Transcendence Through Sound

Liner Notes and Suggestions for Meditation Practices
by Adam Del Monte

The driving force behind this music and project is the desire to further discover connections and commonalities between all phenomena of life. We are blessed with such an abundance of cosmological knowledge that one must employ one’s imagination to discover the more subtle and inner connections between the worlds and energies of which we are made.

As a musician, I feel blessed to have a tool at my side which at any given moment elevates my awareness in certain ways. There is a reason why a major chord sounds happy to most of us and a minor chord sounds sad. The evolution of western music from the Baroque period has progressed within a rather logical expansion and extension of the harmonic boundaries based on the overtone series established by Pythagoras. Just as these harmonic colors exert and solicit an emotional response (of course depending the interpretation and expression), these responses appeal to our sense of aesthetic, our likes and dislikes.

But what if there were a different “set of ears” inside of us that resonate with, and understand the sounds and vibrations of music that has a different set of laws: ones based on the connection between the Hebrew letters, the constellations and the planets and the organs in our body? According to the mysterious and ancient book Sefer Yetsira, The Book of Creation, a cornerstone of Kabbalistic knowledge, every letter in the Hebrew alphabet corresponds to either a sign of the zodiac or a planet. There are other equivalences between the letters and the organs in our body. By connecting the laws of music, astrology and Sefer Yetzira, I havefound the common thread between the musical 12 tone chromatic scale, the signs of the zodiac and the Hebrew letters.

These meditations are a musical transliteration and permutation of various Holy Names of the Divine, verses from the Psalms of David and fragments of prayers. According to the Kabbalistic tradition, our souls are made of the energy of these letters. We are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Life has 22 paths that correspond to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. These 22 paths are the channels that connect the 10 Sefirot of the Tree of Life. These are the 10 layers, spheres, dimensions and levels of density within us that represent the fundamental structure of our psyche and our soul. In listening to these sounds that have the equivalent vibrational combinations, the power of the sounds of these words, unlocks our very own higher vibrations and channels.

The act of actively listening to this music in particular constitutes the technique and method of this kind of meditation. The slow rhythms and the long spacings are gateways into the inner world of the notes and spheres. The long sustains of the highly reverberant guitar and Tibetan bowls are the wings upon which our awareness soars.

As a point of departure and recommendation on how to do this meditation, I encourage you to sit as you wish with the palms of your hands facing upward. You might also listen lying down flat or slightly reclined. It is best to listen with headphones. Just let go and let the sounds carry you as you pay attention to what comes up within you. Allow these sounds and holy names to wash over and through you.

One more active visual-listening suggestion: Imagine the notes of the guitar to be droplets or bursts of energy. As you hear these first notes, imagine that these droplets penetrate your body, especially your entire belly area and then during the sustained notes and chords, imagine the energy filling your entire chest, lungs and heart. When the Tibetan bowls come in allow all this energy to rise up into your head and fill it with light.