Role of Sound in Medication

From sound to silence

Why do we use sound in meditation? Why not use one of the other senses or faculties, since touch, sight, taste, and smell must also possess increasingly subtler forms until they reach the point of their emerging? It is true that these four faculties do have subtle forms, but only sound reaches to the ultimate point of emergence.

The five senses correspond to the five elements of which all things consist. Those elements are ether, air, fire, water, and earth. That is, their grossest forms are those of sound, sight, touch, taste, and smell as perceived by the bodily senses. Because of this we use these terms to refer to them. But the water element is not just the liquid we call “water.” It is much, much more, having roots into the astral and causal planes. The same is true of the other elements. When relative existence, individual or cosmic, begins, there is a chain of manifestation.

First there is the out-turning of the consciousness itself. This modification on the cosmic level is the emerging of the Mahat Tattwa, the Great Element, that is the Personal or Saguna Brahman, spoken of in Christianity as “the Only-begotten of the Father” or “Son” of God. In the individual this is the sense of asmita: I-am-ness. Then the Pradhana [Prakriti] modifies itself into the five elements, beginning with the ether, and each succeeding element contains within itself some of the preceding elements. That is, air is not “pure” but is air mixed with some ether. Fire possesses some of the ether and air element. Water has some fire, air, and ether. Earth has some water, fire, air, and ether. So only ether is unmixed, and only ether is “touching” the principle of individualized consciousness. In other words, only ether is in direct contact with the spirit. Yet ether [akasha] pervades all the other elements as their prime constituent–actually as their source and core element. Sound is the quality (or faculty) of ether;1 touch is the quality of air; sight is the quality of fire; taste is the quality of water; and smell is the quality of earth. Sound, then, is the only thing that reaches back to the principle of consciousness. The other elements stop somewhere along the way.

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Role of Sound in Medication by Swami Nirmalananda Giri