of repetition

of repetition

In the mid 1920s, musician Hazarat Inayat Khan

brought Islamic mystical tradition to Western ears at the Summer School in Suresnes, France.

"During these three months' sessions," Khan would focus on sound, color, music, dancing, and language "extensively and profoundly, so that they could easily be published afterwards in the form of books."

Published for the first time in 1996, The Power of the Word opens with "a thought that can be pondered over for years, each time with fresh inspiration" ("The Power of the Word" in The Mysticism of Sound and Music 248). In the beginning was the word "teaches that the first sign of life that manifested was the audible expression, or sound: that is the word" (248).

"When we study the science of breath, the first thing we notice is that breath is audible; it is a word in itself, for what we call a word is only a more pronounced utterance of breath fashioned by the mouth and tongue. In the capacity of the mouth breath becomes voice, and therefore the original condition of a word is breath. Therefore if we said: 'First was the breath,' it would be the same as saying: "In the beginnning was the word" ("The Power of the Word," Hazrat Inayat Khan p. 249). We can't help but spread the wyrd around.

Later in the same text, Khan sketches a commons based on the repetition of specific words, drawing together diverse traditions, in the same manner that Govinda does in his chapter centered on OM, "The Magic of Words and the Power of Speech."5 Khan, too, directs our attention to the persistence of mantra across all traditions. The repetitious history of mantric formulae "shows that behind the repetition of words a secret is hidden, and the day when man has fathomed it he will have discovered a great secret of life. Leaving all religions aside and coming to material science, a person who has really touched the great height of science will never deny for one moment that behind this whole manifestation...is movement. You may call that motion a vibration, or you may call it by a religious name" (258). We call it wiki, and in the beginning was the wyrd and the wyrd was wiki.

This mantra grounds, organizes, reboots, dissolves, and illuminates a multimedia pedagogy that allows the resonance to do the composing.

Mantra from http://www.futurehi.net/archives/000147.html

"Mantra is traditionally an eastern creation but it applies well to magick as a metaprogramming technique and is often integrated into western approaches to spirituality. As we’ve seen, words not only hold a definition, but also a sonic signature that resonates through the skull. The mantra capitalizes on both of these features to create meaningful phrases designed to alter brain chemistry and reprogram mind. The classic Tibetan mantra “Om Mane Padme Hum” translates roughly into “I am the jewel in the thousand-petaled lotus of the heart of Shiva”. The definition of the mantra is the linguistic code to be run in the mind. We understand and embrace its meaning and use this as the conscious relationship to the mantra. It means something significant to us and embodies a mystical experience we wish to embrace and integrate. Likewise the words have a distinct phonic signature when spoken. Through repetition the logical definition of the mantra recedes into the subconscious, put to sleep by the gentle cadence and resonance field of its vocalization. Om Mane Padme Hum Om Mane Padme Hum Om Mane Padme Hum. This fragment of code, repeated over and over, calms the torrent of mind and synchronizes the electromagnetic fields of the brain. In this receptive state the meaning of the mantra is internalized, planting seeds of change deep within the subconscious, and deeper within the associative networks of the brain. As the individual returns to baseline consciousness and goes on about their day, the seed germinates. With steady practice, as in the Ritual of the Pentagram, the seed is nourished and grows to affect real change in the consciousness of the individual."

The Kwannon Sutra, a chapter from the Lotus Sutra, which, along with the Shingyo (Heart Sutra), and the Kongkyoko (Diamond Sutra), are the "most read" texts in Japan's Zen sect, according to D.T. Suzuki's Manual of Zen Buddhism. These, the Paramita sutras, emphasize and utilize tropes of repetition to bring attention to all-pervading breath, the Logos, the wyrd. Here, in the Kwannon Sutra, cited below, infinite variations of form are embedded in the rhythmic repetition of conditional statements. If-then, if-then, if-then.....ad infinitum. Reckoning with infinity requires rehearsal, and rehearsal [requires repetition]. Patterns of repetitio cut across the paramita sutras, whether the translations be in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, English, or any emerging pattern of wyrd.