heart clapping

''now the point is this: your auditory nerves are not stimulated solely by external vibrations. suppose you are in an utterly silent place. even here, it's not quiet. your body is itself the source of many vibrations. ... by definition, a stimulation of the auditory nerve is a sound. it doesn't matter whether the stimulus originates in the ear drum or within the nerve itself. ... thus the absence of sensation cannot mean an absolute absence or nothingness, ...

''any stimulation, external or internal, of the auditory nerves is a sound that can be heard by the brain. ... thoughts and even moral dilemmas are minute chemical and electrical processes. your so-called lifestyle, your emotions, your moral predicament can be sensed in the physics of your brain. the auditory nerves hear these things too. and suddenly, the sound of one hand clapping has become the sound of your soul. ...

''both the veda and maitriya upansad of the ancient hindus, who were indo europeans, tell of how the universe was created by sabda brahman, the "eternal sound" that created everything--and still inheres in everything--but is itself uncreated: "begotten, not made," as the nicene creed expresses it in "john i, verse i: in the begining was a sound, and the sound was with god, and the sound was god, all things were made by that sound, and nothing not made by that sound was made."

''is the sound of the auditory nerve that same sound? can either sound be traced to the omnipresent static of the universe? can you hear the three-degree blackbody radiation? ... can you draw a perfect breath? can you tell your heart when to beat? as it turns out you can do all of the above. but first we must refine and deepen our understanding of the inner world.

''if we are to use the language of trance in our investigation, we need both a paradigm--a conceptual example coordinating our inner life with meditation--and a technique for realizing the paradigm, the necessary paradigm is called proprioception; the technique is yoga. ...

''proprioception is a physiologicaly well-defined but incompletely understood, source of internal experience. ... the proprioceptive nervous system is the neurology of bodily feeling. by means of the proprioceptive system your body is made known to your brain. a general visceral experience--a proprioception--can be sensed by any one with a minimum of concentration. proprioception is internal touch but in the expansive sense of proprioception we are adopting, the term applies to how you see, hear, smell, and taste your body as well ...

''experimental investigations of biofeedback in humans and animals over the past thirty-five years provide sufficient ground for assuming that control of hyperaware states occur predictably under a variety of conditions. to cite only one example, it has been conclusively demonstrated that animals can be taught to control many bodily functions such as heart rate, ...

''the vagus nerve is the tenth cranial nerve. one of its many branches [rami] supplies nerves of sensation to the heart. when for instance, you feel a twinge in your heart the sensation travels along a sensory ramus of the vagus nerve. keeping in mind the fact of proprioception let us look anew at the question, can you tell your heart when to beat?''

j. nigro. sansonese, the body of myth.