This is a thought experiment that feels like a fable to me.
It’s part creation story and part metaphysical look at where my beloved harmonic series might have came from, and why returning to the harmonic series as a guiding principle helps ToneStream bring peace, order and beauty to people and to the world.
First, a big tip of my modified bowler to Itzhak Bentov.
Bentov was a Czechoslovakia-born Israeli-American scientist, inventor, mystic and author. I’m especially indebted to his book: Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, and to the thought experiments in it. Bentov gave many of us explorers an approach, and the language, to stalk the wild pendulum of consciousness in our own ways. Here we go…
…Let’s place ourselves ringside on the first day of creation. It was a fine day. Source was in a good mood because it was the first day of business in the Consciousness hustle.
Source was also Consciousness itself (and much more I suspect, but that is not this fable). Source had somehow invented consciousness. But neither Source nor Consciousness has put out a memo that I’ve seen as to why this happened. I suspect that “Team One” are not at liberty to share that “Why?” pre-beginning with us at this time. And personally, my interests are not around that big “Why?”, but rather where rubber meets the road with the harmonic series.
So Consciousness spent the first morning just being conscious (of course there was no time or space yet, but this is a fable, and it takes time to tell one). There was nothing to be conscious of––no physical matter to make things from that could be observed. But just being conscious was a heck of a lot better than the non-consciousness that had been in the neighborhood before.
Like creatives everywhere, Consciousness soon got bored. Then it realized that because it was conscious, it could know that it was conscious. “Hey, this is like I’m observing myself. I’m just plain old me, Consciousness, but I can see myself being conscious.”
In observing itself, Consciousness realized it had invented a kind of duality. Because being aware of being conscious is a separate “thing” from simply being conscious.
Before things got too crazy, Consciousness said: “This could get out of hand and I could get confused. Let’s call my original conscious self ‘1’ a name that shows I’m connected to Source which I am conscious of, but don’t understand. And me observing myself? Geez, that needs a name too. Better call that ‘2.’”
See? A good first day.
Original Consciousness was called “1,” and Consciousness Observing Itself was called “2.” This was great entertainment––a nice way to play with life. Consciousness observed itself being conscious all day.
When it woke up the next day, it hadn’t slept well. “Damn, I’m bored again,” it said.
Like many creatives looking for a quick hack, Consciousness had an idea: “I’ll just do more of what I already did yesterday and see how long I can get away with that.”
It liked its 1-ness and its 2-ness, and it noticed they had a thing going on––a relationship in fact.
[In music theory this relationship is called the octave. You can hear the octave in your head right now if you mentally sing the first two notes, as Judy Garland, in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”: ‘some… where…’ That leap from “some” to “where” is an octave. So one of the most beautiful songs ever written begins with an interval of an octave, a true and beautiful beginning].
“Well, 2 is 2 times 1,” Consiousness would have said, if it had invented math yet. “What if I take that same 2-ness and keep multiplying by it? Yeah, now I’m getting somewhere: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128… I could keep going forever this is so much fun. In fact, I just invented infinity. And it’s all me, all the time.”
Consciousness was simply repeating “Consciousness Observing Itself” at higher and higher “frequencies.” It spent an infinite amount of time playing by itself, replicating itself.
But like many creatives with an urge to collaborate, it said: “This creation sport would be more fun with another player, someone different from just me all the time.”
So Consciousness took its 1-ness and combined it with its 2-ness because they were already friendly and had that thing going on. Together they made something new: 1 + 2 = 3.
Bam.
In that instant, Consciousness created the first thing different from its two selves, and a whole new relationship: 3:2 (in music theory this relationship is called the perfect fifth).
Consciousness, Consciousness Observing Itself and the First Differentiated Thing played long and hard that day. Together they had invented the series 1, 2, 3, the beginning of the harmonic series. They had moved beyond plain old boring Consciousness, past the more fun Consciousness Observing Itself, to the grand sport of playing as the First Differentiated Thing.
Consciousness was tired. As it rested its head on a nice firm buckwheat pillow, its last thought that day was: “Tomorrow I’ll keep going with this differentiation-into-form thing and make the 10,000 things that Lau Tze will need when I get around to making him. Maybe I want to see what it’s like to be conscious as all of them, maybe I don’t care about that, I don’t know yet. But still… I could be a politician of any stripe, I could be a Yorkshire Terrier named Lucy, I could be the breath in Rumi’s reed flute…”
The End.
And that’s where ToneStream begins. Its tuning starts at 1, doubles to make the octaves, and uses 3:2 to make the fifths, the same sequence in our fable. When you listen to ToneStream you’ll hear those first relationships still at play. To me, that’s a way back to 1, the oneness we all started from before “differentiation into form” and the troubles that come from forgetting, as soap man Emanuel Bronner said: “We are All One or None!”
Michael Joly, Coney Island, Nov 7, 2026