Pathways of the Mind
Exploring Sympathetic Resonance
The Project
Resonance, as a concept to be explored, is certainly not a new idea. It seems to have been a source of human fascination since time immemorial. Interestingly, the more one explores resonance, the more comes to presence to be explore. Resonance, it seems, bears potential to touch our experience as sentient beings in infinite ways. There is, of course, the obvious. That concerning sound. Indeed, a lifetime could be spent in the exploration of just this particular conception: relationships between vibrating material objects; our perceptions of these relationships; the various ways by which these might be manipulated and configured by us so as to give rise to other, perhaps more developed forms. We may perhaps choose to perfect one area of this field of potential in the way that, for example, Indian classical music has done, yielding a highly evolved form of 'sympathetic resonance' where materials (strings) are tuned so as to vibrate in response to sonic stimuli rather than through the direct contact of human hands. This sympathetic form of vibration suggests other areas too.
If we consider the notion of resonant exchange between people, exchange based on feelings, intuitions, and perceptions, yet another field is opened up as potential for exploration. Perceptions are not restricted to the sole provenance of ears, eyes, noses, etc. There are other modes, other sources by which the world of our habitation might be experienced and considered, if we open the door onto these and develop the necessary faculties. Our lives are constantly engaged with this kind of exchange, often without our conscious awareness or intending of it. But there are also the clever psychologists who seem able to 'read' people - minds and their function - in ways that enable them to prescribe, as it were, reactions; to manipulate in ways that generate for them a desired result. This is powerful stuff! Happily, all are not manipulative though, or at least not in the sense of utility and opportunism and in fact, if given a situation where we each generate the freedom to respond to stimuli in our own particular way, be it music or speech, reading or intuiting 'vibes', we come to a situation where each of us can, from occasion to occasion, circumstance to circumstance, learn a little about our innate human-ness, our potential to harmonize, and these characteristics as they might obtain in others.
Realization of these characteristics requires of us focussed, concerted effort. If only considered in musical terms, harmony is a complex matter and by dint of its conception, verticle in nature. But harmony extends beyond the fairly limited field of music. Harmony is vibration. It penetrates a far vaster range than is determined by the man-made conception of 'musical' pitch and its identity. Primarily, harmony rests in sympathetic resonance. It can sit within, or be external to, definition. It bears the potential to, as is often expressed in Buddhist terms, transcend time and space, reaching beyond the verticle and/or horizontal, doing so as non-concept. And this depends purely upon circumstances we don't control, nor desire to ... moments ... countless aspects.
So this project, Pathways of the Mind, is an exploration of these moments. But this is not to satisfy a quest for knowledge. Rather, this project is a shared exploration of pathways in ongoing experience. Or, perhaps better put, in Being. To broach each pathway on this journey I have chosen, as fundamental to it, spontaneous improvisation, not because I hold this to be the only means possible but because it's the one I feel utterly committed to, yet challenged by. And the challenge? Perhaps a discussion better left for another time ...
Pathways of the Mind: exploring sympathetic resonance - The Project, text COPYRIGHT © Phil Treloar, February, 2009