Actually, I think it might be more accurate to say that he has acquired me. I’m a scientist (astrophysicist to be precise) and I’ve been agnostic for as long as I can remember, so I’ve always struggled with the idea of God and the purpose of religion. But a few months ago, I had a spiritual experience, and since then, I’ve been on a quest to understand the being known as God. To learn more, I’ve studied and participated in various religious systems, and for the past month I’ve been explorin...

Robert Gass, author of Chanting: Discovering Spirit in Sound, believes that ritual chanting is among the most universal of human impulses, as well as one of the first: “We have no recordings of the earliest humans,” he writes, “but when we encounter indigenous tribes who’ve had little contact with modern civilization, they all have sacred chants that their oral history traces back to their earliest origins. And if you look into creation myths from different cultures, in almost every case the world is said to come into being through sound, through chant. It’s in Hi...