REN: SOUND, VIBRATION AND CREATION

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

As the creation myths of many cultures share, when God created form, he named or sounded each form in order to bring it into existence. As Adam saw the world around him, he named each object to bring it into manifestation. As Brahma looked into the void, he named each potential that he saw, and brought that object into existence. Without naming, things do not exist, or rather things remain unknowable, mysterious, beyond understanding or form.

Name creates form. The moment we name something, be it a person, attitude, object or way of being, we give it a form. Giving something a name gives it a form, which defines and labels it, to give it meaning. Name creates form. Naming things creates thoughts. Thoughts arise from language, the basis for communication and relationship. Thought creates a certain reality, a consensual reality that we can agree exists as we all give it the same name, and a meaning. How could we ask another person to pass the apple without all of us knowing it was called an apple, and we all agreed that it was an apple? This is why the ancient Hawaiians, upon seeing the great sailing ships of Captain Cook on the horizon, could not even see them, as to their perception, these ships did not exist.

Thoughts are names, and names create and define objects through their vibration. Thoughts are objects, known as thought forms. Without names, there are no thoughts, no objects, no language and no way of communicating. Without names, our reality and everything we do everyday would literally cease to exist in this dimension as we know it. Without names, all objects dissolve into a mass of vibrating, formless energy.

As soon as you name something, you bring forth ALL the associations you have created in your entire life to you about that object. It is all there in that moment, the whole field of energy connected to the meanings you have given to that object. The only way to truly and purely experience that object is to see it in innocence, without name.

We first experience Ren through our own name, and its resonance to us. Our name defines our relationship to the world. Our name connects us with our ancestry, with the resonance of people long dead, and still to be born. Name links us all. Name creates identity, and form. When we name something we bring it into Being. Conversely, when something is unnamed it is unknowable, a mystery. This is why the secret name of Ra, and the unnamable name of YHWH contain the greatest power, only known to a few, who can then wield the power of God to create, or destroy.

Ren is your true spiritual name, the name that you resonate to most: the name of your soul. This name leads you forward into becoming your true Being. It is a reminder of your essence when you forget it. It is the sound of your soul, our God-given name that creates resonance each time it is said, and which holds great power once you learn what it is, and how to use it. Mantras connected to your real name hold great power for you, and Remembering your original name brings forth your soul purpose, grounding you into manifesting your heart's desires.

Teachers throughout time have given their students names. Yet today it is more important for you to remember your own name, through prayer and meditation. However, when you are in a sacred site or temple, in ceremony, your original name can arise more quickly, as your soul opens up and delves deep into its essential sound vibration that unites it with all creation. When you sing spontaneously, in abandon, in connection with the currents of creation, when you let go of yourself, then this sound, your soul song, can arise. The purest sound you can make is this song of your soul, connecting your heart or Ab to your Ka, or power.

As thoughts become forms so you can unite the Ab, the heart, with the willpower of life-force, Sekhem, to create reality from the heart. This power, known to the Egyptians, came from the understanding that all thoughts are names and sound vibrations, and these names, meanings and sounds create our manifested reality. From these sounds all names and thoughts are created, and destroyed. This understanding also highlights the ways in which we as humans, through the technosphere, are creating, manipulating and veiling deeper realities through the indiscriminate use of sound, name, and meaning.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF REN

Sound and form are portals to enter innocence. Enlightened architects have utilized the science of Ren, of sound, form and harmonic proportions, to create physical spaces where we can enter the luminous worlds that Ren cloaks and reveals. In many Indian Temples intricate carvings in marble capture the moment when matter starts to vibrate, the moment when we experience movement in that which appears solid. In temples such as these, such as the exquisite Jain Temples in Mt. Abu, India and Harlesden, London, the experience of the temple is one of constant movement and vibration, where every object is dancing. In many traditional Christian Cathedrals, when the sounds of the choirs reverberate, your eyes become entrained by the patterned light of stained glass windows. These combinations of colour and shape vibrate in resonance with the sound, creating oscillating after-images and expansions of consciousness.

The most powerful sacred buildings and architectures have been constructed with the knowledge of the Ren, which involves sacred geometry, harmonic acoustics, and the four stages of sound vibration. A sacred building is a harmonic structure built to journey through the four stages of the Ren. One of the most powerful examples of these Four encoded into a building is in Chartres Cathedral, France, a Temple to the Mother and Isis.

Chartres is a powerful design, as its specific purpose is to bridge a perceived gap between the finite and infinite. In essence, it is created to resonate the true harmonic ratios and proportions of the human body. As one walks into the cathedral space, one activates and aligns to inherent geometries of vibration and shapes of sound that resonate and inform our consciousness. These shapes of consciousness are mathematically encoded into the sacred space.

Entering Chartres is like walking into another world, vibrant in a Silence that contains many possibilities. Orbs of light hang suspended in darkness, pristine geometries cloaked in symbol ripple in blood-red and blue waves throughout the mindscape. Throughout the day the light constantly changes in intensity and colour. Certain windows within Chartres are coded to catch the attention only at certain times of the day, conceptually reflecting and reminding me of the Indian Raga musical scale, whereby particular sets of notes and modes are played at specific times such as morning, early afternoon, twilight, midnight, and so on. So, each window, like music, is played differently by the light at different times of the day, immersing the interior in a different atmosphere. This provides us with a new facet, a new chord, a new face every hour, every day of the year, with light, shade and colour subtly combined or dramatically contrasted.

Chartres Cathedral is built to reflect and explore this dance of light and shadow. In the view of the alchemists, matter was mind, and it was the immaterial that was real, with the shadow or echo of matter being unreal. (Plato) As the creator of Chartres, Suger said "the loveliness of the many coloured gems calls me away from external cares…I see myself dwelling in some strange region of the Universe which neither exists entirely on Earth, nor entirely in the purity of heaven."

When we see, hear, and reflect on the beauty of material objects, we can then take them within the mind, and become able to "see" through them and perceive their counterparts in the invisible world. In this transformation, we are transported to an intermediate place where our consciousness is neither completely material nor completely spiritual, but both at the same time. The "dull mind rises to truth through that which is material and, seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion." Here we can travel from the seen to the unseen worlds through the many layers of Ren, using the visible as a gateway to the invisible. In this journey we are transformed.

The science of Ren in Chartres uses a simple vocabulary of squares, diamonds, triangles and circles (the shapes of the Ka body) to create simple progressions made in colour, generating movement, light, and space. One moment, there will be nothing to look at, and the next second the canvas of your perception seems to undulate and morph. Energy releases from the forms via the relationships between them.

When we see this point when colour, light and form momentarily precede mental interpretation, we fully experience their purity, immediacy and freshness beyond their three dimensional appearance. We see them as energy itself. Here, the perception of colour is entirely relative and unstable - each one influences the other in a mesh and web of interconnectivity. The eye becomes seduced, transported into a deep relaxation that readily receives, a diffusion of colours. Colour links the inner and outer worlds.

To increase this bridging effect requires the curve, or toroidal spiral form. When colours are twisted along the rise and fall of an enfolding curve, their juxtapositions change continually in innumerable sequences, which create different sensations. From these clusters, which flow into each other, arises meaning. The curve of the torus creates a more pliable structure, evoking rather than describing, bringing to mind the rhythms of nature rather than describing them literally. As the eye flows along the curve, it loses its linear thread as shapes fuse, dissolving like a mirage into a shimmering chromatic field.

At this hinting of what lies behind the surface of the senses, behind the first layers of Ren, lies the quantum state, or fluid mind. In investigating the energy or visual potential of such shapes and colours, one can journey into what lies behind the appearance, which is why the Cathedral builders built this space.

Ren is an important aspect of the light bodies, and it dominated much of Egyptian thought, writing, architecture, and ways of perceiving and interacting with the many worlds around them. All the worlds and dimensions can be placed into a space far smaller than the tip of a pin, and they are far vaster then you could ever measure. The ways to interact with these many dimensions is through applying the science of Ren, the science of name, sound, and form.