Healing, Hearing and the Call of The Clearing

On the one-in-many roots of the words ‘heal’ and ‘healing’
 

Consonantal transformation: Indo-European and Sanskrit /k/ becomes European /h/

Indo-European roots – kar (to make or form), kal (to sound out or call)
Greek root: koilu – the beautiful, well-made or well-formed

Anglo-Germanic roots:
alone, allein  - all-one, authentic, whole
haul / holen – to fetch or bring forth
hale / heil – well-being, completeness or wholeness
heal / heilen – to ‘save’, and thus to be able to bring forth again (wieder-holen)
holy / heilig  - that which allows the bringing or calling forth (again) of all that is heil and is therefore ‘healing’
hal (Old English) – to sound or call
sound / Gesund  –  well-sounding / ‘healthy’
Hail / Heil –  sounded call that means ‘be well’.
hell (Germanic) clear, radiant, resonant
hellen / hallen (Germanic) – to clear or brighten, and to resound or resonate
            [gihelli – harmonious / unhelli – dissonant]

Hellen [to clear], along with hell [clear], mean the same as Hallen [to resound] … In the sense of the primordial event of the self-manifestation of being,  Hellen occurs originally as Hallen, as tone. All other beings fall short of this fundamental tone [Grundton]. How close this is to Indian insights into ultimate truths is best shown by my assertion: “Language is the house of Being”.

Martin Heidegger

The quotation cited above was the final response to questions put to him by Medard Boss regarding the relation between what Heidegger called the primordial ‘clearing’ or ‘clearednesss’ [Lichtung] within which all beings come to be, and the corresponding Indian notion of a primordial ‘light’ of awareness within and from which all beings first come to light, and thus come to be.  Heidegger’s answer, even if unknowingly, also alludes to another, no less fundamental dimension of the Indian thinking – the understanding that all things are expressions of a primordial sound or tone (omkara). Yet to fully heed Heidegger’s own assertion that “Language is the house of Being” we must also heed his other assertion “Language speaks” and heed his instruction to “Listen to language”. This is particularly the case if we wish to understand such common words as ‘health’ and ‘healing’ in a deeper way,  a way that does not take their meaning as given but listens closely to their many roots and their  intertwined senses and resonances. If we do so, we find that these roots have to do with beings both sounding and resounding with a clear tone and also clearly coming to light in a way that is complete, well-formed or ‘beautiful’. Listening to language in this way, we can understand ‘healing’ itself as a mode of ‘clearing’ or hellen – the clearing of a space of awareness in which beings can recover (wiederholen) their wholeness. The clearing as hellen allows them to once again clearly stand out in and radiate the beauty of their own completeness or wholeness. Yet the hellen is also - or even more essentially a hallen – a House or ‘Hall’ of Being in which beings clearly sound out and let resound their own, most fundamental tone of being. Thus it is that ‘healing’ is not only the working of a clearing and translucent inner ‘light’, the light of awareness, but - even more primordially - the ‘soundness’ (Ge-sund-heit) of a clear, unmuddied and resonant ‘tonality’ of awareness.  It is only through recovering the un-muddied clarity of their own “fundamental tone” (Seth) that each individual’s inner beauty - the unique shapes and colourations of their awareness - can come to radiate in the translucency of a divine light - in the ‘clearedness’ of ‘the clearing’. The clearing itself is not only the primordial light of awareness in which beings - all shapes and colours of awareness – first come to light. It is also the primordial tone within whose depths they are first called forth. The clearing is therefore also that which constantly calls and recalls all beings to itself - and thereby also to themselves. It calls to them both wordlessly and in words - for its call is the wordless inner resonance of the words through which it calls to them. Yet the call of the clearing can only echo or resonate within us if a space is first cleared for us to hear and heed it, feel and fathom it. Healing is the clearing of this space of true hearing. The clearing of such space is not merely ‘our’ activity however, but belongs to the very essence of ‘the’ clearing. ‘The’ clearing itself is ‘that which clears’. It therefore also constantly seeks to clear a space of hearing within us – indeed that is the very essence of its ‘call’ to us.  ‘Healing’ means hearing and being heard – both by other beings and by the divine source of all beings. Its primary requirement is therefore the expansion of a clear and resonant space or ‘hall’ of hearing within us. For it is only within such a space or ‘clearing’ that the full dimensions of meaning or ‘inner resonance’ concealed within the word can ‘come to light’, as can the full dimension of our own being – the wholeness that binds and lies behind all its numberless parts, and that calls to us through each and all of them. ‘Health’ is essentially the openness and clearness of our hearing response to these calls – and to the Call of  The Clearing that opens us to them.