Sounds

Do Sounds Have Shapes?

    This is a science story. It begins in Switzerland. A Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny invented a surprising new instrument called a tonoscope: if you speak a sound into its microphone, a thin metal plate at the other end will form a matching shape in sand scattered on the plate. The vibration of your sound is “translated” into a certain form in hard material. When the letter “O” was spoken, the sand grains formed a perfect circle. But isn’t a circle the shape we use to write the letter “O”? what a coincidence! The scientific conclusion was that the rapidity of a sound vibration may show up as fixed form in solid matter.

    Our ancient ancestors believed that words and names had properties of their own. Your name, for example, is very special to you, isn’t it?
Some young children do not like to tell their names. And then, there is the story of he dwarf Rumpelstiltskin, who went to pieces when his name was discovered. Kids always ask, “What is the name of that (color, flower, animal etc.)? Maybe “abracadabra” and other so-called magic words have a special power of their own, because of their shapes, their frequencies.

In the Bible we read, “In the beginning was the Word…” That must have been a very special word. The composers of the Vedas thought so. The scientist above wants to change that famous sentence just a little bit: “In the beginning was the Sound of the Word.”

When we study the principles of sound formation and the history of human speech, we use the words “phonetics” and “linguistics,” – big words you won’t need right now. But the sciences of sound and speech are fascinating. One very useful tool for this is the International Phonetic Alphabet. This isn’t an alphabet of letters, but one of sounds: all the different speech sounds heard in most of the world’s languages.

A guestion: Do you think all of this has some connection with “OM,” the original name of Brahman, or God in Vedanta?

from Supernature by Lyall Watson
Hodden and Houghton, London