Nonviolent Dreams of the Mystic Heart: The Sufi Path of Silence

"I have found in every word a certain musical value, a melody in every thought, harmony in every feeling, and I have tried to interpret the same things with clear and simple words to those who used to listen to my music." Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music

In the beginning, there was sound, and not only sound - a sound. What was that sound? Was it the sound of one hand clapping? OM? The percussive bang of everything exploding into existence? It was the sound of all sound, the sound from where all originates, the intonation of creation.

In traditional music around the world, percussion precedes music, or more accurately, melody. Percussion is the first sound. From the clacking of bones to the taut skin of the drum, the percussive rhythm announces the beginning of music, and thus art, language and community.

What is the origin of language? Seekers for the origin of language are mystified and further entrenched in mystery by searching through the very device they seek to derive from its source. It is obvious that language originated as sound. It would be only logical to presume that language was derived of music, rhythm and song.

Does music influence language, or more intently, the way we speak and what we say? If music is a prime suspect in the origination of language, then it would not only influence the way we speak and what we say - music will cause us to speak. Yet, speech caused directly by music uses the language of poetry, lament, cries of ecstasy and deep reflection.

Speech caused by music is also self-reflective, sympathetic to the transformative creativity within the subjective life. Imagine, the first sound of the universe - a cry - reverberating throughout time and creation as a lament for the ultimate truth - that beginning ends.

In narrative, beginnings are almost always preceded by an end, giving rise to the potential for beginning anew. Music is a constant affirmation of the cyclic nature of ending and beginning, as sound falls and rises, always with the shadow of silence before, after and throughout. Indeed, great music is often a testament to the musician's play with silence.

Silence teaches of right listening. Music is the result of right listening. Music teaches of right speech. Knowledge is the result of right speech. Knowledge teaches of right action. Enlightenment is the result of right action. Enlightenment teaches of right listening. Silence teaches of right listening. 

In the film, The Way of the Heart, Hazrat Inayat Khan's wisdom is conveyed through his prophecies of music as becoming the future religion of humanity. Inayat Khan taught how all religious and social disputes are founded in the inconsistencies and ambiguities within verbal language. Yet, in music, where profound meaning is clear and immediate, ideas and beliefs are expressed without conflict.  

When speaking is united to the knowledge of music, the silence of listening births a voice of the path. 

Listen to more Dreams of Sufi Music: Mercan Dede
Dream of Shams, Dream of Perhan, Dream of Lover

____________

flightless dragon

memory blast

rash city

silent anger

three ways

urban nature

______________

Created immediately before a Lantern Memorial remembrance for the victims of the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, the track features a poem published with the University of Texas, El Paso, entitled, "Lugubrious Background Nearing an Electro-Magnetic Haze". The piece, transformed into narrative sound art through the trajectory of experimental music, is essentially about the explosive omnipresence of America juxtaposed with its remoteness. The marginal landscapes of America are the birthplace for one of the the world's greatest questions: atomic energy. The poem, "Lugubrious Background..." begins in the traditional lands of the American Southwest, with its rich history of Original Peoples. That history becomes estranged into small-town marginality by the overwhelming shadow of a towering American presence. Leading finally to the sounds of New York, the sirens of immigration and post-colonial history remove the people further from the true and original history of the land, until, finally, the inside becomes outside, and the electrified modernization of progress displaces connectivity in nature with a sheen of bright lights. The outside has transformed to the inside, and without a way out, people are terminally trapped by misperception and ignorance.

The musical instrumentation on the track, "Lugubrious Background" speaks to another contemporaneous event, namely the 400th year anniversary of the first treaty between Europeans and Native Americans. On the same day as people remembered the bombing of Nagasaki, canoes waded down Hudson River to New York City to meet delegates of the UN to not only celebrate World Indigenous Day, but to remember the beginning of a formal international relationship between Native Americans and European settlers, begun by the Iroquois Confederacy and the Dutch Kingdom. So, the instrumentation on this track, a frame drum (bodhran) and a xaphoon (bamboo sax) speaks to a renewed history of American tradition. The modern frame drumming techniques of North America have spawned an entirely new way of hearing and playing the frame drum. Although using a bodhran, the frame drum is a universal instrument known throughout the Original Traditions of Native Americans across Turtle Island. Similarly, the xaphoon is likened to a refreshed jazz tradition, wherefrom Hawaii a new saxophone was invented only thirty years ago. The sound of the fame drum with a bamboo sax conjures American sentiments from the historical age beyond the contemporary into the imagination of a future where co-existence revives cultural tradition.


The title of the following chapbook, "Truth our Up-Pressing" is a call to evince our oppressive actions, and speak our truth in a humble way. Either through poetry or prose, the human voice is a powerful agent of active creativity in the spirit of life, survival and freedom. "Truth" is here used as a verb, a kind of call to transform our forms of oppression that we often feel entitled to uphold in the name of family honour, and to dismiss that, and in turn, change our language. Therefore, I use "Up-Pressing" instead of "Oppressing" to say go from seeing our oppression as being a burden on others to seeing our oppression as a burden on ourselves. The oppressed oppresses, the oppressive are oppressed. In truth, all are both oppressor and oppressed, and until each and every last human being realizes this, there is no freedom for anyone.

Truth our Up-Pressing by Rusty Kjarvik

The Original Meaning of Apocalypse

Apocalypse is originally from the Greek apocálypsis meaning "a disclosure of knowledge, hidden from humanity in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e., a lifting of the veil or revelation" (source). Let today be a reminder that there is only one present, and all dreams, fantasies, prophecies and revelations ultimately bring us back to where we are in the here and now. Let us remember that today is always the first and last day. May the renewal of the seasons awaken our senses to the natural light of continuity and the breath of the living voice saying, "it's never too late to live for today." 

________

There he is. I introduce him. Aboriginal poet of the year they say, and the reception is warm. Mythologists and Dreamers convene for the day, to listen to his heart beat to the rhythm of all present to listen. His words ring true, clean and sound through the temple of the mind.

Homage to a poet by Giorgione

I cavort through the crowd. Childhood friends move like Romany artists, musicians, gamblers and comics in their smiling delight. The air is communal and warm. Friendships seep through our pores with a nourishing embrace of eyes.

_________

No broken gourd of misinformation,
            Cracked on the headless spine of an open carcass
                        Breeding divine fungi in the tawny mist,
                                    A tempting kiss stolen across the breath
Of a warring ocean disengaged from its godly host

...
Anger in the tempest of religious man,
                        A cork-bottled nightmare
Emerging suddenly from the abyss,
Encouraging the lion’s stare
            To recede from tropical gore
                        And inculcate the masses
                                    Into a final tour
...

 Impressing the abstract wonder of the fearless
                                    And preparing a light
                                                For here

excerpts from "find Inspiration!"

Andamese Teaching: From Kill or Be Killed to Communicate or Be Killed

Talking History - A Lakota Storyteller

"Myths and legends were told...usually at night around the village fire and the telling was reserved to the "dreamers" or medicine-men, the Oko-jumu...There were three ways a man, and much more rarely a woman, could become an Oko-jumu. One was by "dying" and then coming back to life, for example by fainting or by having an epileptic fit and then recovering. Another way was to be "kept" in the jungle by spirits: if a person showed no fear of spirits, it was believed that they would refrain from killing but they could still keep their victim in the jungle for a while. Yet another way was by talking to the spirits in a dream. The spirits were the dead and any contact with them either killed a person or made him or her into an Oko-jumu." George Weber. The Andamese. Chapter 23: Myths and Legends.

This study, originally from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, is especially pertinent to the study of rites of initiation, where the primary function of this social form of belonging, not only within the human group, but with humankind's higher spiritual faculties in cohesion with subtle ecological presence. This gives us insight into the source of human knowledge, as an intergenerational narrative, and even represents the role of conflict transformation and the relegation of the aggressive principle in human nature from a kill or be killed to a communicate or be killed.

For a comparative study between the Lakota and Andamese peoples with relation to the role of dreams in the making of traditional storytellers, read From Social function to Pedagogical Function on Mythic Dreams.

_________

Tramping through the corridor of my grandparents in the Hampton hills of New York, the beige linoleum lies dirtied with a score of recent visitors, and the angel light of the winter’s day breathes with an icicle heart onto the feet of the whitened doorstop. With a running muck of puppies, my father swings the door open and shoots me out into the dizzying cacophony of wild dogs, huge and menacing. Their growling eyes bear down with starving, cannibalistic teeth.

Ceremonial Orgies by Dog-eaters by Anonymous

As my father quickens back through the warm house, the slow-motion snow gathers under my frosted eyelids, as I work myself back up to my feet in the subzero temperatures, at eye-level with a host of swarming canines, wild and diseased. I notice the back leg of one dog’s been bitten clean to the bone. Their wounded sting of necessity chokes my well-wishing brain into a heady daze of a feral calling.

Gypsy dog-killers by Anonymous

And in the mind of my love, a dream of lightening news props up our necks to an after-life view. Our grandfather, recently deceased, visits us. He’s traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles away across the entire scope of the prairies, a young man of excellent hue, whose eyes invigorate the humble walls of our sleepy apartment. Again in his prime, he offers a blessing of material coordination with our passionate, creative hearts. An ingeniously crafted wooden box, shaped of his exceptional Norwegian whittling hand I presume, is handed over, as a gift, to us.

The Willow flute by Christian Skredsvig

Within the glorious arboreal artwork, two handcrafted wooden flutes of a celestial order are presented hearteningly. They appear as long bamboo flutes, however with a sound equal to a half-Shakuhachi, half-recorder timbre. We play them with delight, and upon sounding the first note, the golden presence of our late grandfather vanishes in a heartbeat of silence; a gift from the prime centre of our earliest known life.

_________

Drift of a fist to the sky
In the activist’s pause
Before standing unannounced
At the gates of eternal misery
Where strife finds embittered ground
And the inglorious suffering breeds childless offspring
Mourning for ancestral greed
Sprouting from a native gourd
With cracked shell
Lying abandoned and weakened at the skin
With taught shell-string clacking
With fortune’s boisterous western noise
Shrinking into the mist
Without echo
From musician’s deep sleep
Over the ancient soundscapes passing
Through electric wilderness
To heart

excerpt from "Ancient Soundscapes, Scholarly Jazzdoms"

Reflection on "The Force of Character" by James Hillman

James Hillman, an archetypal depth psychologist, whose post-Jungian conception of the human experience is essentially imaginative, and whose amoral fluctuation between endurance and immaturity lies nascent in the temporal grains of salt which gather and line the throat with ever increasing grab as aging commences upon the personality. Written at an old age, the author speaks clearly against any kind of aging therapy, and humanizes the current malaise which treats aging as a virus.

The author unwraps biological naturalism with the psychological bloom of a mind fermented with insightful, though not inundated, research on the literary and aesthetic character of human aging as a welcoming asset to life, in flagrant contrast to the ceremonial traditionalism of preparing for death, a non-issue in the continuous envelopment of life throughout the growing and falling of seasonal lasting. Dreams are referred to for their imagistic plentitude in bringing the holistic human experience towards fruition in the entire round of consciousness.

In short, Hillman's psychology is life-affirming unto the limits of modern knowledge-bearing with regard to the biological strength of humankind to age well and vigorously, as an essential presence in social reflection, as a memory of characterful belonging in the psyche of an unconscious gathering of the old triumphant spirit of age in all its mythic fortitude and human vulnerability.

Read Scott London's brilliant interview with the late author: On Soul, Character and Calling : A Conversation with James Hillman

__________

Strutting down main street, Northampton, the little city atmosphere in a smaller town, brevity of metrosexual burning. Eyehole of gouged recollection, that there is a grayer hiss over the obscure horizon edge. A paranoiac whereabouts, a drinkability churning in the ingrate stomach as cold rice turns to frothy fluid within mellowed bowels. The attuned ear swings in frantic respite as the free march to movie theatre skies nickels and dimes my racy birth rite beginnings in the stingy hollow of American noonday education.

Northampton (Massachusetts) by William Henry Bartlett

Deeper along the edge of the township, towards rougher pasture, the greener grass gives to a brown floor of the barn stead. Outside, a reenactment of the medieval lance posture, only instead of a game between knights, the Anglo matador speaks in a murderous war with the human horse. I try my hand. With two lances upraised, I pierce the flesh of a gorgeous brown horse, mirroring the hue of the dirt circle fenced by a weak wooden ring and an audience steeped in American farmhouse poverty. As other horses, unsaddled and with fierce eyes, carouse into the ring, I jet from the gathering into a blacker city.

The Present by Thomas Cole

The jurist is deliberate, patient and silent. Instead of an easy interpretation by the passive jury of bored, directionless public witnessing, a guitarist lights the court with unfailing melodies, an original spirit of human will, to impose the individual struggle with death outside of foreign deliberation in the mind of an other. Because truly, in listening, the other melds seamlessly with the brain of a decidedly active witness, pardoning all in the sonic flight of metaphysical charm.

_________

Gazing at my Love's face, I see through the apparent reality to a frameless art. A sacred geometry in the flesh. A timeless elision, going beyond spent energy.

To consume a day; imagining with laughter in the midst of family. 

- excerpt from "Gazing at Love's Face"
 

As a Child of Light, Embraced by Thoth in Dreamland

Ramses III. in front of god Thoth in tomb of Khaemwaset, 12th Century BC. by Ancient Egyptian Painter

"Thoth, the Atlantean, at the 26,000 year ago beginning of the Cosmic Cycle now ending, aided in the building of the Great Pyramid and secreted within it records and instruments of the Motherland Mu and Atlantis explaining how the 'Children of Light' dwelt amongst the Ancients and are not as sons of men, except when they are in physical bodies. Thoth incarnated again in the Third Dynasty of Imhotep as architect under King Zoser, was Socrates and Simon Peter among seven incarnations. He knew that all men were essentially Spiritual Beings, for he said, 'Man is a 'star' bound to a body! Man is space born, a Child of the Stars(a Starchild!). Man is a flame bound to a mountain!'"

Source

For More Mysteries: Where the Lines that Divide Science and Myth Intersect 


"Dreamland" refers to the areas in and around Nevada and New Mexico where extraterrestrial mysteries intersect with government security, arcane science and high technology. This is the setting of my dream.

_______

After this series of dreams passed through my consciousness, upon waking, I had intended to discard the activity of recording this night of dream substance, as the sketches of dream memory seemed to be far-fetched, or too far removed from my daily, waking reality. Then, upon waking, I was forwarded the above message from an old friend. I thought this was a sign that I should indeed record this dream.

I seemed to be returning from the West Coast, driving across the United States, when I passed through the Southwest. I feel as though I’ve ended a part of my life where I was deeply embroiled in study. As I traverse beyond the coastal horizon into the desert landscape, I am somehow drawn into one final “course” if you will. I stop in an area of absolute desolation somewhere deep in the deserts of the American Southwest. The only nearby city is way far off beyond the horizon. We are in pure desert. I see a familiar face in a crowd of indiscernible human shapes and activity. Suddenly, though curiously expected, there is a presence above, a directing mysterious light, leading us to raise our arms in recognition. I feel we are being taught something, as my entire body begins radiating with harmless visible electricity. There is a pulse coursing through my limbs with a vibrant white glow.

Suddenly, I find myself, in the state of a child. I perceive myself as a small, minute entity, like a small child version of myself, however, somehow smaller, as my surroundings are proportionately more massive than I’ve ever experienced. I feel as if dropped into the middle of the desert, with only a couple companions, equally disoriented. We begin stumbling through the desert brush in an unknown direction, thoughtless and with a daze of incredulity and stubborn introspection strong enough to leave us careless and at once convinced as to the security of an optimistic fate. As we continue our walk, we soon happen upon an open cliff, leading into a canyon of vegetation and water. This source of life is our destination, we can feel it. As two children, however, we fall headlong down the cliff, without heed to caution or ability to properly maneuver the descent, and find ourselves plunging into the cool stream below. This is refreshing, however disconcerting, as we feel we have lost things of importance. There are beings upon a hillock above us, so we slowly collect ourselves and find our way to the top. We are welcomed by a towering figure, an alien body, whose shape and features remind us of an insect, although this being commands great respect. There is an exasperatingly strong resemblance to the living Thoth, Egyptian God of Knowledge and Writing! We are comforted in the presence of Thoth, and he sees to it that we are taken care of, while being independent as ever to splash about for our things in the water and climb the forested canyon hills.

Now that I reflect, I believe more and more this was the figure of Thoth as we know from Egyptian mythology in the flesh. In the dream, Thoth was of certain humility and held an unassuming air, embracing me and simply allowing my inner Child to explore (with personal neuroses intact) under the beautifully humane security of his nearby presence. 

__________

Watch about another incarnation of THOTH in New York City!

_________

"there's an old saying,

that goes something like;

‘a person that knows their place is a demi-god,

and the place of a person,

is a god,

and the One who has no personality

and is everywhere,

is the God’

a really old saying,

no one knows where from"

- excerpt from "An Old Saying"