" A person does not hear sound only through the ears; he hears sound through every pore of his body. It permeates the entire being, and according to its particular influence either slows or quickens the rhythm of the blood circulation; it either wakens or soothes the nervous system. It arouses a person to greater passions or it calms him by bringing him peace. According to the sound and its influence a certain effect is produced. Sound becomes visible in the form of radiance. This shows that the same energy which goes into the form of sound before being visible is absorbed by the physical body. In that way the physical body recuperates and becomes charged with new magnetism."
-Hazrat Inayat Khan, Mysticism of Sound
In many traditions, people use the power of speech to communicate with the divine. In the bible, it states that at the beginning was the word. In Japanese Shinto, the sound ‘su’ is the sound of the universe before the big bang and it is used when reciting kotodama. In Hinduism and Buddhism, people recite mantras to create a special state of mind, appropriate for communicating with the divine.
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What does it mean for us in our spiritual practice? Simply put, sound is energy and it affects the material world. This is why mantras and sutras are so powerful.
Each sound has a different effect on the body and on the brain. In Chinese Taoist Qigong, for example, the sound Shhhhhhh, sub-vocally is associated with the liver and gall bladder. It will stimulate these organs when said properly.
Sounds also carry emotional energy and will affect each individual in a certain way. These are mostly related to past experience. For example, someone hearing the roaring of an airplane might remember a trip to Tahiti and it will be a pleasant experience but another might remember bombers dropping devastation on his village during the war.
Sound Triggers
Triggers are mechanism created to quickly reach a physiological or a psychological state. The most famous trigger experiment is Pavlov’s dogs. I’m sure you have heard of it but I will repeat it anyway. the story goes that Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, physiologist and physician had dogs that he always fed after ringing a bell (the trigger). Soon enough, the dogs learned that the bell meant food so they had a very physical reaction when hearing the bell. They started to salivate in anticipation of the food.
A sound trigger would then be easy to create to enhance our spiritual practice. For example, the ring of a soft bell at the beginning of a meditation session will send a message to the body and the brain that it is time to get into meditation mode. This, in turn makes it easier to attain some good results quickly, compared to someone who hears that same bell for the first time.
We can create sound triggers or some have already been created through the ages by past masters. According to the collective unconsciousness theory of Carl Jung, we can tap in this knowledge and energy by reciting the same sounds, in the same pattern our predecessors have done for generation.
They built a vast reserve of ‘energy’ or consciousness in the universe that we tap into each time we say a mantra or a chant a sutra. The effect of each sounds or text is marked by the intention of the person chanting it. If a mantra has been chanted for thousands of years with the intention of creating peace in our soul or to be closer to god, the person who chants it today with that same intention will add part of that universal reservoir to his chant, thus making it more efficient. This makes it useful to recite things that have been recited for a long time by gurus and masters before us.
The Science of Chanting a Mantra
Sound is an excellent method for causing a deep stimulation at a cellular level as sound can travel five times faster in water than air. Chanting one's personal resonant frequency is the perfect way of awakening the consciousness within. Music articulates our life, evoking emotions from joyous to sadness and regulating moods . Experiments have provided a confirmation that resonant based experiences are not illusionary or imaginary, but occur through a form of interconnectedness created by resonating frequencies inside and outside the living system.
Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when a given system is driven by another vibrating system or external force to oscillate with greater amplitude at a specific preferential frequency. Resonance can occur when an object is vibrated at its natural frequency or naturally occurring frequencies, which is possible by music or chanting. The technique of repeated chanting during healing sessions is a best example of resonance, where the music played creates a resonance interference pattern resulting in a healing effect, attributed to the supernatural. Similarly, when people pray together or recite a prayer or hymn, they initiate a non-local resonance, aprocess which may result in a positive effect due to focused attention. Brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing were found to be thicker in persons who would meditate and chant daily in comparison to persons who would not, and the thickness of these areas increased with increasing years of mediation practice.
Music can be stimulating but depends on structural features such as tempo, pitch, frequency patterns, etc. which can be broadly categorized as pleasant or unpleasant by the listener. Continuous chanting can activate the oscillators and bring about a creation of a standing wave within the body, which apparently enhances the natural vibration frequency of the body due to the presence of a same set of vibrating frequencies of a chant. Yeast cells have demonstrated a 12% increase in growth frequencies inside rate and 14% reduction in biomass production with a significant difference in the metabolite profiles on exposure to different sound frequencies, confirming the enhancing effect of these vibrations at a cellular level. Music is made up of several frequencies and therefore these frequencies are the key to understanding the effect of a chant on the overall system. When these vibrations resonate at a particular frequency or frequencies it results in an interference pattern which can be constructive or destructive. Several frequencies are known to create constructive patterns within the brain which can enhance brain functioning and neuroplasticity.
EEG recordings of skilled Buddhist monks with years of training and chanting have shown a significant rise in gamma wave activity in the 80 – 120 Hz range while this effect was lower in new meditators. For Buddhist monks, the purpose of meditation and chanting is to free oneself from suffering and gain spiritual liberation which is the same reason for meditative practice in other religions. Several studies have also been conducted in invertebrate organisms such as snails, which have shown that the Tibetian chant Om Mani Padme Hum has a direct effect on cognition. In another study, a significant reduction in recovery time from a hypothermic exposure was also observed in snails which shows a direct effect of this chant at a cellular level since snails are invertebrates with non-auditory features.
Om Mani Padme Hum is a meditational chant that is known to generate positive energies within the body through mystical vibrations. Frequencies associated with a chant may have a direct effect on the body at a cellular level leading to biochemical changes within the cells to bring about a positive effect, such as cognition and several others which are yet to be known. In a study conducted in Vedic chanting, the chanting group showed a significant increase in scorings in memory tests and showed a considerable reduction in total error and total time taken for cancellation tests when compared to non-chanting practitioners.
We can only conjecture about what state of consciousness this reflects: monks seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness during their daily lives, not just when they meditate or chant. The monks themselves have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience.
Or, as a fourteenth century Tibetan text describes it,
“…a state of bare, transparent awareness;
Effortless and brilliantly vivid, a state of relaxed, rootless wisdom;
Fixation free and crystal clear,
a state without the slightest reference point;
Spacious empty clarity, a state wide open and unconfined;
the senses unfettered…”
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