Sutras 1.25 and 1.26: A Small Introduction to Mantra
1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.
1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.
Continuing on our voyage into the qualities of the Atman, or that little piece of God imbued in everything, we are given a closer glimpse into It's nature.
A grouping of writings called the Upanishads speaks heavily on this subject. My favorite is called the Isha Upanishad. It's opening incantation can be used as a mantra. During my studies with Goswami Kriyananda, I was given this Mantra to contemplate:
1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.
Continuing on our voyage into the qualities of the Atman, or that little piece of God imbued in everything, we are given a closer glimpse into It's nature.
A grouping of writings called the Upanishads speaks heavily on this subject. My favorite is called the Isha Upanishad. It's opening incantation can be used as a mantra. During my studies with Goswami Kriyananda, I was given this Mantra to contemplate:
oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate
Which roughly translates to: Om ! That (world) is a complete whole. This (world) too is a complete whole. From the complete whole only, the (other) complete whole rose. Even after removing the complete whole from the (other) complete whole, still the complete whole remains unaltered and undisturbed.
Did you get that? Makes perfect sense right? So goes attempting to understand something that has no form, but trying to put it into an understandable form. When I chanted the Mantra above, I did it in Sanskrit, doing a full Mala at least once a day. A mala is that necklace of beads worn by Yogic practitioners to keep count. One necklace will always contain 108 beads.
The power of the Sanskrit language does not reside in what it says, but the quality of how it is said.
While chanting a mantra, you begin by saying it out loud. The next step is the say the mantra out loud in you mind. Finally, nearing the end of the mala, what is left over is a "feeling" that the mantra gives you. That feeling, is the intuitive sense of what the mantra is trying to convey. Holding on to that feeling during formal meditation ingrains it into the subconscious.
Mantra chanting can be done on it's own or part of a larger meditative practice. I recommend it for anyone who has a noisy mind. After about six month of doing a mala once a day, the mind will be calm and allow you to go deeper into meditation.
There is so much more to Mantra then what I have said above. I will include more in future lessons.