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Enlightenment at the Speed
of Sound and Light
©1999 by John-Michael Dumais
Originally published in Convergence Magazine
As the new millennium dawns, a general raising of human consciousness is occurring, as evidenced in many aspects of popular
culture. I recently watched the movie, The Matrix, and I was surprised to encounter a great deal of classic enlightenment symbolism.
Keanu Reaves’ character, called "Neo" (new, newborn, new species) discovers that what appears to be normal existence is a
dreamworld based on the neural projection of 5-sensory reality, and that his "real body" is being cultivated for its electrical output. To be liberated, he must be physically unhooked from "the
Matrix," which connects to his body systems through tubes that, like chakra cords, keep him tied to this illusion of reality. Once unhooked, he slides down a kind of birth canal and into water.
But this is only the first step in our hero’s awakening. He must now learn to free his mind from the mental assumptions of 3-dimensional
reality that continue to limit him. Gradually he learns that he can operate faster than the speed of thought, and that reality is not a condition he must live with, but the creation of his own mind. Though the movie
defaults to prosaic recipes of guns and violence, it nonetheless aptly portrays the underlying archetypal dynamics we each face on our journeys of awakening.
The Holographic Mind
Many ancient philosophies, such as Buddhism and shamanism, tell us that our own lives can be thought of as holographic projections of mind.
Modern science now recognizes that this physical universe - our bodies included - are actually 99.999% empty space; our seeming solidity is merely an illusion created by energy patterns emerging from a quantum level
of reality.
In his book Quantum Healing, Deepak Chopra merges these ancient and modern views by elegantly illustrating how intelligence and memory reside outside of time and space. Chopra sees hormones as the chemical mediators between this quantum level of reality and the physical body. Since every cell in our bodies is constantly dying and being replaced, states of health or disease continue to be created not by the body, but by memory, or in other words, by
the projection of our own consciousness.
Who, then, chooses this memory and where is it located? Scanning the human brain using P.E.T. (positron emission tomography) shows that,
whereas the command to move a finger is an observable electro-chemical processes, the choice to do so cannot be observed. The chooser – the divine element of consciousness, will, and memory – cannot be scientifically measured in the brain or body!
Prayer and healing touch offer further evidence of our quantum reality. Larry Dossey, M.D., in his book Healing Words, explains how
prayer reaches beyond limits of time and space to facilitate healing. In her studies of non-contact therapeutic touch Dolores Krieger, demonstrates that even when subjects are unaware that healing energy is being
directed at them (thereby neutralizing "the placebo effect"), healing is still significantly accelerated when compared to control groups. The brand-new science of Psychoneuroimmunology, studies the
connection between consciousness and healing through the mind-brain-blood matrix. We now know that the body itself is comprised of energy patterns that respond faithfully to the higher-order energy of thought and
emotion. Like Neo, we are beginning to remember Who We Are – vast fields of non-physical consciousness energy focused through and around a physical body.
Pain: Doorway to Healing
Our culture is being led towards enlightenment by such developments as mind-body healing because our disconnection from our true selves most
often manifests as pain and illness, and their antecedents, depression and stress. Indeed, some estimates attribute as much as 85-90% of all illnesses to stress.
Since stress itself is an internal response pattern (not to be confused with the external stressor itself), it follows that if we can reprogram the response, we can enjoy not only greater health but an enhanced quality of life and being. That is, if we can change our minds,
we can not only overcome disease but we can expand and evolve as individuals and planetary citizens. Fortunately, our nervous systems are much more responsive to alterations of inner consciousness than previously
believed, as demonstrated by biofeedback, hypnosis, shamanic healing, and eye movement desensitization therapy.
It is no surprise then that we are witnessing an explosion in the use of vibrational healing therapies, ranging from homeopathy, flower
remedies and aromatherapy to healing with subtle energy, color, and sound. Such approaches affect us in the deeper energetic levels of our being, each one accessing a different vibrational dimension of our
holographic self. Perhaps the most immediately accessible of all of these modalities involve sound and light.
The Sound Code
"Sound is the force which groups all things from atoms to worlds," said the famous Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan. That sound
vibration shapes physical matter is beautifully demonstrated by the "cymatics" work of Hans Jenny. Applying fine powders and other materials to flat surfaces, Jenny shows how sounds of various frequencies
create an ever-changing landscape of geometric forms. To a growing fetus, whose ears are developed by around 18 weeks, sound brings the rich world of tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, and intensity into the womb. From
within that dark world, our soul begins to awaken through the pulse of heart beat, language, music, and emotion.
Dr. Alfred Tomatis, the noted French ear specialist, capitalizes on the way sound can affect our nervous system at the deepest levels with a
technique called Sonic Rebirth. A patient simply listens to a recording of his mother’s voice, altered to sound as it would in the watery environment of the womb. The technique has achieved remarkable
results with a variety of problems ranging from learning disabilities and autism to depression and trauma. The primal sonic energy somehow resets or repatterns the nervous system, creating quantum shifts in
consciousness that allow the physical brain and body to return to a resourceful state. This may also be one of the mechanisms at work in those who have experienced healing when swimming with dolphins in their unique
sonic environment.
Voicing Our Healing
The ready availability of our voices makes sound a natural choice for self-healing. For example, when we give ourselves permission to
express deep, non-verbal feelings, we can begin to heal the split between our body and spirit. Words, on the other hand, tend to distort, or worse, to mask what we are truly feeling. Bypassing language by vocalizing
guttural, alien or animal sounds, opens channels of feeling and knowing that are often surprising in their quality and intensity. "Did I make that sound?" is a typical response of many clients as previously buried or repressed aspects of the psyche re-emerge. These sounds can bring power, wisdom, instinctual knowing, healing, and a sense of release.
Recently I discovered a Siberian tiger that had been caged inside of me. I roared loudly and made throaty purring sounds, while my body
moved to an impromptu choreography of feline movements. The experience was beyond thought, beyond understanding; yet I knew something powerful and positive was being liberated in me. Intuitively I sensed this tiger
was showing me that if I owned my natural fierceness, I could learn to be softer and gentler at the same time.
Sound Holograms
Sound and music are powerful precisely because they circumvent the logical mind and connect directly to the limbic system (the
mammalian-emotional brain) and to the more primal reptilian brain. Powerful upsurges of multi-sensory memory can be evoked by just a snippet of a song. Whenever I hear Three Dog Night’s "Joy to the
World" I am transported to Greenfield State Park in New Hampshire in 1971. Not only the sights and smells of the lake and trees, but the angle of the afternoon sun, the taste of the food, and the feeling of who
I was then, my dreams, hopes, fears, and foibles. The richly textured memories come unbidden, somehow coded inside the melodies and lyrics.
Like Dr. Wilder Penfield’s experiments of probing the brain to stimulate a holographic re-living of past events, music and sound are able
to uncap hidden fountains of multi-sensory experience. One client suffering early signs of M.S. found that when he listened to a symphony, he could enter the music, swim in the colors it evoked, and become different
animals. His body relaxed and began vibrating. He had no doubt he had contacted his "inner physician." He has continued his own healing exploration of music, and to this day has kept the disease at bay.
Sound, Medicine of the Future
Sound is the Swiss army knife of healing. It can relax or energize the body and mind; release tension, pain and stuck emotions; release
endorphins and stimulate the immune system; expand consciousness and induce states of reverie or bliss; enhance digestion and physical endurance; focus the mind for learning or creative tasks; assist in the
integration of new energies and behaviors; open new areas of self-expression; and help ground us in our bodies. The ancient Eastern discipline of Shabda Yoga focuses on sound as the direct pathway to God.
At the Monroe Institute (founded by the late Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, and Ultimate Journey),
complex blends of binaural sounds are used to create balanced left-right brain functioning and thereby induce altered states of consciousness. These sounds become the launch-pad and the guide-wire for people to
experience themselves as more than their physical bodies.
I use overtone chanting to help lift clients out of the "box" of their conditioned mind and gain access to higher dimensions and
the "music of the spheres." Drumming, toning, and healing music all induce brain wave patterns that facilitate conscious dreaming and shamanic journeying, in teh process unleashing stores of wisdom and
healing. Tibetan bowls and tuning forks help balance the chakras and open up energy channels in the body. "Sound will become the medicine of the future," claimed Edgar Cayce. I believe that future is now.
Lighting Our Way Home
All matter in the universe, from stars to hearts to DNA, vibrate at specific frequencies and can be measured as radiation in the color
spectrum.The work of Valerie Hunt at UCLA reveals that frequency measurements of neuromuscular vibrations on the chakra sites of the human body correspond to the same color frequencies observed by psychic
sensitives.
Since we are "vibrating organisms" giving off sound and light, it follows that we can be affected by these energies. We now know
that full-spectrum light (from the sun or special light bulbs) can alleviate a variety of disorders, from depression to PMS. Certain color frequencies have been shown to eradicate cancer cells. Whether we attend to
the feng shui of color in our environment and clothing, or simply visualize colors in order to balance and heal ourselves, light may be for many the first treatment of choice.
The Missing Frequency
Healing means "to make whole." If we conceive of pure spiritual energy as white light, and if we think of wholesome experiences as
expressing that pure spiritual energy, then a traumatic experience is like the loss of one or more colors of the spectrum. If as children we weren’t allowed to express anger, for instance, it might mean that red is missing in our expression. On the other hand, if a caregiver was angry with us during an experience, we may feel that the everything but red was missing. This may be what ultimately lies at the bottom of the compulsion to repeat negative patterns of behavior: our internal separation is attempting to reconcile itself by re-creating the original conditions of trauma.
The wholeness we seek is the consciousness of completeness, rightness, safety, and love. As the missing color or colors are brought back
into consciousness and reunited with the split-off part of the psyche, white light is again created (the summation of all colors), the frozen energy is discharged, and the psyche is healed – is made whole. This is enlightenment.
Color My World
Like musical notes, each color conveys an array of possible vibrational information. The red end of the spectrum, like fire, is warming and
energizing. It can excite passion, motivate us, and aid in blood circulation. Orange brings the warmth of optimism, hope, and confidence, and is good for lung ailments. Yellow, the color of our sun, brings clarity,
joy, creativity, and is a healing vibration for digestion and the nervous system. Green falls in the middle of the spectrum, so it’s no surprise that it has balancing and healing properties. This may in part
explain why a walk in the green of nature is always so healing. Green gives us purpose and the groundedness to carry out that purpose. It is harmonizing, integrating, and peaceful. Physically, green has antiseptic
and antibacterial qualities, and can be a good color for problems such as high blood pressure, hypertension and ulcers.
Approaching the cool, electric end of the spectrum, blue is associated with serenity, faith, divine will, spirituality, and higher
consciousness; blue is also effective with headaches. Indigo is connected with the third eye of self-contemplation, intuition, and inner vision; emotionally, indigo helps reduce stress, fear and inner conflict.
Violet, the blending of red and blue, is considered a high spiritual vibration, associated with forgiveness, transformation and freedom. White, the summation of all colors, symbolizes unity, perfection and
enlightenment. Beyond these colors are the pastels, metallics, and many subtle hues which offer other qualities to experiment with.
The Light Code
In his book, Light: Medicine of the Future, author and optometrist Jacob Liberman tells how his journey to heal his own and other’s
eyes evolved into a broader education of the spirit. He and other researchers have found that different colors, especially those experienced as discordant or unpleasant by his patients, are the keys to healing body
and spirit. Such colors are fragments of holographic memories that have been repressed; the desire "not to see" these memories results in a host of physio-emotional difficulties. Healing occurs when a
patient’s field of vision is saturated by the "offending" color, and when he or she allows the coded images and emotions to release. Often this release is accompanied by seemingly "miraculous"
improvements in the eye’s health and function
Brent Baum, author of The Healing Dimensions, has worked with over 7000 trauma survivors with a technique he calls "Holographic
Memory Resolution" (HMR). Baum finds that many diseases seem to originate in traumatic memories. Traumas are defined as any event coded by the nervous system as a threat to survival – physical or emotional
– that thereby induces a trance or state of dissociation.
Such dissociations are mediated by the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system as a kind of "circuit breaker" that prevents
overload and allows the individual to continue to function. Our consciousness encodes the traumatic memory as a "freeze-frame" of the moment just prior to the trauma, called "T-1" (T minus 1).
The freeze-frame is a hologram containing fragments of multi-sensory awareness that, when brought to consciousness, allows access to the full memory of the original trauma. Using verbal as well as subtle energy
techniques, Baum has been successful in resolving many different kinds of disease states, including migraine headaches, chronic pain, PMS, seizure disorders, anxiety attacks, asthma, depression, and eating disorders.
Successful reprogramming using HMR involves re-visioning the traumatic scene as a safe scene, then coding the new image into the nervous
system using color. When the mind registers the new image surrounded by the new color, it moves to a "T+1" state and the fear, sadness, anger, or other blocked energies of the trauma are released. This
release can be felt by anyone sensitive to energy; I experience it primarily as pain or sharpness leaving the body and aura.
Recently a woman I worked with recalled an experience of being ridiculed by a schoolmate in third grade because she was walking to school
alone. That experience was recorded as a feeling of "not-okay" that took the form of a round, hot, red, heavy imprint on her left shoulder. This trauma contributed to her feeling vulnerable and unworthy
when she did not have a mate. Missing was the understanding that it’s okay to be alone, and the compassionate permission to explore solitude.
As she accessed these qualities, I felt heavy, painful energy release from her shoulder. Her subconscious mind offered the color blue, which
she visualized coursing through her shoulder. The repatterning was successful – the shoulder pain was gone. Like Dr. Tomatis’s work with the sound of the mother’s voice in utero, the new image-color seems to
recalibrate the nervous system from a dissociated, contracted, resource-poor state to an open, safe, creative, and resource-full state. She became en-light-ened.
Since each color can express a wide array of energetic qualities, how do we know which ones to use? Fortunately, the subconscious mind knows
exactly what color it needs without the intellect having to understand or figure it out. Like a lock searching for its key, our subconscious mind continues to seek the energy that will make it whole and will
spontaneously attract to us the needed colors in clothing, jewelry, flowers, and paintings. Simply imagining a sacred space and breathing in the colors expressed there can be initiate healing. By being more
conscious of the colors we wear, the colors of the foods we eat, and the feng shui of colors in our living and working environments, we can nourish ourselves all day long.
Sound & Light-enment
The Sufis say that humans are like beggars walking around with loaves of bread on our heads. In our quest for healing and enlightenment, we
tend to look for inspiration and cures from what is external to ourselves. We tend to see our bodies as if they were separate, mechanistic structures we have to "treat" and manipulate. While we can be
assisted from the outside, our journey will ultimately bring us back to ourselves. Back to the light of our own spirit. Back to the sounding of our own bodies.
If we are made of god-stuff, then the keys to healing all already coded within us. If we are shards of the universal hologram, then we have
access to all information everywhere, from the vibration of calcium to the vibration of our soul’s purpose. Our bodies are finely-tunable instruments of healing, responding precisely to what we consume in the form
of colors, sounds, emotions, thoughts, images, air, chemicals. The question is, are we conscious of what we’re "eating"?
The natural world is a moving feast of color, form, and music. Perhaps our ancestors felt the awe of creation most through storms of thunder
and lightning, and sought to re-create it through fire circles, drumming, singing and dancing. God is always offering us nourishment – at the speed of sound and light. We carry our sounding, hearing, and seeing
right inside of us, all the time. Our minds, emotions, and bodies are always telling us where we are in our consciousness, and what we need for healing. Indigenous shamans may make this connection most directly:
seeing visions and hearing music evoked by the visionary forms as they ride up and down the braided serpents of DNA.
In The Matrix, Neo’s mentor Morpheus tells him: "Don’t think. Know." Our thinking carries us away from ourselves, away
from feeling, away from sensing, away from knowing. Useful as it is for practical functioning, intellectual thinking often splits the universe into discrete objects that we learn to fear and control. Light and sound
bring us back to our senses. They show us that grace is offered to us each moment, freely. They recall us to the immediacy of the divine, the magic in the present moment. Whether through the golden hues of a
sunrise, or the sound of laughter, we are always being invited, through sound and light, to lighten up.
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