A Dialogue on Mantra Practice

Adesh, Adesh,

I’ve been doing my thousand-a-day Rudra mantras, making myself an offering to the Cosmos and using the mantra as a call. However, today I shifted the focus to a very one-pointed worship in which the mantra itself is the deity and offering myself to the mantra. Of course, I knew intellectually that a good mantra is supposed to be one with the deity it represents, and countless times I’ve been absorbed in mantras while worshiping the divine vibrations in the zonule, but somehow I never quite made the connection to how a mantra can in a functional way be considered to be the deity. I always thought of it as a way to get to the deity, but apparently that happens best when you make it to be the deity. Anyway, the mantra came alive in the center of my mind, and I can say that I’m not the same as I was yesterday.

Did you happen to notice a change in your chant or perhaps a change in your enthusiasm when the mantra came alive in the center of your mind? If so, could you describe it?

The chanting did change somewhat, in that I experienced that the mantra was “doing me” as much as I was doing the mantra. I was already chanting with a good degree of fullness of my chi, which I feel is a prerequisite to reaching any threshold of success, but as the experience crystallized, I noticed that my enunciation became very precise, as I was concentrating with rapt attention to every part of each syllable. Palpable magick power was even oozing out from the spaces between the syllables when I looked there too.

There is an esoteric capacity of the mind to mix modalities of sensory perception, such as seeing sounds or smelling colors, called synesthesia. During my mantra epiphany, and also since, part of my mind was taken to an astral loka where the sound of the mantra had a three dimensional form, though as you can imagine it becomes very hard to describe in English at this point. Quite psychedelic.

As far as enthusiasm, hell yeah – it was electrifying. The challenge actually was to keep in a relaxed state of equanimity, so as not to become distracted and disturb the stability of the yoga. Enthusiasm is important and natural, but if it reaches the level of an exhibition of ego, then it’s an unwelcome intrusion in the Divine space. It’s a subtle balance. Anyway, I felt like it wasn’t “my” enthusiasm as much as the innate ecstasy of the Divine being expressed through my nervous system.

Was this experience accompanied by insightful ideas or did it have a non-instigating effect on your mind and thoughts as you completed the practice?

The value of this kind of experience is that it turns your paradigm of reality upside-down, inside-out, or all of the above. As I mentioned, my effort as I completed the practice was to maintain the one-pointed awareness that triggered the whole thing in the first place, not to let my thoughts spin off on all the ramifications. But outside the time/space of the sitting, yes I hope and expect the ripple effect of insightful ideas will propagate forth and lead to new and fantastical thought patterns.

The Deity is the background and the mantra is the foreground. As in seeing, our eyes focus to encompass a perception of the totality of the piece we are viewing. Similarly, in this way do I bring the mantra into focus to encompass both the seeing and the seen (scene)? A type of Stereoscopic vision, rather than a monoscopic vision that tends to flatten the visual field?

My only comment would be that the approach you describe sounds similar in some ways to my previous notion (which did yield positive effects over a long period of time), but the startling change for me now was a result of intentionally merging in my mind the “background” deity with the “foreground” mantra. After all, if yoga with a deity is desired, then why hold it at arm’s length in the background?

And lastly, if I might reemphasize what for me has been the key element, it is as Kapilnath put it: “In all humility you may offer yourself up as an offering. If this is done rightly and your offer accepted, there will be no holding back and the liquid gold of the Cosmos will move through all parts of your being.”

May your endeavors in the spiritual realm grant you much peace and happiness.

Guru Om

Dhruvanath