Excerpt from The Cosmic Kaleidoscope
A mantra is a word or collection of syllables with a liberating effect on the mind: “A sanctified word that helps one in attaining salvation is a mantra.” In particular, two factors are essential to effect “the awakening by mantra”. First, the mantra must fit the person’s inherent reactive driving forces (samskaras), and second, it must be infused with the requisite power to be able to transform a microcosmic consciousness into the Macrocosmic state.
Mantra is sound-based. As explained early in the book, the first vibration of the material creation is sound. We also came to know that the first stage of the manifest creation is subtle and inaccessible to the ordinary consciousness of living beings. Sound is at first created in the form of ideas, as a psychic reality of the cosmic mind. Gradually, this psychic reality is transformed into physical reality in the process of creation. So, sound is the most subtle form of material expression, linking the cosmic physical realm with the cosmic psychic realm.
The cosmic force at this stage of transforming cosmic psychic reality into physical reality is termed as parashakti in Sanskrit. This primal cosmic force exists also in human beings. Before being initiated into the power of mantra, one’s parashakti is lying dormant coiled up in the lowermost vertebra at the bottom of the spine by the basal plexus (muladhara cakra). By application of a suitable mantra this potentially spiritual force is awakened. By regular spiritual practice this physico-psycho-spiritual force of a human being, which is bound by the person’s inherent reactive driving forces, gets further transformed from crude to subtle in successive stages. As it rises through the various plexi (cakras), along the spine up towards the chief plexi at the top of the head, the practitioner experiences states of increasing subtlety and finally attains the cosmic state.
According to Shrii Shrii Anandamurti:
The point where the sense of the unit identity is locked is called kula. Hence those who achieve perfection through spiritual practice are called kaola. Those who can move the collective ectoplasm through the medium of their ectoplasmic rhythm, can awaken new power in sound through their own ectoplasmic strength. … and those who can perform such a tough task are called Mahákaola. They alone are worthy of the status of guru and no one else. When a Mahákaola awakens vibrations in the universal ectoplasmic body through the medium of particular sounds, those sounds acquire the status of siddha mantras. A spiritual aspirant can only achieve perfection through the medium of those siddha mantras.
The powerful consciousness of a siddha mantra is realised in “conceptual understanding of and psychic association with the mantra”. The practitioner strives to imbibe the spirit of the empowered mantra. He or she applies proper spiritual ideation while using the mantra, and in the process realises the spiritual object of the ideation with the help of the meaning, rhythm, and power of the mantra.
Shrii Shrii Anandamurti quotes the ancient Diksaprakash scripture where Shiva states:
Mantras without their corresponding ideation are merely a couple of letters mechanically uttered. They will not bear any fruit even if repeated a billion times.
The Essence of Our Being
Parables are a beloved form of imparting subtle realities. The following is from the ancient Svetasvatara Upanishad text:
As oil in seeds, as butter in cream, as water in dry river-beds, as fire in wood, so is the Self seized within the self, if man looks for it by truthfulness and penance.
Shiva reasoned in the same way, as stated in the Kularnava Tantra:
Ideation on Brahma is the best process in which oneness with the Divine is felt spontaneously and always; inferior to that is concentration in the form of dhyana and dharana; lower than that is praise and the singing of hymns, and the worst is idol worship.
Such scriptural communications informed people that there is a potentiality in us that should be realised, and the essential process for realising one’s full potential, to become one’s true self, is ideation. For that reason, spiritual meditation is called intuitional practice, the transformation of body and mind into intuition and soul.
The key to successful spiritual ideation is sincerity and inner longing. One should not be like a parrot but proceed with reverence towards that most subtle entity who transforms one’s being bit by bit. The transition from being habitually preoccupied with random association to meditating with purposeful ideation is an essential adaptation process for spiritual practitioners. One goes increasingly “deeper into it”.