Vibration

“ Science has reduced everything nowadays to vibration. Light, sound, sensation—all the mysteries of nature are either vibrations or interference of vibrations. There," she said, throwing another pair of pebbles in, and pointing to the two sets of widening rings as they overlapped one another; "the twinkling of a star, and the pulsation in a chord of music, are THAT. But I cannot picture the thing in my own mind. I wonder whether the hundreds of writers of text-books on physics, who talk so glibly of vibrations, realize them any better than I do." ”

“ All agitation is vibration. All force manifests itself in this way.
The painful brilliancy of the sun is produced by the rapid vibrations of the rays; the twinkle of the distant star, the waves of the ocean when ruffled by the winds; the shimmer of the moon on its crested surface; the brain in thinking; the mouth in talking; the beating of the heart; all, alike, obey the one grand and universal law of vibratory motion.
Qualities of Sound.—Sound is nothing but a succession of vibrations of greater or less magnitude. Pitch is produced by the number of vibrap. 157tions; intensity by their force ”

“ Vibration is the movement of a body in a state of tension,—undulation, that of a body absolutely lax. In vibration, not an atom of the body changes its place in relation to another,—in undulation, not an atom of the body remains in the same place with regard to another. In vibration, every particle of the body ignores gravitation, or defies it,—in undulation, every particle of the body is slavishly submitted to it. In undulation, not one wave is like another; in vibration, every pulse is alike. ”

“ All matter is vibration; that has been proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can disintegrate flesh. ”

“ The Vibration of Sounding Bodies Manifest to the Senses.—If we place the hand upon a large bell that has been struck we can feel the vibration. If we strike one of the ends of a tuning-fork upon some hard body we can see the vibration, as represented in Fig. 182 by the dotted lines. If we look in upon the strings of a piano as it is played, the vibration of the larger strings is very observable to the eye. If we rub the edge of a drinking-glass so as to produce a musical sound, the water which is in it will be thrown into waves from the vibration of the glass. ”

“ The tuning fork is musical. Here we have rapid, regular motion; vibrations follow each other at perfectly definite intervals, and the air disturbance produced by one vibration is exactly like the disturbance produced by a later vibration. The sound waves which reach the ear are regular in time and kind and strength, and we call the sensation music.
To produce noise a body must vibrate in such a way as to give short, quick shocks to the air; to produce music a body [279] must not only impart short, quick shocks to the air, but must impart these shocks with unerring regularity and strength. ”

“ I have a friend at home, an old professor with whom I studied in Germany, who is engaged in some experiments with vibration, and he has assigned me rather a novel task—that is, I am to go over to the general's and determine the tone of a waterfall, for everything has its tone—your window glass, your walking stick, even—and these will respond to the vibrations which make that tone. Young memories are born of vibration, and old airs bring back old thoughts. ”

“ Not only so, but the amplitude of vibration in the one will determine the amplitude [Pg 66] of vibration in the other, for the intensity of the induced current is determined by the amplitude of the inducing vibration, and the amplitude of the vibration at the receiving end depends upon the intensity of the attractive impulses. When we sing into a piano, certain of the strings of the instrument are set in vibration sympathetically by the action of the voice with different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the piano. ”

“ Every thought, emotion or mental state has its corresponding rate and mode of vibration. And by an effort of the will of the person, or of other persons, these mental states may be reproduced, just as a musical tone may be reproduced by causing an instrument to vibrate at a certain rate—just as color may be reproduced in the same way. By a knowledge of the Principle of Vibration, as applied to Mental Phenomena, one may polarize his mind at any degree he wishes, thus gaining a perfect control over his mental states, moods, etc. ”

“ Its energy is the great primal Breath. Vibration is life and light, heat and motion. Without it, there would be blackness and universal death. From the almost static state of rock and soil, we have risen steadily in vibration up through the first four senses, to Sound, the fifth. The scope of Sound-vibration yet to be experienced by us is beyond our wildest imagination.
"Sounds are the different rates of vibration in all things. As yet we know Sound as we know most other things, merely on the dense physical plane. ”

“ However delicately etheric the substance its movement commences by the vibration of its particles, and a vibration is a wave having a certain length, amplitude, and periodicity, that is to say, something which can exist only in terms of space and time; and as soon as we are dealing with anything capable of the conception of measurement we may be quite certain that we are not dealing with Spirit but only with one of its vehicles. ”

“ We must now consider the vibration itself. By this I mean a double movement,—one [Pg 169] by which a body proceeds from a point to return to it. Here is the element we seek,—the symbol which constitutes essentially all life. The vibration of our brain is the agitation of the source of life, the emotion of matter in contact with that Divine Unity whose possession constitutes our typical personality.
This is the umbilical cord of our dependence. The nerves, and the contact that they give us with the exterior world, are but the instruments of our knowledge ”

“ We have thus proved, in a simple way, that a musical tone is produced by rapid, regular vibration, as shown by the marking—the air-waves, set up by the vibration, seeming to blend in the ear in a manner similar to that in which the vibrations of the string blend to the eye, which makes the tone seem continuous. ”

“ From THE ALL, which is Pure Spirit, down to the grossest form of Matter, all is in vibration—the higher the vibration, the higher the position in the scale. The vibration of Spirit is at such an infinite rate of intensity and rapidity that it is practically at rest—just as a rapidly moving wheel seems to be motionless. And at the other end of the scale, there are gross forms of matter whose vibrations are so low as to seem at rest. Between these poles, there are millions upon millions of varying degrees of vibration. ”

“ By various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of the air to declare themselves we know the length and frequency of the sonorous waves, and we have also obtained great mastery over the various methods by which the air is thrown into vibration. We know the phenomena and laws of vibrating rods, of organ-pipes, strings, membranes, plates, and bells. ”

“ And from this, by vibration, is built the complicated structure of things as we see and feel them to be, all dependent upon vibration. Everything is altered, directly as the vibratory rate is changed. From the most tenuous gas, to fluids to solids—throughout all the different states of matter the only fundamental difference is the rate of vibration. ”

“ Each vibration of the sound adds to the pressure upon the glass of its own vibration. Instead of the edges drawing closer by the one-thousandth of an inch, let us say, the sound vibration causes the edges to draw closer by two-thousandths of an inch. And that strain, repeated, not normal, will sometimes shatter the glass. But the sound vibrations must be exactly as numerous as the glass vibrations. Otherwise, the sound vibrations, instead of accelerating the glass vibrations, will impede and stop them. ”

“ To accomplish that, we clasp hands"—Quest grasped Clason's extended hand—"and look steadily into each other's eyes.
"Now, it is well known that the vibrations of an individual's will are as distinctive as the sworls of his finger-prints. What is not so well known is that the frequency of vibration in one person can be brought into accord with that in another. ”

“ Atomic vibration, my dear Arnoldi, has created a varied series of planes of existence, to which the human retina and the human auditory organs are totally out of accord. That is—everything vibrating within the perceptions of our own immediate powers of sense manifests itself in the form of concrete material matter, such as myself and yourself and objects in this room, perceptible by sound, sight, smell, touch, and so forth. ”

“ There is little doubt that music causes a physical vibration of the air, but the force that such vibrations could have on most tissues is negligible. Other writers recommended that the instrument be held against the part to be treated for direct transmission of the vibrations, but if physical excitement is desired this can be accomplished more uniformly by applications known as manipulation or massage. ”

“ I have proved that all bodies, solid, liquid, and gaseous, are in a state of molecular agitation when under the influence of sonorous vibrations; no matter if it is a piece of board, walls of a house, street, fields or woods, sea or air, all are in this constant state of vibration, which simply becomes more evident as the sonorous vibrations are more powerful. ”

“ If, then, different fibres are tuned to tones of different pitch, it is evident that we have here a mechanism which, by exciting different nerve fibres, will give rise to sensations of pitch. When the vibration is not simple but compound, in consequence of the blending of vibrations corresponding to various harmonics or partial tones, the ear has the power of resolving this compound vibration into its elements. ”

“ We can, of course, take hold of the bob with our hand and force it to vibrate in any period we please, and thus produce a forced vibration; but a free vibration, or one which is unforced, has a natural time-period of its own. ”

“ But the vibrations may also be communicated through the air alone. Holding the resonant case of a vigorously vibrating fork in my hand, I bring one of its prongs near an unvibrating one, placing the prongs back to back, but allowing a space of air to exist between them. Light as is the vehicle, the accumulation of impulses, secured by the perfect unison of the two forks, enables the one to set the other in vibration. Extinguishing the sound of the agitated fork, that which a moment ago was silent continues sounding, having taken up the vibrations of its neighbor. ”

“ Vibration or tremolo, bad when produced involuntarily by the singer, becomes a brilliant quality when it is voluntary and used at an opportune time. Every break must be preceded by a vibration, which prepares the way for it. ”

“ Now the doctrine of vibration appears absolutely to exclude the possibility of the union of all these into one associated idea, because as the whole of that principle is founded on the greater ease and certainty with which one local impression is supposed to pass into the seat of the next, and the greater force with which it acts there than it can do farther off, the idea of a visible object can never run into the notion of a sound, nor vice versâ, these impressions being of course conveyed along different nerves to different and very remote parts of the brain. ”

“ In one instance the vibration is capable of affecting one set of nerves, and in the other, two sets of nerves. The heat-vibration can be discovered by the sense of touch alone, but the light-vibration may be detected both by the eye and the touch. ”

“ Think, then, what crisscross of air currents and confusion of ether vibrations, what myriad of physical events, must intervene between any distant object and your own body before sensations come and bring a consciousness of that object's existence!
Nor can you be sure, even after any particular [Pg 13] vibration has reached the surface of your body, that it will reach your mind unaltered and intact!
Etheric Vibrations as Causing Sensations
What goes on in the body itself is made clear by your knowledge of the cellular structure of man. ”

“ Sound is produced by vibration; the lowest number of vibrations the ear can distinguish, is sixteen per second, which is known as the low bass notes of an organ. The highest are, approximately, 12,000 per second. These vibrations require power to produce them. ”

“ It is also through the vibrations conveyed by the air to the little membrane called the drum of the ear that the sensations of sound are received, and of the nature of these vibrations a few words must be said presently. In considering the different qualities of sound, we have so far confined ourselves to sustained musical notes, as, for instance, the vowel sounds in singing. This has been done to show the relations of rapidity of vibration to pitch and for simplicity of illustration of the superposition of vibrations, etc. ”