World Kirtan – iAwake Technologies

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Explore the ancient spiritual technology of chant — infused with iAwake’s resonant entrainment technology. Join our local Torrey World Kirtan group, as we explore chants from around the world (old and new). Combining the power of chant with the power of entrainment is well, a NEW experiment. We think its brilliant : ). Check it out.

Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration or the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

— Yogananda Paramahansa

Why chant?

• Evokes ecstasy & bliss (drug-free)
• Opens the heart
• Focuses the mind
• Awakens … quickens yet deepens the slience
• Releases stress & stuckness
• Heals
• Connects you to the Great Mystery, God, Allah, Great Spirit

Chant as a spiritual technology and practice.

Chanting is at the heart of all sacred traditions worldwide, and for very good reasons. What meditation accomplishes in silence, chanting accomplishes in sound: it wakes up the emotional center and sets it vibrating to the frequency of love and adoration while feeding the body with that mysterious higher “being food” of divine life. Sacred chanting is an extremely powerful way of awakening and purifying the heart because it allows us to experience, beyond the distortions of our own personal passions, the power and profundity of the divine passion itself.

— Cynthia Bourgeault, author of Chanting the Psalms, is an Episcopal priest, author, hermit, teacher and wisdom school founder.

Why tech the chant?

Why not?! Chanting is best done live, in community, as the field it generates is powerful — and being buoyed by the voices around you is, well, incredibly beautiful and moving. Adding our resonant entrainment technology to the chants provides some of that deeper, more compelling quality in a different, yet sometimes startlingly powerful way. Try it out and see what you experience.

World Kirtan Tracks

1 Bowl Invocation

2 Sri Ram Jai Ram (Hindu)

3 Heart Sutra Chant (Buddhist)

4 Shema Yisrael (Jewish)

5 Neesa Neesa (Native American)

6 Zikr of the Tender Heart (Sufi)

7 Thank You For Hearing Me (Contemporary)

8 Om Doong Durga (Hindu)

9 E La Hu Ea (Hawaiian)

10 Zikr of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi)

11 Om Mani Padme Hum (Buddhist)

12 He Kehau (Hawaiian)

13 May All Beings Be Well (Buddhist)

ADDITIONAL INFO

The Experience – How to Use These Tracks

How to Use These Tracks

• Listen with headphones for optimal entrainment experience.
• Sing along with the chant. Notice its effects. Allow yourself to become immersed in the sounds.
• Chanting is a powerful way to prepare yourself for meditation – so listen to/chant with 1 or several chants before your sitting practice
• Try harmonizing along with the chanting – can be a powerful ecstasy-driving effect
• Try closing your eyes while listening and/or chanting along – this can deepen your experience
• Play the tracks on speakers to experience a more ambient effect.
• Play them with a group through speakers and join us in the chant!

Challenges to the Practice of Chanting

This is boring!

My mother’s comment when I played her some of the tracks. True. Can seem boring – so repetitive, no fancy solo singing, instrumentation. But this isn’t for entertainment LOL … but for sliding into presence, awakeness with sound and vibration. The state of boredom can be a precursor to the chattering mind shutting down and the interior revealing its riches…

I can’t carry a tune.

So what! Chanting is not about singing in tune – though its great when it happens – but about becoming in tune with yourself and with the group and with Spirit, the Great Mystery, God.

I’m uncomfortable singing in a group.

Try closing your eyes, as this can help you turn inwards and let go of feelings of self-consciousness. Focus on YOUR experience, first. Gradually, this discomfort will reverse direction and you’ll find yourself drawn to the energy and harmonies a group offers. Or just chant by yourself!

I don’t know the meaning of what I’m chanting.

Google is a great place to look up the meaning of the words, if you are interested. : ) But also try just allowing the sounds of the syllables to wash over and through you. Some chants are thousands of years old and have a power accumulated from the morphogenetic field that’s been developed, steeped in the belief and tradition from which it arises. (We’ve also provided notes in the manual.)

This is not the tradition I’m comfortable with.

Fair enough. Be curious and open and see how you feel as you chant the words and melodies from other traditions. There is an underlying belief in World Kirtan that there are many rivers but only one ocean. If it is still too uncomfortable, then honor yourself for experimenting, remain with your tradition and go in peace. : )

The Story

From Pam Parsons Dupuy, producer:

Welcome to a new experiment at iAwake: world kirtan (chant) meets sound tech. This has been a project close to my heart and soul for more than a year. My goal was to share a core spiritual practice of mine, devotional singing of chants from around the world and combine it with the startling sound technology iAwake produces.

Kirtan is a sanskrit term that comes from the Indian Hindu tradition, referring to devotional chanting, generally of a call and response structure. Our group borrows from this term but adds “world” to connote that we draw on chants from many sources, both traditional and new, from around the world. We also don’t typically do call and response, but sing together, in a circle, like a choir.

Kirtan groups have taken off in the US and around the world – the bass player for a kirtan I attended in Boulder, CO in August 2016 commented that there were 4 kirtan groups in Boulder, CO alone. Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Snatam Kaur Khalsa, Kirtan Rabbi and many more kirtan artists are coming online in this neo-spiritual music expression. Ours is unusual in that it is not primarily Hindu but World, with a strong Sufi influence because the world kirtan leaders come from Dances of Universal Peace (DUP), one of the streams from the Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan’s lineage. Many of the chants we sing come from members of DUP. I am/we are forever grateful to Bernie Skydrummer and Joy Morris for developing, facilitating and helping to birth this new form of kirtan.

We began recording last August of 2015 and Javi Otero, our CTO and one of our sound wizards, just completed adding the sound tech to the tracks this August 2016.

Soundtracks:

The soundtracks were developed by our local world kirtan group, Torrey World Kirtan, led by Bernie and Joy, with contributions from singer/songwriter, Will Barclay. We have been singing many of these chants for years, but we are not professional singers (except for Will Barclay). The instrumentals are sparse and simple – the focus for our group is joining in voice and feeling and surrender to the sacred divine through sound. This is a central spiritual practice for many of us, and we’ve come to love World Kirtan as a way to honor that there are many rivers but one ocean, to help promote respect for traditions different than the one we grew up with, and as a way to express and experience devotion, surrender and ecstasy, personally and communally.

This project was recorded at 96 kHz, 24 bits, using 2 Neumann U89 microphones in a Mid/Side (M/S) configuration, recording in our meditation room in Teasdale, UT.

For tracks infused with iAwake’s Resonant Entrainment Technology (both tech and non-tech versions are available):

All tracks employ monaural and (musical) binaural entrainment to target alpha brainwaves, so these tracks will work with speakers only (ideal for group use) but the tech effects will be enhanced with headphones because of the binaural entrainment.

Our hope is that listeners to these soundtracks will be inspired to chant along with us, and perhaps start their own local world kirtan groups.

Peace, Pam & the iAwake Team

The Details

Track listing

1 Bowl Invocation

2 Sri Ram Jai Ram (Hindu)

3 Heart Sutra Chant (Buddhist)

4 Shema Yisrael (Jewish)

5 Neesa Neesa (Native American)

6 Zikr of the Tender Heart (Sufi)

7 Thank You For Hearing Me (Contemporary)

8 Om Doong Durga (Hindu)

9 E La Hu Ea (Hawaiian)

10 Zikr of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi)

11 Om Mani Padme Hum (Buddhist)

12 He Kehau (Hawaiian)

13 May All Beings Be Well (Buddhist)

We close each kirtan session with this final chant.

The Technology

ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY OF CHANT

Chanting is a spiritual form of practice in many religious traditions, from Vedic Hindusim, called kirtan (call and response singing), African spirituals, Gregorian chants of Western Christian monks, zikrs of Islam/Sufism, Jewish chants – ancient and modern, Buddhist chants from Tibet, Japan, China, etc., and now, in the last 50 years, a neo-spiritual tradition has emerged, that has come through the cross fertilization of East and West, the 60’s cultural revolution, civil rights movements, modern or re-envisioned spiritual movements, etc.

MODERN PSYCHOACOUSTIC TECHNOLOGY

Target Brainwave Frequencies

• Alpha Waves – Deep relaxation, grounding in the here and now, releasing stress.

Psychoacoustic Technology

• Resonant Beats – World Kirtan contains a wide range of naturally occurring harmonics and beating frequencies that have beenbinaurally recorded* by playing sustained notes on a shruti box whose difference in frequency match the alpha brainwave range (headphones required for optimal effect).
• Monaural Entrainment – the recording contains various layers of monaural sound pulses targeting the alpha range that have been arranged to intensify the effect of the naturally occurring beats and harmonics explained above (suitable for both headphones and speakers).
• 3D Entrainment – this album has a variety of experimental 3D protocols aimed at engaging more parts of the auditory system by using special 3D programming techniques that render virtual sound fields audible, and whose dimensions, proportions and qualities have been carefully modeled to create a nearly subliminal and ever-evolving entrainment texture that harmonizes with the fundamental frequencies of the Resonant beats (headphones required).

*Binaural recordings (not to confuse with binaural beats, of which Resonant beats are a special category) use a matched and specially placed pair of microphones in order to mimic the way sound arrives at our ears. Playback of such special recordings on headphones can enhance realism and depth as well as naturally expand the stereo image of the material.

User Reports

“…the amazing tech imbedded in each of these, brings it to a whole new level.”

I already work with chants. Each of these chants has a place in your life. No matter what the circumstance. Chanting helps to bring you back into the moment, just as concentrating on your breath does. But, with words and music, and the amazing tech imbedded in each of these, brings it to a whole new level. You’ve done an outstanding job on these!

—Cynthia Entringer

“… a kind of ecstasy…ineffable things occur…”

When I allow myself to really relax and open into the sonics of World Kirtan: I am overcome with a kind of ecstasy. Ineffable things occur when one is meditating on one’s central channel, while auditioning the recordings.

—Christopher Worthing

“I simply love chanting these tracks!”

What a wonderful idea. I simply love those chanting tracks! I felt spiritual more connected, few tracks were uplifting and with some others I felt relaxed and balanced. They are also perfect in between a stressful day to relax and recharge. I can keep on listening to them over and over again, they are beautiful. Thank you!

—Roberto

“Joyous grateful and cheerful upbeat mood.”

Joyous grateful and cheerful upbeat mood. Feeling of meditating in company with singers on the tracks in some way.

—Paul

“…spiritual artistry of the music”

I felt a wonder for the spiritual artistry of the music.

—James Lewis

WORLD KIRTAN

Package Includes

• 13 tracks of world chants with entrainment encoded music (63 minutes total) for digital download
• 1 downloadable high quality zipped MP3 file – Mac and PC compatible
• 1 optional downloadable zipped WAV file – Mac and PC compatible
• 1 optional CD
• User eManual (downloadable PDF)
• Ongoing support (responsive email, active Facebook forum, FAQs, videos, audios)