THE SILENT DARKNESS OF THE HALF MEASURE

If the finest audible sound that can be heard by both the human ear and the divine ear has a characteristic wavelength of roughly 1 digit, then this implies that any sonic impulse with a wavelength smaller than that will be experienced as silence, rather than a sound.

This silence is characteristic of the half measure, which represents the scale of the field of silent darkness that serves as the boundary between heaven and earth and which, from the system of matched pairs, is about 1 centimeter. On the scale of the half measure, all perceptible forms of light and sound are transcended. When awareness becomes established on this scale, the field of pure consciousness is experienced as a field of silent darkness. It is only when awareness takes its first step on the divine ladder, by ascending to the first layer above and descending to the first layer below that the universal sound becomes heard and the universal light becomes seen.

The Vedic seers used an acoustic analogy to describe the silence of the half measure. The Upanishads, the Vedic texts that specifically deal with the eternal self, tell us that it corresponds to the silence that arises when the tones of a struck bell fade away. According to modern acoustics, the final audible tones of a struck bell are manifested by the highest harmonics of the bell, which have the smallest audible wavelengths. Because the half measure is roughly ½ digit (approximately 1 centimeter), it transcends the smallest wavelength that can be heard by the human ear. As a result, when the smallest audible tones of the struck bell fade, the awareness is led to the silence of the half measure.

This principle was employed in ancient meditation practices and is used in the practice of Transcendental Meditation. According to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has popularized this ancient practice in modern times, it involves following a mental sound to its source in silence—that is, initiating a particular sonic formula (mantra) on the level of the mind and then allowing that sound to fade away into silence.

It is only when that state becomes established permanently and the soul takes its first step on the divine ladder, ascending to the first layer above and descending to the first layer below simultaneously, that the universal light and sound of consciousness become cognized. This results in the soul cognizing the same universal fields of transcendental light and sound experienced by the Creator at the dawn of creation. At this point, it becomes reborn as an enlightened, universal soul.