Classes at Shalwa Woods

When the Mantra sinks in Yoga’s Ear ||98.57||

Mantric Utterance•One can pass through the mystical doors

•Cross the occult ranges

•Write devotional poems

•Sing spiritual songs

•Make religious compositions

•Express metaphysical thoughts

•Be fully adoring with emotional lyricism

But these can be far away from the Mantric word.

Nothing CountsPoetic intelligence

Creative insight

Unfailing aesthetic sense

Deeper and genuine perceptions

Swift and luminous intuition of things,

Yet the vision and language and rhythm of the Mantra may be lackingDirect and experienced awareness of the mysterious and the divinely hauntingA living contact with the reality One sustained example is the Rig Veda; in our own times it is Savitri.

A Yogin is oftentimes “led by a mysterious sound”.

He is conducted to the birthplace of the rhythmic Sound itself,

nādabrahma which is the origin and source, shabdayoni, of

this harmony.

There are the inaudible voices, but the Yogin is perfectly at

home with them.

A Shelley led by the mysterious sound seizes in the shape of a

bird that sound.

The spirit of delight whose race must begin takes a body to

sing unbidden hymns.

The Agastaya's Prayer and Proclamation

Lo, the hymn of affirmation, O Maruts; it is fraught with my

obeisance, it was framed by the heart, it was established by the

mind, O ye gods.

Approach these my words and embrace them with the mind; for of

submission are you the increasers.

Framed by the heart and confirmed or established by the mind,

hridā tastān manasā dhyāi. The earliest recorded theory of the

creative Word. 

In the system of the Mystics the Word is power; the Word creates.

All creation is expression, everything exists already in the secret abode of

the Infinite, guhā hitam, and has only to be brought out by the active

consciousness.

The poetic measures of the Mantras,— anushtubha, trishtubha, jagati,

gāyatri,—are symbolic of the rhythms in which the universal movement of

things is cast.

The Mantra is not in its essential part a creation of the intellect.

It must have come as an inspiration from the supramental plane, ŗtam, the

Truth, and received either through the heart or by the luminous

intelligence, manisha, fashioned by the heart and confirmed by the mind.

Vedic Metres

Mantra comes from the OvermindThe Mantra is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition.

Its characteristics are

a language that conveys more than the mere surface sense of the words

a rhythm that means even more than the language

is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it

has power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or

indications or values of the things uttered, but its significance and figure

in some fundamental and original consciousness.

The body of the mantric sound becomes a chariot for accomplishments in the

triple glory of truth-conscient awareness of delight.

The receiver of the Word, the listener of the transcendent speech, parā vāņī,

awakens to its reality. A transmutation gets effected.

Knowledge and Power become instruments in the spirit's working. 

The Mantra is the highest intensest revealing form of poetic thought and

expression.

It envisions inmost truth of God and self and man and Nature and

cosmos and life and thing and thought and experience and deed.

It is a thinking that comes on the wings of a great soul rhythm,

chhandas, the seeing not separated from the hearing.

The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the

thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal.

Mantra is the voice of the inmost truth and is couched in the highest

power of the very rhythm and speech of that truth.

The Mantra is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all

that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite.

Mantra is Truth-Revelation

It is the superconscient Nature-Force, Shakti, Vak, the goddess of

creative Speech.

Tantric psychists supposed that this Power acts in us through different

subtle nervous centres on higher and higher levels of its force and that

thus the word has a graduation of its expressive powers of truth and

vision.

The grades of the Tantric classification, Pashyanti the seeing word, as

the description of that degree of power.

Vak

The Overmind touch consists in the undertones or overtones of the

rhythmic cry

A language of spiritual vision, feeling or experience.

Undertones and Overtones

The Mantra is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind

inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition.

Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere

surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more

than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the

power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications

or values of the thing uttered.

Its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness

which is behind all these and greater.

Mantra is the Word of Power

There is the original source of inspiration.

There is the vital force of creative beauty which contributes its own substance

and impetus and often determines the form, except when that also comes ready

made from the original source.

There is the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet.

Three Elements of Poetry

The Overmind thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep or

wide or all these things together. Sometimes there comes down a supreme

voice, the Overmind voice and the Overmind music.

The Higher Thought has a strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and

moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent

character.

The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words

or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of

revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep.

The Intuition is usually a lightning flash showing up a single spot or plot of

ground or scene with an entire and miraculous completeness of vision to the

surprised ecstasy of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound

which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a

single stroke.

Overhead Planes

Ranges of Spiritual Mind—The Overhead Planes

A graduality of Ascent There is the graduality of ascent, an increasing and deepening communication with light and power, a scale of intensities which can be regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of Mind or in a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it.

Upraised Estates of MindOn summit Mind are radiant altitudes

Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,

Outskirts and dependences of the house of Truth,

Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.

There man can visit but there he cannot live.

Truth-Thought

We become aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous

knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character.

Not the seeking or mental construction, no labour of speculation or difficult

discovery, but it is spontaneous knowledge from a Higher Mind that seems to

be in possession of Truth. One observes that this Thought is capable of

including at once a mass of knowledge in a single view; it has a cosmic

character, not the stamp of an individual thinking. A Cosmic Thought

A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;Its smallest parts are here philosophies Challenging with their detailed immensity, Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things. But higher still can climb the ascending light;

Truth-Sight

Beyond this Truth-Thought we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased

power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of the nature of Truth-Sight with thought

formulation as a minor and dependent activity. We may compare the action of the Higher Mind

to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an

outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff.

Vasts of VisionThere are vasts of vision and eternal suns, Oceans of an immortal luminousness, Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks, There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight; A burning head of vision leads the mind, Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;The heart glows, an illuminate and seer, And sense is kindled into identity.

Truth-Force

Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an

intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling,

Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition;

yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of

self-existent knowledge. This imparts to our intuitions something of its

own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater

Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate.

Intuition's LightningsA highest flight climbs to a deepest view: In a wide opening of its native sky Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs, Its fiery edge of seeing absolute Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self, Rummages the sky-recesses of the brain,Lights up the occult chambers of the heart; Its spear-point ictus of discovery Pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form,Strips bare the secret soul of all that Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes; The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy And tears away the veil from God and life.

Overmind

At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct

contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an Overmind that covers as

with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of

Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at

the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth

from our sight. This is the occult link, this the Power that at once connects and

divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.

Empire of the Overmind

Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse,

The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

In its house of infinite possibility;

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single look:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.

Based on The Life Divine and Savitri

Ranges and Ranges

Upraised Estates of Mind

On summit Mind are radiant altitudes

Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,

Outskirts and dependences of the house of Truth,

Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.

There man can visit but there he cannot live.

 

A Cosmic Thought

A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;

Its smallest parts are here philosophies

Challenging with their detailed immensity,

Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things.

But higher still can climb the ascending light;

Vasts of Vision

There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,

Oceans of an immortal luminousness,

Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,

There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;

A burning head of vision leads the mind,

Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;

The heart glows, an illuminate and seer,

And sense is kindled into identity.

Intuition's Lightnings

A highest flight climbs to a deepest view:

In a wide opening of its native sky

Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack

Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,

Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,

Rummages the sky-recesses of the brain,

Lights up the occult chambers of the heart;

Its spear-point ictus of discovery

Pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form,

Strips bare the secret soul of all that is.

Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes;

The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,

Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

And tears away the veil from God and life. 

Empire of the Overmind

Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse,

The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

In its house of infinite possibility;

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single look:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.

The Triple Fusion in Poetry

There has to be in the poetic speech the triple fusion of

rhythmic movement,

thought-substance,

soul's vision of truth,

of the rhythm, substance, and sight, of laya, vāk, dŗştī which must join together

to give rise to the expressive Word, brahma which is also the mantra. There

must be deeper and subtler music, a rhythmical soul-movement entering into

the metrical form.

The Occult EarWhat determines the sense of hearing is the sensitive ear, the occult, the inner ear which in the stillness listens to the deeper and subtler contents of the sounds of the Word, to its quiet dhwani.It is the deep secret voice that speaks out through it, bringing knowledge of the excellent things to us who can receive it. In terms of sound the three ways in which a syllable may differ are: quantity, emphasis or stress or weight of voice, and pitch or accent. Generally it is the accent and to some extent stress that govern the metrical flow of a line in English poetry. Each word-group has a separate rhythm, an independent life, yet it is by following each other rapidly in a single whole that complete force and beauty in poetic composition is achieved.

The Mother on the MantraNobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given: it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being—then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning—to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was.

I had gone to a lecture. All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the

sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly filled with light, a golden,

vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it.

I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the

story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different

countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would

suddenly see the place filled with that same light.

That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of

spiritual aspiration—there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the

Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.

11 May 1963

A Mantra is not the same thing as prayer or self-dedication (Atma-nivedana).

Prayer is conveyed in the words the Sadhaka chooses. Any set of words or

letters is not a Mantra.

Only that Mantra in which the Devata has revealed His or Her Particular

aspects can reveal that aspect, and is therefore the Mantra of that one of His

or Her particular aspects.

The relations of the letters (Varņa), whether vowel or consonant, Nada and

Bindu, in a Mantra indicate the appearance of Devatā in different forms.

Certain Vibhuti or aspects of the Devata are inherent in certain Varņa, but

perfect Śakti does not appear in any but a whole Mantra.

All letters are forms of the Śabda-Brahman, but only particular combinations

of letters are particular form, just as the name of a particular being is made

up of certain letters and not of any indiscriminately.

Śakti and Śakta 

The whole universe is Śakti and is pervaded by Śakti. Nada, Bindu, Varga are all forms of Śakti

and combinations of these, and these combinations only are the Śabda corresponding to the

Artha or forms of any particular Devatā.

The gross lettered sound is the manifestation of sound in a more subtle form, and this again is

the production of causal "sound" in its supreme (Parā) form.

Mantras are manifestations of Kuņdalini which is a name for the Śabda-Brahman or Saguņa-

Brahman in individual bodies. Produced Śabda is an aspect of the Jiva's vital Śakti.

Kuņdalini is the Śakti who gives life to the Jiva. She it is who in the Mulādhāra Chakra (or basal

bodily centre) is the cause of this sweet, indistinct and murmuring Dhavani which is compared

to the humming of a black bee.

Thence Śabda originates and, being first Parā, gradually manifests upwards as Paśyanti,

Madhyamā, Vaikhari. Just as in outer space, waves of sound are produced by movements of air

(Vāyu), so in the space within the Jiva's body, waves of sound are said to be produced

according to the movements of the vital air (Prāņavayu) and the process of in and out

breathing.

As the Svarupa of Kuņdali, in whom are all sounds, is Paramātmā, so the substance of all

Mantra, Her manifestation is Consciousness (Cit) manifesting as letters and words. In fact,

the letters of the Alphabet which are called Akshara are nothing but the Yantra of the

Akshara or Imperishable Brahman.

Kuņdalini, who is extremely subtle, manifest in gross (Sthula) form in differing aspects as

different Devatās.

It is this gross form which is the Presiding Deity (Adhishţātri Devatā) of a Mantra, though it is

the subtle (Sukşma) form at which all Sadhakas aim.

Mantra and Devatā are thus one and in particular forms of Brahman as Śiva-Śakti.

A Mantra consists of certain letters arranged in definite sequence of sounds of which the

letters are the representative signs.

To produce the designed effect, the Mantra must be intoned in the proper way, according to

both sound (Varņa) and rhythm (Svara).

Mantra when translated ceases to be such, and becomes a mere word or sentence.

Woodroffe