Epicenters of Justice

EPICENTERS OF JUSTICE: Music theory, sound-current non-dualism and radical ecology

A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY DREW WILLIAM HEMPEL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF LIBERAL STUDIES MAY, 2000

___________________________________ DonnaMae Gustafson, Instructor Instructor LS 8000 8 0002 2 ___________________________________ Stephen Daniels, Advisor ___________________________________

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INTRODUCTION

Recently a lawsuit, backed by timber corporations, was filed against a citizen group called the Superior Wilderness Action Network (SWAN). SWAN has been successfully challenging timber sales by providing providing scientific scientific data reviewing re viewing the threat to fragile ecosystems from corporate corporate logging practices. The timber companies argue in their lawsuit that, in reality, SWAN represents a philosophy of deep ecology that th at is premised on religious beliefs and thus is a violation of church and state separation. Using religious arguments to make government decisions is unconstitutional according to the lawsuit that has been dismissed by SWAN as a typical corporate SLAPP-a strategic lawsuit against public participation. While the argument of SWAN seems obvious, being a group lead by credible university scientists,(1) the timber companies raise a point that could just as easily be turned on its head: Historian David F. Noble, a former M.I.T. professor and curator for the Smithsonian, has presented extensive evidence that in actuality mainstream science is driven by a technologica technologicall madness that seeks to recrea te God's dominion over the earth and works to revive mankind's original image-likeness to God.(2) The origin of the spiritual madness defining modern science is traced to the Benedictine monks under the Carolingian empire, as directed by court philosopher John Scotus Erigena. For the first time in in western history the mechanical arts were motivated by an elite, materialistic materialistic millenarianism to reconstruct "imago dei" and restore "Adam" from the Fall. " 'It was precisely [the] power over nature [that] Adam had lost by original sin.'" An urgency of the beckoning apocalypse ushered in modern science, an expression of the self-fulfilling crisis. Under modernism Man himself became the universal co-creator with God, thus formally disconnecting a divine presence presenc e from nature itself and insisti insisting ng on an abstract transcendent tra nscendent perspective "epitomized by mathematics." A "saintly existence" and a "new race of men" will follow the endtimes via the "redemptive powers of technology." The final secularization of these "spiritual men" occurred in the development of modern engineering elite institutions through the freemasons and their offspring offspring of posit positivism ivism.. Karl Marx even became one of the greatest proponents of the "Edenic respites from labor." Space flight, nuclear weapons production, computer-based artificial life and genetic engineering are all symptoms of an worldview to create an Adam II that will redeem mankind through the destruction of the Fall and the dawn of a new era. The "scientific saints" renounce responsibility for necessarily risking escalation toward the inevitable end-times.(3) Several leading philosophers have argued that, while the ecological crisis presents a new unifying common common ground for united united action, a ction, unless unless the th e underlying opposing worldviews are a re addressed, resolution will only occur by escalating catastrophes that threaten the future of life on the planet.(4) The last 500 years of colonialism and its resultant ecological havoc have been rooted in ideas based b ased on scientific scien tific materialism, materia lism, reductionism, reductionism, mind/body mind/body dualism, and linear causality-what became fortified as the modern paradigm by classical liberalism and the Enlightenment.(5) Enlightenment.(5) Radical ecology theory is being reconsidered rec onsidered by dominant institutions, institutions, in the context of the New Paradigm-mainly systems theory, the new physics, holistic medicine, postmodernism. Although strongly recognized since the mid-1980s, post-modernism became theoretically definitive definitive after Professor P rofessor Frederic Frede ric Jameson's tome Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of















states, a new "totality "totality of difference" can be created-what creat ed-what sound-current sound-current non-duali non-dualism sm describes. As explained e xplained by theorist Jozef Keulzart, Keulzart, systems theory was formalized by Ludwig von Bertalanffy during the 1930s by applying the thermodynamics of open systems to ecology, cybernetics, and information theory. The new physics refers to the primacy primacy of energy over matter, the limit of reductionism, and the inter-connection of all reality as proven by Bell's theorem, quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Holistic medicine applies the above new paradigm concepts to mind/spirit/body dynamics for healing. The University of Minnesota, for example, offers a minor graduate degree in Complementary Therapies and Healing Practices.(6) Physicist Nick Herbert makes the following pertinent new paradigm recommendation: "Religions assure us that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the same deity; biologists say that we are entwined with all life-forms on this planet; our fortunes rise or fall with theirs. Now, physicists have discovered that the very atoms of our bodies are woven out of a common superluminal fabric. Not merely in physics are humans out of touch with reality; we ignore these connections at our peril."(7) Many institutional planners though are hesitant to implement ecologically-sound structural reforms if only for fear of growing irrationalism, extreme relativism, and even a new allencompassing big Other of "harmonious Nature."(8) The ecological crisis is universally eroding the façade of the Western modern paradigm and exposing the spiritual roots of science. What theory can provide a successful integration that meets the true and legitimate concerns of rational humanists and that addresses the ecological justice crisis in a more compassionate and effective manner? Not only did modern science develop from a profound structural problem but David Bordwell, a definitive source for film criticism and social theory, argues that, similarly, social theory "has tended to be deeply traditional in its assumptions." He, like Noble, also traces these limited and problematic conceptual concep tual assumptions to an origin of elite spiritual institutions institutions of the West: We st: "While not all societies believe that a symbol is inherently meaningful, Christianity has been a strongly hermeneutical religion, seeking the kerygma, that latent sense waiting to be called forth."(9) Bordwell is not presenting a broadside attack against spirituality, nor even the practice of deriving implicit moral moral meanings, mea nings, but raising an institutional institutional critique that tha t exposes expos es the epistemological limitations limitations behind western, including including modern and postmodern, theories to date. The same deep conundrum does not elude music analysis. Caryl Flinn recently accomplished one of the most comprehensive analyses of the utilization of music theory for social criticism in contemporary times and she comes to a similar conclusion as Bordwell: By arguing that music represents a special place within the limited system of symbolic interpretation, cultural analysts have worked to "nostaligize music as an object of study or have it stand in for an abandoned ideal."(10) While Flinn does not deny the special role of music for Western theorists after Pythagoras, she does deconstruct the utopian theories as still mirroring a one-dimensional bias of meaning that enforces social repression. Yet in the end Flinn positively encourages utopian projects around music and Bordwell makes, from his broader perspective, a surprisingly similar promotion. To overcome overc ome the long continuous continuous limits limits of analysis, anal ysis, traced trac ed back ba ck to Aristotelian thought, Bordwell argues for a poetics that recovers our senses by utilizing "the reconstruction of earlier acts of comprehension." He states that, like the subordinate role often given to music in social analysis, style and form are not emphasized enough in theory and















institutions.(12) institutions.(12) This is not a nostalgic project but meets Flinn' F linn's s goal for music theorists, namely, n amely, "how to talk concretely and specifically about the effects generated by a signifying system that is so abstract."(13) Utilizing Bordwell's neo-formalist approach that creates "a set of relations of meaning between betwe en conceptual concep tual or linguistic units" units" (i.e. a relation relat ion of opposite opposite meaning, me aning, diminuti diminution on in size, defined by inclusion, etc.), I will be presenting a field of meaning that revolves around moral categories, as is the norm for interpretive criticism of rational humanism.(14) While a few recent grand theorists, in my opinion, have each successfully achieved this new integrative theory, they both have done so in different different manners and with the same epistemological symbolic limitations limitations that Noble and Bordwell Bo rdwell describe. describe . The three thre e most prominent examples are Gilles Deleuze, Ken Wilber, and Slavoj Zizek. The later two qualitatively move beyond b eyond postmodernism by similarly building building from systems syste ms theory, theory , idealist philosophy philosophy (Hegel and Schelling) and emphasizing psychoanalysis. Wilber recognizes the need for a new paradigm to address the ecological crisis with the following: "before we can even attempt an ecological healing, we must first reach a mutual understanding and mutual agreement among ourselves as to the best way to collectively proceed....Anything short of that, no matter what the motives, perpetuates the fracture." Zizek relatedly states: "the hitherto underestimated underestimated ideological ideological impact of the coming coming ecological crisis will be precisely precis ely to make the th e 'collapse of the big Other' part of our everyday everyd ay experience.... expe rience.....T .The he way to break out of this this viscous cycle is not to fight the 'irrational' nationalist particularism but to invent forms of political practice that contain a dimension of universality beyond Capital; the exemplary case today, of course, is the ecological movement." And "significantly, Deleuze and Guattari express their new vision in terms of 'ecophilosophy.'" philosophy.'" (15) (15 ) Fortunately Georgia State University philosopher Mark B. Woodhouse wrote, after building on these grand theorists, the presentation of what he calls energy monism-a model of reality that would not be possible, "if we were not of the very essence of music, i.e., rhythmic vibrations of energy."(16) His work is promoted by Tulane University philosopher Michael E. Zimmerman, author of Contesting Earth's Future: Radical ecology and postmodernity. (17) Zimmerman considers Woodhouse's Paradigm Wars: Worldviews for a New Age to be "an indispensable guide to new conceptual pathways that may lead to the radical and constructive alterations needed to guide humankind in the 21st century." Ironically at about the same time that Woodhouse's book came out, I also sent Zimmerman my manuscript, "The Fundamental Force," which which presents dramatically similar similar integrative work. Zimmerman Zimmerman also positively positively reviewed re viewed what I have been recently calling sound-current non-dualism-a label very much like energy monism. Fortunately, and most significantly, the core concepts of this paradigm can be expressed through basic and easily accessible music theory-a realization that's been entertained by not only leading scientists but by the foundation of the Western Academy-Pythagoras.(18) It's not surprising that energy monism can be easily understood "as a powerful root metaphor and as a concrete model of explanation," according to Woodhouse. The same resonating approach to reality is found in cultures across the globe, just as the same basis for the sophisticated philosophy of Taoism is also found universally.(19) The harmonic and rhythmic processes of yin and yang forces are rooted in a "deep ecology of the body," according to the work of Taoist qi gong Master Mantak Chia. Influential physicist and music analyst James Jeans dismissed the connection between Taoism and Pythagoreanism in 1937 when he wrote, "the















"Taoism had its origins in shamanism, and much like Pythagoreanism it attempted to develop a systematic 'scientific' aspect." The brilliant philologist and historian Peter Kingsley in his groundbreaking work Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition, well summarized the bias that my approach openly confronts: "To suppose that a magician is someone incapable of devising coherent theories about the structure and working of the universe is in the last resort sheer prejudice, denied denied by all the evidence."(20) The reconstructive science of Taoist qi gong and sound-current non-dualism successfully address the western crises of self/other dualism and subsequent reactionary irrationalism, thus enabling an ecological approach to reality to be achieved. Woodhouse theorizes that the new paradigm, because of its cyclical universal principles, is a foundation for a rising global culture which is meeting the planetary planetary crisis of survival.(21) I contend that the theory of sound-current non-dualism demonstrates that true science-based music theory and Taoist qi gong are formally equivalent. Both originate from indigenous systems that are based on universal principles of turning fundamental quantity into quality or natural law modeled by music theory. Music theory formally explains why indigenous societies are not "pre-cognitive" "pre-cognitive" or "backwards" "backwa rds" and formally explains how the western self/other self/other repressive repressiv e system sy stem derives from closed closed one-dimensi one-dimensional onal western epistemolo epistemology gy and is reflected reflec ted in linear, genocidal western development. Music theory provides the formal foundation for radical ecology, chaos and complexity and, in so doing, successfully and formally addresses the three main critiques of radical ecology: a) that it's irrational b) that it's still materialistic and doesn't explain inner consciousness c) that it's another symbolic hegemony or repressive big Other deterministic system. Music theory, by modeling the principles of universal energy, explains how to achieve what qi gong master Dr. Chow calls, "exceptional human functions" of a multi-dimensional multi-dimensional sustainable nature. natu re. SOUND-CURRENT NON-DUALISM

Music is derived from a very simple yet profound concept. From the definitive book Music and Science by physicist Sir James Jeans: "The motion of any particle [or pulse] will be a succession of waves...but in a vibration the restoring force is exactly proportional proportional to the distance the particle has moved mov ed from its position of equilibrium."(22) equilibrium."(22) This is known in in physics as the law of Pythagoras. The implication of this law is that "the motion of every particle will be of the same kind, whatever the structure to which it belongs." (23) Consider the clock, a defining metaphor for the western modern paradigm(24): "the period of vibration of a pendulum depends on its length, and not on tthe he exte e xtent nt of its swing; it is because becau se of this that tha t our pendulum clock clock keeps ke eps time.... the period is independent of the extent and energy of the swing...Without this property it may also be said that music, as we w e know it, would be impossible."(25) The Th e simple motion motion of regular waves enables time to be ordered and the plucked string (a.k.a. the first note, the fundamental, the pulse, or the natural free vibration of the string) when viewed on an oscilloscope, is seen as an empty circle, like the clock face.(26) This empty circle, the fundamental, notes music analyst Beaulieu, is also the same symbol of the Wu Chi, the source for all reality in Taoism.(27) Taoist qi gong Master Mantak Chia states,















This void was given the name Wu Chi. It is depicted as an empty circle in traditional Taoist art because it is beyond human description."(28) Wu Chi is literally the void or nothingness from which all arises. Although Wu Chi, the source of the way of the Tao, cannot be directly referred to with words, music, profoundly, does measure the nothingness itself, as we'll see next.(29)

By the same law of Pythagoras, the free vibrations, or naturally harmonious relations to the fundamental, are all "multiples of the same number."(30) The next natural multiple or harmonic is the octave, the ratio 1:2, or as its called in the Greek source, the Diapason, meaning "through all" or "through the whole."(31) The scientific basis for proving harmony of the Diapason (that Hemholtz theory built from the law of Pythagoras) is at the next order of information, the ratio of ratios rat ios or the relation relat ion of the multiples multiples of the ratios. r atios. Each multiple has its own set of multiples multiples in an infinite pattern of dynamics.(32) But for the Diapason, or the first node (where the string is touched in the center), the beats, as the physicists call the resultant sound of the second order, equal zero or nothingness itself. Normally the resulting difference between the multiples of the ratios creates a pulsating sound or beat. Jeans writes, "on this theory [Helmholtz theory of beats] the octave becomes the most perfect of all concords, since none of the harmonics can possibly beat worse than when one note is sounded alone." He adds "the unpleasantness [beats] remains until the octave of frequency...is reached, at which point [the beats] suddenly disappears."(33) Since music theory is not considered a model to describe reality by the corporate-state western institutions then the great cosmological magnitude of Hemholtz's beat analysis is left systematically marginalized in dominant society. By approaching rhythmic vibrations of energy as the new physics does, the implications of the Diapason is that the source of reality can now be understood easily ea sily (i.e. how something comes comes from nothing). nothing). As the most successful suc cessful music theorist and sympathetic vibrations physicist, John Keely, put it: There would be no life, and therefore no action in aggregated matter, had the latent negative force [the nothingness measured by music theory] been left out...The evolution of power from the latent condition...proves the 'connection link' between celestial and terrestrial, the infinite and the finite.(34)

Keely's connecting link refers also to the second important implication of the law of harmony, or beats, which is that the difference between orders of information can be measured. The problem of clarifying the difference between classes of information is a perennial quagmire to science and true music theory provides the answer.(35) answe r.(35) In Taoist qi gong gong these different levels of information are crucial to the concept of nothingness as the source of creation. The node is the relative void , where string displacement equals zero, and the zero of the beats, signifying pure harmony and creation, is the absolute void . The brilliant and profound text Taoist Yoga states: Seeing the void as not empty is right and seeing the void as empty is wrong [as the West

















This concept has been regained in the new paradigm work of new physics. Berendt cites physicist Charon, Cha ron, noting, noting, Both the electron and the black hole hole [i.e. extremely dense d ense matter or zero beats] are characterized characte rized by totally curved space and by curved time. This This means that the time of electrons and of black holes is opposite to our 'material' time, which moves on a straight line from past to presen pre sentt to future. This, in turn, may imply that that if entropy entrop y grows in the 'material' world, then in the world of electrons (and black holes) precisely the opposite force might grow, the force of negentropy.(37)

The Diapason, first overtone, or node, as the halfway spot on the vibrating string, is, Beaulieu points out, equivalent to the complimentary halves of the Tai Chi symbol from the Wu Chi. Tai Chi, just as with the Diapason, is the basis for all harmony. Music theorist Berendt comments, "the octave, the proportion 1:2, which has always been used to signify the polarity of the world: yang and yin, male male and female, heaven and earth, ea rth, etc."(38) The source of nothingness from which the totality of difference arises enables further evaluation of the universal laws of harmony. To reiterate, the node, the place were the string is touched or first measured, is a relation of the natural free vibrations and, "a touch will kill all the vibrations except those for which the point of contacts is a node."(39) The points at which the displacement of the string is zero are the nodes or the free vibration multiples of the fundamental. By inference the closer the multiple or ratio of string parts is to the beats of zero or the absolute void (the source of the harmony through all) the more consonant the interval of the scale. Thus, based on the Hemholtz law of harmony, at the interval of a fourth and a fifth (ratios 4:3 and 3:2) beats similar similar to the octave octave nearly ne arly disappear (for the octave again the beats are zero).(40) These two intervals are the next natural multiples to the fundamental: "the fourth and fifth work together as yin and yang...The fifth, and the fourth are the basis for the 1-4-5 chordal progressions found throughout music of all cultures," states Bealieau.(41) Just to emphasize this point, although music is fiercely defended as an expression of free association and subjective pluralism (which I completely support), at this fundamental level, true music theory gives proof to universal cultural values from the harmonic or natural law of energy

















The law of Pythagoras, an example ex ample of the inverse-square law so fundamental to science, can also be approached geometrically through another Pythagorean law, the law of growthfundamental to chaos and complexity or open systems science, as we'll also see. It's represented by the 4:3 or 3:2 proportioned five-pointed star, "thought to have been a sign of the Pythagorean brotherhood," comments Edward Rothstein, music critic for The New York Times. (43) The profound simple principle is thus: "As the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the lesser." Rothstein notes that the power of the principle is "to contain itself within itself in the simplest possible fashion." (called the golden mean, the golden section or the Divine Proportion) Rothstein, also a mathematician, explains that the law of growth can be stated as "each number being the sum of the two previous numbers."(44) Or as the music analyst Erno Lendvai puts it: "If every branch b ranch of a tree, tre e, in one year shoots shoots a new n ew branch, and these these new branches double after two years, the number of the branches shows the following yearly increase: 2, 3, 5, 8, 21, 34." (also known as the Fibonacci number series).(45) The mathematical analysis Spirals: From Theodorus to Chaos by Phillip J. Davis (1993) attempts to demystify the law by giving it further credence at the same time: It simply grows its stalks or florets in succession around the apex of the stem so that each fits the gaps of the others. The plant is not in love with the Fibonacci series; it does not even count its stalks; it just puts out stalks were they will have the most room. All the beauty and all the mathematics are a natural by-product of a simple system of growth interacting with its spatial environment.(46)

This law of growth has been b een so important to human civilization civilization that Egyptian, Mayan, Maya n, Asian, Greek, Gothic, Gothic, Renaissance and modern modern architecture and art have hav e all been created creat ed by its precise measurements.(47) The growth pattern can be applied to music analysis in at least three manners. The ratios can be attributed to the number series (i.e. 1:1, 1:2, 3:2, 5: 3, 8:5, 21:13 equals the intervals of unison, octave, perfect fifth, major sixth, minor sixth and minor sixth again).(48) Dover publications, known for their prestigious pr estigious music texts, published the book The Divine Proportion that investigates how the ratio of the major sixth and the major third approximate the golden mean proportion. Lendvai applies the number series to the intervals with each number represented each step of the scale (i.e. 1=minor second, 2=major second, 3=minor third, 5=perfect fourth and 8=minor sixth).(49)

















At this point point we can use music theory theory to examine the basic processes of energy ene rgy that derive from the harmonics resonance spirals of yin/yang dynamics based in the void. We've now deduced, from the void itself, the formation of the first fundamental free vibrations, or natural harmonics, that govern all of reality or rhythmic vibrations of energy. Based on the law of harmony (the second level of the law of Pythagoras) the major sixth (or inversely the minor third) is the next overtone in the creation of the musical scale. From this next basic harmonic we achieve the pentatonic scale and the ability to resolve the first basic structure of psychological and spiritual completion, as the Gestalt or cognitive laws of psychology applied by music analyst Leonard Meyer will show. Jeans states, "the pentatonic scale in which a considerable amount of Chinese and ancient Scottish music is written, as well as much of the music of the primitive peoples [sic.] in Southern Asia, East Africa and elsewhere."(51) Or as the New Harvard Harv ard Dictionary states, "scales "scale s of this type type [pentatony], of w whic hich h there are a re many, are widely distributed geographically and historically."(52) Although the specific five notes may change, they can be derived from the infinite complexities of the fundamental rhythmic processes of energy that resolve the musical scale. The principles of energy dynamics derived from the basic scale enable a multi-dimensional matrix of reality (i.e. resonance and opposite phase transformations described in advanced science via synthesize analysis of the Fourier wave theorem).(53) Or as the equivalent of Taoist qi gong gong describes, "each of the Five Fiv e processes of energy depends on the interactions of of Yin and Yang Yang emanating from the primordial void."(54) These energy processes, through an experiential science of universal Truth and Harmony, have been correlated by Taoist qi gong gong Master Mantak Chia as the following: following: 1) Energy rising: South, Fire, Heart, virtue of love, joy, happiness, gratitude, small intestine, Summer, taste: bitter, color: red, negative emotions: impatience, arrogance, hastiness, cruelty, violence, Mars, mantra mantra of "Hawwwww." "H awwwww." 2) Energy sinking: sinking: North, Water, kidney, bladder, virtue of gentleness, generosity, alert stillness, Winter, taste: salty, color: black or dark blue, negative emotion: fear, Mercury, mantra of "Woooooo." 3) Energy expanding: expanding: East, Wood, liver/gallbladder, virtue of kindness, forgiveness, Spring, taste: sour, color: green, negative emotions: anger, aggression, Jupiter, mantra of "Shhhhhh." 4) Energy solidifying: solidifying: West, Metal, lungs, large intestine, virtue of courage, righteousness, appropriateness, Autumn, taste: pungent, color: white, negative emotions: sadness. Venus, mantra of "Ssssssss." 5) Energy stable: Center, Earth, spleen, pancreas, stomach, virtue of openness, fairness, justice, Indian Summer, taste: neutral, color: yellow, negative emotions: worry, sympathy, pity, Saturn, mantra of "WHOoooooo."(55)

















The processes of Gestalt neo-formalist analysis (Prägnamz--proximity and similarity; law of Return or the need for cyclic formal structures; law of saturation; law of completion and law of continuity) reflect the five process of energy described by Chia (i.e. solidifying, expanding, sinking, rising, rising, stable). But again, aga in, crucial to the application of Gestalt Gesta lt analysis analy sis in music music theory is that--just like the law of Pythagoras expresses fundamental relations for music, "the most important pattern-forming parameter [are] pitch and duration." As Meyer clarifies, in a description of the basic rhythmic vibrations of energy, "relaxation and quiescence...is associated with the decline in tension which is effected when pitches are lower-when a progression descends at its close."(58) From the resolution of the scale or the harmonic relaxation at the fundamental--the void of infinite potential is accessed--the secret for supreme harmony where the unity of infinite reality is experienced. This connection of all multidimensional reality has been described by the new physics (i.e. (i.e. the superstring theory) theory) in the same manner as a s Nick Herbert e xplains the the secret secre t of quantum theory-"using ordinary waves in unusual ways."(59) The means of quantum mechanics are still based in the linear closed systems of one-dimensional western epistemology. Subsequently the final message of physicist Margaret Wertheim's Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics and the Gender Wars is to seriously reconsider the mega-astrophysics projects that put the future of the planet directly at risk, i.e. the superconducting supercollider. Instead she urges that we ground physics in an ethically balanced framework--reflecting the original foundation of energy wisdom.(60) Fortunately, with the principles of resonance, the goal of unifying reality can be accomplished by means of humans without any outside tools.(61) In reflection of the five processes of energy, ene rgy, physicist physicist K.C. Cole Cole writes, after analyzi an alyzing ng the research rese arch of Linear Linea r Accelerator Accelera tor Centers, Cente rs, "resonance may provide a good good analogy for learning...Resonan learning...Resonance, ce, in other words, determines what we see, and what's reflected; what goes right through, what gets stuck, and what sinks in....resonance can make things seem to appear out of nowhere."(62) Even though fully existing in the void is the ultimate example of the principles of resonance, Pythagoras could also heal "without touch" just as Taoist qi gong (vital energy work) Masters are well-documented at doing today.(63) Everyday in China more people then the whole population of the U.S. practice qi gong. Ironically, because of China's Marxist scientific materialism, there has been a great research effort to scientifically examine the workings of qi gong-in 1998 the Chinese Government officially approved eleven different styles of qi gong based on the immense scientific evidence supporting their validity. China has several institutes that use high technology to research qi gong and there's even a qi gong university in Beijing which produces

















this fundamental wisdom.(66) By the principle principle of the synthesizer theorem, Fourier's wave analysis, all waves can ca n be transposed from one level of information to the next, because of their inherent harmonic resonance based ba sed in the void, as described by the law of Pythagoras. We've already modeled modeled this transformation with with the difference difference between ratios and beats (or ratios of ratios). The way this principle is explained in basic music theory also inversely reflects how deeply and fundamentally the closed epistemology of the West is an inaccurate portrayal of the multidimensions of information, consciousness and reality. Again music analyst and physicist Jeans states: Thus, for perfect concord, each step of one 'hour' on the clock face [the cycle of harmonics] would increase the frequency by a factor of 1.5 (3:2 or fifth) [the natural free multiples] and twelve such steps would increase it by a factor of (1.5) to the twelfth, of which which the value is 129.75...the frequency of this last C [the true Diapason] is only 128 times that of our starting-point, so that our twelve steps slightly overshoot the mark.(67)

Because Pythagoras limited limited his his mathematical analysis to ratios, as "the seve rity of Greek taste resulted in melodies being restricted to a compass of an octave," the 'comma of Pythagoras,' or "overshoot" was created. Trying to squeeze the comma of Pythagoras into a one-dimensional closed symbolic system also created an inaccurate, one-dimensional symbolic portrayal of reality. The Equal Temperament Temperament Scale, the Just Ju st Scale, the Mean-Tone Mean-Tone Scale are all examples of trying to compensate for the overshoot that Jeans describe, by maintaining closed systems of increasing abstraction based on the comma of Pythagoras.(68) In response to this fundamental problem, the very influential contemporary composer Harry Partch built a new toning system that reflects music as an accurate model of reality. His system is called the "tonality diamond" and is identical to the Pythagorean Lambdoma or matrix of harmonic resonance.(69) Contemporary composer Sun Ra also conveyed an accurate multi-dimensional model of music with it's logical cultural consequences. As he states, The music is not part of this planet in a sense that the spirit of it is about happiness. Most musicians play earth things, about what they know, but I found out that they are mostly unhappy and frustrated and that creeps over into their music.... I'm dealing with pure sounds... sounds... People have ha ve a lot more of the UNKNOWN than the known in their minds...



















The vowel mantras are the linguistic and psycho-spiritual connection between rhythmic vibrations of energy and symbolic language. Martin Buber, a strong influence for M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky and his brilliant structural analysis of symbols and society, made the following remarks: The word is an abyss through which the speaker strides. One should speak words as if the heavens heav ens were opened in them.. them...He .He who knows knows the secret sec ret melody that bears the inner into into the outer, who knows the holy song that merges the lonely, shy letters into the singing of the spheres, he is full of the power of God.(72) Music analyst Berendt comments, "The science of linguistics reveals that the Christian Amen gradually grew from the primordial mantra OM."(73) Sound therapist Jonathan Goldman remarks, "We can actually feel different parts of our body vibrate with sound. For those who have had no experience working with the subtle body [vital energy or chi], this physical resonance makes it easier for them to accept the possibility of resonating subtle energy as well...."(74) In fact vital energy or qi gong can also be translated as "breath work" and by using resonance of the negative ions and oxygen from air, a spiral of energy is created which resonates with fundamental frequencies that structure the very nature of matter and time. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls this process of creation through resonance, "morphogenesis" from "morphic" (form) "fields."(75) "fields."(75) The same generative gene rative process can be shown in in a more basic manner again with simple music. Dr. Hans Jenny discovered that by placing various mediums on a steel plate with a crystal sound oscillator attached to the bottom, the complex biological forms on the plate are examples of sound nodes organizing matter, called cymatics.(76) Taoist qi gong Master Mantak Chia explains, "By resonance, this spinning ball [of chi], helps stimulate the flow of the

















practice....This primal Vibration or Sound is in its nature transcendental and therefore perceived in silence. Jesus' disciples called it the 'Holy Spirit' or the 'Word' (which is from the Greek Gre ek word wo rd 'Logos,' meaning sound). sound). 'In 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' After Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment, He spoke of this Sound too, calling calling it the 'drum of immortality'. immortality'. Krishna equated Himself with the 'sound in ether'. Mohammed perceived this Sound in the cave at Gare-Hira when He had a vision of the archangel Gabriel, and Lao Tzu described the Tao as the 'Great Tone'.... Tone'.... THERE ARE TWO KINDS of sound: the worldly sound, and the supra-worldly sound. The worldly sound is very important to our sensual and mental comfort, but the supra-worldly sound draws us back to God. WITH OUR POOR worldly language, every time I would like to speak about this great treasure within us, I feel so ashamed of doing such a poor job. But I have somehow to try to convey a part of this great wisdom so that you may feel interested, and find it out for yourself, and then you will know it for yourself without any language.(78)

The holy advaita (or Indian non-dualist) sage Ramana Marashi makes a similar point: To a question by a visitor which seemed to hint that Realised Souls lived only for themselves, 'Why does not Bhagavan go about and preach the Truth to the people at large?' Maharshi replied: 'How do you know I am not doing it? Does preaching consist in mounting mounting a platform and h haranguing aranguing the people around? Preac P reaching hing is simple simple communication communication of Knowledge; it can be reall r eally y done in Silence only. What do you think of a man who listens to a sermon for an hour and does away without having been impressed by it so as to change his life? Compare him with another, who sits in a holy presence and

















MUSIC THEORY-THE LOST LOGOS OF THE WEST The founder founder of systems theory for social science science Gregory Bateson remarked: remarke d: "Pythagoras and Plato knew that pattern was fundamental to all mind and ideation. But this wisdom was thrust away and lost in the midst of the supposedly indescribable mystery called 'mind.'"(82) As we've shown above, through gestalt cognitive theory, there is a direct connection by mind and the basic patterns of rhythmic energy vibrations. This connection though was fuddled and has been the fundamental root problem of the extreme global crisis induced by western linear development that mirrors western linear thought. Another facet of this point is that rhythmic vibrations of energy do not not give primacy to material existence ex istence over ove r consciousness consciousness as has been a mistaken critique critique of radical ecology open systems theory. Meyer Mey er states, s tates, "the ultimate ultimate foundation of rhythm is to be found in in mental activity." activ ity." Even Ev en though, though, "the more order o rder and a nd regularity the mind is able to impose upon the stimuli presented to it by the senses; the more likely it is that motor behavior does play an important part in facilitating and enforcing the musical experience."(83) Taoist qi gong makes the same point at a deeper level: "When beginning to cultivate (essential) nature [enlightenment] and (eternal) life [immortality] it is necessary first to develop nature....This is called fixing spirit in its original cavity which should be where (essential) nature is cultivated and the root from which (eternal) life life emerges. eme rges. "(84) From this primacy of energy as consciousness and virtue, we can begin to analyze the history of how the "wisdom was thrust away" in the West as Bateson describes. Starting with the foundation of music theory for western analysis Bateson comments: This discovery hit the Pythagoreans squarely between the eyes e yes and a nd became a central secret (but why secret?), an esoteric tenet of their faith. Their religion had been founded

















For a long time Western rationalists smiled at the notion that the sound of a single word [a vowel mantra], a single syllable should have a formative, shaping, creative power.....Aristotelian logic is based on the law of identity (A equals A), the law of contradiction (A cannot be equal to non-A) and on the law of the excluded third (A cannot be equal to A as well as to non-A). Beside it stands (and has stood since ancient times) what is known as paradoxical logic; which postulates that A and non-A can both be predicates of X....Our Western concept of logic is strongly conditioned by Western language. It cannot be an accident that Aristotelian logic came into being in classical Greece, in whose language the separation of subject and object, common to all Western languages, found its first clear expression and was immediately realized, in a magnificent graphic manner that was never duplicated by subsequent systems....The symbol of the Western way of speaking and of western logic is the straight line...Argument and discourse in our Western way of speaking and thinking can be symbolized by two intersecting lines drawn with arrows at their ends, one pointing to the left and the other one pointing pointing to the right.... right.... I feel that tha t this excursion ex cursion in to 'logics' 'logics' is necessary necessa ry in light light of what we have hav e said about.. about...mantras .mantras and their effects.(87)

Social systems theory analyst Bateson makes the same point, "logic cannot model causal systems-paradox is generated when time is ign ignored... ored....apart .apart from language, language, there are no named classes and no-subject-predi no-subject-predicate cate relations."(88) relations."(88) Berendt points out the difference difference in Asian languages from western language and the cultural analyst Noël Burch has examined the subsequent different cultural interpretations of reality.(89) Similarly the translator of ancient Greek, philosopher and mathematician Robert Schimdt, has shown that western logos was derived out of a broader language system of phasis--which is the means by which objects spoke

















Like Berendt and Bateson, Rothstein has recognized that both math and music follow the ancient dialectical reasoning reasoning that he traces tra ces to the Pythagorean-based work of Plato. He quotes Socrates, "argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic" and then follows, "the inner life of the arts is in the world of Forms, in the processes of dialectic and its argument by metaphor."(92) Bateson built his social systems analysis, like the phasis of ancient Greek, around the dialectical syllogism -- "Grass dies; Men die; Men Men are grass" in response to the western weste rn logical logical paradox of metaphor -"Epimenides was a Cretan who said, 'Cretans always lie'". Bateson states in Mind Mind and Nature: A dominant mode of communicating Necessary Unity that "syllogisms in grass must be dominant interconnection of ideas...." (93) In response to the deep epistemological error in the West, like Bateson's Pythagorean social systems theory, the foundation of radical ecology chaos and complexity, or open systems theory, is also based from true music theory. As Capra describes in The Web of Life In the 1950s scientists began to actually build models of such binary networks, including some with little lamps flickering on and off at the nodes. To their great amazement they discovered that after a short time of random flickering, some ordered patterns would energy in most networks. They would see waves of flickering pass through the network, or they would would observe repeated repeat ed cycles. Even Eve n though though the initial initial state of the network ne twork was chosen at random, after a while those ordered patterns would emerge spontaneously, and it was that spontaneous emergence of order that became known as 'selforganization.'(94)



















psychoanalysis, he devoted a large part of a recent book to attacking rhythmic vibrations of energy. It's not that Zizek's theory is incorrect but only that he refuses to systematically take into account dialectic analysis beyond that of Hegel and Lacan-or beyond the limits of language as represented repres ented by the F reudian "primord "primordially ially repressed."(97) repress ed."(97) (see (se e below for further description of primordially repressed) Zizek writes, "Hegel's point is not a new version of the yin/yang balance, but its exact opposite: 'truth' resides in the excess of exaggeration as such."(98) What is missing from Zizek's understanding of Taoist qi gong is that the disease is considered the teacher for the cure, just as Zizek states, "the wound is healed by the spear that smote it." In other words, the dialectical process, as expressed through music theory and Taoist qi gong, uses resonance-the exaggerated 'comma of Pythagoras'--to achieve a new synthesis or a new form. Zizek does recognize the meaning of music as "the pre-ontological texture of relations" when he refers to Plato's "chora" (i.e. chorus) from the Pythagorean dialogue Timaeus--calling it "a kind of matrix-receptacle matrix-recep tacle of all determinate forms, governed by its own contin contingent gent rules."(99) Zizek also impressively traces the history of the ego or the Subject as corresponded with the development of opera. The end of opera coincides with the beginning of modernism and the hysterical subject

















The true dialectical process, for which Zizek expends considerable energy to describe through philosophy, can also be approached through music theory in a manner that very specifically and simply simply clarifies the correct interpretation that has been the focus of his his very ve ry serious investigation. As Zizek states, in dialectics first there is a thesis then an antithesis and as each is taken to their extreme logical conclusions, like Socrates would do, both points negate each other by their mutual absurdity (called the dialectical reversal after the unity of opposites). Then that negation is affirmed a ffirmed as a new common common ground that both points now hold hold in common. common. This This last formal step ste p is like naming or recognizing the the first negation and is called double negation nega tion or determinate reflection. The point not recognized in the dominant one-dimensional interpretation of dialectics is that it's "the very lack [void] they have in common" which enables a new synthesis. As Zizek writes, "Being reveals itself as Nothing at the very moment we try to grasp it in its pureness," and in reference to Hegel, "the subject is precisely that which is not substance." Zizek then states that the dialectic process is the same "nodal" problem again and again. (104) Taking Zizek Zizek quite quite literally is more appropriate appropriate then he may eve everr realize re alize for it is exactly the nodes of music theory, by modeling different orders of information, that so precisely describe

















While Zizek, like Bateson, does not stray from the limit of the primordially repressed, he does describe that limit as being magical pre-verbal sound. The primordially repressed are myths that "have no 'original' in the language of intersubjective communication.'" He gives a very significant example, at the very moment when the reign of (symbolic) Law was being instituted (in what Moses was able to discern as the articulated Commandments), the crowd waiting below Mount Sinai apprehended only the continuous, non-articulated sound of the shofar [a trumpettype horn]: the voice of the shofar is an irreducible supplement of the (written) Law.

Zizek defines the shofar as "a kind of 'vanishing mediator' between the mythical direct vocal expression of the pre-symbolic life-substance and articulated speech...this strange sound...is strictly analogous to the unconscious act of establishing the difference between the unconscious

















When typical modernist artist speak about the Spiritual in painting (Kandinsky) or in music (Schoenberg), (Schoenbe rg), the 'spiritual' dimension they they evoke evok e points towards the 'spiritualization' 'spiritualization' (or, rather, 'spectralization') of Matter (colour and shape, sound) as such, outside its reference to Meaning...it Meaning...it dwells in a kind of intermediate spectral spectr al domain of what Schellin Sch elling g called geistige Körperlichkeit. From the Lacanian perspective, it is easy to identify this "spiritual corporeality' as materializ mate rialized ed jouissance ....(114) ....(114)

By claiming spiritualization is outside the "reference to Meaning" Zizek falls into the same epistemological trap and misses the crucial open systems connection between quantity and quality that the law of Pythagoras models. As music analyst Rudolf Haase puts it, "in nature an important role is played by those quantities which in man can be transformed into qualities."(115) Or as Zizek himself admits when analyzing Mozart's Don Giovanni, "the very external form of the Count's melody, its discord with its own content (the words sung), articulates the unconscious truth as yet inaccessible to him, to his psychological

















climate change and colonialism). Wilber does not recognize the fact that there has been a strong backlash against indigenous indigenous research, resea rch, precisely because of its psychologica psychologicall threat to the linear western worldview. His use of Hawaii to explain his theory of holons is an inaccurate portrayal of genocidal U.S. imperialism-in fact he claims the contrary occurred.(120) Certainly neither Pribram, nor the global green movement that Wilber supports, are advocating a "regressive " regressive"" return to pre-industrial pre-industrial society as the immediate immediate dominant dominant fear arises, but instead the societal model of an open spiral process that continually reaffirms the universal common ground of the void. From systems theory music analysis, Leonard Meyer calls this societal model "fluctuating stasis" based on "steady-state" systems theory, a prediction of the same recommendation from radical ecologist open systems theorist Fritoj Capra.(121) In Noise: The Political Economy of Music , Jacques Attali presents a similar societal vision-predicted by and achieved through profound music practices that challenge the hegemony of one-dimensional repressed symbolic abstraction of the western worldview.(122) John E. Peck, worth quoting at length, documents how in fact indigenous cultures already enact concepts of sophisticated open systems theory:



















nothingness, just as music models) that fill the Pythagorean Kosmos. Music theory also ironically proves, by modeling "depth" as well in a more direct manner, how the dominant postPythagorean western worldview is not as sophisticated or accurate as the majority of human cultures (i.e. sustainable indigenous cultures) that it's corporate-state policies are destroying.(126) In the application of the law of Pythagoras and its derivative principles (of harmony and growth) music analyst Berendt notes that "Each spin [of all particles] contains all

















nature and became ever more fragmented personalities. personalities. Thus Thus arose the tension between between wholeness and fragmentation, between body and soul....(130)

The argument presented by the open systems theorists is backed by the historical historical analysis of

















it is not difficult to detect an underlying schema of descent into the underworld as prelude to a celestial ascent. This apparent illogic is the logic of myth. One dies to be reborn; one descends into the depths in order to ascend....This fundamental idea was so strong that it managed to survive intact in spite of the cruder Christian dramatizations of hell-fire, suffering, and punishment,....(136 punishment,....(136))

















Unfortunately, as Morris Berman has documented, precisely because of the psycho-spiritual repression under a reified one-dimensional closed symbolic system, when the undercurrent of non-dualism is tapped, it is assimilated by the dominant reactionary forces.142 Corporate-state fascism has already promoted the guise of being nature-loving under the label of Nazism and now eco-fascism, a term Berman uses, is the threat of a genetically-engineered micro-chipped social cleansing lead by the "life sciences" of Cargill, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and

















problems arise from applying the engineering paradigm to life. This paradigm is being deepened through genetic engineering, which will have major ecological and ethical implications [i.e. extinction]...life is seen as having instrumental rather than intrinsic value. Thus, there is a self-directed capacity for restoration. The faculty of repair is, in turn, related to resilience. When organisms are treated as machines, and manipulated without recognition of the ability to self-organize, their capacity to heal and repair breaks down,



































































































































































Epicenters of Justice

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