“The supreme concordance is a sacrament of Being … If even on Earth concordance gives marvellous forms to colours, to sounds and to man himself, what cannot be achieved with superior harmony?”
RESONANCE*
This important subject can now be dealt with because one can check it with the simplest means. One touches a string of the monochord and observes that the others also (tuned to the same sound) enter into a more or less accentuated vibration, according to the force of the first touch.
Any vibrating body enters into resonance when “it feels” its own sound. The most well known and disseminated technical use of this principle is the radio-receiver apparatus. It contains an oscillating electrical circuit, which is regulated so as to pick up the wave of the desired broadcasting station; this occurs when the two vibrations enter into resonance. With the monochord one can also verify the precision of sound resonance, by varying the tension of the initial string. It can be noted that very little is needed to lose the resonance of the other strings, which remain mute and as if dead, because they do not “hear” that sound which is intimately connected with them.
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The principle of resonance is recognized as valid in many fields, and thus not only in acoustics but in Physics as a whole and in Electricity; and it is present, as we shall see, also in many branches of learning and art. In a purely material sense, it is explained by saying that resonance is produced when the oscillations of a body are transmitted to another of the same “period”, through a form of combination. If we leave aside the question of combination – (air, ether, etc.) – which still conceals many enigmas and has not been clarified at all, nor is it as simple as explanations of this kind would have one believe – the fact that “different bodies of an equal period” exist is worthy of the most lively interest. This at first seems evident, but it becomes extraordinary when one considers the phenomenon in an absolute sense, by itself, that is when one investigates the how and the why. Then it acquires a far greater value. In Physics, and in its technical applications, a copious use is made of it. In Chemistry, it is called catalysis: in fact resonance alone is able to explain the enigmatic catalysts. 
The same holds good for enzymes and ferments in vegetable and animal bodies; they can be explained only as entities of resonance present in the material cycles of life, that is able to increase or reduce oscillations and to preserve the general equilibrium of the organism.
But resonance is revealed also in the psychological field. From the phenomena of sympathy and antipathy, to the appearance of similar ideas, to the contemporary discoveries in different places, to end with the great historical resonances, which can certainly be interpreted in a positive or negative sense as gigantic effects, it shows that it is a universal principle.
“Equilibrium is lost when energies do not correspond and are not sufficiently harmonized.”
VARIOUS NOTES
On 16 April 1850 a battalion of French infantry was marching on the suspended bridge of Angers, with a span of 102 metres. The mooring ropes broke and 236 soldiers perished. The cause: the period of oscillation of the bridge entered into resonance with the cadence of the marching step.
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When a substance, by its presence alone, without changing, favours or hinders the combination of another two substances, it is called a catalyst. For example, water and nitrogen do not combine at all. But if one adds platinum, a reaction is produced and ammonia is derived. It is surprising that the catalyst is not damaged by the process and remains completely “neutral”, which can only be explained by considering it to be in internal resonance with the other two substances.
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According to what Sir John Barrow, who travelled in 1800 in the Far East, reports, “the Chinese doctors consider that every part of the human body has a pulse of its own and that from this beat all the illnesses can be discovered. For them the science of pulsation is the major one and the doctor not only studies the various pulses for hours at a time, but gives the patient precise prescriptions … For every pulse quality they have an expression or a name which characterizes it … In substance, their manner of touching the pulse is in effect like comparing it to a musical score, which matches their conception of a living body, which they compare to a well tuned lute.”
Robert Fludd, a Rosicrucian, considers that men are resounders, who reproduce cosmic “music”; the human organs are in proportion to the cosmic resonances and every man has his own “base note”, which corresponds to a cosmic configuration.
“Only the currents, stretched out like vibrating cosmic chords, give the formula of the revealed Magnet of the Infinite.”
EMERGING CONSIDERATIONS
Resonance is one of the essential principles of Space.
Let us imagine a cosmic source, which transmits its peculiar quality in Space by vibration. All the other sources which are still inactive, but distinguished by the same quality or containing it, are induced to vibrate by resonance.
It is an immense process, spatial par excellence, which one must study with the most profound attention, remembering that the Space considered here is “That in which we live, move and have our being”; it has no extension nor distances and offers no intervening resistance.
The starry heaven is perhaps the figure which best assists in understanding this principle. The stars, like worlds and systems, are sources of energy which is propagated by vibration in the universe. Wherever it meets similarity or attunement, it is picked up, assimilated and relaunched into Space. In other words, all that is “in obedience” to a certain signal receives it, identifies itself with it and retransmits it, as long as it lasts, to its source.
From this cosmic miracle infinite considerations, corollaries and applications derive.
Everything is transmitted, in Space. There is no knowledge, nor consciousness, nor sound that cannot be extracted from the invisible and manifested in a form. That which belongs to Sirius, Jupiter and Venus can be expressed in earthly ways. It is the universal Science. The Cosmos knows, and every particle of it mirrors all its wisdom.
When such subjects are touched on, one is distressed and as it were oppressed by their very greatness, so that what one devotedly perceives and describes seems less than a grain of sand. The infinite cyclical modulations of the innumerable sources of energy, their power, the activity which they induce in the most hidden spaces, the ready, spontaneous and perfect obedience of their similars, and the stupendous and simultaneous interweaving of all the vibrations are conceptual forms of such force as to seem unbearable to the heart. But the resounding Space contained in the heart is precisely the place of reception and transmission of all the signals. It must be purified and kept in such a state of selective tension as to react to the most distant messages and to recognize their origin.
It is a process of education and discipline which are easy to understand, through which one day earthly humanity will rise to the glorious consciousness of the Cosmos, distilling knowledge by resonance.
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The unity of the Cosmos appears to be ordered by degrees, distinguished by the quality of consciousness, each one capable of responding to tones of cosmic vibration and of reflecting them within its own hierarchy. From this it appears that the process of resonance is twofold in its effects. A receiving centre receives the signal which arrives from outside and sends it out again into Space, amplified by the spontaneous concordance induced; but it also absorbs part of the energy and distributes it, within its sphere, to all those component individual parts for which it is rightfully responsible and which are of such a nature as to correspond to the sign.
Thus in particular earthly humanity receives from Space the waves which, through quality of consciousness, it can “understand” or, in other terms, which it obeys. And it not only relaunches them but absorbs and spreads them within itself among all those individualities of which it is composed and, where they arouse “comprehension”, the twofold process is repeated in the individual, who takes possession of the signal, repeats it in the human group and absorbs it in his own parts.
This means correspondence between the individual and the whole and between the parts and the individual, in an orderly and hierarchical way. A signal of solar origin received by humanity stirs certain men and certain physical and non-physical organs in them. Received by the vegetable kingdom, it stirs certain families and certain parts in them, and so on. It is an incessant exchange of energy and intelligence, which links every point in Space and depends on consciousness. In ancient times, for example, diseased organs were cured with “corresponding” herbs or rays, or the quarters of cities and the cities of a region were laid out according to geographical alignments which would favour the reception and resonance of particular, desired cosmic vibrations; lastly, these were amplified by appropriate instruments, either complex, like a temple, or simple, like a religious vase.
This demonstrates the knowledge and application of the principle of resonance. The most splendid human cultures were prepared through such measures, and when there is a return to these principles, true culture will be rediscovered.
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The more complex an organism is, the clearer and more numerous the correspondences show themselves to be which link the external Space by resonance to that enclosed within it. A vital, noble and complex whole like the human being must thus respond to an immense range of cosmic vibrations, of which it assimilates a part for the benefit of the inner environment. According to the consciousness, this resonance varies, in quality, from that of the savage to that of the genius. Moreover, it varies with people, places, worlds and systems.
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From the thoughts expressed up till now it follows that the primary energy is transmitted in Space by orders and correspondences, through the principle of resonance. The entities which people the Cosmos are all connected to a single unrevealed Source; but by degrees, or by orders, in a perfect hierarchical arrangement. A signal of beauty which vibrates in the heart of a man and transforms him from the inside arrives through the filter of a series of hierarchical correspondences, cooperating from above to below, like a radio relay system. It is a progression which must be respected, both for the descent of the signal and for the contrary, ascending or, if you like, invoking movement. These concepts lead one to realize that energy is transmitted according to two simultaneous methods: by waves and by quanta. The study of Harmony and of its bases also passes through this dualism, which must be resolved in a synthesis. Every point is in contact with every point in the Infinite – which means continuity. And at the same time, Space is coordinated in a hierarchical way, which presupposes degrees, that is leaps, that is a discontinuity.
To accept only one or the other of these two aspects not only limits the field of knowledge but damages the truth of what one knows, as it mars its representation. It remains only to “pass” between the two, that is to synthesize them in a higher comprehension and, as such, inexpressible in words.
The tonal coordinates, which Hans Kaiser presents later in his work, are at this point already mature and recognizable. Two fundamental properties of Space have in fact emerged: continuity and discontinuity. By the first, consciousness communicates with the Infinite. By the second, it proceeds from degree to degree. The diagrams created with the tonal coordinates show that the consciousness contained in a form of Space reacts by resonance to an external “command”, and that it grows correspondingly by stages, phases and cycles.
