Research has shown that music has the power to change emotional states, perceptions, physiology and elevate spiritual awareness. Certain types of music, devotional and sacred in nature, also have the power to transform individual and collective consciousness into the heightened states of love, forgiveness, compassion and physical healing.

According to all major spiritual and religious texts the earth and universe were created and brought into form through sound. The Upanishads, considered the oldest spiritual text on our planet (10,000 years older than the Bible), actually translates into “The Last Song.” The Hindu Bhagavad-Gita, which predates the Bible by some three thousand years, literally translates into “Celestial Song” or “Song of the Lord.” Its’ text states: “In the beginning was Brahman, with whom was the “Word,” and the “Word” was Brahman and Brahman SAID this world shall be and the world came into being.”

“The octave formed a circle and gave our noble earth its form.” Pythagoras, the Father of Mathematics (569-475 BC)

Similarly, in the Bible’s Gospel of John it states: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” According to John the Evangelist in the first century A.D., the Biblical translations of the ‘Word’ means ‘Primary Harmony.’ Egyptian religious texts state that the Singing Sun created the world with its cry of light. He sang: “This world shall be,” and the world came into being. The religious texts of the Aztecs also referred to God as the ‘Creator’ and state that “He SANG the world into existence.”

“Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration or the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)” – Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.

Hindu teachings describe the ‘Word’ in terms of the sound ‘OM,’ which is the vibratory essence of God and the creative energy used to bring the universe into existence. Buddhists refer to this energy as the ‘Primal Vibration,’ teaching that it was divided into 12 tonal derivations, each of which gave rise to and corresponded with the 12 signs of the Zodiac, the 12 months of the year, the 12 hours of the day (yang), the 12 hours of night (Yin), as well as the 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

“All things are aggregations of atoms that dance and by their movement produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes . . . Each atom perpetually sings its song, and the sound at every moment creates dense subtle forms.” – Alexandra David-Neel, Belgian-French opera star and explorer (1868-1969) the author of over 30 books. A quote his book “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”.

Music and all audible sound, according to these spiritual texts, represented the audible manifestation of the “Word,” ‘OM,’ or ‘Primal Vibration.’ In fact, the great Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan, went so far as to say: “What makes us feel drawn to music is that our whole being is music; our mind and body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us, all that is beneath and around us, it is all music.”

“And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

From birth, our consciousness is hard-wired to hear and listen. The first bone to develop in the human fetus is the ear bone and the first sense to develop in the fetus is hearing. Hearing is also the last sense to go when we die. The cochlea, the central part of the inner ear looks like the shell of a snail. In it there are some 60,000 hair cells. Each of these hair cells resonate to a specific frequency or sound, like a microscopic tuning fork, a corresponding neurological impulse is sent to the brain. This impulse causes the release of neuropeptides, or what are called “communicator molecules.”

Music differs from other art forms, such as paintings, sculpture, photography, or literature, in that they express more of a linear or more of a one and two-dimensional form of matter/energy than does music. As such, other art forms are processed by either one or the other brain hemispheres. Music, as a type of matter, remains in a vibratory state and is thus processed holographically, or by both the right (intuitive) and the left (analytical) hemispheres of the brain.

“In ancient times music was the foundation of all the sciences. Education was begun with music with the persuasion that nothing could be expected of a man who was ignorant of music.” Cicero (106-43 BC)

In physics, Albert Einstein’s statement, “Energy and mass (matter) are different forms of the same thing mass/energy,” creates the foundation for understanding the energetic/vibratory nature of all matter. As energy increases, matter begins to take form. The great German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) went so far as to say, “Architecture is crystallized music.”

In the 19th Century, physicist Ernst Chlandi discovered that when he sprinkled sand onto a flat surface affixed to a pedestal base, and then drew a violin bow perpendicularly across the edge of the surface, round, mandala-like shapes were formed as the grains of sand were moved by the sound-waves generated. This work was followed by Dr. Hans Jenny in a field he named ‘Cymatics’ or the study of waves. Jenny was able to capture on a device called a “Tonescope,” the patterns of a circle when “OM,” the sound associated with God, was chanted into this device. He also discovered that concentric diamond shapes also formed within the circle during the process.

The 14th Century Sufi poet Hafiz proclaimed “People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul itself was the song.”

Great composers like J.S. Bach wrote at the head of their compositions “A.M.D.G.,” the Latin initials for (Ad majorem Dei gloriam) meaning “For the Greater Glory of God.” Thus, when musicians create and perform from a devotional and self-realized state, this intent at the level of quantum physics, formats their music into a sacred energetic formula that expresses the enlightened perspective of love or what Pythagoras called the ‘Music of the Spheres.’ When this music is experienced by the listener, the Law of Sympathetic Vibration dictates that their mind will resonate correspondingly.

Therefore, the process of listening to spiritually-inspired music establishes the protocol whereby the mind stills and the body relaxes. In this state, the mind, is moved into a present-time reality where the sacred vibration of harmony (OM, Aum, Amen, or Cosmic Vibration) is least distorted and the mind is quiet enough to both witness and remember the Song of the Self, or the mystical principle of the “I AM,” the Divinity within. Here, the mind is moved from passive hearing to a conscious listening of the “Word” or “Primary Harmony.” In other words, the process of listening to sacred music empowers the mind to perceive and release illusions of fear, pain, and suffering so that it experiences and remembers the reality of the love that it already is. Thus, atonement and the integration of Divine Will is made possible.

“The wonders of the music of the future will be of a higher & wider scale and will introduce many sounds that the human ear is now incapable of hearing. Among these new sounds will be the glorious music of angelic chorales. As men hear these they will cease to consider Angels as figments of their imagination.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

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Article Originally Published Here: Huffington Post