Attend Upcoming Mantra Yoga Webinar
Mantra is the fundamental practice of Yoga and can help deepen your Yoga practice on all levels from Asana, Pranayama and Pratyahara, to Concentration (Dharana) Meditation (Dhyana) and Samadhi as unitary Consciousness. Mantra Yoga is very helpful for training the mind for any determined activity, and for relieving psychological and emotional problems, compulsions, obsessions and addictions, also strengthening the Yamas and Niyamas, the yogic principles of right living and right action.
We will explore the role of mantra in Yoga Sutras, the Yogas of Knowledge (Jnana) with mantra as Self-inquiry, Devotion (Bhakti) with mantra as connecting us to the Deity, and Hatha Yoga with mantra as a way of guiding asana and pranayama..
We will introduce the different types of yoga mantras used, including bija/seed mantras starting with OM, name mantras to deities like OM Namah Shivaya, and longer mantric chants like Vedic Gayatri Mantra or Sanskrit Stotras.
LEARN MORE ABOUT YOGIC MEDITATION AND PROGRAMS WITH DR. DAVID FRAWLEY AND YOGINI SHAMBHAVI
Mind and Sound Vibration
The mind’s thoughts are based upon words and sounds, which create and sustain the mind’s vibratory pattern and where its energy goes. The words within our minds and their subconscious residues hold emotions, feelings, memories, sensations, information, ideas, and insights. They are containers for many emotions above and beyond the overt meaning that the words may actually have. Our life experiences are held in patterns of remembered communication, words and sounds, including not just what has been said but how it has been said, and how it becomes imbedded in our deeper memory that we can easily fall into.
Mantra is the main yogic practice to change the vibratory pattern of mind and speech, bringing the mind’s activity into a yogic energy pattern and mantric flow, by both the nature of the sounds used and how we energize these.
Control of our inner speech, thought flow and expression is the basis of control of the mind. Steadiness of the inner or mental speech in turn rests upon steadiness of the outer speech. Through steadying our inner sound and thought currents by the use of mantras, we can steady the mind.
Changing the dominant sound patterns in the mind is the best way to change and heal the mind down to the subconscious level, and open up the higher levels of awareness. Mantra allows us to link our outer speech with our inner speech and mind, connecting us to greater cosmic sound vibrations and making our thoughts and words more aware and yogic, aligned with our sadhana.
Seed or Bija Mantras and Concentration
The simplest way to develop the power of attention for focused mental activity or meditation is to concentrate on a single sound as in a bija or seed mantra. Making the mind one-pointed in a concentrated seed mantra brings the mind to a state of ‘singularity’, in which the mind will naturally take a quantum leap in awareness, leading us to the universal consciousness beyond the limitations of the mind and the relativity of time and space.
Shakti Bija mantras like OM, AIM, HREEM, SHREEM, KLEEM, KREEM, HOOM are particularly helpful here, either singly or in certain combinations. They can be received from a teacher and and are part of the worship of various Devatas (Deities).
OM Haum Joom Sah Namah Shivaya is very good in this regard. Note my book Mantra Yoga and Primal Sound for more information or traditional mantric texts like the Mantra Yoga Samhita.
As one repeats the mantra, the vibration of the mantra gradually enters into the deeper mind, reaching into the samskaras or karmic patterns at the base of the subconscious. Here we should remember the example of a singer who by holding a single high note can break a glass. The light of the mantra can illumine even the deepest darkest portions of the subconscious mind, releasing any blocked energy within it.
The development of concentration through mantra is one of the best tools of psychological healing. It can help break up deep-seated habits, addictions, and traumas, releasing the mental energy and prana trapped within them. It helps dissolve negative emotional patterns whether desire, fear, anger, attachment or various types or addictions and compulsions, even those forgotten by the conscious mind. Mantra Yoga does not require that we analyze the unconscious, relive our traumas, or dig up old memories.
The mantra changes the energetic pattern and structure of the mind, so that such negative patterns have no place to exist, develop or remain in our consciousness, like light that dispels the darkness. No need to try to remember past traumas or problems, one can use the mantra to renew them and reclaim the energy lost in them.
Need For Sustained Practice in Meditation and Mantra
To achieve this mantric power of attention and concentration requires discipline, effort and practice on a daily basis morning and evening. Our power of attention is like a muscle and can only grow slowly and incrementally in strength over time. We need patience in developing it like cultivating a garden. Yet if we persist, in a period of a few months, major differences can be seen, and the nature of the mental field can be considerably altered within a few years of steady practice.
Once we have a greater power of attention through mantra, we will naturally have greater powers of discernment and a better judgment in life, which will improve our health, well-being, work, and relationships. It will no longer be as easy for other people or the external world to disturb us or dominate our thought process. We will have an inner flow and an inner space that nourishes us from within. We will have greater capacity to learn and a greater creativity to enhance our lives.
Mind and the Three Gunas
It is important in this context to remember the role of the three gunas – that sattva guna or light and harmony is the true nature of the mind, and rajas and tamas, the factors of agitation and inertia, are the doshas or toxins at the level of the mind that need to be controlled and removed.
The yogically concentrated mind is a sattvic mind, which has the innate power of self-renewal and deeper perception.
The distracted mind is a rajasic mind, which will involve us in unnecessary activity and cause our actions to be done in a disturbed manner.
The dull mind is a tamasic mind that will slow down all of our responses and get us caught in emotional negativity and darkness in one form or another.
The meditative mind depends upon a sattvic life-style based upon the yamas and niyamas of Yoga, particularly ahimsa or non-violence. This sattvic life-style implies an Ayurvedic life-style that balances your constitution as Vata, Pitta or Kapha, and a Yogic life-style that includes all the tools of Yoga relative to body, prana, senses, mind and heart. If our meditation is not proceeding well, or if we are lacking in concentration, there may be factors in our life-style that are inhibiting it.
If we make concentration and meditation an integral part of our life style – which is easy to do with mantra meditation – then we can return to the state of harmony and balance that connects with the universal prana and awareness, the state of the higher Self.
Dr. David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
