Downward Facing Blog

(Saraswati as the principle of divine sound and speech)

You chant mantras all day long, so why not make it useful?

First the basics:

Mantra comes from two words: man and tra. Man stems from the word for lower mind: manas. Tra means to protect. So a mantra is a “mind protector”.

The mind has a kind of structure or shape to it which goes out to create your experience in the world. You could think of it like a geometric shape, which has its own inherent values and energy pattern(s). As you think, so you attract.

We are always doing a kind of mantra, for some, it could be complaining, others it might be joyous. Although it looks like the world outside causes our mind to react, it’s actually our mind which causes the world to take its shape.

The five elements (earth, water, fire, air, space) exist in a kind of state of potential on a quantum level and it is the mind and perception which causes these elements to snap into the structures which we perceive. The mouse under your hand is only there to the extent that you “expect” it and have agreed with others that it is there. The patterns in your mind which have created the mouse are held in place by language. So we can say that the language or speech in the mind is what creates the structures, then the gross five elements move into place to form the reality we anticipate.

So if I say “go to hell” it has a kind of energetic pattern, a shape. If I chant OM NAMAH SHIVAYA (OM praise to the divine consciousness) this too has it’s own shape.  It’s like if we had a glass table with a pile of sand on top of it. You hook up a speaker to the glass and play different kinds of music. Slayer makes one kind of shape, Mozart makes another. We want our basic inner geometry to reflect our highest potential of course, which is, divine!

Many years ago, on a beach trip to an island off the coast of Ranong Thailand, a mantra I had been initiated into years before suddenly popped in my mind. I had entered a kind of dimension in which my teacher (Swami Niranjananda) telepathically transferred it to me. Over the next two days it remained the background of my thoughts, almost as if despite my will. The experience that followed however was really beautiful.

At night, looking up at the stars in the sky and chanting the mantra, the stars would form lotus shapes in my perception, like giant constellations in the pattern of flowers. When I did not chant the mantra, the stars would revert back to the original patterns. Then, chant the mantra, and it would again transform. I temporarily gained the awareness (siddhi) to transform the world into different experience through language (mantra). I was in a different plane of reality, just like heaven.

This English guy who came up to me on the beach and asked “how ya doin?” and I replied “everything is perfect!” He looked confused and went on about how it would be perfect if it wasn’t for the generator, and if the beach was a bit different, if he had more beer, and there were naked chicks on the beach, etc. I could only laugh. From my perspective, we were in heaven, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t really get me I think. Too bad, but it wouldn’t have been easy to transfer my state of mind to him in a moment.

Unfortunately I don’t get to walk around with this perception everyday, but I did learn how the mind works in relation to the inner dialogue.

How you speak is how you express and define your basic nature, your intelligence. Everything, every object, every being in the world communicates and each thing in the world is a form of the original Divine Word. Each thing has a specific message about the nature of the universe. Even you.

The world comes into creation through speech so speech is really divine potential. We do not usually honor this sacred force however and waste our energies and this cosmic power. Remember, complaining is cosmic power as well. What do you think that creates?

In Vedic idea, there are two fundamental forces in the universe; prana and speech (Vak). Prana is the male principle (Shiva) and speech is the feminine principle. They are forever intertwined; Prana is the energy behind speech and speech is the limitation (form) of prana. Prana carries our thoughts as speech into the world for manifestation. In many traditions the word is the divine power such as in the bible which says: “in the beginning was the word”

Remember that “speech” really refers to FOUR levels, of which the spoken audible part of speech is but one level. I will write more about this in the next post!

In the meantime, dwell on this Vedic idea:

Prana is the Father, Speech is the mother, and Mind is the Child

Om Namah Shivaya, Adrian Cox