STUDYING MUSIC AND VIBRATIONS IN INDIA

Posted on by Ettore Grillo

 

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“Apparently you could make friends easily, Uncle Salvatore. Listening to you, I sense that you felt in India as comfortable as in your own country.”
“Benedetto, my country is the world. My hometown is the place where I am at the moment. In other words, if I am in New York, my hometown is New York, if I am in Moscow, my hometown is Moscow, if I am in Addis Ababa, my hometown is Addis Ababa, and so on.”
“I think you were lucky to find a piano academy in India. They play other instruments in Indian music such as sitar or harmonium.”
“Yes, I was lucky. But the academy was different from that in Isola. As soon as I entered there, I saw several musical instruments in one room. I couldn’t expect that they gave lessons for the violin, guitar, keyboard, and piano simultaneously. When I went to the academy for my first lesson two days later, two students were playing the violin, one the guitar, two the piano, and one the drums in the adjacent room. All those sounds didn’t annoy me. On the contrary, there was a delightful harmony of noisy sounds.
“The teacher was a young woman called Swara. She was quite fat, with long wavy black hair down to her shoulders. If she had been less fat, she would have been a beautiful woman, but her fatness made her body look like a wine bag. “I sat down at a black upright piano and started playing by reading the score on the piano. Now and then, the teacher came and checked my practice. If my playing was acceptable, she turned the page of the piano book to a new page.
“At that time, I wondered whether this was useless work. I was too old to learn a musical instrument. But I felt that playing the piano was like a kind of meditation that made me a less cerebral person.
“After I finished the piano lesson at the music academy, I went to Ravi’s home. He showed me his favorite musical instrument, the sitar. ‘The sitar is an Indian string musical instrument used in classical music. The sound box is made from a pumpkin. The strings are supported by two ivory bridges. Sometimes in the cheaper sitars, they use bones of a camel as bridges. The number of the strings ranges from eighteen to nineteen. There are two rows of strings, seven on the upper part of the sitar and twelve on the lower part,’ Ravi explained like a teacher.”
“Uncle Salvatore, it seems that the sitar is similar to the viola d’amore. You’ve already talked about this musical instrument when you met the lawyer Bruno.”
“They are not similar, Benedetto. The viola d’amore looks like a violin or a cello. The sitar looks like a guitar. However, the common thing of these musical instruments is that some strings vibrate though they are untouched. It was the first time that I saw a sitar.
“Ravi went on, ‘When two strings are tuned in the same frequency, it doesn’t matter if the string is in the upper part or in the lower part, whenever you pluck one of them, the other string vibrates.’ ‘Some time ago I heard about vibrations from a friend of mine in my hometown. He said that everything vibrates in the universe. Do you agree with him?’ ‘Yes, I do. Everything in the universe has its own frequency. The frequencies are measured in hertz. For instance, if the frequency of the glass I am holding in my hand now is x hertz, when you produce the sound of x hertz, both frequencies are the same and the glass vibrates. Everything vibrates, both organic and inorganic matter, both material and immaterial. That’s why when beautiful music is played, our whole body vibrates. Our bodies are made of many particles that react to the various sounds.’ ‘Do you believe in the existence of the soul, Ravi? If yes, I want to know whether the soul can vibrate as well,’ I asked Ravi.”
“Uncle Salvatore, I want to know whether you believe in the soul or not.”
“I don’t know, Benedetto. I’m not sure about that.
“Ravi said, ‘The world is made of energy. When a musical instrument is played and you feel well, it happens because the sound contains positive energy. On the contrary, when you hear the noise of the cars and horns in the street, you are stressed. There are two kinds of energy. One is good, and the other is bad. The world is ruled by two opposite energies. Everything is energy, and Einstein proved it by the well-known formula, E=mc2. It means that energy can change into matter and matter into energy.’ ‘Is the soul energy?’ I asked.
“Ravi lit a candle. Then he went on. ‘The human body and the soul are similar to a candle. When the human candle is burned out, it can’t contain the soul, which leaves the body. Stones are also energy, for they are not dead. There are souls in the universe when an embryo enters the womb. It attracts a soul with the same frequency. When you work under pressure or have pain, your body loses its natural positive frequency. That’s why you need good music to harmonize your body. The soul can feel vibrations as well. Body and soul are connected, and both vibrate. Words and thoughts have vibrations, too. If we say something or think of something, our words or thoughts create vibrations. Do you know why we met? It happened because we have the same frequencies. We both love music. If we had had different frequencies, our meeting wouldn’t have been possible. People attract one another according to their frequencies. Among millions of people in the world, you can attract your soul mate who has a frequency similar to yours. It is like playing the sitar. The string that vibrates in resonance must have the same frequency as the string you pluck.’ ‘What is the difference between frequency and vibration?’ ‘Frequency is the number of vibrations in a second. It is measured in hertz. Hertz are the number of vibrations. In other words, one hertz is one vibration, two hertz are two vibrations, and so on.’

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words: second edition by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo

LET’S TALK GIBBERISH

Posted on by Ettore Grillo

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“One evening, after nearly a half hour of singing, something extraordinary happened. The pastor who led the worship first started to stammer and then uttered a series of incomprehensible words or rather sounds. It was gibberish, which lasted for almost ten minutes. His words recalled an unknown dead language. I had never seen anything similar in the Christian world. Long ago, attending Catholic Charismatic Movement meetings, I heard about speaking in tongues. But I had never seen someone who spoke in tongues.
“The pastor seemed to be in a trance. He was perspiring and pale. His wife sat close to him, motionless as a statue, with her gaze turned forward.
“When the ceremony was over, I approached the pastor and asked him, ‘What happened to you?’ ‘I had a fire inside my chest. It is possible to keep it under control, but it is better to let this inner fire out,’ he answered. ‘What kind of fire is it?’ ‘Our church was established in Wales at the beginning of the last century. From there it spread all over the world. It is related to the church of the early Christians. The gift of the Holy Spirit and speaking in unknown languages are described in the Acts of the Apostles.’ ‘What does speaking in tongues mean?’ ‘It means speaking in an unknown language. He who speaks in tongues experiences a special communion with God. To learn about this topic, I recommend you study the Holy Scriptures. At the beginning, there was only one language for all humankind. Then, due to the building of the Tower of Babel, God confused languages. Later, on Pentecost day, the Holy Spirit descended into the Apostles who spoke in an unknown language which everybody was able to understand,’ the pastor said.”
“Did you inquire into the pastor’s gibberish?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What conclusion did you come to?”
“The pastor’s gibberish made me suspicious that it was due to the vibrations of the music and songs which resounded in his heart. He convulsively expressed the so-called communion with God.”
“Do you rule out that the Holy Spirit talked through the pastor’s voice?”
“No, I don’t. But I am still a bit skeptical about it. “A few years later, during one of my travels to India, I had a chance to know another kind of gibberish. This gibberish was a way of giving vent to the innermost thoughts and emotions buried in the depths of the mind. Actually, we hide repressed emotions inside ourselves.
“It is said that the etymology of the word gibberish comes from Gibraltar, a British overseas territory whose inhabitants spoke in a language mixed with English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Hindi whenever they didn’t want foreigners to understand their conversation. Another theory says that the word gibberish comes from the name of the Arabic alchemist Geber who used it as an incomprehensible jargon. At Osho Ashram, in India, gibberish consisted of speaking nonsense words in unknown languages. Its main function was to throw away the garbage inside our mind.”

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words – second edition- by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo

LET’S TALK VIBRATIONS

Posted on by Ettore Grillo

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“The first time I came across resonance and vibrations was after I bought my first SPA truck. I have talked about that truck in the first part of my memoir. Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course, Uncle Salvatore. But what does your truck have to do with resonance? Are you going off the subject again?”
“No. Let me tell what happened. Can you see those two small windows? Well, whenever I warmed up my truck’s engine in the square in front of my house, leaving it on and in neutral, my mother leaned out of the terrace and shouted, ‘Salvatore! Turn off the engine! The windowpanes are rattling because of your truck!’
“I looked up at my mother with surprise, doubting her words. Maybe my mother doesn’t want me to drive this truck. Surely she is making an excuse, I thought. Actually, she didn’t like new technology. Furthermore, she was always worried about me when I drove my truck.
“One day I left the truck idle with the engine in neutral, the brakes on, and four big wedges against the wheels, and then I went to the kitchen where my mother was cooking. All the windowpanes were rattling! My eyes grew round. My blood froze. How is it possible? There is something eerie behind the rattling, I thought. ‘Go and sell that goddamn truck right away! It doesn’t bring us good energy. I don’t feel good with this rattling,’ said my mother with an angry face.”
“Uncle Salvatore, insofar as I know, windowpanes are thick and well-set in the window frames. It is impossible that they can rattle.”
“Seventy years ago, windowpanes were thinner than nowadays. Furthermore, they lay a little bit loose in the grooves of the windows.”
“I get chills of fear, Uncle Salvatore. What did you do to solve the mystery?”
“At that time, I had a friend who helped me with debt collection. He was a lawyer and also a member of an esoteric society. He had studied the occult for a long time. I had an
appointment with him. I wanted to entrust him with two past due bills so that he could recover my money. His house was Baroque style, opposite the Palace of Prefecture. After I entered at the iron gate, a path, flanked by flowering plants and deciduous trees, led me to the main door. The house served as his office as well, which was in a large room on the left after the entrance. His desk was very simple, compared with the magnificence of the house. The windows of the room were adorned with reddish colored drapes. Opposite the desk were a couch and an upright black piano. The lawyer, Bruno, was quite tall, had an olive complexion and black, bright eyes. When he was in court, he pleaded his cases with great enthusiasm and heart. He was a handsome man married to a blue-blooded woman.
“We talked about the bills for a while, and then I brought up my issue. ‘Bruno, something strange happens to my house when my truck is in neutral with the engine on. The windowpanes in the kitchen rattle. The windows are a little far from my truck. How is it possible? You have been studying the occult for a long time. Tell me the reason. Do evil spirits haunt my house?’
“While I was talking, Bruno smiled and glanced at me mischievously as if I were one of his peasant clients with their heads full of superstitions. ‘Don’t be afraid! There are no
ghosts in your house. Now, I’ll show you something unusual.’
“He got up from his chair behind the desk, headed for the piano, sat on the piano stool, and tapped on one key. Then he turned his head back to me. His black eyes were bright like those of a little boy. ‘Now, pay attention to what I am doing. Look at the thin crystal hanging from the chandelier. I will tap the F-sharp key, and then the thin crystal will vibrate.’
“I kept my eyes fixed on the chandelier, but I was quite skeptical. I doubted that the crystal would vibrate without touching it. Bruno hit a key, and then the thin crystal vibrated like a leaflet in the wind. ‘Can you see?’ ‘Yes, of course!’ I answered with open mouth. ‘Now I’ll play a piece of music. Keep your eyes fixed on the crystal while I am playing the piano. Tell me whether it vibrates or not.’
“This time the thin crystal remained still. Apparently, only when Bruno hit the F-sharp key would it vibrate. ‘There is nothing diabolic,’ said Bruno. ‘It is a physical phenomenon. Including human voice, every sound creates vibrations which are propagated through sound waves that can even cross walls. A part of the vibrations comes back to you through reflection. Next time, instead of leaving the engine of your truck in neutral, rev it up a little. The windowpanes of the kitchen won’t rattle. After that, come here again. I will tell you something more about the interaction between sound and matter, music and religion, sound and the creation of the universe. I predict that your mother won’t shout anymore.’”
“It’s very interesting, Uncle Salvatore. Did you try what the lawyer told you?”
“Of course I did. I asked my mother to check the windowpanes. Then I parked the truck in front of my house as usual. I revved the engine a little bit. My mother leaned out of the terrace, and her face was quite relaxed and smiling. The windowpanes didn’t rattle!
“On Saturday evening, I met Bruno at his home again. As usual, he was very kind to me. We sat on the couch. A beautiful blond maid with a lacy white apron and white gloves brought us two cups of coffee on a silver tray. She waited until we finished our last sip. Then she put our empty cups on the tray and went out of the room with a slight bow. ‘Bruno, I did as you said. This time the windowpanes didn’t vibrate. Could you explain to me the reason?’ ‘Yes, of course. Wait a minute.’
“Bruno went to another room and came back with an old musical instrument that looked like a violin. ‘This instrument is called viola d’amore. Amore means love, but it has nothing to do with love. This kind of violin has fourteen strings. Seven strings are located in the upper part and seven below. The player of the viola d’amore plays only the strings on the upper plane, while those below vibrate in sympathy with the upper strings…

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words – second edition- by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo