In Search of the Lost Chord:
The Re-Discovery of Chakra Music

In the Fall of 1969 this was one of my favorite albums, but I hadn't really given much thought to the question. I was a freshman at Vanderbilt University, away from home for the first time. My life, like the times, was turbulent, buffeted from all sides by a hundred new experiences, ideas and questions. Those were crazy times. The Viet Nam War and student protests were in full swing. Drugs, radical politics, long hair and hippies were the dis-order of the day. Like everyone else my consciousness was expanding, my head exploding. I was far away from finding myself, much less the mysterious lost chord I heard the Moody Blues signing about. For me, and all my friends, rock music was important, the Beatles were in their prime, but we didn't think too much about myths of a magic music. Little did I then realize that in just three years these myths would become my reality.

The journey started on a cold Fall night in 1969 when I encountered a strange man in a white robe, long hair and beard. He was outdoors talking what seemed to be mystical gibberish. A small group of students were listening, some were arguing with him. His words made no sense on one level, and my friends and I made fun of him. But on a deeper level he touched me in a profound way. My friends left, but I stayed to listen, not understanding why. I had an unexplained fascination with the being behind the words. I could feel his presence, it was somehow sacred, but not stiff and religious. The man called himself "Ram Dass." He had just returned from India where he had changed his name from Richard Albert. He had stopped using LSD and broken with his fellow psychology professor at Harvard, Timothy Leary. Now he was touring college campuses sharing what his new Guru had taught him. He spoke of the mystical experience of God as the true meaning of life, and of spiritual practices as the natural way to get high, the safe alternative to drugs. He took my name and address, and later I received a free hand bound copy of his beautiful book Be Here Now. My life was forever changed.

The encounter with Ram Dass marked the beginning of my spiritual Path. The words of the Moody Blues, the Beatles, and others took on new meaning. I soon discovered that many of the so called counter-culture were on a similar trip. We were moving from materialism, to political protest, to an inner quest for meaning. Like countless others at the time, I was tripping on a far out search for my true identity. I started experimenting with awareness and meditation and read like crazy. All my extra money went into "weird books." I read so much my father was encouraged to quit his job as a stock broker and open a book store. I was on a Path, searching for truth. Like everyone else, I had no idea where the Path would lead, nor any expectation that it would have anything to do with the lost chord. To me this was still just another Moody Blues' song, one far off dream among many.

I assumed that, like Ram Dass, my answer would come from a Guru in India. My life in Nashville was too confined, the professors too academic and sterile. It was now 1971, the draft and the War were in full swing. My student deferment ended in two years, and senseless death in Viet Nam loomed over everyone as an ominous cloud. I yearned for adventure and dramatic change. I felt that the truth must lie somewhere else. I had to get away from Nashville, travel and see the world. I decided to try and leave the country, to begin my journey to the East, not knowing if I would ever return. I decided to go with the flow, wherever it might take me.

I ended up in Vienna, Austria. It was the most beautiful city I had ever seen, filled with palaces and exotic grandeur from the past. A stark contrast to Nashville, I knew that the strange and unexpected could not be too far off. It wasn't India, but it was on the way. Vienna was the European doorway to the East, the neutral country at the edge of the Iron Curtain. It was also the inner sanctum of classical music, the traditional home of great musicians.

I came to Vienna and fell in love immediately; not with the city, but with a girl, a fellow student and kindred soul named Molly. It was Molly (now my wife of 21 years) who first told me of a strange professor at our school. Unlike all of the other faculty at the Institute of European Studies, he was a local, a Viennese professor, not a transplanted American. He was at the Institute teaching Americans by a fluke of chance. The regular philosophy professor was on sabbatical that year, and so they found a local substitute. I was suspicious of any academic philosophy teacher, but friends had heard him, and said he was talking my talk.

I sat in his second day of class to check it out. I found a giant among men in every way. He was large in height and build, with a grey beard. He spoke an elegant English with a strong British/German kind of accent. Like Ram Dass his words found an inner echo in my soul. He had a special presence and inner power. His name was Arnold Keyserling. He was a Professor of Spiritual Philosophy at the Academy of Art of the University of Vienna. He also taught at his own private school and had written many books of his own philosophy.

Like Ram Dass, Arnold Keyserling was a spiritual being with great knowledge and wisdom. He awed us all with his incredible wealth of knowledge and mesmerizing speech. I had learned a lot in the last two years since meeting Ram Dass, but I was still searching for a quick solution. I began to hope that Keyserling would be my Guru. But I soon found that Professor Keyserling would have none of that. He told me that I should be my own Guru, and to love Molly, not him.

Slowly I began to understand. I learned that no one can, or should, provide me with the answers to my deepest questions, that I would have to do that for myself. Keysering provided me with something far more valuable than the answers to my questions. He taught me how to go about finding those answers for myself, he taught me how to think holistically. His philosophy integrated the far out, the messages of the East, with the rational traditions of the West and with science. I didn't understand it then, but he spoke to both my right brain and my left brain.

I found in Arnold Keyserling a teacher who would not be a Guru. He refused the pedestal I offered him. He was a mystery, a mystic and a scholar all rolled in one. He took my youthful adulation, and channeled it into work and self confidence.

I soon organized classes at his private school. There he could teach his philosophy more freely than at the Institute. A group of around 20 Americans studied with him and his wife, Wilhelmine Keyserling. A Hungarian princess by birth, she prefers to be called "Willy". A remarkable woman in her own right, she taught us Hatha Yoga and meditation. Arnold and Willy together taught us their philosophy, which they called The Wheel, and also taught the I Ching. I was so charged up that after the first semester I had the audacity to ask Vanderbilt University if I could drop all of my other classes, leave the Institute of European Studies, and devote my full time to study directly with Professor Keyserling. Amazingly they approved the idea, and upon my return to Vanderbilt next year, even awarded me 21 hours of "A" accreditation for the semester of independent study.

In early Winter 1971, soon after I started the outside classes for Americans, I also started attending some of the other activities at the Keyserlings' center, a place I later came to know as the "School of Wisdom." The instruction for the Viennese was all in German of course, a language which I but poorly understood, if at all. But the people I met there, most of whom spoke English very well, buoyed my enthusiasm. We talked after the classes and I got to know a few of them. Some students were obviously well along on their path. They had used Keyserling's ideas and thinking methods to get their heads together, and their bodies. I saw that a Guru wasn't necessary, in fact, it was a hinderance. These Viennese were very different from the rest of the city population, wonderfully strange and avant guard, yet genuinely spiritual.

Then in the Winter of 1971 something totally new happened. I didn't know it at the time, but for the last 35 years Arnold Keyserling had been actively searching for the lost chord. The Moody Blues' fantasy was a poetic echo of his real life. I was present when he announced to a large assembly at the School of Wisdom that he had invented a new type of musical scale. He explained that his invention was actually a re-discovery of a long lost scale, and that it was based on mathematics. Wilhelmine then played the electronic instrument specially constructed to produce the new tones of this scale.

Naturally I understood almost nothing of the German explanation, but during the demonstration of "Chakra Music" as they called it, I felt the unusual effects of the tones. These notes had never been heard before. They were from a completely new scale, with different frequencies and intervals. They were the lost chords. I felt a buzz from hearing the notes, both in my head, and in parts of my body. I had never felt anything like it before. It was an altered state like with a drug, but clear, no grogginess. Everyone in the room was relaxed, "stoned," yet wide awake and in touch. In the vernacular of the time, the good vibrations literally made us high. Later I learned this was a natural resonance effect of the tones themselves. It was an amazing phenomenon considering we had just heard the seven chakra tones and a few simple chords.
 

  Listen to selections  from three PrimaSounds CDs to hear/feel PrimaSounds Chakra Music for yourself.
 

It was the deepest group meditation I had ever experienced. Everyone there was in an energized and profound state. Although the first music instrument, which they called a "chakraphone," was crude and simplistic by today's standards, and the playing of a few chord combinations could not really be called music, everyone was psyched about the possibilities of this new scale. Many realized the importance of Keyserling's exact mathematical calculation of the vibrations which were in resonance with the human energy field. I could feel the excitement, but at the time due to the language barriers and my limited knowledge, I didn't comprehend the full significance of the event.

Later I realized that this was a once in a life time opportunity for me, a perfect example of being in the right place at the right time. For Arnold the discovery of the lost chords was enough. It was the end of the journey for him, not the beginning. He was not interested in playing the chakraphone or learning how a musical scale tuned to the chakras might be used to create a new form of music. He was a philosopher and mathematician, a student of music theory and esoterics, not a musician. Likewise his wife, Wilhelmine, was a yoga instructor, not a musician or therapist. They both were very busy and had other fields to plow. Arnold simply announced the discovery of the new scale, published a book about it, and left it to others to take up the challenge of making something out of it. The once lost chords had been found by Arnold. But it was up to someone else to play these chords, to fulfill the potential of his invention and create a new type of music with these tones.

At the time I had no idea that person would be me. I seemed the least likely candidate. I spoke no German, didn't understand the explanation of the music, and barely knew what was happening. I was the new student, so I didn't even know of Arnold's life story, how he had searched for this lost scale for years. Later I learned all about it. His story is fascinating, strange but true.

The fulfillment of Keyserling's dream in 1971 did not come easy. He had been searching for this scale for over thirty years. As a young man Arnold was intrigued by the myths of a magic music. He became convinced that there was a kernel of truth behind these stories, that such a music must once have existed. Our ancestors appeared to have known of a music that could tune a person into the depths of Original Being, the inexhaustible Source of the Universe. He knew that this inner music must have been completely different from the classical and popular music of western culture. Western music from Beethoven to the Beatles is essentially communicative and brings people together from the outside through dance, singing and intensive listening. We had no music which could enable a person to start an inner ascension up to the threshold of death, and return other people from death, as is told, for instance, in many Shamanic traditions.

Arnold Keyserling seemed destined by birth for this search. He is the seventh generation in a line of philosophers, whose ancestors include the Keyserling who commissioned Johann Sebastian Bach to write his masterpiece the "Goldberg Variations." His father, Count Hermann Keyserling, was a famous philosopher in the nineteen twenties who wrote a best selling book The Travel Diary of a Philosopher . On his mother's side Arnold is the great grandson of Chancellor Bismarck.

Arnold was raised in his father's Institute, the School of Wisdom, which was founded in Darmstadt, Germany in 1920. Arnold grew up around the spiritual leaders of the day who attended as students and guest speakers. The teachers included psychologist Carl Jung, novelist Hermann Hesse, sinologist Richard Wilhelm, and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. When the Nazis assumed power, they closed the School of Wisdom and persecuted the Keyserling family.

As a young man escaping the horrors of Nazi Germany, Arnold Keyserling had several spontaneous peak experiences of deep spiritual realization. On one occasion he felt as if he were tuning into the fundamental vibration of the Universe. He wondered if this state of consciousness could be induced intentionally and directly by using laws of vibration. The known musical scales and notes could not do it, but perhaps other yet unknown notes could be found to do the job.

There are hundreds of millions of different notes and scales possible within the range of human hearing. For that reason Keyserling ruled out trial and error as a method to find the lost chords. Anyway, that was not his style. He was a scholar and adventurer, not a tinkerer. He loved mysteries, not experiments. Since he was convinced this knowledge had once been known, he assumed that traces of the lost wisdom could still be found. Perhaps someone somewhere still even preserved the knowledge in secret. Rather than pursue material wealth and a career, he decided to devote his life to solving this mystery. He would search for the lost chords and the laws behind them.

After the War his search took him to Paris where he and his wife to be, Princess Wilhelmine, studied with the famous Russian esoteric philosopher, George Gurdjieff. Many people know of the mysterious Mr. Gurdjieff from reading the book about him by one of his early disciples, P.D. Ouspensky, entitled In Search of the Miraculous. Gurdjieff had travelled widely throughout the mid-east and central Asia in pursuit of hidden knowledge. Gurdjieff reported having heard a special music among the legendary Sarmoung Brotherhood which was used for healing, psychic control and the induction of mystical states of consciousness. Gurdjieff taught Arnold Keyserling some of the laws behind esoteric music, and some of the secrets of the Sufi's and their music. But the exact science, the mathematics of the tuning of the tones, was unknown even to Gurdjieff.

After Gurdjieff's death, Arnold moved to Austria where he helped his father reopen the School of Wisdom in Salzburg. Arnold then heard about a great composer living in Vienna who was also a mystic and a "mad saint." That man was Joseph Hauer, who with Schoenberg was the founder of modern 12 tone music. Hauer, who was then in his eighties, had enormous piercing eyes and long white hair. Arnold moved to Vienna to study with Hauer, but once there, he learned that Hauer would only accept trained musicians as students. So before he approached the great music master, Arnold immersed himself in improving his piano skills and knowledge of classical music theory.

Keyserling then approached Joseph Hauer and asked to be his student. Hauer agreed after he learned of Arnold's background and search, and discovered that he had known Richard Wilhelm. Wilhelm was a great sinologist who translated the I Ching. Unbeknownst to Keyserling, Hauer and Wilhelm had been good friends. Wilhelm taught Hauer all about the pentatonic music of ancient China. Hauer was the first western composer to be influenced by the Chinese traditions. Unexpectedly Keyserling was introduced to both western and eastern mystical traditions of music. From Hauer, Arnold learned how music can be used as a doorway to God. Still, even Joseph Hauer did not know the whole secret. He did not know what pitch would spring open the doors of perception. No one seemed to know.

The Keyserlings then went to Italy, the home of Pythagoras, the fabled founder of both mathematics and music. There he immersed himself in the study of number and its relation to tones and spiritual traditions. Arnold hoped that mathematics might provide the solution. The great scholar of esoteric music, Hans Kayser, was of some help, but still no definitive answers. After a few years in Italy, Arnold was convinced that no one in Europe had the information he needed. He would have to journey to the East, to the home of all mystery traditions - India.

So once again, Arnold and Wilhelmine left everything and moved, this time to Calcutta, where they lived for five years. While teaching German and Philosophy in Calcutta, Arnold travelled throughout the East, searching for hidden knowledge of this lost music. He became friends with Indian musicians like Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Kahn, and learned about alternative tuning systems and rhythms completely unknown in the West. Keyserling also learned of the Chakras, the seven vortexes of energy that make up a person's aura or soul. He and his wife eventually became adept at Yoga and the various forms of meditative arts which permeate all Indian music and religion. But the answer to his quest still eluded him.

In 1962 the Keyserlings returned to Europe, eventually to settle again in the cradle of Western Music - Vienna. There Arnold became a Professor of Spiritual Philosophy at the University of Vienna. He developed his own unique style of "planetary philosophy" which incorporates the belief systems and traditions of the whole world, both East and West, ancient and new. His philosophy of The Wheel uses holistic thinking to find the common denominators behind all traditions and philosophies. Arnold's pioneering activities in spiritually based psychology, now commonly called Transpersonal Psychology, eventually led to his becoming the President of the European Association of Humanistic Psychology. Moreover, Arnold continued his father's tradition of the School of Wisdom, where he and Wilhelmine taught esoteric philosophy, yoga and meditation.

All the while Arnold continued his research and investigations into the obscure origins and laws of mythic music. He learned many of its secrets: he knew its history in ancient cultures, and many of the laws of vibrations and consciousness. Still, the exact tuning of the notes of this music eluded him until just about the time I came to Vienna in the Fall of 1971.

At that time new discoveries in the field of brain wave research had just provided Keyserling with the last missing pieces to the puzzle. EEG measurements of zen monks in satori, and yogis in the deep meditative state of samadhi, showed that the alpha brain wave - 12 cycles per second - was always produced when they attained peak awareness. Now he knew what the fundamental tone should be for his scale calculations.

The scale itself was based on the one tone interval which doesn't fit into the western music system, the natural seventh, also known as the acoustic seventh. The frequency and harmonics of the natural seventh are dissonant when compared to the fundamental tone, or the other basic fraction tones, such as the third and the fifth. It is so different from the rest of the tonal frame that in musical traditions in the West after Pythagoras it was called non-melodic. The acoustic seventh was excluded altogether as an unacceptable sour note. This interval is, however, always present as a natural tone, in the seventh harmonic and can be heard as an overtone in some instruments.

Arnold had long suspected that the seventh harmonic, corresponding analogously to the seven chakras, might hold the key to the lost chords, and perhaps even to the chakras themselves. He knew that when the acoustic seventh is taken as the basic interval, to the exclusion of the others which normally make up our musical scale, a completely different musical scale results with different intervals (distances between the notes). But he did not know what frequency to use as a basis for the construction of such a scale, nor was he sure what the correlation would be with these tones to the chakra energies. This is where the brain wave research provided the answer. Mathematically when 12 is used as the base value, the fundamental tone, the 7 to 4 ratio of the natural seventh harmonic divides up that tone to produce a new musical scale, a five tone, pentatonic scale. Very little temperment is required to adjust the octaves. Keyserling named the five notes after the vowels: A, E, I, O, U. The scale has completely new tones and intervals which have nothing to do with modern musical temperament, the seven tone diatonic scale, or even other pentatonic scales still found in the East.

In the Winter of 1971 Keyserling created an electronic instrument that could play these special tones. He and his wife were the first to hear these tones. As soon as they did they knew that he had really found the secret tuning he had been looking for. To the trained ear the frequencies of the notes, and the intervals between the notes, were completely different. The chord combinations had all new harmonics and structure. They found that these new tones altered their consciousness and pushed them within. The chords could quickly produce a deep inner Awareness, and allow them to attain this state in a matter of minutes, instead of hours.

Arnold and Wilhelmine then confirmed with their own ears and energies what Arnold had long suspected. The reason these lost chords had these dramatic effects, whereas other tones and scales did not, was that these tones were exactly tuned to the seven Chakras. His discovery of the lost chords was at the same time the discovery of the frequencies of the chakras themselves! This was the "magic" behind the music. It was tuned to the body's energy field. For that reason they called the new sounds "Chakra Music."

At the first public performance of the new tones, the listeners, myself included, could feel how the tones stimulated their chakras. We could sense for ourselves how the individual notes were in tune with and had the same frequencies as our energy centers. Because the sounds moved at the same frequencies as our energies, they resonated the chakras, opening and amplifying them.

A previously unknown correspondence was found between the five note scale created by the acoustic seventh, and the seven chakras. This correspondence explains why the Chinese approach to human energies - the CHI - with acupuncture and the like, is fivefold, whereas the Indians and others experience the same energy as sevenfold. Both traditions are right. The surprise discovery which explains the apparent anomaly is that the frequency of the first chakra is almost exactly twice that of the frequency of the sixth chakra. Further, the frequency of the second chakra is almost exactly twice that of the frequency of the seventh chakra. In other words the fifth note (U), and first note (A) in the five note scale, repeat in the lower and higher octave to match the seven chakras. The seven chakras are composed of five basic harmonics. Keyserling thus discovered how the seemingly contradictory traditions of India and China were in fact harmonious. Mathematics revealed a hidden structure which unified the five energies with the seven.

During the Winter of 1971 and Spring of 1972 I began to understand the history and theory of Chakra Music. I slowly realized the magnitude of Arnold's achievement. After yoga classes they allowed me to experiment with the musical instrument he created, the Chakraphone. I became hooked on Chakra Music and its effects. At the same time I started getting clues that Chakra Music might be the key to my unique potential. I began to think that my destiny was somehow tied into Arnold's, that the end of his quest was the beginning of mine. Omens and agreements, coincidences, and other unexplainable and wonderful things started happening to point me in this direction.

The full story of what happened next, along with the details of my meeting Arnold and his discovery are told in my new book on PrimaSounds entitled  Chakra Music: the Story of PrimaSounds. Suffice it to say that there were many difficulties, many twists and turns, but finally a happy ending. A totally new kind of music has come out of this adventure. We have learned that it is possible to make music with the new scale, and like the legendary music of Orpheus, PrimaSounds do indeed soothe the troubled soul. We are learning that these tones facilitate and accelerate all types of meditation and can help human energies to strengthen and balance. PrimaSounds can also take the experienced listener to the threshold of other worlds, the Shaman's gate. The chords create a kind of musical doorway for anyone to penetrate to their fundamental vibration, their deepest, center tone. From this inner core of silence - pure Awareness - visions are awakened and a new harmony with the Universe can be attained. The ancient tools now take on a computerized form. The once lost chords are back again to sing the body electric.

Three CDs of PrimaSounds music, each with one hour of original compositions and chakra tones, may be obtained over the Internet from WISDOM WARES at SunAngel