the hearer’s eardrum, even impinging on the hearer’s body. But sound is
not ‘material’ in the sense of substantiality: sound is not a substance ex-
tended in space. Experiencing the reality of the non-material realm
through experiencing sound is a powerful way to realize the reality of the
spiritual, with spiritual connoting, in part, non-materiality. The opposi-
tion of the material and the spiritual does not, however, imply the oppo-
sition of the material and the sacred, for ‘spiritual’ and ‘sacred’ are not
equivalent terms. Furthermore, unlike traditions such as Advaita
Ved ̄anta and classical Yoga that regard materiality as inferior, Tantra and
indigenous American religious philosophies esteem the natural world and
human physicality as compatible with the sacred. Traditions such as
these ground the idea of music as medicine.
In the Hindu view of language, it is the ‘vibrating’ spoken word that
has power; words are manifestations of the Divine.^93 Chant issues from a
material source—the human body/mind. But even though the resonation
of the chanting voice is physical, it is not material. Thus it provides direct
experience of the reality of the spiritual. The singer’s voice radiates out
from his body/mind into the atmosphere, creating a field of sound that
joins with the field of vibration in which all Being participates. Sacred
song transforms consciousness in a healing way. In singing, the vibrations
of sound return to the singer, and egoism is destroyed with his awareness,
not that he is chanting, but that he is an instrument resonating the song of
that which is sacred. In this attunement, the singer can be as an unstruck
drum, resonating in concert with the musical vibrations surrounding it.
166 religious therapeutics