MANTRA: THE ART OF SOUND AND INNER SILENCE, (continued) :


SARIDA BROWN: You are saying that there is a difference between spirituality and religion?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Absolutely! Any method that will bring you to go inside will be spiritual; any method that causes you to look for the divine outside is religious. Religion then becomes an institution, and once something is institutionalized it usually loses the spirit.

SARIDA BROWN: Do we find the spirit within through chanting?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Yes, through sound, through breath. The more relaxed you become, the less breath you need. When you are excited you breathe fast, and when you calm down, the breath rate reduces. In Microchakra Psychology™ we say if you are breathing 16 breaths or more per minute, you are functioning from the first chakra mind; 12 breaths per minute, your awareness is coming from the second chakra mind; 10 breaths per minute from the third chakra; 8 breaths per minute from the fourth; at 5 breaths per minute the fifth chakra mind becomes active, when you are creative and you are, so to speak, in communion. Two breaths per minute comes when you are in the state of meditation. Then sometimes you don't appear to breathe at all, and that is the state of samadhi, in which you are totally unaware of the outside world, and you are absolutely merged into your own source within yourself I am so grateful to have been born in the culture where these concepts existed and I was fortunate to meet an extraordinary man when I was twelve years old who taught me these things and has influenced my whole life.

SARIDA BROWN: So breath carries our consciousness?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: That's right, it actually energizes our awareness. I save the word 'consciousness' or the divine. I prefer to use consciousness I instead of the word 'God', because consciousness is omnipresent. You can understand the whole theory of creation if you start with the point of consciousness, rather than those denominational stories of creation that first there was a God, so now the rational mind will say 'If first there was a God, then who created God?' so that becomes a problem to solve. But nobody has a problem with consciousness, because consciousness just is, and whether you believe in a doctrine like reincarnation or not is perfectly fine. Consciousness is going to be here. When this universe was not here, consciousness was still here, and when the universe will be gone, consciousness will still be here, so this creation is just a phase in time, and time is a construct of mind.

SARIDA BROWN: So when we use the word 'consciousness' in place of God, it doesn't divide people.

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: That's right. Otherwise people will fight over Allah and Ram and God. I think it is basically for religious reasons that people have wars, or in the past it has been like that. Now, industrialized nations can start a war because they want the minerals from a country and they don't want to use up their own resources until they have exhausted the rest of the I poor world'.

SARIDA BROWN: So this is another religion?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Yes, it's called power religion!

SARIDA BROWN: We've talked about mantra, breath and consciousness. What about sound?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: When you hear the word 'sound', you probably think back to when you studied physics at school, and you were taught that when the tuning fork vibrates, sound travels through the air to our eardrums and that's how we hear things. That's partially true, but in the science of mantra, which is also a science of sound, we believe that sound is the cause and not the effect of vibration. In the mantra system there is a silent sound which seems like a contradiction in terms, but there is a silent sound: our thoughts have sound, our feelings have sound, we think in terms of sound, words are sound and it's only at the level of their delivery that sound becomes audible, otherwise the sound is silent. If it wasn't so, how could there be people who can hear your feelings and your thoughts? I know many people who do that.

Thoughts and feelings are all based on sound. In mantra we use the audible sound to tune into our own silent sound, that is the function of mantra. In Sanskrit, an ancient language of India, manna means 'mind', and 'man' is a being who has a mind, and mind is restless by nature. Until all seven chakra minds reach a level of contentment, this restlessness is not going to go away. Mantras are designed so that, temporarily, any chakra mind can experience a sense of gratitude, so that this restlessness stops for a time and you can be spared to meditate for a while. Then when your meditation is over, you can tell from the first thought that comes to you which chakra mind your awareness has been pushed into. But you have to be able to look at yourself objectively to do this, and it is a difficult task without a teacher who has been able to do it for him or herself.

So for this function of sound, how the sound is delivered is very important: when you are breathing 8 breaths per minute the effect of your mantra chanting will be different from when you are breathing 3 or 4 breaths per minute. There are also many other factors that contribute to the effectiveness of a mantra.

SARIDA BROWN: Could you talk about the relation between the sound that we express individually, and cosmic sound?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Cosmic sound is the sound of fundamental or primal stress where the creation separated from the stasis. Consciousness at that stage was in the state of stasis, and sound in the state of stasis is a silent sound. But within the stasis there was the life force called prana in an unmanifest state. As prana separated from the stasis, that 'crack in the cosmic egg, created the audible sound. Now whether you call it the Big Bang, or a small bang, or the Word, or whatever, it was sound that caused the creation to take place because audible sound creates akasha, as it is called in Sanskrit it has been poorly translated as 'ether'. Sound produces ether, and without ether there would be no space, and there has to be space before creation can begin, and before light can appear. Sound therefore is the primary factor.

The moment prana separates from the stasis, it is what we call the female, creative principle to a Hindu, stasis is masculine. There is prana everywhere, in the galaxy, in an atom, and you can dissect it and do anything with it: you can't kill the prana, it can only be transferred from one place to another.

From the ether comes the air, and there can be no movement without air, and then fire, and with the fire cooling down come the waters and then from the waters comes the earth, and then the creatures of the earth. But we as consciousness have not just evolved on earth; we as consciousness were, even in the state of stasis so why do we identify with this body created from the five elements? This body is only a case in which I live, and I also live in my house, yet I don't identify myself with my house. That's the difference between whether you are a physical being or a metaphysical being. All our lives we train ourselves to be physical beings, and then when the spiritual mind opens up, it says 'Hey, but you are not Just a physical being, there is something more to you', then you have to find the tools to define 'Who I could be if I am not this body?

There are three desire principles that human beings go through, if they discover them all in one lifetime. One is that 'I am this body, and I receive the information through my senses, and I do my best and that's all there is'. The first three chakras are associated with this first desire principle. The second principle is that 'I am very fortunate to have my first, second and third chakra needs met, I'm very grateful for that and I'd like to help other people so they can be as well as I am'. The third desire principle is 'But what is this universe? Who am V That is the spiritual need. So in the second principle is the point of view of religion: 'You. Not me, but You, A Lord'. But in the third, 'If the Lord is in me, then who am I calling on all the time in the outside world? Why don't I have a taste of it myself, because that might be what people have been calling enlightenment in many cultures, or Nirvana or Mokshd. But religions don't like that third desire principle, because it shakes the power and the politics of the politicians of religion, so that is why yogis and sufis had to extricate themselves from societies and live outside on the periphery, to do their own spiritual work.

SARIDA BROWN: So through mantra and sound we come to recognize who we truly are?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Yes, we can, and there are not too many other ways that are so far known to mankind.

SARIDA BROWN: You speak of akasha as a principal state in the universe, that is created by d sound. What is akasha, and how is it relevant to us?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: Akasha is the fifth element. We all know about earth, water, fire and air. But for all these to be able to exist, there has to be akasha. The densest meaning of akasha is space, which is everywhere, but there are different qualities of akasha. Sound produces akasha. that's why I mentioned that there was a silent sound. We produce akasha by the offering of our sound.

In the stasis - and with the movement of the prana, that sound became audible, and that audible sound then creates audible akasha. That audible akasha is what you hear when you go into the space. It can be so loud that if we heard it our ears would become deaf in an instant.

When we chant or speak, we create akasha. The meanings of the words are travelling in akasha, and you transmit akasha as you transmit air which is the carrier of the sound. There is fire in the sound also, the warmth that you hear, and there can be a flow, and you can also hear the rhythm, so all five elements are present everywhere, in different proportions. This body is basically made up of what is between the molecules. When you look at bones or crystals, which are solid, the spaces between the molecules are so small that the molecules seem to be sticking together; then look at flowing water, the molecules are far apart from each other; in fire they're even farther apart; in air they are even farther apart; in space there are hardly any molecules, because it's all space. So akasha creates more space between the molecules that we are made of, that we are. The more space between your molecules, the more flexible your body is, the more flexible your thoughts are, the more flexible your feelings are, the more accommodating you are: it's the lack of space that makes you tight, stressed, and prone to disease. Akasha is an unspoken nutriment.

SARIDA BROWN: So what effect do we have from akasha when we chant?

SRI SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR: We produce akasha by the offering of our sound, and that akasha is then absorbed. Let's say you're sitting by yourself and chanting (and you have learned to chant properly), then you create quality akasha, which you will then absorb and it will make you feel spacious and calmer inside, your rate of breathing will slow down, your temperature will normalize, tensions will seemingly disappear. We produce akasha with any sound that is made, and there are also negative akasha, for instance the sound of a gun, or an aeroplane flying overhead, or a truck passing by, or metal colliding ? and people are repelled by the negative akasha they experience. Then there are people you make friends with because you like their voice ? they are creating more pleasant akasha. There are singers who create beautiful akasha, but the finest quality of akasha is produced with the mantra. The finest is called surya akasha.
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Sri SHYAMJI BHATNAGAR, internationally recognized master of the ancient science of sound is the founder of the Sound Research Institute (SRI Centre) based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.He leads special programs in Microchakra Psychology™, human energy studies and InnerTuning® counseling.

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