Sound Body
“Your faith in the sound body needs to be far higher than your individual experiences.”
This line emerged as a practice in one of our Substance of Love workshop session. Let’s explore this deeper.
With our awareness, breath and consciousness when we are doing a practice there could be at least these three phenomenon that are present.
There is something that will be happening in our inner experience. Let us take inner experiences as layer 1. Our inner experience includes our thoughts, emotions, sensations, memory imprints and the like. Through our practice something could get triggered in our inner experience. It could be positive or negative. If people are only focussing here they make errors in discernment of their practice. For example due to a good practice (say someone is chanting within their body) some limiting dark energy gets released from within, they could get scared and stop the practice. This is a great opportunity for healing or transformation lost.
This brings us to another layer of experience. When we truly practice, something opens up like a higher vibration or state of being. Let us take this as layer 2. For example we could experience wave like consciousness around us, or connection to vastness or a state of peace and silence, or an automatic state of joy / bliss or an heightened sense of calmness / aliveness / alertness and the like. We may experience this within us or around us or above us or below our feet. Another example of layer 2 is going and sitting near Samadhi, or Matrimandir or walking in a pure & beautiful space in nature. In all these cases if we truly connect to the Master or Nature or Divine then layer 2 is enhanced within us or around us or above us or below us. Or for example you are chanting or reading Lalita Sahasranama, a profound invocation of the many qualities of the Divine Goddess. If we read or chant it mechanically nothing happens. But if we connect to the names, sounds and almost become united with the chant, a certain state of Presence forms even in the room where we are doing the practice. All these are examples of layer 2.
When we do our inner practices layer 2 is what we need to focus on to detect if we are opening up to something good. If our point of reference is reactions of layer 1 which is our individual experience, it could lead to confusions. For example let us say we feel some wave like vast and floating feeling all around us. This is an example of layer 2. However it could be new to us or through associative memory it could trigger some images internally and we could be filled with fear. This fearful inner experience (layer 1) of fear is a reaction to a beautiful experience unfolding in layer 2. We perhaps are not used to it or may not have the capacity to bear it. Once we are able to discern our layer 2 and we sense something good unfolding then we can relax and open the very same inner experience which is shrinking to the quality or state or vibration of vast and floating waves and allow for transformation. Now if we have developed right understanding or capacity to hold these experiences then our inner experience would also be a state of gladness for a beautiful state unfolding in layer 2.
Layer 2 is actually impersonal. It is in the domain of universal, cosmic or Divine. An extension of Layer 1 will be the inter-subjective space. This is the space of how our inner experiences interfaces with others and triggers and gets triggered by others. This too we take it as an extension of our inner experience. Layer 2 is truly the domain of Higher or Divine Consciousness acting on us. When we do our inner practice and layer 2 builds up and we connect it to our layer 1, it leads to individual healing or transformation.
But yet in body work we need to learn to go beyond our individual experiences and personal healing.
The layer 3 is a domain within our body, but free and beneath our individual and inter-subjective experiences. For example it is the pure substance at the depth of every cell. In a way of speaking it is Pure vibrations of layer 2 (higher consciousness) that lives as layer 3 within our body. This pure substance is self-lit, radiant, joyful and is love.
With this background let us enter into an exploration of Sound. The domain of sounds exists everywhere in layer 1,2 and 3.
Let us take a part of a quote from the Page 224 of the book Sri Saundarya Lahari by Swami Satyasangananda Saraswati:
“According to the agamas, Shakti in her purest form before mingling with matter has nine manifestations, which are the atma of the universe, as they percolate into each and every form of creation. The nine manifestations are: i) matrika, the energy residing in sound, ii) kula, lineage, iii) nama, form, iv) jnana, knowledge, v) chitta, individual consciousness, vi) nada, the varying frequencies of sound, vii) bindu, nucleus, viii) kaala, time, and ix) jiva or atman, the self who enjoys.”
Opening to the Grace, Love, Force and Light of the Shakti is layer 2. She exists. We open ourselves humbly, in a receptive posture. Now if we take the first aspect of matrika alone for this exploration, there is a Higher Energy that resides in sound that enters into matter and our body and being. This is happening in each moment, in the present. We may not be aware. With faith as we may not have ‘heard’ or received Her, we bow down to Her as sound. All our sound practices like ‘AUM’, which is a primordial sound is in a way a part of this. Now we can chant AUM within us and it would land within our inner experiences. If we can concentrate on the sound vibration of AUM and repeat it within us it supports in the healing of our inner experiences. The same AUM can be chanted within the substance of our body and its depths. Now if we can consciously repeat this sound, its vibration and presence starts to stand on its own. The AUM is an ancient chant which has deep rooted higher aspiration, light and will to unite with Higher. If we keep repeating AUM consciously whenever we remember, hopefully we will come to a time when it is chanting on its own. We see this example in Mother’s Agenda where Her Cells were chanting Her mantra 24/7. The word ‘sound body’ has been coined to indicate a body’s substance with is filled with a primordial sound, bija mantra or another mantra that is rising within oneself with joy. Such a body can hold higher vibrations within in a steady state and by progressing offering of our individual experiences to the Influence of these sound vibrations combined with New Consciousness (present as layer 2) coming from Above, can be a body that is on the path to evolve into the next stage of human.
Now the sound vibration chant can be done within our individual experiences which provides personal healing or it can be chanted beneath our individual experiences. We can do it by aiming our focus beneath our individual experiences of thoughts, feelings and emotions. The experience of beneath our individual experiences, could be felt as space within our body or outside or as pure substance untouched by any of our history of experiences. Both this space and pure substance is in the domain of impersonal or universal, but felt as US. The individual sensations may not be here within this space or pure substance. However we can easily see the self-light or experience the self-joy or love that is there. The sound vibration can be chanted in this beyond individual experiences’ space or substance (layer 3). This builds a more firmer and more stable presence of Higher Qualities to be present within our depths and would cast their influence then on our individual experiences. This is what we are referring as a sound body.
Now in the beginning we may not be aware of the impersonal potent space or pure substance beneath our history of personal experiences. So when we do body work we may be focussed largely on clearing our individual experiences. This is great but this alone is not enough. We need to go to the Source. Here we are doing this through sound. So faith helps. Faith in Sound as Sakthi Herself. Faith that there is a layer pure beneath our personal experiences. Faith in our inner practice that even though we don’t know how to, we can still aim our awareness beneath our individual experiences and chant the AUM or bija mantras. And faith that Grace and Love will guide our path.