The Picture of Sound
Years ago I noticed an uncanny correlation between mantras and mandalas. A mandala is the picture or symbol of an event or focus of worship, such as the Star of Bethlehem, and a mantra is a sound usually intoned for centering and contact such as ohm. When Handel wrote his classical Messiah, it was to celebrate the birth and life of Christ. When the hallelujah chorus is sung, a perfect five pointed star or Star of Bethlehem is produced. Did Handel knowingly create the music for this purpose? I don't believe so. Still, somehow he tapped into a form, a geometry, and intuited music that represented the geometry.
Geometry and Sound
My interest in this correspondence between the early pictorial interpretations of sound patterns and frequencies led me into a long and continuing research project. Just how often does sound correspond with form? Is there a sound to the DNA molecule? Could sound be generated from the geometry? In other words, could some mathematical method yield a geometry of creation?
For most, geometry is a boring subject studied in High School. For others, it is the sacred path to the Ultimate. For still others, it is a science that when applied outside of the realm of pure abstraction (mathematical theory) is both predictive and creative. That is, through the use of geometry, functional forces can be directed such as geomagnetic or electro-magnetic fields.
Geometry is the stuff of Pythagoras, Hermes, Thoth, and so many more mystical thinkers that it is hard to overlook. In every spiritual tradition, there is a path written in geometry. The Sufi, in their dance, the Hebrew in their Cabbalah, the Egyptian in their structures and sciences, the Greek in their brotherhoods, philosophy and universities, the Rosicrucian, the Mason, the Hindu, the Native American, and on and on all honor and employ geometry both as a science and a mystical path. Is it possible that a true archetype of a universal nature begins in geometry itself? In other words, is geometry the archetype?
Cymatics is the study of the sound of geometry (see my book, Subliminal Communication, p60-61). Early researchers used a stylus vibrating across a turn-table covered with fine sand to picture sound. The stylus was sensitive to frequency and signal strength. Thus, when a sound was played, the turn-table turned and the stylus vibrated. The result, a picture in sand. This method was laborious and time consuming, but it worked.
The Universe is kind and patient. For me, due to my interest in this work, the chore was made much easier. Today I have a remarkable device in my studio that is essentially a rotating arm full of light emitting diodes (LEDs). The LEDs are sensitive to frequency and signal strength. They are colorized across the spectrum to coincide with frequency length. As such, when I put a sound into the spinning light-bar, a color motion picture results. The continuous geometry of sound in real time.
Over the past five years, using this rotating light-bar, I have witnessed the math of the DNA helix, generated in sound through a special software program, reproduce the geometry of the helix on my light-bar. Indeed, using many of the rates from Radionic research, I have seen what I believe to be the organic geometry of cells, tissue, organs, and more--but save all this for another issue.
Geometry of Creation
Back to the point at hand, geometry appears to be not only an aspect of science and mysticism, but an archetype with the power of what might be called a morphogenic field. Biologists believe that morphogenic fields define the characteristics of species and species differentiation. In straight forward terms, it is the morphogenic field that accounts for why an acorn always becomes an oak.
The accomplished behavioral scientist, Carl Jung, is generally credited for the modern notion of archetypes. An archetype is an essential image that universally communicates without linguistic need. Dream images are often thought of as having representative meanings universal to all. These images are referred to as archetypes.
Archetypal imagery is powerful. It pulls at some level of consciousness in ways that are meaningful but usually difficult to describe in words. Geometrical archetypes exist everywhere and I am frankly puzzled as to why this is yet a basically unexplored area of science.
Let's digress a little at this point and look at a very brief history of geometry and science. It is instructive to realize that modern science has its beginning with Galileo Galilei. He was the first to carry out systematic experiments and to use mathematics to describe his work. To Galileo, mathematics was geometry. Actually, at the time of Galileo, there were two distinct forms of mathematics available. Geometry, and the math derived from early Indian mathematicians known after its Arabic name given by the Persians as algebra. Algebra is a system of equations as you all remember from your school days. Rene Descartes combined these two systems thereby producing pictures of equations in what is today known as analytic geometry. As important to science as this was, it nevertheless fell short of being able to deal with non-linear equations. This problem was solved by Isaac Newton a century later. To make a long story short, for various reasons mathematics tended away from geometry until recently. Jules Henri Poincare is credited with reversing this trend with a system of visual mathematics known as topology or "rubber sheet geometry". It is upon this system that the mathematics of complexity lie. It is also in this system of mathematics that chaos theory demonstrates a higher order. Now, it is not in the scope of our enquiry to spend the necessary time to adequately review mathematics, but for those of you interested, the best history, description and application of historical mathematics as applied to modern science that this author is aware of is given by Fritjof Capra in his marvelous book, The Web of Life.
Here is the reason for our digression. It is geometry that makes sense out of our most contemporary theories in the physical sciences. From the Nobel prize winning work of Prigogine and his theory of dissipative structures to the latest theories proposing an all life connectedness, a network of life, a one ecology of life, the Gaia Hypothesis, or the metaphor used by Capra, the web of life; the intelligent self organizing nature of the planet--nature as alive. These new theories are gaining prominence chiefly on the back of mathematical models/geometry that illustrate order arising from chaos. Not just order, but a higher order. It would seem that not only does the law of conservation (nothing lost) apply to nature, but when order seems to break down, it's really reorganization destined for a higher order. An apparently self organizing reorganization that reveals itself as a geometric process.
Geometry as a Primordial Archetype
I return to my question, is it possible that geometry is the primordial archetype? Is its elegance and simplicity capable of ordering everything in the universe? Is it due to this ancient intuited knowledge, noetic wisdom, that so many hold geometry as sacred? Could it be that when we know the form we discover the function? Is geometry the language of creation? Certainly many can and have shown the geometric progression from singularity to space/time universe. Indeed, multi-dimensional theories currently so popular in physics, including the string theory, our most promising hope for providing a general unified theory, are strongest in their appeal when laid open by geometry.
In my opinion, geometry is a fundamental archetype. It is also more.
To that end, after showing many the effect of geometrical shapes naturally organizing and changing, of fractals collecting into a higher order, of shape and color generating what many have perceived as the matrix, cookie cutter if you will, of all that we know in our physical world and much of what we theorize about, it was decided to join geometry with our patented Whole Brain® InnerTalk® technology and create video tapes.
As with anything, as the new product evolved, it was tweaked. In the end, the geometry vibrates in permutation to an amazing dance of color. It is stillness in motion to watch. The rotating kaleidoscope of colors are used to hide positive messages. Sometimes you see them as the color changes, but unless you still frame your video they do not normally reveal their entire word content. So maybe one sees the word "good" but misses the "I am" content in the sentence--at least consciously. Of course, the research shows your subconscious doesn't miss it.
The soundtrack, music and nature sounds, also carries the positive messages. Additionally, we added tones and frequencies with a canceling beat differential to entrain the brain, slow down brain wave activity, and produce a natural deep state of relaxation or altered consciousness. The best part--they work. Our trial subjects, bankers, businessmen, dental patients, secretarial and clerical persons, truck drivers and so forth have all reported the same absolutely mesmerizing affect followed by a sense of personal empowerment.
Geometry For Health?
For me, this is a beginning. The use of geometry holds many possibilities. Some of these are not abstract mathematical methods for scientists. Deep down I sense that the visual stimuli may even hold a new path to wellness. Perhaps, I have theorized, if the geometry of a healthy organ were presented together with its sound, that somehow the body would imitate, mimic, vibrate or sympathetically resonate to this sound picture and thereby restore its own health. Somewhat analogous to tuning a piano, tuning the body and mind through the sound picture of organic geometry.
Copyright 2005 Eldon Taylor

About The Author

Eldon Taylor, Ph.D., is Director of Progressive Awareness Research. He is a Diplomat in the American Psychotherapy Assoication and received the 2005 International Peace Prize from the United Cultural Convention for his work in teaching self-responsibility and respect for all life. He is the author of over 200 books and self-help programs (http://www.innertalk.com).