Vaisheshika

Vaisheshika

The study of sound has taken me on an amazing and wonderful voyage. In this commentary, I hope to impart something of the wonder I feel when considering the phenomenology of sound, the physiology of hearing, the perception of sound in the mind, and the underlying relationship between sound as we know it and the emergence of the physical universe.

Vaisheshika is one of the six principle systems of gaining knowledge from the Vedic tradition of classical India. The other five (and their original proponents) are Nyaya (Gotama), Samkhya (Kapila), Yoga (Patanjali), Mimamsa (Jaiminni), and Vedanta (Badarayana). The name Vaisheshika derives from a Sanskrt word which refers to "that which differentiates the object of observation from its surroundings." Historically, the originator of the Vaisheshika system of thinking was Kasyapa, known also by the honorifics Kanabhuj and Kanabhaksa, but nowadays always referred to as Kanada. The name Kanada itself derives from the Sanskrt words for atom and devouring (kana and ad) — devourer of the atom. No doubt this colorful title reflects the true focus of Vaisheshika, which is to determine the ultimate origin of physical reality through a "drill-down" process beginning with the diversity of creation and ending at the first impulse of manifestation. Curiously, Vaisheshika can be considered as an ancient Vedic precursor to the Big Bang theory (or something very much like it).

My own investigation into Vaisheshika began more than thirty years ago when I was studying a commentary on the first six chapters of the Bhagavad-Gita by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In this book, Maharishi provides a very brief summary of the Six Systems in an appendix, and I was struck by the simple set of "elements" from Kanada's Vaisheshika. These nine elements are manas, atman, dik, kala, akasha, vayu, tejas, apas, prithivi — mind, awareness, pressure, time, space, identity ("air"), quality ("fire"), substance ("water"), form ("earth). They are presented by Maharishi and Kanada in the opposite order, from the most derivative to the most basic, and as anyone familiar with Maharishi's writings must know, he places a very high significance on sequence or order. (Kanada offers this "inward facing" view because his insights constitute a kind of "drill-down" approach starting from the most manifest elements and working towards their origin.) But when viewed in the opposite direction, from the origin to the most expressed levels, I felt I was being given a glimpse into the actual mechanics of manifestation, a glimpse of how the universe is created.

Naturally, this glimpse was at first very incomplete. In fact, one initial consideration completely puzzled me for a few decades: namely, if the sequence of elements starts with the most basic, why would "mind" be placed before "awareness"? This was all the more puzzling because in Maharishi's extraordinarily rigorous expositions on Vedic knowledge, consciousness is clearly presented as the ground state of all existence, the field of all possibilities, the origin of everything, even the "field" of quantum physics. Mind, on the other hand, is the movie-screen of human experience, on which all sensory input (after extended processing and modification) is projected. Mind is the realm of thoughts, which are perhaps the most highly derivative creations in the universe. Why would "mind" come before "awareness" in the very first stages of manifestation?

The clue to this juxtaposition of "first elements" was, during most of those decades of puzzlement, being presented in numerous publications and lectures by Maharishi, but although I thought I understood what he was saying, it took a long time for it to sink in and clarify my understanding of the nine elements of Vaisheshika. This clue is what Maharishi calls "the Samhita of Rishi, Devaata, and Chhandas" or, in my words, "the inherent unity of the observer, the process of observation, and the object of inquiry." This notion is, in effect, an assertion that the most basic components of what we call knowledge, which is the union of the knower with the object of knowledge by the process of knowing, are essentially a singularity. The division, in other words, into the three essential mechanical components (the seer, the seeing, and the seen), is trumped by their intrinsic unity. Put yet another way, knowledge is essentially a unity, and only appears to be separated into subject, object, and process.

The assertion that knowledge is a unity of its components is not, in the long view, surprising at all. Anything, physical or conceptual, comprises component parts; these components taken together produce the whole, which is intrinsically more than its parts. But what is surprising is that Maharishi puts so much emphasis on the point. His discussion of the Samhita dominated much of his work for many years, and is an excellent example of how something fundamental, simple, and even possibly somewhat obvious, can be so easily overlooked (or misunderstood) because of those very qualities of simplicity.

The concept of the Samhita, tellingly, is central to any understanding of Vedic knowledge. The ultimate realization of the greatest thinkers of Indian civilization is that the universe is fundamentally a manifestation of an underlying unity, diverse only in its expression of the unbounded and unmanifest qualities of that unity. Any understanding of the true nature of reality must be consciousness-based, and cannot be derived from analysis of the manifestations of that unity on the "screen" of consciousness (mind). Ultimate reality, in other words, is neither a concept nor a thought — it is a realization of its own essential unity by that same unity: consciousness. From this perspective the Samhita is indivisible: rishi, devaata, and chhandas simply are that unity.

But this only exacerbates the conundrum of placing manas (mind) before atman (awareness) in Kanada's explication of how to create a universe. Isn't atman "more fundamental" than manas?

The Samhita assertion resolves this unambiguously. Manas and atman are two components of the Samhita (chhandas and rishi, observed and observer); therefore, they are intrinsically mere conceptual aspects of the underlying wholeness. This wholeness is usually called Brahman (or Brahm, since the final syllable is virtual). (Don't confuse Brahman with Brahmin or Brahma.) The notion of Brahman is, of course, just a notion, since Brahman precedes any manifestation of anything. Brahman is the precursor, the substratum, the unmanifest basis, of anything that can become manifest. One can think of Brahman as the vacuum state of the field, or as God, or as "the unmanifest," or as the primordial undifferentiated basis of existence. Whether Brahman is described in philosophical terms, scientific terms, or religious terms, all such descriptions — when analyzed conceptually — become inherently meaningless. Their value is only as "vikalpa" -- statements without actual referent but with some pedagogical value in the moment. This is a quality of all thinking that addresses the most fundamental notions: everything eventually resolves into paradox because ultimate reality is not a concept or an idea, and cannot be encompassed by one of its components (a thinking human's individual mind).

My preference is to consider Brahman as a field of "pure" knowledge (not knowing, not objects of knowledge). Movement of knowledge is what we call fluctuations of the quantum field. In other words, the quantum field is itself the field of pure knowledge in action. What Brahman may be beyond all this, I have no idea. But the poet in me likes to consider that this is but one facet of an infinitely faceted meta-reality, and that the universe we live in is therefore just the tip of the iceberg.

From this perspective, some of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics become less troubling, though no less paradoxical. There is no longer any need for "spooky action at a distance" (Einstein), because the field itself is pure Knowledge. Physics is (so far) the study of the manifestations and mechanics of the wave function, which is analogous to the study of ocean waves to learn about the ocean. By studying the waves we learn much about the elasticity and manifest dynamics of the air-ocean interface and the influence of near-field boundaries, but if our observations are limited to the waves themselves we learn precious little about the domain of the sea and its unfathomable depths. String theory, superstring theory, brane theory, and even Wheeler's brilliant holographic principle, all address the observed, not the basis of the manifestation process. But since the field of human consciousness is itself an aspect (rather than a byproduct) of the underlying field which "does" all the manifesting (all the fluctuations of the field are by definition of the field, and emergent from the field), and since consciousness can in silence reflect upon itself and come to know its own nature — because of this, we can see beyond the manifest surface of the ocean and directly cognize the mechanics of manifestation itself.

As my understanding of all this began to fall into place, I happened to be spending most of my time as a full-time composer, working with timbre and spatiality. The subtle issues of spatial perception through hearing had become very important to me, because I was composing works that had to be presented on multiple speakers. Since there are few (if any) venues with appropriate sound systems, I had to address the problem of how to make these compositions available to other people. As a result, I began experimenting with binaural processing of my eight-channel works, so as to position the tracks in discrete positions in the perceived sound field. The "sound-stage imaging" possibilities of binaural sound are astounding, and led me into a study of the mechanics of the hearing process. Further commentary on these topics will be found in the sections "Psychoacoustics" and "Sound Art."

As I examined the physiology of our auditory aparatus, I realized that although the ear-drum is the outermost area of contact with the external field of atmospheric pressure-waves (sound), and although the ear's frequency detector has a corresponding membrane at its entrance, the two membranes are linked by three of the tiniest bones in the human body, and those bones are in turn linked together by nearly microscopic ball-joints. This means that all the sounds we hear are essentially transmitted through a point source, and from the "inside" point of view, all sound originates from the last of these tiny joints (some fraction of the diameter of a hair).

Sound defines space. In fact, the sense of hearing is the basis of our volumetric model of the world. The ancient Vedic system Vaisheshika describes the sequence of manifestation of the universe, beginning with primordial cosmic mind, and emerging through Dik, Kala, and Akasha. Curiously, this translates as an enticing model of the physiology of hearing: pressure (Dik) over time (Kala) gives rise to subjective viscerally "real" volumetric space (Akasha).

Here we explore this insight into the basis of Maya, and take delight in the phenomenology of sound itself, which is a more than coincidental analog for the fine vibrations of the quantum field that compose the universe.

Sound, as experienced subjectively, can be considered as occupying four domains of cognition:

By exploring sounds of the fourth kind (sounds not recognized), we accomplish several things. First, the mind is freed from the entire speech-processing faculty, which together with music processing binds the attention to a linear experience of rigidly enforced sequence. Although we can’t escape from the subjective necessity of sequential perception (more on that later), vast mental resources are allowed to relax when the audible field is devoid of verbal and formal musical content.

Here we should acknowledge that our operating definition of music is rather limited in the present context. We therefore suggest sonic art as an alternative term for creative audio expressions that are not limited to melodic, harmonious, and/or rhythmic forms.

Another interesting outcome of the exploration of nonlinguistic non-recognized sound is the newfound accessibility of two extremely important determinants of the subjective experience of hearing: timbre and ambience.

Because speech, melody, harmony, and rhythm are so powerful, and marshal such substantial physiological resources for their perception, they easily overshadow most of the underlying experience of the timbre (tonality) of what we hear. In addition, they mask almost completely the vital ongoing spatial monitoring which we rely upon for ongoing knowledge of the volumetric characteristics of our surroundings.

The sonic galleries on this site contain various creative explorations into sound, emphasizing this domain of the Unknown, but inevitably toying with elemental tastes of the other domains. It is almost impossible to eliminate conceptual referent, and even more difficult to eliminate all traces of melody, harmony, and meter. But as the mind casts about, searching for “origins” of the various timbres and sound spaces, we may find some welcome freedom from worldly context, and perhaps glimpse a little deeper into the inner workings of the grand illusion everyone finds so convincingly real.