. Now I understand why there are different groups of people having success, using a number of different systems. It's quite amazing. You can tell somebody, "Okay this sound is going to do this," and guess what? It does it. That's because there's a consensus reality. Reality is co-created. Coming from a third-dimensional viewpoint I believe it's equal parts frequency and intent. As we move to higher levels of consciousness and evolution, intentionality becomes ninety percent and the frequency is ten percent. There are spiritual masters in India and perhaps in other places who can make any sound. They can belch and they can heal you of anything, or they can make inter-dimensional gateways. That's because they are such pure high-vibratory beings. I say to the people I teach that it's really important for us to be aware of what is called the psycho-acoustics of sound: the physical effects of sound upon the brain and the body. It's important to have a balance between left and right brain. Celeste: How does visualization enhance the power of toning? Jonathan: Visualization also involves feeling and emotion — it's not just an image. So, for example, if you become the energy of compassion and love while you chant, the mantra will be much more effective. Sound and intentionality build upon each other. As this occurs, the effect is synergistic: much greater than the sum of the parts. When Jesus said he would be around when two or more were gathered in His name, he was not speaking figuratively. The effect of sacred sound in a group is like that. The mathematics are very different. One plus one equals three — or even more. So we suggest again that people gather together in sacred sound and experience the results. You can create sacred space in this manner. You can change the frequencies of imbalanced areas in this way. And the energy will stay changed, at least for a while, because you have changed the fields.[3] Celeste: I know you've written articles and chapters in your books on mantras, and can speak for hours on the subject, but can you briefly explain why they are so powerful? Mantras are words of power from different traditions that are chanted aloud or recited silently. They put someone in resonance with the vibrations of divine entities or energetic attributes like compassion and wisdom. There are major mantras that are specific for healing, designed to resonate and balance the chakras — our etheric energy centers. In the Hindu tradition, these are called the Bija or seed mantras. We utilize several different types of chakra-resonating sounds and mantras in my recording of Chakra Chants. There also are mantras designed to invoke specific beings who have different gifts and abilities, such as Tara, the Tibetan female Buddha of Compassion, who is the equivalent of many feminine entities, from the Chinese Quan Yin to Mother Mary in the Christian tradition. Chanting Tara's mantra allows one to become one with the energy of Tara. This bestows compassion with protection upon the chanter. Mantras are found in practically every culture — they are most well known in the Hindu and Tibetan traditions, but the chanting of sacred words is prevalent throughout the different religions and spiritual paths of the world. Some examples of this use of mantras are the Shema in Hebrew, the Allah Hu Akbar in the Islamic tradition, and the Hail Mary in the Christian tradition. Many people today are interested in what is called the Merkabah. In Hebrew, it means "Chariot." The purpose in activating the Merkabah is to create a means of accessing higher levels of consciousness. In the Hebrew tradition, the most common method of activating and accessing a Merkabah and connecting with the Divine is through the chanting of the sacred name of God. One of my latest recordings, Holy Harmony, actually uses an ancient and sacred Hebrew name of Jesus in order to resonate and encode with the Christ Light. It is extremely powerful. Celeste: Do you believe that people can have a beneficial impact on the earth by gathering together and chanting? Jonathan: Yes, it's really important right now for humans to gather together and work together, combining vocalizations with visualizations, and frequency with intent. In this way we can assist the planet in reaching a new level of peace and evolution. As I said, reality is a co-created venture. It could best be called "consensus reality" — it's basically the result of our co-created thoughtforms and belief systems. And so it can be shifted and changed by even a small number of people doing powerful meditational work. My belief is that the actual number required is the square root of one percent of the total number of people. This does not mean that any group of eight thousand people chanting OM for peace would create world peace. Realistically, it would create shifts in the electromagnetic field, but for such a major shift those eight thousand people would have to be very advanced in their ability to focus frequency plus intent. They would all have to be masterful spiritual beings. Celeste: Many people in our culture have lost the ability to focus on one thing. Attention Deficit Disorder is more widespread than ever before. Jonathan: True. We've had more than eight thousand people together at peace rallies, and we haven't brought world peace yet. And I believe that this is because the people at those peace rallies were not totally focused. Nevertheless, I think it's very important and vital for us to get together and OM and tone and chant and sing the syllable "Ah." You get this whole synergistic effect occurring. Sound coupled with intention amplifies the energy of the prayer. I encourage everybody to go and create groups of their own to generate sounds for world peace. Celeste: I love the way you describe toning with intention in Healing Sounds: When making the sounds, imagine that there is a beam of energy coming from your heart, your throat and your third eye. Imagine this energy coming out of your centers and meeting at the point of a triangle that is the beam of sacred sound. From your heart is coming Divine Love, from your throat is coming Divine Sound and from your third eye is coming Divine Wisdom as you make the sound. This visualization will enhance the sacred sound and make this work with overtoning even more effective.[4] Jonathan: We can create the Temple of Sacred Sound, and these temples are going to be manifesting all over the planet. They don't have to be in a structure, they simply have to be a gathering of people sounding together for the activation, assistance, and evolution of the planet. We're going to be seeing more of that, and it's the real focus of my work. Together we can work compassionately and cooperatively using sound with visualization to assist in co-creating a reality of harmony together on this planet. What a blessing.
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