The Fundamental Tone Of Being

© Photo by Fernando D. González

There are moments of immense serenity, when everything around and inside is immersed in a deep silence; it reveals itself as a divine call from the depth of ourselves, a fundamental tone of our Soul. Om, I Am.

Its echo can be felt in valleys, deserts, mountains, but also in our natural verbal expressions. C.G.Jung once said that aum or mmmm is the natural vibration Nature does when it's in tune with itself. The teacher of sacred dances G.I.Gurdjieff reported to have listened to it in the Gobi desert.

In his inspiring essay The Search for Awakened Listening David Hykes remarks that the harmony between two notes or vibrations can be made finer through the awareness of the higher fundamental harmonic they share.

This means that every perception, action, emotion and thought can be harmonized and improved by attuning ourselves to the fundamental ground of being.

Unfortunately, we live out of tune and don't let this primordial vibration nurtur the Cosmos through us. Instead, we keep jumping like monkeys from one thought to another, from one perception to another, without tasting this moment, now. Heedlessness keeps us trapped in darkness.

The only way of listening to "I am" is by coming to all our senses. Being aware of the breath, colours, tastes, the sweet songs of the birds, an ache in the back, our eyes watching, our ears getting sound vibrations, the wind blowing, distant voices, the smell of a flower, the sound of the falling rain, a child laughing, the weight of our body, our negative reactions...

The more perceptions we absorb consciously, relaxing mind and body, the closer we get to reality, the better the response we get from the Universe.

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In regard to deep listening it´s worth mentioning the work of David Hykes, founder of the Harmonic Presence Foundation and the Harmonic Choir (see our related links) .

The Message of Longing

It is not difficult to realise that we live as insatiable beings, always wanting this and that, constantly looking for fulfilment: “if I could have that car and that house, I would be happy; if I could be with that person, all my dreams would become true...” And after trying different things to achieve some goals, we see that what comes is not happiness, but the pressure of a mortgage and other preoccupations. And behind that, the longing of ever. This sense of "something missing" is always present and we never know how to deal with it. And when we don’t get what we want, we live days of disappointment, unease and fear. Even when we get what we want we still suffer because we can't hold it forever. No matter what we obtain, we always manage to exist in roller coasters that leave us unsatisfied.

Wisdom tells that trying to scape from distress and emptiness is not the solution, for this only makes the problem bigger. What we resist, persists (C.G.Jung). As the Taoists teach, we should be more like water, flowing through the points of lesser resistance.

Ancient poems referred to this condition of distress and restlessness we live, and they also showed the way of facing it wisely. Now, humans have been forgetful for thousands of years and live cultivating heedlessness. We have forgotten not only the knowledge about our role in the Cosmos, but also our spiritual and cultural roots. The longing we feel is telling us to establish a conscious connection with our roots and look inside. 

However, since decades ago there has been a tendency to look for answers in Oriental doctrines, forgetting that Occident was a harvest place of Wisdom and has its source in the same fountain: our true nature.

The seeds of the Western civilization were spread by mystics and wise men like Parmenides, Pitágoras and Empedocles [1], preparing the soil for Christianity, which thrived in the Gentile world by means of Helenistic inheritance, until it all went through the sewage of confusion, dogmatism and blood.

Paradoxically, the Western culture, now decadent, is a perfect image of restlessness and the uncontrolled desire, specially in the so called American way of life, so popular all over the world. The West lost its connection with Reality, since its inception, because nobody listened to the guides and the Master Logos, owing to the dark age in which our culture was born.

Fortunately, we still can learn from the teachings of Parmenides, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates and the Gospels. And this tell us it is time  to stop and listen to what the present moment has to say. 

As Empedocles says to a pupil in a poem, first of all we need to listen with all our being, use all our senses to receive divine impressions. Everything is a gift from the Divine [1]

Be watchful, for you don´t know the time and the hour in which the Son of Man will come, reminded Jesus.

Our problem is that we never embrace what happens here and now, within and outside ourselves, and thus we can´t learn from is.

As soon as we feel our body and psychological state, we notice perhaps tensions and the wish to reach some relief. Longing is an intrinsic quality of life and it communicates something important that we don´t pay attention to owing to our tendency to be in a rush. 

Longing is present in the way plants grow towards the light, in the songs of birds, in the love of a man for his beloved lady, in the excitement of a child during the Christmas night, in the passion of a flutist. All vibrates and longs for returning to the source of existence.

This is why the first most important commandment given to Moses and stressed by Jesus was: You shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

There is an enigmatic poem which became a stepping stone of our Western civilization. It was written by Parmenides of Elea (born in 515 B.C) and describes his journey into the Mansions of the Night, where all opposites –light and darkness, life and death, masculine and feminine– are reconciled. The poem starts as follows:

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown.

Parmenides, far from putting his longing aside, he follows it as a thread guide. The attention to our longing may not be what we are used to, but there is no other way to real freedom. So long as we live we will feel the need for going back to the Source, not in the future, but right now.

In the Mansions of the Night Parmenides listened to the gentle words of a goddess, a revelation that mirrors our unconscious life, the nature of Reality and the way of living in tune with it. Her divine message is simple and says there is only one Way to the Truth: Being is [all] and non-being is not, namely, beyond clumsy interpretations: everything is part of the fullness of Being and it is not possible to think or feel anything outside of it. 

A truth that was later stressed by Christians like Paul, who spoke of the Pleroma or Fullness Mind of the Father. 

Curiously, Christians equated the numeric value of Iesous Christos with that of Being (Einai), using the system of Greek gematria, known as isopsephy. 

In all these traditions, the divine intelligence invites us to feel the loving oneness behind the chaotic world of the senses, just with one realization  described in Parmenides poem: conscious awareness (noêin) and being (einai) are one and the same. 

Far from being “thinking”, as many intellectuals believe, this means to embrace at once everything perceptible here and now, both what emerges and vanishes (including thoughts) and what never changes, the two faces of Truth-Oneness. There is nothing outside. 

Even the world of division and confusion belongs to Love-Oneness, because forgetfulness belongs to the flow of Being and Self-Remembering. 

We all have a universal mission, which is realizing this oneness, and an indivudual life mission related to our vocations. Each one of us is born with an essence that longs to be unfolded by following what shamanic and mystical traditions call the "personal song". Follow your bliss and doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else –Joseph Campbell–.

This doesn't mean that our mission is easy. Life is a great challenge, and bliss contains as much sweetness as bitterness, by embracing and transcending both, we move beyond, into what has no time nor words.

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1.Recommended reading on the subject: Reality and In The Dark Places of Wisdom, by Peter Kingsley.

Note: for a nice essay on longing by Peter and Maria Kingsley: http://peterkingsley.org/pkoffice/images/KingsleysLonging.pdf

Inner Fragmentation

The world outside appears to be fragmented, and such a fragmentation is rarely perceived as a projection of our inner world.

It's our fragmented mind what generates the image of a world broken into isolated pieces.

All names humans have invented believing they were true, says a verse in the ancient Greek poem of Parmenides.

Naming things and people has a practical dimension, but we can't reduce reality to ordinary thoughts, names and mathematical formulas, because that is a distortion.

The map is not the territory (Alfred Korzibsky).

We can identify as a person with a name, likes, dislikes and so on. But those are superficial bits of information and don't say anything true about what we really are at a fundamental level. What are we beyond any idea and preconception?. The distortion of reality begins by identifying ourselves with a "personality" or "ego" to whom we attribute qualities such as will or ableness to do. Our personal history, our self-image, our superficial desires and thoughts are all fragments of what is considered as "me" or "I". Now, is such a "personal bundle" something consistent or rather a mental construct based on memory and imagination?

If our personality is a single entity, how can we have so many contradictory feelings and thoughts about the same things?

All our mechanical mechanically impulses have always a dark sense of "I" attached to them: "I" like, "I" don't like, "I" feel sad, "I" feel happy, "I'm" afraid etc.

And these blind reactions become contradictory: "yesterday I liked this, today I don't"; "a part of me wants to go, other part doesn't want to go"; "one part hates, another loves".

Such a display of changing opinions are the evidence that we are divided inside, that we are not the single person we believe we are. Therefore, our personality is inflated with a self constructed image full of fragmentation.

My name is Legion: for we are many (Mark 5:6-9).

A teacher of dances called G.I.Gurdjieff advised we should think in terms of "it likes", "it doesn't like", "it's sad", "it's happy" etc, and keep the expression "I" for more conscious experiences. Only an impartial Witness has the right and power to collect all experiences.

This is a sacred individuation or soul-making, the Romanticists would say.

Then, the "personal ego" becomes the servant of something higher.

Back To Consciousness

The essential task of bringing harmony out of disharmony starts by watching our inner chaos.

Essential is to observe how our mind wanders blindly from one thought to another, from one desire to another, as a bundle of mechanical habits that only scratch the surface of things, getting lost in the world of labels, stereotypes and clichés, even dealing with spiritual ideas.

Even the external world is not really perceived, but felt through the dark screen of our mind. We live asleep and our so called waking life is not very different from our night dreams. Despite we´re meant to be "conscious beings", we live without being really aware of living.

Now, there exits a fundamental quality of awareness known pointed by great masters as an essential step for inner growth. Without it, all the things we do will be just another dream. There´s an expanded consciousness that includes tastes, sounds and other perceptions.

It's not a mechanical process, so it must be cultivated; a task which turns out to be very difficult.

The reason why we find it difficult to be alive is that our ego enjoys spending most of its time in the heads. Thus, all we do and perceive eventually becomes boring, disappointing, repetitive and dead.

Can we use our senses consciously?

The expansion of awareness may lead us to what many traditions call the real Self or Witness , a crystal clear space of undifferentiated consciousness and pure love. Gate to the soul.

It's neither thinking, nor feeling, nor anything we can think about, and yet, Consciousness is the condition of possibility of all things.

The whole cosmos rests within it. Recognizing this is one of the trickiest things, since it´s so evident, subtle and simple that our complicated mind can´t keep up with it.

Back To Harmony

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates' words "Know Thyself" remain for all those who seek true knowledge. (G. I. Gurdjieff, excerpted from Views From The Real World).

What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we heading to? Which is our place in the Universe, as individuals and as species? Is there any clue to know for sure if our existence fits into a universal harmony?

These and other questions must be answered, and not intellectually, not as a theory, but as the very process of inner-discovery.

Isn't there a feeling that something is missing in the way we feel and look at things?.

How can we expect to know ourselves and the Universe if we don't connect with the natural harmony underlying all things?.

Our Work as human beings, individually and collectively is to serve the Cosmos by bringing meaning out of meaninglessness, order out of chaos.

Paradoxically, at some point during the course of evolution we began to do the opposite. We see all upside down. It's time to listen again.