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Chapter Titles

2 We See Three Dimensions But How Many Do We Hear?

Selected Excerpts

Merely looking at something cannot develop us. Goethe

Hidden harmony is mightier than what is revealed. Heraclitus

Our tradition teaches us that sound is God - Nada Brahma. The highest aim of our music is to reveal the essence of the universe it reflects. Ravi Shankar

Foreward by Yehudi Menuhin
The reader will soon understand why this book fills me with admiration and wonder for its author, a kindred spirit who corroborates my conviction that the magic of listening brings us closer to the central core of the universe. To begin to comprehend the mystery of life it is not sufficient to touch and to see - we need to hear, to listen, and thus to unite heart and mind and soul. The softer the sound, the more important it is that we percieve it. We have, I fear, become a deaf people, and the cries of pain of the flora and fauna around us, the very air we breathe, the suffering of our fellow human beings in our urban deserts, in parts of the globe we have subjected to war, to famine and flood, through greed and selfishness, have become inaudible. The media encourage us to read, to view, to hear, but that does not mean we listen.

Until we can create a still centre within ourselves we will be unable to attune the 'third ear' to the messages that are broadcast to us, loud and clear for the most part, but rendered futile due to our incapacity to listen. This handicap is more than deafness; it is blindness as well - and our only hope as we reach the end of the twentieth century is to heed that childhood rhyme we all learned - a key to finding the 'third ear':

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard -
Why can't we be like that wise old bird?
 
 

p. 177
"Seeing entails judging. The eye passes judgement. The judgement separates the judge from what is judged. Seeing involves keeping at a distance. Viewed literally - if I bring an object too close to my eyes, I can't see it clearly any longer. The outlines blur and the structures are no longer perceptible. When the object is one or two centimetres away from my eyes, it starts to get dark; and when it is right on top of them, things are completely black. This shows that in the moment of becoming one, the eye loses its function. The eye must in fact stop looking in order that this becoming one may be possible. That is why most people close their eyes when kissing and making love."

p. 73
"The fact that it has mainly been eye-oriented human beings who permit, who make, the noise which fills every corner of our towns and cities cannot be fortuitous. People oriented towards hearing would never have allowed that to happen. They wouldn't have been able to put up with it. They can't tolerate it.

Noise is garbage perceptible to the ear. It is noise, and not the refuse and other rubbish tipped on the dumps spreading like the plague around towns and villages, that constitutes our civilization's greatest problem in this sphere. 'Visible' garbage is taken away by refuse trucks, but audible garbage remains - as if the auditory dimension wanted to take its revenge for centuries of suppression, discrimination, insult, and injury. If people still able to listen don't take their revenge, the auditory dimension will."

p. 129
"This book is full of examples of how through listening we can gain knowledge, make discoveries, and find connections inaccessible to seeing. The more examples the better in order to convince Westerners, brought up to glorify the eye, that they also possess another wonderful sense organ whose elevation is long overdue.

Scientists believe that they investigate everything, but they deceive themselves. They mainly examine what can be comprehended in visual terms. They neglect what can be heard, and even the organ of hearing itself. Physiologist Wolf D. Keidel sums up: 'The functioning of the eyeball has become absolutely clear to science...but the same is in no way true of the inner ear.'"

• IDM track _Ear Of The Be Hearer_ MP3 (vK) by Sense off of _A View From A Vulnerable Place_ CD on Neo Ouija (2001)
• IDM breaks track _The Third Ear_ MP3 (192k) by Frank Heiss off of _Hanging By A Thread_ CD on Syncom Productionz #004 (1997)

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