It is one of the fundamental perceptions of the ancients that the Reality turned towards manifestation reveals itself as a primordial Sound, the Brahman is nada, God is Logos. The first stir, spanda, of the Creative Consciousness renders itself as a vibration of sound, sabda, and all else issues from this Sound-Form of the Reality. Each form in creation has this Sound-origin at its base. It may belong to any plane of existence, it may be a god, it may be a thought –form or a current of force or a material object on earth. At its root there is a Sound-substance from which it has evolved into this manifestation. Naturally, this Sound is not the sound of our physical world, but it is the Sound of the plane of the supreme Ether, paramevyoman. Indeed, it translates itself into appropriate form on the different levels of creation. It is only the last stage of this rendering of Sound-form that is the human speech. And when any particular word or words in our speech are such projected correspondences of the supreme Sound-forms, they are called mantra.
Thus the mantra is a transcript in terms of human speech of the basic Sound-body of any truth or form in creation. By dwelling upon such a word or words one can connect himself with the prototype in the higher planes and evoke the truth embodied in that original Sound-form to manifest. It is an occult law that if one can recreate the conditions in which something first manifested, an inducement, a pressure, is exerted for that thing to manifest again.
In the mantra-sastra each Deity is conceived as having its own Sound-form, which is rendered, at the human level in the body of the letters of a mantra revealed to the seer. By concentrating upon this physical nodus one evokes the Deity ensouled in its corresponding Sound-form above to manifest. Rapport is established between the person who waits upon the mantra and the Truth at its head.
Naturally, a mantra of this type is not concocted by the human mind. It is not a matter of clothing an idea into metrical form. The Word comes into the being reverberating from the depths of an eternal Silence and settles in the recesses of the heart. There it is brooded upon by the central consciousness till it is assimilated and acquires sufficient individuation in this world of flux. When it is so processed, hrda tastan, carved by the heart, it is taken up by the intelligence and subjected to a further process of fusion and then clothed in an appropriate thought-form. This thought-form flows in its inevitable sound-body, and we have the Word.
This is the sacred character of the mantra around which a whole science has been built up by the seers of yore. A mantra is not a convenient means for concentration for arresting the wayward tendencies of the mind; it is not even a vehicle to connect oneself with the Deity; the mantra is the body of the Deity, in a sense it is the Deity itself. It is when one looks upon the mantra in this spirit, adores it, takes to it with the love that one reserves for the Divine Beloved that the mantra reveals its true nature, yields its truth and becomes one with the upasaka, practicant. He attains identity with the ensouled Deity.
- M.P. Pandit.
(‘A Chapter on Mantra’ from ‘All Life Is Yoga’, M.P. Pandit, Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)
Thus the mantra is a transcript in terms of human speech of the basic Sound-body of any truth or form in creation. By dwelling upon such a word or words one can connect himself with the prototype in the higher planes and evoke the truth embodied in that original Sound-form to manifest. It is an occult law that if one can recreate the conditions in which something first manifested, an inducement, a pressure, is exerted for that thing to manifest again.
In the mantra-sastra each Deity is conceived as having its own Sound-form, which is rendered, at the human level in the body of the letters of a mantra revealed to the seer. By concentrating upon this physical nodus one evokes the Deity ensouled in its corresponding Sound-form above to manifest. Rapport is established between the person who waits upon the mantra and the Truth at its head.
Naturally, a mantra of this type is not concocted by the human mind. It is not a matter of clothing an idea into metrical form. The Word comes into the being reverberating from the depths of an eternal Silence and settles in the recesses of the heart. There it is brooded upon by the central consciousness till it is assimilated and acquires sufficient individuation in this world of flux. When it is so processed, hrda tastan, carved by the heart, it is taken up by the intelligence and subjected to a further process of fusion and then clothed in an appropriate thought-form. This thought-form flows in its inevitable sound-body, and we have the Word.
This is the sacred character of the mantra around which a whole science has been built up by the seers of yore. A mantra is not a convenient means for concentration for arresting the wayward tendencies of the mind; it is not even a vehicle to connect oneself with the Deity; the mantra is the body of the Deity, in a sense it is the Deity itself. It is when one looks upon the mantra in this spirit, adores it, takes to it with the love that one reserves for the Divine Beloved that the mantra reveals its true nature, yields its truth and becomes one with the upasaka, practicant. He attains identity with the ensouled Deity.
- M.P. Pandit.
(‘A Chapter on Mantra’ from ‘All Life Is Yoga’, M.P. Pandit, Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)
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