An Interview with Jonathan Goldman:

Sound Healer/Explorer Extraordinaire!

by Brent Raynes

Jonathan Goldman, the author of Healing Sounds, and the founder and director of the Sound Healers Association (http://www.healingsounds.com/) out of Boulder, Colorado, describes in this exclusive interview how he became a sound healer, shares a number of personal and profound experiences, and reveals significant lessons and insights he’s gained over the years from his extensive research and work in this exciting and pioneering field.

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Editor: How did you get started in this field of sound?

Jonathan Goldman: Well Brent, I like to say that the light of God struck me one night when I was on stage. I was playing in a professional rock and roll band. I had been playing since I was around fifteen years old. I went off to college, at Boston University, where I graduated with a degree in film making, and then I was playing in various rock and roll bands. Then one night I was playing in a club in a seaside town called Marshfield, Massachusetts. I was one of the singers and a guitar player for the band, and I remember coming back from a break and looking out at the audience, and I began basically to become aware that the music that we were creating was helping to induce an ambience of negativity and violence.

No question that the alcohol and the other substances that people were embibing was also adding to this violent and negative atmosphere, but the music was too, and that night I had the strangest thought, because once again I had been playing music since I was about 15 years old, but now my thought was this: What if music could be used to make people feel good?

Now the concept of actually healing with sound didn’t manifest for me as an idea until a couple of weeks later, but that night it was the idea of using music to make people feel good and sort of create positive energy, if you like. For me, the amazement of it simply is that I had been playing for so long and never had had that thought before. I have always wondered since what was going on that night. Who or what came through to me? I began to contemplate what would happen if music could be used as a positive tool. Then shortly after that I basically began to wonder: what about healing sound? Then shortly after that, we’re talking about within a couple of days of having this thought about healing sound, I was introduced to a woman named Sarah Benson who was giving a workshop on healing with sound, and Sarah became my major mentor in the field of sound healing. She was responsible for so many of the important shifts and changes in my life, including basically an invitation to join a group of people who were interested in research and looking at the healing properties of sounds and music.

I went to this gathering and it was really amazing. I was the new kid on the block. There were some extraordinary people in the field of sound healing—major pioneers such as Dr. Randall McClellan, who wrote an extraordinary book called The Healing Forces of Music, and taught the first college level course about using sound as a healing modality. There were a number of other well known people as well. I was just really elated.

Editor: And this was in Massachusetts?

Jonathan Goldman: Yes, in Massachusetts. I was so thrilled and in wonder, and then I found out that this was their last meeting and I said, “Listen, why is this great energy stopping? It’s so incredible!” They said, “Well, we really just don’t have time to organize these meetings and to do this right.” I said, “What if I were to take this over and do it.” And so all of a sudden the responsibility fell on me and the very first thing that I did was give it a name, because in certain traditions in order to help manifest something you name it. In fact that’s very, very Biblical. In the Old Testament, Adam and Eve named the different animals and stuff like that, helping to create manifestation. So I came up with the name New England Sound Healers. We then began to have monthly meetings that featured people from throughout the globe. Teachers, scientists, medical doctors, spiritual masters, musicians, healers, and really all sorts of people who were engaged in some aspect or another with using sound and music for healing. These people basically freely came and gave of their time, and we had people like Dr. Peter Guy Manners who was the creator of Cymatic Therapy, Kay Gardiner from Maine who was one of the great pioneers of sound healing and the author of Sound In The Inner Landscape, Sarah Benson, of course. Also Don Campbell who wrote a book The Mozart Effect used to present for us, as did the well known musician, Steven Halpern. There were many people who were really extraordinary pioneers in the field of sound healing who freely came and gave of their time and energy, and the group grew and grew.

Editor: What year was this?

Jonathan Goldman: I founded it in 1982 and it still exists right now, but for about eight years we had meetings in the New England area. I sent out a monthly newsletter which went from probably 40-50 people to the thousands. So we changed the name to the Sound Healers Association simply to reflect the global shift in consciousness in terms of using sound and music as a healing modality. During that time I went to Leslie University where I persuaded them that the idea of healing with sound was actually a possibility and that I could do research on this subject. I then indeed graduated with a masters in independent study, researching the use of sound and music for healing.

Sometime later I moved to the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado, and I wrote my first book, Healing Sounds there, which was initially published by a company over in England called Element Books, and now, still in publication over fifteen years later, it’s being published by Inner Traditions.

Editor: Yes, I got a copy about a year ago, and it’s a really good book.

Jonathan Goldman: I’m really grateful. I still find that it’s a really good book. I’ve written about three or four other books, and Healing Sounds continues to be a wonderful and important book. The really great thing about the book is that the information in it is that it is still totally true and valid today.

There was an electrician over at my house today doing some electrical work. He and his wife recently had a little girl. I gave them a copy of a CD that I created over 19 years ago called Dolphin Dreams, and this was created for the birth of my son Joshua. It was actually the first commercially released recording that featured the sound of dolphins. As I said to this fellow, “This was done 19 years ago, and yet it is still used by many, many people for the birthing process,” so the really wonderful thing here, whether you’re creating a therapeutic recording or a book on healing sounds, it’s still important, valid, and relevant to all that’s going on now. Which is quite extraordinary as opposed to being in the music business where if you’re in the normal, traditional music industry and you put out an album, you have about a month to make it, and if it doesn’t make it then that’s it for the life span of it.

Editor: Yeah, what’s in one day is out the next.

Jonathan Goldman: Right. I’m really grateful for what I have accomplished. I have one recording, called Chakra Chant, which was probably recorded somewhere around 1998 or ’99, and it has won a number of different awards including the Visionary Award for both “Best Healing/Meditation Album” and the “Best Album of the Year.” It is probably one of the top ten, for want of a better term, New Age or therapeutic sound recordings for nearly ten years now. Once again I truly appreciate that CDs such as Chakra Chants and Dolphin Dreams, that were recorded a while ago, are still being wonderfully received. Perhaps that is a comment on how relevant they continue to be.

Editor: I know that in my revised copy that I have you mention toward the back of the book things that have happened since the book was first published and kind of bringing the reader up-to-date on developments, like this Dr. Masaru Emoto.

Jonathan Goldman: Right. That’s just wonderful stuff, and for your readers who don’t know about this, very simply there is a man by the name of Masaru Emoto who began to photograph water. Actually what he would do is take samples of water from different places and then he would freeze these samples and then photograph them under a Dark Field microscope. He would photograph the water crystals and what is really quite amazing is that if the water was pure and healthy, like from a natural spring in the wild, the crystallized water would look like a snowflake. But if the water was polluted then the water would look like mud. That was pretty interesting. From there, I guess he wondered, “What happens if different sounds and different music are put into the water? How would that affect it?” So then he used distilled water, which is pretty neutral, and he would expose it to different sounds. Some sounds made very specific and beautiful crystalline shapes, and other sounds, like certain forms of heavy metal music that probably had really powerful negative intent encoded upon it, made this water look like mud. Next, he began to go, “Okay, well what if I worked simply with the concept of intentionality.” He would write words such as “love”, “peace” or “harmony” on the jar containing the water and then photograph it. He also put very negative words on as well. I remember one was “You make me sick, I want to kill you.” The water that had been frozen with the words “love”, “peace” and “harmony” on the jar looked like the most wonderful snowflakes, but the water with “You make me sick, I want to kill you” looked like mud. He had simply written these words and put it on the water. Yet the difference was extraordinary. This really demonstrates the power of intentionality.

If you want to send people to my website, I do have some of Dr. Emoto’s pictures. One of them is really polluted water from Japan, and it looks like mud, and then another one is the same water after a priest had chanted over it for about half an hour. It looks like a snowflake. When I first saw this, I was stunned. I felt this was so important, because how much of our body is composed of water? How much of this planet is also composed of water? This is great evidence of the power of sound coupled with consciousness to literally change polluted water into healthy water. How extraordinary!

Editor: Right, you had already written in your Healing Sounds about the formula of Frequency + Intent = Healing.

Jonathan Goldman: Yes exactly, and in fact I would like to share with your readers that particular evolution of consciousness which is simply that around 1989 or 1990, (I can’t remember exactly when) except that I remember the computer was using a DOS operating system and the screen was a black screen with these amber letters on it. What I had done was collected a whole lot of different systems of using sound for healing.

Before I go into what occurred next, I’d like to ask for you to allow me to first go into a basic explanation of how sound can be used for healing and then get back to the story. Can I do that?

Editor: Sure, absolutely.

Jonathan Goldman: The basic idea of sound as a healing modality is simply this. It’s something that the mystics of ancient times have told us and it’s something now that modern quantum physicists are telling us, that everything is in a state of vibration. The ancient mystics, the writers of the Old Testament, the New Testament, they all had this wisdom. “In the beginning was the Word.” The Lord said, “Let there be light.” The actual speaking of the word light creates light. In the Vedic tradition, “In the beginning was Brahman with whom was the Word,” and one can go on and on with all of these different traditions and find that they have a commonality in their understanding that the world, the universe and everything, is the result of sound, and it is in fact sound.

Everything is in a state of vibration, from the electrons moving around the nucleus of an atom to stars in distant galaxies having planets moving around them. Everything is in a state of motion.

Now sound, technically, travels as a wave form and these waves are measured in basically what are called cycles per second. We hear from around 16 of these cycles per second (however fast or so these waves go are called it’s frequency) and we hear from 16 of these waves to around 16,000. A younger person can hear upwards of 20,000 cycles per second, but the older you get, the more your hearing degenerates.

However, regardless of how well we can hear, I’d like to suggest to you, and to those reading this, that really the world of sound encompasses so much more than that small spectrum of sound that falls within our audible bandwidth. Just imagine, for example, our friends in the ocean, the dolphins, can receive and project frequencies upwards to 180,000 cycles a second, so that’s more than 10 times, for the most part, our range of hearing. Yet dolphins are able to have really huge communications about many different things I suppose. To us, there’s nothing going on. We can’t hear it. Yet to the dolphins there’s just extraordinary information being exchanged.

So the idea is that everything is in a state of vibration and motion, and it is therefore conceptually putting out a sound. Whether or not we can actually hear this sound is a different story. But, as the ancient mystics have said: the world is sound. Indeed our quantum physicists are now telling us the same thing--that the universe is music, and everything is in a state of vibration. In fact, the concept of this superstring theory is really a concept of vibrations occurring harmonically at different levels of existence, or different dimensions, if you like.

With regard to this idea that everything is in a state of vibration, realize that the chair you’re sitting in or the pages of a book you might be looking at or a computer screen are all vibrating and thus making a sound. Everything is in a state of vibration, and this includes our body. Every organ, bone, every tissue, every part of our body is in a state of vibration and when we are in a state of health we’re like this wonderful orchestra that is playing this overall symphony of the self, whatever you want to call it. We say in fact that we’re in sound health.

But getting back to our metaphor of the body being like an orchestra, what happens if like the second violin player is missing sheet music. They begin to play the wrong notes, the wrong melody, and pretty soon the entire string section is off and pretty soon the entire orchestra is sounding off, and this is, if you like, analogous to a part of the body vibrating out of harmony, vibrating out of ease. In fact, we’d call this part of the body that is vibrating out of ease to be dis-eased.

Now let me ask you a question. What if we could somehow restore to this string player who has lost their sheet music the correct notes, the correct frequencies? We’d have the string player back in the orchestra playing along just fine. Yes?

Editor: Absolutely.

Jonathan Goldman: I come from a family of doctors. My father, grandfather, my brother are all medical doctors and I have the highest regard for traditional allopathic medicine, but currently, with this metaphor of the body being like an orchestra and this string player having lost his sheet music, traditionally allopathic medicine would either give this string player enough drugs till they pass out or else basically cut off their head with a broad sword, which would be analogous to surgery, and both of these are effective in removing the string player from playing the wrong notes but it doesn’t restore the string player back to their part in the orchestra. This is the whole idea of using sound as a modality. What if we could give the string player back the correct sheet music? What if we could somehow project the correct resonant frequency to that part of the body that is vibrating out of ease or out of harmony.

It’s a fairly simple notion and yet it’s very, very important because for the most part most of the energy and medicine approaches really work along the lines that energy which is blocked, which is vibrating at the wrong frequency, causes imbalance. I simply say that energy that is basically vibrating at the wrong frequency creates this phenomenon as well, so we perceive something as being out of tune, as being unhealthy.

Now let us return to my story and that time sitting in front of my computer. I was writing a book and I literally had been collecting for about 8 to 10 years, various systems of using sound as a healing modality. I would mostly be focusing on the use of sound to resonate the chakras, but I also had a lot of different systems of sound for resonating different organs, whether it was the heart or the liver or anything. I had just literally hundreds of pages, and I remember sitting at my computer, and I probably had a stack of pages that were about two feet high, of different systems. There were that many. I was sitting with my head in my hands because I was really in a state, if you will, of intellectual angst because there were all of these different scientists and all of these different healers who were claiming great success with sound, and yet these different systems that they were using were not in agreement with one another. They weren’t coherent. There was no, if you will, unified field occurring. One scientist would use one set of frequencies for a particular organ and another scientist would use a completely different set of frequencies for the same organ. Yet both were claiming success. One spiritual master would use a particular mantra for a specific chakra while another spiritual master would use a very different mantra for that same chakra, both claiming success in terms of being able to resonate and balance the chakras.

I was sitting there going, “What is going on? This doesn’t make any sense.” I like to have both the left and right portions of my brain ­both the logical and intuitive aspects working together so I could understand this stuff. Something felt wrong, and I couldn’t get it. I just couldn’t get it. I knew that there had to be an answer as to how these people, whom I had no reason to doubt the validity of their claims of success with these sounds, and yet how could it be that the sounds didn’t align and match with each other. Then all of a sudden I heard a voice say, “It is not only the frequency of the sound that creates its effect, but also the intention of the person creating the sound that creates this effect.” I remember writing down, in big glowing amber letters on my computer, “Frequency + Intent = Healing.”

Now intent, if you like, is the energy behind the sound. It is, if you like, the consciousness that we have when we’re making the sound. This really made a lot of sense to me and then later I have experienced this type of phenomenon, and in fact most people have because probably everyone has been at a party and somebody has walked up to them and they said, “How lovely to see you,” and you feel like you’ve been psychically slimed.

Really the word, the frequency of the sound said one thing but the intentionality was very, very different, and we pick it up. So getting back again to Dr. Emoto’s work here was one example of a validation of the power of intention coupled with sound.

Another aspect of this is simply using kinesiology, which is a method of muscle testing, and you can take this same sound and put two very, very different intentions on it and the effects will be very, very different.

Editor: A lot of what we’re talking about here is, once again, like with what you’ve been talking about in the ancient writings and texts and how a lot of cultures already had this knowledge and we’re simply rediscovering it, you know?

Jonathan Goldman: Exactly.

Editor: Now one day I was surfing the Internet and I came across a story about you which was the first time that I had read about you. It described this experience that you had down in Mexico, in a temple. You were in the darkness with a guide who had his flashlight and you and some friends, and this is one of those fascinating stories. You had gotten down inside there, it was pitch black, and he turned out the light, and he knew that you did toning and worked with sound and asked you to project sound toward the doorway there. Well, if you don’t care, just take it from there.

Jonathan Goldman: Well the amazing phenomenon was that I made this sound and the room became slightly illuminated. Now it wasn’t as though somebody had switched on a 60 watt bulb, but you could definitely make out the outline of different people and actually see them, to some degree or another. I created this tone for about, I don’t know, a minute or two minutes. Everyone in the room experienced this phenomenon of seeing light and being able to see each other. Then the guide turned his flashlight on and we continued.

I have to admit that it was probably such a powerful experience for me that I really blocked it out from my psyche, my consciousness, until I returned back to the United States because we were down there during what is called the Harmonic Convergence. I think that was probably around 1987. Probably about 20 years ago. I then began to research different ideas of how this might have manifested, and in my book Healing Sounds I spend a few pages at least contemplating how this possibly could have been. It certainly was a very real experience.

Thank you for reminding me of that. I’ve begun to now jot down ideas about some, shall we say, unique and strange experiences that I’ve had during my life.

Editor: Well that one has always fascinated me and I just thought that if I ever had an opportunity to ever talk with you I wanted to mention that.

Jonathan Goldman: Well it was one of the more significant frequency shifting adventures that I’ve had. I’ve had others that have not been written up. In fact, one of my brothers, when he first read that book, he was just like blown away by the information and the experiences, and I told him, “The really strange stuff I didn’t write about.” It’s quite unique. I’ve had many, many different, almost if you like unbelievable adventures that did occur, and what can one say except, “Golly gee, it’s certainly an interesting planet that we’re on.”

Editor: Yeah. In my column Reality Checking, I’ve been describing how I’ve been working with a set of Peruvian whistling vessels for two years now and I write periodically in my monthly column details about doing presentations with them and experiences people share.

Jonathan Goldman: I’ve just been in contact again with the man who basically rediscovered the Peruvian whistling vessels, and his name is Daniel Statnekov.

Editor: I just wrote an article about him. He came through the area back in June and we got to meet and spend some time near an Indian Mound over near Jackson, Tennessee. We blew some of his vessels there and meditated there, and it was quite an experience. Details of this are on the website too!

Jonathan Goldman: Oh great!

Editor: Daniel’s a real great guy!

Jonathan Goldman: He’s wonderful. He actually made me a set for my 50th birthday some years ago and they’re on my altar and there’s another set that was made by a student of his, by the name of Don Wright, that we take around. I don’t blow them too frequently because they’re so powerful. So just really for very, very special healing occasions, but they’re wonderful.

Editor: How about sharing any of your other experiences with sound?

Jonathan: Okay. Another one is just really an interesting one. The Tibetans have a very interesting sound that is actually composed of many, many different sounds all together. It’s called either multiphonic singing or the Tibetan deep voice [Jonathan then demonstrated a remarkable and deep growl like sound].

Editor: Off hand, it sounds kind of like a didge.

Jonathan Goldman: It does, it does. That’s great that you say that because when I first got the [Jonathan demonstrates it again] and I knew what a didgeridoo sounded like, but trying to tell people that it sounded like a didgeridoo people went, “What’s that?”

And that’s also another tradition that has the creation of the world occurring through sound is the aboriginals of the Australian tradition. Anyway, I had been fascinated by this extraordinary deep voice sound and I was trying to create it but to no avail. Then this group of Tibetan monks came to the United States for the first time and we recorded them and I took a cassette of the monks chanting home and I was sitting in my crystal grid. For want of a better term, a crystal grid is basically a hexagonal geometric formation composed of six crystals, and it’s sort of a sacred space. I remember going to sleep there and I woke up the next morning and I had the Tibetan deep voice, just like that. It was like magic. It wasn’t like the stories of monks training for two or three years to get the deep voice. I got it overnight. Truly an extraordinary experience.

That first group of monks that we recorded was from the Gyume Monastery and their CD is still available. It’s called Sacred Tibet. Then probably six or eight years later, I made friends with a young Tibetan monk from the Drepung Loseling Monastery, who was at the time about 19 years old. He was a great chanter and very bright—he had taught himself to speak English and to use a computer. He and I became very friendly and he would come visit with me. This man, named Lama Tashi, went on to become the Chant Master of the entire monastery. He was one of the Dalai Lama’s favorite chanting monks. He became very, very well known. It was my great honor to produce, record and co create an album with Lama Tashi called Tibetan Master Chants, that was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2006.

Going out to Hollywood and being at the Grammy Awards with a Tibetan monk was an amazing experience. Lama Tashi received massive press coverage, including almost a full page in USA Today. He was the first solo Tibetan monk nominated for a Grammy. I trust that this nomination really assisted in bringing awareness of the sacred power of sound to the public. Lama Tashi and I remain good friends—every year he comes out to Colorado to teach at the 9 day long Healing Sounds Intensive. I give thanks!

Speaking of the bringing awareness of sound to the public—if you pay attention, you’ll find that there’s been some awareness of the power of sound to heal for quite a while.

Here’s a quote from the Science Section of the New York Times, from 1988. “Sound shaped in dazzling toolÉ.can make, break, or rearrange molecules and levitate objects.”

For those who think that sound healing merely incorporates the sound going into our ears and through our auditory pathways, into our brain, effecting our nervous system --which is amazing enough--in reality we’re dealing with an energy that has the ability of re-arranging molecular structure, so when people say to me, “What sort of conditions can be healed with sound?” I say, “Conceptually anything, if you’re able to rearrange molecular structure.”

I continue working with sound, I continue learning things and I continue forgetting things (Jonathan laughs) but that’s okay. Not only do we now have “Frequency +Intent = Healing”, but I have created some other formulas that are similar to that, including “Vocalization + Visualization = Manifestation”, and “Frequency + Feeling = Effect”.

I could go on and on, but what is so very, very important is the power of our consciousness coupled with sound is extraordinary in terms of being able to shift and change energy. Interestingly enough, the power of belief—of our consciousness—is acknowledged in many different healing traditions, including Tibetan Medicine. In Tibetan medicine, it is said that healing occurs through three phenomena: The first is the belief of the healer in the medicine, the second is the belief of the person receiving the healing energy in the healer, and the third is the karma between the two.

So one might want to put that in Western terms as saying the relationship between the two, and I think a lot of people have had the experience where, whether it’s going to a dentist or a doctor or a massage therapist, “This person is the greatest in the world,” “I have just had the greatest massage,” and you go to them and you feel beat up or like nothing happened. Was the person different?

No.

What was it?

It was basically, really, the relationship you had with them in terms of the work that they were able to do. I think that this is very, very important also in working with sound. It is my understanding that we are all unique vibratory beings and that what works for one person will not necessarily work for another person.

When I start a class I will usually just ask, “How many of you are allergic to penicillin?” Usually anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of the people in the audience will raise their hand.” I’ll go, “Okay. Now if everything in the universe is a wave form, then this will include pharmaceuticals, and here we have penicillin will heal 80 to 95 percent of you, but it will also be toxic from anywhere to 5 to 20 percent of you.” That’s basically a pretty good illustration of how things work in the world. I just don’t think that you’ll find just any one frequency, any one sound, or any anything, whether it’s a food, or a light or a color, a smell or what not, that’s going to work for everyone because we’re all unique vibratory beings. I think this is so important for people to understand. Especially as we get more and more into the realm of sound beginning to hit mainstream consciousness and all sorts of various claims being made about different sounds.

You mentioned that you first came across me on the Internet, and I love the Internet and I think it’s so very, very important, and I want to talk in a moment about how I perceive the Internet may be useful for creating world peace. But at the same time there’s an incredible amount of misinformation on the Internet, as well as an incredible amount of good information. It used to be that people would read something and they would perceive that it was true, and I don’t think that’s valid anymore. I am in no way denigrating your wonderful writing or anything like that, but I think that you also know that you google something and you go from the alpha to the omega on the subject, in terms of people writing “this thing is the best thing in the world” to “this thing is the worst thing in the world.”

Who do you believe and what do you believe? It’s really an intriguing aspect. Once again, I’d like to state one of the most important things about sound is that we’re all unique vibratory beings. Because we’re that way what sound may work for one person may not work for another. We really need to honor that and understand that because otherwise, for example, I’ve heard stories of people who had been told a certain sound was good for them and they had an adverse reaction, and they would ask me what I thought and I would say, “Well I’ve spoken to many, many different healers, but I like to believe that for the most part momentarily there may be a readjustment to getting used to different types of sounds, but I think that there are some sounds that we’re resonant with and there’s some sounds that we’re not resonant with. And if we’re not resonant with a sound and it makes us feel bad then we should not expose ourselves to that sound, or experience that sound.

When you’ve done the Peruvian whistling vessels, have you had people who have blown the vessels and not had good experiences?

Editor: Usually what happens is that initially they’re like “Oh, I don’t know about this,” and then suddenly they’ll get into it, but I do know that I have had people that left and said that they couldn’t stand it.

Jonathan Goldman: Yes, and so when we blow them, and we always blow them at our Healing Sounds Intensive and I do a rather long discussion about the power of the vessels, but also that we really have to trust our own innate wisdom and if something doesn’t feel good honor it. Please leave.

Ultimately with sound I think that we want to be like a shaft of wheat that bends in the wind and that all sounds just pass through us harmlessly, but for most of us we haven’t had this experience.

I’m a child of the Woodstock Nation and I grew up playing music. I’ve listened to and enjoyed practically every type of music there is. I like to believe that I can handle any type of music that exists, but I recently walked into a record store, and there was music playing that really negatively affected me. Personally, it created a powerfully adverse reaction and ultimately, after about 5 minutes, I had to physically leave the store because I was becoming sick. So I thought, “Okay, this is really intriguing. I’ve never had this reaction before.”

So what did I do? (laughs) A few weeks later, I went out and bought the album because I really wanted to understand what was going on. I then listened to the album so that I could understand how and why it had been affecting me so badly and then learn to be fluid enough so that the sound would not really affect me at an adverse level. I will tell you that this music is not the type of music that I would listen to now. It was a form of heavy metal music that was really, really harsh. It was created to be that way. Yet artistically I now could understand the people who had made it and what they were going for. Some people have suggested that some of the music that I create is very angelic and divine and sacred and harmonious, and it makes them feel really, really at peace. I will tell you that this music that I was listening to that gave me the adverse reaction was definitely created for the opposite effect. It was designed to manifest havoc.

Yet, at the same time, if you think of the yin-yang and the Tao, I guess that there’s a place for both the angelic music and its opposite. However, one of the things that I was really concerned about was the fact that young folks (Jonathan chuckles at this point) who listen to this type of music all of the time are definitely going to receive an effect on their nervous system. It’s definitely going to have an effect on their psyche as well as their physiology. Obviously the metabolism and hormones of someone in their teens are very different than somebody of my age, but at the same time, you know, I was a wee bit concerned. I never want to be in the state that I felt that my parents were in when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan and they were like, “What is this type of music!”

Editor: Yeah, this younger generation!

Jonathan Goldman: I really try and understand all different aspects of music, yet the more that I learn about music the more I become aware of the power of music to effect us on a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level. I would suggest that probably this music had been consciously designed to agitate the listener.

Editor: Probably a wake up, arousal state is what they were shooting for at the time.

Jonathan Goldman: Maybe something a little more intense! I’m talking about music that drove me out of a store it was so violent and negative. It was definitely designed to agitate the listener and it got to me very quickly. Yet at the same time I think that for younger folks who listen to it, this music will indeed wake them up and gets the adrenal pumped up, etc., etc. and that’s okay. But it would be really good if whoever listened to this music could listen to something that would balance them out—something slow and soothing—at least once in a while. It would be wonderful, if we could all become aware of the power of sound and use it consciously.

As I said before, we’re all unique vibratory beings. And that’s true. Yet in terms of what is called psycho-acoustics and the relationship of sound to the nervous system, with regard to the how different frequencies affect us all, there are some basics, such as the physics of sound, that are going to apply to almost everybody. For example, the effects of really loud sounds will affect everyone pretty much the same way. We’re talking now about the physical aspects of sound. The sound goes into your ear and ultimately your brain, affecting your heartbeat, your respiration, your nervous system. If I was all of a sudden going to shout really loud, the sound would go into your ear and it would cause an increase in your heartbeat, your respiration, and your brainwave activity. It would trigger the fight or flight response and adrenaline would be produced. Your hormonal levels would be disrupted. These loud sounds would actually affect your immunological system.

So there are certain sounds that by their very nature are not particularly positive in terms of the way that they affect us and we need to be aware of that. Once again, I believe that it’s “Frequency plus Intent equals Healing”. But it’s an equal formula. We have to be aware and pay attention to the physiological effects of sound—the frequency.

Editor: As you’re talking about these things it makes me think of a book that was written quite a few years ago, one of the authors I think was a Peter Thompkins?

Jonathan Goldman: The Secret Life of Plants?

Editor: Yeah, yeah. You know, the heavy metal type music the plants would die while playing Mozart and Beethoven they would thrive.

Jonathan Goldman: Okay, wait now. That’s a different book. The woman’s name was Dorothy Retallack and it was The Sound of Music and Plants. These music experiments were done in Denver, which is near here.

My problem was that I grew up in the ‘70s and I had plants and my friends had plants--thriving plants, and the plants loved Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zepplin, etc., so what was going on? The only thing that I can perceive of is this, and this may have come from The Secret Life of Plants, with the scientist who basically invented the polygraph.

Editor: Baxter?

Jonathan Goldman: That’s right. Cleve Baxter. Thank you. He basically attached polygraphs to plants. I actually met him and he was talking about the fact that I think he was eating a sandwich during lunch at one point, and there was a fly going across the table toward his sandwich and he simply thought about slamming his hand on the fly and the polygraph that was attached to the plants went off the register, and then in another experiment where he approached the plants with like scissors with the concept that he was going to cut one of the leaves and the plant reacted.

So with that in mind, that plants are sensitive to our thoughts, and then also as my friend Gregg Braden has talked about in his books, including The Divine Matrix, the fact that when you are able to measure thoughts or consciousness, then time and space are no longer limitations. Therefore, you can be five feet away or five hundred miles away and if something is attuned to you it’s attuned to you. So the fact that this woman may have been in another room playing heavy metal that she probably didn’t like very much and she probably had the expectation that it was going to hurt the plants, then the plants obviously reacted that way. That’s my explanation.

Editor: It was then the experimenter effect, and intent.

Jonathan Goldman: I think so. Now we understand there is no longer anything like the subjective experiment because as soon as you become part of the experiment you are a participant.

Regarding the experiments with plants and music, I like to believe that any type of music, depending upon the time, the place and the need of the individual, can have positive effects.

I realize that I’ve gone from one side of the coin saying that really loud sounds aren’t good for you, to saying that any music, depending on the time, space, and individual can have positive and powerful effects. There is a difference between the volume of the music and the genre of music we listen to. And there may even be some times when listening to very loud music is appropriate.

How could this be?

I used to live up in the mountains outside Boulder, around close to two miles up in the atmosphere, or about 9000 feet, and Boulder is about 5000 feet, and in order to get home at night I would have to ride up this really winding road. Now when I was driving down during the day I’d be listening to a lot of the music that I create for relaxation and it was wonderful, but at night when I was driving, all of a sudden I could be going from moderate weather into a snowstorm and have to be really, really alert, and under those conditions I would usually play very fast and very loud music because I wanted to have the equivalent of sonic caffeine so that I could really, really be alert. I didn’t want to be going off the road, because going off the road could have meant taking a really long fall.

So once again, if you drink coffee all of the time I think it’s going to have certain effects on your nervous system, but at certain other times I think it’s permissible. I never want to get into “You must never do this” or “You must never do that,” and the same thing with sound. We have such an extraordinary, extraordinary smorgasbord of sound that is available on this planet and I don’t ever want to go and get into the “My sound is the most healing sound,” or “Mozart is the most healing sound,” or “The Beatles are the most healing sounds,” or country and western, Indian music or Tibetan chanting. Once again, if we can sample from the different types of music, including heavy metal, depending upon the time and the space and the need of the individual, it will be great. If we become limited to listening to just one type of music, then what a bore. It’s like eating tofu food all of the time, or hamburger all of the time.

Now Brent, I want to tell you about what I think is a very, very important project. I call it The Temple of Sacred Sound. Currently the Internet and cyberspace are called by some the Neural Net of the Planet. For want of a better term, it’s the mind of the planet. In terms of the chakras, it’s perhaps the third eye of the planet, the mind’s eye of the planet, which is great. But it’s really, really important for the heart of the planet to be activated.

Many, many years ago, this scientist by the name of Carl Sagan talked about this world being in a state of technological adolescence where we had the ability to create almost anything with our technology, but perhaps not the wisdom of how to use it correctly. It’s a little bit like the scientist that Jeff Goldblum played in Jurassic Park when he was talking about the scientists who created the dinosaurs and he said, “You people are so interested in seeing if you can do something you don’t ask if you should.”

Now it’s the energy of the heart that gives us this inner guidance of whether or not we should do something, and it is so very, very important because we really need to be able to activate the energy of the heart for what I call Global Harmonization.

Question: how do you activate the energy of the heart over the Internet when this is the neural net, which is the mind? The answer is through sound. In the Tibetan tradition there is body, which of course is the heart, there is mind, and then there is the interconnecting field which is speech or sound. So by using sound via the Internet, we can activate the heart and connect body and mind through speech. I would like to suggest to your readers that soon there is going to be something called The Temple of Sacred Sound, where people will be able to go on 24/7 and sound along with other people throughout the planet for planetary peace.

They’ve done some really wonderful experiments through the Global Consciousness Project showing that a very small amount of people, with a combined consciousness, can really shift and change and accelerate the consciousness of the planet. One of the really powerful and important things about sound is this: sound amplifies intent. Sound enhances prayer. One of the reasons why prayer is vocalized in most of the different traditions of the planet is simply this: sound is able to enhance and amplify the prayer. It’s that simple.

So imagine that you can go online and be able to actually sound along with people throughout the planet making an “OM” or an “AH,” or many other sounds, with all of these hundreds of thousands of other people generating the energy of peace and harmony and love while they sound.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Editor: Now is this something that’s a current project?

Jonathan Goldman: It is in the manifestation stages. I can’t tell you exactly when it’s going to be up and running but I’m being directed more and more by my inner guidance to really manifest this. I think it’s really important. I’ve come across a whole lot of people who are very, very interested, so I just wanted to share that with you.

Editor: Okay. Thanks.

Jonathan Goldman: To me, it’s very, very exciting. It’s a really, really powerful and promising thing. Every year we have something called The World Sound Healing Day where people throughout the planet will basically make an “AH” for peace and harmony. They send a Sonic Valentine to the Earth because it takes place on Valentine’s Day. We’ve had some extraordinary and remarkable responses in regards to that event, but what if we could have something like this going on every day? The possibilities are limitless.

Editor: It sounds very interesting, and people could actually have the speakers and a live feed, and you’re talking about intone themselves.

Jonathan Goldman: Exactly. It would be toning with conscious intent for planetary change. There are some amazing people working on this. It’s only a matter of time before it manifests. I believe that when The Temple of Sacred Sound is up, it’ll really assist people in waking up and embracing and embodying compassion. When this happens, they’ll be some extraordinary shifts and changes on this planet. I think the entire consciousness of the planet has the potential to change for the better—and that it will change. All the various global meditations and global sound healings are enormously beneficial. Perhaps awareness of the power of sound and The Temple of Sacred Sound will be pivotal in our next step towards evolutionary acceleration.

Editor’s Note: Jonathan’s website is a great resource of information on the subject of sound healing. To learn more, go to: http://www.healingsounds.com/