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What is Psychosophy?
At the core of human consciousness a new source, both of spiritual awareness and of free action, can be found.
What we have been and what we might become, converge in the present life of the soul. We live at the threshold between transforming past experience into raw material for future potential and staying imprisoned within given limitations. This threshold may be seen as the growing point for the evolution of human consciousness.
At the dawn of modern psychology, Rudolf Steiner created Psychosophy as the foundation for a future spiritual psychology, but it has remained relatively unknown for 100 years. (Lectures given in Berlin, November 1st – 4th, 1910). It could have well been named a ‘Psychology of Freedom’.
In what follows, the indications from these lectures are linked to the foundations of Psychophonetics.
All our experiences leave traces in the substance of what Rudolf Steiner calls the ‘Etheric’ or ‘Life Body’. Some imprints are deeper than others and the capacity for storage of these imprints is apparently limitless – nothing gets lost.
The earlier these ‘Soul Body’ imprints take place the deeper they are and, naturally, the more lasting is their impression. The imprints could be considered as three layers:
- Present Time imprints
These could be compared with the surface of the sea as the wind is blowing, creating patterns, shapes, ripples and waves on the face of the water. Some will stay longer than others depending on how much attention they are given while they take place and how much they resonate with deeper layers. - Past Time imprints
These patterns prevail in the upper layer of the Life-Body and reflect the concerns that are constantly present during any period. These are the topics one is processing at any time, the crisis one is going through, the ongoing focus of one’s attention. This layer could be compared with the movement of the seawater in itself, the current. It is formed between the shape of the depths of the sea and the winds blowing above the surface. It is from this level that a client usually brings their presenting issue into a session. - Deep Time imprints
These make up the bulk of one’s biography. They have been around for a long time, they have stood the test of time, they are not going to dissolve in a hurry. From the depths they can dictate habits, tendencies, defences, attractions and repulsions, patterns of relating, moods, feelings, choices and actions. This level could be compared to the bedrock of the sea: it changes, but very slowly. The mountains and ravines of this layer determine a great deal about the movement of the water of experience above.
The imprints on all these three levels, as well as on their many subdivisions, are pressed into a very special substance, between the physical and the emotional. They make up Soul-Forms which ripple and shape the Life-Body. Like a windy storm which disrupts the tranquility of the face of the water in a lagoon, our Life-Body is imprinted by the storms of our emotional and mental life.
The three layers of ‘Soul-Body’ imprints form a sequence from the thin to the thick and while some insight may be gained by reflecting on the first two layers, the deep layers need to be addressed in their own languages of form, rhythm, shape, gesture, movement, vibration and resonance. These are the languages of the inner life and Psychophonetics uses these as well as the sounds of human speech, to allow new relationships and new understandings to become conscious for a client from within the Soul Body.
The sounds of human speech and the dynamics of experience
Whatever name could be given to the substance of which the Soul-Body imprints are made, the same must be given to the substance of which the sounds of human speech are made. If you think beyond the physical, corporal dimensions of sound, something remains to be observed — a pattern of vibration. This pattern delivered and perceived through the physical body is akin to the substance of the Life Body itself. Sounds of speech, consonants and vowels resound with amazing precision, matching like a glove to hand, the imprints of experience on all three levels of the Soul Body.
When a guitar string is struck over an open piano with the pedal pressed, equivalent notes resound which is called in acoustics Sympathetic Resonance. The same takes place between the sounds of human speech and the imprints of the Soul Body.
In his lecture called ‘ The Alphabet’ Rudolf Steiner says that if the whole alphabet of human speech would be spoken at the same time by people in a circle, the form of the human Life Body would emerge in the centre for those who could perceive it. In a Psychophonetics Sound Laboratory, people can come into direct connection with the impact of the sounds of speech which create experiences of body and soul. Each sound and each sound combination resonates, awakens and stimulates specific experiences in people’s bodies, memories, pictorial awareness, emotions and feelings with very precise correlation between the specific sound and the specific experience. Steiner’s hypothesis is, for us, confirmed with thousands of people in many cultures: the sounds of speech are similar in substance to those of Soul Body imprints on all levels.
If it be true that every imprint at every level of the Soul Body can be accessed, made conscious, be articulated, released, stimulated or disperse by the vocabulary of the sounds of human speech, then we have an instrument of healing in our hands, available to every human being with which to explore and recover every aspect of human experience. The implications for the future development of health care are beyond imagination.
This is exactly the claim of Psychophonetics: that every human experience can be named precisely by the sounds of human speech.